The Foundations of Value, Part I

Logical Issues: Justification (quid facti), First Principles, and Socratic Method

Original Source

after Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Fries, & Nelson

If you wish to justify your beliefs, you give reasons for them. You say that you believe proposition Z because of reason Y. Willingness to give reasons all by itself may be called rationality. You may also wish, however, to justify proposition(s) Y. So you cite proposition(s) X as the reason for believing proposition(s) Y. Aristotle noticed two things about this procedure. First, we must be able to describe how Y provides a reason for Z and X provides a reason for Y. Logic is just the description of how X implies Y and Z, or that Y and Z are logical consequences of X. Logic can prove Y and Z on the basis of X, but it cannot prove X without further reasons (premises), e.g. propositions U, V, or W. If we continue to give reasons for reasons, from Z to Y, to X, to W, to V, to U, this is called the Regress of Reasons. Aristotle's second point, then, was just that the regress of reasons cannot be an infinite regress. If there is no end to our reasons for reasons, then nothing would ever be proven. We would just get tired of giving reasons, with nothing established any more securely than when we started. If there is to be no infinite regress, Aristotle realized, there must be propositions that do not need, for whatever reason, to be proven. Such propositions he called the first principles (archai, principii) of demonstration. How we would know first principles to be true, how we can verify them, if they cannot be proven is the Problem of First Principles.

Aristotle decided that first principles are self-evident, which means that we can know intuitively that they are true just by understanding them (by noûs, "mind"). This was widely believed to be the case for many centuries, especially since it seemed to fit perfectly the best example of a deductive system based on first principles: geometry, where all the theorems are ultimately derived from a small set of axioms. In other areas, however, self-evident first principles didn't seem to work very well. Ultimately, Hume and Kant decided that most first principles are not self-evident. Hume thought this meant that we couldn't really even know them to be true, although we had to assume that they were. Kant thought that we could know them to be true, even though they couldn't be proven and were not self-evident. (Kant called such propositions "synthetic a priori." "Synthetic" means that they can be denied without contradiction, i.e. they do not contradict themselves or anything else that is true. Now that is called "axiomatic independence." "A priori" means that they are known to be true independent of experience.) Although there is not much agreement on whether Kant explained this successfully, Leonard Nelson, following a suggestion in Kant, later thought that there were really two questions involved: 1) the actual justification (what Kant called the quid juris, or matter of right), which we can set aside for the moment; and 2) the question of whether the first principles are simply there, i.e. whether we use them (never doubted by Hume and called the quid facti, or matter of fact, by Kant). Nelson saw that this could lead to a theory much like Plato's.

Aristotle had hoped that first principles could be discovered through induction. An inductive inference is the generalization that results from counting individual objects or events. The Problem of Induction is the realization that we can never know how many individuals or events we need to count before we are justified in making the generalization. Francis Bacon believed that empirical science uses induction, and his views influenced everyone's view of science until this century. But Bacon couldn't answer the objection that induction never proves anything. Nor could anybody else.

In The Logic of Scientific Discovery Karl Popper shattered the conundra of induction and the verification of first principles by just dismissing them. Induction never had proven anything. Even Aristotle understood that, but it finally wasn't until David Hume that the point was really driven home--although even modern partisans of Hume don't seem to understand the result. Aristotle's problem of verifying first principles was resolved by Popper with the observation that deductive arguments can go in two directions: ponendo ponens ["affirming by affirming," or modus ponens, "the affirming mode": if P implies Q, and P is true, then Q is true.] held out the mirage of verification, but a deductive argument can also use tollendo tollens ["denying by denying," or modus tollens, "the denying mode": if P implies Q, and Q is not true, then P is not true], which means that premises can be falsified even if they cannot be verified [Popper says that this is a form of Kantianism, and in fact it is rather like what Immanuel Kant says in the Critique of Pure Reason at A646-647 under "The Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason." Popper also says that it is conformable to the Friesian variety of Kantianism, since Jakob Fries (1773-1843) and Leonard Nelson (1882-1927), returning to a consideration of the original problem in Aristotle, stoutly maintained that first principles cannot be logically proven/verified--the modern terminology is that they must be "non-inferentially" justified]. This explains many peculiarities in the history of science and is, indeed, the "logic of scientific discovery," although people like Thomas Kuhn have muddied the waters with other issues (some of them legitimate, some not--in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

In relation to Popper's understanding of the logic of scientific discovery, the point of interest is how Socratic Method uses falsification. The form of Socratic discourse is that the interlocutor cities belief X (e.g. Euthyphro, that the pious is what is loved by gods). Socrates then asks if the interlocutor also happens to believe Y (e.g. Euthyphro, that the gods fight among themselves). With assent, Socrates then leads the interlocutor through to agreement that Y implies not-X (e.g. the pious is both loved and hated by the gods). The interlocutor then must decide whether he prefers X or Y. That doesn't verify or prove anything, but one or the other is falsified: just as in science a falsifying observation may be itself rejected instead of the theory it discredits. Although Y often has more prima facie credibility, the heat of the argument is liable to lead the interlocutor into rejecting Y for the sake of maintaining their argument for X (though, with Euthyphro, Socrates does not agree with either premise). Socrates then, of course, finds belief Z, which also implies not-X. After enough of that, X starts looking pretty bad; and the bystanders and readers, at least, are in no doubt about the outcome of the examination.

Why it was always possible to find another belief that would imply not-X is a good question. Plato had thought that true first principles [note] were unavoidable. We use them always, even though we usually don't realize it and even when we may even think that we aren't. Whenever Socrates questioned people, he had always been able to maneuver them into contradictions. Plato decided that this happened because Socrates could always find the way to bring out the conflict between everyone's false beliefs and the true principles that they inevitably employed somewhere. With a contradiction, however, which side is true and which is false, or whether maybe both sides are false, is an open question. Thus, Plato conceived of Socratic Method as the way to discover the truth on the principle that a completely consistent system of belief is possible only for the true first principles. Otherwise false beliefs would create contradictions with the unavoidable true principles. As Hume said, whatever our philosophical doubts, we leave the room by the door and not by the window--the same Hume who ruled out, not just miracles, but also free will and chance because he thought they all violated the same principle of causality that he so famously doubted. Nelson suspected that consequently, while Socratic Method did not really justify the first principles, it did provide a way to discover them. In a practical sense, that may be just as good as justification, and we can even say that Hume did more or less that very thing. It does always give Socrates, and us, an way to pursue the inquiry when we seem to reach an impasse.

Socratic Method thus shares the logic of falsification with Popper's philosophy of science and thereby avoids the pitfalls that Aristotle encountered after he formulated the theory of deduction and faced the problem of first principles and of induction. Both Socrates and Popper are left in a certain condition of ignorance because the weeding process of falsification never leaves us in a final and absolute cognitive state: we always may discover some inconsistency (or some observation) that will require us to sort things out again. Our ignorance, however, may be of a peculiar kind. We may actually know something that is true, but the limitation will be in our understanding of it. Galileo was in a position to know that the sun was a star, but his understanding of what a star was still was most rudimentary. Isaac Newton had a theory of gravity that still works just fine for moderate velocities and masses--the force of gravity still declines as the square of the distance--but Einstein provided a deeper theory that encompassed and explained more. When it comes to matters of value that scientific method cannot touch, Plato had a theory of Recollection to explain our access to knowledge apart from experience, and his theory was actually true in the sense that we do have access to knowledge apart from experience; but Immanuel Kant ultimately provides a much deeper, more subtle, and less metaphysically speculative theory that does the same thing.

Plato's own argument against Protagoras's relativism brings out this point. It is that relativism itself uses the very principle of absolute truth that it explicitly rejects. Relativism cannot even make its own claim without holding that it is above the relativity that it postulates. But if relativism is not absolute, then it allows its opposite, namely absolutism. Relativism could be true only if it were relatively relative, and that is not a denial of absolutes. Subjectivism has the same problem. If there is no knowledge (objectivity), how can we know that? If there is no objective truth, that would be an objective truth. So if subjectivism were true, clearly we couldn't know it, we would just have our subjective impression that no one would need to pay any attention to.

Be careful whenever a philosopher (or anyone) begins talking about "reason"--just as when Mr. Spock used to say in Star Trek, "Logic dictates." Logic doesn't dictate very much, and we must be very careful what someone means by "reason" when they begin invoking it. As you have seen, logic requires premises, and it ultimately cannot prove those premises. If "reason" means logic, it really only means consistency; but in principle, there could be an infinite number of consistent logical systems. Since Hume thinks that all first principles are established by sentiment, he properly asserts that, "Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions." Other philosophers (Aristotle, Plato, Kant) may mean more by "reason" than consistency, but we must be clear exactly how that differs from logical consistency.

What would make the principles revealed by Socratic Method true is a deeper issue that will be considering in the following essay, "The Foundations of Value, Part II, Epistemological Issues: Justification (quid juris) and Non-Intuitive Immediate Knowledge."

Epistemology

Topic and Essays The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series

Copyright (c) 1996, 1998 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

Note

Plato also used the term archê, like Aristotle, but didn't define it in terms of logic and the regress of reasons. In Plato's day logic didn't exist yet, so it wasn't until Aristotle that the regress of reasons could even be described.

http://www.friesian.com/founda-2.htm Original Source

The Foundations of Value, Part II, Epistemological Issues: Justification (quid juris) and Non-Intuitive Immediate Knowledge

after Kant, Fries, & Nelson

In the previous essay, "Justification, First Principles, and Socratic Method," the Problem of First Principles was in the end addressed through Socratic Method in terms of the Kantian quid facti, i.e. that we can seek to discover what the First Principles are. However, the deeper question of the Kantian quid juris, what really makes the First Principles true, or what justifies them, was temporarily set aside. At this point, the answer to that issue can be found in one of the most pivotal doctrines of the Friesian tradition: the theory of non-intuitive immediate knowledge. This is a profoundly paradoxical doctrine, which is at variance with contemporary notions of immediate knowledge and intuition.

Non-intuitive immediate knowledge is the category to which Fries and Nelson assign the knowledge that belongs to the object language systems [1] of metaphysics and ethics, as opposed to the empirical category to which they see the metalanguage, i.e. epistemology itself, belonging [2]. Here "intuition" is used for the German Anschauung as used by Kant and the Friesians, and it does not mean "intuition" either in the ordinary sense of a spontaneous belief or in the similar philosophic sense. In Kant the notion of intuition originally seems to be the equivalent of perception and perceptual knowledge [3]. The conception becomes confused, however, when Kant himself appears to conclude that perception cannot be knowledge, or even perception, without the mental activity of synthesis [4]. The conclusion would reduce "intuition" to no more than a pre-conscious receptivity of the senses. Intuition as "immediate" knowledge would also thus become impossible, since knowledge would require the mediation of the intellect to become knowledge. Friesian theory accepts Kant's earlier notion of intuition as being immediate knowledge, albeit not conceptually articulated in any way.

Nelson's point in that regard [5] is that not all knowledge can be mediate, or conceptual, because all conceptual propositions, except tautologies and contradictions, are essentially arbitrary and must, for their truth or falsity to be determined, be referred to some external ground. The "external ground" then for perceptual knowledge is immediate knowledge in perceptual intuition, which as such cannot be any kind of belief or thought. In this respect the Friesian theory of truth [6] is a combination of traditional correspondence and coherence theories: coherence in that the conceptual expression and the immediate knowledge both belong to consciousness, and must merely be made to conform to one another; and correspondence because immediate knowledge is a representation of the external world and so, on the principle that our representation contains the objects of our knowledge (phenomenal objects), the external world itself, requiring that the purely mental entity, the belief or the propositional representation, corresponding to the world, must be mediately constructed. By the principles of the dual nature of representation (that representation is both internal, a mental content, and external, the phenomenal object of our representation) and of ontological undecidability (that we cannot decide whether representation is "really" internal or external) we may consider the Friesian doctrine of truth to be the equivalent of the strongest traditional correspondence theory, that there is an isomorphism between truth in internal representation and states of affairs in the external world.

The difference between intuition and immediate knowledge is that the concept of intuition contains the added feature of immediate awareness--that the intuitive ground is explicitly present to consciousness. The intuition that we have is perception, and the objects of perception are empirical objects. Since we are ordinarily strongly inclined to believe that knowledge implies awareness of knowledge, it is a very powerful tendency to equate our intuition with our immediate knowledge as such. That gives rise to what Nelson calls [7] a "dogmatic disjunction" in the attempt to formulate the nature of the ground of metaphysical knowledge: that any knowledge is either from intuition or from reflection.

This is to say that any case of knowledge is either mediate, involving concepts and thought, where through reflection new knowledge can be generated, or immediate, where all immediate knowledge is intuitive.

Nelson's chart from "The Critical Method and the Relation of Psychology to Philosophy" [8].

Given the "dogmatic disjunction" as the starting point, Nelson sets out a simple axiomatic system to demonstrate the various epistemological approaches to metaphysics [9]. If one accepts (1) the disjunction and also accepts (2) that metaphysical knowledge is possible and that (3) our intuition is empirical, then the only possible conclusion is that the source of metaphysical knowledge is in reflection. For Nelson that is the nature of the traditional system of "dogmatic" or speculative metaphysics. Those systems may be relatively naive, relying on Euclidean sorts of proofs and "self-evident" premises whose self-evidence remains an unexamined claim, or they may be relatively sophisticated with peculiar doctrines of logic (as with Hegel) to account for the manner in which thought generates new knowledge. Dogmatic metaphysics is untenable, however, once it is realized that reflection cannot generate knowledge that is not already implicit in its datum. Logical derivations and analytic truths are no more than rearrangements of what is given. The speculative generation of scientific hypotheses escapes the failing of dogmatic metaphysics because scientific method looks to the empirical verification or falsification of the hypotheses. That way is not open, by definition, to metaphysics.

With a new premise that reflection is essentially empty of any new ground or source of knowledge, we cannot accept all of the original three premises of dogmatic metaphysics. Rejecting premise (2) that metaphysical knowledge is possible results in the conclusion of empiricism that all synthetic knowledge is ultimately grounded in empirical intuition. Rejecting premise (3) that all our intuition is empirical results in the conclusion of mysticism that metaphysical knowledge is possible because we possess, or can possess, a special intuitive ground for it. The final alternative, which Nelson calls "Criticism," is to reject premise (1), the "dogmatic disjunction," and conclude that there is a third source of knowledge besides intuition and reflection. Since a division into mediate and immediate is logically exhaustive and we already accept that mediate knowledge, or reflection is empty, then there must be immediate knowledge which is not intuitive. This must actually mean that we are unconscious of the non-intuitive immediate ground. The knowledge itself is neither believed nor thought, as such, and it is not explicitly present to us as the table or chair is perceptually.

The "Critical" conclusion tells us nothing positive or definite about what non-intuitive immediate knowledge must be. Even to be legitimately forced to a conclusion that some immediate knowledge is not intuitive obviously does not tell us what it is, and so I characterize this as a merely "negative" theory which must remain inadequate for that reason--as we are left to wonder what kind of knowledge we could possibly possess without being aware of it. The conception is by no means new, however, for it corresponds to one of the most characteristic and important doctrines of Plato: namely that what we think we know is only opinion and what we really know we actually don't know that we know. Plato's explanation for that condition was also characteristic, and paradoxical, not fitting precisely into either the dogmatic or the mystical categories of Nelson's analysis; for Plato held that our metaphysical knowledge is a momentarily forgotten memory of a prenatal intuition. This is ultimately an appeal to intuition, but in present time it is only an appeal to memory. In his own way Plato thus approximates, with a positive doctrine, the conditions of non-intuitive immediate knowledge: that it is known but not at first known consciously.

With this analysis in hand, Friesian theory can describe all the possible ways that a proposition can be grounded or justified [10]. There are three of these: 1) Proof, which is justification by logical derivation. Tautologies, analytic propositions, can be proven, given the rules of logic, by themselves; all other proofs require premises, which outside of logic are ultimately going to be synthetic. 2) Demonstration, which is justification by the display of an intuitive ground. In daily life this is the most conspicuous means (apart from arguments from authority), not just of the justification of belief, but of the origin of ordinary knowledge. And 3) Deduction (in Kant's legalistic sense [11]), which is justification by means of a description of the non-intuitive ground of the belief or proposition. "Deduction" is the peculiar Kantian vehicle for dealing with non-intuitive immediate knowledge, and it is the theoretical heart of Friesian introspective empirical epistemology. "Proof," "demonstration," and "deduction" are terms that all traditionally mean proof; but Demonstration and Deduction in these new Friesian sense are in no way logical derivations in the object language. Demonstration is merely a showing of the obvious. Where the obvious is no longer present or escapes the nature of our perceptions, then other considerations come into play. Deduction is a showing of the unobvious, but still importantly a showing. Deduction cannot logically prove the propositions in questions any more than the demonstration of an intuitive ground can. But the cognitive force of each is the same.

The first questions about non-intuitive immediate knowledge would be how it comes to be consciously known, having been unconsciously known, and then how we know that it is what we think it is. In Kant's classic terms, as we have seen, those are the questions of the quid facti and the quid juris [12]. The quid facti, the conscious possession of the non-intuitive knowledge, is obtained by reflection, specifically by taking our ordinary naive acts of judgment as objects and then by abstracting from them the forms or presuppositions they had unconsciously employed [13]. Since the presence and focus of consciousness is in its object, the forms or rules by which the object is known, or generated, are themselves not perceived; but taking consciousness itself as an object can bring those presupposed forms into the objective focus, making possible their entry as such into consciousness. Nelson's theory in this respect is not satisfactory. He thinks that the abstract forms are recognized by a method of "regressive abstraction," but this is really just an appeal to intuitionism and is really no more satisfactory than saying that they are self-evident, once we think about them enough. But since Nelson did think that this occurs through Socratic Method, it is possible to ignore the intuitionistic aspects of his theory and just see Socratic Method, as described above, using the logic of falsification. The method, then, as in science, is to imaginatively construct rules to explain the phenomena and then test their logical consequences against those phenomena--where the phenomena, of course, are our statements, not our empirical intuitions of the world.

One of the nicest examples, from outside philosophy, of the quid facti is the recognition of grammatical rules of language. Language as an elaboration of consciousness by which objects are conceptually articulated contains many forms that are not intuitively known; and there is no more conspicuous a contrast than in a child between the fearful complexity of rules that are so easily manipulated with respect to their objects yet so securely hidden in themselves. Another sort of conspicuous contrast is when a language teacher insists on the correctness of palpable grammatical archaisms yet usually entirely fails to employ them in ordinary speech. Obtaining the quid facti is simple in principle, but in practice reflection is never as easy as it seems it should be.

Nelson's conception of Deduction seems to be that it is sufficient to show that the ground of the object language propositions must be non-intuitive [14]. That would seem to be only half the answer, however, having said what the ground is not while leaving the question unanswered what the ground is, providing no general theory of the ontology of the non-intuitive ground of various object languages. A consequence of that is that the various object languages, once identified as such, remain isolated from each other, each a solitary universe of thought maintained solely by Nelson's "self-confidence of reason" [15]. The ontological ground of the difference, for the Friesians, seems to be lost in the unknown qualities of things in themselves. The continuation of the theory, therefore, will be in ontology rather than in logic or epistemology. Such questions are treated in the following essay, A Theory of the Good."