Finitude: A Study of Cognitive Limits and Limitations 9783110319651, 9783110319224

Table of contents :
Preface
Chapter One ON FINITUDE AND LIMITATIONS
Chapter Two NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT
Chapter Three UNRULY WORLDS
Chapter FourTHE MEANS AND METHODS OF RATIONALITY
Chapter Five THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC REASON
Chapter 6 PERPLEXING CHOICES
Chapter 7 WISDOM
References
Name Index

Citation preview

Nicholas Rescher Finitude A Study of Cognitive Limits and Limitations

For Barry Smith

Nicholas Rescher

Finitude A Study of Cognitive Limits and Limitations

Bibliographic information published by Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de

North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Eire, Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected]

Livraison pour la France et la Belgique: Librairie Philosophique J.Vrin 6, place de la Sorbonne; F-75005 PARIS Tel. +33 (0)1 43 54 03 47; Fax +33 (0)1 43 54 48 18 www.vrin.fr

2010 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 978-3-86838-073-6 2010 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard Printed in Germany by buch bücher dd ag

CONTENTS Preface Chapter 1: On Finitude and Limitations

1

Chapter 2: Natural Science as a Human Artifact

13

Chapter 3: Unruly Worlds

39

Chapter 4: The Means and Methods of Rationality

53

Chapter 5: The Limits of Naturalistic Reason

63

Chapter 6: Perplexing Choices

77

Chapter 7: Wisdom

89

References

99

Name Index

103

Preface

H

uman finitude and its implications have long been one of the central themes of Western philosophy. The essays gathered together in this volume explore various facets of this not altogether pleasing fact with which we must realistically come to terms. It is tempting to think that even though our physical powers are limited we humans nevertheless have an endless potential for cognitive achievement. There is, however, good reason for acknowledging that this is far from so. And the present book is devoted to showing how this is so. It thus forms part of a long study and many-sided series of investigations designed to probe the limits and limitations of human knowledge. These include • The Limits of Science (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984; 2nd revised edition, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999). • Unknowability (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009). • Ignorance (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). • Error: On our Predicament when Things go Wrong (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). It should be stressed, however, that it is not this writer’s position that one should endorse some versions of scientism. Quite to the contrary! As was strongly stressed in Scepticims: A Critical Reappraisal (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), the idea that knowledge is unattainable finds no support or encouragement in the idea that its acquisition can confront difficulties and obstacles. Several of these essays have been presented on various occasions during recent years (references are given in the footnotes). Because it is my aim to present them as independently self-sufficient readings, some small repetitions occur from time to time. The interests of self-

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

containment render this unavoidable, and it occurs on so small a scale the reader may not even notice. I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her ever-efficient aid in preparing my manuscript for publication. Nicholas Rescher Pittsburgh PA February 2010

Chapter One ON FINITUDE AND LIMITATIONS ________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Various important limitations to human endeavor have come to light in the 20th century. (2) And these often root not in our personal incapacities, but in fundamental limits inherent in nature as when desideratum conflicts also constitute a variant mode of limitation. (3) Then too, the human condition is imperfectable in the face of resistance barriers and diminishing returns. (4) In every direction we turn, the reality of limitations and finitude confronts us. ________________________________________________________ 1. SOME SALIENT LIMITS PAST AND PRESENT

C

ertain recognized infeasibilities have long been on the agenda of rational inquiry. In mathematics, for example, the project of “squaring the circle”—by using only a ruler and compass for the construction of a circle was demonstrated to be impossible by J. H. Lambert in the middle of the eighteenth century.1 Again, in physics, the idea of a perpetual motion machine, which had intrigued theorists since the middle ages, came to grief with the demonstration of its infeasibility during the rise of thermodynamics in the middle years of the nineteenth century.2 And modern physics has such long recognized the impossibility of achieving a perfect vacuum.3 All such impossibilities set insuperable limits to goal achievement and betoken salient limitations that confront us in this world. And this is only the beginning. The twentieth century has witnessed an amazing volume of technological progress that saw mankind attain to a heretofore undreamed-of extent a wide spectrum of longstanding aspirations: harnessing the power of the atom, aerial flight, instant transglobal communication, painless dentistry/surgery, and drudgery-

2

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

free computation, to cite only a few items. But notwithstanding such well-nigh incredible progress in matters of technology, when we turn to theoretical science we see a rather different scene. For here the century presents a picture that focuses on recognizing limits rather than wide-open horizons. The demonstration of impossibilities is in fact among the most strikingly characteristic features of twentieth century science.4 A handful of salient instances that illustrate this fact is given in Display 1, which indicates that there are many things which we might ideally like to do which (as recent science shows) we cannot achieve—transmitting information instantaneously, travel in time to change the past, axiomative arithmetic, predicate atomic disintegrations, fix the position and velocity of very small particles, and so onwards. All of these milestone achievements of the era share the common feature of demonstrating the inherent infeasibility of achieving some desideratum to which practitioners of the discipline at issue had long and often aspired. Such findings had the effect of derailing unrealizable aspirations by the discovery of limits. In this regard, the twentieth century has proven itself to be an era of disillusion where time and again the discovery of limits has thrown a bright and often unwelcome light on our insuperable limitations. And so, despite the vast new vistas of possibility and opportunity that modern science and technology have opened up, there has emerged an ever clearer and decidedly sobering recognition that the region beyond those new horizons is finite—that progress in many directions—be it material or cognitive—has its limits and that we can go only so far in realizing our desires. And it is not unfair to say that the conception of deep limits that lie at the foundation of nature’s modus operandi is a salient leitmotif that runs across the entire landscape of recent science.

ON FINITUDE AND LIMITATIONS

3

Display 1 IMPOSSIBILITY DEMONSTRATIONS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY SCIENCE •

Physics/Relativity: Albert Einstein’s demonstration of the impossibility of physical transmissions faster than the speed of light.

•

Physics: The discovery of irreducibly stochastic processes and the consequent of fundamental randomness of various sectors of nature. Conceivably we can get a firm grip on nature’s laws, but we cannot possibly get one on its facts and the consequent limits of predictability means that surprises are inevitably in store for us.

•

Physics/Quantum Theory: Niels Bohr’s demonstration of the Principle of Complementarity inherent in the infeasibility of a conjointly precise specification of certain physically descriptive parameter (i.e., position and momentum) of physical micro-entities.

•

Psychology: Sigmund Freud’s insistence on the impossibility of self-mastery on grounds of there being no way for our rational conscious deliberation to gain complete control of our psychological processes.

•

Thermodynamics/Cryogenics: Max Plank’s demonstration of the effective impossibility of reaching absolute zero in experimental situations.

•

Cybernetics: Claude Shannon’s demonstration of the impossibility of a flawless (lossfree) transmission of information, any channel having a level beneath which noise cannot be reduced.

•

Mathematics: Kurt Gödel’s demonstration of the impossibility of axiomatizing arithmetic.

•

Computation Theory: Alan Turing’s demonstration of the limits of computability.

•

Social Theory/Economics: Kenneth Arrow’s theorem establishing the impossibility of reconciling social preferability with individual preferences.

2. SOURCES OF FINITUDE: NECESSITY AND INCAPACITY There is nothing inexplicable or baffling about all of those manifold impossibilities. They root in certain fundamental features of reality. And here it emerges that the systematic study of this topic brings to light the operation of certain very general and fundamental processes

4

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

that account for a wide variety of particular cases. In particular, the following five factors figure among the prime sources of finitude: • Necessity • Incapacity • Scarcity (of resources or time) • Uncontrollability — Fate — Chance • Imperfectability — via desideratum conflicts — via resistance barriers

Let us look at the situation more closely—staring at the top. Limits of necessity can root not only in the fundamental principles of logic (logical impossibility) but also in the laws of nature (physical impossibility). For every scientific law is in effect a specification of impossibility. If it indeed is a law that “Iron conducts electricity,” then a piece of nonconducting iron thereby becomes unrealizable. Accordingly, limits of necessity are instantiated by such aspirations as squaring the circle or accelerating spaceships into hyperdrive at transluminal speed. Many things that we might like to do—to avoid ageing, to erase the errors of the past, to transmute lead into gold—are just not practicable. Nature’s modus operandi precludes the realization of such aspirations. We had best abandon them because the iron necessity of natural law stands in the way of their realization. A key limitation of finite creatures relates to limits of capacity. In this regard there are various desiderata that individual finite beings can realize alright but only at a certain rate—so much per hour, or year, etc. Reading, communicating, calculating—there is a virtually endless list of desirable tasks that people can manage within limits. For throughout such matters we encounter a limit to performance—a

ON FINITUDE AND LIMITATIONS

5

point beyond which more efficient realization becomes effectively impossible. Here we have a sort of second-order limit of impossibility. Scarcity is another prime source of limitations. It is not the laws of nature as much as the condition of our planet that precludes diamonds from being as plentiful as blackberries, and truffles as common as mushrooms. Many of the things that people would like to have are matters of scarcity—there is just not enough of them to go around. Not everyone can have their castle in Spain, their personal field of oil wells, and their daily commute along peaceful country lanes. Even fresh, clean air is not all that easy to come by. Many or most resources are in short and limited supply—there is just not enough of them— time, that is to say, lifetime included. In hankering after them, we encounter insuperable limits of scarcity that impel us into some of the unavoidable limitations that manifest our finitude. A vast array of natural processes are such that while they profoundly affect us, they also are matters over which we have no control. Part of this roots in the fate that determines our place on the world’s stage—the time of our birth say, or the genes with which we are equipped, or the people who are our parents and siblings, etc. And then there are the chance occurrences and fortuitous encounters that exert so great an influence on the unfolding of our lives. After all, much of what happens to us in this life is the result of “circumstances beyond our control.” Also prominent among the root causes of insuperable limits is the phenomenon of what might be called desideratum conflicts where in advancing with one positivity we automatically diminish another. What we have here is vividly manifested in the phenomenon of positivity complementarity that obtains when two parameters of merit are so interconnected that more of one automatically means less of the other, as per the following diagram:

Positivity 1

Positivity 2

6

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

The systemic phenomenology at issue here is such that one aspect of merit can be augmented only at the price of diminishing another. Consider a simple example, the case of a domestic garden. On the one hand we want the garden of a house to be extensive—to provide privacy, attractive vistas, scope for diverse planting, and so on. But on the other hand we also want the garden to be small—affordable to install, convenient to manage, affordable to maintain. But of course we can’t have it both ways: the garden cannot be both large and small. The desiderata at issue are locked into a see-saw of conflict. Again, any criminal justice system realizable in this imperfect world is going to have inappropriate negatives through letting some of the guilty off while also admitting false positives by condemning some innocents. And the more we rearrange things to diminish one flaw, the greater scope we give to the other. And so it goes in other situations without number. The two types of errors are locked together in a see-saw balance of complementarity that keeps perfection at bay. A philosophically more germane example arises on epistemology. With error-avoidance in matters of cognition the tradeoff between errors of type 1 and errors of type 2—between false positives and false negatives—is critical in this connection. For instance, an inquiry process of any realistically operable sort is going to deem some falsehoods acceptable and some truths not. And the more we fiddle with the arrangement to decrease the prospect of one sort of error, the more we manage to increase the prospect of the other. It transpires that throughout such cases we have the situation where realizing more of one desideratum entails a correlative decrease in the other. We cannot have it both ways so that the ideal of an absolute perfection that maximizes every parameter of merit at one and the same time is out of reach. In the interest of viability some sort of compromise must be negotiated, seeing that the concurrent maximization of desiderata is now unavoidably unrealizable. And the unattainability of perfection also has other interesting ramifications.

ON FINITUDE AND LIMITATIONS

7

3. IMPERFECTABILITY VIA RESISTANCE BARRIERS AND DIMINISHING RETURNS The utopian idea of human perfection—be it at the level of individuals or of the social order at large—has been with us throughout recorded history.5 After all, it lies in our nature to aspire after ever greater things. But experience and theorizing alike indicate that nothing is clearer than that neither our lives, nor our knowledge, nor yet our morals can ever be brought even remotely near to the pinnacle of perfection. And for good reason. In medicine, life prolongation affords as vivid example, since with the elimination of one form of life-curtailment others emerge that are yet more difficult to overcome. Again, performance in such sports as speed-racing or high-jumping also illustrates this phenomenon of greater demand for lesser advance. Throughout there is a point where every further proportionate step towards an ideal limit becomes increasingly difficult with the result that an exponentially diminishing group of performers will be able to those increasively greater levels of achievement. A fundamental feature of biomedical progress affords a vivid illustration of the situation: The rarer the phenomenon—for example, the negative reaction to a medicament, the less frequently it is encountered in the course of experience, the more difficult—the more costly in terms of time, effort, and resources—its cognitive domestication by way of explanation, prediction, rational systematization will generally prove to be.

And the reason why we cannot predict the extremely rare nonstandard responses is not that they need be inherently inexplicable, but rather that their explanation or prediction become unaffordable through complication—and thereby through the extent to which its realization would require advancing the cognitive state of the art. Our way is blocked by what is, in effect, a resistance barrier—a phenomenon encountered throughout physics with such ventures as the endeavor to create a perfect vacuum, or that of achieving absolute zero in lowtemperature research, or again that of propelling subatomic objects to

8

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

the speed of light with particle accelerators. What is at issue is a fundamental principle of natural philosophy: Limits impose resistance barriers. And this obtains in matters of cognitive penetration as much as in those of physical penetration. The closer we get to that idealized extreme condition, the harder it pushes back in reaction against further progress. And just this sort of resistance is encountered in many areas of ordinary life—as is illustrated by the quest for a perfectly safe transport system or a perfectly efficient employment economy. A crucial aspect of resistance barriers lies in the fact that the more progress one makes along given lines, the more difficult further progress becomes. Resistance barriers inevitably engender cost escalation and diminishing returns. One of the prime instances of a resistance barrier is encapsulated in the phenomenon of entropy—of disorder. For not only does nature “abhor” a vacuum, it does so with order as well. It insists on disorder through something of an entropic principle of dissonance preservation: the more one intervenes in nature to control disorder by compressing it into a more limited area, the more strongly it pushes back and resists further compression. Nature insists upon an ultimately ineliminable presence of chaos and disorder. Resistance barriers involve two aspects: first, an outright impossibility of reaching a certain ideal goal, and second, an effective infeasibility of drawing ever nearer to it because this requires a level of capability (and thus resource investment) that is ever-larger and thereby ultimately bound to outreach the extent of resources at our disposal. Two different albeit interrelated sorts of limits are accordingly at issue here, namely limits of possibility (of unrealizability in principle due to an inherent impossibility) and limits of feasibility (of unrealizability in practice due to a shortfall of resource, time, or capability). In either case, however, the pervasive reality of resistance barriers constitutes a decisive obstacle to the approximation of perfection in practice. 4. A FINITE BEING It is a familiar truism that humans as members of Homo sapiens are finite beings. Many of the things we think desirable and advisable to do are simply unachievable for us.

ON FINITUDE AND LIMITATIONS

9

The idea of overcoming ever-mounting obstacles is inherent in the operation of physical (and consequently economic) factors. The technology of scientific inquiry affords a vivid illustration here. Consider some examples: (1) the increasingly more powerful accelerators needed to push the velocity of particles ever closer to the speed of light in order to probe into the fine internal structure of “fundamental” particles, (2) the increasingly massive, complex, and powerful equipment needed to detect radiation over greater and greater cosmic distances, (3) the increasingly complex and powerful equipment needed to send out and retrieve signals (e.g., to send as sophisticated an “observation apparatus” as a man out even so short a distance as that to the moon), or again (4) the increasingly complex and powerful apparatus needed to produce very low or very high temperatures or pressures, etc. The same underlying principle operates throughout this range—that of the escalating resistance encountered in inquiry into nature, inhering in the physical limits or limitations inevitably encountered in operating our technological instruments of intervention. With many innovative productive processes the realization of further product is inversely proportional to the volume of product that has already been achieved, the amount of effort required to realize further product increases exponentially with the amount of product that has already been realized. This situation is strikingly realized in any branch of literature-based scholarship, where further conditionalities to the literature are expected to take earlier conditions into account. A powerful version of the law of diminishing returns is in operations here. The Law of Logarithmic Returns also connects up with—and is interestingly illustrated by—the idea of a cognitive lifespan as expounded by the sagacious Edward Gibbon in his Memoirs of My Life: “The proportion of a part to the whole is the only standard by which we can measure the length of our existence. At the age of twenty, one year is a tenth perhaps of the time which has elapsed within our consciousness and memory; at the age of fifty it is no more than a fortieth, and this relative value continues to decrease till the last sands are shaken out [of the hour-glass measure of our lifespan] by the hand of death.”6 On this basis, knowledge development is a matter of adding a given percentage increment of what has gone before. Thus fresh expe-

10

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

rience superadds its additional increment ∆E to the preexisting total E in such a way that its effective import is measured by the proportion that movement bears to the total: ∆E/E. And cumulatively we of course have it that this comes to the logarithm of E: ∫ ∆E/E = log E. On such an approach, an increment to one’s lifetime has a cognitive value determined on strict analogy with Daniel Bernoulli’s famous proposal to measure the utility value of incremental economic resources by means of a logarithmic yardstick.7 Even though the actually achieved thought and knowledge of finite beings is destined to be ever finite, it nevertheless has no fixed and determinate limits. Consider an analogy. No matter how far out we go in counting integers, one never gets beyond the range of the finite. Even so with facts. There is a limit beyond which we will never get. But there is no limit beyond which we can never get. For the circumstance that there is always room for linguistic variation—for new symbols, new combinations, new ideas, new truths and new knowledge— creates a potential for pushing our thought ever further. The range of issues operative in these deliberations was already mooted by Immanuel Kant: [I]n natural philosophy, human reason admits of limits “excluding limits,” Schranken) but not of boundaries (“terminating limits,” Grenzen), namely, it admits that something indeed lies without it, at which it can never arrive, but not that it will at any point find completion in its internal progress … [T]he possibility of new discoveries is infinite: and the same is the case with the discovery of new properties of nature, of new powers and laws by continued experience and its rational combination …8

And here Kant was doubtless right. The cognitive range of finite beings is indeed limited. But it is also boundless because it is not limited in a way that blocks the prospect of cognitive access to ever new and continually different facts thereby affording an ever ampler and ever more accurate account of reality. The reality of human limits and limitations is something we have no choice but to accept and take a stand and it is not an unalloyed negativity. For as Leibniz insisted in various contexts, imperfection has a

ON FINITUDE AND LIMITATIONS

11

positive side to it, seeing that it opens the door to the prospect of unending progress and improvement.9 And the tenor or this Leibnizian thinking is nothing new. It roots in the idea of epekstasis prominent in the thought of St. Gregory of Nyssa (b. 335 AD). Where classical Greek thought as typified by Plato and Aristotle saw perfection in changeless stability, Gregory envisioned a superior, Christian ideal of human perfection as a constant progress in wisdom, virtue, and godliness. The extent to which humans can realize such a prospect by our unaided efforts, short of divine aid, has been a bone of much contention throughout much of subsequent Christian theology.10 Potentially, human affairs admit of various sorts of fundamental progress. And the following four areas are doubtless the most important here. • Physical (the capacity to intervene in nature to bring about a change of conditions) • Cognition (the capacity to expand and refine knowledge) • Moral (the capacity to act in ways that are just, fair and appropriate) • Spiritual (the capacity to commune with the nature-transcending fundamentalities of existence.) However, in each of these areas progress is interpreted by obstacles. We have what might be termed resistance barriers inherent in the fact that building further progress in that abandoning mode becomes increasingly difficult. And this situation confronts us with a vivid manifestation of the harsh reality of human finitude. NOTES 1

See Eugen Beutel, Die Quadratur des Kreises (Leipzig/Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1913; 5th ed. 1951); C. H. Edwards, Jr., The Historical Development of the Calculus (New York-Heidelberg-Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1979).

12

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

NOTES 2

See A. W. J. G. Ord-Hume, Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977).

3

See Mary Hesse, “Vacuum and Void,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan and Free Press), Vol. VII (1967), pp. 217–18.

4

For an instructive discussion of relevant issues see John P. Barrow, Impossibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

5

For a lucid and instructive discussion of these issues see John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (London: Duckworth, 1970).

6

Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life (Harmondworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 63.

7

Gibbon’s “law of learning” thus means that a body of experience that grows linearly over time yields a merely logarithmic growth in cognitive age. Thus a youngster of ten years has attained only one-eighth of his or her chronological expected lifespan but has already passed the halfway mark of his or her cognitive expected lifespan.

8

Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, sect. 57. Compare the following passage from Charles Sanders Peirce: “For my part, I cannot admit the proposition of Kant—that there are certain impassable bound to human knowledge … The history of science affords illustrations enough of the folly of saying that this, that, or the other can never be found out. Auguste Comte said that it was clearly impossible for man ever to learn anything of the chemical constitution of the fixed stars, but before his book had reached its readers the discovery which he had announced as impossible had been made. Legendre said of a certain proposition in the theory of numbers that, while it appeared to be true, it was most likely beyond the powers of the human mind to prove it; yet the next writer on the subject gave six independent demonstrations of the theorem.” (Collected Papers, [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–58, 2nd ed.], vol. VI, sect. 6.556.)

9

“Our happiness will never consist, and ought never to consist, in a complete joy which leaves nothing to be desired, and which would stupefy our spirit, but in a perpetual progress to new pleasures and new perfections,” Principles of Nature and of Grace, sect. 18.

10

This paper was initially presented in the Luncheon Lecture series of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in the spring of 2006. It has profited from the constructive comments of several of my colleagues there including Jason Dickinson, Mickey Perloff, and Laura Reutsche.

Chapter Two NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT ________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Natural science as we do and can develop it is based on observing the phenomena of nature. (2) The detection of these phenomena is in great measure dependent on the use of technology. (3) The product of such detection is a function of the process involved. (4) Since future technology is not presently available, we can form no firm idea where the course of scientific discovery will take us in days to come. (5) Natural science is a human artifact, and its nature reflects the limits and limitations under which we labor. ________________________________________________________ 1. THE EXPLORATION MODEL

O

ne must, it is clear, reject the naive idea that natural science is a fixed body of fact revealed to us humans bit by successive bit in its abstract systemic finality. But at the opposite extreme, one must also, it is clear, reject the equally naive idea that natural science is a free creative product of human inventiveness—a species of artistic invention. Instead, science—as an enterprise containing both the methods and products of inquiry—has to be understood in very different terms, namely as a human artifact which, like all other artifacts, is constrained in its nature by the nature of the materials with which its producing artisans have to work. In developing natural science, we humans begin by exploring the world in our own locality—not just our spatial neighborhood but our parametric neighborhood in the “space” of physical variables like temperature, pressure, radiation, and so on. Near our natural “homebase” we are—thanks to the evolutionary heritage of our sensory and

14

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

cognitive apparatus—able to operate with relative ease and freedom, scanning nature for data with the unassisted senses. But in due course we did all that we could manage in this way. To do more, we proceeded to extend our interactive probes into nature more deeply, deploying increasing technical sophistication to achieve increasingly high levels of capability. We have pushed ever further out from our evolutionary home-base in nature toward increasingly remote frontiers. From the egocentric standpoint of our local region of parameter space, we have journeyed ever further to “explore” in the manner of a “prospector” searching for cognitively significant phenomena along the various parametric dimensions. This picture is clearly not one of geographical exploration, but of the physical exploration—and subsequent theoretical rationalization— of “phenomena” which are distributed over the “space” of the physical quantities spreading out all about us. This exploration-metaphor forms the basis of the conception of scientific research as a prospecting search for the new phenomena needed for significant new scientific findings. As the range of telescopes, the energy of particle accelerators, the effectiveness of low-temperature instrumentation, the potency of pressurization equipment, the power of vacuum-creating contrivances, and the accuracy of measurement apparatus increases that is, as our capacity to move about in the parametric space of the physical world is enhanced—new phenomena come into our perception, with the result of enlarging the empirical basis of our knowledge of natural processes. The key to the great progress of contemporary physics lies in the enormous strides made in this regard.1 No doubt, nature is in itself uniform as regards the distribution of its diverse processes across the reaches of parameter space. It does not favor us by clustering them in our parametric vicinity: significant phenomena do not dry up outside our “neighborhood.” But cognitively significant phenomena in fact become increasingly sparse because the scientific mind has the capacity to do so much so well early on. Our power of theoretical triangulation is so great that we can make a disproportionately effective use of the phenomena located in our local parametric neighborhood. But scientific innovation becomes more and more difficult—and expensive—as we push out farther and farther from our evolutionary home-base toward ever more remote frontiers.

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

15

After the major findings accessible at a given data-technology level have been achieved, further major findings become realizable when one ascends to the next level of sophistication in data-relevant technology. We confront a situation of technological escalation. The need for new data constrains us to look further and further from man’s familiar “home-base” in the parametric space of nature. Thus, while further significant scientific progress is in principle always possible there being no absolute or intrinsic limits to significantly novel facts—the realization of this ongoing prospect for scientific discovery demands a continual enhancement in the technological state-of-the-art of data extraction or exploitation. It is of the very essence of the enterprise that natural science is forced to press into ever remoter reaches of parametric space. This ever more far-ranging exploration of the spectra associated with different conditions in nature demands continual increases in physical power. To enable our experimental apparatus to achieve greater velocities, higher frequencies, lower or higher temperatures, greater pressures, larger energy-excitations, stabler conditions, greater resolving power, etc., requires ever more powerful equipment capable of continually more enhanced performance. The sort of “power” at issue will, of course, vary with the nature of the particular parametric dimension under consideration—be it velocity, frequency, temperature, etc. But the general principle remains the same. Scientific progress depends crucially and unavoidably on our technical capability to penetrate into the increasingly distant—and increasingly difficult—reaches of the power-complexity spectrum of physical parameters, to explore and to explain the ever more remote phenomena encountered there. Only by operating under new and previously inaccessible conditions of observational or experimental interactions with nature—attaining ever more extreme temperature, pressure, particle velocity, field strength, and so on—can we bring new impetus to scientific progress. However, it is useful and important to emphasize that this “parametric space” parametrizes the degree of capability on our part to realize conditions at variance from our evolutionary “home-base,” and not simply positions that lie one-sidedly in the constitution of nature per se.

16

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

This idea of the “exploration” of parametric spaces provides a basic framework for the present model of the mechanism of scientific innovation in mature science. New technology increases the range of access within the parametric space of physical processes. Such increased access brings new phenomena to light, and the theoretical systematization of these phenomena is the basis for growth in our scientific understanding of nature. Scientific theory-formation is, in general, a matter of spotting a local regularity of phenomena in parametric space and then projecting it “across-the-board,” maintaining it globally. The theoretical claims of science are themselves never local—they are not spatiotemporally local and they are not parametrically local either. They stipulate how things are always and everywhere. And so it does not require a sophisticated knowledge of statistics to realize that inductive projection of the sort we make in science is invariably a risky enterprise. And it does not require a sophisticated knowledge of history of science to realize that our worst fears are usually realized—that it is seldom if ever the case that our theories survive intact in the wake of extensions in our access to sectors of parametric space. The history of science is a history of episodes of leaping to the wrong conclusion. Given that we can only learn about nature by interacting with it, Newton’s third law of countervailing action and reaction becomes a fundamental principle of epistemology. Everything depends on just how and how hard we can push against nature in situations of observational and detectional interaction. And we cannot “get to the bottom of it” where nature is concerned. Nature always has hidden reserves of power. Successive stages in the technological state-of-the-art of scientific inquiry lead us to different views about the nature of things and the character of their laws. But the sequence of successively more powerful and sophisticated instrumentalities on the side of inquirers need not be matched by any coordinated succession of layers in the constitution of physical existence somehow captured “correctly” by our inquiry at corresponding levels of sophistication. The “layers” we encounter principally reflect our own procedures. Accordingly, it is a wholly unwarranted supposition that there is a sequence of nature-levels placed conveniently alongside our inquiry

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

17

levels, in a parallel coordination, that makes for an elegantly ladderlike configuration. Nature just goes along “doing her thing.” Nature has no layers, no differentiated physical strata or levels.2 The only “layers” now in view are those at issue with the technology of probing—of observation and manipulation—that is used by certain sorts of beings in the course of their interaction with nature. (Nature no more has levels because she reacts differently to different sorts of probes than does an animal which responds differently to different stimuli.) The only physical layers are process-relative, hinging on the character of our modes of observation and manipulation. 2. EXPLORATING POTENTIAL DEPENDS ON TECHNOLOGICAL MEANS As an army marches on its “stomach” (its logistical support), so science depends upon its “eyes”—it is crucially dependent on the technological instrumentalities which constitute the sources of its data. Natural science is fundamentally empirical, and its advance is critically dependent not on human ingenuity alone, but on the monitoring observations to which we can only gain access through increasingly sophisticated interactions with nature. Progress in modern natural science faces the challenging task of climbing ever upward from one level of technological sophistication to the next. Creative genius cannot of itself outrun the course of technological development. Nothing could more emphatically demonstrate the impotence of mere intellect unaided by technological means for the acquisition of empirical data than the fact that nowadays, in many areas of natural science, it is virtually inconceivable that major discoveries (or indeed any original work of real value and interest) should come from some quarter outside the handful of major research centers or institutes. Only they are “on top of the problem” at hand, and only they are privy to the new data generated by the frontier technology of research that represents a special “in-house” information-source: particle accelerators, research reactors, radio telescopes, and so on. Without an ever-developing technology of experimentation and observation, scientific progress would grind to a halt. The discoveries of today cannot be attained with yesterday’s instrumentation and tech-

18

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

niques. To secure new observations, to test new hypotheses, and to detect new phenomena, an ever more powerful technology of inquiry is needed. Throughout the natural sciences, technological progress is a crucial requisite for cognitive progress. We are embarked on an endless endeavor to improve the range of effective observational and experimental intervention. Only by operating under new and previously inaccessible conditions—attaining extreme temperature, pressure, particle velocity, field strength, and so on—can we realize those circumstances that enable us to put our hypotheses and theories to the test. As an acute observer has rightly remarked: “Most critical experiments [in physics] planned today, if they had to be constrained within the technology of even ten years ago, would be seriously compromised.”3 This situation points toward the idea of “technological levels,” corresponding to the successive state-of-the-art stages in the technology of inquiry with regard to data-generation and processing—giving rise to successively “later generations” of investigative instrumentation and machinery. These levels are generally separated from one another by substantial (order-of-magnitude) improvements in performance with regard to such information-providing parameters as measurement exactness, data-processing volume, detection-sensitivity, high voltages, high or low temperatures, and so on. The enormous power, sensitivity, and complexity deployed in present-day experimental science have not been sought for their own sake but rather because the research frontier has moved on into an area where this sophistication is the indispensable requisite of ongoing progress. In science, as in war, the battles of the present cannot be fought effectively with the armaments of the past. The salient characteristic of this situation is that once the major findings accessible at a given data-technology level have been attained, further major progress in the problem-area requires ascent to a higher level on the technology scale. Every data-technology level is subject to discovery-saturation, but the exhaustion of prospects at a given level does not, of course, bring progress to a stop. For after the major findings accessible at a given data-technology level have been realized, further major findings become realizable by ascending to the next level of sophistication in data-relevant technology.

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

19

We arrive therefore at a situation of technological escalation. The need for new data forces us to look further and further from man’s familiar “home-base” in the parametric space of nature. Thus, while scientific progress is in principle always possible—there being no absolute or intrinsic limits to significant scientific discovery—the realization of this ongoing prospect demands a continual enhancement in the technological state-of-the-art of data extraction or exploitation. With the enhancement of technology the size of this body of data inevitably grows. Technological progress constantly enlarges the “window” through which we look out upon parametric space. In developing natural science we use this window of capability to scrutinize parametric space, continually augmenting our data-base and then generalizing upon what we see. And what we have here is not a lunar landscape where once we have seen one sector, we have seen it all, and where theory-projections from lesser data generally remain in place when further data comes our way. Historical experience shows that there is every reason to expect that our ideas about nature are subject to constant radical changes as we “explore” parametric space more extensively. The technologically mediated entry into new regions of parameter space constantly destabilizes the attained equilibrium between data and theory. Progress without new data is, of course, possible in various fields of scholarship and inquiry. The example of pure mathematics, for instance, shows that discoveries can be made in an area of inquiry that operates without empirical data. But this hardly represents a feasible prospect for natural science. It is exactly the explicit dependency on additional data—the empirical aspect of the discipline—that sets natural science apart not only from the formal sciences (logic and mathematics) but also from the hermeneutic ones (like the humanities), which address themselves ceaselessly to the imaginative reinterpretation and re-reinterpretation of old data from novel conceptual perspectives. There is no escaping the fact that—natural science being, as it is, an inescapably empirical enterprise—remorseless limitations are imposed upon the prospects of effective theorizing at any given stage in its development by this dependency on the available data. To say this is not to sell human ingenuity short; it is simply a matter of facing a

20

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

very fundamental fact of scientific life. Progress in natural science is insuperably limited at any given time by the implicit barriers set by the available technology of data acquisition and processing. Technological dependency sets technological limits, first to data acquisition and then to theory projection. The achieved level of sophistication in the technological state-of-the-art of information acquisition and processing sets definite limits to the prospects of scientific progress by restricting the range of findings that are going to be realistically accessible. Limitations of physical capacity and capability spell cognitive limitations for empirical science. Where there are inaccessible phenomena, there must be cognitive inadequacy as well. To this extent, at any rate, the empiricists were surely right. Only the most fanatical rationalist could uphold the capacity of sheer intellect to compensate for the lack of data. The existence of unobserved phenomena means that our theoretical systematizations may well be (and presumably are) incomplete. Insofar as certain phenomena are not just undetected but in the very nature of the case inaccessible (even if only for the merely economic reasons suggested above), our theoretical knowledge of nature must be presumed imperfect. Fundamental features inherent in the structure of man’s interactive inquiry into the ways of the world thus conspire to ensure the limitedness of our knowledge. 3. IN EXPLORATION, PRODUCT DEPENDS ON PROCESS Given the fundamentally interactive nature of scientific progress as a technologically mediated warranty between nature and mind, let us ask ourselves about the relationship between process and product in regard to science. Specifically, what would the “science” produced by an alien civilization existing on some remote planet be like? How closely would it have to resemble ours? Not necessarily all that much. To begin with, the machinery of formulation used in expressing their science might be altogether different. Specifically, their mathematics might be very unlike ours. Their dealings with quantity might be entirely anumerical—purely comparative, for example, rather than quantitative. Especially if their environment is not amply endowed with solid objects or stable struc-

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

21

tures congenial to measurement—if, for example, they were jellyfishlike creatures swimming about in a soupy sea—their “geometry” could be something rather strange, largely topological, say, and geared to flexible structures rather than fixed sizes or shapes. Digital thinking might be undeveloped, while certain sorts of analogue reasoning might be highly refined. Or, again, an alien civilization might, like the ancient Greeks, have “Euclidean” geometry without analysis. In any case, given that the mathematical mechanisms at their disposal could be very different from ours, it is clear that their description of nature in mathematical terms could also be very different. (Not necessarily truer or falser, but just different.) Secondly, the orientation of the science of an alien civilization might be very different. All their efforts might conceivably be devoted to the social sciences—to developing highly sophisticated analogues of psychology and sociology, for example. In particular, if the intelligent aliens were a diffuse assemblage of units comprising wholes in ways that allow of overlap,4 then the role of social concepts might become so paramount for them that nature would throughout be viewed in fundamentally social categories, with those aggregates we think of as physical structures contemplated by them in social terms. Then, too, their natural science might deploy mechanisms very different from ours. Communicating by some sort of “telepathy” based upon variable odors or otherwise “exotic” signals, they might devise a complex theory of empathetic thought-wave transmittal through an ideaferous aether. Again, the aliens might scan nature very differently. Electromagnetic phenomena might lie altogether outside the ken of alien life-forms; if their environment does not afford them lodestones and electrical storms, the occasion to develop electromagnetic theory might never arise. The course to scientific development tends to flow in the channel of practical interests. A society of porpoises might lack crystallography but develop a very sophisticated hydrodynamics; one comprised of mole-like creatures might never dream of developing optics or astronomy. One’s language and thought processes are bound to be closely geared to the world as one experiences it. As is illustrated by the difficulties we ourselves experience in bringing the language of everyday experience to bear on subatomic phenomena, our concepts are ill-attuned to facets of nature different in scale of struc-

22

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

ture from our own. We can hardly expect a “science” that reflects such parochial preoccupations to be a universal fixture. The interests of creatures shaped under the remorseless pressure of evolutionary adaptations to very different—and endlessly variable environmental conditions—might well be oriented in directions very different from anything that is familiar to us. Laws are detectable regularities in nature. But detection will of course vary drastically with the mode of observation—that is, with the sort of resources that different creatures have at their disposal to do their detecting. Everything depends on how nature pushes back on our senses and their instrumental extensions. Even if we detect everything we can, we will not have got hold of everything available to others. And the converse is equally true. The laws that we (or anybody else) manage to formulate will depend crucially on one’s place within nature—on how one is connected into its wiring diagram, so to speak. A comparison of the “science” of different civilizations here on earth suggests that it is not an outlandish hypothesis to suppose that the very topics of alien science might differ dramatically from those of ours. In our own case, for example, the fact that we live on the surface of the earth (unlike whales), the fact that we have eyes (unlike worms) and thus can see the heavens, the fact that we are so situated that the seasonal positions of heavenly bodies are intricately connected with agriculture—all these facts are clearly connected with the development of astronomy. The fact that those distant creatures would experience nature in ways very different from ourselves means that they can be expected to raise very different sorts of questions. Indeed, the mode of emplacement within nature of alien inquirers might be so different as to focus their attention on entirely different aspects or constituents of the cosmos. If the world is sufficiently complex and multifaceted, they might concentrate upon aspects of their environment that mean nothing to us, with the result that their natural science is oriented in directions very different from ours.5 Moreover, the conceptualization of an alien science might be very different, for we must reckon with the theoretical possibility that a remote civilization might operate with a drastically different system of concepts in its cognitive dealings with nature. Different cultures and different intellectual traditions, to say nothing of different sorts of

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

23

creatures, are bound to describe and explain their experience—their world as they conceive it—in terms of concepts and categories of understanding substantially different from ours. They would diverge radically with respect to what Germans would call their Denkmittel—the conceptual instruments they employ in thought about the facts (or purported facts) of the world. They could, accordingly, be said to operate with different conceptual schemes, with different conceptual tools used to “make sense” of experience—to characterize, describe, and explain the items that figure in the world as they view it. The taxonomic and explanatory mechanisms by means of which their cognitive business is transacted might differ so radically from ours that intellectual contact with them would be difficult or impossible. Epistemologists have often said things to the effect that people whose experience of the world is substantially different from our own are bound to conceive of it in very different terms. Sociologists, anthropologists, and linguists talk in much the same terms, and philosophers of science have recently also come to say the same sort of things. According to Thomas Kuhn, for example, scientists who work within different scientific traditions—and thus operate with different descriptive and explanatory “paradigms”—actually “live in different worlds.”6 It is (or should be) clear that there is no simple, unique, ideally adequate concept-framework for “describing the world.” The botanist, horticulturist, landscape gardener, farmer, and painter will operate from diverse cognitive “points of view,” to describe one selfsame vegetable garden. It is mere mythology to think that the “phenomena of nature” can lend themselves to only one correct style of descriptive and explanatory conceptualization. There is surely no “ideal scientific language” that has a privileged status for the characterization of reality. Different sorts of creatures are bound to make use of different conceptual schemes for the representation of their experience. To insist on the ultimate uniqueness of science is to succumb to “the myth of the God’s eye view.” Different cognitive perspectives are possible, no one of them more adequate or more correct than any other independently of the aims and purposes of their users. The science of a different civilization would inevitably be closely tied to the particular pattern of their interaction with nature as fun-

24

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

neled through the particular course of their evolutionary adjustment to their specific environment. The “forms of sensibility” of radically different beings (to invoke Kant’s useful idea) are likely to be radically different from ours. The direct chemical analysis of environmental materials might prove highly useful, and bio-analytic techniques akin to our senses of taste and smell could be very highly developed, providing them with environmentally oriented “experiences” of a very different sort. The constitution of the alien inquirers—physical, biological, and social—thus emerges as crucial for science. It would be bound to condition the agendas of questions and the instrumentalities for their resolution—to fix what is seen as interesting, important, relevant, and significant. Because it determines what is seen as an appropriate question and what is judged as an admissible solution, the cognitive posture of the inquirers must be expected to play a crucial role in shaping the course of scientific inquiry itself. To clarify this idea of a conceptually different science, it helps to cast the issue in temporal rather than spatial terms. The descriptive charaterization of alien science is a project rather akin in its difficulty to that of describing our own future science. It is a key fact of life that progress in science is a process of ideational innovation that always places certain developments outside the intellectual horizons of earlier workers. The very concepts we think in terms of become available only in the course of scientific discovery itself. Like the science of the remote future, the science of remote aliens must be presumed to be such that we really could not achieve intellectual access to it on the basis of our own position in the cognitive scheme of things. Just as the technology of a more advanced civilization would be bound to strike us as magic, so its science would be bound to strike us as incomprehensible gibberish—until we had learned it “from the ground up.” They might (just barely) be able to teach it to us, but they could not explain it to us by transposing it into our terms. The most characteristic and significant difference between one conceptual scheme and another arises when the one scheme is committed to something the other does not envisage at all—something that lies outside the conceptual range of the other. A typical case is that of the stance of Cicero’s thought-world with regard to questions of quantum

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

25

electrodynamics. The Romans of classical antiquity did not hold different views on these issues; they held no view at all about them. This whole set of relevant considerations remained outside their conceptual repertoire. Again, the difference in regard to “conceptual scheme” between modern and Galenic medicine is not that the modern physician has a different theory of the operation of the four humors from his Galenic counterpart but that modern medicine has abandoned the four humors, and not that the Galenic physician says different things about bacteria and viruses but that he says nothing about them. Sociologists of knowledge tell us that even here on earth, our Western science is but one of many competing world-pictures. When one turns outward toward space at large, the prospects of diversity become literally endless. It is a highly problematic contention even that beings constituted as we are and located in an environment such as ours must inevitably describe and explain natural phenomena in our terms. And with differently constituted beings, the basis of differentiation is amplified enormously. Our minds are the information-processing mechanisms of an organism interacting with a particular environment via certain particular senses (natural endowments, hardware) and certain culturally evolved methods (cultural endowments, software). With different sorts of beings, these resources would differ profoundly—and so would the cognitive products that would flow from their employment. The more one reflects on the matter, the more firmly one is led to the realization that our particular human conception of the issues of science is something parochial, because we are physically, perceptually, and cognitively limited and conditioned by our specific situation within nature. Given intelligent beings with a physical and cognitive nature profoundly different from ours, one simply cannot assert with confidence what the natural science of such creatures would be like. The diversified history of our terrestrial science gives one some miniscule inkling of the vast range of possibilities along these lines. It is tempting to reason: “Since there is only one nature, only one science of nature is possible.” Yet, on closer scrutiny, this reasoning becomes highly problematic. Above all, it fails to reckon with the fact that while there indeed is only one world, nevertheless very different thought-worlds can be at issue in the elaboration of a “science.” As

26

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

long as the fundamental categories of thought—the modes of spatiality and temporality, of structural description, functional connection, and explanatory rationalization—are not seen as necessary features of intelligence as such, but as evolved cognitive adaptations to particular contingently constituted modes of emplacement in and interaction with nature, there will be no reason to expect uniformity. It is surely naive to think that because one single object is in question, its description must issue in one uniform result. This view ignores the crucial impact of the describer’s intellectual orientation. Minds with different concern and interests and with different experiential backgrounds can deal with the selfsame items in ways that yield wholly disjoint and disparate results because different features of the thing are being addressed. The things are the same, but their significance is altogether different. Perhaps it seems plausible to argue thus: “Common problems constrain common solutions. Intelligent alien civilizations have in common with us the problem of cognitive accommodation to a shared world. Natural science as we know it is our solution of this problem. Therefore, it is likely to be theirs as well.” But this tempting argument founders on its second premise. Their problem is not common with ours, because their situation must be presumed substantially different, since they live in a significantly different environment and come equipped with significantly different resources. To presuppose a common problem is in fact to beg the question. Science is always the result of inquiry into nature, and this is inevitably a matter of a transaction or interaction in which nature is but one party and the inquiring beings another. We must expect alien beings to question nature in ways very different from our own. On the basis of an interactionist model, there is no reason to think that the sciences of different civilizations will exhibit anything more than the roughest sorts of family resemblance. Our alien colleagues scan nature for regularities, using (at any rate, to begin with) the sensors provided them by their evolutionary heritage. They note, record, and transmit those regularities that they find to be useful or interesting, and then develop their inquiries by theoretical triangulation from this basis. Now, this is clearly going to make for a course of development that closely gears their science to their particu-

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

27

lar situation—their biological endowment (“their sensors”), their cultural heritage (“what is interesting”), and their environmental niche (“what is pragmatically useful”). Where these key parameters differ, we must expect that the course of scientific development will differ as well. Admittedly, there is only one universe, and its laws and materials are, as best we can tell, the same everywhere. We share this common universe with all life-forms. However radically we differ in other respects (in particular, those relating to environment, to natural endowments, and to style or civilization), we have a common background of cosmic evolution and a common heritage of natural laws. And so, if intelligent aliens investigate nature at all, they will investigate the same nature we ourselves do. But the sameness of the object of contemplation does nothing to guarantee the sameness of ideas about it. It is all too familiar a fact that even where only human observers are at issue, very different constructions are often placed upon “the same” occurrences. As is clearly shown by the rival interpretations of different psychological schools—to say nothing of the court testimony of rival “experts”—there need be little uniformity in the conceptions held about one selfsame object from different “perspectives of consideration.” The fact that all intelligent beings inhabit the same world does not countervail the no less momentous fact that we inhabit very different ecological niches within it, engendering very different sorts of modus operandi. No one who has observed how very differently the declarations of a single text (the Bible, say, or the dialogues of Plato) have been interpreted and understood over the centuries—even by people of a common cultural heritage—can be hopeful that the study of a common object by different civilizations must lead to a uniform result. Yet, such textual analogies are oversimple and misleading, because the scientific study of nature is not a matter of decoding a preexisting text. There just is not one fixed basic text—the changeless “book of nature writ large”—which different civilizations can decipher in different degrees. Like other books, it is to some extent a mirror: what looks out depends on who looks in. The development of a “science”—a definite codification of the laws of nature—always requires as input some inquirer-supplied ele-

28

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

ment of determination. The result of such an interaction depends crucially on the contribution from both sides—from nature and from the intelligences that interact with it. A kind of “chemistry” is at work in which nature provides only one input and the inquirers themselves provide another—one that can massively and dramatically affect the outcome in such a way that we cannot disentangle the respective contributions of nature and the inquirer. Things cannot of themselves dictate the significance that an active intelligence can attach to them. Human organisms are essentially similar, but there is not much similarity between the medicine of the ancient Hindus and that of the ancient Greeks. After all, throughout the earlier stages of man’s intellectual history, different human civilizations developed their “natural sciences” in substantially different ways. The shift to an extraterrestrial setting is bound to amplify this diversity. The “science” of an alien civilization may be far more remote from ours than the “language” of our cousin the dolphin is remote from our language. Perhaps reluctantly, we must face the fact that on a cosmic scale the “hard” physical sciences have something of the same cultural relativity that one encounters with the materials of the “softer” social sciences on a terrestrial basis. There is no categorical assurance that intelligent creatures will think alike in a common world, any more than that they will act alike that is, there is no reason why cognitive adaptation should be any more uniform than behavioral adaptation. Thought, after all, is simply a kind of action; and as the action of a creature reflects its biological heritage, so too does its mode of thought. These considerations point to a clear lesson. Different civilizations composed of different sorts of creatures must be expected to create diverse “sciences.” Though inhabiting the same physical universe with us, and subject to the same sorts of fundamental regularities, they must be expected to create as cognitive artifacts different depictions of nature, reflecting their different modes of emplacement within it. Natural science—broadly construed as inquiry into the ways of nature—is something that is in principle endlessly plastic. Its development will trace out a historical course closely geared to the specific capacities, interest, environment, and opportunities of the creatures that develop it. We are deeply mistaken if we think of it as a process

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

29

that must follow a route generally parallel to ours and issue in a roughly comparable product. It would be grossly unimaginative to think that either the journey or the destination must be the same—or even substantially similar. Factors such as capacities, requirements, interests, and course of development affect the shape and substance of the science and technology of any particular space-time region. Unless we narrow our intellectual horizons in a parochially anthropomorphic way, we must be prepared to recognize the great likelihood that the “science” and “technology” of a remote civilization would be something very different from science and technology as we know it. Our human sort of natural science may well be sui generis, adjusted to and coordinated with a being of our physical constitution, inserted into the orbit of the world’s processes and history in our sort of way. It seems that in science, as in other areas of human endeavor, we are prisoners of the thought-world that our biological and social and intellectual heritage affords us. Each inquiring civilization must be expected to produce its own, perhaps ever-changing, cognitive products—all more or less adequate in their own ways but with little if any actual overlap in conceptual content. Our science is bound to be limited in crucial respects by the very fact of its being our science. A tiny creature living its brief life span within a maple leaf could never recognize that such leaves are deciduous—themselves part of a cyclic process. The processes of this world of ours (even unto its utter disappearance) could make no cognitive impact upon a being in whose body our entire universe is but a single atom. No doubt the laws of our world are (part of) the laws of its world as well, but this circumstance is wholly without practical effect. Where causal processes do not move across the boundaries between worlds—where the levels of relevantly operative law are so remote that nothing happening at the one level makes any substantial impact on the other—there can be little if any overlap in “science.” Science is limited to the confines of discernibility: as Kant maintained, the limits of our experience set limits to our science. A deep question arises: Is the mission of intelligence in the cosmos uniform or diversified? Two fundamentally opposed philosophical views are possible with respect to cognitive evolution in its cosmic

30

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

perspective. The one is a monism that sees the universal mission of intelligence in terms of a certain shared destination, the attainment of a common cosmic “position of reason as such.” The other is a pluralism that sees each intelligent’ cosmic civilization as forgoing its own characteristic cognitive destiny, and takes it as the mission of intelligence as such to span a wide spectrum of alternatives and to realize a vastly diversified variety of possibilities, with each thought-form achieving its own peculiar destiny in separation from all the rest. The conflict between these doctrines must in the final analysis be settled not by armchair speculation from general principles but by rational triangulation from the empirical data. This said, it must be recognized that the whole tendency of these present deliberations is toward the pluralistic side. It seems altogether plausible to see cognition as an evolutionary product that is bound to attune its practitioners to the characteristic peculiarities of their particular niche in the world-order. There is, no doubt, a certain charm to the idea of companionship. It would be comforting to reflect that however estranged from them we are in other ways, those alien minds share science with us at any rate and are our fellow travelers on a common journey of inquiry. Our yearning for companionship and contact runs deep. It might be pleasant to think of ourselves not only as colleagues but as junior collaborators whom other, wiser minds might be able to help along the way. Even as many in sixteenth-century Europe looked to those strange pure men of the Indies (East or West) who might serve as moral exemplars for sinful European man, so we are tempted to look to alien inquirers who surpass us in scientific wisdom and might assist us in overcoming our cognitive deficiencies. The idea is appealing, but it is also, alas, very unrealistic. In the late 1600s, Christiaan Huygens wrote: For ‘tis a very ridiculous opinion that the common people have got among them, that it is impossible a rational Soul should dwell in any other shape than ours … This can proceed from nothing but the Weakness, Ignorance, and Prejudice of Men; as well as the humane Figure being the handsomest and most excellent of all others, when indeed it’s nothing but a being accustomed to the figure that make me think so, and a conceit … that no shape or colour can be so good as our own.7

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

31

People’s tendency to place all rational minds into a physical structure akin to their own is paralleled by a tendency to emplace all rational knowledge into a cognitive structure akin to their own. Roland Pucetti even thinks that the fundamental legal and social concepts of extraterrestrial societies must be designed on our lines.8 Life on other worlds might be different from the life we know. It could well be based on a multivalent element other than carbon and be geared to a medium other than water—perhaps even one that is solid or gaseous rather than liquid. For what holds for the material configuration of the human shape would seem no less applicable to the cognitive configuration of human thought. It is plausible to think that alien creatures will solve the problems of intellectual adjustment to their environment in ways as radically different from ours as those by which they solve the problems of physical adjustment. The physics of an alien civilization need resemble ours no more than does their physical therapy. We must be every bit as leery of cognitive anthropomorphism as of cultural anthropomorphism. 4. CAN WE PREDICT WHERE SCIENCE WILL GO IN THE FUTURE? Let me now turn from the spatial to the temporal dimension, and inquire into the natural science not of distant places but of future times. The landscape of natural science is ever-changing: innovation is the very name of the game. Not only do the theses and themes of science change but so do the very questions. Of course, once a body of science comes to be seen as something settled and firmly in hand, many issues become routine. Various problems become mere reference questions a matter of locating an answer within the body of preestablished, already available information that somewhere contains it. (The mere here is, to be sure, misleading in its downplaying of the formidable challenges that can arise in looking for needles in large haystacks.) However, in pioneering science we face a very different situation. People may well wonder “what is the cause of X”—what causes cancer, say, or what produces the attraction of the loadstone for iron—in circumstances where the concepts needed to develop a workable answer still lie beyond their grasp. Scientific inquiry is a creative process

32

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

of theoretical and conceptual innovation; it is not a matter of pinpointing the most attractive alternative within the presently specifiable range but of enhancing and enlarging the range of envisageable alternatives. Such issues pose genuinely open-ended questions of original research: they do not call for the resolution of problems within a preexisting framework but for a rebuilding and enhancement of the framework itself. Many of the questions with which present-day science grapples could not even have been raised in the state-of-the-art that prevailed a generation ago. We cannot tell in advance what the specific answers to our scientific questions will be. It would, after all, be quite unreasonable to expect detailed prognostications about the particular content of scientific discoveries. It may be possible in some cases to speculate that science will solve a certain problem, but how it will do so lies beyond the ken of those who antedate the discovery itself. If we could predict discoveries in detail in advance, then we could make them in advance.9 In matters of scientific importance, then, we must be prepared for surprises. Commenting shortly after the publication of Frederick Soddy’s speculations about atomic bombs in his 1930 book Science and Life, Robert A. Millikan, a Nobel laureate in physics, wrote that “the new evidence born of further scientific study is to the effect that it is highly improbable that there is any appreciable amount of available subatomic energy to tap.”10 In science forecasting, the record of even the most qualified practitioners is poor. We cannot even say what concepts the inquirers of the future will use within the questions they will raise. Maxwell’s research was directed toward answering questions that grew out of Faraday’s work. Hertz devised his apparatus to answer questions about the implications of Maxwell’s questions. Marconi’s devices were designed to resolve questions about the application of Hertz’s work. Each confronted a research problem inherent in solutions to earlier problems. It is a key fact of life that ongoing progress in scientific inquiry is a process of conceptual innovation that always places certain developments outside the cognitive horizons of earlier workers because the very concepts operative in their characterization become available only in the course of scientific discovery itself. (Short of learning our science from the ground up, Aristotle could have made nothing of

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

33

modern genetics, nor Newton of quantum physics.) The major discoveries of later stages are ones which the workers of a substantially earlier period (however clever) not only have failed to make but which they could not even have understood, because the requisite concepts were simply not available to them. Thus, it is effectively impossible to predict not only the answers but even the questions that lie on the agenda of future science. Detailed prediction is outside the realm of reasonable aspiration in those domains where innovation is preeminently conceptual. If there was one thing of which the science of the first half of the seventeenth century was confident, it was that natural processes are based on contact-interaction and that there can be no such thing as action at a distance. Newtonian gravitation burst upon this scene like a bombshell. Newton’s supporters simply stonewalled. Roger Cotes explicitly denied there was a problem, arguing (in his Preface to the second edition of Newton’s Principia) that nature was generally unintelligible, so that the unintelligibility of forces acting without contact was nothing specifically worrisome. However unpalatable Cotes’s position may seem as a precept for science (given that making nature’s workings understandable is, after all, one of the aims of the enterprise), there is something to be said for it—not, to be sure, as science but as metascience. For we cannot hold the science of tomorrow bound to the standards of intelligibility espoused by the science of today. The cognitive future is inaccessible to even the ablest of presentday workers. After Pasteur had shown that bacteria could come only from preexisting bacteria, Darwin wrote that “it is mere rubbish thinking of the origin of life; one might well think of the origin of matter.”11 One might indeed! The inherent unpredictability of future scientific developments the fact that no secure inference can be drawn from one state of science to another—has important implications for the issue of the limits of science. It means that present-day science cannot speak for future science: it is in principle impossible to make any secure inferences from the substance of science at one time about its substance at a significantly different time. The prospect of future scientific revolutions can never be precluded. We cannot say with unblinking confidence what sorts of resources and conceptions the science of the future will

34

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

or will not use. Given that it is effectively impossible to predict the details of what future science will accomplish, it is no less impossible to predict in detail what future science will not accomplish. We can never confidently put this or that range of issues outside “the limits of science,” because we cannot discern the shape and substance of future science with sufficient clarity to be able to say with any assurance what it can and cannot do. Any attempt to set “limits” to science—any advance specification of what science can and cannot do by way of handling problems and solving questions—is destined to come to grief. Not only can one never claim with confidence that the science of tomorrow will not resolve the issues that the science of today sees as intractable, but one can never be sure that the science of tomorrow will not endorse what the science of today rejects. This is why it is infinitely risky to speak of this or that explanatory resource (action at a distance, stochastic processes, mesmerism, etc.) as inherently unscientific. Even if X lies outside the range of science as we nowadays construe it, it by no means follows that X lies outside science as such. We must recognize the commonplace phenomenon that the science of the day almost always manages to do what the science of an earlier day deemed infeasible to the point of absurdity (“split the atom,” abolish parity, etc.). Present science can issue no guarantees for future Science. The supremacy of natural science over other possible modes of question-resolution is closely bound up with its plasticity. If we could set limits to the shape and substance of science, then it could also be possible to set limits to what science can and cannot accomplish. If, for example, we could say (with Emil du Bois Reymond12) that the explanatory program of science is an atomistic Newtonianism—a mechanistic world in which we could, at the most and best, achieve the “astronomical knowledge” of a “Laplacean Spirit” who knows the total history of the motions of all particles throughout space for all of time—then we could indeed say (as Reymond does) that science cannot account for the source of motion, the nature of matter, the operations of consciousness, and so on. If we could circumscribe the substantive nature of science, we could also circumscribe its potential achievements. But just this is impossible. We cannot defensibly

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

35

project the present lineaments of science into the future. While we can say with confidence what the state of science as we now have it does and does not allow, we cannot say what science as such will or will not allow. The boundary between the tenable and the untenable in science is never easy to discern. Future science can turn in unexpected and implausible directions. The realm of scientific possibility is unchartable. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio …” That some theoretically available scientific position fails to accord with the science of the day is readily established, but that it is inherently unscientific is something whose establishment lies beyond our powers. The contention that this or that explanatory resource is inherently unscientific should always be met with instant scorn. For the unscientific can only lie on the side of process and not that of product—on the side of modes of explanation and not its mechanisms; of arguments rather than phenomena. There is indeed a line between science and pseudoscience—and also between competent science and poor science. Yet, such boundaries cannot be drawn on substantive grounds. The line between science and pseudoscience cannot be defined in terms of content—in terms of what sorts of theses or theories are maintained—but only in terms of method, in terms of how these theories are substantiated. The inherent unpredictability of science change is the very hallmark of science. It sets real science apart from the closed structures of pseudoscience, whose methodological defect is precisely the “elegance” with which everything falls much too neatly into place. And it means that no sort of idea, mechanism, or issue can be placed with reasonable assurance outside that realm of science as such. Science, as already noted, is simply too opportunistic to be fastidious about its mechanisms. Eighteenth-century psychologists ruled out hypnotism. Nineteenth-century biologists excluded geophysical catastrophes. Twentieth-century geologists long rejected continental drift. Many contemporary scientists give parapsychology short shrift—yet who can say that its day will never come? The pivotal issue is not what is substantively claimed by an assertion but rather whether this assertion (whatever its content!) has been substantiated by the prevailing canons of scientific method. There is, to be sure, rough wisdom in scientific caution and conser-

36

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

vatism: it is perfectly appropriate to be skeptical about unusual phenomena-constructions and to view them with skepticism. Before admitting “strange” phenomena as appropriate exploratory issues, we certainly want to check their credentials, make sure they are well attested and appropriately characterized. The very fact that they go against our understanding of nature’s ways (as best we can tell) renders abnormalities suspect—a proper focus of worriment and distrust. But, of course, to hew this line dogmatically and rigidly, in season and out, is a mistake. The untenable in science does not conveniently wear its untenability on its sleeves. We have to realize that, throughout the history of science, stumbling on anomalies—on “strange phenomena,” occurrences that just don’t fit into the existing framework—has been a strong force of scientific progress. Throughout natural science, we are poised in a delicate balance between reasonable assurance that what we believe is worth holding to and a recognition that we do not yet have “the last word”—that the course of events may at any time shatter our best laid plans for understanding the world’s ways. We can set no a priori restrictions, but have to be flexible. Nobody can say what future science will and will not be able to do. 5. CONCLUSION These rather many-sided deliberations have been designed to make a very simple but important point: Natural science as we know it is a human artifact. Constructed on the basis of incomplete data and imperfect concepts, it is made by us humans in our own way, in response to our interests and questions, and by means of our technology for interacting with nature. It is characteristically human, but not arbitrarily human. For it is certainly not a free and unfettered creation of imaginative intelligence. Even as the work of the potter is a negotiation between the ideal and the real—between his imagination and the physical materials in which it must be embodied—so is the work of the scientist a product of thought/matter interaction. The questions we ask of nature depend primarily on us. But the answers we get—though set in our own terms of reference—nevertheless depend on the stern edicts of a nature over whose doings and dealings we actually have

NATURAL SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ARTIFACT

37

very little control. Seen in its natural role as the product of a process of inquiry natural science is as yet incomplete, deficient, and open to enlargement and improvement.13 Our imperfect grasp of nature’s realities is one of the clearest manifestations of human finitude. NOTES 1

A homely fishing analogy of Eddington’s is useful here. He saw the experimentalist as akin to a fisherman who trawls nature with the “net” of his equipment for detection and observation. Now suppose (says Eddington) that a real fisherman trawls the seas using a fishnet of two-inch mesh. Then fish of a smaller size will simply go uncaught. Similarly, the theorists who analyze the experimentalist’s catch will have an incomplete and distorted view of aquatic life. Only by improving our observational means for “trawling” nature can such imperfections be mitigated (see A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (New York, 1928)).

2

Recall Geothe’s stricture: “Nature hat weder Kern noch Schale, Alles ist sie mit einem Male.”

3

D. A. Bromley et al., Physics in Perspective: Student Edition, NRC/NAS Publications (Washington, D.C., 1973), p. 16.

4

Compare the discussion in G. Ehrensvard, Man on Another World (Chicago/London, 1965), pp. 146–148.

5

His anthropological investigations pointed Benjamin Lee Whorf in much this same direction. He wrote: “The real question is: What do different languages do, not with artificially isolated objects, but with the flowing face of nature in its motion, color, and changing form; with clouds, beaches, and yonder flight of birds? For as goes our segmentation of the face of nature, so goes our physics of the cosmos” (“Languages and Logic”, in: Language, Thought, and Reality, ed. J. B. Carroll (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 240–241). Compare also the interesting discussion in T. Nagel “What is it Like to be a Bat?” in: Mortal Questions (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).

6

T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962).

7

C. Huygens, Cosmotheoros: The Celestial Worlds Discovered—New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, Their Inhabitants and Productions (London, 1698), pp. 76–77.

8

R. Pucetti, Persons: A Study of Possible Moral Agents in the Universe (New York, 1969), cf. E. McMullin in Icarus 14 (1971), pp. 291–294.

9

As one commentator has wisely written: “But prediction in the field of pure science is another matter. The scientist sets forth over an uncharted sea and the scribe, left behind on the dock is asked what he may find at the other side of the waters. If the scribe knew, the scientist would not have to make his voyage” (Anonymous, “The

38

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

NOTES

Future as Suggested by Developments of the Past Seventy-Five Years”, Scientific American 123 (1920), p. 321). 10

Quoted in Daedalus 107 (1978), p. 24.

11

Quoted in Biology and the Future of Man, ed. P. Handler (Oxford, 1970), p. 165.

12

Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, 11th ed. (Leipzig, 1916).

13

This chapter was initially published in the Yearbook of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), pp. 164–88.

Chapter Three UNRULY WORLDS ________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Cosmological anarchy arises to the extent that occurrences lie beyond the reach of lawfulness. (2) A body of laws exhibits emergence when altogether new laws bring new features of phenomenal order to light. (2) The underdetermination of nature’s phenomena by its laws is a pathway to anarchy. (3) The reverse situation—and underdetermination of the laws by the phenomena—is also a prospect. (4) There are various ways in which phenomena can escape being lawmandated. The ongoing emergence of new levels of lawfulness affords a pathway to this destination. (6) All in all, the dialectical interrelation of laws and phenomena poses interesting theoretical problems. ________________________________________________________ 1. COSMOLOGICAL ANARCHY: LAWFULNESS AND ITS ABSENCE

A

ny cognitively tractable model of a world will pivot on two major categories, namely that world’s phenomena and the laws governing their occurrence. Two sorts of complications arising in the interplay between these two factors will make for a situation of explanatory aberration, namely: (1) explanatory anomaly where the laws are insufficient to explain the phenomena, and (2) nomic anomaly where the phenomena are insufficient to determine the laws. The present discussion seeks to elucidate some salient aspects of these aberrant conditions. A world is anarchic insofar as its phenomena do not admit of lawbased explanation. And to the extent that this is so, the occurrences of such a world will also be inexplicable—and, a fortiori unpredictable on the basis of its laws.

40

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Display 1

It is instructive to explore the idea of a radically anarchic world where every strictly universal descriptive generalization with respect to certain of them world’s arrangements is false so that its phenomena are subject to no universally descriptive laws whatsoever. This means that every universal generalization purporting to describe some facet of the world’s modus operandi admits of exceptions. Such a totally unruly world is just too complex for its various facets to admit of rigorously universalized characterization. Here all taxonomically universal laws (“All Xs are Ys”) and all qualitatively universal laws (“All Xs have F”) will be false. In considering the possibilities for worlds it is useful to have recourse to some simplified and schematic models. Accordingly, the “worlds” that will concern us in this illustrative discussion will be two-dimensional systems having the geometry of an infinite graphpaper gridwork, as Display 1. And they will involve in two sorts of “phenomena,” namely Xs and Os occupying the squares of such a gridwork. On this basis, it is easy to see that lawfulness and anarchy can exist in conjunction. For our graph-paper worlds clearly admit the prospect that some column is an entirely random mix of Os and Xs with Xs everywhere else. But nevertheless a generalization of the format “All columns are X-containing” could also be realized. Radical anarchy obtains when there no (finite) body of laws can possibly determine the entire range of phenomena at issue. This will,

UNRULY WORLDS

41

of course, always be realizable by having the distribution of Os (or Xs) be wholly random throughout. Such a world will be truly unruly in that every purportedly universal descriptive generalization about it will in fact have exceptions. Note, however, that it would become possible to salvage mitigated lawfulness if one could spell out exactly the range of exceptional cases. For we could then restore universal laws via a specific indication of the exceptions. Thus given a law of the format: • Always whenever X, then Y, except for cases of type T1 and T2 and … Tn we would then go over to the restricted generality of the rule: • Always whenever X-but-not-Ti (1 ≤ i ≤ n), then Y The possession of a comprehensive inventory of the range of exceptional cases at issue would thus make it possible to regain rigid universality. In a sufficiently unruly world it will transpire that the list of exception-cases will be potentially nonterminating. No doubt as we go down the list to ever more unusual and remote cases, the proportion of exceptions grows ever smaller. (This can be seen as analogous to the statistically ordered list of side effects on medications.) But the list as a whole is nevertheless effectively unending. Unruly worlds must thus be complex in their descriptive structure. For with really simple worlds, anarchy cannot possibly arise. Consider a super-simple world, a 3 x 3 tic-tac-toe gridwork filled in with Os and Xs. So simple a world cannot possibly be unruly. Here one cannot avoid having some laws of the format: • All are containing For suppose that all four of those possible laws are false. Then (1) Some column is not X-containing (i.e., has all Os).

42

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

(2) Some column is not X-containing. (3) Some row is not X-containing. (4) Some row is not X-containing. To avert universal laws, all four of these must be true. This situation is impossible because (1) and (4) stand in contradiction. And so one cannot here evade classically universal laws of exceptionless generality. (And this sort of situation will prevail irrespective of how large that gridwork may be.) By contrast, the more complex worlds respected by larger gridworks can avoid lawfulness altogether along the previously indicated lines. But in its absence, our capacity to understand matters can become compromised in view of the fact that, while our explanatory understanding proceeds by subsumption under generalizations, the requisite generalities may simply be absent. 2. THE ONTOLOGICAL UNDERDETERMINATION OF NATURES PHENOMENA BY NATURE’S LAWS We now come to the focal problem of the present deliberations, namely that of moving inferentially from laws to the phenomena. This issue highlights the prospect of the ontological underdetermination of nature’s phenomena by nature’s laws. It is easy to illustrate how it can transpire that an underlying vast body of laws could still leave the phenomena at issue underdetermined. Thus consider the following law hierarchy of laws that obtaining for a certain graphic world: Law i: For all i ≥ 2, every i-square must contain an X. Observe that this situation will be satisfied by the situation of Display 2 where O-squares are simply blank.

UNRULY WORLDS

43

Display 2 A SCHEMATIC WORLD X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

In these circumstances there will be different possible realizations of the same body of laws. For there are clearly other ways to meet these conditions—for example, by shifting every other row/column entity over by one space. Or again consider the Display 3 situation in the context of the indicated law: Law:

Every X-filled square must be flanked by exactly two Xfilled squares.

Compare the given situation with that which obtains where the entire shaded belt is filled with Xs. The laws are the same while their phenomenal realizations are decidedly different. And it is clearly possible for an entire law manifold to exhibit this condition of phenomenaunderdeterminationalism in its overall collectivity. In such cases, the laws will underdetermine the manifold of phenomena. The crucial point is simply that laws are possibility-excludent and that the manifold of possibilities excluded by a given body of law can prove to be insufficient to exhaust all but one single member of the manifold of possibility in toto.

44

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Display 3 ANOTHER SCHEMATIC WORLD

X X

X X

3. THE ONTOLOGICAL UNDERDETERMINATION OF NATURE’S LAWS BY NATURE’S PHENOMENA Let us now turn to the prospect of an ontological underdetermination of nature’s laws by nature’s phenomena. The idea that the laws supervene on the phenomena is not a merely epistemic conception that is grounded in the convolutions of inductive reasoning; it is an ontological conception deep-grounded in our very idea of lawfulness. Nevertheless, the idea that the actual phenomena—the whole entire lot of them—might be such as to admit of realization through different and actually incompatible law-manifolds has certainly not received the attention it deserves. For while the phenomena can rule out the prospect that certain generalizations are lawful, they may nevertheless be unable of themselves to settle the inverse issue of just which ones are. And this can come about in several ways. One possibility here is that the phenomena frustrate lawfulness—: • by being accidental. That is, by simply chancing to occur—even as regularities—without there being anything that is nomically necessary or lawful about it.

UNRULY WORLDS

45

Granted, the descriptive regularities are determined by the phenomena: they simply are what can be extracted by regularity trawling. But whether those descriptive regularities are actually lawful or whether they are simply fortuitous is something that cannot be settled by mere observation. And a related way in which the actualities can fail to determine lawfulness is: • by being skewed. That is, by failing to encompass those cases which allow various actual laws to come into active operation. For the laws take the hypothetical form “If …, then - - -” and that antecedent condition may never arise. Examples would be the laws governing what happens under certain parametric conditions (pressure, temperature, velocity) which never obtain. The salient point in this second case is that those actually occurrent phenomenon would reveal the laws only if they could be extrapolated beyond the realized course of events. For laws have a facttranscending dimension: they purport not just how things actually stand, but even how things would have to be if certain conditions obtained. And the domain of iffiness is beyond the reach not just of observable fact but of actual fact altogether. 4. HOW PHENOMENA CAN AVOID BEING LAW-MANDATED Yet what would determine the phenomena to be as is if the laws do not do so? How could a phenomenal reality possibly get to be constituted except as the product of the operation of laws? What productive agency is operative in Nature except for the laws? What is at work with this line of questions is a deep-rooted metaphysical prejudice—one that it is almost impossible to shake off. To see how this is so, it is constructive to begin by considering that the net effect of a law of nature is to abolish possibilities—to preclude their realization in nature. “All elms are deciduous” rules out elms that remain in full leafage during winter; F = ma rules out that (in suitable units) F = 10 while m = 5 and a = 3, and so on. Laws are possibilityexcluders.

46

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

However nothing guarantees that the law system of a world need be so complete as to effect an exclusion of possibilities that manages to pin matters down to one single candidate and leaves only “one man standing,” so to speak. Nothing precludes the prospect that the laws of nature, like the laws of chess, could leave it open for reality to play one of several different games, thereby failing to be altogether determinative of the phenomena. What actually happens must certainly conform to the laws—that is, fall within the range of possibilities they admit of. But this range need not be one-membered. It is certainly possible that nature’s manifold of laws suffices to single out one uniquely admissible possibility. But neither general principles nor observable facts indicate that this possibility represents the actuality before us. Indeed one of the key aspects of our human predicament is the fact of living in a world that is at least partially anarchic—a world whose operations do—as best we can tell—lie at least in part beyond our law-based explanatory grasp. 5. THE ONGOING PROLIFERATION OF NEW LAWS The descriptive mechanisms now at our disposal make it easy to illustrate the idea of different levels of lawfulness. For it enables us to see how these will now automatically be a hierarchical succession of increasing complex objects, i.e., thing-kinds—specifically those based on its succession of increasing large squares: 2-squares (containing 4 basic squares, 3-squares containing 9 basic squares and 4 squares of level 2, and so onwards.) All of these form a hierarchical succession of different thing-kinds with different levels of potential complexity. Worlds of this sort obviously open the door to lawfulness insofar as their make-up admits of generalization with respect to its geometric constituents. Against this background, consider the simple illustration of a phenomenally fractile world whose law-structure looks to be the same at every level of scale. For consider the sequence of i-level laws given by • Every i-square is X-filled

UNRULY WORLDS

47

or • Every i-square is O-filled (Here i-squares are simply i-sided squares.) It is clear that these laws are doubly homogeneous—both in the phenomenal range (where there is absolute uniformity) and in the nomic range (where identical laws hold at every level). Moreover, this infinite hierarchy of laws is “nomically reductive” in the sense that all of them follow from the base-level law • Every square (i.e., every i-square) is X containing. It is instructive to contrast this situation with that of emergence of new “irreducible” laws. For starters, consider the law: Law 1: Every X-containing square must abut on (i.e., fully align with) an X-containing square. Note that this fails to engender the entire hierarchy of homologous higher level laws of the format: Law i: Every X-containing i-square must abut on (i.e., fully contact) an X-containing i-square. Note that for Law 1 is realized in the situation of Display 4. Display 4 A SIMPLE LAWFUL WORLD O O O O O X X O O O O O

48

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Display 5 A VARIANT SCHEMATIC WORLD X

X

That this does not yield those higher-level laws emerges when we consider the diagram of Display 5. This clearly shows that the move from Law 1 to Law 2 breaks down. So when Law 2 also obtains this represents a new, irreducible situation. And this circumstance is replicated in the fact that all of the laws up to n might obtain without having Law n + 1 hold good. So here we have a situation where the laws of a hierarchy exhibit real emergence—i.e., a situation where higher-level laws cannot possibly be derived from lower-level ones. (To be sure, the whole series of laws could in special cases be realized—and realized emergently—for example, where all squares X-filled. But this would be a very special and eccentric case.) It is also of interest to contemplate the prospect that no finite body of established laws can exhaust the entire manifold of lawfulness. For illustration, consider once more a graph-paper gridwork which issues in a sequential series of increasingly complex composite entities, by way of squares, 2-squares, 3-squares, etc. And now suppose the following series of laws obtaining at different levels of world-constituent complexity Level 1: Every individual square is occupied by a O or an X. Level 2: Every 2-square has at least 3 Xs. Level 3: Every 3-square has at least 8 Xs

UNRULY WORLDS

49

Level i: Every i-square has at least i2-1 Xs. Observe that the laws here obtaining up to including the nth level do not determine the law obtaining at the (n + 1)st level. And at every level there is contingency by way of indeterminate alternativeness as far as the manifold of prior-level laws is concerned. The reality of it is that different modes of lawful order can be operative at different levels of natural taxonomy. And in principle at each level new modes of lawfulness come ongoingly into operation. So no matter how far the manifold of lawfulness established via the observed phenomena may extend, the prospect of yet further laws can be everpresent. And in such circumstances one cannot preclude the prospect of phenomena outside the explanatory reach of established law. In situations in which a process of this sort is in operation we have a hierarchy of emergent higher-level laws that are not derivable from the lower-level ones. When this happens, an itemized inventory of laws can never be completed. 6. LARGER VISTAS The issues raised by the interplay between laws and phenomena deserve to be viewed in a larger perspective. The medievals thought “How can concrete reality possibly get itself constituted expect through the creative operations of the deity?” The moderns analogously ask: “How can concrete reality possibly get itself constituted except through the creative operation of natural laws?” But however plausible this supposition that “Only laws can make a world” may seem, it is in fact a presumption that has very little by way of clearly visible support over and above the standing prejudices of well-accustomed ideas. To get a better grip on the issue, it is useful to go back to the cosmological perspective of the ancient Greeks as it stood before the Stoics came along to legalize nature. It might well be—who can possibly know otherwise?—that our reality, much like Topsy, just grew and that lawful order itself came along gradually and rather imperfectly in the course of subsequent events (much as Plato envisioned the situation in the Timaeus). In such circumstances the laws will circumscribe the phenomena without being able to determine them.

50

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Perhaps our deep-rooted conviction that the phenomena are invariably the consequence of the productive operations of laws is no more than a deep-rooted prejudice—a mis-allegiance, if you will, to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. After all, there might in the end, simply be no law-based explanation—no lawful ground or reason—why things should stand this-wise rather than that-wise in certain regards. This might well be a fortuitous feature of just how things happen to be. Nature might, conversably, make a simply arbitrary choice among alternative possibilities. Faced with this sort of prospect, some theorists resort to rather desperate course of evasiveness they seize upon the idea of a multiverse—that all of those alternatives are in fact realized and that things stand this-wise in the particular universe in which we happen to be. (And why are we in the universe? Just because it is, by definition, the universe in which we happen to be.) Yet what is all this but a somewhat desperate subterfuge to avoid confronting a difficult and discomfiting question? Be all this as it may, the fact remains that, as our present deliberations indicate, it can certainly transpire that sort of going on ad infinitum in the elaboration of the laws, the laws at our disposal in the existing state of the scientific art may well leave the constitution of the world’s phenomena underdetermined. It is far from implausible to think that at every level of nature’s lawful development there is always room for new thing-kinds subject to new laws that are irreducible to laws obtaining at the lower levels. (And this can happen with probabilistic laws as readily as with deterministic ones.) Insofar as such a prospect is realized, we will confront what looks to be an anarchic world containing inexplicable phenomena—one whose situations and occurrences will lie (at least partially) beyond the range of explanation and prediction accessible via currently envisioned laws. Contingency, chance, and sheer fortuitousness then enter upon its stage, and inexplicability will arrive in its wake—at any rate as long as explanation is construed in its traditional mode as a matter of inferential subsumption under laws (be they deterministic or probabilistic).1

UNRULY WORLDS

51

And the circumstance that, as best we can tell, the actual world that we inhabit is in various respects unruly, gives credence to the prospect of an imperfect knowledge of the manifold of nature’s facts. NOTES 1

This chapter was initially presented as a Luncheon Lecture at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in January of 2010.

Chapter Four THE MEANS AND METHODS OF RATIONALITY ________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) The rational validation of our beliefs and actions is inherently geared to generality. (2) To qualify as such, valid reasons must always root in general facts. (3) And this holds both for cognitive (theoretical) and behavioral (practical) reasons. (4) Reason is thus by nature general and impersonal. (5) But of course this does not prevent the particular situation of knowers and agents from playing a critical role. (6)The gearing of reason to generality means that rationality itself cannot afford us an all-sufficient guide to the management of life in our decidedly complex world. ________________________________________________________ 1. RATIONALITY

T

he ancients saw man as “the rational animal” (zoõn logon echõn), set apart from the world’s other creatures by the capacity for verbalized thought and deliberation. And following in the footsteps of Greek philosophy, Western thinkers have generally deemed the deliberate use of knowledge for the guidance of our actions to be at once the glory and the duty of Homo sapiens.1 Rationality calls for the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends. It is a matter of the recognizedly effective pursuit of appropriately appreciated benefits. To behave rationally is to make use of one’s intelligence to figure out the best thing to do in the circumstances. Rationality is a matter of deliberately doing one’s utmost to realize rational ends with the means at one’s disposal, striving for the best results that one can expect to achieve within the range of one’s resources— specifically including one’s intellectual resources.

54

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

For a belief, action, or evaluation to qualify as rational, the agent must (in theory at least) be in a position to “give an account” of it on whose basis others can see that, in the circumstances, “it is only right and proper” for him to resolve the issue in that way. An intelligent, detached observer, apprised of the facts of the case, must be in a position to say: “While I myself do not believe or value these things, I can see that it is appropriate that someone in the agent’s circumstances should do so, and in consequence it was altogether sensible for the agent to have proceeded as he did.” It lies in the very meaning of the concept of rationality that if something is indeed “the rational thing to do,” then it must be possible in principle for anyone to recognize the rational sense of it once enough information is secured. 2. AGAINST IDIOSYNCRATIC REASONS Some things we desire for ourselves (“Mary as a wife”), others we see as universal desiderata that hold generally and for everyone (“having a good spouse if married”). Now, the crucial fact is that a personal want or preference qualifies as rational only in so far as it can be “covered” by a suitable generality—a circumstance that is an unrestrictedly universal desideratum (all else being equal). Only in so far as I am convinced that Mary will prove to be an instance of something that everyone can acknowledge as desirable—having one’s marriage partner be “a good spouse,” “a caring helpmeet,” “a desirable mate” or the like— will my own desire to have her for a wife be a rational one. Those acts alone which deserve the rather pompous title of a “universal principle of reason” can qualify as rational. It is not “being the last to cross the bridge to safety before its collapse” but “managing to cross the bridge safely” that would be rationally advisable for anyone and everyone to opt for in relevant circumstances.2 Only those acts whose salient characterization is universally rational are rational at all. Rationality is inherently impersonal and general. To account for an agent’s action on principles of reason calls for showing that any similarly situated sensible person would have so acted. If something is to be rational for X it will have to be rational also for anyone who is in the same circumstance. And these circumstances must be general— they can indeed take the form “If he were in Smith’s shoes” but not

THE MEANS AND METHODS OF RATIONALITY

55

just barely “If he were Smith.” What it makes good sense to do will certainly depend on the circumstances of the agent, but not on his particular identity and individual peculiarities and particularities. Rational justification thus has to have an element of objectivity to it. To be sure, “because he had insulted my sister” looks to be personal. But it is objective and not idiosyncratic: anybody—any sensible person—would take offence and react to this. It not only explains but excuses. And in this regard it is decisively different from “because I just forgot.” Rational justification is always to at least some extent impersonal and general. It cannot just react on an idiosyncratic flavor or fancy. “Just because I felt like it” or “Such whims may explain what I did but they do not justify it.” Reasons can be individualized but not idiosyncratic. And for present purposes this is the critical point. Idiosyncratic “reasons” are only faux-“reasons” that may explain but do not validate. By “idiosyncratic explanations” I understand those sorts of answers to the questions “Why did X do A” that proceed in terms of consideration specifically and characteristically linked to the individual at issue. Here we might here have such action-explanations as • Because he felt like it at the time. • Because he likes blondes. • Because he was bored. • Because he forgot that spades were trump. Action-explanations of this sort function specifically with reference to conditions specific and personal to the agent involved. They deal in motives, i.e., explanatory reasons, but not in authentic justifying reasons. They may serve to account for what the agent did but did not validate it as rationally appropriate. And they fail to do this exactly because they do not apply to any individual in any circumstances. The injunction is not “Do as the Romans do” but only “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

56

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

3. EXPLANATORY VS. JUSTIFYING REASONS To show that an action was rationally appropriate and justified, the account provided must have it that it is only normal, natural, and to be expected that someone in these circumstances in which the agent finds himself should perform that action. Rationality is predicated on a commitment to generality. Normative depersonalization is crucial to rational validation. For consider theses of the format: • the true (just, right, beautiful, etc.) is

as

reality people at large claim (see, maintain) it to be. we I

One’s rational entitlement to stake a claim of this sort is diminished whenever one fails to endorse this claim also at the next level upward along that bracketed list. And, similarly, one’s rational entitlement to stake such a claim carries with it an inherent pressure also to advance it at the next higher level. Failure to escalate the generalized level of one’s claim in this context constitutes the potential flaw of exceptionalism. And this engenders problems because there is always a strong presumption against exceptionalism. And just herein lies the inherent objectivity and depersonalization of reason. Rational belief, action, and evaluation are possible only in situations where there are cogent grounds (and not just compelling personal motives) for what one does. And the cogency of grounds is a matter of objective standards. The idea of rationality is in principle inapplicable where one is at liberty to make up one’s rules as one goes along—to have no predetermined rules at all. The dictates of rationality are objective. If something makes good rational sense, it must be possible in principle for anyone and everyone to see that this is so.

THE MEANS AND METHODS OF RATIONALITY

57

This matter of good reasons is not something subjective or idiosyncratic; it is objective and lies in the public domain. Both the appropriateness of ends (for a person of particular make-up, talents, tastes, and the like) and the suitability of particular means for pursuing those particular ends pose objective issues that are open to others every bit as much as to the agent himself. Indeed, with respect both to someone’s needs and to his best interests, other informed people (his doctor, his lawyer, his tax advisor, and so on) may well be in a position to make better and wiser—that is, more rational-judgments than the individual himself. Robinson Crusoe may well act in a perfectly rational way. But, he can only do so by doing what would make sense for others in similar circumstances. He must in principle be in a position to persuade others to adopt his course of action by an appeal to general principles to show them that his actions were appropriate in the circumstances. Rationality is thus something inherently general in its bearing. 4. THE ISSUE OF GENERALIZATION Generalization is the crux of justificatory rationality: Whatever considerations render it rational for someone to do something will by this very fact render it rational for “anyone in these circumstances” to do so in sufficiently similar conditions. To act rationally is to do that which one is well advised to do in the circumstances, and good advice is a matter not of persons but of the situations in which they find themselves. This conditional character is a key aspect of the universality of reason. Only when the ground of action is something universal—something that is mandatory (or tacit) for agents in general. To show that doing A was the rational thing for me to do in the occasion calls for showing that anyone in those conditions and circumstances would be called upon to do likewise. The contention “What’s rational for you to do need not be so for me” is certainly correct—within limits. Consider the medical analogy. You might do well to eat chocolate to provide the calories needed for the strenuous outdoor life you lead; for me, with my diabetes, it would be a very bad thing indeed. And so, low-level recommendations like “Eat chocolate” indeed fall into the range of the just stated dictum.

58

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

But with “Eat the foods conducive to maintaining your health” the matter stands very differently. At this level there is no variability. What is right and proper here is right and proper for everybody. And, similarly, at the higher level of governing principles, rationality is absolute and universal. The uniformity of overarching rational principles transcends the variability of their particular cultural implementations. Different cultures do indeed implement a rational principle like “Be in a position to substantiate your claims” very differently. (For one thing, there are different standards as to what constitutes proper “substantiation”.) But, they cannot simply abandon it. If they resort to “It’s all right to maintain anything that suits your fancy” they do not have a different mode of cognitive rationality but rather, in this respect at any rate, are simply deficient in cognitive rationality. Sometimes, to be sure, it is very unlikely, or even impossible, that many or most others could find themselves in those particular circumstances. For example, it could happen that certain opportunities for advantageous action are opened up by the circumstance that most others are not doing something. It can be perfectly rational for people to act “out of step” with the majority; for example, when a fashionable trend leaves a useful niche abandoned. But, clearly, contra-majority action is not something that everyone could do. The fact that something that is rational for someone is rational for anyone else who is “in his shoes” thus does not mean that it is rational for everyone, full stop. It may (as in this case of productively eccentric action) even be logically impossible for everyone to act in this way at a given time. To be sure, the question of what we would do if we were “in someone else’s shoes” of course raises the issue of just what are we to take along when we step into those shoes? If we take nothing of our own along, then we are bound to see the issue exactly as he does; there is no other possibility. If we take everything along, then of course he simply vanishes from the scene—his idiosyncratic wants and needs count for nothing. What we have to do to proceed realistically is to assess what it would be appropriate to do in conditions “sufficiently like” his, specifically what it would be intelligent to do in the light of his information and of his situation. It is not a matter of changing the rules of the game on our subject, but one of assessing how well he plays the game by his rules—the rules he does, or ought to, follow

THE MEANS AND METHODS OF RATIONALITY

59

given his valid needs and real interests. What we take along, then, is our native intelligence and our “common sense” ability to think and to judge as reasonable people. However, the various substantive commitments on matters of fact and of value are things that we must in large measure take over from the agent at issue. 5. RATIONALITY DOES NOT NEGATE PERSONALIZATION The circumstantialities of reason make for an unavoidable aspect of situational delimitation. Thus consider the operation of a rational rule of prudence such as Never put your life at risk. Never put your life at risk needlessly. Never buy something that is available more cheaply. Never buy something that is available cheaply with equal ease and convenience. As such comparisons clearly indicate, to achieve universality one must qualify. The generality at issue is always approximate and indefinite and can be transformed into strict generality only through suitable limitations and qualifications. Rational resolutions are indeed universal, but only circumstantially universal in a way that makes room for the variation of times, places, and the thousands of details of each individual and situation. What it was rational for Galen to believe—given the cognitive “state of the art” of his day regarding medical matters—is in general no longer rational for us to believe today. The routines of training and practice that a young “natural athlete” can rationally set for himself may not make sense for a young cripple or an active septuagenarian. Obviously, what it is rational for someone to do or to think hinges on the particular details of how he is circumstanced. And the prevailing circumstances of course differ from person to person and group to group. The rulings of rationality are indeed subject to person-relativity, but a personrelativity as regards objectively determinable circumstances.

60

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Consider an example. I am hungry; I go to the restaurant; I order a meal. Have I acted rationally? Of course. But why exactly? Well, because a long story can correctly be told about what I have done, a story in which considerations of the following sort play a crucial role. My well-evidentiated beliefs that eating food alleviates hunger and that restaurants provide food; my sensible preference for the comfort of satiation over the discomfort of hunger; my custom of doing what I effectively can to alleviate discomfort.

The basic chain that is at issue here, namely “alleviate discomfortproceed to secure food—go to a food supplier—order food,” is part and parcel of the rationale of my action. And if the chain were severed at any point (if, for example, I realized that the restaurant had run out of food last week), then my action (ordering that meal) would cease to be rational in the circumstances. One only proceeds rationally when what one does at each step is a particular instance assured by a universal principle of rationality that holds good generally and for everyone. I study the menu and order steak. Was it rational of me to do so? Of course—because I was hungry, came to eat something at the restaurant, and found steak to be the most appealing entry on the menu. On due reflection, it could be (quite appropriately) said that I proceeded on the principle “Presented with various options for food (and other things being equal), select that which one deems the tastiest.” (To be sure, other things may not be equal—my choice of beef might deeply offend my dinner guest who deems cattle sacred.) Here we have a strictly universal principle—one that it makes perfectly good rational sense for anyone to act on. Though clearly not every sensible person would order steak, I nevertheless could be said to have done—under the aegis of the indicated principle—something that any sensible person would do. Similarly, any rational choice must be “covered” by a universally valid desideratum. It must implement, in its particular context, a principle that is of strictly universal validity—although, to be sure, one that is of a conditional nature. To be sure, the question “What is the rational thing to believe or to do?” must receive the indecisive answer: “That depends.” It depends

THE MEANS AND METHODS OF RATIONALITY

61

on context and situation—on conditions and circumstances. At the level of the question “What is rational; what is it that should be believed or done?” a many-sided and pluralistic response is called for. The way in which people proceed to give a rational justification of something—be it a belief, action, or evaluation—is unquestionably variable and culture relative. We mortal men cannot speak with the tongues of angels. The means by which we pursue our ends in the setting of any major project—be it rationality, morality, communication, or nourishment—are “culture dependent” and “context variable.” Nevertheless, those larger projects have a uniform and universal validity. Greek medicine is something very different from modern medicine. But, the aims of the enterprise—“the maintenance of health,” “the relief of distressing symptoms,” and the like—are similar throughout. It is, after all, these aims that define the issue; they indicate that it is medicine we are talking about rather than basket weaving. And this is so with rationality itself as well. Rationality is, after all, a definite sort of enterprise with a characteristic goal structure of its own, viz. the pursuit of appropriate ends by appropriate means. And it is in view of this fact that its defining principles make for an inevitable uniformity and universality. 6. RATIONALITY IS NOT ENOUGH Randomness and chance create interruptions in the world’s regularities, with the result that not everything that happens conforms to fixed general rules. Anomaly invades the flow of occurrence and puts some of it outside the course of lawful regularity. Our understanding of the world is based on the cognitive exploitation of discernible patterns. And where these do not exist, rationality is unavailing so that reason—whose modus operandi is geared to regularity and order—will on occasion prove to be insufficient as a guide. In a world whose phenomena are sufficiently complex to exceed the reach of exceptionlessly universal laws, it will transpire that reason itself is not able to provide direction in any and all circumstances. For the inherent gearing of reason to generality means that on a significantly chaotic world rationality itself cannot afford us an all-

62

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

sufficient guide to the management of life. However, this is a state of affairs that reason itself can and does recognize.

NOTES 1

On these issues see the author’s Rationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

2

Cf. Derek Parfit, “Providence, Morality, and Prisoner’s Dilemma,” Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 65 (1979), pp. 555ff.

Chapter Five THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC REASON ________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Can our philosophical understanding of the world be grounded entirely on naturalistic principles? Can its theses and explanations rest wholly on scientific considerations? (2) The great Leibnizian “ultimate questions” about the rationale and nature of existence call this prospect into question. (3) They do so by confronting us with four difficult options. They are (4) scientistic positivism, (5) issue-dismissal, (6) theological supernaturalism, and (7) metaphysical supranaturalism. Each of these options confront substantial difficulties. (8) The choice that confronts us here is itself one that demarcates the limits of naturalistic reason. (9) Overall, the metaphysics of optimalism affords the most promising alternative. (10) Curiously, this problem of the limits of reason is self-illustrative. ________________________________________________________ 1. PRELIMINARIES

E

arly in her magnum opus, Finite and Eternal Being, Edith Stein addressed the question of “the possibility of a philosophy founded on pure natural reason.” She agreed with St. Thomas Aquinas that in principle the answer is, or should be, affirmative. But she went on to insist that such a philosophy is bound to be incomplete and thereby, in a way, also incorrect. And she maintains that “people must judge for themselves whether by accepting the additional knowledge [made accessible through faith] they may perhaps gain a deeper and fuller understanding of Reality.” She did not, however, afford as much detail and precision as one might wish for regarding the correlative question to where naturalistic reason ends and the additional knowledge of faith

64

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

begins. The present discussion will take some cautious steps towards locating this limit more exactly. And it will endeavor to do this on the basis of considerations that remain within the scope of Stein’s overall project of arguing that natural reason is not enough to meet the entirety of our cognitive needs. First, however, one preliminary observation is in order. It seems appropriate to characterize observation-based scientific reasoning as naturalistic, reserving the expression “natural reason” for use in a broader context of human rationality at large, which also encompasses cogent reasoning in contexts other than science, including philosophy and even theology. Since man indeed is by nature a rational animal, natural reason should be seen as embracing the entire repertoire of our ventures in cogent ratiocination. And so our question becomes “Can philosophy be grounded entirely on naturalistic principles?”. 2. TWO “ULTIMATE” QUESTIONS The stage for the present deliberations was set by two transcendental questions which were put on the agenda by G. W. Leibniz. I. Why is there anything at all? II. Why are things as they are? These questions can in turn be partitioned into four: (1) How is it that there are actual states of affairs at all? (2) How is it that there are laws of nature? (3) Why do the actual state of affairs have the character they do? (4) Why do the laws of nature have the character they do? Clearly, these four questions pose issues of high prominence on the agenda of any adequate philosophy.

THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC REASON

65

Now in addressing these ultimate questions, there are basically four options. We can (1) seek to resolve them in materialistic and scientific grounds, or else we can (2) reject the questions themselves as meaningless and inappropriate, or (3) see the answer as lying in supernatural and specifically theological considerations, or (4) endeavor to resolve them by an appeal to somehow supra-natural, naturetranscending meta-physical facts. In sum there are three salient alternatives: • the scientistic course of an exclusive reliance on natural science • the positivistic course of issue-dismissal • the theological course of supra-natural explanation • the metaphysical course of a science-transcending but still broadly “natural,” non-theological mode of explanation How do matters stand in these four regards? 3. PROBLEMS OF SCIENTISM Natural science is our venture in securing observational knowledge about the world. And natural science in general explains states of affairs developmentally. In order to account for an aspect of the world’s arrangements, it looks to some earlier, antecedent condition of things, and then invokes the laws of nature to explain on this basis how those subsequent conditions whose explanation is at-issue have come to be realized. The scientific format of naturalistic explanation is thus that of a developmental transit of states of affairs under the operation of nature’s laws. Naturalistic explanation as we have it accordingly has two sorts of inputs into the products that they provide: antecedent states and natural laws. But it is, or should be, clear on the very surface of it that this state of affairs means that natural science will in the final analysis be unable to resolve those matters of ultimate explanation. For it emerges on closer inspection that those “ultimate questions” are to be seen as tran-

66

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

scendental because they do not, by their very nature, admit of any naturalistic explanation. For where the states and laws themselves are at issue—this standard line of procedure is simply unavailable. Accordingly, these questions outrun the reach of nature-geared scientific explanation as this is standardly practiced. For all scientific explanation sequence impute relating to the world’s phenomena and laws, and cannot proceed when these essential requisites are themselves in question. Where does the fact that those big transcendental questions outrun the limits of naturalistic understanding leave us in the endeavor to get a cognitive grip on the issues? What options are available to us when confronted with such scientific insolubilia? 4. DISMISSING DISMISSALISM We can, of course, consider recourse to the option of dismissing these questions as improper and illegitimate. But such rejectionism is not a particularly appealing course. For any alternative to it has the significant merit of retaining for rational inquiry and investigation some clearly intriguing questions that would otherwise be lost. The question of “the reason why” behind existence is strikingly challenging and surely important. If there is any possibility of getting an adequate answer—by hook or by crook—it seems reasonable that we would very much like to have it. Its nonstandard nature makes this difficult, but that is surely not a very satisfactory ground for abandoning the problem. This only makes sense if from the very outset one accepts the decidedly problematic prejudgment that it should be our stance towards questions that “If science can’t answer them, they’re meaningless.” But such blatant scientism has little to be said for it. There is, after all, nothing patently meaningless about this “riddle of existence.” And it does not seem to rest in any obvious way on any particularly problematic presupposition—apart from the epistemically optimistic yet methodologically inevitable idea that there are always reasons why things are as they are (the “principle of sufficient reason”). To dismiss the question as improper or illegitimate is implausible, fruitless, and embarrassingly reminiscent of Aesop’s “Fox and

THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC REASON

67

Grapes” story. Try as we will to put the question away, it comes back to haunt us.1 5. THEOLOGICAL SUPERNATURALISM In the Western tradition of thought, the theological approach to those ultimate questions has always stood at the forefront. The doctrine is that things are what and as they are because a creator God chose to have it that way. However, the difficulty of this position is that where the ways of God are concerned it is so difficult to get there from here. Moreover, invoking God to resolve our philosophical issues would seem to be overreaching. Medieval theorists of the division of academic labor had a dictum for it: non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum. (Roughly: “Don’t call on God to pull your philosophical Chestnuts out of the fire.”) If there is any way to crack this nut without resorting to such heavy machinery, one ought to be willing to try it. 6. A SUPRA-NATURAL METAPHYSICAL APPROACH: THE IDEA OF PROTOLAWS And yet another option is indeed available. For a variant strategy of resolution might look not to scientific realities but to metaphysical principles that underpin our efforts at the cognitive domestication of the observational realm. Such deliberations will move in the sphere of the contemplatively possible rather than that of especially actual. But how can an explanation ever move from mere possibility to actuality by comprehensible means? To deal sensibly with this question, it is necessary to undertake a brief excursus into the theory of possibility. The realm of the possible can be represented as a region that is divided, target fashion, into three concentric rings—as per Figure 1. Moving inwards we encounter first (outermost) the domain of mere logical (or “purely hypothetical”) possibility, and last (centrally) the domain of a physical possibility that reflects the mode of operation of the actual things of this world. Intermediate between them lies the realm of real (or “metaphysical”) possible.2 Mere possibility is a matter of abstract, logical consistency—of purely theoretical prospects.

68

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

FIGURE 1 THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY logical possibility physical possibility real possibility

Physical possibility is a matter of the operation of things actually present on the world’s existential stage. Real possibility is something intermediate between these two. It is a matter of genuine or “realistic” possibility, not in the sense of psychological imaginability, but in that of a “metaphysical” possibility which must eventually be cashed out through some substantive theory of possibility with respect to metaphysical proto-laws that are not laws OF nature, but laws FOR nature. Such protophysical laws should be understood as laying down conditions of real possibility, ruling certain theoretical (logical) possibilities out as outside the realm of realizability. They “precede” nature and delineate among all the abstractly available possibilities certain ones as alone “real,” ruling out the rest as unreal, remote, merely hypothetical or the like. The root idea of this approach goes back to Leibniz, who effectively envisioned real possibility in axiological terms. For him, metaphysical possibility rooted in axiological considerations of evaluative optimality. And ultimately the only real possibility will be that which is evaluatively optimal. To be sure, it is clear that one cannot just optimize, any more than one can just maximize or minimize. For one has to optimize something, some feature or aspect of things. And if this factor is to be something that can be accepted as self-validating and self-sustaining, then the clearly most promising candidate would seem to be intelligence itself—that is to say the overall status and standing of intelligent beings at large. Accordingly, intelligence and its concomitant ra-

THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC REASON

69

tionality best qualifies as the self-sufficient standard of value that will have to be at issue “for the best” will have to be construed in terms of what is best for the enhancement and diffusion of intelligence in the cosmos. A rational being is bound to see the loss of reason as a supreme tragedy. The value at issue here with “being for the best” is a matter of being so as intelligent creatures see it—that is from the vantage point of intelligence itself. Assuredly, no intelligent being would prefer an alternative that is inferior in this regard. And so, for an intelligent being—a rational creature—intelligence itself must figure high on the scale of values. Accordingly, the metaphysical optimalism envisioned here is oriented at optimizing the conditions of existence for intelligent beings at large. And at the cosmological level such an optimalism will militate towards a universe which • provides for the chance and randomness through which alone intelligent beings can emerge in the world through evolutionary processes based on chance-conditioned variation and selection, • provides for the chance-conditional novelty and innovation needed to provide an environment of sufficient complexity to be of interest for intelligent beings, • provides for the order of regularity and lawfulness needed for a universe sufficiently orderly and to allow complex creatures to develop and thrive, • provides for a lawful order in the modus operandi of nature sufficiently simple to be understood by imperfectly intelligent beings as a basis for grounding their decisions and actions in a complex world. The arrangements of an intelligently contrived universe must, in sum, manage things in a way that the emergence of intelligent and rational creatures is provided for. And so an optimal world, in the metaphysical sense presently at issue, is one that achieves a condition of optimalization under constraints—these constraints being a manifold of natu-

70

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

ral law favorable to the best interests of intelligence—that is, of intelligent beings at large. To be able to afford an adequate resolution of our ultimate question the principle at work cannot inhere in further extraneous considerations. For the question of why things are as they are will arise with respect to the principle itself, and if it is to resolve such matters it must do so with respect to itself as well. It must, in short, be self-sustaining and self-grounding. Otherwise the requisite ultimacy will thus be achieved. And the optimality principle indeed has this feature of self support. For the obviously appropriate answer to the question “But why is it that such a principle of optimality obtains” is simply “The principle obtains because that is for the best.” Clearly the principle is selfsustaining and self-explanatory. And in this present case this is not vitiating circularity but an essential aspect of the problem—a decidedly virtuous circularity. So mandates the axiological program. Unlike a theological supernaturalism which looks to divine intervention in the ordinary course of nature, the axiological optimalism envisioned here is a merely supra-natural—and not super-natural— position. For what this line of approach does is to explain nature’s features in terms of an axiological proto-law that possibilizes and probabilifies arrangements conducive to the success of intelligent beings in the world (which is not quite to say that such success is guaranteed). We have here an account that reaches outside the range of scientific materialism to a conception of nature whose rationale lies not in observation but in a systematization with human experience at large. An important terminological distinction is at work here, Supernaturalism accepts an agent or agency that intervenes in the ordinary course of nature and alters its operations. Supra-naturalism, by contrast, leaves all the ordinary forces of nature in place and comes into play only where they leave certain issues open and unresolved. Supernaturalism changes the ordinary course of nature; supra-naturalism, by contrast, provides resolutions where these forces would otherwise leave matters open and undecided.

THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC REASON

71

7. THE RATIONALE OF OPTIMALISM VALIDATION AND THE REGRESS PROBLEM There now immediately looms the objection: “What can possibly explain such an optimalistic proto-law regarding the manifold of possibility? Why should it be as is?” The answer to this seeming conundrum is straightforward. If optimalism is our proto-law, then it will be self-sustaining. It is itself for the best that which is for the best should be. To be sure, the question “Why optimalism?” splits into two decidedly distinct parts, namely (1) Why does optimalism obtain?, and (2) Why is it that we should accept optimalism’s obtaining? These issues are, of course, every bit as distinct as “Why did Booth assassinate Lincoln?” and “Why should we accept that Booth assassinated Lincoln?” The former question seeks an existence for a fact, the latter asks for the evidentiation of a judgment. The answer to the first question has just been noted. Optimalism obtains because it is self-potentiating. It is the case that what is for the best obtains because this itself is for the best. Optimalism, in sum, obtains on its own self-sufficient footing. For if we press the questions, “Why should what is for the best exist?” then the answer lies in the very nature of the principle itself. It is self-substantiating, seeing it is automatically for the best that the best alternative should exist rather than an inferior rival. Value is, or can be, an explanatory terminus: it can be regress stopping and “final” by way of self-explanation in a way that causality or purposive can never manage to be. So much for explaining how optimalism might obtain. But why should we accept it—what sorts of substantiation could it have? Based on the realization that, since rational explanation must proceed from premises, the principle of anangkê steinai—of the need for an ultimate stopping place of self-sufficiency—has been acknowledged since classical antiquity.3 And since this sort of thing is somewhere between difficult and impossible to encounter in the sphere of fact, it seems plausible to seek it in the sphere of value. The shift from natural to the axiological order of explanation is clearly inviting.

72

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

So evaluative superiority in this context is a matter of serving the interests of intelligence. And the principle of optimality accordingly can be revised as a principle of noophelia as well. In the end, we must acknowledge that optimalism is self-explanatory, seeing that this is for the best?4 To ask for a different sort of explanation would be inappropriate. We must expect that any ultimate principle should explain itself and cannot, in the very nature of things, admit of an external explanation in terms of something altogether different. And the impetus to realization inherent in authentic value lies in the very nature of value itself. A rational person would not favor the inferior alternative; and there is no reason to think that a rational reality would do so either. So in the end what recommends acceptance is simply that it works. To be sure, the principle of optimalism represents a contingent feature of things. And as such itself requires explanation seeing that one can and should maintain the Leibnizian Principle of Sufficient Reason to the effect that for every contingent fact there is a reason why it is so rather than otherwise. But there is no decisive reason why that further explanation has to be “deeper and different”—that is, no decisive reason why the prospect of self-explanation has to be excluded at this fundamental level.5 In the end, if there is to be anything worthy of the name of an ultimate explanation, there is just no alternative to its being self-sustaining and self-validating. At this stage—and of course it is an exceptional and altogether extra-ordinary one. Self-validation is not viciously circular, but, rather, is circular in a profoundly virtuous way. For it lies in the very nature of a genuinely ultimate explanation that it must not require anything else for its own validation. So much then for the explanatory of optimalism. But it is time to move on. Ultimate questions are altogether extraordinary. Usually when we ask about things and their conditions we are after a developmental account—how they got to be so given a process of transformation from some earlier condition. This standard sort of issue-resolution is clearly impossible in the present case. The fact of it is that when we ask an extraordinary question we must be prepared for an extraordinary and indeed seemingly bizarre answer. For if an altogether basic condition of things-in-general is to be explained this cannot be done on the basis

THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC REASON

73

of the machinations of some thing or sort, seeing that this itself would form part of the problem. Rather, it must be done on the basis of some sort of principle. Now this principle of ultimate explanation cannot be one that relates to actualities. This would simply carry us back to the starting point. Rather, it must relate to possibilities. It cannot deal in actually extant facts but must deal merely in what is potentially possible. And since it cannot relate to facts at all, it must relate to values. And on this basis it confronts us with the problem of factoring a transit from values to fact grounded in evaluative considerations. But such a transit is possible only with an axio-metaphysical principle of the form Among the various possibilities, it is X that qualifies as real (actual, existent) because this is for the best.

Only such a principle of optimality can achieve the requisite work in relation to those ultimate questions. So that we must accordingly take the line that: the existing order of things is what it is and as it is because this is for the best: it represents the best-possible constitution that is encompassed within the overall manifold of possibility. The essential creativity of a possibility-to-actuality principle can thus be achieved along this axiological route which has it that optimality is able to provide for the needed transit from possibility to actuality. And such then is what optimalism sets out to do. 8. CONCLUSION It emerges from the present deliberations that if we confront those grand ultimate questions at issue with the “riddle of existence”—and do not simply dismiss the problem—then two prime approaches present themselves—the axiological and the theological. Which way should we go? To all visible appearances naturalistic reason does not suffice to resolve this issue. Neither scientific inquiry nor philosophical deliberation suffices to settle matters one way or the other. We seem to be at the limits of reason—at the end of our cognitive tether.

74

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Now in a somewhat strange and perhaps surprising sort of way, the two alternative positions of axiological and theological grounding are caught up in a peculiar embrace. The limits of naturalistic reason come more clearly into view in the setting of a concern for those “ultimate questions” invoked by Leibniz. They emerge at exactly the point at which we become unable to explain facts on the basis of other facts, but must—for the sake of explanatory adequacy—turn from the explanatory invocation of facts to that of values. If we take the orthodox theological line that Reality is the production of a creator God, then we are almost inexorably driven towards an axiological position. Because we really have little alternative but also to confront the question “just why did God choose to make his creation in this way rather than some other?” And there seems no way to address this more sensibly that with the response “Because that is for the overall best.” On the other hand, if we are optimalists then we are confronted with the question: But if Reality is as is because that is for the best—if optimality indeed engenders reality—then will not this principle enjoin a creator God as well? Would such a being not be an integral part and parcel of what is overall best? To all appearances, metaphysical optimalism and theistic creationism are mutually reinforcing doctrines. But what is fundamental? Deciding which way to go here is no simple task. The alternatives before us seem so closely linked and interconnected that a clear-cut resolution one way or the other threatens to outrun our rational grasp. In fact, given its inherent difficulty, the question that now confronts us is itself one that demarcates the limits of natural reason. Our question about the limits of naturalistic understanding itself lies at the limit. In effect, the very question with which we are dealing itself affords the material for its own answer so that, in the end, our problem of the limits of natural reason is self-illustrative.6 NOTES 1

For criticisms of ways of avoiding the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” see Chap. III of William Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Prin-

THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC REASON

75

NOTES

ceton, 1975). Cf. also Donald R. Burrill (ed.), The Cosmological Argument (Garden City, 1967), esp. “The Cosmological Argument” by Paul Edwards, as well as Adolf Grünbaum, “The Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cosmology,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 56 (1989), pp. 373–394. 2

In principle there might be more refinement here, with some actuality-departing possibilities being relatively more proximate or remote than others, depending on how radical the departures from existential reality. This would lead to gradations of more or less “real” possibility, depending how close one comes to the “real life” modus operandi of actual things. We here ignore this prospect and abstract from such complications which do not mind and afford the outcome of the deliberations.

3

See John Michael Shea, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Principle ‘Anankê Stenai’,” New Scholasticism, vol. 55 (1981), pp. 139–158.

4

Optimalism is closely related to optimism. The optimist holds that “Whatever exists is for the best,” the optimalist maintains the converse that “Whatever is for the best exists.” However, when we are dealing with exclusive and exhaustive alternatives the two theses come to the same thing. When one of the alternatives A, A1, … An must be the case, then if what is realized is for the best it follows automatically that the best is realized (and conversely).

5

After all, there is no reason of logico-theoretical principle why propositions cannot be self-certifying. Nothing vicious need be involved in self-substantiation. Think of “Some statements are true” or “There are statements that state a particular rather than universal claim.”

6

This essay was written for presentation at an Edith Stein Conference held at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in April of 2010.

Chapter 6 PERPLEXING CHOICES (On Effecting Options When Rational Evaluation Fails Us) _______________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Perplexing choices involve a conflict not just among different alternatives but discordant standards. (2) There is just no automatic process by which a rational resolution can be effected in such cases. Deliberations of pure reason do not resolve matters here: as far as the rationality of the issue goes, we are left sometimes with a selection quandary. (3) There are, however, alternative approaches to proceeding in such circumstances. (4) Pure randomness affords no workable resolution in and of itself. (5) Sheer personalized arbitrariness is the only way out. Sensible choice is here a personalized matter that involves making rather than finding a resolution. (6) Man is a rational animal alright, and yet is not just a rational animal, but also a creature of will and decision able to make strictly arbitrary choices, and thereby enjoys a reason-detached capacity which it is occasionally rational to employ. ________________________________________________________ 1. PERPLEXING CHOICES

W

hat will concern us here are situations of choice among alternatives whose evaluation is the source of problems. Such situations become perplexing because the comparative value of the alternatives that confront us is problematic. Perplexing choices of this sort commonly arise in matters of decision when one sort of value has to be weighed against others in the

78

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

comparison of alternatives—as when the spaciousness of Apartment No. 1 has to be weighed against the lovely ocean view afforded by Apartment No. 2. The problem is that of determining comparative preferability in the face of divergent sorts of advantages and disadvantages, assets and liabilities, plusses and minuses. Multiple value facets will be at issue here: better in point of A, worse in point of B. In such cases we confront what is, in effect, not merely a choice among alternative objects, but one among alternative standards, where the question is one of which sort of evaluative factor merits the greater weight in the case at hand. This sort of thing can also occur in regard to one single value of inherent complexity. Consider, for example, the cognitive value of simplicity in relation to theories. This splits apart into a proliferation of respects: • expressive simplicity: grammatical economy in the mode of formulation. • conceptual simplicity: lexicographic economy of exposition in avoiding of complex ideas that require elaborate explanation. • instrumental simplicity: economy in the amount of mathematical and technical apparatus needed for formulating the theory. • inferential simplicity: economy in the labor to figure out the results and outcomes provided for by the theory. • pedagogical simplicity: economy in what it takes to teach the theory and to learn it.1 The salient issue here is that we here encounter a diversified manifold of divergent perspectives of consideration from which one theory can be seen as simpler than another with conflicting perspectives producing a clash even within a single factor like simplicity. The internal diversity of desiderata stands in the way of amalgamating these different features into one single whole—even as the inner tension among the

79

PERPLEXING CHOICES

various aspects of simplicity precludes one thing being simpler than another in every respect. And this is a commonplace predicament. For just the same sort of situation is going to obtain in the case of such concepts as similarity or convenience or the like. All of them dissolve into a plurality of respects which will themselves have yet further respects with standards of their own. Most any respect-involving desideratum is going to be inherently diversified, subject to different aspects that cannot simply be forced together in smooth coordination because more of one will be obtainable only at the price of less of another. And—most relevantly for our present purposes—there may well be no way of fusing the different aspects into one unified overall result because the complex realities of the case block the prospect of integrative fusion of overall reconciliation. Such cases open the door to perplexity. Thus consider, for example, the situation of three alternatives a, b, and c that are subject to three critically different standards of merit which sort them differently as follows: Evaluative Rank/Order 1 2 3

A a b c

Standards B b c a

C c a b

In such cases, different standards yield different and discordant results. Many of the challenging choices we face in life arise between alternatives that have different and not readily comparable points of advantage and disadvantage. Automobiles afford a fertile source of examples here. Greater passenger comfort calls for bigger cars while greater maneuverability calls for smaller ones. Greater fuel economy calls for lighter cars, crash-safety calls for heavier ones. On this basis the choice between cars can involve decidedly perplexing decisions. And this sort of difficulty confronts us in many contexts.

80

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

2. NO AUTOMATIC RESOLUTION BY FACTOR AMALGAMATION Matters would, of course, be ideal if there were some general formula for compounding those different parameters of merit into one single synoptic measure of over-all optimality. But alas there is not. The well-known “Impossibility Theorem” of the Nobel Prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow had the following structure: •

Suppose that a group of n individuals had to make a choice among k alternatives.

•

And suppose further that the individuals involved rank these alternatives differently

THEN

•

There is no possible general rule of combination for deriving an overall preferential order that satisfies all of the adequacy conditions that are required for such a rule.2

So the divergent preferences of different individuals do not admit of the construction of any cogent overall synthesis. The entire spectrum of idealized desiderata is not conjointly realizable. And this situation, where there is no specifiable process for combining various preferences into an overall preferability, also obtains when the issue is one of combining various desiderata into aggregate desirability. Accordingly, when one shifts from the Arrow perspective of the referenceranking of different individuals to our present perspective of the preference ruling of different evaluation standards, exactly the same impossibility at issue in Arrow’s argumentation arises once again. This circumstance is highlighted by what might be called “Milnor’s Paradox” in the theory of economic rationality.3 For when an individual faces problems of choice in conditions of uncertainty, there are various standards of rational choice, each looking to the matter from the angle of a different aspect of desirability. And here, as John Mil-

PERPLEXING CHOICES

81

nor showed in 1954, conjoint realization of these different aspects of desirability is a logico-mathematical impossibility.4 As these formalized analyses of choice theory demonstrate, there can be no satisfactory general principle of combination or overall amalgamation that is applicable in these cases. Those perplexing choices cannot be resolved on rational general principles: their resolution always requires an element of arbitrariness that transcends the reach of rational evaluation. 3. ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO SELECTION QUANDARIES Given that no routine general process of solution is available in these cases, how is one to proceed when confronted with a selection quandary? What is it that can be done in these perplexing circumstances where the relevant standard issue is conflicting evaluations? Of course one possibility is simply inaction—an inability to get oneself to make that otherwise requisite choice. One stays fixed in place like a deer frozen into immobility by the headlights of an onrushing car. This, clearly, is not a very sensible option. A second possibility is resolution postponement—to delay choosing and hold back from resolving the issue. There will, however, be many circumstances where this particular option is simply unavoidable, and many others where the status quo is inferior to alternatives. A third theoretical possibility would call for revision by somehow forcing a change in the conditions of choice, bringing new or different options into existence. It must be acknowledged, however, that this radical “Egg of Columbus” stratagem is seldom available in practice. And finally, in fourth place comes the seemingly plausible but unrealistic prospect of treating truly perplexing alternative as effectively indifferent choices by giving all of those rival standards an equal voice and vote in the determination of the final outcome. But how can choice egalitarianism be seriously implemented? To see how such equalization works out, consider the situation of four alternatives being evaluated differently by three clearly discordant standards.

82

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Alternative 1 2 3 4

Valuation by Standard A B C 2 5 4 8

3 4 5 2

10 8 3 2

If those standards themselves are to be given equal weight, with all of them on the same footing in a condition of perfect parity, then we could simply add up the evaluations across each column, arriving at the result Alternative 1 2 3 4

Aggregate Weight 15 17 12 12

On this basis, alternative 2 would prevail even though none of those standards classes it as its preferred alternative. But in a process of blending each makes some concession to the others with alternative 2 emerging at the top in view of the general consensus in seeing it as second-best. While such an egalitarianism of alternative standards may not always resolve the matter so convincingly, it does offer us some prospect of a practicable resolution. Are other prospects also available? Perhaps random choice can afford a plausible stratagem. 4. PURE RANDOMNESS DOES NOT HELP It is instructive and constructive to distinguish between effectively identical alternatives that are the same in all relevant aspects of their descriptive constitution (comparable bales of hay, matching dollar bills, fresh copies of the same book), and choices that are equivalent. Here the alternatives involved, while descriptively different, neverthe-

PERPLEXING CHOICES

83

less have the same over-all value (such as the same dollar amount in bills of different denomination). The classic example of identically indifferent choice is exemplified in the notorious anecdote of the Ass of Buridan—the hungry animal baffled by the choice between two equally appealing bales of hay: EL BURRO DE BURIDÁN: Una día el burro de un filósofo llamado Juan Buridán—y por eso llamado el burro de Buridán—perece de hambre y sed. Teniendo a un lado una gran cantidad de avena y otro un cubo de agua, el burro nunca puede saber si tiene sed o hambre. El burro no sabe que decidir: si comer o beber. En esta horrible vacilación le sorprende la muerte.5

Presumably Buridan projected this example in the service of his theory of the will. It is tempting to think that a resort to randomness is the appropriate procedure with genuinely indifferent choice. “Just toss a coin or throw a die” seems to afford the sensible response. But things are not as straightforward there as they seem. Thus let it be that, in the case of Buridan’s donkey, the beast says to himself: “Fine, I’ll just toss a coin to decide between the left bale and the right.” But now there at once arises a second-order choice: Shall it be heads for the right bale and tails for the left, or shall it be the reverse? This is clearly itself yet another choice between totally equivalent alternatives. So if randomness is indeed the way to resolve such choices, we would have to proceed once more by a coin toss or some such. We are now launched upon on infinite regress that would freeze the decision maker into immobility. And just here lies the critical lesson of the Buridan’s Ass situation. Any process of random-choice resolution requires and presupposes a non-random arbitrary-choice selection. Without such unfettered arbitrariness the possibility of a randomness is annihilated. Only a being that can resolve indifferent choices through spontaneous arbitrariness—without resort to external tie-breakers—can ever resolve indifferent choices adequately. With such difficulties in view, Medieval and Renaissance thinkers added a tie-breaking free will to speech and reason as distinctive capacities separating humans from the lower animals. As they saw it, rational beings—but not dumb animals—possess a capacity for arbitrari-

84

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

ly breaking such a tie. Indeed, one of the prime uses of the Buridan’s Ass sort of illustration was to make the point that an ass—unlike a human—would indeed starve in a situation of synoptic choice between two equal bales of hay because it lacked a free will. Nor could reason accomplish the job all by itself. For while reason would indeed insist that one of these alternatives be taken, there is nothing preferential to be said on either side with respect to which one. The point here is that even a rationally mandated choice need not always be resolvable by reason alone and that a free will is needed to break the tie by making a characteristic contribution of its own.6 Paradoxically, reason sometimes enjoins recourse to selection-effecting measures in whose operation reason itself plays no part. In some circumstances only the capacity for what is—from reason’s standpoint—a venture in sheer arbitrariness makes it possible for us to cope sensibly with various real situations. Yet here too there can be problems. 5. GROUNDLESS CHOICE: ON BEING ARBITRARY Suppose that your choice has come down to buying one of two cars. The one has stylish exterior, the other a somewhat better audio system. No rationally geared consideration multitudes one way or the other. (E.g., you are not deaf). No commitment to rationally geared general principles comes to your aid here. You are just going to have to decide. The issue is not: “Which factor is the more important?” It is: “To which factor are you going to ascribe the greater significance in this case, here and now?” What you need to do in this case is not to investigate and discover, but simply and solely to decide something to make up your mind about it. With equivalent alternatives, the choice can rest on value-irrelevant whims or fancies reflective of personal preferences prevailing in the absence of any rationally relevant consideration of preferability. In such situations there is, effectively by hypothesis, no good objective reason for choosing A rather than B. Granted, the chooser will have a response to the question “Why do/did you so choose?” But this response will now take the line of what is really more of a motive than a reason: “I just felt like it” or “It was just an impulse.” Such responses may well explain, but they afford no rationale. In such matters

PERPLEXING CHOICES

85

the choice—if made at all—is made arbitrarily. For with effectively indistinguishable alternatives there is nothing that can reasonably be discounted among them. A chooser chooses randomly if the way in which he makes his choice is such that any given outcome is equally likely. By contrast a chooser chooses arbitrarily if the way in which he makes his choice proceeds on the basis of considerations that do not bear upon the value of the chosen alternative. It is, accordingly, important to distinguish between random and arbitrary choice. Random selection is just that—selection by means of some probabilistically indifferent resource. Arbitrary selection, by contrast, is a choice made through personal fiat without any good objective reason whatsoever. And the crucial lesson of the present deliberations is that random choice is impossible in the absence of arbitrariness. Ideally we would have it that alternative #1 is inherently better than alternative #2. But this project often leaves us in the lurch. In matters of choice, rationality can carry us only so far. For life often presents us with alternatives that are exempt from the reach of preferability Arbitrary choice is a matter of preference without preferability. But it is not that two choices are devoid of any motivation of some sort. It is just that the so-called reason for choosing in a reason in name only because it lacks any and all tincture of general validity that is required by authentic reasons. Political decision makers like to shirk responsibility by offloading it to “expert advisors.” “We decided on X rather than Y because all the experts said that this was the better option” is the politician’s favorite way out. And for us individuals, reason is the functional equivalent to that expert advisor. We can escape personal responsibility by placing “I decided on X rather than Y because this was the reasonable thing to do in the circumstances.” But—perhaps regrettably—there are many situations where this just won’t work. We have to take personal responsibility. We have to be prepared to say “I decided on X rather than Y because that’s simply what I resolved—there just is no deeper because.”

86

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

6. REASON VS. INCLINATION To “explain” one’s reason for acting or choosing by saying “Just because it suited me” or “Just because I wanted to” is not to give a reason. There is, after all, no such thing as a purely personal and subjective “reason”—that sort of thing can be a motive but does not deserve the name of reason. The purely personalized factors of taste, inclination, mood, whim, etc., on whose basis individuals can resolve rationally indifferent choices unquestionably provide outcome-determinative factors. Yet just exactly because they are personally idiosyncratic, they fall outside of reason’s range. They are not irrational (they do not violate reason’s requirements) but rather arational in lying outside the realm of reason. In such a matter reason is simply a neutral bystander who remains on the sidelines of decision. And what comes to the fore in decision is not utter arbitrariness but something more personal than that—the operation of inclination, personal style, and individual taste. The individual stands on his own. Personal choice can fill the gap left by the absence of any rational (impersonal) preferability. The crux is that homo sapiens have the capacity for substantially arbitrary choice: that in cases where there is no reason to go one way rather than another, reason nevertheless has the capacity to “break the tie”—to make a rationally indifferent, merely personal and willful resolution. And so, rational perplexity need not issue in stultifying indecision exactly because people can resolve those perplexing choices on the basis of personalized considerations that range beyond the reach of reason. Only if it were the case that reason were its sole and only resource for effecting choices would Buridan’s then-unfortunate donkey have to starve. This line of thought projects a significant lesson. Rationality is uniform: in specific conditions and circumstances strictly rational people will act just alike. But real people will not and need not do so. They have the means for acting on their own idiosyncratically arbitrary determinations. And in so doing this they are not being irrational, but rather acting arationally via choices and decisions grounded not in impersonal reason but in personal inclination and style. And in so pro-

PERPLEXING CHOICES

87

ceeding they do not vitiate the mandates of reason so that there is no need for them to be apologetic about it. The circumstances of life enjoin a mixture of choices that require a rationally guided preferability-assessment together with rationally intractable choices that people must make arbitrarily. Choice in the absence of preferability will on occasion come our way. And seeing that we are called upon to make some decisions in circumstances where reason’s guidance is insufficient, we require the aid of a willfulness that reaches beyond reason. For the man is a rational animal alright and yet is not just a rational animal, but also a creature of will and decision, able to make strictly arbitrary choices—and thereby enjoying a reason-detached capacity which it is occasionally rational to employ. NOTES 1

On the inherent complexity of the concept of similarity see the vivid discussion in Chapters 4–7 of Mario Bunge, The Myth of Simplicity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963).

2

Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choice and Individual Values (New York, 1951), Coweles Commission Monograph N. 12; 2nd ed. (New Haven, 1961), “The Meaning of Social Welfare: A Comment on Some Recent Proposals,” Technical Repost No. 2 of the Department of Economics and Statistics, Stanford University (Stanford, 1952).

3

On these issues see Paul Diesing, Science and Ideology in the Policy Sciences (New York: Aldine, 1982).

4

See Diesing, op. cit. pp. 44–47.

5

Angel Flores, First Spanish Reader (New York, 1964), p. 2. This balancing of hunger and thirst carries us back to Aristotle.

6

On the problem and its historical background see the author’s “Choice without Preference” in his Essays in the History of Philosophy (Aldershot, UK: Avebury 1995), pp, 77–114.

Chapter 7 WISDOM ____________________________________________________________ SYNOPSIS (1) Wisdom contrasts with information-oriented smarts and with actionoriented acumen. And it comes in two forms: experience-derived worldly wisdom and inspirational (or spiritual) wisdom. (2) Proverbs are salient expressions of worldly wisdom. (3) The complex diversity of proverbs reflects the complex diversity of life. (4) However, inspirational wisdom differs from the common sense wisdom of everyday life. (5) It issues from the spiritual guidance of insightful sages. (6) It is important to seek and heed the guidance of wisdom thanks to its capacity to guide us towards the realization of a meaningful and rewarding life. ____________________________________________________________ 1. WISDOM AS A COGNITIVE CAPACITY

T

here are three levels of cognitive ability: smarts, acumen, and wisdom. Smarts come from learning; it is geared to information, so that the smart person is somebody who knows a lot. Acumen is oriented to the application of information in deciding upon action: the acute (or astute) person is able to use what he knows to get what he wants. Wisdom, by contrast, is a matter of good judgment, of guidance by the true worth and importance of things: the wise person exercises good judgment in relation to the appropriate aims and goals of life. The acute or astute person is shrewd in relation to deciding short term issues about actions here and now. The wise person is able to see how these short-term decisions and actions can lead to good results over the larger course of life that is truly meaningful. Deepening our knowledge of nature’s modus operandi through scientific inquiry clearly extends our sagacity. But not necessarily our wisdom.

90

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Acuity comes from practice in using ingenuity for problem solving. But wisdom comes from insight based on either acquired or worldly wisdom as a benefit of life experience, or inspired or spiritual wisdom as a “gift of the gods.” Wisdom accordingly comes in two forms: worldly wisdom (or sophia) or inspired wisdom (or gnosis). Acquired wisdom is gained through the experiences of life and it is usually fruit of years. Spiritual wisdom, by contrast, knows no other rule or reason, only inspiration. Because information is more readily transmitted than good evaluation, the role of expertise is more prominent in the domains of inquiry and praxis than is that of wisdom. We humans are far more open to assistance on means than ends. We are so caught up in our wants that we have no patience with the issue of whether we ought to have them. By some mysterious process they become transmuted into needs. 2. PROVERBIAL WISDOM AS A PRIME MODE OF WORLDLY WISDOM

The motto of the ΦΒΚ society gets it right. Philosophia biou kybernêtês: wisdom is the steersman of life, providing guidance toward its enhancement. Its aim is to be aid the human spirit to flourish in the mode of Aristotle’s eudaimonia. The individual who can look back over the course of his or her life with rational contentment is able to say “I have lived wisely.” Worldly wisdom addresses the great uniformities of the human condition—birth, maturation, mating, procreation, flourishing frailty, struggle, suffering, decay, and death. This dimension of worldly wisdom is manifested in the nature of proverbial wisdom. Proverbial wisdom is the great repertory of worldly wisdom. The dictionary defines a proverb as something like “a popular maxim that pithily conveys a useful lesson or instruction.” The three salient factors of a proverb are: instructiveness, brevity, and popularity.1 And its reason for being is to provide useful guidance in the conduct of life. Perhaps we can learn but little from this source of “popular philosophy,” but that little is neither uninstructive nor uninteresting. For the proverbs of a culture show us how its people really think about things.

WISDOM

91

Proverbs are generally anonymous, passed down from time immemorial. Sometimes, however, the dictum of an identifiable individual becomes proverbial—for example, Robert Walpole’s cynical remark that “Every man has his price.” Proverbial wisdom is overwhelmingly concerned with the conduct of our everyday affairs, formulating the “common sense” lessons that put the hard-won wisdom of hindsight at the disposal of everyone. (After all: “Lo que hace el loco a la postre, hace el sabio al principio.”) Hence the bulk of it is devoted to rules and instructions. (“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”) To be sure, proverbs are sometimes framed in the form of questions; but then questions are rhetorical and do duty for an injunction. (“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”: One has to trust somebody. “But who is to bell the cat?”: Be practical about your proposals and assure of their implementability.) Here, as elsewhere, the exception tests (not proves, save in an antiquated sense of the term) the rule: Exceptio probat regulam. Proverbial wisdom’s messages address the human condition at large. They are generally universal. In overwhelming measure, proverbs reflect constancies of the human condition and not cultural peculiarities of particular groups or eras. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Virtually every proverb has equivalents in other languages. (“Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it”, “Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat.”), (“Mutter treu wird täglich neu”, “Tendresse maternelle se tousjours renouvelle”), (“The devil too may quote scripture”, “Con l’evangelo se diverta eretico”), (“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”, “Si quis dat mannus, ne quaere in dentibus annos.”), (“A bird in hand is better than two in the bush”, “Una avis in dextra, melior quam quattuor extra”). The basic message is generally universal although the particular mode of expression may be culturally shaped in ways that calls for backward information about prevailing conditions. (The English ridicule taking coal to Newcastle, the Greeks taking owls to Athens, the Indians taking pepper to Hindustan.) Sometimes, however, closely kindred proverbs move off in somewhat different directions. “When it rains, it pours” comes to: once troubles begin for someone, they have lots of them. But “Cuando llueve, todos se mojan” comes to: once troubles begin for someone, many are affected.

92

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

As regards its substantive structure, proverbial wisdom for the most part falls into a modest array of thematic categories. 1. Injunctions to prudence and caution in human interactions: Caveat emptor; Better safe than sorry. 2. Injunctions to avoid vice and cultivate virtue and probity: Pride goeth before a fall; Honesty is the best policy; Let your word be your bond. 3. Injunctions to sagacious self-interest: Carpe diem; You can’t take it with you; Quien a dos señores ha de servir, al uno ha de mentir. 4. Encouragements to action or effort: A rolling stone gathers no moss; Nothing ventured, nothing gained; Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute; Delay is the road to never. 5. Advice for maintaining health and well-being: Im Becher ersaufen mehr als im Meere; Mas matóla cena que sanó Avicena. 6. Managing family interactions and affairs: Honor thy father and thy mother; Blood is thicker than water. 7. Managing one’s dealings with people: In vino veritas; Never trust a man who can’t look you straight in the eye; Verbum sat sapienti est. 8. Keeping one’s expectations within “realistic” bounds: A cat has nine lives [but you don’t]; Non omnia possumus omnes; You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. 9. Being mindful of human shortcomings: A tout heure, femme pleure; El rio pasado, el santo olivadado; Where the carcass is, there will the vultures be gathered together (Matthew 24:28).

WISDOM

93

10. Providing excuses—of the success of others, for example: Among the blind, the one-eyed is king, having “the luck of the Irish.” This list of basic thematic categories can be prolonged—but not very far. Proverbial wisdom is worldly in its orientation to the basics of prudence in the prospect of life. 3. THE INCONSISTENCY OF PROVERBIAL WISDOM

But life is complex. No simple rules are satisfactory; an approach or procedure that works in some cases will fail miserably in others. So proverbial wisdom has to be attuned to move in either direction in line with the almost infinitely complex and ramified character of different circumstances and situations. If there is to be any body of simple rules at all, it must, if adequate, be prepared to move in opposite directions subject to the indications of diversified circumstances. The most striking and significant feature of proverbial wisdom is its inconsistency. It is Janus faced in its tendency to look in opposite directions at once, reminiscent of Newton’s first law in that for every proverb of one tendency there is another with equal force of the opposite tendency, as per the following sample pairs: “A stitch in time saves nine”, “Look before you leap”; “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”; “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”, “You can’t take it with you”; “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, “Tempora mutantar, nos et mutatur in illis.” The inconsistency of proverbial wisdom is not the front of carelessness; it roots on something deeper. Those proverbs that point in opposite directions mark the complexity of human life: that there is a time to hurry (“A stitch in time saves nine”) and a time for being slow (“Haste makes waste”). For “depending on conditions” both ways of proceeding are apposite proper. Changing context and circumstances make for changing priorities, With varying conditions there is a wider scope of greater need for one or another of such opposed factors as caution/daring, thrift/liberty, deliberations/action, and conformity/going one’s own way. And with variation in these factors comes a variability in the appropriateness of proverbs. True worldly wisdom is a matter of

94

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

deploying proverbial wisdom judiciously. It is readily taught by precept and better yet by example. Let us now, however, return the second, less prosaic category of wisdom: 4. INSPIRED WISDOM AND THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION

A knowledge of science—and natural science in specific—will certainly make a person smarter. But such sagacity need not yield wisdom. Science may teach us the ways of the world, but even an accurate road-map is of little help if our destinations are not chosen with care. Sagacity alone is simply insufficient as a guide. On occasion we need to reach further and deeper. And here, often as not, inspirational or spiritual wisdom can come to our aid. For while worldly wisdom is designed to guide us in the dealings of everyday life, inspirational wisdom—by contrast—lifts our spirits above and beyond this humdrum sphere. And while it too roots in experience, what is now at issue is the special experience of extra-ordinary situations, in contrast to the garden-variety experience of everyday life. Specifically what is now at issue includes: 1. a recognition of the beauties and the grandeurs both of Nature about us and of the larger cosmos beyond, 2. a recognition of human frailty and impotence in the face of nature’s awesome forces and powers, 3. a sense of gratitude and unworthiness in the face of the opportunities that our existence in the world puts at our disposal, 4. an awed acknowledgment of the magisterial accomplishments occasionally achieved by the progress among our fellows. And so while worldly wisdom addresses the great commonalties of human existence in the material world, spiritual wisdom addresses the realities of our existence in the ampler stage of the world of the spirit,

WISDOM

95

and looks to the extra-ordinary realties we occasionally encounter outside the ordinary course of things. The distinction at issue is akin to that which St. Thomas envisioned in distinguishing between the “natural light of the intellect” and the “infusion of divinal light.”2 Spiritual wisdom calls for the ultimate rational contentment achievable through the conviction that—despite awesome challenges of the difficult existence in the world not of our choosing or making—the forces of good will ultimately endow our lives with element of meaning and value. And so, a crucial point of wisdom—worldly and spiritual alike—is a recognition of limits. It is in recognizing the minuteness and limitedness of place in the world’s scheme of things that we achieve a satisfactory view of ourselves and our situation. An acknowledgment of human limitations and of the limits of our power is a critical element of wisdom—the foundation alike of the frustrationfreeing realism of the worldly wise and of the humility that is a key portion in spiritual wisdom. An instructive historical illustration of this sort of wisdom is provided by a Christian heresy that sought to substitute wisdom for religiosity, namely gnosticism. Spiritual wisdom is not the sort of thing learned from books or for classroom instruction. Wisdom is more readily acquired by looking into people rather than books. It is not acquired by practice or instruction. It comes—when at all—from contemplation proper and the sorts of spiritual exercises that put people into experimental touch with the life of the spirit. Gnosticism was a diffuse religio-philosophical movement at the outer fringes of early Christianity. The Gnostics lay claim to a specially deep and meaningful insight. Their special wisdom was not the fruit of rational inquiry and deliberation, but that of a special inspiration and revelation. We do not arrive at this by study but often as not through traditionary transmission from ancient sages or prophets. The wisdom of the Gnostics was closer to mysticism than to intellection. It was the wisdom of inspiration and neither of erudition nor of rationalism. It saw inspiration as available from living sages rather than being the exclusive prominence of safely dead prophets. (Just this is why it was distrusted by to the church fathers.)

96

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

At this point someone might complain: “You have devoted a good deal more space to worldly wisdom than to spiritual wisdom. Surely this is out of all proportion to the importance of these resources.” And it must be conceded that the objector is quite right insofar as importance is concerned, albeit not so insofar as concerns the complexity of the issues. Worldly wisdom has a far simpler scope than spiritual or inspirational wisdom. It (worldly wisdom) has to cover a far greater range, namely the whole manifold of life-oriented activities. Inspirational wisdom, by contrast, concerns itself with ends, not means, with values not activities (behaviors). But deciding objectives is narrow while designing consensus of action is broadly narrowed. Fixing on a destination is—however challenging—seemingly simpler than working out how to get there from here. 6. WISDOM AND REASON There are limits to scientific reason, to practical reason, to mathematical reason, even to preferential reason. But not to reason as such. The present deliberations about the limits of reason are not an exercise in ratiophobia. They are not intended and must not be construed as disparaging reason or suggesting that we can find elsewhere a more useful and reliable guide. Quite the contrary—when an issue needs to be resolved and a problem addressed, there is no other guide at our disposal that is superior to reason. And if reasoning cannot resolve the matter and some other recourse as to be involved, then it is reason itself that will inform us of this. It is the course of wisdom to recognize that the only limits to reason are those that can and should be acknowledged as such by reason itself. For reason has the unique capacity of self-understanding and is, in consequence, able to recognize and acknowledge its own limitations. And there is no extra-rational arbiter or monitor for reason. Consider the issue of confining a dog within a circular region. Such a limit can be imposed either from without by building a fence around the area (Kant’s Grenzen) or from within by tethering the dog at the center (Kant’s Schranken). Now the salient point here (mine as well as Kant’s) is that Reason indeed has its initial limits imposed by the limi-

WISDOM

97

tations of its modus operandi. But it has no external limits—there is nothing external to human reason that imposes limitations upon it. The finitude and limitedness of human reason are artifacts of its own structure. No external factors or forces impose limitations upon it. All the same, the course of wisdom is to recognize that the only valid limits to reason are those that are acknowledged by reason itself. For there is no extra-rational monitor or controller of reason. 7. DOES WISDOM PAY?

Are wise people happier? To address this question seriously one must distinguish two sorts of “happiness,” viz. the effective happiness linked to the ordinary pleasures of life and reflexive happiness linked to the sort of contentment involved in looking a rational reappraisal of the conditions of things. Wisdom may not have much to do with the former, but is pivotal for the latter. Wisdom in all its forms would not be what it is if it did not have a pragmatic advantage—if its counsels did not pay. The big question, however, is that of the currency in which this payment is to be made. It is surely not in worldly goods—the wise man is not the richer for it. The wise man is not necessarily happier—at any rate as the world generally understands happiness. Rather the coin in which wisdom makes its payments is in what Aristotle called eudemonia, which we might call rational contentment or perhaps ever spiritual satisfaction. People who follow the counsels of wisdom need not be the richer for it, nor even the “happier.” But they will be able to live more contentedly inside their own skin and can in retrospect survey life without regret. A realistic recognition of the limitedness of even the most powerful resource of our disposal—our human reason—is one of the salient features of wisdom. Wisdom insists that we see ourselves as integral parts of a larger whole, connected to other people (past, present, and future) and to the natural sphere that sets the stage out for our lives: it sees us as inseparably connected to the social and natural worlds spread out about us. Forces above and beyond our control have comprised to give us our chance to sit briefly upon the world stage, and wisdom insists that we make the most of it. Humans are limited be-

98

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

ings—limited alike in inner capacities and outer resources. But limited though we are, the course alike in reason and wisdom is to make the most of the opportunities for the good that are at our disposal. We may not have the power to leave the world a better place than we initially found it. But we are caught up in an intensely unhappy state of things when we have to burden our conscience with the realization that our deliberate actions have resulted in making it an even worse place that it would otherwise have been. True wisdom resides in recognizing the importance of doing our imperfect best to honor the demands of reason in matters of cognition and action. NOTES 1

In principle, the populace at issue in “popularity” might merely be a particular group (as for example Traduttori, traditori is addressed to scholars). But the present discussion will focus on what is popular in the wider sense.

2

Aquinas Summa Theolgiae, I, Q12, art. 13, iobj. 3.

References Anonymous, “The Future as Suggested by Developments of the Past Seventy-Five Years,” Scientific American, vol. 123 (1920), p. 321. Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choice and Individual Values (New York, 1951), Coweles Commission Monograph N. 12; 2nd ed. (New Haven, 1961), “The Meaning of Social Welfare: A Comment on Some Recent Proposals,” Technical Repost No. 2 of the Department of Economics and Statistics, Stanford University (Stanford, 1952). Barrow, John P., Impossibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Beutel, Eugen, Die Quadratur des Kreises (Leipzig/Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1913; 5th ed. 1951). Bromley, D. A., et al., Physics in Perspective: Student Edition, NRC/NAS Publications (Washington, D.C., 1973). Bunge, Mario, The Myth of Simplicity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963). Burrill, Donald R. (ed.), The Cosmological Argument (Garden City, 1967). Diesing, Paul, Science and Ideology in the Policy Sciences (New York: Aldine, 1982). Dyson, Freeman, Disturbing the Universe (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). Eddington, A. S., The Nature of the Physical World (New York: Macmillan, 1928).

100

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Ehrensvard, Gösta Carl Henrik, Man on Another World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). Flew, R. Newton, The Idea of Perfection in Christian Theology; An Historical Study of the Christian Ideal for the Present Life (London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1934). Flores, Angel, First Spanish Reader (New York, 1964). Grunbaum, Adolf, “The Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cosmology,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 56 (1989), pp. 373– 394. Handler, Philip (ed.), Darwin, Biology and the Future of Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). Hesse, Mary, “Vacuum and Void,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan and Free Press), Vol. VII (1967), pp. 217–18. Huygens, Christiaan, Cosmotheoros: The Celestial Worlds Discovered—New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, Their Inhabitants and Productions (Glasgow: R. Urie, 1462). Kant, Immanuel, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). Leibniz, Principles of Nature and of Grace. Millikan, Robert A., Science and Life (Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1924). Nagel, Thomas, “What is it Like to be a Bat?” in: Mortal Questions (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).

REFERENCES

101

Ord-Hume, A. W. J. G., Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977). Parfit, Derek, “Providence, Morality, and Prisoner’s Dilemma,” Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 65 (1979), pp. 555ff. Passmore, John, The Perfectibility of Man (London: Duckworth, 1970). Peirce, Charles Sanders, Collected Papers, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–58). Rescher, Nicholas, The Limits of Science (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984; 2nd revised edition, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999). Rescher, Nicholas, Rationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Rescher, Nicholas, Essays in the History of Philosophy (Aldershot, UK: Avebury 1995), pp. 77–114. Rescher, Nicholas, Error: On our Predicament when Things go Wrong (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). Rescher, Nicholas, Unknowability (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009). Rescher, Nicholas, Ignorance (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). Reymond, Emil du Bois, Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, 11th ed. (Leipzig, 1916). Rowe, William, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theolgiae.

102

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Whorf, Benjamin Lee, “Languages and Logic,” in: Language, Thought, and Reality, ed. J. B. Carroll (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 240–241.

Name Index Aesop, 66 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 63, 95, 98n2, 101 Aristotle, 32, 87n5, 90, 97 Arrow, Kenneth J., 3, 80, 87n2 Barrow, John P., 99, 12n4 Bernoulli, Daniel, 10 Beutel, Eugen, 11n1, 99 Bohr, Neils, 3 Bromley, D. A., 37n3, 99 Bunge, Mario, 87n1, 99 Buridan, Jean, 83, 86 Cicero, 24 Comte, Auguste, 12n8 Cotes, Roger, 33 Darwin, Charles, 33 Dickinson, Jason, 12n10 Diesing, Paul, 87n3, 87n4, 99 Dyson, Freeman, 99 Eddington, A. S., 37n1, 99 Edwards, C. H., 11n1 Edwards, Paul, 75n2 Ehrensvard, Gösta Carl Henrik, 37n4, 100 Einstein, Albert, 3 Faraday, Michael, 32 Flew, R. Newton, 100 Flores, Angel, 100, 87n5 Freud, Sigmund, 3 Galen, 59

104

Nicholas Rescher • Finitude

Gibbon, Edward, 9, 12n6, 12n7 Gödel, Kurt, 3 Goethe, Wolfgang von, 37n2 Gregory of Nyssa, Saint, 11 Grünbaum, Adolf, 75n2,100 Hertz, Heinrich, 32 Hesse, Mary, 12n3, 100 Huygens, Christiaan, 30, 37n7,100 Kant, Immanuel, 10, 12n8, 96, 100 Kuhn, Thomas, 23, 37n6, 100 Lambert, J. H., 1 Legendre, A. M., 12n8 Leibniz, G. W., 10, 64, 100 Marconi, Diego, 32 Maxwell, J. Clark, 32 McMullin, Ernan, 37n8 Millikan, Robert A., 32, 100 Milnor, John, 80-81 Nagel, Thomas, 37n5, 100 Newton, Isaac, 33, 93 Ord-Hume, A. W. J. G., 12n2, 101 Parfit, Derek, 62n2, 101 Passmore, John, 12n5, 101 Pasteur, Louis, 33 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 12n8, 101 Perloff, Mickey, 12n10 Plank, Max, 3 Plato, 11, 27, 49 Pucetti, Roland, 31, 37n8

NAME INDEX

Rescher, Nicholas, 101 Reutsche, Laura, 12n10 Reymond, Emil du Bois, , 34, 101 Rowe, William, 74n1, 101 Shannon, Claude, 3 Shea John Michael, 75n3 Soddy, Frederick, 32 Stein, Edith, 63, 75n6 Turing, Alan, 3 Walpole, Robert, 91 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 37n5, 102

105

NicholasRescher

Nicholas Rescher

Studies in Quantitative Philosophizing The present book brings together several case studies, dealing with relevant facets of the work of some of philosophy’s all-time greats. The subject-matter topic being addressed differs significantly, but in each case there is an attempt to apply mathematical methods and perspectives to the solution of a key philosophical issue in a way that throws instructive light upon it. On this basis it emerges that the question “Are mathematical methods useful in philosophy?” finds a suggestive response in the fact that over two millennia key figures in the history of the subject have indeed thought so. And they have substantiated this view not so much by abstract argumentation on the basis of general principles, but by making this point through actual practice. Preface Chapter 1: On the Epistemology of Plato’s Divided Line Chapter 2: Aristotle’s Golden Mean and the Epistemology of Ethical Understanding Chapter 3: Ockham’s Razor and Ontological Economy Chapter 4: Pascal’s Wager in Religion Chapter 5: Leibniz on Coordinating Epistemology and Ontology Chapter 6: Ethical Quantities

ontos verlag Frankfurt • Paris • Lancaster • New Brunswick 2009. 167pp. Format 14,8 x 21 cm Hardcover EUR 79,00 ISBN 978-3-86838-065-1 Due January 2010

P.O. Box 1541 • D-63133 Heusenstamm bei Frankfurt www.ontosverlag.com • [email protected] Tel. ++49-6104-66 57 33 • Fax ++49-6104-66 57 34

NicholasRescher

Nicholas Rescher

Free Will An Extensive Bibliography With the Cooperation of Estelle Burris

Few philosophical issues have had as long and elaborate a history as the problem of free will, which has been contested at every stage of the history of the subject. The present work practices an extensive bibliography of this elaborate literature, listing some five thousand items ranging from classical antiquity to the present.

About the author Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the Americna Metaphysical Society, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, and the C. S. Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received six honorary degrees from universities on three continents. Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984. In November 2007 Nicholas Rescher was awarded by the American Catholic Philosophical Association with the „Aquinas Medal“

ontos verlag

Frankfurt • Paris • Lancaster • New Brunswick 2009. 309pp. Format 14,8 x 21 cm Hardcover EUR 119,00 ISBN 13: 978-3-86838-058-3 Due December 2009

P.O. Box 1541 • D-63133 Heusenstamm bei Frankfurt www.ontosverlag.com • [email protected] Tel. ++49-6104-66 57 33 • Fax ++49-6104-66 57 34

Ontos

NicholasRescher

Nicholas Rescher

Collected Paper. 14 Volumes Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the American Metaphysical Society, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, and the C. S. Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received seven honorary degrees from universities on three continents (2006 at the University of Helsinki). Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984. ontos verlag has published a series of collected papers of Nicholas Rescher in three parts with altogether fourteen volumes, each of which will contain roughly ten chapters/essays (some new and some previously published in scholarly journals). The fourteen volumes would cover the following range of topics: Volumes I - XIV STUDIES IN 20TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-937202-78-1 · 215 pp. Hardcover, EUR 75,00

STUDIES IN VALUE THEORY ISBN 3-938793-03-1 . 176 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN PRAGMATISM ISBN 3-937202-79-X · 178 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN METAPHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-938793-04-X . 221 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN IDEALISM ISBN 3-937202-80-3 · 191 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF LOGIC ISBN 3-938793-19-8 . 178 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY ISBN 3-937202-81-1 · 206 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ISBN 3-938793-20-1 . 273 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN COGNITIVE FINITUDE ISBN 3-938793-00-7 . 118 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN METAPHYSICAL OPTIMALISM ISBN 3-938793-21-X . 96 pp. Hardcover, EUR 49,00

STUDIES IN SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-938793-01-5 . 195 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN LEIBNIZ'S COSMOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-22-8 . 229 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-02-3 . 165 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-23-6 . 180 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

ontos verlag Frankfurt • Paris • Lancaster • New Brunswick 2006. 14 Volumes, Approx. 2630 pages. Format 14,8 x 21 cm Hardcover EUR 798,00 ISBN 10: 3-938793-25-2 Due October 2006 Please order free review copy from the publisher Order form on the next page

P.O. Box 1541 • D-63133 Heusenstamm bei Frankfurt www.ontosverlag.com • [email protected] Tel. ++49-6104-66 57 33 • Fax ++49-6104-66 57 34