Philosophy Science and Method Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel - Compress PDF
Philosophy Science and Method Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel - Compress PDF
Essays in Honor of
Ernest Nagel
PHILOSOPHY,
SCIENCE, AND
METHOD
Editors: SIDNEY MORGENBESSER
Columbia University
PATRICK SUPPES
Stanford University
MORTON WHITE
Harvard University
Preface
STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
The Realist-Instrumentalist
Controversy 200 SIDNEY MORGENBESSER
viii CONTENTS
3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF
THE GOOD
4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
MARCH 10
ditions that produce success are too seldom understood. These conditions
are precisely the subject matter of logic. For Dewey, if there are no problem
solvers, there is no logic. Put another way, it may be said that for Dewey
logic is equivalent to experimental epistemology. Logic is a positive inquiry
into inquiries, having the methods of inquiries as its specific subject matter.
In this sense logic is descriptive and not normative, but it is also normative
insofar as it sets standards for later inquiries.
MARCH 12
MARCH 17
syllogistic forms are not fruitful, but wrong in denying the validity of the
syllogism simply because it was developed at an early stage of science.
Nagel then stated that surely there must be some misunderstanding here.
Possibly what he was saying was an incorrect interpretation of Dewey.
Nagel said he was calling attention to the close connection between
genesis and validity for Dewey, and he raised the question of whether a
person who ignored the biological evidence would be a supernaturalist.
In Nagel’s view, surely not.
As a final example, Nagel remarked on Dewey’s treatment of the prin¬
ciple of identity. For Dewey, it is not just the form if p then p, but rather
the carrying through of the term so that it has one meaning. It formulates
a rule for the handling of terms. Nagel said that for Dewey it then becomes
a synthetic principle rather than a tautology.
MARCH 19
Nagel began with some remarks about symbols which, I believe, were
meant to reflect Dewey’s views, although my notes are vague on this point.
Nagel said that symbols are artificial signs. Between natural signs and their
object, there is signification. Between artificial signs or symbols and what
they stand for, there is meaning. We can have clusters of symbols or arti¬
ficial signs, but not clusters of natural signs. For Dewey, all inquiry
essentially involves the use of symbols or artificial signs. This is a point
which much of the criticism of Dewey’s logic seems to have missed.
Nagel then considered the important term situation in Chapter IV of the
Logic. For Dewey it is not possible to define the term situation, for all
definitions are made within situations. There are two points of Dewey’s
discussion that Nagel said were important to note. The first is that percep¬
tion itself occurs always within a situation; the second is the sense in which
perception is cognitive. The central point here is that Dewey denies that
perception per se is cognitive. Isolated acts of perception are for Dewey
not knowledge; they are neither true nor false. Validity or invalidity is
relevant only if we consider the signification of the perceptions. Through¬
out his many discussions, Dewey criticizes the doctrine of immediate knowl¬
edge, that is, the doctrine that direct or immediate knowledge arises from
sensation. Nagel repeated that it is essential to realize that in Dewey’s
logic knowledge can never be the case of simple perception alone. The
reason for Dewey’s claim is clear. Perception is not the outcome of inquiry,
but this is the most important characteristic of knowledge; consequently,
perception is not knowledge.
Relevant to this discussion, Nagel turned to Dewey’s important distinction
between having and knowing. For Dewey, Nagel said, knowing is the
terminus of inquiry, but having is essentially an aesthetic experience.
PATRICK SUPPES 7
than essential. Fourth, relations were in general also accidental, and now
they are the prime subject matter of science. Dewey wants modern logic
to serve present science and culture in the way that Aristotle served the
science and culture of his own time. (It is not clear to me to what extent
Dewey realized that Aristotle’s logic was in no sense adequate to Greek
mathematics or astronomy. In any case, the thrust of this chapter seems
to be one of the weaker parts of the Logic, and, like Nagel, we can
quickly dispense with it here.)
MARCH 24
In this lecture Nagel turned to Part II of the Logic, which deals with
the structure of inquiry and the construction of judgments. Nagel em¬
phasized that we cannot hope to get the sense of what Dewey is saying by
examining minutely any specific argument. Nagel said that Dewey’s def¬
inition of inquiry illustrates this point perfectly. Russell’s criticism of Dewey
is well justified if we take strictly the single italicized statement of Dewey
in which he defines inquiry (pp. 105-106): “Inquiry is the controlled or
directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so
determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the
elements of the original situation into a unified whole.” Nagel’s point is that
it would never do to take seriously for careful analysis this single italicized
definition of inquiry. What we have to do is to read the many passages
in which Dewey discusses inquiry and put together for ourselves a more or
less inductively constructed picture of what Dewey means by inquiry.
Nagel then said he would try to give some feeling for how this might be
done. He began by saying that the situation with which inquiry begins is
indeterminate. The constituents of the situation do not hang together. The
organism wants to know in what way they do not hang together, for surely
in other ways, they do. Nagel said that apparently the problem is raised in
the mind of the inquirer, because he cannot understand the structures of
the various parts of the situation. In this sense, the situation is doubtful
or indeterminate. It is important to emphasize that for Dewey this sense
is not merely a subjective one. Complete determination does not hold for
the environment. Dewey says that evidence in the physical sciences about
indeterminancy of physical events is evidence that the sense is not purely
subjective. Nagel remarked that this argument is questionable, but that the
reasons were too complicated to discuss at this point. Here Nagel mentioned
Dewey’s lecture on time two years before (1945). Nagel’s version of the
lecture was that Dewey held that time and individuality are connected.
Individuality is development in time, and Dewey claimed that to some
extent his view was derived from statistical mechanics. Nagel asserted that
using such evidence from physics to discuss human individuality was, in his
PATRICK SUPPES 9
view, bad philosophy. He said he would agree that the came for doubt can
be outside the body of the doubter, but this does not make the situation
itself doubtful. Nagel asserted that, as far as he could see, the element of
indeterminancy exists wholly, or almost wholly, in the observer. (The
sophisticated thing which Dewey might have attempted is a biological
interpretation of subjective probability. It seems to me that this is the best
line along which to claim that indeterminancy is more than subjective, or
at least to take the sting out of the claim that it is subjective.)
MARCH 26
he would discuss in greater detail later. To support this analysis from the
text, Nagel quoted the following passage from page 111 of the Logic.
Nagel noted that the distinction between perceptual and conceptual materials
made in this passage is perhaps the basic distinction for Dewey. The funda¬
mental thing for Dewey is that there is no dualism of perception and
conception but rather a functional differentation. Dewey’s theory of inquiry
is an attempt to show how two different processes that are widely separated
in traditional philosophy and epistemological analysis are but two different
functions within a single framework of inquiry.
Nagel reviewed the steps in inquiry as Dewey conceived them. We begin
with an indeterminate situation. We transform that situation into the fixing
of a specific or definite problem. The next step is the introduction of
reasoning or symbolic operations in order to determine the acceptability
of the possible solutions. What is important about Dewey’s conception of
reasoning, which we shall examine in more detail later, is that it is always
an intermediate operation. A mathematical investigation or, it would seem,
any purely theoretical work is always a phase of inquiry and cannot be
the whole of inquiry. The reason for this is that a purely theoretical study
does not constitute the formulation of a problem in terms of observation,
nor apparently in terms of the explicit and immediate feeling of in¬
determinacy of an actual physical situation. Nagel emphasized that in mak¬
ing these observations he had been supposing that the conception of factual
material does not include the observation of symbols as carriers of meaning.
It is apparent that from a formal standpoint this would be a way of con¬
ceptualizing a theoretical investigation as a complete inquiry, and in my
own judgment, it would be very much in the spirit of Dewey’s general
philosophy to give such a radically empirical account of pure mathematics.
However, it should be emphasized that Nagel did not support this view,
nor is it easy to support it by any direct remarks on Dewey’s part.
Nagel concluded the lecture by noting that it seems appropriate to assign
mathematics to the immediate operation of reasoning. He noted that
Dewey’s use of the word problem is more restricted than the ordinary use
and does not include such things as mathematical problems. In this dis¬
cussion of mathematics, Nagel referred to page 405 of the Logic. Several of
the passages there do suggest to me that a radically empirical interpretation
of mathematical activity would perhaps provide a better reading of Dewey
than a more conventional one. I quote here the passage of most interest.
PATRICK SUPPES 11
APRIL 9
The name objects will be reserved for subject matter so far as it has been
produced and ordered in settled form by means of inquiry; proleptically, ob¬
jects are the objectives of inquiry.
Nagel then turned to the explicit discussion of the nature of judgment
for Dewey in Chapter VII of the Logic. Nagel’s first point was that for
Dewey judgment is not inquiry itself but the settled outcome of it. Thus,
judgment is never found in inquiry except on a partial basis. Secondly, judg¬
ments are to be distinguished from propositions, which do not have direct
existential import. For Dewey a judgment issues in existential consequences.
It is a decisive directive for future activity, but the judgment itself is not
the set of activities that ensue. It has a propositional form, and thus in
general, its truth or falsity can be investigated. Nagel indicated that for him
this analysis presents a difficulty. Knowledge is defined by Dewey as the
terminus of inquiry; but this characterization of judgment indicates that
knowledge is, strictly speaking, not the terminus of inquiry, for following
the assertion of a judgment a further transformation takes place, namely,
the directive for future activity contained in the judgment. (Nagel did not
discuss the distinction between judgments as imperatives or directives on
the one hand and as true or false indicative sentences on the other, but
the reasons for not pursuing this kind of distinction are clear to anyone
who has perused, even cursorily, the Logic.)
Nagel noted that for Dewey a final judgment is always individual in
character. Nagel remarked, in a characteristic vein of his own, “This
is a hard saying,” for many judgments have the form of universal proposi¬
tions. Nagel raised the question of how we reconcile Dewey’s assertion that
judgments are individual in character with what appear to be the patent
facts in many inquiries. Nagel remarked that one way of looking at the
matter is that many inquiries by theoretical scientists must be regarded, as
previously remarked, only as partial inquiries. Secondly, he said that it was
necessary here to make Dewey’s distinction between singular and individual.
For Dewey, singulars are named by demonstratives such as this or that.
Propositions about singulars occur during the course of inquiry, but the
final judgment is about the total situation, which is individual. (It seems
clear that Dewey’s views on these matters have been influenced by the way
we think of legal judgments of a court, which, almost always, do deal with
an individual situation and are not expressed in terms of universals. This
particular interpretation was not discussed by Nagel.)
In this discussion of judgment Nagel emphasized the overweening im¬
portance for Dewey of practical activity in contrast to theoretical investiga¬
tions. Nagel said he would interpret Dewey as holding that the scientific
inquiries of a mathematical physicist would never be regarded as a com¬
pleted inquiry, at least not until they were used in some aspect of practice
or at least in direct, experimental investigation.
Nagel then turned to Dewey’s view that every judgment has the logical
PATRICK SUPPES 13
form of subject, predicate, and copula. (That Dewey held this view is sub¬
stantiated by many passages in Chapter VII.) Nagel raised the question
whether Dewey was ignoring the central fact of modern logic that many
propositions are relational in form. Dewey, he said, seemed not to be
ignoring the modern logical viewpoint, but to be distinguishing between
propositions which are not true or false, but more or less useful, and
judgments which are true or false. Dewey seems to take the view that
propositions are guides, maps, or blueprints; they are, in other words, means
for making more effective judgments. In certain respects, Nagel said,
Dewey’s view seems to be close to Wittgenstein’s verifiability theory of
meaning. For Dewey only those things are fully warrantable, that is, true
or false, which are individual in character. General propositions do not
have this property but are useful only as guides. However, it should be
emphasized that for Dewey a judgment is not warranted by a simple
perception. Nagel pointed out that if Dewey’s view is taken seriously,
then it is not only the concept of truth for general propositions that is
endangered but the whole concept of confirmation and scientific testing
of theories, in the sense of determining the extent to which evidence con¬
firms a theory or, in ordinary terms, the extent to which the theory seems
to hold for relevant phenomena. This has the consequence that there is no
direct question of induction for judgments because judgments are always
particulars. They are not related in functional fashion to general proposi¬
tions. As a result, induction holds only for intermediate stages of inquiry
and not for the terminus or final judgment of inquiry.
APRIL 14
APRIL 16
The notion that a moral judgment merely apprehends and enunciates some
predetermined end-in-itself is, in fact, but a way of denying the need for and
existence of genuine moral judgments. For according to this notion there is no
situation which is problematic. There is only a person who is in a state of
subjective moral uncertainty or ignorance. His business, in that case, is not to
judge the objective situation in order to determine what course of action is re¬
quired in order that it may be transformed into one that is morally satisfactory
and right, but simply to come into intellectual possession of a predetermined
end-in-itself [p. 168].
At the end of this lecture Nagel remarked that a source of much mis¬
understanding of Dewey in his discussion of practical judgments, and in
particular, moral judgments, is Dewey’s distinction between evaluating
and valuing. The distinction for Dewey is parallel to that between having
and knowing. It is the distinction between having a value experience and
evaluating that experience.
APRIL 23
ing of propositions is determined by factual data, and this Nagel felt should
be avoided.
Nagel next turned to Dewey’s discussion of contradictories. He pointed
out that for Dewey a universal or general proposition is negated not by
the indeterminate “some” but by the determinate singular. Nagel admitted
that Dewey is correct in terms of much actual practice and inquiry. General
propositions are denied by the use of a singular proposition and not merely
by an existential statement. Nagel made the point, however, that there is a
standard, broader usage. It is possible to establish a particular or existential
proposition without using singular propositions; insofar as this must be
accepted as established doctrine or procedure, Dewey’s position must be
qualified. My notes do not show that Nagel discussed this point in detail.
Finitistic or constructive positions about the foundations of mathematics
would seem to offer specific support of Dewey’s position.
APRIL 28
APRIL 30
MAY 5
This lecture was devoted to Chapter XIV, “Generic and Universal Prop¬
ositions.” I find my notes on this lecture to be rather unsatisfactory, and
in an effort to bring them into better order, I have read Chapter XIV once
again. I must confess that I find Dewey unusually obtuse in this chapter.
The whole discussion is at a level of such vague generality that it is difficult
to pin down and evaluate his central theses. It seems fair to say that in this
lecture Nagel was dealing with very recalcitrant material.
Nagel began by pointing out that the distinguishing feature of generic
20 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
MAY 7
tions of physics, for example, are necessary in the sense that the meanings
of terms that we use in investigations are partly fixed by these propositions.
If the universal propositions are abandoned, then the meanings of terms
necessarily change.
Nagel said that he did see a difficulty in the sense that what Dewey
calls universal propositions are in fact often used as premises and not
as leading principles. Nagel did say that it is possible to look at the matter
functionally and to claim that a given proposition can function in some
contexts as a premise and in others as a rule of inference. Nagel said that
he would put the matter this way: it would be possible to introduce a
greater degree of “relativization,” which would permit us to use a prop¬
osition either as a premise or as a leading principle of inference.
Nagel concluded the lecture by discussing some of the advantages of
regarding universal propositions as leading principles. In the first place
we test them only insofar as they are useful. For the pragmatist and
especially for Dewey, theories of science are simply the means of getting
from one set of singular propositions to another. Nagel admitted that
initially this viewpoint does seem to clear the air. We can then assert that
physical laws do not necessarily reflect the structure of things in the
universe but simply provide tools for getting from one singular proposi¬
tion to another. Nagel did say that he felt there were difficulties in this
view as well, but there was not time to pursue them on this occasion.
MAY 12
In this lecture Nagel dealt with that part of Chapter XVII concerned
with what are often called the laws of thought or formal canons of logic.
Traditionally, this discussion has centered around the principles of identity,
contradiction, and excluded middle, and Dewey discusses each of these
principles at the end of the chapter.
Nagel began by saying that the function of laws of thought or formal
canons is to state the ultimate conditions which propositions must satisfy
to function properly in inquiry. He turned then to the discussion of the
first principle, that of identity. He remarked that this principle is not
to be found in Aristotle, and that probably the first explicit formulation
is found in Leibniz. Traditionally the principle expresses an ultimate
condition on any subject matter, but for Dewey it expresses something
different. He here cited Dewey’s own formulation (p. 344) that the prin¬
ciple is “the logical requirement that meanings be stable in the inquiry-
continuum.” Nagel remarked that this interpretation of Dewey’s is
obviously different from that given by realistic logicians (realistic is
here, of course, an ontological term).
Nagel next turned to the principle of contradiction. He stated that for
PATRICK SUPPES 23
MAY 14
In this lecture, the last one of the term, Nagel began by discussing
Dewey’s views on induction. He stated that Dewey’s views on induction
and more generally on scientific method were fairly orthodox, but as he
would show later in the lecture his views on causality were not. Nagel
remarked that Dewey is concerned to show that a given sample or class
has representative connections for the whole. This is one formulation of
a classical problem of induction. The difficulty, of course, is to know
how to state the criterion of representativeness. Nagel pointed out that
beyond stating the problem correctly, Dewey says little more. For instance,
at no point does he discuss, even at an elementary level, general principles
of statistical inference. Nagel remarked that it was disappointing to find
so little specific discussion in Dewey, considering the definiteness of much
of the literature on induction.
24 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
Dewey has possibly the most impenetrable prose style of any serious
philosopher since Hegel. On the other hand, like Hegel, he has important
and fundamental things to say.
It seems fitting to end with the closing lines of Dewey’s Logic, which
describe so well not only the major thrust of his work but the dominating
spirit of Ernest Nagel’s philosophy as well.
Since scientific methods simply exhibit free intelligence operating in the best
manner available at a given time, the cultural waste, confusion, and distortion
that results from the failure to use these methods, in all fields in connection
with all problems, is incalculable. These considerations reinforce the claim of
logical theory, as the theory of inquiry, to assume and to hold a position of
primary human importance.
SOME DIFFICULTIES IN KNOWING
Stuart Hampshire
There are at least three distinct kinds of challenge to, or rebuttals of,
a claim to knowledge: The first is the simple rebuttal—“What you claim
to know to be true is not true”; the second is a challenge which questions
the source of the knowledge or the method by which the alleged knowledge
has been obtained. This challenge is.commonly expressed in the words
“How do you know?” When such a question is put as a challenge, it is im¬
plied that the claim to genuine knowledge is not acceptable unless a reliable
source, or a reliable method, has been used in the particular case. A claim
to knowledge is not to be respected unless the knowledge claimed has a
respectable origin; the speaker may be required to show that he is an
authority on the particular issue, as he has implicitly claimed to be. He
must be able to show that he is in a position to know that which he claims
to know. Otherwise he is exposed to the rebuttal: “What you say may be
true—but you cannot now possibly know that it is.” A third and different
challenge, or different kind of challenge, may be phrased in various ways,
but is commonly expressed in the words “Are you sure?” Human beings
are apt to err: a liability to mistake attends all their performances, not
excluding their search for knowledge. They make mere mistakes, as it
seems, by chance, or perhaps even inexplicably. They use words care¬
lessly, inaccurately. They forget things. They overlook things. They write
down the wrong number for no reason at all, or for no reason that they can
give. They often have a reliable source and a reliable method; they have been
asked the time; they have a watch; but then they misread the figure on
the dial carelessly. A machine may misread the figure on the dial, but not
carelessly; for it does not employ, or need to employ, care in reading it
correctly. But human beings do. They are not instruments: or, if they
are instruments, they are instruments that use themselves, and they
may misuse themselves. They need to be careful in order finally to be
sure, because they may go wrong without anyone having a reliable
method of finding out why they have gone wrong. “Are you sure?” unlike
“How do you know?” asks, among other things, whether you have on
this occasion been careful, or careful enough, in using a generally reliable
26
STUART HAMPSHIRE 27
method. Of course you can also make a machine check its results; but
this is not the same as asking it whether it is sure that it has not made
a mistake. A claim to knowledge is certainly not to be respected unless
the knowledge claimed has a respectable origin. But more than this can
properly be asked: “Are you sure that you have not just made a mistake?”
I am just mentioning well-known facts here. These well-known facts are
of the first importance in understanding the notion of knowledge, and per¬
haps also the concept of following a rule. I check the proof to be sure that
I have not made a mere mistake, just a slip, somewhere in the derivation.
I look at my watch again when the small boy who has asked me the time
says, “Are you sure?” This kind of fallibility, or corrigibility, is always in
the background, and with some of us, on some topics, it has to be in the
foreground when we claim to know. I may be in the best possible position
to know that something is the case, and yet I may throw away my ad¬
vantage, inadvertently, carelessly, incompetently, for no reason at all. This
is why I can be asked “Are you sure that you are right?” when I have
claimed to know something on occasions when it would be absurd to ask
me how I know. I may be reminded of one kind of fallibility even when
the other kind of fallibility—fallibility in respect of source or method—is
not in question.
There notoriously are occasions when the question “How do you know?”
would be at least absurd, and perhaps unintelligible, as a question. These
are the same occasions on which a statement shows, in virtue of its gram¬
matical form and its topic, these two taken together, that the speaker is in
the best possible position to claim to know that it is true. For example, he
who reports that he is currently experiencing a certain sensation cannot
intelligibly be asked how he knows that he is; it is already shown, in the
grammar and vocabulary of the statement itself, that he is in the best
possible position to claim to know that his statement is true. The grammar
and vocabulary show that he is the authority on this matter, that he is in
the optimum position for making that statement. But he can intelligibly be
asked whether he is sure that his report is correct; doctors often do put
just this question, and it is sometimes, and in abnormal conditions, difficult
to answer it; on the other hand, it is often, and in normal conditions, very
easy indeed to answer it—e.g., when the description is not a very specific
one or when the sensation is a familiar one. Of the first person, present
tense reports of sensations, one may say that it is evident that the speaker
is the authority. But he is also a fallible authority, particularly if he attempts
a very specific description, or a description that is in some other way am¬
bitious and highly informative, or when he describes a sensation that is
very unfamiliar.
We may therefore, as a preliminary, divide statements about states of
mind, attitudes, and desires into two classes: first, those statements which
admit the challenge “How do you know?” when a claim to knowledge has
28 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
been made, as well as the less specific challenge “Are you sure?” In the
second class, we have those statements which show, in their grammar and
vocabulary, that the speaker is in the best possible position for claiming to
know that the statement is true, that he is the authority, and that no ques¬
tion about the source of his knowledge arises; then only the less specific
challenge “Are you sure?” is in place, a challenge that requires the speaker
to think again about the statement in case he has been careless in making
it and has not on this occasion taken due precautions against mistake. This
latter challenge is appropriate to any claim to knowledge of any kind,
whatever the grammar and the vocabulary of the statement may be. But it
will be especially appropriate when the topic is complex, or when for some
reason it requires a careful use of words or careful matching of a specific
description, or when there is evidence that the speaker has been hasty or
careless or that he has been unreliable in the past. We all know, for ex¬
ample, how difficult it may be to describe sensations when they constitute
symptoms to a doctor; there is the difficulty of not exaggerating or under¬
stating, of distinguishing between that which is more correctly called pain
and that which is more correctly called discomfort. And if we are asked
“What kind of pain?” or “What is the pain like?” we know how difficult it
may be to give a more specific description and to avoid error in matching
the right description to the phenomenon.
With this kind of possibility of mistake, I may hesitate, be doubtful,
and need to stop to think before answering a question, even though I am
clearly in the best position for claiming to know the correct answer; the
grammar and vocabulary of the question alone may show that, if I do
claim to know the answer, no question would arise of how I know or what
the source of my knowledge is. Yet I hesitate, am doubtful, and do not know
what the correct answer is. Someone else may think that he knows what
the correct answer is, and his belief may prove correct, even though I, the
authority, do not yet know. The doctor may know: he has seen lots of
cases like mine; perhaps he has had the disease himself, or he has heard
lots of reports, and he is thoroughly familiar with the appropriate vocab¬
ulary. He has used a reliable method of inference; and I may subsequently
confirm that his conclusion was correct. He had arrived at a conclusion
that turns out to be correct by an argument that establishes that so-and-so
must be true or is likely to be true. If after careful attention to the phe¬
nomenon and to the description, I confirm his conclusion, I do not present
the conclusion of an argument; I report what I claim to know, or what I
believe, without benefit of argument. In the old-fashioned, much abused
phrase, I now either know, or I think I know, directly.
Because of the possibility of carelessness of different kinds and the
possibility of inaccuracy in the use of words or symbols, it is never an
offense against the proper use of language for someone to argue that he
who is in the best possible position for making a certain statement is prob-
STUART HAMPSHIRE 29
II
In the case of sensations, then the subject’s difficulty, if he has one, will
typically be one of matching the right description to the phenomenon
experienced. If he hesitates and is unsure about the right reply to a question
about a present sensation, he may be uncertain about what to call the
sensation or how to classify it. Since truth has always been represented
as an agreement between a statement and that to which it refers, the
subject has a doubt which is a pure case of doubt about the truth of the
various possible descriptions that suggest themselves to him. This is one
particular kind of doubt among others, and a particular kind of difficulty
in achieving a true statement. He needs to be accurate, or exact, to find
words that fit perfectly and that are not just approximately right; and it may
be difficult to get an exact fit in words. On the one side is the phenomenon,
the reality to be described, which is in no way concealed from him, and
is, so to speak, transparent when he attends to it; he therefore does not need
to investigate further, or to probe or to experiment or to approach the
phenomenon from another angle. On the other side, requiring to be
matched, is the commonplace vocabulary in use from which he has to make
a fitting selection. If he is not sure whether a particular description that
suggests itself would be a truthful description, this would not normally be
accounted a case of ignorance; it is not exactly that kind of lack of knowl¬
edge from which he suffers, unless it is some ignorance of the standard
use of the relevant words. It is an uncertainty of another kind. Let us call it
the semantic uncertainty. It is in some respects very like the uncertainty
30 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
that a man may feel when trying to discern whether one pattern exactly
matches another pattern in a different medium. It is uncertainty about
matching possible descriptions with an independent reality. This kind of
uncertainty, which might occur in connection with almost any kind of
empirical statement, is often at its most acute when a man is trying to
find the most fitting and accurate description of his own sensations. Every
kind of statement has its own kind of liability to error, and this matching
of descriptions to the phenomena becomes more crucial when other liabilities
to error have dropped away. Then one may resolve his uncertainty by an
inductive inference. This description is probably the right one. Then he
may tell you, by reconstructing the inference, why he believes that this
must be the correct description; but he will not tell you how he knows;
for his belief evidently falls short of the ideal case and therefore does not
constitute knowledge. He was indeed in a position to know, but he was
unsure; therefore he had to use an eccentric, and not the standard, method
of arriving at his statement. In a parallel case, a man was in a position
to know what was said at a meeting because he was present and heard the
speeches, but he happens not to be sure. He may fill the gap by inferring
what must have been said. If he is asked “Do you know that this is a true
account?” he will have to indicate that he is not claiming the authority
of a witness. He can tell you why (using what evidence) he believes that
this is a true account.
Ill
IV
It has sometimes been said, mistakenly, that this use of the modal form
makes a stronger statement of fact than the corresponding plain indicative
statements—“This is your hat” and “Your hat is upstairs” and “He is very
unhappy.” If by a “stronger statement” is meant a statement which claims
a greater degree of certainty, this is surely not true. The flat assertion “This
is your hat” would commonly be taken to imply a greater degree of cer¬
tainty than the more tentative “This must be your hat,” if any implications
at all about certainty can be drawn from the wording of these statements
alone. The function of “must” in such cases as these is to imply that the
assertion about the hat is the conclusion of an inference, when the statement
might have been known to be true directly and without the aid of inference.
In a well-known short story by Saki, a woman, descending from a train
at a country station, is accosted by a stranger who says,—“You must be the
new governess.” The woman replies, “Well, if I must, I must,” and the
story proceeds from there, from this willful confusion of two kinds of
necessity. Had the stranger simply said, “You are the new governess,”
she might simply have denied it. The necessity in “You must be the new
governess” is contrasted with the possibility represented by the weaker
form of modal statement “You may be the new governess”; both show
something of the weight of evidence for the conclusion, in the one case
compelling evidence, in the other not. Because “It must have been X” and
“It must be X” indicate the conclusion of an inference, they often do not
make such a strong claim, in respect of certainty, as the unmodified “It
was X” and “It is X.” The man who says, “It must have rained” makes
no stronger claim, in respect of certainty, than the man who says, “It was
raining”; the former is typically the man who has seen the wet pave¬
ments, the latter the man who remembers the rain coming down.
So much is true of putative statements of fact about the present and the
past. But the situation in respect of statements about the future course of
events is quite different. Here the contrast between statements which are
the conclusions of an inference and statements known to be true non-
inferentially is at least far from obvious. If I am considering the future
course of events, nothing corresponds to my just seeing my hat and
recognizing it, or my having seen the rain and having remembered it. For
this reason we may be inclined to say that all statements about the future
course of events, other than statements of intention, are known to be true,
if known at all, by some kind of inference. “Fascism will not happen here,”
no less than “Fascism cannot happen here,” will be supported by some
inference; “It will happen” no less than “It must happen” will be sup¬
ported, in face of the challenge “How do you know that it will?” by an
appeal to some evidence that it will, or to some method of inference, and
not by any claim to the authority of direct knowledge, parallel to “I can
see it” or “I remember it.” For this reason there is a definite sense in which
“It must happen” is normally stronger than “It will happen.” “It must hap-
36 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
pen” here has a greater logical force, because it says both that it will happen
and that there is compelling evidence that it will. “This horse, Ajax, must
win the race” says more than “This horse, Ajax, will win”: namely, that
there is no possibility of its losing; and this cannot be a correct thing to
say if the evidence does not exclude the possibility of its losing. The pos¬
sibility is typically excluded, and the “must” is justified, when a contrary
outcome is incompatible with some well confirmed general proposition.
Let us then try to transfer this idiom of “must,” marking the conclusion
of an inference that compels assent, into the present tense. A man may say
“I must be in love” or “I must be jealous” because he has noticed features
of his own behavior that amount to compelling evidence that he is. In
respect of these passions, revealed by their typical symptoms, he here
speaks of himself as he might speak of another or of his own past. These
are the facts that he has discovered about himself, and he can tell you how
he knows and of the evidence that has led him to this conclusion. Such
an inference is not unusual. On the other hand, only in very peculiar
circumstances would a man intelligibly say “I must be in pain,” or “I think
I must be in pain”; he scarcely ever infers that he is in pain, and there is not
normally any question of him telling you how he has discovered that he
is in pain, or of his giving you the source of his knowledge. Least of all
would he say “I must be in pain because such-and-such has happened,
which, as you know, causes pain.” There are exceptional circumstances in
which the modal idiom has a use: a man might reasonably say to a
doctor—“I suppose you are right when you infer, on the basis of your
experience and medical knowledge, that I cannot be in great pain, only in
some acute discomfort; perhaps I am exaggerating.” He infers that the
doctor’s description is likely to be, or even must be, the correct one and
that he must be misdescribing; what he is calling great pain is not what
is ordinarily called great pain. He resolves the semantic doubt (exceptional
for the unspecific description “pain,” less so for “great pain”) by an in¬
ductive inference.
But one cannot naturally say of oneself “I must believe p,” although
one may say “I must have believed p at that time.” “I must believe p,”
representing an inference from the evidence of behavior, is a way of saying
“I must have believed p up to now,” the moment of realization. I may infer
from signs and behavioral indications what my past beliefs were—“I must
have believed him”—as I may infer the present beliefs of another. But one
cannot infer what one’s beliefs are to be, starting from now. Either one
already knows, or one has to answer a normative question, to form a belief
on the evidences of truth, as one takes them to be. I may in exceptional
circumstances infer what my beliefs will be in the future. For example, I
might say “I know from experience that when I see him I shall fall under
his influence, and that I will believe what he tells me, even in defiance of
the evidence.” The implication here is that I shall no longer know, re-
STUART HAMPSHIRE 37
meaning “starting from now” as opposed to “up to now.” Given that I have
discovered, perhaps as the conclusion of an inference from my previous
behavior, that I do have the desire, do I want to get rid of this desire, if
I can, or do I now endorse it? Does it now persist as a conscious desire?
The fact that I have learned is a fact about the immediate past, leading
into the present. Starting from now, and from this fact, I may think again
about what is to be desired. In this uncertainty there is room for delibera¬
tion, that is, for determining what is to be true of me.
Suppose that I am doubtful about what I want, and suppose that, under
the influence of an adequate and tested psychological theory, I think that it
must be possible to infer what I now want, just as I infer what another
man now wants on the basis of a theory—“Given so-and-so that has hap¬
pened, he must want so-and-so”; for the relevant initial conditions, and
causal factors, are known; so I conclude that I must now want so-and-so,
given that so-and-so has occurred. Is this odd and unusual? I think it is:
but is it odd and unusual for the same reason that it would be odd for
a doctor to conclude by a parallel argument that he, the doctor, must be
in pain because he has a disease which is always painful? Surely not—
the oddity has a different source. Of the doctor and his pain, one would
merely say that if he already has a pain, he must know directly that he has.
“Am I in pain?” is an unusual question for which a particular context
of semantic uncertainty must be imagined: the context, already men¬
tioned, in which the speaker is doubtful whether he would be exaggerat¬
ing if he described his condition as pain rather than, e.g., discomfort.
But the question “Do I want so-and-so?” is far from unusual and is
intelligible in a very ordinary context. That I should not be sure what
I want is entirely normal. One would not appeal to the principle that
if a man has a desire he must generally, and except in odd circumstances,
know directly that he has; for the very range of cases under consideration
show that no such principle operates. It is an intrinsic feature of desires,
aims, ambitions, purposes, attitudes, that they may be uncertain, unfocused,
confused, inchoate. It was one of the strengths of Aristotle’s Ethics to have
recognized this, as against those empiricists who have taken desires as in¬
variably given facts of consciousness.
The oddity of saying “Applying a reliable psychological theory, I have
come to the conclusion that I must now want this” resides in the kind of
knowledge claimed, which does not match the original uncertainty, ex¬
pressed as “I do not know what I want.” Admittedly there are cases in
which a man may infer that he must really want to do so-and-so, although
he had not realized this until his attention was drawn to the evidence. But
in coming to know this, he has not removed the kind of uncertainty which
he might have expressed in the words “I do not know whether I now want
to do X or not.” If he had been asked “Do you want X?” he might have
answered “I do not know,” and then be convinced that he had been wanting
STUART HAMPSHIRE 39
X. But he still has the immediate future, starting from now, to determine.
The man who does not know what he now wants in a matter that deeply
concerns him, and who also does not know whether he admires an action
or not, normally has a question for decision. Just because he has a question
for decision, it seems that he cannot settle his doubt by a factual inference,
which could only lead him to a conclusion about what must have already
been true before this doubt arose. In removing this present uncertainty, he
has to consider the features of X that make it desirable for him and the
features of Y that make it admirable. In confessing his uncertainty, he has
confessed that his desire for X and his admiration of Y are still mere pos¬
sibilities, to be endorsed or eliminated by him. An observer may infer,
applying a theory, that he will make up his mind in a particular way and
that he will emerge from his deliberations with a particular desire and a
particular attitude. But the subject will not now remove his uncertainty in
this way. If therefore someone were to say to him, in this situation of
uncertainty, “You must want X” and “You must admire Y,” he would
normally take this “must” as prescriptive, as an imperative of rationality or
perhaps even of morality—perhaps as meaning “You have compelling
reasons for wanting X and for admiring Y.” There would be an implied
allusion to some standard of correctness—for example, “You must, on
pain of being inconsistent” or “You must, on pain of being utterly mis¬
guided in your desires and admirations.” The “must” would not naturally
be taken as “It must be the case that you do in fact want X and admire Y.”
Suppose I say to you: “You must want to save your friend.” I may intend
this to be taken as “It must be true that you do. No human being could
be so unfeeling.” But you would not express agreement with this proposition
in the words “All right, I must.” This would be Saki’s governess again.
You would say “Strangely enough, I don’t” or “I do.” Either you know
whether you do or do not, or it is not yet true either that you do or you
do not, just because you are still uncertain about it, after the question has
been put to you. Even if the inference to the desire had been correct,
and the desire was an unconscious desire unrecognized by the subject, it
still would not be true that you simply want now to help your friend if,
at the conscious level, you are now doubtful. However, “You must have
wanted X and admired Y” would be construed as “It must be the case that
you did.” “I must have wanted X and admired Y” would in similar fashion
be construed as meaning “It must be the case that I did.” On the other
hand “I suppose I must still want X” would often be interpreted as “I
suppose I must if I am to be consistent and rational.” I might be committed,
logically or otherwise, to wanting X by my other desires and admirations. If
the “must” is expanded as “I must, on the pain of being inconsistent or ir¬
rational,” then it is not misleading, I think, to characterize the statement as
normative. It is normative in the same way as “I must accept the conclusion
of this argument” or “This cannot be doubted,” which does not normally
40 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
what I want,” “I do not know what I feel about it,” “I do not know what
my attitude to it is,” typically confess uncertainty, not about what is already
true, but about what is to be true of me, starting from now. This requires
a process of reflection, akin to deliberation, which is aimed at the kind of
knowledge or certainty which has as its outcome that I do now intend to do
so-and-so, want so-and-so, feel so-and-so, have such-and-such an attitude,
or sentiment. If I start from an uncertainty about myself of this kind—
about what is to be true of me in these respects—I will not infer from a
statement of initial conditions together with some general psychological
proposition what must be true of me, starting from now, as I may infer
what must have been true of me up to now. If deliberation ends with the
conclusion that I must, starting now, want so-and-so, feel so-and-so, have
such-and-such an attitude, the “must” will allude to some standard of
rationality or morality: so to a kind of correctness, which is not truth.
A present tense question put to me as a request for information—“Do
you want?” “What is your attitude to this?”—places me in an ambiguous
position, a position of facing both ways; I am confronted with the need to
report the facts, as they already are, and with the need to make a decision;
for I may dissociate myself, with a second-level desire or attitude, from
the desire or attitude which I find that I already have. The request for
information forces me into this position of active self-consciousness; and the
asking of the question may change the facts just by engendering this self-
consciousness. In response to the question, I may for the first time
recognize that I in fact have a desire or attitude that I now wish that I did
not have. The movement from knowledge of the facts about oneself, about
one’s desires and attitudes up to this moment, to a knowledge of that which
is to be true of me is a continuous movement of consciousness; it is so
pervasive that it is easily overlooked. Present tense avowals of desires and
attitudes have been found baffling in their logic, partly because they
mark this movement from the one kind of knowledge to the other. “I want
X” is open to a two-faced challenge, when the question “Are you sure
that you want X?” is asked; the first face of the challenge calls on the
autobiographer not to disregard any evidence, perhaps of behavior, that
suggests that the facts are not yet as he reports; the second challenge calls
on him not to disregard any reasons there may be for not desiring X. The
contrast between evidence and reasons here is a contrast between steps
that lead to, and are taken to justify, a conclusion which is a belief about
already wanting X, and steps that lead to, and are taken to justify, wanting
X; justification of both kinds might be needed because the belief that X
is already wanted might be a mistake, and wanting X might be a mistake.
The observer, considering the desires of the subject, would hold these
possibilities of mistake apart; he would know from which point of view
he was considering the desires. But the subject would normally not separate
the factual from the deliberative question. This is part of the asymmetry,
STUART HAMPSHIRE 45
learns about the causes and conditions upon which one’s perceptions de¬
pend, one is in a position to apply this knowledge of causes in distinguish¬
ing veridical from deceiving perceptions; and applying the knowledge in¬
cludes actively performing tests—e.g., by changing the perspective or
angle of vision or by performing some simple interference experiments.
I can legitimately regard myself, with my sensory equipment, as an instru¬
ment that records the presence of objects in the environment; but I am an
instrument which deliberately employs itself to find the answers to ques¬
tions which I have raised. When I find myself inclined to believe that
there is a certain pattern of colors on the ceiling, and not as the conclusion
of an inference, I may still suspend belief until I have performed tests and
found good reasons for believing. I am normally free, and not powerless, to
question any of my beliefs, whether they arise directly from perception
or not. In the setting of questioning an inclination to believe, or of resolving
uncertainty, that which causes me to believe is called a reason for believing;
in a setting in which a perceptual belief has formed without any active
inquiry, or even the shadow of an uncertainty, there must still be an
ascertainable cause of the belief, but it may not be called a reason. If I am
altogether ignorant of the psychology of perception, I will not know which
perceptual clues make me form certain beliefs, e.g., about the distance be¬
tween visible objects. I will not know how I know, and I will say that I know
directly, in cases where there has been no uncertainty resolved by inquiry
and where my belief is true. When I am uncertain and actively investigate,
my final belief has an explanation which includes a reason, the evidence
from which I have inferred. Sometimes my reason may only be the belief
that my first inclinations to believe (my first impressions of distance)
almost always are confirmed, that is, that I am a reliable instrument in this
matter; this is a reason for endorsing my first impression of distance on a
particular occasion. But the further question—“Am I sure that there is
nothing abnormal in the circumstances in which this perceptual belief was
formed?”—is never an absurd question. I do not wish to deny, but rather
to stress, the many differences between knowledge of the external world
and the knowledge that a man may have of his own states of mind, desires,
and attitudes. But the corrigibility in principle of any empirical knowledge
claim, apparent in perceptual claims, has often neglected consequence in
claims to self-knowledge. Suppose that a man knows what he will want to do
when certain sufficient conditions obtain, which he knows will occur very
soon. When the anticipated desire occurs under the foreseen conditions,
he can still raise the question “But am I sure that I do want to do this?
Are there good reasons why I should want this?” Of course he knows
that he does now want it, that this primary desire exists, and, in the case
supposed, he knows why it exists. He is so far like the man who sees the
pattern of colors on the ceiling, and who knows that this is a possible correct
STUART HAMPSHIRE 47
description of what he sees, but is still not sure whether there is in fact a
pattern of colors on the ceiling.
The mere raising of the reflective question has already changed his
state of mind; and this distinguishes self-knowledge of this kind from
knowledge of the external world. For there is now a sense in which he
knows what he wants to do and a sense in which he does not know what
he wants to do. Recognizing this primary desire and knowing the conditions
(perhaps a physical state) that have produced it, he may still be hesitant
and uncertain, and any conclusion of the uncertainty will have a reason
as at least part of its explanation. The uncertainty in this case of desire
amounts to a kind of conflict, and will be plainly a conflict of desire if
the outcome is that he does not want, on reflection, to do that which he
also feels a desire to do. Similarly with attitudes of mind: I may find myself
predictably feeling admiration for someone and being inclined to act
correspondingly, while on reflection I am uncertain about my attitude to
him, because I am uncertain whether there is anything admirable about
him. I have therefore a divided and uncertain attitude, which may be
continuously modified as I continue to reflect upon what my attitude is.
The transition, in self-knowledge, from knowledge of psychological
fact, and of the causes that explain my desires and attitudes, to a reflection
on these facts, which introduces causes that are reasons, depends, firstly,
on a feature of knowledge itself: that a claim to empirical knowledge is
always challengeable by the question “Am I sure that this is so?” This
challenge to reflect upon desires and states of mind, when it is contemporary
with these states, leads to the consideration of reasons. Insofar as a desire
that is to be in part explained by reasons differs from a previous desire
that was independent of these reasons, the reflection by itself brings about
a change.
This conclusion obviously leaves many of the traditional issues as¬
sociated with a thesis of determinism untouched. But it is incompatible
with a particular picture that is often associated with a thesis of determin¬
ism: namely, the picture of advancing psychological knowledge gradually
displacing the kind of uncertainty that is expressed by the questions “Do
I want to do this?” and “What is my attitude to this?” when these questions
call for a decision. Any additions to our systematic knowledge in psychology,
and thus to our power of calculating exactly what we will or would feel
under specifiable conditions, will always leave a place open for this kind
of uncertainty.
ON OBJECTIVE INTENSIONS AND THE
LAW OF INVERSE VARIATION1
R. M. Martin
One of the most fascinating but neglected branches of modern logic is the
semantical theory of intensions. By the intension of a term is meant vari¬
ously the meaning or connotation or Sinn of the term as over and against
its designation or denotation or Bedeutung. Intensions in one form or an¬
other have played a small, but persistent, role in the history of logic. In
modern mathematical logic they have played scarcely any role at all. In¬
tensions in fact are the kind of entity in which mathematicians have shown
little interest. But surely the theory of intensions must play a fundamental
role in philosophical, as contrasted with purely mathematical, logic.
A fundamental “principle” concerning intensions is the so-called law of
inverse variation of extension and intension. There was much controversy
over this law in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and its exact
logical status was in doubt. The controversy seems never to have been set¬
tled and the “law,” if such it be, seems never to have been stated ade¬
quately. Although occasionally mentioned by more recent writers, no one
seems to have probed the logic, if there be such, underlying it. In par¬
ticular, the law seems not to have been examined by such proponents of
intensions as Carnap, Church, Fitch, or Frege. And yet it has often been
regarded as one of the fundamental laws concerning intensions. A clear and
unobjectionable statement of it is necessary if the theory of intensions is
to be given a secure modern footing.
Let us examine critically a little of the fascinating history of this law,
preparatory to attempting to give it a more exact form. We shall not present
a complete account but will merely select a few formulations of outstanding
interest. And if we start in the center, this will at least (in Bradley’s
phrase) get us into the heart of the matter.
Bradley in fact called the law “that preposterous article of orthodox
logic [that] turned the course of our reasoning into senseless miracle.”2
But Bradley never formulated the law very clearly. “Extension and in¬
tension,” he says almost mockingly, “. . . are related and must be related
in a certain way. The less you happen to have of the one, the more there-
48
R. M. MARTIN 49
fore you must have of the other [italics added]. This statement has often
passed itself off as both true and important. I confess that to me it has
always seemed false or frivolous.”3 Frivolous, indeed, lacking clear and
defensible definitions of ‘intension,’ ‘less,’ ‘happen to have,’ ‘must have,’
and no doubt other terms. Such definitions are not, it is to be feared,
to be found anywhere in the annals of idealist logic.
For Bradley, as for others in the Hegelian tradition, the notion of
intension is intimately bound up with the doctrine of the “concrete uni¬
versal.” There, however, ‘intension’ takes on a quite different meaning in
which extension and intension seem to coalesce. Hence naturally, on such
a meaning, a law of inverse variation does not hold.4
II
Keynes does not himself accept the law in this form but uses it merely as a
basis for discussion.
We note first that this preliminary formulation of the law concerns
terms, not what the terms designate or denote. Thus straightaway we see
that it is to be a law of syntax or semantics, not of some object-language.
But the terms are common, i.e., are denotative and denote objects in
common, so that the law is clearly a semantical law, not a syntactical one
and not one of logic in the narrow sense (comprising just the theories of
truth-functions, quantifiers, and identity). Further, the terms must be ar¬
ranged in a series, although strictly this is an elaboration which is not
needed. The relation of subordination between terms is presumably a
semantical relation, analogous to class-inclusion. A term a is subordinate
to a term b if and only if every object denoted by a is also denoted by b.6
The extension of a term a is presumably the class (or virtual class) of all
objects denoted by a. So far so good, barring niceties.
The extension of a term, Keynes says (p. 22), “consists of objects of
which the name can be predicated,” whereas “its intension consists of
properties which can be predicated of it,” i.e., of the extension. Intensions
are of three kinds, conventional, subjective, and objective. The conventional
intension, or connotation, of a class-name consists of “those qualities which
are essential to the class in the sense that the name implies them in its
definition. Were any of this set of qualities absent the name would not be
applicable. . . .” (How about primitive class-names, not defined?) Perhaps
50 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
Ill
And secondly:
(B) If a series of terms is arranged in order of increasing intension, the
denotation of the terms will either remain the same or diminish.
52 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
Cohen and Nagel criticize (A) but seem to condone (B) as a satisfactory
law.
Although these two formulations appear similar to those of Neville
Keynes, actually they are very different. In the first place, by a teia.
Cohen and Nagel do not understand an expression, but rather what th~
expression stands for. Propositions, according to them and following
Aristotle,
either assert or deny something of something else. That about which the assertion
is made is called the subject, and that which is asserted about the subject is
called the predicate. The subject and the predicate [i.e., presumably the things,
not the expressions] are called the terms of the proposition. ... A term may be
viewed in two ways either as a class of objects (which may have only one
member), or as a set of attributes or characteristics which determine the ob¬
jects. The first phase or aspect is called the denotation or extension of the term,
while the second is called the connotation or intension. Thus the extension of
the term “philosopher” is “Socrates,” “Plato,” “Thales,” and the like; its in¬
tension is “lover of wisdom,” “intelligent,” and so on.
We do not claim that (A') and (B') are precisely what Cohen and Nagel
intend by (A) and (B), but only that they are reasonably close approxima¬
tions to what they perhaps intend.
It should be noted that Cohen and Nagel’s formulations are given as
principles within an object-language. For Keynes, however, as we have
observed, these principles are meta-linguistic, more precisely, semantical,
principles. It is not altogether clear what is thought to be gained by
their statement within an object-language. Usually by a term one under¬
stands an expression of such and such a kind. Keynes is explicit on this
point. According to him, “. . . it seems better to start from the names. . . .
Neglect to consider names in . . . connexion [with extension and intension]
has been responsible for much confusion.” Also Carnap and Frege have
emphasized the importance of regarding intensions as intensions of expres¬
sions. In fact, it is now almost universally recognized that the theory of
extension, denotation, connotation, intension, and the like, belongs to
semantics, and hence is to be formulated within a semantical meta¬
language.
There is also the difficulty concerning ‘necessary’ in Cohen and Nagel’s
formulations. Is this to be construed in the sense of some modal operator?
If so, we must then face squarely the need for mixing modal operators and
quantifiers. We do not wish to contend that this cannot be done satisfactorily,
but only that there are grave difficulties here which must not be glossed
over. Quine and others have pointed these out repeatedly. Surely we can¬
not expect a satisfactory formulation in the manner of Cohen and Nagel
of the law or laws of inverse variation until these difficulties are overcome.
Also closely connected with these is the dubious ontology of attributes,
etc., which we have already met in the formulations of Keynes.10
The reader may object that we are being excessively laborious as to logi¬
cal detail. But, to borrow a phrase which Cohen and Nagel themselves
use in another context, “it is necessary to . . . [be] so if we wish to avoid
elementary confusions.” In trying to avoid such we must occasionally be
allowed to refer to more advanced matters in modern logic, syntax, and
semantics, as well as to pay strict attention to what might appear as
minutiae. To refuse to allow this is often to refuse to let a subject grow or
develop beyond its incipient (or textbook) stages. As logic itself, including
now the theory of intensions, has developed enormously within recent
years, it must carry its history along with it, subjecting it to fresh critical
scrutiny in the light of present knowledge.
54 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
IV
Let us reflect now upon what is needed if we are to gain a more adequate
formulation of the law or laws of inverse variation.
In the first place, we must have a well-articulated semantics including
a syntax. Nothing less than this surely is now acceptable. Because the
law or laws are so intimately connected with denotation or designation, the
most natural logical underpinning is no doubt to be found in denotational
or designational semantics.
Next we must have a clear and acceptable notion of what intensions are.
We must have a clear ontic description of them. One searches far and
wide in the literature for this. In the author’s Intension and Decision, a
theory of many kinds of intension was suggested. Certain defects, however,
marred the theory there, but these we shall try to correct. Intensions should
emerge in a natural way, so we should contend, as certain kinds of
entities already available in the underlying denotational semantics. They
are not, in other words, to be regarded as sui generis. The notion of
analytic truth should play a fundamental role, supplanting the somewhat
vague and unsatisfactory traditional use of ‘necessary’ or ‘essential.’ Also
intensions must be dissected into parts (or members) in some fashion,
and are not to be regarded as indivisible wholes. As regards this, there
seem to be two historical lines of research. On the one hand, there is the
German tradition, stemming no doubt from Kant, through Frege to Carnap.
And, on the other, there is the English tradition to which Stuart Mill and
Neville Keynes have contributed notably. The key difference seems to be
that in the German tradition intensions are regarded as sui generis and as
indivisible wholes, whereas in the other they are dissected into components.
On this crucial matter we side with the English. We shall try to be as clear
as possible as to precisely what these components are. Heretofore this has
been left rather vague, as we have seen.
Let us turn now to recent semantical theory, in order to pave the way
for a more sophisticated and (hopefully) adequate formulation of the law
or laws of inverse variation.
To designate is to be a proper name of, whether of an individual, a
class, or a relation. To denote is to be a common name of an individual
and of an individual only. Semantical rules concerning designation and
denotation reflect both actual usage and convention, but are no doubt to be
laid down in part by meta-linguistic fiat. There is a third notion, also of
great semantical interest, that of L-designation. It is perhaps a more
“natural” notion than either designation or denotation, simpler, and more
closely reflecting in some sense actual usage. L-designation has occasionally
R. M. MARTIN 55
been mentioned by Carnap, although very rarely used even by him.11 Also
it is definable, with certain desirable restrictions, in terms of denotation.
Hence an intensional semantics based on it shares the advantages enjoyed
by the semantical meta-languages based upon denotation.
We shall also need to introduce a notion of virtual-class L-designation.
Virtual classes, it will be recalled, are classes manquees, very like real
classes, but lacking the crucial feature of being values for variables in the
formalism at hand.12 The theory that emerges, with virtual classes used
in place of real classes and L-designation in place of designation, represents
an important improvement over the theory put forward in Intension and
Decision.
Classes are treacherous entities. They lead us astray in mathematics, and
hence there is little reason to regard them as suitable tools in philosophy.
In their favor is the circumstance that they are extensional entities and
hence relatively clear. If we reject them, it would not do to reinstate
intensional entities in their place, entities such as properties or class-con¬
cepts, relation-concepts, individual-concepts, or propositions.13 If we are to
reject classes, we must do so toto caelo and reject intensional entities
as well. Rejection here of course consists only of refusal to admit as values
for variables. If we can succeed in defining a suitable notation for such
entities, or somehow succeed in gaining the effect of such, upon an ac¬
ceptable foundation, this is all to the good. In fact, this is just what we hope
to do for the various kinds of intensions.
The philosophic importance attaching to the rejection of intensions as
values for a special kind of variable (intensions sui generis, so to call
them) is multifold. First, there is the distrust of pseudoentities. At best
intensional entities are suspect and should not be multiplied beyond neces¬
sity. Then there is the complexity of the laws governing them. These are
notoriously sticky and more complex than ordinary laws governing ex¬
tensions. Also there is the further complexity of the whole meta-language
in which intensions sui generis can be accommodated. Extensional meta¬
languages are always considerably simpler, both in structure and in what
is assumed. There is also the relevant thesis of the unity of science. Why
should only extensional entities be required in certain parts of science and
then all of a sudden abandoned when we turn to others? It is as though we
were to condone here a fundamental severance similar to the alleged one
between the Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften. Also there is the very
considerable historical confusion that surrounds the subject of intensions.
When properly viewed and analyzed, so we contend, the assumption of
intensions sui generis is seen not only not to have been needed but to have
been positively harmful. The role of intensions, to a large extent at least,
can be played instead by certain kinds of virtual constructs, as we hope
to show.
56 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
Let L contain ‘M’ (for men) and ‘R’ (for rational beings) as
PredConOne’s. According to this definition-schema we may say that ‘M’
designates the virtual class of individuals who are men, ‘r3(Mr • Rx)’
designates the virtual class of individuals who are both men and rational,
and so on. Also a here designates the virtual class X3(—x—), no matter
what notation we use to refer to that class. Thus if X3(—x—) =
*3(- .x. .), then also a Des X3(.. x . .). After all, a rose by any other
name. . . .
We may go on to virtual-class L-designation as follows. An expression a
is said to L-designate a virtual class xs(—x—) if and only if a designates
X3(—x—) and a = m, where in place of ‘m’ we put in the structural-
descriptive name of the abstract ‘x3(—x—)’. As a matter of fact, however,
the clause concerning designation here may be dropped, for it follows from
the other clause by one of the Rules of Denotation. Hence we are left
with the especially simple definition,
VI
VII
It is to be observed that the theory here does not allow that one and the
same nominal virtual class can be a member of both the ObjAnlytcInt(a)
and of the ObjSynthcInt (a). The way in which the member is specified or
referred to makes all the difference. (Hence our concern with nominal
virtual classes.) We may see this as follows.
Let
vm
We note that the only contexts thus far introduced in which ‘ObjAnlytcInt
(a)’ may occur significantly are of the form of the definiendum of (D3), in
which a nominal virtual class is said to be a member of the ObjAnlytcInt
(a). And similarly for ‘ObjVerlnt(a)’, ‘ObjSynthcInt(a)’, and ‘ObjThmlnt
(a)\ But further contexts may be introduced definitionally, in particular,
contexts in which we may say that one intension is included in another or
that an intension is identical with an intension.
Various relations of inclusion as between one-place predicate constants
have already been introduced. The following definitions introduce various
relations of inclusion as between objective intensions.
and so on, for all possible cases. There are sixteen in all. And identity for
each case is merely mutual inclusion. Thus
and so on.
Also we can introduce an existential operator for objective intensions.
We let
and so on.
We have immediately existence theorems, to the effect that if a is a
PredConOne, then ElObjAnlytcInt(a), E!ObjVerInt(a), and EIObjThm-
Int(a). For synthetic or factual intensions much depends upon the axioms
of the object-language, which in turn depend upon what the facts are, so
to speak. Ordinarily we should be able to show that the objective synthetic
intension of a PredConOne exists also, but it is not clear that this can
always be done.
We have some interesting inclusional laws for intensions as follows.
and so on.
As corollaries of T4a-T4c we have the following laws concerning the
various kinds of equivalence.
Let us say that one nominal virtual class is analytically included in another
if the expression which LDes the first is analytically included in the expres¬
sion which LDes the second. Thus
and hence
and hence
We need not tarry with these technicalia further, the main line of de¬
velopment being clear enough.
IX
‘G3(—G—)’
‘d LDes G3(—G—)’
And similarly for the other kinds, synthetic, veridical, and theoremic.
Now for Russellian descriptions, taken as primitives of L. Let ‘inviota’
be the structural-descriptive name of the inverted iota V, and ‘ex’ of ‘x’.
If c is the structural-descriptive name of ‘(—x—)’ then i{inviota'~'ex'^cy is
the structural description of ‘(-)X.(—x—) )’. Likewise let ‘invep’ be the
structural description of the inverted epsilon ‘3\ And finally let ‘SentFunc-
One n,d’ express that a is a sentential function of L containing d as its only
free variable. Then we may let
than ex.) (D5) and the generalization of (D6) together would provide a
definition of WhtdAnlytcInt’s for all individual expressions of L.17
Enough has been said surely to indicate how the theory of Whiteheadian
intensions could be further developed.
That intensions turn out to be merely virtual lends further support to
the theory of virtual classes. And that intensions may be introduced within
the semantical meta-language based on ‘Den’ provides further ground for
thinking that this meta-language is adequate for philosophical purposes.
This meta-language, or kind of meta-language, enjoys many advantages
over its alternatives, as we have noted. To have used a meta-lanuage of
higher order for the theory of intensions, as in Intension and Decision, was
a step backward anyhow. To have employed essentially the whole of
mathematics (contained in such a meta-language) merely to develop so
essentially simple a theory as the semantical theory of intensions is to have
employed too much. The notions of intension are not notions of mathematics
and it is an anomaly to have supposed that they were. (By ‘mathematics’
here we mean, barring niceties, the theory of real classes and/or sets.) The
inadequacy of the treatment in Intension and Decision is in part to have
made too much of real classes rather than to have relied on their virtual
counterparts. Here as elsewhere real classes lead us astray, virtual ones, on
the other hand, being a sure guide.
foregoing use of nominal virtual classes. But because the theory of in¬
tensions above presupposes the notion of analytic truth, it is essentially a
semantical theory, as with Frege, even though the semantical presupposi¬
tions involved differ remarkably.
In the theory put forward above, of course, ‘denotation’ is taken in a
very different sense from that of Russell. Here only primitive or defined
predicate constants denote. Russell, on the other hand, in addition to
descriptive phrases of the form ‘the one so and so,’ regards phrases such
as ‘a man,’ ‘all men,’ ‘some man,’ and so on, as denoting. Apparently
he had not, in 1905, straightened out completely the proper use of the
quantifiers. Once this is done, what is left of Russell’s theory concerns only
descriptions.
Descriptive phrases have been explicitly introduced in the theory of in¬
tensions above. There are of course alternative methods of doing this. Much
depends upon whether descriptions are taken as primitive or defined in
Russell’s way. If the latter, there is then no need for a discussion of their
meaning. If, on the other hand, they are taken as primitives, as with Frege
or Carnap, and above, then of course there is. The distinction between
primitive and defined signs in general is of the utmost methodological im¬
portance. Yet curiously little attention is paid to it by methodologists or
analytic philosophers. Doubtless the reason is that the distinction seems
irrelevant for natural language. We do not worry about what the primitives
of a natural language are, although it is no doubt time that we did. But
for logic, the discussion of language-systems, syntax, semantics, and the
like, the distinction cannot be disregarded with impunity.
Russell is never too clear as to precisely what a meaning is. To say
merely that “when ‘C’ occurs, it is the meaning” we are speaking about, or
that “the natural mode” of speaking about the meaning is by inverted com¬
mas, is not sufficient. Nonetheless, in these passages Russell is careful to
distinguish between use and mention, a care unfortunately he does not
always show. Also he is careful here to distinguish between denotation and
meaning, a care likewise which unfortunately he does not always show. In
the theory above, meanings or intensions are explicitly identified with
certain kinds of virtual classes, and thus given an explicit ontological
status.
Let us tarry with Russellian descriptions a little, particularly as concerns
Frege’s celebrated example of ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star,’
so much discussed in the literature. These two phrases presumably stand for
or designate the same object, but should have different meanings or analytic
intensions.19
Within L, let ‘Sx’ for the moment read ‘x is a star’, ‘Mx’, ‘x shines in the
morning’, and ‘Ex’, ‘x shines in the evening’. As is customary we disregard
for the moment all astronomical matters, all matters concerned with time,
68 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
as well as more precise characterizations of ‘M,’ ‘E,’ and ‘S.’ Let Russellian
descriptions be regarded as primitive terms of L. Let ‘ms and es be dis¬
tinct, defined individual constants, introduced in such a way that
and
‘es = (-jx.(Ex • Sx))’
but
— X3(Mx • Sx) e WhtdAnlytcInt(‘es’).
And similarly for other cases. If, on the other hand, ‘ms’ and ‘es’ are
primitive individual constants, and where ‘ms = es’ is presumably synthet¬
ically true, then clearly
but
~X3 (x = ms) e WhtdAnlytcInt(‘es’).
XI
The definiendum may read ‘a connotes the nominal virtual class F’.
More interesting is the notion of virtual attribute which emerges from the
foregoing. For this we need the relation of designation for individuals,
which has not thus far been introduced. Let
XII
XIII
Intension and Decision. Although the key definition there, that of ‘Obj-
Anlytclnt’, was faulty and threw the whole chapter out of focus, we see
now its value as a heuristic, using L-designation in place of designation and
nominal virtual classes in place of real ones.26
We should emphasize again the extreme simplicity of the theory. No
complicated notions are used anywhere, in particular no notions depending
upon higher-order quantifiers or in any way upon the mathematical theory
of sets. This very simplicity is thought to recommend it for philosophic and
linguistic use. We may conveniently distinguish elementary (or first-order)
from theoretical semantics, just as mathematicians frequently distinguish
between elementary and analytic number theory. In each case, the ele¬
mentary presupposes usually only a first-order logic. Theoretical semantics,
comprising the so-called theory of “models,” presupposes either a higher-
order logic or some suitable set theory. In elementary semantics such high-
powered tools are eschewed. Just as it is of interest in number theory to
use only elementary procedures where possible, so in semantics. We have
attempted to show in this paper that elementary procedures suffice for a
semantical theory of intensions, and this heretofore, if we mistake not, has
not been thought possible.
Attention has been confined here wholly to PredConOne’s. But we can
go on to two-place, etc., predicate constants, constructing a theory of in¬
tensions for such by analogy with the foregoing. Perhaps here, as in rela¬
tion theory generally, some interesting intrinsically relational notions would
emerge, transcending the analogy with PredConOne’s.
To summarize. The theory sketched in this paper incorporates the fol¬
lowing features. (1) We are concerned with analyzed intensions, not in¬
tensions sui generis, and in this analysis a multitude of kinds emerges not
distinguished by advocates of the latter. (2) The theory is given within
a first-order semantical meta-language for any first-order system L. (3)
Intensions are given only virtual existence, and at that only nominally so.
(4) There is kinship with Russell in the suggestion that meanings are to be
found primarily in the mention of expressions. (5) Intensions are dissected
into parts or members, so that one can speak of such and such a nominal
virtual class as being a member of such and such an intension. Such modes
of speaking are apparently not available for intensions sui generis, usually
regarded as in some sense indivisible or undissectible wholes. (6) Several
laws of inverse variation are given in what is (hopefully) a satisfactory
way. It is not clear that these laws have ever heretofore been adequately
stated. (7) Suitable notions of connotation and attribute are forthcoming
within the meta-languages discussed. (8) Some tentative suggestions are
put forward toward characterizing notions of sense and synonymy.
Logic advances by slow, minute steps, but these we must not be afraid
of, or disregard or condemn, if we wish to move forward and avoid
“elementary confusions.” The truth, it is said, is hid behind seventy thou-
72 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
NOTES
1. This paper is an improved and expanded version of “An Improvement in the
Theory of Intensions,” Philosophical Studies XVII (1967): 33-38. Also some para-
graphs are borrowed from “On the Inverse Law of Extension and Intension,’
Memorias del XIII Congreso Internacional di Filosofla, Mexico City, 1962, with the
kind permission of the editors.
2. The Principles of Logic, 2nd ed. (London, Oxford University Press: 1922),
Vol. II, p. 486.
3. Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 170.
4. See in particular B. Bosanquet, Logic, 2nd ed. (London, Oxford University
Press: 1911), Vol. I, pp. 64 and passim.
5. (London, Macmillan: 1906), pp. 35 ff. This book, termed “excellent” by
C. S. Peirce (Collected Papers, 3.384), has been called “the most perfect presenta¬
tion of classical formal logic in general . . . [which] has been equally great and
beneficent in its influence within Anglo-Saxon civilization” by Heinrich Scholz, in
his Concise History of Logic, tr. by K. Leidecker (New York, Philosophical
Library: 1961), p. 48.
6. Cf. the author’s Truth and Denotation (Chicago, University of Chicago Press:
1958), p. 104.
7. Cf., however, the author’s Intension and Decision (New York, Prentice-Hall:
1963), Chapter II-IV.
8. See, for example, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Harvard Uni¬
versity Press: 1953) and Word and Object (Cambridge, The Technology Press of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York and London, John Wiley
and Sons: 1960).
9. (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co.: 1934), pp. 30-33.
10. Further, the Cohen and Nagel laws, if such they be, appear to presuppose
fragments at least of some kind of modal set theory, which, it is to be feared, had
not been adequately formulated at the time. Cf., however, F. B. Fitch, “A Complete
and Consistent Modal Set Theory,” The Journal of Symbolic Logic 32 (1967):
93-103.
11. See esp. R. Carnap, Introduction to Semantics (Cambridge, Harvard Univer¬
sity Press: 1942), p. 81 and Meaning and Necessity (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press: 1946), p. 163.
12. See the author’s “The Philosophic Import of Virtual Classes,” The Journal
of Philosophy LXI (1964): 377-387. Cf. also W. V. Quine, Set Theory and Its
Logic (Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 1963), pp. 15 ff.
13. See especially Meaning and Necessity, passim.
14. See, e.g., Truth and Denotation, pp. 99 ff., or Intension and Decision, p. 14.
15. Meaning and Necessity, p. 163.
16. For essentially this argument the author is indebted to Mr. Evan Jobe. See
his “R. M. Martin’s System of Pragmatics,” Methodos XV (1963): 313-330, and
his “A Note on Connotation and Attribute,” The Journal of Philosophy LXI1
(1965): 325-328.
17. Cf. the author’s “On Proper Names and Frege’s Darstellungsweise," The
Monist 51 (1967): 1-8.
18. B. Russell, Logic and Knowledge (London, Allen and Unwin: 1956), pp
39-56.
19. The following paragraph corrects pp. 124-125 of Intension and Decision.
20. Cf. the author’s “On Connotation and Attribute,” The Journal of Philosophy
LXI (1964): 711-724.
21. Cf. Truth and Denotation, pp. 213 ff. or Intension and Decision, p. 35. ‘invep’
here as above is the structural description of ‘ 3’, ‘ex’ of ‘x’, ‘id’ of ‘ O’, and ‘--’is the
sign of concatenation. Cf. Truth and Denotation, Chapter III.
22. Cf. F. B. Fitch, “Attribute and Class,” in Philosophic Thought in France and
the United States, ed. by Marvin Farber (Buffalo, University of Buffalo Publications
in Philosophy: 1950), pp. 545-563.
23. See especially The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (in The Library of Living
Philosophers, ed. by P. A. Schilpp, LaSalle, Ill., Open Court: 1963), pp. 897 ff.
R. M. MARTIN 73
1. INTRODUCTION
This assumption is, of course, controversial, and I cannot pursue that argu¬
ment here, but shall be content to assume that there are strong arguments
in favor of some probabilistic c-theory, but that the particular c-theory
which is adopted (that is, the particular assignment of prior probabilities)
will depend on the best way that can be found of satisfying criteria of
adequacy derived from our intuitive use of inductive methods. I do not
wish to claim, as Carnap appeared to claim in Logical Foundations of
Probability, that confirmation measures a unique objective relation between
hypothesis and evidence, but rather (which Carnap also claims) that it is
a measure of the reasonable degree of belief of scientists in the hypothesis
on the basis of the total available evidence. This degree of belief is not to
be understood to be established directly by consulting explicit pronounce¬
ments of scientists or by conducting opinion polls, but indirectly by ex¬
amining what is presupposed by their generally agreed inductive behavior.
The project of developing a c-theory may then be likened to that of setting
up a scientific hypothesis whose statements are not all verified directly, but
by their consequences. Prior c-values, like “theoretical statements” need
not be given a direct interpretation, but are tested by comparing the con¬
sequences of the c-theory with generally agreed inductive behavior.
2.1. One type of problem concerned with the confirmation of laws turns
partly on technical issues within the syntax of given confirmation theories
76 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
firmation of (U) does after all correspond to our intuitions, and that
wherever a generalization of form (U) in an infinite domain appears to be
required by scientific inference, it can be replaced without loss by a generali¬
zation in a finite domain, whose confirmation is nonzero.
Let us begin to attack this by asking what would be implied by ascribing
to (U) a nonzero confirmation? It would mean, surely, that it was reason¬
able to believe that (U) has some chance, however small, of remaining part
of the corpus of acceptable scientific knowledge indefinitely and under all
empirically possible circumstances, that is to say, under all circumstances
which can in fact obtain in nature. It is not obvious that it is reasonable
to believe this. This is not so much because such a belief covers an in¬
finite number of instances but rather because it may not be reasonable to
believe that (U) states a law accurately even in one instance. Qualifications
may have to be introduced; for example, A may in all observed and in al¬
most all as yet unobserved instances co-occur with C, a predicate which we
have not included in our description and perhaps have not even noticed.
In that case we may, if we pursue science long enough, be forced to modify
(U) to (x)(Ax.Cx D • Bx) because we have found instances which are A
but neither C nor B. Or, we may find that some A’s are not B, but are
predicated by a closely similar B' which was not previously distinguished
from B, as when a law containing metric predicates is found to hold not
strictly but only approximately. Few of the laws which have been cited as
typical by logicians have in fact remained unmodified in some such ways.
Consider for example Galileo’s law of falling bodies, the law that planets
move in ellipses, Boyle’s law, Newton’s law of gravitation, the chemical
law of constant proportions, and Mendel’s laws of inheritance. All of these
can be expressed in the form “For all bodies, if a body is A it is also B,” and
in this form all have either been falsified or shown to be true only for a
finite number of instances, in which form they may have of course nonzero
confirmation. Even an apparently hard case such as “All molecules of
water consist of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom” has already
had to be modified to “All molecules of water (other than heavy water)
consist of two (nonheavy) hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.” This
means that refusal to ascribe nonzero confirmation to “All water molecules
consist of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom” in more than a finite
number of instances could not have eliminated any useful inferences in the
past since the law has in fact turned out to be true only in limited domains.
Is it reasonable to suppose that any lawlike generalization of the form
(U) in current or in any future science will remain forever unqualifiedly
true in every instance? If not, then we are committed to the belief that no
assertion such as (U) has any chance of being strictly true, and therefore
that its confirmation is always, properly, zero.
Some of the examples given above may, however, seem to involve not
so much infinite domains of discrete individuals as continua of individuals,
MARY HESSE 79
for example, space and time points. And even on the very weak assumption
that in every interval of such individuals there is only a countable infinity
of points (the rational divisions which we could in principle measure),
then every generalization over such an interval is an infinite generalization
in the sense considered here, and has zero confirmation. Can we do with¬
out so modest a requirement in our domain of individuals? Consider the
generalization
zation (x)(Ax D Bx) may not be eternal, but if A and B are primitive
predicates of the language Li in which it is made, whereas C or B' do not
occur in that language, it is somewhat strange to hold that (x) (Ax D Bx)
is false in Lx simply because another generalization (x)(Ax.Cx D. Bx) or
(x) (Ax D .Bx v B'x) replaces it in a richer language L2. This objection,
however, does not have much force, for if this is indeed the situation, then
(x) (Ax D Bx) is false in Lx and in every other language containing the
predicates A and B. It is false because there are A’s which are not B, either
because there are A’s which are not C or because there are A’s which are B'
and not B. This does not of course mean that nothing true can be said
about A and B in Lx, only that no universal generalization (U) can be truly
asserted because (U) is in fact not true. Furthermore, it is perfectly pos¬
sible for a single c-theory to bridge the gap between Lx and L2. Most c-
theories satisfy the so-called “fitting-together” criterion for predicates,
namely, that the value of c(h,e) is to be independent of all predicates except
those contained in h or e. Thus the complete list of primitive predicates does
not have to be known before c(h,e) is evaluated, and the basic language
can in this respect be extended indefinitely without disturbing c-values
already obtained in proper parts of itself.
Another objection related to the linguistic basis of a c-theory has been
made by Nagel in his comments on Carnap’s theory of induction in the
Schilpp volume.11 Nagel remarks that universal laws may be indispensible
even in recognizing the evidence for a law. For example, confirmation of
the law “All swans are white,” even for a finite domain, requires acceptance
of some statement “a is a swan,” and this in turn presupposes universal
laws implicit in the universal term “swan.” Similar points have been made
by Popper,12 who would seem to hold that no evidential statement of this
kind is in principle a singular statement nor can be known conclusively to
be true, because the observation-report “a is a swan” can always be chal¬
lenged and further tested and such tests may result in withdrawal of the
statement—the light was bad; being a logician I was obsessed with the
concept of “swan”; what I saw flying across the lake was actually a goose.
If there is in principle no end to this process of challenge and test, then
indeed a statement such as “a is a swan” is not singular but has con¬
sequences which are properly tested by events other than the observation
which prompted its utterance. It is not clear, however, that these con¬
sequences are such that “a is a swan” must be taken to be an elliptic ex¬
pression of one or more universal generalizations in infinite domains. Indeed
on Popper’s view at least it would be highly paradoxical if this were so,
because if we can never know such a universal generalization to be true
or even probable, and if every statement of evidence both of positive and
negative instances of a generalization itself presupposes such knowledge, it
is difficult to see how any generalization can even be known to be false.
MARY HESSE 83
Why, except for entirely pragmatic reasons, should we accept, even pro¬
visionally, one general statement rather than any other?
This problem is not so pressing on Nagel’s view, for presumbly Nagel
does believe that we can know or be reasonably confident in the truth of a
statement such as “a is a swan.” In that case it may be suggested that he is
over ambitious in requiring c-theory to explicate the conditions of ap¬
plicability of its own basic language. To adopt a language containing cer¬
tain extralogical predicates in terms of which to explicate the mutual induc¬
tive relations of its statements is indeed to presuppose that the predicates
are universals, and we cannot give finite sets of necessary and sufficient
conditions for the applicability of universal terms. But it does not follow
that the process of applying universal terms is in the least like that of coming
to accept universal laws, nor that it depends on probabilities in infinite
domains. Indeed the difficulties involved in any such construal of universals
may well suggest that here as well as in our account of induction we ought
to eschew infinities altogether. At worst, Nagel’s objection means that
c-theory does not give an account of the logic of the learning of its own
basic language, but it is not at all clear why it should be expected to do so.
To require this would be something like requiring a formalization of
arithmetic to define uniquely the natural numbers, a task which, though
originally worth attempting, we now know to be impossible, but we
do not thereby regard the formalization of arithmetic as an impossible
or worthless enterprise.
Nagel has a related objection, based on the supposition that experimental
tests always themselves depend on acceptance of the universal laws govern¬
ing the test apparatus and surrounding test conditions. But here, surely,
infinite domains need not be involved, only high probability over finite
domains which are defined to be as large as is necessary. Generalizations
concerned with instruments do not even need to be universally true—the
laws of classical optics, for example, may provide a sufficient approximation
to the behavior of a telescope even when it is testing predictions derived
from a theory which contradicts classical optics. It follows that any pre¬
supposition involved in accepting the evidence as highly probable can al¬
ways be stated without loss in terms of high confirmation of generalizations
in finite domains.
Another objection can be dealt with equally briefly. This is that if all
infinite generalizations have zero confirmation, then a generalization which
has not yet been refuted is no better off than one which is known to be
false. And yet we must consider the status of the former as different from
the latter. My reply to this would be that we do consider it as different, but
only in virtue of the confirmation of the generalizations over limited domains
which are its consequences. That is to say, what we actually use in theoreti¬
cal inference are statements of the form “All the next n A’s in a limited
84 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
region of space and time are B,” where n and the limited region may be
as large as we like to specify. Such statements have nonzero confirmation in
any well-behaved c-theory. The value of that confirmation will however be
very different according as the evidence does or does not contain instances
of A which are not B. In other words, our confidence in predicting of the
next million A’s that they will be B will be much diminished if the strictly
universal generalization “All A’s are B” has already been refuted.
randomness of the ways in which we may come to know it, the argument
can, I think, be shown to depend on a pun on the word “possible.” The
situation to which c-theory is relevant is that of contemplation of a
potential law “All A’s are B” when we do not know on the basis of the
evidence available whether this generalization is true or not. If it is a law,
then on Kneale’s view A necessitates B, and then in one sense it is im¬
possible that A should be not-B, but it does not follow, since by definition
we do not know that “A necessitates B” is a law, that it is impossible that
“A necessitates B” should be false, and hence that there are other pos¬
sible lawlike statements, some of which may be true. And Kneale has not
noticed that if his objection were conclusive it would also count against
the use of probability even for accidental universal generalizations, for if
it is a cosmic fact that all A’s are as a matter of fact B’s, it is likewise not
“possible” that an A should not be a B. But this rests more obviously on
a pun on “possible,” and Kneale is not deceived by it, for he accepts the
ordinary scientific use of probability for chance occurrences. The case of
logical necessity to which he appeals is not conclusive for his argument
either, for when we do not know whether a potential mathematical theorem
is true or false (as with Goldbach’s conjecture, for example), there
is one sense of “possible” in which it is possibly true and possibly false.
But in this case, since mathematical theorems, unlike scientific laws, are
matters of proof, it is not likely that our degree of belief in Goldbach’s
conjecture is happily explicated by probability-functions. Whether confirma¬
tion of laws is so explicable is a question of whether our degree of reason¬
able belief in them behaves like a probability-function in the light of con¬
firming evidence and cannot be decided a priori by arguments about physi¬
cal necessity, however that may be understood.
3.3. There is implicit in Kneale’s discussion another serious question
about laws vis-a-vis accidental generalizations. Since c-theory depends
merely on the syntactic relation between evidence-statements and law-state¬
ments, it cannot distinguish laws from accidental generalizations, and in
particular it cannot reflect our greater willingness to allow confirmation to
a potential law than to an accidental generalization, even on similar evi¬
dence. For example, considered merely as a relation between evidence and
generalization, a sample of viruses all of which have caused Asian flu in
persons whose birthdays lie in June is no better evidence for the generaliza¬
tion “All these viruses cause Asian flu” than it is for “All these viruses
attack only people whose birthdays are in June.” And yet we should be
much more inclined to regard the former as well confirmed than the latter.
The first remark to be made about this difficulty is that it is not reason¬
able to expect c-theory alone to decide for us how we are to distinguish
laws from accidental generalizations. Since it is almost universally admitted
that the necessity of laws does not reveal itself by peering more closely at
the events which may be their instances, it will not be revealed either by a
MARY HESSE 87
c-theory which can by definition only take account of the statement of the
law and the statement of all the evidence that is available for it. Neither
is the problem removed by building into a c-theory a logical connective
equivalent to “necessitates” as well as the usual connective of material
implication (as has been suggested for other reasons by L. J. Cohen). For
in such a theory the problem would be that unless prior distinctions were
made, all accidental generalizations not yet contradicted by the evidence
would get as high confirmation as potential laws. Instead of all laws look¬
ing like accidental generalizations, as in probabilistic theories, all ac¬
cidental generalizations would look like laws. The question how to dis¬
tinguish potential laws from accidental generalizations must be decided
independently of c-theory, but once it has been decided in a form which
can be expressed in terms of c-theory, we shall of course be entitled to
demand that the c-theory give us relative confirmation values in accordance
with our usual assumptions about the relative confirmability of the two
kinds of statement.
One widely accepted way of making this distinction is the view15 that
the generalizations we are prepared to accept as potential laws are those
that follow from the conjunction of appropriate boundary conditions with
more or less systematic theories, which are in turn supported by a variety
of other laws. The generalizations that we regard as accidental, on the other
hand, are those which are not so connected with other generalizations by
theories. This view demands of a c-theory that when laws are consequences
of a theory they should be given confirmation higher than the confirmation
they receive from their instances alone, for they share the latter possibility
of confirmation with accidental generalizations, but not the former.
The view is, however, open to the general objection that some potential
laws can be distinguished from accidental generalizations even when no
systematic theory is present; for example we may be quite ignorant of any
explanatory theory of how the virus causes Asian flu and yet be prepared
to accept this correlation as lawlike. This is one reason why it is not satis¬
factory to adopt this view as a basis for the confirmation of laws. There is
also a more fundamental reason why it in fact cannot be accepted as it
stands as defining the conditions of adequacy of a c-theory. It is easy to
show that, in any probabilistic c-theory, the confirmation of a law L cannot
be increased above its value (c;) on the evidence of its own instances,
merely in virtue of its deducibility from a theory T, unless it is also in¬
creased by all the evidence for the theory even before the theory has been
explicitly formulated. That is to say, supposing the whole of the evidence
for T is E, then since c(L,E) is a single-valued function of L and E only,
88 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
its value is independent of any theory T which may be or may have been
proposed to explain E in the deducibility sense of explanation. This result
means in general that if probabilistic c-theory is to explicate the relation
between explanatory theories and laws, theories must satisfy stronger con¬
ditions than those required on the deducibility account because this account
is not sufficient to show that theories are relevant to the confirmation of
laws. I have suggested elsewhere16 that the further conditions to be imposed
on T must be derived from relations of analogy between the objects specified
in the total evidence E, so that T is not so much one among many possible
postulate systems having E among its consequences as the explicit state¬
ment of the analogies which exist among a number of empirical systems
including E, the best theory being the one which embodies the strongest
and most extensive analogy. A theory would therefore be established when
the number of analogous systems realizing it is large in number, and this
would incidentally have the effect that, given appropriate differentiating
boundary conditions, the number of its empirical consequences is also
large.
On such a view it is at once possible to understand why we accept the
correlation of viruses with Asian flu as lawlike and the correlation of viruses
with June birthdays as accidental. The former correlation does, and the
latter does not, have analogies with many other empirically established
correlations, and this can be known even before more sophisticated theories
of the disease are available. In order to ensure that the confirmation
c(L,E) is greater than C;, it is necessary only to impose upon the c-theory
the requirement that evidence comprising data about a large number of
analogous objects or systems of objects yields in general higher c-value for
L than evidence comprising only isolated objects or systems which are
instances of L.
The view that at least some types of explanatory theory are best regarded
as explicit statements of analogies among instances is a very natural ex¬
tension of the view of laws which has been maintained in this paper, for
exactly the same considerations apply to the deducibility of instances from
general laws as to the deducibility of laws from theories. No probabilistic
c-theory will give confirmation to a particular prediction, for example “The
next raven will be black” (I) on the basis of observed instances of black
ravens (E), which is greater than c(I,E), merely in virtue of confirmation
of the generalization “All ravens are black” from which (together with
boundary conditions) both I and E are deducible. It may or may not be the
case that universal generalizations in infinite domains can be given finite
confirmation, but confirmation of instances is entirely independent of this
possibility, and the result just stated holds in either case. Thus the con¬
firmation of the generalization may be zero without entailing that c(I,E)
is zero.
MARY HESSE 89
5. CONCLUSIONS
The arguments of this paper have not depended upon any particular
assignment of prior confirmation to theoretical statements, but have rather
been intended to elicit some of the criteria of adequacy which such an
assignment should satisfy. It has been argued on the one hand that finite
prior confirmation in an infinite domain is not one of these criteria, but on
the other hand suggestions have emerged regarding three criteria which
are required and which may be summarized as follows:
(A) Variety of instances in the evidence should tend to confirm a gen¬
eralization more highly than the same number of instances all of the
same kind.
(B) In inductions from instance to instance or from finite law to finite law,
confirmation should increase with the degree of analogy between in¬
stances. Apart from its intuitive desirability, this requirement offers
the best hope of explicating within confirmation theory those induc¬
tions which are normally said to depend upon explanatory theories.
(C) Although the confirmation of a law in infinite domains remains zero,
it should be possible to show that its confirmation in specified finite
domains, however large, does reach a value reasonably near unity with
increasing amounts of favorable evidence.
some obvious extensions, does satisfy the conditions specified in (A) and
(B).18
Apart from the as yet unsolved question of an adequate c-theory, how¬
ever, a certain attitude toward laws and theories has emerged from this
discussion which may have some independent interest. In conclusion let
me summarize the main characteristics of this attitude.
1. It has been argued that it is unreasonable to believe that any universal
generalization in an infinite domain, as stated at a given stage of science, is
true.
2. Inductive inference (and perhaps also use of universal terms) can be
analyzed without loss into inference from particulars to particulars, or at
most to generalizations in finite, though large, domains.
3. This view does not detract in any way from the special features that
90 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
have been ascribed to general laws, specifically not in the following respects:
(a) It does not imply that statistical generalizations should be preferred to
universal laws.
(b) It does not imply that c-theory cannot assign finite confirmation to
counterfactual inferences.
(c) It does not imply that laws are not in some sense necessary.
(d) It does not imply that laws cannot be distinguished from accidental
generalizations.
(e) It does not empty the notion of law in an infinite domain of all signifi¬
cance. It merely denies that we can ever have any reasonable grounds
for believing such a law to be true.
4. Neither does this view devalue theories. It rather reinterprets theories
as expressions of the analogies between their instances, in virtue of which
analogical inferences can be made to further finite sets of instances.
NOTES
1. Principles of the Theory of Probability, International Encyclopedia of Unified
Science, Vol. I, No. 6, Chicago, 1939.
2. The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, ed. P. A. Schilpp, La Salle, Ill., 1963,
pp. 785-825.
3. Part of this paper was read at a colloquium at Oberlin College, April 15-17,
1966. I am much indebted to the commentators on this occasion, Professors
P. Achinstein and P. Alexander, and to others who took part in the discussion. I
wish especially to acknowledge a correction to my original formulation of the be¬
ginning of the second paragraph, Section 2.2, which was made by Professor Achin¬
stein, and has been incorporated in the present version.
4. R. Carnap: Logical Foundations of Probability, Chicago, 1950; The Con¬
tinuum of Inductive Methods, Chicago, 1952; Induktive Logik und Wahrscheinlichkeil
(with W. Stegmiiller), Vienna, 1959.
J. Hintikka: “Towards a Theory of Inductive Generalization,” Logic, Methodology
and Philosophy of Science, ed. Y. Bar-Hillel, Amsterdam, 1965, p. 274; “On a
Combined System of Inductive Logic,” Acta Philosophica Fennica, 18, 1965, 21;
“Induction by Enumeration and Induction by Elimination,” The Problem of Inductive
Logic, ed. I. Lakatos, Amsterdam, 1968, p. 191, and my comment on the latter
article, ibid., p. 220.
P. Achinstein: “Variety and Analogy in Confirmation Theory,” Phil. Sci. 30, 1963,
p. 216; and Carnap’s reply, ibid. p. 225.
Mary Hesse: “Analogy and Confirmation Theory,” Phil. Sci. 31, 1964, p. 319.
5. M. Bunge: The Myth of Simplicity, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963, p. 116ff.
L. J. Cohen: “What has Confirmation to do with Probabilities?,” Mind, 75, 1966,
p. 463; “A Logic for Evidential Support,” Brit. Journ. Phil. Sci., 17, 1966, pp. 21
and 105.
W. C. Kneale: Probability and Induction, Oxford, 1949.
H. Kyburg: Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief, Middletown, Conn.,
1961.
K. R. Popper: Logic of Scientific Discovery, London, 1959, Appendices *vii-*ix.
6. The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, p. 977.
7. “‘Content’ and ‘Degree of Confirmation,’” Brit. Journ. Phil. Sci., 6, 1955, p.
160.
8. “On the Confirmation of Laws,” Phil. Sci., 26, 1959, p. 14.
9. “The Status of Determinism,” Brit. Journ. Phil. Sci., 14, 1963, p. 106.
10. Probability and Induction, p. 73.
11. Op. cit., p. 802.
12. See for example Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 94.
MARY HESSE 91
its own values, and it is these values which control the legitimacy of in¬
ferences.
Nagel’s remarks suggest a question for study of considerable philosophi¬
cal interest: Can an account of standards of legitimate inference be con¬
structed which shows how conformity to these standards promotes the aims
of inquiry?6 This question can be raised about statistical inference in par¬
ticular and about scientific inference in general.
To construct an account of scientific inference of the sort required, some
conception of the relevant features of legitimate inference must be available.
In addition, the aims of inquiry which control the legitimacy of scientific
inferences must be identified. Finally, a theory of rational goal attainment—
i.e., a theory of rational decision-making—must be introduced in terms of
which it can be shown that conforming to standards of legitimate inference
best promotes the aims of science.
All of the topics just mentioned are surrounded by controversy. Con¬
sequently, each step in a decision-theoretic account of scientific inference
requires a rather elaborate defense; and even with the aid of such argu¬
ments, the proposals thus supported could only pretend to be tentative.
Space will not allow for extensive discussion of all the controversial steps to
be taken in the following discussion. Therefore, the suggestions made here
should be taken only as a basis for further discussion and not as in any
sense final.
Thus, in spite of the well known difficulties involved in using the injunc¬
tion to maximize expected utilities as the basis for a decision theory, this
principle will be adopted here. The difficulties are accompanied by certain
advantages. First, this procedure allows something to be said about the
way in which scientific inferences are related to probabilities.7 In addition,
utility theory can be used as an analytic device for representing the aims
of science which control the legitimacy of inferences. These utilities, of
course, are not to be understood as representing satisfactions or subjective
preferences of individual investigators. Rather they are to be interpreted
as indices of the relative importance which scientists are committed to at¬
taching to the consequences of their inferences insofar as they are com¬
mitted to promoting the institutional aims of science.
In order to apply the injunction to maximize expected utility, some¬
thing must be done about indentifying the “cognitive decision problem”
facing an investigator when he uses given evidence to reach a conclusion.
This involves specifying the “options” open to him, the relevant “out¬
comes” of these options, the scientific objectives controlling his “decision”,
and the representation of these objectives with the aid of an “epistemic”
utility function.8 The subsequent discussion is devoted to an examination of
these problems.
94 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
II
Carl Hempel, who was the first to publish a cognitive decision model of
the sort to be considered here,9 has, with his customary clarity, isolated
the problem with which he is concerned as follows:
. . . let us suppose now that a scientist has at his disposal the set of all sentences
accepted at the time, which we may assume to be expressed in the form of one
complicated sentence e; that he has invented, or has been presented with a
set of n hypotheses, hlf h2 . . . , hn, which, on e, are pairwise incompatible
while jointly exhausting all possibilities . . . ; and that he has to choose one from
the following n-1 courses of action: To accept hi and add it to e; . . . ; to accept
hn and add it to e; to accept none of the n hypotheses and thus leave e un¬
changed. The problem is to construct a rule that will determine which choice it
is rational to make.10
Hempel disclaims any effort to devise a procedure for generating the
list of sentences hi, h2, . . . , hn.
. . . the construction of such hypotheses requires, in general, scientific in¬
ventiveness and, in important cases, great genius; it cannot be achieved by the
mechanical use of induction rules. The inductive problem here considered is
rather that of deciding on the available evidence—which may include the
results of extensive tests—, which, if any, of the proposed hypotheses is to be
“accepted” and thus to be added to the corpus of scientific knowledge.11
Ill
tion and has available to him total evidence e. The first problem to be faced
in setting up a cognitive decision model for choosing among the relevant
possible answers is to find a standardized way of representing the pos¬
sible answers.
Let U—to be called “the ultimate partition”—be a set of n sentences
hi, h2, . . . , hn such that e implies that at least and at most one of the hi’s
is true and such that each of the hi’s is consistent with e. Each element of
U is a “strongest consistent relevant answer to the question Q” in the
sense that, given e, no other relevant answer entails an element of H
(unless it is equivalent to it, given e). If the elements of U are alpha¬
betized, all relevant answers to the question will be equivalent, given e, to
one and only one sentence in the set M generated by U as follows: All
disjunctions of m distinct elements ofM(0<m^n)in which each dis¬
junct appears once and only once and in alphabetical order together with
the sentence C which is the conjunction of all elements of U in which each
conjunct appears once and only once and in alphabetical order. M has 2n
elements.14
Strictly speaking, an investigator does not answer a question by ac¬
cepting an element of M. He is committed to accepting a set of sentences
consisting of some element H in M together with all the deductive con¬
sequences of H and his evidence e. Thus, H is better characterized as the
strongest sentence accepted via induction from the evidence e relative to
the ultimate partition U.
This way of looking at the situation explains why two investigators
disagree where one accepts H and the second accepts HvG without accept¬
ing H. The sentences they accept are not inconsistent with one another; but
one accepts a different system of sentences than the other.
To accept C as strongest (where C is the conjunction of all elements in
U) is to contradict oneself. In so doing, one obtains as strong (as “maxi¬
mal”) an answer to the question as is possible but with the inevitable
consequence that some of the sentences accepted will be false. Hempel
does not mention the option of accepting C as strongest among his cog¬
nitive options. Given that any adequate account of scientific inference
should insure that this option is never taken, his omission is not serious.
However, it is useful to take explicit notice of it in order to show that it
will indeed never be taken.
In Hempel’s setup,15 the remaining options correspond (when modified
to meet the requirements introduced previously) to cases of accepting h4
as strongest where h, is an element of the ultimate partition U. There is
one exception. Hempel allows for suspension of judgement. This is repre¬
sented in the scheme proposed here by the case of accepting S as strongest
where S is the disjunction of all n elements of U. To accept S as strongest
is to accept only the deductive consequences of the total evidence e.
The trouble with Hempel’s scheme shows up where U has more than
98 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
two elements. If there are three, hi,h2, and h3, then in addition to accepting
some hi as strongest, accepting C (hi&h2&h,3) as strongest or accepting S
(hivh2vh3) as strongest, accepting hivh2, hivh3 or h2vh3 as strongest are
options always open to the investigator and should be considered in any
account. Instead of the n + 1 options mentioned by Hempel, there are 2 .
Of course, when U has exactly 2 elements, the two schemes are identical.
IV
y
Efforts to obtain true and informative answers to questions are multi¬
purpose endeavors in the sense that the aim of the activity can be viewed
as some sort of compromise between distinct goals each of which could
be pursued to the total neglect of the others. Thus, an investigator might
attempt to obtain true answers to questions without regard to how informa¬
tive they are. Alternatively, he might look for informative answers to ques¬
tions without any concern for the truth values of the answers he obtains.
Thus, a natural approach to the problem of constructing an epistemic
utility function representing the invariant features of all efforts to obtain
true and informative answers to questions is to begin by considering the
epistemic utility functions appropriate to efforts to obtain true answers to
questions and to efforts to obtain informative answers to questions.
Suppose then that an investigator is interested in “the truth and nothing
100 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
T(H, t) = 1
T(H, f) = 0
C(H,t) = cont(H,e)
C(H,f) = cont(H,e)
EC(H,e) = cont(H,e).
Rule for Ties: Let H1? H2, . . . , Hn be elements of M such that F(H4e)
is maximal. Let G be that one of the Hj’s (there will be one and only
one) which is equivalent, given e, to the disjunction of all of them.
Accept G as strongest via induction from e relative to U.
The injunction to maximize expected utility and the rule for ties yield,
when epistemic utility is measured by the V-function, a rule for obtaining
answers to questions relative to given evidence which can be formulated
as follows:
(A) Divide the elements of the ultimate partition U into two sets: the set
K such that H is an element of K if and only if p(H,e) / qcont(— H,e)
=q/n (where n is the number of elements in U); and the complement
of K in U.
VI
VII
One place where rule (A) can with some plausibility be directly applied
is in situations where an investigator wishes to make predictions regarding
the relative frequencies of certain kinds of events in a series of trials on the
basis of statistical assumptions.
Suppose, in particular, that some experiment having two outcomes
H and T is repeated n times and that the chance that H will appear on the
ith trial has the same value p for each i. What prediction should be made
regarding relative frequencies. The usually accepted method is to recom¬
mend adopting that conclusion which bears a probability near to l.26
This prescription does yield an intuitively acceptable result—to wit, the
prediction that the relative frequency lies in an interval around p, an inter¬
val which decreases in size as n increases. It also allows the conclusion that
the relative frequency is not p or, for that matter, any other specific value
in that interval.
Rule (A) can be applied to this problem in such a way as to yield the
ISAAC LEVI 105
the same body of evidence. When rule (A) is used, on the other hand,
the inconsistency is no longer obnoxious because consistency is demanded
only in conclusions reached relative to fixed evidence and a fixed ultimate
partition.28
One way in which a high probability rule might be amended to meet the
requirements of rule (A) is to restrict the condition of acceptance to
elements of M bearing high probability. But this also leads to contradiction.
The second feature of rule (A) of vital importance in avoiding difficulties
of the sort under consideration is its refusal to recognize high probability
as a sufficient condition for acceptance. An element of U will avoid re¬
jection as long as its probability is greater than q/n. Since probabilities
meeting that requirement may be very small, the contradictories of ele¬
ments of U will often fail to be accepted even though their probabilities
are very high. This explains why in the example mentioned previously
the statement “the relative frequency will not be p” will fail to be accepted
as a good answer to the question about long run relative frequency.
According to rule (A), high probability is not only insufficient for ac¬
ceptance, it is not necessary either. This consequence could be avoided by re-
.5n
striding values of the q-index of caution to those less than or equal to--
n — 1
However, there seems to be no reason for this carrying the same conviction
as that which recommends restricting q-values to those less than 1.
Two points can be made, however, to mollify advocates of high prob¬
ability. The first is that when the ultimate partition contains only two ele¬
ments, then rule (A) takes high probability as necessary and sufficient for
acceptance.
The second point concerns the probability which an element of U should
have in order that it be accepted relative to the evidence e and, in addition,
that further efforts to obtain evidence be considered pointless. Advocates
of high probability as a necessary condition for acceptance may be viewed
as individuals who adopt a moderate but not excessively high degree of
caution. Consequently, if evidence acquisition is to terminate, the available
evidence should warrant their accepting an element of U. In this sense, a
high probability may be necessary (but not sufficient) for final acceptance.
According to rule (A), however, it is not necessary for tentative accept¬
ance.
VIII
(1) If the evidence e implies that all s individuals are confirming instances
of h and N is the size of the universe, then there is a positive value of
the lambda parameter such that when that value is used to generate a
measure of confirmation, h will be accepted relative to e. The maximum
such value for lambda decreases with increasing N and increases with s.
(2) Let e1 imply that s individuals are confirming instances of h and that
they all share the same Q-predicate. Let e2 imply that s individuals are
confirming instances of h but that they are as heterogeneous as possible
with respect to Q-properties consistent with their being confirming in¬
stances of h. There is a positive value of lambda such that when that
value is used to generate a measure of confirmation, h will be accepted
relative to e2 but will fail to be accepted relative to er This theorem fails
only in the case where N = s + 1.
NOTES
1. Work on this paper was done while I was a Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright
Scholar at the the London School of Economics in 1966-67.
la. Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science, New York: Harcourt Brace (1961),
p. 14.
2. See, for example, The Structure of Science, p. 13.
3. See, for example, R. Rudner, “The Scientist qua Scientist Makes Value Judge¬
ments, Philosophy of Science 20 (1953), pp. 1—6 and R. C. Jeffrey’s commentary
“Valuation and Acceptance of Scientific Hypotheses,” Philosophy of Science 23
(1956), pp. 237-246.
4. The Structure of Science, p. 497.
5. The Structure of Science, p. 498.
6. This question should not be confused with the problem of “vindicating” in¬
duction. Vindications purport to justify inductive reasoning by showing that certain
“inductive policies” best promote the aims of science. Unlike the arguments to be
presented here, however, vindications are intended to answer Hume’s problem This
means that the assumptions on which they are based are held to be necessary
incorrigible, indubitable or the like.
This paper is not concerned at all with Hume’s problem. The problem is to pro¬
vide a systematic account of standards for legitimate inference which relates con-
ISAAC LEVI 109
measure of the content added by accepting H to that already afforded by the evi¬
dence. Subject to the reservations indicated in the text, I now agree with his ap¬
proach. However, in “Corroboration and Rules of Acceptance” and “Decision Theory
and Confirmation,” [The Journal of Philosophy 58 (1961), 621-625], I raised an
objection against it. Because of this, I used (in “Corroboration and Rules of Ac¬
ceptance”) an absolute measure of content, and Hintikka and Pietarinen have done
likewise. I now think that my objection can be avoided and, subject to the modifica¬
tions mentioned in the text, I am now adopting a measure of “content added.”
18. This approach does seem entirely appropriate to large numbers of cognitive
decision problems. It does not seem plausible when applied to cases of choosing be¬
tween theories where one element of U is a “residual hypothesis” x (see footnote
14). The reason is that, although the residual hypothesis is a strongest consistent
answer, it is not a theory which can be used for explanation. In such cases, it
seems plausible to accord a much lower content value to the residual hypothesis
than to the others. This qualification, however, does not mean that the measure of
content for such cases is some logical measure in the sense just given or that it is
correlated with the same measure function used to measure probabilities. Although
I have no definite proposals to make as to how content values should be assigned
when the choice is among theories, most of the formal results obtained in this dis¬
cussion are applicable to such cases, insofar as they are at all plausible.
19. Too much significance should not be attached to the numerical value of
the weight w. Keep in mind that any utility function which is obtained by linear
transformation of the T-function is an adequate utility function for representing the
goal of obtaining true answers. A similar remark obtains regarding the C-function.
The 0 points for measuring utility in these two cases is not of any real importance
here, but the arbitrariness in the choice of unit is. Thus, let T' = aT and C = bC
where a and b are positive constants. If V = wT + (1 — w)C and V' = wT +
(1 — w)C it can be shown that V' is not a linear transformation of V. Let x =
aw + b(l — w). x is positive. Furthermore, there is a number between 0 and 1,
w', such that V' = x(w'T + (1 — wQC). V' is thus obtainable via linear transforma¬
tion from a weighted average of T and C. But, in the general case, the weight w'
will not equal the weight w. Hence, V' cannot be obtained by linear transformation
from V.
To be specific, if w = 1 — w, it would be misleading to conclude that truth and
content are weighted equally; for by a suitable change of units for measuring the
utility of truth and the utility of content, one would obtain an equivalent utility
function in which the weights w' and 1 — w' were not equal. The weight w does
have the following significance. As w increases, the relative importance of truth as
compared to content decreases.
20. If the T-function and C-function are transformed by change of unit as in
footnote 18, the weights would have to be changed from w to w\ Suppose, in par¬
ticular, that V'= w'aT + (1 — w')bC and that it is obtainable by multiplying V
( = wT +(1—w)C) by a positive factor, q by definition equals (1 — w)/w. But
this equals b(l — w')/aw'. Thus, the significance which q has in the function F(H,e)
can be detached from the choices of units for measuring the utility of truth and
content. Thus, when q is greater than 1, it can be shown that some errors are pre¬
ferred to some correct answers, whereas for q-values less than or equal to 1 this is
not so. This is so, no matter what the units for measuring the utility of truth and
the utility of content happen to be.
21. Proof: F(HvG,e) = p(H,e) + p(G,e) - p(H&G,e) - qcont( - H,e) —
qcont( - G,e) + qcont( - (H&G),e) = F(H,e) + F(G,e) - F(H&G,e). We are
given that F(H,e) = F(G,e) and that these values are maximal. Hence, F(HvG,e) +
F(H&G,e) = 2F(H,e). Since neither term on the left hand side of the equation can
be greater than F(H,e), they both must be equal to it. This proves the theorem.
22. Let H and G be elements of U. Because they are exclusive given e, F(H&G,e)
= 0 and, in virtue of the argument of footnote 21, F(HvG,e) = F(H,e) + F(G,e).
This means that the sentence E whose acceptance as strongest will be recommended
by the injunction to maximize expected utility will be that disjunction of elements
of U, HivH2v . . . vHk, such that for each H, in the disjunction F(H,,e) is non¬
negative. But these Hi’s form the complement of the set K in U mentioned in
rule (A).
23. V(S,t) is less than or equal to V(H,t) for every H in M, and V(G,f) is less
than or equal to V(C,f) for every G in M. Consequently, the requirement that no
error be preferred to any correct answer is fulfilled if and only if V(C,f) is less
than or equal to V(S,t). This is true if and only if (1 - w) is less than or equal
to w. And this is equivalent to saying that q is less than or equal to 1.
ISAAC LEVI 111
24. I first introduced the notion of degree of caution in “On the Seriousness of
Mistakes” and used it there as an interpretation of levels of significance. (See, in
particular, pp. 56-57 and p. 63 of that article.)
25. The ideas mentioned here can be exploited to construct a measure of degree
of acceptance which has a formal structure akin to that found in G. L. S. Shackle’s
theory of potential surprise. (See, in particular, Decision, Order and Time in Human
Affairs, chapters VII-XII.) I think that Shackle has captured an important notion
of degree of acceptance or degree of belief which has been neglected due in part to
certain dogmas which surround probabilistic interpretations of degrees of belief.
26. See Harald Cramer, Mathematical Methods of Statistics, Princeton: Prince¬
ton U. Press (1946), pp. 148-150, and C. G. Hempel, “Deductive-Nomological vs.
Statistical Explanation,” pp. 141-149. Hempel’s central concern is with statistical
explanation as opposed to statistical prediction. The critical remarks to be made
here regarding the high probability acceptance rule for statistical prediction apply
to statistical explanation as well and should, if they are sound, lead to emendations
of Hempel’s account parallel to the sort mentioned in the text for statistical pre¬
diction.
27. No proof will be offered here. I do have proofs, however. Unfortunately, I
am unable to provide a rule for easily computing the shortest acceptable interval
around p for any given q.
28. Henry Kyburg has suggested avoiding inconsistency by tampering with the
laws of deductive logic. This desperate strategem has been avoided here by a re¬
vision of methodology. Instead of requiring that the set of sentences which an in¬
vestigator accepts relative to his evidence ought to be deductively closed, the
proposals made here assume that the set of sentences which an investigator accepts
ought to be deductively closed relative not only to his evidence but to the question
he is considering as well.
29. Space will not permit a review of the rudiments of Carnap’s confirmation
theory to which reference will be made below. The reader will be expected to under¬
stand some of the terminology from the Logical Foundations of Probability and
The Continuum of Inductive Methods. I hope, however, that the main philosophical
points are clear.
30. E. Nagel, “Carnap’s Theory of Induction,” The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap,
La Salle, Ill.: Open Court (1963), pp. 799-805.
31. E. Nagel, “Carnap’s Theory of Induction,” pp. 806-810 and Principles of the
Theory of Probability, Chicago (1930), pp. 68-71.
32. E. Nagel, “Carnap’s Theory of Induction,” pp. 787-788.
33. E. Nagel, “Carnap’s Theory of Induction,” p. 786.
CONCEPTS OF STATISTICAL EVIDENCE1
Allan Birnbaum
1. INTRODUCTION
(i) prior probability concepts (e.g. Boole, 1854, Venn, 1888, Fisher,
1921, 1950, and Neyman, 1962, all interestingly foreshadowed by
Bernoulli, 1713);
(ii) decision-theoretic concepts (e.g. Cox, 1958, p. 354);
(iii) proposed precise concepts of statistical evidence in general (e.g.
Tukey, 1962).
meanings of terms appear, and major developments have turned upon two
kinds of criteria for appropriateness of form and meaning of such concepts:
(a) Judgments that certain aspects of statistical evidence are irrelevant
to evidential meaning. These are expressed below as axioms of statistical
evidence. (The principal ones, sufficiency, conditionality (ancillarity), and
likelihood, stem from the work of Fisher, as indicated below.)
(b) A requirement of adequate operational content, in terms of suitably
controlled probabilities that evidential interpretations will be strongly mis¬
leading. This will be discussed below as the main feature of the confidence
concept of statistical evidence. (As indicated below, this is a concept of
evidence which has developed more or less systematically in applications
of mathematical statistics, particularly of the theories of Neyman and
Pearson.)
These criteria, individually and in various combinations, have played
key roles during recent decades in constructions of statistical inference
theory and in criticisms of such theory. This paper is devoted primarily
to a presentation of some main features of these developments, which
seem to have intrinsic as well as historical interest. These developments
include an apparently decisive negative outcome.
It has seemed to some (including this writer) that any adequate concept
of statistical evidence must meet at least certain minimum versions of
both of the criteria just indicated. But the difficulties of developing such a
concept have become increasingly apparent, and it now seems rather clear
that no such adequate concept of statistical evidence can exist.
Prob(B) = 2 / (*).
xeB
For our examples, the sample space is 5 = {0,1,2,50}; and, if the coin
is unbiased (or if the long-run rate of apparent cures is 50 percent), then
the pdf has the binomial form
SO 1 50
f(jt) = ( ) (-) , for * = 0,1,2,. . ., 50.
50 50—x
f(x,6) = ( ) ex (1-6) ,x = 0,1, . . . 50, for 0^0^ 1.
x
p 11 p 12 • • pu
P21 P22 P23
L P12 ■ • pij
An experiment in which just two progeny are observed has the model
where
the second and third columns are proportional (in fact identical); the
condition of (Si) is met, with c = 1: pt2 = pi3, for i = 1 and 2. Thus (Sx)
implies Ev(E,2) = Ev(E,3).
To exemplify the extramathematical content of this concept, consider the
genetical experiment described above which is represented by E2. It is quite
possible in practice to complement such an experiment, in case its outcome
is / = 2, by tossing a fair coin and observing whether it falls heads or
tails. Precisely because this addition to the genetical experimental procedure
seems so clearly trivial, and irrelevant to the statistical and genetical evi¬
dence in each possible outcome, it is interesting and useful to consider
formally the model of the augmented experiment and to compare it with
the original model: The new sample space has four points, which we may
label by
1, if / = 1,
„ _ 2, if j — 2 and heads is observed,
- 3, if j = 2 and tails is observed,
4, if j = 3.
It is readily verified that the new model has the form E = (p\y) given
above. The indicated relations between probabilities in the respective
models are
an example of the kind usually used to illustrate its plausibility and to sup¬
port its adoption. In the example, a given model was made more com¬
plicated, in a way considered trivial and irrelevant to evidential meaning, as
expressed by (Si). Conversely, adoption of (SO supports certain con¬
venient commonly-made simplifications of models used in practice: If just
the evidential meaning of outcomes is of interest, there is no need to dis¬
tinguish between outcomes which are equivalent under (Si), and they
may be treated as equivalent alternative indications of one outcome. Such
treatment is naturally represented by a simpler new model, with a smaller
sample space, determined from the original model.
An example is provided once more by the genetical experiment: Instead
of the model E2 above, we may obtain a different, more complete model
of the same experimental situation as follows: If the progeny are labeled by
u = 1, 2, respectively, then the experiment has the four possible outcomes
T, for j' = 1,
i = /(/') 2, for j' = 2 or 3,
3, for f = 4,
The concept of evidence denoted by (Si) above, together with its conse¬
quences for simplification of models just illustrated,2 constitute the suf¬
ficiency concept of statistical evidence. This is conveniently formulated as
follows:
(S): The sufficiency axiom: If E = (py) is determined from E' = (p^ ) by any
function j=j(j') which takes distinct values on any two values of j' which
do not label proportional columns of E', then for each (E', j') we have
Ev(E',j')=Ev(E,j) where j=j(JD-
is /(/') = 1 for /' =1,2. (This function fails to take distinct values on values
/' labeling nonproportional columns.) Thus the sufficiency axiom (5) may
be stated thus: If /(/') is a sufficient statistic in E, and if j(j\) = /(A),
then Ev(E',j'o) = Ev(E,j) where / = j(j\).
jo-23W^-io)/50-
For (£,40) this gives #(.99,40) a .67. (<t> denotes the standard normal
X
distribution function.) Here — is of course the usual point estimator of a
binomial parameter, and the second term is a multiple of the usual estimator
of its standard error. A precise formula for such an estimator is #(.99,*) =
the smallest value # for which ^ f(v,6) 5= .99, where /(*,#) is the
vrgx
this estimator has the required basic property is immediate, and is described
conveniently in many texts by reference to the Clopper-Pearson charts.
Because of the discreteness of binomial distributions, no estimator (func¬
tion of x) can meet exactly the indicated bound on error-probabilities.)
Antecedents of both the method of confidence region estimation and the
confidence concept can be traced back as far as the earliest systematic
consideration of statistical evidence, that of Bernoulli, l.c. (Cf. also e.g.
Dempster, 1964, pp. 56-7).
As the example illustrates, the general method of confidence region
estimation is often applied by use of techniques provided by the theory of
point estimation, a self-contained branch of mathematical statistics. Point
estimates, accompanied by distribution theory adequate to indicate their
precision, yield confidence region estimates (often approximate ones) for
a wide variety of problems. Indeed, use of the confidence concept is cur¬
rently the favored mode of application and interpretation of point estima¬
tion methods. Thus confidence region estimation techniques share important
features with the long-standing practice of reporting measurements (esti¬
mates) of quantities accompanied by their standard errors (or other
indices of precision); and the confidence concept may be regarded as in¬
cluding usual interpretations of such reports of measurements. Further ex¬
pository remarks on these relations are given e.g. in Birnbaum (1961a).
The paper cited also describes briefly a mode of treating tests of
statistical hypotheses which is currently favored when feasable, namely,
embedding testing problems in confidence region estimation problems. To
illustrate in terms of our genetical example where # has just the two
possible values .75 and Vi, the confidence interval estimation result
Conf(.63 ^ # rg .94) fS .98 incorporates conveniently an application of a
test (between the hypotheses .5 and .75) and its interpretation (“reject
# = .5, at significance level stronger than 2%”).5
124 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
(L): The likelihood axiom: If two models of statistical evidence (E,j) and
(E',j') determine the same likelihood function, then they represent the
same evidential meaning. That is, if for some positive c we have p^ =
cp'ij. for each i £ Q (the common parameter space of E and E'), then
Ev(E,j) = Ev(E',j') (where E = (Pij), E' = (p'ir)).
We note that when we take E' = E, this becomes just the sufficiency
axiom.7
The second part of the likelihood concept complements the likelihood
126 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
r 1, if a - 0 and x = /x
. 0, if a = 0 and x =,4 for all x,p;
t{X,0) - f(X,n,cr) - jc£100 _ |x _ if a = 100, for \x - /x| < 100,
0 otherwise.
V
11 1
for which L( 1,2) = plj/p2j ^ c, or p2j ^ - Plj) ^ - V Plj ^ -.)
c c ' c
In addition to the preceding conservative operational property, it is
easily shown that in experiments which would be called highly informative
under any plausible definition, the probability is high of “strong-looking
non-misleading evidence” in the sense of values L(l,2) far above unity if
i=l, and far below unity if i = 2.
able, within which the models £50 and £200 are embraced as possible
models, with probability V2 that each will turn out to be the one applicable.
The experimental situation represented by this broader model E will
result first in either E50 or £200 being realized and then in observation of
an outcome. Thus each sample point of E has the form (£5o,-*), with x =
0, 1, ... 50, or (£200,*) with x = 0,1, . . . 200. We note that here (£50,
x) plays not its usual role as a model of statistical evidence, although it is
that, but the role of a sample point of another experiment £. Hence a
model of statistical evidence represented by an outcome of £ has one of
the forms
(£,(£80,*)) or (£,(£20o,*) )•
1 50 50 — x
/((£5O,*),0) = -(x)0x(1 — 6) ■ )
Let us consider in this context £ the outcome (£.-)0,40), which represents
the statistical evidence (£,(£,->0,40)). The various concepts and techniques
of evidential interpretation discussed above, and others, are applicable here
in their usual general ways. For example an optimal 99 percent lower con¬
fidence limit estimator of 6 can be given as before (not withstanding greater
complexity of the definition of optimality and the calculations).
However it has seemed to many theoretical and applied statisticians that
a model of evidence such as (£,(£50,40)) here, comprehensive and ac¬
curate though it is, contains parts which are clearly irrelevant to evidential
meaning: given the bad luck of getting just 50 rather than 200 ob¬
servations, the evidential meaning of the outcome of the fifty observations
is fully represented by (£50,40); and the hypothetical possibility that an
additional 150 observations might have become available but in fact did
not, seems irrelevant to the evidential meaning of the result. Formally, this
is represented by adopting (£50,40) in place of (£,(£50,40)) as the ap¬
propriate model of the statistical evidence obtained (or as a more par¬
simonious, though equivalent model). Within this “conditional” model any
chosen mode of evidential interpretation could be applied. For example
the confidence limit estimate found for (£50,40) in section 2.2 above might
be determined and interpreted in the usual way.
The general form of the concept just illustrated may be stated generally
by reference to any model £ = (pi;) which is a mixture of two other models
£' = (p'ij-) and E" = (p"ir) in the sense illustrated, namely:
(iii)
Pii (
J(l/2 )p'ij;
1(1/2)p"ir,
if j=(E',n,
if/=. (£"/')•
(Mixtures are usually defined more generally, allowing more than two
component experiments, and possibly unequal weights; but this simple
restricted definition suffices for our discussion.) The general form of the
concept illustrated is11
(p'ij-) and E" = (p"ir) with common parameter space, let (E',j') and
(£",/") be any models of evidence determining a common likelihood func¬
tion: For some c > o, p"ir = c p'iy for each i. By applying (C) to the
mixture E of E' and E" we obtain
Ev(E'j') = Ev(E,(E',j') )
and
Ev(E",j") = Ev(E,(E",j”))
of other models, and also of the normal model with precise attention to the
imperfect estimate of its precision parameter.)
This role of utility and decision concepts might be described as connected
with interpretations and applications of outcomes j of given experiments
E = (Pij). But more precisely, this role is not related to interpretations of
cases of statistical evidence (E,j), nor to concepts of evidence, in the gen¬
eral sense of this paper. (This point has not always been clearly appreciated.
Some sources of misunderstanding are indicated below.) Rather, this
role is related primarily to another aspect of the experimental situation,
represented by another mathematical ingredient which complements the
model E of an experiment, when statistical decision problems are formu¬
lated. This is the decision space (illustrated briefly in section 1 above), a
set D = {d} of points (labels) d of the respective alternative decisions or
actions, one of which is to be adopted on the basis of the observed out¬
come j of E. An artificially simplified but relevant illustration can be devised
in connection with the genetical example above: Let d1 denote the decision
to launch a commercial stock-breeding program, or alternatively to launch
a program of further genetical research, in a way which would be ad¬
vantageous and appropriate if and only if two specified genes lie on different
chromosomes. Suppose d2 denotes the sole alternative possible decision, for
example to launch a different program, or to do nothing. The problematic
situation represented in part by the model (E,D) is resolved when a decision,
d-i or d2, is adopted.
In statistical decision theory, each possible policy, or rule for choice of
decisions, is represented by a decision function d(j) with values in D (pos¬
sibly randomized, i.e., depending also upon an auxiliary randomization
variable). The theory develops concepts and techniques of advantageous
choice, based on the utility concepts of loss and risk or utility, and on
criteria for optimal choice (admissibility, minimax, etc.).
Statistical decision theory has played significant roles in several devel¬
opments in modern mathematical statistics. One of these developments is a
new approach to prior probability concepts, due to Savage (1954): The
admissibility criterion for reasonable choice is a weak and basic, noncon-
troversial one in the context of statistical decision problems. It is of some
intuitive as well as technical interest that this criterion admits accurate
formal interpretation in terms of hypothetical implicitly-held prior prob¬
abilities: Each admissible decision function would be also an optimal one
for a person holding a suitably corresponding prior probability distribution.
(Here an extended technical sense of prior pdf is sometimes required, a
sense generally favored also by those holding prior probability concepts.)
Savage showed that certain richer criteria, characterizing also consistency
among all preferences in such contexts, entail prior probabilities and linked
utilities, at least hypothetical implicitly-held ones, which would account for
134 1. SCIENCE AND INQUIRY
Q.
Smith, 1947, pp. 12-13; Morton, 1955, pp. 281-4, and 1962, pp. 38-43;
Smith, 1959, pp. 298-9, and 1963, and references therein; and Renwick
and Lawler, 1963, pp. 69-71, 84). In another area, a problem in at¬
tribution of authorship has been investigated by both Bayesian and non-
Bayesian methods, described in detail, by Mosteller and Wallace (1964).
It is interesting to compare and contrast such applications of prior prob¬
ability concepts with examples which figured in earlier stages of discussions
of such concepts. The latter include Karl Pearson’s and Fisher’s discussions
of anthropometric correlation measurements (Soper et al., 1916; Fisher,
1921).
A discussion of such comparisions will be presented elsewhere, together
with fuller discussion of other points touched on briefly in this paper.
NOTES
1. The writer is indebted for helpful comments on earlier versions to John Pratt,
Charles Fisher, and Valerie Mike, and to Churchill Eisenhart for guidance on histori¬
cal material. This work was done in part while the author was a Fellow of the John
Simon Guggenheim Foundation. It was also supported in part by the Office of Naval
Research and the National Science Foundation.
2. The general form of such determination of one model E from another E',
by any given function /'(/') (not necessarily having the property considered above),
is: E has as its sample space S — {/} the range of values of /(/'), for f in S’; without
loss of generality for our purposes, we assume this range to have (after possible
relabeling) the form /= 1,2, . . . J. The probabilities in E — (pu) are given by the
usual basic probability rule, p(j = 2p'(j' where the summation is over all j' such
that ;■(/') = /.
3. The condition given above is well known to be equivalent to the usual de¬
fining condition for a sufficient statistic. (Cf. e.g. Cramer, 1946, p. 488, Lehmann,
1959, Lindgren, 1962.) Since we shall not use the latter condition, it is convenient
to regard the condition in (S) as defining sufficient statistics in our discussion.
4. It is of course common nontechnical usage to call any proposition probable
or likely if it is supported by strong evidence of some kind. Thus it would not be
unnatural here to call the confidence coefficient .99 the probability or the likelihood
of the proposition that 8 S: .63. However such usage is to be avoided as misleading
in this problem-area, because each of the terms probability, likelihood, and con¬
fidence coefficient is given a distinct mathematical and extramathematical usage here.
That of likelihood is introduced in the next section. Probabilities are specified in
our models E and (E,x) only for points and subsets of the sample space S = {*}.
For points 8 or sets (like 8 2: .63) in the parameter space Q = (0), no probabilities
are defined, except under specific additional formulations (such as the Bayesian, in
which the parameter space is made the sample space of specified prior and posterior
distributions).
5. The concept of statistical evidence which has been associated with tests since
their appearance in 1710, which may be termed the significance-probability concept,
has proved an elusive one to explicate (cf. Anscombe, 1963). The paper in which
the Neyman-Pearson theory of tests originated was an approach to the problem of
explicating and justifying this concept in connection with a systematic mathematical
theory of tests. The paper introduced a new definition of a test as a two-decision
procedure, whose operational error-probability properties allow application of the
confidence concept as it applies to results of such tests. (Cf. especially p. 336 of
Neyman and Pearson, 1933.)
6. When convenient the last form may be used, or the symbol c may be replaced
by any positive number. Thus the only essential aspect of a likelihood function is
the set of likelihood ratios it determines; these are the respective values of the
likelihood ratio function:
L(i,i’) = Pn/pvi, for i,i’ e 0.
7. We observe that the definition of a sufficient statistic and the statements of
ALLAN BIRNBAUM 139
(Si) and (S) above can be stated conveniently in terms of the likelihood function.
In fact, the likelihood function is readily seen to be the sufficient statistic which
gives the greatest possible simplification of models in the sense illustrated above; the
latter property makes it a “minimal sufficient” (or “necessary and sufficient”)
statistic.
8. Fisher’s program for a theory of fiducial probability shows that he considered
that a fully adequate concept of statistical evidence would be one having the form
of probability distributions over parameter spaces, determined however in such a
way as to be incompatible with the likelihood axiom (cf. Anscombe, 1957). The
fiducial concept is not discussed further here because the present writer (among
others) has found insufficient clear substance in the mathematical and extra mathe¬
matical aspects of that concept. For some recent criticisms, reinterpretations, and/or
revisions, see Fraser, 1961, Dempster, 1964, 1966, and Hacking, 1965.
9. But a semblance of a “likelihood school” has been suggested in recent years
by, for example, Barnard et al., 1962, Anscombe, 1964, D. G. Kendall, 1965, Sprott
and Kalbfleisch, 1965, Zweifel, 1966, and some tentative discussion by this writer,
1961, 1962, pp. 286-98, 325-6.
10. We indicate here in further detail the incompatibility referred to: The given
likelihood function could have arisen alternatively from a different experimental
procedure, E*, in which the newly-bent coin is tossed until just 40 heads have been
observed. If the fortieth head is observed after just 10 tails have appeared, the likeli¬
hood function is the same. But the model of this experiment is quite different from
E. The method of confidence limit estimation is applicable in E* in the same general
way as in E. But in general the (optimal nonrandomized) .99 lower confidence limit
determined from (E*,x*) and (E,x) are different, even when the latter deter¬
mine the same likelihood function. Furthermore, there are still other experiments in
which the same likelihood function may appear, but where the method of confidence
limit estimation is inapplicable, or at best applicable only awkwardly and formalis-
tically. An example is represented by the model with just two sample points, j — 1,2,
and the pdf /(1,<?) = ^ (1-0)10, f(2,8) = 1-/(1,d), for 0 ^ 0 g 1.
11. The formulation of the conditionality concept as one of equivalence, as in
(C) preceding, was proposed by this writer (1962) as the natural explication of the
concept, not withstanding the one-sided form to which applications of the concept
had been restricted (substitution of simpler for less simple models of evidence).
This proposal seems to have found general acceptance among those interested in
the concept. A restricted formulation of the concept proposed by Basu (1964) is
admittedly a modification of Fisher’s idea (requiring introduction of another extra-
mathematical concept), and in any case does not lead to another.
12. It is of course not often that explicit reference to this notion is called for.
It could be expressed rather precisely as an axiom for concepts of evidence, analogous
to those above.
REFERENCES
2 Some inductive arguments are better than others and some are very
good indeed.
2.1 Anybody who rejects all inductive arguments, indiscriminately, as
“invalid” seems committed to holding that if I hear the sound “ku-ku”
from a tree, it is no more reasonable to think there is a cuckoo in the tree
than to think there is a lion there; and no more reasonable to expect to
find a pebble on the sidewalk than to expect to find a thousand dollar bill.
2.11 If we hold P to be true and are required to choose between K
and not-K, it is sometimes reasonable to say that there is nothing to choose
between them; but sometimes this reply would be the height of absurdity.
(Take P to be: all but one of the 1000 marbles in the bag are black and
this ball was drawn at random from the bag; and K to be: this ball is black.)
2.2 People whose common sense has not been weakened by philosophy
will often agree in their judgments about the goodness or badness of given
inductive arguments. This provides some hope for the codification of in¬
ductive procedures. But there is enough disagreement to make us cautious.
2.3 If we ever met somebody who seemed to agree sincerely with that
old bogey the “counterinductionist,” we would have to treat him as a
lunatic. And we should be right.
2.31 But how would such a lunatic behave? Can one commit the
“gambler’s fallacy” all the time?
4 There are some formal principles that are relevant in appraising in¬
ductions.
4.1 That all the observed /f’s have been B is some reason for thinking
that any given A is a B; that most A’s are B is some reason for thinking
that an A drawn at random is a B; if P inductively supports K, and Q in¬
ductively supports K and P and Q are compatible and independent, the
argument from P.Q to K is at least as good as the argument from P to K;
and so on.
4.2 Principles such as these I hold to be “linguistically a priori,” i.e.,
to be guaranteed by what we properly mean by “reason,” “support,” etc.
4.3 Such principles provide a meager harvest and serve rather to
stigmatize as bad the inductive arguments that no sensible man would ever
use than to provide guidelines for genuine inductive inferences.
6.2 There are useful inductive strategies and maxims but no infallible
rules for getting right conclusions.
6.21 There are no infallible principles for climbing mountains in general.
But when the task is narrowed to climbing a known mountain, it is pos¬
sible to rely on determinate and helpful strategies. So also in induction:
The better defined the inductive task, the more help we can get from
previous experience of similar tasks and the obstacles to their fulfillment.
Cf. the relatively definite rules for statistical inferences, discussed in treatises
of statistical method.
6.3 Good inductive inferences call for judgment—in the sense in which
one speaks of a good judge of wine or of livestock.
6.31 A miniature inductive problem: waking up, noticing that my watch
has stopped and needing to decide whether it is time to get up yet. There
are intelligent as well as stupid ways of attacking this task.
6.32 In a good inductive solution, there are present at least the fol¬
lowing: recall and choice of relevant premises; estimation of the strength
with which they support the conclusion under examination; conflation of
several supporting strands to yield a judgment of the resultant strength
of the conclusion; a decision whether a suitable “detachment point” has
been reached, or whether suspension of belief is in order.
6.321 At point after point in this process, the reasoner’s flair, skill, good
judgment, are crucial.
6.4 All sound inductive judgment is made against a background of de¬
tailed knowledge that activates the skill and expertise built up by repeated
exercises of inductive judgment.
6.41 Asking somebody to form an inductive judgment about a skeleton
argument, presented in all the nakedness of abstract symbols, is like asking
a connoisseur to evaluate an imaginary painting.
6.5 One way to find out whether a man is a good inductive judge is to
notice how often he goes wrong without extenuating circumstances. A
good inductive judge must not fail too often.
6.51 But how often is “too often”? It takes a good inductive judge to
judge an inductive judge—if only because the arguments in question have
to be independently appraised.
6.52 We learn to become better inductive judges by scrutinizing our
failures and retroactively criticizing the trains of thought that produced
them.
NOTE
1. Offered as a birthday card in affectionate tribute to Ernest Nagel, in the hope
that he might agree with at least half of what is said. This summary statement of a
philosophy of induction may conceivably help others to see precisely where and why
they disagree.
2. Structure of
Science
ON WHAT THERE MAY BE IN
THE WORLD
G. Feinberg
I. INTRODUCTION
some system does exist in this sense, then there is a finite probability of
spontaneously creating the system, provided only that sufficient energy is
available.
Even when a physical system does not contain enough energy to spon¬
taneously create other objects which will persist for an indefinite time, it
can still do so for a very short time, because of the uncertainty relation be¬
tween time and energy, which allows for violations of energy conservation
over short periods of time. Hence any physical system will again and again
spend short periods of time as another physical system, containing other
objects, which would not be found in the first system by measurements which
last over time periods commonly employed in the laboratory (by this I mean
times greater than 1019 seconds). These spontaneous creations and de¬
structions of new objects, known as virtual transitions, play a major role in
determining the properties of most of the elementary particles. In this case
the new objects created and destroyed are usually assumed to be other ele¬
mentary particles. The possibility of virtual transitions seems to be much less
important for determining the properties of collections of particles such as
nuclei, atoms, or macroscopic objects, although even there in some cases
precise measurements can detect their effects.
If other objects than particles and their aggregates exist and obey the laws
of quantum mechanics and relativity, then they also will have some effects
on the properties of things we already know, because of the possibility of
virtual transitions. This indirect effect on our present observations places
some severe restrictions on the properties of hypothetical new objects. In
particular, the conservation laws of energy, momentum, angular momentum,
and charge would have to be satisfied for these new objects, or else, through
the virtual transitions, they would be violated for particles as well, in con¬
tradiction to experiment. On the other hand, we shall see that the existence
of certain hypothetical objects would enable the preparation of states of
elementary particles which although allowed by relativistic quantum me¬
chanics are not preparable using particles alone.
The possibility of other objects than particles is contained in relativistic
quantum theory because neither relativity nor quantum mechanics prescribe
what objects do exist. Both of these theories do place restrictions on the
properties of objects, and both tell about how to describe the behavior of
objects that are known to exist, but neither requires that any of the possible
objects that they describe are indeed to be found. It is not clear how to
formulate a physical theory that does prescribe exactly what objects exist,
without ad hoc assumptions. This is a problem in which a careful analysis of
language might play an important role.
It is of course clear that since we and our measuring instruments are con¬
structed of particles, any other objects that may be found in the world can
only show themselves to us through their interaction with particles. There¬
fore, in these remarks, I shall concentrate on this interaction, and describe
G. FEINBERG 155
A long line of physicists, from Faraday to Einstein, have found the field
an intellectually satisfying concept for describing physical phenomena. By
a field is meant here an extended region of spacetime in which some meas¬
urable disturbance is to be found. In the contemporary formulation of par¬
ticle physics, this notion does not play a central role. This can be said in
spite of the fact that the formalism used by most physicists to describe ele¬
mentary particles is called quantum field theory. The point is that while
this formalism deals with operators which depend on spacetime, as classical
fields do, these operators may be thought of as descriptive conveniences
used to formulate certain assumptions about elementary particles. Indeed,
some progress has been made, under the name of the S-matrix theory, in
purging the notion of fields from elementary particle physics altogether.
Whether or not this can be done, it is clear that the fields that are now con¬
sidered are not independent of the particles that they are used to describe.
It is therefore of interest to raise again the possibility that such inde¬
pendent fields may exist in nature. The meaning of this suggestion is the
following. We imagine a region of spacetime in which energy and momen¬
tum occur, and can be exchanged with our measuring instruments. How¬
ever, this concentration of energy and momentum, and perhaps other
physical quantities, should not be simply a superposition of energy, momen¬
tum, etc. of distinct particles. The latter would for example be the case for
an electromagnetic field, which can be thought of as a superposition of
various numbers of photons, or light quanta. I shall refer to the independent
fields as Faraday fields. A non-quantized field would be a Faraday field, but
we have learned from Bohr and Heisenberg that the inner logic of the quan¬
tum theory requires that anything interacting with quantized matter must
itself have quantum properties, so that purely classical fields cannot exist.
In particular, the gravitational field must be quantized, and so does not
necessarily qualify as a Faraday field, although it may have one such aspect.
Let us next consider what properties the Faraday fields should have, and
how to go about detecting them. I shall assume that they satisfy the prin¬
ciples of relativistic quantum mechanics. I do this here to avoid the multi¬
plication of new hypotheses. In a later section, I shall try to describe
156 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
hypothetical objects not obeying these laws, and how to detect them. I also
assume, for reasons that I have previously indicated, that the Faraday fields
satisfy the conservation laws that hold for the elementary particles.
The principles of relativistic quantum mechanics guarantee that energy
and momentum will be associated with Faraday fields. However, this energy
and momentum will not be a precisely defined quantity. Nor in general need
the observables associated with particles, such as charge, have a well-defined
value for the fields. This in itself would be a new situation, since all known
states containing a definite number of elementary particles always have
definite charge. States with indefinite charge may be used as reference states
for the preparation of elementary particle states having well-defined values
for observables that do not commute with charge. This would be analogous
to the use of objects with well-defined positions to produce states that are
superpositions of distinct momentum states. If states of elementary particles
which are not eigenstates of charge can be prepared, it would necessitate
the re-examination of the so-called superselection rules1 that play a prom¬
inent role in the theory of symmetries in particle physics.
I have remarked that if the fields are to affect our measuring instruments,
which are made of particles, then there must be a specific interaction be¬
tween the fields and particles, which will transfer momentum, energy and
other physical quantities to and from the particles, i.e., scatter them. Let us
ask what properties could characterize field-particle scattering that would
be characteristic of it, as compared, say, with particle-particle scattering.
One such characteristic comes from the fact that the field will not have
definite angular momentum. As a result, the scattering of the particle by
the field will in general depend on all the individual components of the par¬
ticle’s momentum before and after its collision with the field. This is to be
contrasted with the case of particle-particle scattering, where only certain
definite scalar functions of the momenta occur. The reason for the difference
is that the field will in general not be isotropic, and so define directions in
space, and the scattering will in general depend on the angles between the
particle momenta and these directions.
The indefiniteness of the fields’ linear momentum and energy do not seem
to have any simple consequences for the identification of the fields, since
these quantities are in any case continuously variable for particles. How¬
ever, the indefiniteness of electric charge may also be a useful tool for the
distinguishing of a field from a set of particles. For example, by measuring
the electric flux through the surface of a volume, one can determine the
average value of the total charge in the region. For a set of particles with
definite charges, this will always be an integral multiple of the unit charge.
For a field without definite charge, this will not in general be the case. How¬
ever, very accurate measurements of the flux would be required to determine
this.
If Faraday fields are identified, it will become an interesting question to
G. FEINBERG 157
ing to these ideas, most or all of the observed particles are composed of a
small number of other particles, the “quarks,” as yet unobserved, with
somewhat simpler properties. This is somewhat like the situation would be
if we knew only heavy atoms, and had not discovered electrons, protons,
and neutrons. In my opinion, this alternative is likely to be realized only
together with major revisions of relativistic quantum mechanics which we
do not yet know how to carry out. In particular, the quark hypothesis ap¬
pears difficult to harmonize with the possibility of virtual creation and an¬
nihilation of particles which is characteristic of relativistic quantum theories.
If a simple understanding of the behavior of the particles is not to be
found within particle physics itself, then perhaps it can be obtained by
giving up the idea that particles are the ultimate structures in nature, and
explaining them as being composed by some underlying, non-particulate
stuff. Some of the phenomena seen in particle physics are suggestive of this
possibility. Although the particles change their number and kind easily, cer¬
tain quantities like energy and charge remain unchanged in these trans¬
formations. Other quantities, like the hypercharge, do change, but so rarely
that one can neglect their variation in many cases. These phenomena have
their analogues in the behavior of excitations of a fluid. There also some
quantities, such as the mass and the vorticity, that are exactly conserved,
even though the individual excitations may be created and destroyed. The
excitations in a classical fluid do not show any of the discreteness of par¬
ticles, such as definite mass, charge, and angular momentum. However,
one can expect that this difficulty would not occuur for a quantized fluid,
since making a quantity into an operator often makes its spectrum discrete.
It is not the purpose of this short section to propose a detailed theory in
which particles are described as excitations of a continuum. Rather, I would
again like to try to give some meaning to this idea in terms of what phe¬
nomena it suggests could be observed. I shall refer to the underlying con¬
tinuum as the fluid, even though this language can only be figurative.
To say that particles are excitations of an underlying fluid would be a
more empirical statement if one could observe the fluid in an unexcited state.
If this could be done, one might think that we could trace the “motion” of
the fluid composing the particle into and out from the background fluid when
the particle went through some changes. Of course, if the fluid obeys quan¬
tum mechanics, its motion can be followed only in an approximate way, and
this seems to make such a direct determination of a substratum for particles
difficult to carry out. Nevertheless, it is instructive to examine what proper¬
ties the unexcited fluid or substratum might have.
We assume that the substratum can carry energy, momentum, charge and
the other conserved attributes of particles. However, when the fluid is in an
unexcited state, these will not necessarily be observable. The point is that
energy, for instance, is defined relative to a reference state, which is taken
to have zero energy. If the fluid is uniformily distributed in space, then it
G. FEINBERG 159
The objects that we have considered thus far were still supposed to satisfy
quantum mechanics and relativity, although differing in some qualities from
the objects we know, i.e., particles. In this section, we consider the hypoth¬
esis that objects exist which satisfy other laws, although still interacting with
particles. I shall for the most part concentrate on revisions of quantum me¬
chanics, which I consider the more fundamental set of laws. Since particles
satisfy quantum mechanics and relativity rather accurately, the hypothesis
is tenable only under one of two alternatives. The first is that the violations
of quantum mechanics and relativity by the new objects lead to effects in¬
volving ordinary particles that are too small to have been observed thus far,
but which might be observed through better experiments. The analysis of
this possibility is fairly straightforward once the violations are specified.
The other alternative, which is somewhat more intriguing, is that particles
G. FEINBERG 161
may satisfy the known laws of physics exactly, although interacting with
new objects which do not precisely satisfy these laws. It has been known3
since the pioneering analyses of Heisenberg, and of Bohr and Rosenfeld,
that some restrictions must exist on the properities of any objects inter¬
acting with another object, such as an electron, which precisely obeys the
laws of quantum mechanics. For example, it is known that if the electro¬
magnetic field were a classical field interacting with electrons, then the elec¬
trons could not obey quantum mechanics exactly, because it would be
possible to make measurements on them, using electromagnetic fields, that
would violate the uncertainty principle. However, it is not known how
strong these restrictions are in general, and in particular whether they imply
that all of a set of interacting objects obey quantum mechanics if any of
them do. If this is not the case, then it would not be so surprising if non¬
quantum systems are found in nature.
It should also be remembered that experiments have by no means tested
all aspects of quantum mechanics for particles. In most cases, there is no
known experimental procedure for preparing a state which is the super¬
position of two given states, or of measuring a quantity which is some
function of measurable quantities. Therefore, it is conceivable that quantum
mechanics could be replaced by some weaker theory, without losing agree¬
ment with what we know from experiment. No systematic study of this ques¬
tion has been carried out to my knowledge, which is surprising in view of
the reputed desire of the founders of quantum mechanics to be guided by
what is experimentally feasible. I shall not, however, consider this possibility
any further here.
In considering what new laws the hypothetical objects might obey, we are
again faced with several alternatives. One would be that these laws are more
stringent than those of relativity and quantum mechanics, in that they give
definite values for quantities that are allowed to vary in those theories. For
example, one could imagine some physical system for which the momentum
could take on only certain values, rather than arbitrary values as in current
theories. This general possibility might be referred to as hyperquantization.
It is clear that if a system A, in which some variable V is hyperquantized
interacts with another system B, in which the variable V is not hyper¬
quantized, the values of V for the system B can still only change by definite
amounts, equal to the difference of two of the allowed values in A providing
that V is conserved. This was the argument used by Franck and Hertz to
demonstrate energy quantization in atoms. It is suggestive to try to explain
some of the approximate conservation laws mentioned in section IV in these
terms.
A second alternative is the existence of new objects about which even less
information can be obtained than present theory allows. According to quan¬
tum mechanics, there is a relation between the accuracy with which position
and momentum can be determined in one experiment, but either one can
162 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
VI. CONCLUSION
NOTES
1. These superselection rules essentially say that no experiment can distinguish
between a superposition of states with different charge, and an incoherent mixture
of such states. They were first described in a paper by Wick, Wightman and Wigner
in Physical Review 88, 101 (1952).
2. T. D. Lee, Physical Review 137, B1621 (1965).
3. See W. Heisenberg, The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, Dover,
1930.
ON CARTESIAN AND DARWINIAN
ASPECTS OF BIOLOGY1
Theodosius Dobzhansky
could with perfect certainty predict all the future and “retrodict” all the past
events. But, as Nagel (1961) said, Laplace was “guilty of a serious non
sequitur,” because “such a claim would be warranted only if, in addition to
knowing these things, Laplace’s divine intelligence would be able to analyze
all traits of physical objects whatsoever ... as definable in terms of the
variables that constitute the mechanical state of a system. However, me¬
chanics does not rest on the assumption that such an analysis is in fact
possible.”
In biology, it is only rarely practicable to deduce or to predict the pat¬
terns from a description of the components. In point of fact, there is little
to be gained from such predictions. The reason is very simple—it is the
extreme complexity of organismic patterns. The strategy of biological re¬
search is to discover the patterns first, then the components down to the
molecular ones, and finally the functional and adaptive meaning, as well as
the evolutionary origins of the particular ways the components are com¬
bined in the patterns. Nor is this strategy peculiar to biology alone (except
that the queston of adaptedness is not relevant in inorganic nature). Water
is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, and alcohol a compound of hydro¬
gen, oxygen, and carbon. Hydrogen and oxygen are gases, and carbon is a
solid which is black in charcoal and light in diamond. Water and alcohol
are colorless liquids with remarkably different properties, especially when
imbibed by man. These properties are sometimes described as “emergents,”
but this word has been abused so badly that it is no longer serviceable. The
point is simply that the properties of water and of alcohol are studied as
such, rather than deduced from the properties of the elements that compose
them.
An example may be helpful at this point to illustrate the application to
biology of the foregoing, perhaps overly abstract, discussion. Natural selec¬
tion is a population level phenomenon or pattern; what are the components
of this pattern? The essence of natural selection is, in the modern view,
differential reproduction of the carriers of different genotypes in a given
environment or a sequence of environments. The interaction of the cor¬
porate genotype (gene pool) of a population with the environments in
which the population lives may change the composition of the gene pool
(directional selection, or balancing and normalizing selection leading to¬
ward an equilibrium), or may conserve a given state of the gene pool
(balancing or normalizing selection at equilibrium). In any case, for
natural selection to occur there must exist two or more genotypes with
different Darwinian fitness in a given environment.
Darwinian fitness is sometimes referred to also as selective value and as
adaptive value. There is evidently an affinity between the Darwinian fitness
or adaptive value on the one hand and the adaptedness on the other. The
two concepts are, however, not identical. Since both are among the key
concepts in organismic biology, it is advisable to have their relationships
THEODOSIUS DOBZHANSKY 173
clarified, the more so because they are not infrequently confounded both in
philosophical and in biological literature (Beckner, 1959; Scriven 1959;
Grene, 1958, 1961; Goudge, 1961; Smart, 1963; Manier 1965). Darwinian
fitness is concerned with the rate of transmission of genes from generation
to generation. It is a measure of the reproductive effectiveness of a geno¬
type. It can be defined operationally as the average contribution which the
carriers of a genotype, or of a class of genotypes, make to the gene pool
of the following generation relative to the contributions of other genotypes
(Dobzhansky, 1962, 1964).
Like adaptedness, the Darwinian fitness is a function both of the
genotype and of the environment. A high adaptedness, as well as high
Darwinian fitness in a certain locality or a geographic region at the present
time, may become lower or higher in the future or in a different locality.
Health, hardiness, and vigor enhance the individual adaptedness (or “fit¬
ness” in the vernacular—here is a danger of another semantic muddle).
Yet these qualities will be reflected in a high Darwinian fitness only if they
lead to a high rate of transmission of the genes to the following generations.
The point is that while the adaptedness may be treated as an absolute
measure, Darwinian fitness is a relative one. Consider a genetically
uniform array of individuals, such as a bacterial clone. It may be well or
poorly adapted to the environment of a laboratory culture, as measured by
its rate of growth in the log phase or by its ability to survive in the
stationary phase. Its Darwinian fitness will become manifest however only
when another genotype is introduced into the culture or arises by mutation,
or when the growth of one culture somehow influences the conditions of
other cultures. A high adaptedness of one genotype may go together with
a relatively low Darwinian fitness, if this genotype is exposed to competi¬
tion with a still better adapted genotype.
Interesting differences between adaptedness and Darwinian fitness arise
from certain genetic conditions, such as chromosomal polymorphisms
maintained by heterotic balancing selection. In a population of Drosophila
polymorphic for certain chromosomal inversions, the Darwinian fitnesses
of the homokaryotypes are lower than that of the heterokaryotype. How¬
ever, experimental chromosomally monomorphic as well as polymorphic
populations can be maintained indefinitely in laboratory population cages.
The monomorphic ones build numerically smaller populations than the
polymorphic ones, given the same amount of food. In nature, polymorphic
colonies would outbreed the monomorphic ones, and eventually replace
them. This can happen, however, only if the monomorphic and polymorphic
colonies exchange migrants; if they are completely isolated, for example
on oceanic islands, the replacement need not occur.
Another interesting situation is the chromosomal “sex-ratio” variant
in Drosophila. A male carrying this genetic variant in its X-chromosome
produces daughters and few or no sons when crossed to any female. Since
174 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
sive, and still others neutral in this respect. Attempts to formulate explicit
criteria of progressiveness have often been made but rarely succeeded;
Thoday’s is perhaps the most nearly successful one, and yet it too stands in
need of improvement.
It has been rightly pointed out, both by philosophers and by biologists,
that the theory of evolution has little predictive power. Indeed, at the
present level of our knowledge, long-term predictions of evolutionary
events are extremely hazardous. The following may, however, serve as ex¬
amples. Consider these three zoological species: the grizzly bear (Ursus
horribilis), the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus), and man (Homo sapiens).
The adaptedness of the bear is restricted to a rather narrow range of the
existing environments, that of a rat to a wider one, and that of man to the
widest, because he is able to tailor environments according to his needs.
There is not much point in trying to compare the Darwinian fitnesses of
the three species, since they rarely compete for the same ecological niches.
It is, however, a not implausible conjecture that the grizzly has the
greatest and man the smallest probability of becoming extinct in, say, one
thousand years from now (a much smaller number than that mentioned
by Thoday!). This conjecture is based evidently on an extrapolation to the
future of the environmental changes which have been taking place on earth
over the last several centuries.
The grizzlies will either be exterminated or will continue in small num¬
bers in nature preserves. The perspectives of the rat are brighter, since at
least until now this species has shown both a remarkable adaptedness and
an adaptability. There is, however, a possibility that man may discover a
way so to modify the rat’s habitats that the toleration limits of the rat
species will be exceeded. In fact, a drug denoted McN-1025 is highly toxic
to rats but not to other mammals (Roszkowski, Poos, and Mohrbacher,
1964). Man as a species is most likely to endure, and is in this sense the
“fittest.” This prediction has, however, an unknown margin of uncertainty;
it is not quite inconceivable that some virus disease may not be controllable
and may destroy the species, or that our species will commit suicide by
means of an atomic war, population explosion, or like madness.
What, then, is the usefulness of the Darwinian, compositionist, forms of
explanation in biology? They do not compete with or replace the Cartesian,
reductionist, explanations; do they add something important? They do,
because the two types of explanation deal with two aspects of biological
phenomena. Either one by itself may or may not be valid, but it will cer¬
tainly be incomplete. We observe certain spatiotemporal systems which
we call living organisms, and for the purposes of the present discussion we
shall assume that we know how to distinguish the living from the nonliving.
Now, the investigation of the living and the nonliving systems proceeds, to
begin with, the same way. One examines their components, the movements,
processes, and changes which are taking place in them. The description
176 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
NOTE
1. The present article is an expanded and modified version of the one entitled
“Are naturalists old-fashioned?” published in the Centennial Volume of The Ameri¬
can Naturalist in 1966. A still different version is published in Volume 2 of Evolu¬
tionary Biology (T. Dobzhansky, M. K. Hecht, and W. C. Steere, eds.), Appleton-
Century-Crofts, New York, 1968. I have profited greatly from discussions with my
colleagues, Drs. R. J. Dubos, H. G. Frankfurt, and Z. Kochanski, and with other
members of the Philosophy of Biology Study Group, organized by Dr. Frankfurt at
the Rockefeller University.
REDUCTION: Ontological and Linguistic Facets1
Carl G. Hempel
1. INTRODUCTION
Among the many issues in the logic and methodology of science to whose
clarification Ernest Nagel has contributed by his thorough and illuminating
analyses, the subject of theoretical reduction holds a place of special
philosophical interest. Reduction affords an important mode of scientific
explanation; it raises intriguing questions concerning the relation between
the concepts of the reducing and of the reduced theory; it is a procedure that
reaches across the boundary lines of scientific disciplines; and its potential
scope encompasses all the major branches of empirical science, since prob¬
lems of reducibility arise in fields as diverse as physics and chemistry,
biology, psychology, and the social and historical disciplines. All these
aspects lend philosophical interest and importance to the topic of reduc¬
tion. But one further reason for the fascination the subject has held for
philosophers lies, I think, in the ontological roots of many questions con¬
cerning reduction—questions such as these: Are mental states nothing
else than brain states? Are social phenomena simply compounds of indi¬
vidual modes of behavior? Are living organisms no more than complex
physicochemical systems? Are the objects of our everyday experience
nothing else than swarms of electrons and other subatomic particles? Or is
it the case, as the doctrine of emergence would have it, that as we move
from subatomic particles to atoms and molecules, to macroscopic objects,
to living organisms, to individual human minds, and to social and cultural
phenomena, we encounter at each stage various novel phenomena which
are irreducible, which cannot be accounted for in terms of anything that
is to be found on the preceding levels?
These questions appear to concern ontological issues, namely, the basic
identity or difference of various kinds of empirical states and processes
which, prima facie, exhibit striking differences. Yet in philosophical studies
in the past several decades, the problems of reduction have generally been
given a decidedly linguistic turn. Thus, that chapter in Ernest Nagel’s book
The Structure of Science which deals with the concept of reduction charac¬
teristically bears the title “The Reduction of Theories” and examines the
relations that obtain between the terms and the laws of two theories when
179
180 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
one of them is reduced to the other. The linguistic construal of reduc ion
goes back at least to early logical empiricist studies, especially to the work
of Carnap and Neurath on unitary languages for empirical science and *o
Carnap’s subsequent emphasis on the possibility and importance of stating
all problems of the philosophy of science in the “formal mode rather than
in the “material mode of speech” or in “pseudo-object-sentences. ~ The
view then held by Carnap, that all significant issues in the philosophy of
science can be restated so as to concern exclusively the syntax of the
language of science, is much too restrictive, as Carnap himself has long
since noted;3 but a construal that is linguistic in a wider sense has proved
remarkably fruitful—so much so, in fact, that many recent and current
studies of reduction characterize the subject from the very beginning as one
concerning the language of science rather than the “nature” and the inter¬
relationships of various kinds of entities, states, and processes. This linguis¬
tic turn is indicative of philosophical misgivings about the ontological con¬
strual of the issues in question, and it is an attempt to explicate the latter
by restating them in a clearer and philosophically more satisfactory fashion.
But the reasons for rejecting the ontological versions and for construing
problems of reduction as concerning the language of science are not, as a
rule, made very explicit. It may be of some interest, therefore, to reflect
upon the rationale of this linguistic turn and to explore some of its impli¬
cations for current problems in the theory of reduction. This I will attempt
to do in the present essay.
2. ON MECHANISM IN BIOLOGY
lantic Ocean, the periods of the Black Death in London, the assassination of
President Kennedy—can become a subject of investigation for many dif¬
ferent disciplines of empirical science. These disciplines, however, are con¬
cerned with different aspects of the phenomena in question; and the aspects
of concern to a particular discipline will be characterized by means of a
conceptual apparatus, and a corresponding vocabulary, that is distinctive
of the discipline. Thus, an object or event may be qualified as physical,
chemical, biological, etc., only relative to a particular characterization, i.e.,
according to the vocabulary in terms of which it is described. More pre¬
cisely: the labels “physical,” “chemical,” “biological,” “psychological,”
and so forth apply properly not to particular objects or events but to ways
of characterizing them. The same remark applies also to kinds or classes of
things or events. A class of things that can be described in biological
terms may also admit of a description in physicochemical terms; for ex¬
ample, epinephrine, biologically characterized as a hormone secreted by
the medulla of the adrenal gland, has been chemically identified as amino-
hydroxyphenylpropionic acid, a substance characterized by a structural
formula for its molecules. Thus, the distinction of biological from physical,
chemical, and other kinds of items applies to individual things and events
and to kinds or classes of things or events only “under a specific descrip¬
tion,” i.e., only in so far as they have been characterized by means of a
terminological apparatus distinctive of a certain scientific discipline. Rather
than of physical, chemical, biological, etc., phenomena, we should speak of
physical, chemical, biological characterizations of phenomena. A biological
characterization would be one that contains essential occurrences of bio¬
logical terms (i.e., is not logically equivalent to one that contains no bio¬
logical terms). But it may contain physical and chemical terms as well:
a statement describing certain thermodynamic or chemical aspects of bacte¬
rial metabolism, for example, would surely count as characterizing biologi¬
cal phenomena. Terms from the specific vocabularies of psychology or the
social sciences, on the other hand, may be thought of as excluded from the
language of biology; expressions containing such terms may plausibly be
said to characterize psychological or sociological phenomena. (This con-
strual accords with the idea that the main disciplines of empirical science
can be put into an order in which each “presupposes” the conceptual ap¬
paratus of its predecessors, but not of its successors; the order would be
this: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, social sciences. This idea
raises various questions of detail, which are not, however, relevant to the
issues here under discussion.)
The considerations just outlined argue for a linguistic construal of the
mechanistic conception of biological phenomena. For the thesis that all
biological systems and processes are basically physiochemical, the follow¬
ing tentative reformulation suggests itself: Every aspect of a thing or event
182 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
(Mia) Every biological term can be defined by means of physical and chemi¬
cal terms;
(MU) For every biological term, there is a coextensive expression containing
only physical and chemical terms.
(M2) Every biological law can be derived from purely physicochemical laws.
The reductionist thesis I wish to consider has been said to express the
empirical component of the psychophysical identity theory. As Shaffer
puts it:
(U) For every kind M of mental state or event there exists a kind B of
bodily state or event such that a person experiences a state or event
of kind M if and only if a state or event of kind B occurs in his body.
But it seems that this statement can be shown to be true without benefit
of empirical evidence. For let us adopt the following definition:
184 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
(D) The body of a person will be said to be in state M' if and only if the
person is in mental state M. (Similarly for events; I will henceforth
refrain from always spelling this out.)
If bodily states of this kind are taken into account, hypothesis V be¬
comes trivially true. It may seem natural to say that states defined by D
do not properly qualify as bodily states; but if the notion of mental state
is taken to be intelligible, as U plainly does, then definition D must surely
be said to specify various states that can intelligibly be attributed to a
human body.
It will be necessary, therefore, to supplement U by specifying the kinds
of bodily (or of physical) states and events to which the hypothesis is
meant to refer. And just as in the case of the mechanistic thesis, this will
have to be done by indicating the conceptual apparatus, and the associated
vocabulary, in terms of which bodily states and events are to be character¬
ized. In the context of the mind-body problem, the conceptual framework
that serves to specify bodily states or brain states will normally be meant
to comprise not only physics but chemistry and biology as well.
The reference made in U to “every kind of mental state” requires anal¬
ogous qualifications. This need is made clear by the arguments already
presented; but it might be further illustrated by this example: Suppose
that a physico-chemical-biological theory has been specified in terms of
whose concepts the bodily states mentioned in U are to be characterized.
And suppose further that P is a certain physicochemical feature (such as,
perhaps, the occurrence of rapid small oscillations of the average brain
temperature) which is describable in the specified theory and which, as a
matter of empirical fact, satisfies the following condition: A person’s brain
has the feature P if and only if the person “is in a pain-state,” i.e., feels
some pain or other. In this case, it would be correct to say that every mental
state which is a pain-state has a corresponding kind of brain-state associated
with it in the manner envisaged by the hypothesis U. However, the associ¬
ated brain-state would be of the same kind, namely, the kind characterized
by the presence of feature P, for all pain-states, irrespective of the qualities
and intensities of the pain; whereas the hypothesis of universal psycho¬
physical association is surely meant to imply that mental states of different
kinds are associated with bodily states of different kinds. And indeed, for
an opponent of a reductive identification of the mental with the physical, any
difference between mental states that was not matched by a difference be¬
tween the associated brain states would constitute evidence that mental
phenomena could not be completely reduced to brain states. But when
do two mental states count as different in a sense relevant to the hypothesis
U? Do my toothache in the morning and my headache in the evening
count as mental states of the same kind, since both are pain-states, or do
CARL G. HEMPEL 185
(SO When sodium chloride crystals are put into water, they dissolve
logically implies
(So) When sodium chloride crystals are put into water they dissolve or turn
into bacteria;
implies
188 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
(S4) Any living body falling freely near the earth moves with constant ac¬
celeration.
But these reductive derivations are not specifically biological, even though
each of the derived sentences S2 and S4 contains an essential occurrence
of a biological term. For if that term is replaced by any other term of the
same logical type—whether from the vocabulary of biology or from that
of some other discipline—the resulting sentence will equally follow from the
given physicochemical premise. Thus, if in S2 the word “bacteria” is re¬
placed by “fish,” by “nonbacteria,” or by “iron filings,” the resulting sen¬
tence still follows from S4; and similarly, S3 also implies the sentences ob¬
tainable from S4 by replacing “living” by “nonliving,” “iron,” “spherical,”
etc.
It is the absence of this peculiarity which characterizes what might be
called reductions specific to biology. In these, the derivation of a biological
principle from physicochemical ones must make use of additional premises
which contain biological as well as physicochemical terms essentially, and
which thus establish connections between the two theories. Following
Ernest Nagel’s similar usage,61 will refer to them as connecting principles.
For example, the chemical analysis of photosynthesis and cellular respira¬
tion in plants permits a reduction of some uniform features of these
phenomena to physicochemical laws. Such reduction makes use of con¬
necting principles broadly to the effect that the plant cells involved in
photosynthesis contain certain characteristic chemicals, including chlo¬
rophyll; that the latter is a mixture of two substances of such and such
molecular structures; and so forth. To this information, principles of physics
and chemistry can then be applied to account for certain physicochemical
processes that take place in the cells and for the production of energy by
oxidation, which is the principal aspect of cellular respiration. In its barest
logical essentials, the structure of the resulting reductive accounts may be
schematically characterized as follows: A law or theoretical principle
couched in terms of physicochemical theory
U) (R4x D Q4x)
(x) (Q2x D R2x)
After all, the meaning of every term we use depends upon the theoretical con¬
text in which it occurs. Words . . . obtain their meanings by being part of a
theoretical system. Hence if we consider two contexts with basic principles that
either contradict each other or lead to inconsistent consequences in certain
domains, it is to be expected that some terms of the first context will not occur
in the second with exactly the same meaning.10
follow the same procedure in both cases, and so would the construction
of triangles or circles. There is good reason, therefore, for denying that
the two theories are incomparable, and for maintaining that they concern
the geometrical structure of the same surface, and that the concepts in
terms of which they characterize that structure agree to a considerable
extent in. their empirical reference as characterized by their operational
criteria of application. Indeed, otherwise it is not clear how they could
be held to contradict each other. The contradiction manifests itself, for
example, in the fact that according to S, the ratio of the circumference of
a circle to its diameter is less than w, whereas according to E, it equals
Ti-; and these conflicting claims lend themselves to test by means of the
common operational procedures specified for the relevant measurements in
both theories.
But the agreement in basic empirical interpretation assuredly cannot
be taken to show that the meanings of the terms in question remain entirely
unchanged in the transition from E to S; in a plausible sense, they are
indeed affected by the difference of the theoretical principles in which they
function. This must be admitted even from a more liberal operationist
point of view; for the principles of a scientific theory normally give rise to
what might be called derivative operational criteria of application for
some of its terms. Thus, the principles of E imply that two lines which
intersect a third one at right angles are parallel; and this consequence
may be used as one operational criterion for parallelism. But this criterion
is not transferable to the theory S, whose basic principles do not yield
the requisite implication; indeed, there are no parallels at all in spherical
geometry.
There remains the question whether, apart from the matter of derivative
operational criteria, the meanings of scientific terms are determined by
the theoretical principles in which they occur.19 Judging the issue intuitively,
it seems plausible to say that to some extent this is indeed the case. Thus,
the principle that mass is additive—that the mass of a physical system equals
the sum of the masses of its components—might be regarded as expressing
part of what the term “mass” means in classical mechanics; and the same
view might be taken of the principle of conservation of mass. Similarly,
the law that all electric charges are integral multiples of the charge of the
electron might be regarded as expressing part of what is meant by the term
“electron.”
But, plausible though they are, these construals may well be questioned.
Suppose, for example, that the existence of particles with charges smaller
than that of the electron were to be established. It is quite likely that the
term “electron” would then continue to be used, but without the claim
that the electronic charge is the smallest possible one. In this event, would
we have to say that there had been a change in the meaning of the word
“electron,” that we were no longer speaking of the same kind of thing as
196 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
relevant to the logical form of a term would be very central to its meaning;
thus, the transition from classical mechanics to the special theory of
relativity is often said to have effected a change in the concept of mass,
which in the classical theory represents an intrinsic characteristic of a
physical body, in relativity theory a relational feature.22
Our discussion of conceptual change had as its point of departure a
comparison of the two theories E and S in our example. The relations
we noted between these theories seem to me to obtain also between a set
of empirical laws (such as Galileo’s and Kepler’s) and a theory that is
said to explain them (e.g., Newton’s theory of gravitation and of motion);
and similarly between two theories of which the first is said to be reducible
to the second (as in the case of classical mechanics and the mechanics
of special relativity, or geometrical optics and wave optics, or classical
thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, or Bohr’s theory of atomic struc¬
ture and Sommerfeld’s refinement of it).
But the analogy to the relation between E and S does not extend, it
seems, to all pairs of scientific theories one of which supersedes the other.
The phlogiston theory and the oxygenation theory of combustion are
not related in such a way that approximations of the principles of the
former are derivable from the latter; according to the oxygenation theory,
phlogiston does not participate sometimes or to some degree in chemical
reactions: there just is no such thing as phlogiston, and combustion is
a process quite different from dephlogistication. Cases of this kind seem
to accord better with the conception, proposed by Kemeny and Oppenheim,
that one theory is reduced to another if the second accounts in a more
systematic and economical fashion for the empirical findings explainable
by the first.
In sum, then, the construal of theoretical reduction as a strictly deductive
relation between the principles of two theories, based on general laws that
connect the theoretical terms, is indeed an untenable oversimplification
which has no strict application in science and which, moreover, conceals
some highly important aspects of the relationship to be analyzed. But the
characterization of that relationship in terms of incompatibility and incom¬
mensurability overemphasizes certain significant differences and neglects
those affinities by virtue of which the reducing theory may be said to offer
a more adequate account of the subject matter with which the reduced
theory is concerned.
NOTES
1. The writing of this essay was supported in part by a research grant from the
National Science Foundation. , TT „ D .
2. R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language; New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Co., 1937, Part V. A less technical statement of the basic idea is given in Carnap,
Philosophy and Logical Syntax; London: Regan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.,
1935.
198 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
versity Press, 2d ed. 1961; and “Carnap and Logical Truth” in P. A. Schilpp (ed.)
The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap-, La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1963; pp. 385—
406. Carnap’s reply on pp. 915-922 of the same volume is of great interest for the
problem here under discussion; and so is H. Putnam’s essay, “The Analytic and the
Synthetic,” in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy
of Science, Vol. Ill; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962, pp. 358-397.
22. On this point, see the fuller discussions by Nagel, in The Structure of Science,
p. Ill and by Feyerabend, in “Problems of Empiricism,” pp. 168-169.
THE REALIST-INSTRUMENTALIST
CONTROVERSY1
Sidney Morgenbesser
Recently many philosophers and scientists have argued that the con¬
troversy between the realist and the instrumentalist, a controversy which
according to some antedates even the rise of modern science,2 has been
settled primarily but not exclusively by developments within the sciences in
favor of realism. And though Carnap, Friedman,3 and other distinguished
scientists and philosophers demur, the received opinion seems to be that
instrumentalism has ceased to be a viable option in the philosophy of
science. What then may we ask is this controversy about? Are realism and
instrumentalism, as Popper and others seem to claim4, the two leading
contrary approaches in the philosophy of science, at least one of which de¬
serves the allegiance of the committed philosopher? In what follows I
shall argue that realism and instrumentalism considered especially as
approaches to theories and their justification do not always compete and
that neither is the obvious victor when they do, thereby offering a negative
answer to the second question and rebutting the first. Note that the phrase
“approaches to the theories and their justification” is not merely decorative.
It is a truism that any two approaches in philosophy have some areas of
agreement. It ought to be an equal truism that realism and instrumentalism
—when the term “realism” is applied to the leading doctrines in the writ¬
ings of Popper, Feyerabend and other typical realists and “instrumentalism”
to key doctrines in the writings of paradigm instrumentalists from Peirce
to Lewis—agree on many important methodological issues. Realism has
emphasized its opposition to inductivism or the views that there are in Mill’s
sense rules for discovery of hypotheses, that scientific inquiry which aims
primarily to increase our knowledge goes through stages, the first of which
can be considered purely inductive and non-theory-dependent and has empha¬
sized the importance of the distinction between the degree of worth and the
degree of acceptability of a scientific hypothesis or theory. Similar ideas
were sponsored by many instrumentalists or if one wishes, pragmatists.
In the distant thirties Reichenbach5 wrote a warm appreciative essay
on the philosophy of John Dewey in which he claimed that the evidence
or arguments in favor of the reality of theoretical entities favored the
realists and condemned the instrumentalists who viewed theoretical en¬
tities as useful tools or fictions. Dewey’s answer was not clear, for he seemed
200
SIDNEY MORGENBESSER 201
to vacillate between denying the thesis that theoretical entities are real and
affirming the one that they are relational or functional ones. But though his
answer is not too perspicacious it does, I think, indicate the importance of
distinguishing for the purposes at hand between the thesis that theoretical
entities are real and the thesis that they exist. Alternatively Dewey’s answer
suggests that we leave open to the instrumentalists the option of denying the
reality and affirming the existence of theoretical entities. Of course the dis¬
tinction is a metaphysical one for it bears upon the attempt by Dewey and
other instrumentalists to deny the traditional metaphysical thesis which, to
use a once popular phrase, bifurcated nature and insisted that while theo¬
retical entities and phenomenal ones both exist, theoretical ones alone
are real. Dewey’s position6 could be interpreted therefore as the simple
one of affirming the existence of theoretical entities and attributing to
them no special ontological status, a position which is adopted by most if
not all methodological realists. On this account there is no incompati¬
bility between the instrumentalists’ insistence upon the nonreality of theo¬
retical entities and the realist position as thus far introduced.
Of course often enough some instrumentalists did deny or appear to
deny the existence, not only the super-reality, of theoretical entities and
did claim or appear to claim that such entities are merely useful tools. But
the instrumentalists’ position as a whole suggests that we interpret these
claims to be directed against Machian types7 of programs which would not
even view scientific theories which countenanced theoretical or unobserv¬
able entities as admissible ones. Put positively, we can view the instru¬
mentalists as favoring the thesis that scientific theories are useful and that
scientists are justified in using them even if the entities they countenance
are fictional. Given this interpretation the instrumentalist is disengaged
from the silly if not self-contradictory thesis that nonexistent entities can
be used and is credited with a thesis that is not at variance with the one
with which we began as the realist one. Of course since the instrumentalists
lately considered and the realists differ on the existence of theoretical en¬
tities, some difference in their position remains. But if that difference is the
sole one, then instrumentalism and realism become not the exciting con¬
traries we have been promised but merely dull contradictories.
A critic may chide for failing to tell a more complete story which, among
other things, would remind us that the instrumentalists did defend not only
the banal thesis that theories even if false may be useful, but the contested
ones that (a) theories are not true or false and that (b) theories have a justi¬
fied use only if they serve as guides for action undertaken to satisfy our
noncognitive needs. With the fuller story, the critic continues a non¬
trivial controversy between the instrumentalist and the realist in the offing
and materializes it if we attribute to the realist the views that scientific
theories are true or false and that science aims at explanation in addition
to the ones already noted, namely that theoretical entities are real and that
202 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
the familiar sense that anyone who asserted R1 and denied R2 would be
engaged in linguistically odd practice. But on what grounds? It might be
claimed that anyone who accepts R1 accepts a theory, and hence rejects
the instrumentalist’s thesis that no theory is true or false. But though this
claim is reasonable, it is not entirely persuasive, since it rests on the de¬
batable assumption that the terms “theory” and “hypothesis” are always
interchangeable. But for the purposes at hand it seems reasonable to rule
that S is a hypothesis if S is not entailed by the total evidence that supports
it and that S is not a theory unless it is lawlike, or at least lawlike appearing.
Given this ruling, though theories may be and most would be hypotheses,
not all hypotheses are theories—a conclusion which removes the force of
the objection. But only momentarily. We will be reminded that anyone
who accepts R1 does so because he accepts as true such statements as
“there are electrons,” which are believed only because scientific laws and
theories are accepted. Once again, 12 seems to be pragmatically incom¬
patible with Rl. True enough. But this objection merely shows that the
acceptance of Rl entails the acceptance not of R2 but of its modified ver¬
sion which reads that some laws and theories are true or false, and that
others need not be, a thesis which can also be viewed as a modified instru¬
mentalist’s one. Note in further support of this conclusion that no one argues
that the historical facts of life alone assure the meaningfulness of “John
Stuart Mill is a blue idea who slept peacefully,” and hence that no one need
deny the reality of the subatomic phenomena while challenging the noncog-
nizability or nonmeaningfulness of some specific general theory about it. But
though no one is forced to go from Rl to R2, who, it might be asked, would
be interested in Rl and find a need for the dull nondisconfirmable version
of R2 just suggested. A malicious answer would be that many realists are
or appear to when for a variety of objections that they have to its standard
interpretation they consider quantum mechanics neither true nor false, and
suggest that it is best viewed as a calculating device.10
But the point is not simply an ad hominem one. The instrumentalist is
not only arguing against the realist, he is assuming that anyone will dis¬
cover some theories which he will find it hard to interpret and which he will
not dismiss from scientific use. Hence the instrumentalist is arguing that
anyone will adopt some version of his position which would at least rule
out R2. Moreover, the instrumentalist is arguing that a scientist is justified
in using theories which cannot be interpreted as true or false, and the
realist would not be justified if he argued that scientists are not justified in
using quantum mechanical theories which the realist cannot accept as
meaningful.
I have argued for a modified version of methodological realism, one
which accepts Rl and a modified version of R2. I add that there is
need of modifying R4, at least on one standard interpretation of it.
Those who have accepted Rl have done so because they have ac-
SIDNEY MORGENBESSER 205
cepted hypotheses and theories in the light of the total scientific evi¬
dence. There is, of course, nothing untoward in that, except for the fact
that acceptance of hypotheses seems to be ruled out by standard inter¬
pretation of R4 which insists that scientists qua scientists do not accept
hypotheses, or that the acceptance of a scientific hypothesis is the per¬
formance of an extra scientific act. More fully R4 insists that scientists
have a method or set of rules only for testing and possibly rejecting theories
and hypotheses and only for that, since that is all the hypothetical deductive
method can provide. Conversely, to allow for the acceptance of R1 we
must either deny the conjunction (a) that science is distinguished by its
method and (b) that the hypothetical-deductive method is the one, or at
least supplement R4 with a method for accepting hypotheses. But since
scientists do accept hypotheses I assume that such supplementing is neces¬
sary. There is an extra-dividend that can be derived from this last point.
On occasion those who accept R3 and deny that science aims at explana¬
tion and prediction do so because they insist that scientists qua scientists can
only offer conditional predictions and that any straightforward acceptance
of predictive utterance is not scientifically warranted. The acceptance of
Rl, if all right, rules out this latter move in defense of R3, and supports
13—science aims at explanation and prediction.11
Let us return to our beginning point. Thus far I have assumed, and I
hope not without justification, that we can discuss the interconnections
between Rl and the subsidiary theses without attending too directly to
Rl itself. The time has come to take a closer look which immediately
reveals that Rl itself is, for a variety of reasons, not a disconfirmable
thesis. We have already agreed that those who accept Rl do so because
they accept such sentences as “there are electrons and protons,” etc. It is
appropriate to note the lack of symmetry; namely that some may reject
any one of these sentences and still maintain Rl. It is also appropriate to
recall that R4 does not provide us with rules for acceptance of hypotheses,12
and draw the consequence that one philosopher may accept Rl and R4 and
accept only the reality of electrons and another the reality of electrons
and fields. Hence we may conclude that Rl does not present us with
refined clues about the ontology of the realist; at best we know that he
accepts some kinds of theoretical entities as real. But which ones?
It is not open to the realist to answer that he admits as real all entities
which the scientist finds it helpful and useful to countenance. For that would
force upon him not only perfectly competitive industries but also factors of
the mind, and Gibbsian ensembles.13
Rl is not, however, completely uninformative. If we know that some¬
one adopts it, we can predict with some reliability that he will not
dismiss as unclear any predicate simply because it is a theoretical one. Pre¬
dictions about specific predictions remain unreliable; a realist may have dif¬
ficulty with specific ones—e.g., “collapse” applied to wave function. Smart
206 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
and other realists have claimed that the thesis “theoretical entities are real
is intended to inform us that there is nothing defective about theoretical
concepts, that “electron” for example is as clear as “red.” Since by parity of
reasoning the realist should say that dragons are real, this explanation would
not do. But this is not the major objection to the realist’s explanation of his
use of R1 rather than of the simpler one “theoretical entities exist.” If I
am right, he is only in the position of saying that some theoretical concepts
are not defective. Note finally that given the realism of the ontology of a
theory the realism of a theory as a whole is not decided. For at least three
reasons, one of which is obvious. The theory may be deemed unrealistic
because its sentences describe nonrealizable or nonfrequently realized
phenomena; the theory may not be realistic because it is not objective
in the sense that at least one of its lawlike sentences contains a fragment
“Pa” which entails “Ra, b” where ‘b’ stands in place of a name or de¬
scription of a human agent.14 And since it is at least debatable whether
quantum mechanics satisfies this last criterion for objectivity and realism,
the claim of the methodological realist that acceptable physical theories
must be realistic is equally debatable.15
Again, the realist thus far does not inform us whether he accepts certain
types of entities as “real” ones, as self-existing ones and not merely as
temporary stages of others; and hence he does not inform us when theories
that countenance entities of type K need be supplemented with theories
which countenance entities of type L, of which K-type entities are temporary
stages. The problem raised is not an idle one, for it and its analogue were
raised when scientists asked whether fields are real, and still deserves at¬
tention. But on all accounts the realist may be described as defending the
nondisconfirmable thesis that some theoretical entities exist or its semantic
analog that some sortal predicates are true of some entities, and owes us
an explanation of his use of “real.”
That being the case, R1 can be viewed as a supplement to the con-
textualist’s position which warns us not to interpret theories and their terms
literally and which insists that we understand theoretical terms by studying
the uses to which sentences in which they appear are put by scientists.
Needless to say, this position is not a very clear one. But if we interpret it
in the light of the uses to which it was put, its thrust becomes relatively
apparent. Instrumentalists wanted to show that there is no need of viewing
terms which ostensibly introduced new K types of entities (e.g., points) as
doing so, but only as providing us with ways of predicting the behavior of
familiar objects, when they can be treated as if they were K type entities.
Instrumentalists therefore had a deflationary approach to the ontological
commitments of scientific theories which need not violate the spirit of Rl.
Why then in the light of its obvious limitations does the realist not merely
emphasize Rl but place it at the pinnacle of his position? I think he does
SIDNEY MORGENBESSER 207
their theories are true or false but only that they have proven fruitful. Some
use can also be found for contention (a).
Since Duhem it has been a commonplace that scientists do not apply
the term “law” only to sentences which are lawlike and true but also to some
that are false.19 Instrumentalists add that scientists also apply the term
“law” to expressions which are neither true nor false and which they
describe as holding or not holding.
One way of understanding these phrases is as follows. The scientist
when offering us a given law which doesn’t hold is presenting us with
causal-schematic expressions. He may say that the law is “All A is V”;
what he means to assert is that “All A • C is V” where ‘C’ functions as a
schematic letter to be replaced as inquiry continues. Causal schematic ex¬
pressions are neither true or false and are often called laws; rather some
laws are best understood as causal-schematic expressions. Everyday life
supplies some examples. A friend tells us that he has a headache and we
advise him to take an aspirin. How should we interpret our beliefs? It will
not do to suggest that we believe that everyone who has a headache and
takes an aspirin will be relieved of his aches and pains. And neither will it
do to suggest that we know of a reliably true statistical generalization
which we can use as a basis for a rational bit of advice. But two alter¬
natives remain. We may be only committed to the simple belief that for the
most part people who take aspirin are relieved of their aches and go no
further. However we may think that if anyone who is under some now
nonspecified conditions (C) has a headache and takes an aspirin he will,
soon enough, return to a state of normalcy. The differences between these
two commitments should be evident. In the first place, we do not neces¬
sarily think that through further inquiry we may be able to get an interesting
true law. In the second case, we think that in the future scientists may be
able to specify exact conditions under which some people do and some
people do not become headache-losers when they are aspirin-gainers.20
The example given supports the contention of the weak noncognitivist,
but it need not embarrass the realist, for he might insist that causal
schematic expressions and the simplified theories we have considered are
to be replaced by laws and theories which are true or false and which do
explain fully. Hence his contentions R(2) and R(3) are saved if construed
as a normative thesis or as a directive. Since the weak noncognitivist offers
descriptive theses, he has no answer to this version of realism. But the
contextualist whose position needs amplification does.
It will be recalled that the contextualist is concerned with the justification
of scientific theories and procedures, insists that the justification must always
be contextual, and adds that science sets its own aim. But since beliefs,
actions, and policies not theories simpliciter are justified, we must expect
the contextualist to have at least two kinds of theses: one about justification
of belief in the scientific theory, or the justified acceptance of that theory,
210 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
and the other about the justification of various types of acts or policies
which have the theories as their goals or instruments even if it is a simple
policy trying to confirm a lawlike sentence of a given kind.
It is a commonplace that a scientist may be justified in accepting a law¬
like sentence S at a given time even if each subsequent inquiry showed that
that S is false. And since it is equally obvious that a scientist may be justified
in not believing L even if L is true, it appears that there are no formulas
of the form “A is justified in believing S if and only if S is true,” or A is
justified in disbelieving S if and only if S is false.”
No wonder then that the contextualist, concerned as he is with issues
of justification, finds R2 of little help. It provides no guide for the con¬
struction of rules or formulas that can be used to assess justified acceptance
or rejection of laws, theories, and hypotheses. At this point the realist might
raise the cry of foul and accuse the contextualist of cheating for neglecting
to attend to the obvious formula: a scientist is not justified in accepting a
given theory or law if it has been falsified.
Nothing seems more reasonable, and if the realist gives good reasons
for believing this is the only rule that is needed, the contextualist s case
seems to be a weak one indeed. But one charge invites another and the
contextualist countercharge is easy to construct. Unless a scientist knows
that a theory has been falsified he need not reject it. Hence the realist has
cheated for not presenting the formula thus: a scientist is not justified
in believing T (or not rejecting T) if he knows that T has been falsified.
But stated that way the rule is otiose: a scientist who knows that a
theory is false cannot decide to believe that it is true; he must reject it.
Remember, that to reject a law or theory is not to discard it; one may
decide to keep a rejected law on the books for a while and seek ways to
correct it. But since the realist has no rules to offer as help to a scientist
who is deliberating whether to discard or to correct a rejected law, he
cannot claim that he has offered rules, if not for acceptance, at least for
the rejection of hypotheses.21 The instrumentalist adds that that the realist
has, in accepting R4, accepted hypotheses and hence cannot turn his back on
the problem of justified acceptance of hypotheses.
But since the contextualist does not merely hive off the mistakes or
omissions of the realist, we may expect him to have his own views to defend
about the topic of justification of belief, or justification of the acceptance
of hypotheses and theories, as credible though revisable. What then are his
views? The standard answer takes the contextualist at his name value and
portrays him as maintaining that there is no general problem of justification,
that there are only specific contextual ones. Presumably, at least three
things are intended. The contextualist is viewed first as contending that
the problem of justification of knowledge in general and the one of trying to
show how knowledge is possible are pseudo-problems, and secondly, as
transforming a commonplace into a complex principle. Normally—that is,
SIDNEY MORGENBESSER 211
when we are in control of our faculties and are not playing Epistemology
I games—we don’t dismiss all our neighbors’ beliefs as equally worthless
but challenge specific ones which we think have specific failings. From
this commonplace the principle (A): If A accepts S as credible, then B
can (in the ethical, not causal sense) challenge A only if he has specific
objections to S, or adduces reason against the credibility of S, and (2) A
can justify his acceptance of S only by answering the specific objections
raised by B, by showing that S is in accord with the criteria or rules that
the reasons addressed by B indicate. The matter does not end here. There
is a third note sounded by one contextualist. In answering B, A will most
likely appeal to other sentences Tx . . n which he will use to support S.
But there is, for the contextualist, nothing special or blessed about Tx. . n.
Though accepted here, they may be challenged later and be transformed
from justifiers to sentences in need of justification. For the contextualist
then, sufficient unto the context the justification thereof.
To understand the contextualist position a little more amply, let us try
to answer an obvious criticism. It may be contended that the contextualist
has made progress with A only by overlooking the difficulties faced by or
raised by B, and has done so by shifting the onus of responsibility upon B,
or upon us the critics, of justifying B’s doubt, or of showing that B’s reasons
are legitimate ones and justify his doubt or agnosticism. The criticism is
apt but not crushing; the contextualist has not shifted the problem from
A to B, he assumes that B has nothing to justify to A. “Assume” is too
weak a word: the contextualist notes that the reasons which B advances
(or the rule to which he appeals) must be accepted by A as good ones,
for otherwise he would not attempt to answer B. A related answer can be
given to a corollary of the criticism just reviewed. It may be claimed that
the contextualist has shifted the problem of justification away from S to
the other sentence Tx . . n which A appeals to in his support of S. But
surely it may be contended A cannot appeal to any odd set of sentences,
but only to those justified in a sense thus far unspecified by the context¬
ualist. The answer is apparent. The contextualist is assuming that Ti . . n
are accepted by A and B and that A has nothing to justify to B about his
acceptance of Ti . . n.
But, though the contextualist may not have shifted any responsibility
we may have shifted our explication or at least its main emphasis. We began
with a standard view which emphasises the contextual features of justifi¬
cation; We ended with a social theory of justification—“Social” in at
least two senses: (A) that it takes at least two to tangle and (B) that the
disentangledness or the process of justification cannot begin unless those
engaged in the process share certain beliefs and certain rules or criteria.
Hence, allowing for a few steps, the instrumentalist position comes down in
part to this: that a scientist is not justified period, but justified to those
engaged in the scientific enterprise if his beliefs are in accord with the
212 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
self-imposed rules of the scientific community. The phrase “in part” sug¬
gests that there is more to come. There is. The contextualist position pro¬
vides us with a partial explanation of the central role that intersubjectively
confirmable observation sentences and inductive rules play in science. The
point about the former is obvious; a word or two may suffice about the
latter. Inductive rules not only express universally shared habits whose
acceptance no one need justify to anyone else; they also express habits we
cannot choose to have and whose acceptance we never have to justify.
To base science on induction is therefore to have a base whose social
justification never arises. Still, it would not do to say that science is, for
the contextualist, based on induction or rests upon an observation or is, as
defenders of R4 might claim, characterized by the employment of the
hypothetical deductive method. What then characterizes the scientific com¬
munity? The previous reflection provides us with a clue. Science for the
contextualist is characterized by the fact that its members share higher-order
attitudes about beliefs and attitudes to revise them in light of the objections
to them brought by others.22
It must, in all candor, be noted that many instrumentalists do not think
that the story ends at this point and that others insist that it doesn’t even
begin with it. For many of the latter have been influenced by Lewis, that
the central problem of justification remains the traditional epistemological
one of trying to explicate “A knows that S” and to indicate for any S the
conditions that have to obtain before it can be known. The issues raised by
these conditions are too complex to be entered into here, so I will note
that I think that the latter contextualists are correct and that their views
must be taken as a supplementary view to the one raised by the social
theory of justification just reviewed. A less charitable note is, I think, in
order about the theses defended by some contextualists who have attempted
to show that rules which are appealed to for the purposes of justification
may themselves be justified by referring to the role they have played in
inquiry, that they have been tacitly obeyed in cases where problems were
solved and were disobeyed when problems were generated. Perhaps they
are right, but if so they are defending a theory which must be justified in
the same way any as any theory must be justified. Secondly, and perhaps
more to the point, I do not think that this approach to justification of rules
has been fruitful and has led to the discovery of any new type of scientific
rules. In the main, traditional inductive rules have been discussed and
their justification attempted by instrumentalists—unsuccessfully, I think, for
though the problems of inductive support for inductive rules may be man¬
ageable, I do not think it is identical with the one of showing that inductive
rules have been problem-removers. But the appeal to problem-solving is
not to be dismissed. It plays a role in the justification of acceptance of
theories and hypotheses not as credible but as worthy of testing and devel-
SIDNEY MORGENBESSER 213
oping or as usable for a given purpose. I advert to some of the issues in¬
volved.
In assessing their work and the work of their colleagues, scientists often
defend theses to the effect (a) that a scientist may be justified in trying to
develop a theory though it is believed to be false,23 (b) that a scientist
may be justified in using T\ for predictive or calculating purposes and
using T2 for related ones though their conjunction is self-contradictory,24
(c) that a scientist may be justified in using Ti for a given purpose and
neglecting T2 though T\ and T2 are logically equivalent.25 These and
kindred theses motivate the plausible instrumentalist thesis that a scientist
is justified in using a theory T to accomplish a given end, if he has good
reasons for believing his theory-guided act will accomplish his end.
But, though plausible, the thesis needs emendation and qualification. That
the thesis needs emendation will be evident when we recall that a scientist
may be justified in doing T even if he has little reason to believe that T
will accomplish his end, but has little option and that doing T may have
more expected utility than any other available one. And, that the thesis
needs qualification becomes equally evident when we recall that a person is
usually considered not necessarily justified but only rational if he accom¬
plishes his end in an effective manner; attribution of justification requires
attention to the worthwhileness of goals and ends, not merely to the efficiency
of behavior. But though it is evident that the thesis needs qualification,
emendation, and supplementation, it is not evident how to supply the
requisite revisions; for we need information about shared scientific ends
and ways of ranking them, which the contextualist does not supply. He is
of course not entirely silent on these matters for he provides a hint when he
suggests that inquiry sets its own aims, which in turn suggests that the ends
of science are to be assumed as worthwhile and none to be dismissed as
denigrating. But how to develop this hint into a program for ranking
scientific ends and assigning different utilities to them is not evident.
Despair may, however, be premature. R3 may perhaps be used to sug¬
gest a strategy, and if under it does do successfully, we may once again
find support for our irenic metathesis that realism and contextualism may
reinforce rather than undermine each other. As I understand it R3 does
not deny that theories are used for calculating, predictive, postdictive pur¬
poses as well as explanatory ones and, hence, is not at variance with recent
theses which emphasize the varied uses to which scientific theories are
put. R3 adds to these observations the quasi-normative one that the act of
explaining has so much more utility than other types of scientific acts that
we can, for theoretical purposes, neglect the others and argue that a
theory Si has more potential worth than S2 if Si has more potential explana¬
tory power in than S2 and similarly far more actual explanatory power. We
seem to have progressed. The problem of specifying rules or criteria for the
214 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
scope and system at the price of safety. But, here too, custom is not a
good guide and must be challenged. The problem here is that the realist
is not clear, I think, on what the scientist is presumed to do, and vacillates
between two directives: (1) accept as credible, and (2) accept as worthy
of test and development. If on the basis of the data “All Americans are
mortal” and “All men are mortal” are confirmed, and neither discon-
firmed, the former would seem to be more credible, the latter more
worthy of test. But we might say that B would be more worthy of test even
without a glance at the data on the grounds that its potential explanatory
power or its potential degree of worth is greater.27
The remaining task is to compare defective theories to each other and
to rival virtuous ones, and it appears to be a self-liquidating task. For
given a choice between a defective (falsified) theory, and a virtuous one
(nondisconfirmed) we must choose the latter, given two defective theories,
we must choose neither. Nothing is neater and nothing more irrelevant as
an answer to the instrumentalist problem with which we began. We wanted
to know how to justify the use of defective theories; we ended with a
criterion for their rejection as noncredible. And that we would cast no fight
on the instrumentalist problem is evident when we recall that for a realist a
theory must be credible, for otherwise it would lack explanatory power.
Hence there is no need for the instrumentalist to fold his theses and fade
away.
NOTES
1. The text for this sermon is of course: Ernest Nagel’s classic chapter, “The
Cognitive States of Theories” in Structure of Science, pp. 106-152.
2. See the article by C. Warren Hollister, “Greek Astronomy and Modem Sci¬
ence,” 1961, History, Volume 4, pp. 53-72. Also references in Roman Science, Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin, 1962, William H. Stube, pp. 159-162; The Mechanization of
the World, E. J. Diyksterhuis, Oxford, 1961, pp. 212-216.
3. Carnap’s discussion in Philosophical Foundations of Physics, pp. 254-256;
on Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” Friedman, M.; “Assump¬
tions in Economic Theory,” Nagel, E.; reprinted in Readings In Microeconomics,
edited by W. Breit and Harold M. Hochman, pp. 23-47, pp. 60-68 respectively.
See discussions in Quantum Physics and the Philosophical Tradition—Aage Petersen;
M.I.T. Press, 1968, chapter 1, especially, pp. 12-20.
4. For Popper, K. R., “Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge,” reprinted in
Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 97-119. Smart, J. J. C., Between Science and Phi¬
losophy, Random House, 1968, pp. 121-163. See Feyerabend, Paul K., “Reply to
Criticism,” pp. 223-262, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume II,
1965.
5. The Philosophy of John Dewey—N. Y. 1939, Reichenbach’s “Dewey’s Theory
of Science,” pp. 157-192. “Dewey’s Answer,” pp. 534-45; 574-75.
6. Fists are often considered less real than hands because they are merely
temporary stages of them, bodies less real than the microscopic entities of which
they are composed (temporary stages of such bodies or rather those bodies tem¬
porarily hanging or staying together). The latter are real if they are permanent and
everything that is can be viewed as composed of them. When arguing against the
thesis of the reality of theoretical entities, Dewey, among other things, claimed that
there are no permanent entities, that everything that exists is an event. For a brief
and illuminating discussion about the reality of species which bears upon this dis¬
tinction see: “Retrospect of the Criticism of the Theory of Natural Selection,” by
Sir K. Fischer, pp. 107-110, in Evolution As A Process.
216 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
There may well be differences between the mental and the physical
which rule out identifying them. The Identity Thesis issues from felt
peculiarities in the mental, felt differences between it and the nice, solid,
familiar, locatable physical, and so it is hard to see how it could never¬
theless turn out to be the physical after all. But what I want to try to bring
out in this paper is a difficulty for the Identity Thesis which does not arise
from any special features of the mental or the physical; the difficulty is,
rather, as one might put it, the form of the thesis. In brief, it is not clear
that claims of that form can be anything more than mere reports of cor¬
relations, whatever the kinds of things they purport to identify.
1. The Identity Thesis is often put forward in some such words as “Sen¬
sations are brain processes (or brain events or brain states).” If sensations
are brain processes, then I take it to follow that toothaches are. But which
brain processes are they? If I am not mistaken, it is not yet known precisely
what is going on in a man’s brain when a tooth aches, and hence I shall
just take the liberty of inventing some physiology. I do not think that the
fact it is so (wildly) over-simple will matter for the points I wish to make.
So let us imagine, then, that there is found a certain chunk of brain—call
it the “dentral chunk,” or “d.c.” for short—to which are attached nerves
coming from each tooth. It is found that whenever a man has a toothache
his d.c. is in a certain state, viz. the state of being swollen; and let us imag¬
ine that the onset of his toothache is contemporaneous with the onset of
the swelling. (This could be made more specific: If it is his upper front
teeth that are starting to hurt, then his d.c. is starting to swell at the place
at which the nerves from the upper front teeth join it.) If the toothache is
a throbbing, pulsating ache, then the d.c.’s swelling varies accordingly:
alternately swelling and shrinking. Lastly, let us imagine that physiologists
do put forward, as psychophysical laws, correlations between toothaches
and swellings of d.c.’s, and between variations in toothaches and variations
in swellings of d.c.’s.
Now there is a possible interpretation of the Identity Thesis—call it the
“Naive Interpretation”—which takes it literally: Toothaches themselves
(as also itches, tingles, and so on) are brain processes, events, or states.
Thus, for example, toothaches are swellings of d.c.’s.
219
220 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
But the Naive Interpretation is surely at best false. No doubt one does
not naturally say that one’s toothache is in one’s tooth (where else could a
toothache be?), but it does come perfectly naturally to say, and would on
occasion be true to say, that one has an ache (or perhaps even a tooth¬
ache) in one’s front tooth, a pain in one’s knee, and an itch in one’s nose.
It is not, of course, straight off clear what we should say about the location
of processes, events, or states, but at any rate it surely will not do to say
that the process of swelling currently being undergone by a d.c. is in its
owner’s front teeth; or that the event, its starting to swell, is there; or that
the state of the d.c., its being swollen, is there. But if that is where the ache
is, then the ache is not identical with the process, event, or state of the d.c.
But at the same time, it may, I take it, be supposed that no defender of
the Identity Thesis—“Materialist,” for short—has ever meant by the Identity
Thesis what I am calling the Naive Interpretation. The example of a “sen¬
sation” which Professor Smart, for example, deals with in “Sensations and
Brain Processes”2 is the having of a yellowish-orange after-image rather
than toothache, and he says: “I am not arguing that the after-image is a
brain-process, but that the experience of having an after-image is a brain-
process.”2 One supposes he would say the same of aches and pains: It is
not the ache itself but the experience of having an ache which is a brain
process. Now the experience of having an ache in one’s front teeth is not
itself in the front teeth, so the location difficulty does not arise: If Smart
does wish to say about toothaches what he said about after-images, then he
is not committed to that which would imply that a swelling of a man’s
d.c. may well be in his front teeth.
But that the Naive Interpretation is at best false, and that no Materialist
(as I take it) has ever meant the Identity Thesis to be construed in that
way, is important; I shall return to the consequences of this in the following
section.
So it is to be the experience of having a toothache which is a brain
process. More specifically, in the light of my (imaginary) physiology:
(To) Events which consist in a man’s starting to have a toothache are events
which consist in his d.c.’s starting to swell,
and so on. And these are, of course, not to be construed merely as (odd)
ways of reporting the correlations I described at the outset; they are to be,
literally, identity claims.
One gain of saying these things would be this: we no longer have to
worry about how d.c. events could cause toothaches. If the car crash you
saw from your window was the very same as the car crash I saw from mine
JUDITH JARVIS THOMSON 221
then it is ruled out that one caused the other. More generally, there no
longer is a “mind-body” problem: we no longer have to worry about how
bodily events could cause mental events. Depending on the events in ques¬
tion, we can say either “They don’t, for they are the same”, or “They do,
but this is just bodily ones causing other bodily ones.”
A second gain is supposed to be4 a scientific simplification: we shall be
able to eliminate “nomological danglers,” i.e., irreducible laws correlating
mental and bodily events. “I cannot believe,” Smart says,5 “that ultimate
laws of nature could relate simple constituents [such as toothaches] to con¬
figurations consisting of perhaps billions of neurons (and goodness knows
how many billion billions of ultimate particles. . . If the mental just is the
physical, then we have no need of such laws; toothaches are not correlated
with d.c. events but are them.
2. But what can a man mean who says (TO and (T2)? It surely is not
plain on the face of it. Nor do the writings of the Materialists give us much
help. We are told straight off they do not mean that “has a toothache”
(or “onset of a toothache”) entails or is entailed by “has a swollen d.c.”
(or “onset of a swelling of a d.c.”): (TO and (T2) are meant to be con¬
tingent identity claims. We are next given a series of identity claims, of
which the following is, I think, a fair sample:
(a) Jones’ table is an old packing case.
(b) The morning star is the evening star.
(c) Duly elected presidents of the United States are commanders-in-chief
of the United States armed forces.
(d) Clouds are masses of water droplets or other particles in suspension.
(e) That table is a cloud of molecules.
(f) Water is H20.
(g) Temperature is mean kinetic energy.
(h) Lightning is an electrical discharge.
But it is not plain what we are to do with these examples. If the point of
putting them before us was merely to remind us of the fact that there are true
contingent identity claims, then they do certainly succeed in this. But we
may have clearly in mind the fact that there are true contingent identity
claims, and yet still feel very unclear as to what (Ti) and (T2) mean. Are
(a) through (h) supposed to shed light on what is meant by (Ti) and
(T2)? How are they to do this? They do not identify states or events. The
subject-terms of (a) through (e) stand for physical objects; “water” stands
for a kind of stuff; “temperature” for a feature of things; and “lightning”—
well, it is hard to say what category lightning falls into, but at all events the
word does not stand for either a state of a thing, or for an event or set of
events.
We could easily construct from each of these a statement asserting identity
between states or events. Thus, for example, from (a):
222 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
(A:) Jones’ table’s being red is an old packing case’s being red,
and
(A2) Events which consist in someone’s painting Jones’ table are events
which consist in someone’s painting an old packing case.
and
(F2) Events which consist in a man’s pouring water are events which con¬
sist in his pouring H20.
But these are useless as aids to the understanding of (Tx) and (T2): for
the capital-letter examples constructed from the small-letter examples in
this way are true if and only if the small-letter ones are true. But is there
supposed to be an analogous small-letter example (t), such that we could
say that the T’s are true if and only if (t) is true? The candidates will have
to have the form:
But if these dots are filled in with “a swelling of a d.c.” (process or event),
or “a swollen state of a d.c.” (state), then (t) itself is the Naive Interpreta¬
tion. And that, as we said, is at best false. No Materialist means to be
putting it forward in putting forward the Identity Thesis.
My point, then, is this: Though (a) through (h) are contingent identity
claims, they do not identify states or events and hence do not shed light
on the meaning of the T’s. By contrast, the A’s and F’s do identify states
and events; but they are true if and only if (a) and (f) are true—and so
if we are to take the analogy seriously, we shall have to say that the T’s
are not true, for (t), the Naive Interpretation, is not true.
There might be an objection to this on the score of (h), and so—and in
view of the fact that it is perhaps the most frequently offered of all these
examples—we ought to digress and take a closer look at it.
“Lightning is an electrical discharge.” Ought we not first ask whether
this is contingent? The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives as its first reading
for “lightning”: “Visible electrical discharge between clouds or cloud and
ground.” But if (h) is analytic, then it certainly would not help in the way
of making the meaning of (Tx) and (T2) any clearer.
There might be an argument as to whether or not the Concise Oxford is
right. But we can sidestep this; we can say that whatever the word does
mean, we are to construe it in (h) as not meaning what the Concise Oxford
says, but instead as meaning “flash of light in the sky.” Or, since not all
flashes of fight in the sky are lightning flashes, “flash of fight in the sky of
kind L.” Or, to avoid the locution “of kind L,” we can instead deal with a
JUDITH JARVIS THOMSON 223
(h*) That flash of light in the sky just now was an electrical discharge.
Now it might be said that while “flash of light” does not seem to stand
for an event, “electrical discharge” does—for we can ask of an electrical
discharge such things as when it took place—and thus that perhaps this
example at any rate escapes the objections I raised to (a) through (h).
But the trouble with (h*) for the Materialist’s purposes is that its truth
on a given occasion is compatible with the truth of: “That flash of light
in the sky just now was caused (or produced) by an electrical discharge.”
Compare (h*) with the following:
(x) That flash of light in the sky just now was a meteor shower.
(y) That sound just now was someone clapping his hands.
(z) That lovely smell in the kitchen now is garlic.
These may on occasion all be said, and said truly. But on any such occasion,
their truth is compatible with the truth of “That flash of light was caused
by a meteor shower,” “Someone’s clapping his hands was what made that
sound,” “Garlic in the stew is what’s responsible for the lovely smell in
the kitchen now.” (Indeed, there may even be some who would want to
say that (x), (y), and (z) are elliptical for the longer causal claims.)
If I am not mistaken, what gets said nowadays is
which are most commonly offered as aids to the understanding of (Ti) and
(T2) do not help us to understand them.
If it were merely a matter of finding a contingent identity claim which
asserts identity between states or events, the difficulty would soon enough
be eliminated, for they are not at all hard to come by. Consider, for example
(J) The sinking of the Titanic was the largest marine disaster ever to occur
in peacetime.6
And
(K) Car crashes which Jones sees from his window are car crashes which
Smith sees from his,
which we can imagine is true. Both of these, I take it, could be said to
assert identity between events. But, as I shall argue, they do not help. I
want to try in this section to give a ground for saying that nothing will.
To begin with, let us go back to (Ti) again. (Ti) said that a man’s
having a toothache is his d.c.’s being swollen. Whatever this may mean,
it is supposed to be an identity and we can presumably operate with it by
the usual rules. So let us notice that “x’s tooth aches” is equivalent to “x has
a toothache,” and therefore, as I take it, we can say that a man’s tooth’s
aching is his having a toothache.7 From this, together with (Ti), there fol¬
lows by transitivity of identity
Similarly, we can say that a man’s tooth’s starting to ache is his starting to
have a toothache; and from this, together with (T2), there follows
(U2) Events which consist in a man’s tooth’s starting to ache are events
which consist in his d.c.’s starting to swell.
So then if (Ti) and (T2) are true, (Ux) and (U2) are true; and a man who
says (Ti) and (T2) should also be ready to say (Ux) and (U2). But what
could a man mean who said these?
(Ux) may be said to be of the form “A’s F-ing is B’s G-ing”; and what
perhaps strikes one first is that, in it,
for a man’s tooth and his d.c. are distinct and different physical objects, and
2. “x is F’ and “x is G” do not entail each other; they are not contin¬
gently identical; they are not even materially equivalent,
The states referred to in (Vx) are states of the same thing, a given man,
and the Materialist’s very point is that the properties “x has a toothache”
JUDITH JARVIS THOMSON 225
and “x has a swollen d.c.” are contingently identical. (They are at least
materially equivalent: By hypothesis, the physiological facts include that
they are.)
But as we said, a man’s tooth’s aching is his having a toothache. We can
surely also say that a man’s having a swollen d.c. is his d.c.’s being swollen.
From these, together with (Vi), we can deduce (Ui) by transitivity of
identity. So, as in the case of (Ti), a man who says (Vi) should also be
ready to say (Ui). If he is not prepared to use the transitivity of identity to
obtain consequences from (Vi), we shall have a right to wonder why he
uses “is”—and indeed, allows his general thesis to be called “The Identity
Thesis.”
To return, then, to (Ui), I mentioned above two features which it pos¬
sesses. There are more which should be noted.
3. Neither F nor G is a relational property.8
4. “A is F” neither entails nor is entailed by “B is G.”
Indeed, we are not to speak of the mental state (the tooth’s aching) and
the physical state (the d.c.’s being swollen) as two; hence we are not to say
that they are two joint effects of a common cause:
6. A’s F-ing and B’s G-ing are not two joint effects of a common cause.
and
(M) Lady Bird’s being First Lady just is Lyndon’s being President,10
and they do get by perfectly well. Nobody boggles when such things are
said.
There is room for argument about this, of course. For example, it might
be said that 6 is not true of them: In both cases what we have is two joint
effects of a common cause. But we need not argue this. Let us ask instead
226 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
what would be the point of saying (L) or (M)? Better, consider a man
who says (L) or (M); shall we not suppose that he thinks there is a reason
why this electrode’s being positively charged “is” (as he puts it) that
electrode’s being negatively charged? An explanation? Perhaps he would
refuse to call it a causal explanation; but does he think that there is an
explanation of some kind or other of the fact he asserts?
The mere possibility of giving an explanation does not by itself rule out
that a claim should be an identity claim. There are identity claims which
may well be true in respect of which it would be in place to ask “How
come?” For example, we might be told that car crashes Jones sees from his
window are all of them car crashes which Smith sees from his. We might
ask “How come?” and be told that it just turns out that way, a sheer
coincidence; but we might instead be told that they are both professional
ambulance chasers and, save while actively chasing ambulances, are both
at their (neighboring) windows all day. So I am not, in other words, going
to argue that if a man says (L) and (M), thinking there is an explanation
of how come this electrode’s being positive “is” (as he puts it) that elec¬
trode’s being negative, how come her being First Lady “is” his being Presi¬
dent, then it follows that he does not make an identity claim or that he
ought not have used the word “is.”
In the case of (M), there plainly is an explanation—namely, that
Lyndon is married to Lady Bird and, by custom, whatever female is
married to the President is First Lady. In the case of (L), there will be
in the right sort of context. The speaker himself might say: “Oh, I thought
you knew. There’s a dilute solution of sulphuric acid in the cell, and . . .
This electrode is copper, and that one is zinc. . . . Now in fact, the copper
dissolves more slowly than the zinc. Up here is a wire connecting the two
electrodes. Etc.” The very point of his using the word “is” might be to
stress that if it is true to say “A is F” it must also be true to say “B is G.”
But now suppose we ask for an explanation in the case of (Ui)? How
come it is a tooth’s aching, and not, for example, a foot’s aching which is
the d.c.’s being swollen? We might be told, “Well, it’s the teeth which are
neurally linked with the d.c.; the feet are not.” But the trouble with this
is that it is not clear how it is supposed to explain what was up for ex¬
plaining. The existence of a neural link between the teeth and the d.c.
would explain why damage to the teeth causes a swelling of the d.c.; the
nonexistence of a neural link between the feet and the d.c. would explain
why damage to the feet does not cause a swelling of the d.c. But how does
that explain why it is the teeth rather than the feet that ache?
This comes out more clearly if we imagine that our question was not
as to why the teeth rather than the feet but instead why an aching rather
than, for example, a prickling. If it is said, “Ah, but you see, the swelling
is of a special kind, kind K,” then it is plain we stand in need of something
to connect achings with swellings of kind K.
JUDITH JARVIS THOMSON 227
This rules out an analogy between (Ui) on the one hand and (L) and
(M) on the other. For we are supposing that one who says (L) or (M)
can give, or at least thinks that there is, an explanation “how come.”
(Ui) is of the form “A’s F-ing is B’s G-ing,” where the replacements
for the variables A, B, F, and G are supposed to be such as to make condi-
228 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
tions 1 through 7 true. I have said nothing yet about (U2), but a similar
thing can be said about it. (U2) is of the form “Events which consist in
A’s starting to F are events which consist in B’s starting to G”—or, more
simply, “A’s starting to F is B’s starting to G”—where A, B, F, and G
are supposed to meet the same conditions 1 through 7. Are there any re¬
spectable identity claims which we would regard as true of which either of
these two things can be said? Pretty plainly the two event identity claims
(J) and (K) which I gave at the beginning of this section cannot be so
described, for they are not of the right form.
Suppose someone were to say
(K*) Jones’ seeing a car crash from his (Jones’) window is Smith’s seeing a
car crash from his (Smith’s) window.
As a form of words, this would probably get by. But what could a man
mean by it, if he also says that 1 through 7 are true of it? If he says that
5, 6, and 7 are true of it, then we cannot suppose he means to be pointing
to a causal connection between Jones’ seeing a car crash and Smith’s see¬
ing a car crash; indeed, he must say that so far as is known it just happens
that Jones’ seeing a car crash “is” Smith’s seeing a car crash. So his remark
cannot be supposed to have the point which we imagined (L) and (M) to
have. But then what could he mean to be saying?
I am inclined to think that we can only understand what he says if we
suppose him to be saying no more than that whenever Jones sees a car
crash from his (Jones’) window, Smith sees a car crash from his (Smith’s)
window. And that if he rejects this—if he says, “No, I don’t mean ‘when¬
ever’; I said ‘is,’ and I meant ‘is’ ”—then we shall simply not understand
what he means.
It could perhaps be put like this. Presumably (K*) will not be true unless
“Whenever Jones sees a car crash from his (Jones’) window, Smith sees
a car crash from his (Smith’s) window” is true; i.e., presumably (K*)
entails the correlation-statement. But if (K*) is to mean something more
than the correlation-statement, we shall have to suppose it is not entailed
by it. So the correlation-statement could be true and (K*) false. But in
view of the way in which we must regard (K*), 1 through 7 being true of
it, what could be lacking to make it true if it is given that the correlation-
statement is true? Suppose it a coincidence that whenever Jones sneezes,
Smith coughs; under what conditions would it be true to say “Jones’ sneezing
is Smith’s coughing,” and under what (different) conditions would it be
true to say “Admittedly whenever Jones sneezes, Smith coughs, but it is
not the case that Jones’ sneezing is Smith’s coughing?”
So far as I can see there is no way in which it could be proved that a
man who said (K*), and said that 1 through 7 are true of it, could mean
no more by what he said than just that whenever Jones sees a car
crash . . . , Smith sees a car crash. . . . But at the same time, we can
JUDITH JARVIS THOMSON 229
surely say this: Pending our being given an account of what more could
be meant, we are entitled to the suspicion that nothing more is meant.
My point, then, is this. (Ui) has a certain form, and 1 through 7 can
be said of it. But—pending further explanations on the part of the Material¬
ists—it looks as if no claim which is like (Ui) in this respect can be any¬
thing more than a report of a correlation—whatever it may purport to
identify, whatever kind of thing it may say “is” thus and such other kind
of thing. If I am right, then, in the absence of further explanation, in the
absence of an account of how claims like (Ux) in this way can be con¬
strued as anything more than reports of correlations, we have a right to a
suspicion that (Ui) would have to be construed as a report of a correla¬
tion too.
What we began with was (Ti) and (T2); and I said of them that it is
not plain on the face of it what a man could mean who said them. Nor
was it plain on the face of it what a man could mean by (Vi) and (V2).
The Materialist did not mean merely to be saying that whenever a certain
kind of mental event takes place, a certain kind of bodily event takes place;
he wants to say that the one is the other—(Ti), (T2), (Vi), (V2) are to
assert identity. (Tx), for example, is supposed to say something stronger
than just that whenever a man has a toothache, his d.c. is swollen. We
noted, however, that a man’s tooth’s aching is his having a toothache; we
can say that it is this and not merely that it is correlated with this. So if
(T'i) is stronger than a mere correlation-report, (Ui) ought to be so too,
identity being transitive. Thus the ground there is for thinking that (Ui)
cannot be more than a correlation-report will also be ground for thinking
that (Ti) cannot be more than a correlation-report. And similarly for
(T2), (Vi), and (V2). The difficulty which faces a man who says (Ui)
is also a difficulty for a man who says these other things.
It remains to call to the reader’s attention the fact that there is not going
to be any move comparable to this in the case of the K’s. (K), it will be
remembered, was: “Car crashes which Jones sees from his window are
car crashes which Smith sees from his.” Surely no remarks about event-
identity ought to have as a consequence that this is not an identity claim;
what this says is not that the crashes are correlated with each other but
precisely that they are the same. (K*) was “Jones’ seeing a car crash from
his window is Smith’s seeing a car crash from his window,” and I said that
if we are to suppose 1 through 7 are true of it, it looks as if (K*) cannot
say any more than that whenever Jones sees a car crash from his window,
Smith sees one from his. But the fact (if it is a fact) that this is true of
(K*) does not make trouble for (K), for there is no move from (K)
to (K*) analogous to the one I made from (Ti) to (Ui). A man’s tooth’s
aching is his having a toothache; from this together with (Ti) we can
obtain (Ui) by transitivity of identity. From (K) together with “Jones’
seeing a car crash is a car crash which Jones sees” and “A car crash which
230 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
Smith sees is Smith’s seeing a car crash,” we can obtain (K*) by transitivity
of identity. But the quoted statements are surely at best false. Jones’ seeing
a car crash is not a car crash at all, and hence a fortiori not a car crash
which Jones sees. No car crash is Smith’s seeing a car crash, and hence
a fortieri no car crash which Smith sees is Smith’s seeing a car crash.
.
4 On p. 225,1 merely mentioned, but did not discuss an important con¬
dition on F and G, namely 3: Neither F nor G is a relational property.
This condition is important; if it is omitted, then there may well be re¬
placements for the variables which give what look to be quite respectable
identity claims. Suppose, for example, that the relation which Henry most
fears to have to anyone is “being hated by.” And suppose Sarah hates
Henry. Then I think we can say that Sarah’s hating Henry is (strictly
speaking the very same state of affairs as) Henry’s having to Sarah that
relation which he most fears to have to anyone. (For his having that rela¬
tion to her is, as a matter of fact, his being hated by her; and this is
equivalent to her hating him.) It might be argued that even 7 could be
supposed true of this example.
So it might perhaps be said that the Materialist need merely restate the
Identity Thesis. I have all along been construing it as the thesis that
mental states and events are brain states and events. But perhaps it should
read: Mental states and events are brain-and-body states and events. In
particular, that (Uj) and (U2) be replaced by
(Wj) A man’s tooth’s aching is his d.c.’s having relation R to that tooth
and
(W2) Events which consist in a man’s tooth’s starting to ache are events
which consist in his d.c.’s starting to have R to that tooth.
Only one of the two predicates in (Wx) is relational, but perhaps there
might be found examples of this kind along the lines of the Henry-Sarah
example of the preceding paragraph.
But in fact it really will not help to reput the Identity Thesis in this form.
To begin with, consider (W2). One thing we can surely say is that for
(W2) to be true, it must be that whatever is the time—say t—at which
the tooth starts to ache must also be the time at which the d.c. starts to
have relation R to the tooth. I am not saying that it is always possible to
date the start of a toothache precisely; I am saying only that whatever the
time assigned to the start of the toothache would have also to be the time
of the start of the d.c.’s having R to the tooth. It seems reasonable to
suppose that event E cannot be identical with event E' unless E and E'
are contemporaneous.
What relation shall we say the d.c. starts to have to the tooth at t, with
which we can identify the tooth’s starting to ache at t? A tooth is drilled
or chilled or damaged in some way; this causes a “message” (an electrical
JUDITH JARVIS THOMSON 231
be identified. And I said that we should imagine that what happens (rele¬
vant to the tooth’s aching) at t is that the d.c. starts to swell; since the
required event must be relational, I then went on to give further charac¬
terizations of this starting to swell such that under those descriptions the
event was relational. In other words, I picked out as what happens in the
brain a nonrelational event, the d.c.’s swelling, and then proceeded to con¬
struct a relational event from it by further characterizing it. But then of
course the conclusion would follow: A further characterized X is still an X.
If we have the patience to see this point through to the bitter end, we
could try to imagine that the tooth’s starting to ache at t is just the d.c.’s
starting to have R to the tooth—there being no nonrelational event at t
of which it would be true to say that the starting to ache is that event
taking place. But other things would have to be added too. For what is
supposed to happen at (as it might be) t-plus-five-minutes when the tooth
stops aching? The tooth need not be doing anything relevant to the ceasing-
to-ache at t-plus-five; if the messages take a long time to reach the d.c.,
the tooth might have stopped sending messages long before t-plus-five.
Moreover, toothaches can pulsate, they can wax and wane; we should have
to imagine that this “purely” relational state of the d.c. and tooth can do
so too.
We can invent odd relations—I see no good ground for refusing to call
them “relations” which do meet these conditions. Suppose that John and
Henry stand in front of a mirror, and Henry smiles at them both for a full
five minutes and then stops—say he starts to smile at t-minus-fifteen and
stops at t-minus-ten. Then at t precisely John and Henry will acquire the
following relation to each other: were jointly being smiled on in a mirror
by Henry exactly fifteen minutes ago. They continue to have this relation to
each other until t-plus-five, and then cease to have it. Their acquiring this
relation to each other and then ceasing to have it is not a matter of any
contemporaneous activities of either of them; we might imagine they fainted
as Henry ceased to smile and have been lying there unchanged ever since.
Moreover, we can even give a sense to talk of their relation waxing and
waning between t and t-plus-five, viz. that Henry’s smile grew broader and
then shrank to a smirk.
In fact I am inclined to think that this is precisely the sort of relation R
would have to be: the d.c.’s having R to the tooth will have to consist in
the tooth’s having done something (sent a message) in the past; variations
in the relational state of the d.c. will have to consist in variations in what the
tooth was doing (variations in the messages) in the past.
But then on this construal of it, the Identity Thesis would commit us to
saying that a present tooth’s aching consists in a past activity of a tooth;
and that present variations in the ache consist in past variations in the
activity of a tooth. Not just that they are causally explainable by these
things in the past, but that they are these things in the past. Could there
JUDITH JARVIS THOMSON 233
There seems to be no reason why there should not be some cerebral mechanism
which associates the pains that come from point A of the body with the cerebral
mechanism involved in, for example, perception and kinaesthesis of point A.
There may just be a tendency to move point A, to direct our eyes toward A, and
so on. To say that the pain is “in” point A is just to give expression to these
tendencies. Indeed, for these who have acquired language, one of these tend¬
encies may just be to say to oneself “in my thumb,” or whatever it may be.
The pain may “touch off” the words.
NOTES
1. I am grateful to Jaegwon Kim for helpful criticism.
2. Reprinted in The Philosophy of Mind, ed. V. C. Chappell. Prentice-Hall, Engle¬
wood Cliffs, N. J., 1962.
3. Op. cit., p. 168.
4. I say “supposed to be” because it is highly dubious whether any scientific
simplification really is achieved by this move. Cf. Richard B. Brandt, “Doubts about
the Identity Theory,” in Dimensions of Mind, ed. Sidney Hook, and the detailed
and very good discussion of this matter in Jaegwon Kim, “On the Psycho-Physical
Identity Theory,” American Philosophical Quarterly, July 1966. The fundamental
points are to be found in the indispensable and by now classic chapter on “The
Reduction of Theories,” in Ernest Nagel’s The Structure of Science.
5. Op. cit., p. 162.
6. From Thomas Nagel, “Physicalism,” Philosophical Review, July 1965. If I
am not mistaken, this is the only example in the literature on the Identity Thesis
which is a contingent identity claim about events.
7. It might be argued that “X’s tooth aches” is not equivalent to “X has a tooth¬
ache” on the ground that a man could have a toothache though he has no teeth.
But (a) it really is not plain that lack of teeth makes more trouble for “My teeth
ache” than it does for “I have a toothache.” And (b), if it does, the discussion
throughout this paper can be explicitly restricted to men who have all their teeth.
Let “X is a toothful” mean “X is a man who has all his teeth.” Should not the
Identity Thesis be true of toothfuls as well as of the rest of us? But “X is a toothful
and X’s tooth aches” is surely equivalent to “X is a toothful and X has a toothache,”
and so a toothful’s tooth’s aching is his having a toothache.
8. Cf. section 4 below.
9. Example from Jerry Feder.
10. Example from James Thomson.
11. Cf. note 4, above.
12. J. J. C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism, p. 104.
EXTENSIVE MEASUREMENT WHEN
CONCATENATION IS RESTRICTED AND
MAXIMAL ELEMENTS MAY EXIST'
R. Duncan Luce2 and A. A. J. Marley3
1. INTRODUCTION
and third, any other assignment having the first two properties differs from
cp only by a positive multiplicative factor, i.e., the family of representations
forms a ratio scale.
Systematic discussions of these ideas have been given by, among others,
Campbell (1920, 1928), Nagel (1932), Suppes (1951), and Suppes and
Zinnes (1963).
Among the various idealizations embodied in the traditional theory of ex-
235
236 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
2. THE AXIOMS
1. R weakly orders A.
2. If (x,y)eB and (xoy,z)eB, then (y,z)eB, (x,yoz)eB, and (xoy)ozRxo-
(yoz).
3. If (x,z)eB and xRy, then (z,y)eB and xozRzoy.
4. If not xRy, then there exists an element y-xeA such that (x,y-x)eB,
yRxo(y-x), and xo(y-x)Ry.
5. Let n be a positive integer. For n=l, define lx = x. For n > 1, if
(n-l)x is defined and ((n-1 )x,x)eB, then define nx=(n-l)xox. For
all non-maximal yeA and all xeA, the set
(n|n is a positive integer and yRnx)
is finite.
A = {a,b,c,d,e},
B = {(e,e), (d,e), (e,d), (c,e), (e,c)},
o:eoe = c, doe = eod — b, coe = eoc = a,
R:aIbPcIdPe,
where P and I have their usual meanings and R includes all implications
that follow from transitivity. It is routine to see that the axioms are fulfilled,
that if satisfies
Throughout this and the next section we assume the first four Axioms of
Definition 2 and the property (stated in the Corollary to Theorem 2) that
not xRxoy. Axiom 5 is not used again until Section 6, and then only once.
Lemma 5. If (x,u), (y,u)eB and xouRyou, then xRy.
Proof. Suppose, on the contrary, not xRy, then by Axiom 4, ylxo(y-x).
Thus, xouRyouIxo(y-x)ouI(xou)o(y-x), which contradicts the Corollary
to Theorem 2. QED
Lemma 6. If (x,y)eB, xPu, and yPv, then (x-u,y-v)eB and (x-u)o(y-v)
I(xoy-uov).
Proof. By the definitions of x-u and y-v and Theorem 1, xR(x-u) and
yR(y-v), and so by Lemma 1 (x-u,y-v)eB. By Lemmas 1, 2, and 3,
So, by Lemma 1,
But, by definition,
If the former, then it with yRy implies, by Lemma 1, that (y,y)eB. If the
latter, (x,x)eB. QED
Corollary. If eRx and eRy, then (x,y)eB.
Lemma 9. If eRx, eRy, eRz, xoyPe, and yoxPe, then xo(yoz-e)I-
(xoy-e)oz.
Proof. Since eoeRxoyI(xoy-e)oe, Lemma 5 yields eR(xoy-e). Similarly,
eR(yoz-e). Hence by the Corollary to Lemma 8, the asserted concatenations
exist. Let u=e-y. If uRz, then by Lemma 1 we obtain eluoyRzoy, con¬
trary to assumption; so zPu. By the definition of z-u, xozIxo(z-u)ou,
and so by the definition of xoz-u, (xoz-u)Ixo(z-u). From the Corollary
to Lemma 6, (z-u)I(yoz-uoy)I(yoz-e); hence by Lemma 1, (xoz-u)
Ixo(yoz-e). In a similar manner, (xoz-u)I(xoy-e)oz, and the result
follows by Axiom 1. QED
Lemma 10. If eRx, eRy, eRz, xoyPe, and eRyoz, then (x,yoz)eB,
xoyozPe, and (xoy-e)ozl(xoyoz-e).
Proof. From eRyoz and eRx, the Corollary to Lemma 8 shows that
(x,yoz)eB. Moreover, if eRxoyoz, then Theorem 1 yields eRxoy, contrary
to assumption. Finally
Note that * is well defined since, by the Corollary to Lemma 8, eRx and
eRy imply (x,y) eB; and if xoyPe then eR(xoy-e) since the converse,
(xoy-e)Pe, leads to the contradiction
and
[m + n + p,xoyoz] if eRyoz and eRxoyoz
[m+n + p + l,xo(yoz-e)] if yozPe and eRxo(yoz-e)
(m,x)*[(n,y)*(p,z)] if eRyoz and xoyozPe
[m+n + p +1 ,xoyoz-e]
[m+n+p + 2,xo (yoz-e) -e] if yozPe and xo( yoz-e )Pe
(m+n,xoy) if eRxoy
(m,x)*(n,y)
(m + n +1 ,xoy-e) if xoyPe.
If xoyPe, then m + n+l > m and we are done. If eRxoy, the same argu¬
ment holds if n > 0. If n = 0, then (m,x)*(0,y)Pe(m,x) because xoyPx
by the Corollary to Theorem 2.
7. Suppose that (m,x)Re(n,y). Choose any integer k such that kn > m,
then
(k+l)(n,y)Re(kn,y)Re(m,x). QED
Throughout this section we deal only with the systems that result by
treating as elements the equivalence classes under, respectively, the equiv¬
alence relations I and Ie. Letters from the begining of the alphabet will be
used to denote these classes and = replaces I and Ie; e denotes both the
244 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
element of Definition 3 and its equivalence class. We now invoke all five
axioms of Definition 2 plus the assumption of no maximal elements.
Definition 4. The subsystem a'e = <A'e, B'e, R'e,*'> of ae is defined by.
c = ceoNce
= aeobeo(Na + Nb)e,
c - ceoNce
= (aeobe-c)o(Na + Nb + l)e
= (aeobe)o(Na + Nb)e.
R. DUNCAN LUCE and A. A. J. MARLEY 245
But, by Lemma 6,
Proof. Suppes (1951) proved the existence of such a function for any
system fulfilling his axioms, in particular for ae. The restriction of it to a'e
transformed isomorphically by Theorem 4 to a completes the proof. QED
Theorem 6. If 9 and ip are two functions fulfilling Theorem 5, then there
exists a constant a > o such that 9 = <x\p.
Proof. With no loss of generality, we may suppose that 9(e) = t^(e) = 1 and
then show 9 = ty. Suppose that 9(x)^(jj(x), then since xeoNxeIx, we see
immediately that <p(xe)y^ip(xe). But since in ae, 9(n,x) = n + 9(x), this
implies non-unique additive scales on ae, contrary to Suppes’ uniqueness
theorem. QED
Theorem 7. If < A,B,R,o > is an extensive system with no element that
is maximal relative to R and o, and if B is finite, then one, and so an infinity,
of the representations of Theorem 5 is into the positive integers.
Proof. Since B is finite, so is the set
one element a that is maximal relative to R and o. Let A' be A with all
maximal elements deleted, R' be the restriction of R to A, B = {(x,y)|
x,y«A', (x,y)eB,xoyeA'}, and o' be the restriction of o to B'. Then if A' and
B' are both non-empty, < A',B',R',o' > is an extensive system with no
maximal element.
Proof. We need only check the axioms of Def. 2, and it is clear that they
are all satisfied except, possibly, 4. It could fail if, in the original system,
al(y-x). In that case, however, yIxo(y-x)IxoaIa, which contradicts the
choice of y«A'. QED
Theorem 9. Suppose that < A,B,R,o > is an extensive system with at
least one element a that is maximal relative to R and o. Let < A',B',R',o' >
be defined as in Theorem 8, suppose that A' and B' are non-empty, and let
C be any positive real number.
1. If there exist u,veA' such that (u,v)eB and uovRa, then there exists a
positive real-valued function <p on A such that for all x,yeA,
2. If for all x,y«A', (x,y)eB implies not xoyRa, then there exists a positive
real-valued function $ on A such that for all x,y«A
uovIaPxIuo(x-u),
from which it follows that vR(x-u) since the contrary leads to a contra¬
diction by Axiom 3. So, by properties of cp,
2. Define
Since tanh is strictly monotonic increasing and < 1, it is clear that parts
i and ii hold. Using elementary properties of tanh, part iii follows for those
x,yeA' for which (x,y)eB since, by assumption, (x,y)«B'. If (x,y)eB and
either x or yla, then by Theorem 2, xoyla, and by substituting $(a) = C in
both sides of part iii we see that it still holds. QED
Property 2, iii of Theorem 9 is the well-known formula for the relativistic
“addition” of velocities. It is obvious from the proof of part 1 that an
additive representation also exists if one is willing to assign oo to a maximal
element (in the case of velocity, that of light) and extend + in the usual
way. Such a representation of velocity fails, however, to have the property
that velocity equals the distance traversed divided by the time it takes. Evi¬
dently, physicists have preferred to retain the latter derived property and
to sacrifice the simple additive representation of concatenation. Perhaps
non-additive representations should be kept in mind in other sciences, even
when additive ones exist.
In the same vein, it is important to recognize that the representation given
in part 2 of Theorem 9 is by no means the only one possible—it is simply
the one that has arisen in the theory of relativity. Specifically, let f be any
monotonic increasing function that maps the positive reals onto the open
interval (0,C) with the property that there exists a function F of two
variables such that f(x + y) = F[f(x),f(y)]. Then
has properties 2,i and 2,ii of Theorem 8 and property 2,iii is replaced by:
<b(xoy) = F[<F(x),0(y)].
NOTES
1. We are endebted to Patrick Suppes for his critical comments on earlier drafts
and, in particular, for his suggestion that Theorem 7 be proved.
2. The first author worked on the problem both at the University of Pennsylvania
and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. During the earlier
phase he received partial support from National Science Foundation Grant GB-1462
to the University of Pennsylvania, and during the later phase he was a National
Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellow.
3. The second author was a Fellow of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in
Science at the University of California, Berkeley, during the period of this work.
REFERENCES
Aczel, J. Lectures on junctional equations and their applications. New
York: Academic Press, 1966.
Behrend, F. A. “A contribution to the theory of magnitudes and the founda¬
tion of analysis,” Math. Zeit., 1956, 63, pp. 345-362.
Campbell, N. R. An account of the principles of measurement and calcula¬
tion. London: Longmans, Green, 1928.
R. DUNCAN LUCE and A. A. J. MARLEY 249
• ' •
CAUSATION AND ACTION
Morton White
The question whether human actions are causally connected with choices
and motives is at least as old as the debate over free will and determinism.
Some philosophers have analyzed a voluntary action as one caused by a
choice; others have analyzed it as one which would not have been performed
if the agent had chosen not to perform it; and still other philosophers, with
no explicit metaphysical axe to grind, have asserted that an action may be
causally explained by citing a choice or a character trait. In all of these
cases it has been argued, and I think correctly, that a causal connection is
asserted, either by means of a “because” statement like “He did that because
he chose to do it,” or by means of a contrary-to-fact conditional like “He
would have done that if he had chosen to do it.” In its logical features the
first sort of statement is said to resemble “This match lit because it was
struck,” and the second to resemble “That match would have lit if it had
been struck.” It has also been correctly argued that we make causal state¬
ments when we cite a state or condition rather than an event in the ante¬
cedent of a “because” statement or in the antecedent of a contrary-to-fact
conditional. We may say “He did that because he was a generous man” or
“He would have done that if he had been a generous man,” just as we may
say “That match lit because it was dry.” Finally, all of these causal state¬
ments have been analyzed, also correctly in my opinion, so as to reveal their
logical connections with laws of nature. Those who accept the view that I
have been outlining may hold different opinions about the detailed features
of those logical connections, but such philosophers are nevertheless banded
together in a Humean community which seems to me to be on the right track.
Arrayed against that community there has always been a vocal group of
distinguished philosophers who implicitly or explicitly reject the view that
choices and actions are causally connected, as well as the view that actions
may be causally explained in a manner that requires appeal to laws. But in
recent times they have come to sing their song in a particularly alluring and
even sirenic manner by using certain techniques of linguistic philosophy. In
this paper, therefore, I wish to address myself to certain widely accepted
contemporary criticisms which are calculated to undermine the view out¬
lined in the first paragraph above.
250
MORTON WHITE 251
into execution. I also disagree with Austin when he says that he would
certainly not understand the sentence to mean that “if I had made a certain
choice, my making that choice would have caused me to do something.”2
To explain these disagreements I should first of all point out what I
do not think Austin denied, namely that a contrary-to-fact conditional
in the third person, like “If that powder had come in contact with a lit
match, it would have exploded,” makes no assertion about the character
of the powder, like “That powder is dry,” but it does imply that there are
features of the powder which, with the feature expressed by “That powder
came into contact with a lit match,” make up a conjunction that is con¬
nected by law with the feature expressed by “That powder exploded.”3
One of those features may, of course, be the dryness of the powder, but this
is compatible with the contention that the dryness of the powder is not
asserted by the contrary-to-fact conditional in question. We may now go
further and say that the sentence “If that powder had come in contact
with a lit match, it would (jolly well) have exploded” is just as causal as
the same sentence without the “jolly well,” and that even the sentence
with the “jolly well” does not assert that the powder was dry. We may now
go still further and say that when I make the first-person statement, “If
I had chosen to walk a mile in twenty minutes this morning I should (jolly
well) have done so,” there is still no more than the implication that there
are features of a certain kind. There is no more assertion of my having
strength of character here than there is of my having had a good sleep
the night before. In short, it seems to me that Austin, the past master of non-
causal first-person sentences, has not in this instance produced one that
is not causal. Both it and its third-person analogue about the powder fail
to assert that an individual has a particular characteristic like strength
of character or dryness, and both may have “jolly well” added to them
for emphasis and remain causal in character.
I grant of course that there are other first-person conditional sentences
which Austin rightly describes as not being causal, but these other ones
do not count against Moore’s view. Consider, for example, what Austin
says about “I shall (do it) if I choose (to do it)” in an effort to show that
it is not causal. I think he is right when he contrasts it with “I shall ruin him
if I am extravagant” by pointing out that while the latter contains a causal
“if,” the former does not because it makes good sense to stress the “shall”
in the former but not in the latter.4 But this difference disappears when
we turn to the third-person counterparts of these sentences: “He will run
a mile in twenty minutes if he chooses” and “He (Smith) will ruin (Jones)
if he (Smith) is extravagant,” and therefore Austin can no longer use his
argument about stress in order to distinguish these two sentences. I am
sure that Moore would have used third-person illustrations throughout his
discussion of free will had he anticipated the irrelevant criticism that “I
MORTON WHITE 253
II
And once we see that we can assert “This match lit because it was dry”
without implying that all dry matches light, we can also see that we can
assert “That man gave one quarter of his salary to the United Fund because
he is a generous man” without implying, to use Mrs. Foot’s words, “that
where the character trait can be predicated the action will invariably
follow.”8 If what I have called the less vulnerable version of the regularity
analysis of singular “because” ‘ statements is adopted, we may regard
statements like “That man gave one quarter of his salary to the United
Fund because he is generous” as causal and logically linked with laws,
only the link is more complex than that envisioned by what may be called
a simpleminded advocate of the regularity theory.
We need not pause very long to show that this view allows us to see
why singular “because” statements which refer to traits in their antecedents
and events in their consequents are perfectly respectable causal statements.
Moreover, we can see by inspecting ordinary language that it is false to
say that an event can happen only because of an event. An automobile
accident may have taken place because of the icy condition of the road
and, as we now see, this may be true without its following that where
iciness can be predicated of a road on which automobiles are traveling,
automobile accidents invariably follow.
Ill
“That match lit because it was dry.” Mrs. Foot holds that in some cases
“finding the motive will be . . . described as finding what was being done—
finding, for instance, that someone was taking revenge”10in say, striking
a person. Then, if the question is “Why did he strike her?” the answer may
be “In striking her he was taking revenge on her.” How, now, do we find
out whether he was taking revenge on her? According to Mrs. Foot, “We
should take it that a man’s motive was revenge if we discovered that he was
intentionally harming someone and that his doing so was conditional on
his believing that that person had injured him.”11 But if this is how we
discover that he was taking revenge on her, then the statement “He was
taking revenge on her” is either logically equivalent to or supported by
a causal statement, namely, “He intentionally harmed her because he
believed that she had injured him.” And this is what I have called crypto¬
determinism, for I do not see any plausible interpretation of “His harming
her was conditional on his believing that she had injured him” which does
not show it to be causal in precisely the sense in which “That match lit
because it was struck” and “That match lit because it was dry” are. In short,
the statement in which we explain the action by citing a motive is either
causal or supported by a causal statement. If this is so, then Mrs. Foot has
certainly not succeeded in excluding causal knowledge from our explanation
of an action by citing a motive. She tacitly admits that in certain cases
a person who explains an action by citing a motive must or may show that
the agent did something because he believed something. Why, then, should
we not conclude that the statement “In striking her he was taking revenge
on her” made in answer to the question “Why did he strike her?” is
equivalent to “He struck her because he believed that she had injured him,”
in which case an explanation which assigns a motive to an action is obviously
causal. It may not “bring the action under a law” in a simple way but it
implies the existence of a law just as “That match lit because it was
struck” and “That match lit because it was dry” do. How else were the
believing and the striking related if the latter was conditional on the
former?
IV
But where motives are intentions it is clear that they cannot be determining
causes; for intending to do X and being ready to take the steps thought necessary
to do X are connected not empirically but analytically. A man cannot be said
to have an intention unless he is reconciled to what he believes to be the in¬
termediate steps. We cannot speak as if the intention were something which
could be determined first, and “being ready to take the necessary steps” were a
second stage following on the first.12
What is being claimed here? The action is his going to the Oxford
station last night. His intention (and his motive) was to take a train to
London. So we may say “Jones went to the Oxford station last night because
Jones had the intention of taking a train to London.” Now even the most
hardened and confident user of that difficult term “analytic” cannot say
that this statement is analytic on the ground that intending to take a train
to London and being ready to take the steps thought necessary to take a
train to London are connected analytically. Presumably the statement which
Mrs. Foot believes is analytic is (A), “Because Jones intended last night
to take a train to London, Jones was ready last night to take the steps he
thought necessary to take a train to London.” But surely the analyticity
of (A) does not imply the analyticity of (B), “Because Jones intended
last night to take a train to London, Jones went to the Oxford station
last night.” To show the analyticity of (B), one would have to assert not
only that (A) is analytic but also assert the analyticity of (C), “Because
Jones was ready last night to take the steps he thought necessary to take
a train to London, he went to the Oxford station last night.” And surely
(C) is not analytic. It is logically possible that Jones was ready to take
the steps he thought necessary to take a train to London and yet did not
go to the Oxford station.
Once we point out that Mrs. Foot has made a fallacious inference from
the analyticity of (A) to the analyticity of (B), we have undercut the
contention that explaining Jones’ action last night by citing his intention
must be done in an analytic rather than a synthetic statment. The most that
she has shown is that his having the intention to take a train to London
and his being ready to take steps necessary to take a train to London are
analytically connected. However, we were not concerned to explain his
readiness to do something, but his doing something last night. Moreover,
as we have seen, even though the intention in question and the readiness in
question be connected analytically, the intention and the action are con¬
nected synthetically if the statement of readiness to do something of a
certain kind does not analytically imply a statement that an action of that
kind has been performed.
Other philosophers have used the concept of analyticity or something
close to it in an effort to refute what I have earlier called the Humean view
MORTON WHITE 257
he would climb the Matterhorn the next day” logically implies “He climbed
the Matterhorn the next day.” William James seems to have thought
that on certain occasions “p” was the case because “p” had been believed
by him to be the case. Are we to say that “James climbed the Matterhorn
on January 1, 1891, because James believed that he would climb the
Matterhorn on January 1, 1891” is analytic? Surely James’s belief that
he would perform a certain action was not logically connected with, and
could have been causally connected with, his performing that action even
though we might say that the belief-sentence in question could not be
understood unless the nonbelief-sentence contained in it as a part was
understood.
I am inclined to think that the situation is similar in the case of choice-
sentences, which are, I might add in passing, intensional contexts as belief-
sentences are. “She chose to walk a mile in twenty minutes yesterday” may
be construed as meaning the same as “She chose for it to be the case
that she walked a mile in twenty minutes yesterday.” But surely this does
not logically imply “She walked a mile in twenty minutes yesterday.”
Choices are often frustrated. And that is why we cannot argue that the first
sentence cannot causally imply the second sentence by pointing out that
we cannot understand the first without understanding the second. Even
if it be true that we cannot understand the choice-sentence without under¬
standing the action-sentence, the choice-sentence may causally imply the
action-sentence.
If I am correct, Professor Melden has failed to see the difference between
the implications of saying that you cannot understand the logical con¬
junction “She washed her hair yesterday and she walked a mile in twenty
minutes yesterday” without understanding its second conjunct, and the
implications of saying that you cannot understand “She chose for it to be
the case that she walked a mile in twenty minutes yesterday” without
understanding “She walked a mile in twenty minutes yesterday.” In the
former case the fact that you cannot understand the longer sentence with¬
out understanding the shorter one may entitle you to say that the longer
logically implies the shorter but in the latter case this is not so. Perhaps this
also shows why one might well be leary about defining “analytic” in terms of
the notion of not being able to understand one expression without under¬
standing another. Those who are not leary about this might also ponder the
fact that you cannot understand “A or 5” without understanding “A.”
Does it follow that “If A or B, then A” is analytic? Obviously not. This
example shows, of course, that we need not cite intensional contexts in
order to refute the view under consideration. Intensional contexts form
only a subclass of those that do not behave as Melden might like them to
behave. Think also of “If not -A, then A.'”
In conclusion I should say that I have focused on the particular arguments
I have chosen to rebut, not only because they have been advanced by
MORTON WHITE 259
serious philosophers from whose work I have learned much, but also
because they seem to me to reflect styles of argument that are more popular
in contemporary philosophy than they are effective. They illustrate, I
believe, three unfortunate tendencies in recent philosophy: an excessive
reliance on the supposedly eye-opening features of first-person sentences,
an excessively narrow view of the regularity theory of causal explanation,
and a deplorable looseness in most philosophical talk about the analytic,
the synthetic, and allied notions.
NOTES
1. J. L. Austin, “Ifs and Cans,” Philosophical Papers (Oxford, 1961), p. 156.
2. Ibid., p. 157.
3. See Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast (Indianapolis, Second Edi¬
tion, 1965), chapter 1.
4. Austin, p. 159.
5. Ibid., p. 161.
6. Philippa Foot, “Free Will as Involving Determinism,” Philosophical Review,
LXVI (1957), pp. 439-450.
7. See my Foundations of Historical Knowledge (New York, 1965), chapter III.
8. Foot, op. cit., p. 441.
9. Ibid., p. 447.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 444.
13. A. I. Melden, Free Action (London, 1961), p. 53.
14. Ibid., p. 203.
SOME EMPIRICAL ASSUMPTIONS IN
MODERN PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE1
Noam Chomsky
be evaluated in terms of its own goals and interests, but simply to point
out that there is, for the moment, no more reason to give it the general des¬
ignation “theory of learning” than to give this designation to molecular
biology (which at least has the merit of occupying itself with fundamental
questions rather than with phenomena and processes which may very well
be quite marginal in normal learning or behavior).
Similarly, the commonly voiced argument that the basic questions are
begged in a nonempiricist account also seems to me entirely without sub¬
stance. How the mind reached its present state of structure and organiza¬
tion is, of course, a fair question, though it is one that can hardly be posed
in any sensible way until we have achieved some understanding of the
nature of that structure and organization. But the particular assumptions
of, let us say, a theory that attributes certain ideas and principles to the mind
as an innate property do not beg that question any more or less than the
conflicting assumptions of the empiricist theory of mind. Of no greater
substance is the argument that whatever innate structure there may be de¬
veloped through evolutionary mechanisms, so that the empiricist approach
is still basically correct, though on the phylogenetic level.2 For one thing,
even if the notion of “development through evolutionary mechanisms” can
be made moderately precise and the claims of “phylogenetic empiricism”
verified in terms of this now clear concept, the whole matter would have
nothing to do with the question of origin of knowledge or belief in the case
of a given organism. Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that this
notion is, for the present, almost empty, and with it, the claims of “phylo¬
genetic empiricism”; it is, in fact, perfectly possible that the innate struc¬
ture of mind is determined by principles of organization, by physical condi¬
tions, even by physical laws that are now quite unknown, and that such
notions as “random mutation” and “natural selection” are as much a
cover for ignorance as the somewhat analogous notions of “trial and error,”
“conditioning,” “reinforcement,” and “association.” It is not that these
notions do not have a clear interpretation under certain restricted condi¬
tions; what is in question is their significance when extended, in a purely
metaphorical way, well beyond the restricted conditions in which they have
been studied in many careful and important investigations.
Finally, certain essentially terminological objections might be raised
against alternatives that have been proposed to an empiricist hypothesis.
For example, there is evidence that the most primitive interpretation of
visual phenomena by human infants makes use of the basic perceptual
constancies, but one might ask whether the phrase “innate knowledge of
the properties of objects in three-dimensional space” is one that should
be used in describing the presumably innate schematism that underlies
these abilities. In general, there is no refined or sufficiently elaborate
terminology available for dealing with the “infinite amount of knowledge
of which we are not always conscious,” of which Leibniz spoke, or with
NOAM CHOMSKY 263
“theory” are distinct systems. The point is too obvious to press, but it is,
nevertheless, difficult to see how Quine distinguishes the two in his frame¬
work. In fact, throughout the discussion, he seems to use the terms inter¬
changeably. For example, in Chapter 1, he discusses the learning of
language in general terms, exemplifies it by an example from chemical
theory leading up to the statement just quoted, then seemingly describes
the “vast verbal structure” so constructed, the associative network that
constitutes one’s knowledge of sciences (“and indeed everything we ever
say about the world”), as both the “body of theory” that one accepts and
the language that one learns. Thus the discussion of how one constructs
and uses a total theory of this sort concludes with the following statement:
Since this comment merely summarizes the discussion of how the “single
connected fabric” constituting our total theory is acquired (the latter dis¬
cussion itself having been introduced to exemplify language-learning), it
seems that Quine must be proposing that a language, too, is “a fabric of
sentences variously associated to one another and to nonverbal stimuli by
the mechanism of conditioned response.” Other parts of this exposition
reinforce the conclusion that this is what is intended, as we shall see in a
moment. Nevertheless, interpretation of Quine’s remarks is made difficult
at points because of his tendency to use the terms “language” and “theory”
interchangeably, though obviously he must be presupposing a fundamental
difference between the two—he is, for example, surely not proposing that
two monolingual speakers of the same language cannot disagree on ques¬
tions of belief, that controversy over facts is necessarily as irrational as
an argument between a monolingual speaker of English and a monolingual
speaker of German.
Elsewhere, Quine states that he is considering a language as a “complex
of present dispositions to verbal behavior, in which speakers of the same
language have perforce come to resemble one another” (p. 27). Thus if
a language is a network of sentences associated to one another and to ex¬
ternal stimuli by the mechanism of conditioned response, then it follows
that a person’s disposition to verbal behavior can be characterized in terms
of such a network. This factual assumption is far from obvious. I return to
other aspects of this concept of “language” below.
How is knowledge of such a language acquired? As noted above, a
Humean theory will acquire substance if such notions as “similarity” are
characterized in some way. Quine therefore postulates a prelinguistic (and
presumably innate) “quality space” with a built-in distance measure (pp.
83-84). Evidently, the structure of this space will determine the content
NOAM CHOMSKY 265
of the theory of learning. For example, one could easily construct a theory
of innate ideas of a rather classical sort in terms of a prelinguistic quality
space with a built-in distance measure. Quine would, apparently, accept a
very strong version of a theory of innate ideas as compatible with his
framework. Thus he considers the possibility that “a red ball, a yellow ball,
and a green ball are less distant from one another in . . . the child’s . . .
quality space then from a red kerchief.” It is difficult to see how this differs
from the assumption that “ball” is an innate idea, if we admit the same
possibilities along other “dimensions” (particularly, if we allow these di¬
mensions to be fairly abstract). In this respect, then, Quine seems to depart
quite radically from the leading ideas that guided empiricist theory and to
permit just about anything imaginable, so far as “learning” of concepts is
concerned. In particular, consider the fact that a speaker of English has
acquired the concept “sentence of English.” Suppose that we were to
postulate an innate quality space with a structure so abstract that any two
sentences of English are nearer to one another in terms of the postulated
distance measure than a sentence of English and any sentence of another
language. Then a learner could acquire the concept “sentence of English”
—he could, in other words, know that the language to which he is exposed
is English and “generalize” to any other sentence of English—from an
exposure to one sentence. The same is true if we mean by “sentence of
English” a pairing of a certain phonetic and semantic interpretation. We
could, once again, construct a quality space sufficiently abstract so that the
infinite set of English sentences could be “learned” from exposure to one
sentence, by an organism equipped with this quality space.
The handful of examples and references that Quine gives suggests that he
has something much narrower in mind, however; perhaps, a restriction to di¬
mensions which have some simple physical correlate such as hue or bright¬
ness, with distance defined in terms of these physical correlates. If so, we
have a very strong and quite specific version of a doctrine of innate ideas
which now can be faced with empirical evidence.
It might be thought that Quine adds empirical content to his account by
his insistence that “the child’s early learning of a verbal response de¬
pends on society’s reinforcement of the response in association with the
stimulations that merit the response . . .” (p. 82) and his general insistence
throughout that learning is based on reinforcement. But, unfortunately,
Quine’s concept of “reinforcement” is reduced to near vacuity. For example,
he is willing to accept the possibility that “society’s reinforcement consists
in no more than corroborative usage, whose resemblance to the child’s
effort is the sole reward” (pp. 82-83). To say that learning requires rein¬
forcement, then, comes very close to saying that learning cannot proceed
without data. As Quine notes, his approach is “congenial ... to Skinner’s
scheme, for . . . [Skinner] . . . does not enumerate the rewards.” The re¬
mark is correct, but it should also be added that “Skinner’s scheme” is
266 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
almost totally empty, in fact, if anything even less substantive than Quine’s
version of it, since Skinner, as distinct from Quine, does not even require
that reinforcing stimuli impinge on the organism—it is sufficient that they
be imagined, hoped for, etc. In general, the invoking of “reinforcement”
serves only a ritualistic function in such discussions as these, and one can
safely disregard it in trying to determine the substantive content of what is
being proposed.
However, Quine returns to a classical empiricist conception of a non-
vacuous sort in his assumptions about how language is learned. Consistent
with his view of language as a network of sentences,4 he enumerates three
possible mechanisms by which sentences can be learned—i.e., by which
knowledge of language can be acquired (p. 9f.). First, sentences can be
learned by “direct conditioning” to appropriate nonverbal stimulations,
that is, by repeated pairing of a stimulation and a sentence under appropri¬
ate conditions; second, by association of sentences with sentences (let us
put aside the objection that, in both cases, the associations should soon
disappear, through extinction, under normal circumstances); third, new
sentences can be produced by “analogical synthesis.”5 The third method
at first seems to offer an escape to vacuity, once again. Thus if the first
sentence of this paper is derivable by analogical synthesis from “the sky is
blue” (both involve subject and predicate, are generated with their inter¬
pretations by the rules of English grammar, and share many other proper¬
ties), then it is no doubt true that language can be learned by “analogical
synthesis,” by “generalization” along a dimension of the abstract sort
suggested above (cf. p. 265). But it seems clear that Quine has nothing
of this sort in mind. The one example that he gives is a case of sub¬
stitution of one word for a similar one (“hand,” “foot”) in a fixed
context. And he seems to imply that the process of analogical synthesis
is theoretically dispensable, simply serving to speed matters up (see p. 9).
Therefore, we can perhaps conform to his intentions by totally disregard¬
ing this process, and considering the knowledge attained by a long-lived
adult using only the first two methods instead of the knowledge attained
by a young child who has used all three (there being nothing that can be
said about the latter case until the notion “analogical synthesis” is given
some content). Noting further that a child of nine and a man of ninety share
knowledge of language in fundamental respects—each can understand and
use appropriately an astronomical number of sentences, for example—it
would seem, further, that little is lost in omitting “analogical synthesis”
from consideration entirely, even for the young child. Assuming that this
interpretation of Quine’s remarks is correct, we derive support for the
conclusion that he regards a language as a finite network of associated
sentences, some associated also to stimuli, since this is just the structure
that would arise from the two postulated mechanisms of language learning.
This interpretation of Quine’s rather inexplicit comments on “analogic
NOAM CHOMSKY 267
available to us. I do not doubt that this approach is quite reasonable, but
it then raises the empirical question of the nature of this universal, a priori
system; and, of course, any philosophical conclusions that may be drawn
will depend on the answers proposed for this question.6 Quine’s attitude
toward an approach of this sort is not easy to determine. It certainly seems
inconsistent with his general point of view, specifically with his claim that
even our knowledge of logical truths is derived by conditioning mechanisms
that associate certain pairs of sentences (cf., e.g., p. Ilf.), so that our
knowledge of logical relations must be representable as a finite network
of interconnected sentences. (How we can distinguish logical connections
from causal ones or either type from sentences which happen to be paired by
accident in our experience is unclear, just as it is unclear how either sort
of knowledge can be applied, but it is pointless to pursue this issue in
the light of the strangeness of the whole conception.) Elsewhere, however,
Quine appears to take the view that truth-functional logic might pro¬
vide a knd of “universal grammar.” Thus he asserts (§ 13) that truth
functions lend themselves to “radical translation” without “unverifiable
analytical hypotheses,” and hence can be learned directly from the available
evidence. He gives no real argument for this beyond the statement, which
appears quite irrelevant to the factual issue involved, that we can state
truth conditions in terms of assent and dissent. The inference from what
we can observe to a postulated underlying structure involving truth-func¬
tional connectives of course requires assumptions that go beyond evidence—
mutually incompatible alternatives consistent with the evidence can easily
be constructed. Hence Quine’s willingness to place these matters within the
framework of radical translation perhaps indicates that he is willing to re¬
gard the system of truth-functional logic as available, independently of ex¬
perience, as a basis for language-learning. If so, it seems quite arbitrary to
accept this framework as innate schematism and not to admit much else
that can be imagined and described.7 In view of the unclarity of this matter
and the apparent inconsistency of the proposal just discussed with Quine’s
explicit characterization of “theory” and “language” and the mechanisms for
acquiring them, I will put aside any further consideration of this topic.
We are left with the fact that Quine develops his explicit notion of
“language” and “theory” within a narrowly conceived Humean framework
(except for the possible intrusion of a rich system of innate ideas), and
that he characterizes language-learning (“learning of sentences”) in a way
consistent with this narrow interpretation, although the conclusion that a
language (or theory) is a finite fabric of sentences, constructed pairwise by
training, or a set of sentences with empirically detectable probabilities of
being produced (hence a nearly empty set) is incompatible with various
truisms to which Quine would certainly agree.
Quine relies on his empirical assumptions about the acquisition of knowl¬
edge and learning of language to support some of his major philosophical
270 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
the other in such a way as to permit ascent or descent from one level to
another”; and what would the effect on the hearer be in this case? Or con¬
sider the likely circumstances and effects of “I’ll see you the day after
tomorrow,” “I’ll see you four days after the day before yesterday.” This
is not a matter of exotic examples; it is simply that the meaning of a
linguistic expression (hence synonymy) cannot be characterized in terms
of conditions of use or effects on hearers, in general. It is crucial to dis¬
tinguish langue from parole, competence from performance.13 What a per¬
son does or is likely to do and what he knows may be related in some way
that cannot, for the moment, be made precise; the relation is, however,
surely in part a factual and not a strictly conceptual one. Performance can
provide evidence about competence, as use can provide evidence about
meaning. Only confusion can result from failure to distinguish these separate
concepts.
Finally, what about the assumption that although in physics we may
work within the framework of a tentative theory, in studying language (or
in learning language or in translating or interpreting what we hear), this
is not possible since it is impermissible to make general statements about
language or, more generally, about our “common sense theories and since
innate properties of the mind can impose no conditions on language and
theories?14 This is simply classical empiricist doctrine—perhaps “dogma”
would, by now, be a more accurate term. It is difficult to see why this
dogma should be taken more seriously than any other. It receives no sup¬
port from what is known about language-learning or from human or com¬
parative psychology. If it held true of humans, they would be unique in
the animal world; and there is no evidence for this particular type of unique¬
ness. In general, it seems to me correct to say that insofar as empiricist
doctrine has clear psychological content, it is in conflict with the not in¬
considerable information that is now available. In any event, returning to
the present theme, the particular assumptions that Quine makes about the
mental processes and structures that provide the basis for human language¬
learning are quite unwarranted and have no special status among the many
assumptions that can be imagined. They can be justified only by empirical
evidence and argument. Philosophical conclusions based on these assump¬
tions are no more persuasive than the evidence on which the assumptions
rest; that is to say, for the present these conclusions are without force.
Interpreted in a psychological context, then, Quine’s thesis of indeter¬
minacy of radical translation amounts to an implausible and quite unsub¬
stantiated empirical claim about what the mind brings to the problem of
acquisition of language (or of knowledge in general) as an innate property.
This claim seems to me of only historical interest. Interpreted in an
epistemological context, as a claim about the possibility of developing
linguistic theory, Quine’s thesis is simply a version of familiar skeptical
arguments which can be applied as well to physics, to the problem of
NOAM CHOMSKY 275
tory mechanisms of this sort. Rather, he holds that these “internal work¬
ings of the mind” do not provide the criterion for the correct use of an
expression, and furthermore, that there may be no “conscious mental
accompaniments” to acts and no statable reasons for performing them. In
general, the philosopher’s “method is purely descriptive; the descriptions
we give are not hints of explanations” (p. 125; cf. also Investigations I,
§§ 109, 126; also the discussion in § 156 of postulated mechanisms that
“are only hypotheses, models designed to explain,” as opposed to pure
descriptions—the word “only” is curious here).
Thus consider the act of reading. The philosopher is concerned to dispel
the temptation “to regard the conscious mental act as the only real criterion
distinguishing reading from not reading” (p. 121), and his “explanation
of the use of this word . . . essentially consists in describing a selection of
examples exhibiting characteristic features” (p. 125). This selection of
examples will, presumably, provide (or suggest to a human intelligence) the
criterion for distinguishing reading from not reading. When Wittgenstein
refers to the “criterion for distinguishing reading from not reading,” he no
doubt has in mind criteria which relate to the meaning of the word “read,”
empirical conditions which are conceptually related in some manner to
correct (i.e., true) assertion that so and so is reading, etc. But the criteria
that Wittgenstein actually discusses, both here and elsewhere, are not in
fact “criteria for correct assertion” in this sense, but rather “criteria for
justified assertion,” that is, conditions under which a rational person would
be justified in stating, possibly erroneously, that so and so is reading, and
so on.20 These are criteria in the sense in which having a certain visual
image might serve as a criterion that justifies my asserting that there is an
oasis over there while walking through the desert, although my perfectly
justified assertion might still be incorrect. It is, however, surely criteria
for correct assertion that relate to problems of meaning. An account of the
meaning of “oasis” will involve reference to the presence of trees, water, and
so forth, not merely to the evidence, however persuasive, that justifies a
rational man in saying that he sees an oasis. And just the same is true of
the case of “reading.” In short, it appears that Wittgenstein’s rather obscure
use of the notion “criterion” may indicate a belief rather akin to a belief
in the possibility of phenomenalist reduction, a belief that meanings of
words (and criteria for correct assertion) are some sort of “logical con¬
struction” (in a loose way, with various reservations, etc.) from criteria that
justify assertion, that is, from evidence. At least, it seems difficult to make
sense of his examples on any assumption other than this.
To return to the case of reading, we may ask whether anyone is subject
to the temptation to regard a conscious mental event as the criterion for
justified assertion, in the manner that Wittgenstein describes; is there, in
fact, a temptation to be dispelled? Rather, it seems that there is a tempta¬
tion to regard the unconscious mental state attributed to A as the criterion
280 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
for correct (not justified) assertion of the statement that A is reading. And
Wittgenstein suggests no argument to indicate that this temptation is in any
way misguided. Perhaps, in fact, I have a (no doubt in part unconscious)
theory involving the postulated mental states of humans performing certain
acts such as reading, etc., which is related to my (also unconscious) system
of linguistic rules in such a way that I assert that A is reading when I be¬
lieve him to be in such a mental state, and my assertion is correct if my
belief is correct. In any event, there seems to be little point in arguing at
length that observed behavior provides the evidence that leads us to state
that A is reading and that justifies us in making the (possibly incorrect)
statement that A is reading. This is simply to prove the obvious. Nor is it
necessary to elaborate on the fact that such observed behavior falls into
vaguely related families-, it is of the nature of bits of evidence to be frag¬
mentary, confusing, partial, loosely related, lacking sharp boundaries, etc.,
that is, to exhibit only “family resemblances.” This observation sheds no
light on the question whether I am attributing a “criterial mental state” to
a person whom I describe as reading, perhaps applying a tacit theory of
human action that guides my assessments and judgments. Much as in the
case of “expecting,” it is questions of the latter sort that might possibly
lead to an understanding of the concept “reading” and its position in the
“calculus of language.”
There is a curious frustration in the attempt to explore and understand
Wittgenstein’s thought. His examples and remarks, often brilliant and
perceptive, lead right to the border of the deepest problems, at which point
he stops short and insists that the philosopher can go no further. Ostensive
definitions do not carry us very far toward understanding how concepts are
learned, and simple “language games” barely illustrate the most superficial,
largely instrumental uses of language. In general, evidence of use is merely
a prerequisite for the study of meaning, as evidence of performance is merely
a prerequisite for the study of competence. To make interesting and intelli¬
gent use of evidence, one has to turn to the study of what it means to
understand a language,” of the nature of the “forms of life” that deter¬
mine the “natural history of man,” and of the nature of the mind that under¬
stands, of “that mechanism . . . born with B, which enabled him to
respond to the training in the way he did” (p. 97). Why, then, does Wittgen¬
stein’s discussion break off where it does, and why does he impose such
deadening limitations on the course that the philosopher may pursue?
Returning to the main theme, if we interpret Wittgenstein as intending
literally what he formulates as factual assertions (about language-learning,
for example), then what he says seems to fall within the framework of a
narrow and dogmatic empiricism. If we interpret him as merely circum¬
scribing the task of the philosopher, limiting it to a “purely descriptive
method,” to descriptions which “are not hints of explanations,” then what
he is proposing falls together with other, quite independent tendencies in
NOAM CHOMSKY 281
NOTES
1. I am indebted to Donald Brown, Jerrold Katz, and Charles Chihara for com¬
ments on an earlier version of this paper. This work was supported in part by The
National Science Foundation under grant GS-1430.
2. Formal parallels between kinds of explanations offered in learning theory
and evolutionary theory have frequently been pointed out. See, for example, B. F.
Skinner, “The phylogeny and ontogeny of behavior,” Science, Vol. 153, No. 3741,
9 Sept., 1966, 1205-1213, for recent discussion. Some earlier ideas are discussed by
W. H. Thorpe, Learning and Instinct in Animals, Methuen, London, 2d edition, 1963,
p. 164f. A parallel that is too infrequently noted is the difficulty, in both cases, of
constructing a nonvacuous thesis of any generality.
3. W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object, John Wiley and Sons, New York, and
Technology Press, Cambridge, 1960.
4. Accepting, that is, the interpretation of his remarks that is discussed above.
5. Elsewhere, Quine states that “the learning of these wholes (sentences) pro¬
ceeds largely by an abstracting and assembling of parts” and that “as the child
progresses, he tends increasingly to build his new sentences from parts” (p. 13). For
consistency of interpretation, we must suppose that this refers to “analogical syn¬
thesis,” since the three methods enumerated are intended to be exhaustive. If some¬
thing else is intended, then the scheme again reduces to vacuity, until the innate basis
for the “abstracting” and “assembling” is specified.
6. It is interesting that Russell, in his Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, Allen
and Unwin, London, 1940, with his concept of real logical form and of logical words
as expressing a mental reality, does appear to presuppose a structure that would
avoid at least these very obvious problems. But a discussion of Russell’s quite in¬
tricate and interesting approach to these questions, though a useful undertaking, is
impossible within the scope of this paper.
7. The reasons for this choice would take us too far afield, into a much more
general consideration of Quine’s thesis, developed later in the book, about the scheme
of discourse that one must use in “limning the true and ultimate structure of reality”
(p. 221), and in describing “all traits of reality worthy of the name” (p. 228).
8. Recall, again, that Quine is using the concept of “interlinguistic synonymy”
as a device for describing not only translation but also learning of language in the
first place and interpretation of what is said to him by one who knows a language.
9. Cf. Philippa Foot, “Goodness and choice,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, Supplementary Volume 35; 45-60. She comments, correctly I am sure, that
we would describe such objects as looking exactly like knives, but being something
else. See also the remarks by J. Katz on such words as “anesthetic” in his “Semantic
theory and the meaning of ‘good,’” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 61, No. 23, Dec. 10,
1964, pp. 739-66.
10. Consider, for example, the experimental evidence that has been produced
purportedly showing differences between apes and humans in ability to carry out
cross-modal transfer. The difference is sometimes attributed to the “linguistic tags”
available to the human. (Cf. A. Moffet, and G. Ettlinger: “Opposite responding in
two sense modalities,” Science, No. 3732, 8 July, 1966, 205-206, and G. Ettlinger,
in Brain Mechanisms Underlying Speech and Language, F. L. Darley, ed., in press).
NOAM CHOMSKY 283
Another possibility that suggests itself is simply that the “concepts” used in the
experimental situation, being defined in terms of conjunction or disjunction of
elementary physical properties (as is the general procedure in concept-formation
experiments), are entirely artificial and mismatched to the “concept space” of the
tested animal. The human subject, however, imposes his own system of concepts
(since he understands what the experiment is about, etc.). Under the conditions of
the experiment, the distinction between the artificial concepts of the experimenter
and the natural concepts of the subject might well be undetectable. Hence it might
be that no difference between apes and humans in cross-modal transfer (and nothing
about linguistic tags) has yet been shown by such experiments, and that what is
shown is merely that an animal (or human) cannot make reasonable use of concepts
that are mismatched to the innate structure of his system of concepts.
11. Of the cited conditions, the one that might be regarded as relevant is “knowl¬
edge and belief.” Thus it makes sense to argue that under certain conditions, a change
in belief may entail a modification of language. But surely it is senseless to hold that
wherever difference of belief leads to a difference of disposition to verbal behavior,
there is necessarily a difference of language involved.
12. In From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1953.
13. The issue is not simply one of observation versus abstraction but rather one
of significant versus pointless idealization. A set of dispositions to respond is a
construction postulated on the basis of evidence, just as is a generative grammar
that attempts to characterize “knowledge of a language.” In Quine’s terms, the first
is based on “genuine” and the second on “analytical” hypotheses, but only in a sense
of “genuine” that is divorced from its ordinary meaning (or else on the basis of a
value judgment that seems to me quite unsupportable). It would be more accurate
to say that setting up a “complex of dispositions to respond” is merely a pointless
step, since such a structure has no interesting properties, so far as is known.
14. Except, as noted earlier, for the constraints imposed by the structure of the
quality space, the system of truth-functional logic, certain primitive forms of in¬
duction, and the capacity to form arbitrary associations.
15. One difficulty in interpreting Wittgenstein, however, is that it is unclear when
what he says is to be taken literally. Some remarks are so outrageous that one can
only suppose that something else was intended (e.g., when he asserts that thinking
may be the “activity performed by the hand, when we think by writing”). A second
difficulty is the indefinite and noncommital style. Still, remarks such as those cited
seem to indicate a fairly specific point of view.
Still another difficulty, in the specific case of the Blue and Brown Books is, of
course, the question whether in detail they do or do not reflect Wittgenstein’s views.
In the Philosophical Investigations, the positions that I want to discuss are less
prominent than in the Blue and Brown Books, though I find little there that might
challenge these positions. In any event, what I will be discussing is the text of the
Blue and Brown Books, which may or may not express what Wittgenstein really
believed about these matters.
16. This kind of terminology may suggest, erroneously, that animal training is
simply a matter of adding arbitrarily selected bits of behavior to a collection of
“habits.” Actually, such terms are appropriate to a description of animal training
only at the most superficial level. For some interesting comments on this matter, see
K. Breland and M. Breland, “The misbehavior of organisms,” American Psychologist,
16, 1961, 681-84; also Thorpe, op. cit., p. 461-2 and references cited there.
17. Similar ideas appear elsewhere. For example, D. F. Pears argues that naming
is ultimately inexplicable, “that any comprehensive explanation of naming is neces¬
sarily circular” (“Universals,” in A. Flew, ed., Logic and Language, second series,
Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1953). Ostensive definitions clearly do not in themselves
explain the basis for naming, and verbal explanations do not give us an exit from the
“maze of words.” “Naming cannot be explained by anything which really goes beyond
a reasoned choice of usage,” since concepts are “completely identifiable only by their
use.” All that we can say about a “well-constructed series of things” (i.e., a set of
things named by a word in a single sense) is just that it is well constructed. No
comprehensive answers can be given to the question of what is common to such
sets or how such “nameable” sets are distinguished, on general grounds, from other
sets. Experimental psychology can only give “the varying tests of the good con¬
struction of a series, and not its essence.” It cannot, then, characterize the essential
properties of “generalization” or “concept formation,” for a given organism, pre¬
sumably. The desire to explain naming, beyond recording details of usage or giving
tests, is “the result of the Protean metaphysical urge to transcend language.”
Whether a concept is identifiable in terms of its “use” or in terms of “a reasoned
284 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
choice of usage” is impossible to discuss, given the vagueness of these notions, but
it certainly seems clear that the problem of determining what is a well-constructed
series of things” for a particular organism is one that can be studied in a serious
way. The varying tests provided by experimental psychology can provide evidence,
as can observation of usage and introspection. And on the basis of such, evidence,
one can try to formulate a theory regarding the “attainable concepts’ and the
“attained concepts,” in particular, the system of concepts embedded in a person’s
internalized grammar. Evidently, the theory that we construct about a person s
grammar (or about attainable grammars) will be underdetermined by evidence,
since the task is not a triviality—the concepts that we attribute to him will not be
“completely identifiable,” in any interesting sense, by observed usage, without the
intrusion of certain assumptions of a theoretical nature. Having arrived at a tentative
theory concerning a person’s grammar, we can consider the data on the basis of
which he constructed this internalized grammar, which incorporates, in particular, a
system of concepts. Finally, we can construct a hypothesis as to the a priori system
of principles, conditions, and assumptions that led the person to construct this system
from the given data (where the process is, no doubt, not only unconscious but
also, quite likely, inaccessible to consciousness, and, quite likely, entirely deter¬
ministic insofar as the vast central areas of language are concerned). Such a hy¬
pothesis wdl specify, correctly or incorrectly, what can be “well-constructed sets”
for a human, and will offer an explanation as to why a particular term has a specific
referential scope. The problem of “explaining naming,” so formulated, may be largely
intractable, but it does not reflect a “Protean metaphysical urge” any more than the
attempt to study various other, for the moment relatively intractable problems, for
example, problems involving determinants of maturation and growth or origin of
species, etc.
18. Though certainly language is not taught in accordance with strict rule. In fact,
there is no reason to suppose that language need be taught at all.
19. But the matter is not simple. Thus one must distinguish expecting someone
from expecting of someone that he will do something, or simply expecting that some¬
thing will happen or will be the case. And one must distinguish not expecting some¬
thing to happen from expecting it not to happen; and, as in the case of belief and
knowledge, one must identify and analyze separately the various factors that may
permit the consequences of what is expected, even those that follow by known and
accepted principles, to be themselves unexpected. A better analysis of what is
involved in “expecting” might build on some of the remarks in the Philosophical
Investigations 1, 5151 575, 577. Although such an analysis must consider those con¬
sequences of a rule that one may draw “as a matter of course” (ibid., 51 238), it will
surely be inadequate if it limits itself to these, avoiding the implications of the
possibility of Socratic “teaching.”
20. Whatever he may have meant by the term “criterion,” his general practice is
to give criteria for justified but not necessarily correct assertion. There are many
examples. Investigations 1, 51 344: “Our criterion for someone’s saying something to
himself is what he tells us and the rest of his behavior.” Investigations l, 51 269: “Let
us remember that there are certain criteria in a man’s behavior for the fact that he
does not understand a word, that it means nothing to him, that he can do nothing
with it. And criteria for his ‘thinking he understands’, attaching some meaning to the
word, but not the right one. And lastly, criteria for his understanding the word
right.” Investigations /, § § 154—155: “If there has to be anything ‘behind the utterance
of the formula’ it is particular circumstances, which justify me in saying I can go
on—when the formula occurs to me . . . for us it is the circumstances under which
he had such an experience that justify him in saying in such a case that he
understands, that he knows how to go on.” Evidently, it is what a person tells us
and what he does that justifies us in believing that he is saying something to himself;
evidently, there is no necessary connection between satisfaction of these “criteria”
and the fact of his saying something to himself. Similarly, in the other cases. Hence
it is hard to imagine how one could claim that such “criteria” could somehow
exhibit the meaning of such expressions as “he is saying something to himself.”
For an illuminating discussion of this whole matter, see Rogers Albritton, “On
Wittgenstein’s use of the term ‘criterion’,” J. of Philosophy, vol. 61, 1959, pp. 845-
857, reprinted, with an additional note, in G. Pitcher, ed., Wittgenstein: The Phil¬
osophical Investigations, Anchor Books, Garden City, N. Y., 1966.
If there were anyone who held the view that a conscious mental act (of the
reader) is the real criterion for distinguishing reading from not reading, he would
not be much impressed by a selection of examples exhibiting characteristic features,
etc., of cases where a person is said to be reading (possibly erroneously). Rather, he
NOAM CHOMSKY 285
would hold that these examples do, in fact, constitute a “veil of inessential features,”
and that evidence of usage could no more refute his conviction that reading involves
a conscious mental act than citation of characteristic usages of “There is an oasis”
could refute his convictions regarding the conditions under which this assertion is
true and regarding the meaning of “oasis.” The “transitional cases” that Wittgenstein
imagines would be regarded as unclear by such a person, on the grounds that we do
not have convincing evidence as to the presence of the criteria! mental state. We
might say that in “normal cases” criteria for justified usage do serve as criteria for
correct assertion as well, but this is empty unless “normal cases” are something other
than cases in which justified assertions are, furthermore, correct. The long discussion
of the same matter in the Investigations seems to me to shed no further light on
the issues.
21. Or, potentially, their physical realizations, though it must be emphasized
that this is a subject that is not, for the moment, accessible to direct study.
22. The currency of the appellation “behavioral science” for the study of man
and society is another manifestation of the same intellectual tendency in that it in
effect defines this study in terms of its data rather than its natural subject matter.
It is almost as though physics were renamed “science of meter-reading.” What, in
fact, would we expect the natural sciences to amount to in a culture that felt satisfied
with a characterization of them in such terms as these?
IF MATTER COULD TALK
Fritz Machlup
The differences between the natural and the social sciences have been
both exaggerated and minimized. To some, especially Anglo-American
writers, the differences have seemed so categorical that they decided to
appropriate the designation “science” for the natural sciences and to deny
it to the study of social phenomena. Others, especially German writers,
insisted on the scientific character of the study of cultural phenomena but
still held that natural and “cultural” sciences were so fundamentally differ¬
ent that they required “contrary” methodological approaches.
These extreme positions had to be countered; it was important to show
that in most respects, especially regarding the logic of inquiry, cognition,
generalization, verification, and application, there were no fundamental dif¬
ferences between natural and social sciences. Philosophers of science who
applied themselves to this task have, however, in their zeal to correct the
errors of the exaggerators of contrast, sometimes gone too far in minimizing
genuine differences. To recognize these differences may do a great deal
for the comprehension of both the unity and the departmentalization of
science.
This essay is intended to present an issue which has an important bearing
on the difference between the natural and the social sciences. Following
my inclination to dramatize ideas when I want the reader to share my
appraisal of their importance, I shall introduce the issue by means of a
short story or parable.
A PARABLE
from inside our machines and apparatuses, in clear English. If we are not
crazy, we are going crazy. Please come immediately.”
When the psychiatrist arrived, he found the physicists engrossed in con¬
versation, not with one another but each with some persons hidden in all
sorts of containers, cabinets, and machines.
“Are you making fun of us? Is this a hoax, or what?” Professor R. spoke
into an apparatus of stainless steel, cylindrical in shape.
“Nothing of the sort,” a voice answered from the inside of the apparatus.
“We simply have decided to end our silence and cooperate with you in your
research work by telling you all we know.”
The professor greeted the psychiatrist and introduced him to his col¬
leagues and assistants. At this point he was called to the telephone. He
returned after several minutes.
“The same thing happened in Princeton. Professor W. was on the phone.
Apparently it started there at the same time as here. At the Forrestal
Laboratory the people panicked after the stellarator started talking. . . .”
He was interrupted by a newcomer. “Someone from the New York Times
called. He wants you to comment on a dispatch from Moscow. There are
two strange headlines in Tass. One says: ‘New Elementary Particles Are
Russian’; the other says: ‘Genes Pass Resolution Siding with Lysenko’.”
Before Professor R. was able to answer, Dr. M., an instructor, entered.
He was excited and, without waiting for his chief’s nod or question, he
began to report on his lab section. He had been talking to a group of under¬
graduates, demonstrating various cases of Brownian motion. As he spoke
about the random walk of molecules and about molecular collisions at
various pressures, someone shouted, “Stop that nonsense!” When he looked
around to see which student had made this impertinent remark, the voice
continued. It was obviously coming from the protective chamber with the
suspended mirror, whose movements were being tracked by the fluctuations
of a reflected light beam. This is what he heard: “It is time that you cease
and desist from misleading your students. What you teach about us mole¬
cules is simply not true. This is no random walk and we are not pushing
one another all over the place. We know where we are going and why. If
you will listen, we shall be glad to tell you.” He had not waited for more,
but had rushed here to report and get Professor R. to witness the event and
to hear what the molecules were about to tell.
“Oh,” said Professor R., “you mean they are going to tell us what they
think they are doing. By all means, let them go ahead.”
long. The parable has served to pose the issue, that is, to ask what problems
would arise in the natural sciences if inanimate matter began to talk. It
is a fantastic idea, to be sure, but an idea worth exploring. Before I pro¬
ceed, however, I shall acknowledge how it came to me.
The theme—that animals, trees, and inanimate objects could be endowed
with the gift of human speech—Jis, of course, as old as literature. Legends,
fables, and fairy tales are the best-known sources; in Homer’s Iliad we en¬
counter a talking horse, that of Achilles; Aesop’s fables and the tales by
the Grimm brothers and by Hans Christian Andersen are full of talking
and chatting foxes and wolves, trees and flowers, storks and ducks, the
sun and the wind, and teakettles, mirrors, and street lamps. In addition,
there are the stories of Orpheus, who moved rocks and rivers by his songs;
and there have been many anthropomorphic parts in epic and lyric poetry,
in tragedy and in comedy.
As a youngster I delighted in reading books by Carl Ewald; among them
was one with beautiful Tales Told by Mother Nature about talking animals
and objects.1 There was one in which earth and a comet had a discussion,
joined in by the moon; another featured a chat between a spider and a
mouse. A conversation between the sea and various plants and birds oc¬
curred in one tale, and another had a talk, with interesting implications of
conscious cooperation, between a soldier-crab and a sea-anemone. There
was also a most informative debate among five germs: tuberculosis, cholera,
and diptheria complaining about man’s warfare against them, mold bragging
about its great power, and yeast defending man as its best friend.
Much later I became acquainted with the writings of E. B. White and
I fell in love with Charlotte’s Web. But the most philosophical stories of
this genre are in the poems by Christian Morgenstern. The manifesto of the
“West Coasts,” protesting the semantic willfulness of man and declaring
their semantic independence,-’ belongs in the notebook of every language
philosopher. But none of the human talk of these nonhuman beings and
things included, to my knowledge, any allusions to the problem of scientific
procedure.
In methodological and epistemological discussions of the social sciences,
references to a cognate, though inverted, theme can be found: Several
writers have mentioned that the natural sciences lacked two sources of
information—inner experience and verbal communication—which were of
essence in the social sciences. We are familiar with statements by social
scientists reflecting about their advantage—in some measure compensating
for several disadvantages—in having access to data of inner experience un¬
available to natural sciences. Thus Friedrich von Wieser wrote: “We can
observe nature from the outside only, but ourselves also from within. And
since we can do it, why should we not make use of it?”3
The emphasis here was on the scientific observer’s ignorance of how it
feels to be a molecule, an electron, or a gene, contrasted with his knowl-
FRITZ MACHLUP 289
have to explain why the rock was telling something that contradicted the
geologist’s finding. He would have to explain why the rock was wrong, did
not know what it was talking about, or was trying to confuse those who
listened to it.
It is one of the characteristics of the natural sciences that their subjects
of investigation do not talk about themselves. Moreover, the
facts and events [studied by natural scientists] are neither preselected nor pre¬
interpreted; they do not reveal intrinsic relevance structures. . . . The facts, data,
and events with which the natural scientist has to deal are just facts,, data, and
events within his observational field, but this field does not mean anything
to the molecules, atoms, and electrons therein.
But the facts, events, and data before the social scientist are of an entirely
different structure. His observational field, the social world, . . . has a particular
meaning and relevance structure for the human beings living, thinking and
acting therein. They have preselected and preinterpreted this world by a series
of common-sense constructs of the reality of daily life, and it is these thought
objects which determine their behavior, define the goal of their action, the
means available for attaining them. . . . The thought objects constructed by
the social scientists refer to and are founded upon the thought objects con¬
structed by the common-sense thought of man living his everyday life among
his fellow men. Thus, the constructs used by the social scientist are, so to speak,
constructs of the second degree, namely constructs of the constructs made by
the actors on the social scene whose behavior the [social] scientist observes and
tries to explain in accordance with the procedural rules of his science.7
NO DIFFERENCE IN LOGIC
Nagel believes that the differences which the Weber school stresses be¬
tween the explanation of social phenomena and that of natural phenomena
lie chiefly in the “personal experience,” “sympathetic imagination,” and
“empathic identification” that are possible for the social scientist and may
aid him in his efforts “to invent suitable hypotheses.”15 But Nagel denies
that these differences are essential as far as the validity of explanatory
hypotheses is concerned. He explicates his position by the following illus¬
tration:
... we can know that a man fleeing from a pursuing crowd that is animated
by hatred toward him is in a state of fear, without our having experienced such
violent fears and hatred or without imaginatively recreating such emotions in
ourselves—just as we can know that the temperature of a piece of wire is
rising because the velocities of its constituent molecules are increasing, without
having to imagine what it is like to be a rapidly moving molecule. In both in¬
stances “internal states” that are not directly observable are imputed to the
objects mentioned in explanation of their behaviors. Accordingly, if we can
rightly claim to know that the individuals do possess the states imputed to them
and that possession of such states tends to produce the specified forms of
behavior, we can do so only on the basis of evidence obtained by observations
of “objective” occurrences—in one case, by observation of overt human be¬
havior (including men’s verbal responses), in the other case, by observation of
purely physical changes. To be sure, there are important differences between
the specific characters of the states imputed in the two cases; in the case of the
human actors the states are psychological or “subjective,” and the social sci¬
entist making the imputation may indeed have first-hand personal experience
of them, but in the case of the wire and other inanimate objects they are not.16
“hatred” animating his pursuers does, of course, not presuppose that we can
“identify” with the people observed. It does, however, presuppose that we
know what fear and hatred “really” are. We could not know what fear is if
we had never felt it or at least, as some would say, if we had not been told
about it by persons who had.17 The same is true for hatred. The meaning of
these words could never be grasped except on the basis of direct personal
experience or perhaps (but perhaps not) on the basis of verbal communica¬
tions from some who have had such experience.18
(2) When Nagel extends the concepts of “observation of ‘objective’
occurrences” and of “overt human behavior” to include “men’s verbal
responses,” he loses the clue to the problem. That fearing and hating men
can tell us about their fears and hates, whereas molecules cannot tell us
about their slower or faster movements, is a difference, not only “im¬
portant,” as Nagel concedes, but essential enough to justify the postulate of
subjective interpretation a la Weber and Schiitz. For the men talking to us
may deny any fears and hates that we impute to them, or claim that they
are animated by feelings which we fail to impute to them in our objective
interpretation of their actions. Molecules, on the other hand, never con¬
tradict our hypotheses by verbal depositions—except in our parable or
similar pieces of fiction.19
(3) Nagel’s illustration contrasts a concrete observation of a particular
human situation, that is, a single instance of a (poorly bounded) class of
social phenomena, with a well-bound class of physical phenomena re¬
produced thousands of times in thousands of laboratories. We shall come
back to this lack of parallelism when we discuss the difference between
the constructs used in universal laws and those used in reports on particular
events.
(4)
The “important differences” that Nagel recognizes are those be¬
tween physical and psychological states, with the possibility of ‘firsthand
personal experience” of psychological states on the part of the social sci¬
entist. This emphasis is at the expense of even more important differences,
especially that the subjects of inquiry in the social sciences can give us
their opinions about our explanations of social phenomena; that their
opinions may sometimes be helpful, sometimes misleading; that they may be
contradictory, some saying one thing, some another; and that large portions
of several social sciences have as their subject matter verbally stated theories
of social “actors,” or, at least, their interpretations of the actions and in¬
tentions of their “partners.”
It is in reaction to this fourth point, to Nagel’s emphasis on “firsthand
personal experience” (and “empathic identification”), that Schiitz exclaims
that subjective understanding or Verstehen “has nothing to do with intro¬
spection.”20 What Schiitz wants to say here, I suppose, is that “subjective
understanding” goes far beyond introspection and does not always require
FRITZ MACHLUP 293
it. It merely requires the construction of at least one model of the actor
or of the type of actor, that is, an imaginative construction of perceptions,
memories, and preferences that is adequate for explaining (and for pre¬
dicting) the observed behavior or the observed consequences of presumed
behavior.
Let us go back to the end of our parable, where the molecules, after
denying the story told by the physicist, offered to tell all they knew about
themselves. The lesson of the parable was not that the physicist had never
been a molecule and thus had no introspective knowledge about molecules
but that the tales told by the molecules would become data and problems
for the physicist to deal with. The self-interpretations of the molecules and
their interpretations of the actions and reactions of their fellow molecules
would become integral parts of the scientists’ observational field.
Whether the tales told by inanimate matter would help or hinder the
scientists’ work is difficult to say. New discoveries will sometimes compli¬
cate, mess up, or even destroy the nicest and most widely accepted scientific
models of natural phenomena, and thus increase the “mystery” of nature
for the time being. Yet, in the long run such discoveries may prove to have
been significant steps in the search for “truth.” On the other hand, the
newly discovered facts may turn out to be errors of observation, and the
scientists’ efforts to accommodate them in their theoretical system may have
been sheer waste. In the same sense, any verbal reports mysteriously made
by inanimate matter—on the witness stand, on the psychoanalyst’s couch,
on questionnaires, or in informal interviews—would certainly mess up the
scientists’ systems of ordered knowledge; in the long run, the value of such
reports may prove to be positive or negative. Undoubtedly, most scientists
would prefer not to be bothered by any confessions, true or false, of their
now conveniently silent subjects of observation.
The most irritating disturbances would come from contradictory commu¬
nications. They would raise, among other problems, the question of who,
if anyone, is right, or “more credible.” Assume, for example, that some
molecules explained their movements as part of a well-designed plan of
action, others as emotional reactions to irritations from their fellow
molecules, while a few molecules admitted that they had been pushed
around in random collisions with others. The scientist would probably regard
the few respondents who had the “correct” story as particularly honest and
intelligent molecules. But he would still be confronted with the problem of
explaining why the others were liars or, at least, confused and unreliable
witnesses.21
294 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
bankers who failed to grasp the implications of their actions and often
misinterpreted their own intentions.23 Writers on the theory of the business
firm have repeatedly been criticized by businessmen who disliked the fun¬
damental hypotheses of the theorists and offered contradictory explanations
of business conduct.24
(1) can feel and think like the men whose actions he investigates;
(2) can talk with other men, learn about their experiences, thoughts, or
feelings, and ascertain that these are similar to his own;
(3) can listen to verbal communications, or read written communica¬
tions, among persons whose actions he investigates, or among per¬
sons of the same type;
(4) can receive verbal communications, solicited or unsolicited, directly
from the persons, or type of persons, whose actions he investigates,
(5) can make mental constructs and models of human thinking and act¬
ing, and can construct theoretical systems involving relationship
among ideal-typical actions, counteractions, and interactions;
(6) can interpret, with the use of his abstract models and theories,
particular (concrete) observations of human conduct;
(7) can interpret, with the use of his abstract models and theories,
particular (concrete) data as results of certain types of action;
(8) cannot build useful constructs and theories in disregard26 of con¬
structs and theories formed and communicated by men of the type
he observes;
(9) cannot obtain useful data (i.e., the “givens” he is supposed to ex¬
plain) except through verbal (and often also numerical) reports
from men engaged in the activities he investigates.
know whether Mars still qualifies for this designation)—a scholar with a
great gift for observation but without any knowledge of human institutions,
practices, or languages. He sets himself the task of explaining the working
and the function of the stock market. He might observe the traders, jobbers,
messengers, brokers, and customers, their movements, their gestures, and
their shouts for any length of time, but he would not even come close to a
superficial description of the actual process, not to speak of the function
of the institution.
Now endow him with the ability to speak and to understand the language,
and permit him to interview every one of the people engaged in the ac¬
tivities of the stock market. He would end up with information, but he
would not understand enough of what goes on to know the economic func¬
tions of the stock market, particularly its role in the utilization of investible
funds and in the formation of capital. Since probably 999 out of 1000 per¬
sons working on the stock market do not really know what it does and how
it does it, the most diligent observer-plus-interviewer would remain largely
ignorant. Alas, economics cannot be learned either by watching or by inter¬
viewing the people engaged in economic activities. It takes a good deal of
theorizing before one can grasp the complex interrelations in an economic
system. And this theorizing consists mainly in constructing ideal types of
motivated conduct of idealized decision-makers and combining them in
abstract models of interactions.
From time to time attempts have been made, in economic literature, to
do without the fundamental hypothesis of economic theory, that is, without
the assumption that households and firms pursue a definite objective, such
as maximization of satisfaction and profits. For example, it has been pro¬
posed “to start with complete uncertainty and nonmotivation” and rely on
“the principles of biological evolution and natural selection” to explain and
predict the course of economic events.27 The principle of conscious “adapta¬
tion” by firms seeking more profits was to be replaced by a principle
of “adoption” of successful firms by the environment. The survival of the
“viable” firms and the elimination of the nonviable ones were supposed
to be the result of “competition.”
This proposal depends on the assumption of competition; but competition
in markets depends on the desire of human decision-makers to make
profits. Competition among hungry animals for scarce food can be under¬
stood without reference to any “thoughts” expressed by the animals. Com¬
petition among well-nourished men cannot. Of course, competition among
athletes in a sport contest, competition among scholars in intellectual
endeavors, and competition among businessmen in trade and industry are
different matters, each presupposing different motivations. The point is that
the existence of the profit motive must be presupposed to explain com¬
petition in business. If firms in particular lines of activity make good profits,
the emergence of newcomers trying to get a share in the market can be
298 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
expected only if one assumes that there are men who prefer more money
to less and, therefore, decide to enter the industry that seems to offer
relatively large profits.28
One of the most important phenomena of the social world, inaction or
“negative action” (“intentional refraining from action”), necessarily escapes
sensory observations,29 other than the nonactor’s verbal statement of his
“reasons,” that is to say, a statement of his (perhaps wrong or misleading
and certainly introspective) theory about his way of thinking. Where
inaction is a mass phenomenon, the construction of an ideal type of man
who would “understandably” not react to a particular change in conditions
is required.
(1) Why did the United States Steel Corporation raise the prices of
certain steel products in April 1962 by 3 V2 percent?
(2) Why did prices, as measured by the cost-of-living index, rise in the
United States by 7 percent from 1956 to 1958?
(3) Why will prices increase if, with a given labor force, given facilities
of production, and given technological knowledge, total bank credit
is expanded and aggregate spending by government and business in¬
creases?
I am not sure whether Nagel sees the concepts and theories of the social
sciences in this or in a very different light. For he does not choose for
his illustrations general propositions of social sciences, but rather singular
events involving particular persons at a specified time and place. He states
this most clearly when he discusses Maclver’s example of the man fleeing
from a pursuing crowd and finds that it involves “an assumption, singular in
form, characterizing specified individuals as being in certain psychological
states at indicated times. . . .”33
At one point Nagel discusses a point of economic history: Southern
cotton planters were “unacquainted with the laws of modern soil chemistry,
and mistakenly believed that the use of animal manure would preserve
indefinitely the fertility of the cotton plantation.” He holds that the “social
scientist’s familiarity with those laws” will help him explain the gradual
deterioration of the soil and the consequent need for virgin land to main¬
tain the output of cotton.34 I submit that it is not the “social scientist” who
needs this knowledge of soil chemistry; it is the historian who, in explaining
the events and changes he has selected for investigation, has to know all
sorts of things, including some general laws of physics, chemistry, agronomy,
FRITZ MACHLUP 301
We may note that in this illustration Nagel again refers to our imagined
identification with a particular trader in wheat, even asks about “the sen¬
timents and envisioned plans” which he actually possesses, and raises ques¬
tions about his actual conduct. Since I may assume that Nagel is not allud¬
ing to the psychoanalysis of a wheat dealer of his acquaintance, but rather
to the methodology of economic analysis, I take the liberty of offering an
interpretation of the “actual” role which “interpretative” explanation has
in economics, and I propose to do this with an illustration involving traders
in wheat.
The economist is concerned with questions of the following kind: How
will the price of wheat be affected by a report of a drought; by a reduction
in the import quota for wheat; by a reduction in the rate of interest; by
an increase in freight rates; by an announcement that the ice cover on the
Great Lakes will delay the opening of shipping for several weeks? These
questions can be answered with the aid of general propositions of economic
theory. The answers do not presuppose that the economist knows any wheat
dealer personally, let alone his psychological make-up. They do presuppose,
however, that the economist has constructed an ideal type of dealer con¬
duct. Its main feature is that dealers would rather make more money than
less. This imputation of the profit motive to anonymous characters—“in-
302 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
HUNCHES
NOTES
1. Carl Ewald, Mutter Natur Erzahlt (Stuttgart: Franckh, 1910); idem, The
Spider and Other Stories (New York: Scribners, 1907); idem, The Old Post and
Other Nature Stories (London: Dent, 1922).
2. Christian Morgenstern, “Die Westkiisten,” in Galgenlieder (Berlin: Bruno
Cassirer, 1926), pp. 42-43.
3. Friedrich von Wieser, “Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen
Nationalokonomie: Kritische Glossen,” Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und
Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich, 35. Jahrgang (1911), p. 402.
4. Alfred Schiitz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Vienna: Springer,
1st ed. 1932, 2nd ed. 1960), pp. 281-282.
5. Hans Kelsen, Allgemeine Staatslehre (Berlin: Springer, 1925), p. 129.
6. Kelsen, loc. cit. Fascinated by this story of the rock, I made the rock expand
its tale: “I came here because I did not like it up there near the glaciers, where I
used to live; here I like it fine, especially this nice view of the valley.” Fritz Machlup,
“Are the Social Sciences Really Inferior?” Southern Economic Journal, Vol. XXVII
(January 1961), pp. 176-177; reprinted in Maurice Natanson, ed., Philosophy of
the Social Sciences (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 166.
7. Alfred Schutz, “Common-sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Ac¬
tion,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. XIV (September 1953),
p. 3; reprinted in Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. I (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 5-6.
8. The idea of subjective interpretation—Verstehen—was first advanced by
Wilhelm Dilthey. He, however, confined it to interpretations of history and literature.
Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert extended the postulate to the social
sciences, or rather “cultural” sciences, which they, however, regarded as strictly
historical in character. (For citations, see footnote 30, below.) It is Max Weber to
whom we owe the further extension of the principle to generalizing (and predictive)
social sciences. Whether for Weber subjective interpretation was a requirement or
merely an important aid in the analysis of social phenomena is still controversial.
9. Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. I, p. 43.
10. Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1961),
p. 481.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 485.
13. Schutz, op. cit., p. 36.
14. Alfred Schutz, “Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences,” in
Collected Papers, Vol. I, p. 65.
15. Nagel, op. cit., p. 484.
16. Ibid.
17. I cannot resist recalling the operatic dialogue between young Siegfried, in
Richard Wagner’s music drama, and old Mime: Siegfried asking what fear is and
how one could learn how to fear, and Mime first trying to teach him fear by de¬
scribing his own feelings of anxiety and then, when this proves unsuccessful, prom¬
ising that Siegfried would soon learn it by personal experience when he encounters
Fafner, the dragon.
18. We may know what fear and hatred felt like when we felt them and how we
think we acted at those times; we may also know how other people acted when
they reported fearing and hating and how they described their feelings. We then try
to find a correspondence or similarity—an overlap among the relevant features
common to these sets of private and public observations.
19. I realize that we can build instruments which tell us by means of signals in
English about the physical state of matter. For example, the gauge in my automobile
tells me whether the water in the radiator is “cold” or “hot.” If the gauge is out of
order, the “report” may be wrong. Yet, we would never say that the water was
“lying” about its temperature. It is not the water that tells us about its feeling cold
or hot; the gauge gives us signals by means of a mechanism which man has invented,
built, and installed.
304 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
homunculi. But there are also economists who do not care about even that much
correspondence between real and imagined men, as long as the conclusions that can
be derived from conjunctions between the constructed types and certain sets of
specified conditions broadly correspond to the observed records of events that have
actually occurred after conditions of the specified sort have actually existed.
33. Nagel, op. cit., p. 482. The emphasis is mine.
34. Ibid., p. 476.
35. Ibid., p. 483.
36. I am indebted to Karl Deutsch for a stimulating discussion of these points.
FUNCTIONALISM IN SOCIAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
Maurice Mandelbaum
We have seen that this institution [the Kula] presents several aspects closely in¬
tertwined and influencing one another. To take only two, economic enterprise
and magical ritual form one inseparable whole, the forces of the magical belief
and the efforts of man moulding and influencing one another. . . .
It seems to me that a deeper analysis and comparison of the manner in which
two aspects of culture functionally depend on one another might afford some
interesting material for theoretical reflection. Indeed, it seems to me that there
is room for a new type of theory?
cipline, which seeks to understand cultures through the ways in which their
true components function, and these components are institutional in nature.
This can be illustrated through a series of excerpts from that article, in
which Malinowski’s reliance on analysis and elements should be clear:
Culture is a well-organized unity divided into two fundamental aspects—a
body of artifacts and a system of customs—but also obviously into further
subdivisions and units. The analysis of culture into its component elements, the
relation of these elements to one another and their relation to the needs of
the organism, to the environment and to the universally acknowledged human
ends which they subserve are important problems of anthropology (p. 623 b).
The primary concern of functional anthropology is with the function of in¬
stitutions, customs, implements and ideas. It holds that the cultural process is
subject to laws and that the laws are to be found in the function of the real
elements of culture. The atomizing or isolating treatment of culture traits is
regarded as sterile, because the significance of culture consists in the relation
between its elements, and the existence of accidental or fortuitous culture com¬
plexes is not admitted (p. 625 a).
The real component units of cultures which have a considerable degree of
permanence, universality and independence are the organized systems of human
activities called institutions. Every institution centers around a fundamental
need, permanently unites a group of people in a cooperative task and has a
particular body of doctrine and its technique of craft (p. 626 a).
In the second place, we may note that in addition to Malinowski’s in¬
sistence on the existence of genuine elements within a culture, the fore¬
going passages make clear another fundamental difference between his
views and those of Ruth Benedict. (This difference brings us to the third
point in Bateson’s account of the variant meanings of the term “function.”)
In these passages Malinowski speaks of “human needs” and of “universally
acknowledged human ends.” Ruth Benedict explicitly rejected Malinowski’s
views at precisely this point: She denied the existence of any set of human
needs which is the same in all cultures, or—to put the same point in an¬
other way—she denied that there are any psychological invariants under¬
lying the forms of organization in different cultures.16 Malinowski’s interest
in such invariants presumably antedated the publication of his article on
“Culture” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. For example, it was
at least implicit in his willingness to generalize concerning primitive man
in his 1925 essay “Magic, Science, and Religion,” and it was assuredly
present in his treatment of instinct in Part IV of Sex and Repression in
Savage Society, which dates from 1929. However, it was his 1931 article
on “Culture” that introduced the question of fundamental human needs as
an essential aspect of his position, and it is this emphasis to which we shall
refer in speaking of Malinowski’s later functionalism.17
This later functionalist position is best summarized in a 1939 essay
entitled “The Functional Theory,” posthumously published in A Scientific
Theory of Culture and also in the longer theoretical monograph which
312 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
gave that volume its name. What characterized Malinowski’s later position,
as distinguished from his earlier statements of his views, is an insistence
on relating institutions, which he always regarded as the genuine elements in
a culture, to human needs. Among these needs there were some which
Malinowski regarded as basic, and he held that most, though not all, of
man’s basic needs were rooted in biological factors. In addition to these
basic needs, Malinowski held that a set of derived needs always arises
through the operation of cultural factors. The general nature of these
derived needs (though not the specific ways in which they are satisfied) is,
according to Malinowski, the same in all cultures: As a consequence, one
can find common characteristics in all societies. And it was with these com¬
mon features, and their relations to human needs, that Malinowski’s later
functionalism was concerned. The details of his theory need not here occupy
us. What is important to understand is that there is no necessary incom-
patability between Malinowski’s later focus of interest and his earlier form
of functionalist theory. Thus, it would be mistaken to assume that Malinow¬
ski’s later functionalism superseded or altered his earlier position. Rather,
it operated on a new level of theory, and it can be either accepted or re¬
jected independently of one’s acceptance or rejection of Malinowski’s
original position.
In order to see that there is no inconsistency between Malinowski’s
earlier and later views, one need merely recognize that he always viewed
those institutional complexes which he took to be the genuine elements
within culture as being characterizable in terms of reciprocal relationships
between individuals. The notion of reciprocity was fundamental in Malinow¬
ski’s analysis of gifts within the Kula cycle (Argonauts of the Western
Pacific)-, furthermore, in his introduction to Hogbin’s Law and Order in
Polynesia, the same notion of obligations and counterobligations was taken
to be basic for an analysis of primitive law. In fact, in that preface (p.
xxxiii), Malinowski came close to defining the concept of “an institution”
in terms of reciprocal relationships of obligation. He said: “From the point
of view on which it is necessary to focus our attention at present an in¬
stitution is nothing but a network, a closely-knit system of rules which
define the mutual behaviour of partners in marriage, in parenthood, in
kinship, clanship, economic co-operation, and so on.”18 Granted this
position, it is easy to see that the institutions which are present in any
society will tend to form a coherent and interlocking pattern of relation¬
ships, since if this were not in general true the individuals within that
society would be caught in a trap of mutually inconsistent reciprocal ob¬
ligations : They would have obligations which they could not fulfill, and one
or the other of the mutually incompatible institutions simply could not
survive without substantial alterations.19 Once we recognize that Malinowski
regarded institutions in this way, it is apparent that there need be no conflict
between the emphases which one finds in his earlier and his later forms
MAURICE MANDELBAUM 313
Functionalism would not be so functional after all, unless it could define the
concept of function not merely by such glib expressions as “the contribution
which a partial activity makes to the total activity of which it is a part,” but by
a much more definite and concrete reference to what actually occurs and what
can be observed. As we shall see, such a definition is provided by showing that
human institutions, as well as partial activities within these, are related to
primary, that is, biological, or derived, that is, cultural needs. Function means,
therefore, always the satisfaction of a need.23
unaltered throughout his career.25 His basic theory had two main character¬
istics, in one of which he was wholly in agreement with Malinowski, and
in the other not. This may be shown by separating into two parts a single
passage in which he stated the conclusions to be drawn from his extended
interpretation of ceremonial customs among the Andaman Islanders.
The passage begins as follows:
That there was at this point a difference between the theoretical position
of Radcliffe-Brown and the early functionalism of Malinowski can be illus¬
trated through the succeeding sentences of the passage which I am citing,
for Radcliffe-Brown continues:
I have tried to show that the ceremonial customs are the means by which the
society acts upon its individual members and keeps alive in their minds a
certain system of sentiments. Without the ceremonial those sentiments would not
exist, and without them the social organization in its actual form could not exist.
the social scientist and the psychologist are not concerned with the same system
and its set of relations. The social scientist is concerned with relations he can
discover between acts of diverse individuals; the psychologist with relations
between acts of behavior of one and the same individual.34
According to this view, the raw data for both the psychologist and the social
scientist were the same: Each started from observations concerning acts
of behavior. The distinction between psychological and social-scientific in¬
vestigations depended not upon any difference in data, but upon the systems
to which these data were related.
In speaking of “a system,” Radcliffe-Brown referred to a complex or¬
ganized whole, whose parts were so interrelated that one would alter their
natures if one attempted to abstract them from the system of which they
were parts. Thus, he frequently used the example of a human organism
as a paradigmatic case of what constituted a system; but it was not, of
course, with the human organism that he believed either the psychologist
or the social scientist should deal. As the above passage suggests, that with
which the psychologist deals are acts of behavior (including thoughts, be¬
liefs, feelings, etc.), and these acts form the system which constitutes the
mind of a given individual; the social scientist, on the other hand, deals with
acts by which persons are related to one another, and Radcliffe-Brown
assumes that such acts too form a system.35
Unfortunately, in discussing what were the elements or parts of the sys¬
tems with which social scientists deal, Radcliffe-Brown was less careful and
explicit than one should like him to have been. On the one hand he some¬
times spoke as if the related elements which comprise a social system were
individual persons, but he also spoke as if they were what he generally
called “social usages.”30 However, in spite of possible misunderstandings
with respect to this issue—which, as we shall see, is an important issue
for the problems which concern us—I believe that Radcliffe-Brown did
have a consistent position which runs through all of his works and which
can be stated in the following way.
318 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
The data of the social scientist are drawn from observations of those acts
of behavior which relate individuals to one another; therefore the essential
elements of a social system are individuals, and without human individuals
no social system would exist.37 Thus, in one sense, the units of a social
system are individuals, and Radcliffe-Brown sometimes explicitly says that
they are.38 However, since it is not the task of the social scientist to relate
the acts of any one individual to his other acts, it is not the individual as
such who can be regarded as comprising a genuine unit in a social system.39
Such units must be those acts which relate individuals to one another, and
Radcliffe-Brown calls attention to this fact in saying that the units of a
social system are “human beings regarded as sets of behavioral events
namely as the behavioral events through which they are related to one
another.40 And when he is most careful in discussing the units of a social
system, Radcliffe-Brown specifies another characteristic which such be¬
havioral events must have: They must be recurrent.41 Furthermore, we may
say that his view demands that these recurrent behavioral events lead to
continuity in the relatedness between individuals, since every system (ac¬
cording to Radcliffe-Brown’s use of that term) must have structural con¬
tinuity over a span of time.42 The acts which fulfill these conditions are
referred to by Radcliffe-Brown as “social usagesand of them he says:
A social usage is not merely a common mode of behavior. . . . [It] always in¬
volves a rule of behavior: there are proper or appropriate ways of behaving
under certain circumstances. ... A social usage is more than simply something
which people do. A, B, and C make bows; D recognizes that that is the way to
make a bow. The fact (1) that some or many people observe it, and (2) the
fact that a large number of people recognize it as a rule constitutes the reality
of a social usage.43
It is the structural form of the society which the social scientist has to describe.
(One might call that form “non-mental” or “super-psychic” if one liked.) It
[the structural form] is explicit in the social usages.44
For this reason it is proper to consider social usages as the specific units
whose interrelationships form a social system.
In this connection there is one final point to be noted, and that is the
stress that Radcliffe-Brown placed on the fact that the total set of social
usages form a single, coherent system. As we have noted, he shared with
Malinowski an acceptance of the principle of interrelatedness: that the
various elements of a culture affect one another. When translated into
terms of social usages, this principle demanded that the specific, repeated
forms of behavior evinced by individuals in their relations to one another
form a coherent pattern, and it was to this principle that Radcliffe-Brown
referred when he discussed “the functional consistency of social systems.”46
MAURICE MANDELBAUM 319
an organism could be effective in the present, and could lead that organism
to the future goal which the teleologist claims that it may be said to seek.
Whatever other faults his views may have, no such charge can justifiably
be leveled against the type of functional explanation which Radcliffe-Brown
offered in his accounts of anthropological facts.51 As we have seen, his
theory did not deny the existence of psychological determinants in func¬
tional explanations, and such explanations (as he employed them) in fact
rested upon the existence of these determinants. And we are now in a posi¬
tion to see why this should have been the case. A social system is a set
of interrelated social usages; social usages, however, are acts of individuals;
they are acts which “while they characterize a certain number of individuals
are the product in these individuals of the action upon them of other
individuals within a specific social system.”52 This being so, the whole
dynamism of any social system will rest upon the interactions of individuals,
not upon an unspecified and “occult” relationship whereby the supposed
needs of the system as a whole presumably make themselves directly felt in
each of its component parts. That Radcliffe-Brown’s emphasis on the role
of individuals in a society was basic to his functionalism throughout his
career can perhaps best be seen through citing a passage from the preface
to the revised edition of The Andaman Islanders (1933), in which he at¬
tempted to specify the meaning of “function”:
In the foregoing account we saw that the basic starting point of function¬
alism for both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown was the doctrine that all
elements within a social system are mutually related; as Bateson pointed out,
it was this thesis which characterized “the Functional School.” However, as
we also saw, Malinowski’s later functionalism operated on a quite different
theoretical level: Its purpose was to account for the universal elements in
cultures, rather than being confined to a thesis concerning the relations ob¬
taining among the coexisting elements in any one culture. It should be
obvious that even if we assume both aspects of Malinowski’s views to have
been sound, they were independent of one another; and we may note that,
if sound, they would play quite different roles in the economy of our knowl¬
edge of societies. Malinowski’s early functionalism was a descriptive thesis
concerning specific cultures, and his later functionalism was concerned with
comparisons of the elements to be found in all cultures. Radcliffe-Brown’s
theory operated on these same two levels. As we have seen, he shared
Malinowski’s descriptive thesis concerning the interrelatedness of the ele¬
ments within any one culture, and he also sought to generalize concerning
the features which all societies have in common. On his view, however, these
common features were structural principles making for the cohesiveness
and continuity of societies rather than being specific, repeated elements tied
to individual needs.
Now, it seems to me clear that the first, or descriptive, principle in each of
these theories ought not to be treated as if it were intended to provide an
empirical law. To view it as a law would be to render it either empirically
false, or so to modify it that it would become too weakened to possess any
explanatory power. This can be suggested in the following way.
If the principle of interrelatedness were to be formulated as a law, it
would very probably be stated in something like the following form: In any
MAURICE MANDELBAUM 323
culture, all elements within the culture are related to all other elements in
such a way that none would be as it is if the other elements were different
from what they are. However, such a law would imply that any change in
any element of any culture would entail that all other elements in that cul¬
ture would also undergo change. This principle can surely not be thought to
be true, and neither Malinowski nor Radcliffe-Brown can easily be inter¬
preted as having believed it to be true.59 However, if the principle were to
be weakened in a manner that would make it empirically plausible, it would
probably have to be stated as holding that many elements in a culture have
some effect on one another; that no element can be understood as a unit
which stands in isolation from all others. This weaker principle was indeed
advocated by Malinowski and by Radcliffe-Brown, and their work—as well
as the work of their followers—has assuredly established its plausibility; it is
a principle which has, in their hands, undermined some of the assumptions
shared by most earlier diffusionists, and before them by most who ap¬
proached social anthropology from an evolutionary or an “antiquarian”
point of view. However, when phrased in this weakened form, the principle
no longer permits one to deduce specific consequences in specific instances.
It could therefore not perform the explanatory function of a law on the
classical deductive-nomothetic model. Nor is it likely that it could be suc¬
cessfully rephrased in probabilistic terms, and be used in explanatory gen¬
eralizations of a probabilistic type.
Under these circumstances, one might seek to interpret the descriptive
principle of interrelatedness (as this principle was used by Malinowski and
by Radcliffe-Brown) as a merely methodological principle of heuristic sig¬
nificance. On such a view, these functionalists would be interpreted as having
merely held that one should always look for interrelationships among the
elements of a culture, for fear of misunderstanding them, or of misdescribing
them, because one may have overlooked their relationships to other elements
with which they were connected.60 However, I believe that this strictly
heuristic interpretation of the principle of interrelatedness would assuredly
be too weak an interpretation to be an accurate reflection of Malinowski’s
thought, and I believe—though with perhaps less assurance—that it would
also be too weak an interpretation to do justice to the views of Radcliffe-
Brown, and of functionalism in general. What was at stake in functionalism
was not merely an important heuristic device but an explanatory principle:
The various elements in a culture were held to be what they actually were
because of their interconnections with one another. This explanatory prin¬
ciple, it should be noted, was descriptive in character, and was not a law-like
generalization from which further specific consequences were expected to
be deduced. Thus, if I am not mistaken, the position of functionalism—so
far as the principle of interrelatedness was concerned—presupposed that,
in some cases at least, descriptive analyses constitute explanations of par¬
ticular phenomena. A position of this sort—though making use of a different
324 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
NOTES
1. “Teleological Explanation and Teleological Systems” was published in 1953
in Vision and Action, edited by Sidney Ratner. “A Formalization of Functionalism”
dates from the same year but was first published in 1956 in Logic Without Meta¬
physics. Since the latter paper was closely tied to Robert K. Merton’s essay on
“Manifest and Latent Functions” (cf. note 3, below), many of its aspects are not
incorporated in The Structure of Science; it should therefore be separately consulted.
However, so far as I can see, the position expounded in The Structure of Science
does not depart from this earlier formulation of Nagel’s view. (A much briefer dis¬
cussion of functionalism is to be found in his contribution to a symposium on
“Problems of Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences,” American
Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, vol. I [University of Pennsylvania Press,
1952].)
2. It has, of course, also been one of the chief sources of much of this work.
Among the philosophers of science who have dealt with the problem, I might
mention Sidney Morgenbesser’s “Role and Status of Anthropological Theories,”
Science, vol. 128 (1958), pp. 285-288; Carl G. Hempel’s “The Logic of Functional
Analysis,” originally published in 1959, but reprinted in a revised version in his
Aspects of Scientific Explanation (1965); Israel Scheffler’s Anatomy of Inquiry
(1963), especially Sections 5 and 9 of Part I; and Chapter IX of Robert Brown’s
Explanation in Social Science (1963).
In Dorothy Emmet’s Function, Purpose and Powers (1958), one finds a very
similar linkage of functionalism in social anthropology with questions concerning
teleological systems.
3. In the present paper I shall not deal with functionalism in sociology. It is a
326 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
4. Recent uses of the term “teleology” have extended its application to a wider
variety of phenomena than had previously been regarded as being “teleological.
For example, the term is presently applied to man-made physical systems regulated
by negative feedback and to those instances in which human action is motivated by
attempts to attain future goals, as well as being applied to biological phenomena
as these phenomena are interpreted by vitalists. One can, of course, find connections
among these three types of use, as well as connections with other traditional uses
(e.g., the theological uses of the term). However, so far as I can see, no one of
these three uses has any necessary connection with functionalism as a theory in
social anthropology, and it will be my purpose to suggest that Hempel was mistaken
when he said: “Historically speaking, functional analysis is a modification of teleo¬
logical explanation, i.e., of explanation not by reference to causes which bring
about’ the event in question but by reference to ends which determine its course”
(loc. cit., p. 303).
5. A useful bibliography of Malinowski’s writings, and of the literature concern¬
ing him, is to be found in Raymond Firth (ed.), Man and Culture, An Evaluation
of the Work of Bronislav Malinowski (London, 1957). Some of the articles cited
in that bibliography have more recently been reprinted in a collection entitled Sex,
Culture and Myth (New York, 1962).
6. Argonauts, p. 11. Although Malinowski’s first book, The Family Among the
Australian Aborigines (1913), was based upon presuppositions which he soon
abandoned, one finds in its concluding chapter expressions of precisely the same
point of view as that cited above: The institution of the family, Malinowski argues,
cannot be understood in isolation from its social conditions, e.g., from territorial
and tribal structure, land ownership and economic practices, and moral, customary,
or legal norms (cf. p. 293 and p. 301 of the 1963 edition, edited by J. A. Barnes).
7. Argonauts p. 515 (italics mine). That the interplay of various aspects of a
culture was basic in Malinowski’s earlier views regarding methodological and theo¬
retical issues also becomes clear in his special preface to the third edition (1932)
of The Sexual Life of Savages (cf. especially p. xx).
8. Argonauts, p. 516.
9. I do not deny that the unsatisfactoriness of many diachronic studies and
their highly conjectural nature, as well as a variety of personal factors, played a
part in Malinowski’s anti-historical bias. I merely wish to point out that if one takes
his anti-abstractionist thesis as seriously as he himself did, then there are good
theoretic reasons for the position that he adopted. This point comes out very clearly
in Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927), pp. 181-182.
To be sure, one might accept this early functionalism and yet be interested in
MAURICE MANDELBAUM 327
29. Cf, above, note 13. The same linkage is to be found in R. H. Lowie’s treatment
of Radcliffe-Brown in his History of Ethnological Theory: He discusses Radcliffe-
Brown in connection with “the French School,” rather than in connection with
Malinowski and functionalism.
Radcliffe-Brown readily acknowledged his debt to Durkheim and to the latter’s
followers. For example, see the prefaces to The Andaman Islanders, and also the
important acknowledgement in the footnote on page 325 of that work. Among the
many other passages which establish this connection, I shall cite only the following:
Structure and Function in Primitive Society, pp. 14, 166, 176, and 200. However,
I should like also to call attention to the fact that in his article “On the Concept of
Function in Social Science,” (American Anthropologist, vol. 37 [1935], p. 394)
Radcliffe-Brown attributed the basic concept of the function of a social institution
to Durkheim.
30. According to Radcliffe-Brown, one of the major factors on which the existence
of any society depends is the existence in it of a shared body of moral customs,
and these he regarded as dependent upon sentiments (cf. The Andaman Islanders,
pp. 400 ff.). Thus he says: “These sentiments and the representations connected with
them, upon the existence of which, as we have seen, the very existence of the society
depends, need to be kept alive, to be maintained at a given degree of intensity.
Apart from the necessity that exists of keeping them alive in the mind of the in¬
dividual, there is the necessity of impressing them upon each new individual added
to the society, upon each child as he or she develops into an adult” (p. 404).
31. For a concise statement of the empirical assumptions involved in Radcliffe-
Brown’s position, see the five points which he takes as his working hypothesis: In
each of them the concept of a sentiment is central (The Andaman Islanders, pp.
231-232).
While Radcliffe-Brown did explain some ceremonials, such as the rite of weeping
(p. 245) and ceremonial dancing (p. 252), in terms which were entirely consistent
with this working hypothesis, it may be doubted whether the same can be said with
respect to his explanations of bodily ornamentation (cf. pp. 320-323). In the latter
explanations he failed to show how sentiments were actually involved. This suggests
that he had either failed to state his working hypothesis with sufficient clarity, or that
he had failed to test it with sufficient rigor.
32. All three essays cited above are reprinted in Structure and Function in Primi¬
tive Society. The quotation from “Taboo” is to be found on page 144 of that volume.
33. Structure and Function in Primitive Society, p. 157. Similarly, he says:
“The social function of the rites is obvious: by giving solemn and collective expres¬
sion to [a particular system of sentiments] the rites reaffirm, renew and strengthen
those sentiments on which the social solidarity depends” (ibid., p. 164).
34 .A Natural Science of Society, p. 45. This work was originally published in
1948, but I shall cite the 1957 reprinting of it.
For a discussion of Radcliffe-Brown’s use of the concept of systems, their dis¬
tinction from classes, and their relation to his view of natural laws, cf. especially
pp. 19-22 of the same work.
35. Ibid., p. 47. In my opinion it is true that social scientists do deal with what
Radcliffe-Brown terms systems of acts through which individuals are related to one
another. However, to define the province of social science (as distinct from psychol¬
ogy) in this way cannot be considered adequate. In the first place, not every set of
acts through which persons are related forms what Radcliffe-Brown characterizes
as a system. In the second place, it is not likely that we would regard it as within
the province of a social scientist, rather than a psychologist, to investigate all cases
in which behavior evinces systematic connections between the interrelated acts of
individuals. (For example, an extreme case of sibling rivalry in a particular family
would not usually be assigned to the field of social science rather than psychology.)
36. In his last, unfinished work—a projected portion of a text on social anthro¬
pology—he used the term “institutions” in much the way he had formerly used the
concept of “social usages.” This fragment is published as Part II of Method in Social
Anthropology, and his use of the term “institution” is to be found in his discussion
of “Social Structure” in that place.
37. I here exclude from consideration the question of whether one can speak of
animal societies as being “societies” in the same sense as human societies. In doing
so, I am following Radcliffe-Brown who distinguishes between them on the ground
that animal societies are based exclusively (or almost exclusively) on instinct rather
than on instinct plus culture (cf. A Natural Science of Society, p. 91).
38. For example, in A Natural Science of Society, p. 49.
39. Radcliffe-Brown uses the term "unit,” rather than “part” to refer to the
330 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
relata within a system, as contrasted with the members of a class (cf. A Natural
Science of Society, p. 22). , .
40. A Natural Science of Society, p. 26. And in a posthumous fragment published
in Method in Social Anthropology, he suggested that “the matter” of human societies
consisted in human beings, whereas their “forms” consisted in the ways in whic
these individuals were connected by institutional relationships (ct. p. 176).
41. Cf. A Natural Science of Society, p. 53.
42. A Natural Science of Society, pp. 24-26.
43. A Natural Science of Society, p. 56.
44. A Natural Science of Society, p. 56. _ , , „
45. Cf. A Natural Science of Society, pp. 124—128; cf. also Structure and Function
in Primitive Society, p. 43.
While Malinowski would not have denied that an overall functional consistency
normally characterizes the culture of any society, in Crime and Custom in Savage
Society, and elsewhere, he emphasized the existence of deviant behavior among in¬
dividuals. To what extent Radcliffe-Brown’s theory of the mechanisms underlying
the formation of social usages permits him to account for deviant behavior is, I
believe, an important open question. , ,
46. At this point it may be useful to call attention to the fact that Radcline-
Brown did not share what may be termed the “organismic” conception of a culture
that one finds in Ruth Benedict, among others. Like Malinowski, he saw a social
system as composed of elements, and it was the interrelatedness of these elements
that gave the system the degree of unity which it possessed. In various of Ruth
Benedict’s utterances, however, she spoke as if she intended to hold that it was
the system as a whole which determined the characteristics of the units which com¬
prised it. Though Radcliffe-Brown also used the catch phrase “the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts,” distinguishing dynamic systems from mere aggregates,
he never suggested that the system as a whole was to be regarded as self-determining.
In fact, it was the essence of his functionalism that the persistence of the whole was
only made possible by the ways in which each element contributed to it. In this
respect, then, his position was closer to that of Malinowski than it was to that of
Benedict.
47. The Andaman Islanders, p. 229.
48. There are, however, passages in The Andaman Islanders, and elsewhere,
which might be regarded as setting forth such a view. For example, in that work he
puts forward the following statement:
By its action upon the individual the ceremonial develops and maintains
in existence in his mind an organized system of dispositions by which the
social life, in the particular form it takes in the Andamans, is made pos¬
sible, using for the purpose of maintaining the social cohesion all the
instinctive tendencies of human nature, modifying and combining them
according to its needs (p. 327).
Although one can clearly see in such a passage that Radcliffe-Brown wished to
emphasize the needs of a society conceived as a whole, if my interpretation of his
thought has been correct, one need not interpret such passages as being meant to
convey the view that a society has the power to select which social usages shall and
shall not have a place within it. It is the combination and mutual reinforcement of
these social usages, through their effects on individual behavior, which support the
system as a whole.
49. He does in fact usually state his view in such a way as to imply that every
element contributes directly to the system as a whole. Cf. the passage cited above
from page 229 of The Andaman Islanders. In his article “On the Concept of Func¬
tion in Social Science,” he is, however, somewhat more cautious: He only takes this
to be a “working hypothesis” (cf. American Anthropologist, vol. 37 [1935], p. 399).
50. To be sure, Radcliffe-Brown did recognize the pervasiveness of social change,
and did regard it as an important problem for the social anthropologist (cf. A
Natural Science of Society, pp. 86-89). However, his emphasis was upon synchronic
analyses, and he regarded it as legitimate to treat these independently of questions
regarding processes of change.
51. Radcliffe-Brown did not discuss biological explanation in sufficient detail to
make me certain that the charge might not apply to him in that sphere—though from
the general tenor of his discussions of scientific explanation in A Natural Science of
Society, I should be surprised if such a charge were justified with respect to his
biological views. However, I am here solely concerned with the charge as it is
presumed to apply to his social anthropology.
MAURICE MANDELBAUM 331
LAW
differences between these two approaches are relative rather than absolute;
they are essentially matters of emphasis. The “positivist” definition cannot
dispense with the acceptance of the legal norm by the community, as shown
by the inclusion, in Austin’s definition, of “habitual obedience, and, in
Kelsen’s analysis, of the “minimum effectiveness.” On the other hand, at
least in the context of a modern legal system, no social behavior, however
steady and supported by conviction on the part of the observing group, can
dispense with the recognition bestowed upon it by the legislator, the ad¬
ministrator, or the judiciary, or a combination of all these organs of the
modem state.
A third essential element in the concept of law is a degree of generality.
“The first desideratum of a system for subjecting human conduct to the
governance of rules is an obvious one: There must be rules. This may be
stated as a requirement of generality.”1® Here, as in so many other fields,
John Austin’s distinction was basically right, but too rigidly drawn: “Where
it obliges generally to acts or forbearances of a class, a command is a law
or rule, but where it obliges to a specific act or forbearance, or to acts or
forbearances which determine specifically or individually, a command is
occasional or particular.”2 In the legal systems of modern societies, legal
norms, resulting from a constant interplay of legislative, executive, and
judicial pronouncements, cover the whole spectrum from extreme generality
to great particularity. They range from constitutional bills of rights to orders
prohibiting the sale of a particular commodity in a specific district on cer¬
tain days. The relativity and even elusiveness of the distinction between
general and particular command is brought out clearly in the doctrine of the
“Stufentheorie.” ... On the other hand, it is equally obvious that a com¬
munity which had no general prescription at all, but only an infinite
multitude of individual commands, would not be regarded as having a legal
order. It would dissolve into millions of individual relationships. Taking
these three essential elements into consideration, we may say, without an
attempt at “definition” of the term, that the concept of law means a norm
of conduct set for a given community—and accepted by it as binding—by
an authority equipped with the power to lay down norms of a degree of
general application and to enforce them by a variety of sanctions.3
LEGAL SYSTEM
The conflict of values is here transferred from the outside world to the
psyche of the individual.
We conclude that “justice,” as a generally valid concept, is formal, in the
sense that it is the goal to which every legal order aspires as a “purposeful
enterprise,” and procedural, in the sense that the Aristotelian notion of
“equality for equals” implies a minimum machinery of justice and third
party determination.
Beyond this, it is necessary to turn to the field of ethics and morality for
a determination of the values that may give the idea of justice a specific
substantive content.
The great majority of writers use the terms “ethical” and “moral” inter¬
changeably.36 Although the choice of terms is largely a matter of preference,
it is submitted that the distinction recently suggested by P. F. Strawson
between social morality and ethics is more than a matter of terminology,
because it clarifies the relationship of individual values to those of the
social and, from there, the legal order. In an article entitled “Social Morality
and Individual Ideal,”37 Strawson suggests that “the region of the ethical
. . . is a region of diverse, certainly incompatible and possibly practically
conflicting ideal images or pictures of human life. . . .”38 Ethics is thus the
sphere of ideal forms of life set by individuals for themselves. It is further
implicit in his suggestion that these ideal images of man’s life—generally
called values—conflict, and that “the multiplicity of conflicting pictures is
itself the essential element of one’s picture of man.” By contrast, the sphere
of morality denotes “rules or principles governing human behavior which
apply universally within a community or class.” A “minimal conception of
morality” limits itself to those rules which are “a condition of the existence
of society,” whereas a more comprehensive conception of morality would
embrace the entire body of rules governing a community or class.
The merit of this approach is that it illuminates the tripartite relation
between (a) the values that individuals, as conscientious and responsible
human beings, set to themselves, (b) the moral norms governing a society
—which reflect a social balance and choice between conflicting individual
values, and (c) the legal order, which must reflect the current social
morality but is far from identical with it. In the completely masterminded
and conditioned society depicted in Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s
1984, the distinction between social morality and individual ethics, and
ultimately that between law, morality, and ethics, might altogether dis¬
appear. The norms of social behavior would be set by “Big Brother,” who
exercises complete legislative authority, and whose lawmaking power is
342 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
used to direct and control every aspect and corner of social behavior
The individual in turn is conditioned to accept the soc.olegal norms a
controlling his entire life and precluding the formation of individual values
—which in Orwell’s terminology would be “ungood.”
In contemporary societies the relative spheres of law, morality, and ethics,
as defined here, differ, of course, considerably. But in every contemporary
society there is some tension between these three orders of conduct. In the
pluralistic and relatively individualistic society which characterizes the value
system of modern democracy, the tension between these three spheres is
and must be considerable. There is liberty left for the individual to form
and live by one of the many conflicting “pictures of life”; this is limited
by the many constraints of social morality which flow from the necessities
of social life as well as by the ideological restraints imposed by society on
the individuals living within it. Finally, there is an increasingly active
reciprocal interrelationship between the legal and the moral order. On the
one hand, moral values press upon the legal system, and on the other,
the modern lawmaker can to an increasing extent influence and modify the
social habits of the community.
Another advantage of the tripartite classification would appear to be
that it bypasses the ancient and rather age-worn characterization of law
as being concerned with external conduct and morals as concerned with
internal conduct. This is, of course, the classical distinction drawn by Kant
in the Critique of Practical Reason, which has been adopted by many
moral and legal philosophers.39 Clearly such a distinction, even if generally
valid, is greatly dependent upon the reach of law in society, which is vastly
greater in the fairly concentrated and manipulated modern society than it is
in primitive communities. A legal system that makes punishment or civil
obligation dependent upon malicious intention or capacity to control one s
actions reaches into the inner mind of man, and modern psychology has
refined and enlarged the interrelationship between the inner workings of
the mind and external conduct. Even more barren is the converse proposi¬
tion that morality is only concerned with internal conduct. The distinction
between ethical, i.e., individual value judgments, and social conduct, i.e.,
morality, helps to clarify this matter. Instead of the watertight and artificial
division into three distinct spheres, we should think of a fluid interrelation¬
ship, variable with regard to the separation and interpenetration of the three
spheres according to the character of the society in question.
In this wide sense, “empiricism” is contrasted with all theories that derive
principles of ethical conduct from a priori metaphysical premises. In this
wide sense, “empiricism” corresponds, in legal theory, to “positivism,” and
metaphysical ethical theories are reflected in legal idealism. In ethical
theory, empiricism, to a large extent, coincides with naturalism, since one
of the fundamental theses of the latter is that “the truth or falsehood of
ethical sentences is established by methods of experimentation and ob¬
servation characteristic of the natural sciences.”47
From the perspective of relevance to corresponding legal theories, we
may distinguish three major types of ethical empiricism: First is the ap¬
proach that derives ethical maxims from historical and social experience.
Second is the approach that tests ethical values in the light of social facts
and realities. This type of empiricism, commonly known as “pragmatism,”
is a specifically American contribution to modern philosophy and ethics.
It is linked with the names of Charles Saunders Peirce and John Dewey.
Third, there is “logical positivism,” i.e., the approach to philosophical state¬
ments which excludes from scientific study anything that is not “verifiable”
by either logical deduction or experimental observation. In ethical theory
this approach leads to “noncognitivism.”. . . Noncognitivists exclude ethical
maxims from scientific enquiry as being essentially “emotive” and not sub¬
ject to scientific verification.
gregate of the conditions under which the arbitrary will of one individual
may be combined with that of another under a general inclusive law of free¬
dom.” But in Kant’s philosophical scheme these principles are not empirical;
they are given a priori, as an essential basis of man’s volition as a free and
rational being.
Similar or even identical ethical postulates can thus be derived either
from a priori judgments or from empirical observations. A corollary to this
duality of approaches in ethical theory can be found in legal philosophy.
Thus, throughout the long history of natural law philosophy, many postu¬
lates such as the absolute integrity of private property, the supremacy of
the lawmaking authority of the church over the state, or vice versa, the
equality or inequality of men, nations, or races, and many more, have been
deduced from metaphysical principles of a God-given universe or universal
reason. But a contemporary jurist48 has formulated five principles of what
he describes as “the minimum content of natural law,” not as a priori prin¬
ciples but as necessary to “the minimum purpose of survival which men have
in associating with each other.”49 They are thus essentially a continuation
and modernization of the “social contract” philosophy. The five principles
are: (1) human vulnerability, which makes it necessary for a legal order to
restrict the use of violence; (2) approximate equality, which makes it neces¬
sary for a legal system to develop rules of mutual forbearance and compro¬
mise; (3) limited altruism, which makes necessary some provisions to
restrain tendencies to aggression;50 (4) limited resources, which makes
necessary some system of exchange or joint planning of services and goods;
and (5) limited understanding and strength of will, from which follows
the need for a system of voluntary cooperation in a coercive system. Thus,
maxims of conduct which many of the older natural law philosophers have
presented as flowing from the immutable nature of man are here presented
as having been shown by experience and history to be necessary to the
survival of man in civilization.
Whereas all the previously mentioned types of theory assert that ethical
values can be objectively ascertained—whether they be deduced from nat¬
ural law foundations, from a priori principles predicated on the rationality
of man, from empirical data based on history, from generally accepted prin¬
ciples of good and right, or from pragmatic enquiry, the “nonobjective”
theories of ethics deny that ethical values can be objectively ascertained. To
them, ethical values are a matter of conviction. They must be believed in
but cannot be proved.
There are, however, two major types of this kind of approach to ethical
norms. One trend of thought is best described, in ethics as in jurisprudence,
as “relativism”; the other is “noncognitivism.” While both agree on the
nonprovability of values, the relativists believe that rational argument can
and must support the choice of a particular value, by comparison with, and
often in opposition to, another value. The noncognitivists reject all study of
ethical values as purely emotive and therefore not within the realm of
science. Probably the most influential of the relativists in modern times is
Max Weber. . . . His most important disciple in the field of legal theory is
Gustav Radbruch, whose legal philosophy—which in recent years has be¬
come the subject of attention far beyond the borders of Germany and
Europe—is a profound and important application of the relativistic ap¬
proach. For it is not content to state the antinomies of legal ideas but follows
WOLFGANG FRIEDMANN 347
the major antithetic values of legal philosophy into particular legal insti¬
tutions and concepts.
Among contemporary ethical philosophers, we may list as relativists
Dewey, Russell, and Ginsberg. Dewey’s entire work53 is permeated by the
thought that value statements are prescriptions or recommendations for
action based on alternative convictions but that “it is morally necessary to
state grounds or reasons for the course advised and recommended. These
consist of matter-of-fact sentences reporting what has been and now is, as
conditions, and of estimates of consequences that would ensue if certain of
them are used as means.”54
Bertrand Russell has, in his many writings, veered from the conviction
that ethical statements are purely emotive to one that holds that truth can
be discovered by the use of reason. The former view is expressed, for exam¬
ple, in his Science and Religion,55 where he says that: “Since no way can
be even imagined for deciding a difference as to value, the conclusion is
forced upon us that the difference is one of tastes, not one as to any ob¬
jective truths.” But in his more recent work on Human Society in Ethics
and Politics of 1954, Russell stresses the role of reason.
Reason has a perfectly clear and precise meaning. It signifies a choice of
the right means to an end that you wish to achieve. It has nothing whatever to
do with a choice of ends. But opponents of reason do not realize this, and
think that advocates of rationality want reason to dictate ends as well as
means.56
The essence of his reasoning57 is that a concept such as “good” has an in¬
trinsic value of its own. Intrinsic value is “the property of being a state of
mind desired by the person who experiences it.” “Good” is the property of
arousing an emotion of approval, “bad” that which arouses disapproval.
Thus “good” is linked with pleasure or desire on the part of the actor and
approval on the part of the community. “Right” conduct is that which is
likely to produce “good” effects. This position is very close to that of Henry
Sidgwick, who in his Methods of Ethics argued that generally recognized
moral rules can be deduced from the principle that we ought to aim at maxi¬
mizing pleasure. Russell’s later theory thus comes close to that of the
“naturalists.”
Like the former, and like that of the utilitarian legal philosophers, . . .
this approach is full of ambiguities. Even if we accept that the “good” is the
end desired by an individual, the test of “approval” is highly ambivalent.
Does it mean approval by the entire community, by a select avant-garde,
approval by the greatest number or by the wise? Is not the highest ethical
conduct sometimes that which is in revolt against the majority and there¬
fore arouses intense disapproval? Ethical pioneers, like the early Christians,
the early fighters for women’s rights or labor organizations, or pacifists,
have had to pursue their values in intense opposition to the overwhelming
majority of their fellow countrymen. A similar criticism can be raised against
348 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
sharply from that of relativists like Radbruch or Ginsberg, for whom there
is very much to argue about in respect to conflicting values, even though
they accept that the ultimate ends cannot be proved but must be believed
in. Although Kelsen could also be described as a “noncognitivist” for the
purposes of legal science, insofar as he denies that the prescription of values
of any kind, including ethical ideals, can be the proper subject of legal
science, he regards the cognition (Erkenntnis) and description (Beschreib-
ung) of the law as a system of norms constituting legal values as the proper
realm of legal science.72 But such values are, for Kelsen as for Radbruch,
relative not absolute.
The influential contemporary school of Oxford “ordinary language phi¬
losophers” is sometimes linked with the ethical noncognitivists.73 But it
would appear that the Oxford philosophers’ emphasis on the analysis of the
meaning of language has no particular ethical connotation, positive or
negative. It seeks to elucidate the meaning of legal terms and concepts in
the context of legal language.74 An illustration is H. A. L. Hart’s “Defini¬
tion and Theory in Jurisprudence,”75 where he investigates the meaning of
such concepts as a legal right or corporate personality in the legal context
in which they are used. By contrast, Hart’s principles of “minimum natural
law” are, as shown earlier, not connected with the “ordinary language philos¬
ophy” but state an ethical philosophy of an essentially empiric character.
privileges of the wife not to testify against her husband because she wel¬
comed this opportunity to dispose, under the cover of legal authority, of
her husband and to carry on her own love affairs?76
The first possible approach is that of transcendental or “supernatural”77
ethics, which corresponds to the orthodox natural law approach in legal
philosophy. This approach would regard the type of decrees that led to
Auschwitz and Belsen as contrary to a natural law of respect for human
dignity, as an emanation either of the law of God or of universal reason. It
would conclude that a law clearly offending against these elementary prin¬
ciples was void and therefore not binding. From this premise flows the right
to punish those who offended the higher law by obeying the positive law.
In technical terms, this means that a subsequent legal order such as that
expressed by the Nuremberg Charter or by postwar German legislation is
made applicable retroactively.
A second approach would be that of the intuitionist ethics. The rightness
or wrongness of a conduct would be determined by an objectively but in¬
tuitively known feeling of right or wrong, a Rechtsgefuhl or a sentimento
giuridico. The difficulty with this approach is that an intuitive evaluation
can lead the individual concerned to very different decisions. He may in¬
tuitively feel the wrongness of an extermination decree and derive from this
his duty to disobey it, or he may on the contrary accept the injunction of
the Nazi law of 1935 which empowered judges to inflict punishment “in
accordance with the sound instincts of the people,” interpreting such sound
instincts as dictating the persecution and even extermination of Jews, Slavs,
and other “inferior” races. Or he may be inspired by the feeling: “right or
wrong, my country.” Intuition may help to inspire marginal decisions in the
sense indicated by Geny, but if asked to guide in the basic choice of values
it yields nothing.
Third, there are the various relativistic approaches. One of these, that
of Dewey, would be based on a pragmatic “logic of enquiry, directed to the
exploration of a given value.” Such an approach would tentatively appraise
the Nazi laws that “legalized” racial oppression, degradation of the human
personality, and mass murder as evil. It would, however, study the question
of subsequent punishment of those who obeyed the Nazi laws in the light
of feasibility. Such a study might show that a complete implementation of
the goal of punishing everybody who participated in the making and
execution of such laws was simply not feasible.78 The result of such a prag¬
matic enquiry might be that a more modest goal, i.e., the selection for
punishment or other sanctions of those prominently associated with the
Nazi regime through their high position or known deeds, would implement
more adequately the objective of disapproval of the Nazi values and of
treating equals equally.
While pragmatic ethics are compatible with a relativistic approach, the
basic attitude of relativistic ethics would be that whether to obey or dis-
WOLFGANG FRIEDMANN 353
obey the Nazi laws was essentially a question of choice between the religious,
humanistic, hedonistic, and other values relevant to the problem. One pos¬
sible value—which indeed was chosen by the great majority of Germans—
was that of obeying the positive authority of the state, at the expense of the
principles of human dignity, compassion, and charity. One of the possible
values would be that of racial differentiation and inequality, approving dis¬
criminatory treatment against Jews, gypsies, Slavs, and other “inferior”
races. But the rationalistic ethics that is usually combined with the relativ¬
istic approach would demand a careful study of the means by which the
different values would have to be implemented. It would show, for example,
that the necessary implication of legal discrimination between “Aryans”
and Jews would lead not only to the undermining of the family but also to a
profound modification of the principles of equality, in contract, in criminal
law, and in other fields. Such clarification of the goals might at least articu¬
late and underline the severity of the choice between values. A relativistic
approach could, however, hardly lead to subsequent punishment of those
who obeyed the law, as a matter of legal justice. It could hardly, consistent
with its own approach, declare Nazi legislation as having been nonexistent.
It could justify subsequent punishment only as a matter of considered retri¬
bution, or a necessary stage in the rehabilitation of the German people, or
in the evolution of international law, or some other political objective.
“Noncognitivist” ethics would dismiss the entire problem as beyond the
reach of rational discussion. It would regard the punishment of Nazi
criminals, or their nonpunishment, as expressions of conflicting emotions,
be they the retribution imposed by an outraged humanity, a sophisticated
version of the traditional exercise of the rights of victors over vanquished, or
on the other hand a skeptical or even cynical acquiescence in the man’s
cowardice.
The solution [I have] suggested ... for these problems is predicated on the
belief that no legally compelling solution can be found for this type of prob¬
lem. Whatever the technical device, a subsequent and differing set of values
has to be substituted for the values governing the offensive action. Whether,
and to what extent, to punish the soldier, the civil servant, or the “grudge
informer” for the actions described earlier is a metalegal problem. The
ethics common to all the theories sketched earlier is that predicated on an
individual freedom of choice. The ethical question of punishment or other
sanctions must therefore be predicated on the degree of freedom of choice
between alternative courses of action. This indicates leniency for those who
acted under the compulsion of the duty of a solidier or of a civil servant and
sterner treatment for those who, like the informer wives, in fact voluntarily
chose one course of action over another. Perhaps this approach may be said
to be close to an existentialist position: “To accept an ethical judgment is
to commit oneself to a course of action or a way of life, and it involves an act
of choice in which one is at least partly on one’s own, anxious but free.”79
354 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
the legal order. There cannot be—and there never has been—a complete
separation of law and morality. Historical and ideological differences con¬
cern the extent to which the norms of the social order are absorbed into the
legal order. And while, in the traditional, more or less custom-bound society,
the flow was essentially in one direction, the gradual transformation of social
behavior into legal custom and from custom into legislative prescription, in
the contemporary, highly articulate and organized society, the law becomes
in turn increasingly a major factor in the formation of social morality.
This interrelationship cannot be bypassed by any legal theory which
maintains that law is a self-contained order of enforceable prescriptions.
The difference between certain “positivist” theories, such as those of Austin
or Kelsen, and others which in one way or another incorporate ethical postu¬
lates into the concept of law and the legal order, lies mainly in the question
of whether the metalegal foundations of a legal order should be sought inside
it or outside it. The “habitual obedience” which forms part of Austin’s defi¬
nition of law, or the “minimum of effectiveness” which is the condition of
the continuing validity of a legal system in Kelsen’s theory, but also “rules
which contain patterns of conduct for the exercise of force” (Olivecrona),
or the “peaceful co-existence of masses of individuals in social groups and
their cooperation for other ends than mere existence and propagation”
(Lundstedt)—all incorporate into the law a certain body of social norms,
whether the latter be stated as hypotheses or “facts” or parts of the legal
definition itself. In the words of one of the most strongly antiidealistic
Scandinavian realists, “The study of law must in the final analysis be a
study of social phenomena, the life of a human community; and jurispru¬
dence must have as its task the interpretation of the ‘validity’ of the law in
terms of social effectivity, that is, a certain correspondence between a
normative idea content and social phenomena.”80
This question has been the subject of sharp controversy in recent years,
against the background of two important aspects of the relation between
law and morality, one contained in a decision of the House of Lords,81 the
other in the report of the Wolfenden Committee published in 1957. In
WOLFGANG FRIEDMANN 357
Shaw’s case, the defendant had composed and procured the publication of
a magazine called The Ladies’ Directory which gave the names and ad¬
dresses, as well as nude photographs, of prostitutes, supplemented by a
coded indication of their sexual practices. Although Shaw was clearly guilty
of two statutory offenses, i.e., publishing an obscene libel and living on
the earnings of prostitutes, the House of Lords, with only one dissent, also
convicted him of a “conspiracy to corrupt public morals.” The House of
Lords here emphatically asserted “a residual power, where no statute has
yet intervened to supersede the common law, to superintend those offenses
which are prejudicial to the public welfare” (Lord Simmonds). The sub¬
sequent discussion, to which the most prominent contributions are Pro¬
fessor Hart’s Law, Liberty and Morality (1963) and Lord Devlin’s The
Enforcement of Morals (1965), centered around the question of how far
the law should go in legislating on morality, beyond the elementary needs
of public order.82 The same problem was raised, in a socially more serious
context, by the report of the Wolfenden Committee which recommended,
by a majority of twelve to one, that homosexual behavior between con¬
senting adults in private should no longer be treated as a criminal offense.
The crucial issue of the relation between law and social morality is put in
the words of the report itself:
The question of what the proper sphere of law is, in relation to morality,
was the main subject of the debate between Professor Hart and Lord Devlin.
The former based himself essentially on John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty,
in which Mill said that “the only purpose for which power can rightfully be
exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to
prevent harm to others.” By contrast, Lord Devlin maintained that the state
may claim on two grounds to legislate on matters of morals. It could func¬
tion to promote virtue among its citizens—the Platonic ideal—and there¬
fore claim “the right and duty to declare what standards of morality are to
be observed as virtuous and must ascertain them as it thinks best.”83 This
conception of the state, which invests it with the power of determination
between good and evil, destroys freedom of conscience, and paves the road
to tyranny, is unacceptable to Anglo-American thought. Alternatively, “so¬
ciety may legislate to preserve itself.” In Lord Devlin’s judgment, the House
of Lords in Shaw’s case had done just this when it sought to indict the de¬
fendant, inter alia, for corruption of the moral welfare of the State. And it
was a jury of twelve reasonable men, representing the moral standards of
the society rather than the educated elite, that best represented the moral
standards of a society.84
While this debate is highly relevant to the question whether and to what
358 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
NOTES
1. This article appears as a chapter in Wolfgang Friedmann, Legal Theory, pub¬
lished by Stevens & Son, 1968, and is reprinted by permission of Stevens & Son.
la. Fuller, The Morality of Law, p. 46.
2. Province of Jurisprudence Determined, Lecture 1, Library of Ideas Edition,
p. 19.
3. This description is fully applicable only to municipal systems, and not to con¬
temporary international law, which lacks both a clearly defined sovereign and
effective sanctions. Whether international law is recognized as law, “or merely as
positive morality” (Austin) depends on the relative importance one attached to
customary observance of a rule or a system, as against the requisites of command
and enforceability.
4. Ross, On Law and Justice (1958), pp. 32, 34.
5. Modern anthropologists have, however, corrected the impression that primitive
societies are generally devoid of legal institutions. Quite elaborate adjudication
procedures exist in many primitive societies. See, e.g. Hoebel, The Law of Primitive
Man (1954), pp. 22 ff.
6. The Existence of a Legal System, 35 N.Y.U. L. Rev. (1960), at p. 1029.
7. Hart, The Concept of Law (1961), pp. 89 ff.
WOLFGANG FRIEDMANN 359
8. The distinction is, however, too categorically formulated, since the studies of
legal anthropologists, such as Hoebel, Gluckman, Llewellyn, Diamond, and others,
have shown that judicial authority—though not legislative institutions or rules of
change—is often very strongly developed in primitive societies.
9. See, in this sense, Ross, op. cit. at p. 60; Hughes, op. cit. at p. 1029.
10. Legal System and Lawyer’s Reasonings (1964), at pp. 178 ff.
11. For an interesting presentation of various structural models of a legal system
in a modern state, as applied respectively to developed, less developed, federal, and
unitary states, see Akzin, “State and Law Structure,” in Law, State and International
Legal Order, Essays in Honor of Hans Kelsen (1964), at pp. 1, 8 and following.
12. Fuller, The Morality of Law (1964), Chap. II, pp. 6 ff.
13. This is illustrated by the problem of strict liability in tort and crime, although
it does not become very clear what the learned author regards as “impossible,” since
strict liability is clearly, in the author’s admission, a frequent and justifiable phenom¬
enon of modern law. The internal morality of law demands only “that it define as
clearly as possible the kind of activity that carries a special surcharge of legal re¬
sponsibility.” {Op. cit., p. 75.)
14. Op. cit. at pp. 59 ff. By a somewhat strained reasoning, Fuller seeks to show
that the latter are not really retroactive, because “men are in effect penalized for
what the law originally induced them to do.” For the contrary and more persuasive
interpretation of such tax laws as retroactive, see Hart, Book Review, 78 Harv. L. Rev.
(1965) at pp. 1284 ff.
15. “Positivism and Fidelity to Law,” a reply to Professor Hart, 71 Harv. L. Rev.
(1958) at p. 660.
16. Hart, 78 Harv. L. Rev. (1965) at p. 1284.
17. Fuller, The Morality of Law at pp. 145-151. The conviction that purpose
in law imparts to it certain moral characteristics also underlies Fuller’s earlier dis¬
cussion with Ernest Nagel: Human Purpose and Natural Law, 3 Natural Law Forum
(1958), 68 ff.
18. Fuller, Irrigation and Tyranny, 17 Stan. L. Rev. (1965) 1021, at p. 1033.
19. The Morality of Law, at p. 145.
20. See Hannah Arendt, The Eichmann Trial.
21. Nicomachean Ethics.
22. “Due process” must, of course, be understood here in a purely procedural
sense and not in the substantive sense given to it by the U.S. Supreme Court in the
interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
23. Ginsberg, On Justice in Society (1965) at pp. 62 ff.
24. Op. cit. at p. 71.
25. The difficulty of finding agreement on “relevancy” or “arbitrariness” is illus¬
trated by the following statements reported by Calvin Trillin in the New Yorker,
December 4, 1965, at p. 144—in a report on racial discrimination in Britain:
“Some labor-exchange managers . . . insist that a company’s refusal to hire colored
people represents neither personal prejudice nor racial discrimination:
“ ‘It is true that there are some firms that do not hire over a certain percentage
of colored workers,’ says a Youth Employment Officer.
“ ‘But isn’t that color discrimination?’
“ ‘No. The employer may know that if the balance is tipped his white workers
will leave.’
“ ‘Color discrimination.’
“‘No. It’s not that they’re white workers. It’s that they’re the experienced workers,
the ones who have been there long enough to know the business.’
“ ‘But the reason they leave—isn’t that color discrimination?’
“ ‘Oh, no. It might be any number of things. The white workers might not want
to work next to someone who smells of garlic. It’s not a matter of color.’
“ ‘Wouldn’t assuming that a man smells of garlic because he’s colored be color
discrimination?’
“ ‘It’s not the employer’s color discrimination.’ ”
“An honest and progressive English journalist who believes that people must be
taught to regard immigrants as individuals also believes that an automobile-insurance
company’s charging higher premiums for all colored people is no different from its
charging higher premiums for all journalists.”
26. L’ldee de Justice (1949) English Edition, The Idea of Justice and the Prob¬
lem of Argument (1963).
27. Op. cit. at p. 60.
360 2. STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
66. In the matter of contracts, by wage statistics collective agreements and other
relevant aspects of the terms of employment.
67. Appendix 1, “Concerning Moral Sentiment.”
68. Language, Truth and Logic (2nd ed., 1946).
69. Op. cit. at pp. 111-112.
70. Op. cit. at p. 14.
71. On Law and Justice (1958), at p. 274.
72. Reine Rechtslehre (2d ed. I960), pp. 89 ff.
73. E.g., by Nakhnikian, op. cit. at pp. 23 ff.
74. In this respect, the “language philosophers’ ” approach may be compared to
Dewey’s “logic of enquiry.” Dewey’s work and American pragmatism have, how¬
ever, been all but completely ignored by English philosophers. See the recent admis¬
sion by A. J. Ayer (The Listener, Nov. 4, 1965): “My conception of philosophy as
an activity of analysis owed a great deal to Moore, as well as to Wittgenstein. Only
the emotive theory of ethics, the idea that moral judgments were expressions of
feeling and so neither true nor false, was relatively new. I recently discovered that
my synthesis of these ideas was similar to the position taken by William lames,
under the heading of pragmatism, or radical empiricism, thirty years before me.”
75. 70 L.Q.R. 37 (1954).
76. For a brilliant dialectical presentation of five alternative approaches, see
Fuller, “The Problem of the Grudge Informer,” in The Morality of Law, pp. 187 ff.
77. In the terminology of Frankena in Philosophy, at p. 446.
78. Something approaching 100 percent execution was attempted in the immediate
postwar Allied legislation that proposed a great variety of sanctions, for virtually
the entire German nation, in the light of a questionnaire comprising 132 questions
designed to show the degree of participation in the Nazi regime. As was to be fore¬
seen, this system broke down under its own weight, in view of numerous exceptions
made for those who were important enough to be necessary in the postwar admin¬
istration, the cooling off of revenge sentiment which set in after the first year or so
had elapsed, and the sheer impossibilities of fair administration. See on the entire
problem Friedmann, The Allied Military Government of Germany (1947), espe¬
cially Chapter 7.
79. Frankena, op. cit., at p. 435.
80. Ross, On Law and Justice (1958), at p. 68.
81. Shaw v. Director of Public Prosecutions [1962], A.C. 220.
82. The further question, to what extent the law courts, as distinct from the
parliamentary legislator, should do what the House of Lords did in Shaw’s case,
need not be discussed in the present context.
83. Op. cit. at p. 89.
84. Op. cit., pp. 89 ff.
85. For an excellent discussion of these questions, see Ginsberg, op. cit., pp.
230 ff.
86. Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, at p. 99.
.
■
3. The Construction
of the Good
METAPHORS, ANALOGIES, MODELS, AND
ALL THAT, IN ETHICAL THEORY
Abraham Edel
It is nothing new that a successful theory in one field finds its uses, or
echoes, in another, as the seventeenth century used Euclidean models in
ethics, and the eighteenth used Newtonian models in economics and ethics,
and the nineteenth came to use evolutionary models. Once attention
is directed on this problem, many other models come readily to mind.
Think of the part that has been played in ethics by transfer to it of a legal
notion of contract, a medical conception of health, a psychological con¬
ception of unavoidable pressures demanding outlet, a biological conception
of an organism whose members have diverse functions to perform in the
maintenance of the whole. Such models are not, however, always applied
at full strength. The application of a Euclidean or a Newtonian model is
the extreme case. Others, less systematically worked out, may operate only
in bits, often no more than by suggestion. Even when a theory in one field
colors the whole intellectual climate, its effect in other fields may be only
through analogy or metaphor. When the mind geometrizes, many things
everywhere are felt to “follow logically” no matter how large the gaps in
strict connection. When Newton reigns, even feelings begin to “gravitate
together,” and when Darwin rules, every field is busily finding it has an
“evolution.” That is why no sharp division can be drawn between the
study of full-fledged models and that of metaphors, analogies, and sug¬
gestive comparisons generally. The common problem is the influence of
one field in shaping or affecting another.
The present inquiry aims to raise in some systematic fashion this whole
question of models in ethical theory by asking in what way and how far
different models have helped shape conceptions of the nature and tasks of
ethics, influenced the detail of an ethical theory, and even furnished integra¬
tive concepts for its organizing structure. Section I considers the role of
models in the prior commitments of an ethical theory—its assumptions
about the world and man, about human nature and the human predicament.
Sections II to IV consider in increasing strength the role that models,
metaphors and analogies play in ethical theories. Section II starts with
casual use. Section III goes on with heuristic uses, where the comparison
serves suggestive functions in developing the ethical theory. Section IV
364
ABRAHAM EDEL 365
deals with structural uses in which the model organizes the ethical theory
and furnishes, in effect, its framework. Section V consists of some con¬
cluding reflections.
Every ethical theory has prior commitments in that it operates with some
assumptions about the kind of world men live in, what men are like, what
typical situations they find themselves in, what are unavoidable problems
or conflicts in the human situation, and so forth. Now these psychological
or social or historical or religious or metaphysical “foundations” of the
ethical theory often already contain embedded metaphors or models that
played a part in the development of the underlying field. The consequences
of this model now extend to the ethical theory.
Plato’s psychological commitments in his Republic constitute an excellent
example of this process. As is well known, Plato uses for the human makeup
a metaphor in which each of us is said to consist of three parts—a human
or rational part, a lion which represents the noble emotions of shame and
indignation as well as the ambitious desire for prestige, and a dragon which
represents the appetites. This dragon combines blind aggression, sexuality,
and acquisitiveness; it is incapable of controlling itself, it is arbitrary and
capricious, and it demands immediate expression. It is tempting to call
this the hydra model of appetite, after the creature that Hercules fought,
which grew two heads to replace every one that he cut off; for though
Plato does not mention this myth in that particular context, according to his
treatment appetite clearly grows stronger as it feeds or is permitted expres¬
sion, rather than is appeased. Now Plato’s model, built into his psychology,
gives a definite shape to his ethics precisely because he leans so heavily
on the psychological commitments. For he ties his account of human
virtues to his picture of the parts of human nature and even defines the
central virtue of justice as the state in which the man in us, supported by
the lion, keeps the dragon in his place. The model thus shows that the ethics
will be a repressive one, and (with further assumptions about distribution
of proportional strength of the factors in men) Plato concludes that the
mass of men have to be held perpetually in an authoritarian mold.
By contrast, the Freudian hydraulic metaphor, conceiving of the flow of
libidinal energies and the dangers of their being dammed (assuming the
incompressible character of fluids), concentrates on repression as the
trouble spot, so that the general aim is to find satisfactory outlets. And
this vital difference from the hydra metaphor remains even when the
concept of the id is developed (employing other metaphors) with properties
of irrationality and demandingness quite similar to Plato’s appetite. An
366 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
ethics employing the Freudian psychology thus can set itself a quite different
goal from the repressive structure of Plato—broadly speaking, a goal of
increasing rationality through insight into oneself.
We must, of course, take care not to attribute to the model greater
importance than it may in fact possess in the psychological theory itself. It is
possible that a metaphor such as Plato’s may come after the fact to adorn
the achievement. After all, he himself gives us his dragon metaphor late
in the Republic (in Book IX), not in Book IV where his theory of the parts
of the soul is advanced. It is not easy to decide how strongly it has functioned
all along. The analytic discovery of the model in the presuppositions of the
ethical theory or in the ethical theory itself cannot as such then settle the
essentially biographical or historical question of what came causally first
in Plato’s intellectual development.
What has been suggested about the influence on ethics of models in prior
psychological commitments may hold equally in religious or metaphysical
or biological or sociological commitments. In the western tradition God
is conceived of as a father. This familial model accordingly transfers the
properties of the head of the household to the deity. The consequent stress
on the virtues of filial piety and obedience in the religion are not surprising.
And as the ethics as a whole is organized in religious terms, the familial
relations are projected through the religion upon the whole of life, and
a mutual interaction ensues in all those phases. In a similar process, when
the world is conceived on an organic model, with individuals as ‘ members
analogous to bodily parts, to demand sacrifice of some part for the good of
the whole is taken to be “natural.” The association of an evolutionary model
that underscores the struggle for existence with ethical “egoism” and of
an evolutionary model that underscores mutual aid with ethical “altruism”
admits of comparable analysis. In all these cases, a model originating in
some particular phase of life or some particular process, is brought into
a domain such as psychology or religion or biology which in turn plays a
background role in an ethical theory. This prior commitment of the
ethical theory serves to project the properties of the model into the moral
outlook on life as a whole.
II
explanatory and put to no analytic use. If, however, we find the ethical
theory attempting to pinpoint the type of discipline required in war, the
elements of persistence and obedience and resignation, and shaping a
morality along these lines, the metaphor has clearly become heuristic. (How
far it is pressed is another matter—a really persistent use of the military
metaphor might inquire into different types of war and show the variety
of basic virtues and forms of social organization relevant for them, and even
raise paradoxes about the abolition of war as a moral ideal!) Finally,
if the theory attempts a systematic picture of the battle of life, if it asks
who is the enemy and who gives the orders, we may end up with a structural
use of the metaphor. Stoic ethics seems to approximate this. Epictetus
tells us to live our lives as if we were soldiers in constant danger of being
ambushed, not by what happens to us but by our reactions to what happens,
so that the enemy is located within ourselves. In addition to this focus
on self-struggle and self-mastery, we are told to obey the divine or rational
nature operative in things and so to be resigned to the lot in which we find
ourselves. In such extended use, the battle metaphor serves both as a key¬
note and as a structural framework for the theory.
Isolated casual comparisions are no doubt often purely literary expres¬
sions enhancing the style, and so may serve little or no role in the ethical
theory. When Kant remarks, early in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals, that a good will, though wholly lacking in power, would “sparkle
like a jewel in its own right, as something that had its full worth in itself’1
and goes on to play with the analogy, comparing usefulness to the setting
of the jewel that helps in commerce or attracts the inexpert, are we to
look for any further significance in the comparison? Or when R. M. Hare,
arguing that the prescriptive use of ethical terms is primary and the descrip¬
tive use secondary, says that bringing up children with the latter turns them
“into good intuitionists, able to cling to the rails, but bad at steering
around corners,”2 do we need to explore clinging and steering to bring
theoretical enlightenment in ethics?
Yet even such casual analogies, invoked and then forgotten, may in
their brief use do a serious job—or sometimes help avoid doing a serious
job! Kant’s comparison of a good will to a jewel shining in its own right
suggests that intrinsic value is obvious. It therefore saves him the trouble at
that point of analyzing the emotions of the beholder who sees an act of
good will. Kant is quite conscious of the problem he has postponed. He
adds a footnote shortly after that he may be thought to be taking refuge
in the obscure notion of “respect” for the moral law; eventually, in his
Critique of Practical Reason he goes into an elaborate treatment of the
notion, and in fact it turns out to be central to his position to maintain
that it is not an ordinary psychological sentiment.
Hare’s use of analogy on this occasion is also not without theoretical
significance. It says, in effect, that life has frequent novel turns, that an
368 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
attentiveness to the need for making fresh choices is central to ethics, and
that a prescriptive use of ethical terms enables us to deal more readily
with such turning-points. This important recognition of a pragmatic element
in deciding how to use ethical terms is passed off in the casual analogy.
Hare is thus able to insist that he is merely analyzing linguistic usage.
Relatively casual models and metaphors may be invoked to convey
a basic philosophical outlook in ethics. For example, N. Hartmann, in his
Ethics, often slips into a kind of astronomical model: there is an objective
heaven of values to be explored by turning our telescopes on it, and all
sorts of values lie there unseen and undiscovered. This kind of model
carries serious theoretical consequences, for it assumes that one who does
not see a given value is either looking in the wrong direction (passing
by on the other side of the street, says Hartmann), or is not sensitive
enough or not developed enough, or in a hopeless case perhaps “morally
blind.” This last metaphor has often been invoked by moral philosophers
to provide the reassurance that in a case of ultimate disagreement about
moral values, one of the parties to the dispute is wrong, so that the “objec¬
tivity” of morals need not be abandoned. Neither in the frequency of its
use nor in the importance of its theoretical consequences is this metaphor
casual. It is only so considered here because it is invoked usually as if
it were self-explanatory, so that it falls short of being heuristic. For all
it does is to suggest that there are, in some domains of the world, inabilities
to perceive what is there. Whether values constitute such a domain is not
settled by invoking the model. A fully heuristic treatment would have
to take the parallel more strictly and elaborate a theory of moral vision
and the conditions of its partial or complete absence which could be subject
to independent confirmation.
The reach of casual metaphor in ethical theory is much greater than
we are inclined to suspect. The reason is the generic one that so much of
ordinary language is shot through with metaphor that it would be surprising
if ethical terms were wholly free and pure.3 “Right” carries notions of
straight and upright, and “ought” of debt. We feel some kind of connection
between what is morally right and what is nonmorally correct, and again
we think of our obligations to others as what we owe them. But only a
sensitive historical-minded philosopher like Nietzsche seriously suggests
using the debt metaphor for heuristic purposes when he attempts to trace
the idea of obligation to the debtor-creditor relation (in his Genealogy of
Morals). And it takes a full anthropological perspective to see that the
comparison to debt may play a structural role in a whole ethics;4 again,
talk of “moral law” carries so much of the sense of command that major
philosophical confusions have arisen from the coupling of universality and
imperativeness. Ideals of “harmony” often come straight from music,
“equality” is frankly arithmetic or geometric, and even apparently logical
ABRAHAM EDEL 369
Ill
IV
even flaunt them; and in its general impact, it should wake ethics from its
dogmatic slumbers!
The implications of such a requirement are perhaps more far-reaching
for the treatment of models than might at first seem to be the case. For the
prevalent tendency has been a kind of tyranny of the model. A model takes
over, extends itself and dominates theoretical construction. Even a limited
analytical model often does this. For example, C. L. Stevenson began in
his Ethics and Language11 with the phenomenon of interpersonal disagree¬
ment and built a model for interpreting ethical terms out of this, analyzing
ethical language as persuasive. He did not add an alternative model in which
ethical terms would be interpreted, for example, through the situation in
which men sharing some basic agreements seek to widen the area of their
agreement (though he does examine patterns relevant to this as a subsi¬
diary matter in the relation of means and ends, in chapter VIII). Con¬
sequently, the model worked out on disagreement as the basic phenomenon
found it hard going when it moved to the region of personal ethical de¬
cision. Would it be possible to analyze a man’s internal deliberation as
trying to persuade himself? What Stevenson actually did was to supple¬
ment “disagreement in attitude” with “uncertainty in attitude” and then
try to interpret such individual uncertainty in deciding as inner conflict in
which one part of the personality attempts to control another.12 While this
no doubt suits some types of value decision, it clearly imposes a single
character on what is probably a rich variety. To recognize the possibility
that a family of models may be required for ethical terms rather than a
single model would be an initial way of escaping possible tryanny.
If even a limited analytical model tends toward tyranny, how much
more tyrannical is the practice of structural models. Yet if the analysis of
the structural models as theory-surrogates is appropriate, the maintenance
of alternatives would seem as necessary as the consideration of alternative
theories. This is of central importance both in the study of past models and
in the construction of fresh ones. Let us look in conclusion at each of these
points.
The basic contribution of the historical study of models in ethical
theory is to the development of comparative ethics. It makes us conscious
of the alternative structures that have been found, and their types or
families, and so the different ways in which problems of ethical theory
have been formulated. Take, for example, the major contrast between the
juridical model and the inductive Newtonian model. The first is oriented
to seeking laws for decision with a view to regulating behavior. The second
tries to find out how people actually behave, whether in the movement of
their desires or the paths of their sentiments (Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith
and Bentham alike find their place here), with a view to expediting their
behavior and minimizing entanglements. If we recognize that the different
types of models develop their own concepts in terms of their own demands,
ABRAHAM EDEL 379
we are not perturbed, for example, by finding that the “ought” in the
juridical sense is not formally deducible in the Newtonian model. Hume’s
famous passage on the problem of transition from “is” to “ought” indi¬
cates no more than the disparity of the models. What we have to ask instead
is how regulative functions are formulated in the Humean model. Such
comparative study breaks through the tyranny of a single model.
Similarly, in constructing, the only feasible path—unless it prove pos¬
sible to avoid all models—is their multiplication, even beyond necessity.
Much might be gained by going beyond lining up familiar ones in contrast,
and carrying out speculative development of unexploited analogies, meta¬
phors, models, if only to free ourselves by their mutiplicity from any hold
that unnoticed ones may have in our thinking. I am not suggesting off-the-
cuff invocation of neglected metaphors, as perhaps a jeweller might say
that his profession has been neglected compared to the textile field: life has
to be cut to size in such a way as to catch the light, only controlled skill can
produce the readiness for beauty which is caught in the glow of the gem,
that the rapt beholding is the prototype of the grasp of intrinsic value. I am
rather suggesting that the counterposing of models from many fields of
study of man can help in ethical theory by revealing multiple relations in
new lights.
Think, for example, of what might be done with an electrical model to
break open the question of the nature of “intrinsic value,” or what is often
called “an end in itself.” Suppose an electrical current running through a
filament in an ordinary bulb. At a certain point incandescence takes place.
The glow is a fresh quality arising under determinate conditions of ma¬
terial and electrical properties. So too ordinary human processes “light up”
as intrinsic values in the interactions of personal and social life. The value
quality is a special glow, not some special or added constituent. Such a
model may help counterbalance other physical models that exhibit goal¬
seeking, for example, as patterns of machine process. But even more, it
suggests by contrast that the notion of “an end in itself” already contains
a hidden model—the craftsmanship model. For unless we assumed that
every act had an end, why would we think of some activity that was not
being directed to something beyond it as being somehow directed to itself?
Why not rather that it is not directed to anything? It is almost as if in
the monetary model we assumed everything had to have a price to have a
value, and so what was not for sale must be priced infinitely high! The
notion of intrinsic good has much more packed away in it than we are
likely to suppose.13
In general, if we recognize that the world (whether in nature or in human
life) is always far richer than any single model, and also that there is con¬
stant change, then attention is shifted from the conflict of models to the
correlation of the various phases that the different models have grasped.
Even in the case of conflicting models—in the normative disciplines at
380 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
NOTES
1. Lewis White Beck translation, The Library of Liberal Arts, p. 10.
2. The Langauge of Morals (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 75.
3. For some consideration of the roots of moral terms, see May Edel and Abra¬
ham Edel, Anthropology and Ethics, rev. ed. (Cleveland, The Press of Case Western
Reserve University, 1968), ch. 10.
4. See the account of Japanese ethics in Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1946).
5. DeWitt H. Parker, The Philosophy of Value (Ann Arbor, University of Michi¬
gan Press, 1957). See especially pp. 103-05 and 189 ff.
6. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909, 1937.
7. For a discussion of Perry’s theory in its historical relations, in comparison
with Dewey’s, and in contrast with later 20th century ethical theories, see Abraham
Edel, “Some Trends in American Naturalistic Ethics,” in Philosophy in France and
the United States, edited by Marvin Farber (Buffalo, University of Buffalo Press,
1950).
8. In the logical works (Topics III) and in the Rhetoric, there are more varied
indices, largely taken from ordinary usage in preferential selection.
9. Our argument here is itself a good illustration of how a model works. It sets
reflection going. Why cannot a tool be used to achieve results and then have its
destined place in the completed product? A rock could be used as a hammer in con¬
struction and at the last moment be fitted in as a coping-stone! It is the very idea of
a tool that is here being transformed in such an objection. To call something a tool
probably means that it is being used to act only on other things. But we could revise
the term to refer to a mode of action instead of an object. There would then be no
tools but only tool-behavior of things. Compare the view that there are no slaves
but men held in servitude, with the Aristotelian conception of natural slavery.
10. It is worth noting as parallel to this controversy about the eliminability of
models in ethics, the general conflict on the question of models in science and phil-
osphy in recent years. Two opposing views have taken shape. One maintains that
some kind of philosophical orientation of outlook—in effect a metaphysical model—
is inevitable as an initial act in interpreting the world, so that one’s picture of the
world is in some fashion different from what it would have been by taking an alter¬
native stand. For example, Stephen Pepper’s World Hypotheses (Berkeley, Univer¬
sity of California Press, 1942) outlines four basic root-metaphors and shows how
each develops its own interpretation of what evidence itself consists in, so that there
is no outside way of adjudicating absolutely between them. Pepper proposes instead
to see the advantages of these different spectacles by applying each in turn to the
various fields of philosophical inquiry. Kindred tendencies are found in Whorf’s
linguistic hypothesis that different languages embody basically different categories
ABRAHAM EDEL 381
reasons that serve as grounds for one position will also serve as grounds
for different decisions in different situations. Of course, such grounds will
never be sufficient for decisions in specific cases, since many factors enter
into the decisions, but they can help guide us in the quest for solutions.
As a foil for the development of my argument, I shall take as a point of
departure some cases of social conflict from the recent past.
A few summers ago Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice was performed
on the mall of New York City’s Central Park. A proposal was made to
televise it so that millions could see and enjoy it—whereupon a furious
controversy broke out. The proposal was bitterly contested by many leading
citizens, not only by Jewish laymen and Rabbis but by others, some of
whom had been quite active in behalf of civil rights legislation. Their argu¬
ment was that the production unfairly stereotyped the Jew as a merciless
Shylock. To televise the play would outrage the sensibilities of a large
minority, and, by being brought into the very living rooms of the people
of New York, it would breed conflict between groups now living peacefully
side by side in the large polyglot city. Similar objections had once been
raised by leading Catholic laymen and priests to the showing of The Miracle,
and were to be repeated on the occasion of the performance of Hochhuth’s
The Deputy. Today leading Negroes, and some of their liberal white allies
in civil rights organizations, strenuously protest the revival and public
showing of Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and the production of any film
in which members of their race are stigmatized.
The standard, and I believe justified, reply to these objections was that
the fears of evil consequences were groundless, that the dross in the reactions
of the audience would be purged in the fires of great art. For there is good
evidence that the exaltation of the spirit produced by great tragedy opens
the human heart to compassion and frees it from prejudice.
Supporters of the Shakespeare production also pointed out that a policy
that forbade the representation of anything that rubbed raw the sensibilities
of minority or majority groups in the community would prevent the circula¬
tion or dramatic rendition of many great works of literature and art. Some
of the writings of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens would have to be
withdrawn from public libraries. Even pictures of the crucifixion in mu¬
seums might come under the ban as prejudicial to a religious minority .
Such censorship is too great a price to pay to allay anticipatory fears,
real or fanciful, that portraying members of some groups in a degrading
light would generate ill-will. After all, somebody must play the role of a
villain! Even if some ill-will is generated among those who are either too
obtuse or too prejudiced to realize that somebody of a villain may be any¬
body, the compensating values of free, unhampered expression are of
overriding importance.
Consider now a situation in which the conditions of the problem are
changed. Suppose we are dealing not with controversial artistic representa-
384 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
legal. They therefore at first blush have a more restricted generality than
human rights, which must be justified on ethical grounds. Every declaration
of human rights holds up a standard to which positive law is morally sub¬
ordinate. For example, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights explicitly declares that it is promulgated “as a common standard
of achievement for all peoples and all nations,” and that the rights it
enumerates “should be protected by the rule of law.” Now both in the sec¬
ond paragraph of its Preamble and in Articles 18 and 19 of the text, the
rights to freedom of conscience and religion and freedom of opinion and
expression—which are identical with the rights of the First Amendment—
are explicitly mentioned. Therefore it is obvious that, however it may be
with some other procedural constitutional rights, the First Amendment
rights, with the exception of the proscription of any established religion,
may be considered as moral or human rights.
Let us therefore, in a preliminary way, ask whether from the stand¬
point of ethical theory or moral practice we can reasonably maintain that
any right is absolutely valid independent of the consequences of its exer¬
cise upon society.
What do we mean by human rights? There seems to be a far wider agree¬
ment on what human rights are than on their definition. But by and large,
those who use the phrase “human rights” mean that a justified claim can
be made to the exercise of powers or to the receipt of goods and services,
benefits and concerns, or to the enjoyment of certain freedom from inter¬
ference. “A justified claim” means that upon sustained reflection we con¬
clude that we have an obligation or duty to acknowledge, respect, and as
far as it is in our power, to help realize such claims, regardless of whether
they are enshrined as “rights” in a constitution. The grounds of our obliga¬
tion or duty vary even more widely than differences in the niceties of defi¬
nition. They are theological, metaphysical, intuitive, scientific, and prag¬
matic (this classification is neither exhaustive nor exclusive—and need
not be considered here).
Now the relevant thing about our moral experience is that the problems
of moral choice that confront us cannot be characterized as problems in
which there is merely a conflict between right and wrong, or good and
bad. In that kind of situation, the problem is not to decide what to do but
merely to summon the resolution to do it. For, assuming that we have
already envisaged the means and instrumentalities required in the relevant
alternatives open to us, the problem in principle is already solved. No,
when we find ourselves in a moral quandary tormented by the question:
“What shall I do?” the agony of choice results from the realization that
right conflicts with right, good with good, and sometimes the right with
the good. We want both security and adventure and can’t have both. We
want to be just but discover we cannot be just without being cruel. We want
to be loyal, but if we are, we can’t be truthful and vice versa. We want to
386 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
be free to live our life but find that we cannot do so except on the ruins
of another’s life. These are the typical moral dilemmas. To the extent that
we resolve moral conflicts, one right or good is sacrificed to another.
Further, in the course of our moral career, we discover that there is no
one specific right or good or value which is always preferred in all cir¬
cumstances of conflict, there is no one alleinseligmachende Wert—no
specific all-sanctifying value—that one upholds at all costs in all circum¬
stances.
There is no time or need to make an inventory of the goods and rights
in our moral economy; but whether we take as our supreme value knowl¬
edge or truth or beauty or love or friendship, there are some situations in
which their pursuit may have to be morally condemned. Knowledge for
its own sake certainly ranks high in the hierarchy of values of any liberal
mind, but a scientist who experimented on a human being in order to dis¬
cover how long he could endure certain types of torture would be ad¬
judged either criminal or insane. And even if he argued, as some Nazi
physicians did, that knowledge derived from immersing victims in icy water
could be useful in aiding survivors or shipwrecks and planes ditched at
sea, we would not regard his statements as mitigating. Similarly, a man
who tells the truth all the time, especially when he is not asked, is before
long avoided as a moral pestilence. The Marquis de Sade may have ex¬
tended the ranges of sexual sensibility, but he was a moral monster whose
words and actions may have inspired others to horrifying cruelties of per¬
version on children. Those who out of transcendent love or friendship have
betrayed their comrades and country fighting in a valid cause are not there¬
fore absolved of infamy.
Santayana once defined a fanatic as a person who, having forgotten his
goal, redoubles his effort. If this were so, a fanatic would be more stupid
than dangerous. A more adequate definition of a moral fanatic is a person
who never forgets his supreme goal and never permits others to forget it—
who believes that his goal justifies the use of any means to achieve it, and is
therefore blind to the other ends destroyed by the consequences of his
means. Because such a person is a logical lunatic, he becomes a moral luna¬
tic.
This analysis holds, it seems to me, even for second order rights that are
not completely formal. When we say that a man or citizen has an absolute
right to equal consideration by the law or by the state, or that it is abso¬
lutely wrong to impose needless suffering or unnecessarily cruel and un¬
usual punishment for a crime, no specific action in indicated. Equal con¬
sideration is compatible with any mode of identical treatment—“equal
treatment” and “equal mistreatment,” and what constitutes “needless” or
“unnecessary” suffering, admitting that pain is intrinsically evil, depends
upon the situation in which there are present other intrinsic goods and evils.
If what I have said is substantially true—and there are refinements to be
SIDNEY HOOK 387
possible. In his own words: “I do not think that anyone can say that there
can be enough publicity, completely to destroy the idea of fairness in the
minds of people, including the judges” (37 New York University Law Re¬
view, 575, my italics).
On the face of it this seems an extraordinary judgment in view of the
number of cases in which claims have emphatically been made that what
Justice Black declares impossible has repeatedly occurred—cases in which
the Supreme Court itself has so held. More pertinent to our analysis is
Justice Black’s assumption that unless publicity completely destroys the
idea of fairness, there is no need to be alarmed that justice will not be done.
Apparently, according to Justice Black prejudice must be complete to be
objectionable. Suppose publicity prejudices a judge or a jury only “90
percent,” however that is to be determined. Would we reasonably consider
a trial fair in such circumstances? Suppose only one juror were prejudiced!
Would we not say that this is one too many for the conduct of a fair trial? Or
must we conclude that all jurors were completely prejudiced, and the
judge as well, before concluding that due process has been violated? Ac¬
tually, Justice Black’s position rests on an evasion. He assumes as a fact
that it never can be established that publicity completely destroys the pos¬
sibility of a fair trial, that Dean Griswold of the Harvard Law School and
other jurists are mistaken in their contention that “Lee Harvey Oswald
could never have received a fair trial anywhere in the United States” be¬
cause of the television publicity. Surely it is not logically absurd to imagine
a situation in which publicity has this effect. Which right in such a situa¬
tion would Justice Black declare to be absolute—the right to freedom of
speech or the right to a fair trial, i.e., the right not to be deprived of life,
liberty, or property “without due process of law”?
There are some absolutists who, at this point, differentiate themselves
from Justice Black and make a distinction between political speech and
speech about other matters, and declare that only the first is absolute and
never to be abridged. This is the position of Dr. Alexander Meikeljohn. It
is also, with some inconsistency, the position of a harsh critic of my criticism
of Justice Black, who seeks to reformulate Black’s position in “a much
more defensible form.” I shall address myself to these points later on.
In justice, however, to Justice Black and my criticism of his thought, and
as evidence of the climate of legal thought in the citadel of rutualistic lib¬
eralism, I must present some supporting details of my characterization of his
position. Justice Black refuses to accept the distinction offered by Meikel¬
john and, by implication, by those who would save him from himself by
putting wiser words in his mouth.
This is apparent in Justice Black’s discussion of what until now has been
the paradigm case of speech that is not privileged, that does not enjoy con¬
stitutional protection. It is the case, cited by Justice Holmes in Schenck v.
United States (249 U.S. 47), speaking for a unanimous court, of a man
390 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
who deliberately and falsely shouts “Firel” in a crowded theater and thereby
precipitates a disastrous panic. Now Justice Black, like any sane man, be¬
lieves that such an action is wrong and should be punished. But his argu¬
ment is that the person should be punished not for his speech, not for what
he shouted, but merely because he shouted, because he created a dis¬
turbance and violated the right of private property.
Nobody has ever said that the First Amendment gives people a right to go
anywhere in the world they want to go or say anything in the world they want
to say. Buying the theatre tickets did not buy the opportunity to make a speech
there. We have a system of property in this country which is also protected by
the Constitution. . . .
That is a wonderful aphorism about shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre.
But you do not have to shout fire to get arrested. If a person creates a disorder
in a theatre, they would get him there not because of what he hollered but
because he hollered. They would get him not because of any views he had but
because they thought he did not have any views that they wanted to hear
there. That is the way I would answer: not because of what he shouted but
because he shouted [loc. cit., at 578-89],
Well, then, what if a person shouted fire not in a private theater but in a
public meeting place, in a church or school where there are no private
property rights to be considered. Would his words be privileged?
What if, in a theater, someone for the thrill or kicks of it falsely whisp¬
ered “Fire” or flashed the words on the screen: “Fire! Run for your life!”
What if there was no shouting at all?
Finally, what if a person shouted “Fire”—and it turned out to be true?
There was a fire! Would we then arrest him for shouting, for creating a dis¬
turbance even if it was a timely warning?
As if he were determined to wring the last measure of absurdity out of his
absolutist position, Justice Black goes on to assert that there should be no
libel or defamation laws in the United States—that indeed at the time the
First Amendment was drawn, the framers intended that there should be
no such laws, “just absolutely none so far as I am concerned” {loc. cit., at
577). The dogmatic certitude with which this discovery is proclaimed we
leave to the professional historian. More relevant to the understanding of
the contemporary absolutist position is Justice Black’s view of how the ex¬
pression “freedom of speech” should be construed with respect to its scope
and privilege.
In other words, the laws against libel, slander, and defamation should
be abolished in every jurisdiction of the land. That these laws need reform
or reformulation to safeguard against abuse goes without saying. But to
SIDNEY HOOK 391
wipe them out altogether is to disregard the obvious fact that on a man’s
reputation may depend not only his honor and that of his family but his
livelihood and the welfare of his dependents, sometimes his very life. The
irreparable damage to reputation resulting from calumny and malicious
slander has been one of the enduring themes in world literature. Even
criminals and lawbreakers are aware of the value of a good name. Many
a person has suffered more anguish from the loss of reputation, from public
shame, than from physical or monetary punishment. It is Iago, the arch
rogue fearing exposure, who utters the lines:
insult to injury by implying that these people are not sincere martyrs to
their religion but simply criminals masking their actions falsely under the
labels of “religion.”
If these remarks are valid, it undercuts the whole position of those like
T. I. Emerson who contends in his Towards a General Theory of the First
Amendment (New York, 1966) (1) that the general theory of the First
Amendment is based on a “strict adherence to the distinction between ex¬
pression’ and ‘action’” (p. 90), (2) that “expression” should never be
punishable by any actions, civil or criminal, that only “actions” may be
legally regulated and punishable, and (3) that some expressions may be
legally punishable, e.g., certain threats, solicitations, libels, obscenities, and
so forth. This inconsistent triad of propositions (the truth of any two of
them entails the falsity of the third) seems to me an outrage both of com¬
mon usage and common sense. It is not mitigated by the practice of putting
quotation marks around the term “speech” when some particular expres¬
sion of speech is deemed legally objectionable (like incitement to violence),
and then classifying this “speech” as an action; nor by putting quotation
marks around the term “action” when certain actions like mass picket¬
ing or joining a terrorist organization are deemed not legally punishable
and then classifying these “actions” as expressions or forms of speech.
It seems to me simpler, less confusing, and intellectually more straight¬
forward to regard all expressions and acts of speech as forms of action or
human behavior, using various criteria to determine the degree of freedom
they should enjoy.
Dr. Alexander Meikeljohn has not resorted to such desperate strategems.
Unlike Justice Black, he distinguishes between “private speech” and
“public speech.” The first is not privileged independently of its conse¬
quences. Citizens can be punished for such speech or deprived of the
opportunity to speak by due process of law. Dr. Meikeljohn goes very
far in approving of restrictions of speech in this sector. He denies that any
publication, including radio and television, “engaged in making money,”
which uses speech to enslave “our minds and wills,” is entitled to the protec¬
tion of the First Amendment (Political Freedom, [New York, 1960], p.
87). On the other hand, public speech which addresses itself to public
affairs, public policy, and issues is absolute. There can be no restrictions what¬
soever of such speech since any government that rests on the consent of the
governed must permit all the winds of doctrine to blow in the marketplace;
such a government must allow all views and policies to be heard. No matter
what the clear and present danger of speech about any public policy may be,
in this view it is absolutely privileged. All other rights may be prima facie,
to use Ross’s distinction, but this one is not only presumptively but un¬
qualifiedly valid whatever the consequences. In fact, however, Meikeljohn
is confident that it is not speech in the public domain that can ever threaten
or undermine our free society but rather the doctrine of “clear and present
SIDNEY HOOK 393
“every idea is an incitement” and it is doubtful that John Dewey was right
in holding all ideas to be plans of action. But it is not wrong to hold that
some ideas are plans of action, that some ideas expressed in words are
incitements to action, and that some locutions or speech acts are part of
an action or performance which if permitted to run its course would event¬
ually end in disaster. It is the objective situation, not the form of the sentence,
that determines whether words are primarily an expresion of opinion, used to
induce a change of opinion, or an incitement to action.
An illustration as good as any are the following words uttered at the time
of the Watts riots:
We are facing a future wherein the streets shall become like rivers of blood.
Let us be prepared to fight to the death, organize, arm, learn to shoot, and
handle explosives. When the impending showdown comes, use the match and
the torch unsparingly. The flame of retribution must not be limited to urban
buildings and centers, but the countryside must go up in smoke also. Remember
the forests, the fields, and the crops. Remember the pipelines and oil storage
tanks. Yes, let it be known to the world that we shall meet their sophisticated
weapons with the crude and simple flame of a match.
—R. F. Williams on Radio Free Dixie, August 21, 1965
dom or right against others, we seek the action or policy that among other
things will best preserve the entire system of operating, desirable freedoms
which make possible the growth of new freedoms. And here there is no room
for the substantive absolutes of Black, Meikeljohn, or any of their sup¬
porters.
To this the objection has been made that the entire notion of “balancing”
of rights against rights, of interests against interests (whether we speak of the
rights and interests of individuals or the government) is mistaken. In this
view, whatever balancing was needed, in consequence of the possible conflict
among the ends or values of the Preamble of the Constitution, was already
done by the provisions of the articles and amendments. Once the Constitution
has been completed, “such ‘balancing’ ceases to have any meaning what¬
ever, except as amendments to the structure are thought to be needed.”
At any given time, and no matter what the case at bar is, “there is no
power, nor is there any need to ‘balance’ the provisions of the Constitution
against one another, unless amendment of the Constitution itself is in
question”—a process beyond the jurisdiction of any court, congress, or
executive (Meikeljohn, 40 California Law Review, 9).
The question of “balancing” rights and interests is complicated by
antecedent commitments concerning what is entailed by the existence of a
written constitution. I want to make a few relevant observations about this,
reserving the detailed consideration of it for elaboration elsewhere.
(1) The notion that human rights and interests have once and for all
been balanced in any document is preposterous on its face. It would require
one to hold that those who drew up the Constitution could have anticipated
all the future situations of conflicting rights and interests that have arisen
in consequence of the industrial and technological revolutions and other
profound social changes. Or it requires the assumption that whenever a
conflict is disclosed (and almost every important legislative measure, e.g.,
the civil rights bills, and almost every case at bar involve such conflict),
it is necessary to go through the complicated process of amending the
Constitution, with the absurd result that no legislative action or judicial
decision could be taken without sanction from a Constitutional Convention
in continuous session, whose balancing would be subject in any case to
the interpretation of the Supreme Court.
(2) The theory that rights and interests have been sufficiently balanced
to permit the resolution of all conflicts by reference to the text presupposes
that, in Justice Black’s words, “the principles of the First Amendment
are stated in precise and mandatory terms and unless they are applied in
those terms, the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition
will have no effective protection” (Wilkinson v. U.S., 365 U.S. 422). But
it is simply false that these principles are stated in “precise” terms, as the
Supreme Court’s own shifting and inconsistent decisions on the meaning of
396 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
other rights and goods. The common or public good is not only a pro¬
cedural matter of equal consideration of all rights and interests but at
any specific time also requires a decision about which set of rights and
interests is to be furthered. Everyone appeals to “the common or public
good,” and most people agree that one or another action (like, for instance,
the New York City transit strike of 1966) is against the common or public
good even when they cannot define what they precisely mean.
No one has codified, or can codify, the middle order range of principles
by which we strike the balance between conflicting rights and interests,
and extend as well as delimit the areas in which they are respected. I do
not believe that we can find one formula to cover all cases in which there is
conflict between the rights to speech and security, to speech and privacy,
to a fair trial and to freedom of press, and so forth. Whether we invoke the
“clear and present danger” formula of Holmes and Brandeis in its different
interpretations, or Justice Hand’s principle applied in the Dennis Case,
“the gravity of the evil discounted by its improbability,” or the distinctions
between “expression” and “action” or “behavior”—no one criterion, with¬
out obvious abuse of language, can apply to all the situations in which re¬
flection approves of abridgment.
Nonetheless certain broad ethical principles can sometimes guide us in
making proper distinctions or in setting limits to the scope or sphere of
rights in dispute. I want to conclude by stating one of these principles
which today may help us to make some helpful distinctions between the
areas in which discrimination is morally permissible and areas in which
it is not.
There is a great deal of confusion about the rights and wrongs of
discrimination. We are vaguely aware that there is a profound difference
between irrelevant discrimination against an individual as a member of
a group and discrimination in favor of an individual based on a rele¬
vant, noninvidious differentiation. Can we find some regulative principle
which will help clarify and order these distinctions? I believe we can if
we interpret the concept of democracy not in narrow political terms but
as a concept of social ethics. If we then define the fundamental ethical
principle of democracy, viewed as a way of life, as equality of concern on
the part of the representative agencies of society for all individuals to fully
develop as responsible persons, then we have some guide in determining the
locus and limits of permissible and impermissible discrimination. Essential
to the concept of a person is the right of choice, the freedom to develop
one’s tastes and judgments, and the overall pattern of one’s life. Conse¬
quently, in those areas of our experience which are inherently personal—
friendships, family, cultural interests—we must be free to discriminate,
and legally protected in that freedom, even when morally our judgments
may be defective. For freedom to develop one’s personality carries with it
the freedom to blunder and err. However, in fields in which discrimination
SIDNEY HOOK 399
NOTE
1. For a more extensive discussion, see my The Paradoxes of Freedom, Berkeley,
The University of California Press, 1964, pp. 46 ff.
JUSTICE AND RATIONALITY
Charles Frankel
acterize the decisions and actions that men take when they speak of doing
justice? It is to these questions that this paper is devoted.
Interestingly enough, classic rationalist answers to these questions have
been receiving increasing attention and respect in recent philosophy. A
growing number of philosophers who have an empiricist and analytic
orientation, indeed, have begun to espouse such answers. Social-contract
theory in particular has been revived and restated in a sophisticated twen¬
tieth-century form, often with help from arguments drawn from the theory
of games. Such reformulated rationalist theories often propose not only a
“rational” and universal standard of justice, free from the taint of any
man’s or group’s special moral point of view; they also offer a general
vindication of constitutional democracy which shows that this system is
alone a legitimate social order because it alone incorporates universally
acceptable principles of justice.
The intellectual seriousness and the sense of social commitment that
informs these efforts are admirable, and the questions they raise are of
considerable importance. As a first step in our consideration of the rela¬
tionship of “justice” to “rationality,” it will be helpful to examine an in¬
stance of these rationalist arguments.
their fair share. They ask, therefore, that the rules be remade. And others
in such societies commonly disagree with them. Such arguments, it is clear,
involve contending conceptions of justice. Is there some neutral procedure
that could be used to arrive at a common conception of justice and thus
to settle such disputes rationally?
The argument under consideration is intended to answer this question.
It proposes that we conduct a mental experiment. Let us imagine a group of
wholly rational men in which such a dispute has arisen. They are rational
because they really know their own interests, because they exercise in¬
telligent forethought, because they stick to a plan of action without being
turned aside by momentary impulses, and because they are not moved by
envy. In Professor Rawls’ words, “The bare knowledge or perception of
the difference between their condition and that of others is not, within cer¬
tain limits and in itself, a source of great dissatisfaction.” Further, the only
thing that holds this exemplary group together is each man’s recognition
that it is to his self-interest to live and work with the others. In imagining
how their minds will work, therefore, we do not have to concern ourselves
with any collective sentiments or loyalties that transcend their individual
interests. This frees us, presumably, from having to take into account any
special anthropological considerations that will upset the universal appli¬
cability of our conclusions.
No doubt, this is not a group of men who invite love or admiration.
They are figures in a Moliere comedy, and not in any serious human trans¬
action. Their “rationality” is perversely simple, ascetic almost to the point
of lunacy. But these imaginary heroes nevertheless serve the purposes of
our analytic model. Since they are so free from normal human complexes
and complexities, it is easier to project their thinking processes. And we
cannot question that, in one traditional and fairly well-established use of
the term, they are “rational” men.
Now how would such a group adjudicate competing views about what
each man deserved or about the justice of their social system? If we can
say how they would deal with this problem, we would have, presumably,
at least the beginning of a rational concept of justice. And in no imme¬
diately obvious sense, it would appear, would we be making any special
moral presuppositions.
The first problem our heroes would notice when they tried to adjudicate
conflicting claims is that they needed some common principles of ad¬
judication. This, in turn, would require an agreed procedure for finding
these principles. For while each man would no doubt have suggestions to
make about the principles that should be adopted, the discussion would
degenerate into a cat fight unless it were governed by certain rules. Spe¬
cifically, it would be plain to each participant that he would have to agree
that any principle he suggested was to apply, if adopted, to complaints
CHARLES FRANKEL 403
against himself and not only to the complaints he made against others; it
would be plain as well that once a suggested principle were adopted, it would
remain in force, saving only very special contingencies, on all future oc¬
casions. In brief, all would recognize, given the conflict with which they
were faced, that impartiality and fairness were essential if there was to be
an uncoerced meeting of minds.
Once these rules of procedure were established—rules that would give
our heroes something like the restraints that go with subscribing to a
moral code—they would be in a position to work out a notion of justice.
And they would all agree, it can be argued, on three fundamental princi¬
ples:
(1) They would agree that each man was entitled to as much liberty as
was compatible with an equal liberty for all the others. For each is a free
and autonomous individual, acting in his own self-interest. The only reason
any one of them would give up any liberty would be that others did the
same and that this sacrifice was required by the group’s joint life and activ¬
ities.
(2) They would agree that only such inequalities in the distribution of
the benefits and burdens of their collective life could be justified as were
necessary to maintain practices that contributed to everybody’s net advan¬
tage. For no rational man would accept a less favored position than
someone else’s unless he was convinced that, in doing so, he was better off
than he would be if the inequality did not exist.
(3) Finally, they would agree that no one should occupy a more favored
position unless that position were open to a fair contest in which all were
free to take part. For the recognition that a given inequality actually
benefits everybody would not be a sufficient reason for a self-interested
rational man to accept the fact that someone else profited more from the
inequality than he did. He would also have to believe that it was better
for everyone, including himself, that the other man held the superior
position. That man should be the man who, as a result of an open com¬
petition, has demonstrated that he is best qualified.
Thus, the three constitutive principles of justice that would be adopted
by our imaginary group of rational men would be (1) the principle of
liberty, (2) the principle of equality, and (3) the principle of reward for
services contributing to the common good. Obviously, in any real-life state
of affairs, these principles would never be more than approximated. Never¬
theless, if the argument we have reconstructed is sound, any rational man
would recognize their validity as far as they go. We have thus presumably
arrived at a minimal but rational conception of social justice—one that
does not require any special or peculiar moral presuppositions but only a
calculation by each individual, no matter what society he occupies, of his
own self-interest.
404 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
II
Every reader will recognize the similarity of this argument to the tradi¬
tional arguments of social-contract theorists. They will recognize, too, how
strongly the argument responds to the desire, which for a hundred reasons
is so powerful today, to vindicate the belief that all individuals, whatever
the mores or codes of their societies may be, are the possessors of funda¬
mental rights. But does the argument succeed? Does it successfully prove
that justice is a concept that can be demonstrated on morally neutral
grounds, and that it is, in this sense, a “rational” ideal?
There are at least nine reasons for believing that it fails. While many
fewer than these would be sufficient to destroy the argument, the exam¬
ination of all of them will take us usefully into a number of the complex
questions related to the problem of justice.
(1) The argument for the principle of liberty rests on the crucial premise
that our imaginary group of rational men is composed of morally auton¬
omous individuals, each of whom speaks for himself alone, each of whom
possesses liberty, and each of whom values this liberty. Because this is so,
they come to the conclusion, not surprisingly, that liberty is a good thing
of which no one should be deprived without good reason. But this con¬
clusion is, of course, implicit in the premise of the argument, and the
premise is by no means one that there is any requirement to accept. We do
not have to suppose that all rational men either have liberty or prize it.
Indeed, we do not have to regard individuals as such as the ultimate
moral units. We can assign this ultimate status to families, clans, churches,
or corporations, and can ascribe value to their freedom and autonomy
rather than to the freedom and autonomy of individuals. Nor is there
anything forced or unusual in such a posture. If we look at the whole his¬
tory and range of human moral attitudes, the ascription of ultimate moral
autonomy to the group rather than to the individual is much more usual.2
(2) The principle of equality raises similar difficulties. No inequality
should be accepted, the argument asserts, unless the inequality can be
shown to contribute to everybody’s advantage. But what does this formula
mean?
We cannot mean by “everybody’s advantage” what any particular in¬
dividual thinks is to everybody’s advantage. This would entail the imposi¬
tion of that individual’s standards on everybody else. Neither can we mean
by “everybody’s advantage” what is determined to be to everybody’s ad¬
vantage by some independent and impersonal standard. This would require
us to find and justify such a standard, and takes us back to the problem
with which we started. And we cannot mean, finally, by “everybody’s ad¬
vantage” simply what each individual happens to think is to his own
CHARLES FRANKEL 405
advantage. Although this interpretation looks like the simplest and happiest,
it works out no better than the others. For the consequence of adopting
it is that any social arrangement that does not represent a bargain or balance
of interests satisfactory to all would have to be declared unjust. And this
would be to set a standard which it is difficult to think that any social
system could meet, and which would have no use at all where the most
troublesome social problems are concerned. For these problems normally
involve distributions or redistributions of benefits and burdens which in¬
evitably leave some people dissatisfied.
It is difficult to see, indeed, why there is even prima facie validity to the
idea that a given social practice is unjust unless each individual affected
finds it to his net advantage. It is quite common to call practices “just”
which are not in accord with this principle, e.g., Robin Hood’s stealing
from the rich to give to the poor, the denial of public funds to religious
institutions (or, conversely, tax exemptions for such institutions), and
some developing countries’ practice of taking property or positions away
from aliens to give to native citizens. Perhaps such practices are not just,
but some reasonable men at least argue that they are. Yet it would take a
very strained argument to show that any of them is to the net advantage
of all affected.
(3) The weakness in the argument is, in fact, even greater. By its very
nature, it gives us too little information to allow us to say just what any of
our hypothetical heroes should rationally accept as to their advantage.
Consider, for example, the process of thought that leads the members of
our group, at the very beginning, to accept rules requiring all to put for¬
ward their ideas in a neutral and judicial spirit. Presumably, the reason
they accept such restraints is that each wishes to avoid endless contention
and dispute. But might not such contention and dispute be to the advantage
of at least one of them? Might it not allow him, for example, to go on
taking advantage of the others while the debate is going on? Presumably,
again, our heroes accept these judicial rules of procedure because they wish
to avoid violence and solutions by force majeure. But might not the
strongest among them be willing to take his chance on such an outcome?
We must, in short, make the additional assumption, which has nothing to
do with the “rationality” of the individuals concerned, that no individual
or faction among them is significantly stronger or shrewder than the rest.
And even if we make this assumption, must we not also assume that our
heroes have certain pacifist inclinations? For could not some or all of them
actually enjoy violence and count a good battle, with all its risks, among
their most cherished interests? Obviously, we do not know if they would
or they would not. Our rational men are ciphers. Yet it is only if we pre¬
sume to know enough about these ciphers to exclude such possibilities
that we can be sure that they would all think it to their self-interest to
seek the path of peaceful adjudication.
406 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
(4) A still further difficulty lies in the fact' that the calculations of self-
interest which are actually demanded of our rational men are of two quite
different kinds. The tendency to confuse these two types of decision is
another fault of much social-contract theory. It is one thing to ask a man to
decide whether, in return for a specific and definite benefit, he is prepared
to make a specific and definite sacrifice. This is to ask him whether he
finds a given bargain advantageous. It is quite another thing to ask him
whether he is willing to run the risk of sacrifice in return for the possibility
of benefits. This is to ask him to take part not in a bargain whose costs
and benefits to himself he can predict, but in a game of chance in which
it is always possible that he will lose.
Consider rather commonplace decisions that must be made in any society.
Let us imagine, for example, that in our little club of rationalists the
proposal is made to build a bridge which, everyone in the club grants, is
vitally necessary if the group’s activities are to continue. However, it is also
plain that the building of the bridge is hazardous, and that it can be reason¬
ably predicted that some members of the society will die in the course of
the enterprise. What does it mean to say, under these circumstances, that
the building of the bridge will be to everybody’s advantage? Obviously, it
will not be to the advantage of those who die.
What we are actually saying, presumably, is that for a given group,
there is a percentage of risk and a percentage of benefit.3 In deciding
whether it is reasonable to take the risk, the individual can decide in his
public role as a citizen that as a statistical calculation the probable benefits
for the society outweigh the risks to some of its members. If, on the other
hand, we require the individual, for the purposes of our argument, to be
purely self-interested, he then has to ask himself whether he wishes to
apply to his individual case these statistical findings that apply to the group.
It is, of course, often reasonable to do this, in a quite normal sense of the
word “reasonable,” even though the application of a statistical regularity
to an individual case is not a demonstrative process. The individual’s deci¬
sion to bet on the probability depends, in the first place, on the value he
ascribes to what he will bet against what he might win, and, in the second
place, on the risks involved in his particular case.
There are, accordingly, two fatal flaws in the argument. The first is that
the individual has to face the possibility that the practice he is asked to
accept will not be to his advantage. It may still be reasonable, of course,
for him to accept the practice, but his acceptance will not be on the grounds
that the argument we are examining alleges are the only grounds for such
a decision. The second flaw, which is even more serious, is that our model
little “state of nature” gives us no help at all in determining what would
or would not be reasonable for any of our rational men to decide. For in
order to carry out such a calculation, we would have to know what specific
distribution of risks was in question, and what each man’s specific values,
CHARLES FRANKEL 407
skills, and social position were. Only then could we know what he stood
to gain and to lose, and what the risks were that he faced as an individual.
An elementary principle of politics and society, after all, is that social
costs fall differentially on different categories of citizens. In short, to say
what our rational individual would do, we would have to know who and
what he was. But by the nature of the argument we are considering, this
information is precisely what is excluded. Once again, we are dealing with
ciphers, and we are asked to do the impossible—to say how they would
calculate their advantage while we remain in ignorance of their outlooks,
their values, and their social positions.
(5) The empty character of the argument is further revealed when we
examine the reasons it offers why a group of men constituted as the hy¬
pothesis claims would reject the proposal to form a slave or caste system.
According to Professor Rawls, there are two possible points of view from
which they might consider such a proposal. The first would be one in
which they did not know their relative talents and abilities and so could not
say whether they would obtain high or low positions in a free and open
social competition. Such individuals, according to Rawls, would neverthe¬
less opt for an open system and against a caste system for two reasons.
The first is that the statistical chances are greater that they would end,
in a caste system, in lower positions rather than in the more restricted
higher ones. The second is that a fixed caste system is notoriously more in¬
efficient, so that the chances that one’s general well-being would be ad¬
vanced by choosing it are also smaller.
But these arguments are unpersuasive. For we cannot know from the
information given how the individuals concerned will actually weigh their
“advantage.” Perhaps, for example, they would prefer not to have the
burdens of high position and would like the guarantee a caste system offers
that they can live free from responsibility. Another possibility is that, for
all their desire for high position, they would not like the uncertainties and
stresses that go with competition for such a position and think it not worth
that much trouble. Indeed, from the point of view of his self-respect
(which is, after all, a strong element in self-interest), a rational man, cal¬
culating the probabilities, might very well come to the conclusion that he
would rather take a chance on living as a slave in a society in which he
could truthfully claim that his abilities were never fairly tested than risk
defeat in an open competitive society where such defeat would demonstrate
that he really was an inferior man!
As for the general “inefficiency” of a caste society, it is obvious that
everything depends on what goes into the notion of “efficiency. His¬
torically, rather a large number of people who have not been conspicuously
irrational, and who have occupied menial positions as well as privileged
ones, have counted among their blessings the stability promised by a fixed
system of social preference and the pleasures provided by the spectacle of
408 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
III
Is this the end of the matter? Is “justice,” then, merely a name for our
prejudices? What do reason and rationality have to do with it?
That we can connect rationality and justice still seems to me possible.
What makes it difficult is only the insistence, against all the rules of logic,
that we must find a way to extract a moral principle from premises that
contain no moral terms. But while philosophers have regularly tried to
perform this bit of magic, it is puzzling that anyone should think that a
moral principle like justice is somehow lifted in moral status when it
is shown to be derivable from neutral principles that are not moral at
all.
The problem is to try to be clearer about what we mean by “rationality”
in the actual context of decisions we make about justice. Since the argu¬
ment we have been considering is concerned, among other things, with
vindicating the idea of fundamental individual rights, let us consider another
kind of argument that can be given to vindicate them. It is the kind of
argument which is ordinarily given, I think, when thoughtful men with
different intellectual or moral outlooks pay joint attention to this question.
Briefly, the concept of justice which incorporates the notion of basic
individual rights emerged as an organizing principle to guide and justify
the lengthy historical process by which, in the modern era, individuals
were freed from irrevocable bonds to social groups or to their inherited
stations in life. The concept holds that all men and women should be de¬
fined, in custom, law, and morals, not simply in terms of their particular
social titles or functions but as legitimate claimants on other grounds to
certain sorts of equal treatment. It says that beyond the ways in which
society designates the position of an individual, and beyond the claims
it makes upon him, he has his own view of himself and his own aspirations
and potentialities, and that this view, too—a man’s own consciousness of
what he would be—has its legitimate claim to the attention and respect
of others. This appears to me to be a large part of what we mean by “the
equality of men.” And I take it that we mean to say, when we use this
phrase, not only that a man’s view of himself as a being larger than his social
roles should be respected, but also that something of value is lost, some
reasonable good is denied, if a man becomes or is turned by his environ¬
ment into, simply a passive creature of his position without this quality
of self-identification and self-consciousness.
Why should we adopt such an ideal? We do not have to. There are al¬
ternatives. We can insist, for example, that self-consciousness is disturbing,
that personal freedom of choice is dangerous, that individual rights represent
412 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
a claim that has no standing when compared with such overwhelming de¬
mands as national strength and solidarity, economic growth, or the protec¬
tion of religion and morality against irresponsible experimentation and
eccentricity. But if we take such a position, we are still confronted with
the results of historical developments in the West (and now in almost all
societies), which have disengaged individuals from fixed positions and made
them mobile beings confronted by an increasing variety of choices. Nor
can we undo the developments in science, industry, and communication that
have given to those who control the centers of economic and political power
the resources they now have to marshal and mobilize individuals.
Presumably, if we do not care for individual rights, this will not in itself
disturb us. But there are other probable consequences of choosing to or¬
ganize a modern industrial, urban society without regard to the principle
of individual rights—among them the manipulation of science, art, and
philosophy, the subjugation of religion and culture to reasons of state,
and the destruction of decencies in human relations that have been en¬
shrined not only in the doctrines of human rights but in other traditions of
our civilization. If we do not wish such consequences, and if we believe
that we are going to have to live with the broad conditions described, a
decision in favor of the doctrine of human rights as a central organizing
principle for society appears to be the best alternative open to us.
This is, it seems to me, the kind of argument which is ordinarily given
when people have doubts about the basic principle of human rights. It is
not, perhaps, peculiarly “philosophical,” but it appears to me to be a reason¬
able and objective argument, although it would no doubt not satisfy a man
from Mars. However, I see no reason why we should try to satisfy this
intruder into our human business. The argument presupposes that those
to whom it is addressed will find it compelling only because they are men
in a specific historical situation and have social memories, historical loyalties
and attachments, and personal interests and hopes. And yet this argument
is not a merely personal argument nor is it arbitrary. It appeals to values
that are not only my own, and to facts whose status as facts can be de¬
termined independently of anybody’s values. To call it “relativistic” or “non-
copiitive” is to say nothing more damaging than that it presupposes the
existence of moral concerns as a basis for moral discussion. But this
is surely the distinguishing characteristic of a moral argument, an in¬
dispensable element of such argument without which it has no force either
psychologically or logically. In this kind of argument we have a more
promising clue, I think, to the nature of “rationality” as it applies to
social ideals like justice or human rights than is provided by a priori
rationalistic arguments.
In the case of the more general concept of justice, the classic belief that
justice is inextricably linked to rationality reflects, I believe, three essential
ingredients of the idea of justice. In the first place, it calls attention to the
CHARLES FRANKEL 413
fact that the concept of acting in accordance with a rule is part of what we
mean by “justice.” Broadly, we can justify this emphasis on regular pro¬
cedure on the ground that security and predictability are necessary and
desirable in human affairs, even though this is a principle to which there
will be some obvious exceptions.
However, since this is a purely procedural concept of justice and does
not tell us whether the rules to which obedience is demanded are good or
bad, it is clearly insufficient by itself. At a second level, where questions
of substantive justice are involved, justice is related to rationality in the
sense that we may ask whether, as an empirical matter of fact, the rules
in question are likely to achieve the purposes for which they presumably
exist. To ask such a question is to ask whether the rules are “rational” in a
quite ordinary workaday sense of the term. (We may also ask, of course,
whether the purposes or ends they serve are “rational” or “reasonable”—
but that is another question.)
Finally, at a third level, the belief that “justice” and “rationality” are
connected calls attention to the relation between decisions about justice
and orderly processes of reasoning. “Justice,” whatever it means, cannot be
determined by caprice. But if one does not hold that there are universal
rational principles, independent of any particular system of rules and
postulates, can we give meaning to this third and most embracing notion
of the connection between justice and rationality? I believe that the answer
is “yes.” From an empirical point of view, the insistence that justice must be
“rational” points to the fact that any particular distribution of social burdens
and rewards is relative to specific and limited criteria which may themselves
be questioned; it requires us, therefore, to keep inquiry open, regarding
the status quo always as provisional. To wish to be “rational” with regard
to justice is to wish always to look for what has been neglected or left out;
it is to strive to achieve as comprehensive and tolerable a balance as is
possible among the competing claims that are at issue in a given context.
The connection between justice and rationality, from this point of view,
is a connection between specific judgments and a regulative ideal. It does
not imply that the idea of rationality is a premise from which a concept of
justice can be deduced.
Such a preconception, indeed, seems to me one of the more damaging
contributions of Western philosophy to Western civilization. It is responsible
for setting a will-o’-the-wisp as a goal of philosophical inquiry; it has caused
groundless anxieties about the status of our central ideals, and it has diverted
philosophers and others from dealing with the substantial and genuinely
difficult issues actually presented by moral and social choices. These do not
have to do with the logical demonstration of moral principles. They have
to do with the adjustment of these principles to one another when they con¬
flict, with their application to specific cases, and with their consequences
when we act upon them. The theory—and the implementation—of human
414 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
rights will be served better. I venture to think, by wrestling with such prob¬
lems rather than by abstract efforts to demonstrate human rights on a priori
grounds.
NOTES
1. The argument is drawn from the ingenious and carefully reasoned articles of
Professor John Rawls, particularly from his “Justice as Fairness,” Philosophical
Review, Vol. LXVII, (1958) and “Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of
Justice,” Justice, ed. by C. J. Friedrich and J. W. Chapman (New York:
Atherton Press, 1963). My interest, however, is not in a narrowly based debate with
Professor Rawls but in the broader issues which his arguments bring to the surface.
In order to keep these broader issues clearly visible, and in order, also, to avoid the
repeated use of the quotation mark, I have stated this argument, for the most part,
in my own language. I do not believe that I have departed from Professor Rawls’
version in any fundamental respect.
Professor Rawls’ arguments are representative of a broader current of thought.
They have been made not only by philosophers but by political scientists, often
accompanied by disclaimers of any attempt to make “unscientific” or “personal”
value judgments. See, for example, James W. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock,
The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), which offers parallel arguments in the
context of an effort to develop analytic models for a theory of collective choice.
2; Professor Rawls agrees in the course of his arguments that in using the term
“individual” it is not necessary to mean by it a human individual in the biological
sense, but any unit, within a society, that acts as a moral agent. Thus, he writes, “A
more realistic conception of such a society might construe its persons as mutually
self-interested families or some other association.” (Friedrich and Chapman, eds.,
Justice p. 103.) But this concession seems to destroy the argument, for it becomes
compatible with situations in which no human individuals possess liberty on other
basic rights defining just treatment.
3. One of the purposes of Professor Rawl’s analysis is to show that the argument
for justice cannot be a purely utilitarian argument. If the above rejoinder has
validity, however, his own argument, in fundamental respects, is utilitarian
4. In Friedrich and Chapman, eds., Justice, p. 102.
BEYOND PARETO OPTIMALITY
James S. Coleman
All theories of action which endow the actors with purposes or goals
are principally designed to describe individual action. But if such theories
are to be generally useful, they should also be able to deal effectively with
collective action, in which the actor is a collectivity made up of two or more
individual actors, who may sometimes have conflicting goals. Yet such
theories have had difficulty in accounting for collective decisions and col¬
lective action. The contrast with individual decisions is instructive. In the
theory of rational individual behavior under certainty, an actor can order
different outcomes in terms of their utility for him. He will, by definition of
utility, choose the outcome that has highest utility, among those available
to him. In decision-making under uncertainty, where the outcome is only
partly determined by his action, a similar calculus applies, except that he
associates a subjective probability to each outcome under each action, as
well as a utility (with metric properties) to each outcome, and chooses the
action with the highest expected utility for him.
But a collective action, involving two or more such rational actors, is
not so directly treated. With two alternatives, say A and B, and only three
actors, there are 23, or eight possible patterns of preference.
These are:
AAA
A A B
ABA
BAA
ABB
BAB
B B A
B B B
group felt that the costs outweighed the benefits to them, and thus voted
against a proposal, a second proposal would be devised that would be
acceptable to them. The same procedure would be followed until all parties
were satisfied that the benefits outweighed the costs for them.
This procedure appears, however, to have several flaws. Wicksell as¬
sumed that each person would compare his costs and benefits in deciding
whether to vote for the proposal. But there is nothing to prevent his use
of a different frame of reference. Suppose one tax-benefit plan, plan X, is
proposed, and it satisfies individual A but not B. Then in order to satisfy
B, another, plan Y, is proposed, more favorable to B. At this point Wick¬
sell assumed that A would still compare plan Y to his present state and,
if it were better, would vote for it. But having made a tentative move to
plan X, A might compare plan Y to plan X and, finding it not better
for him, vote against it. More generally, the individuals might use strategy.
If one party, though he feels his benefits outweigh his costs, believes he
can receive more benefits or pay fewer costs by holding out, he may well
do so. Furthermore, it is those who have least to lose, for whom the excess
of benefits over costs is least, who can most afford the chance of no policy
at all and thus most afford to veto any plan. This use of strategy could well
stymie legislation so that none would be passed, and all would lose.
A second flaw is that the principle is only applicable to certain kinds of
issues. It is applicable only to issues in which quantitative adjustments can
be made for specific individuals or groups, and only to policies which
provide some specific costs and benefits to all persons—excluding policies
that provide benefits only to some (e.g., the unemployed or dependent
mothers or parents of school children) and policies where the benefits
are not so easily defined.
If Wicksell’s proposal were viable, it would provide a means of finding a
Pareto-optimal move if one exists. If we assume that adjustments in the
distribution of the tax could be made with infinite precision (presumably
taking infinite time to do so), then a positive judgment could be made in
every case: If, for a given benefit scheme, some tax schedule could not pass
unanimously, we could definitely say that the costs outweighed or equaled
the benefits, and thus the present state is equal to or better than any possi¬
ble proposed one, involving this set of benefits.
However, this approach of Wicksell’s is concerned with a particular kind
of decision: a tax policy, in which many variations in policy are possible. A
major element in the proposal is adjustment of the tax policy until it becomes
acceptable. However, many issues are not like this. The collective decision
will be either yes or no, with few, if any, adjustments possible. The question
becomes acceptance or rejection, with little hope of so modifying the policy
that it might be passed. A declaration of war, passage of a civil rights bill, a
decision to build a county courthouse, all of these are concrete proposals that
can be modified only slightly if at all. Thus, for such issues, the possibility of
420 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
a resolution by modifying the bill until it becomes acceptable does not exist
or is greatly reduced.
A somewhat different approach was taken by some early economists
toward surmounting the constraints of Pareto optimality. Early writers,
along with assuming cardinal utility for an individual, assumed that utilities
for different individuals could be added, thus providing, in principle at
least, a sum total of utility for the population. If this were possible, it would
eliminate the need for the stringent Pareto test of individual-by-individual
increases in utility for a proposed policy, and allow a definite judgment of
better or worse than present for every proposed policy.
This easy assumption of interpersonal comparison was questioned at
some length, beginning in the 1930’s. Much confusion, which is not yet
wholly dispelled, developed. Perhaps the most important cause of confusion
lies in the confusion about the role of the economist himself and the role of
the subjects about whom he is theorizing. Classically, the role of the econ¬
omist in welfare economics was as policy adviser. Thus, reflecting this
classical position, Roy Harrod (1938) says:
Consider the repeal of the Corn Laws. This tended to reduce the value of a
specific factor of production—land. It can no doubt be shown that the gain
to the community as a whole exceeded the loss to the landlords—but only if
individuals are treated in some sense as equal. Otherwise how can the loss to
some and that there was a loss can hardly be denied—be compared with the
general gain? If the incomparability of utility to different individuals is strictly
pressed, not only are the prescriptions of the welfare school ruled out, but all
prescriptions whatever. The economist as an adviser is completely stultified,
and, unless his speculations be regarded as of paramount aesthetic value, he had
better be suppressed completely. No; some sort of postulate of equality has to
be assumed.
But, as time went on, things occurred which began to shake my belief in the
existence between so complete a continuity between politics and economic
analysis. ... I am not clear how these doubts first suggested themselves; but
I will remember how they were brought to a head by my reading somewhere—
I think in the work of Sir Henry Maine—the story of how an Indian official
had attempted to explain to a high-caste Brahmin the sanctions of the Benthamite
system. But that,” said the Brahmin, “cannot possibly be right—I am ten
times as capable of happiness as that untouchable over there.” I had no sym¬
pathy with the Brahmin. But I could not escape the conviction that if I chose
to regard men as equally capable of satisfaction and he to regard them as
differing according to a hierarchial schedule, the difference between us was not
one which could be resolved by the same method of demonstration as were
JAMES S. COLEMAN 421
available in other fields of social judgement. ... “I see no means,” Jevons had
said, “whereby such comparison can be accomplished.”
Harrod and Robbins both agree that interpersonal comparison involves
some judgment by the economist of the importance of different persons’
utilities; but Harrod, in order to continue to give policy advice, is willing
to make such judgments while Robbins is not. Presumably, most economic
theorists felt similarly uncomfortable, despite the egalitarian origins of
welfare economics, and thus were quick to follow a point suggested the
next year by Kaldor (1939): that in some cases, two policies could be
objectively compared without interpersonal comparison of utility, if a shift
from the first to the second brought wide enough benefits to some groups
that those who lost by the shift could be fully compensated by those who
gained. This compensation principle has similar attributes to Knut Wick-
sell’s taxation scheme, in which the bill would be continually adjusted until
all benefited from it. With the compensation principle, if compensation
were in fact carried out (a matter which was unclear in the proposal),
everyone would be better off under the second policy than the first, and
the move would be a Pareto-optimal move. This approach, which formed
the basis for further work by Hicks (1939), Scitovsky (1941), and Samuel-
son (1950), bypassed the question of whether the economist was to com¬
pare different persons’ utilities but maintained the role of the economist as
adviser concerning the welfare implications of economic policy. Finally,
Samuelson showed that it was highly improbable that there were any moves
that would pass sufficient tests to insure that the second position was
better than the first, and this approach came to appear less profitable. Yet
during this time there was little or no resolution of the question of the
economist’s role and the question of interpersonal comparison of utility.
I. M. D. Little, in his critique of welfare economics (1957, pp. 52-53)
shows the confusion most fully, for he retrogresses from Harrod’s and
Robbins’ recognition of the distinction between the economist’s and the
actor’s judgment.
We may now ask whether people do compare differences in satisfaction of
happiness, and whether they add them. As regards the first, there is no doubt
whatever. I can say “£.1 would make more difference to Smith than it would
to Jones.” Such statements are made, and when such a statement is made it is
correct to say that the man who makes the statement is comparing the differ¬
ences in satisfaction which the addition of £ 1 to his purchasing power would
make respectively to Smith and to Jones. . . . There is also no doubt that we
compare different people’s total happiness (where the word “total” must not
be taken to imply that happiness is a sum of parts). We frequently maintain
that A is happier than B, and it is obvious that when we do so we are not
talking nonsense. We can, also roughly, compare the amount by which A is
happier than B, with the amount by which B is happier than C.
Here it is unclear who is making the judgment: the economist, who is
outside the system of behavior to be explained, or another actor within the
422 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
Let there be three men and two alternatives, x and y. Let the orders be xy
for Tom and yx for both Dick and Harry. The [Arrow] conditions then pre¬
clude xy as the master-order. The two [economic] states may be such that in y
Tom has one piece of manna, while Dick and Harry both have ninety-nine
pieces; in x Tom has three pieces and Dick and Harry both have ninety-eight
pieces. Might not then the master ranking xy be desirable?
the same for all, and that this occurred when the amount of money income
(or among some authors, “real” income) was the same for all. Thus welfare
economics has always had an egalitarian bias, often implicitly assuming that
social welfare is maximized when incomes are equal but not being quite
willing to back up this assumption with policy advice to equalize incomes.3
Even at present, as in Little’s review (1957), a redistribution is called good
if it is toward equality, and bad if it is toward inequality.
Though Arrow’s book and the large volume of work spawned by this
work dealt with voting rules, most of these authors did not envision the loss
of the role of the welfare economist as policy adviser (speaking, of course,
in behalf of the welfare of the people). Yet the implications of Pareto
optimality, and the implications of Kaldor’s compensation principle, implied
a criterion of a unanimous vote as the welfare test of a new policy.
Furthermore, as indicated earlier, in a related but different tradition of
economic theory, the theory of public finance, the principle of individual
choice had long before been carried to its logical conclusion in the explicit
discussion of voting procedures by Wicksell and Lindahl. Only very recently,
in the work of Buchanan (1962) and others, has there been an explicit
recognition of a role for the welfare economist other than that of policy
adviser, a role of showing through theory the indirect consequences of a
policy—showing what the effects of a given action will be for each group in
the population and attempting to find policies that will meet with collective
agreement.
One of the disturbing aspects of the discussion of interpersonal com¬
parison of utility by most authors is a failure to recognize the basis on which
a concept in a theory may legitimately be endowed with certain properties,
whether these properties be the ordinal, interval, or cardinal properties of
real numbers. It is one of the earlier achievements of economics that the
appropriate criteria have been applied in choice under certainty, with the
result that an ordinal conception of utility has replaced the cardinal con¬
ception of Marshall. The appropriate criteria can be stated in several ways,
but in essence, they are: Considering the behavior which the theory is
designed to describe, does it include any behavior which may be used to
assign values and to test properties (ordinality, cardinality, etc.) that these
values are assumed to obey? In economic behavor under certainty, which
classical economic theory is designed to cover, the choice behavior of in¬
dividuals does not have the properties that allowed a cardinal measure of
utility but only properties that allowed an ordinal measure.4
Yet no economists appear to have explicitly applied a similar test to the
question of the interpersonal comparison of utility, and some have not even
applied it implicitly. As a result the most bizarre reasons are given for ac¬
cepting or refusing to accept interpersonal comparison. Harrod accepted
them in order to get on with his task of giving policy advice. Robbins im¬
plicitly applied the criterion and rejected interpersonal comparisons because
424 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
and the losses are (uibi, uib2) (for i = 1, . . . , m). There is no way to know
whether the gains outweight the losses over different events for the same
individual or over the two individuals, for these quantities are incommen¬
surable, given the range of behavior allowed so far. We can only be certain
that the gains outweigh the losses for those events m + 1,. .., n, with which
we are no longer concerned.
(ii) Second, having carried out the preceding vote, the individuals are
now allowed to vote once again, this time being free to carry out prior
negotiations on any two events at once (though their negotiations must be
limited to two events at a time). In this case, suppose we find that on
events 1, . . . , g, and j + 1, . . . , j + g, the decision has been reversed,
and the new policy is voted by both individuals. Observation shows that
this occurred through a political exchange: Individual 1 offered to give up
his control over event i (1 ^ i ^ g), allowing a change to policy b, in return
for control over event k (j + l^k^j + g),in which 2 would allow a
change to policy b. What further information does this give us about the utili¬
ties of 1 and 2? Since we know that 1 gave up control over issue i for control
over issue k, this means that from the two changes in decision he has made
a net gain. Comparing his gains and losses from the change,
Event i Event k
gain: Uibi Utbl
This new behavior on his part, together with the previous information that
Uiai > uibi and ukbi > ukai, tells us that the gain he experiences for the new
policy on event k is greater than the loss on event i, or rather that:
More simply, the outcome of event k is more important to him than the
outcome of event i, or he has more interest in event k than i. For simplifica¬
tion of further treatment, we can give a precise definition of his interest in
an event. If we define yki = ukbi — ukal, then yki is negative if he favors the
status quo and positive if he favors a change. Then if we define xki = | yki |,
he will be willing to give up control of i to gain control of k if xki > xsl; and
the quantity xkl is his interest in event k.
This added freedom for the behavior of these two individuals gives a
partial ordering of the utility difference between outcomes for each, or his
interest in the event, that is, a partial ordering of the Xii and of the xi2. This
partial ordering is very incomplete, since it establishes order relations only
between pairs of x’s, i.e., those pairs of events on which a political exchange
was made. However, we can extend this partial order by slightly modifying
the way this new vote is made: by asking both individuals to state, for all
pairs of events, whether they would or would not be willing to make an
428 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
exchange. Thus if there are r events in the set (1, . . . , j), and s in the set
(j+1, both individuals would give an answer for all r x s pairs
of issues. Exchanges would then be made by matching pairs of issues on
which both individuals had responded positively. The responses generated
by this procedure would allow testing of transitivity of the x’s and would
make the partial order much more complete.8 There still would not be inter¬
personal comparison between the xiX’s and xi2’s, nor a metric associated with
them.
These outcomes also give some further information about the gains and
losses of these decisions to society. The general result is that comparing this
procedure, allowing political exchange, to the first which did not allow such
exchange, there is a net gain to society, as has often been claimed for in¬
creases in freedom of trade.9 This gain can be expressed by considering only
those events on which a change in outcome occurred between this pro¬
cedure and the more restrictive one, that is, events 1, . . . , g, and j + 1,
. . . , j + g. Let us now assume the events j + 1, . . . , j + g, ordered so
that j +1 is exchanged with event 1, j + 2 with event 2, and so on. The
end result of this exchange is to result in a gain of xj+iii and a loss of xu for
individual 1 on events j + 1 and 1, and a gain of x12 and a loss of xj+i,2 for
individual 2 on events j + 1 and 1. For both individuals there is an overall
gain (i.e., xj+itl > xn, and x12 > xj+ij2), as implied by the willingness of
each to exchange. Thus the gain to society from the new political procedure
can be expressed by the set of g pairs of gain-and-loss for individual 1, and
the set of g pairs of gain-and-loss for individual 2. For both individuals for
each of the g pairs, the gain is greater than the loss. Sums could be carried
out over the two sets separately (not assuming comparability between x’s
for the two individuals), but we are not yet qualified to assume additivity
for an individual’s x’s, but only an order among the x’s. Nor do we need to
assume additivity, since the gain exceeds the loss for each pair of events
taken separately.
(Hi) Now we allow an added freedom of behavior beyond that allowed
under (ii), that is, the freedom to carry out political exchanges in which
more than two events are involved. Individual 1 can offer to exchange his
vote on one or more events for 2’s vote on one or more events. If he offers
to exchange three for one, this means that the combined event (which we
will label d) consisting of several individual events (say i, k, and c) are of
less interest to 1 than the single event which he is attempting to gain control
over. We assume no interaction among events, by which we mean that we
assume l’s interest in this combined event, xdi, to be given by:
itself. For example, if 1 were indifferent between control over event c and
control over event h, then he should be indifferent between control over
combined event d and control over combined event e which consists of
events i, k, and h. This test examines the interaction between event c and
events i and k, by testing the proposition: If xhl = xci, then xdi = xei, where
d and e are combined events consisting of i, k, c, and of i, k, h, respectively.
Obviously many such individual tests must be carried out to provide a
reasonable degree of confirmation of the assumption of additivity or no
interaction. The important point, however, is that with this greater political
freedom for negotiation, behavior occurs which makes it possible to give
numerical values to the x’s, and to test whether these values have the prop¬
erty of additivity possessed by real numbers.10 The second important point
is that, as will be shown, this added political freedom will give social welfare
higher than or equal to that obtained under (ii).
To see this last point, assume first that all the single-event exchanges have
been made under condition (ii), and then the new possibility exists for
multi-event exchanges. Either no further negotiations would occur (in which
case the social welfare would remain the same), or some further exchange
would occur. We can see immediately that if such an exchange occurs, it
increases the welfare of each, for it would not otherwise be made. Thus the
revelant question is, can such an exchange be made, given that no single¬
event exchanges are possible? That this is possible can easily be shown.
Suppose individual 1 wanted to gain control over event h, and offered con¬
trol over either i or k for it. But the exchange did not occur because for
individual 2 just as for individual 1, 1, xh2 > x12, and xh2 > xk2. However,
if 1 is now allowed to offer control over both i and k for h, his offer means
that xhi > Xn + xkl, and if 2 accepts, this means that xh2 < xi2 + xk2. Both
of these inequalities are compatible with the previous single-event inequali¬
ties. Thus if this exchange occurs, the gain to 1 is xhl — xiX — xkl, and the
gain to 2 is xi2 + xk2 — xh2, both of which are positive.
Now it is possible to express the welfare to the two members under each
of the three conditions. Let us assume additional events, labeled g + 1, . . . ,
h, and j + g + 1, ... f are exchanged under condition (iii).11 The baseline
from which the welfare below is expressed is for each event the utility for
the outcome he likes least. By slight modifications of these expressions, a
baseline representing the status quo could be used.
(i) individual 1:
£ Xn +
i=m+1
Xn
individual 2:
£
i = j + i
X12 + i
i = m + 1
x,2
430 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
3 j + g
n
(ii) individual 1:
E Xi! +
E Xji +
E Xii
i = g + 1 i =j+ 1 i = m + 1
m n
g
individual 2:
E Xi2 4-
E xi2 + E xi2
i = 1 i = j + g + 1 i = m + 1
f n
j
(iii) individual 1:
E Xi! +
E Xi! +
E
i = m + 1
Xii
i = h + 1 i = j + 1
h m n
individual 2:
E x12 +
E xi2 +
E xi2
i = 1 i = f + 1 i = m + 1
It is not evident from the sums given above, but the inequalities presented
earlier show that at every step the changes expressed by changes in the
summations is going from (i) to (ii) and from (ii) to (iii) all represent
gains for both individuals. Thus at every step, there is an increase in the
welfare of both individuals, produced by the increase in freedom of political
exchange. Yet there is still no basis for comparing the utilities or interests or
welfare of the two individuals. It is to this we next turn.
23 Xii + 23 Xu
i = 1 i = m + 1
and 2 realizes
m n
23 xi2 + 23 Xi2
JAMES S. COLEMAN 431
each of these two quantities being some proportion less than or equal to 1,
since the sum of xn and of xi2 over the whole range are each equal to 1.0. For
the other conditions, the sums are as given above under (ii) and (iii). Thus
if each individual acted with perfect rationality, each must have realized that
part of his interest allowed by his power in the system, plus an additional part
due to the conjunction of interests between him and the other. In other words,
his power in this system of events can be defined as his ability to realize his
own interests. It is evident that his ability to realize his interests depends
both upon his “constitutional control” over particular events and upon his
distribution of interests. Thus under conditions of no exchange, it is evi¬
dent that the power of individual j is proportional to the sum of c^ xij5
summed over all events i, where Cjj is the degree of constitutional control of
event i by individual j. That is, under conditions of no exchange, he has
much power only if he controls those events that interest him greatly. He
cannot use his control of other events for any purpose whatsoever, so this
control does not add to his power. In the special case of a unanimity rule
(as in the case of any voting rule which is not symmetric between the two
outcomes of the event), his constitutional control c^ depends upon the di¬
rection of his interests. If his interests favor the status quo, cu = 1, while if
they favor the new policy, Cij = 0. Thus the measure of power for individual
j n
1 is proportional to ^ Xjj + ^ Xy. If the total power
i = 1 i = m
Xa + £ Xu
i = 1 i = m _
1 j m m n
In calculating this power, the quantities Xji and xi2 have for the first time
been taken as commensurable. That is, the proportion of an individual s
interest that he realizes politically is commensurable with the proportion of
another individual’s interest that he realizes politically, for these are mea¬
sures of the political power of each. Thus it is only in the assessment of
relative power that the interests of 1 and 2 can be compared. And at this
point, they not only can be but must be compared, for the power of an
actor in a system is his ability to realize his interests.
This introduction of relative power as the only source of “interpersonal
comparison of utility” is so foreign to the usual ideas of interpersonal com¬
parison that some discussion is warranted. Consider how an interpersonal
comparison of utility could be made between husband and wife. When an
432 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
American Indian husband rides while his wife walks carrying a burden,
can we compare the utility or disutility that each is experiencing? If a
modern American husband takes the bus to work while his wife uses the
car, can we compare the utility differences that each would experience
between the two activities? In both cases, I think the answer is No. We can
observe only the outcome, and from that infer not how important it is to
one compared to its importance to the other but something quite different:
the power that each has to realize his interest in this arena of decision¬
making and the amount of interest this event has for him relative to other
things that also interest him. In the case of the American Indian it would
be necessary also to observe numerous choices of the husband and wife
separately between walking, riding, and other activities; and second, to
determine the relative power, it would be necessary to observe the outcomes
of other events involving activities of varying levels of importance to each.
Similarly, with the modern American husband and wife. Obviously, the
main difference between these two examples is not one of utility differences
but of differences in relative power of the husband and wife. There is no
standard for comparing these utilities other than the standard they (in their
larger social context) establish for themselves, and this standard is not one
of utility but relative power.
To see the dependence of power upon the decision rule, let us con¬
sider a different decision rule: a probabilistic rule with the probability of
outcome a equal to the proportion of votes for a. In this case, each individ¬
ual’s constitutional control of each event is 0.5, independent of his direction
of interest. Under condition (i) of no vote exchange, his power to realize
his interests will be, as above, proportional to the product of his control
over events and his interest in the event. Comparing this with the earlier
measure of power under the unanimity decision rule shows that the measure
is quite different under this new decision rule. If the same decision rule
existed, but individual 1 had three votes and 2 had only one, then l’s ability
n
E
i= 1
-75 xii
r! = -
n n
fl = 0.75
JAMES S. COLEMAN 433
It is evident that the total realized interests in the system can be summed
in such a system as this, for they must be summed over persons to provide
the denominator for the measurement of power. This means also that it is
quite possible to obtain, with this sum, the total “social welfare,” if we are
quite explicit about what we mean by social welfare. This social welfare
that results from these collective decisions is social welfare in which differ¬
ent individuals’ interests may count the same or differently—not as a func¬
tion of an omniscient God or his representative, a social scientist, deciding
that each individuals’ interests should count a certain amount in the social
welfare, but as a result of the decision rule, the procedural rules, and the
distribution of interests. Thus if the constitutionally established decision
rule requires unanimity, it gives greater power to those who favor the
status quo, and the aggregate social welfare can only be stated relative to
this constitutional inequality. The actual distribution of interests realized
gives the distribution of welfare. As a consequence, two statements need to
be made in stating the social welfare arising in a given system of collective
decisions: (a) the sum of realized interests; and (b) the decision rule and
procedural rules, which together with the distribution of interests determine
the relative power of each individual to realize his interests. An alternative
to the second statement is the actual distribution of power, or some meas¬
ure of the skewness of the distribution.12
Thus the interests of some may count more than the interests of others in
the social welfare as actually realized. Why is this so; why not rather that
the interests of all count equally? The answer lies wholly in the constitution
which dictates the decision rule that distributes control over decisions and
gives the permissible political procedures.13 One can then object, however,
that we have not progressed at all but instead have merely pushed the ques¬
tion up another level, with the question becoming Why does the constitu¬
tion provide this degree of inequality (or equality)? The objection is a valid
one, but betrays a mistaken notion that there can be something outside so¬
ciety in terms of which its power distribution can ultimately be justified.
Because a society is a self-governing system, the only explanation is an infi¬
nite regress, moving at every point closer to fundamental sources of power,
such as economic productivity, control of strategic resources, intelligence,
and physical strength.
Yet to have pushed the question up one level may provide a very valuable
service. It shows what the indirect consequences of a given constitutional
procedure are, and thus allows those who have power over the constitu¬
tion (which almost always is more nearly the total of the members of the
electorate than is true for specific decisions) to compare the consequences
with constitutional intent. Thus it allows for a more rational framing of the
constitution, to allocate power among members of society more precisely in
accord with the intent of those with power over the constitution.
434 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
The definition of power above is only appropriate for the case in which
each individual is restricted to merely casting his vote. But under conditions
of free exchange (such as [ii] or [iii] above), each individual has additional
actions he can carry out. These actions increase his ability to get what he
wants, for they allow him to use the interests others have in an event over
which he has total or partial control. That is, if individual 1 has control over
events 1, . . . , j because he favors the status quo, then his ability to realize
his own interests in other events depends upon individual 2’s interest in
these events 1, . . . , j. If 2 has little interest in these events, then he is un¬
interested in an exchange which will allow him to gain control of them.
However, if 2 has much interest in these events, he will give up control over
events of interest to 1 in order to gain control of them. Thus we might be
tempted to say that under conditions of free exchange, an individual’s
ability to realize his interest (that is, his power) is equal to his degree of
control over events times the interest that all individuals have in those events.
If the interest is his own, he can realize it directly through exercising his
control; if it is another’s, he can realize an equivalent interest by exchang¬
ing his control over this event with the interested party for one in which he
does have high interest. However, such a formulation neglects one point,
which can best be illustrated by example. Suppose individual 1 has control
over event k, which individual 2 has high interest in, but 2 has no control
over an event of interest to 1. In such a case, the interest that 2 has in event
k is useless to 1 in exchange, because of the lack of power of 2. The case
becomes even clearer if there are three persons in the system. If 1 controls
event k of interest to 2, and event j, of interest to 3, then which is more val¬
uable to him? It depends on the relative power of 2 and 3. If 3 controls
every event not controlled by 1, then 2’s interests in event k is worthless to 1.
Then taking these two points together, in a system of free exchange
(assuming a large number of events so that terms of exchange could be
appropriately worked out by combinations of events), an individual’s power
or ability to realize his interest is given by his constitutional control over
an event times the interest of individuals in this event, each individual’s
interest modified by his power; this whole quantity summed over all events:14
n s
Tj = X) Cij Xlk Tk
i = 1 k = 1
vi= Xijfj
j=i
by the exchange its total expected utility from the system; if it did not, it
would not have entered into the exchange. Thus the only possible losses
incurred through the exchange are due to externalities—losses experienced
by those who were not parties to the exchange. Only if their expected losses
(weighted by their power) are greater than the expected gains of the parties
to the exchange and others who stand to benefit from the exchange will there
be a reduction in social welfare due to the exchange. But if this is so, it
means that they have the resources to carry out an exchange with one or
both of the parties, overriding the initial tentative exchange. For each event
i involved in the exchange, each party j will benefit or lose by the exchange,
exchange a quantity A piyy, where A Pi is the change in probability toward
passage of the new policy due to the tentative exchange on event i, and
yfj is the utility difference in favor of the new policy. The sum total of wel¬
fare gained and lost by the exchange is thus obtained by adding Apiyij over
all events i for the individual, then weighting this sum by the individual’s
power r_j, and finally summing all the positive numbers and the negative
ones. If this negative sum is greater, more has been lost by the exchange
than gained by it. But since rj is the total value of events under the control
of j (Tj = 2 Cij vk), and the absolute value of ytj is xu, then the measure of
social welfare lost is also a measure of the sum of the resources which the
losing parties j can afford to give up to redress the loss. The measure of
resources that a given losing party can afford to give up is that fraction of
his interest that he stands to lose, ? Apiyij, times the total value under his
n
equivalent value, then if the gain achieved by those who gained in the
tentative exchange was less than 22 a p* Xj rj (summed only over those who
NOTES
1. Sometimes politicians forget this and assume that an action is clearly ben¬
eficial to all, later to discover to their dismay that this is not so at all. An excellent
case in point is the behavior of many city councils in passage of a measure fluoridat¬
ing the water system. The cost is almost nothing (it does not raise the tax rate),
JAMES S. COLEMAN 437
to use any one of several techniques for measuring utility under risk (e.g., Von
Neumann-Morgenstern (1947) or Ramsey-Suppes (1955)). This procedure however,
might not give an additive measure even if the suggested procedure did, for it
would not only involve combinations of issues, but also risk, meaning that he would
make exchanges as if his interest in this issue were A pi xu, where A pi is the
increment in subjective probability of a favorable outcome, given the exchange.
11. If a different procedure has been assumed, starting condition (iii) after
initial preferences were established, rather than after single-event exchanges, then
a higher amount of welfare might have resulted for each person, since some of the
single-event exchanges made under (ii) may have precluded combinations that
would have resulted in a higher welfare for each.
12. The standard deviation of the distribution appears to be an especially good
measure of this inequality, for it is equivalent to a function of the differences in power
between all pairs of individuals. It is the square root of the average squared difference
of power between all pairs of individuals in the system.
13. Buchanan and Tullock (1962) have emphasized the importance of separating
problems of collective decisions into two levels, one a constitutional decision which
establishes the procedures under which the operating decisions are made.
14. This system of equations can be solved for rj by transposing rj to the right
hand side of the equation, and dividing through all terms of each equation by rs
(the power of the last-labeled person), to give r*, . . . , r* . Then the first s— 1 equa¬
tions are independent equations in s—1 unknowns(r* , . . . , r* ), and can be solved
by standard means. The r*’s can be transformed into r’s by recognizing that the total
power is defined to be 1.0, and by use of the equation:
(H1 r* + 0^= 10
i=i
Since all r*’s are known, this equation can be solved for rs, and then this used to
solve for r,i since r,ii‘
= rfr
15. This assumes of course, that the only resources used in such exchange are
control over events in this system. If resources from outside the system are used,
then the larger system, including those resources, must be the system for analysis.
16. Henceforth, the term “social welfare” will be used to mean social welfare
relative to the distribution of constitutional control.
REFERENCES
Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: John
Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1951.
Buchanan, James M., “The Relevance of Pareto Optimality,” The Journal
of Conflict Resolution, v. 6, 1962, pp. 341-354.
Buchanan, James M., and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent. Ann
Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1962.
Harrod, R. F., “Scope and Method of Economics,” The Economic Journal,
v. 48, 1938, pp. 383-412.
Hicks, John R., “The Foundation of Welfare Economics,” Economic
Journal, v. 49, 1939, pp. 696-712.
Kaldor, N., “Welfare Propositions of Economics and Interpersonal Com¬
parisons of Utility,” Economic Journal, 1939, v. 49, pp. 549-552.
Little, I. M. D., A Critique of Welfare Economics, second edition. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1957.
Little, I. M. D., “Social Choice and Individual Values,” The Journal of
Political Economy, v. 60, 1952, pp. 422-432.
JAMES S. COLEMAN 439
for P’s threatening Q). I shall not be able here to get to these further
questions, and shall be engaged largely in tool-sharpening rather than in
tool use.
One final preliminary remark, or warning, or apology. This study of
coercion is an exploratory study, and is meant to raise questions and sug¬
gest problems. To many of these questions and problems I propose tenta¬
tive answers and solutions, but some are left open. I would be happier if
I could answer or solve them all. But in philosophy questions and problems
often outlive specific proposed answers and solutions. Unfortunately, so
it was in the course of writing this paper.
threatened me, and that you will be very upset if I do A (not that you
will choose to be upset to punish me for doing A). Since I don’t want
you to be upset, I refrain from doing A. You did not coerce me into not
doing A, though it seems that the conditions listed are satisfied; in par¬
ticular it seems that the relevant conditions 5 and 2 are satisfied. Or, if
they can be so interpreted so that they’re not satisfied, it would be well to
make this interpretation explicit, replacing 5, 1 and 2 by:
(5') Part of Q’s reason for not doing A is to avoid (or lessen the likelihood
of) the consequence6 which P has threatened to bring about or have
brought about.7
(Part of) P’s reason for deciding to bring about the consequence or have
it brought about, if Q does A, is that P believes this consequence worsens
Q’s alternative of doing A (i.e. that P believes that this consequence
worsens Q’s alternative of doing A, or that Q would believe it does).8
The SSRC example satisfies this condition, since (part of) the researchers’
reason for deciding to kill Q if he doesn’t turn over the money is that they
believe this consequence worsens Q’s alternative of not giving them the
money.
But the condition formulated is not broad enough, for we want to cover
cases where P has not decided to bring about the consequence if Q does A,
but is bluffing instead, or neither intends nor intends not to bring it about if
Q does A. This suggests disjoining another condition with the one above:
ROBERT NOZICK 443
(7) Q believes that, and P believes that Q believes that, P’s threatened
consequence11 would leave Q worse off, having done A, than if Q didn’t
do A and P didn’t bring about the consequence.12
I suggest that it is as a case of this sort of situation, rather than the one
discussed earlier, that we are to understand the following: some adult’s
mother says to him, “If you do A I’ll have a heart attack, or the prob¬
ability = p that I’ll have a heart attack.” I have in mind a case where
the mother does not choose to have a heart attack if her son does A or
to do something which will bring on or raise the probability of a heart
attack. She just knows she will (or that the probability = p). It seems to me
that the mother’s statement is not plausibly construed as a threat to
(choose to) do something or bring about a consequence if her son does A.
To use a distinction which will be discussed later, what the mother issues
is not a threat but rather a nonthreatening warning. If we look just at the
first sort of situation, we will conclude that the mother did not coerce the
son into not doing A. But this example can plausibly be viewed as a case
of the second sort of situation, in which before Q does A, P does something,
making this known to Q, which worsens Q’s alternative of doing A. And
if this counts as coercion, then the mother may coerce the son. We should
look, in this case, at the mother’s act, prior to her son’s doing A, of telling
him that she will or probably will have a heart attack if he does A. We
may suppose that without her announcement the consequence of her son’s
doing A is some probability of her having a heart attack and some prob¬
ability of his feeling guilty (a function of the probability of his realizing
why she died and the probability that he will feel guilty anyway because
he did something she didn’t like and then she died) and some probability
of A’s having quite nice consequences. And we may suppose that after
the mother’s announcement the consequences of his doing A are changed
significantly. For now there is some probability of her dying and his feeling
enormously guilty (because he ignored her warning), and even if she won’t
die because of his doing A, if he does A he will worry over this possibility,
feel guilty about doing something he knows upsets her, etc. Her act of
making her announcement before he did A worsened the consequence
of his doing A. If we suppose, furthermore, that one of her reasons for
making the announcement was to worsen the consequences, and that one
of his reasons for not doing A was this worsening of consequences, then
we have a situation of the second sort. And if this sort of situation counts
as coercion, the son was coerced into not doing A.18
I have thus far concentrated upon the central part or core of the notion
of coercion, and, in order to avoid too many complications all at once,
have spoken of necessary and sufficient conditions for coercion (period).
However, I believe that there are further cases of coercion which do not
themselves satisfy the conditions thus far discussed, but which are cases
446 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
(1) If P coerces Q into doing A, and “A” contains as a proper part the
referring expression “r^” and “B” is obtainable by substituting the refer¬
ring expression “r2” for %” in “A”, and “r2” and %” have the same
reference, and “rx” occurs transparently in “Q does A,” then P coerces
Q into doing B.20
(4) If P coerces Q into doing A, and if the only way anyone can do A
is by doing either Bx or B2 or, . . . , or Bn, then P coerces Q into doing
Bj or B2 or, . . . , Bn.21
(5) If P coerces Q into doing A, and the only way in which Q can do A
is by doing either Bx or B2 or, . . . , or Bn, then P coerces Q into doing
B, or B2 or, .. . , or Bn.22
The notion of a threat has played a central role in what has been said
thus far. In this section we shall consider the differences between threats
and offers, and in the next section we shall consider the differences between
threats and warnings.
If P offers Q substantially more money than Q is earning at his current
job to come to work for P, and Q accepts because he wants to increase
his income, has P coerced Q into working for him? Some writers (Hale,
Bay) would say that P has; the threat being “come to work for me or I
won’t give you the money.”24 On this view, every employer coerces his
employees, every employee his employer (“give me the money or I won’t
work for you”), every seller of an object coerces his customers (“give me
the money or I won’t give you the object”), and every customer the
person from whom he buys. It seems clear that normally these aren’t
cases of coercion. Offers of inducements, incentives, rewards, bribes, con¬
sideration, remuneration, recompense, payment do not normally constitute
threats, and the person who accepts them is not normally coerced.
As a first formulation, let us say that whether someone makes a threat
against Q’s doing an action or an offer to Q to do the action depends on
how the consequence he says he will bring about changes the consequences
of Q’s action from what they would have been in the normal or natural
or expected course of events. If it makes the consequences of Q’s action
worse than they would have been in the normal and expected course of
events, it is a threat; if it makes the consequences better, it is an offer.25
The term “expected” is meant to shift between or straddle predicted and
morally required,26 This handles pretty well the clear cases of threats and
offers. Let us see how it fares with more difficult examples.
(a) P is Q’s usual supplier of drugs, and today when he conies to Q he says
that he will not sell them to Q, as he normally does, for $20, but rather
will give them to Q if and only if Q beats up a certain person.
(b) P is a stranger who has been observing Q, and knows that Q is a drug
addict. Both know that Q’s usual supplier of drugs was arrested this
morning and that P had nothing to do with his arrest. P approaches Q
and says that he will give Q drugs if and only if Q beats up a certain
person.
to deprive Q of his drugs, if Q does not beat up the person. In the second
case, where P is a stranger to Q, P is not threatening not to supply Q
with drugs; in the normal course of events P does not do so, nor is P
expected to do so. If P does not give Q the drugs he is not withholding drugs
from Q nor is he depriving Q of drugs. P is offering Q drugs as an induce¬
ment to beat up the person. Thus in the second case, P does not coerce
O into beating up the person, since P does not threaten Q. (But the fact
that P did not coerce Q into beating up the person does not mean that it
would not be true for Q to say, in some legitimate sense of the phrase:
“I had no choice.”)
There is a further point to be considered about the first case in which
P is Q’s usual supplier of drugs. In addition to threatening to withhold the
drugs if Q doesn’t beat up a certain person, hasn’t P made Q an offer?
Since in the normal and expected course of events Q does not get drugs
for beating up the person, isn’t this a case in which P then offers Q drugs
as an incentive to beat up the person? And if P has made this offer, why
do we view the overall situation as one in which P threatens Q, rather than
as one in which P makes Q an offer? We have here a situation in which P
takes a consequence viewed as desirable by Q (receiving drugs) off one
action (paying $20) and puts it onto another action (beating up the per¬
son). Since Q prefers and P believes that Q prefers paying the money and
receiving the drugs to beating up the person and receiving the drugs, and
since Q would rather not beat up the person, P’s statement is a threat to
withhold the drugs if Q doesn’t beat up the person, and this threat pre¬
dominates over any subsidiary offer P makes for Q to beat up the person,
making the whole situation a threat situation.
But instead of subtracting a desirable consequence from one of Q’s
actions and tagging the same consequence onto another of Q’s actions,
P may subtract a desirable consequence C from one of Q’s actions Ax and
add a more desirable consequence C' onto another action A2 available to
Q. For example, the dope peddler might say to Q, “I will not give you drugs
if you just pay me money, but I will give you a better grade of drugs, with¬
out monetary payment, if you beat up this person.” It seems plausible to
think that as one increases the desirability of C' to Q, at some point the
situation changes from one predominantly involving a threat to deprive
Q of C if he does Ax (doesn’t do A2) to one which predominantly involves
an offer to Q of C' if he does A2. And it seems plausible to claim that this
turning point from threat to offer, as one increases the value of C' for Q,
comes at the point where Q begins preferring A2 and C' to A, and C (stops
preferring the latter to the former?).27
The following principle embodies this claim, and also covers the case
where it is the same consequence which is switched from one action to
another as in the earlier example. It also is meant to apply to obvious
ROBERT NOZICK 449
mixtures of threats and offers, e.g., “If you go to the movies I’ll give you
$10,000. If you don’t go, I’ll kill you.”
This principle ties in nicely with something we shall say later. For when
the change predominantly involves a threat, Q would normally not be
willing to have this change made (since he’d rather do the old Ax than
either of the two alternatives after the change), whereas when the change
predominantly involves an offer, Q would normally be willing to have the
change made (since he’d rather do the new A2 than the old Ax, and if he
prefers doing one of the old alternatives (Ax) to doing the new A2, he can
still do it,) I shall claim later that this willingness or unwillingness to make
the change marks an important difference between offers and threats.28
If a statement’s being a threat or an offer depends upon how the carry¬
ing out of the statement affects the normal or expected course of events,
one would expect that there will be situations where it is unclear whether a
person is making a threat or an offer because it is unclear what the normal
and expected course of events is. And one would expect that people will
disagree about whether something is a threat or an offer because they dis¬
agree about what the normal and expected course of events is, which is
to be used as a baseline in assessing whether something is a threat or an
offer. This is indeed the case.
Consider the following example. Q is in the water far from shore,
nearing the end of his energy, and P comes close by in his boat. Both
know there is no other hope of Q’s rescue around, and P knows that Q is
the soul of honesty and that if Q makes a promise he will keep it. P says
to Q “I will take you in my boat and bring you to shore if and only if you
first promise to pay me $10,000 within three days of reaching shore with
my aid.” Is P offering to take Q to shore if he makes the promise, or is he
threatening to let Q drown if Q doesn’t make the promise? If one views
the normal or expected course of events as one in which Q drowns without
P’s intervention, then in saying that he will save Q if and only if Q makes
the promise, P is offering to save Q. If one views the normal or expected
450 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
quences of one act of Q’s (stealing) against the background of the normal
and expected course of events minus this act of punishment.33
According to the account offered earlier of (the first sort of) coercion,
threats are necessary for coercion. One might extend the account to in¬
clude some offers, if there were clear situations in which Q is coerced into
doing A even though Q does A because P offered to do B if Q did A.
Despite my inclination to say that one is never coerced when one does
something because of an offer (unless in the case discussed earlier, the
slaveowner is making an offer to his slave), there is one sort of case, where
the offer is closely tied to coercion or attempted coercion, which I find it
difficult to decide about. Suppose that P knows that Q has committed a
murder which the police are investigating, and knows of evidence sufficient
to convict Q of this murder. P says to Q, “If you give me $10,000 I will
not turn over the information I have to the police.” Let us assume that
were P unable to contact Q and present his proposal he would turn the
information over to the police. Furthermore, in this situation P is (morally)
expected to turn the information over to the police. So in the normal and
expected course of events, P turns the information over to the police
(whether or not Q gives him $10,000). It would seem, therefore, that P is
offering not to turn the information over to the police, rather than threaten¬
ing to turn it over. Yet one is strongly tempted to say, when Q pays P
$10,000 because he accepts the offer, that Q was coerced by P into paying
the $10,000.34
If the following principle were correct, then this would be a case of
coercion:
A case similar to the previous one, is one in which the police arrest Q
for a crime, believing that he has committed it and having sufficient evidence
to convict him of it. In the course of questioning Q, they come to believe
that Q knows who has committed some other crime, and they say that Q
will not be prosecuted if and only if he tells them who has committed this
other crime. Since if the police did not think Q knew who committed the
other crime they would have prosecuted, and since they are morally ex¬
pected to have him prosecuted, the police have offered not to have Q
prosecuted rather than threatened to have him prosecuted. If Q names the
person who committed the other crime, in order to escape being prosecuted,
some are strongly tempted to say that he was coerced into giving the in¬
formation. The above principle would yield this consequence. Though I
do not deny that one may say, in some legitimate sense of these expressions,
“Q was forced to do what he did,” “Q had no choice,” I am unable to
ROBERT NOZICK 453
decide whether, in the above cases, Q was coerced into doing so, and I
leave this an open question.
The two previous cases are cases where P is morally expected or re¬
quired to do the act, and would normally do so (turn the murderer over
to the police, have Q prosecuted). It is worth mentioning cases where P
has a legal and moral right to do the act, but would not decide to do so
(even if Q didn’t do A) were he not trying to get Q to do A. For example,
P has a right to build on his land blocking Q’s view, or foreclose Q’s
mortgage, or bring legal action against Q (on a valid and enforcible claim)
but would not decide to do so (it’s not worth the trouble, P has no pressing
need for funds, etc.) were it not for his wanting Q to do A. P tells Q that
unless he does A, he (P) will build on his land, foreclose Q’s mortgage,
bring legal action against Q, etc. Since P’s action is not part of the morally
expected course of events (not that P is morally expected not to do it) and
since in the normal course of events P wouldn’t do it, the account yields
the result that one would wish: In these cases P is threatening to perform
his actions rather than offering not to do so.
Employees
I. union wins II. union loses
Employer
The employees make the first move (pick a column) and the employer
makes the second (picks a row) knowing what move the employees have
first made. That is, first the employees choose to be represented by the
union or not, and then the employer, knowing what choice his employees
have made, decides to stay in business or go out of business. I shall assume
that each of the members of some particular majority of the employees
preferentially ranks the outcomes as follows:
(b)
(a)
(c)
(d)
and shall call this the preference ordering of the employees.38 There seem
to me to be at least four cases worth considering,39 corresponding to four
different preference rankings of these alternatives by the employer. These
are:
I assume, for each case, that the employer knows the preference ranking
of the employees.
Case 1: The employer, if he were sure that the union would win the
election, would not make his announcement, since he prefers continuing in
business though the factory is unionized, to going out of business. That is,
he prefers (b) to (c). However he commits himself to going out of business
if the factory is unionized, and announces this decision (that is, rules out
(b)), in the hope that this will lead his employees to reject the union. By
ruling out (b) beforehand he leaves his employees (a), (c), and (d)
among which to choose, and since of these (a) is highest in the preference
ranking of the employees, they will presumably then act so as to realize
ROBERT NOZICK 455
(a) , and this is the alternative which the employer ranks most highly. The
employer is committing himself beforehand, for strategic reasons, to do
something (B) in a situation (I) such that had he not committed himself
to this he would be better off doing something else (A) in that situation
when and if it arose. It seems clear that in this case, when the employer
announces that he will go out of business if the union wins the election
he is threatening his employees.40 For in the normal course of events, he
does not go out of business, given his preferences, if the employees vote
for the union. Hence he’s announcing that he will depart from the normal
course of events in a way to the detriment of his employees, if they elect the
union.41 And also (part of) his reason for deciding to go out of business if
the union wins is that he believes that this worsens his employees alter¬
native of electing the union (and he thereby hopes to influence them to
reject the union). Hence his announcement is a threat, and he has threatened
to go out of business if the union wins the election.
Case 2: The employer announces that he will go out of business if the
union wins the election, thus ruling out (b), and leaving the employees a
choice between (a) and (c). He makes this announcement hoping that
because of it, his employees will reject the union. Note that in this case,
unlike the first one, there is not something the employer would rather do
than go out of business if the union wins the election. (For he is indifferent
between (c) and (b), whereas in the first case, the employer preferred
(b) to (c).) Though there aren’t exactly the same strategic considerations as
in the first case, still strategic considerations are involved. And this employer,
too, has threatened his employees. For in the normal or expected course of
events he wouldn’t have made his announcement, and would, being in¬
different between (c) and (b), decide whether or not to stay in business
if and when the union won the election. We may suppose that before he
decides there is some nonzero probability of his deciding to close the
factory, and some nonzero probability of his staying in business. This
being what one would expect in the normal course of events, his announce¬
ment and commitment to going out of business, for sure, if the union wins
the election, changes the normal or expected course of events in the typical
manner of a threat. For his being almost certain to go out of business
is worse, from his employees’ viewpoint, than there being some probability
of his going out of business and some probability of his remaining in
business. Since part of his reason for deciding to go out of business if the
union wins is that (he believes) this worsens his employees’ alternative of
electing the union, this constitutes a threat.
But if in this case the employer does not announce that he will close if
the union wins (which would be a threat), but instead announces truth¬
fully that he is indifferent between closing and staying in business if the
union wins and will decide what to do afterwards (and if his employees
voting for the union in the face of this announcement would not anger him
456 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
(b) Where some people are free to do acts they should be unfree to do.
(c) Where some people are free to do acts they should be unfree to do, and
some people are unfree to do acts they should be free to do.
(or all other realizeable patterns are less optimal) than the one yielded by
this legislation.
I might mention the statement, which we might call a tip, which stands
to an offer as a non-threatening warning stands to a threat; that is, P’s
statement which points out that P will bring about some consequence if
Q does A which improves Q’s alternative of doing A, though P’s believing
that it improves or that Q would believe it improves Q’s doing A is not
part of P’s reason for deciding to bring about the consequence if Q does A.
Building into the notion of P’s making Q an offer to do A the require¬
ment that (part of) P’s reason for bringing about the consequence if Q
does A is to improve Q’s alternative of doing A, illuminates the following
example: P comes up to Q and says, “your money or your life.” Q resists
and beats P up. Had P not said what he did and had he not confronted
Q with a gun, and had Q just beaten P up, Q would have been a bully and
people would have scorned him. But now the consequences of beating
P up are made far more attractive to Q; Q becomes a hero if he does so.
But P hasn’t made Q an offer to beat him up, because though what P did
improved the consequences of some action of Q’s, bringing about this
improvement was not part of P’s reason for acting as he did.45 Has P tipped
Q off to something? Highwaymen normally don’t go on to say, “And if you
resist and beat me up you’ll be a hero,” but if one did, he would have
given his prospective victim a tip, however little appreciated. Note, in¬
cidentally, that one should not think for the case where Q beats P up after P
makes his threat that Q was coerced into doing so, even though Q did so to
avoid the threatened consequence. For not all of the other necessary con¬
ditions for coercion are satisfied.
(a) doing Ax
According to this view, any action of P’s which results in Ai’s being
significantly greater or A2’s being significantly less in utility than the other
actions in A may coerce Q. It makes no difference, according to this
view, how the difference in utility is brought about; whether in (a) Ax is
absolutely raised in utility or all the other members of A are absolutely
lowered in utility, or whether in (b) A2 is absolutely lowered in utility, or
all the other members of A are absolutely raised in utility. It is only the
resulting relative positions, however arrived at, which count. This view is
mistaken, and I shall assume that we can all think of examples that show
to our satisfaction that this is so. I now want to consider whether anything
illuminating can be said about why the notion of coercion isn’t so wide
as to encompass all bringing about of actions by the bringing about of
difference in relative position. The question I’m asking may seem bogus.
After all, there will be some terms which apply both to getting someone
to do something via threats, and to getting someone to do something via
offers, e.g., “getting someone to do something.” And there will be some
terms which apply to one and not the other. Am I just asking why the word
“coercion” is among those that apply to only one of these and not to both?
And why expect the answer, presumably going back to the word’s Latin
roots, to be philosophically interesting? So let me state my task differently.
I would like to make sense of the following claims: when a person does
something because of threats, the will of another is operating or predom¬
inant, whereas when he does something because of offers this is not so;
a person who does something because of threats is subject to the will of
another, whereas a person who acts because of an offer is not; a person who
does something because of threats does not perform a fully voluntary
action, whereas this is normally not the case with someone who does some¬
thing because of offers; when someone does something because of offers
it is his own choice, whereas when he does something because of threats
it is not his own choice but someone else’s, or not fully his own choice, or
someone else has made his choice for him; when a person does something
because of threats he does it unwillingly, whereas this is normally not the
case when someone does something because of offers. (There are other
ways to approach this area. One might ask why we say that we accept
offers, but we go along with threats rather than accept them.)
I would like to make sense of these claims in the face of the following
three roughly true statements, which seem to indicate that threat and offer
situations are on a par so far as whose will operates, whether the act is
fully voluntary, whose choice it is, and so forth.
460 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
(1) A person can be gotten to do something which someone else wants him
to do, which he otherwise wouldn’t do, by offers as well as by threats.
(2) A person can choose to do what there is a threat against his doing,
just as a person can choose to do what there is an offer for him not to
do. (“just as”?)
(3) Sometimes a threat is so great that a person cannot reasonably be ex¬
pected not to go along with it, but also sometimes an offer is so great
that a person cannot reasonably be expected not to go along with it
(that is, not to accept it).
I shall consider only a partially described person, whom I shall call the
Rational Man, and unfortunately shall not get to us. The Rational Man,
being able to resist those temptations which he thinks he should resist, will
normally welcome credible offers,46 or at any rate not be unwilling to have
them be made. For he can always decline to accept the offer, and in this
case he is no worse off than he would have been had the offer not been
made. (Here I ignore the “costs” of making decisions, e.g. time spent in
considering an offer.) Why should he be unwilling to be the recipient of an
offer? On the other hand, the Rational Man will normally not welcome
credible threats, will normally be unwilling to be threatened, even if he is
able to resist going along with them. It is worth mentioning some cases
which are or seem to be exceptions to this. A person might not mind threats
if he was going to do the act anyway. But, since in this case he (probably)
wasn’t coerced, he needn’t concern us here. A person might welcome
threats which restrict the acts he can reasonably be expected to perform,
and therefore improve his bargaining position with a third party, e.g. an
employer negotiating with a labor union might welcome publicly known
threats against raising wages by more than n percent. But what he wel¬
comes is not his being coerced into not raising wages by more than n per¬
cent (he is not coerced), but its looking to others as though he is coerced.
This needn’t concern us here.
But there are other cases which are somewhat more difficult. For ex¬
ample, P tells Q that he’ll give Q $10,000 if in the next week someone,
without prompting, threatens Q. Someone does and Q welcomes the threat.
Or, P is jealous of Q’s receiving certain sorts of offers and tells Q that if
he (Q) receives another offer before P does, then P will kill Q. Q cringes
when the next offer comes. Or Q believes that having at least five threats
(offers) made to one in one week brings good (bad) luck, and so is happy
(unhappy) at the coming of the fifth threat (offer) in a week. Or for tax
purposes Q welcomes a threat to illegally take some of his money. And
so forth. I want to say that in such cases when threats are welcomed and
offers shunned, they are done so for extraneous reasons, because of the
special context. (One is tempted to say that in these contexts what would
normally be a threat (offer) isn’t really one.) I find it difficult to distinguish
these special contexts from the others, but the claim that threats are
ROBERT NOZICK 461
normally unwelcome whereas offers are not, is not meant to apply to con¬
texts where some special if-then is believed to obtain, where it is believed to
be the case that if a threat (offer) is made, resisted (accepted), or car¬
ried out then something good (bad) will happen to the recipient of the
threat (offer) (where this good (bad) consequence is not “internal” to the
threat (offer)), and this belief on the part of the recipient of the threat
(offer) overrides other considerations. It is along such lines that I suggest
viewing the person who welcomes a threat because it affords him the
opportunity to prove to others or test for himself his courage. Finally, let
me mention the case where a person is in an n-person prisoners’ dilemma
situation. In this case, he may most prefer everyone else’s being coerced
into performing a dominated action while he is left free to perform the
dominant action. He may also prefer everyone’s being coerced into perform¬
ing a specific dominated action (e.g. paying taxes) to no one’s being so
coerced. And since he realizes that the policy he most prefers, which treats
him specially, isn’t a feasible alternative, he may welcome the threat to
everyone including himself.47 But though he welcomes the system which
threatens everyone, he might still be coerced into performing his particular
action (e.g. paying his taxes). This too seems to me not to be a counter¬
example to the claim that threats are unwelcome, but one of the special
contexts, with special if-thens tagged onto the making of the threat, to
which the claim is not meant to apply.
I have said that the Rational Man would normally be willing to have
credible offers made to him, whereas he would not normally be willing to
be the recipient of credible threats. Imagine that the Rational Man is given
a choice about whether someone else makes him an offer (threatens him).
For example, the Rational Man is asked, “Shall I threaten you (make you
an offer)?” If he answers “yes,” it is done. I am supposing that no offer
is made the Rational Man to say “yes” to this question, and no threat is
made against his not saying “yes”; i.e. that no threats of offers are involved
in this choice about whether a threat (offer) is to be made. Let us call the
situations before a threat or offer is made, the presituation. (I shall speak
of the prethreat and preoffer situations, in anticipation of what is to come.)
And let us call the situations after a threat or offer is made the threat and
the offer situations respectively.
Looking first at offers:
(d) The Rational Man, when placed in the offer situation, does not nor¬
mally prefer being back in the preoffer situation.
Turning to threats:
(d) The Rational Man, when placed in the threat situation, would normally
prefer being back in the prethreat situation, and would choose to move
back.
(1) The Rational Man would be willing to move and to choose to move
from the preoffer to the offer situation, whereas he would normally
not be willing to move or to choose to move from the prethreat situation
to the threat situation.
(2) The Rational Man, once in the offer situation, would not prefer being
back in the preoffer situation, whereas the Rational Man in the threat
situation would normally prefer being back in the prethreat situation.
If we concentrate solely on the choices made in the threat and offer situa¬
tions, we shall be hard put to find a difference between these situations
which seems to make a difference as to whose will is operating, whose choice
it is, whether the act is fully voluntary, done willingly or unwillingly, and
so forth. If, however, we widen our focus and look not only at the choices
made in the postsituations, but look also at the choice that would be made
about moving from the presituation to the postsituation, then things look
more promising. For now we face not just two choices but two pairs of
choices:
(1) To move from the preoffer to the offer situation, and to do A in the
offer situation
(2) To move from the prethreat to the threat situation, and to do A in the
threat situation.
And the Rational Man would (be willing to) make both choices in (1),
whereas he would not make both choices in (2). This difference in what
choices are or would be made (when other factors are appropriately the
same) seems to me to make the difference, when someone else intentionally
moves you from the presituation to the postsituation, to whose choice it
is, whose will operates, whether the act is willingly or unwillingly done,
and to whether or not the act is fully voluntary.
One would like to formulate a principle that is built upon the preceding
ROBERT NOZICK 463
Notice that I have not said that the feature I am emphasizing which is
mentioned in the principle, namely, being willing to choose to move from
one situation to another, is by itself sufficient for a choice in the latter
situation to be not fully one’s own, but instead I have said that this feature,
in conjunction with the other features listed in the antecedent of the prin¬
ciple, is sufficient.
Since this principle presents a sufficient condition for Q’s choice not being
fully his own, it does not yield the consequence that in the offer situation,
normally Q’s choice is fully his own. A detailed discussion of when choices
are fully one’s own, or fully voluntary, yielding this consequence, would
take us far afield. Here I just wish to suggest that the crucial difference
between acting because of an offer and acting because of a threat vis-a-vis
whose choice it is, etc., is that in one case (the offer case) the Rational
Man is normally willing to move or be moved from the presituation to the
situation itself, whereas in the other case (the threat case) he is not. Put
baldly and too simply, the Rational Man would normally (be willing to)
choose to make the choice among the alternatives facing him in the offer
situation, whereas normally he would not (be willing to) choose to make
the choice among the alternatives facing him in the threat situation.
The principle seems to me to be on the right track in concentrating not
just on the choice of whether or not to do A, but also on the choice to
move into the threat or offer situation. But it is difficult to state a principle,
which gets all the details right, and which is not trivial and unilluminating
(as one would be which said: if P moves Q from Sx to S2 via threats
then . . . ). It seems that rather than speaking (just) of act A being fully
one’s own choice, one should speak of its being fully one’s own choice to
do A rather than B. I have in mind the following sort of case. P intentionally
breaks Q’s leg (intentionally moving him from Si [no broken leg] to S2
[broken leg]). Q would prefer not making this move, and afterwards would
prefer not having made it. But once Q has a broken leg, he chooses to
have a decorated cast put on it, rather than a plain white one. If we just
look at the act of wearing a decorated cast, we will have difficulties, for
surely it is not Q’s own choice (he was forced into a position where he had
to wear a cast, etc.), yet in some sense it is. It seems to me more illumi¬
nating to say that wearing a cast rather than none was not fully Q’s own
464 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
choice, wearing a decorated cast rather than a plain one was fully Q’s own
choice, and wearing a decorated cast rather than none was not fully Q’s
own choice. It is not clear how to state a principle which takes this and
similar complications into account, and is not open to obvious difficulties.
I do, however, want to suggest that we shall not be able to understand
why acts done because of threats are not normally fully voluntary, fully
one’s own choice, etc. where as this is not normally the case with acts
done in response to offers, if we attend only to the choice confronting the
person in the threat and offer situations. We must look also at the (hypo¬
thetical) choice of getting (and willingness to get) into the threat and offer
situations themselves.
We have said that if P coerces Q into not doing A then (part of) Q’s
reason for not doing A is to avoid or lessen the likelihood of P’s threatened
consequence. Assuming that all of the conditions in the first section of this
paper are satisfied, then
(a) In the case where Q’s whole reason for not doing A is to avoid or
lessen the likelihood of P’s threatened consequence (ignoring his reasons
for wanting to avoid this consequence), P coerces Q into not doing A.48
(b) In the case where P’s threatened consequence is not part of Q’s reason
for not doing A (even if it is a reason Q has for not doing A) then P
does not coerce Q into not doing A.
But the case is more difficult when P’s threatened consequence is part
of Q’s reason for not doing A, and other reasons which Q has for not
doing A (which do not involve threats) are also part of his reason for
not doing A. For in this case, Q contributes reasons of his own; it is not
solely because of the threat that he refrains from doing A. If we had to
say either that this situation was one of coercion, or was not one of co¬
ercion we would, I think, term it coercion.49 But, I think, for such cases
one is inclined to want to switch from a classificatory notion of coercion
to a quantitative one.50
Let me indulge in a bit of science fiction. Suppose that one were able
to assign weights to the parts of Q’s reasons for not doing A, which indicated
what fraction of Q’s total reason for not doing A any given part was.51
One might then say, if P’s threat was n/mth of Q’s total reason for not
doing A, that Q was n/m-coerced into not doing A. If P’s threat is Q’s
whole reason for not doing A (no part of Q’s reason for not doing A)
then Q is 1-coerced (0-coerced) or, for short, coerced (not coerced). And,
in the absence of precise weights, one might begin to speak of someone’s
being partially coerced, slightly coerced, almost fully coerced into doing
something, and so forth.52 Furthermore, without claiming that a person is
never to be held responsible for an act he was coerced into doing, we might,
for some cases in which his reasons (other than the threat) for doing
an act aren’t sufficient to get him to decide to do the act, be led to speak
ROBERT NOZICK 465
of a person’s being (held) partially responsible for his act; not completely
responsible because he did it partly because of the threat, and not complete
absence of responsibility because he didn’t do it solely because of the
threat, but contributed some reasons of his own. I would end by saying that
the consideration of such a view of responsibility, and the tracing of the
modifications in what has been said thus far introduced by a thorough¬
going use of the notion of n/m-coerced, would require another paper—
were it not for the thought that some readers might take this as a threat.
NOTES
8. I included the latter disjunct since I can threaten you with a consequence which
I don’t believe would actually worsen your alternative of doing A, but which I
know that you believe would do so. Subtle questions arise about cases where
it is the making of the threat itself that causes the person to believe that one con¬
sequence is worse than another. For example, a Gestapo agent questioning a
prisoner believes that two concentration camps are equally bad, and the prisoner
too initially believes this. The Gestapo agent tells the prisoner, in a threatening
voice, that he will be sent to a concentration camp in any case, but if he cooperates
during the questioning he will be sent to the first camp, whereas if he does not, he
will be sent to the second camp. Here it is the very making of the threat which
causes the prisoner to think that the second camp is worse than the first.
I might note one refinement of this condition, to handle cases where (part of)
P’s reason for so deciding is as described in the condition, but this part drops away
and P sticks with his decision for another reason entirely and thereafter announces
the decision. It might be more appropriate to say something like: (Part of) P’s
reason, at he time he informs Q he will bring about the consequence or have it
brought about if Q does A, for planning to bring about he consequence or have it
brought about if Q does A, is that P believes. . . .
The condition in the text should be interpreted or extended so as to cover cases
in which the worsening of Q’s alternative of doing A is not part of P’s reason for
deciding to bring about the consequences if Q does A, but rather
(a) P decides to bring about the consequences if Q does A because he believes he
has a duty or obligation to do so.
(b) P knows this consequence would worsen Q’s alternative of doing A.
(c) Part of the reason for P’s bringing about of such a consequence if Q does A
originally being thought to be his duty or obligation, or being continued to be so
thought, is that such a consequence worsens Q’s alternative of doing A.
9. This disjunction is condition 3'. Thus the full condition 3' is: (Part of) P’s
reason for deciding is . . . , or, if P hasn’t decided, (part of) P’s reason for saying is
is. . . . An alternative condition would be just: (Part of) P’s reason for saying is
to get Q not to do A, or to worsen. . . . This alternative condition differs from the
one under consideration for cases where P has decided to bring about the con¬
sequence if Q does A, and no part of his reason or motive is as described, but part
of his reason for telling Q that he will bring about the consequence if Q does A, is
to get Q not to do A. I find it difficult to decide between these conditions, though
I lean towards the one presented in the text. A specific example for which the
condition in the text and the alternative condition diverge is discussed (as case 3)
in the section on Threats and Warnings.
10. Note the difference, with respect to coercion, between saying to a man who
intends to do A in order to bring about x:
(1) If you do A, I’ll do something which (just) prevents your A from bringing
about x.
(2) If you do B, I’ll do something which would, were you to do A, (just) prevent
your A from bringing about x.
11. It was noted earlier that little weight should be put on the word consequence.
Here we are considering cases where one is tempted to say that P does not bring
about any consequence; he just prevents Q from bringing one about.
12. One naturally notes, for many examples of the sort under consideration, that
if Q does not do A and P performs the action which would thwart Q’s A achieving
x, had Q done A (it is not always possible for P to perform this action if Q doesn’t
do A; e.g., “If you mail the letter, I shall intercept it before it reaches him”), then
no bad consequence is visited upon Q. But a condition built upon this observation
would fail on two counts:
(1) It would count Q as coerced when he refrains from doing A because P
threatened to do B if Q does A, where B is such as to just prevent Q’s A
from bringing about x, if Q does A, and to inflict great harm on Q if he
does not do A.
(2) It would count Q as not coerced when he refrains from doing A because P
threatened to bring about a consequence if Q does A, which consequence is
harmful to Q only if he does A.
13. I should note that I do not discuss in this paper, and wish here to leave open,
two further conditions. (Hart mentions something in the area of the first.)
(1) The consequences which P has threatened is so weighted by Q as to override
the weight which Q (morally) ought to give to not doing A.
For example, Q who is not in dire financial condition, and would just slightly
rather not kill people (he feels about killing people as most people do about killing
ROBERT NOZICK 467
flies), kills R because P has threatened not to return the $100 he’s borrowed from
Q unless Q kills R. Did P coerce Q into killing R?
(2) The weight which Q does give to not doing A does not fall far short of the
weight he (morally) ought to give to not doing A.
For example, Q destroys R’s home because P has tnreatened a consequence, if Q
does not destroy the home which R has laboriously built, which Q weights and
anyone (morally) ought to weight as worse than destroying R’s home. However, Q
just slightly would rather not destroy R’s home. Did P coerce Q into destroying
R’s home?
14. If one is reluctant to say that the members of the gang have threatened him,
then a slightly more complicated account of coercion, in terms of threats and im¬
plicit, or quasi-, or surrogate threats, must be offered.
15. Complication: Suppose that as the stranger is being beaten, he says that if
they stop and promise to release him, he’ll sign over a traveller’s check to them for
$1,000. They stop, he signs it over, they release him. Was he coerced into signing it
over?
16. Slightly modifying the conditions previously set out, we obtain, for these
situations:
(1) P performs an action such that, if Q then does A a certain consequence will
ensue.
(2) A with this consequence is substantially less eligible as a course of conduct
for Q, than A without this consequence.
(3) P knows that the act he’s performed satisfies (1) and (2), and intends Q
to know, and know he’s intended to know, that such an act has been per¬
formed.
(4) (Part of) P’s reason for performing his action is that (he believes) its con¬
sequence if Q does A would be believed by Q to worsen his alternative of
doing A.
(5) Q does not do A, and (part of) Q’s reason for not doing A is to avoid or
lessen the likelihood of this consequence.
(6) Q believes that P (or that someone) has done something intending that this
consequence, which he thinks Q will think bad, will ensue if Q does A, and
Q believes that he is intended to know (and intended to know that he is
intended to know) this.
(7) Q believes that, and P believes that Q believes that the consequence of P’s
action if Q does A would leave Q worse off than if Q didn’t do A and P
didn’t do his act.
17. If it is coercion several interesting questions arise. I shall mention only one
which has no obvious analogue about the first kind of coercion discussed. If condi¬
tions (1) — (7) apply to P and Q, and person R, whom P has never thought of (it
is no part of P’s reason for performing the act that it worsens R’s alternative of
doing A) refrains from doing A to avoid the consequence (P’s act is such that
though directed to Q, it would inflict the consequence upon anyone who does A),
was R coerced into not doing A?
Though many questions that arise for this notion correspond to questions about
the first notion, it is not obvious that the corresponding questions about the two
notions must be answered in the same way. In particular, one is more willing, I
think, to call a case of the second sort a case of coercion (assuming that some cases
of this sort are) even though P lacks some of the specified intentions or reasons,
than one is to call a case of the first sort, when P lacks some of the specified in¬
tentions or reasons, a case of coercion.
18. It should be mentioned, in fairness to my mother, that this example was sug¬
gested during the discussion at Columbia by someone whose name I shall not men¬
tion, in fairness to his mother.
It is as a special example of this sort of situation that one might understand the
activities of some charitable organizations which, along with an appeal for funds,
send a “gift,” attempting perhaps to present one with the alternatives of
(a) returning the gift, making no contribution, and feeling slightly embarassed.
(b) keeping the gift while making no contribution, and feeling somewhat guilty
and uneasy,
(c) making a contribution.
19. An interesting question arises for accounts of a notion, such as mine, which
(attempt to) provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the central part or core
of the notion, and then handle further cases by specifying the relations in which
they stand to the core cases. Given a set of conditions, which are purported to be
necessary and sufficient for the core cases of a notion, and given an example to
468 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
which the notion applies but which does not satisfy the conditions, how is it to be
decided whether the example is a counter-example requiring the modification of the
conditions, or whether the conditions are to be retained and the example handled as
a non-core case by specifying its relation to cases satisfying the conditions? I would
hope that the reader does not find objectionable my treatment of some particular
cases as cases which should satisfy the core-conditions (in the previous section) and
of some other cases as not being core cases (later in this section), even though the
basis for choosing to treat the particular cases as I do is not stated here.
An alternative procedure to the one followed in the first part of this section is to
accept the previous account as the full account of coercion, and to widen the notion
of what actions a threat is about. (Why this is an alternative procedure will become
clear as the reader comes to the numbered statements which soon follow in the text.
In the notation used in these numbered statements, the alternative procedure would
involve saying that the threat is not only about the act A, but is also about the
B’s.) There seems to me to be some slight reason for the course followed in the
text, but it is not clear that anything very important depends upon which way one
proceeds.
20. Readers who notice my sloppiness in the use of quotation marks here will
know how to remedy it. One may wish to limit the final formulation of such a
principle so that some cases in which P does not know that ri and rz have the same
reference, do not count as P coercing Q into doing B.
21. Note that the consequent of 4 is not equivalent to: P coerces Q into doing Bi
or P coerces Q into doing B2, or . . . , or P coerces Q into doing Bn.
22. One may be reluctant to apply this principle, as it stands, to situations where
unbeknownst to P, Q is specially handicapped so that he can do A only by doing
some horrendous Bi. One must also be careful not to misinterpret conclusions reached
by applying this condition, as in the case (where n = 1) where R advises Q to go to
the movies and P threatens Q with death if he does not go to the movies. Since Q,
whom P coerces into going to the movies, can go to the movies only by doing what
R advised, by applying the condition we reach the conclusion that P coerces Q into
doing the action advised by R, which is easily misinterpreted.
23. A useful question to consider is why the statements obtained from (1) — (8)
by replacing “coerces Q into doing A” by “persuades Q to do A” (making other
obvious changes) are unsatisfactory, where (1) — (8) themselves are not unsatis¬
factory in the same way.
24. Other writers (Laswell and Kaplan, Dahl) do not say that threats are in¬
volved, but claim that inducements, or positive rewards coerce.
25. A more complicated statement would be required to take into account condi¬
tion 7 in the section on Conditions for Coercion. (This condition was prompted by
the example in which P says that he will turn off his hearing aid if Q says another
word.) Since in the present section no examples which violate condition 7 are con¬
sidered, the complication is omitted.
26. P can threaten Q even if the consequence does not worsen the consequences
of Q’s doing the action, so long as P believes it does. Similarly for offering. We
shall not consider this complication, since such threats and offers will normally not
have the appropriate result in actions of Q.
27. I ignore problems about consequences along a continuous dimension, where
there may be no first point of changed preference, or of change from preference to
indifference.
28. The notion discussed here should be distinguished from another in which both
threatening Q with x if he does A and offering him y if he doesn’t do A are said
to predominantly involve an offer (threat) if for almost any action B, if Q is both
threatened with x if he does B and offered y if he does B, Q will prefer to do B
(not do B).
29. I ignore problems arising from a divergence between what P believes to be
the morally expected course of events and what is the morally expected course of
events, e.g., where P believes he’s morally required to let Q drown, although he’s
morally required to save Q.
Consider a further case (after Braithwaite), P and Q are neighbors, and P would
practice his violin each night, whether or not Q is in his own apartment. Q detests
hearing P practice, and asks P to stop. P refuses. The question of monetary com¬
pensation for P’s stopping is raised. Suppose that Q’s property rights are not violated
by P’s practicing, and that $500 is the least amount of money which could get P to
stop practicing for one year, and that $2,000 is the greatest payment Q would make
to P to stop practicing for one year. (Both amounts indicate their real preferences.)
Suppose that P says that he will stop practicing for one year if and only if Q pays
ROBERT NOZICK 469
him $n. One intuitively wants to say that there are some amounts n such that P
would be offering to stop in return for $n, and some (higher) amounts such that it
would be a threat not to stop unless Q paid P the money. The difficulties in de¬
vising a theory of a reasonable, or just, or fair price need no elaboration here. Dis¬
agreements over the range in which a fair price would fall or over whether there is
any coherent notion of a fair price which applies to this situation, may lead to dis¬
agreements about whether we here have a threat or an offer.
30. An alternative view would hold that it is an offer, but that doing something
because of such an offer counts as being coerced into doing it. This would require
modification of our earlier account of coercion to include doing things because of
such offers. (Such offers being offers to not continue the usual though morally for¬
bidden course of events, and to switch (at least temporarily) to the morally expected
course of events which the recipient of the offer would prefer to the usual course
of events.) Readers who find unsatisfactory my here calling the slave owner’s state¬
ment a threat, may call it an offer and treat “threat” appearing in the section on
Conditions for Coercion as a technical term which includes such offers.
31. What if he prefers that he not be supplied with dope, but can’t resist buying
it when it’s available?
32. Let me suggest as a fertile area for testing intuitions and theories, the fol¬
lowing, where the normal and morally expected courses of events may diverge, and
where it may not be clear what the morally expected course of events is. Suppose
some nation N were to announce that it will in the future give economic aid to
some other countries provided that these other countries satisfy certain conditions
(e.g., do not vote contrary to N on important issues before the United Nations, do
not trade with specific nations, do not have diplomatic relations with specific na¬
tions). Would this announcement constitute an offer to give these nations aid, or a
threat not to do so? Relevant factors (to list just two of many) are whether or not
N has an obligation or is morally required to give these nations economic aid (inde¬
pendently of whether they satisfy the conditions), and whether or not N has pre¬
viously given these nations economic aid independently of whether they satisfy the
conditions.
33. Though this seems to me to be the correct thing to say, there is a problem,
which I have not yet been able to solve, which I should briefly mention.
Letting P = you are punished
C = you commit a crime
the offcials in the society might say
P if and only if C
or equivalently
not-P if and only if not-C.
Interpreted truth-functionally, each of these is equivalent to either (P and C) or
(not-P and not-C). The two remaining possibilities are (P and not-C), and (C and
not-P). The background we want to use in deciding whether a threat is involved is
C and not-P. If we were to use the remaining possibility, P and not-C, as the back¬
ground, then it would turn out that an offer is involved here. The problem is to
formulate criteria, in cases where the biconditional is itself part of the normal and
expected course of events, which pick out C and not-P rather than P and not-C in
this and other threat cases, and which would pick out the appropriate background for
offer cases as well.
34. This is a case of blackmail which presumably should be legally forbidden
because allowing it increases the probability that crimes will go undetected. Other
reasons apply to other cases, but note that it is not obvious that one wants to legally
forbid all cases which fit the description: saying that one will make public some in¬
formation about Q unless Q pays money. For example,
(a) P’s saying that he will make public the information that Q has not paid P
the money Q owes him, unless Q pays the money.
(b) P is writing a book, and in the course of his research comes across informa¬
tion about Q which will help sell many copies of the book. P tells Q he will
refrain from including this information in the book if and only if Q pays
him an amount of money equal to the expected difference in his royalties
between the book containing this information and the book without the in¬
formation.
35. A coercive consequence for Q’s A is a consequence which has been threatened
if Q does A.
36. More precisely, the credible threat of raising the probability of this conse¬
quence from what it is without P’s aiding in bringing it about, to what it would be
with P’s aid.
470 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
37. Lawyers sometimes speak of the distinction as being between threats and pre¬
dictions. Since philosophers sometimes contrast predictions and statements of in¬
tention, and the latter may be “predictions” in the lawyer’s sense, to avoid confusion,
I speak of threats and nonthreatening warnings. . .
38. Stipulating that each of the members of some particular majority has this pre¬
ference ordering enables us to avoid problems, relevant to our concern here, about
non-transitive majorities. .
39. I consider here cases where the employer could stay in business (without
running at a loss) even if the union wins. In the case where, if the union wins, the
employer cannot both stay in business and out of the red, it is clear that his state¬
ment is a warning and not a threat. (In the normal course of events he does go
out of business if the union wins, and chooses to do so earlier than he must, in order
to cut his losses.) I assume, for the cases discussed in the text, that the employer
making the statement intends to close if the union wins. If he intends not to close, or
has no settled intention either way, then in stating that he will close if the union
wins he is making a threat. .
I should note that I am assuming for some of the cases in which the employer
could profitably stay in business if the union wins, that he does not have an obliga¬
tion to and is not morally required to remain in business if the union wins the elec¬
tion. It may be that some disagreements about whether the employer is threatening
or warning stem from disagreements about whether he is morally required to remain
in business if the union wins (morally required not to close because of dislike of
running a unionized business, etc.).
40. Cf. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict. Note that according to contemporary
utility theory, it will be reasonable for the employer to rule out (b) for strategic
reasons even if he doesn’t know the preference ranking of the employees, so long as
p u(a) + (1 - p) u(c) > u(b), „ , ,
where p is the probability that the union will lose the election after he s announced
that if they win, he will go out of business, and u(x) is the utility of x to the em¬
ployer.
41. I should note that I have done nothing here to argue, as I would wish to,
that acting on such strategic considerations is not part of the normal or expected
course of events which forms the background to discussing questions of coercion.
Not doing something unless you’d first announced it in this sort of strategic situa¬
tion, for strategic reasons, should be distinguished from not doing something without
prior announcement for other sorts of reasons; cf. discussions of ex post facto laws.
42. I wish here to exclude threats against certain acts which harm others, etc.
It is difficult to determine whether there is a presumption against threatening some¬
one against (or coercing someone into not), e.g., murdering someone else, which is
almost always easily overridden, or whether there is no such presumption in such
cases. It is also difficult to determine exactly what the difference is between these
two alternatives. For an attempt to describe the difference, see my “Moral Complica¬
tions and Moral Structures,” Natural Law Forum, Vol. 13, 1968, section 7,
I do not discuss the possibility that the employer in case 3 is engaging in the
second type of coercion discussed in the section on Conditions for Coercion, so that
his prior act of announcement worsens the employees’ alternative of electing the
union because they will feel worse having the factory close when they have been
warned of this than they would if, without warning, they elected the union and the
factory closed.
43. The Supreme Court held in Textile Workers Union v. Darlington Manu¬
facturing Co. (380 U.S. 263 (1965)) that it is not an unfair labor practice for an
employer to close his entire business, even if the closing is due to antiunion animus,
but that closing part of a business is an unfair labor practice if the purpose is to
discourage unionism in any of the employer’s remaining plants, and if the employer
may reasonably have foreseen such an effect. Given the difficulties in determining an
employer’s purpose, one suspects that the effect of this decision will be to forbid
all employers from closing part of their business because it has become unionized,
if other parts of the business are not unionized.
44. This brief description is meant to indicate the area of concern rather than
as an account of paternalistic legislation. In such an account one would have to dis¬
tinguish this sort of legislation from other legislation, often called paternalistic, which
provides for adults what parents are expected to provide for children, e.g., food,
shelter, money. (I do not claim that no common account of the two sorts of legisla¬
tion can be given.) It is held, by people who call such legislation paternalistic, that
adults are supposed to provide these things for themselves, or through agreements
with other citizens qua private citizens. When legislation and governmental institu-
ROBERT NOZICK 471
tional arrangements provide things which parents provide for children but which
adults are not supposed to provide for (solely by) themselves, e.g. protection from
the infliction of violence by others, such provision is not termed paternalistic.
For the area of concern in the text, since different sorts of reasons can be offered
for the same piece of legislation, one should speak of paternalistic reasons for legis¬
lation rather than of paternalistic legislation. One wants an account of paternalistic
reasons for legislation to have the consequence that some reasons put forth for
legislation which would make people unfree to manufacture or sell cigarettes would
be paternalistic reasons even though they do not involve the protection of the (per¬
haps nonsmoking) persons made unfree to manufacture and sell cigarettes. I shall
not pursue the details here. Note that some paternalistic acts can involve great self-
sacrifice, as when drugs are legally forbidden in order to protect those who are not
addicts who would be so under a system in which drugs were legal. The price we
pay to protect them is increased risk of being robbed or assaulted by addicts trying
to acquire money in order to pay the high prices on the illegal market, plus the
diversion of resources into trying to enforce the law. Perhaps it is appropriate that
we should all suffer for our original unjustified paternalistic intervention.
The reader might find it useful, in thinking about paternalism, to consider
whether there are any limits to the severity of the penalty we would include in a
paternalistic law, and how these limits are to be fixed. Could we, for example, have
the death penalty for the offense of swimming at a beach when no lifeguard is
present? Certain plausible-looking principles would allow this, because when the
system including this penalty is instituted, it is the one of the alternatives which is
expected to best operate for the person’s own good. Surely something has gone hay¬
wire here.
45. Distinguishing two types of offers in a manner similar to the earlier distinc¬
tion between two sorts of coercion, this case does not fit the first type of case. For
here it is not the case that after Q beats P up, P will then do something which im¬
proves the consequences for Q of this action. (Even if P will then do this, e.g. spread
the news that Q is not to be threatened, it is not an offer for the reason mentioned
in the text.) And even though it fits the second sort of case, that is P now does
something (threatens Q) which improves the consequences of Q’s beating him up,
P is not offering something to Q to beat him up, since P lacks the requisite reasons
involved in making an offer.
46. I omit consideration of offers to do acts such that, if the offer is made, the
act cannot be done without accepting the offer, e.g. one cannot work at certain
government jobs without receiving a salary of at least one dollar per year. The
Rational Man may sometimes prefer doing the act without the offer’s having been
made, so that it will be clear to others, and perhaps himself, why he does the act
(e.g. not for the money). I also shall not consider the case of a person’s not wel¬
coming an offer for him to perform a malicious act because of what it shows about
the person making the offer. Note the importance of our restricting our attention
here to the Rational Man. Another person might not, for example, welcome an offer
of $50,000 for him to kill Jones, because he’s afraid he may be tempted to (and
unable to resist the temptation to) accept the offer. In considering only the Rational
Man, I am leaving part of my task undone. For I do not argue, as I would wish to,
that even for someone who sometimes succumbs to temptations which he believes
he ought to resist, there is a significant difference between offers and threats.
47. For a discussion of the prisoners dilemma, cf. Luce and Raiffa, pp. 94—102.
One often finds this argument applied to questions about the provision of a public
good for a group. For example, each inhabitant of an island might prefer that others
contribute to the construction of barriers against the sea while he does not, yet
prefer everyone’s being forced to contribute to contributions being left purely vol¬
untary in which case, let us suppose, the barriers won’t get constructed. (For a dis¬
cussion of the conditions under which a public good for a group will be provided, cf.
Olson. Buchanan and Tullock argue that public goods for a group will be provided
more often than one might think.)
One must be wary of concluding too quickly from this line of argument that
there will be unanimous consent to the provision of the public good by forcing
everyone to contribute. For there will generally be alternative ways in which the
public good can be provided, and individuals even if they all agree that each of
these ways is preferable to the purely voluntary situation, may differ about which
of the ways should be used. Should the good be paid for from funds gathered via a
system of proportional taxation, or one of progressive taxation? And so forth. It is
not obvious how unimous consent to one particular way of providing the good is
suppose to arise.
472 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
48. Even if Q has other reasons for not doing A, We distinguish between “Q has
a reason r for not doing A,” and “r is (part of) Q’s reason for not doing A.”
49. This indicates an asymmetry between doing something (partly) because of a
threat, and doing something partly because of an offer. For suppose that the other
reasons Q has for not doing A which are part of his reasons for not doing A, in¬
clude an offer by R for Q not to do A. Using a classificatory notion of coercion,
doing A partly because of a threat shows the person was coerced, whereas doing
something partly because of an offer does not show that he was not coerced.
50. For a discussion of classificatory, comparative, and quantitative concepts cf.
Hempel, Part III. An illuminating study of different scales of measurement is Suppes
and Zinnes.
51. A good place to begin in thinking about the weight of reasons is with Ernest
Nagel’s discussion of the weight of different causes in The Structure of Science,
pp. 582-588.
52. There are other factors which one might wish to build into a quantitative
concept or measure of coercion, though perhaps there is no natural way to combine
all of the factors into one measure. For a discussion of some similar questions about
measuring freedom cf. Oppenheim, ch. 8.
REFERENCES
Most human beings, whether they are religious believers or not, appear
at times to have great difficulty in regarding death as truly and really the
absence of life. In some contexts they do treat death in this way, but at other
times they think of it as a restful or gloomy or undesirable continuation of
life. There is a very common tendency to think of a dead person as sleep¬
ing an extremely deep sleep in his grave—so deep that he will never
again wake up. A famous Italian conductor was once greatly upset by the
way the musicians of the New York Philharmonic were playing the move¬
ment of a Brahms symphony at a rehearsal. “If Brahms were alive,” he
finally exclaimed in exasperation, “he would be turning in his grave.”
When this story is told, it usually takes some time before people see the
absurdity of the conductor’s remark. If Brahms were alive he presumably
would find better things to do than lie in a grave.2 However, to a person
vaguely thinking of Brahms as sleeping in his grave, the conductor’s remark
will not seem absurd.
People do not have this difficulty in the case of other absences. If a
whiskey bottle is empty, nobody is likely to maintain that it is filled with
an ethereal liquid; and if one comes across a blank canvas, one is not
tempted to describe it as an exceptionally abstract painting. Yet, this is
precisely how we frequently think of death. We then refer to it more or less
seriously as “the rest which may not be unwelcome after weariness has
473
474 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
is regarded by most people as a worse fate yet; and even those who con¬
sider life imprisonment worse than death regard the latter as very un¬
desirable—at least as undesirable as, say, imprisonment for ten years.
Again, just as we regard a chronic illness involving some pain as worse
than a merely temporary ailment involving the same degree of pain, so we
regard a mortal illness, because it is mortal, as worse than either; and
although many people would regard some chronic (nonfatal) illnesses as
“objectively” worse than death, almost everybody treats mortal illnesses
as (necessarily) very undesirable, even if the amount of pain involved is
relatively slight. Since languishing in jail or suffering a painful illness are
states or processes of living organisms, it becomes tempting to regard death
as another, very undesirable, state of a living organism. We see, in the words
of P. L. Landsberg, a philosopher writing in the phenomenological tradi¬
tion, that “death . . . must exceed all experiences of illness, suffering or
old age.”4
Another line of reflection that may lead to a similar conclusion is sug¬
gested by Landsberg in the course of discussing the “community” that two
people may form—a husband and wife, for example, who not only love
each other but who have braved many a storm together. If one of them dies,
this “community,” this “we,” is destroyed. The surviving person experi¬
ences then a “bitter cold.” In feeling the death of the “we,” he is led into
an “experiential knowledge” of his own mortality. “My community with
this person,” writes Landsberg, “seemed shattered, but the community was
to some degree myself; and to this degree I experienced death in the very
core of my own existence” {op. cit., pp. 14-16). It is tempting to proceed
to the conclusion (though Landsberg in fact does not explicitly go that
far) that one’s own death is a more extreme instance of the same kind of
thing: even more bitter and cold than the bitter cold which the survivor
experiences upon the death of the “we.”
This common human tendency to regard death not as just the absence
of life but as existence in a dark, impenetrable abode has been enshrined
into a philosophical doctrine by the Christian existentialist, the late Professor
Paul Tillich, in his “ontology” of Non-Being or Nothingness. Tillich’s doc¬
trine is introduced in connection with his distinction between fear and
anxiety (it should be noted that although Tillich’s use of these expressions
is in harmony with that of other existentialists, it is significantly different
from their use by most professional psychologists and psychiatrists). In
fear, writes Tillich, we are always facing a definite object: It may be physical
pain, the loss of a friend, the rejection by a person or a group or any
number of other things, but in each case it is something “that can be faced,
476 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
Anyone who undergoes death seems by that very fact to be robbed of any
possibility of understanding and analyzing what it was to undergo death [ibid].
being is no longer lit up to himself in the only way that would seem to make
anything like an existential analysis possible, and so it appears that he cannot
by any means understand what the undergoing of death may be like [ibid].
Macquarrie does not abandon the search after these admissions. He at¬
tempts to get at the nature of death by a consideration of various “analogies”
and by reflections about the death of others. Although he is very emphatic
that the usefulness of these inquiries is limited, Macquarrie believes that
they lead to a “preliminary understanding” of the nature of death. Perhaps,
he asks, it is possible to compare death “to the ripeness of a fruit, which is
not something added to the fruit in its immaturity, but means the fruit itself
in a specific way of being” (ET, p. 118). This analogy, unfortunately,
breaks down at the crucial point. For “whereas ripeness is the fulfillment of
the fruit, the end may come for man when he is still immature or it may
delay until he is broken down and exhausted with his fulfillment long past”
{ibid.). Although this analogy breaks down (and the same is true of others
which I have not reproduced), Macquarrie believes that such considerations
yield a “positive result.” It becomes clear that “death belongs to my pos-
PAUL EDWARDS 479
What is the nature of the loss sustained not by the survivor but by the
deceased?
How does the loss of being sustained by the dead person feel to him
(not to us) or, since he feels nothing any more, how would it feel to
him if he could feel it?
These questions may sound slightly mad, but they are a precise formulation
of the ontological quest as conceived by Professor Macquarrie and, in vary¬
ing degrees, by a number of other existentialist explorers as well.
Before leaving Macquarrie, we should note that in his opinion the study
of the death of others yields an important positive result. “One positive
character of death” has been ascertained: “Death is always my own since it
cannot be experienced vicariously. ... it is untransferable and isolates the
individual. He must die himself alone” (ET, p. 118). There are innumerable
ways in which one person can represent another, “but nothing of the kind is
possible in the case of death. ... no one can die for another, in the sense of
taking the other’s dying away from him and performing his death for him”
(SCE, p. 52). This result may be “combined” with the one achieved in
480 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
This is not as much as one could wish, but it is considerably more than
nothing—“ ‘somehow from the outside’ is not the same as ‘completely from
the outside.’ In some respects we are looking at our death (or its possibility)
from the inside', otherwise we could not even take ‘an attitude’ in front of
our death or its possibility” (p. 194, my italics).
Like Macquarrie, Mora pays much attention to the death of others, but
he is a little more sanguine in his confidence that such a study can get us to
the inside of death. In the absence of a “direct and complete grasp,” we
can at least “use analogy and conceive of our death in terms of another’s
death” (p. 192). Professor Mora recounts three personal experiences which
“are to be taken as examples of another’s death. They cover ‘cases’ which,
as happens in legal matters, can be considered ‘precedents’ ” (p. 178). We
shall here confine ourselves to the two which Mora himself regards as his
more hopeful cases. In one of them he witnessed the sudden death of a
man killed by a bullet in the course of a battle. Professor Mora had not
known this man at all and although he felt the death of this man to be
symbolic of “the universal and overwhelming presence of death,” he ex¬
perienced neither grief nor anguish. What happened was a “mere fact,”
something merely objective, “outside there” (p. 183). The second case
deals with Professor Mora’s maternal grandmother. Here the person who
died was not a stranger but on the contrary was somebody whom Professor
Mora had known exceedingly well and with whom he had formed “a com¬
munity of participation” somewhat along the lines described by Landsberg.11
If the death of a given person is, in relation to a survivor, a “purely external
event” then, Professor Mora believes, the survivor would not be justified in
claiming that he had experienced the person’s death “in the sense of some¬
how sharing it.” The death of his grandmother, however, was not experi¬
enced by Professor Mora as a merely external event. In such a case “we
are not merely ‘watching’ someone die but we are, or are also, ‘sharing’ his
death—at least to the degree in which we had ‘shared things in common’.”
However, we must not allow ourselves to be carried away and claim too
much. Even when the death is not a merely external event, one only “some¬
how” shares the deceased’s death—“to conclude . . . that we are actually
‘sharing’ another’s death,” even when the person was terribly close to us,
“would be to go too far” (p. 179, my italics). When all is said and done,
Professor Mora concludes, “I knew little about the relation between my
grandmother and her death, and still less about the relation between the man
shot down in battle and his death” (p. 185, Mora’s italics).
What is a person who has preserved his sanity to say to all this, more
especially to the search for the ontological character of death, the “inside
482 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
nature” of death as it is to the dead, the nature of the loss sustained not by
the survivors but by the deceased, death not as it is observable when we see
a dead body, but as it is “undergone” by the dead person? Perhaps the best
way to call attention to the ludicrous confusion underlying all such onto¬
logical searches is to relate the following conversation between two German
pessimists.12 “It is much better to be dead than to be alive,” said the first.
“You are right,” remarked the second, “but it is still better not to have been
born in the first place.” “That,” replied the first, “is very true, but alas how
few are those who achieve such a happy state.” Since he regards death as a
loss and not as a gain we may, in this context at least, regard Professor Mac-
quarrie as an optimist and we may imagine an optimist who shares his onto¬
logical views reasoning in the following way: “A man who loses both his
arms sustains a greater loss than one who loses one arm only, and a man
who loses his eyes and his arms sustains a still greater loss. A yet greater loss
is sustained by him who loses his life. Even he, however, is not quite as badly
off as the man who failed to be born in the first place. The lot of the latter
is the worst of all. It is very fortunate that there are not too many who find
themselves in this dreadful condition.” To diagnose as clearly as possible the
absurdity in the procedures of the German pessimists as well as the Mac-
quarrian optimist let us first, following Benn and Peters,13 distinguish be¬
tween the “actions” a person performs and the “passions” he experiences or
undergoes. An action is anything a person does, for example, singing a
song, giving a lecture, assaulting an enemy, resigning a position. A “passion,”
in the broad sense in which Benn and Peters use the word, is anything that
happens to a man—a toothache, the tortures he endures, the pleasure he
experiences when drinking a glass of orange juice after a game of tennis,
the feelings of constrictions he has when gagged or confined to a prison cell.
No doubt the distinction is far from sharp, but it is one which all of us make
in certain situations. Now, Macquarrie, Tillich, Mora, and most of the poets
and philosophers mentioned in the opening section of this article recognize
that the death of an individual is not an action, but they mistakenly believe
or imply that it is some kind of passion, though a very special and extremely
passive type of passion. In fact, however, neither death nor our nonexistence
before we were born are passions any more than they are actions. If we
introduce the word “state” to mean any action or passion, then we can
express our point by saying that, while feeling the coolness of the night,
reaching the last stop of a journey, arriving in a strange country from which
one will never return, sleep, and rest, sustaining losses (no matter how
serious), undergoing pain and torture, feeling isolated and all alone and
even finding oneself surrounded by impenetrable darkness are states or
experiences of living human beings; death is not a state. At times, indeed,
the ontological explorers themselves realize this, for example when they
complain about the difficulties of a phenomenological investigation of death.
At other times, however, they seriously believe that death is a state, a dark
PAUL EDWARDS 483
hence I cannot now know from personal experience what the state of being
dead is like. But this state is different from other unknowns. It is a very
special unknown. Africa is also unknown to me, but others who have been
there can tell me about it when they return. Again, I have never been
skating, but other people can tell me what it feels like to glide across a frozen
lake. Nobody, on the other hand, can tell me what death is like. For one
thing, nobody can come back from the dead to tell me; but, furthermore,
even if somebody did come back, this would not help, since while he was
dead he would have had no experiences and could not attend to his own
state of deadness. The conclusion thus seems inescapable that, as Tillich
so happily put it, death “is the unknown which by its very nature cannot be
known.”
In arguing that death is a totally unknowable state, Tillich dimly perceived
something which ontologists like Macquarrie and Mora obscure when they
assert that they have some little knowledge of the nature of death. Tillich
dimly perceived that it is logically impossible to attain the object of the
ontological quest. The ontologists write in such a way as to suggest that
they are trying to determine the characteristics of a peculiarly elusive state,
but a little reflection makes it clear beyond any question that what we have
here is a series of self-contradictory expressions and not any kind of state,
elusive or otherwise. To an uncritical reader it may appear—and the re¬
marks of writers like Macquarrie and Mora are specially apt to foster this
impression—that the object of the ontological quest is a state which cannot
in fact be examined by human beings because the only subjects competent
to examine it are chronically absent when they are needed for the examina¬
tion. It may thus be thought that the relation of human beings to the object
of the ontological search is like their relation to some territory which is so
extremely hot or so extremely cold that anybody wishing to explore it is
annihilated before he can get to his destination. In fact, however, the situ¬
ation is altogether different. The ontologists are wondering what death would
feel like to the dead if they could attend to their deadness, but part of what
is meant by saying that a person is dead is that he no longer has feelings or
experiences. The ontological search thus amounts to the question “How does
it feel to be in a state in which one no longer has any feelings?” or “What
kind of an experience does a person have who no longer has any experi¬
ences?” These questions are not one whit more sensible than such absurd
questions as “How long is the fourth side of that triangle?” asked by some¬
body who is pointing to a perfectly ordinary triangle or “In which country
is the father of this orphan living now?” where the questioner is not referring
to any foster father or to any habitat in the next world. The ontological
questions do not become any less grotesque by being expressed hypotheti¬
cally. “How would Hume’s death feel to him if he could attend to it?” is
not any less ludicrously absurd than “How does Hume’s death appear to
him?” or “How does (the dead) Hume feel about his death?” Once again
PAUL EDWARDS 485
the reader should be reminded that the ontological explorers have ruled out
questions about survival as irrelevant to their problem.
In a recent decision in which he enjoined the American Nazi Party from
holding parades within two miles of Jewish houses of worship, a Chicago
judge observed that he would similarly issue an injunction against a group of
nudists if they wished to parade in their native attire outside a Presbyterian
church. Puzzled by the nature of native attires, an ontologist might now
engage in the following investigation: To wear one’s native attire is to wear
very peculiar clothes. What kind of clothes is a person wearing who is wear¬
ing his native attire? There are serious difficulties in the employment of the
phenomenological method in this case. When a man is wearing a hat or
a woman wearing a skirt and blouse we can perceive the clothes they are
wearing. However, when we look at somebody who is wearing his native
attire we cannot perceive any clothes. If we could perceive clothes on the
person, he would not be wearing his native attire. At this stage a Tillichian
ontologist would maintain that we must reach an agnostic conclusion—
native attires consist of unknowable clothes—while somebody following
Macquarrie and Mora would try to attain a “little knowledge” perhaps by a
careful study of the clothes which the nudists wear when they are not wear¬
ing their native attire or by studying people who are in the process of
changing from their work clothes into their native attire. Perhaps analogies
might yield helpful clues—perhaps we should study oranges and apples and
bananas after they have been peeled or perhaps an examination of trees,
denuded of their foliage, may yield at least a preliminary understanding. The
ontological investigation of the nature of death is just as ludicrous as the
ontological inquiry into the nature of native attires. To every move in the
latter investigation there corresponds a move occurring in the writings of
the ontological explorers of death.
There is a familiar story about the boy who, before his first date, was
advised by his father to discuss three subjects—love, family, and philosophy.
Following his father’s advice and taking up love, he first asked the girl, “Do
you love noodles?” to which the answer was “no.” Remembering that he
should next discuss the topic of family, he asked his date whether she had a
brother. The answer again was “no.” This left only the subject of philosophy
and the boy now asked his final question: “If you had a brother, would he
love noodles?” I think it would be generally agreed that this last question is
absurd, but the ontological question about death is considerably more ab¬
surd. Although it would in almost any normal circumstances be utterly
pointless to inquire whether a hypothetical brother loves noodles, the ques¬
tion is not self-contradictory: We can describe what it would be like for a
girl who in fact has no brother to have a brother and what it would be like
for such a person to love or not to love noodles. We might even possess
some evidence supporting the claim that a given person’s brother would (or
would not) love noodles. The ontological question about death, on the
486 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
Jaspers is surely right in maintaining that when one thinks of such associated
phenomena as funerals or the mourning of the bereaved survivors, one is not
thinking of death itself, i.e., of the death of the person who died. However,
if life and consciousness are in the present context taken to be “positivities,”
then, in thinking of death, one would have to think of a “negativity.” If
thinking of President Kennedy’s life is thinking of a positivity, then thinking
of his death is thinking of the termination of his life—of the absence, the
nonoccurrence ever again of any actions or passions that would be part of
his biography. But this is apparently not enough for Jaspers and others who
are under the impression that death is a state. They presumably require that
a person, in order to think of death, should be thinking of a dark presence
and not merely of the termination of life and consciousness; and, since un¬
fortunately there is no such presence (or else it is impenetrably dark), one
will conclude that death itself, as distinct from side-phenomena and negativi¬
ties, is altogether unthinkable.16
The full ludicrousness of the ontological search is hidden from the ex¬
plorers (and presumably also from their less critical readers) by the em¬
ployment of certain highly misleading strategies. The first of these to which
attention should here be called is the frequent use of quasi-inductive tech¬
niques and language and the related claim, made by some ontologists, that
although the nature of death must remain largely unknown, a certain amount
of understanding has in fact been achieved by their methods. These strategies
suggest that the ontologists are engaged in a quest that is not in principle
different from the investigations of a scientist, however much more difficult
it may be because of the peculiar nature of the subject matter.
In this connection it is worthwhile to engage in a rather full examination
of the ontological “investigations” carried out by Professor Mora. It will be
recalled that, according to Professor Mora, we can “somehow” get on the
inside of death by studying the various attitudes that people display toward
death and that we can gain a little knowledge of what death is in those cases
in which there had been a community between us and the dead. Professor
Mora believes that in the latter kind of case the survivor, to some extent,
shares the dead person’s death and that as a consequence he obtains a little
knowledge of what this death is like on the inside. If a survivor and a dead
person did not form a community, the death in question is merely an “ex¬
ternal” event, but where there was a community, the death becomes more
488 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
than a merely external event. It seems clear that Professor Mora is misled
here by the pictures associated with the words “external” and “internal.”
No matter how much a person may be shaken by a given death, he cannot
get at it from the inside any more than a survivor who is altogether indif¬
ferent. He does not get inside the dead person’s death—not even a tiny bit—
not because he lacks some special gift of empathy which other human beings
possess or might conceivably possess but because there is nothing to get into:
There is nothing to get into since death is not a state or condition “of the
deceased” and since, if it were a state, it would not be one to which anybody,
the dead person or any survivor, could conceivably attend.
The word “share” is commonly used in a number of different senses.
For example we say that two people share a certain object, like a house
or a car or a restaurant, if both of them legally own it. Again, we say
that people share the same outlook or convictions—e.g., when both of them
are socialists or absolute idealists or admirers of Heidegger. Here what we
mean is that the two people have similar views or similar attitudes. When
Professor Mora claims that on certain occasions one human being can (to
some extent or somehow) share the death of another, he evidently has
neither of these ordinary senses in mind. In all likelihood he is thinking of
the sense in which we say of a person that he shares the grief or the suf¬
fering of somebody else if he is so sympathetic that, upon observing the
other person’s grief or suffering, he experiences a kind of duplication of
these in himself. In general, when we use the word “share” in this last
sense, we mean more than that the two people have similar feelings: We
mean that the first person is so attached to the second that the feelings of
the second immediately lead to similar feelings in him. A little reflection
makes it quite clear that “share” can no longer be intelligibly used in this
sense when a survivor is said to share the death of somebody else. For no
matter what the survivor feels, he is not reproducing death in himself. One
cannot be significantly said to “share” in this sense unless there is some¬
thing to share—something like grief or pain—and death does not qualify as
such a something. Of course, a person may in this sense share somebody
else’s dying—he may experience in himself the anguish or the serenity or
whatever emotions the dying person feels; but this is totally beside the
point since what the ontologist is out to explore is death and not dying.
A study of the attitudes of people toward death, whatever its intrinsic
interest, does not help the ontological quest along any more than a con¬
sideration of bereavements which are classified as more than merely ex¬
ternal events. In both cases Professor Mora seems to think that the
psychological data available to us (in one case the feeling of the survivor,
in the other the attitudes of the people who are thinking about their death)
are related to death itself somewhat like the reflections or images of an
object (in a lake or a mirror or on a photographic plate) are related to the
objects whose reflections they are. However, it is not and cannot be so.
PAUL EDWARDS 489
concerning the relation between his grandmother and her death, but he
nowhere tells us what this little knowledge consists of. This is not surprising
for the simple reason that Professor Mora has no such knowledge and can
have none. If anybody thinks otherwise this can only be due to the failure
to recognize in ambiguity similar to the one described in the preceding
paragraph. It should be noted that Mora does not adduce the fact that he
could not achieve more than a little knowledge about the relation between
his grandmother and her death as peculiar and exceptional. In other words,
it is not just Professor Mora who possesses no more than a little knowledge
in such a case, but all human beings are similarly handicapped and inevi¬
tably so, no matter how well they may have known the deceased, no matter
how close they may have been to him or her throughout life and throughout
the last days. Human beings do not even, in their own cases, have any
greater access to the relation in question. The reason for this is not, as
Professor Mora’s language suggests, some kind of empirical limitation like
that of a thief who cannot get into an apartment he wishes to rob because
he finds it impossible to break through the lock. The reason is the sense¬
lessness of the expression “X’s relation to his death” as this is used by the
ontologist in the course of his quest. This senselessness is obscured by the
fact that the expression “X’s relation to his death” also has a rather clear
meaning in other contexts. In nonontological contexts the question “What
is X’s relation to his death?” would be naturally interpreted to be a
means of asking for information about X’s attitude toward his death. Here,
while we may in this or that case be very ignorant about the person’s at¬
titude, we can frequently have a great deal if not indeed complete knowl¬
edge; and certainly the person himself very often has more than merely a
little knowledge. In this sense it seems to me that Professor Mora, having
known his grandmother very well and having spent much time with her
while she was dying, probably had more than a little knowledge of her
relation to her death. Or if he did not, the ignorance is not something that is
universal and inescapable. However, none of this is of any aid to the ontolo¬
gist. For what the ontologist is concerned with is not how people feel about
their death while they are alive but what death is, i.e., what it is to the dead,
what the loss is that the deceased has sustained—not how the deceased felt
prior to sustaining the loss. And if the question is taken in this ontological
way, Professor Mora has not little but no knowledge whatsoever of the
relation between his grandmother and her death. One would know some¬
body else’s relation to his death when the question is asked in the spirit of
the ontologist only if one were that other dead person and could then attend
to that person s deadness. This, however, is a logical impossibility even
if it were not a logical impossibilty to be somebody else. It is, as we pointed
out in the last section, a logical impossibility because if one is dead one
cannot do any attending. Not only can Professor Mora have no knowledge
PAUL EDWARDS 491
about the relation between his grandmother and her death, but in the
ontological sense even his grandmother herself can have no such knowledge.
It is important to realize that Professor Mora’s empirical arguments do
not “happen” to be invalid, but that they are bound to fail. What is most
objectionable about them is not their detailed defects but their very produc¬
tion in the spirit that empirical arguments of some kind might conceivably
provide clues to the nature of the object of the ontological search. Much
the same applies to “analogies” like that between the ripeness of a fruit
on the one hand and death on the other which Macquarrie (and Heidegger)
reject but whose very consideration suggests that we have here an inquiry
that might conceivably be carried on by means of analogical “indications.”
Macquarrie and Heidegger are right in rejecting such comparisons, but
they give the wrong reasons. In the case of the analogy between the fruit
and death, Macquarrie and Heidegger complain that the analogy breaks
down because the ripeness of the fruit is “the fulfillment of the fruit,” but
the end for a man may come when he is still immature or long after he has
passed the peak of his powers. Let us suppose, however, that all human
beings were to die precisely at the moment of their greatest fulfillment,
neither too young nor too old, i.e., when their powers are at their peak.
Let us suppose for example that Mozart had not died at the age of thirty-
four but that he had lived on until he was sixty-five when his powers
finally began to decline, and that Winston Churchill had not lived on into
a state of near-senility but that he had died shortly after the successful
conclusion of the war against the Nazis. Even if this sort of thing happened
universally, the analogy would break down for the simple reason that the
fulfillment or maturity of the fruit is a state of the fruit while the death of a
man is not one of his states—mature, immature, or any other kind. It is
conceivable that a certain kind of person, like Bardone in Rossellini’s
II General Della Rovere, would experience the greatest moments of ful¬
fillment in the course of sacrificing himself for somebody else or for a
cause; but these experiences would still be states of his living organism.
In such a case one may, using language loosely, say that the person’s
death was his greatest fulfillment. However, if one is talking sense, one is
really referring to what the person did or experienced while he was dying
or going to his death. It is important to bring out the proper reasons for
dismissing the above and other analogies since the reason given by Mac¬
quarrie and Heidegger suggests that if only human lives were different in
certain ways some of these analogies would work. Analogies in which death
is compared with a state cannot work, but of course there is not the
slightest need to introduce any of them in order to discover what death is.
As already pointed out we know quite well what death is and we no more
need “analogical clues” in the present case than we need them in order to
understand the nature of silence or of native attires.
492 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
analytic” (op. cit., p. 55, my italics). Any consistent ontologist ought surely
to protest that Professor Macquarrie simply abandons ontology for intro¬
spective psychology here. What is “present” and “accessible” is not death
but thoughts about death and no amount of qualifications (“in a way,” “in
a sense,” and many more I have not reproduced) can undo the difference.
What becomes accessible to phenomenological study or to the existential
analytic had always been accessible, and what had not been accessible (the
state of deadness as distinct from thoughts about death) is no more acces¬
sible after the shift than it had been before. Macquarrie first ruled out the
study of the death of others on the ground that although it “might teach us
much . . . about psychological reactions in the face of death,” it “can never
disclose death as an existential phenomenon,” but he ends up studying
precisely such psychological reactions.
It should be emphasized that Professor Macquarrie is by no means
alone in shifting from ontological to psychological and practical issues, and
it should also be noted that these psychological and practical questions
are not usually senseless. The failure to detect the shift and the intelligibility
of the questions to which the ontologists transfer their attention are per¬
haps as much responsible for their not perceiving ludicrousness of the
initial ontological quest as the use of such quasiinductive techniques as we
described in the last section. In Macquarrie’s case the main mechanism of
the shift is an ambiguity in the word “existential” as it is used in such
expressions as “existential character” or “existential phenomenon.” All
existentialists are agreed that death is more than a biological phenomenon;
and to this “more” they refer as the “existential character” or the “ex¬
istential aspect” of death. However, different existentialists and sometimes
the same existentialists at different times have different things in mind when
they speak of this “more.” Sometimes when we are told that the existential
character of death must escape the biologist, what is meant is indeed the
“ontological character” of death—the object of what we have been
calling the ontological quest; but at other times, when the limitations of
the public methods of biology are stressed, the writers refer to the inner18
feelings of anguish, horror, serenity, or whatever people experience when
they think about their death. Since the word “existential” is used in both
of these ways, Professor Macquarrie can maintain that all his answers are
answers to questions about the existential character of death and anybody
who is not attentive to the ambiguity just described would not notice the
shift that has taken place.
In Mora’s case the mechanism of the main shift is an ambiguity in the
word “understand.” Professor Mora sets out to “understand” death and
originally this means finding out what death is on the inside in the ontologi¬
cal sense. But he is also concerned with the question “Does death ever
(and perhaps always) have meaning or is it always or at least sometimes
an absurd happening?” To this latter question Professor Mora proposes
494 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
sary to observe that although some of Professor Wild’s remarks are true,
they do not in any way imply his main conclusion about the existence of
aspects of death which cannot be studied by the “limited methods of
science.” To begin with, Professor Wild is quite right in calling attention to
the difference between what one may call the statistical and the personal
perspectives. It surely cannot be denied that a person’s state of mind is very
different when he gives his assent to the proposition that all men are mortal
from what it is when he realizes that he himself is one of those who will
inevitably die. Although this is certainly not something that existentialists
have discovered, people do perhaps on occasions forget it and it may well
be salutary to be reminded of it from time to time. To this, however, it
must be added that the differences are not peculiar to the subject of death.
It is exactly the same with thousands of other things—e.g., suffering im¬
prisonment unjustly or contracting a chronic and painful disease. The state
of mind of a person who reads in a book that 10 percent of all people
condemned to prison sentences are in fact innocent is very likely to be
significantly different from what it would be if he became one of those
convicted for a crime he did not commit; and the state of mind of somebody
who reads about what patients suffering from chronic arthritis go through
is likely to be very different from what it would be if he himself became
such a sufferer. Convictions, just and unjust, are phenomena that can be
studied by the methods of science and so can the feelings of those convicted;
and the same is true of arthritis and the states of mind of those suffering
from this disease. It is not easy to see why the admission that there is a
genuine difference between the personal and the statistical viewpoints
should imply that either the subject in question (be it arthritis, convictions,
or death) or the mental states which make up the personal viewpoint fall
outside the scope of scientific inquiry.
Professor Wild, like other existentialists, has a tendency to define “science”
in a misleadingly narrow way. It may be granted that death is “something
more than the objective biological stoppage which can be observed from
the outside.” Death is also the termination of consciousness. However,
for this insight it is not necessary to appeal to phenomenology or to the
existential analytic. Professor Wild no doubt in this context also thinks of
dying; and again it may be granted that the biologist, in studying the
physiological processes that go on in a dying organism, does not thereby
study the experiences of the individual which, from the human point of
view, are usually the most poignant aspect of the situation. Again, however,
from this it does not follow that science cannot study these inner experi¬
ences; and in fact Feifel and other contemporary psychologists21 have
amassed a good deal of interesting material which is not one whit less
scientific than the work of other psychologists who rely on the introspective
reports of their subjects. Some of Heidegger’s own most interesting com¬
ments about human attitudes toward death, which carry the wholehearted
496 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
degenerative diseases, reports that as their life was slowly ebbing away, they
felt that they became more and more surrounded by darkness.24 In our
ordinary thinking we also frequently fail to keep death and dying clearly
apart, and this is one reason why the full ludicrousness of the ontological
quest is not always noticed. When the existentialists mean death (and I
am here referring to situations in which they must mean death if they are
to do ontology), many an innocent reader tacitly substitutes “dying” and
the resulting statements, though frequently false, are no longer senseless.25
The confusion between death and dying is unquestionably one of the
factors responsible for the extremely misleading assertions, endlessly re¬
peated by all existentialists, that all of us must die isolated and alone. “No
one can die my death for me,” writes Professor Wild, “this thing at least I
must do alone” (op. cit., p. 82, my italics). Death, he later remarks, “is
an actual act to be lived through by an individual alone” (p. 83, my italics).
Again, in a passage quoted previously, we are told that death is “something
I must face by myself alone” (p. 239, my italics). Professor Macquarrie
expresses this doctrine of what we may call “the privacy of death” by
declaring that death “isolates the individual. He must die himself alone”
(ET, p. 118, my italics). In a similar vein, though not using the word
“alone,” Professor William Barrett writes: “Death is not a public fact oc¬
curring out there in the world; it is something that happens within my own
existence.”26 When these writers maintain that human beings die isolated
and alone (and this of course is asserted not of some but of all human
beings), they presumably wish to claim more than merely that all human
beings eventually die. They give the impression and they themselves un¬
doubtedly believe that they are not merely redescribing the latter familiar
fact. However, if “alone” is used in any sense in which “all human beings
die alone” asserts more than that they all eventually die, it is quite clearly
false. In one natural sense of this expression, somebody dies alone if he
is physically isolated as in the case of a man who gets lost on an Arctic
expedition and freezes or starves to death before the rescuers arrive. There
is another sense in which one may quite naturally speak of somebody as
dying alone or in solitude, although the person need not be physically
isolated like the man lost in the Arctic. What we then mean is that, while
dying, the person is psychologically or emotionally isolated—he does not
greatly care about anybody else and nobody else cares much about him.
It is in this latter sense that Ivan Ilyich in Tolstoy’s moving story dies alone
although he has a dutiful wife and daughter. Now, it is clear beyond any
doubt that, while some people die alone in one and some in both of these
senses, others do not die alone in either sense. Winston Churchill, Louis
XIV, and David Hume, to cite some familiar cases, did not die alone in
either of these senses.
The existentialists suggest that there is a third sense in which “dying alone”
means more than just “dying” and in which all human beings necessarily die
498 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
alone. It is easy to show that there is no such further sense and that the
only sense in which it is true that all human beings necessarily die alone is
one in which “dying alone” is logically equivalent to “dying.” As the existen¬
tialists use “alone” (or rather as it must be interpreted if their statement is
not to be plainly false), it is logically inconceivable for a person not to die
alone. Let us suppose that a human being is not dying either in physical or
emotional isolation but is, on the contrary, experiencing the greatest and
deepest love and happiness of his entire life during his last days.27 As the
existentialists use “alone” in the present context, such a person would still
have to be described as dying alone for the simple reason that he is dying.
If “alone” had some additional content, then it would be possible to describe
what it would be like for a person to die without dying alone; but as the
existentialists use these words, such a description is not possible. The exis¬
tentialists seem to be saying something novel and of interest here and they
also seem to be saying something that is plainly true. However, the upshot of
our discussion is that if their statement is interpreted in such a way that it
says something interesting, then it is clearly false; while if it is interpreted so
as to make it true, it becomes nothing more than a rhetorical way of assert¬
ing the exceedingly familiar fact that everybody dies some day.
Much the same comment is applicable to the other formulation that is
commonly given to what we called the doctrine of the privacy of death. We
are told that nobody can get another human being to die for him, to act as
his substitute or representative in the matter of death; and this is put forward
as a statement asserting more than the familiar fact that everybody eventually
dies. However, the key expressions in these formulations are ambiguous:
When used in one sense, the statement to the effect that nobody can die
somebody else’s death is not platitudinous and goes beyond the assertion that
everybody eventually dies, but in this sense it is false; when used in another
sense the statement is true, but then it becomes a platitude simply reassert¬
ing that everybody dies some day. There is a perfectly natural sense in which
people can get others to die as their substitutes. During the French Revolu¬
tion the authorities in Paris would occasionally allow a man who had been
sentenced to death to leave his prison in order to attend to urgent business
provided that somebody else took his place as a kind of human bail. If the
person sentenced to death did not return by a given time, the man substi¬
tuting for him would be guillotined in his place. Heidegger and his followers
point out that in such a case the evil day is postponed and not ultimately
avoided: The person who absconded will some day die and then he will
not be able to have somebody else die in his place. In Heidegger’s own
words: “No one can die for another. He may give his life for another, but
that does not in the slightest deliver the other from his own death.”28 To
keep these two senses apart, let us insert the adjective “ultimately” when¬
ever we use the expressions in the sense in which it is clearly true that no¬
body can get somebody else to die as his substitute or representative. Now,
PAUL EDWARDS 499
it seems clear that what prevents a person from ultimately getting a sub¬
stitute is simply the fact that he will eventually die. It is part of the meaning
of he will die” that he cannot ultimately get a substitute. It is not one fact
that all human beings eventually die and a further fact that they cannot
ultimately get a substitute for their death: These are two different ways of
referring to the same fact. Suppose there were a tremendously powerful
tyrant who has for many years been in the habit of getting other people to
do the most varied things in his place. Whenever an unpleasant task comes
UP e-g-> to meet a foreign dignitary, to attend the opening of a boring play,
or to receive an honorary degree—he sends somebody else. When he is
challenged to a duel, he sends a substitute, and when he wishes to get rid
of dangerous opponents, he sends other people to do the killing for him.
After many years of this, he comes to believe that he can also (in our second
sense, i.e., “ultimately”) get somebody else to die for him. How would we,
if this were possible, convince the tyrant that he was mistaken? In effect he
believes that he will never die and to show him that here he cannot ultimately
get a substitute we would have to convince him that, like all others, he will
eventually die: We do not have to convince him first that he will eventually
die and then, separately, that he cannot ultimately get a substitute in the
matter of dying.
To the above criticisms of the doctrine of the privacy of death, it may be
replied that although not everybody is necessarily alone while dying, in
death this is the fate of all human beings; and this contention will appear
plausible to all, whether they are ordinary people or philosophers engaged
in the ontological quest, who are under the influence of the notion that the
dead person is sleeping in the grave or that he somehow continues to exist in
a dark abode. The man who is lying in his coffin is there all alone and his
loneliness would not be remedied even if we put a few corpses or perhaps a
few living people into the same coffin since he would not be able to converse
with them. Somebody under the sway of this picture might exclaim that the
dead are in fact more alone than any living person can be. For, unlike the
living they cannot obtain any of the relief that comes from talking about
one’s losses. The dead cannot talk to the living or to their fellow dead or
even to themselves. Their loneliness is thus seen to be truly staggering! Once
this is spelled out in full, the absurdity becomes quite obvious; while it is
false to assert that everybody dies alone in any sense in which this asserts
more than that people eventually die, it is senseless to say about anybody
that he is alone in his death. To be alone, one has to be alive, and the dead
are neither alone or not alone for the same reason that Julius Caesar is
neither an even nor an odd number and that feelings of anger are neither
blue nor red. As for Professor Barrett’s statement that death is not a “public
event,” it is appropriate to remark that unless death is taken as the inner
state of the deceased in which he has the experience of having no experiences
—and we saw that there were “difficulties” in conceiving death in this way
500 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
—death is a public event, though not one which the dead person can witness.
What is not or not exclusively a public event is dying, or more specifically
the experiences of the dying person; but these, it should be added, are no
more private than other feelings and thoughts.
Almost as frequently as they assert that each person must die his death
alone, the existentialists make remarks to the effect that death is something
mysterious. They do not merely mean that this or that man’s death is a
mystery but that all deaths anywhere, at all times, and under all imaginable
circumstances are, and are necessarily, mysterious. Thus Professor Wild, in
a passage quoted previously, speaks of “this mysterious and long-neglected
phenomenon” (op. cit., p. 238) and earlier in the same work he observed
that “harsh, mysterious, and inexorable, death places all else in question
and reveals the uncanny strangeness of the world” (p. 84). In several places
Wild also asserts that death is “opaque to theoretical analysis” (p. 82) or
“opaque to understanding” (p. 81). Professor Tillich, needless to say, since
he regards death as the “end . . . with its impenetrable darkness,” concurs
in this opinion and adds that time too is a mystery.29 Professor Macquarrie
complains that people who treat death as an impersonal phenomenon are
thereby taking the “mystery and imminent threat” out of it (ET, p. 121).
The remarks about the mysterious nature of death just quoted are rather
cryptic, but there is a much fuller statement in a recent work by an English
writer who, while not calling himself an existentialist, expresses great sym¬
pathy for the movement. In his Existentialism—For and Against, Paul
Roubiczek praises the existentialists for offering valuable correctives of
errors associated with positivism and the thinkers of the Enlightenment.
“The mystery of death,” he writes, “even more than that of birth, is bound
to invalidate all the false convictions which survive from the Age of Reason.”
To this he adds:
Purely rational thought, though it can explain the causes of death in scientific
terms, can never account for the fact that we can die at any moment and are
beings who, in any case, must die sooner or later. The length of our lives seems
to be fixed in a purely arbitrary way which, being inexplicable, defeats the
power of reason (p. 113).
Perhaps none of the existentialist theses about death strikes a more respon¬
sive chord in ordinary readers than this claim that death is mysterious; and
it is echoed in countless statements found among poets, novelists, orators,
religious writers, and even psychologists.30 The feelings of helplessness and
horror which death inspires in most people seem to lead very naturally to
the remark that death is a mystery or to other remarks along the same lines.
It is probably sacrilege of the most damnable kind to subject such statements
PAUL EDWARDS 501
I hope that an existential ontologist will come forward and tell us what other
sense there is in which death can be intelligibly characterized as a mystery.
If, however, I am right and the above two senses are the only ones to be
considered in this context, we may reach the following conclusion: It is
meaningful but false to maintain that death is always a mystery in the first
sense; religious believers could say something sensible by calling death a
mystery in the second sense, but the existentialists are not, and many of
them cannot be, using “mystery” in this sense.
We can perhaps obtain some understanding of what these writers are
doing by comparing their statements about the mystery of death with what
I have elsewhere called the “quasi-theological why.”31 People who do not
or who no longer believe in God nevertheless quite frequently ask such
apparent questions as “Why do I have to suffer so much?” or “Why is it
that, although I try so hard and mean so well, happiness in the end always
eludes me?” As asked by somebody who believes in a just and good God,
these are genuine questions, asking how the initial theological assumption
can be reconciled with the injustice and suffering experienced by the ques¬
tioner. However, when an unbeliever uses such language, we no longer
have anything that can be treated as a genuine question. What we have
before us are complaints about the nature of the universe, expressions of dis¬
appointment and perhaps despair that the operations of the world are not
in accordance with the individual’s moral demands. Similarly, when some¬
body like Mr. Roubiczek speaks of death as a mystery and excludes from
the start as irrelevant any information that science might provide, he may
well be using the word “mystery” in a quasi-theological way. He does not
seem to be raising a question but to be complaining about the “absurdity”
of death: He seems to be complaining that death occurs at all and, further¬
more, that there is no correspondence between the length of a human life
and the moral caliber of the particular human being.
It is a pity that Mr. Roubiczek does not identify the thinkers of the Age
of Reason whose “false convictions” he wishes to demolish. It is more than
doubtful that philosophers like Hume or Diderot would ever have wished
to dispute the assertion that death is a contingent fact or that the lack of any
correspondence between the length of a human life and the moral qualities
of the person in question is a feature of the world which cannot be further
explained. What they would probably have added to these admissions is that
one is not advancing the understanding of anything by referring to such con¬
tingent facts as “mysteries.”
death; and the feelings and thoughts which constitute the personal per¬
spective can be made the object of scientific inquiry no less than other
psychological phenomena.
2. Death is the absence of life and is no more inconceivable than other
absences—e.g., the absence of sound or of clothes. Not only is death not in¬
conceivable, but in fact people conceive of it constantly and without the
slightest difficulty.
3. Although this or that death may be a mystery, it is not true that all
deaths are necessarily mysterious—at any rate the only people who could
justly make such a claim are believers in an all-powerful and all-good God
provided they also regard death as an evil which such a God might have
been expected to prevent.
.
4 The doctrine of the privacy of death, whether it is expressed by the
statement that everybody dies isolated and alone or by the statement that in
the matter of death one cannot have a representative, is either false or plati¬
tudinous, asserting no more than that everybody eventually dies.
5. The writings of the existentialists are pervaded by a confusion of death
with dying. Many of their pronouncements which are absurd when inter¬
preted as statements about death cease to be absurd when treated as state¬
ments about dying.
6. It is claimed by many existentialists that their question “What is
death?” is distinct from scientific questions about the nature of death, from
religious questions about survival, and from such metaphysical questions as
“Why does death occur at all?” Their question is said to be concerned with
the “ontological character” of death. However we found that when they
discuss the “ontological character” of death, the existentialists do one of
two things: They either address themselves to certain psychological and
practical issues in which case the use of the word “ontological” is highly
misleading; or else they engage in what we called the “ontological quest”
which amounts to asking “What does death feel like to the dead?” and this
turned out to be a grotesque pseudoinquiry. It would perhaps be claiming
too much to say that there is no genuine ontological question here, but if
there is one, this has yet to be demonstrated.
NOTES
1. I wish to thank my friends Martin Lean, Donald Levy, Margaret Miner, Mary
Mothersill and Elmer Sprague for reading an earlier version of this manuscript and
for making helpful suggestions.
2. The only person known to me who habitually slept in his own coffin was
“Lord” Timothy Dexter, an illiterate Yankee trader who made a fortune during the
Revolutionary War and who subsequently settled in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
There he built a Hall of Fame containing statues of Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin,
George Washington, George III, and himself as well as a mausoleum with an enor¬
mous coffin painted white and green. To enjoy the coffin while he was still alive,
Dexter had a couch put into it and not infrequently he took his nap on the couch.
Brahms was an eccentric man, but it was not his habit to sleep in a coffin.
3. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. Ill, p. 382.
504 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GOOD
4.
The Experience of Death, p. 13.
5.
The Courage to Be (from now on referred to as CB), p. 36.
6.
Systematic Theology, Vol. I, pp. 188-189.
7.
“The Eternal Now,” in H. Feifel (ed.), The Meaning of Death, pp. 30-31.
8.
Macquarrie’s discussions of death are contained in his An Existentialist The¬
ology (abbreviated from here on as ET) and Studies in Christian Existentialism
(from now on abbreviated as SCE).
9. From now on referred to as BD.
10. There is a constant shift in Mora’s discussion from talk about death to talk
about the possibility of death. I am ignoring this here because experiences of the
possibility of death” have nothing to do with the original ontological aim which,
in Professor Mora’s words, is “to scrutinize in detail the nature of human death”
(p. 170). In a later section of this article I shall provide a detailed account of the
chronic shifts of existentialists from ontological issues to psychological and moral
questions.
11. See page 475 above.
12. Adapted from Bertrand Russell’s Portraits from Memory, p. 147.
13. Social Principles and the Democratic State, p. 200. Needless to say, Benn
and Peters are not the first to make this distinction. It is already found in Aristotle
and Descartes.
14. “Death and My Life,” The Review of Metaphysics, 1963, p. 22.
15. Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 261.
16. For a discussion of the peculiar arguments in support of the claim that al¬
though the death of others is conceivable and imaginable, one’s own death is not
see my article “My Death,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. V, pp. 416-419.
17. The only ordinary sense known to me in which we ever say of somebody that
he experiences death occurs in connection with people, like doctors, nurses, and
coroners, who frequently observe dead bodies (and dying patients). By saying that
these people “experience death” we mean that they habitually observe human beings
as they are dying and their dead bodies shortly after death has taken place.
18. The word “inner” is used ambiguously in much the same way as “existential ”
Biology, we are told, cannot explore the “inner” nature of death; and sometimes
this means the inner nature as it would appear to the deceased if he could attend
to it while at other times it just refers to attitudes toward death on the part of the
The author of this copy of Version II apparently felt that this so-called
proof justified the procedure followed in the succeeding proof. But it is clear
that this comment constituted not a “construction” proof but only an
“existence” proof. Briefly we can say that the author, following Campanus’
postulate (which is, in fact, misnamed since it appears in the Adelard
version of the Elements on which Campanus based his version), held
that for any ratio of lunes (Lj/L2), where, say, Li is the tetragonal
lune and L2 the hexagonal lune in the solution under consideration, there
must exist an equal ratio of squares (Q1/Q2), where Qi is any given square
and 02 is some other square, or L1/L2 = Q1/Q2. By the alternation of
ratios L1/Q1 = L2/Q2. But in the first part of the proof it is proved that
there is a Qi equal to Li; therefore, there must be a 02 equal to L2. How¬
ever, it should be obvious that we are not told how to construct such
a square Q2. (Incidentally, there is an interesting “existence” proof found
in the Quadrature of the Circle composed by the brilliant mathematician
and physicist Ibn al-Haitham [Alhazen],8 where Alhazen arrives at the
conclusion that a circle inscribed in the lune on the side of a square is
some determinate part of that lune. With that part assumed as found—for
he in no way could find that part by construction—the proof is success¬
fully completed.)
Beyond the emended text of Version II with its added justification, I have
recently discovered what I believe to be two further reactions to Simplicius
510 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
comment, and their publication and analysis is the object of the remainder
of this paper. The first is included in a fifteenth century manuscript of
Glasgow University Library (BE 8.y.l8, 209v-210r). Its date of composi¬
tion is unknown, but since all of the other quadrature items included in this
section of the manuscript are from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
I would guess that this piece was done no later than the fourteenth century.
It constitutes a third version of the Simplicius passage, in general much
closer to the paraphrase of Version II than to the translation of Version I.
But the fact that the author of Version III remarks on the falsity of the
basic assumption (see the text and translation below) links it to Version
I, which, I have no doubt, the author must have seen. The reason that
the author gives for the falsity of the assumption that the hexagonal lune
can be squared in the manner of the tetragonal lune is that “the greater the
polygon and the circle, the greater is the lune, because the circumference
of the larger circle which is less curved [for a given chord] cuts a smaller
segment from the lune and conversely the circumference of a smaller
circle cuts a greater segment from it because it is more curved.” The
author of Version III thus seems to believe that the false proof assumes
that the hexagonal lune is constructed on a line of the same length as that
on which the tetragonal lune is constructed, these lines being chords, as
they must, of unequal circles. Actually the original author of the false
proof does not have the two different lunes constructed on equal chords
but rather on chords that do have a fixed ratio (chords AD and LP in Figs.
1.2, 1.3). The original author apparently believed that, since the semicir¬
cles constructed on the sides of the hexagon were in fact twice the semicircle
constructed on the side of the square (i.e., semicircle LP = 2 semicircle
AFD), the respective lunes must have a fixed ratio of rectilinear figures
which could be determined by the fact that the lune on the side of the
square is equal to a quarter of the square (i.e., lune AFD ~ A ABD)
At any rate, the original author was certainly wrong in thinking that his
reference back to the quadrature of the tetragonal lune provided any
assistance in determining a rectilinear figure equal to the hexagonal lune
Now our medieval author of Version III goes no further in his criticism,
but, having had his say, reproduces the proof in a manner similar to
Simplicius’ account as it appeared in Versions I and II.
A second late medieval reaction to the comment by Simplicius on the
falsity of the proof is found, I believe, in the De arte mensurandi of
ohannes de Muris, an eminent mathematician and astronomer whose
career at the University of Paris can be traced from at least 1318 to some
time after 1345.9 Actually, in this work (written shortly after 1343) John
does not mention the comment of Simplicius, but rather he treats several
propositions on lunes (which were, in fact, partially drawn from the
Simplicius fragment) without tying them in any way to the problem of the
MARSHALL CLAGETT 511
NOTES
1. Thus Gerard of Brussels used the quadrature of the circle as given by Archi¬
medes in order to make such an equation; see M. Clagett, “The Liber de motu of
Gerard Brussels,” Osiris, Vol. 12 (1956), 112-120, 152-156.
2. M. Clagett, Archimedes in the Middle Ages, Vol. 1: The Arabo-Latin Tra¬
dition (Madison, 1964), 606-609.
3. T. Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1921), 183-200.
Heath gives a complete discussion of both the passage from Alexander and that from
Eudemus. It is the passage that Simplicius drew from Alexander which circulated in
the Middle Ages in Latin.
4. Clagett, op. cit. in note 2, 610-626.
5. Ibid., 619.
6. Ibid., 625.
7. Ibid., 620, variant reading to lines 14-19; 625.
8. H. Suter, “Die Kreisquadratur des Ibn el-Haitam,” Zeitschrift fiir Mathematik
und Physik, Vol. 44 (1899), Hist.-lit. Abteilung, 33-47.
9. L. Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. 3 (New
York, 1934), 294—324; P. Duhem, Le Systeme du monde, Vol. 4 (Paris, 1954),
34-38, 51-60.
10. Suter, op. cit. in note 8, 37-38: “Wir sagen: Wir ziehen in einem beliebigen
Kreis einen Durchmesser, nehmen dann auf einem der Halbkreise einen beliebigen
Punkt an, und ziehen von demselben zwei Gerade nach den beiden Endpunkten des
Durchmessers; hierauf beschreiben wir iiber diesen beiden Geraden zwei Halbkreise,
so sind die von den beiden Halbkreisen und den Bogen des ersten Kreises begrenzten
Mondfiguren zusammen gleich dem Dreieck im ersten Kreis. Wir haben diesen Satz
schon in unserm Buche iiber die Mondfiguren bewiesen, doch wollen wir den Beweis
hier nochmals wiederholen: Es sei der Kreis ABG gegeben (Fig. 1.1), sein Mittelpunkt
sei D, wir ziehen durch D den Durchmesser ADG und nehmen auf dem Umfang des
Kreises den Punkt B an, ziehen dann die beiden Geraden BG und AB, und be¬
schreiben fiber denselben die beiden Halbkreise AEB und BZG; nun sagen wir, dass
die beiden Monde AEBH und BZGT zusammen gleich dem Dreieck ABG seien.
FIGURE 1.1
Beweis: Von irgend zwei Kreisen verhalt sich der eine zum anderen wie das Quadrat
des Durchmessers des einen zum Quadrat des Durchmessers des andern, wie im
zweiten Satze des 12.Buches der Elemente bewiesen worden ist, also
Kreis BZG : Kreis BEA = BG2 : AB2;
durch Zusammenziehung ergiebt sich:
BG2 + AB2 : AB2 = BZG + BEA : BEA;
nun ist aber BG2 + AB2 = AG2, also
AG2 : AB2 = BZG + BEA : BEA.
Aber es ist auch AG2 : AB2 = Kreis ABG : Kreis BEA, also hat man:
MARSHALL CLAGETT 513
FIGURE 1.2
ADC [Fig. 1.2]. Dyameter eius ABC. Certum est quod angulus D tri-
anguli ADC est rectus. Ergo lateris sibi oppositi, videlicet ABC,
quadratum, quod est A EC, valet duo quadrata descripta super duo
5 latera sibi opposita, AD et DC, que sunt DGC et aliud sibi oppositum.
Ergo per consequens duplum est ad unum illorum sicut ad quadratum
DGC cum ambo sint equalia. Sed sicut se habet quadratum super ali-
quam lineam descriptum ad quadratum super aliam descriptum sic se
habet semicirculus super primam lineam descriptus ad semicirculum
io super aliam lineam descriptum. Ergo semicirculus ADC descriptus
super lineam ABC erit duplus ad unum semicirculorum descriptorum
514 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
descripta: Quid tamen falsum est. Quanto enim figura plurium angu-
lorum et circulus maior, tanto maior est lunula, quia minorem portio-
nem ab ea abscindit circumferentia maioris circuli que minus est gel-
bosa (/globosa), et econtrario circumferentia minoris circuli maio-
25 rem abscindit portionem quia magis curva et per consequens lunula
minor.
FIGURE 1.3
MARSHALL CLAGETT 515
The quadrature of the circle is this: Let ADC be the semicircle of the
circle to be squared, and ABC its diameter. It is certain that angle D of
A ADC is a right angle. Therefore, the square of the side opposite it,
namely ABC, which [square] is A EC, equals the two squares described
on the two sides opposite it (ABC), namely [the sides] AD and DC, which
[squares] are DGC and the one opposite it. Therefore, it (square AEC)
is double to either of those squares, as, for example, double square DGC,
since the two squares are equal. But the square described on some line
is related to the square described on another line as is the semicircle
described on the first line to the semicircle described on the second line
[by Euclid, Elements, XII.2]. Therefore, semicircle ADC described on
line ABC will be double the semicircle described on either of the two
sides AD and DC, and consequently it (semicircle A DC) is equal to
both [together], just as the square described on the same line ABC is equal
to the [sum of the] squares described on the other two sides. Therefore, if
the quantities common to the larger semicircle and the two smaller semi¬
circles—namely, the segments H and I—are removed, the remainders—
[on the one hand] the lunes AFD and DKC and [on the other] the triangle
ADC—will be equal. But the triangle can be squared; therefore, the two
lunes can be squared. And thus a lune or lunes can be squared.
516 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
Then I suppose that the lune described on the side of any other figure,
as for example, that on the side of a hexagon, could be squared in the
same way as the lune described on the side of the square. This, however,
is false. For the greater the polygon and the circle, the greater is the lune,
because the circumference of a larger circle which is less curved [for a
given chord] cuts a smaller segment from the lunes, and conversely the
circumference of a smaller circle cuts a greater segment from it because it is
more curved, and consequently the lune is smaller.
However, if this is supposed [namely, that any lune can be squared],
I take line LMN = 2 line ABC. Therefore, its square LNO = 4 square
ACE, as is evident to the sense, and consequently semicircle LPQN
described on the said line will be quadruple semicircle ADC by the said
proposition: The square of some line is related to the square of another
line as [the one’s] semicircle is to [the other’s] semicircle. Therefore,
semicircle LPQN is equal to the three semicircles LP, PQ, and QN
described on the three sides of the semihexagon plus another fourth semi¬
circle, namely T, each of which semicircle is equal to semicircle ADC.
Hence, if the common segments R, S, V are subtracted, equal quantities
will still remain. But the remainders to this MS are (1) the half of the
hexagonal figure, LPQN, and (2) the three lunes posited above plus the
semicircle T. Therefore, these quantities [(1) and (2)] are equal. But
the half of the hexagonal figure can be squared since it is composed of
triangles. Therefore, the whole remainder can be squared, namely the three
lunes plus the semicircle. But with the square equal to the three lunes
subtracted (which lunes, as has been proved, can be squared), a square
still remains (for if a square is subtracted from a square a square remains),
and that square is equal to semicircle T. Therefore, the semicircle can be
squared, and also the whole circle, which is what we intended. Here ends
the Quadrature of the Circle according to another doctor.
FIGURE II.l
■——
FIGURE II.2
25 27a propositio
LUNULAM HEXAGONAM CUM LUNULA TRIGONA TERTIE PARTI HEXAGONI
CIRCULO INSCRIPTI EQUALEM ESSE NECESSE EST.
Sit circulus A EC super centrum D [Fig. II. 3], latus vero hexa-
goni AE, latus trigoni erit CE per 15 2* huius. Super igitur utrum-
que latus semicirculus figuretur. Dico lunulas protractas simul
sumptas equales esse triangulo A EC, qui est tertia pars hexagoni circulo
inscripti. Angulus enim A EC rectus est per 30 3i!. Ergo per penul¬
timam primi quadratum AC valet duo quadrata AE, EC\ igitur et circu-
518 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
FIGURE II.3
ADC
28a propositio
TRES LUNULAS HEXAGONAS CUM SEMICIRCULO HEXAGONALI MEDIETATI
HEXAGONI CIRCULO INSCRIPTI EQUALES ESSE.
FIGURE II.4
29a <propositio>
LUNULAM HEXAGONAM SEXTA PARTE HEXAGONI ESSE MINOREM TRIGO-
55 NAMQUE MAIOREM.
FIGURE II.5
Proposition 26
A TETRAGONAL LUNE IS EQUAL TO ONE FOURTH OF A SQUARE INSCRIBED
IN A CIRCLE.
Let circle ABC be described about center D [see Fig. II. 1], with a per¬
pendicular DB [constructed] by 1.11 [of the Elements of Euclid], and with
BC the side of the square inscribed in the circle by IV. 6 [of the Elements].
And on the side BC let semicircle BFC be described. I say that the lune
contained by the two curves (and this lune I call a tetragonal lune) is equal
to ABDC, which is one fourth of the square by 1.4 [of the Elements]. For
1 ABC is a right angle by III.30 (= Gr. III.31). Therefore, AC2 = AB2 +
BC2, by the penultimate proposition of [Book] I [of the Elements], and
hence AC2 = 2 BC2. Therefore, by XII.2 [of the Elements], circle ABC =
2 circle EEC; hence semicircle ABC = 2 semicircle BFC. Therefore, the
quarter circle BC = semicircle BFC. Therefore, with the common segment
removed, the lune remains equal to the aforesaid triangle, which is that
proposed.
In the same way this can be demonstrated for another tetragonal lune,
in fact for all tetragonal lunes by like argument. From this it is clearly
evident that a tetragonal segment of circle ABC is equal to two tetragonal
MARSHALL CLAGETT 521
segments of circle BFC [see Fig. II.2]. For since two halves of the same
circle are equal by a common axiom, when [from these halves] two equals
are removed, namely the tetragonal lune and the above-said triangle (and
these are equal as has been seen), the tetragonal segment of circle ABC
is left equal to two tetragonal segments of circle BFC', hence the proposed
[corollary]. And thence it is that half of it is equal to one of those, although
these things might have been demonstrated earlier in the twenty-fourth
[proposition] of this [chapter]).
Proposition 27
IT IS NECESSARY THAT A HEXAGONAL LUNE PLUS A TRIANGULAR LUNE
BE EQUAL TO ONE THIRD OF A [REGULAR] HEXAGON INSCRIBED IN A CIRCLE.
Let circle AEC be [described] about center D [see Fig. II.3], while the
side of the [regular] hexagon will be AE and the side of the triangle CE,
by the fifteenth [proposition] of the second chapter of this [work, the De
arte mensurandi]. Therefore, on each side let a semicircle be drawn. I say
that the lunes drawn [on these sides] taken together are equal to /\AEC,
which is one third of the [regular] hexagon inscribed in the circle. For
Z AEC is a right angle by III.30 (= Gr. III.31). Hence, by the penultimate
[proposition] of [Book] I [of the Elements] AC2 — AE2 + EC2. Therefore,
circle [AEC is equal] to circles [AE and EC]; and semicircle [AEC is equal]
to semicircles [AE and EC]. Therefore, with the common segments re¬
moved, the above-said lunes remain equal to the afore-said triangle, which
is that proposed.
Proposition 28
THREE HEXAGONAL LUNES PLUS AN HEXAGONAL SEMACIRCLE ARE EQUAL
TO HALF OF A [REGULAR] HEXAGON INSCRIBED IN A CIRCLE.
Let the semicircle be AEC, in which there are three sides of the [regular]
hexagon: AE, EG, GC [see Fig. II.4], by 1.3 or IV.15 [of the Elements].
And let a semicircle be described on each side, as well as a semicircle out¬
side equal to each of these by 1.3 and the definition of equal circles. I say
that the three described lunes plus semicircle B are equal to one half of the
[regular] hexagon, which half is AEGC. For AC2 = 4 AE2, by the third
postulate of [Chapter] 2 of this [work]. And circle [AEGC equals] circles
[AE, EG, GC and B]; and so on, as above. Therefore, with the common
hexagonal segments subtracted, the three hexagonal lunes plus semicircle
B remain equal to the above-said semihexagon, which is that proposed.
From the preceding and the present it is inferred that four hexagonal lunes
and a triangular lune plus hexagonal semicircle B are equal to five sixths
of the [regular] hexagon inscribed in the circle, which conclusion is accepted
as a corollary.
522 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
Proposition 29
A HEXAGONAL LUNE IS LESS THAN ONE-SIXTH PART OF THE [REGULAR
INSCRIBED] HEXAGON, AND [ITS COMPLEMENTARY] TRIANGULAR LUNE IS
Newton’s insistence that “the system of the world”2 gives evidence of the
Creator is well known to scholars through published and generally avail¬
able primary sources: chiefly the concluding General Scholium to the
Principia,3 the later Queries of the Gpticks? and the four letters he wrote
to Richard Bentley on the occasion of the latter’s two sermons on “The
Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World.”5 Be¬
cause the General Scholium was written only in 1712-1713 for the second
edition of the Principia and did not appear in the first edition in 1687,6 and
because the Queries of the Opticks dealing with God are not part of the
first edition of 1704,7 there appears at first glance to be some possible
justification for the view advanced by Biot and by Laplace in which New¬
ton’s concern with religious questions is referred to a late period of his life.8
During some fifteen years of intimacy with Newton’s writings, in manu¬
script as well as in print, during the preparation (in collaboration with
Alexandre Koyre) of an edition of the Principia with variant readings, I
have been made aware how false and misleading it is to relegate Newton’s
concern with theological matters to the end of his life, as a supposed con¬
sequence either of senility or a personal crisis that led to a mental break¬
down. The purpose of this article shall be to demonstrate primarily that
Newton’s concern with God and with the Divine Providence was a con¬
tinuing feature in all editions of his Principia, but that this information is
not available to the average reader. Secondarily, I shall show how this topic
is related to the form and significance of the Definitions at the beginning of
the Principia. (See Appendix I on pp. 537 ff. below.)
At least half of the General Scholium deals with religious topics. Para¬
graph three discloses some of the major regularities of the solar system,
leading to the conclusion that such a
most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed
from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.9
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all:
And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God navTOKparup,
523
524 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
or Universal Ruler. For God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants,
and Deity is the dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who
fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. The supreme God is a
Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without
dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God,
the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say,
my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of Gods; we do not
say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: These are titles which have no respect to
servants. The word God usually signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God.
It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God; a true, supreme
or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme or imaginary God. And from
his true dominion it follows, that the true God is a Living, Intelligent and
Powerful Being; and from his other perfections, that he is Supreme or most
Perfect. He is Eternal and Infinite, Omnipotent and Omniscient; that is, his
duration reaches from Eternity to Eternity; his presence from Infinity to In¬
finity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He
is not Eternity or Infinity, but Eternal and Infinite; he is not Duration or Space,
but he endures and is present. He endures for ever, and is every where present;
and by existing always and every where, he constitutes Duration and Space.
Following a lengthy discussion of such topics as whether God “is omni¬
present, not virtually only, but also substantiallyand whether blind
“metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every
where,” could produce a “variety of things,” Newton concluded this portion
of the Scholium10 with these words:
And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from phaenomena, be¬
longs to Experimental Philosophy.
A strong statement, written in enthusiasm! We may well understand that
Newton would have felt the necessity to tone it down in the third and final
edition, where it reads that thus to discourse of God, “from phaenomena,”
belongs to “Natural Philosophy.”
One part of this General Scholium is particularly fascinating to the
modern critical philosopher or historian of science: Newton’s discussion of
God, and his various names, from a linguistic point of view. In particular,
our attention is drawn by Newton to the fact that our expression God—
as in “my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods”—is different
from “Eternal,” “Infinite,” or “Perfect.” These are absolute terms or
“titles which have no respect to servants” and so are unlike “God [which]
is a relative word, and has a respect to servants.” In the light of this pres¬
entation, we should not find it too surprising that a second place in the
Principia where Newton introduces a religious note is also a discussion of
the relative and the absolute in terms of linguistic analysis.
The occasion is another famous Scholium, the one following the Defi¬
nitions, at the very beginning of the Principia: thus preceding even the
Axioms or Laws of Motion which, together with the Definitions, make up
the introductory material prior to Book One. In this Scholium Newton in-
I. BERNARD COHEN 525
Upon which account, they do violence to the Sacred Writings, who there
interpret those words for the measur’d quantities. Nor do those less defile the
purity of Mathematical and Philosophical Truths, who confound real quan¬
tities themselves with their relations and vulgar measures.12
Newton’s argument is much like Galileo’s, when the latter sought to avoid
criticism of the Copernican system as a contradiction of Scripture. It is the
job of the Bible, said Galileo in a famous pun, to instruct us how to go to
heaven, and not to tell us how the heavens go! The Bible is written, for
greatest intelligibility, Galileo argued, in the language of the vulgar.13
One of the most fascinating aspects of Newton’s statement about the
Sacred Writings (i.e., Sacrae Litterae, Scripture, or the Bible) is that it is
not to be found in the version of Newton’s Principia current in the English-
speaking world. Andrew Motte’s English translation, as revised by Florian
Cajori, often reprinted and widely read, has a quite different sentence al¬
together. There we find:
How can Cajori have revised Motte so as to give such a different reading?
Let us turn at once to Newton’s original words in Latin, which are:
Proinde vim inferunt sacris literis, qui voces hasce de quantitatibus mensuratis
ibi interpretantur.
In other words, as Galileo had said, the Bible is written in the language
of ordinary discourse. Hence those who try to interpret Scripture in terms
of absolute measured quantities rather than the vulgar relative quantities
do violence to the Scriptures.
Lest there be any doubt on this question of Newton’s meaning, I shall
present the testimony of two members of Newton’s circle. First, John
Clarke, brother of the famous Samuel Clarke who participated in the
526 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
It will be observed that Whiston refers the reader directly to the question
of the literal interpretation of Scripture with regard to the motion of the
earth and the sun’s standing still.
As to Newton’s intended meaning, we may turn to other uses of “sacrae
litterae” in his manuscripts. In one of these, Newton himself presents a point
of view explicitly the same as Galileo’s and the one attributed to him by
Whiston in the quotation just given. Newton writes:
8 Systema corporum coelestium in sacris literis minime doceri.
[The system of the heavenly bodies is not at all taught in Scripture.]
12 Nihil obstare quo minus Terra pro lege Planetarum circa solem moveatur.
Diluuntur objectiones ex sacris litteris.
[Nothing stands in the way of the Earth’s moving around the Sun according
to the law of the Planets. Objections from Scripture are removed.]
I. BERNARD COHEN 527
After completing the tract just mentioned, Newton wrote out a draft of
the Definitions, Laws of Motion, and Book One of the Principia, of which
a considerable fragment is preserved, having been deposited by Newton in
528 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
In this early draft, or the so-called Lucasian Lectures, the next sentence
begins:
Solus enim Deus, qui singulis immobiliter et insensibiliter
I have said earlier that a mention of God and a discussion of the Divine
Providence was a continuing feature of all editions of Newton’s Principia.
In Book Three (in which Newton displays the system of the world on the
I. BERNARD COHEN 529
The smaller the Planets are, they are, caeteris paribus, of so much the greater
density. For so the powers of gravity on their several surfaces, come nearer to
equality.
caeteris paribus, of the greater density, as they are nearer to the Sun. So Jupiter
is more dense than Saturn, and the Earth than Jupiter. For the Planets were to
be placed at different distances from the Sun, that according to their degrees
of density, they might enjoy a greater or less proportion of the Sun’s heat.
Our water, if it were remov’d as far as the orb of Saturn, would be converted
into ice, and in the orb of Mercury would quickly fly away in vapour. For the
light of the Sun, to which its heat is proportional, is seven times denser in the
orb of Mercury than with us: and by the thermometer I have found, that a
sevenfold heat of our summer-sun will make water boil. Nor are we to doubt,
that the matter of Mercury is adapted to its heat, and is therefore more dense
than the matter of our Earth; since, in a denser matter, the operations of
nature require a stronger heat.33
That is, in the first edition, Newton would have us believe that:
530 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
God therefore placed the planets at different distances from the Sun so that
according to their degrees of density they may enjoy a greater or less proportion
of the Sun’s heat.
But in the later editions, it is merely said that “the planets were to be
placed” at such distances that “they might enjoy” their due proportion of
the sun’s heat, the explicit reference to God (“Deus”) having been elimi¬
nated.
Hence, we see that in the first edition Newton did mention God ex¬
plicitly. It is thus an error to say that Newton introduced the name of God
and his divine providence only in the later editions of the Principia (ed. 2,
1713; ed. 3, 1726), in the supplementary General Scholium. This example,
incidentally, serves to illustrate the importance of having available a critical
edition of the Principia, with a complete set of variae lectiones to enable
scholars to find out what was eliminated and added, and also what was
altered, from one edition to the next.
Why would Newton have eliminated this explicit reference to God in his
revision of the corollary in question? At first glance, it might appear
that he had decided to confine all explicit mentions of God to the final
General Scholium. For, indeed, he does mention God by name in the
second and third editions only in this General Scholium,35 while in the first
edition God is mentioned only in the corollary to Proposition VIII (Book
Three). But this opinion is confuted by the facts, since Newton eliminated
the reference to God in this corollary in the interleaved copy of the Prin¬
cipia in his personal library,36 apparently long before he had even con¬
templated a General Scholium. It is a reasonable guess that he would have
eliminated this reference to God after he had read the review of the first
edition of the Principia which was published in the Acta Eruditorum, for
in it the anonymous reviewer especially called the reader’s attention to the
use of planetary densities in Newton’s presentation of how God had created
the universe.37 Newton might very well have concluded that this topic
either required a more considerable discussion, perhaps with further ex¬
amples,38 or else should not be mentioned at all.
But it is of more interest than a mere curiosity that Newton should have
mentioned God in all editions of the Principia, and not just in the second
and third editions, as is usually stated. For we know that Newton was of
strong religious bent, and that he conceived the structure of the world to
offer definitive proof of the existence of God and his continuing divine
providence. As he wrote to Bentley,
When I wrote my Treatise about our System [of the World, i.e., Principia
Lib. Ill], I had an Eye upon such Principles as might work with considering
Men, for the Belief of a Deity, and nothing can rejoice me more than to find
it useful for that Purpose.39
In other words, it was more in character for Newton to have included God
in all editions of his account of the “System of the World” in Book Three of
I. BERNARD COHEN 531
the Principia than it would have been had God been absent in the first
edition. (See Appendix II on pp. 542 ff. below.)
The second edition (1713) of the Principia has much new material on
comets, the subject with which Book Three of the Principia concludes in
the first edition (1687).40 Among the manuscripts in which Newton worked
out his attempted revisions and extensions of his presentation of the subject
of comets, there is a sheet containing a proposed alteration of Proposition
XLI (Book Three) which is especially fascinating. This single sheet shows
us how the very act of writing on cosmological questions almost auto¬
matically was apt to lead Newton to questions about God similar to those
he would discuss in the General Scholium. This fragment reads as follows:
Moreover, the vapors which arise from the sun, fixed stars, and tails of Comets
seem to be condensed in the Planets and to be converted first into water and
moistures, then into mud and clay and salts and sand and the substances of
animals vegetables and minerals. Thus comes about the perpetual interchange
of all things; and the Lord of all alone remains immutable, who by his own
counsel and will disposes (through Ministers) all things in the best order, by
removing the fixed stars to convenient distances lest they fall into one another,
by placing the Planets in concentric orbs in the same plane with conspiring
motions, and the comets in excentric orbs and various planes with contrary
motions, and by granting to each one its just determination of motion and
velocity by which they may be able to describe their designated orbs, and by
forming in the beginning the species of all things in first seeds. It is philosophic
to set forth by what laws and in what way [or “by what reasoning”] the system
of things once set by God is conserved and perseveres; but how this most wise
order of things could have arisen from the counsel and will of its founder,
natural Philosophy does not teach [altered from it is not relevant to natural
Philosophy to set forth].
but to set forth how this most wise order of things could have arisen from
matter alone and motion or from the Nature of things, necessarily acting,
eternal, infinite, most wise, most powerful and supremely perfect, or from any
blind fate without final causes and therefore without God the Lord of all
things, is most foreign to Philosophy.41
text (which served as the basis of the final or corrected printed edition)
is to be found among Newton’s papers in the Portsmouth Collection in the
University Library, Cambridge.43 In this work, Newton—as might have
been expected—discussed God in relation to the same subject in which
God is introduced in Book Three. Newton states as a proposition:
Why some of the planets are more, others less dense, and the forces in all are
proportional to the quantities of matter.
Newton then expresses his desire for more accurate measurements of the
diameters of the planets, and presents a method for achieving this end.
other statements about God we have been presenting here, may serve as a
continual reminder of how great the temptation always was for Newton to
stray from the strict and narrow path of science and to meander through
theological metaphysics.
NOTES
1. The research on Newton’s scientific thought, on which this article is based, has
been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
A somewhat different version of this article is being published in the writer’s forth¬
coming volume, Newton’s Natural Philosophy: Inquiries into Newton's Scientific
Work and Its General Environment {in process).
I am grateful to Anne Whitman, who has worked with me on the transcription,
translation, and interpretation of Newton’s manuscripts.
2. Book Three of Newton’s Principia is entitled “The System of the World”
(“De Mundi Systemate/Liber Tertius”). An earlier version was published post¬
humously and bears the title De Mundi Systemate. Florian Cajori, who revised
Andrew Motte’s translation of the Principia (1729), Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the World (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1934) attempted to distinguish between
the two by entitling Book Three of the Principia “System of the World (in Math¬
ematical Treatment),” but without indicating that the parenthetical expression was
not Newton’s. For a guide to Newton’s writings, see George J. Gray: A Bibliography
of the Works of Sir Isaac Newton, Together with a List of Books Illustrating His
Works (Cambridge: Macmillan and Bowes, 1888; second edition, considerably revised
and enlarged, Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1907); H. Zeitlinger: “A Newton
bibliography,” pp. 148-170 of Isaac Newton, 1642—1727, a memorial volume edited
for the Mathematical Association by W. J. Greenstreet (London: G. Bell and Sons,
1927); A descriptive Catalogue of the Grace K. Babson Collection of the Works of
Sir Isaac Newton, and the Material Relating to Him in the Babson Institute Library,
Babson Park, Mass., with an introduction by Roger Babson Webber (New York:
Herbert Reichner, 1950); a supplement compiled by Henry P. Macomber was pub¬
lished by Babson Institute in 1955.
3. An edition of the Principia with variant readings, undertaken by the writer
and the late Alexandre Koyre, with the assistance of Anne Whitman, is being pub¬
lished jointly by Harvard University Press and Cambridge University Press.
4. Conveniently available in a current reprint (New York: Dover, 1952).
5. Bentley’s sermons and Newton’s letters are reprinted, with a commentary by
Perry Miller, in I. Bernard Cohen and Robert G. Schofield (eds.): Isaac Newton’s
Papers & Letters on Natural Philosophy, and Related Documents (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1958).
6. A textual comparison of all the editions of the Principia is available in the
forthcoming edition with variant readings (see note 3 supra).
7. For the development of the Queries, see Alexandre Koyre: “Les Queries de
VOpticks de Newton,” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences, 1960, 13:
15-29; also I. B. Cohen, Preface to the Opticks (note 4 supra), pp. xxxiii sqq.; intro,
to Isaac Newton’s Papers (note 5 supra), pp. 14 sqq.
8. Biot’s statement seems cautious compared to the extravagance of Livio Stec-
chini’s recent declaration that, “Whereas the first edition of the Principia (1687) is
essentially rationalistic in spirit and follows a positivistic method, theological preoccupa¬
tions dominate the second edition.” To my knowledge, this is the first time that a
book has been said to have been “dominated” by one aspect of an appendix added to
a new edition! Stecchini’s claim seems all the more absurd if read in the light of the
removal of God’s name from the text of the Principia, as it had appeared in the first
edition. Furthermore, Stecchini’s statement is so at variance with the facts (since
the method and subject matter and the form and style of the text are so nearly
identical in all editions) that one suspects that he has either never read carefully in
any edition or did not comprehend what he did read. In any event, Newton’s major
statement of “a positivistic method” does not appear in the first edition of the
Principia, but in the second, in the new final Scholium Generale, following the theo¬
logical section, in Newton’s declaration that “I have not been able to discover the
cause of those properties of gravity from Phenomena and frame no hypotheses.” In
534 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
any event, “it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws
which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions or
the celestial bodies, and of our sea.”
Stecchini’s essay is a sort of historical apologia for Immanuel Velikovsky and nis
theory of catastrophes and it appears in a book intended to glorify Velikovsky and
to demolish his critics. It is typical of the lack of accuracy in this presentation as a
whole that Stecchini offers as “proof that Newton had become fixated on the religious
problem, but had not lost any of his intellectual flexibility, . . . that the few addi¬
tions that appear in the third edition of the Principia (1726), disclose that he came
to believe that God reveals himself not in the appearance of things but in the ways
of mankind.” This statement, taken from Cajori’s notes to the Principia, but without
the quotation marks of the original, does less than justice to Cajori, who wrote
(p. 670) that, “It is to be noted that Newton’s idea of God in the second (1713)
edition of the Principia is drawn largely from the ‘appearances of things, while the
interpolations printed in the third edition (1726) are taken more particularly from
the ‘ways of mankind.’” The phrase “ways of mankind’ occurs in the new material
printed in the third edition in 1726, but—as Cajori correctly points out (loc. cit.)
and as Stecchini ignores—“substantially this addition Newton prepared long before
1726, in fact, only six months after the publication of the second edition in 1713. It is
given in a list of corrections and additions to the second edition, which he sent to
Cotes; but this was not printed at the time.” I do not know how Stecchini concluded
that there are but “few additions that appear in the third edition of the Principia,
since this is far from the truth; perhaps he meant to say, “few additions that appear in
the General Scholium in the third edition. . . .”
Stecchini’s essay, entitled “The Inconstant Heavens,” appears on pp. 80-126 of
Alfred de Grazia, ed.: The Velikovsky Affair, the Warfare of Science and Scientism
(New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1966). The discussion of the Principia
may be found on pp. 95-96. This book is in part a reprint of the September 1963
issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, but with much new material.
9. Quoted from Andrew Motte’s translation (1729; reprinted, London: Dawsons
of Pall Mall, 1968, with an introduction by I. B. Cohen), corresponding to p. 544 of
the Motte-Cajori version. For earlier versions of the General Scholium, see A. R.
Hall and Marie Boas Hall: Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton (Cam¬
bridge: at the University Press, 1962), pt. IV, § 8.
10. I am not particularly concerned here with the evolution of the whole of the
General Scholium.
11. Quoted from the Motte version, p. 17.
12. This is my own adaptation of the Motte version of the Principia.
13. See, in particular, Galileo’s letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615),
translated into English with an introductory commentary in Stillman Drake: Dis¬
coveries and Opinions of Galileo (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books,
1957), pp. 173 sqq. Also Giorgio de Santillana: The Crime of Galileo (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1955).
14. Op. cit., p. 11.
15. See H. G. Alexander: The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Manchester:
Manchester Univ. Press, 1956). For other editions of this famous work, see the
article by A. Koyre and I. B. Cohen (cited in note 22 below).
16. For an account of these annotations, see Michael Hoskin: “Clarke’s Notes to
Rohault’s Traite.” The Thomist, 1961, 24: 253—263; also G. Sarton: “The Study of
Early Scientific Textbooks,” Isis, 1948, 38: 137-148.
17. John Clarke: A Demonstration of Some of the Principal Sections of Sir Isaac
Newton’s Principles of Natural Philosophy (London: printed for James & John
Knapton, 1730), p. 24.
18. William Whiston: Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematick Philosophy more easily
Demonstrated (London: printed for J. Senex & W. Taylor, 1716), p. 37.
19. This text is to be found among the MSS in the Portsmouth Collection in the
University Library, Cambridge (MS Add. 3965.542v).
20. This is not the only example of Newton having written a preface that would
be printed as if written by someone else. The second printing (or edition) of the
Commercium Epistolicum, of 1722, contained an anonymous “Ad Lectorem" which
proves to have been written by Newton; also a lengthy “Recensio Libri,” translated
into Latin from an English original that had been published in the Philosophical
Transactions (No. 342: Jan.-Feb. 1715), and which also proves to have been written
by Newton. This Commercium is allegedly a documentary report of a supposedly
international committee of the Royal Society, which investigated the charges of
I. BERNARD COHEN 535
“Upon which account they violate that accuracy of language, which ought to be held
sacred, who interpret those words of the measured quantities.”
31. Indeed, the evidence is quite strong that—at least in large measure, if not
entirely—Florian Cajori did not make his revision of Motte’s translation by a con¬
tinuous confrontation of Newton’s original Latin text and the Motte translation. I
have assembled a number of examples that show that even where Motte used the
second rather than the third edition, Cajori made no alteration; at other times, Cajori
altered Motte’s version (which happened to be based on the second edition) without
taking account of the fact that Newton himself had made an even better change in
the third edition. (Incidentally, we do not know why certain portions of Motte’s trans¬
lation are based on the second rather than the third edition; perhaps he had begun
to make this translation prior to 1726, when the third edition of the Principia was
published.) For these examples, and other material concerning the Cajori and Motte
versions of Newton’s Principia, see I. B. Cohen: “Pemberton’s Translation of New¬
ton’s Principia, with Notes on Motte’s Translation,” Isis, 1963, 54: 319-351, esp. pp.
341 sqq., 348 sqq. It should be added that we do not know how much of the final
revision of Cajori’s version, which was published posthumously, was done by the
editors rather than by Cajori himself.
32. An example of such an attempt to make Newton read more like a modern
book than the original may warrant is found in the treatment of the First Law of
Motion. Whereas Motte has Newton say: “Every body perseveres in its state of rest,
or of uniform motion . . . ,” Cajori’s revision reads, “Every body continues in its
state of rest, or of uniform motion. . . .” The word “persevere” may sound a little
too “active” for modern ears, but it is closer to Newton’s '"persever are" than the
more “passive” word “continues.”
33. Quoted from Motte’s translation, corresponding to the Motte-Cajori version,
p. 417.
34. Quoted from the first edition, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(London: printed by Joseph Streater for Sam. Smith & other booksellers, 1687),
p. 415. A facsimile reprint of the first edition is available from William Dawson &
Sons, London.
The first part of this Corollary 5 is much longer in the first edition. The changes
are displayed in the critical edition of the Principia, in press (see note 3 supra).
35. I refer only to the actual text of the Principia, that is, to Newton’s text. In
the second edition, there is a considerable discussion of God at the end of Cotes’s
preface (Motte-Cajori version, pp. xxxi sqq.), which is also reprinted in the third
edition.
36. Newton’s interleaved copy of the first edition of the Principia is in the Ports¬
mouth Collection in the University Library, Cambridge. Newton also kept an an¬
notated copy of the first edition, which is at present among Newton’s books in the
Trinity College library, Cambridge. There are in these two libraries, also, similar
interleaved and annotated copies of the second edition. In the edition of the Principia
with variant readings, now in press (see note 3 supra), all of the annotations from
these four copies are included among the “variae lectionesas are also the variants in
the final manuscript used by the printer for the first edition.
37. This review appeared in the Acta Eruditorum for June 1688, pp. 305-315.
38. It is just such a discussion that one finds in the “Leibniz-Clarke corre¬
spondence,” in which Samuel Clarke was the spokesman for Newton. For the degree
of Newton’s participation in Samuel Clarke’s letters to Leibniz, see the article by A
Koyre and I. B. Cohen cited in note 22 supra.
39. Quoted from Newton’s letter to Bentley, 10 December 1692, Isaac Newton’s
Papers . (cited in note 5 supra), p. 280; also available in the Royal Society’s
edition of the Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol. 3, 1688-1694 (Cambridge-
published for the Royal Society at the University Press, 1961).
40\,Th®firsf edition of the Principia ends abruptly with a discussion of comets at
the end of Book III. Newton had evidently planned a “Conclusio” which he wrote out
in two drafts but never completed for publication. This has been published together
with some unused portions of the Preface, by Professors A. R. Hall and Marie
Boas Hall in their volume of Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton (cited
m note 9 supra), pt. IV, § 37. In neither this part of the Preface, nor the draft of
the Conclusion, nor in the Preface actually printed by Newton does he refer to
theological questions or mention God by name.
vt ? xr *n^eres^P§ t0 observe that, toward the end of the discussion of Proposition
u j ^ew^°/1 discussed some beneficial aspects of comets, even stating the likeli¬
hood that the tails might turn into vapor which, “rarefy’d and dilated, may be
I. BERNARD COHEN 537
at last dissipated, and scatter’d through the whole heavens, and by little and little be
attracted towards the Planets by its gravity, and mixed with their atmosphere. For
as the seas are absolutely necessary to the constitution of our Earth, that from them,
the Sun, by its heat, may exhale a sufficient quantity of vapours, which being
gather’d together into clouds, may drop down in rain, for watering of the earth, and
for the production and nourishment of vegetables; or being condens’d with cold on
the tops of mountains, (as some philosophers with reason judge) may run down in
springs and rivers; so for the conservation of the seas, and fluids of the Planets,
Comets seem to be requir’d, that from their exhalations and vapours condens’d, the
wastes of the Planetary fluids, spent upon vegetation and putrefaction, and con¬
verted into dry earth, may be continually supplied and made up. For all vegetables
entirely derive their growths from fluids, and afterwards in great measure are turn’d
into dry earth by putrefaction; and a sort of slime is always found to settle at the
bottom of putrefied fluids. And hence it is, that the bulk of the solid earth is con¬
tinually increased, and the fluids, if they are not supplied from without, must be in a
continual decrease, and quite fail at last. I suspect moreover, that ’tis chiefly from
the Comets that spirit comes, which is indeed the smallest, but the most subtle and
useful part of our air, and so much required to sustain the life of all things with us.”
Quoted from Motte’s translation (see note 9 above), corresponding to the Motte-
Cajori version, pp. 529-530. This passage is essentially the same in all three editions.
41. U.L.C., MS Add. 3965, fol. 152v. The Latin original reads:
“Vapores autem qui ex sole stellis fixis et caudis Cometarum oriuntur, in Planetis
condensari videntur & converti primo in aquam & humores deinde in limum & lutum
& sales & arenam et substantias animalium vegetabilium et mineralium. Sic perpetua
fit rerum omnium vicissitudo & solus omnium Dominus manet immutabilis qui
consilio suo et voluntate omnia ordine optimo (per Ministros) disponit, removendo
Stellas fixas ad commodas distantias ne cadant in se invicem, locando Planetas in
orbibus concentricis in eodem piano cum modbus conspiranti(bus) & cometas in
orbibus excentricis & planis varijs cum modbus contrarijs, & tribuendo unicuique
justam motus determinationem et velocitatem qua Orbes designatos describere possint,
& rerum omnium species in seminibus primis formando sub initio. Quibus legibus et
qua radone systema rerum olim a Deo positum conservatur & perseverat philosophicum
est exponere: at quomodo sapiendssimus hie rerum ordo a consilio et voluntate con-
ditoris oriri potuit, Philosophia naturalis non docet [from non pertinet ad Philo-
sophiam naturalem exponere].”
The canceled passage reads:
“at quomodo sapiendssimus hie rerum ordo a materia sola et motu aut a rerum
Natura necessario agente aeterna infinita sapientissima potendssima & summe per-
fecta aut a caeco quocunque fato sine causis finalibus atque adeo sine rerum omnium
Domino Deo oriri potuisset exponere a Philosophia alienissimum est.”
The phrase “per Ministros” could refer to agents, servants, attendants, mediators,
and so on. By “conspiring” motions Newton means here (as in Law II in the Prin-
cipia) motions in the same sense or direction. The translation of vicissitudo is given
as “interchange,” rather than “conversion” or “transmutation,” since Newton used
conversio and transmutado for the latter.
42. The topic of Newton’s theological or religious views in relation to his concept
of the “System of the World” is vast, and in this sense the word “complete” as I have
used it may be misleading. But I have given in this article a “complete” account of
the subject as it appears in the actual texts of the several printed editions of the
Principia.
43. The question of the different editions and translations is a very complex one,
and I shall not discuss it here. It is discussed in a separate publication dealing with
the relation of the various manuscript copies to one another and to the printed
editions.
44. Quoted from Cajori’s revised version, p. 566. We do not know who translated
this work.
All but three of the Definitions at the beginning of the Principia con¬
tain the phrase “est mensura ejusdem” or “est ipsius mensura”—trans-
538 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
lated by Motte, and repeated by Cajori, as “is the measure of the same.”
Thus:
I believe one will look in vain in the literature concerning the Principia
for an explanation of this odd phrase.
With regard to centripetal force, the presentation I have given of the
Scholium to the Definitions helps us at once to see Newton’s intention. The
clue is given by the general distinction we have seen Newton make in this
Scholium between “the quantities themselves” and “sensible measures of
them.” With respect to “the quantity” of centripetal force, Newton proposes
to us a set of three different “sensible measures.” We must not—to quote
and paraphrase Newton again—confuse such a “real quantity itself” as
centripetal force and its “vulgar measures.” Each of the three “sensible”
measures of centripetal force has its own purpose. That “sensible measure”
which is (Def. VIII) “proportional to the motion [i.e., momentum] which it
generates in a given time” is the one familiar today, in the common form
of the Second Law of Motion (F = k • mA or F = k- m AV/At = km •
AV/At). In the Principia, however, Newton most frequently uses that
“sensible measure” of centripetal force which is (Def. VII) “proportional
to the velocity which it generates in a given time,” i.e., the “accelerative”
measure, or “accelerative force” (f = k ’AV/At); thus he determines the
acceleration itself / (to use our present terminology), without introducing
the mass or “quantity of matter.” An example he gives (and which is dis¬
cussed following) is “accelerative gravity,” or the “measure” of “gravity”
(which is a “centripetal force”) “proportional to the velocity which it
generates [in all bodies] in a given time,” or “g.”
In the case of “quantity of matter,” Newton says explicitly: “It is this
quantity that I mean hereafter everywhere under the name of body or mass.”
This quantity is known to us, furthermore, “by the weight of each body,
for it is proportional to the weight, as I have found by experiments on
pendulums, very accurately made, which shall be shown hereafter.” Thus
ends the amplification of Definition I. Newton here presents “mass”
(“massa”) or “quantity of matter” (“quantitas materiae”) as a “sensible
measure” of matter that “arises from its density and bulk conjunctly.” He
thus neatly and deftly avoids any discussion of what matter itself may be
in an absolute sense, or of what its “essential” measure might possibly be.
I. BERNARD COHEN 539
“weight” toward any given planet, since “all bodies gravitate towards
every Planet; and ... the weights of bodies towards any [the same] Planet,
at equal distances from the centre of the Planet, are proportional to the
quantities of matter they contain.” Because there are two measures of
matter—mass and weight, or, resistance to acceleration (or change of
state) and power to call forth a weight-force—Newton quite naturally had
to find the relation between them. In fact, at any one and the same place
(as Newton shows in Prop. VI, Book III, and states in the discussion of
Def. I), the “quantity of matter” is always proportional to the gravitational
“weight.”
The meaning of Galileo’s experiments thus becomes merely the equiv¬
alence of the two concepts of matter, or the constant proportionality of the
measures of matter: mass and weight.8 And at once it follows that any
change in the acceleration of free fall (or in “accelerative gravity”) must
produce a corresponding change in weight in all bodies (or all masses),
whether that change arises from a move from one part of the Earth to
another,9 or from one part of space to another.10
In Book II of the Principia, Newton proves (Cor. 1 to Prop. XXIV) that
if two pendulums have their “centres of oscillation . . . equally distant from
the centre of suspension,” it must follow from the equality of periods in
any pendulums that “the quantities of matter in each of the [pendulous]
bodies are as the weights.” On this basis, he could report (Prop. VI, Book
III) that quantities of matter (mass) and weight were found to be propor¬
tional in the following substances: gold, silver, lead, glass, sand, common
salt, wood, water, and wheat.11 He concluded, by induction, that this result
may be applied to all varieties of matter, and that this result would have
been the same no matter where the tests had been made. These experi¬
ments, Newton pointed out explicitly, were only intended to prove what
had been, “for a long time, observed by others,” namely, the descent in
free fall of “all sorts of heavy bodies” from equal heights “in equal times.”
As Newton puts the matter, “. . . and that equality of times we may dis¬
tinguish to a great accuracy, by the help of pendulums.”
It is often said that what Newton proved by his pendulum experiments
is that mass is proportional to weight. Such a statement is grossly mislead¬
ing. Newton only devised a more accurate form of experiment to show how
exact Galileo’s result was, that all bodies fall freely with the same accelera¬
tion at any one place. His interpretation was not to hold that “mass” is a
universal entity or property of matter; rather, he showed that one par¬
ticular concept of quantity of matter” he chose as a “sensible measure”
(proportional to the resistance to being accelerated) also is proportional to
another measure or quantity of matter” which determines the gravitational
attraction or weight towards any planet.”12 Without such concepts of
sensible measure, it would not have been possible to have a related law
of universal gravitation (or, law of gravity) and Second Law of Motion,
I. BERNARD COHEN 541
and thus to explain both the constancy of the acceleration of free fall for
all bodies at one place and the variation of this acceleration from place
to place.13
NOTES
1. Defs. I-II assert that the “measure” in question “arises from” the “density
and bulk conjunctly” (Def. I) or the “velocity and quantity of matter conjunctly”
(Def. II). But Defs. VII-VIII present the “measure” as “proportional to” either
“the velocity” (Def. VII) or “the [quantity of] motion” (Def. VIII) which is gen-
erated “in a given time.” Def. VI is somewhat different in style, for here the “meas¬
ure” is “proportional to the efficacy of the cause that propagates it from the centre,
through the spaces round about.”
2. Many authors have criticized Newton for introducing “circular” definitions;
for, if mass be measured by volume and density, is not density merely mass per
unit volume? The answer is: not necessarily. In Newton’s day “density” and “specific
gravity” were used interchangeably, and the specific gravity of many objects (or of
samples of objects) could be determined directly by simple experimental devices
such as for weighing the object in air and in water.
An example of the usage of “specific gravity” in Newton’s day occurs in Thomas
Salusbury’s translation of Galileo’s Discourse . . . concerning the natation of bodies
upon, or submersion in, the water (London: printed by William Leybourn, 1663;
reprinted with intro, and notes by Stillman Drake, Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press,
1960). Lemma I reads: “The absolute Gravities of Solids, have a proportion com¬
pounded of the proportions of their specificall Gravities and of their Masses.”
Here (see p. xxv), the word “mass” is Salusbury’s translation of Galileo’s “mole”
and means volume or bulk.
In Newton’s Opticks, Book Two, Part III, Prop. X, he writes of “the Densities
of Bodies estimated by their Specifick Gravities.” In the accompanying table of
refraction in various substances, Newton describes the third column as: “The
Density and specifick gravity of the Body.”
3. Momentum, “quantitas motus,” is therefore based on mass (“quantitas
materiae”) rather than weight, or bulk (“moles”). And inertia (the ability to
resist any change in “state”—whether of motion or of rest) is also proportional to
“body” (“corpus”), which is another “name” for “quantity of matter” or “mass,”
according to Def. III.
4. Newton attributed this effect to two causes. One arises from the shape of
the Earth, an oblate spheroid, while the other is a pure effect of latitude in relation
to distance from the axis of rotation.
5. The Scholium following the Definitions is devoted to an exposition of the
grounds for basing physics on “sensible measures” of time, space, and motion
rather than on their “absolute” aspects, which are not detectable (save for rotation).
6. I mean here, of course, “invariant” in Newtonian terms, not Einsteinian.
7. Of all Newton’s contemporaries and predecessors, only Huygens possibly had
any real insight into the concept of mass.
8. One is tempted to state, however anachronistically, that Newton proved by
experiment the “equivalence” of “gravitational mass” and “inertial mass.” I believe
there can be no doubt that Newton was aware that the “quantity of matter” as a
“measure” of matter that determines (or “is proportional to”) its resistance to
being accelerated is not by definition alone equivalent to that “measure” of matter
that determines its “weight” or the force acting on it in a given gravitational field;
he obviously had the insight that this equivalence is shown by Galileo’s experi¬
ments, or by his own pendulum experiments.
9. In other words, Newton—to use our modern terminology—appreciated both
the constancy of the acceleration of free fall (same value for all bodies at any
one place in the universe: Galileo’s result), and its variation (unknown to Galileo,
and revealed by Halley’s and Richer’s expeditions).
10. It is most important to recognize that Newton dealt with the variation in
weight (and in the ever-proportional “accelerative gravity” or acceleration of free
fall) occurring as one would move out in space from the Earth’s surface. See the
discussion of Def. VIII. To use (anachronistically) our modem algebraic equations,
he saw that W a g or that W = k • mg, and that “g” varies from place to place.
542 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
11. “And therefore the quantity of matter in the gold (by cor. 1. and 6. prop.
24. book 2.) was to the quantity of matter in the wood, as the action of the motive
force (or vis motrix) upon all the gold, to the action of the same upon all the wood;
that is, as the weight of the one to the weight of the other. And the like happened
in the other bodies. By these experiments, in bodies of the same weight, I could
manifestly have discovered a difference of matter less than the thousandth part
of the whole, had any such been.” Prop. VI, Book III.
12. It is most significant that in stating Prop. VI, Book III, Newton writes of
“the Weights of bodies towards any Planet” C'pondera eorum in eundem quemvis
Planet am”), since this usage implies that the force attracting bodies toward any
planet (or toward the Sun) is the same as the terrestrial force of gravity or weight.
In a Scholium just prior to Prop. VI, Newton says: “The force which retains the
celestial bodies in their orbits, has been hitherto called centripetal force. But it
being now made plain, that it can be no other than a gravitating force, we shall
hereafter call it gravity.” Newton had already shown in Prop. IV that the force by
which the Moon “is continually drawn off from a rectilinear motion, and retained
in its orbit,” is “the force of gravity” (i.e., terrestrial gravity) so that “the Moon
gravitates towards the Earth.” Hence, in this Scholium, Newton can use the name
“gravity” in relation to “the cause of that centripetal force, which retains the Moon
in its orbit” and he can conclude that this “cause . . . will extend it self to all the
Planets by rule 1. 2. and 4.”
13. I have developed these ideas further in my article: “Newton’s Second Law
and the concept of force in the Principia,” The Texas Quarterly, vol. 10 (1967), pp.
127-159. A corrected and expanded version of this paper will appear in my Newton’s
Natural Philosophy: Inquiries into Newton’s Scientific Work and Its General Environ¬
ment (in process).
that “the main Question” in “determining the true systeme of the world” is
whether the Earth remains at rest or is in motion, that is, whether the uni¬
verse is geostatic or heliostatic.5 Of primary interest is Newton’s immediate
declaration that the Scriptures have been wrongly introduced into the
discussions of this question, since the Scriptures were not composed
“in the language of Astronomers,” but of the “common people to whom
they were written,” which is the same opinion that we have seen Newton
express at the Scholium on time and place, following the Definitions in the
Principia. Less convincing is Newton’s own interpretation of the passages he
cites: that they were intended “to tell the vulgar in their own dialect,” that
God had so firmly made fast on its foundations “the great continent of
Asia Europe & Africa,” that it could not move around on the Earth—in the
manner nowadays being studied in the light of Wegener’s continental-drift
theory. Newton concludes that the references in Scripture to “immoveable-
ness” do not, therefore, apply to the whole globe as a possibly moveable
entity, but only to “its parts one amongst another.”
In paragraph II, Newton marshalls the principles of the new physics to
show why there can be no simple experimental proof that the Earth does
or does not move—so long as the motion is “eaven” and not a series of
uneven “joggs.” Here Newton attacks the arguments of “common people”
and “mathematicians” who don’t really understand “the principles of
Mechanicks.” Originally he had referred to such writers as “mathematicians
who have skill enough only to write Collections.” But who it was that
Newton had in mind I do not know. Most likely it was Robert Hooke,6
and it was in fact with Hooke that Newton had had a most interesting and
significant exchange of letters on the effects of the Earth’s motion. The
occasion had been in 1679, when Hooke had initiated a “philosophical”
correspondence with Newton. Hooke wanted to discuss the motion of
planets, but Newton had attempted to shift the subject by introducing “a
fansy of my own about discovering the earth’s diurnal motion.”7 At issue
was the actual path of descent of an object let fall from a tower on a
moving Earth; if the object could penetrate to the Earth’s center, its path
in absolute space would be an ellipse, but with respect to the Earth it would
be a curve of a special sort which Newton drew.8 From this correspondence
Newton was led to consider the paths of bodies under various centripetal
forces and, in particular, the elliptical paths of planets in accord with
Kepler’s laws under the action of an inverse-square law of force.
In the Principia, Newton had shown that experiment would never enable
one to distinguish between the dynamically equivalent states of uniform
rectilinear motion and of rest; thus one could never know by experiment
whether the solar system as a whole were at rest on in uniform rectilinear
motion. But it is different for rotation. For instance, there are a number of
definitely observable effects of the Earth’s rotation, among them the
variation in the period of a pendulum from one latitude to another, the
544 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
shape (prolate spheroid) of the Earth, and the precession that depends on
the rotation of the Earth in relation to the inclination of the axis and to
the Earth’s shape. Clearly, then, the declaration at the end of paragraph II
cannot refer to the Earth’s rotation. When Newton says that terrestrial
experiment alone can never determine whether the Earth is at rest or in
motion, he must have had in mind the orbital or annual motion and not the
daily rotation. Since the uniform translation of the solar system as a whole
was never a major theological or philosophic issue, Newton must have been
referring to the orbital motion of the Earth. No doubt he had in mind the
revolution of the Earth in its orbit; the observed effects are grossly the same
for a fixed terrestrial observer on an Earth at rest and for that same fixed
observer on an Earth either in linear uniform motion or in its annual orbital
motion.9
The following manuscript, here printed for the first time, ends in the
middle of a sentence. A portion of each page has been destroyed and the
editorial restoration of missing words or parts of words is presented within
angle or “claw-hammer” brackets. I have used “corners” L J to indicate
insertions made by Newton in his own text, and I have indicated deletions
and other changes within square brackets (my editorial comment, as “del.”
for deleted, being in italics). The only change I have made is to substitute
curved braces { } for Newton’s own square brackets, which he tended to
use in at least three ways: (1) as we would use parentheses or brackets,
say within quotations, (2) to show quotations, and (3) to mark off passages
for deletion.
i
Scripture abused
In determining the true systeme of the world the main
to prove the im- Question is whether the earth do rest or be moved. For
moveableness of
the [earth del.] deciding this some bring texts of scripture, but in my
globe of yc [Eart
del.] Earth. opinion misinterpreted, the Scriptures speaking not in the
language of Astronomers (as they think) but in that of ye
common people to whom they were written. So where tis
“ Psal 93.2 & 96.10.
said thata God hath made ye round world so fast that it
cannot be moved, the Prophet intended not to teach
[*> Psalm 98.8. del.] Mathematicians the spherical figure [of the whole del.] &
immoveableness of the whole earth & sea in the heavens
but to tell the vulgar in their own dialect that God had
made the great continent of Asia Europe & Africa so fast
upon its foundations in the great Ocean that it cannot be
moved therein after the manner of a flo|_ajting Island. For
this Continent was the whole habitable world anciently
I. BERNARD COHEN 545
.8.
Job. 38.18. Psal. I& this earth & sea they accounted flat as if ye sun moon
50.1.
& stars ascended out of ye ocean at their rising & went
down into it again at their settingj This Continent is the
cJob. 28. 24 &
37.3. Psal. 46.9. & world or earth usually mentioned in scripture & there
72.8.
f Psal 74.17 described to bed broad & to havee ends orf borders,
[-’ Prov. 8.27 del.] [& del.] [that is [gdel.] circular onesj whose center some
placed in Egypt others at Delphos, others at Jerusalem.
And this world the Prophets consider as established in
the Ocean upon sure & immoveable foundations at ye
first creation. The heavens were of old & the earth
standing out of ye water & in the water {that is in the
midst of the Ocean like an Island} by the word of God.
2 Pet. 3.5. Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the
foundations of the earth & the heavens are the work of
thine hands Psal 102.25. Prov. 8.29. Where wast thou
when I laid the foundations of the earth. Declare if thou
hast understanding who hath laid the measures thereof or
who hath stretched <Cthe> line over it. Whereupon [from or
whereupon] are the foundations thereof <fix’d> or who
hath laid the corner stone thereof, when the starrs <of they
morning praised me together, &c. Job 38.4. [[When he set a
circle upon the face of the deep {that is formed it circular
about the earth}—when he appointed the foundations of the
earth, then was / by him. Prov. 8. 27, 29j del.] The earth
is the Lord’s & all that therein is the compos of the world
& they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the
seas & established it upon the floods Psal 24. 1, 2 & 136.6.
IThou hast laid the foundation of the round world Psal.
89.12. When he set a circle upon the face of the deep
{that is, formed it circular about the earth}—when he
gave to the sea his decree that ye waters’ should not pass
his commandm*, when he appointed the foundations
of the earth, then was I by him. Prov. 8.27, 29j He
laid the foundations of the earth that it never should
move at any time: Thou encompassedst it wth the deep like
as with a garment Psal. 104.5. So then the round world
spoken of in scriptures is such a world as hath foundations
L& is founded in the watersj & by consequence ’tis not the
whole globe of the Earth & Sea but only the habitable dry
land, ffor the whole Globe hath no foundations, but this
[habitable)world is founded in the seas. And since this
world by reason of the firmness of its foundations is said
546 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
NOTES
1. Portsmouth Collection: University Library, Cambridge, MS Add. 4005, Sec.
7, fols. 39-42. This MS is written entirely in Isaac Newton’s hand.
2. Newton not only wrote out in his own hand the drafts and final text of the
“impartial report” of the Royal Society’s committee to investigate the possible claim
of Leibniz to have been a “first” (or independent) discoverer of the calculus (and
hence innocent of any charge of plagiarism); he also wrote a review of the report itself
(the Commercium Epistolicum), which he published in English in the Philosophical
Transactions and then printed in a Latin version as an introduction to the next
edition of the Commercium. The authorship of Newton was revealed only in the
nineteenth century; see Augustus De Morgan: “On the authorship of the account of
the Commercium Epistolicum, published in the Philosophical Transactions,” Phil¬
osophical Magazine, vol. 3 (1852), pp. 440-444. Newton’s article was entitled: “An
account of the book entitled Commercium epistolicum Collinii & aliorum, De analysi
promota, published by order of the Royal Society, in relation to the dispute between
Mr. Leibnitz and Dr. Keill, about the right of invention of the new geometry of
fluxions, otherwise call’d the differential method,” Phil. Trans., vol. 29 (1715), pp.
173-224. The MS drafts of the Commercium and the review, both in Newton’s
hand, may be found in U.C.L. MS Add. 3968.
3. “Principles of Philosophy” recalls to mind at once the title of Descartes’
treatise (Principia philosophiae), which Newton’s superseded. On these titles, see
my article: “Newton in the light of recent scholarship,” Isis, vol. 51 (1960), pp.
489-514.
4. Newton’s correspondence with Bentley may be found in vol. Ill of the Royal
Society’s edition of the Correspondence of Isaac Newton. The first printing of these
letters is reproduced in facsimile, with a facsimile of Bentley’s sermons on the
“frame of the world,” together with a commentary by Perry Miller, in I. B. Cohen
& R. E. Schofield (eds.): Isaac Newton’s papers & letters on natural philosophy
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958).
5. Newton is concerned only with the question of the rest or motion of the Earth,
not with the identification of the center of the “universe” or of the “world.”
6. Robert Hooke had, in fact, edited a set of “Collections” for the Royal Society
and was the author of a work entitled An attempt to prove the motion of the Earth
from observations (London: printed by T.R. for John Martyn, 1674). But Hooke—
at least in this work—sought for evidence in the possible annual parallax of the
fixed stars and not in the results of terrestrial experiments.
7. Newton’s letters to Hooke, and Hooke’s replies, may be found in the Royal
Society’s edition of The correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol. 2 (Cambridge: at the
548 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
University Press, 1960), esp. p. 301; see also Newton’s comment on this episode
in a letter to Halley of 20 June 1686, ibid., p. 438. For the significance of this
episode, see D. T. Whiteside: “Newton’s early thoughts on planetary motion: a fresh
look,” British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 2 (1964), pp. 117-137, esp. pp.
131 sqq.
8. For the actual curve, see J. A. Lohne: “The increasing corruption of Newton’s
diagrams,” History of Science (Cambridge), vol. 6 (1967: actually fall 1968), pp.
69-89, esp. § 3.
9. That is, for gross observations, such as the dropping of weights from towers
as seen by naked-eye observers, there are no visible effects of the Earth’s revolution
in its annual orbit because this “eaven” motion—for so short a time—is not per¬
ceptibly different from a uniform linear motion.
THE LAW OF INERTIA: Some Remarks on Its
Structure and Significance
Arnold Koslow
It is surprising that many of the discussions of the role and status of the
law of inertia conclude with remarks which hold for theoretical statements
in general. Thus, one writer1 has noted, correctly I think, that if the law
of inertia is an empirical proposition, then it is not an empirical generaliza¬
tion. “All simians are hairy,” is an empirical generalization; it is possible,
given our beliefs about the world, to support this proposition directly
with many and varied instances of hirsute simians. But Newton’s first law
of motion cannot rest upon this kind of direct instantial support because
such instances do not exist. Newton’s law states that if no forces are
present, acting upon a body, then the body preserves its velocity. Thus, if
the body is at rest, it remains at rest, and if it is in motion with a certain
velocity, then it continues to move with the same speed in a straight line.
Given our belief that every body attracts every other body with a force
that is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them,
it seems to follow that any instance of bodies actually in motion cannot
be one in which no forces act. If Newton’s first law of motion is not an
inductive generalization, then it is on a par with typically theoretical state¬
ments of the physical sciences. Such a conclusion, though true, fails to
bring out the importance and the centrality which the law of inertia has
for theories of motion. Other writers have urged, for various reasons,2
that the law of inertia is not an empirical proposition simpliciter. Hanson,
for example, seems to suggest that there is no one law of inertia but a
“family of schemata.” Certain of its terms are “semantically linked” to
the others so that the meaning of its terms can be unpacked from the
remainder. According to Hanson, a physicist, by deciding what status to
give to the law of inertia, sets forth the logical structure of mechanics by
indicating which terms are primitive and which are derivative. Thus
Hanson maintains that “in some contexts the law may express a priori
relationships within mechanical theory, e.g., the semantical connections
between “uniform,” “rectilinear,” “ad infinitum,” “acceleration,” etc.
On other occasions, the law may reflect, a posteriori, a range of facts that
support mechanics as a set of empirical descriptions and pragmatically
549
550 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
II
The law of inertia is either a part of a physical theory about the motion
of bodies, or it is supplementary to it. In the latter case, the law is not
deducible from the theory. For example, Descartes’ law of inertia seems
to be a supplement to his theory of motion. The latter consisted of a
series of laws stating which kinds of motion would follow certain kinds
of collision or impact between bodies. Descartes supplemented his theory
of motion with the law of inertia: If a body is at rest, it remains at rest;
if it is in motion, then it continues to move with a constant speed in a
straight line, unless it collides with other bodies.5 This law is significantly
different from Newton’s first law of motion because of its explicit stress
upon impact as the sole source of change from an inertial motion. Never¬
theless, granted that a body is either in collision or not, the law of inertia
proposed by Descartes serves as a natural complement to his theory of
motion, although it is not a deductive consequence of that theory.
In contrast, Newton’s law of inertia is of course an integral part of his
theory of motion since it is one of his three laws of motion. Consequently,
his law of inertia is deducible from his theory of motion.
Still, it is true that his law of inertia complements his second law of
motion which states that the total force acting upon a body is equal to
the product of the body’s mass and its acceleration. Occasionally some
writers have made the further point that Newton’s first law is a deductive
consequence of the second law of motion. This remark seems initially
plausible, and then, after a moment’s reflection, seems initially unplausible.
In the Principia6 the three laws of motion are stated, each followed by
ARNOLD KOSLOW 551
a small expository section, and all included in the space of two medium¬
sized pages. The remainder of that section, called “Axioms or Laws of
Motion,” contains a deduction of eight corollaries and a large concluding
Scholium. No one needs to be reminded of the deductive rigor and
organization of the Principia. It therefore borders on the incredible that
Newton neglected to point out the deductive connection between his first
and second laws of motion, especially since the supposed deduction is so
simple. One deduction proceeds as follows: The total force acting upon a
body is the product of its mass and acceleration. If the total force is zero,
then the acceleration is zero, because the mass of a body is positive. There¬
fore the velocity of the body is constant. What are we to say about this
simple proof and the consequent redundancy of the Principia?
It is poor policy to suggest that Newton was a mathematical dunce.
A more credible alternative is that Newton understood his first and second
laws in a slightly different way than we do at present, so that his law of
inertia complemented his second law of motion but was not a deductive
consequence of it.
Since this point is not the major target of this paper, I would like
only to sketch one reason in support of my view. Newton believed that
forces which act upon a body are external causes whose effect is the
body’s motion. These forces arise somehow from the presence and motion
of other bodies, but the exact manner in which forces were produced was
sometimes unknown and therefore left unspecified. Forces are causes
which have true motions as their effects. On the other hand Newton also
believed that certain forces could be produced by motion with respect to
Absolute Space. For example, he thought that if a body rotated with
respect to Absolute Space, then this motion would give rise to or produce
a centrifugal force which in turn would produce certain distortions. The
entity Absolute Space was assigned a dual role: It was a frame of reference
for Newton’s theory of motion, and it also had a causal role within that
theory.7 Ernst Mach tried to find a replacement for Absolute Space which
would preserve both roles which Newton gave to it. Hertz, though, thought
that Newton had taken forces “twice over”—once as cause and once as
effect. And this revealed, he thought, the obscurity of Newtonian force
and motivated, in part, Hertz’s own efforts to reformulate the science of
mechanics.
Newton’s second law, I suggest, does not state without qualification that
the total force on a body equals mass times acceleration. This law has
sense only if there are forces or external causes acting upon a body. That
is, the second law should read as follows: If there are forces acting upon
a body, then the total of all these forces equals the product of the body’s
mass and acceleration. Under certain conditions, then, a quantitative
relation holds between a cause or number of causes and their effect.
552 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
What happens when there are no external causes acting upon a body?
Newton’s first law is supposed to cover this situation. It states that if there
are no forces acting upon a body, then it has zero acceleration. Once the
first and second laws are described this way, it becomes clear that the first
law complements the second but is not a deductive consequence of it. A
statement of what happens when causes are present does not entail a
statement describing what happens when those causes are absent.
Ill
IY
seems to have believed that bodies move naturally if they move on cir¬
cular paths around the center of the earth with constant speed. The
Aristotelian and Keplerian inertialike statements also have the form of
conditionals which specify certain normal conditions and those natural
motions which take place under them. Clearly many conditions have
been offered as normal, and an equal variety of conditions have been
considered the natural motion of bodies. We may well ask whether any
type of motion is excluded as unnatural or any type of circumstance is
nonnormal. Despite the variety, I think that there are some broad con¬
ditions which have to be satisfied. For example, it seems to be true that if a
type of motion is natural, then all other motions are composed of motions
of that kind or resolvable into them. Uniform circular motion and uniform
rectilinear motion both meet this demand, which shows that the resolvabil¬
ity condition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for natural
motion.8
There is another condition which all natural types of motion satisfy:
They are—for want of a better term—explanatorily homogeneous or
uniform. If “M” denotes a type of natural motion referred to in a law of
inertia, then that law of inertia will be related to a theory of motion T, in
a special way, which we will discuss below. “M” is explanatorily uniform
if and only if it is not the disjunction of two conditions, “M*” and “M**,”
such that the theory T can explain why a natural motion is of the kind M*
rather than M**. All natural motions are therefore on a par with respect
to the theory’s explanatory resources. The familiar argument that classical
mechanics cannot distinguish between rest and uniform motion is an
argument for the homogeneity of the natural motion employed by Descartes
and Newton.
Parallel remarks also hold true for the condition of normalcy. It seems
necessary to any condition of normalcy that it describe a body in a situa¬
tion when it is uninfluenced by the action of forces. The Cartesian and
Newtonian conditions of normalcy obviously describe bodies when they
are free from such influences, and the Galilean condition also seems to
be a condition of this kind. For Galileo believed that changes in the
distance between a body and the center of gravitation were the cause of
the body’s change in velocity. It followed that if bodies were uninfluenced,
that is, if they kept a fixed distance from the center of gravitation, then
there would be no change in velocity. It was by an argument like this
one that Galileo concluded that the natural motion for bodies is a con¬
centric circle around the earth, assuming that the center of the earth and
the center of gravitation coincide.9 One condition seems necessary to all
conditions of normality: They must describe as normal the special case
of a body completely by itself. This restriction accords well with the
belief of all these writers that the forces and influences upon bodies arise
in some way from the presence and motion of other bodies. In the absence
554 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
of other bodies, such forces should also disappear. The requirement that
normal conditions always include the case of the isolated body is clearly
not sufficient to determine one and only one normal condition.
Questions of truth and even specific content aside, every one of these
laws of inertia specifies that whenever a body is in normal circumstances
it will execute a natural motion. They have a conditional form, “N D M,”
where “N” and “M” are predicates which specify conditions of normalcy
and natural motion respectively, and “N D M” states that for any entity
x, if x is in a normal circumstance (N), then x executes a natural motion
(M).
The story thus far is not the entire story about inertialike statements.
They have played a central role in the explanations offered by theories of
motion, and that role has so far not been described. Also, nothing we
have said thus far explains why inertialike statements have always received
a great amount of attention—more so than the other laws of motion, more
attention surely than the various laws of collision and the principle of
the equality of action and reaction. The great interest generally shown
in the laws of inertia over other laws of motion is, I think, no mere
accident.
VI
I would like to suggest two ways in which the law of inertia has a
special importance for theories of motion. First, there is a sense in which
a theory of motion can have one and only one law which is inertial, given
it. Second, the explanatory power of one theory of motion with respect to
another is reflected in the scope of their respective laws of inertia.
The first point can be made clear by a number of theorems, the first
of which tells us something about the uniqueness of the consequent
condition of a law of inertia. The second theorem tells us something
similar about the antecedent condition.
Theorem 1. If “N D M” and “N D M*” are two true inertialike state¬
ments, and both are inertial, given T, then “M” and “M*” must be co-
extensional, assuming T. That is, the predicates “M” and “M*” apply and
fail to apply to exactly the same entities.
The proof is direct. Let /3 be a body. Suppose that “M” holds true of f3.
Since “N D M” is inertial, given T, it follows that “M D N” is deducible
from T. Therefore, given T, (3 has N since it has M. But the conditional
“N D M*” is true, so that f3 has M*. The converse is also true. Suppose (3
has M*. Since “N D M*” is inertial, given T, the conditional “M* D N”
follows from T. Therefore, assuming T, f3 has N. But “N D M” is true, so
j3 also has M. Consequently “M” and “M*” are coextensive.
Theorem 2. If “N D M” and “N* D M” are two true inertialike state¬
ments, both inertial, given a theory T, then, assuming T, “N” and “N*”
must be coextensive. The proof is similar to the one used for Theorem 1.
Both theorems can be obtained from a third:
Theorem 3. If “N D M” is a true inertialike statement, which is inertial,
given T, then assuming T, “N” is a maximal predicate with respect to the
predicate “M”. That is, if “N* D M” is another true inertialike statement,
which is inertial given T, then every N* is an N. It is also true that the pred¬
icate “M” is maximal with respect to the predicate “N”. The proof is similar
to those already used in the previous theorems. One fact ought to be
noticed. Despite these theorems, it still seems possible that there can be
more than one law of inertia, even with respect to the same theory T. Thus,
it might still be true that there are two true inertialike statements, “N D M”
and “N* D M*,” both of which are inertial, given the theory T.
This possibility seems a strange one, and it seems to be counter to our
understanding of the role which laws of inertia play with respect to their
theories of motion. I do not know of any case in the history of science where
two proponents of the same theory of motion defended different laws of
inertia. Further, a theory of motion complements a law of inertia by ex¬
plaining those cases not covered by the law of inertia. It therefore seems
ARNOLD KOSLOW 557
malcy. They are the cases in which a body is isolated from all others or is the
only body present. If we assume further that the condition “N-and-N*” is
not only nonempty but normal, then we shall say that the conjunctive condi¬
tion is satisfied. It is easy to see that the following theorem is true.
Theorem 6 . If “N D M” and “N* D M*” are two true inertialike state¬
ments, both inertial, given T, and the conjunctive condition is satisfied, then
there is only one law of inertia, given T.
We mentioned above that in order for a statement to be a law of inertia,
it had to stand in a certain relation to a theory of motion; that is, it had to
be inertial, given that theory. We know that whenever a theory of motion
has a law of inertia, then it has exactly one. We understand that under
certain plausible conditions, the law of inertia of a given theory is unique,
so that we may talk of the theory’s law of inertia. But we do not know how
these uniquely associated laws of inertia are related to each other. For
example, if two theories are logically inequivalent, are their laws of inertia
logically inequivalent? The following remarks are not original with myself,
but they underscore the point that what is methodologically interesting and
distinctive about the law of inertia is connected with the fact that it is related
in a special way to a dynamical theory.
Suppose that there are two theories T and T* such that T* is a sub-theory
of T. This means that every logical consequence of T* is also a logical con¬
sequence of T. On the assumption that each theory has its associated law of
inertia, how are those laws related? It is easy to show that the same law of
inertia must be associated both with the theory T and its sub-theory T*. Let
us denote by “N* D M*” the law of inertia of T*. It is true and inertialike.
Further, “N* D M*” is inertial, given T. To see why this is so, suppose that
there is a deviation from an M*-type motion. The deviant motion can be
explained by the theory T* together with the information that there has been
a deviation from the N*-state. Certainly the same explanation is available,
using the theory T, since T* is a sub-theory of T. Consequently “N* D M*”
is a true inertialike statement which is inertial, given T. But this is also true
of “N D M.” By Theorem 5, they are the same law of inertia, up to an inter¬
change of coextensive predicates.
This argument seems to show that changes which increase the deductive
power of a theory do not bring with them any change in the law of inertia.
Another more important relation between theories of motion and their
laws of inertia concerns the explanatory power of theories. Roughly speak¬
ing, the greater the explanatory power of a theory of motion, the more nar¬
row will be the scope of its law of inertia.
There are many difficulties connected with an adequate description of the
relations “T has greater explanatory power than T*” or “T has the same
explanatory power as T*.” We shall say that one theory has greater
explanatory power than another if and only if the former theory’s ex¬
planatory consequences—those events or regularities which it explains—
560 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
why a has F rather than not. The reason is that the characteristic F serves to
divide the class of natural motions which are M into two kinds: those which
are both M and F and those which are M but not F. If T could explain why
a has F rather than not, “M” would be explanatorily inhomogeneous and
therefore fail to be natural. Consequently T* can explain features of as
motion which T cannot. Therefore T cannot have greater explanatory power
than T*. This argument also shows that T cannot have the same explanatory
power as T*. Therefore, assuming comparability of T and T*, it follows
that T* has greater explanatory power than T. But this contradicts our initial
assumption that T has greater explanatory power than T*. Therefore it is
false that there is an a which has M but does not have M*, or, every M is M*.
This concludes the proof for the second case. A similar argument proves the
third case, when T* has greater explanatory power than T. For the first of
our three cases, when the two theories have the same power, we can assume
that there is an entity a which has M but fails to have M*, and there is an
entity f3 which has M* but fails to have M. We can deduce contradictions
in either of these cases by arguments similar to those already given. There¬
fore “M” and “M*” are coextensive predicates, and the proof of Theorem
7 is complete.
There is one immediate and very serious objection to this result. It seems
patently true that Galileo’s theory of motion has greater explanatory power
than any of the ancient theories. However, probably all of the pre-Galilean
theories of motion, including Kepler’s, characterized departures from rest
as unnatural and in need of explanation. Every Keplerian natural motion is
therefore a Galilean natural motion. If the seventh theorem is sound, then
Kepler’s theory of motion has greater explanatory power than Galileo’s.
Why should this be so? Assume that the two theories are comparable. If
they were of the same power, then the two classes of natural motions would
be identical, and this is not the case. Further, if Galileo’s theory had the
greater power, then the Galilean natural motions would be included among
the Keplerian ones. And this is not the case. Therefore Galileo’s is the
theory of lesser explanatory power. This too is an unacceptable, highly
counterintuitive conclusion. The absurdity we feel about this conclusion
rests on the firm conviction that Kepler’s theory of tangential jolts and plan¬
etary yearnings for the sun is false. Since there can be no explanation which
uses premises known to be false, it follows that Kepler’s theory has no ex¬
planatory consequences. This fact explains why we find the statement ab¬
surd rather than simply false. Fortunately, the fact that Kepler’s theory has
no explanatory consequences also shows that the counterintuitive conclusion
is not a corollary of the seventh theorem. The reason is that the proof of the
theorem requires that the theory T* have explanatory consequences. But
we might go one step further and argue that the supposed conclusion, if
properly understood, strengthens rather than undermines our belief in the
theorem. Suppose we abstract from the falsity of Kepler’s theory of motion
562 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
and ask what would have been the case had Kepler’s theory of motion been
successful?12 What if Kepler’s theory provided explanations of every change
in the position of a body while Galileo’s, at best, explained only changes in
velocity? Then surely the theorem would yield the correct conclusion:
Kepler’s theory would have greater explanatory power than Galileo’s.
VII
The relation between the explanatory power of theories and the scope of
their laws of inertia has consequences for a thesis recently defended by Brian
Ellis in a very illuminating study.13 According to Ellis, the law of inertia is
“conventional.” His thesis complements an earlier claim by Duhem. Duhem
argued that in the face of a disconfirming experimental outcome, any select
part of a theory could be retained, provided suitable changes could be car¬
ried out in the remaining part of the theory. And Duhem suggested that
such changes could always be carried out in a satisfactory manner. The situ¬
ation which Ellis asks us to consider is quite different. He seems to argue
that even when no contrary experimental result arises it is possible to change
any one of the laws of Newtonian mechanics, provided suitable changes are
wrought on the theoretical remainder. It is this feature of the laws of me¬
chanics which Ellis terms their “conventionality.” In the study referred to,
he tried to show, in particular, that Newton’s law of inertia is conventional.
The argument is based upon a specific replacement which Ellis offers for the
Newtonian law of inertia.
Newton’s first law states that under certain normal circumstances, bodies
execute velocity-preserving motion. Instead of this law, Ellis proposes
another which he also believes to be inertialike: Under normal conditions,
bodies execute natural motions, that is, those motions which bodies undergo
when they are solely under the influence of gravitational attraction. The
motions which he has singled out are of course not those which are described
in Newton’s first law. In addition to this new principle of natural motion,
Ellis sketched the remaining laws of his new system of dynamics and claimed
that his dynamics taken together with his law of inertia is “in every way as
adequate as Newton’s.”14 If his assertion of equal adequacy is correct, then
the law of inertia is conventional in his sense of that term.
But Ellis’ claim is certainly mistaken. There are many factors which have
to be spelled out in explaining how one theory is “in every way as adequate
as another,” but surely one of the requirements is that the two theories have
the same explanatory power. However, the two systems of mechanics,
Newton’s and Ellis’, cannot have the same explanatory power. If they did,
then by our last theorem, their conditions of natural motion would have to
be coextensive. We have already noted that this is not the case, so that Ellis’
conventionality thesis is simply wrong.
ARNOLD KOSLOW 563
VIII
at all. Granted that both tasks have been carried out so that we can speak
of the support for the law of inertia, two views dominate. The first view
claims that the law of inertia is empirical, though the evidence for it is not
of the direct instantial type. The observation, however, applies equally
well to most theoretical statements. The second view maintains that the law
of inertia is a priori, perhaps analytic, perhaps definitional. But proponents
of this view have usually given the other laws of motion the same blessing.
It is not to truth, of whatever stripe, that we look when we seek what is
methodologically distinctive about the law of inertia.
IX
Even so, one might ask whether there is something distinctive about the
law which invites, perhaps even accommodates, such diverse characteriza¬
tions of its truth. There are several features of laws of inertia which might
have encouraged some people to think of them as definitional and others to
regard them as empirical. I do not think that the two features which I shall
discuss are the only ones which could motivate such contrasting descrip¬
tions of the truth of a law. They are, however, features which are more
closely associated with laws of inertia than with any other law, and on that
account they may be more relevant.
Given a theory of motion, its law Of inertia has a privileged uniqueness.
There is no alternative to the law which is also inertial, given T. Accordingly,
given the theory, it is logically impossible for there to be a change in its law
of inertia. And this observation might motivate us to model laws of inertia
after analytic truths. For the latter are by design without alternatives. On
the other hand, a law of inertia, since it is inertial given a theory of motion,
forms a natural complement to it. The theory explains what happens in
certain situations, while the law of inertia tells us what happens in the re¬
maining cases. Theory and law are so closely related in the general enterprise
of explaining motional phenomena that it seems unlikely that they would
differ in logical status. The fact that the theory is empirically grounded sug¬
gests that the same holds true for its law of inertia. Whether a law of inertia
is analytic or synthetic may be extremely difficult to settle. But calling it
analytic to stress its uniqueness and the fact that there can be no change in
it and calling the law synthetic to stress its relation to the theory of motion
are disastrous ways of calling attention to these two distinctive features of
laws of inertia. It provides a contrast where none should be drawn. We do
not have to stress that a law of inertia is inertialike at the expense of its
being inertial, given a theory. These features, singly and together, provide
clues to the complexity of the term “inertia” in some of its major contexts;
they tell us how laws of inertia are related to each other, to theories, and
566 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
NOTES
1. N. R. Hanson, “Newton’s First Law: A Philosopher’s Door into Natural
Philosophy,” in Beyond the Edge of Certainty, R. Colodny (ed.), Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1965, pp. 6-28. .
2. Cf. H. Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, Dover Publications Inc., 1952,
Chapter VI, esp. pp. 91-98; N. R. Hanson, op. cit., and Brian Ellis, “The Origin
and Nature of Newton’s Laws of Motion,” in Beyond the Edge of Certainty, R.
Colodny (ed.), Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.
3. Hanson, op. cit., p. 20.
4. It should be noted that if this is Hanson’s thesis, then it is hard to understand
why he requires a “family of schemata,” when his argument seems to show only
that there is a single expression being used in a variety of ways.
5. R. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, Part II, XXXVII, XXXIX, and
XL, in Oeuvres de Descartes, C. Adam and P. Tannery (eds.), vol. IX, 1910, Paris:
L. Cerf.
6. Sir Isaac Newton, Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica, London:
1687; second revised edition, R. Cotes (ed.), Cambridge: 1713; third edition,
revised, H. Pemberton (ed.), London: 1726.
7. Sir Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and the
System of the World. Tr. by A. Motte (1729); revised with an historical and
explanatory appendix by F. Cajori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947).
To cite just two contexts for the causal role Newton assigned to Absolute Space,
(a) just prior to his description of the bucket experiment, he says: “The effects
[sic] which distinguish absolute from relative motion are, the forces of receding from
the axis of circular motion. For there are no such forces in a circular motion
purely relative, but in a true and absolute circular motion, they are greater or less,
according to the quantity of motion,” (p. 10).
(b) “It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover and effectually to dis¬
tinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of
that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come
under the observation of our senses. Yet the thing is not altogether desperate; for
we have some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which are
the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which are the causes
and effects (sic) of the true motions.” (p. 12). For a different view of the causal
role of Absolute Space, cf. D. Shapere, “The Causal Efficacy of Space,” Philosophy
of Science, vol. 31, no. 2, p. 113.
8. That is, it is true that if R is a type of natural motion then all motions of
bodies are resolvable into R-type motion.
9. Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Tr., with
revised notes by S. Drake. Foreword by A. Einstein, University of California Press;
1962, p. 28.
10. We have written the law as “N D M,” referring in this way to the longer
closed sentence “(x)(NxD Mx).” The claim in the text is that the converse
“(x)tMxD Nx)” is deductible from the theory T. To show this we require that
the explanation which T yields of deviant motions be expressible in a system of
postulates based upon a system of logic, such that the deduction theorem holds.
The underlying logic may have to be as complex as an applied functional calculus of
the fourth order since we require the use of analysis in the theoretical explanations.
Vide. A. Church, Introduction to Logic, Princeton University Press, 1956, p. 317,
fn. 520.
11. This significant concept of explanation and prediction of events under given
descriptions was first introduced and exploited in S. Morgenbesser’s “The Deductive
Model and its Qualifications,” in Induction: Some Current Issues, H. E. Kyburg Jr.
and E. Nagel (eds.), Wesleyan University Press, 1963, pp. 169-179.
12. Our abstraction from the falsity of Kepler’s theory means that we are no
longer considering the true explanatory power (or simply, the explanatory power)
ARNOLD KOSLOW 567
of theories, but their potential explanatory power. This distinction was introduced
by C. Hempel. Cf. Aspects of Scientific Explanation, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965, pp.
338. An analysis of the proof of Theorem 7 shows that it also holds for the relation
of greater potential explanatory power so that the argument offered in the text
is still sound.
13. Brian Ellis, “The Origin and Nature of Newton’s Laws of Motion,” in Beyond
the Edge of Certainty, R. Colodny (ed.), Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.
14. Ibid., pp. 41, 65.
15. Hanson, op. cit., pp. 12-13.
16. Poincare, op. cit., pp. 95-96.
17. Ibid., p. 97.
KANT’S PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC1
Charles Parsons
All modes of knowledge, that is, all representations related to an object with
consciousness are either intuitions or concepts. The intuition is a singular repre¬
sentation (repraesentatio singularis), the concept a general (representatio per
notas communes) or reflected representation (representatio discursiva) .3
Intuitions are thus contrasted with concepts, which relate to objects only
mediately, by way of certain properties and by way of intuitions which
instantiate them and which relate indifferently to all the objects which
possess the required properties.
What is meant by calling an intuition a singular representation seems
quite clear. It can have only one individuated object. The objects to which
a concept “relates” are evidently those which fall under it, and these can
be any which have the property which the concept represents, so that a
concept will only in exceptional cases have a single object. Thus far, the
distinction corresponds to that between singular and general terms.
One might think that the criterion of “immediate relation to objects”
for being an intuition is just an obscure formulation of the singularity
condition. But it evidently means that the object of an intuition is in some
way directly present to the mind, as in perception, and that intuition is
thus a source, ultimately the only source, of immediate knowledge of objects.
Thus the fact that mathematics is based on intuition implies that it is im¬
mediate knowledge and thus, even though synthetic a priori, does not
require the elaborate justificatory argument which the Principles do
(A 87-B 120). By the immediacy criterion Kant’s conception of intuition
resembles Descartes’, while by the singularity criterion and his insistence on
a nonintuitive conceptual factor in all knowledge, Kant’s theory of intuition
differs from that of Descartes.
That what is immediately present to the mind are individual objects
seems to be an axiom of Kant’s epistemology, or one might also say
metaphysics, since it goes with the conviction that objects, the primary
570 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
existences, are in the first instance individual objects. Thus what satisfies
the immediacy criterion of intuition will also satisfy the singularity criterion.
It does not seem that the converse must be true. The idea of a singular
representation formed from concepts seems quite natural to us. Such a
representation would relate to a single object if to any at all, but it hardly
seems immediately. By associating it with a definite description rather than
with a general term, we would distinguish it from a concept under which
exactly one object falls (even if necessarily). For Kant, however, the pas¬
sage from A 320 = B 376-7 seems to allow such a representation to be a
concept; this might also be suggested by the fact that the idea of God is
called a concept; it is nowhere suggested that it is an intuition. However,
Kant never remarks, so far as I know, on the implications of the possibility
of nonimmediate singular representations for the concept of intuition.
This omission may give support to a theory which has been advanced
by Jaakko Hintikka according to which the singularity criterion is the sole
defining criterion: An intuition is simply an individual representation.
In Kant and his immediate predecessors, the term “intuition” did not neces¬
sarily have anything to do with appeal to imagination or to direct perceptual
evidence. In the form of a paradox, we may perhaps say that the “intuitions”
Kant contemplated were not necessarily very intuitive. For Kant, an intuition
is simply anything which represents or stands for an individual object as dis¬
tinguished from general concepts.4
Many of the passages Hintikka cites also mention the immediacy criterion,
and it is not clear why Hintikka thinks it nonessential. The main reason,
which we shall consider later, is that this assumption supports a theory of
Beth and Hintikka to explain Kant’s notion of “construction of concepts
in intuition” and the resulting analysis of mathematical demonstration.
Another seems to be the absence of the immediacy criterion in the Logic
and the fact that Kant makes remarks on concepts which seem to exclude
essentially singular concepts and thus to imply that all singular representa¬
tions are intuitions.5
Hintikka also points out that the part of the Transcendental Aesthetic
where Kant argues that space is an intuition argues essentially that the
representation of space is singular. However, he has opened the Aesthetic
by stating the immediacy criterion (A 16 = B 33, cited above) and in the
proof of intuitivity he does say that space is given (B 39, also A 25).
Moreover, in arguments for the same thesis in the Inaugural Dissertation
of 1770, Kant does appeal to immediacy: Immediately after arguing that
space is a pure intuition because it is a “singular concept,” Kant says of
geometrical propositions that they “cannot be derived from any universal
notion of space but only as it were seen in space itself as if in something
concrete” (§ 15c, emphasis Kant’s). Later he says, “Geometry makes use
of principles which fall under the gaze of the mind.”
It seems to me that the textual evidence for Hintikka’s view is not
CHARLES PARSONS 571
tions. The inferences which are covered are the syllogisms and immediate
inferences of the Aristotelian theory and a few propositional inferences
such as modus ponens. Of propositional logic as an additional developed
theory, or of the additional possibilities of quantification theory, Kant had
no idea.
Kant not only had very limited technical resources at his command;
what is more striking and more damaging to his standing as a philosopher,
he was largely satisfied with logic as he found it. Technically he could
hardly in any case have gone very far beyond the state of the science in his
own time, and he was not a creative mathematician. But what would have
been needed for Kant to be dissatisfied with “traditional logic” might only
have been more insight into his own discoveries.
As is well known, Kant attributed the lack of progress in logic to the
absence of any need for it. He held that logic was established as a science
and then finished off once and for all by Aristotle. This is a false view not
only of the possibilities of discovery in logic but also of the history of the
subject, which, far from not being “able to advance a single step” nor
“required to retrace a single step” since Aristotle, had done both more than
once. Kant’s opinion was also influential and served to create resistance
to more reasonable views both of logic itself and of its history.
Why Kant should have thought the science of logic both completable
and completed is a question which I shall not attempt to answer here. I
do not know whether a serious effort to answer it would uncover interesting
ideas of Kant, which as it is we do not understand. In general, it can be
said that the view harmonized extremely well with the more rationalistic
side of Kant’s way of thinking and with the belief, which he was not the
only great philosopher to hold, that his own work finished off an important
part of philosophy. Kant certainly thought that there were inexhaustible
sources of problems, even philosophical problems, for the human intellect
to wrestle with. But he held that this inexhaustibility lay within limits fixed
by a form, the basic properties of which could be exhaustively described.
This form would belong to the human faculty of thought itself, which so
long as it was dealing with “itself and its form” and not with objects given
from outside or with the manner in which they might be given from out¬
side, was bound to be capable not only of being on sure ground but of
uncovering and analyzing every relevant factor. Reason and the under¬
standing are “perfect unities” (A xiii, A67 = B92). We also find an echo of
the Cartesian idea that the self is better known than objects:
I have to deal with nothing save reason itself and its pure thinking; and to
obtain complete knowledge of these, there is no need to go far afield, since I
come upon them in my own self [A xiv].
Logic is, according to Kant, the most general of all divisions of knowl¬
edge. It applies to all objects of our thought in general, and all true state-
CHARLES PARSONS 573
ments and sound inferences must conform to it. In particular and especially
important, logical possibility is the most inclusive kind of possibility. If
something is possible in any respect whatsoever, it is logically possible; its
concept does not involve a contradiction. In particular, at least as far as
Kant’s explicit statements are concerned, the applicability of logic is not
limited by the forms of our sensibility.
The relation between logic and the forms of intuition can best be seen
by contrast with geometry: The forms of intuition provide the basis for
certain necessary truths, in particular those of geometry, in the sense that
if the forms of intuition were not as they are the truths in question would
not hold, and if we did not have a certain insight into our forms of in¬
tuition, we would not know them. The application of these truths, however,
is limited to the objects which affect our senses. Moreover, the principles
are true of these objects only as they appear and not as they are in them¬
selves.
These limitations do not obtain for logic. In particular, there are states
of affairs which are logically possible but which are excluded by the forms
of intuition, such as the existence of spatial configurations contrary to the
theorems of Euclidean geometry; so that geometry is a more special theory
than logic, not only in the sense that it deals with a more restricted type
of object but also in the sense that it makes statements about these objects
which are not logically necessary, although they are necessary in another
way.
Logic is also not subject to the great limitation of knowledge based on
intuition, that of appearances. When Kant says that it must be possible
to think of things in themselves, he implies first that such a conception does
not contradict the laws of logic, and second that in the statements we make
about them, the logical laws are still a negative criterion of truth. If he
could not trust logic in this realm, Kant’s metaphysics of morals would
not be able to get off the ground.
Already on this level, it is possible to see quite clearly some reasons why
Kant should have regarded geometry as synthetic a priori and used an idea
such as that of a form of intuition in order to explain how such a science
was possible. Geometry is a more special theory than logic first in the
sense that it contains nonlogical primitives, second in that its theorems
cannot in general be proved merely by means of definitions and logic,
as Leibniz apparently thought. Indeed this is much more obvious to us than
in Kant’s time, given that we have non-Euclidean geometry and are in
general less tempted to overestimate the power of logic, especially tradi¬
tional logic. It is worth pointing out that Euclid’s postulates are what are in
effect existence assumptions, so that here Kant’s general views about
existence would imply that they could not be analytic.
That Kant should then found geometry on the form of our sensible
intuition is not difficult to understand. On the one hand spatiotemporality
574 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
We have to go outside these concepts, and call in the aid of the intuition which
corresponds to one of them, our five fingers, for instance, or, as Segner does in
his Arithmetic, five points, adding to the concept of 7, unit by unit, the five given
in intuition. For starting with the number 7, and for the concept of 5 calling
in the aid of the fingers of my hand as intuition, I now add one by one to the
number 7 the units which I previously took together to form the number 5,
and with the aid of that figure [the hand] see the number 12 come into being
[B 15=16],
It is, however, still not clear why that process cannot be either itself
put in the form of a purely logical argument or replaced by something
quite different which can.
There was an attempt to do just this with which Kant was in a position
to be familiar, by Leibniz in the Nouveaux Essais.8 Leibniz worked with
576 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
‘2 + 2 = 4’, but the type of argument suffices for any addition formula.
He assumed as an axiom the substitutivity of identity, which Kant would
in all probability have regarded as analytic. Leibniz took as definitions
2=1 + 1,
3=2 + 1,
4 = 3 + 1,
2 = 2 + 1 + 1 (def. of “2”)
= 3 + 1 (def. of “3”)
= 4 (def. of “4”)
2 + 2 = 2+ (l + 1) = (2 + 1) + 1 = 3 + 1
ticular case in question. Then one observes that the proof is correct for an
arbitrary triangle, and therefore that the assertion must hold in general.18
(3 x)Fx
Fa
logic, there is a possible case in which this happens, and in which (since
(1) is valid) there is also no conflict with (1), namely in which U contains
fewer than four elements. In that event the antecedent of the above would
always be false.24
If one considers the minimal existence axioms which would be needed to
prove the categorical ‘2 + 2 = 4’ in modern set theory, we find that again
they require the universe to contain at least four elements, which can be
identified with the numbers 1,2, 3, 4.
If we accept first order quantification theory with identity as a logical
framework, then it seems that we can maintain the symmetry of arithmetic
and geometry in a weak sense, that such propositions as ‘2 + 2 = 4’ imply
or presuppose existence assumptions which it is logically possible to deny.
To draw the line at this point and to declare thus that set theory is not
logic seems to me eminently reasonable; but I shall not argue for this now,
particularly since I have done so elsewhere.25
I think the presence of existence propositions in mathematics is one of
the considerations at stake in Kant’s views on mathematics, but it is not
clearly differentiated from others. His general views on existence imply that
existential propositions are synthetic, but he never applies this doctrine
directly to the existence of abstract entities. In the letter to Schultz cited
above, Kant says that arithmetic, although it does not have axioms, does
have postulates. Postulates as to the possibility of certain constructions,
for Kant constructions in intuition, played the role of existence assumptions
in Euclidean geometry. Schultz states as a postulate in the Priifung essen¬
tially that addition is defined.
This factor is also present in Kant’s remarks about “construction of con¬
cepts in pure intuition,” which he regards as the distinguishing feature of
mathematical method. If the geometer wants to prove that the sum of the
angles of a triangle is two right angles, he begins by constructing a triangle
(A 716 = B 744). This triangle, as we indicated above, can serve as a
paradigm of all triangles; although it is itself an individual triangle, nothing
is used about it in the proof which is not also true of all triangles. The proof
consists of a sequence of constructions and operations on the triangle.
Kant’s view was that it is by this construction that the concepts involved
are developed and the existence of mathematical objects falling under them
is shown. Although we need not regard this theorem as implying or pre¬
supposing that there are triangles, Kant regarded a general proposition as
empty, as not genuine knowledge, if there are no objects to which it applies.
In this instance only the construction of a triangle can assure us of this.
Apart from that, further existence assumptions are used in the course of
the proof, in the example of A 716 = B 744 of extensions of lines and of
parallels.
The same factor is also suggested in the rather puzzling passage in which
Kant says that the operation with variables, function symbols, and identity
CHARLES PARSONS 585
For starting with the number 7, and for the number 5 calling in the aid of the
fingers of my hand as intuition, I now add one by one to the number 7 the units
which I previously took together to form the number 5, and with the aid of
that figure [the hand] see the number 12 come into being (B 15-16, emphasis
mine).
The pure image of all magnitudes (quantorum) for outer sense in space; that of
all objects of the senses in general is time. But the pure schema of magnitude
(quantitatis), as a concept of the understanding, is number, a representation
which comprises the successive addition of homogeneous units [A 142=B 182].
As I said, this seems to conflict not only with the interpretation which
number and addition acquire in such constructions as Frege’s, in which
586 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
These remarks place arithmetic less on the intuitive and more op the
conceptual side of our knowledge. If arithmetic had for its object “an
object of intuition as magnitude,” i.e., forms such as the points, lines, and
figures of geometry, then it would refer quite directly to a form of intuition.
But instead it refers to “a concept of a thing in general”; the science of
number is a “pure intellectual synthesis.” This latter phrase especially sug¬
gests that arithmetical notions might be definable in terms of the pure cate¬
gories and thus be associated with logical forms which do not refer at all
to conditions of sensibility. Such a view would seem to conflict with the
statement of the Schematism that number is a schema.
The reference to “a concept of a thing in general” is no doubt to be
meant in the same sense as that in which the categories are said to specify
the concept of an object in general, and the pure intellectual synthesis is
no doubt that of the second edition transcendental deduction, which is the
synthesis of a manifold of intuition in general, which is for us realized so
as to yield knowledge only in application to intuitions according to our
forms of intuition. Thus the “concept of an object in general” could give
rise to actual knowledge of objects only if these objects can be given ac¬
cording to our forms of intuition.
CHARLES PARSONS 587
But does this merely mean that objects in space and time provide the
only concrete application of these concepts which we can know to exist, as
one might expect from the absence of special reference to intuition?
Whether it means this or something more drastic is, I think, a special case
of the general dilemma about the understanding which I mentioned in
the beginning. In either case, however, it would be a plausible interpreta¬
tion of Kant to say that the forms of intuition must be appealed to in order
to verify the existence assumptions of mathematics.
However, it is not very clear how to apply the general conceptions de¬
rived from the Aesthetic and the Transcendental Deduction to the case
at hand. The direct existence propositions in pure mathematics are of ab¬
stract entities, and it is only in the geometric case that they can be said
to be in space and time. I do think that the objects considered in arithmetic
and predicative set theory can be construed as forms of spatiotemporal
objects. Full set theory would of course not be accommodated in this way,
but it is not reasonable to expect that from a Kantian point of view im-
predicative set theory should be intuitive knowledge or indeed genuine
knowledge at all. It could legitimately be said to postulate entities beyond
the field of possible experience.26
It is natural to think of the natural numbers as represented to the senses
(and of course in space and time) by numerals. This does not mean mainly
that numerals function as names of numbers, although of course they do,
but that they provide instances of the structure of the natural numbers. In
the algebraic sense, the set of numerals generated by some procedure is
isomorphic to the natural numbers in that it has an initial element (e.g.,
“0”) and a successor relation which the notion of natural number requires.
In this sense, of course, the numerals are abstract mathematical objects;
they can be taken as geometric figures. But of course concrete tokens of
the first n numerals are likewise a model of the numbers from 1 to n or
from 0 to n — 1. A set of objects has n elements if it can be brought into
one-to-one correspondence with the numbers from 1 to n; a standard way
of doing this is by bringing them in some order into correspondence with
certain numerals representing these numbers, that is by counting. (The
numerals used in work in formal logic, for example where the initial element
is ‘O’ and the (n + l)st numeral is obtained by prefixing ‘S’ to the
rtth numeral, have the further property that each numeral contains within
itself all the previous ones so that the nth numeral is itself a model of
the numbers from 0 to n.)
The basis for the use of a concrete perception of a sequence of n terms
in verifying general propositions is that, since it serves as a representative of
a structure, the same purpose could be served by any other instance of the
same structure, that in any other perceptible sequence which can be placed
in a one-one correspondence with the given one so as to preserve the suc¬
cessor relation. This might justify us in calling such a perception a “formal
588 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
intuition.” We might note that the physical existence of the objects is not
directly necessary, so that we can abstract also from that “material” factor.
An empirical intuition functions, we might say, as a pure intuition if it
is taken as a representative of an abstract structure. Such a perception
provides the fullest possible realization before the mind of an abstract con¬
cept. One of the important questions about Kant’s philosophy of arithmetic
is whether a comparable realization exists beyond the limits of scale of
concrete perception.
Before we can enter into this question, let me point out another closely
related reason in Kant’s mind for regarding mathematics as dependent on
intuition. This comes out in particular in the concept of “symbolic con¬
struction.” The algebraist, according to Kant, is getting results by manipu¬
lating symbols according to certain rules, which he would not be able to
get without an analogous intuitive representation of his concepts. The
“symbolic construction” is essentially a construction with symbols as ob¬
jects of intuition:
That this is a source of the clarity and evidence of mathematics and pro¬
vides a connection of mathematics with sensibility is indicated by the fol¬
lowing remark:
This distinction corresponds in the prize essay to the following, where the
distinctive role of signs in mathematics is explicitly emphasized:
CHARLES PARSONS 589
The certainty of mathematics is connected with the fact that the signs are
sensible:
Since the signs of mathematics are sensible means of knowledge, one can know
with the same confidence with which one is assured of what one sees with
one’s own eyes that one has not left any concept out of account, that every
equation has been derived by easy rules, etc.; thereby attention is made much
easier in that it must take account only of the signs as they are known in¬
dividually, not the things as they are represented generally.29
The prize essay suggests a position incompatible with the Critique of Pure
Reason, namely that since in mathematics signs are manipulated according
to rules which we have laid down (in contrast to philosophy, where the value
of any definition turns on its having a certain degree of faithfulness to pre-
analytic usage), operation with signs according to the rules, without at¬
tention to what they signify, is in itself a sufficient guarantee of correctness.30
These passages show that a connection between sensibility and the in¬
tuitive character of mathematics existed in Kant’s mind before he developed
the theory of space and time of the Aesthetic. However, unlike in the
later work, no inference is drawn at this stage from this connection to a
limitation of the application of mathematics to sensible objects.
The general point behind the observations on symbolic construction can
be put in the following way: In general, a mathematical proposition can be
verified only on the basis of a proof or calculation, which is itself a con¬
struction in intuition. But in view of the remarks about ‘7 + 5 = 12’, a more
special fact may have influenced Kant. Certain “symbolic constructions”
associated with propositions about number actually involve constructions
isomorphic to the numbers themselves and their relations, or at least an
aspect of them. Thus in Leibniz proof that 2 + 2 = 4, ‘2 + 2’ must be
written out as ‘2 + (1 + 1)’ and the two l’s as it were added on to the
‘2’. A corresponding proof of ‘7 + 5 = 12’ would involve five such steps
instead of two.
A similar observation concerning the schema (1) has been made by a
number of writers. Although the schema does not imply that the universe
contains any elements or that any construction can be carried out, the
proof of it involves writing down a group of two symbols representing the
F’s, another such group representing the G’s, and putting them together to
get four symbols. So that it is not at all clear that ‘2 + 2 = 4 interpreted as
a proposition about the combinations of symbols is not more elementary
than the logically valid schema (1).
I have already suggested that the “symbolic” construction in generating
numerals is already enough to settle the question of their reference. In the
590 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
same way the actual carrying out of the calculations shows the well-defined
character for individual arguments of recursively defined functions. How¬
ever, induction, which I have wanted to leave out of account here, is in¬
volved in seeing that they are defined for all arguments. Maybe Kant ought
to have said that apart from intuition I do not even know that there is such
a number as ‘7 + 5’. And it seems that one could not see by a particular
construction that there is such a number without also seeing it to be 12.
This is in agreement with Hintikka’s statement that the sense of Kant’s
statement that numerical formulae are indemonstrable is that the construc¬
tion required for their proof is already sufficient.
The considerations about the role of symbolic operations apply equally
to logic and therefore undermine Kant’s apparent wish to distinguish them
on this basis. This appears more forcefully in modern logic, where instead
of a short list of forms of valid inference one has an infinite list which must
be specified by some inductive condition. In my opinion this is a consequence
to be accepted and is even in general accord with Kant’s statements that
synthesis underlies even the possibility of analytic judgments.
The special connection of arithmetic and time can, I think, be explained
as follows: If one constructs in some way, such as on paper or in one’s head,
such a sequence of symbols as the first n numerals, the structure is already
represented in the sequence of operations and more generally in the suc¬
cession of mental acts of running through a group of n objects, as in count¬
ing. Thus time enters in through the succession of acts involved in con¬
struction or in successive apprehension. This connects with Kant’s remark
about number in the Schematism. In the operations involved in represent¬
ing a number to the senses, we also generate a structure in time which
represents the number. Time provides a universal source of models for the
numbers. In particular, Kant held that it is only by way of successively per¬
ceiving different aspects of a manifold and yet keeping them in mind as
aspects of one intuition that we can have a clear conception of a plurality.
For quite small numbers this seems doubtful although not for larger ones.
Nonetheless the element of succession appears even for the smaller ones
in the comparison involved in generating or perceiving them in order, and
the order is certainly part of our concept of number. What would give time
a special role in our concept of number which it does not have in general
is not its necessity, since time is in some way or other necessary for all con¬
cepts, nor an explicit reference to time in numerical statements, which does
not exist, but its sufficiency, because the temporal order provides a repre¬
sentative of the number which is present to our consciousness if any is
present at all.
Of course it is one thing to speak of representation in space and time and
another to speak of representation to the senses. What is represented to
the senses is presumably represented in space and time, but maybe not vice
CHARLES PARSONS 591
versa. To establish a link of these two Kant would appeal to his theory of
space and time as forms of sensibility. The relevant part of this theory is
that the structures which can be represented in space and time are structures
of possible objects of perception. The kind of possibility at stake here must
be essentially mathematical and go beyond “practical” or physical possi¬
bility.31
Consider once again a procedure for generating numerals, say by starting
with ‘0’ and prefixing occurrences of ‘S’. The actual use of these as symbols
requires that they be perceptible objects. Nonetheless we say it is possible to
iterate the procedure indefinitely and therefore to construct indefinitely
many numerals. Thus it is clear that the numerals (numeral types32) which
it is in this sense possible to construct extend far beyond the numeral-tokens
which have ever been produced in history or which could in any concrete
sense actually be used as symbols.33 This possibility of iteration is necessary
for the constructibility of indefinitely many numerals and therefore for the
infinity of natural numbers to be given by intuitive construction. Moreover,
some insight into such iteration seems necessary for mathematical induction.
Insofar as the appeal to pure intuition for the evidence of mathematical
statements is supposed to be an analogy of mathematical and perceptual
knowledge, it holds less well for propositions involving the concept of in¬
definite iteration, such as these proved by induction, than for propositions
such as 2 + 2 = 4. There seem to be two independent types of insight into
our forms of intuition which a Kantian view requires us to have, that which
allows a particular perception to function as a “formal intuition” and that
which we have into the possible progression of the generation of intuitions
according to a rule. To speak of a peculiar kind of intuition in the second
case seems quite misleading. The mathematical knowledge involved has a
highly complex relation to “intuition” in the more specifically Kantian case.
That complexity must be in some way present in the “intuitions” of space
and time since space is an individual which is given, but its structure also
determines the limits of possible experience and contains various infinite
aspects. No doubt the plausibility of the idea that space is present in im¬
mediate experience made it more difficult for Kant to appreciate the differ¬
ences of the kinds of evidences covered by his notion of pure intuition. I am
sure that more could be done to explicate the Kantian view of their con¬
nection.
In our discussion of intuition, we have somewhat lost sight of the view of
logic which at the start we attributed to Kant, which except for the question
of existence resembles the modern views called Platonist. Although Kant’s
view of intuition fits better with the modern tendencies called constructivist
or intuitionist, it seems certain that the concept of pure intuition was meant
to go with this view of logic and not to replace it. Without using notions
like “concept” and “object” in a quite general way, it is probably not pos-
592 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
sible to describe it. It would be hasty for that reason to identify Kant’s con¬
ception of intuition with that of Dutch intuitionists, although Brouwer s
undoubtedly shows some affinity. It would also be hasty to regard Brouwer’s
critique of classical mathematics as altogether in accord with Kantianism.
NOTES
1. An earlier version of this paper was written while the author was George
Santayana Fellow in Philosophy, Harvard University, and presented in lectures in
1964 to the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Society for Logic and
the Philosophy of Science. I am indebted to J. J. de Iongh, J. F. Staal, and G. A.
van der Wal for helpful comments. I am also grateful to Jaakko Hintikka for
sending me two unpublished papers on the subject of this paper.
2. i.e., 1st edition, p. 320, 2nd edition, pp. 376—377. All passages are quoted
in the translation of Norman Kemp Smith (London, 1929) with slight modifications.
Other translations from German are my own. Translations of Kant’s Inaugural
Dissertation are by John Handyside, in Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation and Early
Writings on Space, Chicago and London, 1929.
3. Kants Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by the Prussian Academy of Sciences,
Berlin, 1903-1956, IX, 91. This edition will be referred to as “Ak.”
4. “Kant’s ‘new method of thought’ and his theory of mathematics,” Ajatus 27
(1965), 37-47, p. 43. Hintikka argues in detail for this thesis in a paper, “On Kant’s
notion of intuition (Anschauung),” to appear in a volume of essays on Kant edited
by Terence Penelhum and J. H. Macintosh (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth). The same
idea seems to underlie the analysis of Kant’s theory of mathematical proof in E. W.
Beth, “Uber Lockes ‘allgemeines Dreieck’” in Kant-Studien 48 (1956-1957), 361—
38°.
5. “It is a mere tautology to speak of general or common concepts” (“Logic”
paragraph 1, Ak. IX 91).
6. One might attribute to Kant the view that there are no such representations.
The classification Kant makes in A 320 = B 376 — 7 and Logic § 1 is of Erkenntnisse,
which Kemp Smith translates as “modes of knowledge” but which in many contexts
would be more accurately though inelegantly translated as “pieces of knowledge.”
Then the relation of a representation to its object is that through which one can know
its object, and it might be held that intuition in the full sense is the only singular
representation which can provide such knowledge. This view would have the
perhaps embarrassing consequence that an object which is not in some way perceived
is not really known as an individual.
7. Cf. the examples of “truths of reason” given by Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais,
IV, ii, § 1.
8. Ibid. IV, vii, § 10.
9. Arithmetik und Kombinatorik bei Kant (Diss. Freiburg 1934), Itzehoe 1938;
Kant’s Metaphysics and Theory of Science, Manchester, 1953, ch. i; Klassische
Ontologie der Zahl, Kant-Studien Erganzungsheft 70, Koln, 1956, § 12.
10. Neither Leibniz nor Schultz seems to mention the fact that in order to prove
formulae involving multiplication, such as ‘2 • 3 = 6’, one also needs instances of the
distributive law.
11. 1. Aus mehrern gegebenen gleichartigen Quantis durch ihre successive
Verkniipfung den Begriff von einem Quanto zu erzeugen, d. i. sie in ein Ganzes
zu verwandeln. 2. Ein jedes gegebenes Quantum, um so viel, als man will, d.i. sie
ins Unendliche zu vergrossern, und zu vermindern (Prufung, I, 221).
12. Ak. X 554-558.
13. Arithmetik und Kombinatorik bei Kant, p. 57.
14. C. J. Gerhardt (ed.), Leibnizens mathematische Schriften, Halle, 1849-1963,
VII 78. Leibniz gives a definition of addition from which he claims commutativity
follows immediately. One could read his argument as deriving the commutativity of
addition from the commutativity of set-theoretic union.
15. “Uber Lockes ‘allgemeines Dreieck’.”
16. “Kant’s ‘new method of thought’,” “On Kant’s concept of intuition,” also
“Are logical truths analytic?” Philosophical Review 74 (1965), 178-203, “Kant on
the mathematical method,” The Monist, vol. 51 (1967), 352-375.
CHARLES PARSONS 593
17. It ought to be remarked that while no doubt the distinction which Kant
makes between axioms and postulates derives historically from that of “common
notions” and postulates in Euclid, Kant’s distinction does not correspond exactly
to Euclid’s. Euclid’s division is between more general principles and specifically geomet¬
rical ones. For Kant postulates are “immediately certain practical judgments,” the ac¬
tion involved is construction, and their purport is that a construction of a certain kind
can be carried out. The role they play is thus that of existence axioms. Euclid’s
common notions are all of a type which Kant asserted to be analytic propositions
(A 164=B 204, B 17), while axioms proper must be synthetic.
18. op. cit. p. 365.
19. Cf. W. V. Quine, Methods of Logic, revised ed., New York, 1959, § 28.
20. “Kant’s ‘new method of thought’,” p. 43, also “Kant on the mathematical
method.” The texts are A 717-B 745, A 734-B 762.
21. In “Are logical truths analytic?” Hintikka develops a distinction between
analytic and synthetic according to which some logical truths are synthetic. He
suggests that the logical truths which are analytic according to this criterion are
roughly those which Kant would have regarded as analytic. It follows, however,
that in some of the arguments which according to Beth and Hintikka involve for
Kant an appeal to intuition, the conditional of their premises and conclusion is
analytic. In particular, this is true of the example that Beth works out in detail
in Uber Lockes ‘allgemeines Dreieck’,” § 7. In order to be applied to mathematical
examples like Kant’s, Hintikka’s criterion would have to be extended to languages
containing function symbols. The way of doing this which seems to me most in
the spirit of Hintikka’s definition has some anomalous consequences.
See also “An analysis of analyticity,” “Are logical truths tautologies?” “Kant
vindicated,” and “Kant and the tradition of analysis,” in P. Weingartner (ed.),
Deskription, Analytizitat, und Existenz, Salzburg and Munich, 1966.
22. Beth, op. cit. p. 363.
23. In fact, (1) is analytic according to the criterion of “Are logical truths
analytic?” (see note 21 above). However, according to another criterion which
might be more in the spirit of Kant, to consider as synthetic a conditional whose
proof involves formulae of degree higher than its antecedent, (1) is synthetic. Hintikka
takes account of this in “Are logical truths tautologies?” by making an additional
distinction between analytic and synthetic arguments, such that in the relevant sense
the argument from the conjuncts of the antecedent of (1) as premises to its con¬
sequent as conclusion is synthetic.
24. Cf. Hao Wang, “Process and existence in mathematics,” Y. Bar-Hillel, E. I.
J. Poznanski, M. O. Rabin, A. Robinson (eds.), Essays in the Foundations of
Mathematics, dedicated to A. A. Fraenkel, Jerusalem, 1961, 328-351, p. 335.
25. “Frege’s theory of number,” Max Black fed.), Philosophy in America,
London and Ithaca, 1965, pp. 180-203.
26. An interesting intermediate case is how constructive proofs as the object
of intuitionist mathematics could be interpreted from a Kantian point of view.
According to Kant as I interpret him, certain empirical constructions can function
as paradigms so as to establish necessary truths because of the intention or meaning
associated with them. Intuitionism would require that our insight into these meanings
be sufficient not only to establish laws directly relating to objects in space and
time but also to establish laws concerning the intentions as “mental constructions.” I
leave open the question of whether this is possible from Kant’s point of view or not.
27. Ak. II 272-301.
28. .Die Mathematik betrachtet in ihren Auflosungen, Beweisen, und Folgerungen
das Allgemeine unter den Zeichen in concreto, die Weltweisheit das Allgemeine
durch die Zeichen in abstracto (Erste Betrachtung, § 2. heading, Ak. II 278).
29. Denn da die Zeichen der Mathematik sinliche Erkenntnismittel sind, so kann
man mit derselben Zuversicht, wie man dessen, was man mit Augen sieht, versichert
ist, auch wissen, dass man keinen Begriff aus der Acht gelassen, dass eine jede
einzelne Vergleichung nach leichten Regeln geschehen sei u.s.w. Wobei die Aufmerk-
samkeit dadurch sehr erleichtert wird, dass sie nicht die Sachen selbst in ihrer
allgemeine Vorstellung, sondern die Zeichen in ihrer einzelnen Erkenntnis, die da
sinnlich ist, zu gedenken hat. (Dritte Betrachtung, § 1, Ak II 291).
30. But cf. the following: in der Geometrie, wo die Zeichen mit den bezeichneten
Sachen uberden eine Ahulichkeit haben, ist daher diese Evidenz noch grosser, obgleich
in der Buchstabenrechnung die Gewissheit evenso zuwerlassig ist. (Ibid., 292). . _
31. One might say that it is possible to construct tokens. The sense of possibility
in which this is possible is, however, derivative from the mathematical possibility of
594 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
constructing types (or mathematical existence of the types). For we declare that
the tokens are possible either directly on the basis of the mathematical construction,
or physically on the basis of a theory in which a mathematical space which is in
some way infinite is an ingredient.
32. Cf. my “Infinity and Kant’s conception of the ‘possibility of experience’,”
Philosophical Review 12> (1964), 173-198.
33. This does not imply that there is an upper limit on the numbers which can
be individually represented, once we admit notations for faster-growing functions
than the successor function. This happens already in Arabic numeral notation. The
number 1,000,000,000,000, if written in ‘0’ and ‘S’ notation with four symbols per
centimeter, would extend from the earth to the moon. That there is such an upper
limit follows, of course, from the assumption that human history must come to an
end after a finite time.
A SOVIET PHILOSOPHER’S VIEW OF
PEIRCE’S PRAGMATISM
Philip P. Wiener
and offers the lame excuse that little was known about Peirce anywhere
during the first third of this century. Students of Peirce, of course, did not
have to wait until the 1930’s to know that William James’s public acknowl¬
edgment of Peirce as the founder of pragmatism was made in 1897.7 Mrs.
Ladd Franklin, one of Peirce’s class of logic students at Johns Hopkins, paid
tribute in 1916 to Peirce’s logic of relations, only two years after Peirce’s
death.8 Morris R. Cohen surely brought Peirce’s philosophy to the attention
of the philosophic public in the early 1920’s,9 as did John Dewey in 1922,
in a special number devoted to American philosophy in the Revue de Meta¬
physique et de Morale.10 It is true that European philosophers knew much
more of William James’s writings than of Peirce’s, perhaps because of the
more graphic style of James’s essays and because James was hailed by
Bergson and others as a pioneer psychologist; the United States was not ex¬
pected to produce any noteworthy philosophers.
By lumping together Peirce’s pragmaticism, James’s radical empiricism,
Schiller’s humanism, and Dewey’s instrumentalism under the label “prag¬
matism,” Melvil asserts the “weakening of the influence of pragmatism” in
logic and philosophy of science because of “the inability of Dewey’s
instrumentalism to deal with logical and methodological problems” of
modern sciences.11 Melvil thus ignores the increasing appreciation and
growing influence of Peirce’s contributions to logic and methodology as
evidenced by the writings of J. Royce, F. P. Ramsey, C. I. Lewis, E. Nagel,
H. Reichenbach, A. Tarski, R. Carnap, and the European, especially Italian
and British, scientific philosophers and analysts who have lately taken a
great interest in Peirce’s ideas. Melvil himself testifies to this fact when he
observes that “Not only in the U.S.A. but also in Canada, England, Switzer¬
land, West Germany, and Italy, voluminous monographs are being pub¬
lished about Peirce’s philosophy.”12
Of course, for Soviet philosophers, the only sound logic and methodology
must be based on dialectical materialism. Hence, Peirce with his remarkable
contributions to the logic and philosophy of science is in Melvil’s view an
“unusual phenomenon in bourgeois philosophy,”13 and can only be ex¬
plained by our Soviet philosopher as “the typical contradiction of a scientist
living in a capitalistic country.”14 Why is there no such contradiction in the
scientific writings of Marx and Engels, Lomonosov and Pavlov, who also
lived in a capitalistic society? Evidently, revolutionary thinkers and pre¬
revolutionary Russian scientists are exempt from the contradictions which
afflict bourgeois scientists. Is it not high time to abandon this dubious dis¬
tinction between two kinds of science and logic and two kinds of truth, bour¬
geois and proletarian, if we are to continue to pursue scientific truth as the
goal of an internationally communal enterprise—that “indefinite commu¬
nity” of scientific investigators proclaimed by Peirce to be the only ultimate
arbiters of truth and definers of objective reality corresponding to such
PHILIP P. WIENER 597
classless truth? Peirce himself was able to indicate the social and political
causes for the historical division between nominalists and realists, e.g., in
the Ockhamite conciliar controversy; Peirce also attacked the “greed-philos¬
ophy” of rugged individualism in nineteenth-century capitalism, e.g., in
Simon Newcomb’s political economy and Charles Sumner’s sociology, with¬
out impugning the classless character of scientific logic and truth.
Yet, to Melvil, the “basic contradiction” of Peirce’s “bourgeois” philos¬
ophy demonstrates the “unscientific nature of pragmatism,”15 principally
because Peirce thought that science was compatible with the love of God.
It would follow that only atheists can be truly scientific thinkers, which
would exclude such historic figures as Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Spinoza,
Kant, Faraday, Eddington, Einstein, Whitehead, and countless others who
have pursued the sciences without losing their sense of man’s ultimate union
with the universal source of all things and values.
Melvil assumes that science must be materialistic, atheistic, and the sole
repository of absolute truth. Hence, Peirce’s “bourgeois” philosophy of
science is false and contradictory, since Peirce’s pragmatism repudiates
materialism, defends the Christian love of mankind and of God, and under¬
scores the approximative nature of all scientific conclusions in his doctrine
of fallibilism.
Despite Peirce’s severe and penetrating criticisms of Berkeley’s and Mill’s
nominalism, of Mach’s and Pearson’s sensationism, and of James’s psychol¬
ogism, Melvil insists on branding Peirce’s “pragmatism” as “subjective ideal¬
ism.”16 Peirce’s critical review of Berkeley’s subjective idealism17 should
suffice to prove the invalidity of any such characterization of Peirce’s
epistemology. Melvil completely misinterprets Peirce’s view of the relation of
belief to truth by assigning to Peirce the words that Peirce himself puts in
the mouth of an imagined interlocutor, “Mr. Make Believe.”18 For example,
Melvil interprets Peirce’s Monist article, partly written in dialogue form, as
follows:
According to one of the definitions accepted by Peirce, truth is nothing but “a
belief unassailable by doubt” [5.416], or “a final and compulsory belief.” Here
Peirce does not hint at the relationship between truth and objective reality. He
insists upon saying that truth (as well as reality) should be defined only in
terms-of doubt and belief” [5.416].
We need only refer to the whole text of 5.416 in order to see that Peirce is
arguing against defining truth as only a state of belief, and to see that he
attributes this subjective view of truth to “Mr. Make Believe” (who might
very well represent some of the ideas of William James or of F. C. S.
Schiller). Melvil should have noticed the hypothetical “if” clause in 5.416:
If your [Mr. Make Believe’s] terms “truth” and “falsity” are taken in such
senses as to be definable in terms of doubt and belief . . . , in that case you
[Mr. Make Believe] are only talking about doubt and belief. . . . Your problems
598 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
[Mr. Make Believe] would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying you want
to know the “Truth,” you were simply to say that you want to attain a state
of belief unassailable by doubt19 [Peirce’s emphasis].
As early as 1878, in his essay “How To Make Our Ideas Clear,” Peirce
distinguished the logical from the psychological aspects of knowing. Al¬
though his preceding essay, “The Fixation of Belief,” was primarily a psy¬
chological and social analysis of methods for attaining stable beliefs, Peirce
never abandoned the logical criteria of the conformity of ideas to objective
reality and the logically independent status of universals or laws. Hence,
Peirce cannot, by any stretch of dialectics, be properly called a “subjective
idealist” or even a “phenomenalist,” as Melvil says of Peirce’s equation of
“cognizability (in its widest sense)” and “being.”20 Peirce plainly distin¬
guished his pragmaticism which is not definable as “thoroughgoing phe¬
nomenalism” from James’s pragmatism which was phenomenalistic in its
emphasis on sensuous immediacy.21 Yet Melvil insists on saying that Peirce’s
pragmatism was based on the same idea of truth which we find elaborated
upon by James, which later served as the pragmatic definition of truth by
preference: truth as “satisfactory,” as something which corresponds to our
goals, as something expedient.22
Referring again to the whole text of the passage in 1.344, quoted by
Melvil as proof of Peirce’s subjective skepticism, we find that Peirce is
actually arguing against the skeptic “of the mendacious, clandestine, dis¬
guised, and conservative variety that is afraid of truth, although truth merely
means the way to attain one’s purpose” (1.344).
Every student of Peirce knows that Peirce in all his epistemological writ¬
ings opposed the skepticism, subjectivism, and nominalism of those who
willfully limited the idea of truth to personal preference or to selfish op¬
portunism instead of relating truth to the ideal goal or purpose of finding
what reality is like when investigated by the whole community of scientific
inquirers, reaching far into the future as well as the past and present.
There are, it is true, obscure passages in Peirce where it is difficult to
follow his line of demarcation between the psychological and the logical.
Murray G. Murphey has traced the development of Peirce’s philosophy
from an early positivistic nominalism toward a metaphysical realism lying
somewhere between this “propepositivism” and “objective idealism.”23
Melvil unhistorically assumes, as Soviet philosophers following Lenin do,
that all idealistic philosophies have to be subjective, despite Marx’s own
early idealism and despite the repudiation of Berkeley’s idealism by Leibniz,
Kant, Hegel, Royce, and Peirce, Melvil also dogmatically asserts that all
religious ideas are based on superstition, although historically the religious
love of mankind and compassion for human suffering—which Peirce (fol¬
lowing Paul Carus) took to be the essence of Christianity, Judaism, and
Buddhism—have these same values in common with Marxian humanists
and their eschatology of the paradise to come with the classless society.
PHILIP P. WIENER 599
Despite the fact that it was Peirce himself who denied the existence of in¬
explicable things, he now says that “chance . . . calls for no explanation
[6.612], because it is the expression of the “pure spontaneity of mind, of its
freedom.28
600 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
Surely, Melvil has not demonstrated his drastic conclusions: “To the
extent that Peirce was a pragmatist his views did not contain an ounce of
scientific character.”32 I hope I have shown that there is at least need for
more study and international collaboration toward a better understanding of
Peirce’s scientific pragmaticism as a distinct variety of pragmatism, subject
to criticism via the logical canons of scientific inquiry rather than by the
methods of tenacity, political authority, or a priori dialectics.
NOTES
1. “The Conflict of Science and Religion in Charles Peirce’s Philosophy,” Trans¬
actions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. II, No. 1, pp. 33-50.
2. Ibid., p. 33.
3. Ibid., pp. 33-34. Melvil’s emphasis on “political” is typical of the Soviet sub¬
ordination of philosophy to politics.
4. Cf. A. O. Lovejoy, “The Thirteen Pragmatisms,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol.
V (1908), pp. 1-12, 28-39.
5. Transactions, loc. cit., p. 50.
6. Ibid., p. 35.
7. William James’s Howison Lecture at Berkeley, “Philosophical Conceptions and
Practical Results” (1897), University of California Chronicle (1898) which also long
antedates Soviet Marxists’ emphasis today on praxis in philosophy.
8. Journal of Philosophy, 13 (Dec. 21, 1916), pp. 715-722.
9. Cf. M. R. Cohen’s article “A Brief Sketch of the Later Philosophy,” Cam¬
bridge History of American Literature, Vol. Ill (1921), pp. 226—265; Chance, Love
and Logic, edited by M. R. Cohen in 1923, was the first collection of Peirce’s essays
on the logic and philosophy of science.
10. Vol. XXIX (Oct. 1922), pp. 411-430.
11. Transactions, loc. cit., p. 33.
12. Ibid., p. 34.
13. Ibid., p. 35.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 41.
16. Ibid., p. 36. . .
17. North American Review, Vol. 93 (Oct. 1871), pp. 449-472, reprinted in my
edited collection of Peirce’s writings, Values in a Universe of Chance, from which
Melvin quotes half of his footnotes, so that he should have known Peirce’s refutation
18. C. A. Peirce, “What Pragmatism Is,” Monist, Vol. 15 (1905), pp. 161-181.
19. Values, loc. cit., p. 189.
20. Transactions, loc. cit., p. 45.
21. Values, loc. cit., p. 196.
22. Transactions, loc. cit., p. 41. , ... , IT .
23. Murray G. Murphey, The Development of Peirces Philosophy (Harvard Uni¬
versity Press, 1961), 98 ff. 10n->\ ni im
24. C. A. Peirce, “The Doctrine of Necessity,” Monist (April 1892), pp. 321-337.
25. Transactions, loc. cit., p. 38.
26. Ibid., p. 39.
27. Ibid., p. 40.
28. Ibid., p. 44.
29. Ibid., p. 46.
30. Ibid., p. 46.
31. Ibid., pp. 46-47.
32. Ibid., p. 49.
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER AND THE
HISTORIANS
Sigmund Diamond
Deliberate falsification in the interest of some favored cause is today rare among
professional historians in nonauthoritarian countries, and uncritical acceptance
of demonstrably erroneous or inadequately supported statements of alleged
fact is not the most frequent way in which historians reveal their partisan al¬
legiances. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that each of two historical accounts of
the same period could contain only indisputably correct statements about mat¬
ters of particular (or “simple”) fact but that each would nevertheless be marked
by a distinctive bias. For two such accounts might differ in what they mention or
fail to mention, in the way they juxtapose the events both of them report, or
in the emphases they place upon various factors both admit were operative; and,
in consequence, one of the accounts might in effect be an argument for a con¬
ception of the goals and limits of human endeavor in opposition to the concep¬
tion defended by the other account.1
If, in the course of analyzing the factors that must be taken into account
in evaluating Rockefeller, we should find—as indeed we will—that the
evaluations and assessments of the man have changed with the passage of
time, that many of the factors which must be considered have not always
received their proper attention, we shall have pointed to the existence of
an interesting, and even important, problem in American history. Why have
evaluations of John D. Rockefeller differed so markedly even at the same
moment in time, and why have they changed over time? And what may
be learned about American society from the fact that, with the passage
of time, we are now all asked to believe that he was “really” the kind of
man revealed to us in the most recent works of historical scholarship?
In 1900, Oscar Lovell Triggs, a professor of English literature at the
University of Chicago, made a speech in which he said that John D.
Rockefeller was superior to William Shakespeare in respect of his value
to humanity. Charles E. Perkins, president of the Chicago, Burlington,
and Quincy Railroad, who had just made an address in which he claimed
that Marshall Field was a greater man than Shakespeare, immediately sat
down and wrote a letter to Professor Triggs, commenting on the Chicago
Tribune editorial disagreeing with the professor: “The Tribune says
Shakespeare goes on forever while Rockefeller is soon forgotten,” he wrote.
“The influence of the things Rockefeller does goes on forever also. The
world wants both of course. But Rockefeller is much more a necessity than
Shakespeare.”4
If the American people as a whole had agreed with Professor Triggs
and with railroad president Perkins in the way in which they evaluated
Rockefeller, then Rockefeller would not today be studied as a “problem”
in American history courses, and—more important—it would not have been
necessary for him to write, as he did write in 1907:
If I were to give advice to a young man starting out in life, I should say to
him. If you aim for a large, broad-gauged success, do not begin your business
career . . . with the idea of getting from the world by hook or crook all you
can. ... Let your first thought be: Where can I fit in so that I may be most
effective in the work of the world? . . . Enter life in such a spirit_The man
will be most successful who confers the greatest service on the world.6
SIGMUND DIAMOND 605
With respect to other issues as well, it would be possible to show that con¬
siderable discrepancies exist between the image of Rockefeller on the basis
of which we are asked to cast a favorable verdict on his role in American
history and the image which led many of his contemporaries to believe that
his life was not an unmixed blessing to the American people. These differ¬
ences in evaluation, it should be pointed out, do not all arise from the fact
that two observers of the same facts may come to different conclusions be¬
cause they interpret the facts differently and that all we need do is pay our
money and take our choice between the different interpretations. On the
contrary, many of the factors on which the evaluation of Rockefeller must
be based are not matters of interpretation at all; they are findings of fact,
and not even an historian’s findings of fact but judicial determination of fact.
It is true, of course, that there are certain points at which the evidence
is susceptible of different interpretations. Professor Nevins, for example,
noting that Rockefeller did not serve in the Civil War and that his claim
that he had sent thirty men into the Union Army could not possibly be
true because his own journal shows contributions of only $138.08 during
the war years, dismisses the matter as follows: “After all, no compelling
moral reason existed why he should enlist. . . .”16 But for journalist Cal
Tinney, the significance of the same set of facts is quite different: “He was
smart. Complete proof he was smart showed up when he was twenty-two,
at which time he refused to join up for the Civil War and, taking seventy-
five more years to die, got rich. Was ever better evidence offered that
Pacifism Pays?”17
Professor Nevins, to take another example, noting that Rockefeller kept
his wife fully informed about his plans regarding the South Improvement
Company, concludes that “this alone goes far to prove that he was con¬
vinced he was following a proper course, for Mrs. Rockefeller was a highly
religious woman with stern moral standards.”18 But it would not, I think,
cause much dismay if another historian were to interpret the same fact
differently.
But, as I have said, many of the factors that must be taken into
account in casting up the Rockefeller balance sheet are not, properly
speaking, matters of inference or interpretation at all. It is not, for example,
a matter of interpretation that the Standard Oil Company practiced indus¬
trial espionage. “Wilkerson and Co. received car of oil Monday 13th,”
wrote a Standard Oil official. “70 barrels which we suspect slipped through
at the usual fifth class rate—in fact you might say that we know it did—
paying only $41.50 freight from here. Charges $57.40. Please turn another
screw.”19
It is not a matter of interpretation that the Standard Oil Company gave
$350,000 to the editor of the Denver Post to induce him to cease his
opposition to the natural gas rates that had been established for that city.20
It is not a matter of interpretation that the Standard Oil Company sub-
608 4. HISTORICAL STUDIES
time.”24 After taking note of the argument, the Supreme Court rejected
it. Shared guilt, Rockefeller implied, is not guilt at all; shared guilt, said
the Court, is guilt nonetheless.
But the second argument is a more serious one and deserves greater con¬
sideration. Let us, therefore, turn to the classic statement of the argument
as it appears in Professor Nevins’ biography of Rockefeller:
faire anarchy versus large-scale efficiency. And so, very briefly, we must
take a look at the texts.
Standard Oil “has known, not guessed at conditions,” wrote Ida Tarbell.
“It has had a keen authoritative sight. It has applied itself to its tasks with
indefatigable zeal. It has been as courageous as it has been cautious.” So
far Miss Tarbell sounds like Professor Nevins. But now note the difference:
These qualities alone would have made a great business, and unquestionably
it would have been along the line of combination, for when Mr. Rockefeller
undertook to work out the good of the oil business the tendency to combination
was marked throughout the industry, but it would not have been the combination
whose history we have traced. To the help of these qualities Mr. Rockefeller
proposed to bring the peculiar aids of the South Improvement Company.26
It is one of the paradoxes of public opinion that the people of America, least
tolerant of this theory of anarchy in political government, lead in practising it
in industry. Politically, we are civilized; industrially, not yet. Our century, given
to this laissez-faire . . . has done one good: it has put society at the mercy
of its own ideals, and has produced an actual anarchy in industry which is
horrifying us into a change of doctrines.27
So far this sounds like Professor Nevins talking about the opponents of
Standard Oil, but it is Lloyd talking about Standard Oil.
If these opponents of Rockefeller were as much opposed to laissez-faire
as he was (and as Professor Nevins is), and if they, too, like Rockefeller,
regarded combination as inevitable, why then did they oppose him? “In cast¬
ing about for the cause of our industrial evils,” Lloyd said,
As to the effect of the change that has taken place in the evaluation of
John D. Rockefeller from his time to our own, let me say only this. In
1922, long before it became popular, at least in intellectual circles, to
inveigh against conformity, John Dewey pointed to an important character¬
istic of the American scene:
Our forbears who permitted the growth of legal and economic arrangements at
least supposed, however mistakenly, that the institutions they favored would
develop personal and moral individuality. It was reserved for our own day to
combine under the name of individualism, laudation of selfish energy in in¬
dustrial accomplishment with insistence upon uniformity and conformity of
mind.33
Not the least of the problems posed by Rockefeller’s life—and the ways in
which that life has been evaluated differently over time—is whether it is
possible to encourage what Dewey called “selfish energy in industrial ac¬
complishment” without at the same time encouraging the conformity that
we all say we deplore.
NOTES
1. Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York and Burlingame, 1961),
580—81, note 25.
SS^LyWilliam H. Allen, Rockefeller: Giant, Dwarf and Symbol (New York, 1930),
3. Ibid.
4. The episode is discussed in Edward Chase Kirkland, Dream and Thought in
the Business Community, 1860-1900 (Ithaca, New York, 1956), 166.
5. Quoted in Chicago Herald and Examiner, May 28, 1937!
SIGMUND DIAMOND 613
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