Aristotelian Perspectives For Post-modern Reason (i)

Modern Age and Actual Age: from the search for certainty to fallibilism

Among the characteristics of modern thought is the predilection for certainty[^4] . The search for certainty has been one of the signs of identity of a whole intellectual tradition, of what Husserl[^5] calls ‘European science’. According to Husserl, the abandonment of this search steeps us in crisis, in scepticism or in any type of naturalism. However, as Kolakowski[^6] rightly observes, neither Descartes nor Husserl managed to distinguish between the subjective feeling of evidence and the objective evidence of truth. Consequently, in many of the modern philosophical traditions, the pursuit of certainty has become a threat to the pursuit of truth, an impulse towards different types of idealism and a cause of crisis (by inference and by reaction) rather than an antidote to it.

The pursuit of certainty -infallibilism , in the words of Laudan - is one of the legacies of Cartesian philosophy. One could state, as Clarke does, that Cartesian science is defined in terms of certainty rather than in terms of the truth of the explanations proposed.[^7] A text in which Decartes himself sets this point out clearly is:

‘What can it matter to us for something to be absolutely false if anyway we believe it and we do not have the slightest suspicion that it is false?’[^8]

Or, if a negative formulation is required, ‘any knowledge that can be rendered doubtful must not be called scientific’[^9] and ‘I treat [...] as false everything which is merely likely’[^10] These words give the tone of what would from then on be the object of the quest for the scientific method.

It is, in any event, a question of establishing methods whose results will be certain knowledge, methods which we can only trust, whether or not subjective certainty is accompanied by objective truth.

Francis Bacon initiated another route of access to certainty, this time with an empirical and inductive character. According to Bacon, the inductive method is theart of invention andmachine , as well asformula ,clear and radiant light [^11] , and other similar boons. Those of Bacon’s ideas with the greatest influence on subsequent scientific thought are those which he expressed in his second book of theNovum Organum , that is his inductive logic, the so-called Baconian method. In general, and as Rossi states, many have seen in Bacon the constructor of a gigantic ‘logic machine’ doomed to not being used. With the Baconian method, according to Spedding, we cannot do anything. We consider it a subtle, elaborate and ingenious mechanism, but one which can produce nothing[^12] . In spite of everything, Bacon’s image as the founder of the new science thanks to his discovery of the inductive method was greatly appreciated by the founders of theRoyal Society and the authors of the great illustratedEncyclopædia .

In what situation do we place the practical with regard to rationality when the first value is certainty?

Many modern thinkers begin their writings with the observation of the disappointing state of the philosophy of human things in comparison with natural philosophy, that is the natural science. Dissension and lack of certainty, both in metaphysics and in moral philosophy, are the points causing the greatest unrest. Both Descartes and Hume, to mention two of the most noteworthy, feel that the model that inquiry into mankind should follow is that of natural and formal sciences, which have already opened up a path, a method to certainty and consensus. So, Descartes set out to find ‘the highest and most perfect moral science, which, presupposing a knowledge of other sciences, is the ultimate degree of wisdom’[^13] . Naturally, Descartes had to settle indefinitely for what he called  ‘provisional morals’. Hume stated with his empiricist approach base on the inductive method, ‘Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension’[^14] . This science will imply the extension of the principles of Newtonian natural philosophy to the study of human nature, and within it to the study of morals. Regarding politics, Hume has still fewer doubts, and states categorically that it can be reduced to a science endowed with a degree of certainty almost as perfect as that of mathematics[^15] .

But this naturalist approach to the study of man, which in principle promises the so longed-for certainty, leads to further disappointments and carries with it the germ of its own destruction, in the long term threatening natural science itself, which will always be an activity and product of human freedom and reason. Today we know from experience how these tendencies implicit in the naturalist position itself have been developed, but in Hume, the whole trajectory is already indicated. Naturalization of moral studies seems to demand a methodological reduction of the normative and the evaluative, which will end up being established as a definitive ontological reduction of human reason and freedom, which are mutually inseparable and inaccessible to the empirical method and never totally explained from strictly naturalist bases. Thence are derived an emotivism and an irrationalism which threaten science itself insofar as its practical aspects are recognized along with its inability to produce absolutely certain knowledge. Hume assures that ‘We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them’[^16] . Paradoxical though this may seem, this resignation that the practical should be the place for feelings derives from a reduced notion of reason, excessively bound up with a given idea of science and method and an extreme valuation of certainty.

In Hume there is no renunciation of certainty, the basis of which is confided to habit, but one of reason. Predilection for certainty leads Hume to irrationalism, not to scepticism[^17] . Karl Popper sums up the situation as follows, saying that, according to Hume, the scientific method is inductive, but:

‘... induction is completely invalid as an inference. There is not a shadow of a logical argument that would support the inference to a generalization from statements about the past (such as past repetitions of some 'evidence'). He [Hume] said that in spite of its lack of logical validity, induction plays an indispensable part in practical life [...] Thus there is a paradox.Even our intellect does not work rationally '. [p.94] [...] This led Hume, one of the most reasonable thinkers of all time, to give up rationalism and look at man not as endowed with reason but as a product of blind habit. Acording to Russellthis paradox of Hume's is responsible for the schizophrenia of modern man ’. [p.95][^18]

If anything can be learnt for the present it is that we lack a notion of practical reason that is well structured and free of traditional errors. Practical criteria cannot depend on a supposed scientific method and cannot aspire to confer absolute certainty on our decisions, but we do not have to go without reason in practical situations, as there is no need to identify reason with a supposed scientific method or with the sure way to certainty. In part, the obstacles encountered by Hume and Descartes in the development of an idea of practical reason have been abolished, for today we are aware that sciences are not governed strictly by the Cartesian method or by the inductive method, and that they are far from reaching complete certainty, which does not make them directly irrational. Above everything else it is the renunciation of the obsession with certainty that enables us today to imagine a suitable notion of practical reason.

It will be said that a notion of practical reason already existed in Kant. And this is so. But two observations must be made in this regard. In Kant, unlike in Hume, there is a radical denaturalization of practical reason, which today seems unacceptable. Such is the case that for Kant, prudence mainly has nothing to do with practical reason, but with theoretical reason, paradoxical though this may seem. This means that he excludes it from the nucleus of morals and considers it a mere technical ability for the pursuit of happiness[^19] . In the Modern period, from Descartes to Bacon, any technique was considered to be no more than applied science, and that if any problem arose in practice, it was due to deficiencies in theory. This view of science as immediately applicable soon spread, as we have seen in Hume, to morals, so the application of a science of man, which would not present genuinely technical problems, but only theoretical ones, would solve the problems of human happiness. Philosophers of the Enlightenment felt attracted by this new way of approaching human affairs. Kant shared the technological optimism of his day although he was the first to resist the concept of morals as a technique, that is, as the application of a science of man to the pursuit of happiness (happiness, by the way, previously defined by that very science). Kant, on the other hand, sought to protect morals from influences external to the very freedom of the subject. He did this by excluding the traditional contents from the nucleus of practical philosophy. According to Kant, prudence lies rather in theoretical reason, as it could become a mere applied science[^20] . In the interests of autonomy of reason, Kant separates morals radically from nature, setting it in the sphere of the freedom of the subject. The attempt to protect morals from naturalism leads to the new excess of putting it in the hands of logicism. The categorical imperative is, at root, of a logical character:Behave in such a way that you might also want your maxim to become universal law . The ‘might also want’ invoked here is, as Jonas[^21] states, that of reason an its concord with itself, an ability which would only be negated by self-contradiction.

In Aristotle, on the other hand, happiness is man’s natural and legitimate aim, whereby it was possible, according to Aubenque, ‘to integrate thetechnical moment of the correct choice of means in the definition of morality’[^22] .

The second observation concerns the certainty of what Kant takes to be really practical. No comparison can be made between the splendid certainty which Kant attributes to Newtonian science and thepractical faith in postulates necessary to give consistence to the practical use of reason. In an atmosphere of extreme valuation of certainty and of the scientific method, the Kantian foundation for practical reason, which, in short, leads to the postulates of human freedom, the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, was not believed or taken seriously. Kant expressed his admiration and  respect for two areas of reality,the starry sky above me and the moral law inside me . But to keep them separate is not sustainable, for indeed he who looks at the stars and grasps moral law is a human being who takes part in the two areas of reality, as a system subject to physical laws and as a free being. The integration of the two spheres seems necessary without the negation of either of them. But if we separate to such an extent the degree of certainty that we attribute to the knowledge of each of them, and if we set such a high value on certainty, then the so-called practical use of reason runs the risk of immediately being seen as one more mask of the irrational, as a concession of Kant’s to his beliefs, affections, desires or interests. The historical proof that this two sets of accounts cannot be tenable for long is what happened to Kantian tradition. Either it tended towards an idealism that suppressed the peculiarity of the practical and made it depend for everything on theory by identifying the rational with the real, or it drifted towards an irrationalism in which the pure use of reason had the same fate as the practical use, until it was seen as one more mask of the will to power[^23] . The pure and practical uses of reason must be integrated and must support each other, for today we know that they either stand or fall together[^24] . But this requires a reconsideration of the ideal of certainty and of the nature of science which has only come about in the twentieth century.

Since Hegel and since Nietzsche, several campaigns have been launched in the pursuit of certainty. One of the last ones in favour of certainty, automatism and the segregation of the practical, based on the identification of reason with science, was called Neo-positivism (and it was pursued as the so-calledreceived view ). Its internal decadence apart, it was Popper’s philosophy and Kuhn’s criticisms that put an end to this venture, and with it to a way of making philosophy of science. Kuhn laid forth the practical aspects of scientific rationality. As he states - in my opinion, rightly - ‘Recognizing that criteria of choice can function as values when incomplete as rules has, I think, a number of striking advantages [p. 331] .’[^25] . In Popper, a clear renunciation of the ideal of certainty and a re-instatement of truth are to be notice.

The recognition of the practical implication of science, both in its genesis and applications and in its justification, and the renunciation of the idea of certainty no doubt mark the end of the epoch in which the supposedly scientific method was shown as the zenith and model of human reason, where all philosophy aspired to ideal of certainty or took its failure as the failure of reason, first in the practical terrain and then, as an inexorable consequence, in the theoretical. Today there is an abandonment of the logico-linguistic conception of theories in favour of a pragmatic conception of science. Science, it is said, is action. But, as previously the possibility of a practical reason was not clear, nor was its articulation with theory, the rationality of science itself has been questioned. Kuhn has been accused of being relativist and irrationalist, an accusation which he has rejected, but without going so far as to construct a philosophical basis on which to base this rejection. For their parts, Peirce and Popper, each in his own way, have tackled this subject but both have recoiled, paradoxically, to quasi-Hegelian positions.

Science taken as action, as the art of research, of teaching, diffusion of knowledge and application, etc., can and must be judged with criteria that cannot in themselves be exclusively scientific or merely arbitrary, but a part of the general rationality of human life. The birth, then, of new disciplines, of new ways of making philosophy of science, such asbioethics ,environmental ethics andSTS studies , is not just a collateral phenomenon, a momentary collision point between science and practical thought, but an indication of a new way of conceiving rationality itself, or at least an indication of the need for this new reason.

I believe that the time has come to perfect concepts and attitudes that have always had a vocation to integrate the theoretical and practical planes without ruling out either of them, concepts and attitudes which were born to avoid the swing of the pendulum between the logicist and irrationalist extremes (between Permenides and Heracleitus, between Charybdis and Scylla).