58 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

psychological circumstance that certain properties are constructive without being effective, that Church's theorem is equally an illustration of the mechanical circumstance (or of the electronic circumstance) that certain properties are constructive without being effective.

Thus it appears that Mr. Myhill's conclusion remains invariant under transformations of basic subiect matter, e.g., psychology to mechanics; I suggest that this is a reflection of the formal nature of Church's theorem, that is, of its independence of such slants and interpretations as my me- chanical one, or as Mr. Myhilrs psychological one. Either none of these interpretations is iustified, or else all are iustified to the same degree; and emphasis on any one serves only to obscure the formal character of the theorem.

A Remark on Good Reasons

by D. B. TERRELL

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

M~. BAmR'S tWO articles 1 provide new evidence of the fresh wind blowing over the field of ethical theory. Before proceeding to a few critical remarks on the first of these two papers, I wish to emphasize my wholehearted sympathy with the tendencies they represent, and with many of Mr. Baier's conclusions. I have attempted in an earlier article 2 to show that by taking the generative problem of ethical theory to be that of justifying attitudes, and not the analysis of judgments, the ground is cut out from under many of the divisions that have become commonplace among ana- lytic philosophers, most notably the opposition between intuitionists and emotivists. I hope I am not incorrect in suspecting that there is a substan- tial area of agreement between Mr. Baier and myself. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, he has taken up exactly that problem which I merely attempted to fix upon as the proper and fundamentally significant issue in the philo- sophical treatment of ethics.

Nevertheless, I cannot believe that Mr. Baler's two articles fully achieve what they are intended to achieve, if that is to construct an objectivist account of practical reasoning independent of the doctrines of ethical intuitionism as ordinarily formulated. There is a crucial paragraph at the end of his first article in which he not only fails to provide the promised

REMARK ON GOOD REASONS 59

account of rationality in decision but lapses into a contradiction. This failure at an all-important stage of his discussion frustrates the hope of finding in it a proof that something or other is a good reason, despite the assurances offered to us that it does contain one. ~

The key to Mr. Baier's line of argument is that a good reason is one which cannot be rejected without drawing upon one the criticism of irra- tionality. With this I agree, as I agree that we should call the behavior of one who "regularly goes in for doing something of which he knows that it will cause him pain, without having any reason for doing it" the "prototype of irrationality. TM I agree also that such a man need not be guilty of any self- contradiction. 5 It is in attempting to show that the epithet of irrationality does not have to be restricted to eases of self-contradiction that Mr. Baier's argument, far from establishing his point, falls into irrationality itself.

There are two types of behavior which need to be considered; neither one of them involves strict self-contradiction, although both might well be called irrational. There is a third type, which might or might not be accused of irrationality. In the first place, there is to be considered the behavior of a man who recognizes that the fact of an action's causing him pain is a good reason for not doing it, and also recognizes no independent reasons/or doing it, and yet does it anyway. Second, there is the man who denies the claim that the pain it will cause affords a good reason for not doing the action. Finally, there is the ease of someone who does what he does without having any reasons for or against it at all.

I am going to assume that it is the second of these three types of be- havior with which Mr. Baier is concerned; it is particularly important to distinguish it dearly. To have a good reason is, as I am using the expres- sion, to know of a fact which is a good reason. This is possible without at the same time granting that it is a good reason. Thus the three types of behavior can be distinguished as follows:

Case 1: Knowing of at least one fact which is a good reason for not per- forming an action, and granting that it is a good reason

Case 2: Knowing at least One such fact, yet denying that it is a good reason (this is to be understood throughout to include denying it to oneself, since we are not interested in lies as such)

Case 3: Knowing of no fact which is a good reason In each case, the action is performed without any reasons in its favor.

First it is to be noted that all three eases have in common the absence o f any good reasons for performing the action. There is not even, let us assume, the romantic reason of doing the action for the sake of its per: versity or pointlessness. In one sense of irrationality, then, all are irrational. This is the sense in which to be irrational is just to lack sufficient reason for an action. But surely we are interested in the possibility of applying a

60 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

stricter sense of irrationality, in which to be irrational is to "fly in the face of reason." The man who does something for no reason at all, and who has no knowledge of any facts which would provide reasons for or against it, if he saw them to be so, is not acting irrationally in this sense.

There is one difficulty which requires only a brief comment within the scope of this discussion. It could be doubted whether it is ever possible to speak of an action Performed for no reason at all. We can, of course, speak of involuntary actions, and the possibility of some actions analogous to the third case could be defended along this line. But the problem is more acute in the case of deliberate action, action accompanied by a considera- tion of the weight of reasons for and against. Ex hypothesi, cases 1 and 2 are understood to be deliberate. For this discussion, they are also of much greater importance than case 3, since they alone involve irrationality in the stronger scnse. But are they really conceivable cases of action? Can we still say of a deliberate, as opposed to an involuntary, action that it was performed for no reason? Perhaps we can, and Mr: Baier's argument seems to depend upon this assumption. For my present purposes, I wish to ac- cept it, while calling attention to the problem it raises. Mr. Baler cannot admit involuntary actions into the scope of his discussion, since it hardly seems correct to say of a person who acts involuntarily that he rejects by his behavior any reason, good or bad. This could be said only of one who acts deliberately. Yet with deliberate actions, he must face the apparent paradox of an action performed, on consideration of reasons for and against, for no reason.

Assuming now that the impression of paradox can be dispelled, we are especially interested in those two cases in which action is positively irra- tional. Mr. Baler suggests that there are two ways in which the charge of irrationality might arise. An individual may either deny or by his behavior reject a truth concerning reasons for action. ~ He seems to take these to be more or less equivalent, yet I think this can be seen to be a mistake. There is an ambiguity in the interpretation of behavior which does not arise when an explicit denial is made. The behavioral rejection of a good reason could be interpreted either as the outright denial of its goodness as a reason or as a refusal to be bound by it. It is the former interpretation only which fits my case 2. Whenever we act with a consciousness of guilt, and I believe the possibility of this sort of action must be recognized, we know that there is a good reason for not doing something, and recognize that it is a good reason, without having any better reason for doing it. That is, we are faced with an example which resembles case 1. From Mr. Baier's arguments, however, I think it would be safe to conclude that he is interested in the outright denial that a reason which is in fact a good reason is so, and in behavior interpreted as signifying pragmatically such

REMARK ON GOOD REASONS 61

a denial. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that there is the other possibility.

It is important to do so because the ascription of irrationality to an action must take a different form in case 1 and case 2. Let us first consider what Mr. Baler has to say about irrationality. It is there that his argument becomes inconsistent. What he contends is that it would be a mistake to reserve the word 'irrationality' for cases of self-contradiction. Yet in order to prove this, instead of directing our attention to cases of irrationality which are not cases of self-contradiction, he points out cases of self- contradiction which are not cases of irrationality. The sentence with which he concludes this brief discussion directly contradicts what he set out to prove, for it reads: "We can speak of irrationality only when someone, in the face of a detailed proof of the incompatibility of two claims, maintains the two claims, either because he refuses to admit that the two claims are contradictory although they plainly are, or in spite of the fact that he admits their contradictoriness (and we have good reason to think that he understands what this means).'7 We can only take this sentence as an unfortunate mistake, if we continue to agree with Mr. Baler that the man he has been considering is not contradicting himself. What must be done is to return to an examination of the relevant cases, and ask again the question as to what constitutes the irrationality in each.

In the first case one is tempted to hold that something like self-contra- diction is responsible for the irrationality of such an action. While I have assumed the possibility of acting contrary to reasons known to be good and sufficient reasons, this need not preclude the possibility that to do so is to be inconsistent in some sense. As I have constructed the case, the contradiction, if there is one, will be of the "pragmatic" sort. It arises only if we can interpret behavior as expressing judgments elsewhere openly rejected. Specifically, it must be correct to assume that acting in a certain way is pragmatically equivalent to asserting a belief that there are no overriding reasons against acting in that way. If so, whoever performs an action in the face of reasons which he does judge to be overriding reasons against it, is proclaiming by his behavior beliefs which are contrary to those which he otherwise avows. We can in this way make good the accusation of a kind of self-contradiction and, hence, irrationality.

The problem is an entirely new one when we consider the case of the man who denies that the fact that an action will cause pain is really a good reason against doing it. Even on the assumption that actions do bespeak beliefs, no contradiction emerges here. The action merely reiterates the profession of belief; if there is irrationality at all, it adheres equally to either one and does not develop out of a clash between them. In what way can it be alleged?

62 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

In the first place, unless we adopt a coherence theory of truth, it is clear that the man who merely denies what is true, without knowing that it is true, is speaking (or, if it is a matter of interpreting the significance of his behavior, acting) falsely, but not irrationally. Mr. Baier has recognized much the same distinction in pointing out that an inadvertent self-contra- diction is not irrational. If, however, we have reason to believe that he knows that what he is denying is really true, we might properly speak of irrationality. There are two ways in which such a situation might arise.

The first is the case in which our reason to believe that the man knows the truth of what he is denying is found in other assertions he has made. If a man says something which is true and later denies it, and we have no reason to suppose that he has suffered any lapse of memory or discovered new evidence against his former belief, we could properly claim that at the time he denied it, he knew that what he was denying was true. But he would be contradicting himself; Mr. Baier's man is not contradicting himself.

The second possibility is that we have reason to believe that the man does understand what he is denying and that it would be impossible for anyone who understands it not to know that it is true. No doubt it is this possibility which leads Mr. Baier to use the word 'clearly' when he asserts that his man "is laying himself open to criticism of such a sort that we must infer that what he denies . . . is clearly true. ''8 To say that it is clearly true is surely to suggest that whoever understands it sufficiently to come to a decision as to its truth or falsity cannot help but know that it is true. Thus a man who denies such a proposition, and who makes no other assertions, does not contradict himself, but is gtfilty of denying what he must know to be true, and this is in itself irrational apart from con- siderations of self-contradiction.

Now Mr. Baler has not shown that the 'statement "That an action causes pain is a good reason against doing it" is a statement of the sort that any- one who understands it must know that it is true. What he has done is very carefully to distinguish the denial of this statement from other forms of action which are very likely to be confused with its denial. He has isolated from all other instances of behavior a case in which a man does in fact deny (or reject in his behavior) its truth. But to show that such a man is irrational in the sense of denying what is c/early true, he must show that it is dearly true, and this he has not only failed to do, but not even attempted to do.

NOTES 1 "Good Reasons," Phiiosophical Studies, January 1953, and "Proving a Moral Judg-

ment," Philosophical Studies, April 1953.

R E J O I N D E R T O M R S . R O B B I N S 63

"What You Will, or The Limits of Analysis," Philosophical Studies, April 1952. 3 "The proof that I shall give . . . shows that anyone denying that a certain fact is a

good reason (prima facie and presumptively) against doing a certain thing is laying him- self open to criticism of a sort just as serious as that he is contradicting himself, namely, that he is irrational." P. 7 in "Good Reasons."

"Ibid., p. 14. 5 Ibid., p. 14.

Ibid., p. 8. 7 Ibid., p. 14. 8 Ibid., p. 8.

Rejoinder to Mrs. Robbins

by A R T H U R PAP

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

TH~.ge is, indeed, one serious misrepresentation of my argument in Mrs. Robbins' "Some Remarks on Semantic Systems" (this journal, February 1953). It may be described as a confusion of mater/a/and logical equiva- lence. She claims that I reject: (1) $1 is true in I.~ if and only if pl. But I don't. What I reject is the claim that this biconditional is necessarily true, not that it is true. After all, in order to show that the biconditional is false I would have to show that either "pl" is true and "S~ is true" is false or that the latter statement is true and the former statement false! What I claimed was that it is logically possible that "pl" is true while "$1 is true" is false. It follows that Mrs. Robbins' reductio ad absurdum of my argu- ment on page 26 is fired at a strawman. For while the negation of "p ~--- q" is indeed equivalent to "p ~ ,~q," the negation of " ' p ~ q' is necessary" is obviously not equivalent to "p ~ - ~ q " !

The same oversight leads her to impute to me the claim that (1) is inconsistent with (4) : it is true that p~ if and only if p~. What I actually claimed, on page 4 of my article (January 1952), is that it is inconsistent to hold both (1) and (4) to be necessary equivalences.

I did not deny that (1) is provable in the semantic systems of Tarski and Carnap on the basis of their definitions of truth. My point is that insofar as their definitions turn (1) into a necessary proposition the), do not accord with the ordinary meaning of "true"; for (1), taken as a state- ment of natural language, does not express a necessary truth. This non- accordance with the ordinary meaning of "true" is the "error in the con-