Kenneth R Westphal - Pragmatism, reason & norms : a realistic assessment
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Pragmatism, Reason & Norms : A Realistic Assessment American Philosophy Series, 1073-2764 ; No. 10
author
:
Westphal, Kenneth R.
publisher
:
Fordham University Press
isbn10 | asin
:
0823218198
print isbn13
:
9780823218196
ebook isbn13
:
9780585125909
language
:
English
subject
Will, Frederick L, Pragmatism, Realism.
publication date
:
1998
lcc
:
B945.W494P73 1998eb
ddc
:
191
subject
:
Will, Frederick L, Pragmatism, Realism.
Page 1
1 Perspectives on Pragmatism
Nicholas Rescher
An interesting and rather curious aspect of contemporary American philosophy relates to the fate of "pragmatism." The founding father of this quintessentially American tendency of thought, C.S. Peirce, emphatically insisted on the central point that there is a cogent standard for assessing the merit of cognitive products (ideas, theories, methods) a standard whose basis of validity reaches outside the realm of pure theory into the area of practical application and implementation. For him the ultimate test of our intellectual artifacts lay in seeing them as instrumentalities of effective praxis in their ability to serve the communal purpose for whose sake and publicity available resources are instituted. But in recent years various philosophers who have laid claim to the label of "pragmatism" have subjected the doctrine to a drastic sea change. Whereas Peircean pragmatism sought in applicative efficacy a test of objective adequacy an individual-transcending reality principle to offset the vagaries of personal reactions later pseudopragmatists have inclined to follow William James in turning their backs on the pursuit of objectivity and impersonality. For classical pragmatism's impersonal concern with "what works out for anyone (for humans in general)" they have perversely substituted an egocentrism of "what works out for me or for the `us' who constitute some limited group.'' In their hands the defining object of the pragmatic tradition the search for objective and impersonal standards has shattered into a fragmentation of communities in the parochial setting of a limited cultural context. We have a total dissolution that is,
Page 10
tenor of his social pragmatism is such that Will is prepared to settle for the convenience of a contingently constituted community rather than for the harder version of a normatively constituted one.
Such a tough-minded pragmatism can certainly grant both the frailties of individuals and groups and the diversity and not infrequent perversity of human aims and purposes. But it can and will go on to insist both that rational comportment is an open option for us, and that it is an option which, given the realities of the human condition, yields palpable benefits. And above all, such a pragmatism does not allow the matter to rest with the idiosyncratic wishes of scattered individuals or with the parochial predilections of contingent groups. Whether those ideas and beliefs actually work or not whether the engine starts or the bulb lights is not a matter of social custom but of the world's impersonal ways. Pragmatism of the Right pivots on a self-subsistent and person-indifferent reality principle its cutting edge lies not with people's connections but with the world's ways assessed in a normative perspective.
The classic pragmatists of the Left (James, Dewey) and their epigones saw the idealistic tradition (and Royce in particular) as the enemy. And at first thought this seems plausible enough. For in cognitive matters at the level of generality and precision at issue in theories of natural science, conceptions such as "knowledge," "truth," "law,'' "completeness," "system," and the like are all geared to the ideal level. They are not realizable results whose attainment we can (if realistic) see as achievable projects. All of them involve an element of normative idealization that renders their full actualization unrealistic.
Acknowledging the impracticability of a full concretization of a normative goal with its concomitant foregoing of guarantees is thus no insuperable obstacle to the validation of an ideal. This issue of its actualization is simply beside the point, because what counts with an ideal is not the question of its attainment but that of the benefits that accrue from its pursuit. What matters in the final analysis is not the achievement of perfection but an improvement on alternatives. All in all, it seems to one that Will is so focused
Page 100
However, even if we assume internalism, the contrast between sociality and individualism is not so sharp as it appears to be. On Reid's view, if there is good evidence that a witness is not credible, then it is not wise to believe him. That is, when doubt over a witness's integrity or authority is raised, Reid's wise man and Hume's proceed the same way. The crux of the difference between them is in the burden of proof. Reid's wise man believes unless there is good reason to doubt the witness's credibility, unless the assumption that he is credible is defeated. So, according to Reid, often a man is wise to believe that a witness is credible even though he has no good evidence that he is. Hume disagrees.
But if Reid's wise man is bound by (4), then he will have to assess the degree of credibility of a witness whenever he receives his testimony, contrary to what he is told to do by (2 * ). Canon (4) tells him to compare the prior probability that p with the credibility of the witness who is testifying that p. But this requires him to assess the witness's credibility. As Hume writes:
[When] the fact which testimony endeavors to establish partakes of the extraordinary and the marvelous in that case the evidence resulting from the testimony admits of a diminution, greater or less in proportion as the fact is more less unusual.15
He goes on to illustrate the point by reminding us of the Roman proverb ''I should not believe such a story were it told to me by Cato." The incredibility of the fact would invalidate an authority as great as Cato. Hume's point is simple: the more implausible the proposition, the more credible the witness must be before we are wise to believe him. Most of us accept the proverb. Thomas Jefferson did. He thought it very unlikely that extraterrestrial matter, a meteorite, could survive passage through the atmosphere and land on the surface of the Earth. So unlikely that he remarked of a report of a meteor landing by two professors at Yale: "It is easier to believe that Yankee professors would lie than that stones would
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