Chapter 10

Curt Ducasse, Philosophy as a Science, 1941

CHAPTER TEN

The Subject Matter Distinctive of Philosophy

I NOW submit that the facts primitive for philosophy all consist of appraisals or, as I propose to say indifferently, valuations.
1. The Primitives of Philosophy. -- But when it is asserted both that the facts primitive for philosophy are appraisals, and that the facts primitive for a science are those it takes as subjects of its questions but as not themselves in question, it is not meant that the justice or warrantedness of appraisals is in general beyond question for philosophy. What is for it beyond question is their occurrence, i.e., that certain appraisals are made of certain entities by certain persons.

Appraisals are of many kinds and so are the things appraised. The latter include not only objects, events, or situations external to man, but also man's own experiences, and his activities and operations, whether physical, psychical, or other. Among kinds of appraisals, some of the more familiar are those we formulate (when we formulate them at all) by means of such adjectives as "good" and "bad," "right" and "wrong," "moral" and "immoral," "beautiful" and "ugly," "sublime" and "ridiculous," "sound" and "erroneous," "veridical" and "illusory," "valid" and "fallacious," "real" and "unreal," "sacred" and "profane," etc., and by means of the comparatives (if any) of such adjectives.{1}

To appraise something is thus to judge its merits or worth -- positive or negative, comparative or absolute. That any appraisal is either positive or negative is I believe the very essence of appraisal; that is, generically, appraising is nothing more and nothing less than "yea-ing" or "nay-ing." The yea or nay -- the positive or negative judgment -- may be dominantly emotional (e.g., a liking or disliking) or dominantly epistemic (e.g., a believing or disbelieving) or dominantly volitional (e.g., an effort to cause or to prevent). But in all cases the appraising consists of some form of favoring or disfavoring response to the entity appraised.{2} The adjectives of appraisal accordingly go in pairs and the members of each pair are opposites. Which pair of specific adjectives is relevant in a given case depends on the kind of entity being appraised and on the general type of interest one takes in it. For example, if the entity to be appraised is an opinion, and the interest taken in it epistemic, the adjectives "erroneous" and "sound" would be relevant. If the interest is emotional, adjectives such as "shocking" or "agreeable" would be relevant. If the entity appraised is an inference instead of an opinion, and the interest in it epistemic, then the adjectives "fallacious" and "valid" would be relevant, etc.

2. Appraisal and Description. -- When we say of a certain fabric, for instance, that it is blue or tightly woven or light-weight, we are said to be describing it; whereas if we say that it is beautiful or good or useful, we are said to be stating an appraisal of it. But it may be objected that these appraisals are themselves descriptions. For instance, to say that the fabric is beautiful means, perhaps, that it is such as to cause, in persons who contemplate it aesthetically, feelings that are pleasant; to say that it is useful may mean that it is an effective means to purposes of certain sorts, etc. These statements, just as much as the statement that the fabric is blue or tightly woven, describe characteristics the fabric possesses that distinguish it from certain other fabrics. Again, the police description of an escaped criminal may include nor only statements of his height and weight, of the color of his eyes and hair, etc., but also a statement that he is, perhaps, good-looking.
The contrasting of valuation or appraisal on the one hand with description on the other thus seems hard to defend, for to describe something is to state the characters it has, no matter of what sort. On this account, the contrast really intended would probably be better expressed as one between statement of value-characters and statement of characters other than these; that is, as a contrast between descriptions that formulate appraisals and descriptions that do not.
It is important to note that the two may consist of the very same words, although when the words state an appraisal they mean something additional to what they mean when intended to describe without appraising. To say of a novel that it is very long, for instance, is to state a character it has, but whether this is statement merely of an objective character, or in addition of an adverse appraisal, depends on whether the character mentioned is assumed to be objectionable -- disvalued or demeritorious. Again, one might say of a painting that in it the volume aspect of the objects it represents, and the relations in the third dimension of space of these objects to one another, are emphasized. This is to state merely an objective character of the painting, if the character mentioned is not being offered as ground for liking or disliking or for admiring or condemning the painting. Otherwise the statement is not only objectively descriptive but also descriptive of the utterer's appraisal of the painting. If the painting is a mural and emphasis of the third dimension is something disliked in a mural by the person speaking, his statement that the painting has this character constitutes adverse criticism of the painting. From the same person, however, the very same statement, but concerning an easel painting, might express favorable criticism.
A statement of appraisal, then, and a "merely descriptive" statement are distinguished by the fact that the latter does not, but the former does, express (whether explicitly or implicitly) a valuing (positive or negative) of the entity about which it is made.{3}
3. Appraisals Primitive for Philosophy Spontaneous, Particular, and Formulated. -- Although all facts primitive for philosophy are appraisals, not all appraisals are philosophical primitives. Appraisals expressible in the form "anything of kind K has value V" are obtained either by induction from particular appraisals or by deduction from some theory, and are therefore derivative, not primitive. Hence, primitive appraisals are particular, not general. But not even all particular appraisals are philosophical primitives, for a particular appraisal may be made deductively from a theory, and cannot then serve as material or evidence for or against that theory or any rival one. To be primitive, an appraisal must therefore be not only particular but also spontaneous, in the sense of not deduced from any theory. Particular appraisals which are simply automatic imitations of those of other persons in one's environment are not spontaneous either, in the sense in which spontaneity is a requirement for philosophical primitiveness; for even if the appraisals of which they are imitations are themselves spontaneous, the imitations of them do not constitute additional bases for generalizations or theories, any more than the images of a given biological specimen in half a dozen mirrors would provide half a dozen additional specimens.

But further, if the generalizations and theories of philosophy are to have scientific status -- are to constitute knowledge in as genuine a sense as, for instance, those of the natural sciences -- then philosophical generalizations and theories must likewise be testable by other persons beside those who propound them. This requires that the spontaneous particular appraisals which are generalized and theorized about, and by reference to which the validity of the generalizations and theories is to be tested, shall be known to these other persons. This is possible only if they are expressed, and expressed in public and commonly understood symbols; for, unlike the primitive facts of natural science, appraisals themselves are not exhibitable to public perception. The entity appraised sometimes is so exhibitable, but the appraisal made of it never is. The appraisal is a subjective fact and can therefore be made known to persons other than the appraiser himself only through public utterance by him of some commonly understood symbol of it. The symbols consisting of the various adjectives of appraisal of ordinary language are the most usual and generally the only adequate medium available for the public expression of appraisals. The pair of words "yes" and "no," or their equivalents, may as already suggested be regarded as the summum genus of pairs of terms of appraisal.
How language for the communication of subjective facts, such as appraisals, is possible is an interesting question but one that need not be taken up here. We only assume here, as common sense does, that such language exists; and that when we study appraisals, the entities we are studying are not the utterances themselves of any of the words of that language, but the subjective -- not perceptually public -- entities which certain of the words of that language stand for.
In the light of the foregoing remarks, some of which will be amplified in succeeding chapters, we may now summarily define the facts primitive for philosophy as consisting of such appraisals as are particular, spontaneous, and stated.
4. Philosophical Theorizing Born of the Desire to Settle Doubts of Our Appraisals Rationally. -- That the facts primitive for philosophy -- the facts it is ultimately about are appraisals, is suggested by the nature of the occasions upon which thinking of the kind generally called philosophical spontaneously arises. They are occasions when our appraisals conflict among themselves or with those of other persons, or are hesitant, or otherwise come to be put in doubt, and where the conflict or doubt is not due to inadequate observation or description of the thing appraised.
This qualification is important, for the demand that arises in us for knowledge adequate to settle a doubt of an appraisal is satisfiable sometimes in one and sometimes in the other of two ways. What is needed to settle the doubt is in some cases better knowledge of what characters are actually possessed by the entity appraised; whereas in other cases it is better knowledge of characters which, if any entity possessed them, would warrant the sort of appraisal we are making. The distinction is essentially that between knowing better an entity we are talking about, and knowing better what we are saying about it -- in this case, between knowing better the nature of the entity appraised, and knowing better the nature of the sort of appraisal we make of it.
For example, doubt as to whether something that a person did on a certain occasion was wrong may arise either from our not knowing exactly enough what he did do, or from our not knowing exactly enough what wrongness consists in. In cases of the first sort, the sort of knowledge needed is not philosophical. It is of the sort obtainable by more careful observation or description of the entity appraised. In cases of the second sort, the knowledge needed is of the kind which an adequate theory of appraisals of the sort made would provide. Such knowledge is philosophical: a theory of appraisals of the sort expressible by the adjective "wrong" would be an ethical theory; by the adjective "erroneous," an epistemological theory; by the adjective "beautiful," an aesthetic theory; by the adjective "real," an ontological theory, etc.
One or two concrete illustrations will make clear that situations of the kind described automatically generate philosophizing in rational persons.
Let us suppose that at a meeting of a college faculty the curriculum is under discussion, and that difference of opinion arises as to whether a given course ought or ought not to be required of all students -- or, to put the same thing in other words, as to whether the requiring of this course for all students is a good or a bad thing to do. It may be that the disagreement arises only from misconceptions by some members of the faculty as to the content or the method of the course. If so, the point at issue is not philosophical, and more adequate information as to the nature of the course suffices to eliminate the conflict of appraisals. But if the nature of the course is equally well known to all and the conflict of appraisals is not at bottom only a conflict of vested interests in the curriculum, then it is one between latent philosophies of college education. The conceptions of what the nature, the methods, or the effects of a college education must be if it is to be good may hitherto have remained unformulated, and therefore more or less vague and fluid, or even wholly absent, in the minds of some members of the faculty. But the conflict of appraisals crystallizes or generates them and brings them to formulation. Thus, one member of the faculty may defend his condemnation of the proposal to prescribe the course by saying, perhaps, that the information it imparts to the student is very unlikely ever to be useful to him later; while another member will acknowledge this fact but declare it irrelevant, and approve the course perhaps on the ground that it provides a unique sort of intellectual discipline, or that it opens to the student a horizon of cultural if not of practical interest otherwise likely to remain closed to him.
Or, to take other examples, challenge of a person's condemnation of a novel may elicit from him the reason that the novel has a tragic ending -- that is, the theory that a novel with a tragic ending is, other things being equal, inferior to one with a happy ending. A physician's refusal to perform an operation that would save the life of a monstrously malformed infant may be judged morally wrong by one person and morally right by another -- the one defending his appraisal, perhaps, by appeal to the injunctions in the scriptures of his religion, and the other by appeal to the fact that useless suffering is avoided by allowing the infant to die.
Obviously, the reason offered by each person in defense of his appraisal constitutes the embryo, or a fragment, of a philosophy of the subject concerned. The defense consists in exhibiting the proposal in dispute as a case of a certain general kind, it being assumed that whatever is of this general kind commends itself -- or, it may be, condemns itself -- too evidently to need assertion, much less argument, of the appraisal. In most impromptu disputes, however, these implicit major premises of the appraisals made have not been thought of prior to the dispute, still less formulated. Rather, they are picked out of the dialectical air at the moment, as being prima facie both plausible and logically adequate to support the appraisal made. But as soon as they are formulated -- put into words -- critical scrutiny of them becomes possible not only to out opponents but also to ourselves, for our opinions are proof against doubt by ourselves only so long as they retain the status of tacit assumptions. The moment we assert them, question of them thrusts itself upon us, even if we then immediately find ourselves able to meet the question with a confident reassertion. Often, however, scrutiny of the hitherto tacit but now formulated major premises of our appraisals exhibits ambiguities or brings to mind cases the formulation has intended to include -- or, as the case may be, to exclude -- but which it does not, or reveals incompatibility between the major premise formulated and others to which one has already committed one's self. Whether these defects be pointed out by opponents or discovered by ourselves, they call for remedy through definitions of terms, and often also of the terms in which these definitions are framed; or through introduction or removal of restrictions to make those major premises cover all and none but the sorts of cases we intend; or through distinctions adequate to render them compatible with one's other commitments, etc.
But to do all this thoroughly and with exactness is to formulate a comprehensive philosophy of the subject in view -- a theory of the sort of appraisal concerned -- in the light of which it will be evident whether the appraisal we made was sound or erroneous. It may be, of course, that the defects which opponents believe they discern in the premises we advance for our appraisal are not really there. But that they are not there can be shown only by means of an apparatus of definitions, classifications, distinctions, etc., adequate to exhibit the confusions, misunderstandings, or false assumptions upon which the objections were based -- that is, again, by means of a comprehensive philosophy of the subject in view.
5. The Derivative Part of the Subject Matter of Philosophy the More Prominent and Technical . -- The generalizations themselves, and also the definitions, classifications, operations, etc., by means of which theories explanatory of the generalizations are constructed and tested, are derivative facts, not primitive; and in philosophy as elsewhere they quickly bulk larger and more prominently, and are more technical, than the primitives. Because of this, their derivative relation to the homely and untechnical primitives is easily lost sight of and the technical subject matter is mistakenly regarded as self-contained. Yet the technical problems with which philosophers are so largely occupied are, as in any other science, generated solely by the persistent attempt to analyze and synthesize in a thoroughgoing manner the humble primitive facts. They are marked off as technical problems of philosophy rather than of some other science solely by the fact that the primitives out of which that persistent attempt generates them are the philosophical primitives, via., appraisals such as described.

6. Is All Philosophy Ultimately Concerned with Appraisals? -- It would generally be granted that the questions as to what are beauty and ugliness, right and wrong, truth and error, etc., are philosophical questions. But it would be claimed by many that the problems of metaphysics -- problems concerning the nature and the form, structure, or order of reality -- are among the most important of philosophical problems and yet are not either directly or indirectly about appraisals. Philosophy, that is to say, includes the "normative sciences," but cannot be equated to them because it also includes metaphysics, which is not one of them.
I believe that this claim concerning metaphysics is ill founded, and that every "metaphysical" problem for which it is made either

is directly about some appraisal; or
is derivative from some appraisal (i.e., is indirectly about some appraisal); or
belongs to some science other than philosophy; or
rests on false assumptions and is therefore spurious; or
is a priori insoluble because the statement purporting to formulate it is so ambiguous that one cannot tell from it just what the problem is supposed to be -- what the data of it are and what the dubitatum or quaesitum -- or whether a problem is there at all, or rather only a string of individually meaningful words followed by a question mark.

As regards the last sort of case in particular, I submit that, in a large part of what has gone by the name of metaphysics, the meaning of the terms employed has been left so vague and the transitions of thought so loose that the conclusions drawn have no title whatever to the name of knowledge, even of probabilities. "Metaphysics" or "philosophy" of this kind therefore seems to me to be just what Broad calls it, namely, moonshine. It is not really philosophy but only the manifestation of a methodological naivete, if not disease, from which philosophy is gradually freeing itself. But the need to purge of it the philosophical problems it has infected does not imply, as logical positivists have claimed, that all the problems of metaphysics vanish in the attempt to state them clearly and are therefore pseudo-problems. I believe on the contrary that some of them are genuine, and that the reformulation that frees the statement of them from ambiguities and false assumptions makes solution of them possible at least in principle.
This is true in particular of the problem of the nature of reality. What this problem actually is has, I believe, been widely misconceived. The adjectives "real" and "unreal," as they enter into the statement of a metaphysical position, do not designate any character that any things have independently of human interest in them, but are on the contrary adjectives of human appraisal. The adjective real voices appraisal of something as being of a species which is of interest at the time to the person applying the adjective; and the adjective unreal, on the contrary, voices appraisal of something as belonging to a species of no interest to him at the time and therefore as to be ignored by him. This implies that a general statement as to the nature of reality, that is, a statement of the form "to be real is to be such and such," does not formulate a hypothesis and is therefore not susceptible of being proved, disproved, or assigned a probability. Rather, it formulates simply the criterion of interestingness which we use or propose to use at a given time in appraising any given thing as interesting or uninteresting to us.
To be using, or to choose, such a criterion is to be occupying, or to take, an ontological position. Since an ontological position is thus not a hypothesis but a (for the time) ruling interest an ontological position is nor the sort of thing susceptible of being either erroneous or the opposite. An ontological position may be queer and unusual, or on the contrary widely held; or it may be perhaps foolish or wise in the long run; or it may be taken, given up, or not taken; or it may be stated or not stated; but it may not be either refuted, demonstrated, or shown to be less or more probable than another. These categories simply do not apply to the sort of thing an ontological position is. For example, as already pointed out, the ontological position of the natural scientist is that to be real -- that is, to be of interest to him in his capacity as natural scientist -- is to be either perceptually public or implicit in what is so. To take this position is obviously not to contend anything, but to adopt a criterion of interestingness -- the one which defines both the scope and the limits of "natural science." But since nothing is contended by adopting it, there is nothing there to be proved or refuted. Adoption of it can only be either imitated or not imitated.{4}
From these considerations it follows that the problem of ontology is at least misleadingly stated by the question, "What is the nature of reality?" For this form of statement suggests that the problem is logically analogous to, for instance, the problem, "What is the nature of rubber, or of a seed, etc.?" in which some entity, called "rubber" or "a seed," etc., is concretely given to us, whose properties we are then asked to discover. The problem of ontology is not of this kind. It is better described as that of inquiring, as we have just done, what exactly it is we are saying about anything -- e.g., about matter, or about mind, or about whatever is perceived, etc. -- when we deny or assert that it is real or ask whether it is real; and further, of inquiring what principal varieties there may be of such ontological choices, how they are mutually related, what is demanded by consistency with any given one of them, etc.
There are certain other problems also often regarded as belonging to metaphysics, but described as cosmological rather than ontological. Examples would be the problem of the nature of the causal relation and its kinds; that of the relation between mind and body; that of the origin of mind, etc. A word must be said to indicate how such problems would be classified on the hypothesis I have presented as to the subject matter of philosophy.
The problems connected with the causal relation are derivative problems of the theory of knowledge. They are raised automatically by any attempt to give a thoroughgoing account of the difference between knowledge and error, and of the kinds of knowledge. The problem of the relation between causation and teleology is likewise a derivative problem belonging to the theory of knowledge. On the other hand, the question whether the events of nature, or any given one of them is determined teleologically or on the contrary in "blindly" causal manner is not a philosophical one. Rather, it is philosophical only in so far as the doubt concerns the meaning of the question -- the nature of causation, of teleology, of determinism. For obviously if a man who was working on a roof fell off, the question whether it was an accident, mechanically caused perhaps by the fact that his foot slipped, or, on the contrary, suicide so planned that his wife could collect his life insurance, is not a philosophical question but one of historical fact, perhaps impossible to decide. Equally historical, of course, even if unanswerable by us, would be the question whether his fall was brought about by the purposive action of some god, demon, or other occult being.
The question of the origin of mind -- once we know exactly what is to be understood by "mind" -- is likewise historical, not philosophical. Again the problem of the relation of mind to body is philosophical only in so far as it turns on how these terms are to be defined, which is a derivative question belonging to the theory of knowledge. But if this is assumed to be adequately known already, and a problem still remains -- turning, let us say, on whether a given mental event is strictly simultaneous with or, on the contrary, immediately sequent to a certain neural event in the brain cortex -- then the problem is once more not philosophical. Rather it is chronological, and soluble, if at all, only on the basis of accurate timing of the two events.
That all the problems of metaphysics are directly or indirectly about appraisals could be shown only by examining all the problems which have been called metaphysical, and showing in the case of each which of the alternatives (a to e above) actually fits it. This would take a volume in itself, but perhaps the few examples just discussed will suffice to show why these problems do not seem to me to constitute cases invalidating my contention as to the subject matter distinctive of philosophy.
7. Philosophy, the Branches of Philosophy, and the Philosophies of Particular Subjects. -- A predicate taken in a given sense is predicable without incongruity, whether affirmatively, negatively, or interrogatively, only of the entities of a certain class, which may be a broad or narrow one and more or less clearly marked off. For example, it is only of physical substances that one can without incongruity question whether, or affirm or deny that, they are soluble in alcohol. It is only of persons who have attempted something that one can congruously ask whether, or deny or affirm that, they have succeeded.{5} These remarks apply to predicates of appraisal as to any others. For instance, the adjective "erroneous" is congruously predicable only of opinions; the adjective "formally fallacious" only of inferences; the adjective "veracious" only of statements or of the persons who make them; the adjective "morally wrong" only of the conduct of responsible beings, etc. An exhaustive analysis of the nature of the characters predicated respectively by these adjectives and their opposites, together with an account of the relations to one another of the sorts of entities constituting the realm of congruous predicability of each, is what the philosophy or opinions, the philosophy of inferences, the philosophy of statements, etc., consists of.{6}
But these three philosophies, for example, are not mutually independent but on the contrary connected indissolubly with one another, and together (with certain other parts) comprise the philosophy of knowledge. When "philosophy" or "the branches of philosophy" are mentioned in ordinary discourse, what is referred to is the philosophy of such comprehensive subjects as knowledge, conduct, religion, art, aesthetic experience, etc.
But any of these branches, or for instance again the philosophy of knowledge, is susceptible not only of division into parts (dealing specifically with inferences, opinions, etc.) but also of particularization in respect to what, specifically, the knowledge considered is knowledge of -- for example, physical entities, mathematical entities, etc. Such particularization will give us the philosophy of physical knowledge, of mathematical knowledge, etc. But we could particularize further still, calling neither for the philosophy of knowledge in general, nor that of knowledge concerning the entities of physics in general, but perhaps only for that of knowledge concerning the entities of acoustics.{7} Then the account of, for instance, what "erroneousness" in the case of opinions about sound consists in would be framed in terms of kinds of tests too special to constitute also an account of what erroneousness consists in where an opinion specifically about light, for example, is concerned instead. Or, to turn from the philosophy of knowledge to the philosophy of conduct, we might be interested not in the philosophy of conduct in general, but only, for instance, in that of the conduct of physicians, or of tennis players, etc., as such; that is, in the ethics of medical practice, of games in general or, more specifically, of tennis playing, etc.

These examples illustrate what is meant by the philosophy of this or that particular subject as distinguished from philosophy in general, or from the comprehensive branches of philosophy.
8. Is Philosophy Mere "Rationalization" of Our Appraisals? -- The situations which naturally generate philosophical theorizing in rational persons have been described above as those in which challenge of their appraisals occurs -- the philosophizing consisting essentially in the attempt to find major premises from which can be logically deduced the appraisals challenged as well as others that are on the contrary accepted. The question now presents itself whether philosophizing is not then only what is called "rationalizing" -- the inventing of reasons adequate to support opinions we already hold, so that the opinions determine the reasons instead of the reasons the opinions.
But to raise this question is, by implication, equally to raise the question whether the theorizing engaged in by, for instance, the physicist, is not similarly rationalizing. For he too starts from opinions he already has -- prepositions already accepted by him as being laws of nature -- and attempts to find premises from which they can be deduced. In the case of the philosopher, the facts the theory is cut to fit consist of generalizations of particular appraisals actually made by certain human beings. In that of the physicist, they consist of, generalizations of particular facts of nature, which are independent of man's appraisal. This is what differentiates the theorizing as in the first case philosophical and in the second physical. But the theorizing enterprise (as distinguished from its subject matter) is exactly the same sort of enterprise in both cases. Therefore, if it is "mere rationalization" in philosophy, it is equally so in physics; or, if it a not so in physics, then it is not so, or at least need not be so, in philosophy either. In the chapter following, I propose to consider more carefully than I have done up to this point what a theory is, what its functions are, and the criteria for choice between rival theories. It will appear that beside a certain likeness there is also a great difference -- equally in philosophy and in physics -- between theory construction (which is an epistemically fruitful process) and mere rationalization (which is an epistemically barren one). It is the difference between speculation when disciplined by the requirement that it meet certain objective tests of validity, and speculation when on the contrary irresponsible because uncontrolled or insufficiently controlled by such tests. That a great deal of philosophical speculation has actually been of this irresponsible sort, and in consequence barren of genuine knowledge, does not at all imply that philosophical speculation cannot be as rigorously controlled as is physical speculation, and as truly fruitful.

[Table of Contents] [Chapter 11]

Notes

{1} "To formulate" is used throughout in the sense of "to express by means of conventional symbols." These are usually words. The words used in the formulation may but need not be uttered. Utterances of them may be vocal, graphic, or other. [Back]
{2} "Entity" is used throughout in the broad sense of "something" not in the narrow one of "substance" or "object" as contrasted with "situation," "event," "activity," etc. [Back]

{3} The entity valued may be valued either for what it immediately is, or as a means or obstacle to something so valued, or both. [Back]

{4} Perception of this is what dictates the "ontological liberalism" described by the writer in "A Defense of Ontological Liberalism," Journal of Philosophy XXI, No. 13 (June, 1924). [Back]

{5} It might be thought that one could congruously and truly deny of George Washington that he succeeded in jumping Niagara Falls: he never attempted it; therefore he cannot have succeeded; therefore he did not. This however overlooks the fact that congruous denial consists in asserting of an opposite, and that "he did not succeed" is not opposite of "he succeeded" unless taken in the sense of "he failed" and not in the sense of "he either failed, or studied medicine, or became president, or was born in America, etc." (that is, not in the sense that "some predicate[s] simply other than 'having succeeded' is[are] predicable of him"). For if the assertion "he did not succeed" means that he failed, then what it means is false. If on the other hand what the assertion means is true, then it does not mean that he failed but that he neither succeeded nor failed; and this is not congruous denial of "he succeeded," since it is not assertion of an opposite of this, but (by implication) of the opposite of "he tried." The assertion "Washington did not succeed in jumping the Falls" is thus incongruous -- impertinent -- in exactly the same sense as the question "Have you quit beating your mother?" which is often used in textbooks on logic to illustrate the fallacy of "double question" (better described as fallacy of false insinuation, since assertion or denial involves this as much as question).[Back]
{6} On the other hand, the predicate "soluble in alcohol" is not a predicate of appraisal, and therefore a theory of the nature of solubility in alcohol would not be a philosophical theory but a physical one.[Back]
{7} The theory of sound is nor philosophical theory, but the theory of our knowledge of sound is philosophical.[Back]
[Table of Contents] [Chapter 11]