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====5.2.7. Synthetic A Priori Truths====
====5.2.7. Synthetic A Priori Truths====
<pre>
Nature, we are told, is only habit. What does that mean? Are there not habits contracted only by force which never do stifle nature? Such, for example, is the habit of the plants whose vertical direction is interfered with. The plant, set free, keeps the inclination it was forced to take. But the sap has not as a result changed its original direction; and if the plant continues to grow, its new growth resumes the vertical direction.
Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, [Rou1, 39]
There is a particular line of thinking, incidental to this construction, that is useful to draw out and to develop for the bearing it has and the perspective it gives on a long standing puzzle, namely, the question of "synthetic a priori" (SAP) truths. These are the kinds of truths that usually require considerable efforts of discovery and invention just to realize the truth of, and yet that are commonly felt after the fact to have always been completely destined, evident, foregone, and necessary. It is a matter of controversy in some circles whether truths of this order really exist, or, if truths of any such character do exist, then whether they really fall under the exact terms of the given description. But the "thrill of discovery" that marks their actual experience is real enough in practice, in logic, in mathematics, and in other formal studies, where even the most purely deductive conclusions do not seem so wholly foregone in their ways that one can afford to forgo the joys and the trials of their proofs. Thus, it follows that the persistence of this experience, as felt, needs to be appreciated in itself, no matter what scheme of theory one selects to explain it or else to explain it away.
Let me abstract, for the moment, from the structural and functional axes of the current construction, describing any development along analogous lines as a process of "coordination", and referring to the form of what results as an "axial coordinating system" (ACS), with axes to be named. What I want to highlight here is the typical progression of experiences that an agent passes through in the process of developing any instance in the form of an ACS, starting from (1) the performance of the separate analyses, working through (2) the synthesis of their combined results, and finally moving on to (3) the derivation of the novel implications on a freshly refurbished stage of inference. Making these abstractions not only yields a clearer view of the relevant structures involved in the process but it also develops a generalized picture of the coordination project that is much more flexible in the present use and increasingly adaptable to future applications.
With an eye to the generic features of my paradigmatic coordination process, and with the abstract idea of an ACS in hand, let me return to the immediate application. As I indicated, one of the benefits that I hope to extract from a study of this form of emergent "coordination", taking in its process and its result, is to clarify the problem of SAP propositions in scientific reasoning, and thus to derive a measure of insight into the forms of sapience that depend on them. Unless the ostensibly fruitful nature of SAP propositions evaporates into thin air with their exposure to the heat of reflection and unless their status as advertised entirely boils away with the resolution of their problematic features, then their analysis can help to rationalize the role of SAP propositions in scientific knowledge, as they arise through inquiry, as they enter into one's compendia of belief or knowledge, and as they contribute to the skills whereby one builds an overall grasp of truth.
I think that the sequence of experiential realizations that I depicted in my reconstruction of a developing faculty for "coordination", no matter whether it is regarded as a process or as a result, not only can account for many of the paradoxical features of SAP truths but also can explain the impressions that typically occur in the process of achieving them. First, it explains why the full recognition of the supposedly "a priori" status does not occur until after the synthetic step is finished, that is, until after the separate analytic perspectives are integrated and after the object domain is reconstituted under their freshly combined views. Further, it explains why this wholly reconstructive and retrospective vision, but one that constitutes a newly coherent mode of perception and a slightly elevated perspective, then appears to look on what was never anything but a pre established domain. Finally, it explains why the appearance or the apparition of anything non analytic contributing to the mix, the very impression that there were ever any truths beyond the manifestly deductive variety, momentarily fades out of sight in the evanescent manner of a transient illusion, at least, until the need of some exigency calls once again for the power of a synthetic capacity.
In any case, the effects that one typically experiences in going through these steps of "coordination" and in bringing about the instrumentality of the corresponding ACS are remarkably similar in many of their most puzzling features to those that are involved in the experiential process and the moment of realization that one comes to expect in the discovery of what is commonly called an item of "synthetic a priori" knowledge.
It is at this point that one is forced to distinguish the order of being from the order of knowing, and once again, within the order of knowing to distinguish the order of discovery from the order of justification. If a recursive analysis leads one only to make explicit an assumption that one has implictly taken for granted up until that time, then, no matter which way one chooses to proceed from that point, calling that assumption into question or continuing to believe it, the process of explication itself still reflects a measure of progress.
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====5.2.8. Priorisms of Normative Sciences====
====5.2.8. Priorisms of Normative Sciences====
