Addenda to Volume II
I. Facts, Standards, and Truth: A Further Criticism of Relativism (1961)
The main philosophical malady of our time is an intellectual and moral relativism, the latter being at least in part based upon the former. By relativism — or, if you like, scepticism — I mean here, briefly, the theory that the choice between competing theories is arbitrary; since either, there is no such thing as objective truth; or, if there is, no such thing as a theory which is true or at any rate (though perhaps not true) nearer to the truth than another theory; or, if there are two or more theories, no ways or means of deciding whether one of them is better than another.
In this addendum1 I shall first suggest that a dose of Tarski's theory of truth (see also the references to A. Tarski in the Index of this book), stiffened perhaps by my own theory of getting nearer to the truth, may go a long way towards curing this malady, though I admit that some other remedies might also be required, such as the non- authoritarian theory of knowledge which I have developed elsewhere.2 1 shall also try to show (in sections 12 ff. below) that the situation in the realm of standards — especially in the moral and political field — is somewhat analogous to that obtaining in the realm of facts.
1. Truth
Certain arguments in support of relativism arise from the question, asked in the tone of the assured sceptic who knows for certain that there is no answer: 'What is truth?' But Pilate's question can be answered in a simple and reasonable way — ^though hardly in a way that would have satisfied him — as follows: an assertion, proposition, statement, or belief, is true if, and only if, it corresponds to the facts.
Yet what do we mean by saying that a statement corresponds to the facts? Though to our sceptic or relativist this second question may seem just as unanswerable as the first, it actually can be equally readily answered. The answer is not difficult — as one might expect if one reflects upon the fact that every judge assumes that the witness knows what truth (in the sense of correspondence with the facts) means. Indeed, the answer turns out to be almost trivial.
In a way it is trivial — that is, once we have learnt from Tarski that the problem is one in which we refer to or speak about statements and facts and some relationship of correspondence holding between statement and facts; and that, therefore, the solution must also be one that refers to or speaks about statements and facts, and some relation between them. Consider the following:
The statement 'Smith entered the pawnshop shortly after 10.15' corresponds to the facts if and only if Smith entered the pawnshop shortly after 10.15.
When we read this italicized paragraph, what is likely to strike us first is its triviality. But never mind its triviality: if we look at it again, and more carefully, we see (1) that it refers to a statement, and (2) to some facts; and (3) that it can therefore state the very obvious conditions which we should expect to hold whenever we wish to say that the statement referred to corresponds to the facts referred to.
Those who think that this italicized paragraph is too trivial or too simple to contain anything interesting should be reminded of the fact, already referred to, that since everybody knows what truth, or correspondence with the facts, means (as long as he does not allow himself to speculate about it) this must be, in a sense, a trivial matter.
That the idea formulated in the italicized paragraph is correct, may be brought out by the following second italicized paragraph.
The assertion made by the witness, 'Smith entered the pawnshop shortly after 10.15 is true if and only if Smith entered the pawnshop shortly after 10.15.
It is clear that this second italicized paragraph is again very trivial. Nevertheless, it states in full the conditions for applying the predicate 'is true' to any statement made by a witness.
Some people might think that a better way to formulate the paragraph would be the following:
The assertion made by the witness 7 saw that Smith entered the pawnshop shortly after 10.15' is true if and only if the witness saw that Smith entered the pawnshop shortly after 10.15.
Comparing this third italicized paragraph with the second we see that while the second gives the conditions for the truth of a statement about Smith and what he did, the third gives the conditions for the truth of a statement about the witness and what he did (or saw). But this is the only difference between the two paragraphs: both state the full conditions for the truth of the two different statements which are quoted in them.
It is a rule of giving evidence that eye-witnesses should confine themselves to stating what they actually saw. Compliance with this rule may sometimes make it easier for the judge to distinguish between true evidence and false evidence. Thus the third italicized paragraph may perhaps be said to have some advantages over the second, if regarded from the point of view of truth-seeking and truth-finding.
But it is essential for our present purpose not to mix up questions of actual truth-seeking or truth-finding (i.e. epistemological or methodological questions) with the question of what we mean, or what we intend to say, when we speak of truth, or of correspondence with the facts (the logical or ontological question of truth). Now from the latter point of view, the third italicized paragraph has no advantage whatever over the second. Each of them states to the full the conditions for the truth of the statement to which it refers.
Each, therefore, answers the question — 'What is truth?' in precisely the same way; though each does it only indirectly, by giving the conditions for the truth for a certain statement -- and each for a different statement.
2. Criteria
It is decisive to realize that knowing what truth means, or under what conditions a statement is called true, is not the same as, and must be clearly distinguished from, possessing a means of deciding — a criterion for deciding — whether a given statement is true or false.
The distinction I am referring to is a very general one, and it is of considerable importance for an assessment of relativism, as we shall see.
We may know, for example, what we mean by 'good meat' and by 'meat gone bad'; but we may not know how to tell the one from the other, at least in some cases: it is this we have in mind when we say that we have no criterion of the 'goodness' of good meat. Similarly, every doctor knows, more or less, what he means by 'tuberculosis'; but he may not always recognize it. And even though there may be (by now) batteries of tests which amount almost to a decision method, — that is to say, to a criterion -- sixty years ago there certainly were no such batteries of tests at the disposal of doctors, and no criterion. But doctors knew then very well what they meant — a lung infection due to a certain kind of microbe.
Admittedly, a criterion — a definite method of decision — if we could obtain one, might make everything clearer and more definite and more precise. It is therefore understandable that some people, hankering after precision, demand criteria. And if we can get them, the demand may be reasonable.
But it would be a mistake to believe that, before we have a criterion for deciding whether or not a man is suffering from tuberculosis, the phrase 'X is suffering from tuberculosis' is meaningless; or that, before we have a criterion of the goodness or badness of meat, there is no point in considering whether or not a piece of meat has gone bad; or that, before we have a reliable lie-detector, we do not know what we mean when we say that X is deliberately lying, and should therefore not even consider this 'possibility', since it is no possibility at all, but meaningless; or that, before we have a criterion of truth, we do not know what we mean when we say of a statement that it is true.
Thus those who insist that, without a criterion — a reliable test — for tuberculosis, or lying, or truth, we cannot mean anything by the words 'tuberculosis' or 'lying' or 'true', are certainly mistaken. In fact, construction of a battery of tests for tuberculosis, or for lying, comes after we have established — perhaps only roughly — what we mean by 'tuberculosis' or by 'lying'.
It is clear that in the course of developing tests for tuberculosis, we may learn a lot more about this illness; so much, perhaps, that we may say that the very meaning of the term 'tuberculosis' has changed under the influence of our new knowledge, and that after the establishment of the criterion the meaning of the term is no longer the same as before. Some, perhaps, may even say that 'tuberculosis' can now be defined in terms of the criterion. But this does not alter the fact that we meant something before — though we may, of course, have known less about the thing. Nor does it alter the fact that there are few diseases (if any) for which we have either a criterion or a clear definition, and that few criteria (if any) are reliable. (But if they are not reliable, we had better not call them 'criteria'.) There may be no criterion which helps us to establish whether a pound note is, or is not, genuine. But should we find two pound notes with the same serial number, we should have good reasons to assert, even in the absence of a criterion, that one of them at least is a forgery; and this assertion would clearly not be made meaningless by the absence of a criterion of genuineness.
To sum up, the theory that in order to determine what a word means we must establish a criterion for its correct use, or for its correct application, is mistaken: we practically never have such a criterion.
3. Criterion philosophies
The view just rejected — the view that we must have criteria in order to know what we are talking about, whether it is tuberculosis, lying, or existence, or meaning, or truth — is the overt or implicit basis of many philosophies. A philosophy of this kind may be called a 'criterion philosophy'.
Since the basic demand of a criterion philosophy cannot as a rule be met, it is clear that the adoption of a criterion-philosophy will, in many cases, lead to disappointment, and to relativism or scepticism.
I believe that it is the demand for a criterion of truth which has made so many people feel that the question 'What is truth?' is unanswerable. But the absence of a criterion of truth does not render the notion of truth non- significant any more than the absence of a criterion of health renders the notion of health non-significant. A sick man may seek health even though he has no criterion for it. An erring man may seek truth even though he has no criterion for it.
And both may simply seek health, or truth, without much bothering about the meanings of these terms which they (and others) understand well enough for their purposes.
One immediate result of Tarski's work on truth is the following theorem of logic: there can be no general criterion of truth (except with respect to certain artificial language systems of a somewhat impoverished kind).
This result can be exactly established; and its establishment makes use of the notion of truth as correspondence with the facts.
We have here an interesting and philosophically very important result (important especially in connection with the problem of an authoritarian theory of knowledge3). But this result has been established with the help of a notion — in this case the notion of truth — for which we have no criterion. The unreasonable demand of the criterion-philosophies that we should not take a notion seriously before a criterion has been established would therefore, if adhered to in this case, have for ever prevented us from attaining a logical result of great philosophical interest.
Incidentally, the result that there can be no general criterion of truth is a direct consequence of the still more important result (which Tarski obtained by combining Godel's undecidability theorem with his own theory of truth) that there can be no general criterion of truth even for the comparatively narrow field of number theory, or for any science which makes full use of arithmetic. It applies a fortiori to truth in any extra- mathematical field in which unrestricted use is made of arithmetic.
4. Fallibilism
All this shows not only that some still fashionable forms of scepticism and relativism are mistaken, but also that they are obsolete; that they are based on a logical confusion — between the meaning of a term and the criterion of its proper application — although the means for clearing up this confusion have been readily available for some thirty years.
It must be admitted, however, that there is a kernel of truth in both scepticism and relativism. The kernel of truth is just that there exists no general criterion of truth. But this does not warrant the conclusion that the choice between competing theories is arbitrary. It merely means, quite simply, that we can always err in our choice — that we can always miss the truth, or fall short of the truth; that certainty is not for us (nor even knowledge that is highly probable, as I have shown in various places, for example in chapter 10 of Conjectures and Refutations)', that we are fallible. This, for all we know, is no more than the plain truth. There are few fields of human endeavour, if any, which seem to be exempt from human fallibility. What we once thought to be well-established, or even certain, may later turn out to be not quite correct (but this means false), and in need of correction. A particularly impressive example of this is the discovery of heavy water, and of heavy hydrogen (deuterium, first separated by Harold C. Urey in 1931). Prior to this discovery, nothing more certain and more settled could be imagined in the field of chemistry than our knowledge of water (H2O) and of the chemical elements of which it is composed. Water was even used for the 'operational' definition of the gramme, the unit standard of mass of the 'absolute' metric system; it thus formed one of the basic units of experimental physical measurements. This illustrates the fact that our knowledge of water was believed to be so well established that it could be used as the firm basis of all other physical measurements. But after the discovery of heavy water, it was realized that what had been believed to be a chemically pure compound was actually a mixture of chemically indistinguishable but physically very different compounds, with very different densities, boiling points, and freezing points — though for the definitions of all these points, 'water' had been used as a standard base.
This historical incident is typical; and we may learn from it that we cannot foresee which parts of our scientific knowledge may come to grief one day. Thus the belief in scientific certainty and in the authority of science is just wishful thinking: science is fallible, because science is human.
But the fallibility of our knowledge — or the thesis that all knowledge is guesswork, though some consists of guesses which have been most severely tested — must not be cited in support of scepticism or relativism. From the fact that we can err, and that a criterion of truth which might save us from error does not exist, it does not follow that the choice between theories is arbitrary, or non-rational: that we cannot learn, or get nearer to the truth: that our knowledge cannot grow.
5. Fallibilism and the growth of knowledge
By 'fallibilism' I mean here the view, or the acceptance of the fact, that we may err, and that the quest for certainty (or even the quest for high probability) is a mistaken quest. But this does not imply that the quest for truth is mistaken. On the contrary, the idea of error implies that of truth as the standard of which we may fall short. It implies that, though we may seek for truth, and though we may even find truth (as I believe we do in very many cases), we can never be quite certain that we have found it. There is always a possibility of error; though in the case of some logical and mathematical proofs, this possibility may be considered slight.
But fallibilism need in no way give rise to any sceptical or relativist conclusions. This will become clear if we consider that all the known historical examples of human fallibility — including all the known examples of miscarriage of justice — are examples of the advance of our knowledge. Every discovery of a mistake constitutes a real advance in our knowledge. As Roger Martin du Gard says in Jean Barois, 'it is something if we know where truth is not to be found'.
For example, although the discovery of heavy water showed that we were badly mistaken, this was not only an advance in our knowledge, but it was in its turn connected with other advances, and it produced many further advances. Thus we can learn from our mistakes.
This fundamental insight is, indeed, the basis of all epistemology and methodology; for it gives us a hint how to learn more systematically, how to advance more quickly (not necessarily in the interests of technology: for each individual seeker after truth, the problem of how to hasten one's advance is most urgent). This hint, very simply, is that we must search for our mistakes -- or in other words, that we must try to criticize our theories.
Criticism, it seems, is the only way we have of detecting our mistakes, and of learning from them in a systematic way.
6. Getting nearer to the truth
In all this, the idea of the growth of knowledge — of getting nearer to the truth — is decisive. Intuitively, this idea is as clear as the idea of truth itself. A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts. It is nearer to the truth than another statement if it corresponds to the facts more closely than the other statement.
But though this idea is intuitively clear enough, and its legitimacy is hardly questioned by ordinary people or by scientists, it has, like the idea of truth, been attacked as illegitimate by some philosophers (for example quite recently by W. V. Quine4). It may therefore be mentioned here that, combining two analyses of Tarski, I have recently been able to give a 'definition' of the idea of approaching truth in the purely logical terms of Tarski 's theory. (I simply combined the ideas of truth and of content, obtaining the idea of the truth-content of a statement a, i.e. the class of all true statements following from a, and its falsity content, which can be defined, roughly, as its content minus its truth content. We can then say that a statement a gets nearer to the truth than a statement b if and only if its truth content has increased without an increase in its falsity content; see chapter 10 of my Conjectures and Refutations.) There is therefore no reason whatever to be sceptical about the notion of getting nearer to the truth, or of the advancement of knowledge. And though we may always err, we have in many cases (especially in cases of crucial tests deciding between two theories) a fair idea of whether or not we have in fact got nearer to the truth.
It should be very clearly understood that the idea of one statement a getting nearer to the truth than another statement b in no way interferes with the idea that every statement is either true or false, and that there is no third possibility. It only takes account of the fact that there may be a lot of truth in a false statement. If I say 'It is half past three — too late to catch the 3.35' then my statement might be false because it was not too late for the 3.35 (since the 3.35 happened to be four minutes late). But there was still a lot of truth — of true information — in my statement; and though I might have added 'unless indeed the 3.35 is late (which it rarely is)', and thereby added to its truth-content, this additional remark might well have been taken as understood. (My statement might also have been false because it was only 3.28 not 3.30, when I made it. But even then there was a lot of truth in it.)
A theory like Kepler's which describes the track of the planets with remarkable accuracy may be said to contain a lot of true information, even though it is a false theory because deviations from Kepler's ellipses do occur. And Newton's theory (even though we may assume here that it is false) contains, for all we know, a staggering amount of true information — much more than Kepler's theory. Thus Newton's theory is a better approximation than Kepler's — it gets nearer to the truth. But this does not make it true: it can be nearer to the truth and it can, at the same time, be a false theory.
7. Absolutism
The idea of a philosophical absolutism is rightly repugnant to many people since it is, as a rule, combined with a dogmatic and authoritarian claim to possess the truth, or a criterion of truth.
But there is another form of absolutism — a fallibilistic absolutism — which indeed rejects all this: it merely asserts that our mistakes, at least, are absolute mistakes, in the sense that if a theory deviates from the truth, it is simply false, even if the mistake made was less glaring than that in another theory. Thus the notions of truth, and of falling short of the truth, can represent absolute standards for the fallibilist. This kind of absolutism is completely free from any taint of authoritarianism. And it is a great help in serious critical discussions. Of course, it can be criticized in its turn, in accordance with the principle that nothing is exempt from criticism. But at least at the moment it seems to me unlikely that criticism of the (logical) theory of truth and the theory of getting nearer to the truth will succeed.
8. Sources of knowledge
The principle that everything is open to criticism (from which this principle itself is not exempt) leads to a simple solution of the problem of the sources of knowledge, as I have tried to show elsewhere (see the Introduction to my Conjectures and Refutations). It is this: every 'source' — tradition, reason, imagination, observation, or what not — is admissible and may be used, but none has any authority.
This denial of authority to the sources of knowledge attributes to them a role very different from that which they were supposed to play in past and present epistemologies. But it is part of our critical and fallibilist approach: every source is welcome, but no statement is immune from criticism, whatever its 'source' may be. Tradition, more especially, which both the intellectualists (Descartes) and the empiricists (Bacon) tended to reject, can be admitted by us as one of the most important 'sources', since almost all that we learn (from our elders, in school, from books) stems from it. I therefore hold that anti-traditionalism must be rejected as futile. Yet traditionalism — which stresses the authority of traditions — must be rejected too; not as futile, but as mistaken — just as mistaken as any other epistemology which accepts some source of knowledge (intellectual intuition, say, or sense intuition) as an authority, or a guarantee, or a criterion, of truth.
9. Is a critical method possible?
But if we really reject any claim to authority, of any particular source of knowledge, how can we then criticize any theory? Does not all criticism proceed from some assumptions? Does not the validity of any criticism, therefore, depend upon the truth of these assumptions? And what is the good of criticizing a theory if the criticism should turn out to be invalid? Yet in order to show that it is valid, must we not establish, or justify, its assumptions? And is not the establishment or the justification of any assumption just the thing which everybody attempts (though often in vain) and which I here declare to be impossible? But if it is impossible, is not then (valid) criticism impossible too?
I believe that it is this series of questions or objections which has largely barred the way to a (tentative) acceptance of the point of view here advocated: as these questions show, one may easily be led to believe that the critical method is, logically considered, in the same boat with all other methods: since it cannot work without making assumptions, it would have to establish or justify those assumptions; yet the whole point of our argument was that we cannot establish or justify anything as certain, or even as probable, but have to content ourselves with theories which withstand criticism.
Obviously, these objections are very serious. They bring out the importance of our principle that nothing is exempt from criticism, or should be held to be exempt from criticism — not even this principle of the critical method itself.
Thus these objections constitute an interesting and important criticism of my position. But this criticism can in its turn be criticized; and it can be refuted.
First of all, even if we were to admit that all criticism starts from certain assumptions, this would not necessarily mean that, for it to be valid criticism, these assumptions must be established and justified. For the assumptions may, for example, be part of the theory against which the criticism is directed. (In this case we speak of 'immanent criticism'.) Or they may be assumptions which would be generally found acceptable, even though they do not form part of the theory criticized. In this case the criticism would amount to pointing out that the theory criticized contradicts (unknown to its defenders) some generally accepted views. This kind of criticism may be very valuable even when it is unsuccessful; for it may lead the defenders of the criticized theory to question those generally accepted views, and this may lead to important discoveries. (An interesting example is the history of Dirac's theory of anti-particles.)
Or they may be assumptions which are of the nature of a competing theory (in which case the criticism may be called 'transcendent criticism', in contradistinction to 'immanent criticism'): the assumptions may be, for example, hypotheses, or guesses, which can be independently criticized and tested. In this case the criticism offered would amount to a challenge to carry out certain crucial tests in order to decide between two competing theories.
These examples show that the important objections raised here against my theory of criticism are based upon the untenable dogma that criticism, in order to be 'valid', must proceed from assumptions which are established or justified.
Moreover, criticism may be important, enlightening, and even fruitful, without being valid: the arguments used in order to reject some invalid criticism may throw a lot of new light upon a theory, and can be used as a (tentative) argument in its favour; and of a theory which can thus defend itself against criticism we may well say that it is supported by critical arguments.
Quite generally, we may say that valid criticism of a theory consists in pointing out that a theory does not succeed in solving the problems which it was supposed to solve; and if we look at criticism in this light then it certainly need not be dependent on any particular set of assumptions (that is, it can be 'immanent'), even though it may well be that some assumptions which were foreign to the theory under discussion (that is, some 'transcendent' assumptions) inspired it to start with.
10. Decisions
From the point of view here developed, theories are not, in general, capable of being established or justified; and although they may be supported by critical arguments, this support is never conclusive. Accordingly, we shall frequently have to make up our minds whether or not these critical arguments are strong enough to justify the tentative acceptance of the theory — or in other words, whether the theory seems preferable, in the light of the critical discussion, to the competing theories.
In this sense, decisions enter into the critical method. But it is always a tentative decision, and a decision subject to criticism.
As such it should be contrasted with what has been called 'decision' or 'leap in the dark' by some irrationalist or anti-rationalist or existentialist philosophers. These philosophers, probably under the impact of the argument (rejected in the preceding section) of the impossibility of criticism without presuppositions, developed the theory that all our tenets must be based on some fundamental decision — on some leap in the dark. It must be a decision, a leap, which we take with closed eyes, as it were; for as we cannot 'know' without assumptions, without already having taken up a fundamental position, this fundamental position cannot be taken up on the basis of knowledge. It is, rather, a choice — ^but a kind of fateful and almost irrevocable choice, one which we take blindly, or by instinct, or by chance, or by the grace of God.
Our rejection of the objections presented in the preceding section shows that the irrationalist view of decisions is an exaggeration as well as an over-dramatization. Admittedly, we must decide. But unless we decide against listening to argument and reason, against learning from our mistakes, and against listening to others who may have objections to our views, our decisions need not be final; not even the decision to consider criticism. (It is only in its decision not to take an irrevocable leap into the darkness of irrationality that rationalism may be said not to be self- contained, in the sense of chapter 24.)
I believe that the critical theory of knowledge here sketched throws some light upon the great problems of all theories of knowledge: how it is that we know so much and so little; and how it is that we can lift ourselves slowly out of the swamp of ignorance — by our own bootstraps, as it were. We do so by working with guesses, and by improving upon our guesses, through criticism.
11. Social and political problems
The theory of knowledge sketched in the preceding sections of this addendum seems to me to have important consequences for the evaluation of the social situation of our time, a situation influenced to a large extent by the decline of authoritarian religion. This decline has led to a widespread relativism and nihilism: to the decline of all beliefs, even the belief in human reason, and thus in ourselves.
But the argument here developed shows that there are no grounds whatever for drawing such desperate conclusions. The relativistic and the nihilistic (and even the 'existentialistic') arguments are all based on faulty reasoning. In this they show, incidentally, that these philosophies actually do accept reason, but are unable to use it properly; in their own terminology we might say that they fail to understand 'the human situation', and especially man's ability to grow, intellectually and morally.
As a striking illustration of this misunderstanding — of desperate consequences drawn from an insufficient understanding of the epistemological situation — I will quote a passage from one of Nietzsche's Tracts Against the Times (from section 3 of his essay on Schopenhauer).
This was the first danger in whose shadow Schopenhauer grew up: isolation. The second was: despair of finding the truth. This latter danger is the constant companion of every thinker who sets out from Kant's philosophy; that is if he is a real man, a living human being, able to suffer and yearn, and not a mere rattling automaton, a mere thinking and calculating machine ... Though I am reading everywhere that [owing to Kant] ... a revolution has started in all fields of thought, I cannot believe that this is so as yet . . . But should Kant one day begin to exert a more general influence, then we shall find that this will take the form of a creeping and destructive scepticism and relativism; and only the most active and the most noble of minds . . . will instead experience that deep emotional shock, and that despair of truth, which was felt for example by Heinrich von Kleist ...
'Recently', he wrote, in his moving way, 'I have become acquainted with the philosophy of Kant; and I must tell you of a thought of which I need not be afraid that it will shake you as deeply and as painfully as it shook me: — ^It is impossible for us to decide whether that to which we appeal as truth is in truth the truth, or whether it merely seems to us so. If it is the latter, then all that truth to which we may attain here will be as nothing after our death, and all our efforts to produce and acquire something that might survive us must be in vain. — If the sharp point of this thought does not pierce your heart, do not smile at one who feels wounded by it in the holiest depth of his soul. My highest, my only aim has fallen to the ground, and I have none left.'
I agree with Nietzsche that Kleist's words are moving; and I agree that Kleist 's reading of Kant's doctrine that it is impossible to attain any knowledge of things in themselves is straightforward enough, even though it conflicts with Kant's own intentions; for Kant believed in the possibility of science, and of finding the truth. (It was only the need to explain the paradox of the existence of a priori science of nature which led him to adopt that subjectivism which Kleist rightly found shocking.) Moreover, Kleist's despair is at least partly the result of disappointment — of seeing the downfall of an over-optimistic belief in a simple criterion of truth (such as self-evidence). Yet whatever may be the history of this philosophic despair, it is not called for. Though truth is not self-revealing (as Cartesians and Baconians thought), though certainty may be unattainable, the human situation with respect to knowledge is far from desperate. On the contrary, it is exhilarating: here we are, with the immensely difficult task before us of getting to know the beautiful world we live in, and ourselves; and fallible though we are we nevertheless find that our powers of understanding, surprisingly, are almost adequate for the task — more so than we ever dreamt in our wildest dreams. We really do learn from our mistakes, by trial and error. And at the same time we learn how little we know — as when, in climbing a mountain; every step upwards opens some new vista into the unknown, and new worlds unfold themselves of whose existence we knew nothing when we began our climb.
Thus we can learn, we can grow in knowledge, even if we can never know -- that is, know for certain. Since we can learn, there is no reason for despair of reason; and since we can never know, there are no grounds here for smugness, or for conceit over the growth of our knowledge.
It may be said that this new way of knowing is too abstract and too sophisticated to replace the loss of authoritarian religion. This may be true. But we must not underrate the power of the intellect and the intellectuals. It was the intellectuals — ^he 'second-hand dealers in ideas', as F. A. Hayek calls them — who spread relativism, nihilism, and intellectual despair. There is no reason why some intellectuals — some more enlightened intellectuals — should not eventually succeed in spreading the good news that the nihilist ado was indeed about nothing.
12. Dualism of facts and standards
In the body of this book I spoke about the dualism of facts and decisions, and I pointed out, following L. J. Russell (see note 5 (3) to chapter 5, vol. i, p. 234), that this dualism may be described as one of propositions and proposals. The latter terminology has the advantage of reminding us that both propositions, which state facts, and proposals, which propose policies, including principles or standards of policy, are open to rational discussion. Moreover, a decision — one, say, concerning the adoption of a principle of conduct — reached after the discussion of a proposal, may well be tentative, and it may be in many respects very similar to a decision to adopt (also tentatively), as the best available hypothesis, a proposition which states a fact.
There is, however, an important difference here. For the proposal to adopt a policy or a standard, its discussion, and the decision to adopt it, may be said to create this policy or this standard. On the other hand, the proposal of a hypothesis, its discussion, and the decision to adopt it — or to accept a proposition — does not, in the same sense, create a fact. This, I suppose, was the reason why I thought that the term 'decision' would be able to express the contrast between the acceptance of policies or standards, and the acceptance of facts. Yet there is no doubt that it would have been clearer had I spoken of a dualism of facts and policies, or of a dualism of facts and standards, rather than of a dualism of facts and decisions.
Terminology apart, the important thing is the irreducible dualism itself: whatever the facts may be, and whatever the standards may be (for example, the principles of our policies), the first thing is to distinguish the two, and to see clearly why standards cannot be reduced to facts.
13. Proposals and propositions
There is, then, a decisive asymmetry between standards and facts: through the decision to accept a proposal (at least tentatively) we create the corresponding standard (at least tentatively); yet through the decision to accept a proposition we do not create the corresponding fact.
Another asymmetry is that standards always pertain to facts, and that facts are evaluated by standards; these are relations which cannot be simply turned round.
Whenever we are faced with a fact — and more especially, with a fact which we may be able to change — we can ask whether or not it complies with certain standards. It is important to realize that this is very far from being the same as asking whether we like it; for although we may often adopt standards which correspond to our likes or dislikes, and although our likes and dislikes may play an important role in inducing us to adopt or reject some proposed standard, there will as a rule be many other possible standards which we have not adopted; and it will be possible to judge, or evaluate, the facts by any of them. This shows that the relationship of evaluation (of some questionable fact by some adopted or rejected standard) is, logically considered, totally different from a person's psychological relation (which is not a standard but a fact), of like or dislike, to the fact in question, or to the standard in question. Moreover, our likes and dislikes are facts which can be evaluated like any other facts.
Similarly, the fact that a certain standard has been adopted or rejected by some person or by some society must, as a fact, be distinguished from any standard, including the adopted or rejected standard. And since it is a fact (and an alterable fact) it may be judged or evaluated by some (other) standards.
These are a few reasons why standards and facts, and therefore proposals and propositions, should be clearly and decisively distinguished. Yet once they have been distinguished, we may look not only at the dissimilarities of facts and standards but also at their similarities.
First, both proposals and propositions are alike in that we can discuss them, criticize them, and come to some decision about them. Secondly, there is some kind of regulative idea about both. In the realm of facts it is the idea of correspondence between a statement or a proposition and a fact; that is to say, the idea of truth. In the realm of standards, or of proposals, the regulative idea may be described in many ways, and called by many terms, for example, by the terms 'right' or 'good'. We may say of a proposal that it is right (or wrong) or perhaps good (or bad); and by this we may mean, perhaps, that it corresponds (or does not correspond) to certain standards which we have decided to adopt. But we may also say of a standard that it is right or wrong, or good or bad, or valid or invalid, or high or low; and by this we may mean, perhaps, that the corresponding proposal should or should not be accepted. It must therefore be admitted that the logical situation of the regulative ideas, of 'right', say, or 'good', is far less clear than that of the idea of correspondence to the facts.
As pointed out in the book, this difficulty is a logical one and cannot be got over by the introduction of a religious system of standards. The fact that God, or any other authority, commands me to do a certain thing is no guarantee that the command is right. It is I who must decide whether to accept the standards of any authority as (morally) good or bad. God is good only if His commandments are good; it would be a grave mistake — in fact an immoral adoption of authoritarianism — ^to say that His commandments are good simply because they are His, unless we have first decided (at our own risk) that He can only demand good or right things of us.
This is Kant's idea of autonomy, as opposed to heteronomy.
Thus no appeal to authority, not even to religious authority, can get us out of the difficulty that the regulative idea of absolute 'rightness' or 'goodness' differs in its logical status from that of absolute truth; and we have to admit the difference. This difference is responsible for the fact, alluded to above, that in a sense we create our standards by proposing, discussing, and adopting them.
All this must be admitted; nevertheless we may take the idea of absolute truth — of correspondence to the facts — as a kind of model for the realm of standards, in order to make it clear to ourselves that, just as we may seek for absolutely true propositions in the realm of facts or at least for propositions which come nearer to the truth, so we may seek for absolutely right or valid proposals in the realm of standards — or at least for better, or more valid, proposals.
However, it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to extend this attitude beyond the seeking to the finding. For though we should seek for absolutely right or valid proposals, we should never persuade ourselves that we have definitely found them; for clearly, there cannot be a criterion of absolute rightness -- even less than a criterion of absolute truth. The maximization of happiness may have been intended as a criterion. On the other hand I certainly never recommended that we adopt the minimization of misery as a criterion, though I think that it is an improvement on some of the ideas of utilitarianism. I also suggested that the reduction of avoidable misery belongs to the agenda of public policy (which does not mean that any question of public policy is to be decided by a calculus of minimizing misery) while the maximization of one's happiness should be left to one's private endeavour. (I quite agree with those critics of mine who have shown that if used as a criterion, the minimum misery principle would have absurd consequences; and I expect that the same may be said about any other moral criterion.)
But although we have no criterion of absolute rightness, we certainly can make progress in this realm. As in the realm of facts, we can make discoveries. That cruelty is always 'bad'; that it should always be avoided where possible; that the golden rule is a good standard which can perhaps even be improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by: these are elementary and extremely important examples of discoveries in the realm of standards.
These discoveries create standards, we might say, out of nothing: as in the field of factual discovery, we have to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. This is the incredible fact: that we can learn; by our mistakes, and by criticism; and that we can learn in the realm of standards just as well as in the realm of facts.
14. Two wrongs do not make two rights
Once we have accepted the absolute theory of truth it is possible to answer an old and serious yet deceptive argument in favour of relativism, of both the intellectual and the evaluative kind, by making use of the analogy between true facts and valid standards. The deceptive argument I have in mind appeals to the discovery that other people have ideas and beliefs which differ widely from ours. Who are we to insist that ours are the right ones? Already Xenophanes sang, 2500 years ago (Diels-Kranz, B, 16, 15):
The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, And could sculpture like men, then the horses would draw their gods Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.
So each of us sees his gods, and his world, from his own point of view, according to his tradition and his upbringing; and none of us is exempt from this subjective bias.
This argument has been developed in various ways; and it has been argued that our race, or our nationality, or our historical background, or our historical period, or our class interest, or our social habitat, or our language, or our personal background knowledge, is an insurmountable, or an almost insurmountable, barrier to objectivity.
The facts on which this argument is based must be admitted; and indeed, we can never rid ourselves of bias. There is, however, no need to accept the argument itself, or its relativistic conclusions. For first of all, we can, in stages, get rid of some of this bias, by means of critical thinking and especially of listening to criticism. For example, Xenophanes doubtless was helped, by his own discovery, to see things in a less biased way. Secondly, it is a fact that people with the most divergent cultural backgrounds can enter into fruitful discussion, provided they are interested in getting nearer to the truth, and are ready to listen to each other, and to learn from each other. This shows that, though there are cultural and linguistic barriers, they are not insurmountable.
Thus it is of the utmost importance to profit from Xenophanes' discovery in every field; to give up cocksureness, and become open to criticism. Yet it is also of the greatest importance not to mistake this discovery, this step towards criticism, for a step towards relativism. If two parties disagree, this may mean that one is wrong, or the other, or both: this is the view of the criticist. It does not mean, as the relativist will have it, that both may be equally right. They may be equally wrong, no doubt, though they need not be. But anybody who says that to be equally wrong means to be equally right is merely playing with words, or with metaphors.
It is a great step forward to learn to be self-critical; to learn to think that the other fellow may be right — more right than we ourselves. But there is a great danger involved in this: we may think that both, the other fellow and we ourselves, may be right. But this attitude, modest and self- critical as it may appear to us, is neither as modest nor as self-critical as we may be inclined to think; for it is more likely that both, we ourselves and the other fellow, are wrong. Thus self-criticism should not be an excuse for laziness and for the adoption of relativism. And as two wrongs do not make a right, two wrong parties to a dispute do not make two right parties.