PROBLEMS FOR THE INDEPENDENCE CRITERION

According to a traditional view, an individual substance is that which could exist all by itself or which in some sense is “independent”. In this chapter, we construct a new version of an analysis of the ordinary notion of substance in terms of independence, and argue for its adequacy.

Our project is to construct an adequate philosophical analysis of this ordinary notion of thinghood. In setting forth our analysis we shall rely on our earlier arguments that a thing in this ordinary sense, that is, an individual substance, is not reducible to or identifiable with an entity of another kind or ontological category, for example, a set or collection of either properties, ideas, sense-data, or events. (This does not rule out the possibility that substances can be eliminated in favor of entities of another kind or ontological category.)

The last chapter's conclusion that deliberation is of ends may be thought a purely verbal victory. “Yes,” it may be admitted, “there is no contradiction in saying that we can deliberate about or ‘of’ ends; but that does not mean that deliberation that modifies ends can be rational.” While Part Three will show how deliberation of ends can be rationally constrained, we first need to confront the pseudo-Humean side of the scope obstacle, which gives the fundamental philosophical motivation for thinking that deliberation cannot rationally determine ends. Having accepted a generalized internalism about reasons for action, I cannot take a dismissive way with this opponent.

SPECIFICATION DEFINED

This section will define the relation of specification, as it holds between two ends or norms, which will be seen to mark out an alternative both to deductive application of a rule and to end–means reasoning. As we saw in §5, the hope that practical reasoning might be given a deductive reconstruction is a chimerical distraction. Once we fully accept that a deductive approach is not available, it becomes open to us to recognize that the ends and norms with which we begin are not “absolute” in logical form. By this I mean that they need not be strictly universal with respect to the domain of possible acts the way the major premise of a Peripatetic syllogism (defined in §5) must be.

Realists and antirealists presuppose an intuitive distinction between abstracta and concreta in their debates about the problem of universals. Examples of abstracta are squareness (a property), betweenness (a relation), there being horses (a proposition), the null set, and the number 7. Examples of concreta are a stone (a material substance), God (a disembodied spiritual substance), Hurricane Andrew (an event), instants and seconds (times), points and expanses of space (places), the particular wisdom of Socrates (a trope), the sum of Earth and Mars (a collection), the Earth's surface (a limit), and shadows and holes (privations). It is desirable that a philosophical analysis of the concrete–abstract distinction allow for the possibility of entities of any intelligible sorts, given some plausible view about the nature, existence conditions, and interrelationships of entities of those sorts. This desideratum seems to require allowing for the possibility of entities of the aforementioned kinds. Six attempts have been made to analyze the concrete–abstract distinction.

1. Unlike abstracta, concreta are spatially located or spatially related to something.

2. Unlike abstracta, concreta are capable of moving or undergoing intrinsic change.

3. Concreta have contingent existence, whereas abstracta have necessary existence.

4. Unlike concreta, abstracta are exemplifiable.

5. Unlike concreta, abstracta are (intellectually) graspable.

6. Unlike abstracta, concreta can be causes or effects.

Despite its broad practical importance, the question whether we can reason practically about final ends may strike an archaic note. To show that relegating this question to the ersatz battleground of discarded philosophies would be a mistake, I begin by explaining my topic and its significance (§1). I then describe how some rather diffuse philosophical stances – ones that ultimately should be discarded – have made deliberating about ends seem impossible (§2). The reader will then request, and be granted, a preview of my argument as a whole and an indication of those more particular opponents against whom I will be arguing (§3). To explain the topic, I begin with an example.

THE ISSUE

Having children is not for everyone a matter of deliberation. I do not simply mean that it can be the result of mistake or coercion. Far more commonly, it is blandly accepted as a natural, if not automatic, concomitant of marriage. What could be more traditional? Yet for some couples propagation is a matter of deliberate choice. Moral issues may impinge on this choice. An educated professional in an industrialized country, sufficiently worried that population growth will cause more pollution than the world can absorb, may refrain from having more than one child. The injustice and cruelty of the world may so disgust an impoverished citizen of a developing country that she refuses to bring a child into it.

Everyone has an interest in reasoning practically about ends. To fail to recognize its possibility is to miss the full potential for evaluating human pursuits and achieving practical wisdom, yet living wisely and discerning the true complexity of value should concern everyone. Both the centrality of the topic of deliberation about ends and the reasons why its potential rationality is not generally recognized have affected how this book has been written. Because of the broad human importance of the topic, I have aimed to write an accessible book. This may mean that in some places – in particular the long examples of Chapter X – the exposition moves too slowly for professional philosophers. In contrast, a few sections of the book establish preliminaries or address details that will mainly interest philosophers and may be skipped by others: §§5, 6, and 12. More generally, since the obstacles to recognizing the potential rationality of deliberation about ends are philosophical inventions, and since common sense already provides some evidence on its own that we do deliberate rationally about ends, only readers with some interest in philosophy are likely to be motivated to follow my arguments through to the end. They will include those readers who have sufficient philosophical curiosity about how the constructive argument against my opponents will go or about the precise shape the theory of deliberation about ends will take. They will also include readers who at the outset feel to some degree the force of the philosophically originated doubts (described in §2) about the possibility of rational deliberation of ends.

It appears to be widely assumed that to respond rationally to cases of value conflict is in effect to weigh or balance the importance of the values involved, and that weighing or balancing cannot be rational unless there is a common measure of value according to which it proceeds. Understood in the right way, the answer to the question whether or not values are or must all be commensurable in that way will determine what sorts of deliberation are possible and useful. If values are all commensurable in the right way, then one need not devote a lot of attention in deliberation to refining one's conception of them severally, and should better concentrate on weighing how instances of them contribute to the commensurating value (the commensurans, as I will call it). If values are all commensurable in the right way, then deliberation may take on a well-understood and much studied form, that of maximization; while the commensurans itself, if it has the status of being that in terms of which the value of everything else is assessed, will seem a source of value beyond calling into question in deliberation. If values are not so commensurable, then prospects for coping rationally with decisions in which they clash may seem correspondingly dim. Either way, therefore, the commensurability issue lurks as a reef upon which hopes for rational deliberation of ends seem likely to be wrecked: If values are commensurable in the relevant sense, then maximizing good consequences, according to some end taken for granted, is the order of the day; whereas if values are not commensurable in this sense, then rational deliberation seems often impossible.

Of the three main barriers to mutual understanding that make for deep disagreement, that of tacit exemplars is the one that remains. Chapter XII argued that the incommensurability of cognitive ends can be dealt with rationally in the same way that conflicts of incommensurable ends may be in general, while the last chapter argued that a clash of hardened propositions does not create an insuperable barrier to interpersonal deliberation. Divergence in tacit exemplars, however, poses the hardest problem of all. Addressing it will require at least imagining some needed institutional support.

INSTITUTING DELIBERATIVE FREEDOM

Tacit exemplars resist rational deliberation because it is difficult to become fully aware of them. Their influence in giving life to the terms we use and the views we hold is so pervasive that it is very difficult to bring them all to consciousness, let alone to obtain a critical perspective on them. This problem also crops up outside situations of deep disagreement: The tacit commitments that shape every individual's practical thinking may, at times, interfere with reasoning, causing distortion or myopia. Yet in §27 I argued, in effect, that these tacit commitments could aid rational deliberation. They can provide highly nuanced sources of guidance, and can underwrite an important kind of practical perception. Via the sort of self-awareness spurred by the demands of deliberative choice, tacit commitments can become explicit.

Where people differ radically over what they take to be axiomatic, it is likely that they also arrived at these beliefs through strikingly different tacit exemplars. The example of disagreement concerning the treatment of rape victims in Pakistan presented in §37 illustrated how both of these aspects of deep disagreement arise together. Their coincidence might be thought to exacerbate the difficulties of a rational bridge across deep disagreement. To the contrary, I will argue in this chapter: The dependence of hardened propositions upon tacit exemplars actually provides a way to soften the former. In other words, the importance of tacit learning undercuts the supposed rigidity of hardened propositions. In thus playing one barrier off against the other, I will leave tacit exemplars as the last remaining one to be reckoned with. Their importance will be assessed in the final chapter. While my imperative, defensive purpose for discussing interpersonal deliberation requires only that I deal with the case of the single person of mixed upbringing, it is simpler for purposes of exposition to stick with an interpersonal example. Although a single person of mixed upbringing can have absorbed radically divergent hardened propositions and cognitive ends from concrete experiences offering contrasting tacit exemplars, it is difficult to keep the tacit aspect of his or her internal division in view. In the case of different people from different cultures, by contrast, it is quite obvious.

Can a coherence approach meet Sidgwick's challenge? Can it truly ground an alternative way of systematizing practical commitments? In particular, can it do so without covertly constructing a commensurating standard? The task of the present chapter is to show in general how it can. More extended examples of coherentist system building will be given in Chapter X.

DEWEY'S ANTITELEOLOGICAL HOLISM

Showing how a coherentist approach can systematize without commensurating will require spelling out more fully what that approach is. To begin with, this will mean learning from two views that depart in opposite ways from the sort of coherence standard I will be defending. The first, which I will discuss in detail in this section, exaggerates the implications of revisability. It is true that the coherence approach allows that any commitment is open to revision. Emphasizing this at the cost of overlooking the possibilities for system that remain, this first view sees little point in trying to build any theory, however provisionally stated. I will take Dewey's account of deliberation as exemplifying this antisystematizing position. The second, to be discussed in the following section, recaptures a place for theory at the cost of unduly restricting the scope for revisability. There, my example will be a recent model of case-based deliberation. Obviously, my own aim is to defend a truly holistic account, one that maintains strong system despite allowing an unrestricted scope for revising commitments.

Setting out to show that we can deliberate rationally about ends, it behooves me to articulate what I take to be the marks of whether a given course of deliberation is rational or not, and more generally what I have in mind by “practical reasoning.” The terrain of rationality being what is contested, there is no noncontroversial way to lay out these marks. There is no core concept of rationality shared between me and my opponents, such that simply setting out a counterexample to their limited view would force them to recognize that we can deliberate rationally about ends. Yet I shall not simply concede them the word “rational,” and accept some other term – perhaps “reasonable” – to cover well carried out deliberation of ends. This fact provides one of my main motivations for taking the more indirect route of first clearing away the three philosophical obstacles to allowing for this possibility. Although the marks of rationality that I develop here may accordingly be expected to beg some questions, they do not provide the first premises of my argument. I set them out nonetheless in order that the reader may better understand the goal towards which this book is directed. For similar reasons, I want to situate (practical) reasoning as I understand it in relation to issues of objectivity and truth (§4) and to explain that although it cannot usefully be captured by a “logic of practical inference” (§5), the general practical “ought” does give it some logical structure (§6).

I have argued that one can deliberate about ends (§8), that ends can be deliberatively specified (Chapter IV), and that deliberative specifications of ends can be subject to rational support and criticism in terms of their overall fit within a system of mutually supporting norms found acceptable upon reflection (Chapter VIII). One may accept these points, however, and remain skeptical about the possibility of deliberating about the (or an) ultimate end. Regarding an ultimate end as a source of value is here the principal obstacle.

REMAINING GROUNDS OF SKEPTICISM

We may distinguish four sorts of principled consideration supporting this residual doubt about extending rational deliberation to ultimate ends.

First, there may remain some commitment to what might be called “normative foundationalism” regarding practical reasoning (cf. Audi 1989, 35–6). This is the view that while we may deliberate about ends, if our deliberation is to have any normative force then this must be obtained from an ultimate end that is not subject to deliberation. On this view, even if an ultimate end is not by definition a “source of value,” it must be regarded as such if practical reasoning is to have normative force. To overcome whatever resistance to deliberation about the ultimate end resides in those who think that normative force must flow from it, my approach will be to describe in the following chapter a number of examples, as realistically as I can, in which deliberation with a claim to normative force concerns an ultimate end.

Our discussion of whether and in what respects deliberation may extend to ends will naturally be advanced by a deeper consideration of the notion of an end (§7). Once this is clarified, I will be able to answer the analytic version of the scope obstacle by showing that deliberation can concern ends (§8). I will also be able to set out more precisely the reasoning underlying the motivational version of the scope obstacle (§9).

ENDS AND FINAL ENDS

Part One's statement of the issue already helped fix the sense of “end” relevant to my argument. We have in mind an item that figures centrally in deliberation about what to do, whether simply by framing problems for the deliberator or also as being subject to deliberation. The three obstacles provide additional hints: The scope obstacle indicates (1) that although ends are relevant in deliberation, it is not obvious that they are what deliberation is about, and (2) that ends are intimately connected with motivation – as, say, ordinary beliefs or logical principles are not. The system obstacle credibly implies that ends are multiple and conflict with one another, giving rise to serious question about which should cede place. The source obstacle allows that some ends are more “final” than others, in that they are recognized as regulating or overriding other ends, at least in certain contexts. Even if there is not a single ultimate end that governs various subordinate ends, ends can be arranged in such a hierarchy.