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Revision as of 14:45, 18 August 2011
, 14:45, 18 August 2011→7.1.4. The Pragmatic Critique: + text
====7.1.4. The Pragmatic Critique====
====7.1.4. The Pragmatic Critique====
The general idea behind this form of differential approach is extremely important to the pragmatic theory of inquiry, which cannot avail itself of any infallible foundations or absolute certainties at the outset of inquiry, but must say how it is possible to begin inquiry as it always does begin, forever starting out in the middle of the action from a mixed condition of partial ignorance and partial knowledge, with a small number of active doubts and a greater multitude of contingent beliefs, and yet still arrive at improvements in the understanding of phenomena.
The basic problem for a pragmatic theory of inquiry can be expressed as follows. The critical judgments to be made at the end of inquiry, though they rely in an incidental sense on the context of unexamined judgments that are always present at the beginning of inquiry, must acquire a degree of certainty that becomes independent in a logical sense from the purely apparent securities of their tentative origin. Otherwise, the claim of inquiry to lead from ignorance to knowledge merely begs the question, redundantly iterating those sheer opinions that already prevailed at the outset, that clothed the undertaking in a series of arguments but were never fairly examined in the investigation.
Regarded in the light of this pragmatic critique, a candidate theory about the development of knowledge needs to identify a realistic model for the conduct of inquiry, the kind of guiding paradigm that can serve in actual practice to direct a genuine search for knowledge, not merely a scheme for summarizing the results after the quest is over and done. This has serious import for the image of inquiry that one really uses. It means that the kind of foundational approach commonly portrayed in axiomatic developments of deductive theories does not provide a viable or accurate picture of the discovery process that prevails in science, not even so often one might think within the realm of mathematics itself, but typically amounts to a put up job, a post hoc reconstruction and a rationalized exposition of the end result only.
On due reflection, it appears that the proper placement of the deductive phase within inquiry and the actual function of the explicative work it means to embody does not rest with the initial motivation of inquiry but fills a need for the intermediate staging and testing of tentative results. This permits axiomatic presentations and deductive developments to find a useful role for themselves within the actual progress of inquiry, sandwiched between the original creation of experimental ideas and the eventual probation of hypothetical concepts.
Another way to express the heart of this problem is in terms of the admittedly rather tenuous distinction between formal and casual contexts of discussion. One is being asked to justify how it is possible for an honest inquirer to draw on the natural human resources of prior belief, tacit knowledge, and casual intuitions without having the whole ensuing progress of inquiry be undermined by this personal way of starting out. This threat to the validity of inquiry can be averted only if one of the feasible ends of subsequent inquiry is to question the self evidence and the practical utility of the prior dispensations referred to as axioms.
If one desires to say that the putative knowledge is merely "potential", hidden, or implicit at the beginning of inquiry and becomes "kinetic", actual, or articulate via its pursuit, then this can probably be accepted as a valid manner of speaking, since it does not disparage the character of the effort that is required to manifest effective knowledge by means of authentic inquiry. But the pragmatic critique puts one on guard for the circumstance that the progress of inquiry is often less like falling off a log and rolling down a hill than it is like hollowing out a canoe and striking out upstream. Its headway is often achieved against the formidable gradients of resistance that are already established in the informal contexts of thought and discussion, put up not only by natural obstructions in the objective environment but also by habitual flows of learned associations parading as reasoning in the interpretive setting. It is only fair that every pretense of tacit and prior knowledge must bear the burden of proof against the forms of prejudice to which its claims are constantly liable.
====7.1.5. Pragmatic Operating Notions====
====7.1.5. Pragmatic Operating Notions====
