Philosophical systems: a categorical analysis 0226313212

Citation preview

Philosophical Systems

EVERETT -W. HALL 1 (

Philosophical System� A Categorial Analysis

L.¥U�:!'�� -- - .. --- ·-- - � -- --�-- .-

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO

&

LONDON

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER: 0-226-31321-2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 60-11824 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO

6o637

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, LTD., LONDON © I g6o BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. PUBLISHED I 960 THIRD IMPRESSION 1970 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Who then are the true philosophers? Those, I said, who are lovers of the vision of truth; ...they are lovers of all true being. PLATO

A philosophical problem has the form: "I don't know my way about." ... For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. WITTGENSTEIN

Prefatory Remarks The present inquiry can perhaps be conceived as an essay in com­ parative philosophy, though this statement might be misleading if the analogy with other comparative studies is made too strict. The expression, "comparative philosophy," is doubtless somewhat novel but the idea is not completely so. Indeed, most philosophies do this job of comparison ( or possibly I should say that their proponents, as human beings, do it without permission from their systems, which often imply the non-reality of rivals). But usually their purport is not the understanding and placing of competitors so much as the extermination of them. The recent analytic movement ought to be a more favorable environment for an objective examination of philosophical view­ points than that furnished by any of the older, more speculative and individualistic systems. Unfortunately much of its energy has, in the present writer's estimation, been misdirected. Within what has traditionally been known as "philosophy,"' it has de­ voted itself all too wholeheartedly to the sanguine business of eliminating its subject. I find myself quite unsympathetic with this undertaking. However unsubstantiated and perhaps even absurd many philosophical systems have been, philosophy is still a live venture and will remain so. It involves a human propensity so deep that no censorship via academic shame can do more than suppress it to the level of the unconscious, if I may adopt a cur­ rent mannerism. Moreover, it is legitimate. In so far as the philosopher barges into the proper waters of science or philology or history or literary criticism he is out of his jurisdiction and can properly be condemned for obstructing navigation, although even in these regions the commotions he sets up may lead to new and more profitable routings of ideas. But it is one of the major

[vii]

objectives of the present investigation to show that even in this age of specialization, perhaps especially in it, the philosopher has a distinctive job of his own to perform, one which I have called ''categorial analysis." It is with the specification of this job and the establishment of its necessity that this book is concerned. The book has grown out of an attempt to rectify a deficiency pointed out by many readers of an earlier work by the same au­ thor, What ls Value? That volume used a method of categorial analysis without doing too much in the way of elucidating or justifying it. The elucidation and justification here offered owe a great deal to a great many people, particularly to graduate students and staff members of the Departments of Philosophy at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. It is a matter of astonishment to the writer how many shortcomings blemish this volume despite its severe ordeal by fire at the hands of these friendly but merciless critics. I am indebted to my wife for reading the proofs and checking the index. EVERETT

[viii]

w. HALL

Contents

I. What Is a Philosophical System?

I

Use of These Terms

I

Virtues and Defects of the Formal and Material Modes

7

Distinction between Categorial and Empirical Assertions

12

Categorial Sentences as Both Analytic and Synthetic

15

Existential and Reductive Categorial Sentences

20

Categorial Commitments and an ExtraConceptual Wor Id

22

II. Marks of Categorial Commitment

Appearance of Native and Foreign Categories A Special Linguistic Mark of Ontological Commitment Total Resources of a Language as Marking Categorial Commitment III. ls a Philosophical System without Categorial Commitment Possible?

Preamble The Case of Everyday Experience The Case of Phenomenology

[ix]

31

35 41

The Case of Linguistic Formalism

50

The Case of Linguistic Informalism

56

IV. ls a Self-Contained System Possible?

72

Preamble

72

The Case of Pragmatism The Case of Language-Innovation

74 79

The Case of Existentialism

86

V. Are There Neutral, Indubitable Categories Available to All Systems?

94

Preamble

94

The Case of Common Sense-Empirical Sentences

98

The Case of Phenomenalism-Sense Sentences

104

The Case of A-Priorism-Analytic and Synthetic

1 18

VI. The Given

129

Grammar of the Term Its Effects in Philosophy Given in and Given to a Philosophical System Possible External Grounds Given to All Philosophical Systems Institutional Authority Science Personal Experience Common Thought and Speech Its Content 152 Its Forms 155 References and Acknowledgments Index

[x]

1 43

144 148

150

I What Is a Philosophical System? UsE OF THESE TERMS

In the present essay the term "philosophical system" or some equivalent will appear quite frequently. In order to avoid mis­ understanding, particularly in this period when the climate of opinion is unsympathetic with system building, it is necessary to remark that the author intends to use it very broadly to in­ clude any point of view and way of doing things philosophical that is at all articulate, even one which refuses to be strictly formulated and amounts essentially to a sort of "style" of carrying on the philosophical task. In the first place, then, a philosophical system need not be obviously and formally systematic. It need not be "formalized" in the logician's sense, that is, axiomatized, derived deductively from a set of axioms, postulates, definitions, or other primitive propositions, with all its terms either specifically defined or def­ initely labeled "undefined." It need not be such that formalization of it, in the sense just indicated, would be fruitful, would show, for example, that some of its characteristic contentions can be derived from others, that they fit together deductively. Indeed, it need not be expressed as a set of contentions at all. I would like to say that logical positivism is a philosophical sys­ tem although many of its adherents claimed (I want at the moment to avoid the problem of the soundness of their claim) that "philosophy" (they meant their own) is not a set of state­ ments but a type of activity. Yet I would like to retain the idea of pattern in the loose sense of a relevance to one another of the elements combined, so that there could be the concept of

[I]

excluded incongruities, of systematic demands, of structural proprieties. Let me give an example. If some ''activist'' were to put together the syntactically clarifying performances of the orthodox logical positivist with the class-revolutionary behavior of the Marxist he would come up not with a contradiction but also not with a philosophical system; he would have a hodgepodge. For the moment this is the best I can do about "system." Let us continue the clarification of our terms by saying that a philosophical system is philosophical. Here I think we are really headed for trouble. There is of course the old dodge, "Everybody knows what one means by 'philosophical' and there's no point in getting into semantical debates." This might have worked at the birth of the century or even in its teens; it is no longer available, since people, particularly sophisticated people, simply do not agree on what it is to be philosophical. Nor will an arbitrary definition by enumeration suffice ( that is, a definition listing all philosophical systems), for, among other things, no new philosophical sys­ tems could, in consonance with this usage, ever be allowed ( which would be harsh on unestablished philosophers). What I propose, as a first move, is the substitution of a word, so that for "philosophical system" we read "categorial system" or "system of categories." This has at least the advantage of putting us in the historical tradition and of dissociating the term both from loose popular usage ( we commonly speak of taking a philosophical attitude toward our disappointments but hardly of assuming a categorial one) and from certain contemporary sects. But it runs into the opposite danger of tying us down too narrowly, to, say, the system of categories of Aristotle or of Kant, or, if not to the actual catalogue of them, then perhaps more subtly to the function they were supposed to perform in the particular system embracing them. And I might say I chose this last phrase deliberately: the categories of Aristotle, as also those of Kant, constitute only one kind of element in the total philosophical system of their pro­ ponents, so that I would wish to refer to the sense man ifold as a factor in the Kantian categorial system and similarly primary matter in the Aristotelian. Moreover I would want ''philosophi-

cal" to be a neutral designation in the strife of systems, whereas if it meant the system of substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, state, possession, action, and passion it would side us from the start with the Aristotelians. But this risk is not really so fearful, especially if I point out that "category" originated in the combination of "kata" (against) and "agora" (place of public speaking), thus in the idea of a public accusation (which is not inappropriate to the context of philosophical debate from the Greek sophists right down to our contemporary Oxonians), and that the Oxford English Dictionary lists first the definition (or really characterization), "A term . . . given to certain general classes of terms, things, or notions; the use being very different to different authors." A second definition the O.E.D. gives is, "A class, or division, in any general scheme of classification." This may serve as a point of departure if we keep in view, to give us bearings, the general schemes of classification found in what have traditionally been accepted as philosophical systems or patterns of thinking. As we look at the widest areas or groups of classes or concepts accepted by or characteristic of recognized "philosophies " we find them taking a trinitarian pattern, marked out by the tradi­ tional division of the philosophical disciplines: ontology (investi­ gating being), epistemology (studying knowledge or, more broadly, any reference), and axiology (concerned with values). In some rough way, this distribution seems relatively inescapable; in any case it is, with different approaches and under different captions, strikingly recurrent. To point this up more specifically in a single illustration, I should like to turn attention briefly to the "transcendentals" of St. Thomas and the Scholastics. Here it seems to me we have a parallel to our pattern: ens (entity), unum (unity), res (thing), and aliquid (something) falling primarily in the province of ontology; verum (truth) and bonum (good) in the territories of epistemology and axiology, respectively. It is quite correct to say that all of these are ontological; I shall return to this in a moment. The allocation just made, however, is not wholly inappropriate. "Ens" seems to have been the most general, positive term for any being. "Unum" was applied to an existent negatively, as not divided. This appears in more recent philosophy in whatever is taken as irreducible or unanalyzable-a physical thing or event

for a materialist, a sense datum for a phenomenalist. "Res" was taken to point out anything not simply as existing but as having a definite essence or "quiddity" yet otherwise leaving that essence unspecified. St. Thomas treated "aliquid" as a relative term, re­ ferring to anything just so far as distinguished from something else. He likewise considered the other two transcendentals, verum and bonum, as relative, the first to intelligence and the second to will or desire. In this treatment, I admit, they would all appear primarily as ontological: a verum is any being as an object of thought; a bonum any entity as an object of desire. Yet I do not think this vitiates my trinitarianism, which-as I trust is evident or in any case will become so-is not a form of philosophical polytheism, since it is a sort of three-in-one-ism. Just as everything can be viewed as a kind of entity and thus approached ontologically, so also it can be treated as a (possible) object of thought or desire and thereby dealt with epistemologically or axiologically. I may be reading something into Aquinas here, but this much seems plain.He held that the transcendentals do not name classes of concrete beings, however inclusive, but rather ways or modes of existing which are to be found in any denizen of the universe. Now this means that if you are concerned with a case of knowl­ edge ( verum) you may correctly consider it not merely as such ( and thus epistemologically) but also as an entity (ontologically) or a good (axiologically), and conversely in each case. On this approach, then, intentions or cognitions and values are not kinds of entities; they are dimensions or features ( if you wish, possible relations, but we are concerned with the nature of these possibilities and not their observable, actual instances) of all entities. Thus the division of philosophy into ontology, epistemology, and axiology is maintained, though with the uni­ fying insight that whatever each deals with is dealt with also, after its characteristic manner, by the others. It seems to me, accordingly, eminently wise when embarking on a study requiring us to pick out the categories of various philosophies that we look for the chief concepts used or presup­ posed in them concerning existence, reference, and value. And I would maintain this even if in a given system we do not find such an organization specifically set up. I realize that this may be dangerous, introducing a foreign accent, but it is also danger-

ous to follow the vagaries of some eccentric system-builder. For he may be mistaken even about the matter of the relative im­ portance of his own various concepts-for want of perspective he may not see certain ideas that are in basic control of his thinking. Moreover, though categorial perhaps has built into it the element of conceptual importance, it is not, I think, reducible to this. This last point may perhaps be sharpened by noting that some philosophies do not admit categories, or, in any case, they do not include the word, though they do not seem recalcitrant to an analysis that finds some of their components more important than others. This leads us to look more deeply into the matter of what it is for a concept, in any given philosophical system, to be a category or to function categorially. I think we have made a start taxo­ nomically by our historical approach, but we should now ask, "What is there about concepts of existence, reference, and value that marks them alike as categorial?" and "Are all concepts of these sorts categorial?" Starting with the last question, I would be definitely inclined to answer with a negative. And this, again, in line with tradition. For one thing ( this is the more superficial objection), there are uses of these ideas or words that are not particularly philosophical ( though of course any use of any word may turn up, by way of illustration, in some philosophical discussion). To give a few instances haphazardly thrown together: "What is the value of x in 'x - y == o'? " "What references have you to show that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery?" "Does there exist a prime number between 61 and 69?" Such questions would not, I take it, in accordance with tradition, be directed to the philosopher. Moreover, in a purely lexicographical sense, the meanings of the words in question, taken in their philosophical usages, would be a matter finally of philological, not philosophical, concern. This too, of course, is of minor significance and scarcely a sub­ ject for philosophical controversy. But there is ground of a philosophically significant kind ( still abiding by tradition) for denying that all uses of such words as "existence," "reference," "value," and their cognates are categorial. I refer to the rather well established convention of distinguishing between what is philosophical and what merely factual, between [5]

the categorial and the empirical. The problem of what devices for determining longitude existed in the sixteenth century is surely existential, in some sense, but hardly categorial. The enigma of who was designated by the description "the man with the iron mask" is patently referential, but sca rcely categorial. The question of what value should take precedence, civil peace or the destruction of human slavery, is unmistakably valuational but not so clearly categorial. Philosophers, in debating categorial is­ sues of existence, reference, and value, are frequently quite ready, when their choice of particular instances is under question, to hand over to the appropriate specialist any challenge concern­ ing the cases they have used. The distinction must be put rather crudely if we want to take advantage of the pervasive character of its appearance. Categorial concepts furnish the framework, give us the structure of various philosophical edifices ; empirical ones are the brick and mortar that are in some fashion to be used in every building. Or better, categorial ideas are those which permeate any particular philoso­ phy, are involved in every statement couched in its language ( though not necessarily appearing in the form of special words) ; empirical ones have a highly restricted use for saying this or that about a narrow range of facts or experiences. Look back again at the medieval transcendentals. They are applicable anywhere to anything a man may think or talk about­ it is an entity, it has a nature, it is something he does or can refer to, and so on. "First philosophy," concerned precisely with these pervasive aspects of things, differs markedly from the special disciplines studying, say, the forms of life or meteorologi­ cal phenomena. This difference has led to the widespread popular misappre­ hension that philosophers deal with a world apart from the "concrete" and "tangible" matters of everyday life and the special sciences, that (to take the extreme form of this mistake) it invents a world of its own, creates it wholly out of its own head. We can find the categories of a given philosophy in two places : in the forms it allows empirical sentences 1 to take when properly 1

I would like "empirical sen tences," in its con trast with "categorial state­ men ts," to be so construed as to include moral judgments, artistic criticisms, and similar evaluations as well as factually descriptive assertions. I hope

[ 6]

set up and in its own categorial statemeats. The popular misin­ terpretation mentioned in the last paragraph has arisen from a frustrating attempt to make sense of the latter without reference to the former. "Speculative', philosophers of the past are not without guilt in this affair. They were often so busy formulating and arguing their categorial claims that they neglected the more humdrum task of showing the relation of these allegations to empirical statements. "Analytic" philosophers of the present, especially the casualists of Oxford, have gone to the opposite extreme. They are so ashamed of their forebears that they try to suppress even to themselves the fact that they are involved in any categorial commitments at all. We shall help them presently to get free of this compulsion. VIRTUES

AND AND

DEFECTS

O F

THE

FORMAL

MATERIAL MoDEs

By "categorial statement" I mean any direct assertion of a cate­ gory.There are two forms of such assertion, one where a category is mentioned as such, usually involving the occurrence of the term "category" or some cognate used significantly (say as a predica�e), and another where this is not the case. Although the practice may be misleading, it may also be helpful and suggestive to adopt the phrases "in the formal mode" and "in the material mode" to describe these two subforms respectively. 2 For what it is worth ( which is very little at the present stage) we may con­ sider the following as examples: of a categorial statement in the formal mode, "Appearance is a category in the Bradleian system but not in that of Mach"; of one in the material mode, "To be is to be perceived," as asserted by Berkeley; of an empirical sentence showing categorial commitments, "I now experience a brown, cylindrical sense datum surrounded by a pentadactylish flesh-colored one and accompanied by a smooth, hard, cool sensum," as uttered by a certain breed of phenomenalist. For our purposes the value of categorial sentences in the presently to publish some lectures on general epistemology claiming that we can have an empirical knowledge of v alues significantly comparable to our empirical knowledge of facts. 2

I have borrowed these terms from Carnap but do not use them exactly as he does, primarily because I consider categories to be concepts not words.

formal mode is that they are explicitly and verbally about cate­ gories. They may, of course, be mistaken, but if so the mistakes they make can be spotted as mistakes about some system's cate­ gories. And this leads us to notice a further illuminating feature they display. For the most part, they do not make sense unless they specify the system or systems they are talking about, for (to speak redundantly) different systems differ categorially. This holds even for my last sentence, for it is not about categories apart from categorial systems but is a generalization about all systems. In particular, I am grateful to categorial statements in the formal ·mode for allowing me to express my conviction that all philosophers are, in some degree and fashion, in the "cate­ gorio-centric predicament," as I shall call it. Within the family of categorial sentences in the formal mode that do not explicitly specify the system about which they are speaking, we may make a further subdivision. Some omit this reference because they mean to generalize, as would be the case for the statement, "The contrast between existence and value is categorial, not empirical," if this were taken to assert something for all systems in which this contrariety appears. Others simply drop out the specification because it is supplied by the context, as when, in an exposition of Bradley, one says, "The distinction between appearance and reality is a categorial, not an empirical one." Perhaps a special form of this last are those that express the writer's own convictions, as when I put down, "The idea of a category is itself categorial." Each of the above unmistakably involves an ellipsis. Are there no fully articulated categorial sentences in the formal mode that make no reference to any system or systems about which they talk-that are, so to speak, system free, absolute, directly about the world (for example, "Existence is a category not a thing") ? There probably are philosophers who would say so ; I think my­ self the idea is nonsense, that we cannot avoid the categorio-cen­ tric predicament. We shall return to this issue before long. I see that my last paragraph cries out for elucidation. "Ap­ pearance is a category" is elliptical ; it should specify the system it is talking about. Suppose we fill it out to get "Appearance is a category in the Bradleian system." This is fine in that it shows the relativity of categories. But in doing this it is not free from its own categories and categorial commitments-in this instance

[8]

to categories, categorial systems, and the relativity of the former to the latter. It is talking about, it is mentioning, not using, the category of appearance. But it is using, not mentioning, the category of category. It is at a meta-level as regards the former ; it is all involved with and so in the same stratum as the latter. Incidentally, this is one of the disservices that Carnap's ter­ minology renders us: it tends to blind us to the truth that being in the formal mode is a relative property, holding of a sentence only in relation to expressions it is about (in its own right as saying something, even a formal something, it is in the material mode, and this fate is not escapable by climbing a ladder of meta-languages open at the upper end); another is that it ap­ pears to classify us with the sheer syntacticists, whereas it should be obvious already that, for example, through the concept of categorial commitment, we are not properly so placed. Having elucidated my qualifying excursus, it is necessary to return to my major contention. Categorial sentences in the formal. mode, by being aloof from the categories they are about, leave us outside them, they remain foreign ; the element of com­ mitment, which is vital to them as categories, is put aside. Sup­ pose, by way of a somewhat distant analogy, we wished to gain understanding of the emotion of irritation, and we did so by replacing the material-mode sentence, "That damn s.o.b. pushed in right ahead of me," by the formal-mode one, "The emotively expressive words 'damn s.o.b.' were used by me attached to a description of the act of stepping ahead of me performed by the person at whom I am pointing." Some elucidation no doubt would be effected by this, but the meta-attitude would have lost the irritation ( though another emotion would be expressed which I shall refrain from describing). So, when we try to put any ( or all) the categorial commitments of a philosophy into the formal mode, we have let slip precisely the element of commitment to those categories ( unless perchance our formalization involves some of them itself). There is a device that would apparently incorporate in a formal­ mode statement commitment to the very categories it mentions, namely, that of referring to them as the speaker's own, for ex­ ample by the use of a pronoun in the first person as in "The concept of physical thing is a category for me" or ''in my system." Now it seems to me that this is ambiguous, its status turning

[9]

on the context in the speaker's mind. I may utter it while just as objective about my system as any other, in which case the pronoun would serve only to select the system about which the sentence talks, thus not embracing any commitment to physical thing as a category. Contrariwise, it may be used to express just such a commitment ( absent, for example, in "The concept of physical thing is a category for you") . When this is so, the speaker is not just mentioning the category and the system to which it is relative; hence we must, for clarity's sake, classify the sentence as in a mixed mode relative to that system; it is both material and formal in relation to the latter. This situation is not conducive to lucidity and in any case does not change my earlier claim that so far as a categorial proposition is in the formal mode, it lets slip the element of commitment. (Parenthetically, when I refer henceforth to a categorial statement as "formal" or "in the formal mode" I shall mean one taken relative to the system it is talking about, not to its own-to whose categories of course it is committed.) It m · ight be objected that I am quite wrong in supposing any defect in formal categorial statements due to their not displaying the categorial commitments they talk about ( except accidentally and in rare cases) . We do not condemn the sentence, "The dog is vicious," on the grounds that it is neither canine nor vicious. It says what it wants to say about something quite different from itself. Similarly, "In Bradley's system the distinction be­ tween appearance and reality is categorial" says just what it wants to say about certain categorial -commitments without itself being committed to them. The contention is (considered in itself) quite correct, but it is beside the point; it is no objection to what I was trying to say. Categorial sentences in the formal mode may say, and say cor­ rectly ( that is, they can be true) , exactly what their users intend, yet not be in all respects so illuminating that, for exan1ple, it offers a sheer gain in lucidity to eliminate material sentences in favor of them. By way of analogy, we may note that a phe­ nomenologist might admit that "The dog is vicious" says what it wants to say quite correctly, but does not display the proper categories and so is not translucent categorially. It is something like this-though not exactly the same thing-I am saying about formal categorial sentences; though there is some gain in going [ IO ]

from the material mode to the formal, there is also some loss, indeed a great loss. To speak from a foreign standpoint about categorial commit­ ments within a system makes sense only if the idea of such com­ mitments is imported, is endowed with meaning in some native usage. Thus, relative to the system about which it speaks, a formal categorial statement does not directly illuminate us (how­ ever true it may be) on the matter of categorial commitment in general nor, a fortiori, of commitment to that system's categories. Moreover, by talking about these foreign commitments it tends to obscure whatever illumination it might give on commitments through its own. So for this purpose it is best to make use of categorial statements in the material mode which quite obviously are involved in categorial commitments but do not talk about any. Also, using the formal mode can easily give the entirely mis­ leading impression that categories are entities quite like particu­ lars or universals, which can be named by specific terms, and that commitment to them is j ust like an existential assertion of such entities. Of course in some commonsensical way one would want to allow that we can adopt special terms for them, other­ wise communication on philosophical matters would become in­ tolerably involved (I have been using "category" and "commit­ ment" and shall continue to do so without further apology) . Whatever it is we are trying to grasp by, or express through, our categories ( and I submit we are attempting in them to be in some sense fair to the structure of the extra-linguistic world, not j ust to shape up our talk) , it is something so pervasive and formative that the large-scale, structural aspects of our speech are more appropriate to its presentation than any particular terms in our vocabulary. In the ways suggested, then, categorial sentences in the ma­ terial mode give us more insight than correlative ones in the formal. For example, stated within the Bradleian system, "Time is an appearance not a reality" is far more enlightening than its formal counterpart asserted from the outside, " 'Tim.e is an ap­ pearance not a reality' is a categorial sentence in the Bradleian system," if we are interested in coming to grips with commit­ ments to the categories of time, appearance, and reality or, in­ deed, to the category of categorial commitment in general. But now we must note defects in material categorial sentences.

And first is the fact that they obscure something rather clearly revealed by formal ones, namely, the relativity of categories to systems. Their orientation is external and implicit, by means of their context, not explicit and internal. I am not so much con­ cerned with any danger of mis-specification of their systematic affiliations, supposing that question to be raised (for example, that one might suppose that "Time is an appearance not a reality " is Whiteheadean), as with the risk that such a question be not raised at all nor such affiliations admitted. It makes sense to debate, by itself, as just a single matter of fact, whether I am writing this with a ball-pen or a fountain-pen. This is not the case, I contend, with any controversy about whether time is real. Thus G. E. Moore made a serious categorial error when he thought he could straight off, and quite apart from other com­ mitments, refute Bradley's claim that time is not real, on the assumption that Bradley meant by it what he ought to mean by it, namely, that there are no temporal facts, nothing ever happens before or simultaneously with anything else. This leads to the recognition of another defect in material categorial sentences for our purposes. Their categorial commit­ ments appear as direct assertions and thus are easily confused with empirical claims. So we have "Time is not real" thus con­ fused, as we have just noticed. Indeed, the same words in the same order can serve as a categorial sentence in one context and an empirical one in another. "Simultaneity is an appearance" might be used by a Bradley to claim that the experience of simultaneity occurs but embraces a contradiction, by a physicist talking about a rapid sequence to assert that a certain change is below our threshold of discrimination: the first would be a case of a categorial sentence, the second of an empirical one. Since categories are relative, what serves as an empirical generalization in one system may be a categorial statement in another without any special linguistic mark of distinction. We have already noted a case of this in "Time is not real." DISTINCTION

BETWEEN

EMPIRICAL

CATEGORIAL AND

ASSERTIONS

At this point we may well ask, What marks out a given form of words as an empirical or a categorial assertion? And what is the nature of the distinction? I would like to postpone consid[ 12 ]

eration of the first to the next section, since it will combine with another question: What are the categorial features of an empirical sentence? A few remarks on the second may be in order here. Whatever empirical telltales there may be to help us distin­ guish in particular cases a categorial from an empirical sentence, the difference itself is categorial or, to put it less misleadingly, acceptance of the contrast is a categorial commitment, not an empirical assertion. It would seem transparent that an empirical distinction must be one between empirical m · atters; where one of the items is not observable in nature, the difference is not. The dissemblance of pink and white dogwoods, the diversity of a Windsor and a ladder-back chair, are clearly empirical; they need only good eyesight and appropriate factual circumstances to be made out. The difference between my black cocker and unity, the dissimilarity of the blotter on my desk and truth are not, in any obvious sense at least, observational. Now certainly one of the items we differentiate when we distinguish a categorial from an empirical sentence is not empirical (I think neither is, but it is not necessary to argue this stronger position). One might try to maintain that concepts are simply psychologi­ cal or linguistic and hence that the divergence between two kinds of them, as in the case of empirical and categorial ones, is merely factual. But this supposes that a classification of concepts is pos­ sible without reference to their objects. Such a view, I would maintain, is wrong, for it would omit precisely their identifying feature as concepts. They are what they are (and therefore classi­ fiable as of this or that variety) by virtue of their directedness, of the what-it-is that each of them is about. They, as contrasted with what Morris calls their sign-vehicles, are essentially referential so that to omit their objects is to leave them aside. Consequently, if one admits that there are categories or categorial matters as well as and in contrast with empirical, then the difference is clearly not itself empirical ( of course if one does not, then the issue van­ ishes). Supposing the distinction to be categorial, it is, then, on the view I have been representing, relative to a system or systems. Consider : " 'This is an inkstand t when written by Moore (that is, when used as Moore uses it to prove that any philosopher who denies the existence of physical things is transparently wrong) is a categorial statement." This sentence, with its commitment to the uniqueness of categorial sentences, is peculiar to my system and

others like it. Moore himself would ( or should in consistency) disallow it. He should claim that "This is an inkstand," even in his handling of it, is as empirical a statement as any can be. So far as I think him wrong in this (as I most definitely do) , it is because my whole categorial framework differs from his, and my adverse opinion is really about that, not about "This is an ink­ stand" in some isolated occurrence and absolute sense. This, I hope, is a sufficient illustration of my contention that the same form of words may function now as a categorial and now as an empirical sentence as its systematic context is changed. Here we have a serious fault of categorial sentences framed in the material mode. Closely tied to this is another and graver defect. If such sen­ tences are easily confused in toto with empirical ones, how much more readily is their assertiveness mixed up with that of the lat­ ter. One way to indicate the dissimilarity I want to put and keep before us is by anticipating what will be developed at some length in a few moments. Empirical sentences, when properly formed, both assert matters of fact and commit their users to categorial positions. The former occurs directly in their predications; the latter is a function, in the main, of their "grammar" (taken broadly). The two of course cannot conflict, but neither can they just duplicate each other. On the other hand, material categorial statements, like all sentences, involve categorial commitments through their form, but they also directly assert categorial mat­ ters, so that the two can conflict or again duplicate each other. Suppose one were to say, "There are no meaningful existential propositions." Here the form conflicts with the content. This is not to say that categorial sentences can be self-applicative, em­ pirical not. The latter is indeed incorrect. Take, "All sentences in this book are composed of two or more English words." This is empirical and self-applicative. It happens to be true, but a false one is easily constructed and in fact one that proves itself false, for example, "No sentence in this book is composed of more than eleven words.'' Here the trouble is that the expression has as a matter of fact properties conflicting with the factual assertion it makes; its form so far as it is categorially committive does not come into the matter at all. But with our categorial instance the conflict arises between what is asserted and what the sentence categorially commits one to. The two are, so to speak, on a level.

Similarly, categorial sentences can be duplicative in their com­ mitments, namely, when what they assert repeats in some fashion and to some degree what their form requires. Consider the fol­ lowing cases : "Some of our thinking about the world is of the subj ect-predicate form," "Treat the imperative seriously in any categorial analysis," "Not every declarative asserts an empirical fact." Empirical sentences are never duplicative in the same way. If they are repetitive it is not in that they say (in whole or part) what their form commits them to categorially, but rather in that they assert something about themselves which as a matter of fact is true (but might have been false within the same grammatical framework) . An instance in point is : "There are forty letters in the present sentence." Here the symbolic expression exhibits what it asserts, but the exhibition is a plain exemplification of a prop­ erty, open to anyone's observation whatever his systematic orien­ tation ( save that he admits in some fashion letters and numbers) ; it is not a tacit philosophical claim. I am aware that in making this distinction (between the sorts of conflicts and duplications one can find in material--categorial and empirical sentences, respectively) I am begging the larger is­ sue ( of the difference between the categorial and the empirical) . But I am not particularly uncomfortable about it. It is simply proof that I am in the categorio-centric predicament myself. I can­ not reach out to something neutral on this issue to do the j ob. Let me point this up. "Treat the imperative seriously in any categorial analysis" is a categorial imperative. Let us suppose it uttered by a philosopher who has a place for it in his system ; it is itself in good form. But what it commands explicitly and what it commits one to who uses it are relative to such a system in which it properly occurs ; it would be quite out of place for a Carnap of the period of The Logical Syntax of Language to is­ sue. If this provocative example bogs us down in issues that are irrelevant at the moment, an analogous treatment can be given of the apparently more innocent, "There is a category of exist­ ence." CATEG ORIA L SENTE N CES ANALYTIC

AND

A S B oTH

SYNTHETIC

In the material mode, categorial statements exhibit a peculiarity that has caused some trouble heretofore in their analysis. They

[ 15 ]

seem to be both analytic and synthetic. It is probably admitted on all sides that they are a priori, though it is frequently not seen that what is a priori (both in the sense of being necessarily and universally true and in that of neither needing nor allowing em­ pirical verification) is relative to a system-for the a-priority is involved in the system and thus requires commitment to it, whereas to say it is relative requires a statement in the formal mode and thus automatically disengages that commitment. Now it may be thought (I have myself so thought) that the reason such material categorial statements have been taken by some as analytic is that these people (like the logical positivists) had a dearth of sentential categories-only two in fact, analytic and empirical-and so in the case of categorial sentences had to do the best they could, which involved a little forcing. I now see however that this was not the whole story. The truth (validity, legitimacy, or what you will) of material categorial sentences, taken seriatim and in relation to less funda­ mental statements properly occurring in the philosophical system in which they are native, lies in the fact that they express some­ thing integral to it; they assert a commitment of it, not some empirical fact as formulated in it. So in a sense they are analytic in- that system ; they point it up in some respect and so could not be false (or invalid or illegitimate) without disruption of it. Within a system you do not say things that disrupt it; or, to put it objectively as a redundancy, a statement that fails to fit the categories of a system is not in that system. Consider the positivist's criterion of meaning : "A synthetic sentence is meaningless (nonsense, says nothing) unless a way of empirically verifying or confirming it is specifiable ( or recog­ nizable, were it to occur)." This is a categorial sentence in the material mode in their line of talk. Deny it and you run against their whole approach. You may not find it developed or derived tautologically, though presumably you could if their system were properly formalized; but it is in no sense itself empirical. Nor is it quite fair to say that inadvertently they have admitted, in its person, a synthetic a priori into their thought, for they recognize it as in and peculiar to their system ( and even if they had not, it is so). It does not hold good of a world outside what they call "philosophical clarification." But now the same thing can be said of the phenomenalist's

[ 16 ]

"Physical things are sets of sense data" or Kant's "Space and time are forms of intuition." These are not analytic in quite the obvious sense that "A red necktie is red" or "A husband is a man" are, since they are not analytic relative to the somewhat amor­ phous logic of everyday speech; yet they can be designated as ana­ lytic in as true a sense as any sentence. They express a commit­ ment of the system in which they occur and their necessity re­ sides in this. They simply repeat and point up something in their systematic context, a context without which they would not make sense. It is time we looked at the other side of the coin. Categorial sentences in the ·material mode are often taken to be synthetic, not analytic. And this has truth in it, too. If one views from the out­ side the categorial system in which they occur, that is, as oneself free of its commitments yet recognizing them as commitments, then material categorial sentences, by formulating these commit­ ments, appear not to be analytic nor even, perhaps, true ( or valid or legitimate); in any case they are clearly not necessary, for the system is not necessary-we suppose it to have legitimate, possibly valid, competitors. So, for example, the criterion of meaning of the logical positivist in the eyes of an outsider makes a synthetic, a substantial assertion that may be quite properly questioned. A similar sort of thing can be said in the case of categorial sentences in the material mode basic to physicalism or phenomenalism. I conclude that the simple and supposedly exclusive and ex­ haustive classification of sentences into analytic and synthetic is wrong, but it does not follow that there are synthetic a priori statements as traditionally understood ( or, if one wishes to say there are-and this would not be wholly incorrect-then one must admit that their analysis is more complex than hitherto sus­ pected). Certainly there may be such, but this is not entailed by anything to which we have committed ourselves. All we need say is that categorial sentences in the material mode are analytic when taken within the system whose commitments they express, but synthetic when viewed from without that framework but still recognized as making categorial assertions. Suppose I say, "Appearance and reality are categorial contrar­ ies in Bradley's philosophy." In this case I am only talking about this antithesis, all commitment to appearance, reality and their opposition being set aside. But suppose I say, "The contrast be-

tween appearance and reality is improper." Here I am taking the claim of such an opposition seriously, yet by saying it is improper I am treating it as synthetic. If in addition I take it not to be em­ pirical ( that is, not such that one could detect by appropriate ob­ servations which entities are appearances and which realities) , then I recognize that it is categorial though foreign to my com­ mitments. Contrast logical positivism with the position I am trying to sketch as applied, say, to the sentence, "There are synthetic a priori . . ,, propos1t1ons. The former can treat this in either of two ways: It can simply and directly relegate it to the wastebasket of "nonsense" or it can make it over into a formal statement, "In certain systems ( of which Kant's is an example) there are synthetic a priori propo­ sitions," which of course is treated, upon pain otherwise of admit­ ting somewhere such propositions, as analytic, as a partial defini­ tion of the systems in question, and so perhaps had best be put in the form "In certain systems ( of which Kant's is an example) , the words 'There are synthetic a priori propositions' are allowed to occur." In neither case would the categorial assertion of the origi­ nal sentence be retained. This can be put, formally, " 'There are no synthetic a priori propositions' is, for logical positivism, an analytic statement." In the system here being outlined, however, the matter is dif­ ferent. Though it itself is not committed to synthetic a priori propositions, it does not turn the claim that there are such entities into nonsense nor does it empty it of its categorial assertiveness by "translating" it into the formal mode. It treats it seriously. This can be put, formally, " 'There are no synthetic a priori proposi­ tions,' is, for this point of view, a synthetic categorial statement." Let us probe this a little further. The position I am trying to develop avoids a disaster many others have ended in ( often with­ out their proponent's awareness) , and one clearly enacted before our eyes by logical positivism, namely, that of denying that there are any other philosophical positions. But this escape has its cost. It requires the admission of a kind of sentence not in the philo­ sophical handbooks, to wit, a synthetic sentence which is neither empirical (in the traditional sense, for it is not confirmable by observations) nor a priori ( since it is not necessarily true) . How-

ever, I think it gives sufficient new insight to warrant so bold a move. Let me point up what is involved, though it is perhaps already quite plain : I am not saying, unqualifiedly, that categorial sen­ tences are synthetic but neither empirical nor a priori; rather, I am suggesting that categorial sentences in the material mode when transplanted outside the system to which they are native into another which, by recognizing their categorial foreignness and thereby admitting that there is some other philosophical ter­ rain besides that upon which it operates, takes their claims seri­ ously although not accepting them are synthetic but neither em­ pirical nor a priori. And I am also putting into this same class the sentences that compete with them in the system into which they have been transported, that is, that system's own categorial state­ ments whose asserted truth conflicts with the claimed falsity of the intruders. These sentences are of course analytic ( as well as synthetic), namely, when taken not as in competition with the foreign ones but in relation to their own home structure, specif­ ically to sentences in that structure not as categorially basic as they (since, as we have seen, there must be a more fundamental level of categorial commitment shared by the system with its admitted foes) . But now the logical positivist and others of his tribe (in this respect) may put in an objection. "Hall," he may contend, "what you have called 'disaster' is really victory or in any case is some­ thing quite acceptable. Why should I admit any other philosophi­ cal position than my own as making any sense ? None does. They all are so many verbal confusions." In the last analysis, there is nothing much I can say to this but "Nonsense." So anyone has the right to suspect that I am no better off than he, that each of us is finally forced to treat the othees categorial claims (when transported into his own system) as empty and thus not really claims at all. Yet somehow I feel I am a little better off. I can talk somewhat longer with fellow philosophers and is not that a gain? For I can talk with others who agree with me on the point at issue, who agree that there are other, rival points of view and thus are com­ mitted to admitting that categorial sentences are synthetic but not a ,priori. And we can fight over which of these are right or most likely so. He, however, has no one with whom to talk; his sup-

posed debate with philosophical opponents is so much elucidation of them into non-existence. With this, however, we are brought straight up to the question, If various categorial systems are thus taken seriously and their competition as real, how is one to decide between them? and -this question leads to another. Must there not be something outside them all, something securely git1en, which is neutral between them and can serve as a fair basis of evaluation of them? I shall return to these queries in subsequent sections. Right now there are some other matters relating to the topic at hand which I ought to put in better shape. EX ISTENTIAL

A ND REDU CTIVE

CATEGORIAL SENTENCES

First, it may help to get a clearer picture of what I mean by '_'cate­ gorial sentences in the material mode" if I subdivide the class I have in mind (I do not claim exhaustiveness for what follows) . One group of them I shall designate "pseudo-existential." I do not mean by this description to deny completely that they are existential ; in a superficial, merely grammatical sense they are rightly so characterized, and I am not sure that they may not be so in a deeper sense or senses. Rather, I adopt the phrase to bring out sharply certain peculiarities that mark them off from empiri­ cal existential statements, one of which is that, as used within a system and as bearing or expressing its commitments, they are analytic, and it would indeed raise eyebrows to speak of any ana­ lytic sentence as ''existential." G. E. Moore furnishes us with a number of examples : "There are physical things," "There was a time before I existed/' "There are other minds." As I have already indicated, these, though prima facie empirical, are in Moore's use, as judged from our standpoint, categorial. No empirical evidence could, for him, overthrow them. Take, "There are other minds." Suppose, he says in substance, one wished to disprove this. The very attempt to do so would show that one was not serious, £or one would be trying to disprove something to other minds. Or imagine that when Moore took "There is a skylight" to confute Berkeley, via the assumption that skylights are physical things, he was mis­ taken, that the supposed skylight was only a painted simulacrum [ 20 ]

of one. He would not have been fazed, for he could have turned to "Here is a finger" or to something else, in fact, to any sentence asserting a matter of immediate observation. For the mistake would have vitiated the empirical case only, not the categorial contention. So I think Lazerowitz and Malcolm (in The Philoso­ phy of G. E. Moore) are right in saying that these sentences, in Moore's use, are not simply empirical (though I think they are wrong in calling them hidden linguistic proposals or subtle affir­ mations of the correct use of English). Other examples can be found in "I exist" in Descartes' system, "There are simple and complex ideas" in Locke's, "Appearances exist but are not real," in Bradley's. Another subclass of categorial sentences in the material mode are those I shall specify as "reductive." They might be called "nothing-but" sentences, since they often take the form, ux-es are nothing-but y-es." These say in effect that things ordinarily taken to be of a certain sort are "really" of a different kind, when the speaker is not pointing out an empirical confusion produced by lumping together things that are observationally distinguishable ("Whales are, you know, not fish but mammals"), but is claim­ ing that a whole class of perfectly good and correctly distinguished empirical entities are fundamentally different from what they are taken to be in the sense that they do not exist in their own right at all, that there is no sort of the sort reduced, or, perhaps better put, that all references to them and statements about them should be eliminated from respectable language and that this can be done without denying what is empirically referred to when one is talk­ ing about them. All this should be stated more circumspectly, but a few exam­ ples will show exactly what I have in mind, and there is super­ abundance of literature, of a couple of decades back, that will fur­ nish all the qualifications one could conceivably wish for. Con­ sider, "Nations are groups of nationals" (Wisdom), "Matter may be defined, a permanent possibility of sensation" (J. S. Mill), "Virtue is the doing good to man, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness" (Paley), "The prophe­ cies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more preten­ tious, are what I mean by law" (Holmes). The cases just given might be called "directly reductive sen­ tences" to contrast them with others that could be designated "in-

directly reductive sentences." The former may be thought of as analyses of categories, fonnulated sometimes as explicit defini­ tions, the latter as stating logical constructions sometimes ex­ pressed as contextual definitions or definitions in use. Consider, in relation to the directly reductive sentences given above, the di­ rectives: "Sentences purporting to speak of nations should be re­ placed by sets of sentences about nationals," "To be scientific and avoid legal mysticism, we should translate the language of law into simple predictions of court actions." It should be noted that indirectly reductive sentences are in the material not the formal mode despite the fact that they are about . 1 mo de " an d "form al mo de " resentences. In our usage ''matena fer, respectively, to sentences that lack or contain mention of the categories of a system; speaking of linguistic expressions is not it­ self sufficient to put a statement into the formal mode. To make this clear, think of "We should distinguish clearly between sen­ tences in the material and the formal modes" which, as uttered by a Carnap using these designations in his way, is, in my usage, itself in the material not the formal mode; compare it with "In Carnap's system the distinction between sentences in the material and formal modes (in his sense) is neither empirical nor merely linguistic but categorial " which in my terminology is in the for­ mal mode. (Strictly, it is so in relation to Carnap's system; taken as involving a commitment on my part, it is material.) CATEGORIA L

CoMMITMENTS

CoNCEPTUAL

AND

AN

ExTRA-

WoRLD

Some pages back I asserted that we can find the categories of a given philosophy in two places : in the forms it allows empirical sentences to take when properly expressed and in its own cate­ gorial statements. For some time we have been concerned with the latter and, in relation to them, with the presence or absence of an admission of legitimate ( though assertedly false) competitors. This emphasis may have encouraged a wrong impression, the im­ pression, namely, that it is all a game or a business, that all phi­ losophers are in a box of their own contriving ( which may be true) and have no hope of getting out or even any interest in do­ ing so (which is false). Categorial systems are not, ·i n the main, oriented to themselves

or their rivals but to the world. Categorial commitments show themselves in the construction of empirical statements, and this is, so to speak, their native habitat. This truth, if properly appreciated, throws light on the whole recent linguistic movement in both its formal and informal branches, since the attempts to construct ideal languages and, again, to get at the true or logical grammar of everyday speech are motivated by something of more philosophical significance than the desire for formal elegance or stylistic correctness. Whether this is done in the one way or the other, the goal of philosophical analysis has been to put empirical sentences in grammatical forms which will avoid misleading readers or hearers about the cate­ gorial commitments of the writer or speaker or ( since this is itself misleading by suggesting that one is outside these commitments) that will free oneself from a linguistically induced error about the structure of the world (including one's knowledge of it) . Let me try to make this concrete. Why did Russell give us his analysis of ordinary descriptive phrases ? Clearly, and as he tells us, to free himself from apparent Meinongian - categorial commit­ ments in the empirical use of these phrases. He wanted, for exam­ ple, to be able to deny the existence of a golden mountain with­ out being committed thereby to its "being" as an obj ect of refer­ ence. And why did Ryle condemn "fictitious person" as a systemat­ ically misleading expression ? Because he wanted to be able to say, in idiomatic English, that Mr. Pickwick is a fictitious person without being committed to the absurdity that fictitious persons are a kind of persons. Or, far more important categorially to him, how did the same writer explain the mistake about there being ghostly minds ? Roughly, by showing that many ordinary expres­ sions ( about intelligent capacities, the possession of certain kinds of knowledge, and so on) , by not sharply distinguishing dispo­ sitional from episodic characteristics, have led many philosophers since Descartes into improper commitments ( into admitting, for example, that there are mental happenings) . At one time Wisdom was interested in the correct analysis of such sentences as "The average man is five feet ten inches tall," and "England went to war with France." Why ? Because, though he did not want to deny what was empirically asserted in them, he at the same time did wish to dissociate himself from the cate-

gorial commitments that appeared to be involved in their use. He wanted no truck with an average man as someone you might meet on the street or with nations as Hobbesian leviathans that could get to fighting one another. Clarification, then, and analysis were to do the trick, as simi­ larly for Carnap or Wittgenstein, restatement in a model or ideal language. When ordinary empirical sentences had been so recast they were all right. Now there have been and are those who hold or seem to hold that the obj ective in this process is to purify, in the sense of to eliminate, not only all categorial mistakes but all categorial commitments whatever. I shall deal with them below. I think their program rests on the biggest categorial mistake of all. Empirical sentences deemed properly clarified and thereby freed of categorial confusion are not stripped of all categorial fea­ tures, but only of "wrong" ones or possibly improper combina­ tions of separately legitimate ones. Wisdom, though granting no single "average" man with single average height, did accept individual men with varying heights : experience could properly be structured in this way. Ryle admits characteristics of human behavior, and specifically dispositional features. Indeed, all empirical statements, so far as they are al­ ready "clarified" or natively well formed and standing in no need of clarification, besides making specific assertions are categorially committive. Take any such sentence. Simply to deny it is equivalent to assert­ ing its falsity. This leaves what I have called its committive element intact. To deny that England went to war with France involves one in the same misleading categorial context (if it is misleading) as to assert the opposite. If one says, "It is not the case that the average man is five feet ten inches tall," one is taken to mean that he is some other height, which of course does not ease Wisdom's troubles. So we see why the philosopher who wants to avoid what he considers the wrong categorial alignments of various empirical sentences cannot simply disaffirm the sentences ; he must recast them. This recasting and the resultant forms that he deems sat­ isfactory show his categorial commitments. In this sense the em­ pirical sentences a philosophical system permits, or, more strictly, the grammatical structures of them which it allows as good form, are most revealing of its categorial character, more so even than its categorial statements ; they are inside the system (as contrasted

with formal categorial sentences) and show how its categories are intermeshed, as elements of structure, with empirical content ( as opposed to material categorial sentences). But now it is high time we faced a most serious problem. Since not only specific categories vary as we go from philosophy to phi­ losophy, but also the distinction between what is categorial and what empirical, how can we tell for any given system which sen­ tences in it are (materially) categorial and which empirical, and, in the latter, what features of it are empirically assertive and what categorially committive ? I fear we shall not be able to answer this definitively and finally, but it is perhaps worth attempting to do the best we can with it.

II Marks of Categorial Commitment APPEARANCE OF FORE IGN

NATIVE

AND

CATEGORIES

Philosophers' battles are odd : they are full of sound and fury but nobody seems to get hurt, or, if anyone does, he refuses to admit it. They remind me of the behavior of my neighbor's child who, for some reason, loves to shoot me and is quite discommoded when I point out that he cannot kill a dead man. Perhaps philosophers are children at heart; this would account for the fact that they never seem to tire of rekilling one another. It has been frequently remarked that in their interminable struggles philosophers never bother to look to the facts to see who is right and who wrong, or, if one of them ostensibly does, his foes pay no attention. Moore, of course, tried to do just this, but everyone involved, even the spectators, thought it quite irrelevant and a bit disgraceful when he held up his hand in disproof of his Berkeleian opponents. This phenomenon gives us one fairly clear and quite reliable mark of a categorial commitment as contrasted with an empirical assertion. Specific observations are relevant to the verification or disverification of the latter in a way in which they are not to the former. It is true that some controversies over empirical matters cannot at the present time be settled by appropriate observations, but this is only because such observations are not now obtainable. Parties to debates of this kind, if normally reasonable, postpone the settling of their disagreements until such time as the relevant facts become available. Another mark is this. An opponent's categorial commitments frequently appear as nonsense, as absurd, and in any case their

wrongness is not ordinary error; his empirical assertions, when the conflict is empirical, are simply false. The matter is, naturally, somewhat more complicated than this if we distinguish between our foe's explicitly categorial statements and the categorial com­ mitments we find imbedded in his empirical assertions. We do not want to damn these assertions as merely ridiculous; we want to allow that as empirical they make sense and are either true or false. So what we do is to say they are "misleading" or "unclear" or "in need of analysis." Let us not bemoan these terms as them­ selves obscure, as shifting both their meaning and application from philosopher to philosopher, though all this is true. There is no one thing, for example, that all philosophers agree upon as categorial foolishness; if there were, philosophers would be de­ prived of all bones of contention, and philosophical activity would cease. For those of us who are more commonsensically inclined, Charles Hartshorne's "I can see only my retinal nerve-endings" is indeed silly; for him, our pedestrian "I see the paper I am writing on" is much in need of revision. For Gilbert Ryle, "My act of thinking what I write is situated at my desk," is as it should be, but not for Berkeley, for whom the act is mental and not in space, nor again for Russell (at a certain period) , who would put it in my brain. And how these mistakes should be set straight in vari­ ous blueprints of reconstruction also differs for these different men. But this is as it ought to be if I am correct : we have in each a mark of categorial commitment and this changes as we go from man to man. Not so for the empirical content, though it cannot be formu­ lated by itself, outside all systematic bias. In some sense all would agree that (putting it in ordinary terms) I am sitting at my desk thinking as I write and as I look at pen and paper. We have then a device : what changes as we translate observations from one phil­ osophical language to another is categorial, what stays the same, empirical. But this must not be taken literally; little or nothing remains verbally unchanged. We must look with understanding, see intellectually, so to speak, the common content. Once more, when we add new material from outside it may have either of two quite different effects. It may simply increase the content of the system, but otherwise harmonize with it eas­ ily. On the other hand, it may disrupt it, refuse to join with it,

turn it into some outlandish hybrid. In the former case the new material differs only empirically ; in the latter it introduces for­ eign categories. Suppose we are writing a detective story� We can, without trouble, have our mastermind combine the observations of those inside the room where the murder occurred with data furnished by people outside the house at the time, and the crime is solved. But try to unite sense data and physical things and events, and trouble is in store ; we do not solve any crime, we commit one. The traditional sort of example is as good as any : "I am now sitting on sense data and am much disturbed about what holds them up" or "I ate for breakfast some patches of pale yellow and drank some dark brown ones, which perhaps accounts for the butterflies in my stomach." The above remarks indicate, I think, what is wrong and quite misleading in Gilbert Ryle's whole approach to categorial dif­ ferences and their criteria via what he calls "category-mistakes." He fails to see that such "mistakes" are ·m istakes only to or for one in a certain categorial framework and mark the intrusion of alien categories. He assumes that they are, right off, simply there or not there and he looks for a test of their occurrence quite apart from all commitments, yet it is patent to an outsider that he is metaphysically involved. A test of categorial mistakes which Ryle gives suggests that he may in fact have nothing more in mind than ordinary logic and the avoidance of contradiction. For example, he takes "Time began a million years ago" to involve a categorial ·m istake be­ cause "It tries to say what cannot be significantly said, namely, that there was a moment before which there was no possibility of anything being before anything else, which contains a patent contradiction." Another case, "Mr. Pickwick is a fictitious per­ son,U leads to the contradiction, "Mr. Pickwick was born in a certain year and he was never born at all." Frankly, I do not think this test ( that a categorial mistake is one which involves or leads to a contradiction) is promising. Certainly one would not want to hold that being or leading to a contradiction is identical with being a categorial mistake, nor even that it always indicates that a categorial mistake has been made. When a prosecuting attorney shows that a witness for the defense has made a statement that involves him in a contradic­ tion, he is not accusing him of falling into categorial error but

of being a liar about matter of fact. Indeed, the whole business in Ryle's hands is really circular, for the contradictions arising from categorial errors arise only if one is already committed to a framework in which they must appear as errors ; in one where they would not, this test would obviously collapse. The effective­ ness of the test presupposes that one in using it has already a specific categorial orientation and, for clarity's sake, a way of determining what this is. To illustrate, let us take the second case mentioned. Suppose we operate in a system that allows being to fictitious entities and that has fictitious persons as a subclass of such entities. Then we can admit a genus, persons, made up of actual persons and fictitious ones. Here for the former variety only is it true or even significant to say that they are born (that is, actually born ; they may be fictitiously born at great length, as is witnessed by Tristram Shandy) . In this system "Mr. Pickwick is a fictitious person" does not imply "Mr. Pickwick was born in a certain year" and the contradiction Ryle would use as a test of cate­ gorial error does not arise. Let us consider the first case. In a system where the beginning of a series, say a temporal series, can be defined-as Aristotle thought-only in relation to what it follows, in combination of course with what follows it ( which is apparently the one in which Ryle is operating) , "Time began a million years ago" does involve a self-contradictory concept, that of "a moment before which there was no possibility of anything being before anything else." But if one is in a system where a beginning or first member can be specified wholly in terms of what follows it (for example, where a beginning to time could be defined as that moment such that every other moment is subsequent to it) , then no such self.;.contradictory concept as the one mentioned by Ryle arises ; in this framework "Time began a million years ago" quite properly refers to a time such that all other moments are subsequent to it, and together they form a period of a ·m illion years, but no reference to anything before this moment is in any way implied or involved. Thus, Ryle, in his use of the test we are now considering, has put the cart before the horse ; he has already identified the thing for which the test was to be a test and thus a basis of identifica­ tion. And we can say the same of his other marks of categorial

mistakes. When he uses absurdity of coupling, it works only if one has already accepted the categorial disparity of the things designated by the coupled expressions; when he employs ab­ surdity in filling a blank in a sentence-frame, the same kind of thing is involved, that is, one must have already accepted the categorial disparity between things whose designations do and those whose designations do not properly fit the same blanks­ otherwise the supposed absurdity does not arise. My main point is not that Ryle has not successfully met the challenge, "What is your test, which you often refer to as 'ab­ surdity,' of a categorial mistake? " although I do make this claim. It is rather that this failure is due to, or in fact amounts to, his building the categorial incompatibility for which he is looking into the very test for it. And this I emphasize only to bring out my contention that Ryle could not help himself, for pointing out categorial absurdities presupposes categorial commitments and is relative to categorial systems, and Ryle has not seen this; this is his fundamental and all-pervasive _ categorial mistake. Turning from the absurdity of alien concepts there is still an­ other mark by which we can separate what is categorial in a philosopher's contentions from that which is empirical, though this is somewhat subtler and requires a deal of sensitivity on our part. Let me put it psychologically. The philosopher's ego is far more bound up with the former than the latter. Challenge him on that and he will defend it much more eagerly and at length than he will this. The reason is not far to seek : if he loses any of his categories his whole position is endangered, for they form a system which constitutes his philosophic standpoint. Empirical material, contrariwise, is adventitious, there for illus­ tration, to give a sense of life and concrete application. To revert to Moore, it made little difference if he had to shift from skylight to inkwell and then to human hand, but it made all the difference in the world whether he was looking at a material object or only at a mental state. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely if you think it through, there often is combined with this a sense that what is categorial is just obvious; it needs no proof and is capable of none; anyone who challenges it is just a fool and not worthy of reply. This of course is characteristic of more reformist and, to speak invidious1 y, less mature philosophers. It goes along with the tendency to

deny that there really are other, signif icant, competing points of view. It reveals, in its way and through the temperament of its advocate, the sense that what is categorial is permeative of the whole and inseparable from it. As Willard Quine has put it, "One's ontology is basic to the conceptual scheme by which he interprets all experiences, even the most commonplace ones. Judged within some particular con­ ceptual scheme-and how else is judgment possible?-an onto­ logical statement goes without saying, standing in need of no separate justification at all." However, as he hastens to add, "Judged in another conceptual scheme, an ontological statement which is axiomatic to [ one philosopher's ] mind m · ay, with equal immediacy and triviality, be adjudged false.,,

A

S PECI AL

LINGUISTIC

ONTOLOGICAL

MARK

OF

COMMITMENT

I am in entire agreement with the sentiments quoted in the last paragraph except that I would extend them from ontology to include epistemology and axiology as well, that is, to embrace all types of categories. But this makes it difficult if not impossible for me to accept another contention of Quine's, namely, that there is a single, favored, rather narrow linguistic device which alone marks out all ontological commitments of any philosopher whatever. "To be assumed as an entity is, purely and simply, to be reckoned as the value of a variable. . . . The variables of quantification, 'something,' 'nothing,' 'everything,' range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true." Put more briefly and categorically : ". . . this is, essentially, the only way we can involve ourselves in ontologi­ cal commitments : by our use of bound variables." This I simply do not see. Syntax is relative to language and to conceptual structure. So it seems to me we need to be more catholic than Quine : we need to look into the whole resources of any language in seeking to discover what indices it has of onto­ logical commitments. To this we shall return. I may have been unfair to Quine. Though he has expressed [ 31 ]

himself in many places quite unequivocally otherwise, he may simply have meant that, in an ideal language set up for this purpose, quantification would be the single and unexceptional signal of ontological commitment. I think there are difficulties in it even when so considered. In terms of the basic relativism of categories, we must admit that this sort of thing is inherently risky. How can you be sure you have retained, undistorted, the categorial commitments of a foreign position when you have translated it into your own ? Or does Quine think he has some­ thing itself categorially neutral and non-biasing ? If the latter is the case, it runs against his own insights on occasion. Moreover, it seems to me obviously not so. Various philosophies have other linguistic devices that reveal their ontological commitments. Bradley had Reality the subject of every judgmenta He would "clarify" our ordinary speech by taking any common statement (such as "My hands are cold") and making it, as he perhaps misleadingly put it, a predicate with Reality the subject ("Reality is such that Hall's hands are now cold") . "Reality" as so used is a proper name. Here we patently have an ontological commit­ ment, but it is found not in the use of a guantifier binding a variable nor in the accepted range of values of a variable, but in a proper name and in its recurrence as subject in all properly formed propositions. To transform it into Quine's syntactical device would unmercifully distort it: it could hardly survive. For on Quine's treatment, although it would be possible to have only one entity taken as existent, its singularity would be an accident, so to speak. Bradley's commitment was to an ontology wherein only this one, unique individual in its total concreteness could conceivably exist : it cries out to be named, to be proper­ named and to be so named in everything we say. But Quine will not admit that naming can carry ontological commitment. This might be all right if he ( say as a nominalist) wished to talk about Bradley's Reality-for example, to deny that there is such an individual. But this would involve Quine's own commitments, and right now we are concerned with his contentions about the proper mark of ontological commitment in any system. It is transparent that his prohibition would do havoc with Bradley. Quine does not traffic with "Reality"; he rides "Pegasus." This of course eases matters ( who really wants to be ontologically committed to Pegasus ? ) and throws some light on his reasons

for talking as he does. People do use mythological and fictional names, and are not thereby misled into supposing that there are entities named by them ( only philosophers fall into this trap) . But now what to do about "Socrates" and similar bona fide names that ordinary folk do suppose name real people ? To take care of this sort of commitment Quine brings in his device and the results are a little astonishing. To make "there is . . . " function he has to transmogrify proper names into predicates. So we have "There is something that Socratizes" not meaning something that corrupts the youth by questioning orthodox moral concepts, but that-well, that has the property of being named "Socrates." Now how did he get himself into this oddity ? He wanted to be able to deny that some proper names name anything and yet allow that they have some significance, as is, of course, the case with fictional and mythological names. He attains this in the ex­ pression, that has cost him so heavily in the coinage of common sense, "It is not the case that there is something that Pegasizes." Was it worth it ? Was it necessary ? The answer to the last question is easy. It was not necessary. An alternative linguistic game that could do the trick would be one according to whose rules every name names ( that is, names seriously, names real entities, not fictional or mythological ones) . Of course myth and fiction could not occur directly here. One would have to substitute meta-talk about them. For exam­ ple, one could write, "In Hesiod's Theogony we find the expres­ sions, 'Pegasus,' 'Medusa,' 'Bellerophon.' ,, A whole work of mythology could be named, as in ordinary speech, and the names in it could be named by "single-quoting,, them. 1 Moreover, by extending this mechanism one could claim a sort of mythological verisimilitude to serious talk which we saw Quine trying to re­ tain and which admittedly forms an important desideratum. We could thus name such a sentence as, "Pegasus sprang from the blood of Medusa." We would then be in a position to say, " 'Pegasus sprang from the blood of Medusa' is to be found in Hesiod's Theogon y, and 'Pegasus' occurs in it." Here we would be committed to the Theogon y , and to the expressions occurring in it, including "Pegasus," but not to Pegasus. I must grant that there is a grave defect here. To put it one My editors have not permitted the use of this device ; I hope they will not forbid a mention of it. 1

way, sentences in the Theogony ( telling us, say, about Pegasus) come out the way many of those in Fin negans lVake do to the uninitiated. Stating it differently, we could not, entering the spirit of the Theogony, say that Pegasus sprang from the blood of Medusa and thus did not co1ne into existence like ordinary horses. In fact, we could not allow any translation of the The­ ogony or its parts into English; this kind of game would require that all players become classical scholars. Still, the game would be every bit as good as Quine's. Quine, in order to avoid commitment to Pegasus, has flatly to deny that there is anything that Pegasizes. This certainly seems to exclude him from any imaginative recreation of the myth. Of course he still allows us to have "Pegasizes" (though it involves us in no ontological commitment, since presumably we cannot quantify over it) . But this, I fear, will not get us what we want. How can we even in imagination say that Pegasus sprang from the blood of Medusa ( as contrasted with the birth of ordinary horses) ? Perhaps by a parallel contraption, that is, making the whole sentence into a predicate which we then, in our realistic moments, deny that anything exemplifies ("It is not the case that there is something that Pegasus-sprang-from-the-blood-of-Medusa-izes") ? We could then get the verisimilitude of myth to serious talk by "-izing" it; but this would be a very cold way of doing it, and would kill its warm meaningfulness as effectively as would the naming game suggested a few paragraphs back. If Quine were to counter that no doubt Hesiod believed all the stuff he wrote, this would not help. For we want to re-enter his world, making it imaginatively meaningful while yet not serious­ ly accepting the entities, events, or even all the predicates he puts before us (think of springing-from-the-blood-of) . Moreover, we can easily block out the author's possible convictions by shifting to fiction, say to Dickens and The Pickwick Papers. Here we find all the resources of ordinary, serious talk used to people a world of creative imagination. And are we to say that, though Dickens was not committed to the real existence of Mr. Pick­ wick, he was to that of Pickwick's friends, since he quantified over them ("On the expiration of its first week, Mr. Pickwick and his friends returned to London"-! presume Dickens meant "all his friends," but "some" would do just as well) ? We may have been riding Quine a little heavily, but I am

confident he will forgive us, since this conduct has carried us on our own j ourney a significant distance. We have, I venture to say, been conveyed through the marshes of the fictional use of language and, indeed, borne comparatively effortlessly right up to a basically sound general view of the location in language of categorial commitments. Is it not crystal clear that the accomplished fiction-writer uses all the resources of ordinary language for his creative purposes, not reserving some for his serious ontological commitments and utilizing only the remainder fictionally ? Indeed, can we not agree that any commitments involved in the serious use of various linguistic forms and devices are exactly the same in imaginative writing save that they are all set aside by the author's telling the reader in some way, "This is fiction," thus psychologically dis­ engaging himself ? Names are taken to name, predications to describe, "quantifications" to generalize, existential assertions to assert existence, and so on, only it's all in play. Now of course this way of putting it may get me in wrong with the critics and aestheticians. In some sense storytellers are in earnest, particularly the great artists amongst them. But this does not show itself in any particular linguistic devices as against others. Fiction is their medium, j ust as oils and pigments and canvas are of painters in oils ; and painters are j ust as truly in earnest and "have something to say" as are and have novelists. And this, I fear, must suffice as a warning not to read what I have said about "psychological disengagement" as a trivialization of a form of art. ToTAL

REsouRcEs

MARKING

OF

CATEGORI AL

A

LANGUAGE

As

COMMITMENT

This then brings us to the denouement of our own story. We are to look for categorial commitments everywhere in the lan­ guage of a philosopher, in all its syntactical devices, indeed in all its resources. Not that a philosopher cannot, by taking thought, free himself from some of these as wrongly carried over from common speech or alien philosophies-surely much of analytic philosophy is devoted to j ust such purification-but rather that categorial com·m itment may be discovered in any features of a

[ 35 ]

philosopher's language; we cannot segregate a few and say, "These are the ones; the rest are beneath our notice." Consider for a moment a philosopher's grammar. He may, of course, make use of ordinary constructions for stylistic ease and elegance as he pleases without categorial involvement if he in­ dicates clearly somewhere how he would reduce or clarify or analyze them. But in the residue of forms remaining after such a projected purification we can justly claim to see commitments. For the Aristotelian, the subj ect-predicate structure so remained; we may fairly claim he was thereby committed to particular and attribute. Russell, by insisting on the irreducibility of relational sentences to the subject-predicate form, added properties (rela­ tions) that can only be exemplified by several particulars at once and in a certain order. To dip into a matter of current controversy : I would say that a philosopher who retains normatives as legitimate sentences not clarified away or reducible to declaratives is committed to values­ in the current idiom, is an objectivist in axiology. 2 Let me spell this out a little more fully. A philosopher may actually use normatives but have a way of reducing them (to his satisfaction, not necessarily to others') to declaratives. Sup­ pose he says that they are all to be transformed into disj unctions, the first clause declaring as fact what the normative says ought to be, the second stating a punishment or some untoward dire consequence if this fact does not come to be. For instance, "The wood ought to be neatly piled by nightfall" would be replaced by "The wood is neatly piled by nightfall or, if not, there will be no dinner on the table." This philosopher, I would say, has not retained normatives in his system in a way that commits him to objectivism. Another man who actually uses normatives frequently may explicitly claim that they are neither sentences nor strictly lin­ guistic expressions at all ( that is, that they perform no semantical 2

By "normative" I mean to refer to a categorical or non-hypothetical sentence whose main verb has the form, "ought to" followed by an infini­ tive and. the "ought" is not used to express instantiation of a generalization, or sentences taken to be equivalent to these in ordinary speech. "He ought to be here right now" if really categorical would be an example, providing it did not mean "He regularly arrives at this time of day," but not if ellip­ tical for, "If he kept up the same speed running into no delaying circum­ stances, he ought to be here right now_,,

function) ; he may affirm that they only occur as symptoms of emotions, comparable to sighs or lugubrious facial contortions. I would absolve him, too, of value commitment in his actual utterance of normatives. Once more, a person may often utilize normatives but ex­ plicitly say of them that their function is wholly practical, to induce others or even perhaps oneself to act in some desired way or to adopt some wanted attitude, just as frowning at him may lead a properly reared child to desist from some activity or point­ ing a finger may direct a motorist to take the right road. Here again I would refrain from attributing value commitment to such a philosopher's adoption of the normative idiom. However, an important qualification must be added to each of these absolutions. The actual utilizations of normative sen­ tences by these philosophers must be in such circumstances and in such fashions as to square with the agent's respective mode of "clarification." Suppose someone of the last variety mentioned were to make normative statements about certain events in an­ cient history under circumstances such that their utterance could not conceivably modify any hearer's actions or attitudes. Then I would probably want to accuse him of axiological objectivism. Consider these remarks sufficient to illustrate what I have in mind by saying that a philosopher's grammar reveals his cate­ gorial commitments. I suppose it hardly needs mention that his lexicon does also, particularly in the case of his technical ter. '' "emer. 1ogy. " S ense datum, " "pre hens1on, m1no . " "eterna I o bJect, gent," "category," "language game," and similar peculiarly philosophical words are surely committive when occurring sig­ nificantly in philosophical constructions. But we must also note that much of a philosopher's vocabulary is composed of everyday terms. On the whole, these need not be individually of categorial importance ; it all depends on their use and context. But types and assemblages of them may. A difference in native tongue in the matter of· general kinds of words available may well indicate a categorial difference in the philosophical systems couched in their terms. I have been told that in some of the languages of South Pacific Islanders there are hosts of terms for different moods of the ocean and weather, but none, on the other hand, for a wave or a cloud. Wharf informs us that the Hopi Indian has no words

correspond.1ng to our mass nouns ( sueh as "water, " "flour, " "matter") , being restricted to individual ones (like "stick," "hill," "man"). If a philosopher were to express himself in such exotic vernaculars, he might find his views skewed away from the predominantly substance-attribute-thing conceptualization toward a world-event or unique-item thought-pattern. I shall revert to this in another connection toward the end of this study. We are today conscious of the fact that the resources of lan­ guage are far wider than its grammar and lexicon. One pervasive feature of colloquial speech is that it is all emotively expressive when taken in the context of its occurrence. Indeed, this is fre­ quently a feature overriding and determining semantical and syntactical characteristics. The apparent reference to deity and his acts in "God damn you" may even in this age be real, but in most situations in which this invocation is used it probably is not. "There is the door," though formally a declarative, can, uttered in certain contexts and with the appropriate inflection, occur as an imperative. A lecturer giving a demonstration before a class may use the imperative, "Note that I added the acid to the solution, not vice versa," as a simple declarative, though of course he may also use it as an imperative ( depending perhaps on whether he wishes simply to describe or also to warn). Much of the value-talk we commonly indulge in may be re­ placed by sentences having the declarative form and giving the appearance, when abstracted from concrete circumstances, of being purely descriptive . But such restatement is fair to our ordinary meanings only if we use the proper intonation and keep the appropriate context intact. I think many nonobjectivists in value-theory have failed to be sufficiently aware of this. A case in point is Dr. Herbert G. Bohnert's reduction (in "The Semiotic Status of Commands," in Phi"losophy of Science for 1945 ) of "Cease this strike ! "-spoken by a Nazi to a Norwegian mining town-to "Either this strike ceases or no one in this town will eat." We feel that perhaps this will do-but only when we keep in mind the concrete situation and the threatening in­ tonation with which the declarative disjunction would be uttered. I would contend that the emotional expressiveness of much of our colloquial speech is itself categorially committive ( to some kind and status of values in the world) ; it could perhaps

be eradicated in a model language if explicitly valuative expres­ sions or forms of expression were retained, or, vice versa, such expressions could be eliminated if the appropriate emotionalisms in their occurrences were retained, but not both without canceling out what, as I see it, is a categorial commitment imbedded in our common talk. One must be particularly alert for emotionalisms of supposedly aseptic formalized languages. A notorious case is the characterizations of moral j udgments as "senseless" or "mean­ ingless" by logical positivism in a certain phase of its develop­ ment. But, more subtly, the pose of aloofness, of impartiality, of being above the strife characteristic of much of the pragmatics of ideal-language construction by the formalists is something not, it seems to me, devoid of categorial significance. But now we may seem to have lost all definite criteria of the categorial commitments of a philosophical way of talking-to have to look to its total resources appears to open the door to the vagaries of individual divination, mystic intuition, and simple reliance on hunches. Unfortunately, this is in some sense true, but I would like to put it in less derogatory terminology. The cate­ gorialist must depend upon his linguistic sensitivity, his sympa­ thetic insight into the other fellow's orientation to determine what are the categorial commitments of any philosophy he may be analyzing. And this does not give him unrestrained license to interpret his colleague as he will. If we look back over this chapter we find some guides to help us look in the right places and from the right angles. When we see something so generally characteristic of a system that its removal would not result in a gap but in the collapse of the whole thing, something that is involved structurally in it, that cannot properly be translated into another standpoint with­ out distortion or transformation into nonsense, that cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed observationally, that, within the sys­ tem, appears foolish to challenge because analytic, but taken from outside, if not empty, then obviously synthetic-in any such something we have a categorial commitment. If directly asserted, that assertion is a categorial statement in the system; so far as it is reflected in the various aspects of empirical language, that is, of sentences that can be verified or disverified observationally,

then to that degree it is an unasserted but real categorial commitment. To this we may add that what we find a philosopher to accept as the kind of thing it is to exist, to refer, or to be valuable, to­ gether with the sorts of "proofs" he allows as cogent in establish­ ing cases of these in concreto, gives us an insight into what is categorial for him.

III Is a Philosophical System without Categorial Com mitment Possible? PREAMBLE

The maj or problem faced by anyone taking the position about philosophical systems outlined above is how one can intelligently evaluate them and justifiably choose between them. This will occupy us in the chapter we shall devote to the given . In the meantime I must face certain objections to what has been said up to this point. The objections will be put in the form of three questions: "Is a philosophical system without categorial commitments possible? " "Is a self-contained system possible? " "Are there neutral, in­ dubitable categories available to all systems? " The answer I shall give to each is, of course, in the negative. The procedure will be to take a few outstanding cases that seem to prove the affirmative and try to show by appropriate analysis that this is not so. This method cannot claim rigorousness. To prove the negative on each question would in strictness require not only a survey of all relevant actual philosophies but of all possible ones as well and even, moreover, a demonstration that they constitute all. It would be foolish so much as to set out on this expedition; my alternative is to disclaim rigor and be satisfied with plausibility ( which choice leaves me not completely unhappy since I am con­ vinced that it is the only one open to the proponent of any philosophical proposition) . But acceptability may be enhanced by taking really striking instances of philosophies that seem to give the lie to the claim here maintained, and this will be the method adopted.

But now another, more serious difficulty must be faced. Is not the negative answer to each of these questions one which arises automatically for me, being really analytic in my system but not necessarily true relative to others? Let me point this up by turning directly to the first of the three questions mentioned. Have I not defined "philosophical system" so that a philosophical system without categorial com­ mitments would constitute a contradictio in adjecto? No doubt this is so. And perhaps in the final analysis my contention that all philosophical systems display categorial commitments is just a reflection of what I take to be a philosophical system on the one hand and a categorial commitment on the other. But in making definitions one frequently has in mind some common, traditional usage, and one means to point up some kind of truth or furnish some sort of insight, both of which were the case here. The instances I shall exploit are commonly recognized as "philosophies" even by their sponsors, and I shall not use the argument against them that I refuse to call them philosophies if and to the extent that they fail to involve categorial commit­ ments. "Categorial " is not idiomatic outside professional circles, but "metaphysics" is and will, for the most part, quite well serve my purpose. So the question for the present section might be formulated somewhat more colloquially, "Is a philosophy with­ out metaphysical assumptions possible? ,, This way of putting it has its drawbacks, since "metaphysical" may be read as "ontolog­ ical" and even more narrowly as "transcendental" (in the sense of involving things-in-themselves of a Kantian sort). It is not, of course, my contention that all philosophies are categorial in this sense; it will be recalled that "categorial " is at least as wide a term as the medieval "transcendental" and covers epistemological and axiological concepts as well as ontological. Philosophies most likely to claim to be free of categorial com­ mitments are the militantly anti-speculative and anti-metaphysical on the one side and those which pass as pre-speculative or pre­ metaphysical on the other. We m · ay characterize both as analytic. What do they analyze? Roughly, and in their own terms, lan­ guage the former and experience the latter. Each may be split in two, using, however, a different principle of division. The analysts of language differ concerning the language to be ana­ lyzed and the language used in the analysis, the logical positivists

analyzing in a formal, syntactical way the language of science, the English casualists analyzing in an informal way the idioms of everyday speech. The analysts of experience differ concerning the sort of experience to be subj ected to analysis, the one group using unsophisticated personal experience, the other a phenom­ enologically "bracketed" one. Turning first to the dissector of experience, we find him fre­ quently claiming to do something pre-metaphysical, something prior to all categorial commitment, something "presupposition­ less." Direct experience, it is claimed, is neutral philosophically because it does not bear the imprint of conceptualization. It is unquestionable that something happens when, in con­ sulting one's experience, one changes one's approach from that of everyday life to that of analytic scrutiny with a definite orienta­ tion or "attitudinal set," as when one shifts from seeing a football crowd in a stadium to experiencing splotches of color associated with intermittent roars of sound. Just what it is that happens is not so uncontroversial, however. Shall we say that we force what was free of conceptual frameworks into something determined by our attitude or that we purify material having un-noted orienta­ tions of its categorial commitments ? The Cartesian approach favors the latter. It has us suspend j udgment on such imbedded assumptions in everyday experience as that there is an external world with which we are in immediate contact. Husserl goes a step further and purifies ordinary experience of all commitment to anything occurring or existing, including our personal con­ sciousness itself. We shall turn to his account of the result of -this purification in a moment. Right now it is the implication it bears to the effect that mundane experience is by nature cate­ gorially committed which occupies us. THE

CASE

OF

EVERYDAY

EXPERIENCE

It is my contention that the everyday experience of the philosophi­ cal layman so far from being free of categorial commitments is replete with them. It is this which has made various philosophies of common sense resting on this foundation possible. They articulate ( to their satisfaction) these otherwise unnoticed as­ sumptions. How can we get at this unsophisticated experience ? Partly by watching ordinary speech, partly by catching ourselves

in uncritical, everydayish moments. Looking at this material we find that (though unstated and non-generalized) there are such assumptions as that there exist and are directly experienced one's self, physical objects, events, and multitudes of other entities, as well as values, both moral and aesthetic. Take your ordinary man or your philosopher when in a commonplace frame of mind. Ask him if he knows when the next low tide is due for your locality and he will answer you without trouble, but ask him if he knows anything and he will consider you either insulting or queer. Consult him on whether he has seen the new desk in your office and he will tell you straight off, but query him on whether he can see physical things at all or only visual images ( sense data), and he will immediately classify you as a "philosopher" or possibly someone even less respectable. Why ? Not because he does not accept and use the assumptions that there is knowledge and that we sensibly apprehend physical things, but because these commitments are so pervasive of his whole experience that to challenge them is absurd or to try to verify them by looking for individual cases is pointless. In everyday experience we are so interested in the details, the empirical facts, the specific moral judgments, that the categorial features are unremarked. But they are there, as any serious ques­ tioning of them will elicit. And they must not be confused with the detail, for the latter is expendable, can be sacrificed to per­ sonal error or treated as accidental, but not so the structural fea­ tures. Moreover, the intrusion of foreign categories is never a mere addition, an enrichment of experience, like seeing Europe or the Orient for the first time. It is shattering, creating havoc. This was the trouble when G. E. Moore tried to introduce sense data into ordinary experience of physical things, not seeing that they are not simply new experienceable items but a wholly different way of categorizing experience. This mistake underlies his attempt to find a criterion for picking out sense data from experiences otherwise "physicalistic." He gives his reader the following amazing instructions : "And in order to point out to the reader what sort of things I mean by sense-data, I need only ask him to look at his own right hand. If he does this he will be able to pick out something ( and unless he is seeing double, only one thing) with regard to which he will see that it is, at first sight, a natural view to take, that

that thing is identical, not indeed, with his whole right hand, but with that part · of its surface which he is actually seeing, but will also ( on a little reflection) be able to see that it is doubtful whether it can be identical with the part of the surface of his hand in question. Things of the sort (in a certain respect) of which this thing is, which he sees in looking at his hand, and with regard to which he can understand how some philosophers should have supposed it to be the part of the surface of his hand which he is seeing, while others have supposed that it can't be, are what I mean by sense-data." Now, it was natural that, sooner or later, some philosophic wit should parody this incredible bit of confusion, and we find it done with just the right touch by Professor 0. K. Bouwsma. "And in order to point out to the reader what sort of thing I mean by ---, I need only ask him to look at the cook's right hand. If he does this he will be able to pick out something with regard to which he will see that it is at first a natural view to take that that thing is identical not indeed with the cook's whole right hand, but with that part of its surface which one is actually ( ? ) seeing but will also ( on a little inspection) be able to see that it is doubtful whether it can be identical with the part of the hand in question. Things of the sort of which this thing is, which he sees in looking at the cook's hand, and with regard to which he can understand how some kitchen visitors should have supposed it to be part of the surface of the cook's hand at which he was looking, while others have supposed that it can't be, are what I mean by rubber gloves." Well, of course the point is that sense data are not a peculiar kind of rubber glove; they do not inhabit kitchen drawers along with butcher knives and tablespoons; they belong to a cate­ gorially different universe. For the phenomenalist, spoons and knives and cooks' right hands are colligations and sequences of sense data; the whole sensible world is a congeries of sense data­ there are no physical things for this philosopher, not because he believes that all cooks have lost their right hands and that all butcher knives have melted away but because he takes these, like all physical things, to be composed of fleeting patches of color, bits of hardness, expanses of warmth or coolness glued together solely by the orderliness of their appearance in our experience. On the other hand, your ordinary man is no phe-

nomenalist, nor is the phenomenalist when off duty. Our every­ day experiences are of rubber gloves, cooks' right hands, and similar commonplace things, not the queer entities Moore tried to introduce. This is not to say that the phenomenalist is wrong; perhaps his categories are better than those of ordinary experience; but to introduce them into the latter as just additional items is decided­ ly wrong. Unsophisticated experience has its categorial commit­ ments, and any insertion of foreign ones is an unwarranted and quite upsetting intrusion which is not to be permitted, for it produces not an enlarged experience but nonsense. But now suppose we waive all this; suppose there is a pre­ categorial experience we all of us have in our unsophisticated moments. This is not itself a philosophy, but philosophers have claimed to found their structures on it. Have they succeeded? I personally think not; the experience they utilize is committed, and this brings out the discouraging impasse in which their disputes frequently end : "I find a special emotion directed toward aesthetic form," "I, contrariwise, can discover no such thing"; "I discover likes and dislikes but no special moral experiences," "A man who hasn't felt the unique urging of moral obligation is morally blind"; "I see sense data every day," "I have never to my knowledge experienced them." But waiving this as well, all I want to hold fast to here is that such philosophers, in appealing to a supposedly categorially free personal experience, are them­ selves categorially committed. They accept a multiplicity of per­ sons for, almost to a man, they are not solipsists. They accept the conscious character of experience or perhaps its neutrality as between body and mind for, in the maj ority of cases, they are not materialists. In short, though we grant them an experience which is devoid of categories, they immediately categorialize it in utilizing it, in incorporating it into their systems. So we catch them at least at this second stage, though I do not for a moment really grant that they escape us at the first. THE

CASE

OF

PHENOMENOLOGY

We are now at a place where the program of the purifiers of experience will appear attractive. Can we not thin down our categorially thick experience of everyday life to a plane devoid

of all commitment? Husserl thought we could, that by a process of phenomenological "bracketing" we could put aside all philo­ sophical presuppositions and discover a categorially pure ex­ penence. I think, however, it is something more than an accident that Husserl, with his kind of phenomenological reduction, came out a metaphysical idealist. His case is particularly interesting, since he tried so hard to make phenomenology presuppositionless. In his instance the difficulty apparently was that he thought by "bracketing off" the existence of everything transcending ex­ perience and indeed that of experience itself he could attain a consciousness purified of every categorial commitment. In one sense he allowed the categories-all of them, even those of exist­ ence and transcendence-to remain, and although this is a credit to his resoluteness, it makes his final failure all the more signifi­ cant. For they were retained not as categories, that is, not as features of the world, but as essences for phenomenological inspection. There are two angles to this I want very briefly to explore. Let us first suppose that he was successful in this bracketing. The result was an experience purged not of all categories but only of those bracketed-in particular, transcendence and existence. Others were left; specifically, essence. The experienceable nature of everything remained, even that of transcendence of experi­ ence. Husserl apparently did not realize that this involved him in a commitment : he had here essences themselves, not merely the essence of essence, since essence and the essence of essence are one and the same; essences, in their own right, not as some­ thing referred to or intended and thus bracketed, remained in his phenomenological residuum. And the dodge of claiming that merely possible essences are sufficient will not help. In terms of the point I am trying to make, the distinction between possible and real essences is nuga­ tory. Possible essences, fantasy-essences, as-it-were essences, are essences and enter some (appropriate) experience; they are not just words for or signs of essences. Needless to say, recognition of this truth does not prohibit acceptance of a distinction between fantasy and actuality, nor a phenomenological treatment of it, such that one explores the essences of the two. It does, neverthe­ less, require that one not suppose the essence of fantasy to be no

honest-to-goodness essence : it is just as essentially essence as any other. Moreover, the essence of something merely imagined but never perceptually experienced, taken in its positive content and neglecting its aspect of being imaginative in character (for ex­ ample, the essence of a centaur) is likewise every bit as essen­ tially an essence as is the essence of anything perceived. There is a perfectly good sense of "bracketing" such that what is methodologically set aside and about which all judgment is suspended is precisely essences or natures. It is surely a logical possibility that there is no essence of redness, but only particular patches said to be red. Let us then disregard whether any two of these share a common quality or even in any way resemble each other. It is, I would suppose (I am not adept at this sort of thing), at least imaginable that we could experience these patches as just particular items of experience, and were anyone to report to ·me that he could achieve a frame of mind resulting in this experience, I would not be justified in throwing out his evidence as untrustworthy. That it would be odd and not easily duplicated is (if we call to mind some of the descriptions Husserl has him­ self given us) scarcely in its disfavor from a phenomenological standpoint. And this leads to an even wilder suggestion, but one made in all seriousness. A phenomenological attitude which, instead of bracketing off existence but retaining essence, did the very re­ verse, seems entirely conceivable. Indeed, something like this may well have been achieved, as an actual experience, by some of the existentialists so that they have been able in their own cases to point directly to what they mean when they say that existence precedes essence. A moment of mere being, without any so-and-so that is, ·may well furnish the content of an experience of this kind. This would defy description, but that should not concern us in the present context. Phenomenology is a queer sort of thing, but that is not the point. That it gives us experiences quite different from those of everyday life can hardly be held against it, unless one has already accepted the latter as his philosophical standard. What I am try­ ing to say is that it is not categorially innocent, as can be shown by putting it in the hands of philosophers of different persuasions -what is phenomenologically given is determined by one's atti­ tudinal set, and this is a function of one ?s categorial commitments.

We have so far supposed that Husserl was successful in attain­ ing the bracketing he sought. Let us see, however, whether this is beyond question. He was going to set aside or suspend all j udg­ ment on existence, even that of experience itself, and simply look at the "what it is" that he directly had. But immediately we won� der about the phenomenological experience itself. Is not Husserl, as a phenomenologist, committed to its occurrence ? Suppose in answer he assumes the phenomenological attitude toward it, and describes what it is for a phenomenologically reduced experience to occur. Will not this suffice ? I think not. The trouble is not that this would engender an infinite series-such a series would be the symptom not the illness. The defect is that at any stage his description would either be purely hypothetical in the sense of a completely unverified guess or it would reveal an existential com­ mitment. Suppose someone challenges Husserl by saying that no phe­ nomenological bracketing and its consequent reduction of expe­ rience has ever occurred. Is it sufficient for him to reply that, in any case, he can describe what would be the result if it were to oc­ cur ? I believe not. For any such proffered description would need some verification ( unless it was a sheer tautology and thus hardly in propriety to be labeled a "description" or an intuition of "the given") . And even if he were to respond that he can at least imag� ine what a phenomenologically reduced experience would be like, this would not help. For what would do the trick would not be the described experience but the fact that he imagined it, and this must occur ( or he must show it capable of occurrence) or his whole phenomenology, as a descriptive discipline, would collapse. This negative result might well have been anticipated. It surely seems that any bracketing commits one to a real distinction be­ tween what is bracketed off and the residuum. If this is denied, does not phenomenology collapse into sheer skepticism ? Is it not forced to carry suspension of j udgment from whatever i s brack­ eted over to the residuum and to the separability in every sense of the one from the other ? Dogmatic skepticism ( as contrasted with a personal attitude of mind) would seem to be a categorial sys­ tem in competition with phenomenology in any form ( even the odd ones we hypothesized above) ; it would say that any phenom­ enological statement is illegitimate, since its opposite has equally

strong support, that consequently we should suspend judgment about it. With this, we turn from the analysts of experience to the anato­ mists of language, from those who find an area antedating meta­ physics to those who discard all metaphysics at any date or level as nonsense.

THE CASE

OF

L IN G U I S T I C F O R M A L I S

M

Of all the anti-metaphysicians of the twentieth century, the logi­ cal positivist has been, if not the most destructive, in any case the most vociferous. He will probably be put down in the history books as the archenemy of metaphysics, vying in our epoch with the skeptic in the Hellenistic. It would seem that if we can find him inextricably committed categorially we should have made significant progress toward persuading the dubious that all phi­ losophers are. The weapon used in his attack was two-pronged. The philoso­ pher, as distinguished from the scientist, need not and indeed could not, he said, deal with the extra-linguistic world at all, ei­ ther simpliciter or in its relation to our thought and language, but only with language itself. The logical positivist did not of course put himself in the absurd position of denying a world external to language, or our ability to talk about it or to investigate this talk and its varying degrees of success. He simply assigned all this to the scientist. It is all em­ pirical, all its questions can be answered by appropriate observa­ tions. There remain no categorial problems concerning it. What was left for the philosopher? Grammar or syntax. But even the study of syntax could be categorially committive if it contained either descriptive or normative sentences, for these could themselves be categorial or by their form reveal a categorial framework. To avoid this, two different devices were used, form­ ing the second prongs in the positivist weapon, one in one and one in the other of the two works we shall use in our case method. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein denies out­ right that philosophy contains any sentences; it is an activity. In the Logical Syntax of Language, Carnap permits philosophical sentences but makes them all logical, thus not referring to any­ thing in the world, not even in the form of the grammar or syn[ 50 ]

tax of some language taken as actual fact. Both agree that the function of philosophy is to clarify language by, so to speak, clean­ ing up its syntax, the one by constructing an ideal language, the other by forming several ideal languages and then showing how the improper expressions of (metaphysical) philosophers can be eliminated by stating them as assertions about the syntax of some one of these. One of the marks of a categorial commitment we noted is that foreign categorial assertions are often rejected not as erroneous but as absurd. This device is frequently and forcefully used in the Tractatus. "Most propositions and questions, that have been writ­ ten about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless." Well, what constitutes the senselessness of philosophical state­ ments ? It lies in the impossibility of their being propositions at all. "A proposition presents the existence and non-existence of atomic facts. The totality of true propositions is the total natural science ( or the totality of the natural sciences) . Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences." But now how justify the assumption that the only propositions are those of natural science, that is, those that present the existence or non-existence of atomic facts ? The answer is straightforward enough. "The world is everything that is the case.. . .What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts." The picture is clean-cut, like a mountain view after one has been in a morass of Meinongianisms. Whether the world is as simple as this, is not itself as simple a question, nor is the problem of how we would ever be able to know that it is. But these issues are beside the present point, which is merely this : The passage just quoted involves a categorial ( or even "metaphysical" if you please) commitment. Indeed, I cannot conceive of one stated more directly. To claim that the world consists of the existence of atomic facts is not to assert the existence of an atomic fact or set of them, for it involves a completeness or exclusiveness not to be found in that; it virtually yet genuinely denies that the world embraces anything other than atomic facts; it says that so-and-soes (atomic facts) constitute the only sort of entities or world deni­ zens there are. This patently puts Wittgenstein in a controversial position, not on a scientific question about what facts there are but on a philosophical one of what facts are and whether there is anything but fact.

Now I suggest as a reasonable explanation of the apparent con­ tradiction in the Tractatus the following interpretation. Most phil­ osophical "propositions" expressed in common speech are mean­ ingless ; this holds of the German ( and English) sentences of the Tractatus itself. But the ideal language sketched out in this work could, if actually completed and used, avoid categorial commit­ ment ( that is, metaphysical nonsense) . This ideal language would allow, besides the propositions of logic which say nothing, only elementary propositions each asserting a single atomic fact. Now we can ask why we should consider such a language to be ideal. The answer is, as before, that the world is the totality of atomic facts, and this language would allow us to assert each and to see in each assertion the structure of the fact asserted, whereas every­ thing else (including all philosophical statements) is excluded. But this of course cannot be said in such an ideal language, nor the question it answers even raised. If we see the point, the whole ideality j ust shows itself. In short, what is obj ectionable in the Tractatus on its own criteria is confined to its unclarified natural language ; in the perfect symbolism it proposes, this would be eliminated. Accepting this interpretation, do we have in the Tractatus a view that has successfully rej ected all categorial commitment ? I think not. First, there is the matter of the supposedly expendable natural speech. Is the necessity of the German and English a psy­ chological matter only ? I believe they are more integral to his task than this. I have the feeling that Wittgenstein cannot dispose of ordinary speech and still do what he wants. Suppose we have Wittgenstein's perfected language all worked out, with a com­ plete vocabulary (list of names of all obj ects) , and all elementary sentences, true and false, that it would permit. We would need something more to do the j ob Wittgenstein was after : we would need the insight that we had everything needed, that the world is here fully portrayed. Now insight can perhaps do wonders, and no doubt in the last analysis we must rely on it, but can it, any more than ordinary vision, see ( without the instrument of language with its nega­ tives) what is not there ? It matters little whether we approach this from the standpoint of the world or of the perfect language. How can we see that a sentence is not in this language, that it asserts nothing or has no sense, unless we have negatives, that is,

linguistic expressions, as parts of or necessary tools in the seeing itself? Similarly for seeing what is excluded from the world, for example, entities other than facts or facts that are irreducibly com­ plex. But now if the insight (which is clearly about the ideal lan­ guage and about the world as a whole, not as a set of individually asserted facts) itself embraces an irreducibly linguistic factor, then we have a linguistic element not in the ideal language (for the insight we are talking of transcends it) . And it is precisely here of course that the whole business of categorial commitment would crop up. We can, however, drop the language factor entirely. What do we lose? Only what I have called categorial sentences. The com­ mitments would remain precisely in the form of the ideal lan­ guage itself so far as seen or taken to be ideal. And this in at least three senses. First, as a whole, it would be composed of two and only two sorts of sentences, elementary factual propositions and logical laws or instances of logical laws. Here we have to do sim­ ply with the nature of the language given us; perhaps we could call it a "fact" (supposing Wittgenstein had actually completed his job) . But this would not be enough. It would have to be seen that, besides being a Wittgensteinian jeu d'espr£t, the proffered language is ideal, does completely portray the world, and this, though not said at all, would still be accepted and thus would in­ volve a commitment built into the insight. Second, each elemen­ tary sentence would show the structure of the fact it asserts, but could not, of course, assert this structure. Here, again, one could not say the crucial philosophical thing ( that the fact has such and such a structure) ; still the language is required to show it, and this requirement and the insight it affords, though not formulable as a categorial sentence, would be a genuine categorial commit­ ment. Finally, there are the tautologies (and contradictions), the logi­ cal propositions. I have neglected these up to now. They might seem not to the point. Since they, supposedly, say nothing of the world, it would seem that they would involve Wittgenstein in no categorial commitment. But a closer inspection, it strikes me, shows that even here Wittgenstein has got himself logically com­ mitted. To demonstrate this I need only appeal to the Tractatus. Though we could get on with science, with all empirical assertions, with-

out the tautologies of logic, the latter nevertheless do disclose something about the world and about our perfect language. "The fact that the propositions of logic are tautologies shows the formal -logical-properties of the language, of the world. " "The logical propositions describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they present it. They 'treat' of nothing. They presuppose that names have meaning, and that elementary propositions have sense. And this is their connexion with the world. It is clear that it must show something about the world that certain combinations of symbols -which essentially have a definite character-are tautologies." Recent history has shown us another development undeniably stimulated by the Tractatus and clearly carrying on one of its en­ deavors, which claims to have succeeded where Wittgenstein failed, to have achieved a philosophy that pursues linguistic clari­ fication without metaphysics, without significant (non-logical) propositions of its own, without any commitments. As already intimated, our case method will have us rely here largely upon Carnap's The Logical Syntax of Language. Carnap obviously builds upon the Wittgensteinian foundation that all meaningful propositions other than logical tautologies are scientific. Philosophy embraces no knowledge of the world, of­ fers no hypotheses concerning it, raises no questions about it, avoids all admission of there being so much as reference to it. How, then, does Carnap avoid his predecessor's metaphysical commitments which furnished the grounds upon which he placed these foundations? An answer is presented in his "Introduction," where he cate­ gorically asserts, "The ... anti-metaphysical attitude [ represented by the Vienna Circle ] will not . . . appear in this book either as an assumption or as a thesis. The inquiries which follow are of a formal nature and do not depend in any way upon what is usu­ ally known as philosophical doctrine." The reader soon finds, however, that the author's predictions in this matter were some­ what hasty. Indeed Part V is devoted to the replacement of phi­ losophy by the logic of science interpreted as the syntax of the language of science and the consequent clarification which elim­ inates metaphysical and ethical pseudo-concepts by methods it will be our immediate concern to scrutinize. In the first place, it is vital to what he does and is emphasized by him that an expression and its designation be sharply and con-

sistently distinguished, and that sentences formed from these be so likewise. Now this directly involves him in semantics (though he was not aware of it at the time). This distinction allows him to use the device of translation from the material to the formal mode of speech. The material mode of speech is composed of sentences ostensibly about subjects but "in reality" about syntax : ". . . pseudo-object-sentences mis­ lead us into thinking that we are dealing with extra-linguistic objects such as numbers, things, properties, experiences, states of affairs, space, time, and so on; and the fact that, in reality, it is a case of language and its connections (such as numerical expres­ sions, thing-designations, spatial co-ordinates, etc.) is disguised from us by the material mode of speech. This fact only becomes clear by translation into the formal mode of speech, or, in other words, into syntactical sentences about language and linguistic expressions." By this translation, Wittgenstein's metaphysical propositions (which he admitted to be non-sensical) are elimi­ nated. For example, " 'The world is the totality of facts, not things' " becomes " 'Science is a system of sentences, not names' "; " 'A fact is a combination of objects ( entities, things)' " is trans­ lated into " 'A sentence is a series of symbols' "; '' 'There is indeed the inexpressible' " gets its due in a pair " 'There are obj ect-des­ ignations which are not object-designations' " and " 'There are sentences which are not sentences' "; and as a final illustration, " 'Propositions cannot express anything higher' " is rendered " 'The higher sentences are not sentences.' " The perfectly obvious question about these is still the wholly justified and, in my estimation, finally unanswerable one, Why make such ''translations"? If you already are committed to the destruction of the metaphysics of the Tractatus, the device here adopted is neat : note how going down the list from what m · ight be called the more scientific to the more mystical metaphysical pronouncements, the renditions go from the relatively trivial to the absurd (self-contradictory). But a spectator not carried away with the technique would wonder about the objective. Wittgen­ stein justified his ideal syntax by his metaphysical assumptions; with these supposedly gone, what justifies Carnap? Is he simply saying, "If you want to eliminate metaphysics here is a nice way to do it"? It would seem not. For then he would be satisfied with any one language that did it, whereas he operates with a general

[ 55 ]

procedure to be applied to all languages. Wherever we run onto metaphysical statements we are to treat them as "disguised," as "in reality" syntactical, as ''deceiving" their authors. This is de­ cidedly taking sides in a battle, not simply offering a weapon to one of its contestants. Let us look at the weapon itself. Translation from the material to the formal mode is essentially a matter of finding a syntactical property for expressions designating words in the material mode of speech that matches the one in the sentence being translated. The occupation of finding such correlations is by itself unexciting and unchallenging; the bite comes in saying that the one of these correlated sets is to be eliminated in favor of the other because it really is the other in disguise. As Carnap puts it, "If we wish to characterize the material mode of speech by one general term, we may say . . . that it is a special kind of transposed mode of speech. By a transposed mode of speech we mean one in which, in order to assert something about an object a, something corresponding is asserted about an object b which stands in a certain relation to . the ob1ect a . . . . '' It is this last that bears the sting. A correlation is a correlation; every wife has a husband, but to say that she is her husband is indeed beyond the proprieties even of a male-dominated society. In the last quotation, what does the work is "in order to say some­ thing about." It is this which allows us to decide which of the corresponding statements is in the transposed mode of speech. It is easy to turn the tables on Carnap. He wishes to say some­ thing about metaphysics without getting himself involved in meta­ physics, so he finds some corresponding thing he can say about syntax. Thus for him the syntactical translations he gives of meta­ physical statements are in the transposed mode; they are disguised anti-metaphysical assertions. He is trying to say with Wittgen­ stein that the world contains only the objects asserted and charac­ terized in scientific statements, but he realizes he cannot say this so he says something else, something correlated, about syntax, and so of course he is deceiving himself. THE

CASE

OF

LINGUISTIC

INFORM A LISM

Ludwig Wittgenstein is a singular figure. Although he m · ay, with much justification, be described as the founder of logical posi[ 56 ]

tivism and without doubt one of the most original and influential thinkers in the formalist school of analysts, he is also, quite legiti­ mately, to be assigned the honor of leading the forces of informal­ ism which have, as a matter of fact if not of j ustice, been victori­ ous in its overthrow. His self-immolation occurred in a series of esoteric lectures, purloined samples of which appeared surrepti­ tiously in the "blue" and "brown'' books, then the whole revised canon officially in his Philosophical Investigations. It is this which will constitute our first and maj or case study of this manner of liquidating metaphysics. We are presented with a difficulty at the very start, however. The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was cryptic, appeared to in­ volve itself in a fundamental contradiction between its goal and its method of attaining it, but it was forthright, particularly so on its anti-metaphysical stand. Philosophical In vestigations has lost this last characteristic. Two things, however, seem to be fairly clear. One is that Witt­ genstein means to rej ect in some fundamental way the method and the commitments of the Tractatus; the other is that he never­ theless retains his suspicion of traditional philosophy. Taking this last first, we find that Wittgenstein still considers philosophy to be not knowledge, not a set of propositions, but an activity, a misled and misleading one in the case of older philoso­ phies, a freeing and in some measure enlightening one in the form Wittgenstein envisages. On one reading, Pl ( as it has come to be called by some) says that the proper job assigned to philos­ ophy is still the same as that given it in the Tractatus-to clean up its own messes and get clear of its own metaphysical entangle­ ments by treating them as verbal ; but now the task has shifted somewhat away from the building of a language with perfect syntax to displaying therapeutic procedures which allow the phi­ losopher to work his own way out of his perplexities by seeing that they arise through a failure to grasp the complexities of ordi­ nary grammar. This may well be the correct interpretation of Pl and its rela­ tion to the Tractatus; we shall return to it later in the form it took in the more recent Wisdom. But in Pl it is all more involved, and if the discussions there are meant simply as examples of giving release from philosophy ( old style) , they nonetheless frequently

[ 57 ]

produce the sense of being something in their own right, of show­ ing up a wrong view or furnishing insight into a right one. Taking this second path, we ask, Why does PI reject the Trac­ tatus, not as a therapy but as a philosophy ? One answer is def­ inite and, on its surface, unambiguous. The Tractatus was wrong in espousing a single, supposedly ideal language. But when we seek to find just what was wrong, we run into several leads, not perhaps incompatible but in any case distinguishable. One line is that a syntactically perfect language is a will-o'-the­ wisp, that ordinary speech is quite all right : ". . . every sentence in our language 'is in order as it is'. That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal, as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense, and a perfect language awaited construction by us." And the justification of this claim goes beyond the suggestion that ordinary language is entirely suited to everyday demands; one can construct an ideal language only if one has already a mother ton gu e to do it with, so that we must in the last analysis rest content with whatever degree of per­ fection we can find in it. More specifically, Wittgenstein gives up a semantics (very really embedded in the Tractatus, though he thought he was doing only syntax in that work) of a name-relation and a truth-relatio�, which supposes there are names that simply designate obj ects and propositions that differ from series of names in that they are true or false. ·There is also in PI a hint, the barest of suggestions, that the trouble with the "perfect" syntax of the Tractatus was that it com­ mitted one to a universe of atomic facts, whereas one must admit general facts as well; indeed, it is the philosopher's business to deal with the most general facts, facts so commonplace that they attract no one else's attention. "What we have to mention in or­ der to explain the significance, I mean the importance, of a con­ cept, are often extremely general facts of nature : such facts as are hardly ever mentioned because of their great generality." "If the formation of concepts can be explained by facts of nature, should we not be interested, not in grammar, but rather in that in nature which is the basis of grammar?-Our interest certainly includes the correspondence between concepts and very general facts of nature." These astonishing statements have been largely neglected by

[ 58 ]

the neo-Wittgensteineans, as is understandable, for they hardly fit the therapeutic picture; indeed, they offer anew the fascination which furnished the grounds for breaking off relations with phi­ losophy (old style) . General facts of nature that might have been different-here is categorial commitment with a vengeance ! Of a truth, it is close to the very categorial commitment, namely, to categories, which animates the present investigation. So let us lay it aside at least until the final pages of the present chapter where some remarks of Friedrich Waismann may bring it again to our attention. Another reading is to the effect that philosophy is still to oc­ cupy itself with language-building, in the hopes of finding insight through syntax, but that the single, perfect language of the Trac­ tatus is to be replaced by a multitude. Moreover each of these lan­ guages is to be treated as a game : it has its own rulebook, differ­ ent from others; it is a work of free invention or creation; we are not to take it too seriously, as somehow logically correct whereas the others are wrong. There is no Game of games, no rivalry be­ tween them, no chance of winning or losing save within particu­ lar ones; the general study of them will play no favorite. What­ ever insights particular ones give, the ensemble will detach us from the idea of rules fixed and forced upon us by the universe. Some such exegesis as this seems plausible in the face of the plu­ rality of language-games of the first pages of Pl (and the larger set appearing in the "Brown Book" from which these seem to have been selected) . And there are passages that read well in this rendition. Ne'Vertheless, I want to leave this way of taking Wittgenstein, partly because I shall devote some words later to his general treat­ ment of games, and partly because he himself appears to prohibit it. I have here in mind the passage where he says, "Our clear and simple language-games are . . . set up as objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities." Wittgenstein has disciples who have understood him in this way and given themselves to word-studies in this manner, par­ ticularly bringing out the dissimilarities of the "same" word and of similar words in different everyday constructions. They no doubt have added something to traditional philology and possibly even to the study of colloquialisms ; but so far as they have de-

voted themselves to such an empirical investigation they would not generally be designated "philosophers." I think I am not rul­ ing out their undertaking by arbitrary definition: indeed, I can still make my point, even though asserting that their investigation is not philosophical. Though they would not be involved in ex­ plicitly categorial sentences, the forms of their empirical sentences would commit them-both to language as occurring in concrete situations that vary and to its varying uses in them, thus to lan­ guage-users that behave in environments, have purposes, and so forth, or, put in even wider terms, to events in contexts. Their language is clearly not that of ·medieval realism or eighteenth­ century materialism ; if it is in proper form, it has its own subtle commitments. Another suggestion not so much advocated as exen1plified is that the construction of a syntactically ideal language be replaced by a phenomenological investigation of meaning, though this de­ scription is misleading since Wittgenstein does not show any in­ fluence of Husserl-he was apparently stimulated by Augustine and William James. Against this must be put the general frustra­ tion he almost always ends in when seeking introspectively for meaning, and his tendency to turn from this fruitless pursuit to the usually answerable query, What did the speaker want when he used the expression ? What did he use it for ? And of course there is the overworked aphorism, "Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use." This sort of behaviorism is closely allied to that of Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind. It considers talk of mental episodes, events, activities to be very misleading and suggests it be replaced by discourse about abilities and dispositions (I am using Ryle's terms here) . "The grammar of the word 'knows'," says Wittgen­ stein, "is evidently closely related to that of 'can', 'is able to'." It is also closely allied to pragmatism, particularly of the Dew­ eyan variety. Wittgenstein would approve discarding the "specta­ tor view of knowledge." We are not to suppose that language corresponds or should aim at corresponding ,vith an "antecedent reality." The picture of a world just there, in which we are placed and which we are passively to reflect or report is entirely mislead­ ing. Knowledge is a doing, our world a conceptual (for Wittgen­ stein, a linguistic) creation arising from some concrete situation and thus always relative to this, changing as it changes. [ 60 ]

I don't want to make too much of these similarities; they are not more than family resemblances. But they are suggestive of a family of categorial commitments uniting all these people. I mean something quite definite. I refer to an ontology accepting, as ulti­ mate, organisms (particularly human organisms) in life situations usually involving other organisms; the behavior of these, espe­ cially in reaction to that of others and in turn exciting theirs; habits, customs, tendencies of behavior, presupposing, of course, capabilities of behaving in such patterns when not actually doing so, and so on. There is also, I would affirm, an epistemology here, that of knowledge as a form ( or rather a number of forms) of be­ havior, to be judged by criteria of success in doing the behavioral j ob, not of correspondence with an unaffected, extra-linguistic reality; in David Prall's well-chosen phrase, "knowledge is apt­ ness of the body." And whatever one's place in this family, one has ties of kinship demanding one's loyalties in philosophic feuds with other families, loyalties beyond question and not to be sub­ jected to criticism. I have no desire to deny the differences. One in particular is noteworthy. For Wittgenstein it is all in play, a matter of games, of games with games, as though, as I have said, there is no uniquely privileged or authoritative Game of games. And this, I think, we might look at for a moment for its own sake. First, it does not absolve Wittgenstein of commitments. He is not simply having fun with philosophers (old style), the way, for example, F. C. S. Schiller did in his edition of Mindi or P. E. B. Jourdain in The Philosophy of Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll. 1 1

To give point to this, especially to any younger readers, let me cite two passages from the latter. The first consists of a few initial lines from chapter xxiv on "The" : "The word 'the' implies existence and uniqueness ; it is a mistake to talk of 'the son a£ So-and-So' if So-and-So has a fine family of ten sons. People who refer to 'the Oxford Movement' imply that Oxford only moved once. . . ." The second is chapter xiii, "Is the Mind in the Head ? " in its entirety. "The contrary opinion has been maintained by idealists and a certain election agent with whom I once had to deal and who remarked that something slipped his mind and then went out of his head altogether. At some period, then, a remembrance was in his head and out of his mind ; his mind was not, then, wholly within his head. Also, one is sometimes assured that with certain people 'out of sight is out of mind.' \Vhat is in their minds is therefore in sight, and cannot therefore be inside their heads.,,

[ 61 ]

Wittgenstein's gaming with language is in dead earnest; it is to do a serious and difficult job, that of philosophical clarification. So we cannot say of it, "See, it cannot commit Wittgenstein for after all he is simply playing with language." Even if no given lan­ guage game involves him in metaphysics, the whole business, as a whole and as he means to use it, does. It shows us how wrong, how absurd (not of course how false in any empirical sense) it is to suppose that the world is made up of simple particulars, or uni­ versals, or of exemplifications of universals by particulars (facts). Rather, we should think and talk in the categories of people talk­ ing in various languages with various rules finally expressive of their way of behaving and living. And this "truth" it would seem is untouched by the consideration that we can and perhaps should apply it to itself and treat it as a game. Second, and presupposed in what I have just written, the con­ cept of games does have a common "connotation" in our ordinary use, and one incidentally that makes Wittgenstein's speaking of languages as "games" peculiarly inappropriate and misleading in a way which, it seems to me, is categorially revealing. He himself, of course, denies this outright. "Consider for example the proceed­ ings that we call 'games'. I mean board-games, card-games, ball­ games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? -Don't say : 'There must be something common, or they would not be called "games" '-but look and see . . . . Are they all 'amus­ ing'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience." Well, let's look and see. Though there isn't always competition or winning-or-losing or amusement, there seem always to be cer­ tain factors in what in common talk we call "games." There are always people ( or higher organisms). We grant writers poetic li­ cense to speak of "the waves playing tag" or "the cloud-shadows frolicking in a game of hide-and-seek" but these are clearly liter­ ary tropes that would lose their metaphorical point if we didn't allow indulgence in the pathetic fallacy. And there is always be­ havior. True, children do (all too infrequently) play at being dead, but this is a form of living behavior, of "acting"; we would not, save for literary effect, admit that cadavers are ever up to any games. And there are rules governing the behavior involved, though these are in many cases not printed in rulebooks and must

be gathered by observing how the game is done. Even ring-a­ ring-a-roses has rules, and if you don't follow them you're not playing the game. Rules of course do not demand competition or the possibility of fouls ( that is of penalties on breaking them as themselves part of the game and thus rule-governed). But they do require that the behavior constituting the game be determined by convention ( even if only the convention set up by a single in­ dividual who has created a game for himself). And this leads to recognizing a correlated property. Games as games are used for ulterior purposes, but so is almost anything that can happen­ earthquakes are sometimes used to win civic citations for heroic action, but this is accidental to them, and hardly refutes the con­ tention that they have a common (geologic) nature. Something taken as a way of achieving a purpose beyond the activity itself, such that the behavior is not governed by convention but by em­ pirical laws ( which may of course be about conventional behav­ ior) determining its possible success in attaining this goal, is not in common speech dubbed a "game." The business of sports pro­ motion is not itself a game, save again in the metaphorical sense in which we sometimes say that business is a game, or war is a game, or marriage is a game ( or is a battle or is a . . .). Finally, though negatively again, games are not about anything else; they often require equipment (balls, nets, boards) and locations, but given what their rules demand for the playing of them, the rest of the world is not necessarily involved. Now it is on these last two points, and above all the final one, that I want to challenge Wittgenstein's metaphor of "language games." Of course one can play games with language, as in cross­ word puzzles, bingo, charades ; but these presuppose that one al­ ready has language as something given, not as itself a game. "Language," as ordinarily used, designates behavior -( or artifacts produced by behavior) that is symbolic, is about a world or set of "objects" to which it refers, and in this sense cannot be thought of, as linguistic, when severed from that world. The behavior mak­ ing up language is thus not self-contained in the way a game is. Quite parallel to games, languages require people, conventions, often some equipment (what would we do without pen and pa­ per, to say nothing of radio stations and printing presses ?). But, in consonance with good usage, we would not have language if the extra-linguistic world were involved only as materials and

means for shaping and transporting the symbolic expressions themselves. There are historical reasons why this crystalline truth has of late been smudged. Logicians, for perfectly valid technical rea­ sons, have developed formal calculi which have been called "un­ interpreted languages." This designation has been most unfortu­ nate in suggesting that one can have a language without any semantical dimension and then add the latter at one's convenience -an ide a quite foreign to everyday thought, indeed, quite strange to the practicing logician who speaks, say, of a class, represented by ''K,,, of e1 ements, sym b o 1 1ze · d b y "a, ,, '' b, '' ''c," . . . , an d h aving such and such properties, which of course is already linguis­ tic in the ordinary sense, since using symbols to refer, though very indeterminately and, if you please, hypothetically. Then again there was the stage in logical positivism when some of its advocates thought you could define the meaning of expres­ sions syntactically ( the nearest they got was a syntactical correlate of "having the same meaning") , and they left the impression that it was meaningful to talk of languages without meaning or that you could construct languages with only "sign-vehicles" ( sounds, ink-mounds) and syntax. They have themselves given this up, but somehow the impression remains that the semantical dimension of language is expendable. Finally, there are the metaphors of idiomatic speech which have been discovered by the informalists and used with devastating ef­ fect. Just as we speak of the language of the winds and leaves, of thunder and machinery, so we can talk of a language made up of such and such humanly devised sounds ("block," "pillar," "slab," "beam") to which "meaning" can be added later by simple asso­ ciation. What is not appreciated here is the difference. To speak of the leaves as "murmuring sweet secrets to the lovers in the for­ est" is ( need I say it ? ) honest ·m etaphor ; to talk of a language made up of the sounds, "block," "pillar," "slab," "beam," is not, and mere conditioning will not erase the difference. Human behavior and its products do not literally form a lan­ guage unless they say something about something else, if we would conform to popular usage. Games, again keeping to good form, do not say anything about anything else, even games with linguistic elements ( which do, as in charades, frequently play on meanings) . Perhaps I have become tedious about this, but it is a

difference that cuts deep. If it is fitting to treat languages as games, we are well on the way to a rej ection of intentionalism, a correspondence theory of truth and related epistemological doc­ trines. This, as the reader may surmise, is not congenial to the author, but that is beside the present point, which is simply that such a denegation cannot plausibly claim to be free of categorial entanglements. I am of course assuming that negative commit­ ments are commitments, that rej ecting a philosophy involves tak­ ing sides in a philosophical controversy. And there is evidence that Wittgenstein meant to do j ust this, that he meant, for example, to repudiate any epistemology involv­ ing a name-relation as constitutive of meaning and a correspond­ ence-relation as making up truth. For our illustrative purposes we can confine ourselves to the former, particularly since it re­ ceives the maj or emphasis in Pl, with only this one remark anent the latter : To agree with his discarding of the na1ne-relation the­ ory of meaning and his emphasis on behavioral use in its stead, Wittgenstein ought either to cast aside entirely the concepts of truth and falsity as nonsensical, or in any case thoroughly mis­ leading, or to accept a success-in-behavior theory of truth. On the latter alternative, he would plainly be committed to pragmatism. On the former, he would need something to take the place of the true-false distinction . What could it be ? Effectiveness in using language for whatever purpose one had ? This, one suspects, would j ust be pragmatism with a change of dress. And wouldn't any other choice as truly enmesh him categorially ? One last consideration and we have done with Wittgenstein. Perhaps this matter is the most fundamental of all, since it takes us from essentially epistemological issues to what, in some meas­ ure, is their ontological grounding. I refer to his apparent rej ec­ tion of common properties in favor of family resemblances. We are not to look for a defining property of language, game, num­ ber, or, one is led to assume, anything else going by a common name, since the entities designated by any such terms have no property in common. How are we to interpret this ? Negatively, Wittgenstein's posi­ tion seems clear : " . . . these phenomena have no one thing in com­ mon . . . . " Is this not itself a categorial commitment ? He would say not ; he would claim ("look and see") that it is simply empiri­ cal . If we have been correct, however, empirical statements are

[ 65 ]

always cast in frameworks involving categorial commitments. Is this? It seems to me so, though perhaps the relatively "harmless" one of common sense; it presupposes, as quite ultimate, a certain area to be accepted as factual-the history of number theory, what people generally speak of as languages, games, together with their talk about them and so on. Moreover it assumes that using the same common term to designate a set of phenomena does not itself constitute a common property or relation of these phenom­ ena. What are "these phenomena" that "have no one thing in common"? Wittgenstein has no trouble speaking of them straight off. Does not this require that they have the common property of being commonly called "languages" or "games" or "numbers"? I am not myself asserting this, but am wondering whether it would be opposed to good usage to do so ( would it not be all right to say that members of the class, people-that-grampa-calls-"bastards," bear a common relation to him, all being objects of his somewhat uncouth appellation?) , so if Wittgenstein rules this out, he is not in any obvious sense confining himself to ordinary commitments of ordinary talk. Our understanding of his positive proposal, to replace the as­ sumption of a common property in the cases in point by a family resemblance, is perhaps not so straightforward. If we were to press the rope-fiber simile, we might come out with : just as in any short length of rope there are one or more fibers running through the whole length, but there is none if you choose a piece that is sufficiently long, so you may take appropriately small sets of what are called languages or games or numbers and discover properties common to all in the set; it is only when you extend them suffi­ ciently that you cannot. For example, if you speak of positive in­ tegers you can find such properties; but if you go on to every­ thing now referred to by mathematicians as "numbers" ( zero, negative integers, fractions, imaginary numbers, and so on) you cannot. Now if we take Wittgenstein to be saying this, then he admits that "common property" is meaningful and "such-and­ such phenomena have a common property" ·makes sense, and thus he is committed to the existence of universals, though warning us to be more circumspect in our predication of them than is our habit. But this is probably a wrong interpretation. The fibers of the simile of the rope are presumably to represent similarities, not

[ 66 ]

common properties. In stating the family-resemblance metaphor Wittgenstein explicitly uses the former, not the latter, expression. On this reading of him he would not admit any common prop­ erties. There would remain, however, the individuals that bear these resemblances. Nowhere does he cast suspicion on the exist­ ence of particular games, the fact of a multiplicity of actual lan­ guages ( to which he has added several hypothetical ones) , and so on. This is something which, in the mood of Pl, goes unchal­ lenged and unanalyzed. A Bradley with his Absolute would be willing to admit a single individual only; such supposed individ­ uals as Wittgenstein lets pass are simply adjectives of the one Reality. A Leibniz with his principle of the identity of indiscerni­ bles or a Whitehead with his concrete events in which eternal ob­ jects ingress, might wish to claim that individuals are some kind of togethernesses of universals. Approaching the matter epistemo­ logically, a Plato or Aristotle might want to assert that we can know individuals only via the universals they exemplify. Witt­ genstein is clearly disagreeing with these philosophers and on a matter not to be decided by "looking and seeing" for the issue seeps into what it is to look and see and what can be looked at and seen. Moreover, we must inquire about the status of the similarities whose crisscrossing constitutes a family resemblance. On this, Wittgenstein and his friends give us no help. They say, "There are similarities and similarities, and some are closer than others," and then they begin giving us examples. But this is merely irri­ tating, for anyone with sufficient imagination and literary re­ sources can do this in extenso, without having or producing any insights on philosophical problems. Does speaking about closer and more remote similarities not involve one in the assumption of orders or types, of similarities and dissimilarities of similarities? Moreover it strikes ·me that the only plausible way of avoiding commitment to common properties ("in respect to which" there are distinguishable similarities) would be to set up these proper­ ties as classes of similar individuals. This game would be highly paradoxical ; no such nominalism, to my knowledge, has ever been successfully worked out. But this is beside my present point, which is the simple one that if developed it would not free one from categorial commitments in general but only from those in-

valving the acceptance of universals, common properties, and similar entities. Now no doubt Wittgenstein and the neo-Wittgensteineans would object that these suggestions about a logic of similarities lead from informalism into formalism and hence are alien to their approach. There would be point to this objection, but it could itself be telling only if one refused to clarify the common­ place and varying usage of such terms as "similar," "resembling," and so on. And surely if one did so refuse, one could not use these terms to get rid of the idea of common properties, for we do say such things as, "Baby has his mother's eyes and his father's hair" (which could no more be said really to mean "Baby's eyes are similar to his mother's and his hair resembles his father's" than "Baby's eyes are the same color and shape as his father's") ; "The new fender is identical in color with the rest of the car," "These two boats have the same sail area though differing in displacement and length of waterline." Ordinary language does not favor the similarity-dissimilarity or family-resemblance jar­ gon any more than it does the argot of common-properties or universals. But perhaps all this is overrefining the objective of PI as re­ gards the family-resemblance matter. Perhaps all that is meant is that sometimes in corpmon idiom we stretch words beyond common properties to cover resemblances, and that philosophers stumble over these similes and metaphors and awkwardly behave toward them as literal. Construing Pl this way, it is legitimate to suppose a common quality attributed to the two pencils on my desk when I call them both red and a similar one to my tooth­ brush when I term it pink, but not to assume that I simply have new cases of these when I refer to the red dean of Canterbury or my pink colleague in the University of Washington. People do call politics a game, arithmetic a language, and philosophy a verbal pastime, and if this is misleading to the philosopher, per­ haps reading PI will help. But now we are back where we started. It may be that Pl is a sort of handbook, studded with concrete examples, designed for the analyst who wishes to treat a special group of cases, namely, philosophers (old style) who have became mentally disturbed as the result of the great flexibility of ordinary language, which they try to "correct" by making it rigid and inflexible; or perhaps [ 68 ]

it is meant as a sort of self-help for the ailing philosopher to use upon himself. John Wisdom, under the influence of the later Wittgenstein, has recently probed this complex at some length ( examples are to be found in his Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis) . But we must give Wisdom his due ; from his first donning of the psycho­ analyst's white gown he has turned his attention to the symptoms of disorder in the new-style philosophy-its oversimplification of the old-style way of doing things, its flat rej ection of all meta­ physics as nonsense, and its characterization of the older philo­ sophical debates as merely verbal. Against this he has claimed that there were insights (he even calls them "categorial") in those old-style pronouncements. Speaking of recent skeptics of metaphysics, he writes : "But the fact is that j ust as their second order paradox that there is no reason for saying one thing rather than another in metaphysics is not merely an expression of muddle but also an expression of a new grasp of the peculiarities of the j ustification of metaphysical statements, so also the first order paradoxes of other metaphysicians are not merely expres­ sions of muddle, but also expressions of a new grasp of the peculiarities of the j ustification procedures proper to statements about right and wrong, the minds of others, etc." These j ustifi�a­ tions are like logical proofs in that they frequently give us a sense of finding something new in facts already known, but un­ like them in not being rigorously deductive. Their j ustifications lie not in their cogency but in their novelty yet relevance, in the sense they give of new vistas to be discovered on the old terrain. Friedrich Waismann, in his contribution to Contemporary British Philosophy, Third Series ("How I See Philosophy") has followed this approach further or in any case stated it more strikingly. Part of this greater forcefulness is due to Waismann's tying the metaphysician's visions historically with great new developments in logic and science, rather than placing them in the sickroom of psychopathic hospitals. We should put Descartes' work not in the context of quibbles about substance but of the impetus it gave to a mathematical description of nature. "To say that metaphysics is nonsense is nonsense. It fails to acknowledge the enormous part played at least in the past by those systems." On the other hand, W aismann does agree with Wisdom that

philosophical arguments are never logically strict, nor of course are they reports of new factual observations. Despite this they have a use and an exceedingly significant one. It might seem that this outcome of the informalist's treatment of metaphysics ought to be in the highest degree satisfactory to the present writer. As a matter of fact, I find myself very sym­ pathetic with the Wisdom-Waismann way of talking about philosophy. This will appear more specifically later. But I am nevertheless unhappy. For all their talk of insight and vision, one could understand them to mean only something psychological or sociological. They may be m · erely reporting the undeniable fact that philosophers (both old and new) have had great success in viewing known factual materials from new angles and getting others to do likewise. Wisdom said, "It is not because it's bad that the old system won't do, but because it's old. . . . A new system will do the same [ as the old] but not in just the same ways. So that in accepting all the systems their blinding power is bro­ ken. . . . " True, he does go on to say that "the individual is restored to us," which certainly seems to put him into a meta­ physics of his own, but is this clear to him ? He seems to say that all philosophical systems can finally be set aside as not saying anything sensible and true about the world. And W aismann writes, "There is something visionary about great m · etaphysicians as if they had the power to see beyond the horizons of their time." It is possible to read this as simply a statement about the history of ideas. It gives the philosopher a worthy place in that history, but it need not imply anything further, for example, that philos­ ophers' categorial visions get at some real aspects of things be­ yond the detail of empirical fact. If Wisdom and Waismann are withholding judgment on the epistemological significance of categorial insights and are treating them descriptively as phases of the mental biography of man, then they are not themselves doing philosophy but only char­ acterizing it empirically. Their own statements would involve categorial commitments only in the sense in which all ordinary speech does. Contrariwise, if they are telling us something about the extra .. conceptual world, even if only that it is composed of individuals in their nakedness as in "creation's chorus," so that our categorial systems cancel one another and allow us by their mutual de-

struction to see the univer se unclothed in our classificatory systems, or if some visions have moved us closer to the structure of things (showing that, for example, it is mathematically de­ scribable or possibly that there are general facts of nature), then the Wisdom-Waismann story has itself a metaphysical plot and is no mere characterization of other philosophers. And I prefer to read it this way. But of course with this interpretation our authors are not merely creative writers but themselves meta­ physicians and involved in their own distinctive categorial commitments.

IV Is a Self-Contained System Possible? PREAMBLE

In the present chapter we shall be involved in defending against a second type of obj ection the position about the character of philosophical systems taken earlier in this book. This means that we maintain a negative response to the question posed. We must, that is, deny categorial self-sufficiency to any philosophy and hold that each makes commitments of a categorial type about a world beyond itself, that none is self-j ustifying. Perhaps this could be put : No metaphysics is categorially solipsistic. For any, it must be allowable to j udge it to be false ( or in some appropriate sense wrong) , not by virtue of an internal inconsistency or structural defect, but in that what it categorially says or assumes about the extra-philosophical universe ( about "reality" if you want) j ust does not square with things, distorts them, or is inadequate to represent them. To make this out I turn to systems which may be thought by some ( though not necessarily their authors) to present exceptions. These are cases where, the obj ector might contend, one can apply a system's basic categories to itself and find that in doing this it measures up to its own standards of what a philosophy is and satisfies its own claims and so is established in its own eyes, so to speak, by this reflexive glance. Here again, it goes without saying, the method cannot be rigorous . Only a few most likely and striking possible exceptions to our universal negative can be investigated. But if their apparent affirmatives can be struck out, we may perhaps feel assured that, if the whole text could be written, it would all be in the negative. I take three cases, drawn from the pragmatism of William

James, the linguistic-innovation theory of Morris Lazerowitz ( following some leads of John Wisdom) and the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. To some extent each must be straightened a trifle to fit the structure we are building, but, I would maintain, this is essentially just unwarping them. Even in their natural state, as raw timbers for our purpose, they show common char­ acteristics marking them as available for our use. They all admit a strife of systems which, though in some wise genuine, cannot be settled by simple observation or expurgated as mere nonsense. They do, in fact, see this as something that must be appropriately handled by any adequate philosophy, and they envisage them­ selves, in each case, as being preferable to rivals because they are more successful in this assignment than others. Each presents itself, at least by implication, as facing up more honestly to the facts of this unfortunate and, so they seem to feel, somewhat scandalous squabble, and thereby as more ably treating it than any competitor. So, though this may not be explicit, each deals with itself in terms of itself and in some fashion supposes this to be the final word. Now it will be my contention that each fails in this because of a further characteristic they have in common. Their method of getting all categorial systems, including themselves, into sup­ posedly a single edifice whose ground plan is their own finally amounts to a psychologism : they tacitly abandon the architec­ tural problem in favor of a psychological or psychiatric one; they give up as their basic desideratum a unified building, substituting for it a single explanation of the motivation of the builders. And in doing this they not merely shift the nature of their enterprise­ from (comparative) philosophy to psychology-; they get all involved, as we would expect any one should who makes em­ pirical assertions, in categorial commitments germane to their psychological task. And these com·mitments, as drawn largely from common sense with perhaps some modification through adaptation to scientific employment, do not fit at all readily into their own categorial framework and in any case ( and here is the crux) the application of these categories is not to the philosophy in question but to its author. James employs his temperamentalism upon himself, not itself; Lazerowitz's linguis­ tic-innovation theory of philosophies is not appropriate to itself but only and at most to the unconscious motivation of its author

( and of the authors of "metaphysical" theories); Sartre, though suffering anxiety about the world and the way it is to be essen­ tialized is, finally, not struggling with the nature of being (and of nothing) as much as with himself and his choice of and ad­ herence to some way of categorizing. I might have captioned this section, ''Can a psychological treat­ ment of categories be adequate?" This would have focused atten­ tion more immediately on what, as I see it, the philosophers I have chosen end up actually doing. But it has two serious defects. First, it omits what seems to me to be a very real feature of their thinking: each believes he is doing something more than the psychology of philosophers, something relevant to philosophy and the strife of philosophic systems. Second, "adequate" is ambiguous in this context in a manner directly relevant to our present in­ terest: it may mean psychologically adequate, that is, adequate to explain various categorial commitments causally or motiva­ itonally, or it may signify philosophically adequate, that is, capa­ ble of justifying or establishing or validating the given categorial commitments. The former is not our concern, yet it is all that our examples can produce, so that their self-application has, final­ ly and strictly, no bearing on our problems about the conflicts between categorial systems and the supposed possibility of the self-justification of any one of them. THE

CASE

O F PRAGMATISM

In his early paper, "The Sentiment of Rationality" (1879), James asks, "What is the task which philosophers set themselves to perform . . . ? " and answers, "They desire to attain a conception of the frame of things which shall on the whole be more rational than that" of common sense. This leads him immediately to the query, ". . . how is the philosopher to recognize it for what it is . . . ?" to which his reply is, ". . . by certain subjective marks with which it affects him. . . . A strong feeling of ease, peace, rest, is one of them. The transition from a state of puzzle and perplexity to rational comprehension is full of lively relief and pleasure." This puts it negatively, as an escape from a sense of irrationality; positively, the state may be described as a "feeling of the sufficiency of the moment," as thinking "with perfect fluency." So now we ask, "Does James's use of the sentiment of rational-

ity, in testing the claims of rival philosophies, satisfy itself ? " And the immediate and spontaneous answer would seem to be, "Of course-it was made to order to do j ust this and do it better than any other philosophy." But even at this moment and on this level a little doubt may creep in. Does one remain possessed of a sense of ease and of fluency in entertaining a conception of the universe if its only claim to one's preference against its rivals is that it gives one more of a sense of ease and fluency in entertain­ ing it ? And this dis-ease in any psychologically normal philos­ opher (the reader will surely, in relation to this type of approach, overlook my use of question-begging terms) rapidly grows, once it has inserted itself. James drops several hints that he has in mind more the appeal of a philosophy to the lay public than its acceptability to professional philosophers, so that the disaffection intimated might not grow so quickly or perhaps even be born at all in this climate. This consideration, however, only leads to the more crucial interrogative, What kind of self-sufficiency are we looking for and would find satisfactory for our purpose ? A psychological one, no ·m atter what group of people one is con­ sidering, is not to the point, I think. The issue at hand is cate­ gorial. The statement that certain types of philosophies more than others give a "feel" of rationality to some, or even to all persons, is itself already categorially framed. It supposes people with emotions and beliefs on matters broadly philosophical, and so on. These commitments go beyond the matter of ease or fluency in the thoughts thereof; they involve acceptance of the things thought about ; they imply that the universe, quite obj ec­ tively and not as so many easements, contains such elements. In the early lectures in his Pragmatism James develops this sentimental approach to philosophic controversies. The dilemma in philosophy is something of a scandal. "The history of philos­ ophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human tempera­ ments . . . . Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so [ the philosopher] urges impersonal reasons only for his con­ clusions . . . . There arises thus a certain insincerity in our philo­ sophic discussions : the potentest of all our premises is never mentioned." James implores forthrightness in avowing this premise and offers his assistance by neatly classifying all philosophical temper. aments 1n two groups : t he " ten d er-min . d e d" an d t he " toug h..

[ 75 ]

minded," the former being favorable to rationalistic systems, the latter to empiricistic. "Temperamentalism," as I have dubbed pragmatism in this mood, offers a method of settling the other­ wise interminable metaphysical disputes. It pursues each philos­ ophy to "its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle." But now what does this amount to? How are we to understand the magic phrases, "practical consequences" and "practical differ­ ence"? I take it, these are part and parcel of the whole tempera­ mental package-deal. We are to adj udicate metaphysical quarrels by looking to the temperamental satisfactions and dissatisfactions involved. If the disputants offer no dispositionally vital alterna­ tives, their litigation is merely verbal and to be thrown out of court. This will apparently void many contentions, thus lessening our professional embarrassment considerably. However, there are different kinds of temperament (James admits two) , so that what might be of great moment for a person of one kind might equally be of no practical consequence to an individual with a different make-up. James resolutely and indeed eagerly faces up to this contingency, but the outcome ( theoretical­ ly; I am not sure how to deal with it practically) is not clear. Suppose we take the debate about substance; is there or is there not such a stuff? The tough-minded empiricist, finding that neither side can show him any difference in sensible fact implied by its position on the issue, throws out the whole dispute as verbiage. Not so, the tender rationalist. Religion, in the person of the Roman Catholic devotee, finds, in the ceremony of the mass, a tremendous personality-involvement in the idea of the substance (but not the accidents) of bread and wine being trans­ muted into the very body and blood of the Son of God. Is then the whole controversy to be cast aside as of no consequence? That all depends. One other example (and one dearer to James 's own heart) : the battle over free will and necessity. If you come up to this like a Rocky Mountain tough, looking only to the empirical facts that can be sensibly ascertained up to the moment, you turn your back on the whole issue. Grubbing around in the dirt of moral

responsibili ties o r their absence is a shameful and unintelligent occupation. But, now, look to the future, tender-mindedly, and the alternatives are momentous, the contest shattering in its im­ port. The affirmation of free will offers hope and challenge and a basis for individual self-esteem completely denied by its nega­ tion .. Is then the whole dispute to be silenced as so much cater­ wauling ? That all depends . Moreover, if these and similar metaphysical debates are allowed to be significant on the test of practical consequences, has tempera­ mentalism anything to say about the relative worth of the op­ posing positions ? Though he nowhere faces this question as such, James gives one the impression that he means, in several specific cases, to answer it in the affirmative. And perhaps his whole pragmatic "theory" of truth, as applied to philosophical ideas, can be taken as an assertion of it. We would then have him saying that that disputant is right whose doctrine gives greater satisfaction ( in the long run and on the whole, of course) to the type of personality involved. Now, if one combines this with the thesis of "the potentest premise" one gets the (logical, not nec­ essarily practical ) consequence that every honest philosophical warrior is defending a worthier position than that of his op­ ponent, if, that is, "the potentest premise" thesis is to the effect that every philosopher maintains a metaphysical system most gratifying to a man of his temperament, and we j udge competing systems sympathetically, from the standpoint of the participants and not from that of some cold and temperamentally uncom­ mitted outsider. But is not this relativistic result unobj ectionable, or in any case inescapable ? Well, that may be as it may be. What we must do at this point is not to conj ecture about it (from some supposedly neutral position ) , but put James, or rather, the whole Jamesian account, as we have outlined it, into the same ledger and in the same currency as those of the parties whose claims it attempts to balance. Now James himself welcomes this most disarmingly, but we must be alert. In the first place, he frequently identifies himself as a tough (I suspect he chose his names for his classification of tempera­ men ts with malice prepense) . When he gets sufficiently warmed to the task, he finds it hard to cast enough scorn upon tender­ minded rationalism with its absolutistic aloofness from the

world's evils. But this will hardly do; this is an entering of the lists with a vengeance and hardly befits one who poses in a pacifying role. And James frequently sees this, too, and attempts to represent the average man as a sort of tender-minded tough, or the arbiter who wants above all to have done with the eternal bickering. But let us disregard this ambivalence on James's part; by an appropriate stretch of our imagination we can endow him with a most steadfast and catholic disposition. Still, we would only have James-other philosophers would presumably continue with their various and often conflicting personalities and it would not ease their conflicts to find in James's temperament a tolerant and universally sympathetic spirit. Indeed it does no good to suppose, as James himself frequently does, that the common man is a middle-of-the-roader in this clash of human humors. What if he is, and if his moods finally will carry the day, simply because he is so numerous? The more eccentric geniuses will still be there, in mortal combat, quite unwilling to allow the issue to be settled by sheer preponderance of numbers. And in any case, there is something decidedly wrong here. If we try to self-apply these categories, James suggests that we would come out with a justification of empiricism, of rationalism, or of some via media, but what we need for our purpose is a vindication of temperanientalism. And this we would not get : the common man, if I may adopt our professional privilege of speaking for him, does not find it at all satisfying to hold that soundness in one's philosophical position is simply agreeableness of the outlook to one's personal make-up-nor would the em­ piricist or rationalist philosopher. I think what James is tacitly appealing to is not conformity to our dispositional propensities but simply to our intellectual honesty. He is not asking, "Don't you like temperamentalism; don't you find it temperamentally attractive? " so much as, "Isn't temperamentalism so; don't you find that it states the facts; isn't the philosopher's temperament his potentest premise after all? " And in so far as it is making this appeal, it is operating not in the area of philosophy but of the psychology of philosophers; its contentions are not categorial but empirical. If this is the case, and it seems to me almost undeniable, then we can make a familiar but effective move. We can point out

that these pragmatic assertions, like all empirical statements, are categorially framed and thereby involve categorial commitments : to the reality of philosophers, their doctrines, their personalities, their conflicts, and so on-these are ultimate as against the cate­ gories distinctive of the pragmatist, which are based upon them and presuppose them. They involve one in the realism of com­ mon sense, and clearly contain acceptance of a world beyond our concepts and the satisfactions these concepts yield. Tempera­ mentalism thus shows itself not to be self-sufficient and self­ j ustifying. THE

CASE

O F

L A N G U A G E-I N N O V A T I O N

If, from our standpoint and as illustrative of the putative type of system we are scrutinizing in the present section, the pragma­ tism of William James fails to be categorially self-contained, nonetheless its author displays admirable honesty in trying to apply its psychological concepts to himself as a person, and one gets the impression that he thinks this sufficient to do the trick. The proponents of the linguistic-innovation theory of metaphysics £or the most part do not even furnish this verisimilitude of cate­ gorial self-sufficiency. Actually, Professor Lazerowitz, whom we shall use as our case study, does suggest at one point a self-application of his own approach, though he does not carry it very far and so will present1y be the object of our aid. In a number of articles, now put to­ gether with some new material to form The Structure of Meta­ physics, he reveals a continuing and deep concern with the prob­ lem of why the metaphysical enterprise can boast no solid re­ sults, why its chronic condition is one of endless and apparently irresolvable controversy. It is their inability to answer this question plausibly that over­ throws the main theories hitherto debated concerning the nature of philosophical conflicts, according to Lazerowitz. If the issues between Heraclitus and Parmenides about the reality of change or between William Hamilton and John Stuart Mill about the existence of physical things when not perceived were empirical, someone would surely by now have devised ways of ascertaining the facts, at least with a high degree of probability, and debate would have ceased. But not only has this not been so, the con-

testants do not consider observational procedures relevant to their disagreements. If the opposing theories were a priori propositions backed up by allegedly rigorous proofs, we could understand why empirical procedures would not be called in to terminate the dispute, but the problem of the continuance of the battle would remain un­ solved. After all, many matters of logical and mathematical im­ port have been definitively settled. The hypothesis that metaphysical propositions make factual claims about established linguistic usage is to be rejected on the same basis. In most cases there is no great difficulty in determining what such usage is; disputes concerning it do not continue in­ terminably the way metaphysical ones do. Nor will presenting even clear-cut facts of this sort serve to resolve any metaphysical issue : fancy stopping the mouth of Parmenides by pointing out that the ordinary Greek could say that rivers flow or that of Mill that in everyday English we refer to chairs when not looking at them or sitting on them. Similarly for the positivistic claim that metaphysical wars are just mock, their rival contentions simply nonsense. It is inherently implausible that very good heads have knocked together for cen­ turies over matters essentially the same as whether it really was brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. The positivist, by pointing out, as he thinks, that philosophical state­ ments are all senseless instead of bringing the old disputes to an end has simply added another voice to the wrangle. Lazerowitz thinks that his own account explains this curious phenomenon of the interminability of metaphysical controversy left unexplained by rival hypotheses. For him, the contestants are presenting rival proposals of linguistic innovations. When Parmenides says that nothing changes he is making a claim neither about things nor about words; he is asking for a change in our use of words about things. We are to alter them so that "remains unchanged " applies to everything and "has changed" and "is changing" apply to nothing. And when Heraclitus says that everything changes he is inviting a contrary innovation. No observable fact, either about the world or about our actual usage, will count against such proposals and thereby resolve conflicts of them; nor will a priori arguments establish their truth or falsity, since solicitations can be neither true nor false. [ 80 ]

It is just at this juncture in his argument that Lazerowitz makes his half-hearted gesture toward applying his position to itself. He anticipates (and I agree wholly with his prediction) that his theory will not be generally accepted by metaphysical disputants nor will it bring their controversies to a close; rather, like the positivists', it will just add another voice to the hubbub. Why, then, should we consider it any different or any better? Moreover, the new voice does not appear to utter words in­ herently any more plausible than those already in the air. I cannot imagine Parmenides admitting that when he said that nothing changed he did not mean to deny that things change, but rather intended to bring about a very radical change, namely, that peo­ ple cease using words for changes of any kind. Indeed, I can hardly conceive of Mill agreeing that when he examined the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton he was not concerned to deny the existence of unperceived physical objects but only to supplant ordinary words for them by such expressions as "per­ manent possibilities of sensation." At this point Lazerowitz would, no doubt, wish to introduce a qualification that might seem to help his case somewhat. The innovations philosophers covertly proffer in their metaphysical theories are not to be introduced into ordinary conversation but only into philosophical disquisitions. With this qualification, in whichever way interpreted, Lazero­ witz does not seem much better off. Philosophers in their debates have certainly not appeared to be simply vying with one another in proposing linguistic innovations of whatever sort. Indeed, if they were, it would seem that their differences would long since have been erased. Surely desiderata could have been formulated and experiments conducted to test the relative merits of the rival propositions. Intelligent people do this on architects' plans and contractors' bids; why are not similar decisions possible on lin­ guistic proposals? It is here that the new material in Lazerowitz's book goes beyond his articles in explicitness and depth. We are now intro­ duced quite specifically into the metaphysician's unconscious. "When a metaphysician declares and proves that nothing really changes. . . , he imagines himself . . . to be announcing the dis­ covery of an important fact about things. . . ; whereas what he

is really doing is introducing a linguistic innovation the contem­ plation of which gives him and others pleasure." For some people the word "change," in addition to its ordinary mean­ ing, which they do not give up in their everyday conversation, has the private meaning of "catastrophic change." They make the unconscious equation change = dreaded change ; and they reassure themselves with the assertion, which is backed by the verbal necromancy of a metaphysical proof, that their status quo will not be disturbed by a new situation which, whether justifiably or not, is felt to be menacing. The hidden sense of the philosophical statement, Nothing really changes,

.

IS

No changes which would create anxiety in me are real.

So now we must return to our challenge and see whether Lazerowitz is in any better position to meet it : Is there any very good reason for accepting his theory rather than some one of his rivals' theories? As we saw, his propounding the idea that philosophical systems are solicitations to linguistic innovations is not likely to end metaphysical strife, nor is this hypothesis, by itself, in any favored position for explaining the interminable character of this struggle. But add the depth dimension, the un­ conscious demands which these constructions satisfy, and we seem to be in a better way to understand the rigidity with which their adherents cling to them. This may seem satisfactory at first, if we think of the linguistic­ innovation theory, along with its rival meta-metaphysical theo­ ries, as empirical hypotheses concerning the psychology of meta­ physicians ( why they refuse to budge from their tenets, whatever refutations of logic or fact are brought against them) . Of course one would need to be tolerant here ; psychoanalysis is still pretty crude and the subject of much disagreement even when dealing with rather ordinary irrationalities of rather ordinary folk, and one must admit that Lazerowitz has jumped quite directly into the deep end of the pool of speculation. But let that be; if he is doing what I have just suggested, we had better turn his hypothe­ sis over to the psychologists and psychopathologists, since its sub­ ject matter is philosophers not philosophical systems. Even on this reading of him, however, there is an interesting

feature of his terrain he has not mapped. What about his own psychology ? Is it not suitable to his sort of approach and if we were to investigate it from his angle, would we not come out with comparable discoveries ? I trust that Lazerowitz would admit that he has needs, and even unconscious ones, and moreover that perchance these are not wholly unrelated to the satisfaction he appears, rather ob­ viously to one reader, to obtain from spelling out and applying his theory. To begin with, it is transparent that Lazerowitz is deeply con­ cerned with the lack of "progress" in philosophy, with the in­ terminable character of its debates, with its lack of positive re­ sults. He keeps returning to this, as though it posed more than an intellectual problem ; one gets the sense that it bothers him emotionally. This can be explained if we take him to be identi­ fying himself with this enterprise, not merely viewing it scientifi­ cally from the outside. Is it beyond conj ecture that, considering himself a fellow philosopher, he has a sense of guilt and wishes to expiate by instituting a reform or, more drastically, that by dissociating himself from his colleagues and aligning himself with scientists he may escape opprobrium ? It will be recalled that Lazerowitz discarded the positivistic theory about metaphysical disputes not because it involved the repudiation of metaphysical propositions (he did not come to their defense as having literal sense) , but on the grounds that it did not explain their fascination, it could not account for the centuries of metaphysical debate and the fact that it is not silenced by being shown to be nonsense. His own theory then may be considered really an addition to the positivists', bringing in un­ conscious motivation to make the whole account scientifically more tenable and to ally himself even more firmly with scien­ tists. And there is a further advantage in thus supplementing the positivists' rej ection of metaphysics ; it brands metaphysicians with irrationality, with hidden and scarcely admissible motivation, with yielding to unacknowledged anxieties that should be met and conquered. They are escapists ; Lazerowitz is thus j ustified in parting company with them and taking sides with those (sci­ entists, of course) who will have nothing to do with the whole shameful business, but honestly face reality and get their satis­ factions openly and from accredited facts.

And this may not be all. We may be able to probe to a deeper level. After all, Lazerowitz could have made a clean break; he could have forsaken philosophy frankly, professionally; he could have joined the ranks of the clinical psychiatrists or the theoretical psychologists, as some of his colleagues have done. Why has he not followed suit? I suggest that it is because metaphysics still allures him; it still invites and tantalizes him; his emotions to­ ward it are ambivalent. Its queerness may be more than an un­ conscious quirk in its devotees; there may be odd questions about the world that cannot be, or in any case have not been to date, finally settled by the best human brains, yet can be seen to be legitimate questions about aspects of the world, over whose an­ swers there are real and significant disagreements. His continued avoidance of this possibility indicates its attraction to him. Here is a threat to his ego; there may be something about the world he cannot know; he senses that he is not completely master here. His reaction to this is a deep anxiety which he must quell at all costs. For him unanswerable metaphysical questions = intellectual impotence,

and since it is degrading and ego-threatening to admit the latter, the former must be denied. But I ·must call a halt. My inward monitor tells me I should be ashamed of myself, .- for this is not getting myself and my reader on with our task. Not that this psychoanalysis of Lazero­ witz is too wild-it is no wilder than some he practices on meta­ physicians and it may even have a grain of truth in it ( as some of his may) . It is simply that it is beside the point. Our interest in Laberowitz's theory (just as in James's) is not in what happens when we apply it to its author but in what is involved when we make it fall under its own categories. Can we then consider it to be self-contained, self-justified, self-grounded, involving no commitments about anything further? Does the linguistic-in­ novation theory of metaphysics make no ·metaphysical assump­ tions that it does not and cannot itself establish within its own framework and by its own procedures? My own answer is unequivocally negative. Language, employer of language, in novation, proposal are all concepts built into the framework of the theory under consideration; they are tools used by the theory, not objects to which the theory applies; they

[ 84 ]

are not expressions for which the theory is soliciting new employ­ ment, but terms exploited in quite their conventional senses. It might be objected that they are not particularly metaphysical. True, the terms expressing them are not technical jargon in some esoteric lingo, but they do involve categorial commitment. For example, innovation unquestionably involves change; Lazero­ witz's theory is thus opposed to Parmenides', and as Lazerowitz himself points out in another case of a metaphysician's opponent, "He is a brother metaphysician who, if he looks at the situation objectively, will see that he holds his own view with as little reasonableness as he is inclined to impute to his colleague, and also with as much assurance. For he can adduce no better ex­ periential evidence with which to convince himself of his own belief than he is able to adduce against the metaphysical proposi­ tion of his adversary; and since the evidence fails to make his opponent give up his position, he cannot use it to convince him­ self of his own position." Perhaps Lazerowitz has too easily yielded ground here, and a more stubborn fighter might contend that one can battle a metaphysical position on a purely empirical basis, without taking sides metaphysically. l personally think one cannot (though not for Lazerowitz's reasons), but the assertion that his theory is categorially ·committed may be ·made more readily acceptable if we push beyond its account of the conscious and preconscious motivation of the metaphysician to the statement it renders of the unconscious. Certainly it is very widely suspected that Freud has introduced in his psychoanalysis metaphysical entities in the narrower and more invidious sense, so that our broader characterization of his theories of the unconscious as involving categorial or framework ideas not directly factual and observational should seem quite unobjectionable. And we hardly can avoid feeling that Lazero­ witz is similarly involved when he makes such statements as "The 'realities' referred to by [ metaphysical sentences ] are sub­ jective, the unconscious contents of our minds, not the physical world" and "The utterance 'change is unreal' reports the inner fact that the work of repression is successfully preventing a memory from coming to consciousness; it expresses an uncon­ scious belief that is a bulwark against the invasion of a dreaded remembrance," and when he speaks of a belief "which satisfies

[ 85 ] .

a wish and counters a fear in the substratum of our minds." A more cautious and operational approach would speak only of cures associated with the use of certain words, avoiding unob­ servable entities as one does the plague. But this would leave Lazerowitz helpless : he has, to my knowledge, brought about no cures, and I assume he would have some grounds for pessi­ mism about the future, so far at least as his work has focused on such individuals as Parmenides, the medieval realists, and F. H. Bradley. No ; I think our most resolute critic must admit that Lazero­ witz's somewhat unimaginative development of suggestions by John Wisdom has not proved to be an exception to our contention that there are no categorially self-sufficient and self-justifying philosophical systems. THE

CASE

O F

EXISTENTI ALIS M

In our quest for a philosophy that is categorially self-contained and thus uncommitted to any world beyond itself, we turn finally to quite a different and, for the Anglo-American mentality, dis­ tinctly alien ideology but one which nonetheless exemplifies the traits outlined at the beginning of this section or in any case may be made to do so with a bit of reading between the lines on our part. Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness does not use our terminology, but I do not think it would barbarize its idiom much to translate it into our tongue. Our distinction between the empirical and the categorial is in some respects approximated by its dichotomy of existence and essence, of sheer, brute "being-in­ itself" and the nature or forms of phenomena, that is, of a con­ stituted world. The whole character of the world is imposed by the con­ sciousness, ''the for-itself." How does Sartre make this out, espe­ cially in view of his portrayal of-I almost wrote "this entity " but of course it is not an entity nor anything positive-of the for­ itself as pure negativity? This smells of magic ; let us watch the performer's hands while he attempts to direct our attention to empty space. The story he tells us is, reversing Spinoza, that every negation is a determination, that differences, specifications, characteriza[ 86 ]

tions spring from nothingness, since they are so many negativities. And the for-itself is not-being ("is what it is not and is not what it is") . This calls for a bit of squinting in order to be seen. The secret is that negativity is many-faceted and should be viewed from several angles. First, as perhaps most obvious for laymen in the existentialist's profession, the negative is negation, is denial of something. We look for Pierre in the cafe, where we were supposed to meet him, and find him not there, saying to ourselves, "He is not here." But now already, at this humdrum level, our magician sets to work. The negative is not simply in our words, our judgment. It comes as an intuition after we have looked about a moment : besides the fullness of being of the cafe, with its tables, chairs, patrons, noises, odors, we suddenly see that Pierre is not there; we appre­ hend his absence. This, says Sartre, is the intuition of "a nothing." But this nothing is not there like another chair ; it is not there for other patrons unacquainted with Pierre; it arises only for a consciousness expecting to see him. On the other hand, it is not merely a negative judgment, for the judgment · is grounded in the absence of Pierre. So, says Sartre, we must take it as a "nihila­ tion" by consciousness. Now this puts the ordinary negative in a new light, as origi­ nated by consciousness but of ontological significance. And it shares this novelty for us with a whole set of other conscious realities ( called "negatites" by our philosopher) whose positive character is founded in a negative, like desire, regret, interroga­ tion, distraction. They are concerned with something not there in experience, whose peculiar type of absence gives the positive flavor indicated by their respective names. In each case the fullness of being is haunted by some lack, by an emptiness, a nothing. No doubt we are accustomed to assigning these to consciousness­ where is there desire, remorse, questioning outside of minds? ­ but not to treating them as negatives at heart. By grouping them with ordinary, out-and-out negatives, expressed by disaffirmative judgments, Sartre has eased us toward the admission that all of consciousness is negative. So now we are ready for a more radical step. Consciousness, quite apart from its more emotional and disturbed states, where it may be convincingly described as all entangled with what is not, is in its most theoretical and apparently affirmative moments

thoroughly imbued with negativity. It is, indeed, in essence a nothing. For consciousness is always of something. It is always about some object or objects. And in this intentionality it does not present itself as getting in the way, as introducing any for­ eign properties. It is translucent. Yet it is not to be reduced to its objects; they remain themselves and their properties are theirs, not consciousness's. Hence, says Sartre, we are to conceive of consciousness as a nothing facing being. Now, for a moment, let us catch our breath. Up to this point ( I am not following the sequence of Sartre's exposition but am adj usting it to make it as credible as possible) , for all his dexterity Sartre has not shown that the for-itself is the source of all dis­ tinctions, that it constitutes every essence, determines every char­ acter. Even if we are completely credulous thus far, we need only admit that consciousness is negative, negative throughout, perhaps, and even, it may be, wholly negative, so that he m · ay call it a nothing or identify it with nothingness. But nothingness has yet to become everything or all things in their essential characters. So he fills away on a new tack on his beat, though an old one to Neo-Platonists. He follows the lead of Parmenides who saw in anything other than any given being only not-being, for it was not (that) being, and of Plato in the Sophist who analyzed "not" as other than ( which of course in some of its uses, as negating "identical with," it is) . Thus any differentiation of being must come from without, that is, from that which is not it, from not-being, from nothingness. Suppose, now, we follow Sartre on this course (which only a Parmenidean would) ; we still do not have what he wants. To identify this nothingness with the nothingness of consciousness is to be taken in by a common name. The second of these nothing­ nesses we have already seen covers a complex; let us for the nonce take it to refer to the transparency of consciousness, its always being about something else; its own presence, as aware­ ness, is diaphanous. This is not the nothingness of otherness, of non-identity, which, unless one is duped by Sartre's legerdemain, one sees m · ust be present in any complex world and requires no intentionality whatever. Perhaps another word will help to bridge the gap, the word "other." In the Platonic lexicon, other than is given as the mean­ ing of "not." Plato did not see that this is only one "not," the [ 88 ]

"not" that cancels identity, not the "not" that denies some char­ acterization. Not seeing this easily led, with the Neo-Platonists, to viewing all differentiation in the world as an infusion of non­ being into the One. Combine with this the modern idealistic tendency to think of the world as obj ect-of-consciousness, as thus relative to consciousness, as consciousness's "other." We then get the mongrel notion of consciousness as a not-being or nothing that introduces otherness into its other (I think this is my phrase, but it sounds reassuringly existential) , that is, differentiation into its obj ect, in short, character of all sorts into existence to make a world. I must of course point out, in passi ng, that "Other" plays also another role in Sartre's drama. Thus capitalized, it designates not an obj ect but a subj ect, a subj ect that in its turn obj ectivizes the world j ust as I do and, thus, threatens me and shames me by finding me out as the center and creator of my world, as he is of his. Thus the Other cannot be treated as j ust another obj ect for me, for obj ects do not have obj ects, nor is his reality simply inferred, a probability ; it must intrude itself as the existence of another center of the universe ; I ·m ust apprehend it immediately. This Other breaks the continuity of our thought. Until he came along to stop us with his Look we seemed well on the way to a self-contained, self-formed, self-j ustified world. Consciousness molded the universe. There were, it must be granted, two ap­ parent surds to this rationalization. One was the in-itself. Al­ though itself without character and thus strictly unspeakable and, one would think, unthinkable, it was there, untouched by the for-itself. So far as it is there and remains untransformed, Sartre's system cannot plausibly be presented as a positive exception to our nega­ tive answer to the question of this chapter. Being-in-itself is some­ thing to which his existentialism is committed, transcending its categories and their source in the for-itself. Yet it should be noted that, in a peculiar but legitimate sense, this commitment is not categorial for Sartre. It is not a utilization of some cate­ gory or concept to furnish a structural feature to his building : it is simply an admission of a sheerly factual element in things. Even so far as this is taken to be a factor to be contrasted with all that is definite in the world, thus to have in its way a character of its own that can be abstractly considered to be not j ust being

[ 89 ]

but the phenomenon of being as he puts it, it goes over to the side of consciousness. The other residuum is more easily dissolved. Consciousness can be considered one of its own works, a free creation just as phenomena are. It is to accentuate this that Sartre calls it the "for-itself," indicating that it arises in its reflection upon itself. If we ask about the character of this self-creation of the for­ itself, Sartre answers ( quite properly on his views) that we must look for it not in a sheer brute fact, but in its nature; so far as the for-itself has any character, distinguishing it on the one hand from the in-itself and on the other from its objects, it is an in­ stance of its own function of articulating a world. And in this it is completely free; how it shall shape this world (including itself and its shaping of the world) is up to it, except (and here again our case fails us for our purpose) that it must do it some­ how; the Nothing cannot shirk its task and do nothing. This is freedom's famous "facticity." It causes Sartre, so he in­ forms us, anxiety and anguish. It need not bother us, beyond our troubles up to this point. For it seems to be just the factor of sheer existence once more, the in-itself-this time the in-itself of the for-itself. So perhaps we can reduce our two surds to one, the in-itself, and this must be taken in-itself, for, for the for-itself, it is a phenomenon, a character, an essence, and thus the work of free, creative consciousness. But now the Other has Looked at us and destroyed this near approximation to self-enclosure. Or has it? There are ti1nes when our philosopher writes as though the for-itself, in creating itself for itself as an object, a "Me," an other-self, creates the Other also, in reciprocity with it : "for the separation of the Other and of myself is never given; I am perpetually responsible for it in my being." Well, whatever this dialectic finally amounts to, it does seem to be worth this to us-it softens the shock to my self-containment administered by the Other and his Look. In some fashion and to some degree I have created even him. Let us, then, handle Sartre just a little roughly in order to make him available as ammunition by which our enemy may bombard our position. For this purpose we have a for-itself creat­ ing the whole world ( so far as it can be categorized or has any structure at all), and this includes itself and its doing this very

[ go ]

job, so that no commitment to anything outside is involved, and no possibility of mis-categorizing is allowed. Will this not furnish our foe with his needed war materiel? I think not. First, let us note how, as we have advanced into this, we have slipped from "the for-itself" to an "I" and "me." This was no inadvertency on the part of your expositor. He meant it to show that as we get down to the heart of our Frenchman's thought we come increasingly to a personal and psychological issue. It is not some abstract or abstractable essence that creates essences but a very intimate and familiar center of concrete experience-namely, oneself as a unique individual. And this ties in with Sartre's emotive terminology; it makes (some) sense of his otherwise in­ comprehensible state of concern about this self- and world­ engenderment. "In anguish," he writes, "I apprehend myself at once as totally free and as not being able to derive the meaning of the world except as coming from myself." And again he tells us that ". .. man being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being." We thus seem to have ended in Greek Stoicism, expressed by a volatile Frenchman who has replaced apathy by anxiety. How­ ever bad our situation may be, it is we who give it its meaning and value-we can put the blame nowhere else. Of course there are differences, but the likeness is too striking to be a mere coin­ cidence. Sartre's message is that of a contemporary Epictetus to a society which, like the Greek intellectual's in ancient Rome, had suffered a severe loss of confidence-"everything of real im­ portance, the whole meaning and value of the world, is within your power/' it says. It is addressed finally to the individual, the individual already in an unhappy situation, thus in a world al­ ready made up, categorially framed. The message is one of seeing it all in the right perspective, as colored by one's own valuations and interpretations beyond any rinsing out. Thus we seem to bog down in psychologism again. And I think we do; I think that Sartre expresses a profound psycho­ logical experience, born of a loss of national pride, religious faith, and moral conviction. We have no God to turn to, no firm struc­ ture of things and values beyond us; we are alone. But this is psychological self-enclosure, not categorial, in the last analysis. A

philosophical system which is self-justifying, making no claims about a world beyond itself, should cause no emotional dis­ turbance to anyone accepting it. In its own terms it obviously could not be wrong or in any fashion mistaken. It should issue not in anxiety but in peace of mind; nothing outside could get in to overthrow it or in any way challenge it. But it is just this, I think, that causes our existentialist his trouble. He suffers anguish because of the haunting fear that his free decision may be wrong. He has no authority to go to, to measure his views, to test his interpretations, yet he may be wrong. Otherwise (again I ask) why should he suffer anguish in deciding upon them and committing himself to them? This reading of Sartre sounds even more plausible when we turn the page from the psychological to the categorial. What would be involved if we remained resolutely systematic or philo­ sophical, putting aside all emotional heroics? The freedom of the for-itself in shaping the essence of the whole world essentially would require, as one of the possibilities open to it, a universe without a for-itself which is free to determine the nature of everything by its own decision. The mechanism of a Hobbes or Holbach, having no place for freedom, the sensationalism of a Hume or Mach, dispensing with a self, would be real alternatives. But clearly they are not_ on Sartre's specifications. This is, I take it, the systematic significance of the "facticity" of consciousness and its freedom. The in-itselfness of the for-itself is an essence which the for-itself cannot omit, much less deny. Though con­ sciousness "is totally responsible for its being," it nevertheless "can in no case prevent itself from being" and specifically from being consciousness, a nothingness that by its nihilating creates a definite world. So, likewise, for its freedom : "In fact we are a freedom which chooses, but we do not choose to be free. We are condemned to freedom. . . ." It is not that there is an in-itself­ aspect to the for-itself ( this of course is so, as was noted earlier, though ostensibly as essence it can be absorbed by the for-itself), nor even that the for-itself is more than essence, that is, it is, is therefore in-itself ( something not thus ingestible); the point here is that the for-itself with its freedotn must exist as a for-itself with its freedom; no incompatible possibilities are open to its choice. Here are essences it cannot fail to create and therefore are not, in any strict way of -speaking, chosen or created by it.

Th us the semblance, if there ever were a significant one, of a categorially self-enclosed and self-j ustifying philosophy is lost at this most basic level of Sartre's thought. Our quest for an exception to our negative generalization has ended in failure. Perhaps we have overlooked a case that could prove itself one ; perh ap s one will arise in the future. For the present, however, it seems legitimate to consider the second of the obj ections to our general position to have been met. We turn finally to the third.

V Are There Neutral, Indubitable Categories A vailable to All Systems? PREAMBLE

It is perhaps politic at the present point in the argument to be disarmingly frank. I find myself constitutionally allergic to claims of certainty by anyone on any subj ect, and above all by philoso­ phers on theirs. I share Dewey's distrust of crusaders in our field who have embarked on the quest for certainty ; I differ from him only in that, on the one hand, I find a much wider set of motives activating traditional philosophers than he does and, on the other, I am also suspicious of people like Dewey himself who are op­ positely disposed by their temperaments. It j ust may be that some philosopher searching for certainty will hit upon it-you cannot be sure beforehand. Now why should any philosopher think he has an indubitabil­ ity upon which to found his system ? My explanation is that he has not taken seriously enough the trite dictum ( usually ascribed to Joseph Butler who, however, probably got it from a book of William Wollaston purporting to prove that actions are really propositions, their goodness and badness really truth and falsity) , "Everything is j ust what it is and not another thing." Certainty, I assume, is j ust what it is, and should not be confused with a strong psychological conviction or tenacity in belief, the im­ mediacy of any experience, the redundancy of some propositions, the tautological character of rigorous derivations of conclusions from their premises. It is quite legitimate to ask whether any or all of these do not possess or produce it, and I must confess that I have no absolutely cogent pro� £ that they never do. But a maj or

[ 94 ]

reason why many philosophers have thought they have located certainty in these or other regions of human thought or experi­ ence is simply their failure to distinguish it from something else and, finding this other thing, they have directly assumed they had it. The claim j ust put forward does of course use "certainty" in a definite significance. It might be well to point out more ex­ plicitly what this is, though our whole context, as it develops, furni·s hes a better specification than can be given by a supposedly synonymous word or phrase. Roughly, the term is here used so that "is certain" or "has certainty" ( with a statement acting as subj ect) means the same as "possesses unquestionable evidence," "is incorrigible,'' "is indubitable" ; or again, so that "It is certain that . . . " ·m eans the same as "It is unquestionable that . . . ," "It is impossible, on the evidence at hand, that '. . .' be false," or "There are adequate grounds for denying that ' . . . ' could be false." I do not claim that these are synonymous expressions nor that any one of them has a constant usage ; together, however, they may furnish a rough indication of the meaning I have in mind. Someone may boggle at this on the grounds either that it is the wrong usage or that it is only one out of many. I agree wholly with the second contention but do not find in it any grounds for obj ection. Apparently the original meaning of "certain"-! turn to the O.E.D. as my authority-was decided or determined. Close­ ly related to this was the meaning of fixed or settled, and not too far away from these was the sense of an individual but unspecified case. In these meanings "certain" and its cognates were not pred­ icable of statements but simply governed ordinary substantives, as in "a certain hour of the day," where it could have any of the three senses j ust mentioned. It came, however, to be applicable to statements, in the sense or senses of unerring, established as a truth to be absolutely received, indubitable. Also references to people were introduced, so that the subj ect of predication of our term was a person taken as in a believing or accepting relation to a proposition, as when one says, "I am certain that the present government will be overthrown." The usage I have adopted is clearly one of these and I do not see why it is improper j ust because it is not also others. This response to the second of the obj ections j ust mentioned

suggests my answer to the first. The argumentative weapon so frequently adopted by the casualist of stressing the flexibility of ordinary speech is something of a boomerang : if "certain,, and "certainty" have so many usages, it can never be right to con­ demn a particular one as not the correct one and it is even hazardous to excoriate it as not a proper one. But tolerance does not seem to characterize recent debates of the question, "Re­ solved, that there are empirical sentences which are certain." If the issue be interpreted as one of construing everyday usage, the controversy should have long since appeared a sheer waste of energy. One party claims that certainty or knowledge ( for the moment let us not argue whether this apposition is in good form) involves being or feeling sure (Norman Malcolm), an­ other that it does not (A. D. Woozley); one that it implies a process of investigation yielding conclusive evidence (Malcolm), another that it is a matter of immediate inspection (H. A. Prichard); one that it requires the truth of the proposition said to be certain or known (Malcolm and others), another that truth and falsity cannot be predicated of that which is known but only of that which is believed (Prichard); one that it obtains only in cases where there has been prior doubt whose termination it marks (Malcolm), another that this is not the case (Max Black, C. D. Rollins); one that certainty properly characterizes only people not propositions (Roger Buck), another that such expressions as "It is certain that" followed by a subordinate clause are perfectly legitimate (almost all the other writers parenthetically m · entioned). If all this fuss is simply about ordinary usage it seems a bit foolish; let us, without further commitment, adopt toward it the attitude the informalist should take : "certainty," "knowledge" and cognate terms do have all these senses and to debate which is the correct one promises no contribution to our problem about the grounds of philosophical systems. I suspect, however, that the debaters do not strictly construe the question as one of common practice. It is my conjecture that running through the whole argument and giving it importance is the extra-linguistic issue, "Are there empirical statements that are certain in a sense of 'certain' not in debate ?" I think that in some measure the participants in the argument give their varying analyses of lin­ guistic custom in order that they may bolster their views on a [ g6 ]

non-linguistic and non-empirical issue. The issue is in fact one of cognitive security in some phase or segment of a total philo­ sophical system or procedure or in the whole of it. As such we shall return to it in a moment. For the present, it is sufficient to have shown that the proposal to use "certain" as roughly meaning indubitable or incorrigible is entirely legitimate. If it be retorted that "indubitable," taken roughly as a synonym of "certain," itself tacitly involves reference to people, since only people can doubt and thus for a statement to be indubitable means that it not be "doubtable" by anyone, I would reply that a serious mistake in linguistic analysis has here been made. This may perhaps be indicated by the use of an analogy. In the tradi­ tional interpretation of a famous argument of Mill's, that philoso­ pher sought to prove that "desirable" meant can be desired just as "visible" signified the possibility of being seen. The traditional refutation has been that "desirable" is not used in this fashion: it is indeed compatible with good usage to say that something which not only can be but actually is desired is undesirable, though not that what can be and is seen is invisible. So in our case: "doubtable" and "indubitable" are related to "doubted" as "desirable" and "undesirable" are to "desired," not in the way "visible" and "invisible" are to "seen." "What can be and actually is doubted by someone may yet be indubitable',-this surely is in perfectly good linguistic form. "Indubitable" does not mean cannot be doubted by anyone. However, it might still be claimed that it means ought not to be doubted by anyone, and thus carries a reference to people's attitudes. This last point is perhaps correct, and in so far as it is, the choice of "indubitable" as a synonym for "certain" is poor. For my purpose, then, I would put it as follows: if we had a word meaning the grounds of obligation upon everyone not to doubt a statement that is indubitable, this would furnish approximately the synonym for "certain" that I seek. After this digression designed in the main to take care of possible casualistic censure, let me return to my argument. It is that no statements taken by themselves or apart from further categorial involvements possess certainty, nor can their supposedly independent certainty be used to shore up any system founded on them, and that though this cannot be strictly proved it can be made highly plausible by noting that the reason . why state-

[ 97 ]

ments of various sorts are taken to be certain in themselves is, in many instances at least, the confusion of certainty with some­ thing else. Mr. Malcolm has classified sentences frequently said to be cer­ tain under three heads, namely, "sense statements," "a priori statements," and "empirical statements." This seems to me a handy way of filing them and makes them readily available for our purpose. There are striking examples, for each type, of philosophers using instances of it as incontrovertible grounds for their sort of system. Sundry advocates of common sense draw from the last, numerous phenomenalists from the first, various rationalists dip into the middle one. Let us see with what success they finally end, keeping in mind our homely maxim that cer­ tainty is just certainty and not another thing. THE

CAS E

O F

CO M M O N

E M P IRI CAL

S E N S E-

S EN TEN CES

For one who prided himself on the clarity of his thought and expression, G. E. Moore must have had his moments of dis­ couragement as he noted the variety of interpretations placed upon his writings by his most friendly expositors. Although I do not cast m · yself in the role of an opponent, I am critical of his sort of commonsensical grounding of philosophy, so perhaps my reading of his statement should be suspect. My understanding is that what he has done has been to take a number of very com­ mon expressions as they might be uttered in simple everyday situations and say of them (a) that they are, as used in those situations, incontestably true and ( b) that thus in them we have a common ground of certainty for all philosophies alike-the latter diverging from one another in their analyses of these and losing their certainty in the process. He has also, I think, meant to do something further, though I am not so sure of this : he has meant to accuse many philosophers, as they have pressed on with their analyses, of thinking that they were in opposition to these commonsensical certitudes or at least were calling them in ques­ tion, and to condemn them if they so thought, since no one can really question them. Moore's examples of such everyday beliefs are too well known to require mentioning, but if we ask what, if anything, they

have in common beyond their certitude, what marks them out, what criterion he uses to select them, the going is not so easy. In the first place, there seems to be no common factor in their content. Probably his most extensive list of examples is given in his "A Defence of Common Sense" (in Contemporary British Philosophy) . Perusing this set may leave the impression that every case has some connection with a person's body or its en­ vironment viewed from the standpoint of that person; if so, this is easily overcome by looking elsewhere, say in his essay, "Some Judgments of Perception," where the cases seem to be drawn from the region of physical things presented to direct perception. Perhaps we can say negatively that Moore (in contrast with his - on-sense realism) · ad­ predecessors in the Scottish school of comm mits no theological beliefs to be unimpeachable; on the other hand, at least some ethical ones seem to be (I have in mind some of his criticism of naturalists). Leaving then their content to one side, let us see if something about their mode of occurrence marks out those everyday beliefs which, for Moore, are beyond question. We might expect to find a social criterion. This at first offers hope, but I believe a careful reading of Moore will dash it. On the one hand, he frequently gives the impression that a belief that possesses certainty is one held by everyone, or by every normal person of mature age. This seems indicated when he admonishes his audience that they, severally, do really know that, for example, what he shows them is a finger or a hand, clearly assuming that there are no excep­ tions even among philosophers who claim to doubt it. But to take such universal acceptance as a test of certitude seems pro­ hibited to us since at least in some places ( as in his Morley College lectures) he admits such agreement at certain periods in the past on beliefs we now know to be false, and surely he would concede on this point that history may repeat itself in the future as regards contemporary unanimities. Moreover, he also on oc­ casion suggests that beliefs that lack universal acceptance may have certainty, as when he identifies the tenets of "common sense" as beliefs held by the "vast majority" of people. Moreover, as mentioned above, if his criterion were really social concurrence (whether of all or of an overwhelming majority), it would seem that his method of applying it would be so crude as to be ridiculous ( it would consist in telling his audience or readers

what they accept with certainty and refusing to listen to any demurrers). This leads to another pragmatic test, namely, what strikes Moore himself very forcefully. This is indicated by a number of characteristic phrases he uses, such as "it seems to me to be very certain," " (in my own opinion) I kn ow, with certainty, to be true," "how absurd it would be to suggest that I did not know it, but only believed it." Now these expressions could be con­ strued differently, but I interpret them as an appeal by Moore to his own strong and indeed supposedly unshakable convictions. Unfortunately their reliability is subject to debate, particularly by men of other intellectual and cultural backgrounds. In fact, in some instances Moore has questioned them himself (I have in mind some admissions Moore makes in his reply to Stevenson in Schilpp's volume devoted to The Philosoph y of G. E. Moore) . Moreover, Moore has frequently underlined the distinction be­ tween having a strong and even indeflectible propensity to be­ lieve something and knowing with certainty that that something is the case. Of course this does not rule out the possibility that Moore is particularly attached to his own convictions and as­ sumes they possess some rather extraordinary reliability. There is another construction that can be put upon Moore's characteristic phrases just now mentioned. It is to the effect that, when he finds what seem to him cases of unquestionable knowl­ edge, he is not simply reporting states of psychological conviction on his part, nor is he using them as marks of certainty, but that he is finding certainty itself, as if this were a property open to direct inspection in the way a pain or an attitude of anxiety is. But though this is a possible reading it is not a very probable one. Moore, a fairly articulate writer, never formulates his view this way, nor faces any of the problems it involves, as he did with the comparable case of good considered as a simple, non­ natural property. And there would be special problems ; not only would he need to face the vast majority of us who do not find, upon introspecting our beliefs, that any of them possess this property, he would also need to note some awkward peculiarities of the property itself. It would be non-natural in that one could fully describe the belief possessing it without mentioning it (re­ membering that it is to be distinguished from psychological con­ viction); it would, moreover, entail the beliefs truth and yet not [ 100 ]

be its truth, and to say that this is open to direct inspection seems rather obviously to spurn the facts of experience. In this predicament, failing to find anythi.ng common to those everyday beliefs that possess certainty other than the fact that they are certain, Moore ·might well have availed himself of the help which Norman Malcolm has been eager to offer, although I do not find that he has. He would then have said that the mark of certainty is good usage; when it is stylistically proper in colloquial language to say, "It is certain that ... ," then we may correctly assign certainty to the belief expressed in the clause fol­ lowing "that." Here of course one must rely upon a person's sense of the proprieties. It is somewhat indicative of the reliability of this approach that Malcolm, who began with almost a reverential awe for "Moore's extraordinarily powerful language-sense 0 ( The Philosophy of G. E. Moore) , has more recently claimed ("Defending Common Sense" in The Philosophical Review for 1949), on this very issue we are discussing, that Moore has missed the grammar of certi­ tude in everyday speech. This brings us up short: whose sense of linguistic propriety are we to accept? And if we cannot trust an individual's feeling for speech-whether that person be one­ self or someone else-how good is this criterion? Moreover, can we trust the vernacular itself ? Is it infallible in picking out those beliefs that really are indubitable ? Here Mal­ colm is forthright and unswerving in his statement: "ordinary language is correct language," "ordinary language must be right"; but there may be some question about his meaning. Does he intend to say merely that on the matter of linguistic usage ordinary language must be taken as our model ? If so, his remarks are irrelevant to our problem, which is not about the usage of "certainty" but the certainty of a variety of common beliefs. Moreover, he frequently expresses himself in a manner indicative of a material and not merely stylistic claim, as when he asserts in general that "any philosophical statement which violates ordi­ nary language is false." Let us for the moment read Mr. Malcolm in this second way. The unfailing mark of commonsensical beliefs that are certain is that it is good English to say of them (putting them in the con­ crete situations in which they occur) that they are certain. Now this is helpful in that it furnishes a fairly definite criterion. I [ IOI ]

say "fairly" because I am not as confident of my abilities to identify cases of it as Mr. Malcolm is of his. To cite one example he gives : I can imagine myself seeing a house apparently thrown into the air by a sudden gust of wind : I doubt my senses, I in­ vestigate in the way and to the extent he specifies, I even come to say, "Yes, I'm now certain the house was tossed into the air by the wind," and all seems quite proper (linguistically, that is) until a quizzical bystander asks, "Is it really beyond doubt that the wind did it? Couldn't some accumulated gas have exploded just at that moment? " Then I say, "You're right, it wasn't really certain that the gust of air did it." Now, of course it might have been certain precisely at the moment when it wasn't certain, so that I was within linguistic proprieties both when I said it was certain and later when, speaking of exactly the same belief, I said that it wasn't. But this way of saving the appearances would require our sacrificing the law of contradiction, and even if we had no other attachment to that law, our renunciation of it would hardly fit the amenities of good taste except in the Strawsonian sense (where "It is and it isn't" is allowable but only in different senses and without damage to the law) . Furthermore, one wonders about the connection between the criterion and the thing itself ( which on this reading of Mr. Mal­ colm are distinct) . Is it because it is good usage to say that a statement is indubitable that it is indubitable? This surely would not, in ordinary cases, be good usage. Imagine ourselves again in the situation just now mentioned. I say, "It is certain that the wind blew a house into the air right before me." Now someone accosts me, "Is it really certain ?" It would not be within the proprieties for me to answer, "Of course it is because it is correct English to say so," even though I were to add "providing one has obtained such-and-such corroborating evidence, as I have done." The point here is not too fine : it is the corroborating evidence that bestows the certainty (if anything does), and not the agreement with good English. Of course one can convert the connection, and say that it is proper to say that a belief is certain because (thus if but only if) it is certain. But this destroys our criterion of certainty. Moreover, it does not agree with good usage since if there is anything we can agree on at all about language it is that false [ 102 ]

sentences must be permitted, and this must surely apply to false sentences about certainty. No, I really do not think Mr. Malcolm has helped us in our problem, though he may have contributed to our linguistic sensi­ bilities. But if Moore is left in trouble about a criterion marking out those commonsensical beliefs that are indubitable, this, I think, is not the worst of his difficulties. In the interpretation we gave him, he was saying that philosophers do have extra-systemic certainties upon which to build, namely, a set of commonsensical beliefs. Let us grant him his everyday certitudes. Will they do the trick ? Here we may tear out a leaf from the casualist's own book. We cannot be sure that these beliefs will perform properly if taken out of their appropriate contexts. Now the original and proper context of Moore's examples ("Here is a hand,U "This is an inkstand," "I have a body that was born in 1901") , as he himself quite specifically emphasizes, was in each case a practical situation of everyday life. If any philosopher were to debate the certainty of any of them in this kind of context, it would _ not be as a philosopher going about his business, which in my idiom is categorial analysis. But Moore's whole purpose is to use them in the philosophical context, as a premise, for example, of a proof of the existence of an external world, or as material for and a test of what Moore calls "analysis." Now have we any reason to suppose that with this shift of context they retain their incon­ testibility ? I do not see that we have. Moore has on several occasions tried to meet this challenge. His response amounts to the contention that, as far as it is rele­ vant to the claim of certainty, the philosophical context is not to be distinguished from the ordinary one of everyday life. What he actually says is that when a philosopher denies or questions the existence of an external world, he is denying or questioning the existence of Moore's hand when Moore holds it right before him, in the same way a man would who believed it the case or possibly the case that Moore's hand had been cut off and, let us say, replaced by an artificial one. Now I must confess that this leaves me completely unmoved. I cannot conceive that any philosopher who has questioned the existence of the external world has meant thereby to doubt the existence of any particular man's hand in the way one would if

[ 103 ]

he thought the hand artificial or simply m1ss1ng. Philosophical doubts, for example doubts about an external world, are questions about the whole framework of the world, about categorial fea­ tures of it, not specific items in it that are subject to observational checking. This is a point that has been so frequently made, 1n one way or another, that there is no need to dwell upon it. THE C A SE O F p HE N O ME N A L I S MS E N SE S E N T E N C ES

With this we take leave of those philosophers, commonsensical or otherwise, who draw from Malcolm's file tagged "empirical statements" for their supposed certainties independent of philo­ sophical systems and capable of furnishing warranties to them. Next we come to the phenomenalists who use examples extracted from the folder he labeled "sense statements" to do this same kind of job. It is a strange historical phenomenon, not sufficiently explored to date, that, imbedded in the very heart of British empiricism, there is a factor of certitude. Hume himself, for all his proba­ bilism as regards factual knowledge and his vigorous attempt to separate necessity from matters of fact, never allowed individual impressions nor reports thereof by those experiencing them to be subject to doubt. And more recent phenomenalism has, with very few exceptions, followed his example as regards sense data. In­ deed, it has been frankly admitted by several phenomenalists that a major desideratum on their part in diverging from ordi­ nary accounts of experience in terms of physical things and events has been the attainment of an empirical basis beyond the touch of doubt. The explanation may be in part historical-the influence of Descartes and the reaction to a reanimated skepticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; in all likelihood, however, there were more basic, inherent reasons, springing possibly from the vague (and unwarranted) feeling that you can­ not have even credibility without a basis in certitude, as was explicitly asserted by C. I. Lewis. But whatever the causes, the phenomenon is still occurring and calls for our attention. To begin with Lewis : the contention is presented that "empiri­ cal knowledge-if there be any such thing-is distinguished by having as an essential factor or . essential premise something dis[ 104 ]

closed in experience" ("The Given Element in Empirical Knowl­ edge," The Philosophical Review, 1 95 2) . Against this modest claim no empiricist can, I think, obj ect. There is a brute-fact ele­ ment in knowledge which only the most extreme rationalist would deny. But why endow it with certitude ? Isn't credibility sufficient ? Lewis himself uses the argument that probability theory requires that any assignment of credibility less than cer­ tainty must be on evidence, and therefore some evidence ·m ust, to give a definite basis to the whole calculation, possess certainty. The argument turns on a confusion of absoluteness and certainty -any calculation of probability ( even that of certainty ! ) is rela­ tive to the evidence. Somewhere, however, the evidence must it­ self j ust be there or posited or taken as true, its probability not being determined by reference to further evidence and thus not subj ect to calculation ; but this in no wise requires that it be ac­ cepted as certain. Why then is it supposed ( as it is by many phenomenalists who do not use Lewis's fallacious probability argument) that the brute­ fact element in experience must be characterized as indubitable ? Why can we not be mistaken about sense data ? In the first place, as several philosophers of this persuasion have indicated (A. J. Ayer in The Foundation of Empirical Knowl­ edge is a notable example) , it is taken to involve a contradiction to allow that anyone could be mistaken about his own sense data at the time at which he experiences them-. This would, if permit­ ted, be playing an unfair game ; the rules of the sense-datistic language rigidly exclude the possibility that a "protocol sentence" or sense-datum report could be false. Now this approach seems to me most unfortunate and should turn empiricists away from the linguistic commitment it de­ mands. Of course I im·m ediately experience exactly what I imme­ diately experience ; to deny it would involve one in contradiction. But, as Professor Quine would say, the expression "immediately experience" here occurs vacuously. We could replace it by any other phrase appropriate to the context, producing such sentences as "I indirectly experience exactly what I indirectly experience" or "I legitimately doubt precisely what I legitimately doubt." Does this show that what I indirectly experience or legitimately doubt are not open to legitimate doubt ? And so for sense data. There must be some reason leading to a phenomenalistic adop[ 105 ]

tion of a language with a rule or rules requiring that sense-data reports are incorrigible. Frequently this appears quite unmistaka­ bly to lie in the directness or immediacy of the relation between the statement and its object. Whatever is just there (in my im·me­ diate experience) is beyond doubt. But this way of talking carries us at once to another pitfall. Whatever exists, whether in my experience, the physical world, or the cosmic consciousness, is not, as an existent entity, certain or uncertain. It must be granted, of course, that besides our ontologi­ cal assertions we may indulge in epistemological ones and specif­ ically verificational statements about our ontological claims. So it is quite proper to say, "It is certain that there now exists in my experience a white, rectangular sense datum," or "It is improbable that there now exists in the cosmic consciousness a purple canoid patch." But why should we suppose these to be true? How do we make them out? In the former sort of case the reply by most phenomenalists is that we can make out the truth by direct inspection. There is nothing, so to speak, between me and the white, rectangular sense datum. This is friendly and reassuring : one gets the picture of two of us (me and my sense datum) being so to speak tete-a-tete ; no third party acts as intermediary. But this way of talking soon sounds odd if you listen quizzi­ cally. In the first place, we wonder just who are the parties in this intimate affair. Perhaps the answer comes, "a mind and its sense data." However, with this reading of his script the phenom­ enalist should be as certain of the mind as of sense data ; their immediate confrontation is mutual. Of course this philosopher could say that the sense data are ·mute, only the mind speaks and so only it speaks with authority. Still one would wonder why it could not speak for itself as well as its partner. And in any case most phenomenalists would be very unhappy ; they would want to throw mind out the door, leaving perhaps only a set of somatic sense data in its place. In this eventuality what do we have? Ap­ parently one set of sense data tete-a-tete with another. Here, one would suppose, if either could be said to possess certainty in or of the presence of the other, the characterization would surely seem to be symmetrical. But would the phenomenalist wish to talk this way ? Would he wish to say that the visual sense data and the

[ 106 ]

somatic ones are equally indubitable and arc so precisely because they are together? Another answer might be that in immediate experience it is a protocol sentence and a sense datum that are face to face with one another. But in thinking of this we note that the confrontation would be gone as soon as the sense datum changed. The phenom­ enalist, however, would like the protocol sentence to retain its in­ dubitability once it had acquired it (by a suitable formulation of verbal tense or other temporal index).And this it could not do if its certainty lay in the confrontation. Indeed, one wonders if the phenomenalist has any right to treat a protocol sentence or any sentence as in any manner transcending time, as would seem re­ quired if it is to be a suitable subject for the predication of indubi­ tability. Suppose we have, "At 8 :13 a.m., November 9, 195 7, a rectangular yellow patch with green crosshatching." Let us for­ get any difficulties about reducing the time specification to sense­ datistic formulation. If it is indubitable at the time mentioned, ought it not be so minutes and hours and days later and independ­ ently of whether it is thrown in the waste basket or saved in a manuscript, that is, quite apart from its own subsequent adven­ tures? Without this, what earthly good is its indubitability; would any phenomenalist want, or could he use, a certainty as ephemeral as sense data themselves? But with it, is not the sentence endowed with a kind of immortality difficult to square with phenomenalist principles? I want to be fair; unquestionably a phenomenalist may have an epistemology with non-temporal predicates ( embracing, for ex­ ample, "means," "is true," "is indubitable"). The rub only comes from the further contention that a sentence of appropriate type, say one asserting specific sense data, acquires an indubitability by being present with the proper sense data in an experienced affair of the sort receiving our attention. This would be a happening, and all parties to it would need to be existents. As an existent, however, the protocol sentence would have to be a complex of sense data and thus temporally as fleeting and incapable of resur­ rection as are all such complexes. In the character in which it is indubitable, then, it would seem it could not have the immortal­ ity desired. If it has an eternal soul, still it is only its temporal body that is ever tete-a-tete with fugitive sensa. Let us turn our minds from the parties in this suspicious affair

[ 107 ]

to their meeting place. I suppose the location would be whatever is meant by "a person's own immediate experience." If this is pri­ vately owned and legally exempt from trespass, we are involved in a scandalous situation which philosophers of this family have long tried to keep from the ears of the general public. They have correctly sensed that bad as it is to be a solipsist, it is worse to be suspected of it by others. Nor is it much better to be thought to hold that belief in others' private experiences has only a low cred­ ibility based on a weak inference from analogy: this, too, smacks of egotism. Many phenomenalists escape all this by denying the secrecy of consciousness entirely. Indeed they make it a matter open to public inspection at all times, or, more accurately, ante­ dating any distinction between "mine" and "yours.,, But this seems somehow to fly into the face of the facts. At the time I wrote it, the expression I put down a few para­ graphs back, "At 8 :1 3 a.m., November 9, 1957, a rectangular yel­ low patch with green crosshatching,U seemed definitely defective, and I could only restrain myself from adding "in Everett's expe­ rience" by thinking of the desirability of keeping clear of the present complication. I doubt whether anyone else at that moment was enjoying a similar visual datum, and even if they were, most of us (including, I am sure, the vast majority of phenomenalists) would wish to say that the experiences were only similar, not identical. True, one could build categorially from unowned sensa to a distribution between private (mental states) and public (ma­ terial things) via some regularities of memory, motion, and what­ not-though one would be in danger of begging the distinction in such concepts themselves-, but this would strike everyone as definitely contrived, for the idea of immediate experience seems so inextricably tied with that of exclusive centers of it that the very basis of certitude it supposedly offers would disappear from such a system. Sensa that are nobody's are poor candidates for in­ contestably grounding everything else in the universe. On the other hand, many characterizations of personal experience are possible : complete privacy is only one. But if we follow this line of thought it becomes extremely implausible to contend that some one of these, to the exclusion of others, offers certitude without categorial bias. Some reader may be a bit restive at this point, thinking that the metaphor of a rendezvous . with its suggestion of a hideaway [ 108 ]

has been carried _too far. Perhaps it has. But what is the whole concept of immediate or direct experience but a metaphor, being perhaps more insidious precisely because it does not parade itself as one? It is clearly in the spatial mode, though what it is meant to convey is non-spatial. Two somethings are immediately juxta­ posed, nothing between them. Suppose we drop the whole spatial figure; we then can forget the problem of the location of the event, but we must also rigorously set aside the suggestion of ab­ sence of intermediaries, of two parties standing face to face. What, literally, does the phenomenalist offer as his supposedly extra-systematic ground of certitude? If we were to return (as we shall not) to our metaphor, what is the confrontation of the par­ ties to the tryst? Let us look at several possibilities. ( 1) It might be answered that it is experience without any in­ ferential element. But this would seem to include too much, for in hallucinations and illusions we have experiences without in­ ferences; yet, so far from having indubitability here, we are in the midst of unmistakable error. The phenomenalist, it goes without saying, would tell us that even in these cases we have certitude, not of what is hallucinated but of the hallucinatory images. But against this must be weighed the report of naive common sense, that we frequently have non-inferential . experiences of physical things. It used to be the fashion for philosophers of the persuasion we are questioning to bring in "unconscious inferences" to take care of these phenomena, but it is so extraordinary to contend that whenever we sensibly perceive a chair or a tree we are draw­ ing a host of conclusions from a set of premises that this style of talking has deservedly fallen into disuse. (2) It might be answered that it is experience directly causing (without temporal intermediary) something else. This something else would, naturally, have to be an event. If it is identified as a mental apprehension or a sentence, it would need to be either of these as temporal, as occurrent, not as intentional or referential. And in this capacity it would not be indubitable, that is, unques­ tionably correct, but only existent; how it is caused would thus be irrelevant to our problem. Russell, writing about "basic prop­ ositions" in An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, identifies them as "those which are caused, as immediately as possible, by per­ ceptive experiences." In so characterizing them he must be think­ ing of them as events, not as assertions, whereas it is only in the [ 109 ]

latter capacity that they are indubitable. It appears that, for him, their direct causal relation to perceptive experiences explains their certainty. Such a supposition grants the distinction between their genesis and their indubitability ( or approximation thereto-Rus­ sell claims for his basic propositions only the greatest possible reliability) , but takes the one as producing the other. But is this production itself a ca\.lsal relation? If so, it is surely odd, for certi­ tude is not an event (nor is the causal relation of one event to another). Moreover, we wonder whether it is a necessary connec­ tion. Does such a genesis give rise to indubitability in basic prop­ ositions without fail or chance of failure? Perhaps it is a logical relation, but on what strange logic does indubitability of a sen­ tence follow from the causal conditions of its occurrence? More­ over, questions crowd in about Russell's causal relation (the one endowing his basic propositions with their reliability). First, it already commits him to a system where causality is a category, and more specifically one in which sense data function causally. This seems hardly beyond reasonable doubt. Second, even in its own terms the occurrence of such a direct causal relation seems insufficient. Suppose the causation to occur automatically and un­ consciously; the person whose immediate experience was involved would then not know when it obtained, and if he didn't, who would (on the view under consideration)? Third, awareness of causation doesn't seem to be the relevant matter; what is wanted is consciousness that the sentence directly reports the sense datum. Finally, causality, if any longer a scientifically reputable concept, is certainly m · ore complex than Russell intimates : he has bor­ rowed an idea here from a past already archaic. "Immediately caused" suggests a single cause, one open to direct inspection, etc., etc. This way of thinking seems no longer credible; it is resur­ rected ad hoc to do a nonscientific, epistemic job. (3) It might be answered that it is experience taken as non­ representational, the directness being an absence of any seman­ tical intermediary in the situation. You can be sure of what you have, this answer would tell us, if you possess the object itself, not needing to rely on any sign of or surrogate for it. But this also would be too wide for our phenomenalist . If we can trust our everyday perception and talk, we constantly, save only in sleep, experience physical objects in their own right without any inter­ vening representative. As Thomas Reid pointed out, we never, [ I IO ]

even in our most intoxicated moments, see a sense-data man as well as a physical one. We may distortedly perceive two men when only one is there, but we do not see one as the representa­ tive of the other. So in general our direct experience is of things not of surrogates. This shows clearly in our language, as Mill himself in characteristic honesty had to admit. We do not, except in somewhat extraordinary situations, talk of our image or idea of the sun but of the sun. Now this commonsensical attitude with its tacit categorial commitment may be wrong, but it is not pat­ ently and unquestionably so. Hence the phenomenalist's stand is not indisputably firm. (4) It might be answered that it is absolutely concrete experi­ ence, experience as involving no degree of abstraction. This fits some phenomenalistic descriptions to the effect that immediate experience of sense data exhausts them, there is nothing left over, unattended, abstracted from, about which any mistake could be made. This identification looks particularly promising. Still there are irrepressible doubts, pointed up by the famous case of the speckled hen. We see for a moment and casually a speckled hen. We cannot be sure how many speckles it has, but ought we not, on the phenomenalist story, be certain of the number of speckles the sense datum in our immediate experience has ? Or do we want to embrace the strange figure of a speckled patch without a def­ inite number of speckles (and if the lack of sharp contours of a speckle causes trouble we can shift to the number of windows on a side of a building we glance at)? As this suggests, it may be that we never have a completely concrete experience; it may all be in some degree abstract, absolute concreteness being an extrapo­ lation by us, known symbolically only, not by acquaintance. And in any case what would be the relation between the concreteness and the indubitability? If we have a fully concrete experience, it cannot err through having left something out; but we (or our sentences or statements about it) can err about it; we may take it to be abstract. Surely its concreteness is not itself indubitability. Nor even is it its immediacy (for our wonderment whether ex­ perience is not always to some degree abstract at least makes sense). (5) It might be answered that it is ungeneralized experience, experience wholly in the form of particulars. Russell, in the book last mentioned, is involved in this, since besides the causal char[ III ]

acterization of basic propositions he gives a logical identification of them as empirical sentences whose evidence cannot be increased or decreased by others. However, this would make his basic prop­ ositions . both indemonstrable and irrefutable but not indubitable ; indeed, it would not insure them any specific degree of reliability except whatever may be involved in their being free from con­ tradiction. Moreover, this view of immediate experience requires that one have assumed a nominalistic standpoint towards it. The incompatible position that experience ineluctably involves gen­ eralization in some degree is surely not, in itself, self-contradic­ tory or absurd. To rule it out, therefore, can hardly be incontro­ vertible. ( 6) It might be answered that it is completely self-evident ex­ perience, experience that requires and allows no evidence beyond itself to guarantee its validity. But on this reply one could not ex­ plain the self-evidence by the immediacy for this would j ust be a redundancy. And would the self-evidence be the same in kind as that claimed for a priori propositions ? If so, the phenomenalist must feel himself in strange company. If not, some further anal­ ysis is demanded to get at the heart of this species of it. No doubt the reader is somewhat fatigued by now, as the writer certainly is. But I did want to get as clear on this matter of the immediacy of immediate experience and its relation to certi­ tude as possible. And I must warn that I have not broken free of all puzzlement yet. This much does, however, seem clear. What is demanded is an immediacy of report about, or of experience of, something ; that is, we are after something of epistemic signif­ icance ( otherwise its relation to indubitability would be left aside) . Thus ontological proximity-causal, spatial, temporal-is itself of no relevance ; if it has bearing it must be through some epistemic connection. Let us then turn to the idea of a reporting of sensa immediately experienced. Suppose I were to record, "I experience a sound-sense-datum whose pitch is at the interval above middle C of a maj or third" or "I experience a patch whose color is that caused in a person of normal vision by light waves of such-and-such a frequency." Then if I were actually experiencing the described sense datum, the report would be direct if by "direct" is meant an ontological propinquity, for example, that of simply occurring at the same time and in the same personal experience. But I suspect these [ 1 12 ]

cases would not be acceptable to the phenomenalist as instances of direct reporting of sense data. I think he would want the re­ port to have a form such that it could be described as directly re­ ferring to the sense datum reported, not describing it via relations to other entities ( since such indirect descriptions would introduce rather obvious grounds of dubiety). Let us suppose that the need of referential or semantical direct­ ness is satisfied if the report is in the £orm of a proper name of the sense datum (or a demonstrative pronoun picking it out as a particular) and a predication using an undefined predicate term of the lowest type. Moreover, we may suppose that there are tacit or explicit rules in the language used directly tying both the name or pronoun and also the predicate term with their respective des­ ignata (how this can be done and what it is to do it raise serious questions we must put to one side). Granting all this, have we now got, in a direct report of a sense datum, something certain ? I doubt it. On this account, terms are in their references not subject to doubt, but neither are they indubitable. Certainty and uncertainty relate to truth, and truth is a predicate of sentences ( or proposi­ tions if you prefer), not of terms. Now of course if you set up rules for the designation of your terms such that "this sense datum" can refer to only one, namely, the one the speaker pres­ ently is experiencing and, say, "red" is similarly fastened to only one quality, namely that displayed by the presently experienced sense datum, then "This sense datum is red" is necessarily true. Unfortunately, it would not be a descriptive statement, as shown by the fact that it would be necessarily true if uttered by someone experiencing a blue not a red sense datum, for "red" would, by its rule, in this situation refer to blue. Let us for the moment waive all difficulties about the reference involved in the proper name or demonstrative pronoun. It would seem essential for the program in hand to have designation-rules for predicates such that more than one occurrence of their desig­ nata is possible, and two or more sentences with different subj ects may occur (whether true or not) with the same predicate-e.g. "This sense datum is red" and, said later or by a different person, "This (other) sense datum is red. " Now if this be allowed (and it seems to fit phenomenalists' language and certainly seems re­ quired by analogy with ordinary speech), we find dubitability not

[ 1 13 ]

to be ruled out by the semantical directness of reports of sense data. There remains open to us the possibility of good, old-fash­ ioned, garden-variety mistakes of misidentification and also, if this be different as some have recently maintained, misrecogni­ tion, just as truly as if we were dealing with people or physical things. I shall not forget a shock to my self-esteem in bringing home a spool of thread to match one my wife was using and in finding that, though both had been viewed in sunlight, they were several shades apart. That we have here a judgment of physical things is irrelevant, since the test was "immediate experience." The mem­ ory factor of course does complicate things, but if "sand-beige" were by designation-rule bound to the sewing-room sense-datum color, then its proper use for the color of a sense-datum in the dry goods store situation is a matter not beyond doubt, and one would suppose that reliance upon memory is just about inevitable if one uses this kind of language-rule procedure. Not quite, how­ ever. Suppose I am in a very well-stocked dry goods store and see scores of beige-colored threads; then, even with my standardiz­ ing ( and rule-specifying) spool at hand, I might ( as indeed I once did) find myself in this plight, that, though some beiges clearly are not sand-beige, there are others I cannot classify, for though I can discriminate some of them from others, I cannot see any of them to be different in color from my sample. I admit that, strictly construed, if I were timidly to aver "This (store-thread) is sand-beige," then I would not be asserting that it is exactly the same in color as my sample.Yet I cannot escape my responsibility in this fashion, for the sample would remain the rule-determinant and thus I could be mistaken. (Need I try to translate all this into sense-datistic language?) Now, I think in some sense it may be validly claimed that the possibilities of misrecognition of sense data just mentioned de­ pend upon and reveal an improper use of language, but we must be careful in putting it this way, for all mistakes whatever, and surely all mistakes in identification, may be characterized in this fashion. What we must keep hold of is that the possible errors under discussion are failures in discrimination of designata, not mistakes in handling the conventional symbols. My trouble in de­ ciding upon the thread to bring home was not that of a foreigner who was insufficiently acquainted with English color terminal-

[ 1 14 ]

ogy. My difficulties turned on identification of a color, and, so far as I can see, would have been exactly the same if my native tongue had been French, Russian, or Chinese. But now let us consider another way in which the certainty of sense-data reports may be disputed. "This sense datum (I now experience) is red" may be questioned on the grounds that it is highly dubitable whether there are any sense data at all, just as one might be skeptical of the medium's report, "The spirit (I now direc_�ly see) tells me to warn you against your friendship with a tall, dark man." Perhaps the voices are in some sense there, but not as the voices of spirits. So likewise the red may be experi­ enced, but not as a property of any sense datum. Our immediate experience may simply not come in the form of sense data ; mine certain!y does not. But on this matter one must admit that he can speak only for himself. There are, I am sure, completely honest phenomenalists who report that they do directly see, hear, taste, touch and smell sense data. Indeed they go further and claim, basing the assertion no doubt on their own case histories, that the rest of us could ex­ perience them likewise if we were to adopt the appropriate ap­ proach and frame of mind. But this itself should give us pause; it may well be true, but if so, it speaks in favor not so much of the certainty of sense-data reports as of their dubitability in re­ spect to form, for the way in which experience gets categorially shaped may well be in part determined by the syntax of the lan­ guage used in describing it. I have already argued that there is no such thing as a categorially pure experience, that the very concept of one shows a systematic or categorial commitment. Leaving dialectic aside, we can attack the problem quite naively yet per­ haps effectively in another way. All proponents of a "given" ( and this is patently true of the phenomenalists) have found in it a brute-fact element. This we must retain while allowing that the way in which it is shaped categorially is in some sense a function of the particular philo­ sophical system involved. Now, it seems to me that, admitting both of these contentions, we must always be ready to accept the possibility that the two elements might jar, that the categories of a given system might discover that the brute-fact aspect of ex­ perience is intractable to their manipulation. Let us apply this to phenomenalism. [ 1 15 ]

Starting with Berkeley's New Theory of Vz"sion and continuing down to present-day accounts of sense data there has been a tend­ ency on the part of phenomenalists to describe the visually given as two dimensional. Now I personally find it very difficult to get color-phenomena in my experience to assume this pattern; my normally stereoscopic vision is somehow recalcitrant to the change in framework. I grant a limited success on occasion when I con­ centrate on the project, but even at these times there is present a sense of distortion and artificiality that leads me to doubt the Berkeleian account of our visual perception of distance and of visual data upon which it rests. Again, the traditional phenomenalistic characterization of sense data has been in Aristotelian terms, that is, sense data are de­ scribed as particulars, their properties as universals ( although I must add that from Locke right down to Moore there has also been a marked looseness of thought on this matter revealed in talk about sense data-ideas, impressions, mental phenomena-as though they were universals) . But a man with the persuasion of G. F.Stout might object that each sense datum of his experience has its own unique properties, no one of which is ever exempli­ fied by any other. 1 Here I find myself in the position of the tradi­ tionalist : I often see two things, distinguishable spatially, as be­ ing exactly the same in color or shape. Yet I can imagine an im­ mediate experience fitting Stout's view, though the picture is strange and uncomfortable. Take another example. Phenomenalists, by and large, have not objected to higher level properties. Thus they often speak of the color of one visual datum as more saturated than that of another or the pitch of one auditory datum as higher than that of a sec­ ond. I have personally tried, with little success, to master the art of sight-reading of music. I try to hear a specific interval, say a fourth or fifth, as the same wherever it occurs in the scale, but for the most part each jump is unique; for example, I do not hear C to F as the same as E to A. When I listen to good readers who have no troubles with new scores written in new modes, I take their word for it that in some sense besides the individual pitches 1

Actually Stout in the locus cla.uicus presenting this view-"The Nature of Universals and Propositions" in Proceedings of the British Academy, volume X-does not rely much on direct experience for support, but this is something of a historical accident.

[ 116 ]

they can directly experience the intervals between them. I am at a loss in trying to categorize my experience so that not only prop­ erties but properties of properties are immediately there. I am thus suspicious of phenomenalists who talk quite easily of their sense data as displaying properties which in turn are themselves related. Or, in this same connection, consider the problem of the clas­ sification of qualities or relations. How is the phenomenalist to handle this? He can make the coloredness of all colors a definite adjective or property in its own right, a view, surely, entirely tenable in itself. I find it impossible, however, to organize my experience in this fashion: colors do not seem to have difference of hue accompanied by a common character of coloredness. But I am equally baffled when I try to discover a unique class-unity of colors, as against another, say, of sounds. Nor am I much bet­ ter off with resemblances and dissimilarities of these immediately experienced qualities. I would say much the same for spatial and temporal relations. It is not that my experience is a clear-cut thing incompatible with these ways of describing it, but rather that as soon as I try to frame it according to any of these patterns, the brute-fact element remains refractory. One final instance. Most phenomenalists most of the time keep faithfully to their tenet that all the properties disclosed in imme­ diate experience are properties of data directly given, or of their properties. But there are some of us (call us "intentionalists" if you will) who find, besides these, another class, namely, proper­ ties that are disengaged or abstracted, not in the sense of Bradley's "floating adjectives" but in the Aristotelian-Thomistic sense of properties present in experience but not characterizing it, proper­ ties experienced as properties of something outside experience. Thus in perceiving an apple which I hold in my hand, both a temporal span and a weight are somehow given, brute facts; but the former is a fact of the experience and the latter of something else (the apple). Now I grant that the phenomenalist need not order his experience as the intentionalist does his; each in fact may feel quite uncomfortable in doing it in the other's way. But that is just my point. Admitting then a brute-fact element in experience, we are not thereby committed to any one way of categorizing it, and thus not to any certainty in this undertaking; specifically we are not

[ 1 17 ]

committed to the indubitability of some one sense-datistic account and thus, a fortiori, not the incorrigibility of particular sentences formulated in accordance with it. Of course it goes without say­ ing that the brute-fact element is not itself certain : if it's there it's just there. And though it is required if one is to be an empiricist, this necessity is categorial within empiricism, and, after all, one can be a rationalist. Now it may be felt that I have been unfair to the phenomenal­ ist, that I have introduced uncertainty into the given foundations of his system ( direct reports of sense data) only from the out­ side. I think I have done more than this, however. True, I have frequently appealed to my own experience and admittedly that experience is ordinarily not sense-datistic in structure; but I have tried to do this in good faith and from within, as it were, rather than as an external foe. The problems seem to me to be there for any phenomenalist to face if he will assume the necessary cour­ age and resolution. If I have been successful, then I have shown that the segment of phenomenalism furnishing the given element in it is not characterized by indubitability. THE

CASE

OF

A-P R I O R I S M - A N A L Y T I C

AND

SYNTHETIC

Finally, let us dip into 'Malcolm's middle file bearing the tab a prtort statements. Now of course if one means by "a priori" just certain, or if cer­ tain is a part of one's meaning, then one would be involved in contradiction if one said of a given sentence that it is a priori but not certain. Even in this case, however, our enterprise may not have to be abandoned : to say, for example, that the sentence, "The a priori sentence, p, is certain" (whose contradictory is self-contradictory) is certain, is hardly to voice a sheer tautology. And if in the meaning of "certain" we have adopted, we are not just repeating ourselves in saying that a sentence whose contra­ dictory is self-contradictory is certain-and I believe we are not­ then we should want to know how the two concepts are related (viz., the concepts having a self-contradictory- contradictory and being certain) . Not being identical, they would demand some other involvement in one another : What is this and how can it be shown? Most philosophers would agree (Prichard being a possiII

•

•

''

1

1

[ 118 ]

ble exception) that "It is certain that . . . " entails "It is true that . . ." and thus implies that ". . ." is something that can be true; but many of these same men would maintain-and I think quite legitimately and without self-contradiction-that where the con­ tradictory of ". . ." is self-contradictory, ". . ." is not properly characterized as "true" (it says nothing at all and thus nothing that could be true). If we take "a priori" in its original meaning of being based on what comes before, as in inferring an effect from a cause, or even in the Kantian sense of not being grounded in experience but be­ ing necessary to the latter, then clearly certainty is not strictly part of its significance and it becomes entirely permissible to question whether any a priori sentence is certain. In any case it is not just absurd to entertain the possibility that a priori sentences lack cer­ tainty ; the appearance to the contrary is, I think, due to a confu­ sion of certainty with a-priority in the sense just indicated. The case becomes clearer if we ask what it is for a sentence to be properly classified as a priori. What are the theories of the a priori? In the first place, among those philosophers who make a clean­ cut separation of synthetic and analytic statements there are those who allow some synthetic propositions to be a priori; there are others who would confine the a priori unexceptionably to ana­ lytic sentences. For our job it is quite unnecessary to settle this dispute. All we need is the admission that it is a serious and le­ gitimate conflict. Granted this, it follows that a-priority and analyticity (if our philosophic stylists will permit such linguistic monstrosities) are not identical. Now this assumption carries with it the consequence that the certainty of all a priori sentences can­ not simply be their analyticity, nor is it a result solely of their analyticity, for it is possible or meaningful to suppose that there are a priori sentences that are not analytic, whereas, on the view under question, all a priori sentences must, as such, be certain. Let us begin our search for a priori certainty in the area of synthetic propositions. Now clearly anyone claiming that certainty can be found in this region does not have to come up with a case to which is at­ tached a meta-certainty as well. All he needs is a true statement to the effect that p (a synthetic a priori proposition) is indubita­ ble. But he does require this. Neither the mere hypothesis or guess

[ 1 19 ]

that p is unquestionable, nor the proposal to treat it as being of this character, is enough. It is not my contention that all such sentences are false-I don't know how I would go about proving this-but only that either they are left up in the air without sup­ port or they rest on categorial commitments upholding them. Let us ask how an objector might try to show that some par­ ticular synthetic judgment is a priori and therefore, on his ac­ count, beyond legitimate doubt. The obvious procedure, and the one usually adopted by advocates of the synthetic a priori, is to appeal to intuition. But someone for the opposition is, certainly to­ day, always at hand to register a protest. Is this discord a case of disagreement about matter of fact which some qualified witness could quickly terminate by a report of personal experience? I think not. The opposition would, I surmise, demand that such "evidence" be thrown out of court as i rrelevant. Is it about a logi­ cal matter? Again, I believe not. Neither party need suspect the rigorousness of his opponent 's logic, nor suppose that the dishar­ mony reduces to a difference between alternative logics. Is it just a clash of rival proposals? Once more my opinion is that it is not. If it were, it could be settled by surveying the advantages and disadvantages of the rival ways of talking. Granting all this, I admit, does not require that the issue be classified as "categorial," but it does make this disposition of it highly plausible, and such an outcome is quite satisfactory to me. Perhaps this plausibility may be enhanced by taking a case. I hope that not all the complexion has been drained from the old stand-by: "Everything colored is extended." Some would say that to be colored and to be visually extended are identical and there­ fore our example is an analytic, not a synthetic, sentence. This is a genuine matter of dispute, a dispute which is, I would say, cate­ gorial, not m · erely lexicographical. However, I want to use our sentence as an instance of a synthetic proposition. Is it incontesta­ bly true? No; it makes perfectly good sense to doubt it (granted that it is synthetic); it is a real possibility that there be something colored that is not spread-out. I have never experienced anything of this kind, even in my wildest dreams or most creative imagin­ ings. If I had, or knew someone who had, I would have a nega­ tive instance of the generalization and would claim that the whole issue had been empirically settled. But without it, the possibility [ 120 ]

still remains and will remain, and not merely in the sense that it involves no contradiction in terms. I suggest that "Everything colored is extended" is a tremen­ dously broad and probably unexceptionable empirical generaliza­ tion. Now this position of mine is categorial. It is in opposition to the view that there is a necessary connection between colored­ ness and spread-out-ness. That view is categorial, also. Hence any sentence asserting it or upheld by it, such as " 'Everything colored is extended' is indubitable," taken in this setting, is categorially involved, and the sentence serving as its subject cannot be pre­ sented as a philosophically neutral certitude. And this can be gen­ eralized. Any assertion of synthetic a-priority is all enmeshed in categorial commitment to necessary connections in the world. Now we could point out that there is no certainty that such ob­ jectively necessary connections obtain. This, however, would not directly help; as remarked earlier, one cannot be certain of cer­ tainty itself, yet there may be such. But indirectly this approach offers us something. If it is uncertain that there are any necessary connections, then a statement's being certainly true and its ob­ j ect's exhibiting a necessary connection are not identical, and we are off on our familiar gambit. The supposal that there are philosophically uncommitted a pri­ ori sentences that are synthetic in form is a weaker objection than that there are analytic ones, at least in the sociological sense that it is hardly respectable today to admit a synthetic a priori. Let us courageously face the stronger protest. Here especially I want to deny that I am denying certainty. I am not denying it, only questioning it. And not completely or as such but simply as extra-systemic. It is quite legitimate to set up a system where some proposition is analytic and beyond meaning­ ful doubt. But then its status is maintained or destroyed in accord with the fate of the whole order in which it falls. It cannot be significantly upheld by itself, come philosophical revolution or an external conqueror. If we try to give it such isolated power, we run into confusions calling for the application of Butler's (Wol­ laston 's) dictum. Let us turn to the analytic to see if we can find an instance of certainty quite free of philosophical bias, a matter, so to speak, of sheer logic. And here, moreover, we may best begin with the most extreme [ 12 1 ]

position taken concerning it. An analytic sentence, so this view would go, is either an instance of a logical rule (its "truth" de­ pending on this fact) or, in cases of generalization, the disguised rule itself. We could then say that obeying a logical rule yields or produces certainty or again that such a rule confers certainty on instances that conform to it. Take modus ponens as an example. Then, on this account, the sentence "There is a fire if there is smoke and if whenever there's smoke there's fire" is certain, and it is certain because it is an application-instance of modus ponens taken as a logical rule. But now we ask for the grounds of this certainty ( remembering that the certainty in question is not per­ sonal conviction but indubitability) . By what right do we ascribe certainty to this sentence ? The answer might be that certainty is precisely that which is produced or yielded (the terms are of course metaphorical, since no causal process is meant) by obedience to such a logical rule as modus ponens. But this sounds dangerously like an identifica­ tion, and surely indubitability is not the same thing as being the, or a, result of conformity to a logical rule. It might be (I am merely speculating) that one of the results of conformity to any logical rule is that the sentence so conforming is composed of a finite number of terms, but this characteristic is not identical with indubitability ; if they are both consequences of the conformity but not the same, then the concept of "consequence of conform­ ity to a logical rule" is different from that of "certainty" and the presence of the former does not automatically insure that of the latter. Let us turn directly to the conformity itself, not supposing that certainty is a consequence of it but that it simply is it. This, how­ ever, lands us in trouble immediately. Certainty in the sense in which we are using that term simply is not the same thing as conformity to a logical rule. On the one hand, we legitimately speculate whether sentences not application-instances of a logical rule may not possess it, and on the other, when we say that a sentence which we have granted to be a case of modus ponens is indubitable, we do not mean merely to repeat ourselves. We are, I think, convinced that there is something about modus ponens other than its being a rule, and which is expressed by the adjective "logical," that enables it (again speaking metaphori­ cally) to confer certainty upon cases of obedience to it. And here [ 122 ]

we must be honest with ourselves . A relativistic theory of logical­ ity will not do ; that is, no one really thinks that logicality in the sense we are after is j ust a matter of being one of the rules in some arbitrary game . Suppose we h ave a devout communist logician who has the rule (p r) p, where "p" is a variable but "r" is an abbreviation for the proposition, "The world revolution is hastened." Would we wish to admit that cases of his rule possess certainty or that all we mean by the certainty of "There is a fire if there is smoke and if whenever there's smoke there's fire" is that it conforms to our logic in the same sense as "America is seen by all Asians to be a warmonger because this implies the hastening of the world revolution" conforms to his ? The rule-character of modus ponens does not then seem suffi­ cient to do the business. Why should anyone have thought so ? I surmise that it was because they could not find anything further that would do the j ob of conferring certainty on application-in­ stances of it, so they suggested that we define certainty as being rule-conformity. However, it seems to me much better (since far more agreeable to common usage and demanded by the meaning we have adopted) to use "rule-conformity," not "certainty," when referring to rule-conformity. So next we consider what marks out modus ponens as a logical rule. A first suggestion is that all instances of it are tautologies or, perhaps more strictly, that to be an instance of it requires of any sentence that it be tautologous. (I am using "tautology" in the ordinary sense ; Wittgenstein in the Tractatus used it in an extraordinary way so that logical rules or laws are tautologies though of course they are not sentences for him.) On this analy­ sis, "There is a fire if there 's smoke and if whenever there's smoke there's fire" is certain not because it is an instance of modus ponens, taken simply as a rule, but because it is tautol­ ogous. And generally, obedience to logical rules assures certainty because it invariably produces tautology. If we follow this path, however, we soon discover ourselves entangled in difficulties. First, of course there is the question whether application-instances of acceptable logical rules, such as modus ponens, are strictly tautologous. It is the fashion nowadays among logicians so to regard them, but there was a time when this was not true, and we must not make the mistake of classi­ fying outmoded views on this matter with disproved scientific

::>

::>

[ 12 3 ]

theories : we are here in the region of philosophical analysis not factual hypothesis. Supposing ourselves freed from this, we are nevertheless still in trouble. Why assume that tautology gives certainty ? It does not help to say that since a tautology asserts nothing it cannot be erroneous. Groans and thunderclaps assert nothing; this does not prove them indubitable, though of course it does show that they cannot be in error. If it be replied that tautologies are sentences, not much is gained. If they assert nothing they can hardly be described as statements nor specifically as true ones, and, as we have noted, we are using "certain" elliptically for "certainly true." Now of course a tautology may say something and be true, so that it may make sense to say of it that it is certain. But in that case we can not appeal to the principle, "Error is impossible because nothing is asserted." Just what then would be the relation between being a tautology and being certain ? If the reply be that they are identical our course is clear : the speaker has broken from our use of "cer­ tainty," which is that of being indubitably true not of being tautologous, and we must avoid confusion of the two. If the reply be that, though the two are different, being tautologous entails being certainly true, our response again is obvious and takes the form of a question : What is this entailment, what are the grounds for saying it obtains ? I do not deny it, I only ques­ tion it, stating that I have not personally discovered it. Tautolo­ gies are frequently useful and often difficult to identify ; perhaps they are the one because they are the other ; but this does not make them indubitable. Another line that might be followed is that rules can be termed logical and cases of them certain when they are frameworks for exhausting the possibilities ; any application-instance of them would, on this view, state all the possibilities on some matter and thus could not fail to be true. Truth-table procedures can be considered as ideographs of this : one starts with all the com­ binations of truth and falsity of atomic propositions, then, via definitional eliminations for some of these in the cases of speci­ fied molecular propositions formed from these atomic consti­ tuents, logical laws, such as modus ponen s, can be seen to obtain, for their columns in the truth tables come out without an "F." At the very start, however, .we must break off a misleading [ 1 24 ]

assoc1at1on here. Suppose we interpret "T" and "F" appearing under the captions of atomic propositions as standing for the truth-possibilities, truth and /alsity; then their occurrence under a molecular heading and as definitional of that molecular form should not be read off uncritically as "truth" and "falsity," but rather as "retained" and "eliminated." This distinction is easily seen if we note that the earlier occurrences of "T" and "F" do not refer to ( or if you please, depend upon) anything else in the truth tables, whereas these later ones do. Thus under "p ::> q" we find one occurrence of "F" and three of "T/' These clearly have bearings on the entries under "p" and "q." The "F," to speak anthropomorphically, says, "My row is eliminated by 'p ::> q' " ; each "T," "Mine is still allowed'' ; but the ''T's" and "F's" under "p" and "q" are mute. For our purpose it would then be much less misleading to use a device of cancellation and retention of truth-possibilities of atomic propositions in place of entries of "F" and "T,, under molecular headings that serve to "define" logical connectives. This is important in warning us against a naive reading of a column under a logical law as "always true" or "cannot be false." This admonition is strengthened when. we note that the entries of "T " and "F" under a logical law are again different in func­ tion from those serving to define a molecular form. Both can be read "allowed" and "cancelled," but in the former case we have no freedom, we must follow the permissions and prohibitions already set up by our truth tables for the connectives involved, whereas in the latter we are at liberty (logically though perhaps not historically) to make our entries as we please. Thus, to return to our example, the entries under modus ponens would show that all truth-possibilities for the atomic elements are allowed, but this is not by virtue of a fresh definition of modus ponens itself but simply in virtue of adherence to the permissions and prohibitions set up by entries under "implies" and "and." The use of truth tables is, in the last analysis, just a mechanism. Modus p onens and other logical laws are supposed to furnish certainty when obeyed because they insure that, in a given matter, account has been taken of all the possibilities. We tnight of course question whether in a,ny case, say that of modus ponens, all possibilities have been covered. This need not detain us long, however, since we are not concerned with what might be called

[ 125 ]

the human element. One can make a mistake about anything, including certainty itself. Suppose this basis of doubt is put to one side. We have all possibilities (relative to some specific matter) before us; can we properly claim certainty that we have truth somewhere in this net? It would surely seem that we can. Where else could truth reside ? But perhaps the spatial metaphor has caught us in its meshes in this manner of talking. Truth is hardly something to be taken even in a reticulation of possibilities. It is not substantive but adjectival; it characterizes sentences. To get it we must capture sentences (or if you wish, statements) . So we must face the problem of the relation between sentences and possibilities. Clear1y, possibilities are not restricted, as we ordinarily use the term, to sentences. Every day we face, or in any case think we face, possibilities of disaster, extraordinary luck, and other contingen­ cies that we would not for a moment identify with sentences. We may of course be mistaken; perhaps all possibilities are noth­ ing but words we speak to ourselves. But this, on our issue, is only one of the possibilities; another is that possibilities as well as actualities obtain in the extralinguistic world. And since this is a possibility it follows that the concept of possibility does not intentionally include that of sentence, nor, a fortiori, that of true sentence. Being certainly true may then be involved in and re­ quired by the embracing- of all possibilities but not as being the same concept or even a part thereof. So again we ask our type of question: If the certainty of, say, any case of m odus ponens is not identical with its exhausting the possibilities, how does the latter produce or establish it? And this must be thought of quite generally, so that it covers the case of possibilities of truth as well as any others, for if it is the depletion of the possibilities that does the business, it must be this that does it. If it be asked, What more do you want?-surely if one has all the possibilities of truth one can properly claim certainty. Well the answer is plain: what is wanted is the connec­ tion. If having all the possibilities and being certain are not identical, how is the one related to the other ? If it be said that the relation is intuitively clear I can for my part only reply that I am weak on intuitions. I want to repeat that the gambit I have frequently used is not unbeatable in the sense that it furnishes an absolutely cogent

[ 126 ]

argument. Butler's dictum has served us well in helping us avoid a loose mode of thinking ( " ' . . . ' is certain j ust because it is an application-instance of a logical rule," "a tautology," "an exhaus­ tive statement of the possibilities") . Still there may be certainties outside all philosophical involvement, and specifically a priori ones, as in the case of m odus ponens, even though we usually come to believe in them because of a fallible way of thinking. But though this possibility has not been strictly refuted, I hope that acceptance of it has lost some of its compulsiveness by the insistence that certainty (in the sense in which we have been using that term) is j ust certainty and not another thing. It will perhaps be noted that the preceding argument does not avail itself of what might seem to be a likely alternative. It does not include the contention that, even if there were certainty in analytic sentences free of categorial commitment, such sentences could not serve to found or help found any philosophical system because they would be empty, would say nothing ( either cate­ gorial or empirical) . This has been omitted because of the writer's conviction that they are not entirely vacuous but only empirically empty. And even if they are, the statement that they are is categorially committive. We have now ended our review of a set of criticisms of a por­ trayal of the nature of philosophical systems and their conflicts sketched in Chapters I and II above. These scruples took the form of affirmative answers to the questions, "Is a philosophical system without categorial commitment possible ? " "Is a self­ contained system possible ? " and "Are there neutral, indubitable categories available to all systems ? " We have in no sense proved that such affirmative answers are illogical nor even in fact that they may not be true. But we have given rather careful scrutiny to a few of the most striking instances upon which affirmative answers might be based with the result, I hope, of finding uni­ versal negatives to be not beyond credence. With this we return to the positive emphasis. It will be remembered that we left off with various rival philosophical systems each claiming to make meaningful and in some sense true, but not empirical, statements about some extra­ philosophical world. Yet each, in its dispute with the others, j udged the issues in debate from its standpoint and used its

[ 127 ]

categories to set them up. The world does not appear in its own right to decide this contest. One can get at the common obj ect here only through the various rival characterizations of it. What to do ? A sheer relativism that simply says, "Be happy with any philosophy which, by some chance, you have got yourself in­ volved in, for there is no rational choice between them," will not do. This indeed is one of the contestants and should not be favored without reason above others. So we are faced with the problem of trying to get out of our categorio-centric predicament and coming to terms with the universe by means of something given to all philosophical constructions.

[ 128 ]

VI The Given GRAMMAR OF THE TERM

In everyday speech, "given" is the passive participle of the verb, "to give." This hardly seems controversial. Just what magic en­ ters with the philosophical device of changing an adjective into a substantive by the use of the article is, perhaps, another matter. But for the moment, let us explore common usage a little further. First, consider the verb itself. In its most frequent occurrence it is a transitive verb taking an indirect as well as a direct obj ect. The Oxford English Dictionary gives as the general sense : "To make another the recipient of (something that is in the posses­ sion, or at the disposal, of the subject) ." This source has the earliest ·meaning to have been simply "the placing of a material object in the hands of another person," to which, however, was added (in Old English) "that of freely and gratuitously confer­ ring on a person the ownership of a thing, as an act of bounty." It is, I take it, perfectly good usage to say, "The gardener gave the lady some chrysanthemums." The logician, with his normal forms, would make "to give" a three-termed relation. Let us designate the referents of the sub­ ject, direct obj ect, and indirect obj ect of this verb "the donor," "the gift," and "the recipient," respectively. This usage, then, demands all three ; if any is omitted the sentence is elliptical and the missing term is supplied by the context. Examples would be "I gave five dollars" as an answer to the question "What did you contribute to the Jewish Welfare . Fund ? ", ''The Firestone store distributes them as complimentary gifts" as a reply to the inquiry "Where did you get the windshield scraper ? ", and "He was [ 129 ]

really giving to himself, not to the college" as an explanation of why a philanthropist donated an unnecessary building rather than much needed endowment to his alma mater. Besides these obvious grammarian's requirements there are, often, subtler demands of social good form. The gift should be graciously accepted, since it is not forced on one ; that is, it should be utilized by the recipient, incorporated in his posses­ sions, thus, to some slight degree, stamped with his personality. The lady should at least be embarrassed in describing the flowers lying withered by neglect on the back stoop as a tribute to her by the gardener, as similarly the president in referring to the long since completed but unfurnished and unoccupied building as a benefaction to the college by one of her distinguished sons. But, on the other hand, not too much should be done to it ; the integrity of the gift must be preserved. It does not seem quite right to describe the obj ect wedged under one leg of the piano to keep it firmly footed as a present from the Firestone store, nor the chrysanthemums utilized simply as compost material as the gardener's favor to the lady, though one might say of each that it was originally a gift. So we seem, if we are to be true to one common, if not the most frequent, usage of our verb, to be committed to the follow­ ing : There is somethiQg given, a gift. There is a giver, a donor of the gift. A lucky find is not a gift, is never "given" (save metaphorically when it is ascribed to chance or lucky circum­ stance) . Nor is an earned wage or purchased commodity. And there is a recipient who, with normal politeness, makes the gift his own without destroying completely its integrity and clear intent. Before turning our attention to the influence of this everyday usage upon the philosopher's linguistic habits, some consideration of exceptions to the account j ust rendered should perhaps be made. That there are other grammars of "to give" having some currency in ordinary speech can hardly be denied ; but I shall contend that they can, by and large, be treated as modifications of and derivations from this one as basic, thereby lending my suppott to the Oxford Dictionary's selection of the "general sense" of the term. For example, our verb is sometimes used in an impassive, quasi-impersonal fashion (as though any allied indicative in the active voice would lack a subj ect) . Thus we [ 1 30 ]

have Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" and Lord Lytton's "Give me the good old times ! " Here we seen1 essentially to lack a donor, yet I think there is tacitly present in this usage, or there was, in an earlier one from which this is derived, the idea of a higher power capable of bestowing the desired boon. This may by now be just a stylistic shell, and "give me . . ." may be properly translated "I would like to have. . . ." But still the shell remains . and so far as the gift metaphor is present so also is the. idea of a donor. Another sort of context seems to yield a grammar omitting the indirect object (the recipient). Examples : "They gave three cheers," "He gave a groan and offered up the ghost," "Her heart gave some beats so quick and loud under her brown bodice" ( Crommelin). But is it completely inappropriate to suppose here a suppressed reference to a spectator? That it is not is perhaps suggested by the close affinity of this employment to that found where, though no indirect obj ect is actually present, a recipient is clearly presupposed, as in "giving a recital (a play, a lecture)," which could hardly be used without the implication of some sort of audience. Then there are correlative cases where the benefactor seems lacking, but may be supplied in the person of any spectator or reader; as when "to give" is roughly synonymous with "to take for granted," "to consent to assume," "to concede," "to allow as a concession" as in "If you'll give me five-and-twenty yards, I'll run you three hops and a step a hundred yards for another crown" (Howard). This last usage has a rather close kinship to one to which the whole donor-gift-recipient analysis seems, at first sight, utterly inappropriate. In this, "the past participle is used, especially in an absolute clause, with the sense : Assigned or postulated as a basis of calculation or reasoning" ( 0 .E.D.). Consider as a case in point : "Given a reasonable amount of variety and quality in the exhibits, an exhibition is sure to attract large numbers" (Manchester Examiner) . This is the kind of thing that occurs so frequently in textbooks of mathematics : "The Obliquity of the Ecliptic being given, to find by Calculation the Right Ascen­ sion and Declination of a given Point in it" (Gregory's As­ tronomy). In such cases it seems farfetched to speak of an offer­ ing at all ; and where would one look for a donor? Yet I think [ 13 1 ]

something can be done to show that the Oxford Dictionary's general sense is lurking about. I suggest that in examples like the last we take "given" as governing a substantive clause, which is its direct obj ect ( and thereby, on our analysis, states the "gift") . The instances j ust cited ( which incidentally were taken from the Oxford Diction­ ary) , could thus be reformulated : "Given that there is a reason­ able amount of variety . . ." and "Given that the Obliquity of the Ecliptic is so-and-so, to find . . . . " The grant here is a premise and the grantor is any reader or thinker willing to bestow it for the sake of the argument or calculation. Granted that granting a postulate is quite different from granting a bounty or bestowing a property right, yet there is some similarity, and by stressing the original, face-to-face polemical, or at least pedagogical, situa­ tion, this similarity comes out. The disputant really does make a gift to his opponent when he grants him a premise he wishes to use. And even a pupil must grudgingly offer something to the schoolmaster, however hard the latter has to struggle to progress beyond it in any further calculations. "But it's all on an imper­ sonal plane, particularly when you get into mathematical ex­ ercises," it may be obj ected. One must admit that frequently in this area "Given that . . . " comes quite close to "If . . . " ; indeed, we sometimes have the combination "If it be given that. . . ." But I think it is never quite the same ; "given" always adds a flavor of ''granted" and suggests a context of a task to be per­ formed, a construction to be made, where that which is given is indispensable and yet is a free gift whose integrity must be respected ( one must use the assumption in accord with the in­ tention of the grantor, which, presumably, is to get on with the argument or solve the problem) . An allied usage is that in which "given" governs not a clause but a word or term and has the sense of "specified." Examples are : "In the given case I recommend suspension of the rule," "The given instance is typical of the sort of miscarriage of j ustice I have in mind." Some of these occurrences have a resemblance to the mental gift ("granted that . . . ") mentioned in the pre­ ceding paragraph, what is allowed being a case of some general class of things about which, assumptively, there is no debate, the question being whether the special instance is to be permitted to represent the class in some respect. Here there could still be a [ 1 32 ]

trace of reference to a bestower (namely, to him who grants that the given is a case of the class being discussed) . This is pretty tenuous, however ; but often another donor does seem fairly definitely implied : I mean the circumstances at hand. The situation in which one is conversing or thinking furnishes gratuitously the instance one needs to make or develop or refute a point about a more general class. There may even be a sugges­ tion of thankfulness here in that the instance, by being "given," is clearly not j ust invented to score a point. When all of this sort of thing is lacking, when "the given . . . " is adequately replace­ able by "the particular . . . /' then it seems "given" is a metaphor and very possibly misleading. It might be entertaining to continue this exploration of the everyday grammar of "give" and "given/' though somewhere in the process the charm could conceivably pall for there is no theoretically final terminus of it short of the idiosyncrasies of each individual situation in which the words do or, for that matter, imaginably could occur. I do not consider this enterprise to be the philosopher's task, however, and so shall bequeath it to some member of the Oxford school, hoping he will respect our benefaction sufficiently not to destroy its manifest purpose entirely. I TS

E FFECTS

IN

PHILOSOPHY

I sympathize with the reader who, already somewhat restive, wonders what the philosophic bearing of this sort of analysis is. The superficial answer is easy and perhaps not without some point. It is that the grammar of "the given,, and cognate terms in the philosopher's language no doubt shows some influence of everyday speech, and that the discovery of these resemblances and the exploration of apparent differences may well throw some new light on the meaning of a portion of philosophic j argon and the commitments philosophers make when they adopt it. The deeper answer, to which we shall turn after illustrating this shallow one, involves everyday grammar as some kind of test of the legitimacy of its philosophic cousin. First, let us ask what is involved in the shift from the ad­ jectival use of "given" in common speech to its substantival oc­ currence, as "the given" or "the datum" of the philosopher. If

[ 1 33 ]

it be said that this simply reflects the general tendency of ad­ j ectives to be transmuted in this fashion when they become matters of philosophic concern ( compare, "the good," "the known," "the existent," "the beautiful") and indeed of all parts of speech ("of-ness," "the ought," "the is," "aboutness") , with the consequent risk of hypostatization, we should agree but not without recognizing the possibility of a wider or more systematic shift in meaning accompanying this. In ordinary usage, what is given is, in the most general sense of our verb, a "gift,, and is referred to as such, not as "the given" or "a datum." Now has the philosopher, when he uses the latter expressions, done no more than shift attention to a segment of or an item in the giving-activity or situation ? In fact, is it not downright absurd to translate the philosopher's "the given" into everyman's "the gift" ? At first sight it might seem so, but I think a case can be made that the philosopher's usage ( or usages, for I believe there a re several) is not wholly peculiar to him, that · the general sense of ordinary grammar is in some degree present in it. Let us look for some kind of reference ( express or tacit) to donor and recipient and some sense of good etiquette concerning the disposal of gifts in the philosopher's employment of "the given." In the case of Kant , our approach is immediately rewarding. The matter of all phenomena is given us a posteriori; the ar­ rangement or order is determined a priori by the forms of the mind. Each is essential to phenomena j ust as the latter are in­ dispensable to anything properly designated "knowledge." Thus it would appear quite unmistakable that for Kant "the given,, ultimately for knowledge is sensuous matter. Who is the giver ? He speaks of "experience," but this term is ambiguous and fre­ quently means phenomena as already showing the effects of mind's a priori contributions. But this need not disturb us, for Kant is explicit in ascribing the manifold sensory content of experience to the causal action upon us of things external to us and otherwise unknown. Things-in-themselves are, then, the anonymous benefactors. The issue is complicated by Kant's speaking of the forms of intuition as "given" a priori ( through the receptivity of mind as against its spontaneity) ; and sometimes of total phenomena as "given obj ects"-given apparently to the spontaneous under[ 1 34

]

standing that furnishes the categories. But it is nevertheless true that the sensibly given, the ultimate matter of experience, is the sense content caused ( that is, given) by things-in-themselves : we have in these (as far as the Critique of Pure Reason goes) donors-in fact, in their systemic role, mere donors. And this in two senses. They perform no other function; they are not, for example, acted on by the mind, not even, apparently, in the metaphorical sense of being the object of an intentional act. Sense content is a free bestowal, not an article of trade or barter ; there is no give and take between mind and things-in-themselves. And in the second place, things-in-themselves are not otherwise known than as anonymous benefactors, and even in this capacity it is only the philosopher, the system-builder, apparently, who knows them; that is, they are known only systematically, never empirically and individually. On the other hand, the mind clearly plays the part of recipient. Moreover, it does this most properly. It not only accepts the gift; it ·makes it part of its own property by stamping it with its own personality (by arranging the sensuous matter in spatio­ temporal forms), yet in such fashion as not to destroy the in­ tegrity of the donation-sense materials are not to be rejected, questioned, or tampered with in their own character. To me, this furnishes an almost perfect example of the in­ fluence of everyman's grammar upon the philosopher's. More­ over, I think that the sense of healthy-mindedness that almost everyone gets upon reading Kant's account, as contrasted with that of many other philosophers in which ''the given'' or "the data for knowledge" appear, is due to this commonsensicality of the language ( which is perceptible despite a highly technical and barbaric vocabulary and a most stilted and involved syntax on his part). As a second and somewhat more difficult case let us consider C. I. Lewis's Mind and the World Order. Lewis modifies Kant's account in two of its factors : in the description of the recipient and its activity and in the reference to a bestower. Lewis makes no specifiable allusions to the latter. This indicates something more than a sense of ignorance concerning specific contributors, similar to the church treasurer's powerlessness in tracing the depositors of individual coins in the collection plate. Kant of course was in this predicament in relation to things-in-themselves; [ 1 35

]

Lewis apparently wishes to omit such transcendent entities from his system entirely. He still speaks however of "the given." Now a gift without a giver is bare, so we may wonder whether perhaps our author's terminology is not ill-gotten. If he had used the expression, "content," so it might be thought, he would have conveyed his idea less misleadingly. What he m · eans to desig­ nate, it could be contended, is simply the sensuous factor in ex­ perience, which cannot be specifically catalogued (since this would compromise its purity by introducing the conceptual ac­ tivity of mind). Some word had to be used and the tradition from Kant, where "the given" was contrasted with "the a ,priori" in the constitution of experience, was at hand. Now I do not wish to adopt any tone of condemnation: If Lewis actually succeeds in avoiding the implications of ordinary grammar in this case, I surely would not suppose this to con­ stitute a philosophical dereliction or in any way a disproof of his system. My concern at this point is not polemical but factual: Does he succeed in this? I think only very partially and the way in which he fails strikes one as significant and revealing. He could not have substituted "sensuous feel" for "the given" since he obviously wanted to take a definite philosophical position about it which this substitution would hide. Nor would "con­ tent" have served him much better, for it is ordinarily con­ trasted with "form" and, though this would be perhaps unob­ jectionable as far as it goes, it clearly would not go far enough: Lewis wants to contrast "the given" with "the produced," with the work of mind. Mind does something to sensuous content once the latter is given to it; it is the source of the conceptual element in experience in a way in which it is not of the sensual. He explicitly and repeatedly describes the given as that which is not created by mind and not modified by any meanings mind places upon it. So far forth, then, it does appear as a gift, how­ ever bare. Besides the gift there is also for Lewis a recipient, namely the mind. Although he is undeniably £allowing Kant in this regard, with somewhat more of a volitional emphasis, there is a differ­ ence and one which, I fear, is disastrous. In wishing to avoid Kant's transcendentalism, Lewis attempts to justify his ascription of the conceptualization of experience to the mind's activity by turning to observation, by catching the agent at work upon the given. This is fatal for it involves a confusion of what I have

termed the categorial with something empirical. What for Lewis is. to constitute an observation (of, say, mind contributing a conceptualization) is already determined independently of the specific observation-no falsification is in principle possible. If indeed it were, then Lewis would be doing psychology and s�pplying us ( albeit through a very crude methodology) with an empirical law, and I take it he does not mean to be doing this. My suggestion is that the plausibility (such as it is) of Lewis's system lies (as did that of Kant's) in its accord with the everyday grammar of "the given." Once you take this kind of talk into your philosophy you are guided by its "logic" and are happy only to the degree in which, however unconsciously, you follow its implications. And so along with the gift Lewis thinks of a recipient who accepts it and respects it, though modifying it to fit his own familiar household. Let us turn to a last but by no means least important case. Lewis ostensibly dropped out the donor. Certain forms of phe­ nomenalism would appear to have eliminated the recipient as well, while continuing in a fashion to use the language of giving, for they speak of "data" and specifically of "sense-data." Have they succeeded in passing beyond the everyday connotations of ''gift" and achieved a technical terminology freed of all en­ tanglements with ordinary grammar ? I think not ; in the most daring of them there is retained a residue, a flavor which entices those who taste their fare to swallow what would, if presented in its own character, be quite unpalatable. In the first place there may be some doubt whether they really do get rid of the idea of a recipient. Russell in introducing the term "sense datum" (in his Problems of Philosophy, where he shows strikingly the influence of G. E. Moore's thought) con­ trasts it with "sensation" which designates the act of sense aware­ ness. This need not presuppose any continuing mind, but it does seem to involve the assumption that a sense datum is a presenta­ tion to some mental process which does not create it, which can only accept it whether, so to speak, it likes it or not. Many who have adopted the sense-datum language continue this idea of an accompanying act, thereby showing in some part, so it seems to me, the influence of the grammatical requirement that a gift requires a receiver or at least a reception. But it may be possible to get rid of this commitment entirely, [ 1 37 ]

and to annihilate the recipient as well as the donor. I think that Russell, when he had reverted to a Humean type of analysis (in Our Knowledge of the External World) , came quite close to doing j ust this-though his attention was directed more ex­ plicitly to the task of getting on without a donor ( an external physical thing) without making nonsense of physical science. Common-sense things on the one hand and percipient minds on the other can be "constructed," Russell then thought, out of sense data, the former being "sets of appearances" obeying physi­ cal laws, the latter of "perspectives" defining private experience but in no way modifying the data making them up . To put it in straight English, this is tantamount to saying that the benefactor and the beneficiary of a sensory gift are different classes of some­ what similar benefactions of which the given one is a common member. My point, of course, is not that this way of talking breaks with good usage and it is decidedly not that, since it does, it must be bad philosophy. My concern lies in quite the opposite direction. Has it broken completely with everyday grammar or does it still retain a touch of it which aids in m · aking plausible a subtle commitment which should be more carefully scrutinized? I incline to the latter alternative. One should not look a gift horse in the mouth : what is given is to be accepted without ques­ tion or mental reservation-this at least is retained from everyday grammar. And what makes this attractive and therefore highly dangerous is the philosopher's yearning for security, for despite his most resolute use of critical tools he is at heart a human being. The phenomenalist is no skeptic, but rather a Cartesian in the empiricist school. He wants something indubitable, something incorrigible not m · erely in his logic but in his empirical knowl­ edge. This, as the reader now knows, I wish to deny him without bestowing a sense of injustice derived from the subtle connota­ tions in the ordinary grammar of the gift-terminology he adopts. GIVEN

IN

AND

GIVEN

TO

A

PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM

But now if we can dampen these overtones pushing us into the key in which some particular philosophical composition is writ­ ten, the language of gift and giver may not be too biasing. In­ deed, it may even help to keep us in a mood to appreciate that

philosophy is controversial, right down to its fundamentals. And this strife is not, in the last analysis, about itself but about some extra-philosophical world to which each controversialist claims to do better j ustice than his opponents. The clash is not between inharmonious yet non-representative works of art but between disagreeing characterizations of the world. Something then is common to them all, and hypothetically, at least, we may evaluate them by reference to it. Here is a "given"--one which is external to competing sys­ tems. But it is not of the kind we recently reviewed. In these and similar cases "the given" designates not the rough terrain upon which every system must finally build, but a clearly marked part fitted to and requiring the rest of the individual structure. Thus Kant's given-the sense manifold-is drawn to his specifi­ cations ; it is properly co-ordinate with his forms of intuition ; it wouldn't do as the indubitable basis for philosophical analysis of the type we find in G. E. Moore. It could not, in fact, be used to replace the given impressions in Hume's philosophy, for were one to try to make this interchange he would find that ideas are simply copies of the sense manifold, and experience is ·m ade up of the sense manifold and its associations, which, of course, amounts to j ust nonsense. Or again, Whitehead's given events are characterized as overlapping in such ways that his method of extensive abstraction can be brought to bear upon them and form a tie between the worlds of abstract geometry and theoreti­ cal physics on the one hand and crude experience on the other. Try to use Kant's sense manifold as the given in Whitehead's system and you land immediately in absurdity. And this out­ come, we have come to note, is a reliable indication that we have on our hands some unassimilated element from a foreign source, not a common, external meeting place of rivals. Facing the danger of this confusion, I suggest we distinguish, by means of the prepositions their designations govern, two "givens" : that which is "given to" every philosophical system alike and with which in some sense the system must square as a whole, and that which is "given in" a particular system, being peculiar to it and what, if anything, is unquestioned in it and taken as in some fashion to be the ground and source of all else. Both of these would be philosophical uses of "the given," the one, however, in the syntax of some particular system, the other [ 1 39

]

in what might be called comparative methodology. The one would signify something internal to a system, furnishing the allowable grounds of statements occurring in it, that is, as formulated within the framework of its categories, the other something presumably external to various rival systems offering a basis for some kind of reasonable choice between them. In a sense this may be considered as an application to the concept of "the given" of Carnap's distinction (in the Revue internationale de philosophie for January 15, 1950) between questions that are "internal" and those that are "external to a framework"-though I do not go along with him at all in his suggestion as to how the latter questions are to be answered.It is an aspect of what I had in mind (in "The 'Proof' of Utility in Bentham and Mill" in Ethics for October, 1949) in distinguishing between a proof within a system and a proof of a system such as that of utilitari­ anism. In mathematics we have, for example, a proof of a theorem of Euclidean geometry, by deduction from given axioms and definitions. But when Euclidean geometry as a whole is called in quesiton, as, let us say, the geometry of physical space, then some other sort of grounds and, ultimately, some other kind of proof m · ust be used. The reader may sense that I am not too friendly toward philosophies vaunting a stratum of "the given" within them; on the other hand, I hold that it is a point of wisdom and of honesty to accept something as externally given to all categorial systems and serving as a common ground and test of them. My "argument," if it may be honored by such a title for it surely is no proof, is essentially two-fold: The most resolute attempts to avoid or deny it have ended in failure, and any position actually successful in eliminating it would not, within its framework, allow recognition of the fact that it has rivals, that its categories are subj ect to legitimate doubt and controversy, that there is sense to the idea of evaluating its success in competition with others. But with this step taken we are brought face to face with what certainly appears to be a most serious contradiction. How can the admission of something externally given to all categorial systems avoid clashing with our acceptance of "the categorio­ centric predicament" ? Let us pause for a moment. Some contradictions one finds one-

self in are easily dispersed: one simply, perhaps arbitrarily, denies one of the elements in conflict. But our path is not so easy. We have arrived where we are not by some involved procedure of system building that can be undone without disaster as far as our whole enterprise is concerned. Rather, we have got here by a basic, wholly commonsensical and, so it seems to me, quite unavoidable facing up to what any philosophic system is and how it can in any degree be made acceptable. We have on the one hand noted that what different systems claim to be given and thus the touchstone of all systems varies with these systems and is unacceptable outside the one to which it is native. On the other hand we have found that philosophers are not simply in­ different to every phase and feature of non-philosophic knowl­ edge, experience, or social outlook: somewhere each finds some­ thing to which he bows and with which he keeps in harmony. Usually this is unavowed, but it is none the less real. Our pre� dicament seems to be then that philosophic structures seem both to be and not to be self-inclosed, to rest on something external and yet to absorb everything into themselves. What shall we do in this predicament ? There is one escape that has already been intimated and which has merits we need not deny ourselves. I refer simply to the obvious possibility that all categorial systems have a division of categories in common-those specifically that are involved in stating the relation between any categorial system and its grounds and form a part, at least, of the self-applicative area of the system. These categories would in some sense be more basic than others to be found in the portion of the systems where they diverge from one another. Without agreeing on whether the universe is made up of physical things or sense data, the ma­ terialist and phenomenalist could well see eye to eye on a funda­ mental distinction between categories ( thing, sense datum) and empirical entities ( this icebox, my toothache), and on the even more fundamental distinction between any categorial system and its grounds. This mitigates the predicament we are in but hardly eliminates it. Unfortunately there is not universal agreement on what shall serve as the common basis of evaluation of categorial systems, so that even if all admit that there must be something externally given to them, what this is to be is a matter of controversy and [ 141 ]

thus falls within the area of divergences. This may be the best we can do, and this is something. But I am not convinced that we are at the end of our tether. It would, of course, be incompatible with the whole outlook of the present study to say, at this juncture, that the something sought is just reality itself, in its virgin condition before intimacy with or even introduction to any philosophical conceptualization whatever. Anyone presenting such a being would clearly in his characterization of it reveal his own special philosophical attach­ ments and predispositions in conflict with others. We want to get around such biases and attain whatever degree of objectivity is possible. We cannot avoid reliance on some view of reality or some source whose reconstruction to fit the philosopher's need gives us, however crudely and inarticulately, an account of the chief dimensions of the extra-philosophical universe. In short, we seek something outside professional, conflicting, philosophical sys­ tems which nevertheless has a point of view about the world im­ bedded in it that can serve as our touchstone. P o ss 1 B L E E X T ER N A L G R O U N D S G 1 v E N A L L P H I L OS O P H I C A L

To

S Y S T EMS

There is more than one candidate for this job, and before pre­ senting the credentials of my nominee I think it only proper that we glance, at least, at some of the others that should be listed. In carrying this out I shall not pretend exhaustiveness ; there is no need to repeat that at this level there can be no "proof," and so, a fortiori, no proof via elimination of rivals ( which method would of course require completeness in stating the alternatives). Like­ wise, in criticizing other proposed grounds of categorial systems than the one I shall adopt, I do not fool myself that I have with any real cogency overthrown them. We are here in the region of reasonable persuasion at most, and it will be necessary to rely heavily on the reader's intellectual honesty to attain even some modest probability. However, it is consoling to note that every other competitor, no matter what degree .of certainty and what­ ever basis of firm authority he may boast within his system, is in exactly the same perilous condition as regards any external foundation of the whole structure of his thought.

[ 1 42 ]

INSTI TUTIONAL

A UT HORITY

The realization of this leads immediately to the first alternative, which will be given short shrift. Since admittedly we must in this sort of ultimate issue rest our case to some degree on faith, should we not frankly and at the start turn to authority as en­ shrined in some great tradition or institution? As illustrative, we might consider the Sacred Scriptures, the actions of general councils, and the papal decretals ex cathedra of the Roman Catholic church or again the writings of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, or the latest official party line of communist Russia. Appeal to authority will hardly commend itself to any philoso­ phers who might chance upon the present book. Contemporary Anglo-Saxon intellectuals are not in the mood to settle their differences this way. Perhaps this is unfortunate, but it is the case and there is no point in entering a closed avenueo But I might make two remarks before passing on, both of them being so obvious that they need no elaboration. First, the simple suggestion that we turn to authority does not as such settle the matter, for there are several rival authorities with no supreme authority on authorities to adj udicate their conflicting claims. Second, the kind of authority here envisaged, ensconced in the trappings of a widely effective institution, simply does not make pronouncements on categorial issues. This might not seem to be true. Did not Marx in his "Theses on Feuerbach" ("The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question"; "The philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it") do just this? I think not; I think that he (and similarly Lenin in his Materialism and Em­ pirio-Criticism ) was concerned with practical matters, with using philosophical ideas in the class struggle. And if we say that whatever may be required for a maximum contribution to a certain practical cause is the ultimate ground of evaluation of rival philosophies, we have given up authority as ultimate. Like­ wise with neo-Scholasticism. Thomistic philosophy is not, per se, authoritative, but only as it fits with and thus strengthens ortho­ dox Catholic theology, so that insofar as we have something here of categorial significance, its basis is not authority but prac­ tical demands. Let us turn then directly to the principle : The ultimate grounds [ 1 43 ]

and test of any categorial system are the practical demands of some social goal. This, however, in its first and obvious meaning will not do. We are concerned with a theoretical question; the associated practical issue of the effects upon society of the ac­ ceptance and propagation of some categorial system is a legiti­ mate but nevertheless a different ·matter. It is, moreover, com­ plicated by the fact that, to fulfill our needs, it is necessary to specify a particular goal from among the several competing for achievement. We are then faced with the question of a basis of choice between, let us say, promotion of the "true" (Roman Catholic) faith and assisting in the struggle of the proletariat to put an end to capitalist exploitation. It seems quite obvious that we have here nothing common and non-belligerent in the conflict between different social and institutional objectives. This seems to me both inescapable and, for our problem, final. SCIENCE

Let us shift then from practical to theoretical alternatives. We appear fortunate in this day and age in having a way out of our dilemma. Surely modern experimental science gives us a footing that is both objective and theoretical-and need I add, also "up to date" ? Her� is a live option for contemporary Anglo­ Saxon philosophers. But unhappily a foundation laid in scien­ tific knowledge, though as firm perhaps as any that could be found, is not equally adequate. Only a most narrow partisan would be satisfied to test rival categorial systems by reference to purely scientific knowledge. Science is wholly concerned with empirical laws and explanatory theories. Important as these are in understanding our world, they omit too much that most if not all of us would want included in any acceptable account. In the first place, value in all its forms is left entirely aside. I am of course speaking of value itself, not certain associated facts such as the occurrence of valuations. There may well be laws about the latter, about, for example, human preferences, and the behavioral sciences may some day be able to formulate them, but this is quite a different question. Now of course it may be said. that I am prejudiced in the matter, being an objectivist in axiology, and that by claiming that scientific knowledge is defi­ cient as a basis of philosophy because it omits values, I have

simply begged this whole issue. Certainly there can be no doubt that current forms of anti-objectivist naturalism do gain much of their plausibility by assuming contemporary science as their "given." So when the issue is ultimately drawn, it may well take the form of a debate concerning the adequacy of science to play this role. Hence I turn to other criticisms. Besides values, scientific knowledge omits much else that would, I should suppose, demand a place in our picture of the world. It gives us no descriptions of individual events as unique (rather than as instances of laws). To put it differently, science is abstract, and only the most pronounced Platonist would assert that nothing but abstractions exist. And certainly the ordinary form of scientific law seems to presuppose the existence of in­ dividual things and events: "s == ½gt2 " is highly abstract but is not about abstractions ; it does not tell us anything about the relation of two universals, space and time, to each other but about the distances fallen and times consumed by (any) one particular freely falling body ; yet it does not describe the fall of a particular body as a unique event. Moreover there is a vast fund of everyday knowledge that is in no strict sense scientific. My son's name is Richard, but people call him "Rich" not "Dick." Fire burns and water moistens. Thunder claps frighten some children and delight others. Yesterday was Friday. Such material is humdrum ; but it has its place, and it is not part of science. It seems to me there are other omissions as well, but we have, I think, found sufficient evidence that a complete system of cate­ gories could hardly be given an adequate external foundation in modern experimental science. So far as one might try to supplement science by bringing in commonsensical matter, perhaps on the basis that science is some­ how only common sense made exact, one might just as well turn to the latter as "the given" in its own right-which indeed is my own proposal. But before considering this, we had best look into the idea of a scientific foundation of philosophy in a some­ what different and more radical sense. I think a good case can be made for the proposition that modern science broke with common sense in the basic concepts it used and in terms of which its laws were formulated. Ernst Cassirer, in Substance and Function, puts in an extreme and not wholly acceptable form what I have in mind. Instead then of [ 1 45 ]

such an ideational framework as is furnished by "thing," "prop­ erty," "space," "time," "event," and so on, we find one employing "energy," "field," "space-time interval," "probability." If our philosophy is to rest on scientific knowledge in this sort of formulation, it must show how we can portray the world satis­ factorily with categories of the latter or "functional" variety. Just how this could be done with any degree of plausibility is difficult to see. If one uses the former sort of terms as his in­ definables and then builds the latter from them, he is finding a �lace for modern science but not using it as his (sole) external ground ; he is certainly using ordinary thought as something given. Technically, the converse is possible : j ust as one could define "field," for example, in terms of events that things with such and such properties enter, so one could define "thing" as a certain class of fields or of classes of fields. But now if this latter is done ( and done consistently and categorially for all such terms) how could we ever identify what we are talking about, how could we interpret our language ? The problem is possibly one of communication, but if so "communication'' is to be taken in more than a merely practical sense. That is, it is not j ust a matter of you, as a person, not understanding what I, in con­ versations with you, am saying. The breakdown in communica­ tion in this instance is, semantical in some degree and involves the whole tie of language with the world. Perhaps a myth might help me make my point. Professor X was a brilliant but somewhat immature young physicist. As often happens even to such minds, his emotions got the upper hand at a certain point and he fell in love with one of his students and married her. Their first-born was a boy, and the father, believing firmly in genetics, was sure he would be a genius if brought up rightly. Hence he was much disturbed one night when, upon re­ turning home from the laboratory, he heard mama X, in response to baby X's babbling, repeating "ball," "ball," "baby," "baby," "baby has ball," and so on. "What are you doing to our son ? " he shouted as he stormed into the apartment. "Wh y , I'm j ust teaching him to talk," stammered his wife. "Didn't you hear him saying 'baa,' 'baa' ? " she continued. "Yes, but you repeated to him-I heard you with my own ears-'baby' and 'ball'," cried the exasperated physicist. "But he had a ball, he was playing with it, and that's j ust the time the association with the right

words should be made," responded his commonsensical wife. "What do you say ? I thought that you were a student of mine ; that you agreed our son should have an intelligent upbringing ; that he should acquire from the first _ a language free of super­ stitions and based on scientific concepts ! " "Whatever do you mean ? ,, timidly interposed his mate. "Why, don't you know that scientifically speaking, that's not a ball ? It's no one crude thing; it's a system of molecules, of atoms, of overlapping fields of energy. You must begin right by calling things what they are." "Oh, Henry. Then you mean that, j ust as that isn't a ball, he . . . he isn't . . . isn't a baby, isn't our baby, our baby boy ? " "Of course he isn't. Now don't get sentimental and spoil every­ thing from the start ! He, like you and me, is j ust a relatively cohesive group of differentiated and interacting cells, themselves nothing, finally, but complex distributions of energy." "Well, Henry, I'm sure you're right ; you're always right, but can't I call him our baby boy ? " "No ! That's the whole point. He must learn to talk the - right way from the first. When he has to get out of the house and mingle with other people then, perhaps; for practical purposes we can build up some street-language, but until then, he must learn to speak correctly and in basic terms only ; that is, he must be taught to speak scientifically." Perhaps it was because Professor X had to spend too much time in the laboratory, combined with the fact that his wife wasn't as good a physicist as he thought her, but in any case I must report that the experiment was not a success. Young master X had a dif­ ficult time learning to talk, and his first comprehensible state­ ments were (in th� main) couched in the language of the street. Moreover he early developed a tendency to stutter which re­ mained with him throughout his life. To put the matter differently (I am really trying to make the same point) : if communication breaks down between a phe­ no-menalist and one who says he has never experienced sense data, surely it would have to collapse between anyone seriously taking the functional notions of contemporary science as his indefinables and the rest of us who j ust cannot organize our experience into fields, probability curves and so on. There is one warning I should make in connection with this last formulatio11. With appropriate sophistication and the devices of metalinguistic talk about what one is doing, one might define the "thing-" sort [ 1 47 ]

of concept in terms of the "field-" kind and not get into the difficulty mentioned, if, that is, one specified that there is no tie between one's indefinables and the world save as they enter definitions, or again that experience gets organized not to fit the indefinables but only what is "built" from them. I think this a possible, though perverse, way of doing things, but my present point would simply be that this reveals the basic commitment to common sense in its own right as the externally given stuff for philosophy to grapple with and to square with. The reason I call this procedure "perverse" is that the ordinary purpose in the philosophic enterprise of constructing definitions is to indicate that the defined terms are expendable, they can be sacrificed without any real loss to one's system, whereas in the procedure just mentioned this is not the case; in it, they constitute the higher brass that must be protected at all costs. I am urging that modern science is not acceptable as furnishing the externally given grounds to philosophical systems. Yet I do not want to make this rejection too sweeping. Positively, science is quite inadequate; negatively, it can serve as a sane and un­ biased corrective. Any philosophy that · conflicts with it in a cer­ tain fashion is, in our day, simply a dead option. The conflict I have in mind is not empirical; the whole view of philosophy here espoused prohibits , it from making empirical statements. It is, moreover, conceivable that a philosophy should set up cate­ gories differing from those modern science actually uses without engendering the objectionable clash I have in mind. That colli­ sion occurs only in cases where some portion of well-established scientific knowledge could not be stated in the categories of the philosophical system in question; to utilize that system would result in throwing out the scientific knowledge not as false but as non-sense. A case in point is the inability of Aristotelian cate­ gories to provide a framework within which it is possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics. PERS ONAL EXPERIENCE

A second theoretical alternative and one of longer standing than modern science is personal experience. Cannot, indeed must not, each of us judge rival systems by the test of his own direct experience ?

Much can be said for everyday, direct, unexpurgated personal experience as the test of philosophical systems. It is replete with categories-the unexamined ones of common sense. These can of course be used as a check against the clarified and systematized sets the philosophers propose. But there is a danger here, lying in the very fact that in everyday life we are not interested in categories but in crude empirical matters. So if we are told to consult our own personal experience, we tend to look for · things that might be present in some instances but absent in others, as when we try to ascertain whether the onset of the headache precedes or succeeds that of the feeling of nausea. This has its place in testing factual statements, but misleads egregiously when the issue is categorial. If one attempts to avoid this by looking for the pervasive forms of one's experience, one easily loses the unsophisticated attitude and thus, perchance, the distinctive categories of com­ mon sense. As already noted, experience, particularly in its struc­ tural features, is easily modified by one's purposes and attitudes, and thereby ceases to be philosophically innocent, a neutral, "given" basis. But there is another objection to taking personal experience of the everyday variety as constituting the external basis of philosophy. If one stresses its personal character, it easily be­ comes something peculiar to the individual and loses that social objectivity which is one of our chief desiderata. It is surely unfortunate when philosophic disputes end in personal idiosyn­ crasies: "I find a special emotion directed toward aesthetic forms"; "I, contrariwise, can discover no such thing"; "A man who doesn't experience a unique quality of goodness is morally blind." This untoward outcome can be avoided by utilizing personal experiences only insofar as they have a socially common pattern. And in everyday life they largely come this way. But why is this so, and how do we find it out? I raise no recondite question about intersubjectivity and proofs of the existence of other minds-we are right now far below the level of all this. I simply wish to keep the present suggestion as to what is externally given to philosophies distinct from another candidate, namely, everyday speech. It is scarcely open to doubt that it is through ordinary communication and particularly through its pervasive [ 1 49

]

forms and syntax that we become assured of the existence of other personal experiences and that our own assumes a shape largely indistinguishable from them. As I have just formulated it, this is a causal judgment, but it leads naturally to the philo­ sophical contention that everyday speech furnishes the objective grounds we are seeking. We shall turn to this alternative very shortly. It seems to me to offer us our most secure foundation. Yet personal experience of the everyday variety is not without virtue in relation to our purpose. Indeed, I should vote for some kind of combination of what might be called the structure of natural experience and the syntax of natural language to do what we are after. Such a combination seems almost forced on anyone favorably inclined toward either of its elements, for they are in the last analysis inseparable. The pattern of our common experi­ ence not only shows the influence of our ordinary language­ forms, it really is beyond our grasp or expression without them ; it is not merely, to an unascertainable degree, made by them, it is also equally made of them. Contrariwise, the grammar of vernacular speech is not something discoverable in school-books, a way in which words are related to other words only. To be understood and used it requires the living of a common life, the sharing of common experiences. Whorf clearly grasped this and made it vivid when he told of his early frustrations in trying to get on to the Hopi tongue until he learned to share the Hopi way of shaping experience, for example, of time and particularly futurity. To have this common social experience in its most articulate form for our philosophical purposes, however, we must stress the language factor. COMMON

THOUGH T AND

SP EECH

Without, then, casting away unexpurgated personal or "natural" experience entirely, we come to a last entry in our list of possible external grounds of philosophical systems, the one for which I wish to present as persuasive a brief as I honestly can. It is every­ day speech or, more accurately, the chief resources of colloquial language as revealing our most basic and pervasive ways of thinking about things. To start with, it is necessary to avoid a somewhat crude but seriously dangerous confusion · or family of confusions. We must

keep our context in mind. The vernacular is being appraised as a possible basis of evaluating competing philosophical systems; if we consider other functions it performs, they must be resolute­ ly subordinated and tested by their relevance to this. Thus the recent tendency in some quarters to insist that ordinary language is correct language is, as it stands, completely beside the point ( of course I mean the present point; its proponents may have some other perfectly legitimate objective in mind which they have managed to keep reasonably obscure). One and perhaps the most important of the purposes of every­ day talk is communication. If a person is speaking of communi­ cating ordinary ideas on ordinary matters with ordinary people, I suppose it is very nearly a truism to say that ordinary language is the correct language to do it in. However, in this context " . " correct " rat her grates on one 's ears; " best " or " most appropriate would seem more in keeping. And if in saying this we utter a truism ( to use ordinary language) we nevertheless have not formulated a strict tautology (to use philosophical j argon), for technical expressions sometimes work better than ordinary ones even for purposes of ordinary communication. In any case, all this is extraneous to the present context. But there are occasions when one wishes to communicate on matters which are not of ordinary concern. Here it is frequently a debatable question whether ordinary language is appropriate. If both parties are familiar with an invented, technical form of speech relevant to the question at hand, ordinary language may not be fitting; it may even be "incorrect" in the very definite sense that its use forces one to commit unnecessary mistakes in communicating his ideas. This can readily be appreciated when the discussion is in the area of theoretical physics; it is sometimes not so clearly seen or, if seen, so readily admitted when the subject matter is philosophical. We ought, I think, to be on guard against some of our English colleagues who by precept and example would bring all philosophical debate into the do­ main of belles lettres. I want to leave no false impression : so far as their program can be achieved without sacrifice in the com­ munication of philosophical ideas·, to say nothing of those in­ stances where it genuinely aids this process, I a m enthusiastically for it. But it easily becomes doctrinaire in its own fashion and

kills the possibility of continued, refined distinctions that often are the crucial lines separating rival philosophies. However, to repeat myself, communication, even between phi­ losophers, is not the present issue. Ordinary language is being considered, not as a medium of intellectual intercourse, but as a basis for the appraisal of competing philosophies. In this con­ text we must avoid any suggestion of derogation of systems whose special diction, if substituted for the vernacular, might hinder rather than expedite communication. The whole notion of replacing everyday speech by some philosophically ideal lan­ guage is here irrelevant. The special speech-forms of given sys­ tems are those systems and they are to be judged by reference to ordinary language in some other manner than as its rivals­ they compete with one another for its blessing, so to speak. What do we look for in our daily talk to serve as our philo­ sophical criterion? In the long history of philosophical recourse to common sense there have been, roughly, two major emphases. The first has been upon the content of commonsensical beliefs. The second, for whose clear recognition as distinguishable from the first we must thank the recent development of linguistic analysis, has been upon the forms of everyday thinking as re­ vealed in ordinary speech. Its Content.-The first has had, by and large, a record of gradual retreat and circumscription. If we consider our own Western traditions we cannot avoid being impressed with the number of items our forefathers accepted without question which we today generally either reject or put out of m · ind: local divini­ ties, demons, heaven and hell, purposes in nature, the diurnal revolutions of the heavens. If these are examples of the sort of things forming the touchstone for philosophic theory, we philos­ ophers are in a bad way and merit the disrespect of those who consider our calling completely outmoded by the development of modern science. Nevertheless, this sort of appeal to common sense, despite its recurrent defeat as regards specific items of belief, has persisted into the present century. The phenomenon can be explained in part, perhaps, by the failure to keep the first utilization of common sense distinct from the second, to­ gether with the associated want of a clear separation of em­ pirical from categorial m · atters. A case in point is, I think, the earlier writings of G .. E. Moore.

[ 152 ]

In his recently published lectures given at Morley College, Lon­ don, in 1 9 1 0-1 1 (Some Main Problems of Philosophy) , especially in the first lecture in which he deals with the general nature of philosophy, Moore's resort to the content of common sense beliefs is fundamental. Philosophy is there treated as a sort of cosmolog­ ical taxonomy, a classification of the main kinds of things the universe contains. And although his dominant purpose, at first, is just to characterize different philosophical systems by reference to the items they would subtract from or add to the contents of the universe as judged by ordinary beliefs, as he progresses in his lectures it becomes fairly evident that he wishes to side with common sense. This is perhaps somewhat complicated by the fact that, as he proceeds from describing to doing philosophy, he passes from taxonomy to analysis, and the test of the latter, beyond the fact that it must not lead to a denial of commonsensi­ cal knowledge, is not made plain. Moreover, he distinguishes, as just intimated, between common knowledge and common be­ lief, and by this means is able to dispose of certain widespread primitive beliefs ( which we now "know" were wrong) and even certain contemporary ones ( such as the belief in the existence of God) which, though very generally and sometimes firmly ac­ cepted, cannot be said to be knowledge. However, what com­ monsensical knowledge possesses but commonsensical belief lacks, unless it be just the added belief that we know and not merely believe, is not elucidated. If it be something else and fundamentally different from widespread acceptance, for ex­ ample, if it be a matter of self-evidence or of some intuition on Moore's part, then we are outside common sense as our ultimate arbiter. If we ask Moore what is the test of a belief's being common­ sensical he seems to answer in these lectures ( though I am not aware that he explicitly raised the question) that it is a matter of "so many people" believing it. And this, in turn, is determined simply by reference to his own general acquaintance with peo­ ple's convictions. Now I do not wish to appear hypercritical, but if there are many millions of people living today ( and this is itself an item of commonsensical belief for Moore) and if, de­ spite his sensitivity for everyday thinking, Moore is an academi­ cian with at least some of the restrictions of social contact that this implies, his interpretation of the content of common sense is [ 15 3

]

not beyond challenge. And if challenged there seems nothing to do, in this general framework, save to employ more reliable methods of ascertaining what it is that people do generally be­ lieve. The American pollsters and public opinion analyzers have at hand such methods. With their more refined procedures of sampling, they also offer the possibility of a quantitative defini­ tion of common sense : it can be specified exactly how widespread a belief must be to become an item of common sense, just as the Roman church can specify the minimum number of attested miracles necessary for sainthood. I am perhaps being a little ironical here, but with all due respect to Professor Moore, just what would be the objection to supplementing his method in the manner indicated, particularly in the case of those beliefs about which he finds it difficult to decide whether they form part of common sense? Frankly, I think the incongruity of the combination of G. E. Moore with the American pollsters arises, at least in part, from the basically non-empirical character of Moore's problem. If he were genuinely interested in what people believe, as a fact, he would need and welcome a more scientific procedure than he has ever practiced. But this is not, I am personally convinced, his real concern. He no more wishes to determine whether God or phys­ ical things exist, in the sense of "exist" in which dodos have ex­ isted but do not now, by finding out the number of people who believe in them ( or even believe that they know that they exist) than he would want to decide by this method whether the birds just mentioned are inhabitants of the universe. He talks as though one could treat the objects of philosophical inquiry on all fours with dinosaurs and anti-protons; yet he comes up with the queer conclusion that by ascertaining what people believe we can find out whether the former exist, although he never suggests this method for the latter. My conviction is that right from the first he is involved in non-empirical matters, in what he calls "analysis." His appeal to common sense is not to determine what exists, in some ordinary and empirical sense, but to set up a test of philosophical analysis. There is imbedded in common sense a sort of level of analysis with which philosophy, however ·much more refined, must agree, for it furnishes the criterion by which controversy at the latter level may be settled, so far, at least, as it [ 1 54 ]

involves parties to it whose thought is in conflict with the analy­ sis found in common sense. I grant that this interpretation does not tally perfectly with what Moore explicitly says, but it makes sense of what he does, whereas if he is taken strictly at his word, he seems to be playing a game_ with mixed rules. In any case it furnishes a transition to the second type of commonsensical philosophy, that which ap­ peals not to the content of everyday beliefs to adj udicate philo­ sophical disputes but to the forms of everyday thought as revealed in the resources of ordinary language. The trouble with the former was partly that common sense has so frequently been proven wrong in what it has accepted that one hesitates to trust it as a guide in what remains. Superficially this is extremely damaging ; but it actually covers a much worse de­ fect. Common sense really has no beliefs about the things that philosophically matter, that divide philosophical schools and con­ stitute the moot questions of their disputes. This statement is it­ self, of course, controversial, and presupposes that philosophy has a special subj ect matter-what I have called, following a long tradition, the "categories. " It assumes that categorial issues are different from empirical. This has already been argued and the issue need not be reopened here. Its Forms.-But if common sense has no beliefs about catego­ ries, how can it furnish criteria for the evaluation of categorial systems ? My answer is that we are to look not at what common sense accepts but how it accepts it ; we are to consider the form rather than the content of commonsensical beliefs. To do this we must turn to the language of common sense-to what I earlier called its total resources, so far as these are used to say anything about the world ( including, of course, the human world) and so far as they cannot be simplified without essential loss. These show the tacit categorial commitments of common thought. There may be other ways of getting at our everyday modes of thinking about and referring to the world, but none, so far as I can see, as reliable. Certainly any direct procedure of questioning or interview is obj ectionable, for if practiced upon the philosoph­ ically sophisticated it would elicit only their articulated, system­ atic commitments rather t�an their ingrained, normal patterns of thought, and if applied to the unsophisticated would prove only, I venture to predict, that they have not thought about such [ 1 55 ]

matters and find it extremely odd that anyone should ask them to do so. I am maintaining then that the way common sense thinks about the world is revealed in the "grammar" of everyday speech, and it is primarily here that we can find our relatively external grounds for choice between rival categorial systems. Here there are imbedded our unsophisticated or "natural" categories; to put it differently, in its repertory of devices of assertion, primarily although not exclusively its syntactical features, taken in the broadest sense of this phrase including all the chief ways it has of saying things, ordinary language is already a first and uncon­ scious analysis.Not, of course, an analysis of language, but of the world.To speak this way may sound odd and disturbing to some members of the analytic movement, but I submit that analysis of language, so far as it has philosophical as contrasted with philo­ logical or purely logical import, is always also analysis of what language talks about. Common sense has chosen to speak about the world by using certain linguistic forms; it has thus uncon­ sciously committed itself; it is these commitments, it seems to me, that offer us the best standard for appraising our conscious, articulated philosophical systems. For several reasons this basis seems to me better than the others considered earlier-with the possible exception of unso­ phisticated personal experience. (Need I warn again that we have here not "proofs" but lines of persuasion ?) In the first place, it has an inherent inclusiveness that they lack. This is especially notable when comparing it with modern sci­ ence. As was mentioned, science is interested only in uniformities of facts. It disregards particulars as such, and has successfully rid itself of value considerations, as I have tried to show in Modern Science and Human Values. Not so for the "grammar of com­ mon sense," as I have argued in What Is Value? In the second place, it has a kind of objectivity-social and methodological-that is extremely desirable in the philosophical enterprise. Here it must no doubt share honors with science, but we must avoid a serious mistake. In its own undertaking science has achieved an objectivity that philosophy, whose task is a differ­ ent one, can never hope to attain; but we are now speaking of the specifically philosophical job and considering science only as offering something in this connection. I am not at all convinced

that the concepts of science or even the modes of thinking in sci­ ence are any more objective for the purpose of making categorial choices ( as contrasted with empirical discoveries) than are the grammatical forms of ordinary speech. However that may be, the present desideratum very clearly elevates these latter above any recourse ( such as the phenomenological) to pure experience. The tendency to shape supposedly unbiased experience to conform to one's special philosophical commitments is so impressive when one considers it, that it leaves one skeptical as to the value of such experience as a neutral and external test of these commitments. This advantage in objectivity carries with it a benefit in the matter of communication. So far as communication between phi­ losophers is a matter simply of ordinary understanding of one another ( which is quite compatible with even very profound dis­ agreement), the problem of promoting it is perhaps irrelevant to our present purpose. But to the extent that philosophic discussion seeks and perhaps finally presupposes at least . some categorial agreement, to that same extent any help received in this matter is a credit in favor of its source. Here again-if this really is a different point-the grammar of common sense scores higher than the phenomenology of pure experience or the idiosyncrasies of personal awareness. Finally ( and this, to my mind, is the most effective considera­ tion), it is the grammar of common sense, combined, as I have suggested, with the structure of our unsophisticated experience, which most generally actually functions as that which is given to philosophers of different persuasions, however little they may ac­ knowledge this common ground even to themselves. That this is an ad hominem argument does not perturb me too much, for reasons already presented and, specifically, because I am not criti� cizing the logical abilities of individual opponents but exposing what seems to me to be a very nearly inescapable predicament of us all. There is always the possibility that domination of philoso­ phers' thought by the syntax of common sense is nothing more than colossal accident, so to speak-it may be just the fact that they need to communicate and that they can do so finally only in those forms of speech and experience they share, and thus that their thinking, however resolutely they try to make it individual and peculiar, falls ultimately into everyday patterns and uses them, at least unconsciously, as tests. I think there is something [ 1 57

]

more to it than this, though I cannot prove it (beyond adding another ad hominem to the effect that anyone saying that this is all has, in so doing, committed himself to some of the funda­ mental categories of common sense). Consider the stir created by the logical paradoxes. There was a time when a certain school thought that the construction of an ideal language that would avoid them was a necessary if perhaps not quite sufficient criterion of complete philosophical success. As we look back we are, I dare say, somewhat amused by this ex­ traordinary lack of balance, but that is not my present concern. Taking them seriously and admitting that a perfectly acceptable philosophy will have a way of avoiding them, I want to ask, What do these paradoxes amount to and why are they to be avoided? Insofar as they can be viewed as merely logical phe­ nomena, in the sense of formal contradictions logicians have en­ countered in constructing their systems, philosophers may per ... haps disregard them in pursuing their own ( categorial) investi­ gations. But there is patently something more to them than this. In the first place, their source, so the logicians tell us, is the for­ malization of everyday grammar. Most if not all of them arise from the admission, quite consonant with common speech, of re­ flexive or self-referring expressions and are objectionable, from a philosophical standpoint, because of their clash with common sense. They disturb us because they involve us in contradictions. But what is the trouble with contradictions? I submit the the­ sis that it lies deeper than formal inconvenience or even the de­ struction of the possibility of any formalism, if the latter is a con­ sequence. It is, of course, said that everything follows from a contradiction, that the trouble therefore is that a self-contradic­ tory proposition implies every other. But technically this is the case only for certain logics, namely, those that make implication equivalent to the relation, "either the falsity of the implicans or the truth of the implicate," or some analogue, such as Lewis's strict implication. Of course the issue is more fundamental if one accepts, as I suppose every logician actually does, freedom from contradiction as a test of the goodness of any formalism, as one of the things we want a logic for. Even granted this, however, it is conceivable that one could settle for less than one hundred per cent. One could specify that a satisfactory formalism is to avoid all contradictions of certain sorts, or all other than a group of

designated ones ( say those present in the well-known logical paradoxes themselves) . This w·ould no doubt make the construc­ tion of logics a curiously ad h oc game ; still it could be played. Nevertheless it would be quite unacceptable as a serious proposal. Why this purity of spirit, this demand for complete elimination of contradiction from any really respectable system of thought ? I am convinced it rests on the grammar of common sense, which has it that to assert and deny exactly the same thing is to say nothing at all, indeed, even worse, to say something (how else can I put it ? ) self.-contradictory. Moreover, it is this author­ ity that condemns any system that produces or implies a contra­ diction as itself saying nothing, or rather affirming a contradic­ tion, at least in those portions logically involved in this result. I perhaps have made too much of this example-surely many others could have been chosen ( such as our common prej udices in favor of the existence of other minds, external things, the past, and, to come closer to the present inquiry, a world external to, but the referent of, our everyday language itself) to illustrate how in our philosophical debates we actually do trust, as a kind of neutral j udge, the forms of our everyday thought. In some broad fashion the patterns of ordinary speech show us the way-this is pretty much the common though usually implicit assumption un­ derlying our philosophical controversies, in so far as they are looked upon as in any way resolvable by appeal . to a disinterested party. I am, I believe, simply asking that we face and formulate this fact, that we change it from an implicit to an explicit com­ mitment. The case of contradiction is particularly good, how­ ever, since it shows how our common speech demands ( through its rej ection of contradictions) its own purification ( since the logical paradoxes arise from usages it allows) . As I have re­ marked, this is ·my answer to those who claim that the method I advocate is irresponsible-sticking by ordinary language when to one's purpose, "clarifying" it as one desires when not. Of course it must be admitted that j ust how one is to bring everyday modes of thought and speech into a self-harmonious pattern is not itself already clearly revealed in the grammar of our mother tongue, not even when that is brought into complete agreement with natural experience. But what would you have ? The philosopher should be left some j ob to perform. Moreover, I reiterate : I have not avoided all commitments. I [ 1 59

]

accept the charge that in appealing to everyday experience as re­ vealed in the resources of ordinary language I am already on categorially challengeable ground. I only say that I have post­ poned this predicament as long as possible (much longer than many others) , and made it consist of something it is almost in­ decent for any philosopher to deny. For must he not talk and debate with others? And, however technical and peculiar his jar­ gon, is he not forced to recast it somewhere, at some primitive level, in the form of his mother tongue and the inherited cate­ gories of his everyday experience ? Suppose, now, the point to be granted. Just what does it involve in the way of a program or method of carrying on philosophy? In a sense, the best I can do is to refer to studies I hope will ap­ pear soon which use this approach. But there are one or two remarks that may clear away some relatively simple misappre­ hensions. First, the grammar of common sense is to serve as the founda­ tion, not the whole structure of our building, or, to change the metaphor, it is the court and not one of the litigants. In it, cate­ gorial analysis is still at the unconscious, uncriticized level. Second, the philosopher, in his critical and systematic job, is not simply to reproduce at the conscious level what is present uncon­ sciously in the syntax of ordinary speech, and this for at least two reasons. Everyday language serves many purposes, as the infor­ malists have rightly if somewhat tiresomely reiterated-ceremo­ nial, moral, artistic, practical. It is much more than a medium for expressing, through communicaiton of ideas, our common ways of thinking about the universe and its various constituents. I do not mean to assume, in fact I emphatically deny, that the last-mentioned function is ordinarily distinguished from others; in everyday contexts it is not, so it is a task of the philosopher, in his, to abstract it and mark it out. Moreover, even in this aspect, the grammar of common sense is not to be taken uncritically-it is often at war with itself. It is this which justifies, if done moderately and with a proper sense of perspective, the construction of philosophically ideal languages. As I have argued elsewhere, these "languages" cannot be judged by any direct comparison of them with the structure of reality, since the latter is, unfortunately, not available to direct inspec­ tion. But to say that they are to be evaluated by reference to the [ 16o ]

grammar of common sense is not to deny them a clarificatory, that is a clean-up, function. How can this be, and what is its test ? The answer, however difficult in detail, is profoundly simple and I feel even uncontro­ versial in general. It is precisely common sense that demands this purification and serves as its test. This has been already indi­ cated in the instance of the so-called logical paradoxes : it is our common modes of thought that have engendered them but also rej ect them. There is, then, when rightly understood, no contra­ diction in saying both that everyday language furnishes our ulti­ mate standard and that it needs not only formulation but "clari­ fication," that is, correction. Third, our program does not, in any primary sense, immedi­ ately plunge us into an empirical study of natural languages. I do not for a moment deny that our knowledge of what I have called the grammar of common sense is a matter at least in part of observation, but I submit that anyone sufficiently literate to un­ dertake the philosophical enterprise has already acquired enough empirical data of the kind required. What is now needed is not a piling up of more facts but a clearer understanding of those al­ ready at hand. This might, of course, be granted as far as the philosopher's native tongue is concerned and perhaps also related languages. But should not the occidental philosopher undertake a study of oriental and primitive languages if he is to be equipped to carry on his j ob in the manner advocated above ? There may be, and indeed I insist that there is, a point here, but I think it is easily exaggerated and, what is worse, used for the wrong purpose. So far as this sort of investigation is called for, it must be directed to profound and subtle syntactical differences of the sort indi­ cated, differences in ways of talking and thinking about the world that escape translation into the philosopher's native lan­ guage precisely because the grammar of the latter will not allow their expression. This means that no superficial and second-hand acquaintance will do ; the philosopher must know the foreign language in the way he does his mother tongue-having lived with people to whom it is native and come to think as they do. Having done this, the job would then again become self-explora­ tory. There is a possible outcome of such an enterprise that must be [ 161 ]

honestly faced. It may be that with the sympathetic understand­ ing of exotic languages it will be seen that there are few, perhaps no common categorial features of all vernaculars. This seems rather unlikely in view of the relative success of anthropologists in learning to speak diverse primitive tongues, but the investiga­ tions and speculations of Wharf and his disciples have opened this as a conceivability. The extreme, it seems to me, would be the necessity of admit­ ting in the domain of ordinary language something strikingly similar to that which has forced itself upon us in the region of philosophical discourse : we would find ourselves in a categorio­ centric predicament. We are not of course concerned with any practical difficulties that might ensue in trafficking with exotic people, nor for that matter with theoretical handicaps of the sci­ entific variety, such as those that would obstruct the anthropolo­ gist's investigations. We want to ask ourselves what this would mean for us philosophers and, more particularly, for us philoso­ phers of the common-sense and common-speech variety. There can be no denying that it would give us some trouble: we would be much better off if we were to be assured by the ex­ perts and, finally, by our own experience (if we could gain it) that there is a modicum of the categorial framework of all ver­ naculars that is common or highly analogous, and that this can be treated as what is given to all philosophical systems and as something with which they must finally square. But in any case, we can point out that we are considering and talking about this very contingency ( of a set of natural languages which in their basic grammars are categorially exclusive and wholly disanalo­ gous), and doing it in fairly idiomatic English. Moreover we are able to grasp and even state the view that the structure of natural experience is not merely revealed in, but is actively shaped by, the grammars of these vernaculars. We thus in some sense transcend relativity to our own native tongue. However, all of this is extremely hypothetical, and speculative considerations of what we niight have to do if we were to arrive at certain results upon acquiring a sympathetic understanding of the languages and outlooks of exotic peoples had perhaps at the moment best be set aside. Whether and to what degree the kind of project mentioned may finally be demanded, it does not seem to me to be an issue for immediate concern. There is enough to

be undertaken in even a preliminary roughing-in of our program if we take English as our natural language. The chief thing to be done now is to note what we (English-speaking philosophers) are genuinely committed to categorially in our own everyday thinking. This can serve as an illustration or instance, at least, of philosophic method. Where does this leave us ? The present section has concerned itself with the question of an external ground and basis of j udg­ ment of philosophical systems, with that which may be said to be given to them ( as contrasted with anything which may serve as "the given" within them) . We noted that to adopt such con­ cepts as "giving" and "the given" involves us, willy-nilly and at least to some extent, in the grammar of their everyday use. Let us, briefly, consider how we may have committed ourselves in the position so far sketched as regards that which is given to all philosophical systems alike. Whatever is given is in everyday parlance a gift. The recipient accepts it ; he surely is not himself its source or creator. This fits well enough with the function we have ascribed to the grammar of common sense. It is not the creature of philosophers or their systems, except for a modicum of clarification which it itself de­ mands. Allied to this, a gift implies a giver, someone external to him who receives it. So in our case, there is an external source of ev­ eryday language and its syntax. It is, of course, the everyday world of people talking, and, more specifically, talking to some extent about the world in which they live. If it be pointed out that this is not really or in every sense external to the system al­ ready taking sh ap e in this book, the proper reply is acquiescence, but with a reservation. To speak of people talking about the world and needing a language with grammar to do so involves one in categorial commitments, but they are at a level which in some very genuine sense is common to various more specific philosophical systems. It is good form grammatically, as well as socially, that the re­ ceiver of a gift accept it, make it part and parcel of his possessions, and, though this perhaps is going beyond the most comprehen­ sive construction, do something with it which, without modify­ ing it beyond recognition, makes it distinctively his own. So with the forms of vernacular speech on the program advocated above.

They ar:e to be elucidated and even to some degree corrected. Stylistic variations, features due to noncognitive purposes, are to be put aside, but the modifications instituted are not to destroy completely the grammar of the philosophical layman. In all the ways just mentioned., the use of the grammar of common sense as that which shall serve as the externally given basis of philosophical systems accords with the everyday gram­ mar of "giving." In another way, however, to speak of it as that which is given to philosophers may be m · isleading. The objec­ tionable connotation, however, does not come directly from com­ mon speech but from philosophic habits, borrowed perhaps from the more specific context of the classroom and textbook. What is given may, in the latter, mean what is granted, and thus, for the problem or task at hand, beyond question. From some such a context, perhaps, many philosophers endow the given in their thinking with indubitability and incorrigibility. The given is fre­ quently made equivalent to the certain. So far as this is the case for any philosopher, I think it best to treat what he calls "the given" as something internal to his system, for whether there is any knowledge whatever that is certain surely constitutes an is­ sue of the first magnitude between philosophers. The grammar of common sense united with the structure of our natural experience forms, I suggest, the highest court. Beyond it there is no appeal. But its verdicts are not certainly true; it it­ self challenges them; it does not speak with one voice; and since we are concerned with matters of truth and not merely legal de­ cision, we must acquiesce to the insecurity this finally forces upon us.

References and Acknowled gments The references in this list arc not exhaustive ; they are meant to locate quoted or summarized passages where the text itself is not sufficiently explicit. I wish to thank the publishers for permission to quote passages noted. PREFACE

p. v Plato, Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett {Oxford : Oxford University Press) , Book V. p. v Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1953) , pp. 49e, 19e. Quoted by per­ mission of the publisher. II p. 28 Gilbert Ryle, "Systematically Misleading Expressions," reprinted in Logic and Language, First Series, ed. Antony Flew (Oxford : Basil Black­ well, 1955) , p. 35 ; cf. also The Concept of Mind (London : Hutchinson's University Library, 1949) , pp. 15 ff. CHAPTER

p. 31 Willard Quine, From a Logical Point of View {Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1953) , pp. 1 0, 1 3, 1 2. Quoted by permission of the publisher. III pp. 44-45 G. E. Moore, in Contemporary British Philosophy, Second Series, ed J. H. Muirhead (London : Allen & Unwin, 1925) , p. 21 8. CHAPTER

p. 45 0. K. Bouwsma, in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (New York : Tudor Publishing Co., 1942) , p. 206. Quoted by permission of the editor. p. 51 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1922) , 4.003, 4. 1 , 4. 1 1 , 4. 1 1 1 . p . 54 lbid., 6. 12, 6.1 24. p. 54 Rudolph Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language (London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1 937) , p. 8. Quoted by permission of the publisher.

p. 55 Ibid., pp. 298--99, 303, 3 1 4-1 5. p. 56 Ibid., p. 308. p. 58

Wittgenstein, Philosophical In vestigations, pp. 45e, 56e n., 23oe.

p. 59 Ibid., p. 5oe. p. 60 Ibid., p. 59e. p. 61 n. P. E. B. Jourdain, Th e Philosophy of Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll (London : Allen & Unwin, 191 8) , pp. 54, 3 1 . p . 62 Wittgenstein, Philosophical In vestigations, pp. 3 1 e-32e. p. 65 Ibid., p. 3 1 e. p. 69 John Wisdom, Philosophy and Psych o-analysis (New York : Philo­ sophical Library, 1 953) , p. 269. p. 69 Friedrich Waismann, in Contemporary British Philosophy, Third Series, ed. H. D. Lewis (London : Allen & Unwin, 1 956) , p. 489. p. 70 Wisdom, op. cit., p. 1 1 9. p. 70 Waismann, op. cit., pp. 489-90. CHAPTER

IV

p. 74 William James, Selected Papers on Philosophy (New York : Every­ man's Library, 1 9 1 7) , pp. 1 25, 1 26. p. 75 William James, Pragmatism (New York : Longmans, Green, 1 921 ) , PP· 6-8. p. 76 Ibid., p. 45. pp. 81-82 Morris Lazerowitz, The Structure of Metaphysics (London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1 955) , p. 67. Quoted by permission of the publisher. p. 82 Ibid., p. 70. p. 85

Ibid., pp. 35, 66, 73.

pp. 85-86 I bid., p. 78. p. 90 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York : Philosophical Library, 1956) , p. 285. p. 91

Ibid., pp. 40, 553.

p. 92 I bid., pp. 84, 484-85. V p. 99 G. E. Moore, "Some Judgments of Perception," reprinted as chap. vii in Philosophical Studies (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1 922) . CHAPTER

[ 166 ]

p. 99 G. E. Moore's The Morley College Lectures were published as Some Main Problems of Philosophy {London : Allen & Unwin, 1953) . p. 1 09 Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (New York : W. W. Norton & Co., 1940) , p. 1 7 1 . CHAPTER

VI

p. 143 Karl Marx, Selected Works, ed. V. Adoratsky (New York : In­ ternational Publishers, n.d.) , I, 471 , 473.

Index A priori, 1 6, 1 7 ff., 1 1 8 ff., 1 3 4 ff. Abstractions, 1 4 5 Absurdity ; see Nonsense Agreement, 99 Analytic, 1 5 ff., n 8, 1 2 1 ff. ; see also Tautology Anguish ; see Anxiety Anxiety, 90, 9 1--92 Aquinas, Thomas, 3-4, 1 1 7, 1 43 Aristotle, 2-3 , 36, 67, 1 1 7 Augustine, St., 60 Authority, 1 43-44 Ayer, A. J., 1 05 Basic proposition, 1 09-1 0 Berkeley, George, I 1 6 Black, Max, 96 Bohnert, Herbert, 3 8 Bouwsma, 0. K., 45 Bradley, F. H., 1 2, 3 2, 67, 86, 1 1 7 Buck, Roger, 96 Carnap, Rudolph, 7 n., 9 , I 5, 22, 50, 54-56, 1 40 Cassirer, Ernst, 1 45 Categorial : analysis, 1 24, 1 54 ff. ; com­ mitment, 7, 9 ff., 1 6, 22 ff., 26 ff., 4 1 ff., 72 ff., l I 5, 1 20 ff., 1 27, 1 33 ff., 1 5 5 ff., 1 60 ; mistake, 28-3 0 ; sen­ tences, 6-7, 7 ff., 1 2 ff., 1 5 ff., 20 ff., 1 20-2 1 ; system (see Philosophical system) Categories, 2 ff., 94 ff. ; and empirical concepts, 6 ; native and foreign, 26 ff. Catcgorio-centric predicament, 8, 1 5, 1 40-42, 1 62 Certainty, 94-1 27, 1 64 Change, 8 1-8 2 Clarification, of ordinary language, 1 59 ff.

Common sense, 98 ff., I 49 ff. ; see also Language, ordinary Communication, 1 47, 1 5 1 -52, 1 57 Concreteness, 1 1 1 Consciousness, 86-g2 ; privacy of, 1 08 ; see also Experience, immediate Contradiction, 1 02, 1 5 8-59 ; as a mark of categorial mistake, 28-3 0 ; and cer­ tainty, 1 1 8-1 9 Controversy ; see Philosophical controversy Datum, 1 33-3 4 Descartes, Rene, 69, I 04 Designation, 1 1 3-1 5 Dewey, John, 60, 94 Emotionalism, and categorial commit­ ment, 38-39 Empirical : concepts, 6 ; sentences, 6-7, 1 2 ff., 22 ff., 50, 60, 96, 98 ff., 1 4 8 ; see also Sense sentences Epictetus, 9 1 Essence, 47-48 Existence, 4 ff., 20 ff., 48, 88--90, I 45, 1 54 Existential sentences, 20-2 1 Existentialism, 86-g3 Experience : everyday, 43-46; immediate, 1 06 ff. ; personal, 1 48-50 External world, 1 03-4 Fact, 5 1 , 53, 1 05, 1 1 7 ; general, 5 8-59 Facticity, 89--90, 92 Family-resemblance, 65-68 Fiction, 35 For-itself, 86 ff. Formal mode, 7 ff., 55-5 6 Free will, 76-77

Games ; see Language game Given, 20, 1 1 5-1 8, 1 29-64 Grammar, and categorial commitment, 3 6-3 7, 1 3 0 ff., I 5 6 ff. Grounds, of philosophical systems, 1 42 ff., 1 5 6 ff. ; see also Given ; Phi­ losophical proofs Hamilton, William, 79, 8 1 Hartshorne, Charles, 2 7 Heraclitus, 79-80 Hume, David , 1 04 , 13 8, 1 3 9 Husserl, Edmund , 43 , 47-50 , 60 H ypostatization, 1 3 4 Ideal language ; see Language, ideal Indubitability ; see Certainty Insight, 5 2 , 69-7 1 Intentionalism, 1 1 7 James, William , 60, 72-73 , 74-79 Jourdain, P. E. B ., 6 1 Kant, Immanuel , 2 , 1 3 4-3 7, 1 3 9 Language : correct, 1 5 0 ; empirical study of, 1 6 1-62 ; formal, 50-5 6 ; game, 59 ff. ; ideal , 5 2-53 , 5 8 , 59, 1 5 8 , 1 606 1 ; informal, 5 6-69 ; ordinary, 5 8 ff., 96, 1 0 1 ff., 1 29 ff., 1 46 ff.,_ 1 5 o ff. ; proposal, 80-8 1 ; reference �f, 63 ff. ; rules, 59, 62-63 ; use, 60 Lazerowitz, Morris, 2 1 , 73 , 79-8 6 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 67 Lenin, V. I., 1 43 Lewis, C . I . , 1 04-5 , 1 3 5-3 7 Lexicon, and categorial commitment, 37-3 8 Locke, John, u 6 Logical : paradoxes, 1 5 8-59, 1 6 1 ; rule, 1 22 ff. ; sentences, 53-54 ; see also Pos­ itivism, logical Look , 8 8 , 90 Malcolm, Norman, 2 1 , 96, 9 8, 1 0 1 ff., I I8

Marx , Karl, 1 43 Material mode, 7 ff., 1 5 ff., 2 0 ff., 55-56 Meinong, Alexius von, 5 1 Metaphysics; see Categorial commit­ ment Mill, John Stuart, 79-80, 8 1 , 1 I I Misrecognition, 1 1 4-1 5

1 22 ff. Moore, G . E., 1 2, 1 3-1 4 , 20-2 1 , 26, 3 0 , 44-46 , 9 8 ff., l 1 6, 1 3 7, 1 39 , 1 5 2-5 5 Morris, Charles, 1 3 Modus po nens,

Name-relation, 5 8 , 65 Names, 3 2-3 5 Necessary connection, 1 2 1 Negativity, 8 6-89 Nonsense, 26-2 8 , 3 0, 50-5 1 , 5 5 , 8 0 , 8 3 Normative sentences, 3 6-3 7 Nothing, 8 7-8 9 Ordinary language ; see Language, ordinary Other, 88 -g o Oxford English Dictio nary, 3 , 1 29-33 Parmenides, 79-82, 8 5 , 8 8 Pegasus, 3 2-3 4 Perplexity ; see Psychotherapy Phenomenalism, 1 04 ff., 1 3 7-3 8 Phenomenology, 46-50, 60, 1 5 7 Philosophical : controversy, 1 8-1 9, 26, 73 , 77-78 , 80-8 1 , 83-8 4, 1 03-4 , 1 201 3 9 , 1 4 0, 1 49, 1 5 1 , 2 1 , 1 27-2 8 , 1 54 ff. ; disciplines, 3-4 ; proofs, 1 40 ff., 1 56 ; systems, 1 ff., 22 ff., 4 1 , 60, 70-7 1 , 72 ff. , 1 27, 1 3 8 ff. ; see also Categorial Philosophy, comparative, vii, 73 Physicist, 1 46-4 7 Pickwick, Samuel, Esq., 3 4 Pitch, 1 1 6-1 7 Plato, 67, 8 8 Pollsters, American, 1 5 4 Positivism, logical, 1 6 , 1 8 , 1 9 , 50-56, 64 , 80, 83 Possibilities, 1 24 ff. Practical, 76 ff. Pragmatism , 74-79 Prall, David, 6 1 Prichard, H. A., 9 6 , 1 1 8 Protocol sentence, 1 07 Psychologism, 73 ff., 8 2 , 9 1-9 2 Psychotherapy, 57, 59 , 6 8-69, 8 2-8 5 Quantification, as a mark of ontological commitment, 3 1 ff. Quine, Willard V., 3 1 -3 5 , 1 05 Rationality, sentiment of, 74-75 Reality, 3 2 , 1 60 Reductive sentences, 2 1 -22

Reference ; see Language, reference of Reid, Thomas, 1 1 0-1 1 Report, of sense data, 1 1 2 ff. ; see a/,so Protocol sentence Rollins, C. D., 9 6 Roman Catholic Church , 1 43-44 Russell, Bertrand, 23 , 27, 36, 1 09-1 0 , 1 3 7-3 8 Ryle, Gilbert, 23 , 24, 27, 28-3 0, 60 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 73, 74, 8 6-93 Schiller, F. C. S . , 6 1 Science, 5 0 ff . , 1 4 4 ff . , 1 5 6-5 7 Self-applicative : expressions, I 5 8 ; sentences, 1 4-1 5 Self-evidence, 1 1 2 Sense content, 1 3 4-3 6 Sense data, 43-46, 1 0 4 ff., 1 3 7-3 8 Sense sentences, 1 0 4 ff. Sentences ; see Analytic ; A prion·; Basic proposition ; Categorial sentences ; Em­ pirical sentences ; Existential sentences ; Protocol sentence ; Reductive sentence ; Self-applicative sentences ; Sense sen­ tences ; Synthetic ; Tautology Similarity ; see Family-resemblance Skepticism, 49-5 0

Stout, G. F., I I 6 Substance, 76 Synthetic , 1 5 ff., 1 1 8 ff. System ; see Philosophical : systems Tautology, 1 23 ff. ; see also Anal ytic ; A priori Temperament, 75 ff. Things-in-themselves, 13 4-3 5 Thomas Aquinas ; see Aqu inas, Thomas Transcendentals, 3-4 , 6 Truth-table, 1 24 ff. Unconscious, 8 1 -83 , 85-8 6 ; see also Psychotherapy Universals, 6 6-6 8, n 6 Value, 1 4 4-45 Vision , n 6 Waismann, Friedrich, 5 9 , 69-7 1 Whitehead , A . N., 67, 1 3 9 Whorf, Benj amin, 3 7-3 8 , 1 50 , 1 62 Wisdom, John, 23-24, 57, 69-7 1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 50-5 4, 56-69 , 1 23 Woozley, A. D., 9 6