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MODEL OF NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY by Vinsent Nandi, 41 aSWW



BOOK OF INSTRUMENTS, PART II [chapters 4-6]



4  TRUTH


4.1  TRUTH AMONG OTHERS


4.1.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


'TRUTH', 'PROPERTY', 'LIFE' AND 'SUPREMENESS'


It is said
that their gods have told them not to lie, but
their 'truth' is simply what sacred books make them believe.
And it is said
that their god has told them not to lie, but
their 'truth' is simply what supernaturalists once professed.

It is said
that their gods have told them not to steal, but
their 'property' is simply what they were born to.
And it is said
that their god has told them not to steal, but
their 'property' is simply what they have managed to acquire.

It is said
that their gods have told them not to murder, but
their 'life' is simply that of the tyrannical killer as well.
And it is said
that their god has told them not to murder, but
their 'life' is simply that of the members of their own group.

It is not said
that their gods have told them not to discriminate, since
their 'supremeness' is simply the dharma of partiality itself.
And it is not said
that their god has told them not to discriminate, since
their 'Supreme' is simply the epitome of exclusivity 'Himself'.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Lying, discriminating (in a sense), stealing and murdering have a built-in
wrongness, and therefore it is merely tautological to assert that one should
not lie, should not discriminate (in the sense of making an unjustified
distinction), should not steal and should not murder. Without an
accompanying doctrine which determines why and when a particular form of
speaking is wrong or right, why and when a particular form of taking is
wrong or right, why and when a particular form of killing is wrong or right,
the old commandments thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not steal and thou shalt
not murder are analytical truths (provided that the emphasis is placed on
lie, steal and murder and not on thou).

If only the wrong ways of not telling the truth are 'lying', then you must
not lie (in the sense of you ought not to lie) is a truism and emphasizing
it empty rhetoric, unless it is uttered in a particular context. (If said in
a particular context it is to indicate that a particular utterance is
considered a lie, that is, wrong.) You must not lie, or thou shalt not lie,
presupposes and requires a theory of truth(fulness), and it is only
worthwhile to teach and learn what the elements of such a theory are, and to
live by the right interpretation of its substantive principles. It is
senseless and naive, or hypocritical, to merely let people know that they
ought not to tell a falsehood when it is wrong to tell a falsehood. When
sacred books and prophets tell falsehoods and suggest that certain things
are true which should not be held true because of a lack of empirical
evidence or rational justification, they lie and they discredit truth
itself. This equally applies to political documents and to the ideologues of
political systems; and to all of us.

If every form of taking away were 'stealing', or if every form of using were
'abuse', it would be absurd to say that one must not steal or abuse. But if
only the wrong ways of taking away are 'stealing', and only the wrong ways
of using 'abuse', then you must not steal or abuse is also a truism, and
emphasizing it --again-- empty rhetoric (unless it is uttered in a
particular context). You must not steal or abuse , or thou shalt not steal,
presuppose and require a theory of property, and it is only worthwhile
--again-- to teach and learn what the elements of such a theory are, and to
live by the substantive, moral standards of property. Here, too, it is
senseless and naive, or hypocritical, to merely let people know that they
ought not to take away or use something or somebody when it is wrong to take
it or 'im away, or to use it or 'im. 'Property' in a normative sense is,
then, not just what one is born to or what one has managed to acquire or
subject, whatever religious or political ideologies may want people or the
male heads of households to believe. (Even if every person is automatically
the sole owner of 'er own body, and the 'theft' or abuse of other people's
bodies therefore immoral, the proposition that this is so is also part of a
theory of property.)

Similarly, if every form of killing is 'murder', this would entail absolute
pacifism with regard to all life, personal or nonpersonal, human or
nonhuman. But if only the wrong forms of killing are 'murder', then you must
not murder is the third truism, and emphasizing it the third case of empty
rhetoric (unless it is uttered in a particular context again). You must not
murder, or thou shalt not murder, presupposes and requires a theory of life
and death, or rather, a whole doctrine of ground-norms, and it is only
worthwhile --again-- to teach and learn what the elements of such a doctrine
are, and to live by the substantive standards of that doctrine. For the same
reason it is here senseless too and naive, or hypocritical, to merely let
people know that they ought not to kill a living being when it is wrong to
kill it. Both the absolute pacifist who refuses to ever kill a tyrant who is
bound to kill many more people, and the cruel tyrant 'imself who exclusively
respects the lives of those who belong to 'er own religious or political
faction agree that one should not murder. Yet, their agreement is purely
emotive and devoid of any practical meaning.

Lies, thefts, assaults and murders were proscribed many centuries, if not
millenniums, before the proscription of discrimination in the sense of
making an unjustified distinction. (Some might contend that it was
'universal love' or some such thing which used to stand for the
inclusiveness which characterizes the absence of all discrimination, but
love is just a polysemous panacea which can be made to fill virtually any
gap.) If every form of making a distinction were 'discrimination', it would
be absurd to say that one must not discriminate. But also you must not
discriminate (which has no historical religious equivalent) is a truism if
discrimination means making an unjustified or wrong distinction. What you
must not discriminate presupposes and requires is a theory of relevancy: it
is the irrelevance of the distinction which makes it wrong and unjustified
(even tho not all irrelevant distinctions are called "discriminatory" by
everyone). Like in the case of truth, property and matters of life and
death, it is only worthwhile to teach and learn what the elements of such a
theory of relevancy are, and to live by the right interpretation of its
substantive principles. Otherwise the distinctions one makes are due to be
partial. And otherwise one's actions are exclusions or expressive of
exclusiveness and a belief in exclusiveness.

The concept of relevancy which plays such a crucial role in questions of
discrimination will be dealt with in the next chapter (chapter I.5). The
concept of property which plays such a crucial role in questions of theft
and abuse will be dealt with in the last chapter of this book (chapter I.9).
Matters of life and nonlife which are governed by the ground-norms of the
doctrine to be expounded in the Book of Fundamentals will be dealt with in
the second-last chapter of that book (chapter F.5). Finally, the concept of
truth, which plays such a crucial role in verbal communication, will be
summarily dealt with in the present chapter. We shall return to the special
discussion of this notion and value in several divisions of the Book of
Fundamentals (notably Truth in a Social Perspective and Truth and
Neutral-Inclusivity).



4.2  THEORIES OF TRUTH


4.2.1  DEFINITION AND CRITERION


We have called the imaginary relationship between a proposition or system of
propositions on a certain level and the reality below that level
"correspondence". If it may be said to exist, the proposition or system of
propositions in question is 'true'. In other words, on this view truth
consists in some form of correspondence between a proposition, belief or
suchlike propositional entity and the factual, modal and normative
conditions. The correspondence relationship itself is imaginary, since the
real relationship is the one between the things in the lower-level reality
the proposition (or belief) is about. It is this relationship which is
factual, modal or normative, and which exists, if the factual, modal or
normative proposition is true. For example, if A and B are friends, there is
a relationship of friendship between A and B, and then A and B are friends
is true. Hence, A and B are friends is true, because there is a real
relationship of friendship between A and B. It is only an indirect way of
speaking to say that there is, then, a 'correspondence' between the
proposition A and B are friends and the fact that A and B are friends, or
the factual friendship between A and B. The same applies to the fact that a
thing C has an attribute D. If C is happy, for instance, there is a
relationship of having-as-an-element between C and an attribute of
happiness, and then C has (an attribute of) happiness or C is happy is true.
The correspondence relationship between the true proposition C is happy and
the fact that C is happy is therefore, strictly speaking, imaginary. What
counts ultimately is that there is really the relationship of
having-as-an-element between C and the happiness attribute D.

Our 'relational theory of truth' is quite simple where it concerns the truth
of propositions which assert the existence of one-or-more-place
relationships between things, including those between things and attributes.
It is a little bit more complicated with respect to propositions such as A
exists in which A is a name. At first sight it might seem that this
proposition does not involve any relation, even not the one of
having-as-an-element. This is misleading, however, as names are somehow
abbreviations for definite descriptions (like the person born at that
particular moment at that particular place or the person who(se body) is the
first common child of that particular woman and that particular man). If an
ordinary name has a sense, it may thus be equated with a so-called
'co-designative definite description', that is, a definite description which
refers to the same object. It must be admitted that a name may then have
different meanings for different people (the most notorious one probably
being God). It has also been suggested that every name is 'loosely
associated with a set of descriptions'. This may be correct in practise, but
it will not do when considering the question whether it is true that A
exists. Then we need one definite description or set of descriptions for A
(ultimately without using any name in these descriptions themselves). Given
the description, or set of descriptions, the question has become whether
there really is the particular kind of relationship between the particular
things, or types of thing, mentioned in each description. If so, then it is
true that A exists, if not, then A exists is false. (It has been denied that
a definite description would give the sense of a name. Yet, it is then still
the reference of a name which must be fixed by means of some definite
description. It is such a definite description which denotes the referent A
which is said to exist in the actual world, not just in some possible world,
unless the proposition is that A could exist or could have existed.)

If the imaginary relationship between a proposition and a factual, modal or
normative condition on a lower propositional level may be said to exist,
this is a 'fact' or 'factual condition of correspondence'; if it can exist,
this is a 'mode' or 'modal condition of correspondence'; if it should exist,
a 'norm' or 'normative condition of correspondence'. Anything that has to do
with the relations between propositions themselves, however, is not a
condition of correspondence, but just a first- or higher-order condition of
thought, whether factual, modal or normative. And whereas correspondence is
the key condition in the correspondence theory of truth, it is coherence or
consistency which is the key condition in the coherence theory of truth. A
synthesis of these theories can be found by allowing correspondence the
ontological part, while using coherence as a test of truth, playing an
epistemological role. In both theories of truth there is a more or less
intimate connection with the idea of the ultimate structure of the world,
especially in the interpretation of correspondence as a structural
isomorphism, and in the view of reality as a unified, coherent whole.

An objection against both the correspondence- and the coherence-theories has
always been that the concepts of 'correspondence' and 'coherence' are not or
cannot be made adequately clear. This objection does not concern truth in
our ontological framework, because we can exactly explain what it means that
'a proposition corresponds with a factual, modal or normative condition'. We
can define truth provisionally by means of correspondence, altho we
basically define it in terms of a certain type of relationship (other than
correspondence) between two or more particular things or types of thing (of
the same propositional level) being there or not being there (while being
there itself may be factual, modal or normative). The correspondence theory
provides, then, the definition of the word true and the coherence theory
only a criterion or test by means of which to tell whether something can be
true or is false. Since coherence is not a sufficient criterion anyhow to
determine whether a theory is true or not, it does not matter that much that
the meaning of coherence itself is vague to a certain extent. If a theory is
definitely inconsistent, because it affirms, for example, both that a thing
has a certain relation and that it does not have that relation, then it is
false; but if it is nowhere inconsistent in this obvious way, it still need
not be true. That a proposition which coheres with a certain system of
knowledge must be consistent with that system in that it does not imply a
contradiction, is not what makes coherence a vague notion; what makes it
vague is that there is to be some 'systematical connection' with that system
of knowledge, at least if the system is to allow for empirical propositions
as well. (Historically, coherence was mistakenly presented as a sufficient
criterion of truth for deductive systems based on a limited number of
fundamental postulates.)

Not everyone has always agreed that there is a distinction between
definition and criterion. Thus pragmatists have argued that the meaning of a
term is correctly given precisely by supplying the criterions for its
application. Of course, a definition like that of truth cannot be identical
to a necessary criterion like coherence, but the difference is less obvious
between a definition and a sufficient criterion, or a number of two or more
criterions which are sufficient together. In the pragmatic theory of truth
'true' is what is ultimately satisfying to believe, either because the
expectations such a belief arouses are fulfilled or because it contributes
to the satisfactoriness of, and effectiveness in, the conduct of life.
Pragmatism does not work with correspondence in the definition of truth, nor
with coherence as a test of truth. It is claimed that people just try to
conserve their old belief set, while restoring consistence when new
experience comes in. Pragmatic 'truth' is a sort of warranted assertibility
which characterizes knowledge as a mere form of belief.

Theories of truth such as the correspondence- and coherence-theories have
been called "ontological theories of truth" (altho the coherence theory is
in fact more 'logical' than 'ontological'). The pragmatic theory is, then, a
'nonontological theory of truth', and as such closely related to another
nonontological theory, the so-called 'consensus theory of truth'. On this
theory the truth of utterances depends on the possible consent of 'all
others' under ideal conversational conditions. The aim is said to indicate
what a 'discursive uptake' of claims to validity based on sense perception
means. This should be prerequisite for making the meaning of truth
adequately clear. Hence it is here one particular method of verification
which is made a criterion or definition of truth. Several objections have
been brought against this consensus theory. One is that it does not allow
for a satisfying definition of falsehood. (An utterance would have to be
automatically false if there is no agreement under ideal
speaking-conditions.) Another objection is that people may agree that p is
true and that q is true, while p logically implies that q is false
(particularly when p and q are complicated utterances between which the
connection is hard to discern). And a third objection concerns propositions
or statements about factual, modal or normative conditions in the past.
These propositions or statements would solely be true if agreement is
reached on them in the present or future. Yet, the proposition or statement,
or what is stated, was true long before agreement was reached. (The
proposition even from the moment the thing in question did, could or should
happen.)

Neither the consensus theory nor the pragmatic theory of truth are able to
distinguish what is true from the belief in what is true, or the
propositional reality of beliefs from the lower-level propositional or
nonpropositional reality of what the beliefs are about. They lack any
propositional hierarchy with the accompanying, real or imaginary,
relationships between the different levels of such a hierarchy. In this
respect they are diametrically opposed to the semantic theory of truth in
which truth must be defined at every level of a propositional hierarchy of
'languages' separately. The proposition which is true or not true is, then,
expressed in what is called "object language", whereas the definition of
truth in that language is given in a metalanguage on the next propositional
level. (If the definition is applied to sentences, one and the same sentence
may be true in one language and false or meaningless in another.)

On the semantic theory of truth the definition of truth must not only be
formally correct in that it is defined at one linguistic-propositional level
at a time, it must also be materially adequate. This means that it must hold
that P is true in language L if, and only if, p (in which P is the name in
the metalanguage of a sentence in the object-language, and p the translation
in the metalanguage of that sentence in the object-language). The underlying
idea is that, for example, water is transparent is true 'iff' (that is, if
and only if) water is transparent. The reply to those who find this trivial
is that the only question at issue here is that of the definition of truth,
not some procedure or method for verifying utterances, that is, not
questions of epistemic justification. It has even been pointed out that the
semantic conception of truth can be embraced 'without having to give up any
epistemological attitude one had already'.

The left-hand side of the schema P is true iff p has been interpreted as
referring to the language, that is, to propositional reality. (Thus <<water
is transparent> is true> refers to a proposition, the proposition <water is
transparent>.) The right-hand side would, then, refer to the facts. (<Water
is transparent> refers to transparent water, or rather to the relation water
bears to the property of transparence.) The schema P is true iff p therefore
fits the correspondence theory of truth and our relational interpretation
very well. The semantic theory of truth has been said to supply a suitably
objective account of truth as a guiding or 'regulative ideal'. On this
account truth is objective or absolute in that it is not relative to
people's knowledge or belief. (It is relative tho in that truth is only
defined for one linguistic level at a time.)



4.2.2  ATTEMPTS TO ELIMINATE TRUTH


The semantic theory of truth does not single out the correspondence theory
as the sole true one. It has been argued that it does not rule out a
pragmatist theory either, and moreover, that also the redundancy theory
could still hold. According to this theory of truth true and false can be
eliminated from all contexts 'without semantic loss' or 'without loss of
logical content'. There would be no need for a distinction between object-
and metalanguage (or between propositional levels) because it is true that p
would not be about the sentence p, but about what p refers to. (It is true
that water is transparent would be about transparent water, not about water
is transparent.) There are several specific problems which the redundancy
theory faces, and redundancy theorists have not managed to eliminate true or
implicit notions of truth from all discourse. Attempts to solve the problems
of the redundancy theory have merely led to the introduction of new concepts
(like that of a 'prosentence') and new words (like thatt) which can only be
grasped if one is already familiar with the meaning and/or use of true
itself. The foreknowledge which such approaches require make the problem
nonexistent and the solutions superfluous.

It is not hard to develop a kind of elimination theory of truth which is
both materially adequate and formally correct (in that it acknowledges
different language levels) and which is applicable to common ('natural'),
that is, nontechnical languages as well. In one such theory truth is treated
as a condition of knowing, and truth is eliminated by introducing the notion
of 'meaning'. The problem is that it is logically possible that p is true,
whereas <p> is true in language M is false. This difficulty is tackled by
taking <p> means in language M that p. This seems plausible, for is it not
correct that water is transparent means that water is transparent? But one
is then immediately struck by the remarkable similarity with <water is
transparent> is true iff water is transparent. What happens is that in the
accompanying analysis of knowledge the concept of truth is first replaced by
that of meaning, and the concept of meaning then included in that of
knowing. When the first part of this procedure may not seem acceptable, it
is replied that the study of meaning in common language 'holds promise of
offering a satisfactory analysis of the concept'. This may be true, but no
guarantee is given whatsoever that the analyses of meaning concerned do not
make any use of, or in any way refer to, truth or correspondence (for
example, with the same fact) or coherence. Truth is thus explained in terms
of the much more problematic, intensional notion of meaning. As it is
purported to be 'perfectly clear' that everyone knows that p means that p if
they know that p, truth can be easily eliminated in the formulation of the
truth condition of knowledge. But unfortunately, if your neighbor has found
out that you are a human, it does not yet follow that 'e has found out that
you are an unfeathered biped means in language M that you are a human. (And
if human and unfeathered biped are not accepted as synonyms, other such
synonymies within or between languages can certainly be thought of.)

A specific problem of redundancy- or elimination-theories of truth is
second-order quantification. Quantification is the operation of binding
variables by means of a quantifier such as there is at least one or some
(the 'existential quantifier') and such as all or every (the 'universal
quantifier'). First-order quantification is, then, the binding of individual
variables like in there is at least one x which is F (say, there is at least
one human being which is unfeathered ) and like in all x-es are F (all human
beings are unfeathered). The objectual interpretation of quantification
appeals to the values of the variables which range over objects (like human
beings). The substitutional interpretation does not appeal to the values but
to the expressions which can be substituted for the variables (like the
expression human being for x in all x-es are F). Second-order quantification
is, now, the binding of predicate variables themselves, that is, predicate
letters like F of which sentence letters are a limiting case (a 0-place
predicate letter). When it is said that there is at least one p such that p
is true (p being a sentential variable), this is precisely a case of
second-order quantification. This device is indispensable where what is said
to be true is not explicitly given but only obliquely referred to. A
well-formed formula is also there is a p such that S means that p and (such
that) p is true, but elimination theorists want us to believe that there is
a p such that S means that p and p would be a well-formed formula too. This
formula, however, has been rightly criticized for its last p which is a
stray variable or name with not any predicate expression to attach to it. To
introduce a new rule into the metalanguage in order to turn the problematic
formula instantly into a 'well-formed' one --as done by elimination
theorists-- is an ad hoc solution which is hardly convincing, if at all.

It has been claimed that the correspondence- and coherence-theories either
must be rejected or can be reduced to the elimination theory. The claim is
based on an equivalence of correspondence and meaning: 'S in L corresponds
to the fact that p iff S means that p in L and p'; and, similarly, of
coherence and meaning: 'S coheres with other sentences of L iff S means that
p in L and p'. But one may as well look at it the other way around. One may
then find that it is precisely because of these equations that the
elimination theorist's concept of meaning is founded on correspondence with
facts or coherence respectively, and that 'er meaning therefore does not
eliminate truth. Meaning merely conceals truth and postpones the fundamental
philosophical questions. It has also been argued that not only the coherence
theory, but that neither the correspondence- nor the coherence-theory would
be a genuine theory of truth at all, but merely a theory of epistemic
justification. To say that, one must understand verification in the sense of
making true, and not in the sense of determining or finding out or
justifying the claim to know. It is then that correspondence- and
coherence-theories would reduce to an elimination-theory. The argument
requires tho that the meaning of meaning be left in complete obscurity.

In another attempt to do away with the apparent predicate expression .. is
true, truth is chiefly analyzed in an opaque context, like in what A says is
true. The central thesis of this analysis is that, for example, A says that
B has feathers and B has feathers is a verifier of what A says is true. The
former position is then formulated as for some p, both A says that p and p.
The question is again whether this may be accepted as a well-formed formula.
Taking the substitutional interpretation of this quantificational formula
one would arrive at some substitution instance of <both A says that p and p>
is true. Pure substitution will not do either for one would have to read for
some sentence, both A says that sentence and sentence or for some B has
feathers, both A says that .. both of which are nonsensical for syntactical
reasons. (Pure substitution would only demand both A says that p and p
without an operator for some p.)

Interpreting for some p, both A says that p and p in the objectual way will
land us in a hopeless muddle as well. To show this, we shall take a look at
a few examples of existential quantification. Firstly, an example of
first-order quantification: for some x, both .. is a friend of x and x is
C's sib. For some x is then for some person, for instance, and for the other
x's we must fill in an appropriate constant such as the name of a person.
Secondly, let us consider an example of second-order quantification with a
predicate letter as variable: for some F, both .. is F and C's tunic is F.
For some F is now, say, for some color and for the other F's we should now
fill in the name of a color. Thirdly, consider a case of second-order
quantification with a sentence letter as variable: for some p, both .. holds
that p and A holds that p . For some p is then for some sentence, but this
means that we should fill in for the other p's the name of a sentence, or
for that matter, a proposition. However, if p is the name of a sentence,
then A holds that p does not make sense, and it must be changed into A holds
p. For some bird or there is at least one bird for which .. is intelligible,
for some (particular bird) B is not. Finally, let us look at for some p,
both A's statement states that p and p. Now, for some p is again for some
sentence, while A's statement reads "p". However, the conjunct p as the name
of a sentence without any predicate expression like .. is true renders the
conjunction meaningless, that is, as meaningless as the conjunction B has
feathers and C or C and B has feathers.

The advocate of the 'simple' theory of truth assumes that that is (always)
logically insignificant and eliminable. Only by assuming this does 'e manage
to eliminate true, altho 'e may admit that it is indeed plausible to hold
that that prefixed to a sentence turns it into a designation of a sentence.
From the third and fourth examples given above it should be clear, however,
that the function of that is of paramount importance as it changes a
sentence into the name of a sentence. (That is, of the same importance as
the difference between a color and the name of a color.) If p is the name of
a sentence, A holds p is synonymous to A holds that q (and not .. that p; p
means that q or <q>). And when a statement reads "p", this does not amount
to the same as a statement reading "that p". Altho that may be deleted in
such cases in the present language --the weather-person says (")it will
rain(") instead of .. that it will rain-- it should be a warning that it is
not permitted to just add that where it is absent in similar cases. ('E says
that "It will rain" is not correct.) Single or double quotation marks and
angle brackets are often deleted in the traditional, common variant of the
written language, yet this does not mean that they have no logical
significance. Elimination theorists tend to ignore the difference between p
and <p> or that p. So they can begin their exposition with for some p, both
A says that p and p, where, if quantificational, it should read " for some
p, both A says (")p(") and p is true" (or else, if purely substitutional,
"both A says that p and p"). A verifier of this is A says (")S(") and S is
true or A says that s and it is true that s (or both A says that s and s).



4.2.3  CARRIED BEYOND BELIEF BY THE BEARERS OF TRUTH


What are the bearers of truth? There are three main positions with regard to
this philosophical question. Firstly, there is the view that truth is a
property, and the question is then what is it a property of?. The diverse
answers which may be given are:
  *  declarative sentences or sentence types (which have a grammatical
     structure, and which are not interrogative or imperative, for instance)
  *  declarative sentence tokens (which are physical objects, notably series
     of visual marks or sound waves) --for example, the sentence token water
     is transparent and the sentence token water is transparent are
     different inscriptions of the same sentence (type)
  *  statements (that is, what is said when a declarative sentence is
     uttered or inscribed)
  *  utterances (as speech acts) --compare the 'performative theory of
     truth' in which truth is predicated to a sentence not by uttering a
     statement but by performing an action
  *  propositions or meanings of sentences (that is, what is common to
     synonymous declarative sentences or sentence types)
It does not follow, of course, that whole theories or beliefs could not be
true or false, but they are true or false because they consist of elements
which are true or false. And it is those elements which are the primary
truth-bearers, whether propositions, sentence types or something else.

Secondly, there is the view that truth is no property. In the redundancy
theory of truth and later variants of it, like the 'simple' theory of truth,
the question itself is considered to be senseless. Closely related to this
question is whether propositions are objects, or whether one does
ontologically commit oneself by quantifying over propositions or sentences.
So long as one sticks to pure substitution this question of objective
entities can easily be evaded, but not when one gives oneself up to all
kinds of quantification without providing a plausible alternative for the
standard interpretations thereof. (Then the result is something which is
neither quantification nor pure substitution.) If propositions are 'things',
and if they are true or not, this implies almost automatically that they do
have or do not have the property of truth, even tho they would only be
imaginary things, and even tho truth would merely be an imaginary property.

On a third view, the right question to ask is what is the relationship
between formal and informal arguments with respect to validity and truth?.
In this case, the issue of the appropriate constraints on instances of
sentence letters --what can be put for p?-- does still arise, also for those
denying that truth is a property.

We have called the primary bearers of truth "propositions" and have assumed
that they are the language-independent meanings of sentences. It is not
important from our point of view whether the primary bearers of truth are
actually something else, like sentence tokens or speech acts. It is not
important either whether these truth-bearers are 'really' things or not.
This is a metaphysical pseudoproblem, for if they are 'things', they are
propositional things, and trivially, these things are entirely different
from the things of nonpropositional reality we have discussed in the first
two chapters of this book. Similarly, if truth is an attribute, it is a
propositional attribute not at all comparable with the catenated and
noncatenated attributes we have discussed before in the same chapters. In
short: if propositions are included in the category of 'things', it is the
meaning of thing itself which changes, and if truth is included in the
category of 'properties' or 'attributes', it is the meaning of property or
attribute itself which changes.

More important than the question whether propositions (in the impartial
sense of primary truth-bearers) are 'real' things or not, is the recognition
of a hierarchy of (orders of) propositions and propositional functions. Such
a hierarchy very much resembles the hierarchy of languages in the semantic
theory of truth, and is needed to solve the problem of semantic paradoxes.
Semantic paradoxes are contradictions derivable in semantics by apparently
valid reasoning with apparently obvious principles about truth --they are
'beyond belief', so to say. A classical semantic paradox is the sentence S
reading "this sentence is false". If S is true, then it is false; and if S
is false, then it is true. Another type of paradoxes are the set-theoretical
ones, which involve sets which are members of themselves (in a purely
set-theoretical fashion). The probably best-known example of such a paradox
concerns the set of sets which are not members of themselves: 'the set of
all sets which are not members of themselves is a member of itself iff it is
not a member of itself'.

It has been argued that both semantic and set-theoretical paradoxes are due
to one and the same fallacy, namely the violation of the so-called 'vicious
circle principle'. According to this principle whatever involves all of a
collection must not be one of that collection. As a formal solution to
paradoxes resulting from violation of the vicious circle principle a theory
of types has been developed. It is in the so-called 'ramified theory' that a
hierarchy of propositions, and in the so-called 'simple theory of types'
that a hierarchy of (sets of) individuals were proposed for the first time.
The former hierarchy starts in our ontology with the level of
nonpropositional reality, while the latter hierarchy is present in every
separate domain of the nonpropositional world.

Those who do not accept the vicious circle principle have come with
proposals which closely resemble this principle nevertheless. A more serious
objection is it to claim that a hierarchy like that of the semantic theory
of truth is no solution, because paradox might still arise with respect to
any truth ascription if the facts would turn out badly. The point made is
then that even 'ordinary' ascriptions of truth and falsity could not even
implicitly be assigned levels in a hierarchy of languages, for example, when
A says that all of B's utterances about S are false, while B says that all
of A's utterances about S are false. The objection is itself erroneous,
however, because it equates utterances about S with utterances about
utterances about S . If A says "all of B's utterances about S are false",
this is an utterance about utterances about S. And if B says "all of A's
utterances about S are false", this does not involve all of B's utterances
about S are false since that is no utterance by A about S, but about
utterances about S.

The idea that all well-formed sentences must be either true or false has
also been rejected: some of them would just have no truth-value at all.
Those stressing this have been using a concept of groundedness. A sentence
is, then, said to be 'grounded' if it will eventually get a truth-value in a
process in which one starts with a sentence which one is 'entitled to
assert' (like water is transparent) and to which one may add .. is true
(<water is transparent> is true). On such a construction a sentence like
this sentence is true will remain ungrounded, and in this way paradox can be
avoided. But --as has already been pointed out-- this concept of
groundedness still has strong affinities with the idea that what is wrong
with paradoxical sentences is a sort of vicious self-dependence.

A serious objection against the whole intuitive idea of groundedness is that
it puts the cart before the horse. That is because it makes use of a
normative concept, namely the concept of entitlement. (Intuitive ideas
somehow always seem to implicitly appeal to normative notions and the
evaluative meanings of words.) If someone is 'entitled' to assert that water
is transparent, this is, firstly, because it is true that water is
transparent, and secondly, because one may tell something which is true and
ought not to tell something which is false. Therefore, it follows from the
truth of both water is transparent and a principle of truth or truthfulness
that one may say, that is, that one is entitled to say that water is
transparent. The advocate of groundedness, however, suggests that it would
be the other way around, that the truth of a proposition or utterance would
follow from a person's entitlement to assert that proposition or utterance.
This fallacy is the same as that in the entitlement theory of property in
which it is claimed that something would be someone's property because 'e is
entitled to it. Also this is a hysteron proteron: it is when something is
one's property (in a moral sense) that one is (morally) entitled to it, not
the other way around. Even if in the relationships between entitlement and
truth, and between entitlement and property, neither term comes before the
other, entitlement alone can never do the groundwork.



4.3  WHAT SHOULD NOT BE HELD TRUE


4.3.1  KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH


What is called "knowledge" can be either practical or propositional.
Practical knowledge is 'knowledge-how', whereas propositional knowledge is
'knowledge-that'. In the context of the concept of truth we shall only be
concerned with propositional knowledge. In a broad sense a theory of truth
should include a theory of (propositional) knowledge of what is true, or a
theory of what we know to be true. Similarly, a theory of relevancy should
include a theory of (propositional) knowledge of what is relevant, that is,
of what we know to be relevant; and a theory of property a theory of
(propositional) knowledge of what is someone's property, that is, of what we
know to be someone's property. Whether a theory of knowledge of what is
relevant, and of what is property, is simply part of a theory of knowledge
of what is true is itself an issue for those theories.

Propositional knowledge is true belief, but true belief need not be
knowledge, because a belief may just happen to be true. If someone believes
that it will rain at a particular moment in the future, and it does indeed
rain at that moment, 'er belief is not knowledge or has not been knowledge
for that reason. What distinguishes such a lucky guess (if it is one) from
knowledge is at least justification, epistemic justification to be precise.
But even this standard definition of knowledge as justified true belief has
been attacked for being too simple. Traditionally its criterions are: (1) p
is true; (2) S believes that p; and (3) S's belief that p is justified. It
has been argued that these three criterions are minimal ones, and that S
should also not believe that p, if p is not true. Moreover, S should indeed
believe that p, if p is true. On such a conception of knowledge it is said
to 'track', as it were, the truth that p. For our present purpose, however,
it is not necessary to consider such additional criterions. The first step,
that is, the one from true belief to justified or grounded true belief is
the most important one for us here.

The central problem for those interested in theory of knowledge is, of
course, whether something can ever be known for sure, and if so, how. If
something cannot be known for sure, the problem is whether one can still be
justified in considering something true nonetheless. Extreme skepticists
would say that one cannot know anything for sure. They doubt everything.
Dogmatists, on the other hand, claim knowledge without ever seriously and
honestly examining what their claims are based upon. They do not doubt their
'truths' which they may readily call "self-evident truths" or "revelations".
(Such 'truths' which are mere products of belief we shall henceforth call
"doxastic truths". As a product of belief a doxastic truth need not be
false: it may happen to be true.)

Skepticism admits of degrees. A skepticist may only doubt certain kinds of
belief, or specific opinions regarded as knowledge by others. 'E may be
skeptical about the 'apriori intuition' or 'knowledge' of a rationalist, but
also about the 'empirical intuition' or 'knowledge' of an empiricist.
Rationalism in the epistemological sense, or apriorism, is, then, the view
that there is knowledge which does not depend on experience for its
justification, knowledge which can be derived from 'self-evident' axioms or
principles by deduction. It is also called "rationalism", because this
knowledge is said to come from reason or from ideas the mind would be
endowed with independently of any experience. The complement of apriorism,
empiricism, is the view that all knowledge depends on experience for its
justification. Sense perception and introspection are the sources of
empirical knowledge which can be derived from those sources by induction.

Both apriorists and empiricists may consider themselves skepticists, or may
start as such, the former ones with regard to empirical knowledge, the
latter ones with regard to apriori knowledge. The apriorist may show how
people can be deceived by their senses, and tell us that we cannot be
certain that this does not happen all the time. The by now worn-out standard
example is that of a stick partially immersed in water which seems to be
crooked when looking at it, but which turns out to be straight when feeling
it. (Note that we can only be sure that we are deceived visually here, if we
assume that our sense of touch does not deceive us.)

The empiricist on 'er part can easily point at the many apriorist beliefs
which have once been presented as 'indubitable truths', but which are now
controversial or acknowledged to be false. Thus for apriorists it was once
self-evident that one, and only one, line could be drawn parallel to another
line thru a given point, that --what has later been denied by mathematicians
believing in the existence of infinite sets-- a whole is greater than any of
its parts, that in all change of the material world the quantity of matter
remains unchanged (not 'of matter and/or energy'), and so on and so forth.
(One idealist who tried to synthesize rationalism and empiricism said that
the laws of science are not drawn from nature, but prescribed to it.)

The most egregious historical example of 'skeptical rationalism' is that of
a philosopher who purported to doubt everything, but who, all the same,
maintained that 'e had a 'clear and distinct' conception of one 'supremely
perfect god'. It is in such monotheist dogmatism that 'skeptical
rationalism' and 'empiricism' even used to meet each other, for also
empiricists once claimed to have 'demonstrative knowledge of God's
existence'. Altho their 'knowledge' was not apriori but empirical, the
ideological result was the same, and had to be the same to start with. (It
would of course have been equally dogmatical to claim that apriori intuition
or empirical evidence would prove that there is not any god or demon.) One
would expect that the end of this theist dogmatism was in sight when, with
the synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, it was argued that the
supernatural entities to which concepts like god, demon and immortality
refer were beyond all possible experience, and could therefore never be
objects of knowledge. What does the trick in this case tho, is a marked
contrast between knowledge and faith, and the possibility not only of
justified knowledge but also of justified faith which is not knowledge.
(Faith in immortality but somehow not in preexistence, for instance.)

When hearing or reading the word faith one should bear in mind that this
word is used in several senses. Three forms of faith which have been
distinguished are: faith in spite of evidence to the contrary, in the
absence of such evidence, and on account of evidence. Now, when contrasted
with knowledge, faith means ungrounded belief so far as evidence is
concerned, that is, faith in the absence of (and possibly in spite of)
evidence to the contrary. But why would we have to have faith that there is
at least one god, and that 'man' is immortal? According to one monotheist
philosopher and ideologue, because 'man's nature demands it', because 'man
is not merely an animal that knows but one that acts and feels'. One must
have faith in this sort of reasoning to consider it as reasoning in the
first place.

Another philosopher of later times has also admitted that there is no
scientific evidence for or against the existence of gods or immortality, yet
the justification of the belief in one or more gods, and the belief in
immortality, is according to 'im that such beliefs are 'the deepest cravings
of man'. Without them people's moral standards would collapse. On the
pragmatist outlook of this philosopher --or should we say "ideologue"
again?-- there is said to be a close connection between what is good and
what is true. However, the close connection is not really between what is
true and what is good, but rather between what is believed to be true and
what is believed to be good by adherents of the same ideology, in this case
of the same monotheist religion. If the right to believe something is indeed
determined by the will to believe something in the absence of evidence, if
not in spite of evidence to the contrary, then the right to disbelieve
something is equally determined by the will to disbelieve something. The
'deepest craving' of some people may be a belief in gods, demons and
immortality, yet the 'deepest craving' of other people is a belief in a
conceptual austerity which does not allow for notions like god, demon (or
names like God or Devil) and immortality. And while one group of people may
defend the existence of one or more gods and immortality on the basis of
their system of norms and values, other persons may reject the belief in the
normative supremeness of such a god, or such gods, and/or in immortality on
the basis of a different system of norms and values. (The very fact that
they reject something on principle presupposes and requires moral
standards.) Thus the pragmatist theory of truth is an instrument which
merely 'justifies' opportunism.

The idealist distinction between knowledge and faith is itself not
justifiable, for given that knowledge is grounded belief and given that it
need not always be based on empirical evidence (altho it may never be
contrary to it), there is no place for faith in the religious, that is,
supernaturalist, sense. It is precisely religious faith and religious
authority which have always been the pillars of denominational dogmatism.
And it is in turn this religious dogmatism which has historically been most
inimical to the advance of scientific knowledge, at least until its role was
taken over by other forms of ideological dogmatism in politically
totalitarian countries. If one can just take anything for gospel and present
it as absolute, indubitable or infallible 'truth', this has nothing to do
with knowledge or justification anymore. To call one's belief in such gospel
'truth' "religious science" or "(mono)theist science" or something similar
with "-ology" --as has been done-- is, then, the ultimate corruption of
language and a travesty of truth itself.



4.3.2  SOME CRITERIONS FOR UNJUSTIFIABLE BELIEF


Faith on account of empirical evidence is knowledge but this does not mean
that knowledge, or propositional knowledge, can be based on nothing else
than empirical evidence. This is what empiricists have taught and which they
have not been able to prove conclusively.

Faith in spite of empirical evidence is false belief and cannot be knowledge
by definition. Judging from the principle of truth, such faith can never be
justified and must be vehemently rejected. A belief which is typically
unjustified because it contradicts empirical evidence is, for example, the
belief that the existing plant and animal species would be created by one
personal being instead of having evolved from other existing, or from
presently extinct, species. (It is here that the genesis of the world and
the genesis of false belief coincide symbolically.) The apotheosis of this
moldy belief from the Directory of Discarded Ideas is that the earth would
be created by one personal being in a certain number of days. Of course, one
can have different opinions on what empirical evidence is exactly, and what
we believe or 'know' to be indubitable, empirical evidence today might not
be accepted as such tomorrow (altho we are seldom willing to reaccept what
has been refuted as rubbish, but which we 'knew' to be evidence yesterday).
The disagreement between those who trust the scientific account (even if
only the present, scientific account) and those who belief in a
supernaturalist account is no disagreement about empirical evidence, but is
one which results from the profound difference between recognizing the
ground-facts and ignoring or disregarding them. The 'evidence' of religious
creatures is at the most the propositional fact, or the quasi-event, that
something has been written down in age-old documents or has once been said
by an ancient of days, if said at all. (That is how certain monotheist
believers come to claim, for example, that they 'know that their redeemer
liveth'.)

The question whether a belief is unjustifiable or not is not the same as the
question whether telling a story is unjustifiable or not. One may tell a
story of which everyone knows that it is false but which everyone likes
because it is beautiful, educative, amusing or something like that. When
such a story is told, it is done as if it is true, but it is the context in
which it is told which makes clear that one does not believe, and that one
does not claim, that it is really true. In the context the story is
recognizable as a piece of prose, as a fairy-tale or as mere mythology.
Hence, it is quite possible to read the supernaturalist tales of ancient,
sacred scriptures and even to enjoy some of the mythological, fanciful
passages of those writings, and to pretend for a moment that they are true,
without believing that they are or were descriptive of reality at all. It is
the belief in those tales and the propagation of those tales as true stories
which flagrantly violates the principle of truth.

A belief is not necessarily unjustified in the absence of empirical
evidence, for the criterion of empirical evidence can only apply to factual
belief, that is, belief about the world as it was, is and/or will be.
Especially a fundamental normative belief, that is, a belief about the world
as it should be according to the most general principle or principles, is
always belief in the absence of empirical evidence (but --so one may argue--
so is a fundamental factual belief too from the apriorist or mixed
apriorist-empiricist angle). It is particular normative views which, in
addition, require their own empirical evidence. For example, if every act is
right which makes sentient beings happier, the justification of the belief
that a certain act is right depends on the empirical evidence that the act
in question does indeed make sentient beings happier. But the fundamental
normative principle underlying this belief itself cannot be proved or
refuted by empirical evidence. On our ontology there are at least two
spheres (in addition to the factual one) in which the rule of empirical
evidence is not operative, or not operative in a decisive way. And even if
one does not adopt the explicit recognition of a separate, objective,
normative sphere, the implicit recognition of norms and values cannot be
avoided when one uses language which is partially evaluative, and when one
does acknowledge goals and objectives to strive for.

Every fundamental normative belief, whether left implicit or made explicit,
must be held in the absence of empirical evidence since the correspondence
which should exist between the normative proposition about reality and the
norm in reality cannot be perceived in the empirical sense, nor can the norm
itself. It does not follow, however, that we may hold any normative
proposition true. The least which is required is coherence of such a
normative proposition with all other propositions considered true or false,
and with what has explicitly or implicitly been taken to be normatively
superior. We thus espouse coherence as criterion of truth even tho we might
be forced to accept what is least incoherent when the option of coherence is
not open to us in practise. Yet, coherence itself (let alone minimal
incoherence) is no proof of truth: a coherent system may be false. Of two
coherent beliefs which are incompatible with each other, at least one must
be false. In the case of factual belief empirical evidence may show which
system is mistaken, or it may show that both systems are mistaken. If, and
insofar as, belief is normative, it is not empirical evidence either which
can demonstrate which one of two incompatible coherent systems is at least
wrong, or which belief in one of two incompatible minimally incoherent
systems is at least ungrounded.

It is banal to remark that empirical evidence cannot be used to justify
normative belief. The crux of the matter is that it is the normative
significance of empirical evidence on the basis of which normative belief
can be justified or must be rejected. As explained in The normativeness of
'purely descriptive' theorizing (3.2.3) this entails that every normative
belief is unjustified which does not embrace a principle of truth, which
does not embrace a principle of relevance and which does not, in a coherent
way, indicate what the goal or goals are to determine what is relevant or
not. Moreover, if two coherent normative systems both encompass all these
principles and goals, but the one is simpler than the other, while not being
less comprehensive, it is only justifiable to hold the simpler belief
according to a principle of conceptual austerity. (Like the principle of
coherence this principle is expressive of a propositional norm, no
ground-norm and even no norm of correspondence.)

We have now provided a number of criterions to determine what beliefs are
plainly false or unjustified. From this it does not immediately follow that
there is only one justifiable factual, modal and normative belief even if
there is, or were, only one true factual, one true modal and one true
normative belief. If we already formulated at this place, for example, the
fundamental principles of the normative doctrine which is the sole
justifiable one in our eyes, this formulation would still leave many
important matters open to widely divergent interpretations. This should have
become regrettably clear with respect to truth: 'everyone' is in favor of
truth and willing to pay lip-service to a principle of truth or
truthfulness, but the interpretations of what is true vary from the belief
of the most dogmatical and obscurantist supernaturalist to the analysis of
the most critical and clear-sighted scientist.

In this chapter we have roughly sketched the minimum and very beginning of
what we ourselves understand by 'truth' and by a 'principle of truth', or
rather what we do not understand by it. Instead of continuing this
discussion on truth at this place, we should first consider the next concept
and principle which any adequate normative doctrine must recognize: that of
relevance. However important truth may be, it is no excuse for irrelevance.



5  RELEVANCY


5.1  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RELEVANCY


5.1.1  ITS WIDTH AND DEPTH


Suppose you know about the existence of a certain office for clerical or
administrative work and you also know (or would expect it) that that office
employs, and always has employed, people of different heights: short, medium
and tall. Now, imagine that someone comes up to you and begins to tell you
that all short people working at that office lost their jobs. Probably you
would, then, wonder why the firm in question only sent, or had to send, the
short workers away, and what their height has to do with it. But how come?
Your informant never told you that those workers who are not short did not
lose their jobs. That is what you made up yourself. As a matter of fact (in
our imaginary case) the office had to close down (because the firm went
bankrupt, say, or because the government thought the firm had become
superfluous), and that is why all the workers were sacked as redundant
regardless of their height. (They may or they may not have got another job
right away.) Hence, all short bodies were laid off, but also the medium ones
and the tall ones. Your informant did tell you the truth, altho it was in
telling you the truth that `e made a distinction which was not relevant. In
`er statement `e distinguished workers who are short from those who are not,
and this distinction was not relevant, firstly, because a person`s height is
(supposedly) not relevant with respect to clerical and administrative work,
and secondly, it was not even judged relevant in the case of the workers`
dismissal. What you rightly assumed is that your informant would not only
tell you the truth, but that `e would also make only relevant (or perhaps
potentially relevant) distinctions when telling you the truth. With this
assumption it was a so-called 'conversational implicature' that only the
short workers would have lost their jobs.

Suppose that the office in the above example does not have to close down,
that they are even expanding, but that they exclusively hire medium short
and short people. In spite of this a person`s height remains irrelevant with
respect to the kind of office work to be done (and also the premises
themselves can handle bodies of widely divergent heights). The office may
now be blamed for discriminating on the grounds of people`s height, an
irrelevant, bodily property in this context. But imagine that the management
of that office reply that there is nothing wrong with discrimination, that
our whole life is only made possible by virtue of the distinctions we make.
This is certainly true, but the management hope that we do not notice that
they commit a fallacy of equivocation: they are not blamed for making a
distinction but for making an irrelevant distinction. (Compare the
distinction made between people who are, or were, employed at the office and
people who are, or were, not. This distinction we accept in the informant`s
statement, yet not that between workers who are short and those who are
not.)

In the language which is our present means of communication both making
distinctions and discrimination have two basic meanings which must not be
confused. Firstly, they have a nonpejorative, often meliorative, formal
meaning, namely: distinguishing by discerning or exposing differences,
especially when distinguishing one object from another; or: making an
appropriate distinction. In this sense of the word, everyone has to
discriminate. It is an ontological and epistemological prerequisite of all
thought. To discriminate also means to use good judgment, and some people do
know how to thus 'discriminate' between real and pretended cases of concern
for their well-being. Other people may 'show fine discrimination' in only
picking out those works of art which are genuine. But secondly, making
distinctions and discrimination have a pejorative, or rather condemnatory
meaning not restricted to the formal register, namely: making an irrelevant
or unjustified distinction; making a difference in treatment or favor on a
basis other than individual merit. This is the meaning discrimination has
when someone is accused of, for example, 'sex discrimination'.

In practise people tend to speak of "discrimination" particularly when the
irrelevant distinction is made in nonpropositional reality itself. Some
might say that the employer who makes a distinction between workers who are
tall and workers who are not, while height is irrelevant, 'discriminates',
whereas the informant who made an equally irrelevant distinction between
workers who are short and workers who are not, did not 'discriminate'. The
former distinction is made in nonpropositional reality itself and, moreover,
harms a category of people distinguished on the basis of their height
(namely tall people); the latter one is only made in a proposition about
reality and the person who probably will be harmed most is the person
receiving the (irrelevant) information. However, rather than limiting the
use of the term discrimination to specific cases (which is etymologically
not justifiable) we ourselves shall put the emphasis on the kinds of
relevancy involved. When it is the relevancy of a distinction, we shall
speak of "discriminational relevancy". The relevancy which plays such an
important role in all our conversation (in addition to truth) we shall call
"conversational relevancy". This subdivision of relevancy is part of a
provisional scheme which does not preclude that one type of relevancy
consists of two or more independent subtypes, or that one type is a subtype
of the other.

The study of relevancy in general has both a horizontal and a vertical
dimension, as indicated in figure I.5.1.1.1. The horizontal dimension
concerns the 'width' of the notion of relevancy, that is, the different
kinds of relevancy and related notions prevailing in several fields of
thought. In this and the next division we will look at the similarities and
differences in meaning and use of all these types of relevancy. Our prime
interest will then be what bearing this has on the notion of
discriminational relevancy. We will even discuss --albeit only briefly-- a
number of notions of relevancy or relatedness which are apparently of an
entirely different nature than discriminational relevancy. The reason for
this is, firstly, that they are part of one and the same overall structure
of relevancy notions, and secondly, that an analysis of these diverse
conceptions in the horizontal dimension of relevancy will enable us to clear
up the workings of the numerous adjectives which go with relevancy. These
adjectives or adverbs must somehow modify or typify what is denoted by the
noun (ir)relevance or the adjective (ir)relevant. Unlike our
discriminational, moral is one of those adjectives used, and frequently
used, by ethical theorists. But the fate of morally relevant when trying to
clarify the nature of morality with it, appears hardly better than that of
causally relevant when that is used in an (abortive) attempt to clarify the
nature of causality.

The vertical conceptual analysis of relevancy concerns the difference
between something (a distinction, proposition, topic, and so on) being
relevant, and it being irrelevant. Relevant is then used in an affirmative
sense as the negation of irrelevant. Since relevant is an unmarked term
(irrelevant being the marked one ), it has also a general, dimensional
meaning designating the extension of both irrelevance and its negation. This
is the meaning relevancy has when we speak of the different types of
relevancy. We shall use the noun relevancy only in this general, dimensional
sense, and relevance only as the antonym of irrelevance, altho relevancy and
relevance are synonyms in the traditional lexicon. As the core meaning of
the marked term (discriminationally) irrelevant we will take the meaning it
has when discrimination in its condemnatory sense is defined as the act of
making an irrelevant distinction. For example, racial discrimination is the
act (in a broader sense also practise or attitude) of making an irrelevant
distinction on the grounds of race or skin color. In the event that a
distinction on the grounds of race or skin color is relevant, there is no
talk of discrimination in this respect and in this sense.

What are the criterions to objectively determine whether something is
relevant or not? This is the problem of relevancy in depth. We will consider
one theory which furnishes criterions for telling the relevant apart from
the irrelevant. Dealing with statistical relevancy it is of limited use for
discriminational relevancy tho. That is why we will eventually have to
develop our own account of the relevance-irrelevance divide which plays such
a crucial role in questions of discrimination. Yet, before doing so it will
be worthwhile to have a look at the motley tissue of occurrences of the term
relevant, not only in ethics and linguistic pragmatics but also in other
disciplines.



5.1.2  THE USE OF RELEVANCY IN ETHICS


Discrimination by people against, or in favor of, people or sentient beings
has become one of the main themes of normative philosophy in general, and of
ethics in particular. An ultimate definition of discrimination cannot be
given without referring to the irrelevant distinction made when
discriminating, even if one is willing to agree that all cases of making an
irrelevant distinction may be called "cases of discrimination". Curiously
enough, the same holds for other essential ethical concepts, such as
fairness, (distributive) justice, universalizability and equality. The
(practical) significance of these concepts does also crucially depend on
what we (or our opponents) believe relevant to be, and subsequently, to be
relevant or morally relevant. The phrases relevant respect(s), relevantly
similar or different and morally relevant appear throughout the ethical
literature on the above-mentioned subjects. Yet, while relevancy (or
relatedness) has been recognized as a key notion in several other fields of
thought, it has not at the same time received any comparable attention in
ethics. This applies even to moral relevancy.

A philosopher may complain at one place that relevance is too vague a
criterion to be of any use and 'plainly does not work' as a criterion for
distinguishing sense from nonsense, while using this very criterion to
distinguish the fair from the unfair at another place. There 'e may argue
that it would be unfair if one person 'consistently obtained more', or owned
more property, than another person 'with the same, or sufficiently similar,
relevant characteristics', or than another person 'situated in relevant
respects' as the former one. But relevant or irrelevant have to be used
somehow to differentiate the fair and the unfair, or the just and the
unjust. It is indeed injustice to treat two similar individuals in similar
circumstances in a different way, that is, the one better than the other,
unless --as has been pointed out-- the 'agent or group can establish that
there is some relevant dissimilarity nonetheless between the individuals
concerned and their circumstances'. Another philosopher has written that one
ought not to judge cases differently 'which are not relevantly different',
that one ought not to make unjustifiable exceptions in favor of oneself. The
inherent suggestion in such an argument is that an exception is not
justified when the difference made is not relevant. The rules of justice
themselves have been described as 'rules of making judicial and other,
analogous decisions impartially, by reference to relevant considerations
alone'.

When a person makes a moral judgment in a particular situation, 'e
implicitly commits 'imself to making the same judgment in any similar
situation. This is what ethical theorists call "the principle of
universalizability": if one judges that x is good, right or praiseworthy,
then one is committed to judging that anything like x in relevant respects
is good, right or praiseworthy. In other words: 'moral judgments are
universalizable' and anyone 'who says that a certain action is morally right
or wrong, ought or ought not to be done, is thereby committed to taking the
same view about any other relevantly similar action'. The key phrase in this
formulation of universalizability is relevantly similar, as has been said
before.

That discrimination itself cannot be defined without making use of relevant
or irrelevant is realized by most writers on this subject. So --as has been
noticed-- somebody may complain about sexism, or discrimination on grounds
of sex, when people count sex as relevant in contexts where it is not.
Sexism has been defined as preference for members of one's own sex simply
because they are members of one's own sex, but in such a definition the crux
of sexism remains hidden in the simply because, in the kind of preference
concerned and in the kind of actions taken on the basis of this preference.
Moreover, the same attitude towards the other sex would be equally sexist,
altho aggrandizemental instead of abnegational. (The above definition cannot
even handle the difference between sexism and homosexuality, or it does in
no way clarify in what it lies.)

However sexism may be defined, it is praiseworthy to point out --as has been
done-- that there is a close analogy between this attitude and both racism
and speciesism. To define racism and speciesism, race and species have only
to be substituted for sex, while the rest of the definition can remain the
same. Against attempts to justify a different treatment of animals it has
been put forward that this attitude is speciesist because 'animals are
biologically similar in the relevant respects'. On this view the fact that
human beings use language, for instance, or a more complex form of language,
to communicate is 'not relevant to the question of how animals ought to be
treated, unless it can be linked to the issue of whether animals suffer'.
(This presupposes a utilitarian morality in which the minimization of
suffering, or the maximization of happiness, is the sole thing that counts.)

A definition of discrimination need not mention relevant or irrelevant when
it makes use of other concepts which have already incorporated the
relevance/irrelevance divide themselves, such as those of fairness, justice
or justification. When differentiating the fair and the unfair, or the just
and the unjust, relevancy has already been employed, or is employed
implicitly. This is the case when an ethical theorist claims that a moral
system should not allow 'to discriminate between people for reasons which we
would in practise judge to be unfair'. It is also the case when
discrimination is not defined as making an irrelevant but as making an
unjustified distinction or as difference in treatment or favor on a basis
other than individual merit. In the last formulation it is presupposed that
a difference made on a basis other than individual merit can never be
relevant. Also when the reference is just to favor (rather than to
difference in favor) it carries implicitly with it that the favor is not
justified, as it is founded upon --again-- a nonrelevant distinction.

From the standpoint of normative philosophy relevance seems to refer to some
significant connection with a goal, purpose, function, process or
institution universally accepted in a deliberated agreement or by tacit
convention. As such it is relational and dependent on the goal, purpose or
other directional entity which we will henceforth call for short "the focus
(of relevancy)". (Of course, the focus with respect to an institution is its
maintenance or enhancement or something of that kind.) The theorist who
regards relevancy as a relative notion may say that the relevancy of
attributes depends on 'the purposes of a given association or enterprise' or
that the criterions for determining what are relevant reasons are
'necessarily linked with the very purpose of the activity of reasoning'.
With respect to the differences between men and women, or other groups, it
has been pointed out that the question is 'whether any such differences
could be relevant to the activity or institution in question'. Because of
this relational nature of relevancy it should not surprise us that one
author has remarked that what may appear 'relevant from one interested point
of view', may 'not appear relevant from the point of view of someone whose
situation and qualities are different'.

The knowledge that relevancy is a relative notion and the introduction of
the concept focus of relevancy will make it easier to show the significant
part played by relevancy in ethical theorizing on the question of equality.
This role is in no way taken cognizance of in the classical principle that
'equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally'. This principle
may guarantee consistence --as we will see in 5.4.1--, but just as
consistence is no proof of truth, so it is no proof of relevance either. It
is that 'equals should be treated equally, unless unequal' which better
illustrates what is going on.



5.1.3  "EQUAL, UNLESS .."


Most reasoning about matters of equality, distributive justice and
universalizability follows the same pattern in which a statement about a
certain form of equality is succeeded by some kind of exceptive clause (or
adverbial clause of open condition), usually starting with unless or except.
For example, the claim that moral principles are universalizable must be
understood in the following way --it has been said: if one person ought to
do x, everyone else ought to do x 'unless there are relevant differences'
between the two persons and/or between their situations. This principle
'that no person should be treated differently from any or all other persons
unless there is some general and relevant reason which justifies such a
difference in treatment' has been called "a fundamental principle of
morality, if not of rationality itself". Another theorist has expressed the
same idea by stating that it is 'part of the concept of morality that no
person is simply excluded from moral consideration'. Being excluded
altogether is distinguished here from being considered differently. But also
in the latter case 'the difference made must be justified by some morally
relevant ground of distinction'. What it all amounts to is that people are
'to be treated equally, except when unequal treatment can be justified'. A
very special justification which has been mentioned in this context is that
the unequal treatment may promote greater equality in the long run. Where
this is indeed the case, it is a certain kind of inequality which serves
equality.

What most, if not all, of those philosophizing on equality, justice and
related issues seem to maintain, superficially speaking, is that people or
cases are (relevantly) equal, unless (relevantly) different. Purely
truth-conditionally (relevantly) equal, unless (relevantly) different and
(relevantly) different, unless (relevantly) equal are tautologies which
signify the same: nothing of interest. But we are not just dealing with two
(parts of) propositions which are true under all circumstances; we are
dealing with people (ethical theorists, for instance) who choose to utter
the one proposition and not the other. Their utterances (or inscriptions)
are moves in a conversational game. Someone saying "(relevantly) equal,
unless relevantly different" does say something of interest, because 'e does
not just choose any tautology, but 'e draws a distinction between this one
and all others for a reason. ( Compare someone saying "a promise is a
promise" at a particular place and time.)

It is a maxim of linguistic pragmatics that a person should be relevant
every time 'e contributes something to a conversation. The maxim is part of
a general principle governing people's conversation which is called "the
cooperation principle". It is on the basis of this principle and maxim that
the equal, unless different pattern is selected, rather than a different,
unless equal pattern. The only sensible interpretation of the equal, unless
pattern is, then, that people or things have to be treated (relevantly)
alike, unless there can be shown to exist a (relevant) difference which
justifies treating them in a different way. Almost all writers on ethical
issues like equality and justice explicitly speak of departures from
equality and of differences having to be justified (for example, by stating
that it is unequal treatment which requires justification). For all of them
the burden of proof rests with the one who wants to make a difference to
prove that such a difference is relevant. This means quite something else
than different, unless .., when the burden of proof would rest with someone
who wants to treat cases or people alike. That person would have to prove
that no distinction on the basis of whatever factor were relevant, and
particularly, that a distinction or set of distinctions drawn by 'er
opponent were irrelevant (assuming that the opponents do agree on the focus
of relevancy itself).

That unequal treatment may promote greater equality in the long run is only
one kind of justification. Other justifications which have been mentioned
rest, for example, on considerations of beneficence or utility, and on
people's differing needs, situations or preferences. With respect to
citizenship it has been argued that everyone should be 'treated as capable
of citizenship unless very strong evidence of personal incapacity is
produced', such as 'infancy and insanity'. (But --it is added-- 'social
characteristics' such as 'poverty and race' have not been 'accepted
generally as good reasons for exclusion'.) That the burden of proof itself
lies with those who want to treat people or things differently cannot be
proved; at the most it can be proved that individual theorists believe it to
lie there.

The advantage of the egalitarian formula that a difference made has to be
justified and may always be disputed, is that it is an action, not an
omission or nonaction, which requires a justification. The burden of proof,
then, even rests with those who want to treat cases relevantly alike by
treating them dissimilarly in relevant respects. (If the egalitarian has
thought about the other side to the picture at all.) A serious problem is
that no-one has ever provided an exact criterion, or set of criterions, to
verify relevance, just as no-one can give a criterion to verify universal
nonanalytical statements. (In division 4 of this chapter we will only
discuss some criterions for falsifying relevance judgments.) It follows that
an egalitarian cannot require someone who makes a distinction to prove in
the strict sense that this distinction is relevant, in any way,
discriminationally relevant. (We will see that statistical relevance is not
sufficient.) An anti-egalitarian might therefore object that it is the
egalitarian who has to prove the irrelevance of the distinction. This is the
different, unless approach. Such an objection would be unreasonable,
however, since it requires 'im to prove the irrelevance of a distinction
made by others after it has been made, or which 'e 'imself does not want to
make. Moreover, altho it is possible to prove irrelevance in some cases,
this does not mean that every instance of irrelevance can even theoretically
be proved. In practise the possibilities are even limited to a much greater
extent, if present at all.

Whereas actual discriminational relevance can never be irrefutably proved
(if this is right), it is a proof of potential relevance which can be
demanded in the equal, unless procedure. Statistical relevance is such a
proof. The subsequent assumption of actual relevance may then not be
contested, by proving the irrelevance of the distinction, for instance. This
seems to be a weak point in the whole procedure. Yet, the question is not so
much whether it is weak or strong, but whether it is weaker than another
spot in the total scheme, namely the choice of focus, which must not be
contested either. And presumably, it is not.

A traditionalist approach to the burden-of-proof issue would be to require
anyone who deviates from traditional practise or convention to prove that a
difference is irrelevant altho 'everyone' makes it, or to prove that it is
relevant altho 'no-one' makes it. It is a viewpoint which makes normative
thought, and moral reasoning in particular, depend on what the majority in a
certain (sub)culture or social environment have 'always' taken to be
relevant and irrelevant, right and wrong. It stresses factual morality in a
historical or sociological sense, and assigns normative significance to mere
belief, coherent or not coherent. Within the framework of normative
philosophy, however, only an equal, unless tenet constitutes a systematic
code, or for that matter, a different, unless tenet.

To require that it is a material difference of treatment of which the
relevance has to be made plausible, represents a kind of idea of equality
(and justice) which is nothing else than a relevance principle interpreted
in an equal, unless manner, nothing else than some 'principle of
nondiscrimination'. It is not to be concerned yet with the content of the
focus of relevancy, that is, with the kind of goal, purpose or other
directional entity in question. A different sort of notion of equality (and
justice) is it which entails that equality itself should be a focus. Thus
according to the relevance principle under the equal, unless interpretation
one must treat the rich and the poor alike, unless their wealth makes a
relevant difference in respect of some goal recognized as a focus. The
richness and poorness of people is, then, still taken for granted, however
big the difference in wealth may be. And any goal could be a focus of
relevancy, whether pertaining to an economic quantity or not. But if the
relevance principle is combined with a separate principle of equality
determining that the equality of wealth (the incomes and/or assets of
people) ought to be a goal in itself, one must not only treat the rich and
the poor in a relevantly similar way, but one must also strive for making
them equally rich ( or 'equally poor' -- it might be sarcastically commented
). All distinctions made to promote this value now become relevant, for
example, to have a rich person pay disproportionately more taxes than a poor
person, the difference in wealth thus being lessened as much as possible.

Altho those who speak of "equality" and "(distributive) justice" turn out to
use the phrases relevant and morally relevant with the greatest ease, the
above example should show how important it is that they clearly state the
following two things: (1) whether they recognize only relevance or both
relevance and equality (as a focus of relevancy); and (2), where for them
the burden of proof lies. To make such a precise statement is conceptually
possible, altho it requires a minimum insight into the role of relevancy
itself. To obtain this minimum insight we should also look at other
disciplines than ethics or normative philosophy, even tho this is going to
confirm our expectations.



5.1.4  RELEVANCY OR RELATEDNESS IN OTHER DISCIPLINES


Relevancy (or relatedness) has been recognized as a key notion not only in
analytical philosophy (which produced the first article on this subject),
but also in philosophy of language (pragmatics), logics (relevance and
relatedness logics), philosophy of science (with a statistical model of
explanation) and in a type of sociological phenomenology. (Phenomenology is
a philosophical doctrine teaching that one can arrive at essences, or
intelligible structures in consciousness, by a description of subjective or
mental processes in which all assumptions about the causes, consequences and
wider significance of these processes have been eliminated.) Since the
subject of relevancy is itself already being discussed in all these fields
of thought, it is not strictly necessary to show how the notion of relevancy
is used in philosophical (sub-)disciplines other than ethics. To demonstrate
the importance of relevancy it will suffice here to have a general idea of
what authors in these other fields of thought have said before on the role
of relevancy itself.

The first person ever to write a (published) article on relevancy in
particular already compared relevancy with truth and argued that it is the
former one, not the latter, which is the 'supreme controlling power in the
making of judgments'. ('E was also the first author to lucidly state that
'truth is no excuse for irrelevance'.) All reasoning ultimately depends on
the notion of relevance. One does not assert whatever one believes to be
true but 'only such a portion of the total truth as one judges to be
relevant'.

The first person ever to write a (published) book on relevancy in particular
was a phenomenologist who discovered that 'our every action, thought and
deed in the lifeworld is guided by and founded on a whole system of
relevances'. In 'er system specific types of relevances determine 'finite
provinces of meaning'. The crucial significance of relevance in this
phenomenological theory is not different from that of a theory in philosophy
of science in which statistical relevance is called "the key concept". Both
theories will be further outlined in the next division.

The concept of relevance has been said to be 'at the bottom of efforts to
solve central philosophical problems and to analyze fundamental concepts'.
On this view relevance is not only a fundamental notion for philosophy but
also for science and everyday life. It has been mentioned already that
linguistic pragmatics recognizes a special maxim of relevance. It has not
yet been mentioned, however, that it has also been claimed that this maxim
is the most important one of all the maxims that govern our conversation
according to the so-called 'cooperation principle'.

We have seen how relevancy is treated as a relational notion in ethical
theories, but when just confining oneself to these theories, one might too
readily draw the conclusion that all notions of relevancy are of this
goal-dependent sort. This is a mistake. It turns out that some relations of
relevancy are not believed to exist between entities of a different type
(one of them being a goal or something similar), but between entities of the
same type (notably when dealing with propositions). In the former case the
relation is believed to be an asymmetrical one between a fundament (the
element in the domain) and a terminus (the element in the range). In the
latter case the relation is symmetrical, and none of the relata would be a
focus of relevancy in the sense of a directional entity or relational
terminus. Confronted with this discrepancy in the accounts of relevancy, we
are forced to search for a possible unity which might underly these
dissimilar conceptions. For if there really existed various entirely
unconnected forms of relevancy, we might not be justified in simply
proceeding on the assumption that the relevancy of discrimination, or, for
example, moral relevancy, is of the goal-dependent sort. This justification
is needed first.



5.2  THE DIVERSITY OF THE NOTIONS OF RELEVANCY


5.2.1  LINGUISTIC, LOGICAL AND STATISTICAL NOTIONS


When the maxim be relevant was formulated for the first time as part of a
cooperation principle governing people's conversations, it was already clear
that its terse formulation concealed a number of problems, such as questions
about what different kinds of focuses of relevance there might be. Thus it
was not much later that in an article on conversational relevancy a
distinction was suggested between 'pragmatic' and 'semantic' relevancy, the
former being goal-dependent, the latter referring to a symmetrical
relationship. Pragmatic relevance is, then, defined as the relevance of
speech acts to certain goals and must be considered as a 'specialization of
the general notion of relevance of an action to a goal' (part of the theory
of goal-directed behavior). Semantic relevance is said to be 'the relevance
of certain linguistic, logical or cognitive entities (propositions) to other
entities of the same type'. As the concepts which it involves have been
mentioned reference, entailment and meaning relations.

The 'pragmatic' and 'semantic relevancy' of philosophy of language have been
called "practical" and "semantic relatedness" in logics. So one logician
speaks of "the practical relatedness of events and actions" and "the
semantic relatedness of the subject-matters of propositions". (Another
logician writes that relatedness is only chosen instead of relevance because
of its different technical meaning in relevance logics.) There is
accordingly no essential difference between pragmatic and semantic relevancy
in philosophy of language on the one hand and practical and semantic
relatedness on the other.

Authors who do not distinguish a symmetrical from an a- or non-symmetrical
relevancy relation simply presuppose that all relevancy is of the
goal-dependent kind like pragmatic relevancy and practical relatedness. The
first philosopher to publish an article on relevancy wrote already that the
relevance of a thing 'lies in its value for us and in our attitude towards
it'. Whether something is relevant depends 'on the purpose of the moment',
and one must not turn 'the usefulness of things for our purposes into an
attribute of the things in themselves', into 'a quality residing in the
thing thought of per se'. (Relevance implies a relation to a purpose 'by its
very etymology' this author said.) The goal-dependent character of the
relevancy notion is less clear, but certainly present too in the first
author to write on relevancy from a phenomenological point of view. 'E
speaks about everyone's 'system of relevances' being determined by one's
'interest at hand'. This interest 'motivates all one's thinking, projecting,
acting, and therewith establishes the problems to be solved by one's thought
and the goals to be attained by one's actions'. The concept of goal is
closely related to that of value, and consequently it is not surprising that
the same author has claimed that a theory of relevances (or of 'topical
relevances', to be precise) will contribute to 'a classification of the
concept of value', that is, to a classification of the values by which one
wants to be guided in one's theoretical and practical life. When later
theorists point out that it is useful to talk of utterances, and to see them
'as being relevant to previous utterances, a discourse, a question, an issue
or a goal' it is clearly goal-dependent or pragmatic relevancy again they
are thinking of.

Relevancy has not only been subdivided into a pragmatic and a semantic type
in philosophy of language. A further subdivision in that discipline is that
into topical, marginal and potential relevance. 'Topical relevance' is what
is said to be at the center of the subject's field of attention at time t;
'marginal relevance' is everything that is still somewhere in the subject's
field of attention, but in 'er horizon; and 'potential relevance' is said to
concern the members of a domain of stored data which might be referred to as
"the background for S at t". What is particularly interesting about this
classification is its similarity with a phenomenological subdivision to be
discussed in the next section. This will be another confirmation of the fact
that philosophers in different fields of inquiry have not seldom categorized
the types of relevancy in ways which highly resembled each other. And this,
in turn, will be a clear indication that there is indeed a unity in the
diversity of relevancy notions.

But before turning to phenomenology we should first have a brief look at a
conception of relevancy of quite a different complexion which has been
developed in philosophy of science. In the theory in question a factor is
said to be statistically relevant to the occurrence of an event if it makes
a difference to the probability of that occurrence. Facts can be
statistically relevant on this view even in the absence of high probability,
since both the probability with and the probability without a particular
property may be low. If they are not equally low, a property is
statistically relevant nevertheless, whereas it would be irrelevant if both
probabilities were high, but equally high. This relation of statistical
relevancy is said to be symmetrical. The rule is to choose the broadest
homogeneous reference class to which a single event belongs. Yet, it has
been admitted that this formulation may not remove 'all ambiguities about
the selection of reference classes either in principle or in practise'. If
the explanation is causal (instead of symptomatic), this provides a more
homogeneous reference class, and --it has been argued-- 'each progressively
better partitioning makes the preceding partitioning statistically
irrelevant'.

The notion of statistical relevancy seems to be subjected to a rather
stringent procedure, and to be little belief-dependent or not
belief-dependent at all. In spite of this, the philosopher of science or the
scientist cannot guarantee either that a partitioning at any time is the
best one, nor that the selection of reference classes is in no way arbitrary
or merely traditional. Without any change in the external world (or
nonpropositional reality) something that is 'statistically relevant' today
may be 'statistically irrelevant' tomorrow. But this means that the notion
of statistical relevance is knowledge-dependent, and in that sense not
objective either. At the most it is of some epistemic nature.



5.2.2  PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND OTHER NOTIONS


On the phenomenological view already referred to there exist various
so-called 'domains of relevance' for a subject in accordance with 'er
multifarious interests and involvements. Together these domains of relevance
form the subject's 'system of relevances' with its own priorities and
preferences always clearly distinguished and not necessarily stable for
longer periods. This system of relevance falls into specific 'zones of
relevance'. They have been labeled "the zone of primary relevance", "of
minor relevance", "of relative irrelevance" and "of absolute irrelevance".
There is a close parallel between the first three zones of this
phenomenological subdivision and the philosophical-linguistic classification
of topical, marginal and potential relevance mentioned in the previous
section. The 'zone of primary relevance' has been described as that part of
the world within the subject's reach which can be immediately observed by
'im and also at least partially dominated by 'im, that is, changed and
rearranged by 'er actions. (Compare the notion of topical relevance.) The
'zone of minor relevance' is, then, a field which is not open to the
subject's domination but mediately connected with the zone of primary
relevance, because it furnishes, for example, the tools to be used for
attaining the projected goal. (Compare marginal relevance.) The 'zone of
relative irrelevance' has been said to be the zone which, for the time
being, has no connection with the subject's interests at hand. (Compare
potential relevance.) The 'zone of absolute irrelevance' is the one in which
no possible change would, so the subject believes, influence 'er objective
in hand.

In the terminology of the phenomenological theory adumbrated here it is not
only the predicate (whether property or relation) which is called
"relevance", but all things believed to be relevant are labeled "relevances"
themselves. Furthermore, it even speaks of "a system of pertinent
relevances", but lexically pertinent is a mere synonym of relevant. The
excessive and doxastic use of the notion of relevancy in this doctrine would
have drained it of almost all practical meaning if it had been generally
adopted. The use is doxastic in that something would be 'relevant' on this
reasoning with respect to, say, a goal, interest, motive or value, merely
because the subject believes it to be relevant. The theory does not and
cannot distinguish between something being relevant given a certain focus of
relevancy (a nonpropositional or lower-level propositional fact), and
something believed to be relevant or pertinent to that focus (a
propositional or higher-level propositional fact).

Part of the question whether the occurrence of an event is relevant or not
is the question whether people's conduct is relevant or not. Such conduct
has been described by a later nonphenomenological theorist as "positively
relevant" when it is doing such and such, and as "negatively relevant" when
it is not doing so and so, altho the person in question could have done it.
On this account saving someone's life, for instance, is positively relevant
to someone's staying alive, whereas letting someone die is negatively
relevant to someone's dying if the subject was in the position to save the
life of the person concerned. Such a distinction between positive and
negative relevancy is closely related to that between doing or causing and
letting or allowing, and also to that between privative and nonprivative
concepts. As such the relationship between positive and negative is one of
negation, like that between privative and nonprivative or affirmative. The
positive in positively relevant and the negative in negatively relevant are
therefore not catenated. Moreover, they do not apply to the relevancy itself
but rather to the kind of conduct which is said to be relevant to a certain
state of affairs or not. If that conduct is something like closing or
opening a door, the relevancy will have to be termed "positive"; if it is
not closing or not opening that door (while being able to do so), it will
have to be termed "negative". It does accordingly not depend on a division
of facts into 'positive' (affirmative) and 'negative' (privative) ones, but
at the very expense of the meaningfulness of this positive and this
negative.



5.2.3  THE GENERAL STRUCTURE UNDERLYING THE DIVERSE NOTIONS


It seems that theorists on relevancy have usually not been familiar with the
publications in other disciplines or subdisciplines on the same subject. Or
perhaps, they reasoned too readily that 'their' relevancy had nothing to do
with the other notions of relevancy. If this were correct, however, we could
not explain very well how anyone when confronted with one of these notions
could ever have a less than vague, intuitive idea about what a specific kind
of relevancy (such as moral relevancy) might denote -- and it is not said
"connote". It is hard to imagine that someone would treat truth in this way,
and suggest, for example, that scientific truth, pragmatic truth and
religious truth would all be entirely isolated, primitive notions having
nothing in common in denotation or connotation. For again, if this were
correct, no-one could even have the vaguest, intuitive idea of what these
phrases could mean if 'e were confronted with them for the first time.
Therefore there is enough reason to assume some underlying structure -- a
common skeleton, albeit differently fleshed out for the several forms of
relevancy (and truth). Of course, we take it that the underlying unity is to
embrace more than some common positive connotation of relevance and negative
connotation of irrelevance eagerly exploited in academic debate.

Let us take goal-dependent relevancy as a primitive notion, as the prototype
of all relevancy. Two entities are then related if they are relevant in
respect of the same goal (same in the sense of identical). On this
construction the notions of symmetrical relevancy or relatedness are
derivative and presuppose the existence of ordinary, goal-dependent
relevancy. (Theoretically the relatedness might also be taken as primitive
and the common relevancy in respect of a certain goal as derivative.) This
conceptual picture 'explains' the reflexivity of symmetrical relatedness,
and shows also why nontransitivity should be required. Pragmatic relevancy
or practical relatedness is from this point of view a particular kind of
goal-dependent relevancy, whereas semantic relevancy or relatedness is a
kind of (symmetrical) 'relevance-relatedness'. Pragmatic relevancy in a
narrow sense differs from other forms of goal-dependent relevancy in that
the fundament of the relation is a speech-act; in a broad sense, in that the
fundament is an act in general. Semantic relevancy differs from other forms
of relevance-relatedness in that the entities related are propositions.

Given this sketchy representation of the overall structure in which
goal-dependent relevancy remains the basic notion, it is easy to locate
discriminational relevancy. Because of the adjective it is the relevancy of
a distinction, for example, on the basis of age or nationality. The question
is every time whether the factor age or the factor nationality is relevant
in respect of something valued high, such as the (best) quality of work to
be done, or the (lowest possible) price of a ticket to be paid. In questions
of discrimination we are not just interested in a statistical relevancy or
other kind of symmetrical relatedness between one distinction we could make
and another distinction we could make. We are interested in only one
distinction or cluster of distinctions at a time, and want to know whether
it is relevant with respect to a value which those concerned have
acknowledged as something to strive for. The distinction itself is not
defined as something to aim at -- otherwise the question becomes
superfluous. It follows that the relevancy of discrimination is a kind of
goal-dependent relevancy with a distinction or cluster of distinctions as
relational fundament and a goal or other directional entity as relational
terminus.

Figure I.5.2.3.1 gives a schematic representation of most of the conceptions
of relevancy dealt with in the philosophical literature in such a way that
the general structure shows. All these forms of relevancy mentioned in the
literature have been listed in figure I.5.2.3.2, as well as a few related
relevancy concepts. They are presented in such a way that it should become
clear on the basis of what characteristics they are primarily (to be)
classified. It goes without saying that this scheme is an idealization. The
actually used notions of relevancy are often of a mixed character. Thus the
primary classification of discriminational relevancy may be on the basis of
the type of fundament (a distinction or set of distinctions) but this does
not mean that the criterions applied to the relation of discriminational
relevancy will not be equally typical. Similarly, the primary classification
of moral relevancy is on the basis of the type of terminus (a moral goal or
value), so it seems, but the criterions of moral relevancy probably also
differ from those of all other forms of relevancy. The question of what
goal(s) moral philosophers actually choose, and of what criterions they
actually apply for moral relevancy (if any), is not our present concern.



5.3  CONCEPTUAL STATUS OF RELEVANCY


5.3.1  REDUNDANT?


Even if one agrees on the relational nature of relevancy and on the general
connections between its diverse forms, there is a number of conceptual
issues about which there still might be some uncertainty. The questions we
will discuss in this division are:
  1.  isn't relevancy redundant?
  2.  if not, is it a formal or substantive concept?
  3.  is it an objective or subjective concept?
  4.  is it of a factual-modal or normative character?
  5.  is it a wholly consequentialistic concept?
Whenever possible, we shall compare a conceptual question about relevancy
with an analogous question about truth. This is not to suggest that the
answer must be the same or analogous, but that one should have good reasons
for an answer which is fundamentally different. We are not the only ones to
thus compare relevancy with truth. It has been said before, for example,
that 'relatedness, like truth, is a primitive notion'. Looking at it the
other way around, it may be interesting to ask certain questions about
relevancy which traditionally have only been posed about truth. The question
whether relevancy might be redundant is of this sort, and will be considered
first here.

Just as some philosophers (but no human in the street) regard true as
redundant, so it might indeed theoretically be possible to dispose of
relevant. In the same way as a (truth-)redundancy theorist maintains that
true and false can be eliminated from all contexts without semantic loss, a
'redundancy theorist of relevancy' might argue that, instead of "relevantly
similar" and "relevantly different", one could as well read "similar" and
"different". After all, similar, and also equal, have another meaning than
identical: it is always equal in one or more particular respects (and the
meaning of different varies with it). In the strict sense relevant is
redundant in relevant reason as well, because a reason is only a reason if
it is relevant. And the other way around: a reason is a relevant fact or
other condition, or a relevant consideration. The only meaning appropriately
given to all these phrases would have to fulfil the criterion of relevance
anyhow, one might say. (Similarly, <it is raining> is true is no different
from it is raining, if uttered at the right time and place.)

Altho the whole idea of redundancy may seem farfetched, it is no coincidence
that it has been remarked that 'is relevant to behaves very much like is
similar to'. It is no coincidence either that many ordinary language users
do indeed mean by similar and different, relevantly similar and different,
by reason, a relevant reason and by making a distinction or discriminating
in a meliorative sense making a relevant distinction. But now, a redundancy
theorist, too, must admit that making distinctions in a condemnatory sense
means making irrelevant distinctions. This existence of deviations from the
norm proves that relevancy (and also truth) might be superfluous in a
perfect world in which everyone makes relevant distinctions only (and tells
the truth only), but that it is a useful notion in the 'substandard' real
world in which people actually live, and so long as irrelevant distinctions
can be made (and propositions falsely uttered ). Making relevancy formally
redundant would merely shift the problem from the denotational sphere --what
is relevancy?-- to the connotational sphere --is the word distinction used
in a meliorative or condemnatory sense, and why?--. A formal redundancy of
relevancy would merely envelop the whole issue in an even denser mist, and
this opinion seems to be explicitly or implicitly shared by all those who
have reflected upon relevancy itself, or who take it that their employment
of relevant or irrelevant is meaningful.



5.3.2  FORMAL OR SUBSTANTIVE?


Traditionally it is believed that those systems count as logics which are
applicable to reasoning irrespective of its subject-matter, which are
concerned with the form of arguments rather than with their content. The
whole idea of topic-independence (also called "topic-neutrality") and the
related distinction between form and content is quite vague, however. This
need not be objectionable --it has been argued-- as logic has probably no
'precise specifiable essential character' anyhow. For example, why would a
proposition about beliefs be a matter of form and one about numbers a matter
of content? But while the distinction between the formal and the substantive
is already vague, when trying to exactly demarcate truth-conditional logics,
it certainly is too vague to demarcate that part of reasoning which depends
on the concept of relevancy as well. In philosophy of language the
'relevancy-conditional' aspect of reasoning belongs to pragmatics, yet this
in itself does not make it less formal or more substantive. Much depends on
our present state of knowledge or conceptualization in which the informal
arguments of today may be formalized tomorrow. The essential point is that
we do somehow distinguish the truth-conditional from the
relevancy-conditional or -dependent.

When the first article of relevancy was written, it was argued that
'relevance is never a matter of form', and that the notion of relevancy had
been cut dead by formal logic. Nonetheless it might be maintained that
goal-dependent relevancy is a purely formal concept, because its content is
a goal, and this focus of relevancy is not given by the notion itself. But
even granted that we could choose any focus of relevancy whatsoever, this
still would not make relevancy automatically a formal concept, if formal is
defined in purely truth-functional terms. It may be true or it may be false
that a distinction is made, but whether or not a distinction is made, it can
still be either relevant or irrelevant. If the 'formal' were confined to the
truth-conditional and the 'substantive' to the directional matter (the focus
of relevancy), the notion of relevancy itself would be neither. It would
have a separate status between the formal and the substantive.

As soon as we postulate that focuses of relevancy must fulfil some minimum
requirements we do in fact in a very general way determine the content of
these focuses (altho we shall not lay down specific goals here, or even not
ends as diffuse as freedom and equality). In the next division we will see
that certain minimum requirements are indeed needed for a focus to be
genuine, and that without such criterions a principle of discriminational
relevance would fail to be effective at all. From this standpoint relevancy
is substantive in a very general sense.

We have now considered three possible positions relevancy could have:
formal, intermediate or substantive. The intermediate status seems to be the
most sensible one, but the choice itself is merely a question of definition.
If one defines formal in a way that it is purely truth-conditional, and all
the rest as substantive, then relevancy is simply substantive. If one
prefers to define formal in a way that it includes the relevancy-functional
(possibly in future formalizations), then it is simply formal. To fight over
this issue without first having defined exactly what one formal and
substantive takes to be, is an exercise in futility. After all, the lines
between matter and form and between form and content were drawn long before
relevancy was recognized as a key-notion in people's thoughts and actions.

Finally, the difference between substantive and formal is, unfortunately,
easily confused with the difference between what is and what is not of
normative significance. Truth may be an entirely formal notion, and yet this
does not mean that a principle of truth --you should not utter sentences
which certainly or probably are false at the time and place of utterance--
is of no normative significance. It is but too obvious that the morality of
thou shalt not lie does not depend on the subject-matter of the lie.



5.3.3  OBJECTIVE OR SUBJECTIVE?


The first theorist on relevancy wrote that one of the 'distinctive
advantages' of the term relevance lies in its bringing out its
'subjectivity'. By this 'e did not mean, however, that the relevant is an
arbitrary creation of the individual subject, but that the relevance of
something depends on 'its value for us and our attitude towards it'. Thus
'er subjective was merely meant to mean relational. Nevertheless, because of
its 'selectiveness' one might select too little or too much, and --as the
argument continued-- relevancy remains a risky affair. (Incidentally, this
disputableness of the concept was assessed as an advantage.)

Now, A may be taller than B and shorter than C, yet this does not make being
taller than and being shorter than merely subjective terms: that a notion is
relational in no way forces us to adopt subjectivism with respect to that
notion. Thus when an ethical theorist writes that whatever 'difference of
kind between persons and situations any particular moral thinker sincerely
takes to be relevant are so for him', 'e confuses the relational nature of
relevancy with its being 'relative' or 'subjective' in the sense of not
objective. There is nothing inconsistent tho in maintaining that a certain
difference appears 'relevant from one interested point of view' and not from
another while claiming at the same time that the difference is 'objectively
morally relevant in a certain context' so long as the context is allowed to
vary with someone's situation or conditions.

The doxastic view on relevancy is, of course, inherently subjective. This is
not only the case in phenomenological thought, but also certain (more)
analytical philosophers have argued that whether an attitude is relevant or
not depends on 'the outlook and scales of value of different persons'. 'No
amount of intimate acquaintance with the circumstances of the action can
avail against the indeterminacy of boundaries of relevance' --it has been
said. Altho one theorist argued for the 'objectivity' of relevancy (or
rather the truth of beliefs which make considerations relevant), 'e derived
this 'objectivity' not from the relevance relation itself but from the
purported invariability of the focus. For 'im the kind of focus of relevancy
was given by the very purpose for which people deliberate and weigh the pros
and cons. People's so-called 'fundamental consideration-making belief' would
simply be the maximization of satisfactions and the minimization of
frustrations. But even if this goal were given, or not contested anymore, it
would not prove relevancy itself to be an objective notion.

Also the objectivity of moral relevancy has been wholeheartedly supported.
Thus it has been claimed that what is morally relevant is 'not an arbitrary
matter, or a matter of choice or opinion'. Yet, the question of the choice
of focus (a moral goal in this case) is confused here, too, with the
question of the opinion someone may have about the relation itself. That
relevancy is a matter of choice because of its relational nature does not
imply that it must also be a matter of opinion. Given the focus of relevancy
chosen, something is or is not relevant in respect of this focus, regardless
of what a certain person or 'er opponent may opine. The objectivity of
relevancy is no different from that of truth, if one accepts that there is
an objective, nonpropositional reality which is entirely independent of
one's talking or thinking about it. Given a particular goal, then, the
relevance or irrelevance of an entity of the appropriate category with
respect to that goal is fixed. The practical, real-life problem is, of
course, to know what is relevant and what is irrelevant in respect of a
certain goal. Those who do not go beyond the notion of what people believe
to be relevant have a doxastic conception of relevancy. The equivalent with
respect to truth would be that truth is all a matter of what one believes to
be true, or of what the group or society in which one lives takes to be
true, for example, because that's the most satisfactory (as in the
pragmatist theory of truth).

The phenomenological 'relevances' we have been acquainted with are basically
doxastic. Where the phenomenological theorist on relevancy speaks of
'knowledge' it includes all kinds of belief, thus being nothing else than
belief. (And therefore it does not deserve the epithet epistemic.) The
domains and systems of (doxastic) relevances are part of, or constitute, the
'relative natural conception of the world' prevailing in a particular group
or society --it is said. This conception would determine or codetermine, for
example, 'the competences and qualifications everyone eligible for a
position has to possess'. But now, it is also argued that often 'elements
are included in the definition which have no, or merely a remote, connection
with the proper fulfillment of the particular position'. The matter
discussed in this context is that people over thirty-five years of age are
excluded from eligibility for certain jobs. Thus elements which are properly
speaking irrelevant in respect of a certain requirement turn out to be
frequently included in a particular group or society's conception
nevertheless. One such qualification which can be irrelevant (altho not
doxastically to judge by the phenomenologist's own assumptions) is
being-35-years-of-age, if the focus of relevancy is merely the eligibility
for a position. To notice this means, however, that the phenomenologist does
take cognizance of the fact, albeit unwittingly, that doxastic relevancy is
something else than relevancy proper after all. Especially when 'e also
speaks of 'fictitious schemes of relevances' 'imself 'e cannot but admit
that doxastic relevancy is one thing, and objective relevancy quite another.
This example should underline again that (at least) the relevancy of
discrimination is not a matter of belief but an entirely objective notion in
the sense given here.



5.3.4  FACTUAL-MODAL OR NORMATIVE?


We have started treating relevancy in itself as a factual notion, that is, a
notion describing the presence or absence of a factual relation -- or at
least a nonnormative relation. (To be precise: relevancy refers to a
relation which can be looked upon from a factual, modal or normative
perspective.) Like truth, relevancy in itself is not normative, and the term
relevant in itself has, or can be given, a purely conceptual, nonevaluative
meaning. It is simply a fact that something is true or not (in general, or
when uttered at a particular time and place), and it is simply a fact that
something is relevant or not (with respect to a certain goal or other
directional entity). Or, if relevancy has a built-in modality, it is simply
a modal or factual-modal condition that something is relevant or not with
respect to a certain focus of relevancy. This factual-modal status of
relevancy should not be confused with its objective status. Even if one
believed relevancy to be a normative concept (or value), one could still
disagree on its being subjective or objective, that is, independent of what
people believe to be the case about it.

Whereas truth itself may be treated as a factual notion, it is normative (to
say) that it is wrong to tell a falsehood or to purposely tell a falsehood.
Similarly, whereas relevancy may be treated as a factual or factual-modal
notion, it is normative (to say) that it is wrong to make an irrelevant
distinction in respect of an accepted goal, or to purposely or knowingly do
so. But while relevancy itself may be something purely factual or
descriptive, it could be argued that moral relevancy is of a normative or
evaluative nature because of the kind of goal or focus involved. It would,
then, not be the nature of the relevance relation itself, but the moral goal
which makes it evaluative. Since so many aspects are involved as soon as the
general notion of relevancy is restricted to a moral or other goal, it is
more important to agree on the underlying structure and the choice of
criterions and goals made, or to be made, than on a certain form of
relevancy being factual, modal, normative or evaluative. Like the classical
conceptions and controversies about form versus content, the antithesis
between the factual-modal or descriptive and the normative or evaluative may
not be of much use anymore with respect to the intricacies of relevancy.

In a sense discriminational relevancy is as factual a concept as relevancy
in general because discriminational does not in any way typify the focus of
relevancy (more than relevancy itself does, and only with respect to minimum
requirements). However, it is a relevancy principle which makes all
relevancy normative, and whether this principle is a weak one with strong
criterions of relevance (or irrelevance, for that matter), or a strong one
with weak criterions, effectively amounts to the same. So far as the
relevance merely depends on the criterions, it could still be considered a
purely descriptive affair, but it turns out that the extent of the
factual-modal part of one and the same normative system of relevance may be
taken larger or smaller, so long as the principle is changed with it (as we
will see in the next division). This implies that relevancy, and certainly
the relevancy of discrimination with its specific criterions (probably not
unlike moral relevancy), may not be that purely factual (or modal) a concept
after all. The normative content will, then, have been infused into one or
more of the criterions of relevancy, or otherwise in our willingness to
accept those criterions. We will return to this issue later, but it should
again show the danger (if not futility) of trying to answer fundamental
questions in isolation.



5.3.5  WHOLLY CONSEQUENTIALISTIC?


In chapter 7 of this book we will discuss several types of
normative-philosophical theories. We will then see that many ethical
philosophers distinguish consequentialist from deontological (or other)
theories. Consequentialism refers to the theory that the ultimate standard
of what is right or wrong is a set of one or more nonmotivational values
which are brought into being. (Nonmotivational is added here to distinguish
them from values such as virtue, praiseworthiness and, perhaps, courage.)
Good and evil are defined in terms of these basic values and an act is
right, consequentialistically speaking, if, and only if, it (or a rule under
which it falls) produces, or is intended to produce, at least as great a
future balance of good over evil as any available alternative. Deontology,
on the other hand, refers to a theory in which an action or rule is said to
have certain intrinsic right-making characteristics other than the value it
brings into existence, that is, other than its good or bad consequences.
(Deontology, which derives from deon, that is, duty, is also defined in such
a way that every ethical theory which is not exclusively consequentialistic
would be 'deontological', but this definition is not justifiable, neither
from a systematic nor from an etymological point of view.)

It is evident that a system of goal-dependent relevancy has a plainly
consequentialistic structure, especially when the focus is a value such as
the best quality of work to be done. Yet, this does not mean that the
goal(s) aimed at could not be of a deontological nature, or be defined in
deontological terms. For example, if a theorist argues that it is a 'morally
relevant fact' that someone breaks 'er promise when 'e has entered into a
(quasi-)contractual obligation to pay, the fact in question is relevant in
respect of a 'deontic' goal, namely keeping one's promise. Moreover, the
relevancy is then obviously of the moral type because of the very nature of
the goal. As a deontic goal, an obligation or duty can be represented by a
variable (with at least two values): 0 for not keeping one's duty, and 1 for
keeping it, or vice versa. Some moral philosophers might argue that if at
least one goal is of a deontic nature, the total complex of relation and
goal(s) --the superstructure with the base on which it is erected-- is not
(exclusively) consequentialistic. The hidden premise in this argument is
that the descriptions of the actions deontic goals prescribe or forbid, are
not themselves value-dependent.

The question is whether any description of reality can ever be given without
that description being (believed to be) relevant to a certain purpose.
Someone would have to maintain that this purpose is at least once of a
deontic nature again. It may also be that the deontologist's description of
a certain action or omission immediately depends on one or more nondeontic
goals. Take, for example, a party which is going to be attended by a great
number of people, and suppose that a particular person has been invited to
that party just like so many other people. Now, suppose too that this person
has told the host that 'e would come, but that 'e actually does not go,
while having no overriding (deontological) excuse for not going. The fact is
that because of the large number of people attending, the host will hardly
miss 'im, or not at all. There are people --deontologists among them-- who
would not call this "a case of breaking a promise", but they obviously
refrain from describing the invited person's omission in this way, since 'er
not doing what 'e said 'e would do does not harm anybody (or less than 'e
would harm 'imself by going). This interest in the absence of any harm
involved, or of minimizing the harm involved, is itself a consequentialist
consideration tho. This may also be the very reason why in such a situation
many people may not even expect someone to necessarily do what 'e says 'e
will do.

Both analytical and phenomenological thinkers have emphasized how much the
typification and description of reality depend on what the one who does the
description believes to be relevant. The phenomenologist, for instance, may
write that someone's 'types were formed in the main by others, predecessors
or contemporaries' and that the sum-total of the various typifications
constitutes a frame of reference in terms of which not only the
sociocultural but also the physical world has to be interpreted'. This issue
of the relevance of descriptions must play an even greater part with respect
to evaluative concepts. One may, then, not simply presume anymore that, for
example, (the duty) not to steal is an (ultimately) deontological goal
because stealing is as value-laden as property is. As has been pointed out
in the previous chapter, the crux of the matter is what kind of taking is,
or should be described as, 'stealing'.

We shall not try to answer the question whether relevancy also ultimately
remains a consequentialist construct, even in deontological theories. As we
have not yet uttered a judgment on the goal(s) (moral or not) one ought to
choose, the answer to that question is of little interest here. What is far
more interesting at this place is whether relevance is automatically part of
a normative system, if it is consequentialist (or insofar as it is
consequentialist). One such system is utilitarianism in which the sole goal
or ultimate value is (the maximization of) happiness and/or the minimization
of unhappiness. Relevancy is, then, definitely not a (typically) utilitarian
concept, since it requires in no way happiness or utility to be a focus of
relevancy, let alone the only focus. But does a utilitarian system by itself
require relevance or --to be more precise-- discriminational relevance with
respect to happiness or utility? We will see that if the promotion of
utility, or the likelihood of its occurrence is merely a question of the
correlation between an action or rule and a change of conditions, a
consequentialist system such as utilitarianism can collide with requirements
of discriminational relevance even tho utility would be the sole focus of
relevancy. This has indeed happened, and particularly violently so when
utility is not regarded as the sole focus. To avoid it one must either add
an independent principle of discriminational relevance to the system --to
say nothing about one or more additional goals-- or incorporate this
principle into the definition of consequentialism, especially into the
meaning of bringing about or producing a value. The question why correlation
is no proof of discriminational relevance in itself is one we will deal with
in the next division.



5.4  CRITERIONS OF DISCRIMINATIONAL IRRELEVANCE


5.4.1  INCONSISTENCE AS ONE OF FIVE CRITERIONS


An empirical supposition underlying our interest in relevancy is that people
did, do and can make distinctions which are irrelevant and that they could
or can decide not to make these distinctions, or to make only distinctions
which they believe to be relevant (and which, ideally speaking, are
relevant). The endeavor to analyze relevancy presupposes furthermore that
for quite a number of people relevance actually does play a role as a
principle, not only in conversational cooperation, but also with respect to
the making of distinctions (assuming that the former would not amount to the
making of distinctions as well). That is why we cannot divorce the question
of the meaning and criterions of relevancy from the formulation of its
principle. Two extremes to be avoided are to require too little, so that
everything is relevant or can deceitfully be 'made' relevant, or to require
too much, so that no material distinction is or can be taken to be relevant.
This would contradict our basic, existential postulate and annihilate the
principle of relevance altogether. With it, it would exhaust such notions as
those of equality and fairness or justice of all meaning insofar as they
depend on the relevancy of making distinctions.

Two general criterions playing a role in any criterial theory or formulation
of a definition are consistence and noncircularity. Taking consistence as a
test of relevancy, a distinction on the basis of a certain factor which is
claimed to be relevant has to be made consistently all the time in respect
of the same focus. For example, if income is a relevant factor with respect
to the amount of taxes to be paid, then it is a relevant factor at all times
for all taxpayers (possibly together with other factors). Consistence
itself, however, does not prove relevance. A government, for instance, may
consistently exclude all those who do not speak and write the 'standard'
language from official positions, yet this in itself does not make the
distinction of language (dialect, sociolect, idiolect or spelling) relevant
with respect to the work to be performed in these positions. This limitation
is not different from that of a coherence test of truth. In other words:
consistence is not a criterion of relevance in the sense of a sufficient
condition; it is only inconsistence that is a criterion of irrelevance in
this sense.

Many a traditional theorist has believed that the dictum that 'equals should
be treated equally and unequals unequally', or that 'similar cases should be
treated in a similar fashion' would express a principle of justice. This is
a grave mistake, unless justice does not mean more than consistence. But if
justice is defined in such a way that the distinctions drawn must also be
relevant, or that exceptions made must be made on relevant grounds, treating
equals equally and unequals unequally does not guarantee relevance and
justice by any manner of means. Only the reverse may be true: if the making
of the distinction or exception is relevant, then those who are equal on
each side of the divide should be treated equally. A classical philosopher
may thus treat all 'er compatriots (the equals) in exactly the same fashion
and all 'barbarian aliens' (the unequals) also in exactly the same fashion,
yet this does not prove that the distinction between compatriots and aliens
would be relevant, and that it would be just to treat aliens in another way
than compatriots, even when done consistently. Such reasoning is fallacious,
because it confuses consistence as a necessary with consistence as a
sufficient criterion of relevance, and indirectly of justice.

Whereas it is relatively clear what consistence and inconsistence mean, the
notion of 'circularity' is a much vaguer one. Strictly speaking, we are
faced with circularity when the relevancy of a distinction depends
truth-conditionally on the relevancy of this distinction itself (or on the
belief in the relevance or irrelevance of this distinction). We will deal
with this case when the difference is made within the focus of relevancy
itself. However, if the relevancy of a distinction is dependent on another
kind of irrelevant distinction drawn within the focus, or drawn in a
(discriminatory) attitude or practise with which it is correlated, the
circularity is there from the point of view of relevancy in general but,
perhaps, not from the point of view of one person making or not making a
distinction. Circularity is still too vague a concept in a disciplinary
environment which is not purely truth-conditional to be used itself as a
criterion of relevancy, altho it plays a role in a number of criterions
which are of a more substantive type than inconsistence.

A criterion of irrelevance is a means to falsify judgments of relevance. The
five criterions to be proposed in this division for the falsification of
judgments of discriminational relevance are:
  1.  the distinction made is not consistently applied;
  2.  the focus (goal or other directional entity on which the relevancy
      depends) is fake;
  3.  the focus is genuine but the relevancy with respect to this focus is
      based on a correlation or difference in correlations only (like in the
      case of statistical relevance), and therefore shows at the most the
      possibility of discriminational relevance with respect to groups or
      categories, and the chance of this relevance with respect to persons
      or members of these categories;
  4.  the focus is genuine but the relevancy with respect to this focus
      depends on the existence (past/present/future; real/expected) of an
      (other) attitude or practise in which a nonrelevant distinction is
      made by the person 'imself or the persons themselves;
  5.  as 4., but now by others.
The first criterion does away with cases of partial relevancy. The second
criterion should do away with cases of fake relevancy, the third with cases
of pseudofactual relevancy, the fourth and fifth (if accepted) with cases of
circular relevancy. By nonrelevant we shall mean what is obviously
irrelevant, partially relevant, purportedly relevant in respect of a fake
focus, pseudofactually relevant or circularly relevant. Moreover, we shall
use the word determinant as a generic term for criterion (of relevancy),
focus (of relevancy) and factor (of distinction).



5.4.2  FAKE FOCUSES OF RELEVANCY


A distinction is only relevant if the focus to which it is thought to be
relevant is a genuine determinant, that is, a determinant which does not
itself depend on one or more nonrelevant differences made. If we allowed for
fake focuses every distinction would be 'relevant', because people could
choose a discriminatory attitude or practise itself as a focus then. Thus
every distinction of ethnicity would be 'relevant' if the promotion of
ethnocentrism itself could be chosen, and were accepted, as the focal
determinant to establish the 'relevance' of the distinction. If
ethnocentrism is defined as the attitude or practise of making irrelevant
distinctions on the basis of the ethnic group to which somebody belongs, the
underlying 'reasoning' could even logically be rejected as circular.

But assume, someone gives another definition of ethnocentrism or formulates
'er goal without making use of the notion of relevancy or a term synonymous
to (ir)relevant. For example, 'e says "my goal is promoting the happiness or
well-being of ethnic group A and/or the suffering of all other ethnic
groups". In a purely truth-conditional sense such 'reasoning' is not
circular now. In order to achieve 'er aim, the distinction to be made
between ethnic group A and all other ethnic groups in the specific situation
concerned is 'relevant'. Tho not so obvious as before, the 'reasoning'
behind this attitude is still unfounded, because the distinction made under
the specific circumstances is the same as the one made in the formulation of
the goal itself, and therefore stands or falls with the relevancy of the
distinction made within the goal. (Note that this conclusion cannot be drawn
if the person's goal had been everybody ought to promote the happiness of
'er own group.) An ethnic group in itself is not a goal, and must be
distinguished on the basis of some factor, but if that factor is happiness,
or suffering for that matter, as mentioned in the formulation of the goal,
it is not relevant to distinguish on the basis of ethnicity (or race or
species) between sentient beings in that the happiness (or suffering) of the
one should be promoted and not that of the other. (However, questions of
intensity, amplitude and life plans may play a role in assessing the
implications of this standpoint, but irrespective of ethnicity.) If there is
no other factor on the basis of which the distinction between ethnic group A
and all other groups is relevant, the so-called 'relevance' is unfounded as
it is 'relevance' with respect to a goal in which an irrelevant distinction
has already been drawn. Such a goal is a fake focus of relevancy.

The nonrelevant distinction made on the basis of the same factor which is
said to be relevant in respect of a certain focal determinant may also be
made in the phrasing of the goal. Thus when someone claims that 'e is
'justified in refusing to employ a male au pair girl or a female foreman'
needing a good au pair girl or foreman is 'er (fake) focus and sex 'er
factor. However, the sexual distinction has already been drawn underhandedly
in the focus itself, which should have been needing a good au pair (person)
or foreperson in the first place. Those who take this kind of 'reasoning'
seriously must be extremely antiegalitarian.

Not seldom is the fallacy involved simply a case of 'factor fuzzing'. For
example, when helping students and senior citizens (say, by charging them
less for a service) is given as focus and poverty as factor. In the focal
determinant the distinction is made then on the basis of age and
studentship, presumably because the people mentioned are believed to have no
work and no earnings. But this distinction is not relevant, if poverty were
really the reason to help people, because then the focus should be helping
poor people. Some students, and probably a greater number of people over 55
or 65, may have moderate to high incomes or assets, and other poor people
are neither students nor senior citizens.

A focus of relevancy may also be corrective instead of genuine or fake. What
is often called "positive", "compensatory" or "reverse discrimination" or
"corrective justice" could be said to amount to making a distinction which
is relevant in respect of a corrective focus. If the distinction is made on
the basis of F, the focus is, for example, the correction of damage suffered
by the person or group formerly or elsewhere discriminated against on the
basis of F. Altho the distinction may not be relevant in respect of the
usual, undisputed focuses (such as the quality of professional work to be
done), it is relevant in respect of the goal of correction. Hence, if there
is disagreement about the legitimacy of a corrective treatment, it may not
be about the relevancy of the distinction itself, but rather about the
legitimacy of the focal determinant(s) chosen or to be chosen.



5.4.3  PSEUDOFACTUAL RELEVANCY


Philosophers of science have argued that descriptions of statistical
correlations or differences in correlations do not explain anything. We will
see that they are no proof of discriminational relevance either. Two
examples should show immediately why discriminational relevance cannot be
proved by means of a statistical correlation:
(a)  a correlation between gender and physical strength
Let us assume that (on the average) men are stronger, maybe even much
stronger, than women. And let us assume that a certain type of work is much
better done by a strong body (a physically strong person) than by a weak
body. It will be true, then, that on the average men do or will do the work
better than women. Nonetheless, the factor gender is not relevant at all in
respect of the quality of the work to be performed: the factor physical
strength is, and this determinant only happens to be correlated with the
factor gender. To maintain that it would be relevant to distinguish people
on the basis of sex with regard to this kind of job is but too familiar a
case of fuzzing the factorial picture again.
(b)  a correlation between race and intelligence
Let us assume that (on the average) members of race A are more intelligent
than members of race B. And furthermore, that a certain kind of work can
only be done well by intelligent people, and that more intelligent people
will do the job better. It is true, then, that on the average members of
race A will do a better job than members of race B. But --'truth is no
excuse for irrelevance'-- this does by no means prove that it would be
relevant to distinguish applicants for the position vacant who belong to
race A from those who belong to race B. The factor intelligence is (believed
to be) relevant as a factor of distinction and this factor would only happen
to be correlated with the factor race (so far as races A and B are
concerned). (As has been said before: "whatever the cause of difference in
average IQs, it provides no justification for racial segregation in
education or any other field". )

Both examples clearly have two different aspects:
(1)  What is the relevant factor of distinction? A factor correlated
herewith is not (discriminationally) relevant for being correlated with it
-- as outlined above.
(2)  Is a group average relevant or individual value? A full-time post is
filled with one person only, and therefore it is solely individual value
that counts, whether it be the person's strength in the first example or 'er
intelligence in the second one. Only individual discrimination on the basis
of physical strength and intelligence respectively would be relevant in
these instances; categorical discrimination founded on whatever factor would
be irrelevant, when the focus is not so much the quality of work to be done
in general, but to be done by one particular person in one particular
position.

It is evident that where group averages are not relevant --as in the
examples above-- they are still indicators of the chance that the relevant
quality may be found in the individual concerned. When considering a male
applicant for the first position mentioned above, the chance that he will be
strong enough to do the work is bigger than when considering a female
applicant (granted that our statistics are correct). Yet, this modal
condition is not discriminationally relevant in itself --only the
applicant's actual physical strength is. In fact, a particular male
applicant may be weaker than a particular female one. That is why we shall
call taking this chance itself as discriminationally relevant "a judgment of
pseudofactual relevance".

Whereas statistics cannot prove discriminational relevance, it can prove
discriminational irrelevance. A factor does not derive its relevance from a
contingent correlation with another factor which is relevant, but if a
factor is (believed to be) relevant, there must be a connection between this
factor and the variable of the focus. This is so, because a relevant factor
must make a difference to the occurrence of an event, or to the probability
of that occurrence. However, to move from this true proposition to the
belief that a factor is relevant, if there is a difference in occurrence, is
even invalid in standard non-relevancy or nonrelatedness logics. Putting it
informally: the fact that there is a difference is no proof that the factor
concerned makes it, but if the factor concerned makes it, it must be there
(if not instantaneously, then shortly after). Therefore relevant is what
makes a difference with respect to a certain focus. (The reason why this
definition is rather meager is simply that it must hold independently of the
kind of determinants chosen.)

Any doxastic relevance can be disproved by showing that there is no
difference, especially no difference in statistical correlations. This is
why 'statistical relevance' is only an index of the possibility of
discriminational relevance with regard to classes. If a factor is
statistically irrelevant, it must also be discriminationally irrelevant, but
if it is statistically relevant, it need not be discriminationally relevant.
The possibility of discriminational relevancy is no actual discriminational
relevancy in itself. Therefore it is not less pseudofactual than the chance
of relevance, when that is mistakenly believed to be factually relevant with
regard to the focus at issue.

When we say that a certain factor 'makes' a difference in respect of a
certain goal and is therefore relevant, we distinguish this making from mere
being or becoming. Thus, making in this sense must not be confused with
producing as generally used in consequentialist considerations. A particular
rule might 'produce' more gains or happiness, for instance, than losses or
unhappiness for the population concerned. If so, then a (rule-)utilitarian
would have to recommend that rule. But this rule might be that no-one of
group G is to be allowed in certain types of public places or to attend
certain kinds of official functions. (Group G may consist of, say, disabled
individuals or homosexual couples.) Especially if people of group G are in
the minority this might 'benefit' the majority of the population, because
they would have more room available, and maybe, because they are so biased
that they do not feel comfortable in the presence of such people. On this
assumption the loss of freedom (and happiness) of the minority in question
would on balance be outweighed by the 'gains' for the majority, and this
means that such a rule would be justifiable on rule-utilitarian grounds.

But would the introduction of the rule only correspond to a difference (an
increase) in utility, or would it also make this difference? If the
statistics are correct, there would indeed be a correlation, namely that
diminishing the number of people of group G in places of type T would
increase the total utility. Yet, such a correlation does in no way
demonstrate the discriminational relevance of the distinction between people
belonging and not belonging to group G, even not, or particularly not, with
respect to the factor utility or happiness. To make it plausible that the
factor in question (such as disability or sexual preference) would be
discriminationally relevant, it must at least be demonstrated too that there
is a special explanatory link between this factor and happiness itself. No
doubt, a majority will have more room available by excluding a minority, but
this has nothing to do with the factor on the basis of which a smaller group
of people or bodies is separated from a larger group of people or bodies.
Any factor differentiating a smaller and a larger group would 'produce' this
result. (Take, for example, all people heavier than a certain maximum
weight, or all people lighter than a certain minimum weight.) That is why a
utilitarian or other consequentialist who speaks of "producing" or "bringing
about a certain difference" does not necessarily refer to 'making a
difference' in the relevant(ist) sense. As mentioned in the previous
division (section 5.3.5) this requires an additional principle or criterion
of relevance.

It may be that a rule which excludes, for example, a certain minority from
certain places would increase the total utility in a social system, because
the majority of the people do not like the members of that minority, and
feel happier when they are not around. In such a case it does seem that
there is an explanatory link between the factor on the basis of which the
minority is distinguished and the factor happiness by way of most people's
attitudes towards the members of that minority. If these attitudes did
indeed make the difference here, the relevance of the factor on the basis of
which the minority is distinguished would not be pseudofactual. But the
question is now whether these very attitudes themselves do not depend on
nonrelevance (and/or false belief). If they are biased, they certainly do.



5.4.4  DEPENDENCE ON INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL NONRELEVANCE


It is high time to have a further look at the principle which has made us
interested in the phenomenon of relevancy in the first place. Most generally
speaking it is expressed in the idea that relevance is something good (more
technically speaking, normatively superior) and irrelevance something bad
(normatively inferior). At this point one may wonder whether the existence
of a distinction is not yet presupposed then, or that the idea is only
concerned with distinctions which do already exist (are already made or on
the verge of being made). Only in the former case are sins of omission as
bad as sins of commission.

Another question is that of the generality of the idea. Does it express a
personal or a universal principle of relevance? If we confine ourselves to
the relevancy of distinctions, the formulations of these two versions of the
same principle differ as follows:
  *  personal version of the principle of discriminational relevance: one
     should not make a distinction which is not relevant (and one should
     make a distinction which is relevant);
  *  universal version of the principle of discriminational relevance: one
     should not make a distinction which is not relevant or the relevance of
     which depends on a nonrelevant distinction made (or on the not making
     of a relevant distinction, and one should make a distinction which is
     relevant unless this relevance depends on a nonrelevant distinction
     made, or on the not making of a relevant distinction).
Now, universal adoption of either the personal or the universal version of
the principle would make no difference, but the difference may be enormous
if neither version is adopted by all people. Someone adopting the personal
instead of the universal version might reason that one can only decide about
what one shall do or not do oneself, and that one must take the decisions of
other people as givens (as 'imposed relevances' in phenomenological terms).
'E might say "even tho other people's attitudes and practises are a flagrant
violation of the requirement of relevance, i cannot help it, and those
attitudes and practises may be most relevant in respect of a genuine
objective of myself, altho personally i do not approve of them". Granted
that this person really could not change other people's attitudes and
practises --an assumption which can be challenged--, 'e still has not
provided a reason to adopt the personal instead of universal version of the
principle of relevance. Also the universal version presupposes personal
freedom, the freedom to decide oneself what distinction to draw, and what
distinction not to draw. It only provides an additional criterion to base
that freely taken decision upon, namely that it should not depend on
nonrelevance.

Where causality plays a significant part, those adopting the universal
version take the situation or the conditions to be considered in the widest
perspective possible. They take care that the causal connection on which the
relevance of a distinction depends, does not involve a (discriminatory)
attitude or practise of making a nonrelevant distinction on the basis of the
same or another factor. Where this discriminatory attitude or practise is
found in the person or group itself, the relevancy is dependent on internal
nonrelevance. A criterion to do away with internal nonrelevance must even be
accepted by someone espousing the personal version of the relevance
principle. For example, if someone dislikes members of a certain group and
this dislike rests on fake and pseudofactual relevancy (and/or false
belief), then the exclusion of members of that group by 'imself and for
'imself may be 'relevant', if the focus is 'er own happiness or well-being.
Yet, such relevancy depends on a dislike which is based on internal
nonrelevance (and/or falsehood), a dislike which may be the result of a
discriminatory upbringing or milieu. The past and present nonrelevant
distinctions underlying the person's dislike of members of the group in
question should itself already have been abstained from in the first place,
even according to the personal version of the principle of discriminational
relevance.

A person rejecting the universal version of the principle of relevance will
actually reject every criterion doing away with external nonrelevance. Thus
'e may not only assign relevance to other people's discriminatory attitudes
and practises but also perpetuate (knowingly or not) these very attitudes
and practises by making 'relevant' distinctions which take them into
account. Some theorists call this "rational discrimination": a form of
discrimination which is the result of rational deliberation, rather than of
mere prejudice. In comparison to the latter, 'irrational' form of
discrimination it would be easy to combat, they say, by legislation imposing
big fines on discriminators. The mere possibility of such a fine would
already tip the scale of the 'rational thinker' in favor of
nondiscrimination. But our present concern is not whether a certain kind of
making distinctions may and should be forbidden by law or not; our present
concern is whether this kind of making distinctions is a form of
'discrimination' to be condemned from the point of view of the relevance
principle regardless of whether the distinctions in question happen to be
legal or not in a particular country. By suggesting that 'rational
discrimination' would be relatively easy to combat it is already assessed
and condemned as something immoral or bad. Such a condemnation makes
implicit use of the universal version of the discriminational relevance
principle, according to which not only dependence on internal but also on
external nonrelevance is indicative of imperfection or normative
inferiority.


5.4.4.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


THE WORLD, ONE AND UNIFORM

In no respect
the world is one and uniform.*
In every irrelevant respect
the world remains one and uniform.
In a relevant respect
at least one distinction can be made,
which only then makes it biform,
which only then makes it multiform.
In infinitely many other respects
the world is one and uniform.


  [*: if the world is not considered at all, not any distinction is drawn
      with respect to this world, that is, neither relevant nor irrelevant] 


----------------------------------------------------------------------------



5.5  TRUTH AND RELEVANCE ON PRINCIPLE


5.5.1  DISCRIMINATIONAL RELEVANCY BY ANALOGY WITH TRUTH


To make a relevant or irrelevant distinction is one thing, to intend to make
it quite another: someone may make an irrelevant distinction while intending
to make a relevant one. Similarly, to make a false statement is not always
the same as intending to make a false statement. We do not even call someone
"a liar" who merely utters a falsehood. A scientist, for instance, whose
hypothesis turns out to be false is not a 'liar' because 'e always did as if
it were true. To be called "a liar" 'e must have had the intention to
deceive or to create a false impression. The present language does not have
an analogous, simple expression with respect to acts of distinction, that
is, for intentionally or knowingly making an irrelevant distinction, or it
must be the word discrimination itself when the intention of making the
irrelevant distinction is incorporated into its meaning.

Underlying the wrongness of lying is obviously the wrongness of
intentionally making an untrue statement, or rather the normative
imperfectness of falsity and the perfectness of truth. A person might lie to
make someone else happy but if this is the right thing to do, it is only so
for eudaimonist reasons. Even if it is right to make someone happy, for
example, by creating an untrue impression or belief, it remains wrong to
knowingly or intentionally make a false statement (and also to carelessly do
this). Similarly, underlying the wrongness of (intentionally and/or
carelessly) discriminating is the imperfectness of irrelevance and the
perfectness of relevance. Discrimination may also make a person or sentient
being unhappy, or happy, but this is again a eudaimonist consideration, and
purely on the basis of a eudaimonist calculus discrimination would be
neither right nor wrong as discrimination -- it would all be contingent on
the total balance of happiness over unhappiness.

Form the point of view of the relevance principle alone all manifestations
of discrimination are equally objectionable, whether a particular entity or
class is treated as inferior and excluded or ignored, or whether is is
treated as superior and made exclusive. The same holds for the making of
nonrelevant distinctions, not on the basis of one particular factor or
cluster of factors, but between different factors or clusters of factors.
This is not to imply, of course, that all these forms of making nonrelevant
distinctions are equally harmful in practise. On the contrary: a nonrelevant
distinction may be entirely harmless, or may even be made to avoid harming
someone. In that, again, it is not different from a lie. The point is,
however, that a special interest in harmlessness would oblige us to adopt
some kind of eudaimonist or related principle as well. But if relevancy is
to be an independent notion, such a principle should, if endorsed, furnish
the focus of relevancy or one of its focuses. If it is the only one (as in
utilitarianism) no relevant distinction would be harmful to the whole of all
sentient beings of all times. But then, someone adopting such a scheme would
not be interested in the harm done to individual sentient beings, and
especially not in a large imbalance in their feelings of happiness or the
satisfaction of their interests.

Paradoxically, the very harm done to particular persons or groups by certain
practises does not make these practises objectionable in themselves in
utilitarianism if they are to the advantage of the whole. To avoid these
consequences of utilitarianism other determinants are needed like equality
in well-being and, perhaps, the maximization of the well-being of the
worst-off. But having adopted one or more of these other goals, it would be
inconsistent to evaluate the diverse forms of discrimination exclusively by
their being more or less harmful. This would lead us straight back to a
utilitarian scheme. Consequently, in every nonutilitarian doctrine
recognizing truth and relevance as separate, basic principles lies and
discriminatory actions or attitudes may be equally wrong or bad, even when
they are not equally harmful, or not harmful at all.

Endorsing the principle of truth(fulness) a lie is wrong --as noticed
before-- regardless of its subject-matter, that is, regardless of what the
sentence uttered is about. But endorsing the principle of discriminational
relevance a nonrelevant distinction made, or discrimination, is also wrong
regardless of its subject-matter, that is, regardless of the goal at issue
and the factor or cluster of factors on the basis of which the distinction
is made. Just as the subject-matter of a lie can be any untrue proposition,
so the subject-matter of a discriminatory attitude or practise can be any
nonrelevant distinction (or class resulting from such a distinction). It is
wrong to say, for example, that there is a relation between race and
intelligence, or race and musicality, if there is no such relation (or to
say that there is no relation between those factors, while knowing that
there is one). This is not wrong because of the subject of the conversation,
not because the lie is a racial lie, but because lying or making untrue
statements is wrong. (Note that the noun lie is also used when the statement
is believed to be true by the speaker.) Similarly, it is wrong to
distinguish between races if the distinction is irrelevant (or to refuse to
distinguish if the distinction is relevant while acting nevertheless). This
is not wrong because of the object of discrimination, that is to say, the
factorial basis of the distinction, but because discriminating itself, or
making irrelevant distinctions, is wrong.

To intentionally or carelessly say something about the female sex or the
male sex, or about the relation between them, that is not true is also
wrong. This is not wrong --again-- because one says something about the
female or male sex, but because saying something which one knows to be
untrue, or which is not likely to be true, is wrong (if said as if it were
true). That the lie is, then, a sexual lie, is not to the point. Similarly,
to intentionally or carelessly make an irrelevant distinction between males
and females is wrong. But this sexism is not wrong because the distinction
is one between males and females (let alone because it is to the
disadvantage of one of both sexes), but because knowingly, intentionally or
carelessly making an irrelevant distinction, or a distinction which is not
likely to be relevant, is wrong.

In short: racism, sexism, and so on, are not wrong because of the factors
concerned or because of the object of discrimination, but because of the
nonrelevance of the distinction made (at least insofar as the nonrelevance
is a necessary criterion of its wrongness). But this means that any
normative doctrine which confines attention to the wrongness of racism and
sexism, and maybe a few more, similar, attitudes and practises, is as faulty
(and irrational) as one condemning only lies about, say, other ethnic groups
or the opposite sex, and about one's own marital status and income, and
perhaps a few more kinds of lie. And just as a lie to someone's advantage is
as bad as a lie to someone's disadvantage (judging by the principle of truth
alone), racism which favors one's own race is as bad as racism which
disfavors it, gynocentrism as bad as androcentrism, a state which imposes
the symbols of our own ideology on everyone as bad as a state which imposes
the symbols of other people's ideology on us and everyone else, and so on
and so forth. It is the obvious irrelevance, or the partial, fake,
pseudofactual or circular relevancy of a distinction made which is
inherently bad, regardless of the factor concerned, just as it is the
falsity of a statement which is inherently bad, regardless of the subject of
discourse.

Ethical theorists have usually understood the importance of truth but the
general support for relevance as a principle, maxim or requirement which can
be found in linguistic pragmatics in addition to the support for truth does
not exist in traditional ethics. Yet, for those who are specifically
interested in the norms and values of the ground-world, relevancy
(particularly the relevancy of discrimination) plays a role of paramount
importance. Discriminational relevancy may even make a separate notion of
moral relevancy superfluous dependent on the normative doctrine espoused. A
principle, maxim or requirement of discriminational relevance does not only
cover all questions of discrimination (altho not necessarily solving them),
but also many, or all, aspects of equality, fairness, (distributive) justice
and universalization. In spite of this, there may certainly be fundamental
discrepancies in the application of these divergent ideas and principles.
Those endorsing a principle of universalizability, for instance, tend to
start from a specific maxim and try to ascertain then whether or not it is
universalizable.

Now, it follows from the definition of universalizability --see 5.1.2-- that
the principle of universalizability attaches a lot of weight to the
distinction made in each maxim under consideration (namely between x and
non-x, or everything which is like x and not like x). It takes these
distinctions as a starting point. But such distinctions which are already
made in ordinary language (with words for 'x', or for 'being-like-x') are
traditionally but too readily accepted as 'normal' or 'natural'. All the
distinctions have first been made, as it were, and their relevance is then
examined afterwards, while the burden of proof is made to rest with those
objecting that a distinction drawn is irrelevant. When endorsing the
relevance principle, on the other hand, the procedure is quite the other way
around: the distinction is not made until is is (proved or believed to be)
relevant (unless one would opt for the different, unless-approach). The end
result of universalization and the making of relevant distinctions should be
the same, but from the standpoint of the relevance principle
universalization is a process of repristination in which the original
oneness which should not have been divided in the first place (in the
language or in the specific maxim) is restored again.

Altho the end results should be the same it is obvious that the principle of
relevance and that of universalizability work in opposite directions. It
would require a separate study to look at all the resemblances and
differences between adopting a principle of universalizability or equality
or justice on the one hand, and a principle of discriminational relevance
with, for example, equality as a focus on the other. What is more
interesting and rewarding from a systematic point of view is to keep sight
of the parallels between truth and relevancy, and the principles lending
these concepts their normative significance.



5.5.2  IN CONVERSATIONS AND IN INFORMATION


According to the cooperative principle everything one says in a conversation
has to be not only relevant but also informative, truthful and perspicuous.
This is entailed by the 'supermaxims' of 'relation' (that is, relevancy),
'quantity', 'quality' and 'manner'. It has been suggested that the
supermaxims of quantity, quality and manner are simply 'subordinated to the
general maxim of relevance' and that the whole general principle of
conversation is 'in fact a principle of relevance rather than a principle of
cooperation'. This suggestion is certainly correct for the supermaxim of
quantity which reads that one should make one's contribution as informative
as is required, and not more informative than is required: this is just
informational relevance. But the suggestion misses the point of the
supermaxim of quality which reads that one should make one's contribution
one which is true.

On the surface it is understandable that someone would argue that a relevant
conversational contribution must also be a true one, and that an untrue
contribution cannot be relevant. Yet, this reasoning is erroneous, since the
entity which is supposed to be relevant is not the same one as the entity
which is supposed to be true. Consider, by way of an example, someone who
says "it's raining" and assume that this proposition or statement is true at
the place and time 'e utters it. It is then true that it is raining, and
false that it is not raining. Now, assume also that the person's
contribution to the conversation may be called "relevant" at the same place
and time. The 'relevance' of the contribution or statement or proposition is
then only a derivative one, because the statement or proposition derives its
relevance from its content in the given context. Is it then the fact that it
is raining itself which is relevant? No, because if it is, or were, relevant
that it rains or rained, it is, or would be, relevant too that it does or
did not rain. What is relevant is the question whether it is raining or not.
In other words, the distinction between raining and not raining. A statement
making use of this distinction is relevant at the time and place concerned
so far as this distinction is concerned. If the speaker had said "it's not
raining", this would have been relevant as well, but then it would have been
false and a violation of the principle of truth (or of the 'supermaxim of
quality', if preferred). Consequently, this principle can definitely not be
dispensed with, even by those who pay the fullest attention to questions of
relevancy.

It has also been argued by certain philosophers of language that the
cooperative principle for conversations is a 'maxim of simple relevance
which would constrain the speaker's choice of utterance, and the hearer's
choice of interpretation, hardly at all'. They would substitute a maxim of
maximal relevance for the cooperative principle. What they are concerned
with is not so much one relevancy relation which plays a role in one context
in a narrow sense (to be compared with the phenomenologist's domain of
relevance) but rather with a multiplicity of relations to different goals or
topics (to be compared with the phenomenologist's system of relevance). (See
for the schematic representation of this view figure I.5.2.3.1 again.) The
underlying idea is that a conversation or discourse involves a sequence of
usually many propositions, and never one proposition (or utterance) in
isolation. This idea does not contradict the conception of 'simple'
relevancy. On the contrary, it builds on it and extends it.

So far as discriminational relevancy is concerned it is not our immediate
concern whether people work in practise with notions of simple relevancy or
with notions of more complex relevancies. What is far more interesting from
this point of view is that the type of relevancy (in any way pragmatic
relevancy) in questions of conversation and information appears to be
discriminational as well. It is again a distinction which is relevant or
not, and it is the presence of this distinction in a statement or
proposition which can make this statement or proposition itself relevant. It
is not only the presence of this distinction in a whole sentence, it starts
with its presence or absence in each separate morpheme (such as the presence
of gender in brother and sister and the absence of it in sib and sibling).
Whether the ultimate relevance lies in the distinction or in the factor is
not important, but given the relevance of the distinction or factor, the
relevance of a morpheme, of a word, of a proposition and of uttering a
proposition derives from it. The same holds for the so-called 'making of a
distinction': making a distinction is relevant because the distinction is
relevant, and not the other way around. Whether a distinction is drawn or
not is not a matter of relevancy but of truth. Granted that a distinction is
relevant, drawing it is relevant, and granted that it is not relevant,
drawing it is not relevant.

Pragmatic relevancy in particular is thus nothing else than a form of
discriminational relevancy in the conversational or informational field.
What we have been calling "discriminational relevancy" hitherto was
basically the discriminational relevancy of the ground-world in which
nonpropositional distinctions exist, and are made, between nonpropositional
entities or classes of such entities. Unlike this form of discriminational
relevancy, the role played by relevancy in questions of conversation and
information can solely be understood against the background of propositional
reality. That is why it is a subject of philosophy of language, of logics,
of philosophy of science and of other disciplines concerned with
communication, thought and valid theorizing. So it has been noticed that it
is not 'of the tradition of science nor of its spirit to give irrelevant
information'. Scientific information, it is said, must be relevant to the
topic, and science is not just a question of citing all the knowledge one
has (even tho the suggestion is part of the etymological origin of the word
science). But if all information and conversation has to be both relevant
and true, it violates the principle of relevance itself to exclusively
emphasize that scientific information and conversation has to be relevant
and true. If it did not violate the principle of relevance, it would imply
that nonscientific information and conversation did not have to be relevant
and true.

Science is merely one of at least four typical modes of thought and verbal
communication. While the principles of truth and relevance are undoubtedly
of great importance in science and --as we have seen-- in philosophy, the
role of these principles, or of certain interpretations thereof, may vary
considerably in other fields of thought. In the next chapter the focus of
our attention will be what characterizes the diverse modes of thought, not
only philosophy and science but also literary art (as well as art in
general) and especially ideology.



6  PARADIGMS OF DISCIPLINARY THOUGHT


6.1  DISCIPLINARY THOUGHT IN GENERAL


6.1.1  ITS PRINCIPLES


In the previous chapters, and especially in the context of our treatment of
propositional knowledge and belief, we have not only talked about
'philosophy', 'ideology' and 'science' but also about 'religion' and
'supernaturalism', about 'scientific knowledge' and 'denominational
thought'. When now taking a closer look at the meaning of such terms as
science and religion, that is, as used by ourselves, we shall not put the
cart before the horse by asking what science is (or what the meaning of
science is), or by asking what religion is (or what the meaning of religion
is). These questions may be interesting from a linguistic or sociological
angle, they need no precise answer when starting from such general concepts
as proposition and theory. On our systematical approach the question is
rather what distinguishes one body of propositions, or of uttered
propositions, from another body of propositions, and what distinguishes one
kind of theory from another kind of theory. Furthermore, we will have to
clarify whether types of propositional entities semantically exclude each
other by definition or whether, perhaps, the one type is to be subsumed
under the other, also by definition. Altho we shall assume an
instrumentalist attitude towards the use of terms like science and religion,
it remains recommendable, of course, to stay as close as possible to the
everyday meaning of such terms. That is, close enough but without mutilating
our own body of thought.

Theorists and theoreticians have always referred to what philosophy,
ideology, science 'and so on' --whatever that may mean-- are, or have in
common, in many different ways. They have spoken of "sides of social life",
"kinds of social activity" or "forms of behavior" (which would also include
production and government). The same people who speak of "kinds of social
activity" also call them "forms of intellectual activity"; this very much
resembles the phrase intellectual undertakings. Other expressions employed
to refer to science, religion, the arts 'and so on' are styles of thought or
kinds of (cultural) symbol system. Since on our ontological construction the
basic element of our own characterization of philosophy, ideology and so on
is the proposition, it is the intellectual aspect, or the fact that we are
dealing with thought, which should provide us with some unity in this muddle
of designata. Accordingly, we take it that 'philosophy' or 'ideology' in our
sense could never exist without thought but that they could exist without
communication -- altho, perhaps, they could not. This is something else than
claiming that philosophy, ideology, and also science, are social activities
in which the presence of thought would be merely contingent. Moreover, even
tho philosophy, ideology and science may be 'social activities' insofar as
the act of thinking, which is language-dependent, is itself called "a social
activity", the description is far too broad as it also encompasses all kinds
of social activity, or sides of social life, which certainly do not belong
to what we are dealing with here, such as organized sports, warfare and
making love together.

The products of philosophy and science may be symbol systems, and in a loose
sense they may be symbol systems themselves, yet also this typification is
too broad, for languages are also symbol systems. And thought itself is then
a symbol system or the production of such a system. This may confirm our
position that there is a necessary relationship between the category to
which philosophy, science, ideology and at least part of the arts belong and
the activity of thinking, but there must be some quality in which these
thought systems differ from other forms of thought. This essential feature
is that philosophy, science, and so on, are modes of thought which are
somehow governed by one or more principles, even if it is 'only' the
principle to create something as beautiful as possible as may (but need not)
be the case in literary undertakings -- and why only? As such they are modes
of thought related to some theory or doctrine. The basics of such a theory
or doctrine can be taught and learned. That is why we shall speak of
"disciplinary thought". Philosophical, scientific, ideological and literary
thought are disciplinary forms of thought in that they all relate to a
particular field of study, or to a 'discipline' in the sense of a subject
which can be taught and learned. Obviously it is not a good story or poem
itself which can be learned but the art or principles of writing a good
story or poem. What these principles are believed to be may differ from
teacher to teacher, yet each teacher's thought itself is disciplinary,
however much the choice of principles or theories may differ.

Nondisciplinary thought is at random or occasional. That does not mean that
it must be false. But if it is true, and not purely observational (if, and
insofar as, this is feasible), it is not yet knowledge but merely belief
which happens to be true. (See 4.3.1.) Since disciplinary thought rests on
at least one principle, it is not at random or occasional. Nevertheless,
like nondisciplinary thought it may still be either true or false. Therefore
it is nonsensical to define principle as general truth; at most a principle
is a general proposition believed to be true, that is, a doxastic truth. It
is better to conceive of a principle as something intended as a rule or
code, not only of practical conduct but also of one's thinking in a
particular field. As something which is meant to guide one's thought, a
principle is then a fundamental assumption or law. (It must not be said that
all thought in all its aspects is guided by principles, for this drains the
concept of 'principle', and of 'discipline', of all meaning.)

Altho knowledge is a form of true disciplinary thought, even true
disciplinary thought need not be knowledge -- it, too, may just happen to be
true. Take, for example, a religion (in the sense of a system of thought)
whose fundamental tenet it is that everything written down in certain
'sacred scriptures' is true. Such a religion is a product or form of
disciplinary thought founded upon a very lucid principle. It would be
unlikely that literally all the propositions in those sacred scriptures
would be false, but it would also be unlikely that a true proposition in one
of those scriptures would be the result of scientific deliberation or
philosophical reflection. Thus according to the religion in question people
should not solely take false propositions as true, but also true ones (the
only requirement being that the pronouncements appear in the chosen
writings). It follows that the system of disciplinary thought concerned does
proclaim things which are true. However, judging by the principles which
lead to knowledge as distinct from nonepistemic belief, their truth is a
mere by-product of the religion's doxastic fundamental tenet.

Disciplinary thought may be said to reflect or constitute a theory or
doctrine. If there exists any difference in meaning between theory and
doctrine, then theory is more often associated with knowledge, and doctrine
with (nonepistemic) belief. For example, theory is sometimes defined as
general or abstract principles of a body of science or as plausible or
scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to
explain phenomena, whereas doctrine has been defined as belief or set of
beliefs which is taught. On the other hand, the main, general and abstract
principles of an art or of a form of art are called "theory" as well, while
a doctrine may be either a system of belief or of knowledge when defined as
principle or whole of principles in a branch of knowledge or system of
belief. In short: we shall use theory and doctrine as synonyms, the sole
difference being, perhaps, that a doctrine may encompass several theories,
and not the other way around. Hence, both a 'theory' and a 'doctrine' may be
a system of nonepistemic belief or of knowledge, and --what is an entirely
different matter-- both may be true or false, let alone relevant or
irrelevant.

Strictly from the point of view of ontology the most important subdivision
of disciplinary thought is that into factual, modal and normative
disciplinary thought. This is a subdivision based on the triadic sphericity
of reality. Disciplinary thought may also be subdivided on the basis of
other factors tho, for example, according to the social function or esthetic
qualities of a theory or body of theories. It is when a mixture of several
of these factors is considered that we arrive at the departments of
disciplinary thought which are generally acknowledged in everyday language,
such as science and philosophy. In the following two sections we shall
discuss four of such departments without claiming to cover all of them.



6.1.2  FOUR DEPARTMENTS: SCIENCE AND IDEOLOGY


By now it has become a worn-out cliche that 'all science is ideological'
(and that solely the speaker's own ideology would be 'scientific'). Even to
say that 'all science is ideological' presupposes that there is a difference
in meaning between science and ideology, that scientific thought is another
aspect of thought, or side of social life, than ideological thought. It may
be true that in practise, when science and ideology are conceived of as
social activities, the person who is involved in scientific activities
(often) does things which are ideological as well, or which can only be
justified or explained in ideological terms. Yet, by distinguishing persons
doing scientific work from other persons it is admitted that there is indeed
something like 'scientific work' which has at least one quality
distinguishing it from all other types of work. And the same applies to
someone thinking or doing something which is ideological. Our first concern
is therefore: what differentiates 'science' and 'ideology'? Whether all
scientists are persons who are at the same time ideologues is, then, a
logically contingent matter, and itself a question of empirical science,
which may or may not be replaced by an empirical presupposition in ideology.

It has been said that the scientist (as scientist) confines 'imself to
explaining 'the facts of experience' or 'how things happen in the world',
that 'er explanations or hypotheses 'can be tested by an appeal to the
facts'. This description is far too simplistic, but it rightly shows the
scientist's primary concern with facts and --in our terminology, especially
where statistics play a significant role-- modal conditions. Nevertheless,
it is often ideology too (whether religious or not) which purports to
explain how things did happen, happen and/or will happen in the world. In
other words: much ideological thought is also about facts, or about factual
and modal conditions. Yet --as has been argued-- the primary function of
ideology is not to explain the world but to support certain interests. On
this view every ideology is not only to the exclusive interest of one class
or other, this is also its very reason for existence. It has been pointed
out, however, that ideology is employed here by the same theorists in at
least three different senses. Firstly, as people's whole system of ideas 'to
describe the world and to express their standards, feelings and purposes'.
Secondly, as all nonscientific disciplinary and all moral or legal thought.
And thirdly, as all nonscientific disciplinary thought and all moral or
legal thought (disciplinary or not) which serves the interests of some class
or group. Subsequently it has been demonstrated that theories which are not
largely speculative or fanciful can serve class interests as well as
theories which are, and that the latter theories need not serve the
interests of a 'class' in the socioeconomic sense. (If class could also
denote the group of people adhering to the ideology in question the entire
claim would obviously lose its force.)

What clearly distinguishes ideology from science also in this debate, is
that ideology is at least partially normative or evaluative, that is,
normative in a doxastic sense, with respect to the ground-world. This is
most evident when theorists refer to the moral and legal concepts or rules
involved in ideological thought. Ideology not merely describes reality as it
is (believed to be), or some aspect of reality, it also propagates adherence
to certain norms and/or values or --as has been said before-- it also
encourages obedience to a moral or legal rule. In the event that the
ideology is successful this results in certain practises and the possible
emergence of a more or less organized social entity. According to one
theorist, 'ideology' must manifest itself simultaneously as a set of ideas
or doctrines, a set of practises and a more or less institutionalized social
group. To call a system of thought "an ideology", however, it is not
necessary from a logical or semantic point of view that it be manifested in
certain practises and institutions, altho it probably should from the
standpoint of the ideology itself.

Insofar as an ideological doctrine is concerned with facts and modal
conditions, its function is (purely) informative, insofar as it is concerned
with norms, values or moral and legal rules (also) imperative. Some
theorists may insist that ideology has in addition to these two functions an
emotive function. But to put these three functions side by side on one level
does not properly reflect the relationships between them, because what is
emotive (and perhaps also informative) about an ideology is in the first
place meant to get the normative message across. An ideological normative
doctrine distinguishes itself from a philosophical normative doctrine at
least in that it also uses nonargumentative means, such as nonlinguistic
symbols, to communicate. Nonargumentative does, then, not mean
counter-argumentative or irrational, nor does emotive mean emotional; one
should rather think of an artistic symbolism and the socialization of the
doctrine which furnishes it with its emotive content (which often is indeed
irrational and emotionalizing, but need not be so). This emotive aspect is
not an end in itself as it may be in the field of art. In ideology it is a
means to another end: in general, the promotion of the doctrine's norms or
values.

The range of the subject-matter or interests of an ideology may vary
considerably. If the subject-matter is specific, or if the ideology serves
the self-interests of a specific group, the ideology is --as we shall call
it-- ' specialistic'. Political ideologies are typically specialistic, for
instance. On the other hand, if the ideology's range is in principle
unlimited or total, the ideology is ' comprehensive'. It is then that one
may speak of "a weltanschauung" or "cosmology", that is, a more or less
unitary, total conception of the world or of the ground-world. However, to
be ideological such a weltanschauung has to demand a commitment to a way of
life, has to be able to mobilize people for actions, and to convince them of
the wrongness of other actions. When a comprehensive ideology has become
part of their daily existence, people live, as it were, under the
denomination of this ideology. The name of this world outlook or cosmology
is then their 'denomination'. That is one reason why we shall use the
expressions denomination and comprehensive ideology (in the sense of one
particular doctrine) as synonyms. (A term like confession is by its very
etymology of course unacceptable.) Denominationalism (in a noncondemnatory
sense) is, then, the recognition of and adherence to denominational
principles and the devotion to denominational interests. This is also a
traditional meaning of denominationalism except that it has been exclusively
used to refer to religious ideology (and often only as organized on a local
level). Tho religion is indeed a mode of comprehensive ideology (or
'denominationalism') which has played an important part in humankind's
history, a particular comprehensive ideology (or 'denominational doctrine')
need obviously not be religious (and whether it is organized on a local,
national or international scale is not a substantive issue). What
differentiates religious and nonreligious denominations is not our present
concern, as this is a matter of the further subdivision of only one of the
departments of disciplinary thought: that of ideology.

We do subsume 'religion' under the heading of 'ideology' or, to be precise,
'comprehensive ideology'. Those who present religious thought as a separate
department of thought besides ideology (and philosophy and science) do so
for ideological reasons: they try to conceal that every religion is a kind
of ideology itself. Especially when religion has a meliorative, and ideology
a pejorative connotation, the desire to do so may but too strongly be felt
by religious believers. In societies or subcultures where it is considered
legitimate to find fault with 'ideologies', while those who criticize
'religions' are blamed for being intolerant, the contention that religion
would not be a form of ideology plays a crucial role in the immunization
strategy of 'parties of God ' and suchlike groups. Their claimed separation
of religion and ideology is merely meant to make religion immune to any kind
of fundamental criticism. Such a cowardly immunization strategy may be
especially successful in some circles when the adherents of a particular
religion traditionally belong to one race or ethnic group, because it can
then be insinuated that the attack is not on the religious ideology but on
the race or ethnic group in question. (As a matter of fact, the original,
objective meaning of ideology was theory of ideas. This doctrine was
intended to reveal the source of people's prejudices. It was the monotheist,
religious establishment of the time in conjunction with a political dictator
who saddled ideology for many years to come with a negative connotation.)

Not only the different connotations of ideology but also the nature of the
relationship between 'ideology' (also when referred to in a nonpejorative
sense) and 'religion' has often confused people. They have thus been seduced
into calling nonreligious denominations or ideologies "secular religions",
or into calling ideologies such as nationalism "religions". Altho correctly
noticing that secular denominationalism and religion, and also nationalism
and religion, have a lot in common, these people did not realize that what
they have in common is not something typically religious, but ideological
(or in the case of nationalism and theistic religion perhaps more
specifically the exclusivist content of the ideological thought). Even
specialist, political ideologies have been described as "religions" because
of their ability to bind a society with ideals and hopes, if not fears.
(Religare, from which religion probably derives, means to tie back or to
bind.) Yet, whether a particular ideological system is a binding, societal
force or not, is not essential to its being ideological, and therefore there
are even not etymological reasons to treat ideology and religion as
synonyms, and least of all, to subsume ideology under religion instead of
the other way around.



6.1.3  FOUR DEPARTMENTS: PHILOSOPHY AND ART


Given that science and ideology are two main departments of disciplinary
thought, what is then the position of philosophy and the arts insofar as
they belong to the domain of thought? The special nature of the arts seems
to be less problematic than that of philosophy, even tho what is called
"art" may vary from the rubbishy rhyme royal of a poet laureate to the
marvel of a painter in whose work no-one was interested during 'er lifetime.
If we include attempts to do so, 'art' is somehow the purposeful creation or
expression of particular feelings by means of material effects in a
nonpersonal medium (or a medium which is in principle freely accessible to
everyone). These material effects may range from sound waves in air to
relief patterns in concrete slabs, from the constant utterance of one and
the same word to an ever-changing palette of colors in a visual display. One
may disagree about the claim that a work of art has to be the result of an
intentional activity, but it is a plain mistake to maintain that art must
create or express beauty or must produce esthetic objects. It may be true
that the artist often, or usually, tries to create an object which is as
nice and pleasing as possible, and that we prefer 'im to do that, yet this
is no necessity. 'Er aim might also be, for example, to create the feelings
one has when visiting a particular (kind of) place (a sense of its
atmosphere) or when meeting a particular (kind of) person. These feelings,
if not neutral, may be either pleasant or unpleasant, and a good artist
creates a feeling of ugliness in the reader, spectator, listener or other
person confronted with 'er work when the thing 'e wants to portray 'happens
to be' not beautiful but ugly. Similarly, a good artist does not only know
how to portray a good character (whatever that may be) but also how to
portray a bad one. This is also why the conscious use of skill, and not only
of taste, is important in art.

When an artist expresses 'er own particular feelings in a work of art, or
endeavors to create the same feelings in others, 'e may do so for
ideological or other nonartistic reasons. Within the scope of the arts,
however, the creation of certain feelings (rather than thoughts) is an end
in itself. This is what distinguishes art from ideology where the creation
or expression of certain feelings is an instrument to serve the end or ends
of the whole doctrine. One of these ends may be, for example, the promotion
of beauty itself, but this, again, is a mere contingence so far as the
concept of ideology is concerned (except, perhaps, in those cases where the
word for what is nice is the same as the word for what is red).

Philosophy (in the sense used here) does not encompass the creation or
expression of particular feelings but of thoughts. This does identify
philosophy as distinct from art, altho many a writer may (have) be(en)
involved in a creative process which is or was at once philosophical and
artistic, that is, literary. It does not yet identify philosophical as
distinct from ideological or scientific disciplinary thought. However, the
relationship between philosophy and ideology is in a way similar to that
between art and ideology. Just as artistic feelings are an end for the arts
but (also) a means for ideology, so is philosophical thought an end for
philosophy but (also) for ideology. To put it roughly: in art it is the
quality of feeling which matters, in philosophy it is the quality of thought
wich matters but in ideology it is the quality of the world which matters.
The prime business of the arts, of philosophy and of science is to
experience, to reflect on and to understand the state of the world as it is,
can be or should be; the prime business of ideology is not to change it --as
has been contended-- but to leave it as it is insofar as it is good, and to
improve it insofar as it is bad.

There is now one barrier left to be taken, namely the distinction between
philosophy and science. Of these two philosophy has been defined as thought
about thought, yet even disciplinary thought about thought need not be
philosophical -- it could be sociological or linguistic. But then,
philosophy has been said to rely 'more or less exclusively on reasoning to
justify its claims' rather than on observation, quantification and
experience. The scientist's business is to systematically organize
regularities between events and possibilities into a body of knowledge on
the basis of which predictions can be made. The last thing is controversial,
but ideally science can explain what it can predict and predict what it can
explain. A philosopher, on the other hand, speculates about regularities and
irregularities between events, possibilities and values without attempting
to prove anything by observation or quantification in the ground-world, and
--what seems to be the main occupation of most philosophers-- 'e speculates
about regularities and irregularities in other people's (especially other
philosophers') speculations. Of course, also scientists speculate, but not
necessarily as scientists. If so, then to determine what they have observed
or quantified, or what they are going to, or ought to, investigate.

We should now have a general idea of the meanings of the concepts of
'ideology', 'art', 'philosophy' and 'science' as they will be used in this
Model. The characteristics given may not be precise and are, perhaps,
incorrect in a certain respect or to a certain degree, even from a
systematic point of view. But fortunately, we do not need an entirely
accurate description (if existing at all) of these four departments of
disciplinary thought, since in practise all of them have overlaps.
Intellectual undertakings do not consist of isolated thoughts, and it was
mentioned already that an intellectual undertaking may be at once
philosophical and artistic. Similarly, it may be at once scientific and
ideological, scientific and philosophical, and so on. There are common
grounds between all departments of disciplinary thought, some wider than
others. We may assume the overlap between science and art to be the
smallest, the one between philosophy and ideology the largest. Yet, for all
departments there are intellectual activities which are unmistakably on this
or on the other side of the fuzzy border, for example, statements which are
indubitably religious or otherwise ideological instead of scientific, or
statements which are indubitably literary instead of philosophical. This
general state of 'disciplinary affairs' is schematically represented in
figure I.6.1.3.1

There is not one science, not one philosophy, not one ideology and not one
art, there are many different (departmental) sciences, philosophies,
ideologies and forms of art. Since our ultimate intellectual concern will be
the development of a denominational doctrine in this Model, it is especially
the category of comprehensive ideologies which demands our further
attention. The subdivision of these ideologies into religious and
nonreligious, theist and nontheist ones, for instance, will be the subject
of the next division. But all ideology is normative and employs a more or
less artistic symbolism (however vehemently we may reject the norms and
values propagated, and however distasteful we may find the symbols used). To
make sure that our own ideological thought will satisfy the minimum
requirements of valid normative reasoning (and preferably the highest
requirements) we must be familiar with the elements of normative philosophy
in particular, that is, the instruments of thought this branch of
philosophy, which especially deals with norms and values, has to offer us.
The following chapters of this book are therefore dedicated to the
normative-philosophical issues which will have the strongest bearing on our
own ideological position. It is in the Book of Symbols that we will return
to the role the arts play, or may play, in the symbolic enrichment and
social acceptance of a new paradigm in denominational thought.



6.2  DENOMINATIONAL THOUGHT


6.2.1  RELIGION


As we have seen, religion may bind people together because of the hopes
and/or fears it creates and maybe because of the appeal its symbolism holds.
Yet, this is what it has in common with other forms of denominational
ideology, if not with ideology in general. Religion may furthermore
incorporate a cosmology, but every comprehensive ideology does, and also
philosophical weltanschauungs do. A religious cosmology may indeed present
'the world to man as a theater in which purposes are unfolded larger than
his own' --as has been asserted-- but this obscure formulation somehow hints
at religion's normative nature or imperative function which --again-- is not
typically religious either. Even dogmatism is not typically religious,
because political disciplinary thought, for instance, may be equally
dogmatic. To say that political ideologies, unlike religions, are not
comprehensive will not do, for especially dogmatic political ideology tends
to become 'complete' and 'integral' -- as has been shown. (It starts, then,
to affect practically all aspects of people's lives, like the naming of
children, their initiation and marriage, introducing its own rites, public
holidays and idols to be worshiped.) Such political ideology has also been
called "religion" or "secular religion", but if so, it is not its dogmatism,
comprehensiveness or exclusivist content in itself which justifies labeling
it "a (secular) religion".

One part of the definitions of religion given in traditional dictionaries
and encyclopedias has always been belief in a god (or God, whoever's proper
name that may be) or something to the same effect like worship of or service
and worship of a god or attitude of awe towards a god (if not God). Another
part of the definitions usually relates to the belief in, or service and
worship of, or attitude of awe towards the supernatural. Many people
--supposedly monotheists -- like to conceive of 'religion in the first place
as 'belief in God', while relegating polytheism to 'belief in the
supernatural'. But neither the belief in one nor the belief in two or more
gods, or for that matter demons, makes a comprehensive ideology into a
religion, because there are also religions (or pure variants thereof) which
are not theistic, nor demonistic. Adherents of those religions do somehow
have supernatural beliefs tho. So the characteristic feature of religion is
not its theism or demonism (if it does acknowledge one or more gods or
demons), but its supernaturalism. It does not follow that religion is a
synonym of supernaturalism, since supernaturalist feelings, thoughts or
actions need not be part of a comprehensive ideology, that is, a
denominational doctrine. Magic, for instance, is the use of means believed
to have supernatural power over natural forces. But also if magic would
involve ideological principles, they would even in combination have a
specialist character and not the completeness a religion has, or purports to
have. This difference between magic and religion is not that significant,
however: both try to keep house by sweeping make-believe rooms with
make-believe brooms. And, naturally, the supernaturalism of both magic and
religion is past belief.

The question which obviously arises in this context is what belief is
supernaturalistic? To say that the supernatural relates to 'an order of
existence beyond the observable universe' may be correct but it will not do
as a definition, for there are enough things which cannot be observed and
which may be taken to exist nevertheless without falling into
supernaturalism. Everyone's ontology has to incorporate entities which are
not observable; if not attributes and relations, for instance, then at least
sets or functions. What is typical of supernaturalism is that it demands the
belief in (many) more nonobservable entities or sorts of entity, or a (much)
more unusual nonobservable entity than necessary for any adequate ontology,
and than needed to explain how the world actually was, is or will be, can be
or should be. (The foremost problem with supernaturalist thought is that the
existence of the nonobservable entity postulated, or its powers, does not
explain anything. On the contrary: it forestalls or delays every
explanation.) The next issues are of course what is an adequate ontology?
and what is explanation?. Problems relating to the former issue we have
dealt with in the first and second chapters of this book, and the question
of explanation is very much related to questions of truth and relevancy, and
of what should and should not be held true or relevant. These problems have
been dealt with in the previous two chapters, and altho the final answers
have certainly not been provided there, it should have become sufficiently
clear which beliefs are definitely on this side of the fuzzy border, and
which beliefs are definitely on the other side of the fuzzy border between
non-supernatural realism or agnosticism and supernaturalism.

Characteristic of religious ideology as a supernatural phenomenon is the
lack of intellectual humility, the arrogance to claim the absolute truth of
beliefs and the literal inerrancy of scriptures without proper observation
or argumentation. This does not apply to those systems of disciplinary
thought in which a supernaturalist belief is presented as a form of
symbolism. In those systems it is done as if a certain entity (or its
powers) or a certain relationship between entities exist, but the truth of
the belief in such existence is not claimed. The belief is hypothetical, so
to say. However, where religion, or the interpretation of a religion, is not
explicitly symbolical, its supernaturalism is an institutional violation of
the principle of truth. It does not matter whether only a few or most of the
members of a community share the nonsymbolic supernaturalist belief.
Collectivity may make superstition into a religion, it does not make it into
a true belief.

The supernatural essence of religious thought need not lie in the belief in
nonobservable entities like gods and demons, or in entities with
supernatural powers; it may also lie in more abstract contentions. The most
notorious examples of such contentions, besides those which concern the
creation of the whole world, come from religious eschatology and
soteriology. Eschatology is the supernaturalist belief in and about the end
(the last moment) of the present kind of world. It builds on a thorough
separation in human history between its imperfect present and an everlasting
final stage of completion (a 'kingdom-come' in grossly monarchist terms). In
this final stage a prophet is said to return, a last judgment is said to be
passed or a new age is said to commence. Admittedly, the notion of an
imperfect, or possibly imperfect, present is inherent in every ideology as a
normative doctrine. What is supernaturalistic about eschatology is the
absolute assertion that the 'perfect times' not only should but will and
must come, and this preferably inflated with the most gaudy of expectations.

Soteriology does not just show the believer the way to salvation, as every
ideology takes pains to save people from what it considers evil; it
guarantees a way to salvation, a promise only a supernaturalist ideology is
willing to make. In combination with eschatology soteriology teaches how to
become part of the chosen, eternally happy ones who will survive the horrors
of history. Like dogmatism, eschatological and soteriological beliefs are
not typically religious either. (The end of eschatology need therefore not
coincide with the end of religion.) Also a political specialist ideology may
pass very explicit eschatological and/or soteriological judgments. But when
such an ideology grows more and more into a 'total' system, it takes the
form of a religion precisely because of the supernaturalist content of its
eschatology or soteriology.

If a denominational doctrine is religious because of its supernaturalist
content and because of the literal interpretation of its scriptures (or part
thereof), it follows that a nonreligious denomination may have either no
supernaturalist content at all or have a symbolic interpretation of its
supernaturalist content. So not only a religious ideology may be either
theistic and/or demonistic or not, this analysis shows that also a
nonreligious ideology may be either theistic and/or demonistic or not.
Perhaps, this does not tally entirely with traditional usage according to
which also the liberal forms of denominationalism in which (mono)theist,
sacred scriptures are interpreted in a symbolist fashion are called
"religion". Yet, the reason for using this terminology is that a symbolist
supernaturalist form of denominationalism does not violate the principle of
truth in the way nonsymbolist supernaturalism, or 'religion' in our sense,
does. The fact that a book is religious does not automatically make every
reader of that book a religious believer, that is, someone who takes it
seriously and literally. However, someone who does not take it seriously or
literally lies if 'e does not make this clear. The result (the violation of
the principle of truth) is then the same.

Religion as supernaturalist denominational thought sacrifices truthfulness
or the courage to admit that one does not (yet) know. Now, there is a way in
which it may also sacrifice these values, but which is not directly and
necessarily related to its content. It concerns certain attempts to take
possession of people as purported believers. This occurs, for example, when
a religion professes that people could and would have a faith by birth. It
is, then, not interested in what people actually believe to be true and
relevant but in what they say or acquiesce in and, worst of all, in what
their parents say or acquiesce in, or used to say or acquiesce in. Taking
birth --or in a wider sense, ethnicity, nationality or race-- as criterion
of religious belief, it treats people or people-to-be as mere bodies which
ought to assume a certain role and utter certain statements because of their
biological relationship with other bodies. What is really in people's minds
is then immaterial. This materialist conception of a 'faith by birth' is the
institutionalization of a collective lie which must have been prompted by
the desire to save mortal religions from dying out. How unfortunate are
those who had such a faith forced upon them by birth.



6.2.2  THE THEODEMONIST PROBLEM OF PROVED WRONGS


In section 3.3.2 it was mentioned that there is no standard evaluative
meaning of the word god in the tradition of the present language. Because
the word god has hardly any universally accepted conceptual meaning either,
the crucial thing is that god and God have a strong positive connotation for
theists. Perhaps a theist is not primarily someone who believes in one or
more gods, but someone for whom the morpheme god has a positive evaluative
meaning in this language. Nevertheless, besides its rather strong evaluative
meaning which is negative for atheists, god does have some standard
conceptual meaning for theists and nontheists alike. Every 'god' is at least
an unusual being in a denominational doctrine, and if it is a principal
being in that doctrine, the doctrine is theistic. Moreover, it is worshiped
or requires (some) people's worship according to such a doctrine. It often
is also believed to have more than natural powers or attributes and to
control the world or a particular aspect of it, but that belief is the
supernaturalist part of the ideology in question and does not constitute its
theist nature in the strict sense. Tho a belief in supernatural 'gods' which
are in need of the same enlightenment as every mortal, human being may be
supernaturalistic, we shall not call it "theistic", because such
supernatural unusual beings do not play a principal role in such a belief.

Not only may a god be believed to rule the universe but also to have created
it, and to provide factual, modal and normative information about it. What
is theistic about this belief (rather than supernaturalistic) is the
worship, or purported worship, of such a being and the assertion or
suggestion that it is of superior value or --in the event that there is only
one such specimen-- of supreme value. But obviously, a god must be believed
to deserve worship because of some quality it or 'e 'has' (which is short
for is believed to have). Such a quality may be that it is more powerful
than usual, or all-powerful in the extremist conception; that 'e knows more
than usual, or is omniscient in the extremist conception. (Extremist in the
literal, catenical sense of the word, referring to the obsession with one or
both of the catena's extremities.) The god's superior value is therefore a
function of its power, its wisdom, its goodness, and so on. Conversely, by
making power, wisdom, goodness and suchlike, attributes of the principal
beings worshiped, power, wisdom and goodness themselves become ultimate
objects of worship.

But, it might be rejoined, it is not power besides goodness which is, or
should be, worshiped; it is the power to do good. This sounds plausible. The
plausibility of this argument evaporates, however, in extremist monotheist
thought in which one personal god, named "God", is claimed to be at once
omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good. What develops is a problem which in
philosophy of religion is called "the problem of evil". Since it is a god
which plays a leading part in this drama, we will briefly discuss it here,
altho the problem is basically supernaturalistic. We shall dub the god in
question "Mono", and to refer to 'im we shall --in the monosexualist fashion
of the major monotheist traditions-- use the masculine pronoun. As Mono, the
leading lord, is all-powerful, and as he knows that he is all-powerful, for
he is at once omniscient, he lacks all courage (but without necessarily
being a coward). Courageous are only those of Mono's opponents who do not
believe that they have supernatural power, or who do not believe that they
are protected by a supernatural being. Yet, we are asked to ignore this, as
this would detract from the luster of the play long before its termination.

In its simplest form the plot is this: Mono, who remains invisible during
every act of the play, is omnipotent, and knows this; he is wholly good, and
knows what is good or just; yet, evil exists, and has been proved to exist.
What ensues is an intellectual battle between, on the one side, the
defenders of Mono who profess that he does exist and that he is both
all-powerful and wholly good nevertheless, and on the other side, his
opponents who argue that he cannot be all-powerful and wholly good at the
same time, even if he exists. First, several of the defense's pleas are
refuted one by one. For example, the argument that 'good cannot exist
without evil' or that 'evil is necessary as a counterpart to good'. We have
already disposed of this sort of argument ourselves as sheer nonsense in
section 2.2.1. Another argument adduced is that 'evil is due to human free
will'. This leads to what has been called "the paradox of omnipotence". How
could Mono, being omnipotent, have created things or people he subsequently
cannot control? To solve this paradox one of the players suggests that a
distinction must be made between first- and second-order omnipotence. (It
has now become a game of two balls, so to say.) The right horn (or ball) of
omnipotence is, then, defined as unlimited power to act and the left one as
unlimited power to determine what power to act things will have. What is
then demonstrated is that Mono could not in the course of history be
all-powerful in both senses at once. As we haven't got enough time to
seriously consider the rejoinder that Mono would be a wholly nontemporal
being as well, we shall listen a moment now to a more sophisticated version
of the so-called 'free-will defense'.

The latter-day free-will defender in question starts with pointing out that
one must differentiate moral and physical evil and that Mono could not
create the possibility of moral evil committed by free creatures while
simultaneously 'prohibiting its actuality'. According to the free-will
theodecy a world containing free persons and moral evil is superior to one
lacking free persons and both moral good and evil, so long as that world
contains more moral good than moral evil. (It will require quite a few
paradisiacal serpent-windings to combine this belief with the usual
monotheist eschatology which teaches that the present world is imperfect,
while forecasting and idealizing a perfect, ultimate world without any
evil.) The notion of an omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good god would
therefore not be inconsistent, because a world with 'free possible persons
such that there is a balance of moral good over moral evil' is logically
possible. Of course, the argument does not prove Mono's actual existence,
for among others, it hinges on the 'empirical' assumption that all people in
the universe do on average show significantly more benevolence than
malevolence. (An assumption which, altho not extreme, is positively
unneutral.) Moreover, even if this is the case, it does not guarantee that
it will remain the case.

So much for the moral evil which the ubiquitous Mono is supposed to
logically allow. Now, what about physical evil, and what is this? The
apologist of Mono-theism defines physical evil as evil which cannot be
ascribed to the free actions of human beings, but here lies the flaw in 'er
apologetics. If 'moral evil' is the 'evil of doing something morally wrong',
then 'physical evil' does not only consider the evil of natural disasters
and suchlike things but also the bad, physical consequences of morally evil
deeds. (Whether they are morally evil solely because of their bad
consequences, or bad consequences which were intended, does not matter
here.) If Mono were wholly good and all-powerful, he might be expected to
help everyone who is the victim of someone else's wicked behavior. This
would not infringe upon the free will of the person committing evil, as Mono
did not have to make the act of free will itself impossible. He would merely
take care that no-one or no innocent sentient being suffered from such an
act in the end. It is then that he would be good.

Some theists in the play may indeed claim that Mono does actually compensate
for all suffering which is the physically evil result of other people's
morally evil behavior, something which amounts to saying that this kind of
physical evil does, on balance, not exist. Other theists may point out that
Mono cannot compensate for all suffering as everyone would then know that
nothing could, on balance, hurt one's neighbor or enemy, and moral evil
itself would become impossible, something which Mono's creation does not
allow for. (We shall skip the question why and how someone would know that
Mono compensates for all suffering. Game-theoretic theology teaches that an
omnipotent or omniscient being should, in certain situations, keep its
opponent in the dark about its omnipotence or omniscience in order to
guarantee the best outcome for itself.) The rejoinder is, first of all,
based on the view that the moral evil would solely lie in its physical
consequences, because it would merely be these physical consequences, bad
and good, which even out in the end; the evil, intentional act of wanting
something wicked is still possible. And not only is this moral evil still
possible, what could be more morally wicked in this terrific world than
doing something which not only hits another mortal being, but which is bound
to provoke the intervention of Mono in his very own person? The evil is then
not committed against just another mortal being but against the leading lord
himself. Every monotheist must admit that this is the most perfect of all
sins. The free-will argument that an omnipotent, omniscient god could be
wholly good, altho 'e would not take away all bad effects of morally evil
acts, therefore fails.

Apart from this digression the free-will defender has still to account for
all physical evil which does not result from morally evil acts. At least,
this is what we would expect, but physical evil like natural disasters is
--as pointed out by one of Mono's advocates-- also the product of moral
evil. This evil must not be attributed to human spirits however, but to one
or more mighty supernatural spirits. In other words: one or more demons
which, altho created by Mono himself long before he created man, have
decided to rebel against their master-maker. In a daring attempt to justify
this belief in one devil and perhaps other demons, it is even related to us
that it is 'an important part of traditional theist belief to attribute a
good deal of the evil found to Satan or his cohorts'. (Satan is the name
given to the sole or principal demon, and as the struggle between this
principal being and Mono is a struggle for power, both must be male in the
style of thought concerned.) The proper name we shall give to this being
playing a second principal role in the Universal Theater of supernaturalist
ideology is Demono.

While naive spectators may first have believed that there was only one great
invisible being in this fantastic play, the dramatic disclosure is that
there have been two invisible actors from the beginning on: Mono and Demono.
We should bear in mind tho that it has only been demonstrated that the
belief in both Mono and Demono is a logical prerequisite of extremist
monotheist religion. It is not necessarily true of all religion, and even
not of all monotheist religion. Nonetheless, what it does illustrate is that
religion is often theistic and demonistic at the same time: they seem to
imply each other, need each other, like yin and yang, if not logically, then
at least psychologically. That is why it is not so much the belief in one or
more gods which counts but the belief in one or more gods and/or demons.
This is what we shall call "theodemonism". (Since demonism is a good word
which parallels theism it is to be preferred to demonology when talking
about the belief in demons.) As the deeds of the 'supreme being' in
monotheist scriptures but too often veer between beneficence and maleficence
a religion founded upon such scriptures is also 'theodemonical' in the full
sense of the word when it does not explicitly recognize any separate,
independent demon.



6.2.3  THE THEODEMONIST PROBLEM OF WRONG PROOFS


There is one vital issue which remains: if the existence of Mono and/or
Demono could be proved, then what the major theodemonist traditions have
always taught is no supernaturalist ideology but knowledge; or at least a
form of denominationalism which does not systematically violate the
principle of truth, even not when literally interpreted. And indeed, the
existence of especially the first principal being has been proved time and
time again, but ... these 'proofs' have also been refuted equally
frequently. There has been the argument from design, which claims that
nature reveals an orderliness which would have to be the work, not just of
an agency, but of a personal agency. (There are more modern, statistical
variants of the argument.) The flaws in this argument were already so
thoroughly exposed more than two hundred years ago by a philosopher more
courageous than any all-powerful designer that it has by now been thrown
into complete disorder. We shall not review 'er criticisms here, but it is
interesting to hear that one might as well conceive of the world as a 'rude
essay of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame
performance'; in other words: the work of a god who did not yet have any
design experience, and who chose to have eschatology make up for it. (The
manuscript in which these criticisms were laid down had to be published
anonymously and posthumously as its wisdom did not serve the interests of
the ruling party of defenders of orthodox monotheism.)

Other proofs which have been produced to demonstrate the existence of one
divine being are the causal and ontological arguments. The causal argument
concentrates on the relationship between causes and their effects. It claims
that there must be a first cause. It is then 'self-evident' --in
supernaturalist terms-- that this ultimate cause condition is part of Mono's
ragbag of predicates. For non-supernaturalists, however, the observable
succession of events described as 'causes' and 'effects' requires no
ultimate beginning or end. To say that it does is begging the question.

According to the ontological argument Mono must exist because the idea of
Mono exists, and the same holds, of course, for Demono. This argument is the
epitome of madness in the pathology of theodemonical supernaturalism. More
critical theodemonists have already pointed out themselves that existence is
not a 'property' like strength or wisdom, and that it cannot be part of the
definition of any concept. The force of the idea or concept of Mono, or of a
being which is perfect --it is said-- is not increased by thinking of it as
existing, or by merely thinking about it. It is the distinction between the
nonpropositional ground-world and propositional reality in our ontology
which rings true here.

After the defeat of the rational 'proofs' to establish the existence of
Mono, most of his adherents have fled atheism and agnosticism by adopting
some kind of fideism, that is, the view that one ought to rely on faith
rather than reason, at least, in religious affairs. Fideism started teaching
that 'religious knowledge lies beyond the limits of man's rational
faculties', and for quite a while thereafter the theodemonological world
remained silent. But did the bells of fideism ring the demise of all
attempts at proving the existence of Mono? Maybe they did, yet the body
which was supposed to be dead much later turned out merely to have been in a
state of suspended animation: the existence of Mono has been 'proved' again.
This time it makes use of the most modern of logics -- modal logics to be
more precise. The 'proof' heavily draws on the concept of supreme being and
tells us that there is nothing greater than the greatest, and that there is
one who is the greatest, and only one. The philosopher in question does not
know what 'great-making properties' are -- 'e only knows what 'e believes
they are. One of these properties would have to be power. Mono, being the
most powerful personal being in the world might thus happen to be the
president of the mightiest country (if male), or the richest man in the most
plutocratic country. Now, this president or plutocrat may feel, and be
treated, like a god, he might not be very happy with the proof at all, for
example, because his political power or wealth needs an external
justification, not one in itself. (In this way he can always claim Mono's
special favor, since Mono never says anything to the contrary.)

Most monotheists might not be very happy with such a banal, incarnate Mono
either. Banal because the president or plutocrat in question is not, or need
not be, the wisest or most intelligent person, let alone show the most
exemplary moral behavior. This takes us back to the crux of every
theodemonical belief: it is the content of Mono's omnium-gatherum of
great-making characteristics and the content of Mono's authoritative
judgments which count, not the real or imaginary fact that he has
characteristics (whatever they may be) or that he has spoken (whatever he
may have said). The theorist who creates a solitary god by proving, however
logically, that there must be someone who is the 'greatest' or the 'king',
regardless of what this god's properties might be, presents a style of
godthink devoid of any content. One may reproach theodemonical fideism with
one of the greatest aberrations in human thought, but not for being that
trivial.


6.2.3.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


THE SPIRIT OF THE MOST EXCLUSIVE


When innocent people wondered how things came into being,
'he' would emerge as the sole creator of the universe,
and as a creator outside the universe.
When innocent people were not quite sure
of the existence of others,
his omnipresence would fill up every vacuum, and
his omniscience would take away every doubt.
When innocent people found out
that mind and matter could not interact,
he would be there
to put the representations of things into every mind
at the right moment.
When innocent people could not understand
why there still was so much evil in the actual world,
his omnipotence would allow them to live
in the best of all possible worlds:
a world in which their virtue and piety could stand out.

When his nature came up,
he would be exclusively human:
anthropopathic and anthropomorphic;
and he himself or his prophet or prophets
would be exclusively male at that.
When his extraction came up,
he himself or his sole or last prophet
would have arisen from one people:
the chosen race dwelling in and round the chosen city.

It is the image of this one being
which provided, or still readily provides, the satisfaction
for sexist, ethnocentrist or other exclusivist desires,
and it is the image of this one being
which provided, or still readily provides, the pseudosolution
to a myriad of theoretical and practical problems.
However,
without eliminating the causes of dissatisfaction themselves,
and without adding anything to our knowledge
of factual, modal or normative ground-conditions.
In the main it was, or has remained, the Great Put-off,
the Mumbo Jumbo:
the Solution begging the questions instead of answering them,
the Symbol causing the problems instead of solving them.

Since the image of this one being was, or still is,
so infinitely multifarious,
'He' has many names, one be the Most Exclusive.
While the spirit of the Most Exclusive
has reigned over too many poor and oppressed people
in the past,
it shall not reign anymore over free and fearless people
in the future.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------



6.2.4  THE ROLE OF NORMATIVE SUPREMENESS


Traditionally both monotheists and atheists have taken it for granted that
the concept of 'supreme being' (or 'Supreme Being') is the same as that of a
solitary 'god' (or 'God'). But if god is a supernaturalist or exclusivist
concept, supreme being will have to be such a kind of concept too. And if
god has a negative connotation, supreme being must also have a negative
connotation. Tho this may in practise be the case for most traditional
atheists, it certainly cannot be based on the meanings of the constituents
supreme and being. It must derive from the assumed identity of supreme being
and (solitary) god (or God). This assumed identity, however, cannot serve to
prove the identity.

As a matter of fact, the notions of 'supremeness', of 'being' and of
'supreme being' are all fully intelligible and meaningful, and there is
nothing supernaturalistic or exclusivistic in attributing a positive value
to the concept of 'supremeness'. On the contrary: every denominational or
other normative doctrine has at least an implicit notion of what is, or
would be, superior or supreme in terms of the value or values of that
doctrine. Superior is that entity or state of affairs which is of a higher
value, that is, of a higher normative value. To say "normatively superior"
or "supreme" is to distinguish these normative notions of 'superiority' and
'supremeness' from factual and modal notions of 'supremacy'. (The
terminology with respect to the normative and other auxiliaries we have
discussed in 3.1.2.) A certain being may, for example, be the most masculine
(anthropomorphic) being in the universe, but if masculinity is no value, or
no value in itself, in the normative doctrine concerned, then the entity's
supreme masculinity is merely an instance of factual supremacy (in the
doxastic terms of that doctrine). Or --to take another arbitrary example-- a
certain being may be the most powerful being in the universe, but if power
is no value, or no value in itself, either, then the entity's state of being
supremely powerful is merely an instance of modal supremacy. It is only if
masculinity and power were values (or 'great-making properties') in
themselves that (on the extremist account) an all-masculine or all-powerful
being would be normatively supreme, and hence a 'supreme being' -- or
perhaps a 'supreme being', dependent on its other properties.

The meaningfulness and realist nature of the notion of 'supreme being' or
'being supreme' does by no means imply the actual existence of a (state of)
supreme being. An actually existing entity is not normatively supreme by
having some predicate or combination of predicates to be filled in later (as
in the modal proof of Mono's existence); it is normatively supreme by having
a particular predicate or combination of predicates, namely that set of
predicates which it should have on the basis of a particular set of norms
and values. This presupposes that the combination of predicates is logically
and physically possible, and that the set of norms and values believed in is
the right one. Hence, if omnipotence were really a great-making
characteristic, not only in the modal but also in the normative sense, a
supreme being would only exist if there were an entity which would indeed be
all-powerful and which at the same time would have all other logically
compatible characteristics for being normatively supreme. For example, if
omniscience were another great-making characteristic, a supreme being would
only exist if there were an entity which would indeed be at once omnipotent
and omniscient, while having all other great-making characteristics as well.
An entity which would solely be omnipotent, and not omniscient, for
instance, would not do. And neither would an entity which would not be
omnipotent or omniscient, but which would nevertheless be more powerful, and
know more, than any other entity in the whole world. On an absolute
definition of supreme being such an entity would still not be the supreme
being, even if it possessed all other great-making predicates of the world
in the strict sense.

On the relative definition of supreme being (when referring to a thing
rather than to a state of affairs) the supreme being is that existing entity
whose nature more closely resembles that of an imaginary being with the
ideal combination of attributes and relations than any other existing
entity. As regards a particular denominational doctrine ideal then stands
for what is normatively superior in terms of its own norms and values. In
the event that it has merely one value, or that its values can be ordered
lexicographically, it is quite clear in principle which being in the world
would be supreme. Thus if personal power is the denomination's sole value,
or the first one in a serial order of several values, then the supreme being
is that personal being which is more powerful than any other personal being
(assuming that there are not two or more entities equally powerful). As
illustrated above, on this conception the supreme being may be some
president or plutocrat (who is living now, or who was/is/will be more
powerful than anyone who ever lived/lives/will live). When other qualities
than power are considered, the supremo in question could be anything,
however: male, female, both or neither; old, young, (both?) or neither;
wise, stupid, (both?) or neither; courageous, pusillanimous, (both?) or
neither; and so forth and so on. If the denominational doctrine acknowledges
more than one value or 'great-making characteristic' and if it can, or does,
not order those values lexicographically, the supreme being could be
anything with respect to any value. The choice with which every
denominational doctrine dealing with the concept of a supreme being is
confronted, is therefore to opt either for the guaranteed existence of the
supreme being (in the relative definition), but with the possibility that it
does not match the doctrinal ideal by any means; or for the possible
nonexistence of the supreme being (in the absolute definition), but with the
guarantee that it does wholly match the ideal. Sincere denominationalists
just cannot have it both ways!

The existence or nonexistence of a supreme being named "God", has always
been the prime issue in the traditional monotheist-atheist debate,
monotheists claiming the existence of 'God', atheists denying it (and
agnosticists saying that they don't know). Both parties have thus implicitly
agreed that the question of the existence of a supreme being would not only
be important, but more important than the question of the ideal propagated
by dint of that supreme being; or (if it does not exist) by dint of its
image. But if theodemonism, and denominationalism in general, is ideology
--and it is-- it is its ideal which is more fundamental than anything else.
It is by way of that ideal that we come to know a denominational doctrine's
norms and values -- the norms and values which also determine what kind or
state of being may be believed to be normatively supreme. Only by
concentrating on its ideal do we enter the normative core of the
comprehensive ideology in question and can we find out about all its
principles, or lack thereof. Whether we will be excited, disgusted, both or
neither, it cannot be denied that the symbol of a supreme being or the
concepts of normative superiority and supremeness play a significant role in
denominational disciplinary thought. All of us will have to personally pass
a last judgment on religion and theodemonism one day, but if, and when, it
results in a rejection of these obsolete modes of denominationalism, it need
not affect the belief in a supreme being or its image.



6.3  PARADIGMS IN SCIENCE AND DENOMINATIONALISM


6.3.1  SCIENCE AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON


Whatever the exact definition of science may be, essential to science is
some kind of theoretical method or procedure. Anything goes --a variant of a
two-and-a-half thousand years older everything flows-- may be true of
nondisciplinary thought, it cannot be true of disciplinary thought, and
least of all for the most methodic form of the factual-modal type of it:
science. (Granting that there is a difference between nonscientific and
scientific thought other than that it is called "scientific". That science
is then the most methodic on the whole does not imply that it would be
methodic by some high, abstract standard.)

But what is the 'scientific method'? It has to do with the inner logic of a
theory, that is, the propositional factual, modal and/or normative
conditions, and insofar as it is empirical science, with the relationship
between theory and experiment, that is, the facts, modes and/or norms of
correspondence. It was once said that empirical science would thus be both
rational and inductive; 'inductive' in that it would infer from a limited
number of instances of some concurrence of predicates that the concurrence
would obtain universally. On this inductivist account of science, empirical
theories or generalizations would only have to be verifiable. Against this
position it has been argued that science may be rational, but that it is not
inductive. If all known specimens of a certain species happen to have a
predicate P, then the inference that all members of that species, wherever
in the universe, have predicate P is just not valid if verifiability were
taken as the criterion. (Happen to have P, for the having of P must not be a
predicate which a member of that species has by definition.)

On the deductivist (but still rational) account of empirical science, the
test is not verifiability but falsifiability. Now a scientific theory does
not hold because it has been proved, but because it has not yet been
disproved. However, this ideal picture of science has in turn been attacked
for describing perhaps how the empirical scientist ought to work, but not as
'e actually does work. In other words: the objection is that the deductivist
conception of empirical science is normative rather than descriptive. In the
course of history, empirical science would on the alternative view not only
not have been inductive, but not rational either. According to the
nonrationalist philosopher of science who looks at 'er subject in a
historical, that is, factual, perspective, a scientific theory is actually
never abandoned because it has been falsified. And it just 'need not, and in
fact never does, explain the facts with which it can be confronted'.

To understand the nonrationalist position (which definitely is not
'irrationalistic') one must conceive of science not as a purely individual
undertaking in which solitary researchers occupy themselves with clearing a
way to truth and relevance, but as a social phenomenon. In practise the
scientist, or at least the person whose brainchild needs recognition as a
scientific theory, is part of, or faced with, a 'community of specialists'.
It is this community which determines which problems and hypotheses deserve
their own and the general public's attention. What the members of such a
community share has been called "a disciplinary matrix". Such a matrix is
said to have four components. Firstly, there is a common conceptual
apparatus with its own terminology, analogies and metaphors; an example of
this is the belief that the molecules of a gas 'behave like small elastic
billiard-balls'. Secondly, there are the so-called 'symbolic
generalizations' used by all members of the group; they are expressions cast
in a logical form. Thirdly, there is a body of norms and values particularly
concerned with predictions (which should be quantifiable and accurate) and
whole theories (which should be coherent, simple and plausible). The most
important component of the disciplinary matrix in this philosophical theory
of science is, however, the 'paradigm'. In the strict, original sense this
is merely an 'exemplar', a 'concrete problem-solution', serving as an
example of how to scientifically handle a problem in the discipline
concerned. In a much wider sense paradigm has come to be regarded as the
whole disciplinary matrix itself.

As the argument runs, 'the installation of a paradigm in a scientific field
is a prerequisite of proper, that is, normal science'. This 'normal science'
is definitely not bent upon falsification. On the contrary: it will attempt
to interpret the facts in such a way that they agree with the paradigm in
force at that moment, or to reinterpret or restrict the paradigm itself in
such a way that it corresponds with the facts. Hence, on this account it is
erroneous to believe that a theory which has the status of a scientific
paradigm would be abandoned when falsified. Not only one or a few, but many
deviations or 'anomalies' have first to be discovered and deemed important
enough to cause a crisis. Such a crisis has been assumed to be 'a necessary
precondition for the emergence of novel theories'. But altho the old
paradigm may have 'exhausted its fertility', and altho scientists may begin
to lose faith, and may begin to look for alternatives, they will not --as
pointed out-- 'renounce the paradigm which has led them into crisis'. It is
only if, and when, an alternative candidate is available to take its place,
that scientists give up their belief. 'The decision to reject one paradigm
is' therefore --if this description of science's history is correct--
'always simultaneously the decision to accept another'. The so-called
'traumatic episode' during which an old scientific paradigm is disposed of,
and a new one established, has been described as "a scientific revolution".
Less dramatically, however, one could also speak of "a more or less radical
transition". This transition can be quite a disturbing experience as a
change of paradigms is, as it were, a change of world-view. (A change which
sometimes appears to be as sudden as a 'gestalt switch'.)

A radically new theory must first be developed or a new discovery must first
be made by one or a few individuals. 'Usually' --as noted-- they are people
'so new to the crisis-ridden field that practise has not yet committed them
too deeply to the world-view and rules of the old paradigm'. It is not
necessarily the case that their contemporaries who are too deeply committed
to the traditional paradigm would have to apostatize personally. What often
happens --as one scientist has observed -- is that the apologists of the
traditional paradigm eventually die, and that a new generation grows up
which is made familiar with the new doctrine. Even in science the transfer
of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is said to be a conversion
experience which cannot be forced upon the believers. Endeavoring to do so
would be asocial.

As could be expected, the nonrationalist theory of scientific paradigms has
met with much criticism. It has been objected, for example, that it is a
purely sociological and psychological description of the business of
science, but this objection is not to the point so long as it does not
pretend to be a normative methodology of (empirical) science. It has been
objected too that, altho 'normal science' and 'paradigms' exist, 'normal
science' in the sense suggested is uncritical, and that scientists who stick
to their paradigm thru thick and thin suffer from dogmatism. According to a
similar objection, several scientific theories (paradigms?) may coexist in
one community at the same time. Finally, it has been correctly pointed out
that the practise of science as described in the theory of scientific
paradigms is not that unreasonable. The ultimate, collective decision to
accept a particular paradigm may indeed take place in accordance with
certain rules, yet when the established paradigm is getting into serious
trouble, a scientist ought to work, or some scientist is bound to start
working, on the development of a plausible alternative. To be a plausible
alternative and to become the new paradigm it will have to fulfil certain
requirements of rationality. These requirements are at least partially
reflected in what will remain the same in the bodies of norms and values of
the old and the new disciplinary matrixes. At the same time they do reflect
at least partially, the norms and values of scientific rationalism.

In dealing with the theory of the succession of scientific paradigms the
historicist interpretation of this theory has not always been clearly
distinguished from a nonhistoricist one. On the historicist view the
succession of paradigms would not only be a historical fact, but a
necessity, and the theory would thus offer a law of historical development.
This historicism would even imply, for example, that given a certain
paradigm anomalies once must occur. Looking at the theory from a
nonhistoricist angle tho, the focus of attention is not so much on any
regularity in the succession of paradigms itself, but on regularities in the
conduct of scientists vis-à-vis the paradigm and, perhaps, change of
paradigms in their own time and community. When comparing science with
denominationalism, it is these regularities in the conduct of people, and in
the social acceptance of traditional or novel systems of disciplinary
thought, which are particularly interesting as they would hold at all times
in the past, the present and the future.



6.3.2  THE ANALOGY


Much of what has been said about the succession of, and attitude towards,
disciplinary matrixes or 'paradigms' in science need not exclusively hold
for science at all, but could be applied to other departments or
subdepartments of disciplinary thought as well. In this and the following
section we will consider some of the similarities and differences between
the theory of the history and future of scientific paradigms as outlined in
the previous section, and a theory of the history and future of
denominational paradigms. A denominational paradigm is, then, a (religious
or nonreligious) comprehensive ideology which plays a dominant part in a
certain community because it is generally adhered to, or made to adhere to,
in that community. This definition may still be vague --what does community
mean, for instance?-- but here it need not be more accurate than the
concepts used in the theory of scientific paradigms or in other theories
propounded by philosophers of science.

What are the most plausible things the analogy reveals to us? First of all,
it reveals to us --again, for all but the most ignorant-- that a religion or
nonreligious, denominational doctrine has never been, and never will be,
abandoned because it has been falsified. Like 'normal scientists', 'normal
denominationalists' always have tried, and will try, to interpret the facts
and modes in such a way that they do not contradict the dominant religion or
nonreligious ideology, or else they will reinterpret or restrict the
assertions of that dominant ideology to make them correspond with new facts
and modes. The distortion of language and truth may be outrageous, yet they
will do it. (For example, if the end of the world was predicted several
millenniums ago in their religion, they may retort that for their god one
day may be a thousand years and a thousand years one day.)

That the falsification of religious or theodemonical belief does in no way
affect adherence to such belief was discovered a long time ago. When, with
the advent of modern science, the key theme of atheist arguments became the
relationship between science and religion, the problems of this relationship
were viewed from a purely epistemological standpoint. So it was naively
believed that the future of religion would depend on the progress of science
in that science would disprove the crucial assertions of religion and
theodemonism. In the meantime history has demonstrated, however, how silly
these expectations were, and that --as said elsewhere-- the 'exposure of the
contradictoriness of religious symbols and dogmas proves to be completely
inadequate'. (Certain exponents of atheist ideology have subsequently
started concentrating on science and religion as 'specific components of the
intellectual life and social system as a whole serving different objective
needs and performing particular social functions'. Their interest is not
really in the truth of statements about the external world. Instead of
elevating ideology to the level of science, these atheists drag science down
to the level of ideology; traditional ideology, that is.)

Another thing which the analogy between paradigms in science and in
denominationalism teaches us, is the occurrence in the past and/or present
and/or future of denominational crises. Also in the denominational field a
crisis is a necessary precondition for the emergence of a new paradigm with
its own conceptual apparatus and symbolism. Such a crisis situation is found
in this field, when the old denominational paradigm (for example, the
state's monotheist ideology) is bankrupt of original ideas and has exhausted
its plausible intellectual supplies; when it is confronted with too many or
too serious anomalies it cannot adequately cope with anymore. While the
loyal agents of the old lights stick to the descriptions and prescriptions
which have been churned out for centuries or millenniums, many people in the
community or society concerned begin to lose, or have already lost, faith.
The traditional standards of conduct and belief become weaker and weaker or
vanish altogether. It is in such a state of anomie that 'spiritual culture'
is often said to be at a low ebb. But altho some people start to search for
an alternative the denominational doctrine (or family of denominational
doctrines) which has led the community or society into crisis or anomie will
not yet be apostatized officially, publicly or by the majority of people. It
is only if, and when, a suitable denominational alternative is available
that this can happen, for the decision to reject the traditionally dominant
ideology is at the same time a decision to accept another doctrine as the
new denominational paradigm. And whereas it may be exaggerated to call such
a decision "a traumatic one" in science, in the ideological field it can be
a really traumatic one because what is at stake here is people's
denomination, that is, their 'name': the name in which they and their
forbears have always gone (and forgone). When that denomination changes, it
is as tho their own identity as a person changes. Yet, it is not necessary
that in a time of denominational crisis people individually renounce their
old belief and accept a new one. (If the adherents of that old belief do so
grossly violate other people's rights that their actions cannot be tolerated
anymore, they will have to be restrained, but they still do not have to be
forced to renounce their belief itself.) Again like in science, the paradigm
which has been in force in the community as a whole can in principle be
replaced without anyone personally falling away from 'er religion or other
ideology. The traditional belief system may simply disappear or lose its
hegemony with the passing on of the old generation or generations.



6.3.3  WITH CERTAIN QUALIFICATIONS


After having reviewed some of the similarities, or possible similarities,
between the history and future of science and the history and future of
denominationalism, we should now briefly consider some of the differences.
The major difference appears, then, to be one in the frequency of
occurrences. Whereas a scientific paradigm is supposed to span decades or
centuries, a denominational paradigm would span rather centuries or
millenniums. (This illustration is meant to be relative, for both scientific
and denominational paradigms might succeed each other more frequently in the
future. Moreover, whereas denominational evolution may take a much longer
time than scientific evolution, it may be that political, or other
specialist, ideological paradigms span a much shorter time than those in
science.)

The corollary of the difference of the role of the factor time is that a
denominational interparadigmatic period (that is, the period between the
heyday of the one paradigm and that of the next) may be expected to last
much longer than a scientific interparadigmatic period, namely centuries
instead of decades. This explains why the community or society in question
may be multidenominational (bidenominational, for instance) for a very long
time. But even in this period its multidenominationalism is a partial one:
the old paradigm, now well beyond its heyday and coexisting with alternative
ideologies, still remains the dominant one, even tho its dominance may
eventually be one in name only. However, in the denominational field a
'dominance in name' is a form of 'real' denominational dominance because of
the symbolic aspect or emotive function of denominationalism.

From the point of view of ideological power, the adherents of the old
paradigm can allow the denominational pluriformity of their community or
society so long as no ideology emerges which is to become a serious threat
to the preponderant influence of their own denomination -- threat not in
terms of political or military power, but in the sense of the force of its
argumentation and the appeal of its symbolism. In the centuries of
denominational instability (or 'interdenominationalism') preceding the
genesis of the ideology which is to become the new paradigm, the influence
of the old religion or other denomination will perhaps wax and wane
(dependent on the fashion of the decade, so to say). But while its power may
vary during those centuries, it does remain in control until a radical
denominational change puts an end to its domination forever. The hallowed
tree which is hollowed out more and more by its own factual-modal and
normative anomalies is destined to finally collapse under the confrontation
with a new denominational doctrine which has had enough time to reach
maturity.

Now, it might be argued that, apart from times of crisis, the nature of
science presupposes general agreement about its postulates, methods and
findings, and that the nature of ideology, and also of philosophy,
presupposes the existence of conflicting, ideological and philosophical
views. Without opposing parties there would be no controversial theories,
and ideology and philosophy would be 'science'; that is, ideology and
philosophy inclusive of denominationalism. On this assumption it would not
only be unnecessary that one denominational paradigm succeeds another (after
a long time of crisis, anomie or multidenominationalism), it would even make
such a paradigm into a scientific one. Yet, as we have discussed in the
previous divisions of this chapter, a denominational doctrine or theory has
characteristics which a scientific doctrine or theory lacks entirely, and
vice versa, regardless of its being the sole accepted one in a community or
not. (Only philosophical theories may perhaps receive the epithet scientific
when they are not contested any longer.) The analogy with science of single
denominational doctrines succeeding each other as dominant paradigms of
their era may therefore still hold, even tho the ideological pluriformity
would then only be found in the instable period preceding the advent of a
novel denominational paradigm.

We should finally turn our attention to two important features which
distinguish a denominational doctrine in itself from a scientific one, and
see what bearing this has, or might have, on the succession of, and attitude
towards, denominational paradigms in the past and future. The first one is
the symbolic aspect: a denominational doctrine is not just a plain
collection of plain assertions, coherent or not. In some way it also makes
an artistic use of symbols to convey the same message as the one in the
assertions. (As said before, some theorists call the function of these
symbols "emotive".) Let us include in this 'symbolism' everything not
falling under that kind of verbal communication which has to be interpreted
literally. This symbolism may therefore consist of the doctrine's literary
way of presentation, of visual and verbal symbols, or, for example, of the
observance of certain holidays, provided that these symbols and holidays
mean something because of the things they represent.

It is not merely the presence of a system of symbols which distinguishes a
theodemonical or other denominational doctrine from science; in practise it
may also be the imposition of such a system on whole societies or
communities. If done, it is evidently done as part of the total imposition
of the theodemonical or denominational ideology on the people concerned, but
symbolism plays a great part in bringing the 'glad tidings of the word'
(and, if the ideology is authoritarian, the sad tidings of the sword). In a
time of denominational upheaval the system of symbols of what is later to
become the new paradigmatic doctrine may even be adjusted or extended in
order to make it more attractive to the majority of people who still adhere
to the old lights. To take a historical example: a theodemonist religion
competing for the place of the 'true faith' in the denominational and
political theater of a particular empire, may not only decide to add the
celebration of the birth of its divine prophet to its symbolism, but even to
move this very birthday a couple of weeks back to make it coincide with a
rival theodemonist holiday which the general populace does not feel like
giving up. Being well aware that they otherwise would not be able to beat
the old paradigm of denominationalism, the leaders of the novel system of
theodemonism may thus find it strategically necessary to incorporate some of
the traditional feasts, customs and rites into their own doctrine's
symbolism. Once they are accepted, however, they are disengaged from the old
denominationalism's substantive content and furnished with a new meaning;
that is, they are then presented to the community as standing for the new
denominationalism's own substantive content.

The fact that symbols play such a significant role in denominational theory
and practise is at once a nuisance and an asset: it is a nuisance as it
makes it much harder to replace an old denominational paradigm which is, or
has become, inferior from the scientific, philosophical and ideological
point of view, but perhaps not from an artistic point of view; it is an
asset, apart from esthetic considerations, because it enables an alternative
doctrine to establish itself as a new denominational paradigm, even tho the
general populace is not capable of recognizing its superior normative and
intellectual merits or, dependent on the ideology concerned, lack thereof.
This adds to the theory of denominational paradigms a dimension which is
absent in the scientific field.

The second feature of denominationalism which fundamentally distinguishes it
from science is the normative aspect: like every ideology, a denominational
doctrine is a normative doctrine which makes normative assertions, not just
about utterances and theories, but about the ground-world itself. (This is
what some theorists call "the imperative function of ideology".) It follows
from this aspect of denominationalism that the anomalies of a denominational
paradigm may not only be factual-modal, like those of a scientific paradigm,
but also normative. A factual-modal denominational anomaly is, say, the
'explanation' of the existence of two sexes by presenting the unsuspecting
woman or man with the image of a god violently sawing asunder single beings
into male and female, or, alternatively, taking a man's spare rib and
molding it into a woman. A normative anomaly is, say, the image of a male
supreme being commanding wives to honor and obey their husbands (while not
commanding husbands to honor and obey their wives, for instance). These
anomalies merely serve as illustrations -- whether they are conceived of as
anomalies, and as important ones, may depend on the time when they are
considered. What is of paramount importance, however, is that a
denominational doctrine must make normative assertions or have normative
nonpropositional principles (since it is an ideology) but need not make
factual or modal assertions like a scientific doctrine or theory. It is
precisely these factual and modal assertions which are subject to empirical
falsification, or which may later receive a certificate of extraordinary
implausibility. Hence, the analogy of the eternal succession of
denominational paradigms may even on a historicist account come to an end
with the emergence of a denominational doctrine which does not venture its
credibility by depending on empirical suppositions with regard to the past,
the present or the future. The adherents of such a doctrine realize from the
beginning on that the part acted by denominationalism in disciplinary
thought is quite different from that of science. In this respect it is the
least scientific of denominational doctrines which has the best chance of
escaping the fate of a scientific paradigm.

There is one thing we can be sure about: the name of a supernaturalist
ideology with quasi-factual pretensions and abominable prescriptions will
not endure forever.





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