by Michele Marsonet (University of Genoa, Italy).

The terms “holism” and “holistic”, which have become so fashionable today, correspond to the words “systematicity” and “systemic”. Speaking of holism the mind goes to Quine’s approach contained in some famous statements of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, where he claimed that:

          The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs (…) is a man-made fabric, which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustements in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Reevaluation of some statements entails reevaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections – the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field (…) But the total field is so underdetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experience is linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.

In the 1950’s Quine rejected the theoretically aseptic analytic/synthetic distinction insisting, instead, on language conceived of as a tool created by mankind for practical purposes, and this move allowed him to overcome the strictures of a purely analytic conception of language by resorting, instead, to the pragmatist tradition represented by thinkers like James, Peirce and Dewey and C.I. Lewis. In the subsequent phases of his philosophical development, however, his commitment to pragmatism became looser, maybe because Dewey and the other main figures of American classical pragmatism always stress the practical side of the scientific enterprise, thus not giving too much importance to the construction of artificial languages.

          In other words, Quine had to choose, and his choice eventually favored a narrow vision of formal logic and logical analysis of language. No doubt things would have taken a different course had he pursued in the later years his early pragmatist inclinations. Quine deserves the great merit of having underlined the importance of pragmatism in a period which saw a large predominance of logical positivism, but it is correct as well to note that subsequently he somehow betrayed the refreshing insights of the “Two Dogmas.” Turning now our attention to Rescher’s metaphysical positions, it is worth to mention that his philosophy is indeed holistic, although he does not use this term frequently. The following words clearly confirm our remarks:

          In philosophy we cannot erect a viable structure one brick at a time, putting each element into place step by sequential step so that it is secure, irrespective of what comes later. Even as one cannot really produce a well-wrought story one sentence at a time without worrying about what is to come (…) so too, a tenable philosophy must be systematically dovetailed whole. For in the end, the range of our philosophical concern is a network where everything is interconnected with everything else. A philosopher who achieves his or her proximate, localized ends at the cost of off-loading difficulties onto other sectors of the wider domain is simply not doing an adequate job. To be acceptable, a philosophical problem-solution must form an integral part of a wider doctrine that makes sense overall (…) For better or for worse, viable philosophizing has to be a matter of systematization.

The question to be addressed now is the following: What kind of metaphysics, if any, can a pragmatically oriented philosopher consistently endorse? The answer is not as difficult as it might seem at first sight. All we have to do is to envision a more modest (or, if you prefer, less pretentious), concept of metaphysics. A pragmatist metaphysics can indeed be construed, provided we recall that metaphysics – just like science – evolves with the passing of time. Contemporary metaphysicians are no longer supposed to detect the structure of reality by using mere thought and pure deductive reasoning: they must instead take into serious account both scientific results and the metaphysical views that today scientists constantly put forward.

          It may be noted, in this regard, that Richard Rorty has insisted that John Dewey himself had his own, naturalistic, metaphysics. Let us then ask ourselves: Is there any rational motive for feeling uneasy about that? And why is a pragmatist thinker supposed not to endorse a metaphysics? As a matter of fact, it would be easy to show, just by reading carefully his writings, that even Rorty has his own broad picture of the world, a sort of “conversationalist” view which is in turn indebted, to a certain extent, to Donald Davidson’s ideas. It is an unconscious metaphysics, as was the case with the logical empiricists, whose original (but hidden) “global” world-perspective was subsequently brought to light by some clever interpreters.

          Indeed, this situation is not totally new. If we consider the classical positivism of nineteenth century, it is easy to verify that mechanism was a sort of new metaphysics – stemming from natural science – which was enormously successful not only with practicing scientists, but also with many scientifically oriented philosophers. A mechanical physicalism offered to the positivists the opportunity to build up a unified synthesis of scientific knowledge taken as a whole, thus pursuing the project of explaining any natural fact by means of the mechanistic model. But this, of course, was metaphysics, since the positivists thought that they were able to reach the first principles of a reality conceived of in purely material and observable terms. Since, according to the positivists, reality is formed only by matter, science is able to get a complete knowledge of it, and so we had a metaphysics which was both unconscious and monistic. Logical positivism, in turn, was just an updated version of classical positivism. The positivists of our century no longer view philosophy as the elaboration of metaphysical world-visions but, rather, as a technical and linguistic activity meant to clarify the meaning of concepts; a pivotal role is played, in it, by formal logic. No doubt, however, even the metaphysical commitments of logical positivism (and of contemporary linguistic analysis at large) were quite strong, as it was shown when their philosophical success began to fade away.

          The fact is that no skilled philosopher takes the world as it is (why bothering to do philosophy, in that case?), but always interprets it. And interpretation means to construct a world-view, which may be narrow or broad. Those who see a neat difference between the terms “metaphysics” and “world-view” are still tied to the pretentious conception of metaphysics which made sense in the past centuries, when philosophers could think that they were entitled (or even compelled) to say the last word in practically every field of human knowledge. Today the situation is different, if only because the need exists to make the philosophical world-view compatible to a certain extent with the scientific one. We think that John Dewey got things right when he observed:

          The generic insight into existence which alone can define metaphysics in any empirically intelligible sense is itself an added fact of interaction, and is therefore subject to the same requirement of intelligence as any other natural occurrence: namely, inquiry into the bearings, leadings and consequences of what it discovers. The universe is no infinite self-representative series, if only because the addition within it of a representation makes it a different universe. By an indirect path we are brought to a consideration of the most far-reaching question of all criticism: the relationship between existence and value, or as the problem is often put, between the real and the ideal.

This means to endorse a world-view which, unlike the classical metaphysical systems of the past, is a sort of “working hypothesis” open to revision just like scientific hypotheses are. Dewey was able to endorse such a position because, by following the path of the best pragmatist tradition, he took thought (and language) to be not an a priori factor that creates reality but, rather, an extremely sophisticated form of the active relationship between a living organism and the environment in which the organism lives, so that thought becomes a natural activity among many others. And, by adopting such a stance, he avoided both the strictures of classical idealism and of twentieth century analytic philosophy.

          It is important here to stress that an author like Rescher follows just the same path, since the tradition to which he really belongs is the American pragmatist tradition of Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey and Clarence I. Lewis. Nowhere of his works does Rescher endorse a relativistic “take it or leave it” stance. His broad view of reality is, like Dewey’s, a working hypothesis which is supported by a cluster of clearly expressed arguments. Nowhere he presents his own system as giving the “final” answer to all metaphysical, epistemic or ethical interrogatives, also because this would be inconsistent with his views on scientific realism. After all, if science is no longer held to give the ultimate answers, why should such a burden be put on the philosopher’s shoulders?

          Rescher is, thus, both a consistent pragmatist and a thinker who never hides his interest in classical metaphysical issues. He characterizes his own position as a “naturalistic idealism”, and this definition deserves to be explained at length. Naturalism and idealism, in fact, usually look like incompatible positions. Let us start with a basic question: Is Rescher a naturalistic thinker? The answer is not bound to be a plain “yes” or a simple “no”. It is only conditionally affirmative, where “conditionally” means that he can be deemed to be a naturalistic philosopher from some viewpoints, but not from others. As regards the philosophy of mind, for example, naturalism implies that mental phenomena can be reduced to the neurophysiological processes located in the brain, and our author strongly opposes this perspective.

          In elaborating his naturalistic idealism, Rescher resorts to his favorite image of the mind which is both placed in nature’s scheme of things and gives a fundamental creative contribution towards shaping the world-as-we-actually-see-it. Wondering how is natural science possible at all, and how is it that mathematics can be effectively used to characterize the modus operandi of nature, he purports to face the respectably old problem of the “intelligibility of nature”. Interestingly enough, however, he picks up a typically Kantian theme treating it in a non-Kantian fashion, claiming that “the present deliberations will not be addressed, à la Kant, to certain a priori principles that supposedly underlie physics. Rather, our concern is with the factual (a posteriori) principles that constitute physics – the laws of nature themselves. Moreover, the issue is not one of understanding these laws completely in the large or perfectly in detail, but of understanding them sufficiently to facilitate (reasonably) effective prediction and control with respect to (some sectors of) natural phenomena.” It is worth noting that this strategy is frequently adopted by Rescher. The presence of Kantian themes is in fact widespread in both his early and mature writings, but the spirit of his solutions is somewhat distant from the one put forward by the philosopher of Königsberg.