Philosophical and Psychological Pragmatics Gustav Bergmann Philosophy of Science, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Jul., 1947), pp. 271-273. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248%28194707%2914%3A3%3C271%3APAPP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A Philosophy of Science is currently published by The University of Chicago Press.
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which would violate or eliminate the basic datum of ethics, i.e., a self freely determining itself from within. . . When this relationship is grasped, and, by the sharp process which we have endeavored to describe as decision, faith, commitment of the whole man, is fulfilled, the framework is established within which the moral ideal is progressively realized. . ." (6:250) On what basis do we determine whether or not we are "progressively approaching an ideal"? Ideals are either approachable and not attainable, in which case we ask how we can measure progress toward that which we can never reach; or ideals are attainable and we must designate the method of measuring the degree to which an ideal is attained. Without answers t o such questions as these the ethicist can make no real contribution to scientific, or for that matter, to progress in any form. There is too much talk and too little action. Action will arise from consideration of such problems as the following: 1. What is an operational (i.e., experimental) definition of value? 2. How do we determine experimentally the value of any act or set of actions? We need more of a science of value and less talk of the value of science. C. WEST CHURCHMAN RUSSELLL. ACKOFF
.
University of Pennsylvania BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Brookner, R. J., "Choice of One among Several Statistical Hypotheses", An. Math.
Stat., XVI, (1935), 221-242.
2. Camp, B., "Some Recent Advances in Mathematical Statistics, I," An. Math. Stat., XIII, (1942), 62-73. 3. Garnett, A . C., "The Good as Form and Quality", Ethics, LVI, (1946), 122-130. 4. Mesthene, E. G., "On the Need for a Scientific Ethic", Phil. Sci., XIV, (1947),96-101. 5. Neyman, J., and Pearson, E. S., "On the Problem of the Most Efficient Tests of Statistical Hypotheses", Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London, Ser. A, 231, (1933), 289-337. 6. Olds, G., "The Personal Category in Ethics", Ethics, LVI, (1946), 235-50. 7. Pap, A., "Determinism and Moral Responsibility", J. Phil., XLIII, (1946), 309-317. 8. Rice, P. B., "Definitions in Value Theory", J. Phil., XLIV, (1947),57-67. 9. Wald, A., On the Principles of Statistical Inference, Notre Dame Mathematical Lectures, No, 1, 1942. PHILOSOPHICAL k V D PSYCHOLOGICAL PRAGMATICS During the last years I have, in several articles, developed a certain notion of pragmatics (here referred to as philosophical pragmatics). The purpose of this note is to state, as clearly and emphatically as I can, that pragmatics thus understood is not the discipline (here referred to as psychological pragmatics) known under the same name, mainly through the efforts of Morris and Carnap. I should not have thought that such a statement or, rather, restatement was necessary. Yet in a recent article1 E. W. Hall attributes to me an opinion that "On the Nature of the Predicate 'Verified', !' Phil. Sci., 14, 1947, 123-131.
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he could not plausibly believe me to hold if he did not also believe that my notion of pragmatics is essentially that of Morris and Carnap. Now I do not wish to argue whether or not the paper from which he quotes2 contains statements which, if taken by themselves, seem to support such a view. Probably it does; for I arrived a t my notion of pragmatics only very gradually as I became aware of the unsuitability of psychological pragmatics as 'a tool of philosophical analysis. Even so, the most casual perusal of another of my papers2 could not have left any doubt on the matter, or so at least it seems to me. All this, homever, is unimportant; I turn to the issues themselves. 1. Psychological pragmatics is a branch of natural science. Its subject matter is the linguistic behavior of human organisms. According to the idea of its proponents, and according to my own, it proceeds behavioristically; it studies, in Max Meyer's famous phrase, the language of the other fellow; and it studies it, as I like to say, from without. But even if behavioristically construed, psychology, like all other sciences, operates in a universe already constituted. This is the reason why psychological pragmatics, like all other sciences, has as such no philosophical significancexv hatsoever. To say the same thing more judiciously, the content of psychological pragmatics belongs, together with that of all other sciences, to that world of common sense upon which the philosopher, in his own characteristic manner, performs his task of clarification, analysis, or reconstruction-take whichever of these three expressions you prefer. 2. The language (L) in which the behavior scientist formulates his findings is, in principle, different from those objects-types, tokens, or, if you please, even neural events-that he discovers to be the "language" (0)of his subjects. This is usually recognized by the introduction of the quoting machinery. Then one speaks of 0 as an object language, of L as "its" pragmatic metalanguage, and arrives a t the notion of a hierarchy of languages. So it is easily overlooked that view point 0 and L are not at all languages in the same sense, that L, and L only, is the language he himself speaks. That may be used to throw light on the distinction between science and philosophical analysis. Very roughly, philosophy is the clarification of the scientist's own language, L. I realize that this formula exposes me to the charge of solipsism. To lend it some specious credence, such a critic may replace 'scientist' by 'epistemological subject' or some other espression of similar flavor. But as long as I succeed in explicating the distinction I have in mind, I am not particularly worried about this kind of misunderstanding. A position may, at a certain stage of analysis, sound solipsistic and yet, upon further analysis, turn out not to be solipsistic. Such refinement of the above formula, which serves so well to make another point, is irrelevant for the problem a t hand. 3. Many of us, and I among them, are of the opinion that philosophical analysis is best carried out by attempting a certain kind of reconstruction of L. I t is at least conceivable that this peculiar kind of reconstruction cannot be achieved by means of one language L. It may be that one needs, instead, a whole hier8
"Pure Semantics, Sentences, and Propositions," Mind, 53, 1944, 238-2544.
"A Positivistic Metaphysics of Consciousness," Mind, 54, 1945, 193-226.
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archy of languages, L', L", L"', . . . so that L9' speaks about L', L"' about L", and so on. (Perhaps one also needs something else; this is not at the moment my concern.) In this hierarchy, L9,L", . . . are all languages in the sqme sense, a sense in which, as has been pointed out, 0 and L are not languages in the same sense. L', L", . . . are, as it were, a decomposition of L into sublanguages. The pragmatic metalanguages of which I speak in my papers are such sublanguages of L. Philosophical pragmatics is the study of their structure and of their role in the total pattern I have proposed as a reconstruction of L. There is no need for giving here any details of this proposal or for restating the reasons that led me to make it. I have already shown that philosophical and psychological pragmatics are two different things. A few more hints will help us t o understand how they may come to be confused with each other. 4. Take a schema of only two members, L' and L", of the kind I call an object language4 and its pragmatic metalanguage. L' contains such statements as 'This is an apple'; L" the equivalents of such statements as 'I know (see, believe, remember) that this is an apple'. This amounts to transcribing the latter statements by statements of the form 'I know a', where 'a' is the name of a statement of L. Again I shall not argue the merits and demerits of this procedure. I shall merely point out that it implies the position that such terms as 'knowing' are descriptive predicates (of the pragmatic metalanguage) in the same sense in which 'apple', 'green', and 'between' are descriptive predicates (of the object language). In this manner I have tried to do justice to Locke's ideas of reflection or, as some more recent philosophers would put it, to the phenomenological givenness of mental acts. The psychological flavor of these traditional terms, 'idea of reflection' and 'mental act' may perhaps seduce some into the belief that philosophical and psychological pragmatics are one and the same thing. Yet to believe this is to confuse three things that are very different from each other, namely: the description of the given (phenomenology), the formal job of constructing languages, and the science of psychology. 5. I hold, and have expressed, the opinion that the root meaning of 'verified' may be defined in terms of such predicates as 'seeing' and 'hearing'. In other words, in the reconstruction I have proposed 'verified' is a predicate of the pragmatic metalanguage. After what has been said i t should be clear that this is but the elaborate way in which a philosopher, for reasons of his own, chooses t o acknowledge that eventually all verification comes down to inspection of the given. To hold this opinion is, therefore, not the same thing as to propose a psychological interpretation of 'verified'. So I do not, as Hall suggests, propose such an interpretation.
The Stak Unwersity of I m a
GUSTAVBERGB~ANN
A s&ciently comprehensive L' will contain the names of the sentences of 0.
