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CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON
Steven James Bartlett
To cite this version:
Steven James Bartlett. CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning.
Studies in Theory and Behavior, 2020, �10.5281/zenodo.5458352�. �hal-02923307v2�
CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON
HORIZONS OF POSSIBILITY AND MEANING
S TEVEN J AMES B ARTLETT
With a Foreword by
C. F. von Weizsäcker
STUDIES IN THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
A Revolutionary Paradigm Shift in Philosophical Thought
ABOUT THIS CORRECTED SECOND EBOOK EDITION The first eBook edition of this book appeared at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading rapidly. As a result, the publisher experienced staffing shortages, and the eBook was unknowingly released without proof-reading to correct an unwelcome number of errors.
Readers who wish to use the eBook version are therefore asked to make use of this corrected second edition, the only eBook edition currently authorized by the author and the publisher.
APRINTED EDITION IS NOW AVAILABLE
The Critique of Impure Reason has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly/technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost.
The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through all booksellers, including Barnes &
Noble, Amazon.com, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under the following ISBN:
978-0-578-88646-6
Bartlett’s Critique of Impure Reason is a tour de force of philosophical thought. His- toric in scale and far-reaching in scope, the massive treatise offers a penetrating criti- cal appraisal of fundamental philosophical problems. This groundbreaking work fo- cuses on reference as the most conceptually basic means of understanding the limits beyond which our concepts cease to possess possible meaning. These inevitable and inescapable boundaries of human thought Bartlett calls ‘horizons’. Step by logical step, the book shows that a recognition of these conceptual horizons brings with it a new and revisionary understanding of a wide range of philosophical questions.
“I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZSÄCKER, philosopher and physicist, Director, Max- Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany.
“I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – NICHOLAS RESCHER, Distinguished University Professor, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books.
“Bartlett’s Critique of Impure Reason is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work.
Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, cau- sality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of rela- tivity physics and quantum theory.” – GERHARD PREYER, Professor, Goethe-Univer- sity, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books on meaning, semantics, and contextualism in philosophy.
“Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” – MARTIN X.
MOLESKI, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, New York, studies of scien- tific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of episte- mology.
“Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philoso- phy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unify- ing perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – DON
PERLIS, Professor, University of Maryland, research on self-adjusting autonomous systems, self-reference, mind, and consciousness.
STEVEN JAMES BARTLETT is a philosopher and au- thor of more than 20 books and numerous papers. He has held professorships and fellowships at major uni- versities and research institutes. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, AAAS, Lilly Endowment, RAND Corporation, Max- Planck-Institute, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and others.
From the back cover of the printed edition
C
RITIQUE OFI
MPURER
EASONHORIZONS OF POSSIBILITY AND MEANING
[Occasional pages in this eBook are intentionally left blank]
C
RITIQUE OFI
MPURER
EASONHORIZONS OF POSSIBILITY AND MEANING
STEVEN JAMES BARTLETT
With a Foreword by
CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZSÄCKER
STUDIES IN THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
AN IMPRINT OF AUTOGRAPH EDITIONS Salem, Oregon, U.S.A.
AUTOGRAPH EDITIONS
Established 1975
Copyright © 2021 Steven James Bartlett
The author and the publisher have made this book available as an open access publication, freely available to readers under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No- Derivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original source from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder’s written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, translate, or build upon this work without such permission). A legal statement of this license may be found at
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This book has been made available as an open access publication through the courtesy of the publisher. Autograph Editions is a non-profit press committed to the freedom of non-commercial access to original and important works. The author receives no royalties from this publication and the publisher is not compensated for its work.
Studies in Theory and Behavior An Imprint of
AUTOGRAPH EDITIONS Salem, Oregon, U.S.A.
eBook, corrected second edition 09.2021 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5458352
URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5458352
DEDICATED TO Karen
My love, wife, best friend, and life companion
and
IN MEMORY OF Frederic Brenton Fitch
who recognized the need for philosophical comprehension on the level of maximum theoretical generality
and
Henry W. Johnstone, Jr.
who understood that all philosophical positions are inherently framework-relative
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other
branch of learning.
– Bertrand Russell (1972/1914, p. 13)
We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful.
This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled by trespassing beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful.
In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason we find an analy- sis of the preconditions of experience and of knowl- edge.
In contrast, but yet in parallel, in the present study our interest is rather in the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we formulate and the claims that we make using them conflict with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge.
The objective of this study is, in short, a “critique of impure reason.” Its purpose is: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference be- comes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual con- fusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophi- cal problems. In the process we shall delimit the domain of possible meaning.
CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
For chapter contents, see Detailed Table of Contents beginning on page xiv.
Preface xxix
Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker xxxiii
Acknowledgments xxxv
Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call 1
Introduction 3
A note to the reader 11
A note on conventions 13
PART I
WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS
AND HOW IT CAN 17
1 Philosophical-psychological prelude 19
2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed
polemic 34
3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of
reference to metalogic of reference 46
4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality 67
PART II
THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE A New Approach to Deductive,
Transcendental Philosophy 85
5 Reference, identity, and identification 87
6 Self-referential argumentation and the metalogic of reference 103
7 Possibility theory 131
8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification 156
CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
xii
9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference 194
10 Framework relativity 205
11 The metalogic of meaning 225
12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of
meaninglessness 256
13 Projection 280
14 Horizons 302
15 De-projection 323
16 Self-validation 341
17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility 353
PART III
PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy
and the Philosophy of Science 363
18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference 369
19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving,
mathematics, and physics 376
20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” 395
21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves,
other minds, realism, and idealism 421
22 The projections of time, space, and space-time 442 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will 459
24 Projections of the self and of solipsism 489
25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields 511 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of
reference 525
27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of
reference 567
28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to
relativity physics and quantum theory 612
CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
xiii
PART IV
HORIZONS 629
29 Beyond belief 631
30 Critique of Impure Reason: Its results in retrospect 657 SUPPLEMENT
The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference 675
APPENDIX I
The Concept of Horizon in the Work
of Other Philosophers 727
APPENDIX II
Epistemological Intelligence 732
References 765 Index 805
About the author 845
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface xxix
Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker xxxiii Acknowledgments xxxv Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call 1 Introduction 3
A note to the reader 11
A note on conventions 13
PART I
WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO
PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN 17
1 Philosophical-psychological prelude 19 1.1 Bifurcations of the human mind: The rational
bridge problem 25
1.2 What it takes to change a philosopher’s mind 28 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a
needed polemic 34
2.1 Willful blindness 38
2.2 Giving belief its due—i.e., a bad name 39 2.3 The rationale for such a polemic 44 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory
of reference to metalogic of reference 46 3.1 Through the looking glass: The superhighway of
philosophy 46
3.2 An exit not taken 48
3.3 The overlooked variety of forms of reference 59 3.4 From theory of reference to its metalogic 64
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xv
4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality 67 4.1 Reference as the primary focus of this work 67
4.2 Universality 70
4.3 Invariance 71
4.4 Philosophical neutrality 72
4.5 The level of maximum theoretical generality 73 4.6 Reflexivity on the level of maximum theoretical
generality 76
4.7 Expanding the scope of a maximally general theory of theories in order to study preconditions
of possibility 77
4.8 The concept of metalogic 78
4.9 Meaning 79
4.10 The self-enclosure of reflexive, maximally
general theory 80
PART II
THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE A New Approach to Deductive,
Transcendental Philosophy 85
5 Reference, identity, and identification 87
5.1 What is reference? 87
5.2 Pragmatical reference 88
5.3 The separation of reference from the object of
reference 91
5.4 Removing agency, intention, action, and volition—at least provisionally—from theory
of reference 92
5.5 Levels of reference and iterative reference 93 5.6 A non-linguistic, non-relational conception of
reference 94
5.7 Identification, reference, and coordinate systems 96 5.8 The metalogical study of reference: Preliminary
comments 101
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xvi
6 Self-referential argumentation and the metalogic of
reference 103
6.1 Self-referential argumentation in philosophy 103 6.2 Pragmatical, or performative, self-referential
arguments 108
6.3 The critical use of pragmatical self-reference 109 6.4 The constructive use of pragmatical self-
reference 110
6.5 Passmore’s absolute self-refutation 112 6.6 J. L. Mackie’s operational self-refutation 115
6.7 Isaye’s rétorsion 119
6.8 Metalogical self-referential arguments 126 6.9 The constructive use of metalogical self-
reference 129
7 Possibility theory 131
7.1 The basic vocabulary of the metalogic of
reference 131
7.2 The concept of possibility 132
7.3 The spectrum of possibility 132
1. Psychologically based possibility 132 2. Temporally based possibility 133 3. Physical or nomological possibility 134
4. Epistemic possibility 134
5. Formal possibility 134
6. Possibility as complementarity 135
7. Parametric possibility 136
8. Many worlds possibility 137
9. Framework-relative possibility 138 10. Metalogical possibility: The preconditions
of identification 139
7.4 A general theory of possibility 141
7.5 Necessity 142
7.6 Excursus: Modal logic and the present study 144 1. Obstacles to the philosophical use of formal
systems of modal logic 145
2. Choosing a philosophically appropriate
system of modal logic 146
3. The choice made by C. I. Lewis 147 4. The choice made by Łukasiewicz 149
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xvii
5. Modal logic appropriate for the metalogic of
reference 151
7.7 Summary 154
8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification 156 8.1 The priority of presuppositions 157 1. Presuppositions as preliminary assumptions 157 2. Conditional presuppositions 158 3. Presuppositions as logical premises 158 4. Presuppositions as logically antecedent
suppositions 158
5. Presuppositions as the ingredients of
definitions 158
6. Presuppositions as suppositions of language
use 159
7. Presuppositions of pragmatical activity 160 8. Presuppositions of missing premises 160 9. Presuppositions of existence 161 10. Linguistic presuppositions of reference 162 11. Presuppositions of concepts 163 12. Structural and systemic presuppositions 163 13. Presuppositions of identification 163 8.2 Truth-functional presuppositions 165
1. Necessary and sufficient conditions of truth:
Logical implication 166
2. Entailment 167
3. Referential presuppositions of truth and
falsity 168
8.3 Structural and systemic presuppositions 172
1. Structural presuppositions 173
2. Systemic presuppositions 174
8.4 The epistemological loop 176
8.5 Conceptualizing the epistemological loop 182 8.6 Presuppositions of identification, continued 186 Appendix to Chapter 8
Rule-based games and Passmore’s and
Collingwood’s presuppositions 191
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xviii
9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of
reference 194
9.1 What is transcendental argumentation? 194 9.2 Transcendental argumentation as
structural/systemic 198
9.3 Transcendental argumentation: Possibility,
necessity, and identifiability 200
9.4 Transcendental argumentation and meaning 201
10 Framework relativity 205
10.1 Frames of reference, reference frames, and
frameworks 208
10.2 Framework-relative field theory 211 10.3 Framework relativity and ontology 215 10.4 Framework self-enclosure and translation to
other frameworks 216
10.5 Framework relativity and perspectives 218 10.6 Framework relativity and conceptual constructs 224
11 The metalogic of meaning 225
11.1 Meaning and theories of meaning 226 11.2 Referential consistency as a criterion of
meaning 231
11.3 Referential consistency as an intrinsically
determined criterion of meaning 235
11.4 Formalized description 236
11.5 Metalogical entailment 252
12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of
meaninglessness 256 12.1 The problem of putative meaning 260 12.2 The delusion of meaningfulness 262
12.3 The logic of meaninglessness 265
12.4 Reflections on logics of meaning and
meaninglessness 276
12.5 The logical priority of the bonded pair, reference-
and-meaning, over truth-functionality 277
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xix
13 Projection 280
13.1 A therapy for concepts 281
13.2 The term ‘projection’ 284
13.3 Projection in relation to other forms of
meaninglessness 287
13.4 Historical intimations of the concept of
projection 288
13.5 The concept of projection 297
14 Horizons 302
14.1 Metalogical horizons 310
14.2 Limits of reference and boundaries of possibility
and meaning 310
14.3 The detection of projections 313
14.4 Heuristics and the detection of horizons 317
14.5 Reflections on horizons 319
15 De-projection 323
15.1 The heuristic stages of de-projection 327 15.2 The epistemological neutrality and tautological
nature of de-projection 330
15.3 Applying the method of de-projection 333 15.4 De-projection and framework self-enclosure 335
15.5 Reprise économique 338
16 Self-validation 341
16.1 Philosophical routes to certainty 341 16.2 Distant connections with self-validation 343 16.3 The “Worm of Ouroboros” logic of self-
validation 346
16.4 The irrefutability of self-validation 350 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility 353
17.1 The two sides of rationality 353
17.2 Intelligibility and coherence 355
17.3 Epistemological rationality 356
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xx
PART III
PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy
and the Philosophy of Science 363
Methodological Recapitulation 365
18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference 369 18.1 The need for philosophical perspective 369 18.2 The ontology of non-existent things 370 18.3 Towards a general ontology of objects 373 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving,
mathematics, and physics 376
19.1 Mathematics and physics from the standpoint of
the general theory of problem-solving 377 19.2 Discovery or invention in mathematics 381 19.3 Discovery or invention in physics 389 19.4 Discovery or invention, according to Einstein 393 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” 395
20.1. “The conceptually unreachable” and the
concept of horizon 396
20.2 The finitude of what anyone knows and the
finitude of the totality of human knowledge 397 20.3 The incompleteness of knowledge 399 20.4 The unlimitedness of our ignorance 400 20.5 Thinking beyond the limits of thought 400 20.6 Expressing the inexpressible: Reaching beyond
the limits of language 403
20.7 Fitch’s Theorem 405
20.8 What can ‘non-omniscience’ and ‘knowability’
mean? 408
20.9 Fitch’s Theorem: The de-projective result 408 20.10 Unanswerable questions: Erotetic intractability 409 20.11 The philosophical and psychological compulsion
to trespass beyond horizon boundaries 413
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xxi
20.12 The need to resort to suggestive—e.g., rule-
based or property-based—reference 415 20.13 Unbounded yet topologically enclosed
frameworks 416
20.14 Conclusion 420
21 The projections of the external world, things-in-
themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism 421 21.1 The projection of the external world 422
1. The external spatial world 423
2. The external ontological world 425 21.2 The projection of things-in-themselves 428 21.3 The projection of other minds 431
1. External others 432
2. Other minds as independent existents 432 3. Other minds as things-in-themselves 433 21.4 The de-projective understanding of the external
world and of other minds: The need to relinquish
these projections 434
21.5 The projections of realism and idealism 436
1. Realism 438
2. Idealism 439
22 The projections of time, space, and space-time 442 22.1 The temporal basis of reference 442
22.2 Projections of time 444
1. Projections of the past 444
2. Projections of time-flow 444
3. Projections of the future 445
4. Projections of absolute time 446 5. Projections of temporal constitutive subjective
activity 447
22.3 The nature of spatial order 447
22.4 Projections of space 449
1. Projections of absolute space 449 2. Projections of spatial constitutive subjective
activity 452
22.5 Projections of temporal and spatial continuity 453
22.6 Projections of space-time 454
22.7 In retrospect 455
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xxii
23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free
will 459
23.1 Causality 459
1. The conventional notion of causality 460 2. The experiential basis of the conventional
notion of causality 461
3. The conventional notion of causality
considered philosophically 462
4. The temporal nature of causal relations 462 5. Similarity relations between cause and effect 463 6. The belief that the relation between cause and
effect is one of “necessity” or “indispensa-
bility” 464
7. The relation between cause and effect involves some kind of “tie,” “agency,” or the
transmission of “productive power” 466 8. The belief that the past regularity and
uniformity of a cause-and-effect relation can
be relied upon in the future 468 23.2 The evolution of the concept of causality 471 23.3 The functional understanding of causality 473 23.4 The concept of causal network 477
23.5 Determinism 479
23.6 Free will 481
23.7 Causality, determinism, and free will—in
retrospect 485
24 Projections of the self and of solipsism
489
24.1 The self 489
24.2 Thinking entails a thinker—that is, there are always two components of thought: a subject (the
self) and objects of which the subject is aware 490 24.3 Temporal preconditions of reflective reference:
An aside 492
24.4 Projections of reflection and projections that
thinking entails a thinker 493
24.5 The self is an existing entity 494 24.6 The self is the center of experience of the world 495 24.7 The self is a bearer or owner of its states 497
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xxiii
24.8 The self possesses or is characterized by faculties
which it exercises in a wide variety of ways 498 24.9 The self is an agent, the cause of thinking—that
is, the processes of consciousness result from the
activity of the self 499
24.10 Every experience is had by a self, by an at least implicit “I”—that is, consciousness by the self
is a universal characteristic of experience 501 24.11 The sum total of the self’s experience comprises
what metaphorically may be called a ‘container’
or a ‘phenomenal field’—that is, the self’s consciousness holds or encloses all that it
experiences 502
24.12 The self serves as a limit which the individual cannot ever go beyond or get away from: The
position of solipsism 503
24.13 The neutral character of pre-reflective experience 505 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential
fields 511 25.1 Non-relational, agentless reference 512
25.2 Referential fields 514
25.3 Referential fields and the place of the observer 518 25.4 Referential fields and metalogical horizons:
A brief summation 522
Relativity physics and quantum theory: Preamble 523 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the
metalogic of reference 525
26.1 Introductory comments 525
26.2 The problem of correlating phenomena from the
standpoint of different reference frames 528 26.3 Fundamental properties of the special and general
theories 532
26.4 Steps from Newtonian physics to general
relativity 536
26.5 The starting point: The Galilean transformation 538 26.6 The first step: The Lorentz transformation 539
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xxiv
26.7 The second step: The shift to intrinsic
identification 545
26.8 Einstein’s mollusks and intrinsic reference 548 26.9 The concepts of tensor and tensor field 551 26.10 Invariance, covariance, and the metalogic of
reference 556
26.11 The convergence of relativity physics and the
metalogic of reference 559
27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the
metalogic of reference 567
27.1 Introductory comments 567
27.2 Measurement-based perturbation 568
27.3 Eliminating “interpretation” from the
Copenhagen interpretation 571
27.4 The Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen (EPR) position 574
27.5 Hidden variable proposals 578
27.6 Quantum theory and the projection of
“underlying reality” 580
27.7 Indeterminacy and uncertainty 583 27.8 Complementarity: “Contraria sunt complementa” 586
27.9 The inseparability of the observer and the
observed 589
27.10 The “collapse” of the Schrödinger wave function 593 27.11 The non-relational ontology of quantum
phenomena 596
27.12 The reality of quantum discontinuity 600 27.13 Quantum theory as a model of objectivity 602 27.14 Quantum theory as a set of limitative results 609 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable
to relativity physics and quantum theory 612 28.1 The relation of mutual confirmation 615 28.2 The main epistemological lessons learned from
and applicable to relativity physics 617 28.3 The main epistemological lessons learned from
and applicable to quantum theory 619 28.4 The main epistemological lessons to be learned
from relativity theory, quantum theory, and the
metalogic of reference 623
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xxv
28.5 The wider applicability of these epistemological
lessons 625
PART IV
HORIZONS 629
29 Beyond belief 631
29.1 The negative science of the metalogic of
reference 631
29.2 The metalogic of reference as a theory of error
analysis and correction 636
29.3 Eliminative psychology and projective delusion 639 29.4 Obstacles to attempts to de-project belief 642 29.5 From conceptual therapy to disorders of thought:
The human will to reach beyond its grasp 647 29.6 The psychology of projective belief 651
29.7 “Beyond belief” 654
30 Critique of Impure Reason: Its results in retrospect 657 30.1 The negative science of the Critique of Impure
Reason 657
30.2 The positive value of negative results 658 30.3 Delineating reality in silhouette 660 30.4 Intrinsic limitations of reference and identity 663 30.5 The Critique of Impure Reason and conceptual
revolution 665
30.6 A possible future of philosophy 668 30.7 Intellectual humility: Submission of
philosophers to the norms of science 670 30.8 The logical standing of the method and results
of the metalogic of reference 672
SUPPLEMENT The formal structure of the
metalogic of reference 675
§1. The advantages and the shortcomings of
formalization 676
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xxvi
1.1. The advantages 677
1.2. The shortcomings 678
§2. Internal limitations of formalization 680 2.1. The impossibility of comprehensive or total
formalization 682
2.2. The impossibility of the total reflexivity
of formalized systems 685
2.3. Formalization, temporality, recursion,
and the metalogic of reference 685
§3. The formalization of complex or even ordinary
reasoning 690
§4. The formal structure of the heuristic of the
metalogic of reference 695
§5. Informal preliminary 697
§6. Deductive representation 702
§7. De-projection and the ontology of MoR:
Informal comments 717
§8. Formalization continued 719
§9. Schematic summary of formalization found in
this Supplement 724
§10. A concluding reminder 725
APPENDIX I
The concept of horizon in the work
of other philosophers 727
§1. The phenomenological horizon 728
§2. The horizon of transcendental Thomists 730 APPENDIX II
Epistemological Intelligence 732
§1. Two approaches to the study of epistemology 732
§2. A set of epistemological skills 734
§3. From a defined set of skills to the recognition of a
new variety of intelligence 737
§4. Is epistemological intelligence no more than a
theoretical construct? 738
§5. The psychology of philosophers 741
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
xxvii
§6. The personality structure of philosophers as seen
through the lens of confirmation bias 745
§7. Non-philosophical studies of so-called
‘epistemological understanding’ 747
§8. Epistemological intelligence and individual
differences 752
§9. Can epistemological intelligence be taught? Can it
be learned? 759
§10. The projection of transcendence 762 References 765 Index 805
About the author 845
xxix
Preface
his study is a descendant of research I began in the mid-1960s. At that time, Gabriel Marcel took a personal interest in the subject of my pro- posed dissertation and generously arranged with Paul Ricoeur for him to di- rect my doctoral work at the Université de Paris.
After I completed that work and had had my first taste of university teach- ing, during the academic year 1974-75 I was offered the opportunity to serve as research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung der Lebens- bedingungen der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt [Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of the Living Conditions of the Scientific and Technical World] in Starnberg, (then West) Germany. The Institut’s staff at the time was quite small, consisting of its Director, well-known German physicist and philoso- pher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1912–2007), and theoretical physicists Michael Drieschner, Lutz Castell, and Hans Zucker. It was a special place, conducive to thought and writing.
During my fellowship there I had the opportunity to transform the phe- nomenologically based approach developed in my dissertation into what I be- lieved, and continue to believe, can serve as a conceptually clearer, more pre- cise, and less terminologically top-heavy approach to rigorous epistemology, one able to benefit by the tools of theory of reference and mathematical logic.
My work at the Max-Planck-Institut resulted in a monograph, Metalogic of Reference: A Study in the Foundations of Possibility (Bartlett, 1975), which was distributed within the Max-Planck-Institut as an in-house publication, and which therefore had a very limited circulation. My intention to fulfill my plans for that study, which I regarded as unfinished, was compromised over the years both by the obligations of university teaching and also by my own susceptibility to seduction to engage in research and to publish in other areas.
For nearly five decades, a persistently pestering monkey has managed to maintain a secure hold on my back, reminding me of that study’s need to be completed, or at least in great measure completed since there is a great deal more that plausibly could have been included in this long book. Thanks to that annoying monkey, nearly half a century after my fellowship at the Max- Planck-Institut, I decided to return to what I originally called ‘the metalogic of reference’. The present work has been strongly influenced by the earlier
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study, I hope profiting by it, but extending it in ways I could not, when in my late 20s, have anticipated.
That an author can be “haunted” by an unfinished writing project is, for most people, an unfamiliar experience, one about which I will say a few words. To be haunted in the way I have been is to be reminded—regularly, stubbornly, persistently, and naggingly, sometimes on the periphery of con- sciousness, but often in a manner central to my awareness—that certain work needs yet to be done which, if left uncompleted, would on the day of my death leave me in a state of regret. Once this book has been finished, the monkey on my back will be free to slip away and return to the jungle and leave me in peace. As time has become ever shorter, I can no longer procrastinate by wondering whether I am perhaps not yet ready or not yet fully able to put my shoulder to the task. Once this book has been finished, I will be able to think and do other things freed of a life-long burden. With the completion of this study, I shall have brought to a close a project foreseen with considerable clarity in my late teens.
As I add these last few words to this work, I am convinced—and here I take the liberty of placing the dignity of humility momentarily aside—that this work provides compelling solutions to many of the main problems that have preoccupied philosophers for millennia. These solutions are strongly compel- ling in a special sense that is made clear in the course of the book: As we shall see, these solutions comprise results that cannot not be accepted without un- dermining the very possibility of meaning.
Perhaps few authors share Aldous Huxley’s reason for writing: As he ex- pressed this, “My chief motive in writing has been the desire to express a point of view.... I write for myself and not for my readers.... [M]y dominant motive in writing is to make things clear to myself, and my writing is impor- tant to others in so far as it helps them to become clearer.”1 Although such an unapologetic admission could be taken as a criticism of an author’s primary motivation, it has another side as an honest statement: that solving a certain set of problems has, for some authors, far greater importance to them, in and of itself, than service to unseen readers. So this has been for me. Notwith- standing this disclosure of my priorities, I have in the following pages made every attempt within my power to communicate to the reader in clear and un- ambiguous terms.
On my departure from the Max-Planck-Institut, Dr. von Weizsäcker shared with me his written thoughts relating to my monograph. Had I chosen to publish it, his reflections would have comprised that work’s Foreword.
Since the method and soul of the older work live on in this study, in both the
1 Quoted by Sullivan (1934, p. 141).
PREFACE xxxi present book’s fundamental approach as well as in several parts of its content, there is no better-qualified thinker to contribute a relevant Foreword than Dr.
von Weizsäcker, whose comments follow.
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Foreword
by
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Director, Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung der Lebensbedingungen der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt
Starnberg, Germany
his work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philoso- phical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal ex- pression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge. He is certainly well- equipped for this task: his doctor’s thesis showed a thorough familiarity with Husserl’s transcendental philosophy (and also with Kant and Wittgenstein) and his mastery of modern mathematical logic and semantics is everywhere in evidence in the present book. He is, furthermore, sufficiently well-versed in the history of Greek logic to be able to locate his efforts against the back- ground of the ancient beginnings in the Stoic-Diodorean and the Megaric- Aristotelian schools.
Dr. Bartlett is right, in my opinion, in developing his calculus from a very general notion of “possibility” that is limited only by restrictions which ap- pear to be necessary preconditions of any theory. From these restrictions he develops the set of axioms that define his “metalogic of reference.” The axi- oms are thus required to be “self-validating” in that their denial would result in a referential inconsistency; in this step lies the formalization of the tran- scendental principle. He is fully aware of the essential difficulty that his metalogic must be “self-referential,” i.e., that the formal structure must expli- cate its own transcendental foundation. His careful studies of the scant litera- ture on self-reference (R. M. Martin, B. van Fraassen) no doubt helped him to avoid pitfalls, but the construction of the calculus is entirely his own.
Dr. Bartlett sees the calculus as the carrying out of Kant’s program of a
“phaenomenologia generalis” (letter to Lambert, 1770)—a “negative sci- ence”—that was meant to precede any future metaphysics; his metalogic tells what referential statements are forbidden, everything else is allowed. I find it particularly attractive that his logic is ontologically “open,” i.e. that the exis-
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tential-referential commitments which he unavoidably makes actually forbid (as referentially inconsistent) the denial of existence to any sort of object. In this point his calculus agrees with Husserl’s technique of excluding all apriori ontological characterization of objects, which is made to depend on an analy- sis of their modes of givenness instead. Another attractive feature lies in the referential inconsistency, entailed by the calculus, of all terms that imply a sharp subject-object decision (such as the term “observer-independent”).
In sum, I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.
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Acknowledgments
ince the ideas and the method presented in this book had their beginning many years ago, acknowledgments of the support and assistance of indi- viduals and institutions also stretch over many years.
In my first years of graduate school, and for the first time, I tasted the strong and disappointing flavor of self-limiting partisanship in philosophy, of blinkering fashions, restrictive paradigms, and preferred beliefs that so often stand in the way of the development of new and potentially revolutionary ap- proaches—whether in philosophy or in other disciplines. Since acknowledg- ments can be both positive and negative, I mention this experience to ac- knowledge its eventual positive value and usefulness to my work by pointing me in promising directions. The need to find a dissertation director with a suitable background, interests, and openness to new ideas led me to contact a number of philosophers whose encouragement and willingness to serve as director of my dissertation I want to acknowledge. They included, in no par- ticular order, Marjorie Greene, Maurice Natanson, Edward Teller, P. F.
Strawson, Herbert Marcuse, and Paul Ricoeur, with whom I decided to work.
All of these individuals expressed interest in a young doctoral student’s pro- posal to develop a certain set of philosophically radical ideas and accompa- nying methodology.
Paul Ricoeur turned out to be a serendipitous choice, both because of his receptivity to new ideas and the fact that he was secure enough in his own thinking not to be intimidated by what is new and revolutionary. The other members of my doctoral committee, philosopher and mathematical logician Jean Ladrière and phenomenologist Alphonse de Waehlens, both professors of the Institut Catholique de Louvain, gave me, in their own respective ways, further much-appreciated encouragement. These men were intellectually open and provided their support to a doctoral dissertation that formulated an origi- nal epistemological method rather than the usual study of another philoso- pher’s thought.
In the years following my doctoral work, I have benefitted greatly by the interest and intellectual sharing of a large and varied group of philosophers, scholars, logicians, mathematicians, and physicists. They are too numerous to list here, but I most especially wish to single out Robert Maynard Hutchins, Frederic Brenton Fitch, Henry W. Johnstone, Jr., and C. F. von Weizsäcker.
To institutions and relevant individuals, I wish to express my thanks to
