FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
EPISTEME A SERIES IN THE FOUNDATIONAL, METHODOLOGICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIOLOGICAL, AND POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE SCIENCES, PURE AND APPLIED Editor: MARIO BUNGE Foundations and Philosophy of Science Unit, McGill University Advisory Editorial Board: RUTHERFORD ARIS, Chemistry, University of Minnesota HUBERT M. BLALOCK, Sociology, University of Washington GEORGE BUGLIARELLO, Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of New York NOAM CHOMSKY, Linguistics, MIT KARL W. DEUTSCH, Political science, Harvard University BRUNO FRITSCH, Economics, E. T.H. Zurich ERWIN HIEBERT, History of science, Harvard University ARISTID LlNDENMA YER, Biology, University of Utrecht JOHN MYHILL, Mathematics, SUNY at Buffalo JOHN MAYNARD SMITH, Biology, University of Sussex RAIMO TUOMELA, Philosophy, University of Helsinki VOLUME 13
NICHOLAS RESCHER University of Pittsburgh FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Cognition D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER / TOKYO
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rescher, Nicholas Forbidden knowledge and other essays on the philosophy of cognition. (Episteme; v. 13) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Knowledge, Theory of. I. Title. II. Series: Episteme (D. Reidel); v. 13. BD161.R48 1987 121 87-16420 ISBN-J3: 978-94-010-8178-8 e-isbn-j3: 978-94-009-3771-0 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-3771-0 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322,3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland. All Rights Reserved 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
For Kurt Baier in cordial friendship
TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION xi xiii ONE / FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE: MORAL LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 1 1. A Range of Positions 1 2. Regulation vs. Laissez Faire 2 3. Moral Limits Pertain to Different Aspects of Knowledge 3 4. Can Knowledge as Such be Morally Inappropriate? 8 5. Knowledge is Only One Good among Others 10 6. The Enforcement of Morals 11 7. Coda 15 TWO / TRUTH AS IDEAL COHERENCE 17 1. The 'Continuity Condition' Relating a Criterion to the Definition of Truth 17 2. Truth as Ideal Coherence 19 3. Coherentism and Truth as Adequation 23 4. Postscript: The Gap Between the Real and the Ideal 25 THREE / RATIONALITY AND CONSISTENCY 28 1. Consistency: Initial Requisite or Ultimate Ideal? 28 2. Linearly Inferential vs. Dialectically Cyclic Reasoning 28 3. Ampliative vs. Reductive Reasoning 33 4. Two Very Different Sorts of Acceptability: Qualified vs. Outright Belief 34 5. Different Attitudes Towards Consistency 37 6. The Place of Dialectics in the Human Sciences 40 7. Must Inconsistency-Tolerance Be Motivated Epistemically? 41 8. Consistency as a Cognitive Ideal 42 vii
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS FOUR / AN END TO SCIENCE? 44 1. Is Scientific Discovery an Inherently Bounded 'Venture? 44 2. Nature Might Exhibit an Unending Complexity of Physical Constitution 45 3. Nature Might Exhibit an Unending Complexity of Lawful Comportment 46 4. The Phenomena of Nature Might Be Unendingly Diverse 48 5. The Basis for an Unending Prospect of Scientific Discovery Might Lie Wholly in the Character of Our Inquiry Processes 52 6. The Regulative Rationale for Supposing the Cognitive Inexhaustibility of Nature 56 FIVE / ON rue PROBABILISTIC BEARING OF TESTIMONY 58 1. Introduction 58 2. The Reliability of Sources 58 3. The Knowledgeability of Sources 62 4. Some 'Variations 63 5. A Survey of Probative 'Virtues 67 6. The Taxicab Problem 70 7. Hume and Laplace on Human Testimony 73 8. Laplace on Testimonial Chains 75 9. The Moral of the Story n SIX / rue LIMITS OF PROBABILISTIC EPISTEMOLOGY 78 1. The Probabilist Program 78 2. Probability Is Not Enough 79 SEVEN / rue rureefold WAY 83 1. The Three Levels 83 2. Some Examples 84 3. Man as a Creature of the Threefold Way 87 4. The Question of Legitimacy: The Utility of the Ideal 89 EIGHT / NUMBER IDOLATRY AND FALLACIES OF QUANTIFICATION 93
TABLE OF CONTENTS IX NINE / LIFE'S SEASONS: THE CONCEPTUAL PHENOMENOLOGY OF AGE-PERIODlZATlON 100 1. The General Idea of a Life Cycle 100 2. The Rationale of Human Age-Periodization Phase Transitions 103 3. The Diversity of Age 104 4. The Conventionality of Phase Transition 107 5. Thought Experiments 109 6. The Upshot 111 7. Broader Vistas 111 TEN / PHILOSOPHICAL TAXONOMY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUE 113 1. The Shape of Philosophy: Some Ancient Views 113 2. The Middle Ages and Early Modern Times 116 3. A Later Picture 120 4. Taxonomic Dynamics 121 5. The Post-Kantian Transformation 122 6. Taxonomic Proliferation 124 7. The Contemporary Situation 125 8. The Problem of Progress 129 9. The Dialectic of the Individual and the Community 131 10. Conclusion 133 ELEVEN / IS PHILOSOPHY A GUIDE TO LIFE? 135 1. Philosophy: The Problematic Guide 135 2. The Problem of 'Applied Philosophy': Only One's Own Philosophy Can Provide Guidance 137 3. What Philosophy Per Se Can Contribute 139 4. Some Examples of 'Applied Philosophy' in the Public Domain 139 5. The Limited Utility of Methodological Applications 141 6. A Danger of 'Applied Philosophy' 143 NOTES 145 BIBLIOGRAPHY 151 INDEX OF NAMES 153
PREFACE This volume collects together eleven essays in epistemology, written during the past three years. They are mostly unpublished, just four of them having appeared previously (numbers two, three, four and eleven). Detailed acknowledgement of prior publication is made in the notes to the relevant chapters. I am indebted to the editors of the several publications involved for their kind permission to use this material. And I am particularly grateful to my friend, Professor Mario Bunge, for his interest in my work and for his willingness to include this sample of it in his 'Episteme' series. NICHOLAS RESCHER Pittsburgh, PA December, 1986 xi
INTRODUCTION The philosophy of knowledge covers a vast and enormously diversified terrain. Within this broad area, the essays that comprise the present book deal specifically with the following issues: 1. The moral dimension of inquiry - in particular, scientific inquiry into the ways of the world (Chapter 1) 2. The epistemic status of such cognitive 'values' of inquiry as - coherence (Chapter 2) - consistency (Chapter 3) - completeness (Chapter 4) 3. The cognitive bearing of probabilistic considerations (Chapters 5 and 6) 4. The epistemic status of certain ideal desiderata of cognition, such as - totality (Chapter 7) - precision (Chapter 8) - exactness (Chapter 9) 5. The methodology and the character of specifically philosophical inquiry (Chapters 10-11) The essays try to combine a hard-headed concern for the substance of rigorous inquiry with a traditionally humanistic concern for a valueguided appreciation of its broader implications. Although topically diversified, all of these studies involve the common objective of seeking to illustrate how the aims or goals of inquiry exert an effect on its products. In an era when fashion leads towards a monolithic 'analysis of knowledge' that regiments this conception into the format of a computational formalism, the book seeks to convey the idea that knowledge is something far more diversified, variegated, and complex than is generally acknowledged. A volume of essays has a point of advantage over a scholarly book as such - an advantage that can be of use to author and reader alike. Since its substantive unity is less rigid, it can give a somewhat freer play to xiii
XIV INTRODUCTION ideas, taking a larger and more diversified terrain into view. This facilitates a less didactic, more allusive mode of dialectic that invites the reader to enter into the discussion by making his own connections and drawing his own conclusions. In the present case, these inferential leaps will, it is hoped, move in one particular direction. For a common and unifying pragmatic perspective unites these many-sided deliberations. Our knowledge is a tool or instrument that enables a creature hungry for understanding to get a cognitive grasp on things. And any tool or instrument is bound to reflect in its make-up the uses its user proposes to make of it; it inevitably takes on a form that is coordinated by the ends and purposes for which it is designed. An impetus to idealism thus emerges through the fact that in inquiry as elsewhere process and product are inseparably interconnected.