Watson ignores the differences between theories which share an archic profile while differing significantly from one another. So, one might have a Democritean archie profile while rejecting atomism for Descartes's views of matter. (..) We are reminded of Heidegger and Derrida. We can remark, with Heidegger, the variety of positions formulated already, each one a significant and self-justifying distortion of reality; or we can surrender ourselves, like Derrida, to the power of differance as it generates a succession of mutually exclusive and annihilating alternatives. (..) Watson proceeds in a Kantian way, fudging the difference between the world as it is in itself, and our theories about it. (..) Watson may be uncomfortable with this relativistic outcome, as when he writes (page 160) that " . . . the one world can be known in multiple ways." (..) Watson's "one world" will have to be repudiated in favor of the diversity of worlds, each one constituted by the theory used for thinking it. (..) There are three considerations that motivate Watson's relativism. Each of them is prominent in his book. First is the notion that the only differences and relations ascribable to the world are the ones laid down by the conceptual system used for thinking it. Second is Watson's idea of "reciprocal priority." This is the notion that every one of the 256 possible theories can explain everything that is explained by each of the others. All are true if each is applicable to everything. Third is Watson's atomistic account of philosophic thinking and history. He supposes that epochs and theories succeed one another, with no way of bringing opposed views to bear upon one another and the world. (..) Watson does not establish that there is reciprocal priority within any two of the 256 possible theories, let alone that reciprocal priority extends to each theory in its relations to all the others. (..) Watson, after McKeon, is emphatic about the autonomy of philosophic theories. (..) Watson never considers the alternative view, namely that philosophic theories are hypotheses tested against the world and other theories. Having little to say of truth, he says nothing of error. Watson ignores the many occasions where, first, the errors of one theory are exposed by criticisms founded in a different theory, and where, second, we have evidence that there are no facts of the sort characterized within a theory. (..) What are the assumptions which justify this retreat from a neutral standard for appraising philosophic theories? There are two assumptions having this effect. One is conceptual, the other is historical. (..) The conceptual assumption is the one mentioned above: every standard for testing a theory is formulated within the archie profile which defines it. This standard has no application beyond the domain established by the theory. (..) The historical assumption recalls us to one influential statement of the view that conceptual frameworks are autonomous. I speculate, with only the affinity of their views and their years together at Chicago as my evidence, that McKeon was much affected by Rudolf Carnap's notion of constructed conceptual systems. Each of these systems may be regarded, Carnap said, from either of three standpoints: its semantics, syntax, or pragmatics. For semantics, we substitute Watson's archie variable reality. For syntax, there is method. Watsn sometimes spoke of three, sometimes of four archie variables, meaning that pragmatics might be divided or not. Watson divides it, writing of perspective and principle. (..) It is, I suggest, Carnap not Aristotle who is the proximate cause for McKeon's and Watson's archic profiles. (..) Carnap anticipates no less than four of the aspects that are prominent within Watson's scheme. First are the archic variables. Second is the purism, where archic variables can have just one of their four possible values, and where archic profiles are never merged. The independence of conceptual systems encourages this purism, though the best philosophers are never purists, as Plato uses all of Watson's four methods in the course of his dialogues. The third of these common features is Watson's relativism. He assumes the distinction which Carnap proclaims, i.e., some questions are internal, and some are external to a conceptual framework. The fourth and last of these affinities bears upon an assumption that is common to Watson and Carnap. They suppose that philosophic thinking requires that we make and use conceptual frameworks. This cannot be a universal characterization of all that philosophers do when thinking about the world, because it ignores a method that is pervasive in philosophic thinking though it sometimes derides the use of conceptual systems. That method is intuitionism. It requires that reality should be the direct object of inspecting mind, where nothing is real if it cannot be inspected. |