C. I. LEWIS--ROSENTHAL

C. I. LewIs in F Cuso

The Pulse of Pragmatism

Sandra B. Rosenthal

PhilosoPhy

C. I. Lewis (1883–1964) was one of the most important

thinkers of his generation. his unique pragmatic vision links him

to the tradition of classical American pragmatism articulated in

the works of Charles s. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and

George herbert Mead. in this book, sandra B. Rosenthal explores

the rich veins that formed the core of lewis’s philosophical

identity. Rosenthal traces lewis’s influences, explains the

central concepts that informed his thinking, and follows

the effects of lewis’s ethics and practical thought as he

worked to resolve the problems and issues that defined

his view of the human experience. Rosenthal shows

how lewis’s central ideas contribute to the enrichment

and expansion of pragmatism and open new paths for

constructive dialogue with other traditions. This book

will become a standard reference for readers who want

to know more about one of American philosophy’s most

distinguished minds.

sAnDRA B. RosenThAl is Provost Distinguished Professor

of Philosophy at loyola University, new orleans.

AMeRiCAn PhilosoPhy, John J. stuhr, editor

C. I. L

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Is in

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us

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lINDIANA

INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolishttp://iupress.indiana.edu

1-800-842-6796

C. I. Lewis

in Focus

AMERICANPHILOSOPHY

John J. Stuhr, editor

e d i t o r i a l b o a r d

Susan Bordo

Vincent Colapietro

John Lachs

Noëlle McAfee

Cheyney Ryan

Richard Shusterman

Sandra B. Rosenthal

Indiana University Press

bloomington and indianapolis

C. I. Lewis The Pulse

in Focus of Pragmatism

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press601 North Morton StreetBloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA

http://iupress.indiana.edu

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© 2007 by Sandra B. RosenthalAll rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any informationstorage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. TheAssociation of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes theonly exception to this prohibition.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rosenthal, Sandra B. C. I. Lewis in focus : the pulse of pragmatism / Sandra B. Rosenthal. p. cm. — (American philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-253-34837-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-253-34837-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Lewis, Clarence Irving, 1883–1964 2. Pragmatism. I. Title. II. Title: ClarenceIrving Lewis in focus. B945.L454R66 2007 191—dc22

2006021428

1 2 3 4 5 12 11 10 09 08 07

For

Lauren, Aliisa, Mark, Michelle, and Stanford

Endless sources of fascination, amazement, and joy

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction1

1 Life, Work, and Importance5

2 Rational Certitude and PragmaticExperimentalism

25

3 Empirical Certitude and Pragmatic Fallibilism69

4 Through Experience to Metaphysics97

5 The Process of Valuation129

6 Morality and Sociality: An Evolving Enterprise148

Notes 171

Bibliography 179

Index 181

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Stuhr and Dee Mortensen for their untiring ef-

forts and ongoing helpful suggestions on behalf of this work, from its incep-

tion to its completion.

I especially wish to thank my husband, Rogene Buchholz, not just for his

encouragement, but for “walking the talk,” taking on much of the tedious

work associated with the writing of this book and, with in¤nite patience,

getting me through an array of incredible computer problems—most of

which were of my own making.

C. I. Lewis

in Focus

The pragmatic vision of C. I. Lewis brings unique doctrines andareas of focus to philosophy in general and pragmatism in par-ticular. This work proposes to explain the central concepts andfeatures of Lewis’s philosophy, explore the lines of thinking thatled him from particular issues and problems to the developmentof these doctrines, and discuss their importance in resolving theproblems that gave rise to them. It will also show the way thesevarious doctrines interweave to form a comprehensive philo-sophic vision about humans and the world in which they live, avision that is enlivened throughout by the pulse of pragmatismand that offers to the general corpus of the classical pragmatiststhe development of features that must be assumed by them butare not explicitly developed and offers to other traditions pointsof contact that open paths for more in-depth dialogues betweenthem.

Chapter 1 traces Lewis’s life and the in®uences that informedthe direction of his thinking, indicating the way these led to hisvarious speci¤c works and doctrines along the way. It sketches in

Introduction

broad strokes the importance of his thinking for both philosophyin general and classical American pragmatism in particular.

The second chapter delves, in a non-technical way, into Lewis’sground-breaking work in logic, discussing how, in the process ofdeveloping his logic of strict implication to avoid the paradoxes oftraditional logic, he became interested in certain issues surround-ing the existence of alternative logics in general and in what theseissues revealed to him about the very status of any logic as wellas about broader epistemic issues. While these abstract logical in-terests seem far removed from pragmatism’s move away from ab-stractions to a focus on the richness of concrete, everyday livedexperience, Lewis’s solution to the questions raised by alternativelogics led him to a distinctively pragmatic understanding of theorigins of logical truths in the richness of human action withinconcrete experience.

These logical interests also led him to his most important andoriginal doctrine, a novel understanding of the nature and func-tion of a priori knowledge. This focus on a priori knowledge isoften held to alienate Lewis from the mainstream of classicalpragmatism, yet his radical reconstruction of its nature providesthe collective corpus of the tradition with an important, if notcrucial, addition. Drawing from a fundamentally Kantian schememade responsive to the insights of American pragmatism andadapted to ¤t the needs of contemporary logic, Lewis establishedan a priori that is coextensive with the analytic, yet that cannotbe said to be empirically vacuous. It arises from experience, haspossible reference to experience, is judged by its workability in theongoing course of experience, and is inherently experimental.

The following chapter explores Lewis’s pragmatic empiricism.Any empiricism, as a position that relies on sense experience asthe basis of knowledge, must give some account of what is sensi-bly given or presented. Because of Lewis’s strong focus on theterm “the given” element in experience, he is often interpreted aspart of a tradition that uses that term to indicate individual, dis-crete units of sense data as the building blocks of experience,building blocks that are usually held to be exhausted in language.But Lewis, in keeping with his pragmatic orientation, clearly rec-

2 Introduction

ognizes the richness of what is immediately given to sense. Heappreciates as well that in its richness what is sensibly givenunderlies and eludes the strict con¤nes of language and, as it en-ters our experience, already bears the imprint of the interpreta-tions by which we get hold of it.

In developing Lewis’s understanding of the given or presentedingredient in experience, the discussion delineates the variouslevels of interpretation by which we grasp it, the functionally dif-ferent roles these levels play in experience and knowledge, andthe distinctively pragmatic nature of the certitude involved. Itfurther explores the way the certitudes of the given and the apriori interweave to give rise to empirical knowledge as probableand fallible, as well as Lewis’s way of handling related issues thatbear on his understanding of knowledge.

Chapter 4 examines the nature of and interrelation between thediverse understandings of reality in Lewis’s philosophy and ex-plains the way he understands each as a reality in the making, areality that is in an ongoing process of evolving or restructuringitself. It also discusses the signi¤cance of Lewis’s understandingof these distinctions in avoiding some of the traditional problemsof philosophy as well as the paradoxes of which thoughtful com-mon sense frequently becomes aware.

In chapter 5 the focus turns to Lewis’s theory of valuation,showing how he utilizes the details of his epistemology in devel-oping his understanding of valuations as types of empirical judg-ments. Like the pragmatists in general, Lewis did not accept theview that moral claims are purely subjective preferences, have nocognitive value, and hence cannot be either true or false. Unlikethe pragmatists in general, however, Lewis makes a break be-tween goods, values, or satisfactions on the one hand, and obli-gation, imperatives, or rules on the other. While judgments per-taining to what is good are empirical claims of sense experienceand are necessary for dealing with issues concerning what is rightto do, or what ought to be done, the claims of sense experiencealone cannot determine what ought to be pursued or what is rightto do. This chapter examines his theory of valuation, leaving hisunderstanding of imperatives for the following chapter.

Introduction 3

Chapter 6 explores the way Lewis, throughout his moral andsocial philosophy, brings the full range of his pragmatic visionto bear in understanding the nature of rules, directives, or im-peratives and their ongoing interplay with judgments of senseconcerning goods. His ethics, with its focus on imperatives ofrightness, provides the grounding for both prudence as the rightordering of one’s life and justice as the social parallel to the im-perative of prudence. This leads to his social philosophy and anexamination of the natural sociality of humans, the meaning ofliberty, the signi¤cance of the institutionalization of social criti-cism, and the way in which society restructures its own socialimperatives in an ongoing process of social evolution.

Like his understanding of a priori knowledge in general, Lewis’spragmatic reconstruction of imperatives ultimately does not con-tradict the general framework of classical American pragmatismbut rather rounds it out by developing certain assumptions onlyvaguely acknowledged in the collected corpus of its works. Lewis’smoral and social philosophy, like his philosophy in general, isdeeply embedded within and attuned to the pulse of pragmatism,and his philosophic contributions are part and parcel of the prag-matic tradition.

4 Introduction

Clarence Irving Lewis was one of the most important thinkers ofhis generation, and with his pragmatic vision he brought uniquedoctrines and areas of focus to philosophy in general and prag-matism in particular. Yet he does not receive the attention giventhe other pragmatists and which he richly deserves.

Lewis is part and parcel of the tradition of classical Americanpragmatism, that movement incorporating, along with his works,the works of the other great American pragmatists, Charles Sand-ers Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead.Pragmatism began as a method of understanding meaning interms of possibilities of experience. Meanings are embodied inour creative ways of acting in the world, our purposive activity,and the truths of our beliefs are subject to veri¤cation in the on-going course of experience. Do they lead to the expected conse-quences; do they work? Experience is experimental, and all of ourbeliefs are fallible. Meanings, and hence the determination oftruths within their structures, are never ¤nal, but are subject torevision. There is a fundamental openness to whatever results ex-perience brings.

1 Life, Work,

and Importance

We are not spectators in the universe, mirroring it in our sub-jective experience or directly grasping its ¤xed structures. Rather,we are creatively engaged within it. Experience is understood asa rich transactional unity of the active organism immersed in anatural universe. Experience is an ongoing transactional affairthat is inclusive of subject and object as features distinguishedwithin an unanalyzed whole. What is involved is not a comingtogether of separate parts—mind and matter, mental and physi-cal, subjective experience and objective reality, self and other, andso forth. Rather, these are distinctions within a uni¤ed whole thatis partially constitutive of the very parts distinguished. Experi-encing subject and experienced object constitute a primal rela-tional unity. Nor does experience come chopped into bits, butrather it is continuous, inde¤nitely rich, and full of relationships.The empiricism of pragmatism is a radical empiricism in that tra-ditional empiricism was not empirical enough; it ignored far toomuch of what we experience.

The universe for the pragmatist is a restless, pluralistic, openuniverse that offers no assurances, no guarantees, and no closure.Diversity, change, and precariousness are part and parcel of it.Emphasizing the importance of community, the social, and thevalue-laden dimension of experience, pragmatism embodies aunique relevance for the affairs of life and concern with humanconduct.

American pragmatism by and large rejects the categories andlanguage central to the philosophic tradition in favor of new vi-sions that undercut the traditional dichotomies and dilemmas thatwere entrenched in the tradition. It does not attempt to providenew answers to enduring problems. Rather it undercuts theseproblems by denying the assumptions that gave rise to them, inthis way transforming the very nature of the debates.

Several factors relevant to Lewis and his work have led to alack of appreciation of his unique contributions to this pragmaticvision. One such factor is his basic temperament and writingstyle. Lewis was born April 12, 1883, in Stoneham, Massachu-setts. His parents, Irving Lewis and Hannah Dearth Lewis, bothcame from New Hampshire families, and as he characterizes him-

6 C. I. Lewis in Focus

self, “both by inheritance and in temperament, I am, I think, anup-country New England Yankee.”1 He was a very private personwho was not concerned with popularity, and he was convincedthat there were great things to be achieved with hard work andself-reliance. This in®uenced his basic approach to philosophic is-sues as well as his style of presentation. He was uncompromis-ingly honest and rigorous in his philosophical pursuits, and hiswritings and lectures were geared to small groups of similarly rig-orous scholars. Lewis was a “philosopher’s philosopher,” an aca-demic specialist who thrived on technical problems presented inprofessional journals or graduate lectures and whose primaryinterest was in addressing other philosophers. And while, likeJames and Dewey, he was interested in the problems and issuesof everyday life, as evidenced by the richness of his writings inmoral, social, and political philosophy, he engaged these problemsby translating them into highly abstract problems of philosophy.

Another factor that contributed to his neglect as an important¤gure in the tradition of classical American pragmatism is par-tially the result of his long association with Harvard University.Lewis grew up in the Boston area, and for most of his career hewas af¤liated with Harvard, ¤rst as a student and then as a teacher.The diverse in®uences of the great philosophers with whom hecame in contact in this setting led him to formulate unique syn-theses of opposing views that required carefully thought throughunderstandings of their relative strengths and weaknesses. His re-constructed version of traditional concepts, which his novel syn-theses required and which is itself partially the result of his longassociation with Harvard, developed into some of his most impor-tant pragmatic doctrines but also led to some of the major barriersto understanding his uniquely pragmatic vision, with a resultantlack of attention to or appreciation of his philosophy.

In his continual use of terms drawn from the philosophic tradi-tion, Lewis radically transformed their meanings in keeping withhis novel vision, but these terms are too often interpreted in tra-ditional ways by both specialized scholars and more general read-ers alike. This is most pronounced in the constant thread of theKantian schematic that runs throughout his thought and domi-

Life, Work, and Importance 7

nates his own philosophic vocabulary. His use of Kantian themesand vocabulary is the source of a perceived tension, even an ir-reconcilable con®ict, between Lewis and a thoroughgoing prag-matism. Kant’s emphasis on a priori forms of thought, schemas,and categorical imperatives does not seem to ¤t with the prag-matic agenda. But, it is precisely Lewis’s pragmatic appropriationof Kantian themes, a thoroughly pragmatic appropriation, thatnot only hides, but also houses, the power of his position touniquely enrich the fabric of American pragmatism.

Moreover, Lewis’s Kantian leanings and the Kantian vocabu-lary that dominate his writings are combined with a style andvocabulary not alien to positivist thinking. Indeed, there is asense in which the positivists can trace their own philosophicallineage back to the problems found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Rea-son. This combination was the source of standard interpretationsplacing Lewis’s position within the framework of either the Vi-enna Circle type of positivism and constructionalism or the Brit-ish ordinary language analysis of the post-Wittgensteinian va-riety. Yet his pragmatic appropriation of Kant involves him in anongoing debate with the positivist tradition and the rejection ofkey positivist doctrines. In this way, he occupies a unique posi-tion in advancing the pragmatic agenda from within the conver-sation of the Anglo-American philosophical world from the late1920s to the 1960s. Today, his pragmatic Kantianism has the po-tential to open up in a unique way fruitful paths of dialogue be-tween pragmatism and later analytic philosophy.

Lewis’s philosophical leanings began to develop before he startedcollege. He said, “At about the age of thirteen, I had found myselfbeset with puzzles which, as far as I could discern, came out ofthe blue and had no antecedents.”2 He found himself question-ing orthodox religion, and when he was ¤fteen he met a “littleold lady” who opened him up to discussion when she said that“she also was a heretic.” During this period he read Marshall’sA Short History of Greek Philosophy and the Zeller books on Greekphilosophy, as well as Herbert Spencer’s First Principles. His last-ing interest in Greek philosophy is evidenced in the sprinkling


of references to various Greek thinkers found throughout hiswritings.

Because he had to provide his own ¤nancial support when hebegan Harvard in 1902, Lewis took course loads that would allowhim to graduate in three years. His time there after his freshmanelementary courses was about equally divided between English,economics, and philosophy. Josiah Royce and William James,among others, were his philosophy professors. As regards twoother important ¤gures in his development, Ralph Barton Perryhad not yet arrived at Harvard, and Lewis did not meet GeorgeSantayana until he was in graduate school. In his third year hetook a well-known course in metaphysics, which was dividedequally between James’s pragmatic position with its pluralis-tic, “restless” un¤nished universe and Royce’s objective or abso-lute idealism with its rational order and in¤nite Absolute. WhileLewis found merit in both points of view, by the end of the courseRoyce was his ideal of a philosopher mainly because of his “deepand untiring” cogency. Even then he thought James and Roycehad more in common, most noteworthy the voluntaristic aspect,than either recognized, and he felt grati¤ed when Royce eventu-ally referred to his position as “absolute pragmatism.” And, in-deed, Royce’s af¤nities with pragmatism were hidden both by theabsolutism to which he took his doctrines and by the opposing,argumentative stances Royce and James continually took towardeach other’s position both in and out of the classroom. Lookingback on that experience years later, Lewis commented that he“should be glad to think that the ‘conceptual pragmatism’ ofMind and the World Order had its roots in that same ground” andthat the general tenor of his philosophic thinking “may havetaken shape under the in®uence of that course.”3

He received an A.B. with honorable mention in philosophy andEnglish, and the next year took a job teaching English at a Mas-sachusetts high school, an experience that he characterized asmiserable. The following year, however, he took an appointmentas an instructor in English at the University of Colorado in Boul-der. He found the mountain setting very congenial, and he related


to the students who, like himself, had to work to put themselvesthrough college. Expecting reappointment at the end of the aca-demic year, he married his long-time sweetheart, Mabel MaxwellGraves, on New Year’s Day, 1907.

In the fall of 1908, however, he returned to Harvard for gradu-ate studies. By this time James had retired and Ralph BartonPerry had joined the department. Lewis remained interested inGreek philosophy, taking Santayana’s course on Plato. He enrolledin Perry’s course on Kant,4 and as Lewis characterizes the impactof this latter course, “The evidence of Kant in my thinking eversince is unmistakable, however little I may achieve the excellenceswhich aroused my youthful admiration.”5 He also took a seminarfrom Perry on epistemology, which brought many current issuesto the fore.

Lewis later characterized the philosophic climate during thatperiod as a contest among three dominate schools of thought:absolute idealism, pragmatism, and the new realism, or neo-realism, of which Perry was a leading exponent. But while Lewiswas in®uenced by James’s pragmatism, his graduate years weremore dominated by the debate between neo-realism and ideal-ism. He repeated metaphysics with Royce and attended Perry’sepistemology seminar. These rekindled trains of thought in Lewisthat had begun in the James-Royce course, and they began totake sharper contours.

During this period objective idealism, which had dominatedboth American and British philosophy, was challenged from thedirections of both pragmatism, with Dewey as the leading expo-nent, and neo-realism, of which Perry was one of the leadingAmerican proponents. Lewis considered that all three movementscould be said to take off from “the Jamesian dictum that ‘The realis what it is known as,’” but each taking it in differing directions.He held that Royce took it in the direction of the Absolute, claim-ing the real is to be identi¤ed not with what it is known as by the¤nite, fallible knower but by the Absolute knower, while Deweytook it to the “mundane level” of the human organism and itslimited practical goals. Neo-realism in turn insists on the some-


thing more, a reality of independent objects to which knowing isdirected.6

The train of thought he developed in the examination of thesethree directions anticipates the tenor of his thinking throughouthis career. While the arguments did not convince him, he did notwant to set them aside without a clear understanding of their re-spective points and without satisfactory answers to them. More-over, he thought that within the parameters in which the contro-versy took place, one could have it both ways if the necessarydistinctions were made. In developing the way of having varioustraditional points of view “both ways” throughout his long philo-sophical career, Lewis developed his own novel way of “havingit” that forged a pathway beyond traditional alternatives.

His speci¤c thinking in having it both ways at this point is il-lustrated by his analysis of the issues of validity and truth thatthese divergent paths raised and the direction of his resolution ofthe con®icting views. He found problems with James’s pragma-tism concerning what he considered the con®ation of truth andvalidity, while he thought Dewey tended to avoid the issue, mak-ing no clear-cut distinction between them,7 and his eventual ex-posure to the writings of Peirce led him to feel vindicated in hisrefusal to accept James and Dewey on these points.

He thought Royce’s position was better on this issue, as it em-phasized that while beliefs change, the criteria by which they arejudged are permanent. Making a clear distinction between thevalidity of empirical beliefs as a relation of them to their givenpremises and truth as a concept that has metaphysical implica-tions, he held that there is no contrariety between pragmatism’sfocus on beliefs judged by their workability and idealism’s insis-tence on the ideal of absolute truth. But he agreed with Perry’sinsistence that there was no warrant for objective idealism’s re-ifying this cognitive ideal as absolute mind. Thus, for Lewis, “ab-solute truth and the validity of such knowledge of the real as isachievable by humans, are two different things,”8 and absolutetruth is an ideal, not a metaphysical reality. Though the distinc-tion between validity and truth takes a different twist in Lewis’s


developed philosophy, this distinction, emphasized in his resolu-tion of the above debate on the issues of truth, is crucial through-out his writings and lies at the heart of his work in logic and theresultant pragmatic a priori, his single most important contribu-tion to the pragmatic tradition.

Re®ecting the strong in®uence Kant had on his thinkingthroughout his career, he held that “the idealists had reverted to ametaphysical non sequitur against which they should have takenwarning from Kant: they had mistaken a valid regulative ideal fora constitutive metaphysical principle.”9 The world as a wholly ra-tional system is a regulative ideal of reason, the ideal of the unityof knowledge, but is not constitutive of reality. We use regulativeideals to guide us, but should not attempt to do the impossible ofproving the reality of what they assert. When Lewis claimed thatafter taking Perry’s seminar he “left idealistic metaphysics perma-nently behind,” what he left behind was what he considered theillicit rei¤cation of ideals as metaphysical absolutes; but he did notleave behind some key elements of Royce’s “absolute pragmatism”shorn of Royce’s absolutes. Indeed, he accepted, in modi¤ed form,much of what idealism, shorn of its absolutes, had to offer.

The later Royce made use of Kantian regulative principles as“leading ideas” crucial in the advance of science. Unlike Kantian¤xed principles, leading ideas can change over time. And, whilesuggested by experience, alternative ones are possible. Though ina sense they are demanded by experience, we use them becausethey are helpful; they work. Their justi¤cation, then, is really apragmatic one. And indeed, even Kant’s regulative rules or idealsin guiding our action are ultimately justi¤ed by their function.This “pragmatic justi¤cation” of regulative principles or leadingideas became crucial in Lewis’s development of his own pragmatica priori, though in other ways they at times took a decidedly un-Roycean turn in his various interests.

Although he did not agree that real objects depended on expe-rience or the knowing relation, he agreed with Royce that anyde¤nition of the real object must include the active constructionsof the mind, which embodied voluntaristic aspects of willing orpurpose, and that we analyze given knowledge in terms of pos-


sible experience. Thus he also rejected new realism’s view of realobjects as completely independent of the knowing relation.10 Butthough the real object was not immediately given, there was agiven, brute element in knowledge. In a distinctively Kantianfashion, Lewis held that without our activity the given has nosigni¤cance, while without the given our activity has no ground-ing. Lewis’s own position incorporates throughout the element ofthe sensuous, “brutely there” given, and the element of interpre-tation.

In 1910 Lewis received his Ph.D., having submitted a doctoraldissertation that attempted to bring together the realism and vol-untarism of the epistemologies of Perry and Royce respectively.The way his years at Harvard contoured his unique pragmatic vi-sion is evinced in own account, which is well worth quoting inlength:

Of my teachers at Harvard, Royce impressed me most. His ponderous

cogency kept my steady attention, even though I never followed to his

metaphysical conclusions. James, I thought, had a swift way of being

right, but how he reached his conclusions was his own secret. Royce

was, in fact, my paradigm of a philosopher, and I was prone to mini-

mize the difference from him of such convictions as I had. It was Royce

himself, ¤nally, with my doctor’s thesis before him, who pointed out

the extent of these differences. He concluded by saying, with his usual

dry humour, “I thought you were principally in®uenced by Perry, but

I ¤nd he thinks you are principally in®uenced by me. Between us, we

agreed that perhaps this is original.11

And, indeed, while his distinctively pragmatic vision re®ects thestrong in®uence of Royce’s idealism and Perry’s realism, it in factnegates or undercuts the very dichotomy between idealism andrealism as well as the dichotomies between many other tradi-tional alternatives.

After getting his Ph.D. Lewis assisted at Harvard for a year asno jobs were available, but the following year he got a position atBerkeley. At Berkeley he turned to the study of logic, and his fo-cus remained there through the publication of his Survey of Sym-bolic Logic in 1918. He had taken a course from Royce on symbolic


logic, which ¤rst stimulated an interest in it, and not too longafter assisted in the course. He was very much in®uenced by theimportance Royce gave to logic, holding, like Royce, that it em-bodied the principles of reasoning and that a study of the logicalsystems led to their grasp. Unlike Royce, however, he did notthink that logic held the absolute truth, allowing us to understandthe Absolute mind in which thought and objects would be iden-tical, in this way understanding reality.

Also, during this period Lewis had the opportunity to read Prin-cipia Mathematica, by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Rus-sell, and recognized its importance for developments in the ¤eldof logic, though he rejected its understanding of the relation oflogical implication. This interest in logic was reinforced by thelasting in®uence of Kant on his thinking; for Kant the laws oflogic were ultimately legislative for human thought. But what ul-timately brought him to the study of logic was his epistemologicalinterests and the insights the study of logic had to offer in thatarea, particularly work done in logic and mathematics concerningin¤nity and continuity, which had negative implications for partsof Kant’s position.

Lewis wanted to give a course in symbolic logic at Berkeley, butthere were no adequate texts available. While he felt that no com-mercial out¤t would publish a logic textbook, the need for a textin symbolic logic, combined with the fact that Berkley was pre-paring to launch a series of publications for its semicentennialcelebration, led him to undertake the project of writing A Surveyof Symbolic Logic. At the time, logic was decidedly out of favor.Looking back on the situation, Lewis described it as one in whichmathematicians dismissed logic as philosophy, and philosophersdismissed it as a mathematical game concerned with obvious re-sults. But after reading the ¤rst volume of Principia Mathematicahe felt that there would be a growing serious interest in logic.

The synthesis Lewis had developed in his dissertation leaned to-ward the realist side. Though the activity of the mind was crucialfor knowledge, its constructive function was limited almost toorganization or selection. During the next ensuing years, how-ever, he began to swing toward various idealisms stemming from


Royce’s in®uence. Interrelated with this was the growing recog-nition of the need to counter the force of Hume’s skepticism,which argued that a reality independent of the structuring ac-tivity of the mind is not only unknowable but meaningless. Theforce of Hume’s skepticism had led Kant to hold on to the validityof knowledge only by agreeing that things-in-themselves are un-knowable, that metaphysical knowledge is impossible, thus set-ting limits to the realm of knowledge, limiting it to what can bestructured by the mind. This concern and respect for Hume’sskeptical arguments followed Lewis throughout his career. Hisongoing unique pragmatic synthesis incorporating dimensions ofrealism, idealism, and Kantian insights, as well as his ongoingcriticisms of these positions, was directed by the need to establishthe validity of knowledge against the skepticism of Hume.

During the time Lewis was at Berkeley idealism came under in-creasing attack and other positions began to assert their respec-tive voices, although idealism remained strong. In this periodthe movement of critical realism, so named by Roy Wood Sellers,took shape. According to critical realism knowledge involves theknower, the datum, and the object; objects existing indepen-dently in the external world cause our percepts to arise. This po-sition was supposed to handle the problems of error and illusion,which posed dif¤culties for neorealism.

Soon after Lewis began his nine-year stay at Berkeley Santayana,an early critical realist, taught summer school there and delivereda paper that caught Lewis’s interest. A year later Lewis delivereda paper in response to Santayana’s attack on idealism, defendingthe idealist position that reality must be intelligible and that rea-son imposed conditions upon real objects. He also defended ide-alism against naturalism, which he thought limited knowledge ofreality to scienti¤c knowledge gained through the reduction ofreality to the value-free contents of mathematical thinking andcausal analysis. He contended that it would not work for natural-ism to take the pragmatic path of understanding knowledge ofreality in terms of workable or useful hypotheses, for this intro-duces the concept of value; “useful” is always useful relative tosome end or purpose one thinks valuable. The understanding of


knowledge as involving valuational dimensions became a key di-rective in the development of Lewis’s own position, which hethought of as a “humanism.”

In 1920 Lewis returned to Harvard as a visiting lecturer, and ayear later he was appointed assistant professor. Although reluc-tant to leave the west, he felt that “for one who grew up underRoyce and James and Perry, no other position in philosophy couldhave quite the same meaning as one at Harvard.”12 His return toHarvard went well, and four years later he was promoted to ten-ured associate professor. He soon turned from logic to episte-mology, and in 1929 published Mind and the World, which lays outthe fundamental tenets of his conceptual pragmatism and whichgave him an international reputation. This work is strongly andconsciously Kantian in its focus on “categories,” though as alwayswith Lewis, the Kantian schematic undergoes a radical transfor-mation. The following year he was promoted to full professor.

When Lewis returned to Harvard he was assigned a room inthe Harvard Library that contained the manuscripts of CharlesPeirce, with the expectation seeming to be that Lewis would be-come interested in them and might organize and catalogue them.While he identi¤ed and organized possible pieces of continuouswriting, he never went further, but he did spend two years “prac-tically living with” the material, read many of the manuscripts,and was in®uenced by Peirce’s pragmatic views. He was particu-larly in®uenced by Peirce’s claim that the meaning of a conceptconsisted in its calling for certain types of behavior in certaintypes of circumstances, leading to certain types of consequences,a debt that Lewis acknowledges in several places in Mind and theWorld Order.13 The further pervasive, sometimes subtle, sometimesnot so subtle, in®uence of Peirce on Lewis’s thinking can beseen in his claim that he thought reading the Peirce manuscriptswas like receiving “a thousand suggestions, on a hundred topics,which eventually round out to a total impression.”14 While ac-knowledging his debt to James and Dewey as well, he calls specialattention to his indebtedness to Peirce.15

Reading the Peirce manuscripts also rekindled trains of thoughtbegun during his exposure to James. He thought that Peirce’s


fundamental concepts were better developed than those of James,and they resonated more with Lewis’s own way of thinking. Fi-nally he realized, to his own surprise, that his own conceptions,as far as they could be classi¤ed, were pragmatic, “somewhere be-tween James and the absolute pragmatism of Royce; a little to oneside of Dewey’s naturalism and what he speaks of as ‘logic.’”16

Thus, when Mind and the World Order was published in 1929, hecalled the general position “conceptual pragmatism.” The bookdeveloped from his work in logic and mathematics and from epis-temological issues that had interested him in his dissertation andfollowed him throughout his career.

Years later, in re®ecting on this work, he said he had later cometo realize that his further writings needed to rectify his failure inthat book to make a clear separation of the more metaphysicalquestions from the more epistemological ones. He also expressedthe regret that he had not better conveyed his thoughts concern-ing “the given” in experience or the ultimate data of knowledgefound in experience, an issue that he tried to better clarify in AnAnalysis of Knowledge and Valuation through the introduction of“expressive language.”

He worried, however, that this may have not made mattersmore clear but may have in fact “muddied the waters,” as scholarswho referred to this later discussion seemed not to grasp the rele-vant points that led to the new distinction, and they generallytended to confuse levels of language. He concluded that “afterthirty years of debating the questions of the given element in ex-perience, I come to think that an accurate and well-expressedphenomenology of the perceptual is the most dif¤cult—the mostnearly impossible—enterprise to which epistemology is commit-ted.”17 But he emphasized again, as he had throughout his career,that one cannot avoid the issues by beginning with the level oflanguage. At no time did he accept the linguistic level as theground level for knowledge.

He further expressed his discontent with certain aspects of Mindand the World Order because it had too much of the air of provingwhen it should have been more just calling attention to. He hadcome to the conclusion that fundamental matters are, by their


very nature of being fundamental, beyond the reach of anythingthat could appropriately be called proof. This re®ects what in factpervades his mode of accepting some very fundamental tenets ofhis philosophy, a pragmatic justi¤cation in that without such ac-ceptance thought and knowledge become impossible.

In 1924 Whitehead came to Harvard. Whitehead’s writingsin®uenced Lewis’s thinking in his study of philosophy of science,especially the Whiteheadean doctrines that everything we knowis via sensory experience; that observational knowledge takesplace though a duration, denying point-like instants of time andpoint-like particles; that duration is not a time container but aslab of nature; and that perception is an awareness of events orhappenings. Whitehead’s in®uence on Lewis’s own thinking isperhaps most notable in the latter’s metaphysical speculations,which, though sparse, are crucial for rounding out his pragmaticvision. Lewis’s metaphysical claims, like Whitehead’s, view realityin terms of process or change rather than in terms of unchangingentities of any sort—although Lewis’s understanding of a uni-verse in process differs in fundamental ways from Whitehead’s.

Meanwhile, Royce continued to have a powerful in®uence onLewis’s thinking. In a closing note to a paper published around1930, Lewis observes that he used “knowledge” in the essay torefer to “truths of description” and excluded “truths of apprecia-tion,” which incorporate the esthetic quality of the given. He con-cludes, “There is, then, a line of division between such interestsand cognition of the type of science. And it is suggested that thefoundation of these, not being found in knowledge alone, mayrest upon some postulate.”18 As with most of what shows the in-®uence of Royce in his philosophy, he reworks this in a way thatalters the direction it takes in Royce’s idealism. And it points thedirection for much of what will occupy Lewis in upcoming years.

During this period, the ¤eld of logic was growing rapidly, andLewis was concerned that the logic of Principia, which was gain-ing hold and with which he disagreed, would have destructiveimplications for the direction of epistemology in general. Fromthe time he ¤rst read Principia Mathematica he thought that theimplication relation, “material implication,” which served as the


basis for the entire development, could not adequately serve as aparadigm for logical deduction, and that its restrictions were theresult of a series of historical accidents rather than the result ofthoughtful consideration of the issue by anyone. In chapter 6 andappendix 2 of Symbolic Logic, co-authored with Cooper HaroldLangford and published a few years after Mind and the World Order,he presented what he regarded as the ¤nal development of his“strict implication.” However, each of the two authors wrote hisrespective individual chapters, and some of Langford’s views ex-pressed in his parts of the book diverge from Lewis’s own views.

After the publication of these two works Lewis turned to thestudy of ethics. From very early in his teaching career he consid-ered ethics the most important branch of philosophy, and hetaught a course in social ethics as often as possible. His ownthoughts on ethics had gradually begun to take root, and he nowwanted to develop them. However, he found that he kept gettingpushed back to epistemological issues for several reasons. Mostimportantly, his work in ethics continually led him to epistemo-logical issues, which ¤rst had to be resolved. He realized that heneeded a well-formulated epistemology that could ground validvaluations as a species of empirical knowledge, an epistemologi-cal grounding of valuation not contained in anything he had pre-viously published.

Also at this time, critical discussions of Mind and the World Orderwere being published in numerous journals, and Lewis was con-cerned with countering the various objections presented. He re-alized that Mind and the World Order made no clear separation ofthe more epistemological issues from metaphysical considera-tions, and he needed to sharpen his focus on purely epistemologi-cal clari¤cations. Furthermore, the conceptualism of “conceptualpragmatism” and the conceptualism implicitly incorporated in histheory of strict implication were becoming consolidated in histhinking and reformulated as a distinct topic, thus bringing abouta closer convergence between his logical and epistemological in-terests. Additionally, other philosophers were presenting pointsof view that were similar to Lewis’s own views, yet divergedfrom them in crucial ways, and he needed to work through these


various positions. The combination of providing a grounding forvaluation as a form of empirical knowledge, clarifying his posi-tion as presented in Mind and the World Order while counteringobjections to it, and working through emerging divergent viewsall combined to focus his attention on the systematic developmentof the epistemological issues themselves.

One of the developments that in®uenced the direction of Lewis’sfocus was the formation of the Vienna Circle, which began in1923 and which developed into the general movement known aslogical positivism. This position limited the cognitive meaning ofpropositions to the method of their veri¤cation, rejected meta-physics, and equated knowledge with scienti¤c knowledge, theultimate goal being the establishment of a uni¤ed language of sci-ence, with philosophy equivalent to the logic of science. Lewiswas exposed to the members of this movement on and off andbecame familiar with their writings, citing them in his own work.Some aspects of it were appealing to Lewis, for example the con-struction of knowledge on the basis of experience, but here again,with quali¤cations that distanced him from logical positivism.

In his presidential address to the Eastern Division of the Ameri-can Philosophical Association in December 1933, he noted thatapproaching the issues from the direction of Peirce, James, andDewey divided him from the logical positivists. Among otherthings that Lewis could not dismiss as the logical positivists haddone were the importance and meaningfulness of metaphysicalclaims, the pragmatic insistence on the importance of unactual-ized possibilities of experience, which cannot be reduced to actualverifying instances, and the inclusion of value theory and norma-tive science within the realm of empirical meaningfulness.19 Alsoabout this time the debate over the analytic-synthetic distinctioncame to the forefront of the philosophic scene with the publica-tions of Willard V. O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.”Quine’s work attacked the irreducible difference between theconceptual and the empirical or existential, a difference that wasa fundamental tenet of Lewis’s position. Quine’s attack, however,misses the mark of Lewis’s unique pragmatic appropriation of the


issue, and Lewis’s stance in fact opens up possibilities for impor-tant dialogue between pragmatism and positions such as Quine’s.

In the late 1930s and into the ’40s much of Lewis’s work wasdirected toward countering the claims of positivism. He recog-nized that positivism had changed the framework of philosophi-cal questioning from “How do you know?” to “What do youmean?”20 This demanded that Lewis develop his thoughts clearlyand precisely, and he delved even more rigorously into the prob-lems of veri¤cation, apprehension of the given, valuational issues,and the importance of the analytic-synthetic distinction.

These various in®uences directed both the plan and the contentof An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, which is considered hismajor work and which was the focus of his interest until 1945.Book 1 of Analysis and Valuation is called “Meaning and AnalyticTruth,” and in it Lewis presents a detailed theory of meaning thatin turn shores up his analytic-synthetic distinction as the basis ofhis pragmatic a priori and lays the groundwork for his positionon valuation as a type of empirical knowledge. As such, it was achallenge both to positivism in general and to Quine’s attack onthe analytic-synthetic distinction.

In re®ecting on the book years later, Lewis thought that heoverdid the separation between Book 1, which contained the logi-cal considerations and the related analytic knowledge that wereneeded for support of more epistemological claims, and Book 2,which housed the systematic development of empirical knowl-edge. As a result, he considered the connection between Books 1and 2 to be inadequate.21 He emphasized, however, that the wholework converged toward Book 3, which established valuation as aspecies of knowledge.

In this work, Lewis described his ethical position as “natural-ism,” which was a complete turnaround from his early attackon naturalism. Lewis had not changed his fundamental rejec-tion of the scienti¤c reductionism that limited philosophy andknowledge in general to the con¤nes of the logic of science andthe ¤ndings of scienti¤c inquiry, but rather had come to under-stand naturalism as a humanism that was itself an attack on sci-


enti¤c reductionism and the kind of naturalism it incorporated.He claimed to hold a “naturalistic or humanistic” conception ofvalues, thus clearly indicating that the naturalism he now em-braced was not to be set over against humanism but rather wasto be understood as part and parcel of it. And indeed, pragmatismin general incorporates this non-reductionistic, value-rich natu-ralism. His goal was, ultimately, to show precisely how and why“empiricism in epistemology and naturalism in ethics” do notimply “relativism and cynicism.”22 This issue was vital, for itconcerned the ongoing debate between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in ethics.

Lewis’s ethical writings re®ect the in®uence of both Kant andPeirce. For Lewis, ethics is not to be taken narrowly, for ethics isconcerned with the critique of human action and hence with thenormative basis of all knowledge, for knowledge and action areinseparably linked. In re®ecting on his philosophy much later inhis career, he succinctly summarized the way in which what hecalls ethical considerations must be taken in a broad sense. It con-cerns not merely “ethics and other types of value assessment, butthe whole area of the normative, including logical determinationsof consistency and cogency,” any claim for truth in logic itself,and the justi¤cation of beliefs in general.

To deal with the issues, he stresses that there must be a sharpline between “what are strictly valuations from judgment of rightand wrong in general.”23 He framed his discussion in terms of“laws” and imperatives, and the “categorical imperative” occupiesthe center stage of his moral theory. This frame, consciously andexplicitly Kantian and crucial for Lewis’s ethical pursuits, is usu-ally held to distance him from the other pragmatists, who do notmake such an irreducible distinction between the good and theright. Lewis, however, is not here running counter to the generalpragmatic view but bringing into sharp focus something implic-itly but fundamentally operative in their pragmatic claims. Perti-nent to these issues, as well as others, is his The Ground and Natureof the Right and the third section of Our Social Inheritance.

In 1953 Lewis retired at age seventy. His stature in philosophyis attested to by the fact that Paul Schilpp, editor of the Library


of Living Philosophers, devoted a volume to his work. This was abig honor, which put him in the ranks of such ¤gures as AlbertEinstein, Russell, Whitehead, Santayana, and Dewey, among oth-ers. After completing An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation andthroughout his retirement years Lewis turned to ethics, publish-ing some articles and three series of lectures. The Ground and Na-ture of the Right,24 consisting of the Woodbridge Lectures presentedat Columbia in 1954, was published the following year; Our SocialInheritance, the Mahlon Powell Lectures presented at Indiana Uni-versity in 1956, was again published the following year;25 “TheFoundation of Ethics,” delivered at Wesleyan University in 1959,was published posthumously in 1969.26 At the time of his deathon February 3, 1964, Lewis was working on a major undertakingin ethics, which he never completed.

While Lewis’s work in ethics was postponed till late in his ca-reer, ethics, in the broad sense in which he takes it, is the foun-dation of his entire position. His focus on abstract logical con-cerns, the essential role of the a priori in knowledge, the sharpbreak between the analytic and the synthetic, and the irreducibledifference between the right and the good have often been heldto distance him from the other pragmatists. However, his philoso-phy, like that of the other pragmatists, is fundamentally a norma-tive philosophy, and his logical concerns and sharp distinctionsare ultimately crucial for the foundations of the general pragmaticvision.

While this chapter has been concerned with the historical de-velopment of Lewis’s philosophic career, his philosophic position isnot one that changed in radical ways over time. Rather, through-out his highly successful career, Lewis’s philosophic endeavorswere directed toward developing, clarifying, re¤ning, expanding,and deepening ideas that had their roots, explicitly or implicitly,in the unique synthesis of diverse positions that he submitted ashis doctoral dissertation. And, while An Analysis of Knowledge andValuation is considered his major work, many aspects of his phi-losophy that are fundamental to and crucial for his unique prag-matic vision are housed solely in brief articles scattered through-out his career. What emerged through this lifelong endeavor is a


distinctively pragmatic vision of the universe in which we live,the manner in which we come to understand it, and the directionof our activities within it in morally and socially constructiveways. The remainder of this book will focus on the various fac-ets of Lewis’s worldview, not in terms of their historical develop-ment, but from the perspective of their systematic signi¤canceand interrelatedness and the contributions they make towardthe further development not only of the pragmatic movement inAmerican philosophy but of philosophy in general.


Lewis holds that there are three ingredients in knowledge: thesensibly given and the concept—each of which is independent ofthe other—and the interpretation of the former by the latter. Adistinguishing aspect of pragmatism is that it puts interpretationand its practical consequences “in ¤rst place.” Knowledge forLewis involves a triadic relation of the given or sensibly presented,freely created a priori conceptual schemes, and the interpreta-tion that brings the two together. This chapter will take a look atthe nature and signi¤cance of the purely conceptual element inknowledge.

Empiricism has been given such a broad range of meaningsthroughout the history of philosophy as to have virtually no de-¤ning characteristics that cover all supposedly empirical philoso-phies. However, the distinction between the a priori, analytic,non-factual statement on the one hand and the a posteriori, syn-thetic, factual statement on the other has been taken to offer themost inclusive characteristic of empiricism. Yet there has beenmuch controversy within the empiricist camp itself over the ade-quacy of this distinction. Cases have been made for the existence

2 Rational

Certitude and

Pragmatic

Experimentalism

of the synthetic a priori by several philosophers who, whether ornot they call themselves empiricists, ¤t into the empiricist cate-gory on other grounds. This so-called principle of empiricism hasalso been questioned from another direction in controversies con-cerning the denial of the long-held absolute distinction betweenthe analytic and the synthetic.

In the midst of this controversy, Lewis’s concept of the a priorioccupies a unique position in the ongoing debate concerningthe nature of a priori knowledge and the very possibility of ananalytic-synthetic distinction. Drawing from a fundamentallyKantian scheme made responsive to the insights of Americanpragmatism and adapted to ¤t the needs of contemporary logic,Lewis has established an a priori that is coextensive with the ana-lytic, yet that cannot be said to be empirically vacuous. It botharises from experience and has possible reference to experience.The uniqueness of Lewis’s position concerning the nature andfunction of the a priori both houses and hides its far-ranging sig-ni¤cance.

Logical Investigation and Its Dual Directions

Lewis’s work in logic, combined with a healthy respect for Kan-tian epistemology and an appreciation of certain basic tenets ofAmerican pragmatism, produced the context of thought fromwhich the pragmatic a priori, the vital core of Lewis’s conceptualpragmatism, took shape. Lewis’s spending many years in thestudy of logic was motivated in large part by his strong objectionsto the conception of implication developed in the extensionallogic of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica. This im-plication relation, called material implication, deviates strikinglyfrom the ordinary sense of implication. According to material im-plication, a false proposition implies any proposition, while a trueproposition is implied by any proposition. The problem, Lewisheld, lay in the fact that the logic of propositions formulated inPrincipia is an extensional one, while ordinary deductive infer-ence depends upon the meanings of the propositions used, andhence is rooted in an intensional logic.


This is not merely some abstract logical issue, for it has momen-tous consequences for knowledge in general. Material implicationdoes not allow for the signi¤cance of contrary-to-fact condition-als, for the signi¤cance of claims concerning what would hap-pen if one were to perform a certain action even if that action hasnot been or ever will be preformed. For example, the claim thatif I were to jump out the window and ®ap my arms in a certainprecise fashion I would ®y “like a bird” and the claim that if Iwere to do so I would not ®y are equally true. Since I did notjump out the window and try to ®y like a bird (nor will I evertry to do so), the antecedent “if” clause is false, and thus the en-tire statement is true, no matter what the consequent clause. Butif the two contradictory claims can both be true, the claim has nosigni¤cance. Material implication cannot allow for the meaning-fulness of unactualized possibilities and potentialities, but onlyfor actual facts, and thus it renders senseless the ordinary mean-ing of causal connections or real connections. Furthermore, itundermines the entire concept of veri¤cation, particularly in sci-ence, in which an observational occurrence is held to verify a hy-pothesis, for if a true proposition is implied by any proposition,then the observational truth technically veri¤es any hypothesiswhatsoever; if the consequent is true, the statement is true re-gardless of the truth of the antecedent. In short, material impli-cation wreaks havoc with our ordinary claims and inferences.

Lewis sees the prevalence of material implication in logic inspite of its paradoxes as resulting from the fact that Boole’s devel-opment of the calculus of propositions followed the model of classinclusion, in which the null-class is included in every class andevery class is included in the universal class. This led to the posi-tion that every proposition whose truth-value is false impliesevery other, and every proposition whose truth-value is true isimplied by every other. The source of the dif¤culty for Lewis, aswell as the dual directions in which it led him, is clearly indicatedin his observation that

Two sorts of problems were before me. First and most obviously: is there

an exact logic, comparable to this extensional calculus, which will

Rational Certitude and Pragmatic Experimentalism 27

exhibit the analogous relations in intension? And is the intensional ana-

logue of material implication the relation upon which deductive infer-

ence is usually founded? Second, there were larger and vaguer ques-

tions: Could there be different exact logics? If I should ¤nd my calculus

of intension, it and material implication would be incompatible, on

some points, when applied to inference. In that case, in what sense

would there be a question of validity or truth to be determined between

them? And what criteria could determine the validity of logic, since

logic itself provides the criteria of validity used elsewhere, and the

application of these to logic itself would be petitio principii?1

The ¤rst set of problems arose from the paradoxes of the exten-sional logic of Principia. Their solution led Lewis to the develop-ment of the system of strict implication in symbolic logic and car-ried him beyond logic into the ¤eld of epistemology and thedevelopment of a detailed theory of meaning and analyticity. Thesecond set of problems, arising out of the entertainment of thepossibility of an alternative to the logic of material implication,led to his interest in the existence, within the ¤eld of symboliclogic, of alternative logics such as many-valued logics and so-called queer logics. It also carried him beyond logic to the de-velopment of a theory of knowledge asserting the free creationof and pragmatic selection among various possible conceptualschemes as tools for interpreting experience.

These two strands of Lewis’s thought, both arising from his logi-cal studies and always completely interwoven, lie at the heart of,and pervade, his philosophical position. An understanding of thenature of these two strands, then, is important for an understand-ing of Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism. The following discussionwill trace these two strands, ¤rst in his continuing logical inves-tigations and then in their manifestation in his epistemic frame-work.

For Lewis, all propositions of logic are truths of intension orrelations of meanings. The logic of material implication claims tobe based on relations of extension and the corresponding deno-tational truth values. However, real denotational truth has refer-ence to the empirical, while no part of pure logic is concernedwith the question of empirical truth. Pure logic, in being abstract,


is concerned with formal truth or validity, not with empiricaltruth. No purely logical truth, then, can be based on extensionalrelations. All such logical truths must be intensional truths.

Lewis holds that any abstract system of logic has intensionalmeaning in that its terms are systematically related in accordancewith general conceptual schemes. Logical rules have meaning interms of the operations they prescribe. This meaning that thesymbols of logic have is part of a system whose total structure isanalytic. “Inference is analytic of systems, not of propositions inisolation.”2 It is because of what the rules mean, because of whatwe do with logical symbols in accordance with rules, that the re-sulting propositions of a logical syllogism are tautologies. The tau-tology is an equivalence of intra-systematic meaning that therules have built up. The logical meaning of truth values, then,just like logical meaning, is pure or intra-systematic intension andis not dependent upon a locus within experience. Within purelogic, whether based on the material implication of Principia orthe implication relation of Lewis’s own system, or any other de-sirable system, the meaning of the terms, which is intensionaland circular, determines the extension, a pure logical extensionthat is itself part of the pure intensional meaning in abstract logic.

This general view of the nature of logical truth lends support,according to Lewis, to his own theory of strict implication, whichdoes not focus its attention on the extensional or denotational val-ues of truth or falsity but on the intensional modalities of possibleand impossible, contingent and necessary, consistent and incon-sistent. These intensional categories forming the basis of the va-lidity of ordinary inference are what Lewis’s own system of strictimplication purports to analyze. Strict implication captures themeaning of ordinary inference or deducibility, with meaningfulimplications holding whether the antecedent is true or false, andallows for meaningful assertions involving potentialities and pos-sibilities. However, like any logic, it is itself circular. Lewis is thusled to his second task, that of understanding the nature of thosecriteria suf¤cient for deciding which, among various possible logi-cal systems, contain the principles that state the truth about validinference.


Two points become clear to him. First, internal consistency isnot suf¤cient to determine a truth that is independent of initiallogical assumptions, but rather such truth requires an extra-logicalelement. Second, every process of reasoning within a logical sys-tem itself contains an extra-logical element, for any particularconclusion presented as the conclusion is selected from an inde¤-nite number of valid inferences that can be drawn. The guidingfactor in both cases is purpose or interest. Thus Lewis is led to theposition that the inferences chosen within a logical system, aswell as the original choice of a logical system, answer to criteriabest called pragmatic. We choose that which works best in an-swering our interests and needs. The problem of alternative logicsis similar to the problem of alternative geometries. The questionin the latter is which geometry applies to real space, and the ques-tion in the former is which applies to ordinary inference. Lewisconcludes that “the behavior of symbolic systems is nothing moreor less than the behavior of the human mind, using its charac-teristic instrument: there is nothing in them which we have notput in ourselves, but they teach us inexorably what our commit-ments mean.”3

A priori judgments, judgments whose truth is in some sensegiven by mind and which are necessarily true or certain, are tra-ditionally held to be judgments that can be determined to be trueor false without any reference to experience. Lewis’s position isthat the analytic and the a priori are identical. He thus rules outa priori synthetic judgments or judgments that are made solely bymind and that are necessary truths independent of sense experi-ence, but that are formed by mind’s synthesis of independentlydiverse concepts. A priori truth is independent of experience be-cause it is purely analytic of our conceptual meanings. The divi-sion between the a priori and the a posteriori, then, coincideswith the division between the conceptual and the empirical, be-tween the contributions of mind and what is given in experience,between the analytic and the synthetic.

Lewis is thus drawn into an epistemological investigation of thenature of a priori truth that encompasses both the analyticity ofmeanings and the pragmatic determination of the contributions


mind chooses to make. Indeed, Lewis recognized from the startof his logical investigations the epistemological direction to whichhe would be drawn and accordingly set his plans “to argue fromexactly determined facts of the behavior of symbolic systems toconclusions of more general problems.”4 The logical developmentof intensional relationships of meanings and the pragmatic deter-mination of their usefulness together give rise to Lewis’s doctrineof the pragmatic a priori. To understand the role of a priori knowl-edge in the way we come to know the world, then, it is importantto ¤rst understand Lewis’s theory of meaning and the kind ofanalyticity it roots.

Meaning and Analyticity

Modes of Meaning

Lewis de¤nes a “term” as an expression that is able to name orto apply to some kind of thing, and introduces the notion that aproposition may be thought of as a kind of term. He distinguishesfour modes or dimensions of meaning that can be applied: com-prehension, signi¤cation, connotation or intension, and denota-tion.5 Broadly considered, comprehension, signi¤cation, and con-notation are all intensional modes of meaning, while denotationis an extensional mode, for the ¤rst three all have to do withmeaning as something determined by what one has in mindwhen entertaining a meaning.

A proposition, for Lewis, is a term capable of signifying a stateof affairs; the element of assertion in a statement is extraneous tothe proposition asserted. The proposition is the content of the as-sertion, a content that, while signifying the same state of affairs,can also be questioned, denied, or merely supposed. Giving thename “proposition” to the clause or participial phrase such as“Jane baking bread now” rather than to the corresponding state-ment “Jane is baking bread now” provides a basis for the impor-tant distinction between intension and extension.

The state of affairs referred to is the signi¤cation of the propo-sition, not its denotation. The signi¤cation of a proposition is the


state of affairs in the actual world that makes the statement as-serting the proposition true or false. Every statement asserts aproposition and attributes a state of affairs to the actual world. Astate of affairs is con¤ned to what must be the case for the predi-cable term, which is the proposition, to be applicable to reality. Astate of affairs is the signi¤cation of some proposition, not its de-notation. It is not a chunk or space-time slab of reality in all thedetails of its concreteness, but rather includes all that the assertionof the state of affairs as actual implies, and only what is thus im-plied. The difference is that between what Peirce calls an “occur-rence,” which is “a slice of the universe” in its “in¤nite detail,”and a fact, which is so much of this as is implied by “the powerof thought.”6

The comprehension of a proposition is the classi¤cation of allpossible or consistently thinkable worlds that are compatible withit. The comprehension of a proposition, the assertion of which istrue, includes the actual world. If the statement is false, the actualworld is excluded from the comprehension of the proposition. Thecorrelation between intension and comprehension is such thatthe more that is incorporated into the intension, the less is in-cluded in the comprehension. Analytically or necessarily truepropositions have universal comprehension and no intension;they apply to any consistently thinkable world. Analytically falseor self-contradictory propositions have universal intension and nocomprehension; they apply to no consistently thinkable world.

While analytic proposition have zero intension, apply to any-thing thinkable, and imply nothing, require nothing, mean noth-ing as to the facts of existence—thus leading to their frequentcharacterization as “empty”—the applicability of analytic propo-sitions to experience is crucial for Lewis. Thus the question arisesas to how propositions that “mean nothing” can be applied to ex-perience.

Lewis ¤nds the answer in the distinction between the analyticand the holophrastic meaning of analytic statements. Throughthis distinction he is able to apply analytic statements to mattersof fact, while maintaining an independence from matters of factnecessary for their a priori assertion. The “analytic meaning” of


an expression is constituted by its component parts and their syn-tax, while the “holophrastic meaning” is the meaning of a wholeexpression as a unit. To exhibit analytic meaning, any statementcan be analyzed into a series of elementary expressions, “each ofwhich has no symbolized constituent, the intension of which is aconstituent of the intension of the expression in question itself.”7

Lewis here means that they are neither elements of meaning thatare not separately expressed (such as “rational” and “animal” aselements in the meaning of “man”), nor elements of expressionsthat have no separate meaning (such as letters of the alphabet).

This type of analysis reveals that the constituents in an ex-pression retain their own meanings while combining to producethe meaning of the whole statement. The meaning of the wholeexpression—the holophrastic intention—is not the same as themeaning of the constituents taken separately. The constituent ex-pressions refer to empirical facts, thus rendering the completestatement empirically signi¤cant, while the constituents in syn-tactical order say that their intensions are so related as to resultin an intension equal to zero. Through use of this distinction,Lewis accounts both for the application of analytic statements toexperience and for the validity of formal deductive systems inlogic.

Lewis points out that not only analytic statements having zerointension but also contradictory statements having zero compre-hension are meaningful in a way in which nonsense locutions arenot. Thus, in speaking of the term “round square,” Lewis observesthat the term is distinguished from nonsense-locution by de¤-nitely implying the properties of roundness and squareness. It isonly by reason of this intensional meaning that it has that onedetermines its inapplicability to anything consistently thinkable.Self-contradictory statements having zero comprehension tell ussomething very important about this world, for it is a piece ofvaluable information to be told that something is impossible, thatno corresponding factual statements can ever be true.

However, since analytically true propositions hold true for anypossible or consistently thinkable world, they cannot distinguishthe actual world from possible worlds or put any limitations upon


the actual world. Analytically true propositions have implica-tions, of course, but they imply only other analytic propositionsthat, in having universal comprehension, also apply to any pos-sible world. As Lewis stresses, the analytic is “independent of anyparticular states of affairs or of what the world that exists is likein its details.”8

Synthetic propositions, on the other hand, have an intensionand comprehension that lie between zero and universal. They canbe true or false of some possible worlds, but not of all possibleworlds. They imply some things but not all things. The implica-tion or deductive signi¤cance of a proposition coincides withthe intension of the proposition in the sense that whatever is de-ducible from the proposition is contained in the intension of it.The important extensional or denotational property of any propo-sition is simply its truth-value. Through his theory of meaningLewis offers intensional criteria for separating and identifying theanalytic and the synthetic, as well as the analytically true and theanalytically false.

Real De¤nitions and Sense Meanings

All real de¤nitions specify intensional modes of meaning. WhatLewis here means by a real de¤nition is neither symbolic conven-tion nor dictionary de¤nition, but rather an explicative statementthat relates a meaning to a meaning. For Lewis, there are twotypes of meanings related in such real de¤nitions—linguisticmeaning and sense meaning. Linguistic meaning is the patternformed by the relation of a term or proposition to other terms orpropositions. Sense meaning is the criterion in mind that deter-mines the application of the term or proposition; it is the criterionby which what is meant is to be recognized.

Analytic truths, for Lewis, state relations between sense mean-ings and not merely between linguistic meanings. Lewis sets outto undercut the conventionalist position that analytic truth ex-presses nothing beyond what is or can be determined by the lan-guage system that embodies it. Such a position makes the analy-ticity of a statement relative to the conventions of linguistic usage.To assert that the a priori is coextensive with the analytic, but


dependent on linguistic conventions, fails to justify the epistemicfunction of the a priori. It explains the analytic by robbing it ofits relevance to sense experience. A priori judgments cannot bemerely verbal.

Lewis holds that there are conventional elements in the choiceof symbols, in the assignment of the symbols to the meanings,and in the choice of the meanings to be considered. But the in-terrelation of the meanings is neither linguistic nor arbitrary.The analyticity of the linguistic meaning is determined by the¤xed intensional relationships of sense meanings. To separate lin-guistic meaning from the sense meaning it conveys is to engagein a process of abstraction, for these two aspects of intensionalmeaning are supplementary rather than alternative and are sepa-rable in analysis rather than factually separated. Such abstractionserves a useful function for purposes of analysis, for it is helpfulto consider meaning both in its linguistic and in its sense aspects.However, Lewis considers it disastrous for epistemological theorywhen one makes the distinction absolute and posits linguisticmeaning as the focal point for epistemological investigations.Such a procedure, by omitting the intensional relations of sensemeanings, leads to the conventionalism that Lewis ¤rmly rejects.Meaning cannot be fully captured by the relationship of words.

The inability of linguistic meaning to adequately capture or ex-press sense meanings produces the result that an examination oflinguistic entities can give us no exact conception of meaningsand their relationships and hence of the necessity in terms ofwhich we understand analyticity. But though language is not thebasis of analyticity for Lewis, he is not denying that language isindispensable to articulate thought. The interrelation of wordsprovides a type of map for locating what is intended in terms ofsense experience. The “usefulness of our linguistic patterns con-sists eventually in their guidance of our identi¤cations of thesense-recognizable so as to conform these to our intensions andrender them consistent.”9

Language serves the positive function of providing precision forour sense meanings, but only by abstracting from a meaning tooconcrete to be captured by words. Language, by its selective and


abstractive nature, makes precise that which “spills over” its ver-bal containers. Here one can see the supplementary roles of lin-guistic meaning and sense meaning. Linguistic meaning does al-low for more precision, but it is not self-suf¤cient. It can onlysymbolize sense meaning, not capture it. It makes our concretemeanings not only communicable but also more precise, yet onlyat the price of abstracting from the concreteness. Linguistic mean-ing helps us to sharpen our meanings as criteria in mind and tonote previously unnoted defects, yet sense meaning as a criterionin mind gives the concreteness of meaning to which the linguisticusage must conform in its role of providing communication andprecision. Thus linguistic meaning and sense meaning, as two in-tensional modes of meaning, perform two complementary func-tions. And, ultimately, sense meaning is the basic, fundamentalmeaning that supplies the criteria of analyticity. If the search forthese criteria is transferred to the linguistic level, then it will in-deed be unsuccessful. At no time does Lewis take the “linguisticturn” in his philosophy.

Pragmatic Kantianism

Sense meaning, as the criterion in mind determining the ap-plicability of a term or expression, requires imagery. But sensemeanings cannot be merely imagery. Lewis is well aware of theoften repeated nominalist objection to abstract general ideas. Heholds that we do have general sense meanings, however, and ¤ndsthe solution to the problem in the answer given by Kant. A sensemeaning is a rule or prescribed routine and an imagined result ofit that will determine the applicability of the word. “We cannotimagine triangle in general, but we can easily imagine followingthe periphery of a ¤gure with the eye or a ¤nger and discoveringit to be a closed ¤gure with three angles.” In this way Lewis pro-poses to solve the epistemological problem of the nature of thenecessity of analytic truth and of how we know such necessity.We perform an experiment in imagination. We know that “[a]llsquares are rectangles because in envisaging the test which athing must satisfy if ‘square’ is to apply to it, we observe that thetest it must satisfy if ‘rectangle’ is to apply is already included.”10


Both his theory of meaning and his notion of the test pattern orschema reveal that his theory of analyticity is basically one of in-clusion or containment. Though he does set up de¤nite criteriafor determining synonymy in terms of intensional meaning, thefundamental concept of his notion of analyticity is not synonymybut rather containment.

This emphasis on rule rather than imagery helps clarify Lewis’sposition that logical systems, also, are analytically true not by ref-erence to the linguistic aspect of intensional meaning, but ratherby reference to sense meaning. Logical rules and postulates arehelpful in dealing with analytic truth because of the intensionalrelation of the sense meanings that the rules express. Logical ruleshave sense meaning in terms of the operations they prescribe, andit is because of this meaning in terms of prescribed routines thatthere is a logical system rather than an aggregation of symbols.Indeed, he holds that without meaning the marks cannot rightlybe called even symbols.

The difference, then, between the analytic propositions of ab-stract logical systems and the analytic statements whose constitu-ent meanings refer to concrete empirical facts is a difference indegree, not in kind. Abstract logical systems do, for Lewis, havesensory reference, even if the sensory vehicles be only conven-tional notation. Furthermore, the intensional relationships in ab-stract logical systems are rooted in sense meanings that can beneither reduced to the sensory vehicles nor assimilated to linguis-tic meaning. These sense meanings, as the criteria in mind, de-termine the applicability of the concepts of logic to the data ofexperience, and as prescribed routines determine the contain-ment of one meaning within another.

Lewis’s theory of knowledge displays both a sympathy towardand a criticism of Kant’s epistemology. This critical appreciationof the insights of Kant is nowhere more in evidence in Lewis’sphilosophy than in his rejection of Kant’s synthetic a priori, a re-jection based directly on Lewis’s own use of the Kantian conceptof schematism. Using his concept of sense meaning as a schemaof application of a concept to experience, Lewis administers toKant’s theory of the synthetic a priori a neat, simple, yet forceful


blow. For Kant, the schematism imposes conditions not derivablefrom the conceptual de¤nition, and thus a judgment relating theschematism to the concept is synthetic a priori. Lewis argues thatthis view of synthetic a priori judgments is plausible only if oneoverlooks an equivocation in Kant’s argument, for the object re-ferred to by the pure concept is a different object than the ob-ject to which the schematism is applicable. The pure concept, ex-pressible by a de¤nition and not limited to objects of possibleexperience, extends at least problematically to noumenal objects,or things-in-themselves that need not be accessible to experience.The object, the essential criteria of which are given in the sche-matism, is a phenomenal object experienced in space and time. Ifwe do not equivocate, but rather speak of the same phenomenalobject in the subject and the predicate, then the judgment is ana-lytic. The concept of the phenomenal object entails all the spatialand temporal conditions essential to that object’s being identi¤-able in experience. The schema for the empirical application ofthe term must be part of the conceptual meaning of the phenome-nal object.

Lewis offers a more brief, yet more general, argument againstthe possibility of any synthetic a priori judgments. “Any characterin the absence of which we should refuse to apply a term is of theessence. It is included in the signi¤cation of the term; and, anyde¤nition which does not entail such an essential character rep-resents a faulty analysis of the meaning in question.”11 Such faultyanalyses are readily understandable, for the intrinsic intensionalconnections among terms are rooted in sense meanings, and ourverbal expression of these meanings may well omit too much ofthe concrete ground of the connection. Thus, through failure ofanalysis, the appearance of synthetic a priori judgments can arise.

But, if the analysis of a meaning is adequate, the schema is in-cluded in the statement of the real de¤nition. And that which ispart of the de¤nition of a term is analytically contained withinit. By turning to the frequently used example “Nothing that is redall over can be green all over,” we can see the way in which Lewismeets the attack of those who hold to the existence of synthetica priori judgments. It is true that one must go behind the wordsto the qualities red and green in order to understand the propo-


sition at all. And it is further true that the meaning of red doesnot include the meaning of green. Yet, an “experiment in imagi-nation” is suf¤cient to reveal that the absence of green is essentialfor our willingness to apply the expression “red all over.” Thesense meaning of “red all over,” as the criterion in mind or theconceptual pattern, implicitly contains the exclusion of “green,”for if green were present, we should refuse to apply the expression“red all over.” Nor would Lewis deny that the experience of redor the experience of green is necessary in order to understand themeaning of the terms. However, once the meaning of “red” and“green” is grasped, as well as the meaning of “nothing” and of“all over,” then experience is no longer required. Once the sensemeanings of the individual terms are grasped, the truth of therelationship is known by an experiment in imagination, for itstruth is simply truth to the original meanings embodied in thebasic concepts. This truth is legislative for all future experience.We know that nothing that is red all over can be green becausewe will refuse to apply the expression “red all over” when greenis present. And though the element of esthesis in imagined oractual sensory complexes is personal and possibly idiosyncratic,the sense meaning has, as its intersubjective factor, the rule-likeprocedures for relating the sensory complexes. It is in this waythat common meanings get beyond such individual differences ofsense content. Indeed, even a colorblind person is able to functioncorrectly with color meanings, for the common content is the re-lational patterns or rule-like procedures.

Lewis, then, has not merely stipulated out of existence the syn-thetic a priori by an arbitrary de¤nition of terms. Rather, he hasattempted to give an epistemic justi¤cation of the thesis of theanalyticity of all a priori truth. But his understanding of sensemeaning has a further important complexity, and this complexityleads directly to the biological basis of meaning and the function-ing of sense meaning as dispositional.

Meaning as Dispositional

Lewis’s focus on the behavioral basis of meaning does not re-duce human behavior to the contents of science, nor does it lie inopposition to a view of human awareness in terms of a ¤eld of


meanings, but rather, when properly understood, it reveals thepurposive activity out of which awareness of meanings emerges.As Lewis stresses, “The fact that purposive behavior is a physi-cal happening, argues nothing as to the adequacy of exclusivelyphysical categories for description of it, since that feature whichis in point is one which it does not share with physical doings ingeneral.”12 Human behavior is meaningful behavior, and it is inbehavior that meaning is rooted. There is an inseparable relation-ship between the human biological organism bound to a naturalenvironment and the perceiver who enters into the structuring ofa world. From the context of organic activity and behavioral en-vironment there emerge irreducible meanings that allow a worldof things to come to conscious awareness. Such meanings are ir-reducible to the contents of science, to physical causal conditions,or to psychological acts and processes, yet they emerge from thebiological, when the biological is properly understood, for thecontent of human perception is inseparable from the structure ofhuman behavior within its natural setting. Purposive biologicalactivity is the “lived through” biological activity of the humanorganism and, as such, is capable of phenomenological descrip-tion. The phenomenological signi¤cance of habit, dispositions, ortendencies is that they are immediately experienced and pervadethe very tone and structure of immediately grasped content.

Although Lewis usually speaks of sense meaning as a precise,explicit schema, yet sense meaning is, for Lewis, intensional orconceptual meaning, and this he frequently identi¤es as a dispo-sition or habit. He clari¤es this dual aspect of sense meaningwhen he observes that “[a] sense meaning when precise and ex-plicit is a schema.”13 Furthermore, though he speaks of sensemeanings as being in mind, “the important character connotedby ‘in mind’ here is ‘entertained in advance of instances of appli-cation which are pertinent’ . . . One may consider such criteria ofapplication, as meanings entertained in advance, in terms of in-cipient behavior or behavior attitudes if one choose.”14 The sensemeaning, as the disposition or habit, is the source of the genera-tion of explicit schemata, each of which makes precise for con-scious awareness some aspect of the concrete sense meaning.


For Lewis, then, the series of possible schemata for any intendeditem is “¤xed” prior to the imposition of a linguistic scheme, notby any eternal ontological order, but rather by the concrete, bio-logically based, disposition or habit as the rule of generation ofexplicit schemata. Meanings thus emerge from organism environ-ment interactions as precise schematic structures uni¤ed by habitas a rule of organization and as a rule of generation of speci¤cschemata. To be conscious of a meaning, to inspect a meaning, isto be conscious of or to inspect speci¤c schemata. We are neverable directly to examine a disposition, but rather we examine par-ticular schemata generated by it. Dispositions cannot be said togenerate explicit schemata in the sense of providing a copy—evena partial one.

The generation cannot be understood as analogous to the Pla-tonic model of an original generating a copy, for if the relation ofthe disposition to that which it generates is that of an original toa particularized copy, then there is transferred to the conceptuallevel precisely the denotative approach to analyticity that Lewisemphatically rejects. We are placed once again in the impossiblepredicament of having to infer intensional necessity from denotedindividual instances—in this case, individual copies. A schema isnot a particular copy of a general rule. It is not a copy; nor isanything in the schema particular. Lewis emphatically rejects asepistemologically untenable the nominalist conception that indi-viduals are the ¤rst knowables and that individuals are primi-tively determinable by ostensive reference. It is only by referenceto intensional meaning as criterion in mind by which one appliesor refuses to apply a term that denotation is possible, for we must¤rst have criteria for determining what experiences are relevant.

Lewis’s position can perhaps best be clari¤ed by taking the term“image” as “aspect.” For example, one may say, quite correctly,that a landscape presents a majestic image or aspect. In this sense,then, the production of an image is the production of an aspect.And while the speci¤c empirical content of experience is best un-derstood as one particular among many, the image of the schemaas criterion of recognition is best understood as the one that ap-plies to the many. The importance of the content of the image of


the schema lies in the way in which it comes into being. Such animage represents as aspect of the dispositional ordering by whichit is regulated.

The disposition or ground of meaning cannot, it is true, be in-spected “an sich,” but it is inspectable in any aspect. Explicit as-pects can be continually generated for inspection, though the ruleof generation will never be exhausted by the schemata and hencewill never be completely inspected. A disposition as an implicitcriterion is concrete, and any attempt to make it clear and explicitrequires an abstraction from this concreteness. Any explicit crite-rion generated by the concrete ground of meaning gains clarityand explicitness at the expense of total concreteness.

In keeping with this, Lewis holds that a meaning is determi-nate beyond what any number of observed occasions can assurewith theoretical certainty. What follows from this position is thatthough a meaning is never fully inspected, it is inspectable in anyaspect. And what follows from this is that some propositions maybe necessary that we do not recognize to be so; it does not meanthat those we do recognize to be necessary cannot be. If an ana-lytic statement is true, it is necessarily true, though it need notbe exhaustive. Lewis is not here claiming that we can know withtheoretical certitude that an asserted relation of sense meaningsis correct. Rather, if the asserted relation is correct, then what isasserted is a necessary truth. The necessity involved in the ana-lytic is there in sense meanings, and if we do correctly state arelation of sense meanings, then we are stating a necessary truth,necessary because we are asserting the implication of that whichhas been ¤xed in behavior—though we have no theoretical cer-tainty that we have correctly stated the relationship. Theoreticalcertitude thus has a fallibilistic dimension.

Though Lewis’s discussion of analyticity and sense meaning cansound quite abstract, then, the discussion ultimately gets downto the very behavioral roots of meaning and analyticity. Lewissummarizes the entire process in behavioral terms when he statesthat how the meaning implicit in behavior should become explicitand what would be recognized as essential when the attitude ¤-nally becomes self-conscious “is already implicit in the attitude


itself. . . . The classifying attitude or mode of behavior which themind brings to the given experience and which represents itsmeaning, dictates the explicit concept and implicitly possessesit already.”15 Through the functioning of sense meaning as dispo-sitional, Lewis can offer a solution to the problem of contain-ment, showing the way in which one can discover that somequality or character not explicit in a de¤nition is nevertheless es-sential to the meaning in question. Similarly, this functioning ofsense meaning makes meaningful the way in which a meaningof which one is not conscious may be implicit in that meaning ofwhich one is conscious.

Lewis uses an abstract model of a mathematical rule generatinga number series to illustrate the concrete functioning of the rela-tion of habit or purposive activity16 to the generation of schemataor sense meanings as aspects of objects or objective qualities. Justas a mathematical rule may generate an unlimited series of num-bers, so a disposition as a rule of organization contains withinitself an unlimited number of possibilities for the generation ofparticular acts of response in relation to particular types of sen-sory content. And, just as with the number series one may elicitany particular number or any particular cut, but cannot exhaustvia enumeration all possibilities, so one can elicit any particularset of sensory-action relations desired, but cannot exhaust viaenumeration all possibilities. Furthermore, in none of these casesis the inability to exhaust via enumeration all possibilities a con-tingent fact, but rather it is intrinsic to the nature of the generat-ing rule. Moreover, as Lewis states, such an absence of bounded-ness gives rise to our “sense of the experientially possible but notexperientially now actual.”17 Embodied in the actuality of ourmeaning structures as habits of response, then, is a sense of a re-ality that transcends actual occasions of experience.

A second and closely related feature of the model for under-standing habit is that the rule for the generation of a series entersinto the structure of that which is generated. The structure of thatwhich is generated re®ects the character of the rule that gener-ates. In understanding the relational structure of that which isgenerated, we understand to that extent the rule that generates


it. The structure of behavior as anticipatory, then, both requiresand makes possible the creatively regulative features of meaningas habit. Such anticipatory behavior also requires the meaning-fulness of possible but unactualized schemata or plans of ac-tion or, in other terms, the meaningfulness of contrary-to-factconditionals, of meaningful consequences of possible ways of act-ing that are not actualized. Lewis’s epistemology cannot operatewithin the structure of material implication and its paradoxes.

The Importance of Temporality

The above illustration houses two temporal features: the pres-ence within experience of inexhaustible possibilities and the crea-tively regulative features of habit as anticipatory. To be a purpo-sive, interpretive agent is to be temporal. Anticipation is ingredientin the fundamental nature of all understanding, and even themost primordial grasp is not a presuppositionless apprehending ofsomething that reveals itself in its pristine purity, for the meaningof things is legislated by our purposive activity, our creative regu-latory habit of response. Our regulative activities, as prescriptivefor the structural relationships within experience, are at oncerules for the construction of the conditions within which thingsof various types can emerge within experience. They consist of thedynamically organized relational generalities that set the condi-tions of recognition for what will count as the emergence withinexperience of instances of particular types of things. Such order-ings are resolutions to action embodied in the “living meaning”of the creative, regulative features of human behavior. The tem-poral stretch of human experience as creative, regulative, and an-ticipatory reaches out to the future to let it emerge within thecontours of the possibilities contained in the temporally rootedstructure of meaning.

For Lewis, knowing emerges at a pre-re®ective level. There is adeepening and extending of interpretive activity that requires arede¤nition of understanding so that it now encompasses thewhole mode of existing of the human. Understanding and imagi-nation are transformed and uni¤ed in the biologically based, con-crete functioning of the creativity of habits or dispositions. He


abandons theories according to which we experience brute sensedata or qualities instead of ontologically thick things that are en-countered ¤rst through purposive activity. This view of purposivebehavioral activity requires an understanding of time that rejectsthe traditional concept of the “now point.”

The minimal experience always involves a durational ®ow, forit is ¤lled with the rudimentary pulsations of the temporal struc-ture of habit as anticipatory. Such a durational ®ow is essentialfor Lewis’s understanding of experience as experimental, for it in-volves an anticipation of a next experience to come, somethingfor which we are waiting, an expectation set in motion by thetemporal stretch of human activity. The temporally groundedstructure of meaning as habit, then, is the source of the function-ally organized concrete structural unity of perceived things asmore than a collection of atomic appearances, and is the sourceof our sense of a reality whose possibilities of being experiencedtranscend all actual experience.

Pragmatic Experimentalism and the Creationof a Common World

Thus far, the examination of Lewis’s notion of the a priori hascentered on the ¤rst type of question arising from his logicalinterests—that is, the nature of the a priori as it relates to anintensional theory of meaning, a theory in which analyticity isgrounded in a ¤xed, intensional relationship of meanings.

There is a second aspect to be examined, however, and that isthe experimental or functional element that runs through hisconcept of the a priori, a view that gained prominence in Lewis’sthought through his awareness of the pragmatic element thatguides both the choice of logical systems and the direction of logi-cal thought within any system. This aspect of Lewis’s conceptionof a priori interpretive structures is best expressed in his assertionthat the difference between a priori interpretive structures andempirical generalizations is one “determined by pragmatic con-siderations of the particular interests our knowledge is to serve.”18

Lewis holds that the entire process of creating the common


world that is our social achievement is based on a cumulativeprocess involving a pragmatic interplay between categories andconcepts on the one hand and experience on the other. We arecreatures fundamentally alike, having certain very fundamentaltendencies to action, growing out of a basic similarity of needsand physical structure. Such a cumulative process between thelogical and the genetic is in operation with the very emergence ofmind, for “The earliest cognitions of a mind like ours are continu-ous with those modes of animal behavior which foreshadow ex-plicit knowledge.”19

Lewis shows not only that our choice of an a priori conceptualscheme is conditioned by experience in that it is based on prag-matic considerations, but also that the logic which the conceptualschemes apply and by which they are interrelated is itself basedon pragmatic considerations and hence is, in the last analysis,conditioned by experience. Yet Lewis holds that “some logic istrue and some logical principles necessary.”20 The status of logicas true cannot be determined by its being self-af¤rming or self-critical. As Lewis realized through his work in logic, “bad” logicor “false” logic or “pseudo-logic” may also be tautological and self-consistent. When Lewis notes that “some logic is true,”21 he isthinking not of formal truth but rather of “extra logical” truth;he is speaking of the pragmatic selection of that logical systemwhich will prove the most useful. He also holds, however, that“some logical principles are necessary,” yet “the stamp of Mind’screation . . . is not inevitability but exactly its opposite, the ab-sence of compulsion and the presence of at least conceivable al-ternatives.”22 Some principles of formal logical systems are “nec-essary,” only in the sense that if we are to express the structureof valid ordinary inference, then certain formal principles are re-quired to accomplish this work.

The problem can be pushed back to an even more fundamen-tal level. Logic, for Lewis, represents the principles of consistentthinking. Analytic statements represent implications of our ac-cepted de¤nitions in accordance with consistent thinking. And,if the law of non-contradiction is the ultimate ground of the va-lidity of logical principles themselves, then what is its own ground


of validity? Logic as the cannon of deductive inference, plus thelogical laws such as that of excluded middle, and the very neces-sity of consistency itself lie, ultimately, in pragmatic considera-tions. Lewis’s pragmatism runs quite deep. Humans, for Lewis,are essentially acting beings. Meanings that mind entertains, thelogic that explicates such meanings, and mind itself emerge frombehavioral responses to the environment in which we ¤nd our-selves. Our ways of behaving toward the world around us thatare made explicit in our accepted logic are those ways of behavingthat have lasted because they work.

The ¤nal ground of the validity of the principle of consistencyas well as the validity of ordinary inference is ¤rmly rooted in apragmatic, evolutionary-based direction toward survival. Theprinciple of consistency, and that ordinary inference which expli-cates our meanings in accordance with the principle of consis-tency, are rooted in a “pragmatic imperative.”23 The basis of theimperative lies in the fact that if it is rejected, then thought andaction themselves become stulti¤ed. The basis of this “pragmaticimperative” to be consistent is held by Lewis to be a “datum ofhuman nature.” However, this does not reduce to the “merelypsychological,” for, as noted by Lewis, we do act and think incon-sistently. Psychologically, it may even be easier and more naturalto think inconsistently. Pragmatically, it is imperative that weovercome this tendency. “A decision without intent to adhere toit would not be a genuine decision. But one who should adopt thedecision ‘Disregard consistency, ‘ would be deciding to disregardhis decision as soon as made. And, adherence to that decisionwould require that it be promptly disregarded.”24

The principle of consistency, then, is a pragmatic imperativethat must be adhered to if thought and action themselves are notto be stulti¤ed. Thus, those principal tools by which meanings arelogically related are themselves rooted neither in metaphysicalstructure, nor in existential structure, nor in necessary structuresof mind, nor in psychological facts, but rather in behavioral re-sponses. Their origin is pragmatic or functional.

Lewis frequently makes use of the term “category,” but cate-gories differ not at all from concepts in general except in their


degree of comprehensiveness and their more fundamental char-acter. Thus, one might speak of the concept of chair, but the cate-gory of physical object. Our common categories are built up inthe light of a basic similarity of primitive experience. In lightof common categories we build our common concepts; and, inthe light of common concepts, similar experience will occur, for“Most . . . identi¤cations of meaning will, of course, be based onthe previous identi¤cation of other and related meanings.”25 Thea priori at all levels rests upon the ability of the mind to formulateconcepts by real de¤nition and to reject from classi¤cation andinterpretation under these concepts any datum that does not con-form to the criteria that their de¤nitions have established. Thus,we know with certitude that “A mouse which disappears whereno hole is, is no real mouse; a landscape which recedes as weapproach is but illusion.”26

On each level of this cumulative process, intensional, a prioriconcepts must precede the possibility of any denotation or empiri-cal truth revealed through experience. Yet pragmatic considera-tions of adequately dealing with what is given in experience willdetermine the development of new a priori concepts on a higherlevel in the cumulative process. And what is an a priori criterionof reality in a particular time frame and context may be just anempirical law in different circumstances.

It is here that the denotation of analytic propositions becomesimportant. Though we may choose to mean anything we desire,and though the truth of a relation of meanings cannot be affectedby any empirical fact, yet pragmatic considerations compel us tointend meanings that have empirical exempli¤cations. If the em-pirical classi¤cation that is implicit in our a priori or analyticproposition has no exempli¤cation in experience, then this propo-sition does not reveal a material truth, and hence is usually notpragmatically justi¤ed. Our conceptual schemes do not limit ordetermine the given, but they determine our attention to thegiven, as well as the attitude we take toward that to which we doattend.

That is a priori, holds Lewis, which we choose to “maintain inthe face of all experience, come what will.”27 The meanings em-


bodied in our conceptual schemes are built up in the light of pastexperience. They are drawn from the empirical situation, al-though the relation between the meanings is statable apart fromany particular instance of fact. The origin of our a priori concep-tual structures, then is empirical, pragmatic, functional.

A well-worn example, which will serve the present purpose, isthe assertion that “all swans are white.” This statement may beaccepted as an empirical generalization, susceptible to veri¤cationor refutation by future experience. Or it may be taken as an ana-lytic or a priori proposition not susceptible to refutation at all. Thedifference between the two lies in the attitude that one takes withrespect to the principle. The objective properties essential to theapplicability of a term are those that we have chosen to insert inour criterion. They are “essential” because and in the sense thatwe have decided to use them, henceforth, as part of our criterion.Thus, if we are determined to maintain the above principle, comewhat may, then the signi¤cation of the character of whiteness isreferred to by the criterion in mind by which we apply or refuseto apply the term “swan.” If the principle is allowed to be over-turned by experience, then the character of whiteness is not es-sential to the application of the term. In this latter case, the termdoes not signify whiteness, but rather whiteness has been factu-ally associated with the application of the term, though it neednot be.

In the case of the empirical generalization the relation betweenthe subject term and the predicate term is extrinsic; the connec-tion is revealed or not according to experience. In the case ofthe analytic proposition, the relationship between the subjectterm and the predicate term is intrinsic, and a correct explicationof the meanings involved, which reveals this intrinsic relation-ship, is “eternally true.” Meanings, then, can be called “Platonicideas”28 in the sense that “the implications of them are eternal andthe empirical truth about anything given, expressed in terms ofthem, is likewise through all time unalterable.”29 These “eternallytrue” logical relationships of meanings can be neither cementedin metaphysics nor reduced to what the majority do, as a matterof psychological fact, draw out of the original meanings. Lewis


objects to new realism in part because it hypostatizes conceptualrealities, while he objects to nominalism in part because it re-duces meaning to psychology.

Thus, in accepting an a priori truth that all swans are white,we can know with certitude that, if we ¤nd a swan, then it willbe white. Though for pragmatic reasons we must create or ¤xatemeanings with workable applications in the ongoing course of ex-perience, a meaning itself is a deductive system applying to a hy-pothetical state of affairs, the implications of which we can knowabout since we create it. The a priori then, has a hypothetical orif-then certitude that is purely conceptual, an intensional if-thenrelationship as opposed to an empirical one.

The distinction between the analytic and synthetic often goesunnoticed because “[t]he a priori proposition and the empiricalgeneralization are usually indistinguishable by their form. Bothare universal in intent, and are normally expressed by an ‘all’proposition or by one in which the ‘all’ though unexpressed isobviously understood.”30 The difference between these two is thatbetween the intensional and extensional “all.” The ¤rst expressesin the predicate something logically contained in the subject; thesubject concept implies the predicate concept. The second statesa factual connection of two classes of objects that are not relatedintensionally. Here it must be noted that though the term “swan”is applied in both cases, the meanings attached to the term differ.Though the denotation of the term in each case may in fact bethe same—for example, when only white swans exist thoughother colors will be allowed if they occur—the signi¤cation andhence also the comprehension and the intension of the term“swan” in the two cases are different. This, then, is a case of twologically distinct meanings. Though the same term is used, mean-ings evolve only in a genetic sense. Logically, separate and distinctmeanings become attached to the same term.

Thus, though Lewis does speak of “the same” proposition serv-ing now in one capacity, now in the other, what is involved is notthe same proposition but rather two different propositions hav-ing the same sentential expression. What is determined by ourattitudes of response is not the function of one proposition, but


rather the choice between two propositions, the choice as towhether the character of whiteness is to be included in or ex-cluded from the signi¤cation of the term “swan.”

Lewis further stresses that often we cannot distinguish in ad-vance what are the analytic equivalences, for our meanings im-plicit in action have not yet been made explicit. For example, inapplying the term “swan,” we may be completely unaware as towhether this character of whiteness is included in the signi¤ca-tion of the term or not. Since a meaning may be implicitly presentin behavior without the explicit recognition of what this behaviorimplies, the inclusion of the character of whiteness may remaincompletely undetermined until an instance of a black bird resem-bling a swan in all other characteristics should arise. The inclu-sion or rejection of the character of whiteness as a signi¤cationof swan will be implicit in our acceptance or rejection of the blackbird as a swan.

This inclusion or rejection implicit in our behavior will be basedupon pragmatic considerations learned in the light of past expe-rience. And, as our past experience has revealed that color is avery cumbersome mode of classi¤cation for ordering experiencewithin the larger classi¤cation of “bird,” it is to be expected thatour attitude will reveal that whiteness is not included in our im-plicit criterion in mind. As Lewis notes, “We may doubt whetherany meaning would ever become conscious if it were not for thepractical dif¤culties which arise when meanings are not thusexplicit—the dif¤culties of hesitant or inconsistent behavior inborder-line cases.”31 The presence or absence of an intrinsic rela-tionship will be found in attitudes of response as manifestedin particular acts of response, not necessarily in any consciousawareness of what a meaning includes or excludes. Belief in a pri-ori synthetic propositions arises because we are not aware of animplicitly accepted intrinsic relationship between meanings andthus assert as synthetic a relationship that is, in fact, analytic.

Lewis at times goes even farther than the functionalist himself,holding that we often cannot tell whether an abandoned principleis to be classi¤ed as a priori and eternally true but now useless oras a false empirical generalization, for “It would indeed be inap-


propriate to characterize as a priori a law which we are preparedto alter in the light of further experience even though in anisolated case we should discard as non-veridical any experiencewhich failed to conform.”32 Lewis’s position is perhaps best sum-marized in his statement that classi¤cations and their criteria “aredetermined pragmatically, not metaphysically . . . and there canbe nothing in the nature of an object which determines the fun-damentum divisionis by reference to which it shall be classi¤ed.Nevertheless, the mode of classi¤cation being given, what deter-mines whether any particular thing belongs to a speci¤ed class ornot, is the real nature of it; the properties it has and those whichit lacks.”33 In short, analytic truth is truth about the relations be-tween the meanings we set up, while the meanings are about em-pirical facts. What is determined by pragmatic considerations andby behavioral attitudes is whether or not a speci¤c objective char-acter is to be included in the signi¤cation of a term. But, oncethat character is included, the relationship of the signi¤cation ofthe character to the criterion of application of the term is eter-nally true and analytic, though it may prove to be pragmaticallyuseless in organizing and interpreting empirical facts.

In speaking of scienti¤c knowledge, Lewis asserts that therecomes a stage when it is dif¤cult to say whether concepts are de-vised and laws discovered to ¤t phenomenal facts or whether theconceptual system itself rules and the facts are reconceived inconformity to it. He uses the example of the Copernican Revolu-tion. Celestial motions can be described by the Ptolemaic system,in which the earth is taken as motionless and the sun and otherstars are understood as moving. This system was replaced by theCopernican system of moving earth and ¤xed stars. Yet, he con-tinues, we now hold that all motion is relative. The issue as towhat moves and what does not in the heavens cannot be settledby experience or facts. All the observational data of one systemcan be theoretically made to ¤t the other. The choice depends onthe issue as to which system “describes the facts simply and con-veniently.” In the same way, he holds that the choice betweenNewtonian mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity is about


more than facts, which can be interpreted to ¤t either one, butrather in the last analysis the fundamental issues are pragmaticones such as “intellectual simplicity, economy, and comprehen-siveness of principle.”34

These kinds of radical shifts in conceptual sets are capturedin Kuhn’s examination of the structure of scienti¤c revolutions.Lewis’s philosophy in fact provides a philosophical groundingfor such shifts that avoids both the objectivism to which Kuhnwas objecting and the charges of relativism that were frequentlyhurled at Kuhn’s position. Indeed, Kuhn himself recognized thedilemma of rejecting long-held foundationalist interpretations ofscienti¤c method while having no adequate philosophical alter-native to replace them.35

Lewis draws from scienti¤c examples because in science cate-gories and concepts change more quickly and obviously than ineveryday experience, in which they more often evolve slowly overtime. This is well illustrated in his use of Einstein’s position as anexample of the fundamental role of the a priori as de¤nitive instructuring experience. As he elaborates in his example, if light-ning strikes the railroad track at two places, which we will callpoints A and B, how do we know whether these events are si-multaneous? It is suggested that the connecting line AB shouldbe measured and an observer with two mirrors properly inclinedbe situated midway along the line. If the person observes two®ashes at the same time, then they are simultaneous. This de¤ni-tion of simultaneity would be right, however, only if it wereknown that the light travels the length A–M with the same ve-locity as along the length B–M. But an examination of this sup-position would be possible only if we already had the means ofmeasuring time. That the speed of light is constant is in fact nota supposition or hypothesis about the physical nature of light, buta stipulation made to arrive at a de¤nition of simultaneity, andthus “we arrive at a de¤nition of ‘time’ in physics.”36 As this ex-ample illustrates, we cannot ask questions to be answered by dis-coverable laws unless we ¤rst have de¤nitive criteria in place bya priori stipulation. “The fundamental laws of any science—or


those treated as fundamental—are a priori because they formu-late just such de¤nitive concepts or categorical tests by whichalone investigation becomes possible.”37

Lewis’s conceptual certitude has been seen to be intricately in-terwoven with pragmatic experimentalism and certain dimensionsof conceptual fallibilism. Our explications of meanings, thoughyielding necessary truths if correctly made, are always subject toerror, thus providing only fallible knowledge about necessarytruths. The very claim that a relationship between meanings is infact analytic or synthetic is itself always fallible; we may easily,through failure of analysis, take as synthetic a relation that is infact analytic. And when experience turns out unexpectedly, re-quiring a change in our set of beliefs, there is no certainty as towhether experience has overturned an empirical generalizationonly, or has given rise, on pragmatic grounds, to a new meaning.We can never be certain if, and when, a highly con¤rmed em-pirical generalization about an object becomes incorporated intothe very meaning of the object, related necessarily to the dispo-sitional rule that now has the power to generate it. The cumula-tive effects of experience can lead to new empirical generaliza-tions about the same meaningful contents of experience, or theycan lead to the perception of different contents by the replacementof the meanings in terms of which contents of a particular typecan emerge within experience.

Further, we do not, at any level of experience, test beliefs inisolation, but rather as parts of a whole set of claims. Somethingsimilar to auxiliary hypotheses in science is operative in our com-mon sense awareness of the world around us. No part of a relevantcorpus of knowledge is immune from change in the face of re-peated discon¤rming instances, and any part of a belief structurecan be held in the face of discon¤rming evidence by changingother parts of the structure. Experience reveals that an improve-ment is necessary, but clearly not which improvement is needed.Whether we change empirical generalizations in the face of dis-con¤rming evidence or restructure a set of meanings that do notadequately capture experience is not itself dictated by the evi-dence but is rather a pragmatic decision operative within the


context of that encompassing intentional unity of humans andnature. And, indeed, experience usually proceeds without anyawareness as to whether or not we have modi¤ed an empiricalgeneralization by counter instances or have replaced a meaningto avoid having to throw out too much of experience as not realcontents of a particular type, for such pragmatic decisions are im-plicit in modes of response.

At this point it may be asked whether, after such a long excur-sion, the only conclusion to be reached is that, after all, the sup-posed distinction between analytic meaning containments andempirical generalizations is nebulous at best, totally useless atworst. The answer here is a decided “no.” This sharp theoreti-cal difference, which is always operative within the structure ofknowledge, though always elusive for our recognition becauseof its fallibilistic, holistic contextualistic features, is inextricablywoven into the complex fabric of the uniquely pragmatic under-standing of a noetic creativity that is rooted in purposive biologi-cal activity and constitutive of the nature of experience as experi-mental.

Lewis is concerned to rectify the kinds of issues raised byJames’s characterizations of truth in terms of “truer” and “falser,”“new truth” and “old truth,” and “becoming true.” He ¤nds that“the paradoxes and many of the dif¤culties of the pragmatic po-sition center on the notion that truth can change.”38 Any principlesthat were ever true must remain true within the context of theold concepts. In each of the two sets of systems illustrated above,“the one would be better truth, the other worse, from the pointof view of workability.”39 Rejected systems are not empiricallytrue, but they remain consistent logical systems, and any empiri-cal claims that were true relative to that framework remain truerelative to that framework.

Past pragmatists, holds Lewis, are vulnerable to a charge of ca-priciousness, in which “they seem to put all truth at once at themercy of experience and within the power of human decision.”40

Our conceptual schemes prescribe the character of reality, andany conceptual scheme has an eternal truth that experience can-not touch, though experience may indicate that it should be re-


placed by one that is more useful. Furthermore, the truth of anyempirical generalization is determined by the relationship of aconceptual scheme to given experience. Empirical truth does notliterally change, nor are conceptual contexts of interpretationproven false. Rather, when the pragmatic factor in experience isproperly located, it is seen that contexts within which any em-pirical truth can be determined are replaced. Apart from somecontext of interpretive structures that prescribe types of realities,the search for empirical truth is literally senseless, for all empiricaltruth is truth relative to a context.

The sense in which truth is “made by the mind” and is “relativeto human interest and purpose” is the sense in which we chosethe interpretive structures by which we prescribe the outlines ofrealities of particular types and in so doing set the context for thediscovery of empirical truth. However, the analytic or a prioritruth contained in the interrelationships of the interpretive struc-tures is subject neither to the contingencies of experience nor tothe whims of convention; rather, it is eternally true. Such truthis not material truth but formal truth or validity. Lewis holds thatthis complex fabric prevents his pragmatism, and by extensionany pragmatism within which it is operative, “from lapsing intoa cheerful form of skepticism.”41 And this complex fabric does infact illusively pervade the collective corpus of the writings of theclassical pragmatists, as the following section suggests.

The Pragmatic A Priori: Overview and Signi¤cance

We have seen that two distinct strands run through Lewis’sconception of the a priori, the “absolutist” and the “functional,”each of which answers questions emerging from his logical stud-ies. When Lewis’s concept of the a priori is approached in termsof its genesis, the emphasis is on functionalism. When it is ap-proached in terms of its analytic nature, the emphasis is on ab-solutism. Both of these strands unite to form the strength of hispragmatic a priori.

The claims implicit in such conceptual interrelationships cannotbe reduced to the contents of experience or to empirical general-


izations about relationships within experience, for they are legis-lative for what types of objects or facts can conceivably emergewithin experience to provide the basis for empirical generaliza-tions about facts and objects. Further, they are legislative for thevery possibility of the emergence of anything within experience.And, though they are a priori legislative for future experience andcontain analytic, intensionally grounded relationships, yet theirjusti¤cation is ultimately pragmatic or functional; if the contoursof realities of various types that they delimit do not adequatelywork in capturing the indeterminate richness of experience, thenthey will be replaced by logically distinct and new meanings.

This a priori element in experience, which regulates in advancethe possibility of the emergence within experience of facts andobjects, is rooted in the concreteness of rudimentary purposivehuman behavior, and it arises from, is made possible by, and isreplaceable or alterable within, the ¤nite temporal structure ofsuch behavior. Further, while it emerges through a behaviorallyoperative creative synthesis, it then contains within its struc-ture the conditions for its applicability in the ongoing course ofexperience. This containment houses within its very structure areference to the sensible, and thus the features of its relationalstructure can be apprehended within sensible experience. Thesevarious characteristics of the a priori in an important sense under-cut some of the contemporary debates about the nature of ana-lytic truths as articulated in explicit claims. More signi¤cantly,they change as well the very nature of the analytic-syntheticdebate.

Perhaps the uniqueness of this point of view to some extent ac-counts for the general perception that this focus on an a priorielement in knowledge and abstract logical systems distances Lewisfrom the other pragmatists, as well as for a general failure to rec-ognize the signi¤cance of the contribution Lewis’s pragmatic apriori can offer to the pragmatic tradition. Yet the detailed devel-opment of a pragmatic a priori and an analytic-synthetic distinc-tion as formulated by Lewis helps ¤ll in or round out the prag-matic position in a much needed way by serving to highlightwhat is operative, in brief, underdeveloped, and underutilized


statements, the signi¤cance of which is generally ignored, in thewritings of the other classical pragmatists. Moreover, it offers aunique opportunity for the American philosophical tradition toengage in fruitful dialogue with both the continental and analytictraditions concerning one of the important issues in philosophy.These directions are sketched in what follows.

Lewis’s focus on the details of abstract logical systems and a pri-ori certitude seems at ¤rst glance to be far removed from theinterests of Dewey. Dewey’s interest in logic can be broadly char-acterized as an interest in the logic of experience and in the natu-ralistic, functional origins of logic. However, as has been seen,though Lewis begins with problems within abstract logic, in trac-ing the pragmatic element in logic to its very roots he “descends”to the point from which Dewey begins his own logical “ascent”to the understanding of abstract symbolic systems. It is preciselythe experiential roots of the foundations of logic that Lewis isattempting to articulate and explicate by beginning with abstractlogical systems and the problems they engender, and from thereworking down to the conditions of their possibility in the inter-actions of anticipatory human activity within a thick natural uni-verse that reveals itself within the contours of such activity. AndDewey, like Lewis, holds that inquiry, in its emergence in the con-text of basic human responses to situations, may generate prob-lems in its own development, and thus logic becomes autonomousin solving the problems necessary for its own advancements.42 ForDewey, as for Lewis, logic permits a great freedom in laying downpostulates, a freedom subject only to the condition that they berigorously fruitful of implied consequences.43

Though Dewey’s brief comments concerning analyticity and thea priori are taken to be merely functional and given little signi¤-cance, he makes distinctions that, though brief and underdevel-oped, clearly point toward that which Lewis lays out in his posi-tion. In a way similar to Lewis’s, Dewey makes a distinctionbetween the intensional “all” of meaning relationships, whichimplies a necessary relation, and the extensional “all” of empiri-cal claims, which implies a high degree of probability at best.44

Dewey also makes a sharp and parallel distinction between if-


then claims, which he agrees are systematically ambiguous intheir meaning, sometimes referring to the existential and some-times to the ideational.45 He holds that existential propositions re-fer directly to actual conditions as determined by experimentalobservation, while ideational or conceptual propositions consistof interrelated meanings that are non-existential in content in di-rect reference, but are applicable to existence through the opera-tions they represent as possibilities.46 Thus, if-then claims refersometimes to existential or empirical circumstances, and some-times to logical relations among meanings.

Moreover, for Dewey material meanings or sense meanings asschematic rules of operation and observation underlie and makepossible our empirical knowledge. As he indicates the key role ofan a priori regulative feature that is distinctively analytic, “Allpropositions of existential import involve delimiting analytic op-erations of observation. . . . The operations of observation exe-cuted are controlled by conceptions which de¤ne the conditionsto be satis¤ed . . . in descriptive determination of kinds.”47

The rule-like or regulative aspect of the a priori, as well as itsemergence within the ongoing course of experience, is encapsu-lated in Dewey’s claim that “a postulate as a rule of action is thusneither arbitrary nor externally a priori. It is not the former be-cause it issues from the relation of means to the end to be reached.It is not the latter, because it is not imposed upon inquiry fromwithout, but is acknowledgment of that to which the undertakingof inquiry commits us.”48 Nonetheless, such a postulate or rule ofaction “is empirically and temporally a priori in the same sensein which the law of contracts is a rule regulating in advance themaking of certain kinds of business engagements. While it is de-rived from what is involved in inquiries that have been successfulin the past, it imposes a condition to be satis¤ed in future inquir-ies.’”49 Such an a priori element within experience, which Dewey¤nds exempli¤ed in the postulational aspect of logic as the theoryof inquiry, is not rooted in this abstract level, but again re®ectsthe pragmatic insight that the level of re®ective inquiry can pro-vide a clear model for understanding the structures of lived ex-perience. As Dewey carefully observes, insofar as thought does


exercise this a priori regulative aspect, “it is because thought isitself still a vital function.”50

Thus for Dewey as for Lewis, the a priori element in knowledgethat regulates in advance the possibility of the emergence withinexperience of certain kinds of facts or objects is rooted in humanbehavior as partially constitutive of the environment in which itoperates. Further, for Dewey as for Lewis the distinction betweenthe a priori and the a posteriori corresponds with the distinctionbetween the analytic and the synthetic, and both distinctions arerooted in the absoluteness of the containment of action-orientedschematic possibilities within the structure of meaning. WhatLewis offers is a full epistemic account and justi¤cation of the na-ture, function, and critical role of this pragmatic a priori dimen-sion within knowledge which they hold in common but of whichDewey’s writings give only hints.

Peirce’s own brief, fragmented thoughts related to these issuespoint toward a position that not only welcomes but calls out forthe developed insights Lewis’s pragmatic a priori has to offer. AsPeirce puzzled over the problem of containment: “Consider a stateof mind which is a conception. It is a conception by virtue of hav-ing a meaning, a logical comprehension; and if it is applicable toany object, it is because that object has the characters containedin the comprehension of this conception. Now the logical com-prehension of a thought is usually said to consist of the thoughtscontained in it but thoughts are events.”51 How, he asks, can thisconcept of containment be made reasonable “when thoughts arealways distinct events?” He ¤nds the answer to the puzzle inthe distinction between the concrete disposition or habit as therule of organization or “living ultimate logical interpretant” andthe awareness of the logical interpretants or schematic aspectsof that which is organized by the rule. As he expresses the point,the living meaning “virtually contains”52 these aspects, and thusthe resultant structure or logical interpretant or “general idea” “isthe mark of the habit.”53 The “particular kind of judgment”54 thatPeirce holds is formed from this relationship is an analytic claimthat expresses a deductive relation of containment between gen-erative rule and schematic product, for, “the conclusion is com-


pelled to be true by the conditions of the construction.”55 Indeed,Peirce indicates that the mathematical model of containment viadiagrammatic or schematic reasoning represents “the modes inwhich concepts are, or should be, represented as compounded inde¤nitions.”56 This discovery requires for Peirce, as for Lewis, “areal effective force behind consciousness,” or, in other terms, aliving habit.57

Moreover, hints of much of the temporal dynamics operativein the genesis of the pragmatic a priori can be found in Peirce’svery brief comments concerning his observation that a self-con-tradictory proposition is not meaningless; it means too much.58

It “means” something in the predicate, not allowed by the sub-ject as the dispositional rule of generation. However, through achange of meaning, though not necessarily of words, “what isinconceivable today may become conceivable tomorrow.”59 YetPeirce, like Lewis, speaks of meanings as analogous to Platonicideas. Concepts are analogous to Platonic forms for both, not inthe sense of being metaphysical essences, but in the sense of being¤xed, eternal, unchanging (though replaceable) and, indeed, “to-ward the side of math.”

The ambiguities of James’s understanding of the a priori asfound in The Principles of Psychology falls into focus within the con-text of the above discussion. James holds that there is a coercive-ness among necessary and eternal relations that the mind ¤ndsbetween certain of its ideal conceptions, and that these relationsamong ideal conceptions form a determinate system independentof the order of frequency in which experience may have associ-ated the conception’s originals in time and space.60 As far as someof nature’s realities ¤t this network, “we can make a priori propo-sitions concerning natural fact.”61 Yet he also indicates that ourregulative principles are themselves conditioned by the experi-ences that they serve to organize.62 Again, at times he holds thatthere is a sharp distinction between the way in which we justifythe a priori truths of logic and mathematics on the one hand andthe a posteriori truths of physics on the other.63 Yet there areplaces where James comes close to holding that physical theoriesand theories of mathematics are alike not on1y in being “sponta-


neous variations,” but a1so in being “rational propositions.”64

What seems implicit here is not an ambiguous vacillation, but adevelopment toward a view that physical truths contain an a pri-ori element, though for physical truths, such an a priori elementboth arises within the matrix of experience and must be foundworkable within the context of experience. Indeed, James’s re-fusal to relate issues of the a priori to the analytic is instructiveof his understanding of the a priori. He holds that the analytic-synthetic distinction is an unhappy legacy from Kant that losesall philosophical interest the moment one ceases to ascribe to anya priori truths the “legislative character for all possible experi-ence” that Kant believed in.65 “We ourselves have denied such leg-islative character, and contended that it was for experience itselfto prove whether its data can or cannot be assimilated to thoseideal terms between which a priori relations obtain. The analytic-synthetic debate is thus for us devoid of all signi¤cance.”66

Thus, James thinks that the experimental context of a prioritruths, the temporal origin of a priori relationships, and the test-ing of their usefulness in terms of their workability in experiencemakes the issue of the analytic-synthetic distinction useless, sincethere is no claim for any a priori truth legislative of all experiencein Kant’s sense. What we can know, holds James, is only that ifthese things are anywhere to be found, then eternal verities willobtain of them.67 This if-then, however, is the if-then of contain-ment, which Lewis calls the hypothetical certitude of a prioriclaims about experience. I can know in advance of any experi-ence, as “eternal verities,” that if the subject term applies thencertain features must obtain, for they are analytically containedin the meaning of the subject term.

It is not surprising that Lewis’s careful and detailed develop-ment of a pragmatic a priori can serve to illuminate implicit andunderdeveloped ideas germinating in the collective corpus of thewritings of the classical American pragmatists, for any positionthat holds, as pragmatism does, that our world does not come tous “ready made” but rather that mind enters into its structuring,can be expected to hold that we bring structures of some sort toexperience. And if the structures we bring to experience are not


to be a veil that cuts us off from what is ultimately real, butrather, as pragmatism holds, allow us to engage an independentreality in fruitful ways, then these structures can be expected tobe formed, evaluated, and replaced when necessary within thetemporal ®ow of the creative, anticipatory dynamics of experi-ence as experimental, in the interplay of mind’s free creativityand reality’s persistent constraints.

These characteristics of Lewis’s pragmatic a priori unite to formimportant points of departure for dialogue with some continentalphilosophy. Heidegger and others rightly claim that if the a prioriis relevant to sense experience, and in fact underlies all percep-tual awareness, then it must incorporate “material meanings.”It is precisely this point that Heidegger is stressing in his objec-tion to attempts to identify the a priori with the analytic, argu-ing that “allegedly verbal propositions cannot be completely sev-ered from the beings they intend. . . . All signi¤cations, includingthose that are apparently mere verbal meanings, arise from ref-erence to things. Every terminology presupposes some knowl-edge of things.”68 A priori structures are synthetic for Heideggerin that the necessary relationships are dependent upon the ma-terial meanings of the terms. But, it is precisely this necessaryreference to the sensory dimension, incorporated within the apriori in the form of sense meanings, that provides the force ofLewis’s claim that the a priori is analytic.

This relatedness to experience leads to the objection that struc-tures so rich in empirical meaning can arise neither through in-duction, nor de¤nition, nor linguistic stipulation, and hence re-quire a synthetic aspect. For Lewis, however, the synthesizingactivity is not involved in the nature or structure of the a priori,but in its functional genesis in experience. This genesis of mean-ing structures corresponds to none of the above alternatives.Rather, genetically, meanings arise through the cumulative effectof past experience and the creative ¤xation, within the ongoingcourse of experience, of dispositionally organized relationshipsamong experiences. And habit, as creatively structuring, alwaysbrings a “more than” to the organization of past experience. Thecreative process intended corresponds most closely to the creative


process that Peirce calls abduction, though what are here ¤xed bysuch creative activities or abductive processes are not empiricalhypotheses asserting the applicability of meanings to experience,but rather the very structure of the meanings themselves. And atany point in the process, a meaning or dispositional rule contains,analytically, all that it has creatively ¤xated, or conversely, all thatit now has the power or potential to generate, and it is a prioriregulative for future experience. This containment houses withinits very structure a reference to the sensible, and thus the featuresof its relational structure can be apprehended within sensible ex-perience.

That the a priori is dependent upon the material meaning ofthe terms does not itself answer the issue as to whether the rela-tionship of the meanings is analytic or synthetic. But there is thecommon agreement that the a priori element in experience, whichregulates in advance the possibility of the emergence within ex-perience of facts and objects, is rooted in the concreteness of ru-dimentary purposive or intentional human behavior; that it arisesfrom, is made possible by, and is replaceable or alterable within,the ¤nite temporal structure of such behavior; that it has a crucialepistemic/existential function in underlying all experience and infact makes experience possible; and that this crucial function re-quires the a priori relatedness of material meanings. This agree-ment offers a new and common point of departure for discussingthe question of the nature of a priori knowledge as analytic orsynthetic and opens a further pathway for dialogue between thepragmatic and continental traditions. It also would seem to clearthis pathway of the stumbling block of Heidegger’s characteriza-tion of the “arbitrariness” of pragmatism.69

At the same time that Lewis’s position opens a pathway for dia-logue with phenomenology concerning the existence of a syn-thetic a priori, it opens avenues of rapport and discussion withthe in®uential position of Quine and others following him whoattack the claim of an irreducible difference between the concep-tual and the empirical or existential.

In his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” Quine argues against thepossibility of the analytic-synthetic distinction and also against


the claim that a statement, taken in isolation from the statementssurrounding it, can admit of con¤rmation or discon¤rmation atall.70 These two “dogmas” were, for Quine, opposite sides of thesame coin. Quine objected to analyticity partially because heconsidered it impossible to make any sense of the concept of syn-onymy or the linguistic meaning of an expression in which it wassupposedly based. His rejection also came in part from his posi-tion that while analytic claims are considered to be infalliblyknown and not subject to revision, no sentence is absolutely im-mune from revision, and thus no sentence is purely analytic ora priori. There are no unrevisable statements and no infallibleknowers.

This latter objection is tied into his articulation of a view, whichcame to be known as “con¤rmation holism,” that our beliefs areholistic, forming a corporate body or web, and sentences are moreor less revisable depending upon how central or peripheral theirpositions are within the web. Quine extended this “con¤rmationholism” to include all of math and logic. So-called analytic andother sentences purporting to be “known a priori” are, like thelaws of logic and mathematics, comparatively central, and so aregiven up, if ever, only under the extreme force of peripheral be-liefs within the web. It now becomes possible to revise logic ormathematics to further a theoretical web that includes empiricalclaims along with mathematics and logic. This revisability doesnot allow for a justi¤cation that excludes experience, for scienti¤ctheories, along with the mathematics and logic they include, arecon¤rmed only as a holistic web or corporate body. What we calla priori knowledge is revisable within the context of sense expe-rience, and sense experience is pervaded by what we call a prioriknowledge. There is a constant intermingling. We revise a web ofbeliefs in keeping with what changes can most “agreeably” beincorporated.

For Quine, then, the major features that make the a priori–aposteriori or analytic-synthetic distinction untenable are the ho-listic nature of belief systems, the revisability of any belief state-ment within a holistic web, the fallibilism of all knowledge, andthe inability to make any sense of the concept of synonymy or the


linguistic meaning of an expression in which it is supposedlybased.

Lewis agrees with Quine in accepting the holistic nature of ourbeliefs, fallibilism, and the revisability of any part of a belief struc-ture. For Lewis we do not test beliefs in isolation, but as parts ofa whole set of claims. No part of a corpus of knowledge is im-mune from change, and any part of a belief structure can be heldby changing other parts of the structure. What is a priori canbe changed, in the sense of being replaced, in the face of thecumulative effects of experience, and experience is thoroughlypervaded by a priori knowledge. Moreover, experience usuallyproceeds without any awareness as to whether we are chang-ing empirical generalization by counter instances or replacing ameaning to avoid having to throw out too much of experience asnot real contents of a particular type. And whether we changeempirical generalizations in the face of discon¤rming evidence orrestructure an a priori net that does not adequately capture ex-perience is not itself dictated by the evidence but is rather a prag-matic decision based on workability. Experience reveals that animprovement is necessary, but clearly not which improvement isneeded. There is an inherent fallibilism running throughout theweb of beliefs.

Further, explications of meanings, though yielding necessarytruths if correctly made, are always subject to error, thus provid-ing only fallible knowledge about necessary truths. And the veryclaim that a relationship between meanings is in fact analytic orsynthetic is itself always fallible. We can never be certain if, andwhen, a highly con¤rmed empirical generalization about an ob-ject becomes incorporated into the very meaning of the object,related necessarily to the dispositional rule that now has thepower to generate it and that thus now contains it. In his under-standing of dispositional rule, Lewis’s focus on analyticity is noton synonymy but rather containment.

Finally, Lewis agrees with Quine that the analytic-syntheticdistinction falls to the ground in the context of linguistic philoso-phy. At this point, however, Lewis and Quine part company. For


Quine this indicates the collapse of the distinction and a “turnto the pragmatic” in the sense that he views linguistic behavioras providing something like synonymy without the rei¤cationof meaning. Words or expressions to which we react similarly,which are employed in the same way, must have similar status.For Lewis, on the other hand, it points to the need to recognizethe importance of experience as underlying and over®owing thecon¤nes of language. It points as well to the crucial role of sensemeanings as schematic criteria in providing the vehicle for incor-porating a sensory element within the very structure of the ana-lytic a priori as the basis for the containment understanding ofanalyticity and as the link for the inseparable intermingling ofthe a priori and experience.

Lewis, in denying the traditional rei¤cations of meaning, alsoturns to behavior, but behavior as the temporal ®ow of the mean-ingful, purposive activity of concrete organisms immersed in thenatural world and as incorporating the analytic-synthetic distinc-tion within its ongoing dynamics. While the sharp theoretical dif-ference between the analytic and the synthetic or the a priori andthe a posteriori is always operative within the structure of knowl-edge, it is always elusive for our recognition because of its falli-bilistic, holistic, contextualistic features. But, Lewis holds, it con-stitutes the pervasive pattern of ongoing experimental inquiry inwhich a noetic creativity is rooted in purposive biological activityand constitutive of the nature of experience as experimental,thereby avoiding what Lewis calls a capriciousness that seems toput all truth at once at the mercy of experience and within thepower of human decision.

The common acceptance by Lewis and Quine of the numerousfeatures indicated above does not solve the issue as to whetherthere is an experiential over®ow that underlies the linguistic leveland opens us onto the universe, or whether sense meaning is in-corporated into the very structure of the conceptual, providingthe link between, and intermingling of, the conceptual and theempirical. However, these many points of agreement clear thepath for turning to the heart of what is at issue and what kind of


dialogue is important in attempting to come to grips with thequestion of the nature of a priori knowledge and the viability ofan a priori–a posteriori or analytic-synthetic distinction.

Here the dialogue with analytic philosophy comes, in a sense,full circle back to the dialogue with phenomenology. Much philo-sophical interest lies in knowing not merely about the conceptswe use, which may or may not correspond to properties, rela-tions, or objects in the world, but about the real characteristics inthe world. For example, philosophers have wanted to claim notmerely that our concepts of red and green exclude the possibilityof our thinking something is both colors all over at once, but thatthis possibility is ruled out for the actual colors, red and green,themselves. They want a basis for thinking that analytic claimsprovide some insight into external reality. This ¤t between con-cepts and actual worldly properties cannot be ensured by a lin-guistic semantics alone. Nor is a synthetic a priori needed to ex-plain it. Lewis’s understanding of a priori knowledge, with itsschematic exclusion of the possibility of both “red all over” and“green all over” at the same time, as well as his distinction be-tween the experiential origin and logical, legislative structure ofthe a priori, explains the ¤t while yet denying the existence of asynthetic a priori.

In a deeply fundamental way, Lewis’s pragmatic reconstructionof the a priori undercuts, and can change the nature of, the de-bates about analyticity and the analytic-synthetic distinction,casting “opposing alternatives” in a new, fruitful, and complemen-tary light. But as Lewis stresses, sense meanings are importantnot only as they relate to analytic truth but even more obviouslyas they relate to the synthetic truths of empirical knowledge.Sense meaning provides the crucial connection between the crea-tions of mind and the sensibly presented. The following chapterwill turn to empirical knowledge and its interweaving of prag-matic experimentalism and fallibilism with a dimension of a dis-tinctively pragmatic empirical certitude.


Analytic or a priori propositions are true of all possible worlds,and their assertions are known true by an understanding of thesense meaning that they express. Empirical or synthetic proposi-tions, however, assert something that is not necessary, and theirassertions can be known true only by turning to experience. Em-pirical knowledge arises by the application of a priori concepts towhat is given in experience.

The Given and Pragmatic Certitude

While Lewis places strong emphasis on the abstract, conceptualelement that enters into knowledge, he is a pragmatic empiricist.And any empiricism, as a position that relies on sense experienceas the basis of knowledge, must give some account of what is sen-sibly given or presented. Because Lewis uses the term “the given”to express this element in experience, he is often interpreted as apart of a tradition in which “the given” indicates individual, dis-crete units of sense data as the building blocks of experience,building blocks that are exhausted in language.

3 Empirical

Certitude and

Pragmatic

Fallibilism

But Lewis, in keeping with his pragmatic orientation, clearlyrecognizes the richness of what is immediately given to sense. Heappreciates as well that in its concrete richness what is sensiblygiven underlies and eludes the strict con¤nes of language, over-®ows our conceptual demarcations, and, as it enters our experi-ence, already bears the imprint of the interpretations by whichwe get hold of it. Exploring Lewis’s understanding of the given orpresented ingredient in experience involves discussing the variouslevels of interpretation by which we grasp it and the functionallydifferent roles these levels play in experience and knowledge.

Fallible empirical knowledge as probable arises in the interpre-tive act that brings together the certitudes of conceptual schemesand the indubitable givenness of something given. Lewis holdsthat there must be, in all cognitive experience, something that isgiven, some element with a ¤xed nature that is independent ofthe manner in which we may conceive it, conceptualize it, or or-ganize it in cognition. It is this given that ultimately determinesthe workability of a chosen conceptual scheme as well as the truthof an empirical prediction. “Unless there should be some state-ments, or rather something apprehensible and statable, whosetruth is determined by given experience and is not determin-able in any other way, there would be no non-analytic af¤rma-tion whose truth could be determined at all and no such thingas empirical knowledge.”1 In order to have a signi¤cant differ-ence between truth and falsity, or between workability and non-workability, there must be some “hard” element in our experiencethat is independent of our purposes and that cannot be altered byour thinking about it; rather, the workability of our purposes orconcepts depends upon their conformity to it.

Perhaps no one aspect of Lewis’s philosophy has been subjectto more frequent and diverse attacks than has his concept of thegiven element in experience. And there is ample basis in his writ-ings for such criticisms. He holds that the given is mind depen-dent, yet asserts that it is ingredient in independently existing re-ality. He stresses that the given is an analytic aspect of experience,never found in its purity, yet apprehensions of the given providecertitude in the veri¤cation of terminating judgments. Such am-


biguities concerning the status and availability to awareness ofthe given lead to an ambiguity in his general use of “experience”as well. He often speaks of that which is given as passages of ex-perience, yet he also stresses that the given is only one componentof experience, for all experience is a unity of the given plus inter-pretation. Lewis’s attempt to delimit the nature and function ofthe given in experience is plagued by confusions arising throughthe use of one set of terms to capture several conceptual distinc-tions. The above ambiguities arise because Lewis de¤nes the ab-straction that characterizes the given in distinct ways, for distinctpurposes, yet proceeds, without quali¤cation, to speak of “thegiven” in a general sense, characterizing it now in terms of onetype of abstraction, now in terms of another.

The given is private for each person, but as seen in the last chap-ter, this does not prevent communication between persons, forwhat is sharable is the pattern of relations among the given asembodied in sense meanings, and “the practical criterion of com-mon meanings is congruent behavior.”2 The given represents thatpart or aspect that is not affected by thought, the “buzzing bloom-ing confusion” that James characterizes as that upon which theinfant ¤rst opens his eyes.3 It is not “subjective,” for the contentof unmediated awareness, abstracted from any supplementationby the interpreting attitude, is signi¤cant neither of the subjectnor of the object.

We confront what is presented by the senses with certain ready-made distinctions, relations, and ways of classifying, ways thatare embedded in our anticipatory actions toward what is pre-sented. Through interpretation the buzzing blooming confusionof the infant is transformed into an orderly world of things. Inparticular, we impose upon experience a certain pattern of tem-poral relationships, a certain order, which makes one item sig-ni¤cant of others. A visual presentation becomes a sign of howsomething would taste or feel, and the taste or feel of the thingbecomes a sign of the next taste or feel. The sensuous given, likeJames’s buzzing, blooming confusion, is not found in its puritybut rather is separable by abstraction. It sets the problem of inter-pretation as we approach it with our purposes or intended ac-

Empirical Certitude and Pragmatic Fallibilism 71

tions. The given is ineffable; by itself it has no reference to actionand requires no veri¤cation.

The given cannot be called the content of cognition, for cogni-tion has as its content objectivities. Rather, it is the “stuff” ofcognition. Our experience is thick; it is experience of a worldof things, not experience of a thin immediacy of givenness. AsLewis says, we “do not see patches of color, but trees and houses;we hear, not indescribable sound, but voices and violins. Whatwe most certainly know are objects and full-bodied facts aboutthem.”4 The given, according to Lewis, is structurable by mind,but yet it is itself not totally without structure, for “attention can-not mark disjunctions in an undifferentiated ¤eld.”5

Lewis holds that there is “in all strictness, only one given,”which he calls “the absolutely given”6 or “the total ¤eld of thegiven.”7 The total or absolute ¤eld of the given provides the bed-rock “stuff” for awareness, and the interested mind “takes” or ab-stracts from this ¤eld complexes that can be presentations of ob-jects. Thus, the given, as the “stuff” that enters into consciouscognitive processes, becomes, in fact, a taken. This element ofgivenness is an event, and the form of this presentation as a ge-stalt or complex whole is partially dependent on the interestedmind and the conceptual structures that de¤ne its purposes, butthe ultimate stuff of the complex is as it is, independently of con-scious cognitive processes.

We “take” from the absolutely given complexes that can bepresentations of objects. Yet we know objects only by apprehen-sions of presentations. This is not a vicious circle, but rather indi-cates a cumulative process based on the pragmatic interplay be-tween immediate apprehension and thick experience. Here, at amore primitive epistemic level, there is operating the same typeof interaction between past experience and modes of apprehend-ing that is found at the higher level of conceptual structure. Andat this point it becomes important to distinguish once again be-tween logical or epistemic order and genetic or temporal order.

Logically or epistemically, the object seen in any speci¤c per-ceptual transaction is the result of an interpretation placed upona “relatively given” or “functionally given” complex that has in


turn been abstracted from the ¤eld of the given. However, geneti-cally, the manner of the abstraction of the functionally given inany perceptual transaction is determined by past experience withobjects. Thus, the “given as taken,” as a content abstracted fromthe absolutely given via primitive cognitive processes, is partiallydetermined by past experience, though it is logically prior to ex-perience of objects in any particular perceptual transaction. Thegiven as taken, then, is a product of the most primitive epistemicactivity of the knowing mind, an activity that supplies us withthe most basic complexes of which we can be aware.

Because what we have in experience is what we have taken, anapprehension of the given in its absolute purity is a limiting pointwithin experience. It is the ideal limit of that which is “there,”totally unaffected by the activity of mind. An apprehension ofpure givenness is a philosopher’s abstraction. “The given, as hereconceived is certainly an abstraction. Unless there be such a thingas pure esthesis (and I should join with the critic in doubtingthis) the given never exists in isolation in any experience or stateof consciousness.”8 Or, as he elsewhere observes, “A state of in-tuition unquali¤ed by thought is a ¤gment of the metaphysicalimagination.”9

Though Lewis makes this distinction in levels of givenness hedoes not dwell upon it, since his interests lie elsewhere. His majorconcern lies in distinguishing that which is “there and given”from that which is not there but which is anticipated as a resultof conceptual interpretation, and for this purpose a focus on thedifference in levels of givenness is not important. For the purposeof analyzing knowledge, it is not the ultimate “integrality” of thegiven that is important but rather the element of givenness thatwe can “for usual and commonplace reasons, mark off as ‘an ex-perience’ or ‘an object.’”10

This “element of givenness,” the given as “taken,” serves an im-portant function in the veri¤cation of empirical knowledge. Ex-perience, as it occurs, is of physical objects. However, at times,when questions of the validity of the act of perception arise, thefocus in experience is not on the objective interpretation butrather on the datum that is “there and given.” The given must be


discriminated within and abstracted from our ordinary aware-ness, which is attentive to the objectivity signalized rather thanto what is directly present.11 In experience we can, by a consciouseffort of withholding objective judgment and instead discern-ing appearances, arrive at the level of that which is “there andgiven.”12

However, the level to which we can work back is the level ofthe appearance of objects, or, in other terms, the “element ofgivenness” or the given as a “taken”—the functionally given. Itis that which we consciously abstract from “thick” awareness ofan objective world. For example, if I claim to see a chair in thecorner of the otherwise empty room I am passing, my claim im-plicitly includes the prediction that if I approach it, it will not dis-appear; that if I try to sit in it, I will not fall to the ground, andso forth. If I am in doubt as to whether there is really a chair inthe corner or whether my tiredness, combined with the light andshadows of the corner area, is playing tricks with me, I will focuson just how the object appears—such as the apparent shape ofthe legs, the apparent thickness of what appears like a seat, andso forth. Moreover, when I say I see what looks like a chair, asopposed to saying I see a chair, I restrict myself to what is given,and what I intend to convey by this language is something aboutwhich I can have no possible doubt.

There is a linguistic correlate to this interrelationship betweenobjective knowledge and conscious awareness of appearancesthat is worth noting here because it is the form that the problemtakes in most of the current literature. Descriptions in the lan-guage of appearing are not, for Lewis, epistemically derivativefrom physical object terms, although they make use of physicalobject terminology. To assert that they are epistemically deriva-tive is to confuse at the linguistic level logical or epistemic orderwith temporal order. In the veri¤cation of perceptual experience,the manner of temporally abstracting the element of givennessfrom “thick” awareness of an objective world and in turn at-tempting to express this functionally given by approximation isin®uenced by our experience of objects and by our objective lan-guage structure. However, in any particular perceptual transac-


tion, the abstraction of the element of givenness, or the given asa “taken,” from the absolutely given, as that content expressibleby appearance statements that approximate, is logically or epi-stemically prior to the use of physical object terminology, thoughthe very structure of the appearance as we take it re®ects ourphysical object concepts.

Totally rejecting the claim made by Russell and others that thereis such a thing as knowledge by acquaintance, Lewis considers theidea of knowledge by acquaintance to come about from two mis-takes. First, one wrongly assumes that there are concepts denot-ing “simple qualities” that are directly exhibited in a single expe-rience. Second, the term “knowledge” is wrongly applied to sheercontemplation of the given. The denotation of any concept ex-tends beyond what is presently given.

Pre-analytic data, those that confront us in the experience withwhich philosophy begins, and the level at which we know theworld around us when no problems arise, is the “thick world ofthings,” not the “thin given of immediacy.13 Post-analytic data,however, can be taken in different senses, corresponding to thetypes of givenness discussed above. Philosophy, for purposes ofanalyzing the constituents of experience, recognizes the aspect ofpure givenness as an element that enters into all experience butthat, as an element analyzed out for purposes of philosophical un-derstanding, is never experienced in its purity. However, commonsense must also have its post-analytic data. These it can havewhen, in moments of doubt concerning the existence of an object,it focuses on “what appears as it appears,” in an attempt to verifya questionable interpretation or to better anticipate future expe-rience through reinterpretation.

Epistemic theory, if it is to give an account of the knowledgeprocess, must recognize not only an element of absolute given-ness, but also this common sense abstraction of appearances, or,in other terms, abstraction back to relative or functional given-ness or the given as “taken.” Thus, Lewis observes that “[t]he ex-plicit identi¤cation of such given elements in experience, and therecognition of the correlative expectancies as being such, is al-ways the work of abstractive attention (analysis?) directed upon


the perceptual experience, whether in common sense knowing orin any philosophical examination of knowledge.”14 The given isnot before experience but in experience, but as Lewis points out,to condemn abstractions is to condemn thought itself. The contentof thinking is always some abstraction that does not exist in iso-lation. The important question for Lewis is whether or not theabstracted content or the given is genuinely discoverable in expe-rience.15

Pure or absolute givenness is logically or epistemically primitivein that it is “there” as the logically ¤nal basis and ultimate refer-ent for all cognitive activity. However, appearances or passages ofimmediate experience are the bedrock data to which one canwork back in conscious awareness and the bedrock data to whichone can appeal in the veri¤cation of perceptual interpretationsvia the predictions they make. In brief, immediate experienceis not the experience of pure immediacy. This is to be expected,for something that cannot be isolated in its purity for consciousawareness cannot serve as a basis for veri¤cation. What serves asveri¤cation are passages of experience, though what is ultimatelygiven for cognitive activity at the most primitive level is the ab-solutely given or ¤eld of givenness. The given, in Dewey’s terms,both sets “the problematic context” for knowledge to resolve andserves as verifying or falsifying data concerning our attemptedresolutions or interpretations.

Lewis holds that in any sense presentation, the given content issome quale or complex of qualia. Though a speci¤c quale may beconsidered in isolation, what is given is generally given as a com-plex of qualia, not a single quale. Relations of qualia are them-selves further structurable by mind, but as relations they are notwithout structure. In any perceptual awareness certain qualia arepresent. In our perceiving a red ball, for example, a sensory qualiais present that we classify as red. But we never see “red,” for thatis a conceptual classi¤cation of a whole range of different shades;it is the particular, ineffable shades that are given qualia. Otherqualities than the strictly sensory may be given. The pleasantnessor fearfulness of something may be given as well as its color orsound.


Qualia are characterized by their “sensuous feel.” In immediateapprehensions they are “felt” rather than known,16 but feelingrepresents not a psychological category but an epistemic level.17

Qualia cannot be reduced to sensations or de¤ned by correlationwith nervous processes. They cannot be brought under psycho-logical categories at all, for to do so is to conceptually interpretthem and make an objective statement about one type of catego-rized reality—psychic reality. As Lewis notes, qualia are appre-hended “not by introspection nor by extrospection, but simply byspection.”18 Peirce’s use of Firstness as involving both spontaneityand feeling can ¤nd its correlation in the above account.

Feeling, sensuous feel, or quality of feeling, then, is intended toindicate precisely that which is, in its purity, apprehended belowthe level of knowledge, not a “state of” an organism. The distinc-tion between qualia and objective properties is not the differencebetween the psychical and the physical or between internal andexternal, but between preconceptual and conceptual. Feeling re-fers to immediacy, not to sensation. James makes a similar point,stressing that sensation or feeling and perception are “names fordifferent cognitive functions, not for different sort of mental fact.”19

As Dewey states of his primary experience as a unity of activityundifferentiated by any thought distinctions,20 such “experience‘is double-barreled’ in that it recognizes in its primary integrityno division between act and material, subject and object, but con-tains them both in an unanalyzed totality. In the same connec-tion, he notes that likewise for James, “thing” and “thought” are“single barreled”; “they refer to products discriminated by re®ec-tion out of primary experience.”21 Because the essence of qualiais to be sensed, Lewis at times characterizes qualia as subjective.However, this is a misnomer, for the content of a presentation ismost aptly characterized as private rather than subjective, sincethe latter term is so associated with mental contents or psycho-logical categories.

Qualia, in their very being, are relative to consciousness. Tospeak of unsensed qualia or of qualia that remain unalteredthough awareness of them changes is “merely a new kind of dingan sich” misleadingly characterized in phenomenological termi-


nology.22 While a given presentation is unique, the qualia thatmake it up are not. Qualia are repeatable and intrinsically recog-nizable in experience, and thus are a “sort of universals,”23 but thevery being of qualia as repeatable and recognizable is a productof the apprehending mind. Thus Lewis recognizes that one mightsay that there must be concepts of qualia because they are recog-nized or that such apprehension should be termed judgment.24

Lewis rejects such characterizations not because they are inac-curate, but because what he is again interested in pointing outis the distinction between qualia as characterizing the given con-tent of awareness and knowledge of objects. And awareness ofqualia is not judgment in any sense in which judgment may beveri¤ed; it is not knowledge in any sense in which “knowledge”connotes the opposite of error. Thus qualia are characterized asnon-conceptual, intrinsically recognizable and immediately ap-prehendable to emphasize their contrast with our awareness ofobjectivities. Primitive epistemic levels of mind’s activity canagain be given merely a passing glance because of Lewis’s statedpurpose to emphasize their distinction from knowledge of objec-tivities.

Qualia, then, are only in their relation to awareness, and theircharacteristics of recognizability, repeatability, and universalityare dependent upon this relatedness. Such recognizable qualia,though products of primitive epistemic activity, are “felt” ratherthan known, for knowledge involves prediction of possibilities offuture experiences. Furthermore, such qualia, though recogniz-able, are ineffable.25 They have no names, for they are epistemi-cally prior to any language, though they can be expressed onlyby some language that attempts to approximate them. Qualia, asa “sort of universals,” then, are functions in cognitive acts. Eventhe isolation of a recognizable speci¤c quale as an ineffable, “felt,”atomic unit lifted out from the gestalt of an appearance is still notthe isolation of “pure stuff,” but rather stuff as discriminated bymind’s primitive criteria of assimilation and recognition. We canin no way work back to pure givenness in experience.

At this point the problem of the certitude of immediate appre-


hensions comes into question, for if the content that is appre-hended is not logically ultimate but rather involves interpretiveelements, then our apprehension of it does not seem readily char-acterizable as certain. Lewis does not mean by certitude, certainlytrue, or certainly correct, as opposed to possibly false, or possiblyincorrect. There is nothing for the apprehended data, as appre-hended, to be true or false to. They are not copies of the inde-pendently real ¤eld of the given, but ways of having or taking orgetting hold of it. Nor can their apprehension be characterized ascorrect or incorrect, for what a quale “is” is determined only inits apprehension; it is, only as it is related to consciousness. Ashad, rather than as known, qualia of the given can be charac-terized neither as true nor as correct. Rather, what is true or cor-rect is what we do with the content via our interpretive struc-tures.

What Lewis means by certitude in this context can best beunderstood by again applying the characterization of pragmaticor functional. As Lewis states, the recognition of given data isimmediate and indubitable “in the sense that veri¤cation wouldhave no meaning with respect to it.”26 The recognition of the datais beyond doubt because to doubt it in the sense that one thinksit may be proven wrong is senseless; indeed, literally so, for todoubt it is to put into question something for which there is nomore fundamental tool by which it can be questioned.

One cannot test it by getting “underneath” it to a more primi-tive epistemic level. Nor can one test it by reference to future ex-perience, for, as given, it indicates nothing concerning futureexperience; it has no reference to action. Hence, the most funda-mental taken of conscious experience must be accepted, for allintents and purposes, as the bedrock of certainty upon which tobuild knowledge.

Lewis stresses the “pragmatic certainty” of the ground of knowl-edge that is “there and given” for the same reason he stresses the“formal certainty” of our analytic propositions. These two typesof certainty, which future experience cannot touch, prevent prag-matism from collapsing into skepticism.27 In short, Lewis stresses


the given element in knowledge in order to combat skepticismby distinguishing carefully between justi¤cation and veri¤cation,between what is given and what is not given or present, but an-ticipated. His general characterization of the given element is usu-ally precise enough only to capture the distinctions necessary forthis purpose. Thus, Lewis will carelessly assert that “[o]n the oneside, there is the Platonic heaven of our concepts . . . on the otherside there is the chaos of given experience.”28 Yet elsewhere, that“[i]n empirical knowledge there are, thus, two elements concern-ing which we have certainty; the recognized qualitative characterof the given presentation is one and the a priori elaboration ofsome concept . . . is the other.”29

The sense in which Lewis can hold that the given is mind-dependent yet ingredient in independently existing reality beginsto emerge from the above discussion if the nature of abstractionis not misunderstood. To abstract does not mean to lift out, or tocopy, but to delineate or focus attention upon. The distinction be-tween the absolute ¤eld of the given and the given as “taken” isnot a numerical distinction or an ontological distinction but a dis-tinction in epistemic levels: the given as pure stuff and the givenas discriminated by attention, interest, or orientation.

Furthermore, in working back to appearances in the veri¤ca-tion process, what is withheld is a level of interpretation. The dif-ference between the absolute ¤eld of the given, appearances orthe given as a taken, and objectivities is not be understood interms of the difference between mental and physical, subjectiveand objective, or internal and external. Rather, the difference isbest understood as a difference in levels of interpretation. To ap-prehend the appearance of an object as the “immediate” contentof experience is to make no judgment concerning the objectivityof the appearance. To perceive appearing objects is to place theimmediately apprehended appearance in a conceptual frameworkof causal relationships that indicate possibilities of future experi-ence. The distinction is a functional distinction, not a metaphysi-cal separation. The difference between the way things appear andthe way things “really are” is not the difference between two dif-ferent things or kinds of “stuff,” but the way in which what is


presented in experience functions in different ways given our dif-ferent intents or purposes in making use of it in experience.

Empirical Knowledge and Types ofEmpirical Statements

Lewis distinguishes three levels of empirical statements that en-ter into the formulation of empirical knowledge: expressive utter-ances, terminating judgments, and objective beliefs. The distinc-tive character of expressive statements, or the expressive use oflanguage, is that such language signi¤es appearances or indubi-table content. In referring to appearances, expressive statementsneither assert nor deny any objective reality of what appears; nei-ther do they predict anything. Because expressive statements arecon¤ned to description of the immediate content of presentation,they cannot be in error. “Apprehensions of the given that suchexpressive statements formulate, are not judgments; and they arenot here classed as knowledge, because they are not subject to anypossible error.”30

It is somewhat misleading to say that expressive language de-scribes the content of presentation, for the given is ineffable. “Inwhatever terms I describe this item of my experience, I shall notconvey it merely as given.”31 However, expressive language is closeenough for the purpose of analysis of knowledge, for “such for-mulations can be made, in a manner the intent of which, at least,is recognizable by what we have called the expressive use of lan-guage.”32 Although apprehensions of the given cannot be in error,statement of such apprehension is true or false, for one may al-ways choose to lie about the content apprehended. The immediatecontent apprehended, however, is not judged, it is “had.”

Terminating judgments state the prediction of a particular pas-sage of experience. They ¤nd their cue in what is given, but statesomething taken to be veri¤able by some test that involves a wayof acting. What such terminating judgments express is classed asknowledge, for the prediction in question calls for veri¤cation andis subject to possible error. Terminating judgments are expressedin the form “S being given, if A then E.” All of the constituents


entering into the judgment (“S,” “A,” and “E,”) require formula-tion in expressive language. Therefore, if the judgment is true, itstruth is known with certitude.

Finally, there are non-terminating judgments or judgments ofobjective fact. Such judgments express objective beliefs that cannever be completely veri¤ed but are always further veri¤able. Anobjective belief or non-terminating judgment always involves pos-sible consequences or possible terminating judgments that stretchbeyond those terminating judgments actually tested. Becausesuch beliefs can never be completely veri¤ed, they are probable,not certain. Non-terminating judgments are expressed in the form,“If this is a physical object ‘O,’ then if ‘S’ appearance and action‘A,’ then in all probability ‘E’ appearance will occur.” The valida-tion of these objective beliefs, expressible in non-terminatingjudgments and asserting some state of affairs, is the central prob-lem for Lewis’s theory of empirical knowledge.

To ascribe objectivity to what is had as a presentation is toconceptually interpret it, and this conceptual interpretation, ex-pressed in a non-terminating judgment, indicates possibilities ofexperience many of which will never be actualized. Such concep-tual interpretation also delimits reality, for reality is de¤ned andunderstood as the result of certain principles operative in ourconceptual schemes. Concepts are sequences of possible experi-ences ordered in certain ways. To know reality of any type is torecognize sequences of possible experience by relating given ex-periences to possible experiences in a way anticipated by the con-ceptual pattern. To ascribe reality to something is to predict somepossibility of experience.

Lewis’s system of strict implication, it will be remembered, wasin large part motivated by the attempt to formulate an implicationrelation that does not depend wholly on the truth values of thepropositions related. The major, or ¤rst, implication relation ofthe non-terminating judgment expresses such logical entailment.The assertion of physical object “O” strictly implies an inde¤niterange of terminating judgments because these are built into thesense meaning of the physical objectivity of “O.” Thus, “the limits


of the possibility of experience are the limits of meaningful con-ception,”33 not the limits of what we can, in fact, verify.

It is Lewis’s emphasis on conceptual interpretation as provid-ing sense meaning in advance of veri¤cation that prevents hisveri¤cation theory of empirical knowledge from being assimi-lated to that of the logical positivists or the operationalists. Sensemeaning, then, becomes the tool by which Lewis, throughout histheory of empirical knowledge, avoids the extensionalist confu-sion of meaning and evidence. The real object cannot be trans-lated into any series of actual veri¤cation instances, for it containspossibilities that in principle outrun any number of actualities.Possibilities are as real as the actualities that con¤rm them andthe objects that house them.

The second implication relation of the non-terminating judg-ment, or in other terms, the implication relation holding withinthe terminating judgment, expresses what Lewis calls “real rela-tions.” Lewis, like Peirce, James, and Dewey before him, rejectsa philosophical atomism of discrete disconnected events. Thesereal relations or connections can also be called “matters-of-factconnections” or “natural connections,” and the type of conse-quence involved might be referred to as “natural consequences”or “real consequences.”34 These names are appropriate becausethis sense of “if-then” is the one connoted by any assertion ofcausal relationship or of connection according to natural law. “Itis the kind of connection we believe in when we believe that theconsequences of any hypothesis are such and such because of ‘theway reality is’ or because the facts of nature are thus and so.”35

Such real relations cannot be expressed by the logical relationof strict implication, for strict implications can be known a prioriby re®ection on meanings, while the relationships in question arefactual. Nor can these real relations be expressed by formal or ma-terial implication, for the potentialities embodied in real relationsrequire the meaningfulness of counterfactual assertions, whereasformal or material implications do not allow for such meaning-fulness. Belief in an objective reality that exists even when un-observed, as well as belief in real connections between natural


events, requires the meaningfulness of a relationship that cannotbe adequately analyzed within the framework of an extensionallanguage. Belief in an objective world incorporates belief in thepossibility of an inde¤nite number of ways of acting with resul-tant speci¤c consequences, many or most of which will never beactualized. Or, in other terms, belief in an objective reality incor-porates the belief that untested hypotheses have speci¤c conse-quences, though these hypotheses are not now put to the test.36

The epistemic role of real connections is not to provide a certi-tude based on “necessary” relations of matters of fact—a neces-sity that Lewis emphatically rejects—but rather once again to ex-tend the meaning of reality beyond all actual experience. Theconceptual interpretation of a given content was seen to lead to aconception of a reality that transcends all actual experience be-cause of the inexhaustibility of the possible terminating judg-ments entailed by the physical object concept. Now, with the re-lation expressed by the terminating judgment, Lewis again takesthe meaning of reality beyond actual occasions of experience, thistime through causal potentialities that real relations embody andthat the counterfactual assertions of terminating judgments ex-press.

Real relations embody potentialities that outrun actual experi-ences and thus require expression in counterfactual statements,but what is asserted as holding counterfactually is a probabilityrelation among events, not a necessary connection. Real relationsare not held by Lewis to require 100 percent correlations, andthus cannot be characterized as “necessary relations of mattersof fact.” “Such probability-connection would be inappropriatelyspoken of as ‘necessary,’ but it has the essential character men-tioned above; it is signi¤cantly assertable when the hypothesis iscontrary to fact and in cases where the factuality of the hypothe-sis is undetermined.”37

Because the various terminating judgments representing pos-sible con¤rmations of an objective belief are implied in the per-ceptual or non-terminating judgment, it would seem that thefailure of a terminating judgment to prove true upon trial wouldprovide decisive disproof of the objective or non-terminating


judgment implying it by the simple rules of modus tollens: If Aimplies B, then not-B implies not-A. However, Lewis ¤nds that adirect inspection of cognitive experience itself leads him to doubtthis conclusion. As he observes: “What I see arouses a belief in areal doorknob in a certain position before me. . . . But suppose Ifail to locate and turn the knob with my hand; shall I be con-vinced forthwith that my belief in a doorknob where I seemed tosee it is false? As a fact, no. . . . We cannot well suppose that anytest in direct experience will either prove or disprove an objectivebelief with absolute certainty.”38

Lewis does not believe that the sole reason for this lack of posi-tive proof lies in the fact that real relations may be less than 100percent correlations, for there are too many other possible waysof explaining the situation and other conditions that must obtainin order for the occurrence or non-occurrence of the expectedsequence of experience to serve as an adequate test.39 Thus, Lewisconcludes from an inspection of experience that something simi-lar to the contextual interactions of auxiliary hypotheses is op-erative in our awareness of the world around us. In the predictionof any passage of experience, the non-occurrence of the antici-pated result may be due not to the falsity of the physical objectbelief but rather to other conditions, the non-ful¤llment of whichwould prevent the anticipated result.

The probability factor that Lewis builds into the terminatingjudgment thus serves two functions, each of which prevents thestrict operation of modus tollens, but for different reasons. First,the probability factor that Lewis builds into the logical structureof the perceptual judgment supplies the epistemic equivalent ofauxiliary hypotheses. Secondly, it allows for the less than 100percent correlations of real relations. Lewis often speaks in animprecise way that seems to indicate that this probability factorlies between the non-terminating judgment and the terminatingjudgment. However, his own clari¤cation of his position indicatesclearly that the probability factor is to be found between the an-tecedent and the consequent of the terminating judgment.40

Thus, strict implication, with no probability factor involved,holds between the non-terminating judgment and the terminat-


ing judgments. But what is asserted by any terminating judg-ment so implied is a probability relation between its antecedentand consequent. The internal structure of a perceptual judgment,then, can be most precisely symbolized in the following way. “Ifphysical object belief ‘O’ is true, then if presentation ‘S’ is givenand act ‘A’ is performed, then it is more or less probable that pre-sentation ‘E’ will be observed to follow.”

The if-then relation of the terminating judgment, then, is botha contrary-to-fact conditional and a probability relation. As acontrary-to-fact conditional it provides the function of extendingthe meaning of reality beyond actual occasions of experience.And as a probability relation, it incorporates a radical fallibilisminto the logic of physical object statements, preventing any certi-tude in either the veri¤cation or the falsi¤cation of terminatingjudgments.

Lewis, in his classi¤cation of empirical statements, characterizesthe terminating judgment as a type of judgment capable of certi-tude in its veri¤cation or its falsi¤cation, since initial data, act, andanticipated appearance are all stated in expressive language. Suchcertitude of veri¤cation provides the foundation for our probableknowledge concerning objectivities. Furthermore, such certitudeof veri¤cation is crucial for Lewis’s position, for “if anything is tobe probable, then something must be certain.”41 However, whatis veri¤ed with certitude is the terminating judgment “strictly socalled,”42 which applies to only a single occasion. The generalform of the terminating judgment can be held true only if theobjective belief holds; it has a conceptual certitude based on thehypothesis of the applicability of the object concept.43

To understand the way in which these two forms of the termi-nating judgment interact with each other and with the two otherlevels of empirical apprehensions, it will be useful to distinguishamong the orders of the genesis of concepts, the structure ofconcepts, and the evidential data for the applicability of con-cepts. The distinction between the functional genesis and thestructural analysis of concepts was introduced earlier in under-standing Lewis’s pragmatic a priori. The third distinction was notthen needed, however, as the truth of a priori knowledge does not


require data of experience but rather arises from a direct inspec-tion of the logical relations of meanings.

Lewis holds throughout his writings that our concepts are ge-netically conditioned by experience. An objective statement meansthat certain “test routines” will probably yield certain empiricalobservations, and for Lewis these probability relations are learnedinductively. We can construct and understand the concepts thatare applicable to them only because they occur in our experience.We assert this applicability in our statements concerning objectivebeliefs, and in these assertions the connections are contained ana-lytically, though what is thus asserted are inductively learnedprobabilities. Thus, schemata that indicate the relations amongappearances and that are analytically contained in our physicalobject concepts must be understood, in their application to expe-rience, as assertions of probabilities.

The meaning of objectivity is something over and above a col-lection of related appearances, and this meaning is supplied bythe ¤xed rule of organization. Thus, though a physical objectstatement is con¤rmable by verifying experiences, it is not re-ducible to or totally translatable into the verifying experiences.Similarly, though the general form of the terminating judgmentis veri¤able by particular experiences, what the general form as-serts outruns any collection of particular instances.

It is here that the answer to the problem of the meaningfulnessof real potentiality is to be found, for a disposition or habit as arule of generation is something whose possibilities of determina-tion no multitude of actually generated schemata can exhaust. Itis the awareness of habit as a disposition or readiness to respondto more than can be speci¤ed that gives a concrete meaning tothe concept of unactualized possibilities.

Thus, the meaning of potentiality, and hence the meaning ofreal relations, is found in the awareness of the actuality of habitas that which can never be exhausted by any number of exempli¤-cations. That readiness to respond to more than can ever be madeexplicit, which is there in the functioning of habit, is immediately“had” in the temporal passage of the “epistemic present”44 andgives experiential content to the concept of unactualized possi-


bilities. One may object that “the present” is too knife-edged forsuch apprehension, but as Lewis observes, “it is not the time-extended cognition but the chopping of it up into unextended in-stants that is ¤ctitious.”45 The concrete meaning of unactualizedpossibilities, of real alternatives and real potentialities, then, isgained by reference to the experiential “feel” within the passingpresent of habit as a rule of generation of, and a readiness to re-spond to, more than can ever be speci¤ed.

In the order of evidence, the occurrence of the expected data iscertain and offers certain evidence for the probability of there be-ing a real connection among appearances. This, in turn, servesas evidence for the probability of the truth of the objective belief.At no time does a relationship receive or require complete veri¤-cation. Lewis holds that the meaningfulness of empirical state-ments as well as the validity of empirical knowledge demands theacceptance of empirical relationships that are not observable butthat are con¤rmable through particular instances of the relation-ships.46

What is decisively veri¤ed, then, is not the truth of the proba-bilistic contrary-to-fact conditional relation of the general form ofthe terminating judgment, a truth that is logically contained inthe truth of the physical object statement. Rather, what is deci-sively veri¤ed is the truth of the occurrence or non-occurrenceof the expected consequent appearance of the terminating judg-ment “strictly so-called.” Such a decisive veri¤cation in turn servesas evidence for or against the empirical existence of the real con-nection, an existence that must be true if the physical object state-ment is true, but that can be stated categorically as probable only.Lewis succinctly summarizes the interrelatedness of the concep-tual and the empirical in the functioning of sense meaning in theprocess of gaining empirical knowledge when he notes that “[e]x-plicit formulation of such inductively established real connectionsgives us, at one and the same time, the sense meaning of our cus-tomary beliefs that we express by af¤rming matters of fact, andthe basic probabilities by which an experienceable world of ob-jects is recognized to exist.”47

Knowledge, for Lewis, not only must be veri¤ed as true; it must


be justi¤ed as rationally credible. In the case of a priori knowl-edge, there is no distinction between these two dimensions. Thevalidity of a priori knowledge coincides with its truth. In the vali-dation of empirical knowledge these two dimensions are distinctand stem from two major characteristics of empirical knowledge.It is based on a ground arising from past experience, and it ischecked by reference to the future of which it asserts something.If a person asserts something without having justifying roundsfor the claim, then even if it happens to be true, that claim is notvalid, nor is it knowledge. Lewis rejects what he considers theoveremphasis on future experience contained in empiricist theo-ries that put forth an account of the veri¤cation of knowledge asif it were the whole story. It is the function of empirical judgmentto save us the hazards of action without foresight, and this re-quires the justi¤cation of knowledge. Lewis is thus led to de¤neempirical knowledge not as veri¤ed belief but as justi¤ed belief.48

Lewis’s justi¤cation of knowledge can best be approached viahis rejection of Humean skepticism, for such a skepticism attacksnot the veri¤cation but the justi¤cation of knowledge. Lewis’s re-buttal of Hume centers on two Humean assumptions: ¤rst, thatnecessary connections of ideas are absent from our empiricalknowledge, thereby leaving empirical knowledge with no rationalbasis; second, that part of the rational basis for empirical gener-alizations from given data must lie in the certainty of our infer-ences from the data.

Part of Lewis’s response has already been provided. Necessaryconnections of ideas are indeed relevant for the interpretation ofwhat is empirically given and for the delineation of reality. In thissense, the ground of the terminating judgment in its general formis logically contained in the truth of the non-terminating judg-ment, though Lewis explicitly recognizes that such a de¤nition“involves the admission that we may on occasion ‘know’ some-thing which is false.”49 The relation of the judgment to its groundis logical, for the truth of the physical object statement strictlyimplies the truth of the terminating judgments contained in it.But such truth is hypothetical. If the non-terminating judgmentis true, then the terminating judgment is true.


However, if we are to categorically assert that something is thecase, that either the terminating or non-terminating judgment istrue of the world, then we turn from a logical ground providingcertitude to an empirical ground providing probability. It is thisempirical and probable relation that must be defended againstHume’s second line of attack, and the fact that empirical gener-alizations are not necessarily true is no reason for holding that wehave no rational basis for believing them. Lewis’s aim, then, is tooffer a justi¤cation of knowledge as probable. The major tools ofjusti¤cation for Lewis are memory, the rule of induction, the ex-istence of real causal relations, and an adequate theory of proba-bility, the empirical workability of which is dependent upon theother three.

Lewis’s own theory of probability, in its synthesis of elementsof both the a priori and empirical views, develops out of an ori-entation set in terms of the pragmatic a priori. Workable a priorirelationships can be established only in the light of past experi-ence; yet such relationships assert something the truth of whichis not dependent on future experience. He agrees with the logi-cal theories of probability to the extent that he considers a proba-bility statement to express a logical and a priori determinable re-lation between an inductive conclusion and the ground or dataon which it is asserted. However, he rejects the assumption of apriori theorists that ignorance or indifference is a valid ground fordetermining the probability of an event. Such a view neglects thecrucial role of past experience.

He agrees with the empirical frequency theory of probability tothe extent that he considers that probability should be assessedon the basis of induction. However, he rejects the assumption thatthe probability of an event can be identi¤ed with an objective fre-quency de¤ned as a limit approached by an in¤nite series. Sucha view fails to recognize that a probability must be somethingcompletely assured at the time of judgment.

Combining elements of both the empiricist and a priori views,Lewis holds that probability is to be determined on the basis ofknown frequency from past experience, but only on appropriate


grounds in relation to which the known frequency may be saidto stand in a logical and a priori–determinable relation accordingto valid rules of probability. He considers that the only way toexplain the cognitive status of empirical beliefs as warranted orjusti¤ed but less than certain is to identify the probability withsomething a priori knowable when the data by which to judge itare given. “Rational credibility of belief can, in the nature of thecase, depend on nothing more than the supporting premises ofwhat is believed and some relationship of it to these premiseswhich is of the general type of logical relations.”50

Thus, an adequate estimate of credibility depends on the accept-ability of the data from which it is drawn and the use of correctprinciples of judgment to derive conclusions from the data. Wesee that here, again, it can be said that the data must be drawnfrom experience, but the relations between such data and thepresent belief are ¤xed, logical, and a priori knowable. And justas non-terminating judgments can be asserted either hypotheti-cally or categorically, so there are hypothetical and categoricalprobability statements. A hypothetical probability statement as-serts that “If data D obtain, then probably P,” while a categoricalprobability statement asserts, “Since data D obtain, it is probablethat P.” A probability judgment asserts an empirical factuality bybeing a consequence of empirical facts.

When the degree of justi¤ed belief becomes suf¤ciently high,we do not express it by “probably P,” but rather simply by “P.”“Probably P” may be certain through “P” is only probable. Thatwhich is believed when “Probably P” is asserted is “P,” and thecontent of the cognition is the empirical factuality “P,” which isprobable. Even if we are disappointed in our expectation of P, theprobability of P has not been disproved, for “P” remains credibleon the grounds on which it was believed.

Lewis holds that the aspect of cognitive experience that he isattempting to explicate must, ultimately, be grasped by a “pri-mordial sense of probable events,”51 for if one lacks such a pri-mordial sense every categorical probability statement must fail.Probability for Lewis, then, is a “category of cognition which is


fundamental and as different from theoretically certain knowl-edge as apprehension of the future is different from observationof the present.”52

The role of memory enters because no empirical judgment canbe justi¤ed solely by reference to immediately present data ofsense. The justi¤cation of any terminating judgment and, mutatismutandis, the justi¤cation of any non-terminating judgment, re-quires the truth of generalizations based on past experience. Ouronly evidence for past experience comes in the form of presentreports of past fact, or in other terms, the reports of memory.Memory of course is not always accurate, but whatever is remem-bered is prima facie credible because it is so remembered.

Moreover, the whole range of empirical beliefs based on memoryand present perception is assured by their congruence. Neitherprima facie credibility nor congruence of acceptable beliefs isalone suf¤cient to ensure the credibility of empirical knowledge,but rather each lends support to the other. Prima facie credibilityof memory is simply the acceptance of anything reported bymemory in one’s own immediate awareness. Any remembered in-cident is accepted as credible as it occurs, though it may in factprove to be inaccurate. As a practical solution to the problem ofthe inaccuracies of memory, one may, of course, further test thebelief based on the memory.

This, however, does not answer the theoretical question, for theproblem for Lewis is the justi¤cation, not the veri¤cation, of be-liefs. Congruence provides an added dimension in the insuranceof credibility. A set of statements, or the assertion of a supposedset of facts, to be congruent, must be related in such a fashionthat the antecedent probability of any one of them is increased ifthe rest are taken as given premises.53

The relation of congruence is more than mutual consistency,but less than logical deducibility. Consistency is not enough, forany contingent statement is contained in some self-consistentcomprehensive system. Congruence cannot be assimilated to co-herence or logical deducibility, for the consequences of a hypothe-sis are not deducible from it. And, while empirical beliefs are con-gruent in that the probability of any one of a given set is increased


by ¤nding the others in that set to be true, some of the items, atleast, must “be independently given facts or have a probabilitywhich is antecedent. There must be direct evidence of somethingwhich would be improbable coincidence on any other hypothesisthan that which is corroborated.”54 Thus, congruence, in its veryfunction, must “feed upon” the prima facie credibility of memory;it cannot test itself. Here Lewis is once again drawing upon hisconclusions from logic, observing that the function of congruencegains clari¤cation by considering certain well-known facts aboutlogical systems.55

The assumption about the prima facie correctness of memory isusually taken for granted, and Lewis holds that there is no com-prehensible alternative to it. Without some genuine relevance ofpast experience to future experience, we would have no sense ofempirical reality. “This assumption in question has a certain kindof justi¤cation, in the fact that mnemic preservation of past ex-perience, its present-as-pastness, is constitutive of the world welive in. It represents that continuing sense of a reality beyond thenarrow con¤nes of the merely sensibly presented; the only realitywhich as humans we can envisage; the only reality which couldcome before us to be recognized as such.”56

The above “kind of justi¤cation” is basically the type of ultimatejusti¤cation offered by Lewis not only for memory but also forempirical generalizations using the rule of induction, and for thereality of law-like relations upon which such generalizations ul-timately depend. The case for their validity rests on their necessityfor our knowledge of reality. In connection with law-like rela-tions, Lewis once again attacks Humean skepticism, this time byshowing that such skepticism is not radical enough. Hume ques-tions the possibility of the knowledge of laws only and does notput in question the possibility of the identi¤cation or recogni-tion of things. However, the validity of both of these kinds ofknowledge turns on the same considerations, for “A world with-out law must likewise be a world without recognizable things.The recognition of objects requires that same kind of order or re-liable relatedness which law also requires.”57 Thus, we cannottake our world as a world of recognizable things and yet doubt


the validity of all generalizations. The only alternative to such va-lidity is chaos.

Lewis, in his ¤nal justi¤cation of the basis of empirical knowl-edge, falls back on the insights of Kant, “because the deduction ofthe categories consist at bottom in this: that without the validityof categorial principles no objective experience is possible.”58 Andwithout the assumptions of the prima facie validity of memory,the rule of induction, and the if-then order of real law-like rela-tions, the application of categorial principles is not possible. Lewis’spragmatic appropriation of Kant’s insights, however, does not as-sume that experience is limited by ¤xed forms of thought ormodes of intuition.

The prima facie credibility of memory and the rule of inductionas epistemically operative principles constitute neither pervasivefeatures of experience nor limitations on possible experience, butrather are epistemic tools for dealing with any features of experi-ence that may present themselves. The assumptions of their credi-bility have a “type of justi¤cation,” a pragmatic justi¤cation. Suchassumptions work. They cannot be justi¤ed in any other way, forthey themselves are the epistemic tools for the justi¤cation of anyempirical knowledge.

However, knowledge of objects requires more than our ownepistemic tools for dealing with experience. It requires a certainorderly sequence in the content of experience, and the content ofexperience is independent of mind.59 Or, put a slightly differentway, a minimal amount of order within the independent contentof experience is necessary for knowledge of a world of things, andsince we do have this knowledge of a world of things, we canassume something about the independently given aspect of expe-rience. Lewis realizes that such a presumption concerning whatis independent of mind might be thought to be dogmatic andfoundationless, but concludes that he has made no assumption ofanything concerning the independently given that could conceiv-ably be false, granting the fact that we can and do distinguish aworld of things.

He must assume only three things, which he calls Principles A,B, and C. Principle A, which is the fundamental principle, states,


“It must be false, that every identi¤able entity in experience isequally associated with every other,” or in other terms, “actualitymust be a limitation of the all-possible.”60 Principle B, which isalmost a corollary of A, states that in any suf¤ciently extendedsituation in which there are identi¤able entities that fail to satisfyPrinciple A—that is, whose association is random—there will beother entities, systematically connected with the former or speci-¤able in terms of them, that do satisfy Principle A.61 Thus, fromthe random constituents we proceed by analysis to simpler ele-ments, or take larger wholes, or con¤ne attention to abstractedelements. Principle C, which follows from principles A and B, as-serts that the statistical prediction of the future from the past can-not be generally invalid, “because whatever is future to any givenpast, is in turn past for some future.”62 In short, there is no con-ceivable way in which what is given can present itself that couldbe such that our predictions would not be better if we intelligentlyobserved past dealings and continually revised our predictions onthe basis of accumulated experience.

In less technical terms, it might be said that all we need to as-sume is that “the deck is stacked.” If the deck is not stacked, thenpast cuts turning up jacks more often then queens, for example,gives no indication of what one may expect in future experience.But if we know the deck is stacked in some way, then the frequentoccurrence of jacks gives a basis for what to expect in future cuts;and if that does not materialize, we revise our expectations interms of other ways cumulative experience now indicates as tojust how the deck may be stacked.

Given these minimal metaphysical assumptions concerning thenature of independent reality, Lewis holds that a mind with epi-stemic activities such as ours can “introduce order by conceptualclassi¤cation and categorial delimitation of the real, and would,through learning from accumulated experience, anticipate thefuture in ways which increasingly satisfy its practical intent.”63

These three principles concerning the independently given can beseen to provide a metaphysical correlate to the epistemically op-erative principle expressed by the rule of induction.

To the skeptical attempt to take the other of the two alternatives


offered by Lewis and assert that possibly there is no such thing asvalid objective knowledge, genuine knowledge of reality, Lewis’sreply is ready. “Empirical reality does not need to be assumed norto be proved, but only to be acknowledged. Nor does the thesisthat empirical reality can be known, require to be postulated orto be demonstrated.”64 Thus, Lewis’s ¤nal defense of his tools ofjusti¤cation is that only if the common assumptions of the primafacie credibility of memory and the rule of induction are acknowl-edged and accepted, and only if the independently real has thosecharacteristics indicated by his brief excursion into metaphysics,can the indisputable fact that we do have empirical probableknowledge be explained. Lewis’s general excursions into meta-physics, however, run much broader and deeper than what hehere needs to explain the possibility of empirical knowledge, andhis position offers signi¤cant implications for rethinking the na-ture of metaphysics in the context of pragmatism and contempo-rary debates in general, as will be seen in the following chapter.


Lewis’s position incorporates diverse understandings of reality,each of which a vision of embodies a reality in the making, areality that is in an ongoing process of evolving or restructuringitself. And his understanding of the nature of and interrelationbetween them offers a solid pathway for avoiding some of the tra-ditional problems of philosophy as well as the paradoxes of whichthoughtful common sense frequently becomes aware.

Types of Categories; Types of Metaphysics

Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism is concerned with the develop-ment of an epistemological position in which knowledge arises bythe application of concepts or categories or meanings to an inde-pendent element. As discussed in a previous chapter, in the con-text of Lewis’s technical terminology, “categories” indicate themost fundamental concepts or principles of ordering by the mind.Hence, eliciting fundamental categories clari¤es the fundamentalpurposive attitudes or fundamental meanings in terms of whichwe approach the independent element. They exhibit interpretiveattitudes, not that which is interpreted. They do not, in them-

4 Through

Experience to

Metaphysics

selves, provide any information about the independent element inits character as independent.

Lewis does state that the categories are “the principles whichformulate criteria of the real.”1 However, what he here means byreality is that experiential content that has been subsumed underits proper category. Thus, he says, “The problem of distinguishingreal from unreal, the principles of which metaphysics seeks to for-mulate, is always a problem of right understanding, of referringthe given experience to its proper category.”2 And again, “Meta-physics is concerned to reveal just that set of major classi¤cationsof phenomena, and just those precise criteria of valid understand-ing, by which the whole array of given experience can be setin order and each item (ideally) assigned its intelligible and un-ambiguous place.”3 In this context he notes that while principlesof interpretation do not impose limitations on the given, theycondition the given as a constituent of reality.4 The reality thus“produced” is not independent reality in its character as indepen-dent of our interpretive categories, but rather is a reality that re-sults from the epistemic process of conceptually structuring thatwhich is given for interpretation. In this sense, metaphysics is, infact, systematic epistemology.

However, if the epistemic process is such that knowledge arisesby the application of concepts to an independent element, thencertain conditions must hold of this independent element.5 Inshort, the universe must be one that allows for the knowledgesituation as Lewis’s pragmatic epistemology interprets it. Lewishimself recognizes this second sense of metaphysics when hestates that the problem of realism, idealism, or phenomenalism isat one and the same time epistemological and metaphysical, be-cause it concerns the subject-object relation, instead of any rela-tion both ends of which necessarily lie in cognitive experienceitself.6 Similarly, he holds that there are “metaphysical presuppo-sitions which are essential to epistemology, for example, the na-ture of knowledge itself, presupposes a reality to be known whichtranscends the content of any experience in which it may beknown.”7 Here it is clear that Lewis sees metaphysics as related tothe independent element, not to the epistemic categorization ofexperience.


Metaphysical speculation in this second sense, as the analysisof that which must hold of independent reality if the knowledgeprocess is to be possible, must itself, as a form of knowing, utilizecategories. However, the categories as metaphysical are not on thesame level as the categories applied to the given, independentelement to give rise to the epistemically contoured reality, theknown world in which we live. The categories as truly metaphysi-cal stand above any context of epistemic reality as tools for un-derstanding and describing the pervasive textures of all experi-ence, textures that are embedded within any alternative categoryor concept by which the independently real is grasped and thatare held to characterize that independently real universe withinwhich such meaning functions. It is this second sense that willbe intended by the term “metaphysics” in the remainder of thiswork.

Lewis holds that the metaphysical categories indicate conditionsnecessary for the application of categories to a given content inthe epistemic process. Yet these categorizations of independent re-ality themselves arise within the knowledge process—though ata higher level of re®ective inquiry. And if the knowledge processis characterized as one in which alternative sets of categories canbe applied to the given data, then it would seem that there mustbe alternatives to the categories by which Lewis delimits theoutlines of independent reality. This, however, is precisely whatLewis would hold—at least in a sense. Though Lewis speaks ofmetaphysics as providing the presuppositions for epistemology,he notes that though a presupposition is logically prior, the idea ofnecessity must be given up. Nor is such a presupposition knownby some “higher” type of knowledge, for as he explains:

Where the body of facts which such a presupposition implies is consid-

erable and well established, and there are no implications of it which

are known to be false, the presupposition gains that kind of veri¤cation

which particulars can give to general principles—that is, the partial and

inductive veri¤cation of it as an original hypothesis.8

Such a metaphysics can be only tentative and responsive to ex-perience while at the same time legislating for the analysis of ex-

Through Experience to Metaphysics 99

perience. This type of procedure, however, is not peculiar tometaphysical analysis but rather is continuous with the methodof the pragmatic a priori that pervades all levels of knowledge. AsLewis observes, when dealing with the highly abstract level ofscienti¤c theory (and, mutatis mutandis, the level of metaphysi-cal theory), it “is no longer easily possible to say whether con-cepts are devised, and laws discovered, to ¤t phenomenal facts, orwhether the conceptual system itself rules and facts are recon-ceived in conformity to it.”9

Our interpretive concepts and categories at all levels, from themost primitive apprehensions of common sense to the most so-phisticated knowledge of metaphysics, have arisen out of pastexperience, have been made prescriptive for the interpretationof future experience, and are subject to the demands of work-ability in the ongoing course of experience. Such a self-correctivemethod is not viciously circular, nor is it circular at all. Ratheronce again what is evidenced is a cumulative process based onthe pragmatic interplay at every level between concepts or cate-gories and experience. Like all categories at all levels, the catego-ries of metaphysics are drawn from experience, but they are uni-versally applicable because we make them analytic tools for theunderstanding and interpretation of the experiential data withwhich we are trying to deal—in this case the given fact that wedo have “metaphysically veridical” empirical knowledge.10 Likeany set of categories at any level, they are justi¤ed by the intelli-gibility they introduce into their given data.

The categories of metaphysics, then, instead of prescribing thefeatures of types of epistemic realities to which there can be al-ternatives, attempt to get at the pervasive features of that inde-pendent reality to which there is no alternative. The categories ofmetaphysics have no necessity, but they are attempting to expressthat which is “necessary” in the sense that they are attempting toget hold of the all pervasive general features of reality that giverise to the general texture of experience as we ¤nd it and thatmake possible the kind of knowledge that we do, in fact, have.Our most all-pervasive modes of experiencing re®ect not only ourown purposive attitudes, but also the general features of that


which is independently given. What Lewis is attempting to cap-ture through the metaphysical categories he utilizes are those un-alterable pervasive features of the independently given, meta-physically ultimate reality, as evidenced in the general texture ofour experience into which it enters. This leads to the categorialnet that Lewis uses to catch the general features of that which is“there.”

From Meaning to Metaphysics

Lewis’s theory of meaning is relevant for coming to grips withthe issue of the meaningfulness of metaphysical claims within aphilosophy that concentrates on the clari¤cation of meaning interms of sense experience. It will be seen below that Lewis’s meta-physics, like that of the other pragmatic philosophers, tends to-ward process as opposed to substance, realism as opposed tonominalism, and an element of spontaneity as opposed to deter-minism. Typically, all three of these types of issues have been at-tacked as meaningless in various ways from the perspectives ofvarious empirical frameworks. However, the meaningfulness ofall of these issues is clearly grounded in Lewis’s pragmatic under-standing of the structure of meaning as dispositional.

First, such a structure of meaning grounds in lived experiencea primordial grasp of time as process. What occurs within thepresent awareness is not the apprehension of a discrete datum ina moment of time, but rather the time-extended experiential“feel” within the passing present of a readiness to respond to morethan can ever be speci¤ed. This “feel” provides the experientialbasis for the meaningfulness of a process metaphysics. As Lewisobserves, “it is not the time-extended cognition but the choppingof it up into unextended instants which is ¤ctitious.”11 Or, as heelsewhere states, “There is only one given, the Bergsonian realduration. . . . The absolutely given is a specious present, fadinginto the past and growing into the future with no genuine bound-aries.”12

Further, Lewis’s dispositional theory of meaning leads to a re-alism as opposed to nominalism, not a realism of eternal es-


sences but a “process realism” in which there are real modes ofbehavior that govern what occurs. Laws cannot be understood assome shorthand for what occurs. Laws, which outrun any num-ber of actualities, are, as modes of behavior, the source of thestructures emerging in what occurs. While their veri¤cation re-quires actual occurrences in experience, their meaning is irre-ducible to verifying experiences, actual or possible. Our disposi-tional modes of response are precisely lawful modes of behaviorstructuring emerging activities. Lewis’s position lies in oppositionto the Bridgman-type operational de¤nition of meaning that re-duces meaning to its veri¤cation instances. And, as seen earlier,it requires the meaningfulness of counterfactual claims, whichin turn requires strict implication as opposed to material impli-cation.

In claiming that the rooting of meaning in experience makesany assertion of realism as opposed to nominalism meaningless,the question often is posed, “How can any experience of whatoccurs provide a meaningful experiential content for the conceptof unactualized possibilities, of a reality of potentialities that out-runs any experienced actualities?” Here, in Lewis’s pragmatic un-derstanding of meaning in terms of action, the answer to theproblem of the meaningfulness of real potentiality is to be found,for a disposition or habit as a rule of generation is somethingwhose possibilities of determination no multitude of actually gen-erated instances can exhaust.

The awareness of habit as a disposition or readiness to respondto more than can be speci¤ed gives a concrete meaning to theconcept of a “process realism,” of a real lawfulness that governsunactualized possibilities. Thus, the meaning of the potentialitiesand real relations of which Lewis and the other pragmatists speakis to be found in the awareness of the actuality of habit as thatwhich can never be exhausted by any number of exempli¤cations.Further, that readiness to respond to more than can ever be madeexplicit, which is “there” in the functioning of habit, is immedi-ately experienced in the passing present and gives experientialcontent to the concept of the “more than” of objectivities that cannever be exhaustively experienced, to the concept of unactualized


possibilities of being experienced that pervade every grasp ofthe world around us and that belie any attempt at phenomenal-istic reductionism. Finally, the sense of unactualized possibili-ties embedded in meaning as dispositional brings a sense of realalternatives—the “could do otherwise”—into the heart of per-ceptual awareness. Thus it provides an experientially meaningfulbasis for the rejection of deterministic hypotheses and a recogni-tion of what Lewis refers to as a “primordial sense of probableevents.”13

These subtle tones of experiencing within the internal struc-ture of meaning make the above metaphysical issues meaningful.To move from the meaningfulness of the issues to Lewis’s claimthat they are in fact features of the metaphysically real leads toLewis’s pragmatic understanding of the transactional nature ofexperience.

For Lewis, as for all the pragmatists, humans are natural organ-isms in interaction with a natural environment. One of the mostdistinctive and most crucial aspects of pragmatism is its conceptof experience as having the character of an interaction or trans-action between humans and their environment. For Lewis, as forthe pragmatists in general, experience is that rich ongoing trans-actional unity, and only within the context of meanings that re-®ect such an interactional unity does what is given emerge forconscious awareness. And if experience is an interactional unityof our responses to an environment, then the nature of experi-ence re®ects both the responses we bring and the pervasive tex-tures of the independently real.

There is, thus, for the pragmatist in general and for Lewis inparticular, a “two-directional openness” within experience. Whatappears opens in one direction toward the structures of the inde-pendently real or the surrounding natural environment and inthe other direction toward the structures of the human modes ofgrasping that independently real, for what is experienced is in facta unity formed by each in interaction with the other. There is, forLewis, an ontological dimension of what appears that reveals it-self in experience and that forms a limit on our interpretations.The pervasive textures of experience, which are exempli¤ed in


every experience and embedded within the meanings by whichwe respond to the world, are at the same time indications of thepervasive textures of that independent universe which, in everyexperience, gives itself for our responses and provides the touch-stone for the workability of our meanings.

Though how we get hold of reality is relative to the conceptualnet we bring, Lewis stresses that “what is relative is also inde-pendent; if it has no ‘absolute character’ it would have no char-acter in relative terms.”14 As he explains, “We know objects onlyas we know certain objective properties of them, which are po-tentialities or reliable dispositional traits resident in the nature ofthem as they objectively exist, and whose manifestations are vari-ously observable: directly in the presentational content of humanexperience to which they give rise.”15

Knowledge, for Lewis, is neither a copy of the independentlyreal, nor qualitative identity between that of which consciousnessis immediately aware and the independently real in its charac-ter as independent. Rather, knowledge is justi¤ed prediction. Weknow the independently real by knowing its potentialities for in-teracting in various ways to give rise to various qualitative emer-gents, among the most important of which are its potentialitiesfor giving rise to certain qualia under certain speci¤ed conditions.As Lewis takes pains to show, knowledge is relative to the mind,the content of knowledge is of the real, and yet the real is inde-pendent of mind. He holds that this understanding negates thefundamental premises of phenomenalism and idealism, meetssome of the main dif¤culties of skepticism, and supports the gen-eral attitude of common-sense realism without attempting theimpossible task of trying to avoid the relativity of knowledge.16

The function of conceptual interpretation is to transcend therelativity of qualia to the mind by comprising a “relational patternin which the independent nature of what is apprehended is ex-hibited in experience.” We “construct” objective reality throughconceptual interpretation of given qualia of sense, but our con-structions that work do so because they “¤t on to” or “logicallycut into” the real potentialities and real modes of interacting in-herent in the nature of reality in its character as independent.


Thus, epistemic theory must show how, from the contents pres-ent to consciousness, we build up interpretations by which wehave “metaphysically veridical”17 knowledge of the independentlyreal. He objects to phenomenalism on the grounds that it commitsa fallacy by claiming that because of the relativity of knowledgeto the mind, knowledge of the independently real is impossible.18

In short, Lewis is not advocating phenomenalism, but rather ispresenting a “phenomenology of the perceptual.”19 Qualia are theindependently real in its relation to consciousness. They are quali-tative emergents in organism-environment interaction. As Lewisstates, “It is still possible in terms of the conception here pre-sented, to af¤rm that the content of presentation is an authenticpart or aspect or perspective which is ingredient in the objectivereality known. . . . The hiatus implied in the view here presented,between immediate sense presentation and objective reality thusevidenced, is not the denial that the content of presentation maybe ‘numerically indentical’ with a part of the objective reality.”20

Even the mirage, “although not real trees and water, is a real stateof atmosphere and light.”21 And in the givenness of hedonic typesof qualities such as fear, joy, sorrow, and so forth,22 or what Deweysuccinctly calls “tertiary qualities,” as well as in the case of illu-sion, the state of the physical organism is a “peculiarly explana-tory part of the objective state of affairs.”23

Lewis makes the distinction between the “order of being” andthe “order of knowing,” and stresses that an epistemologicalanalysis does not make analyses of other sorts super®uous. The“order of being” is what is known, but the “order of knowing”must explain how it is that we know.24 He stresses that the mis-take of too much philosophy “since Kant, and perhaps particu-larly amongst idealists,” is the tendency to “attach to epistemo-logical analyses a kind of exclusive truth.” As he further observes,“In some one of the innumerable meanings of the word ‘is’ it mustbe true that a thing is what it is ‘known as’, identi¤able with itsratio cognoscendi, but it is also the effect of its causes, the causeof its effects, the organized whole of its physical or other constitu-ents, and a hundred other signi¤cant things besides.”25

Though Lewis’s main emphasis is usually on the epistemic as-


pect, the other senses of “is” are always there in the background,providing the context for his discussion. The basic textures of ex-perience thus lead to the outlines of the categories of metaphysics.The categories of metaphysics, for Lewis, are the categories of aphilosophy of nature, but not the nature of the natural scientist.Rather, it is the sense of nature before natural science, the levelof nature to which humans, as active agents, are fundamentallybound.

Toward a Metaphysics of Process

Lewis’s view of metaphysics is very much that of the episte-mologist drawn into metaphysical speculation. It has been seenthat he has two different yet interrelated views of the role ofmetaphysics: metaphysics as systematic epistemology and meta-physics as concerned with the nature of the independent elementthat enters into the knowledge situation. However, even his state-ments relating to the latter position can be seen as an epistemolo-gist’s view of metaphysical problems, for though he will state aproblem in terms of the nature of independent reality and begindiscussing the problem from such a metaphysical perspective, hetends frequently to shift gradually in his discussion from the prob-lem of the nature of independent reality to the problem of ourknowledge of independent reality. Thus, Lewis’s strong epistemo-logical interests often obscure, to ¤rst glance, the real metaphysi-cal nature of the problems involved. However, when Lewis’s di-verse metaphysical assertions are brought into sharper focus, theoutlines of a pragmatic metaphysics emerge as a systematizationof the metaphysical features implicit in his pragmatic understand-ing of experience and meaning.

It was seen earlier that Lewis, in his justi¤cation of empiricalknowledge, holds that the if-then order of real relations is a con-dition required for knowing rather than a way of knowing. It isan order expressed in our knowledge system by “If A, then prob-ably B.” In this expression of the relationship involved, two fea-tures of metaphysical reality emerge, both rooted in the pervasivetextures of experience. The ¤rst feature is indicated by Lewis’s


statement that the kind of connection holding between what isasserted by “If A then B” bears on the possibility of knowing anindependently real world.”26 The aspect of real relations of whichLewis here speaks is their nature as embodying potentialities thatno number of actual occasions can exhaust. Metaphysical reality,then, includes potentiality or lawfulness. Lewis frequently refersto such potentiality as possibility, but it is a strong sense of pos-sibility, the “would-be” of Peirce’s category of Thirdness, as dis-tinct from a weaker sense to be discussed below. Thus, our crea-tive concepts embodying dispositional modes of response cangrasp the real dynamic tendencies of reality to produce operationsof a certain type with a certain regularity.

In the relation expressed by “If A, then probably B,” a secondimportant feature of metaphysical reality emerges. B need not beactualized, for real relations are probability connections. Alterna-tive actualizations are possible. Lewis, like Peirce and James be-fore him, recognizes that reality has a certain amount of “looseplay” that allows for exceptions to lawfulness; possibility is a realfeature of metaphysical reality. This, then, is a weak sense of pos-sibility, the “may-be” of Peirce’s category of Firstness as opposedto the “would-be” of Thirdness. The “could do otherwise” expe-rienced within the structure of meaning as dispositional has itscounterpart in the “could do otherwise” contained within themodes of behavior of the universe. Independent reality, which isultimately given as one component in experience, thus assists inproviding, as an all-pervasive texture of experience, that whichenters into our “primordial sense of probable events.”27 As notedearlier, Lewis holds that our grasp of empirical knowledge restson such a primordial sense of probable events.

Independent brute hereness and nowness, or the force of inter-action,28 is also a condition required for knowing rather than away of knowing. Lewis is emphasizing here that same pervasivetexture of experience that Santayana expresses as “shock,” andPeirce as “Secondness.” It is the aspect of brute existence or ac-tuality asserting its “thereness” through interaction, the surdityof that ontological dimension which reveals itself in experienceand forms a limit on our interpretations.


The categories of possibility, potentiality, and actuality, then,stand above any speci¤c epistemic context as the conceptual netby which to catch the all-pervasive textures of experience andfeatures of the independently real. The importance not only ofthese three categories but also of their mode of interrelation canbe seen from a fundamental metaphysical requirement that Lewisis forced to make within the context of a purely epistemologicaldiscussion. He notes that knowledge as predictive requires the as-sumption that though “any possibility is a possible actuality, it isnot possible that all possibilities should be concomitantly real.”29

Or, in other terms, actuality must be a “limitation of the all-possible.”30 With these three all-pervasive “categories of being” astools of analysis, Lewis develops his understanding of objects andqualities.

Lewis notes that the ontological problem of the status of objectscomes down to whether an object is nothing but a bundle of at-tributes and existential surdity or whether more is needed, andhe articulates this by connecting it to traditional discussions ofsubstance: “One must either ¤nd in the object something whichpersists unaltered, or one must penetrate to some law-like or pre-dictable mode of such alteration.”31 Quality and surd existence,then, are not suf¤cient; objects require either unalterable sub-stance or lawful alteration.

He avoids the concept of substance as “unhelpful”32 and optsrather for lawfulness, a type of lawfulness embodied in process.As he states, “An object is an event; some continuous volume inspace time comprising a history of enduring. Characteristically,the process of change in this kind of event is never too abrupt ortoo pervasive.”33 This option for process metaphysics is to be ex-pected, for it has been seen that Lewis’s theory of meaning incor-porates, as a pervasive texture of experience, the “feel” of the pas-sage of time, of time as duration. Were it not for such a primordialsense of duration, the “feel” of the potentialities and alternativesthat are constitutive of the meaning of objectivity could not be“had” in experience through the functioning of habit. Such a ten-dency toward process is mirrored in the writings of all of the clas-sical American pragmatists.


Lewis holds that whatever is an object is a discrete individual,and that objects as individuals answer to the law of excludedmiddle,34 but this concerns the issue of objects as we experiencethem, as being abstracted by relation to something distinctive ofthe human.35

There are stars in the heavens, but constellations only for our seeing.

Perhaps likewise there are molar masses only for our senses, directed

upon the quanta or wavicles which inhabit the ocean of energy. But at

least the potentiality of so appearing to us, instead of otherwise, and

of being discriminable as just these molar masses, in just these rela-

tions to one another, is in the ocean itself, as constituted independently

of us.36

Objects as individuals depend upon interaction with a “mindedorganism,” but the potentiality of thus appearing is in the inde-pendent reality itself. This potentiality is not the potentiality ofideal archetypes or substantive features in any sense but rather isthe potentiality inherent in “modes of persistence” or “continui-ties.”37 Just as a continuum is real apart from the cuts actualized,so the potentialities of process are real apart from the occasionsactualized. Such real connections are not “possible things” butrather real connections among possible events or matters of fact.

An object as an experienced particular, then, is an abstractedor selected portion of some continuum of events that contains po-tentialities for more and other experiences. Such a process or con-tinuum of events reveals itself to us through the meaning struc-tures we bring. Thus it can be seen again, this time from themetaphysical perspective, that what is given is not without struc-ture, but yet is further structurable by the meanings throughwhich it reveals itself to us. Lewis here provides the metaphysicalfoundation for the pragmatic claim that experienced particularsare products of organism-environment interaction or transaction.

Lewis’s discussion of the ontological status of objects leads di-rectly to the problem of the ontological status of qualities, and hisconcern here is to distinguish properties of objects from qualia ofsense-presentation. The problem he attacks is that we persistentlyconfuse sense-qualia with objective properties of things, although


one can never be an instance of the other. This is not because weuse a color such as “blue” for an entire range of objective colorproperties or for an entire range of visual qualia, for “Make ‘blue’as precise a word as the artist’s ‘crimson lake’ when he buys atube of paint, and it is still true that this speci¤c property of anyobject presents itself to the eye by some whole range of visualqualia.”38 The immediately presented quale, in the context of itscircumstances, is a manifestation of the objective color-propertyof something, and is a frequently used way of verifying that ob-jective property, though other ways, such as spectroscopic exami-nation, may be more precise and decisive. But the visual qualeand the objective color of an object cannot be identical “becausethey belong to different categories of being.”39

But of course for Lewis the categories are our tools for abstrac-tive understanding. The categories of metaphysics are tools foranalysis of the pervasive textures of the independently real, on-going process. They are not intended to indicate some sort of dis-tinct metaphysical realms. Quality as an objective property is a“dispositional trait,”40 a “propensity of behavior.”41 As such, itbelongs to the category of potentiality. Qualia, or qualitative im-mediacies, however, are the dispositional traits as they mani-fest themselves through interaction with a perceiving organism,emergents within the context of interacting potentialities. Suchqualia are as metaphysically real as the dispositional traits, buttheir reality consists in their emergence within the context of in-teracting continuities. For Lewis, as for Peirce, qualitative imme-diacy belongs to the category of diversity, spontaneity, or sheer“suchness”—in short, to Peirce’s category of Firstness. Or, inDewey’s terms, the qualitative endings of interacting continuitieshave an aspect of the unpredictable, the spontaneous, the unique,the ineffable.

Neither qualia as repeatable sense presentations nor objectivequalities as abstract repeatable universal entities belong to thecategories of metaphysics. To attribute repeatable sense presenta-tions or repeatable objective qualities to the independently real inits character as independent is to confuse the categories of sub-stance metaphysics with those of process epistemology, for they


are functions of epistemic activity. If there were no epistemicstructuring of what is given, “there would be no abstract entities”;reality would be classi¤able but there would be there would be“no classes.”42 As seen earlier, meaning as dispositional providesthe possibilities for the emergence of classes within experience.

The Making of Worlds

Lewis’s concept of world and its relation to an independentlyreal universe is intertwined with his two distinct meanings ofmetaphysics. The independently real universe has been seen to bea concrete, ongoing, inde¤nitely rich process composed not ofdiscrete substances but of continua of events. Or, as he stateswithin the context of epistemology, the absolutely given is a“Bergsonian real duration.” It is concrete in the sense that itcontains an inde¤nite richness of possibilities and potentialitiesinherent in its nature as a “hard” or “brutely there” reality inprocess. Our knowledge can never embody more than a par-tial selection or abstraction from its inde¤nite concreteness. Theworld, for Lewis, develops as a precise encompassing structurethat emerges from the application of an abstract conceptual sys-tem to the concrete process and that, as the product of the logicalinteraction of both, is identical with neither. Or, as expressed inless abstract terms, the world is the outermost horizon or encom-passing frame of reference of organism-environment interaction,of our active engagement with a processive universe.

Lewis, discussing the difference between systems and worlds,notes that “[a] system may omit both a fact and its contradic-tory, but a world must have one or the other. Thus, a system willbe indeterminate in ways that a world cannot be. The relationof a system to a world which includes it is the relation of knowl-edge to reality.”43 Here Lewis seems to equate “world” and “re-ality” as the concrete process. Yet Lewis also states that “[i]n theonly sense in which we can speak of a world at all, whether ac-tual or possible, there is a possible world for every self-consistentsystem.”44 There is but one concrete process, but a plurality ofself-consistent systems that may be applied to it. It is precisely


Lewis’s point that what is given to mind allows for alternativeself-consistent interpretations. And it is our interpretive struc-tures that must be orderly and self-consistent, not what is givenfor interpretation, for “a mind set down in any chaos would pro-ceed to introduce order by conceptual classi¤cation and categorialdelimitation of the real.”45 As he points out, if we could evenimagine anything violating the laws of excluded middle or non-contradiction, then “the ever present fact of change would do itevery day.”46

A world is similar to reality as the concrete process in that“world” indicates a concrete whole that can be only partiallygrasped. Yet, a world is dependent upon the abstract system thatgrasps in a way in which reality as the concrete process is not, fora world is that perspective of the concrete process which has been“¤xed” or “carved out” by an abstract system. Knowledge is ab-stractive and selective. A world, though concrete, is nonethelessselective in the sense that a world, as the concrete content de-noted by an abstract system, is one way among many possibleways in which the one metaphysical reality or concrete processcan be delineated or “¤xed.”

And, though alternative classi¤catory systems are always pos-sible, a system, once chosen, limits the alternatives possible withinit, though the richness of the possible alternatives so ¤xed cannever be fully grasped. Thus, he holds that “no conceivable knowl-edge can ever be adequate to a world.”47 This is because “ourknowledge ¤xates a whole system of facts but cannot exhaustit.”48 A ¤xated system of facts can never be exhausted becauseany meaning or conceptual demarcation has its own implicatedmeanings that limit the range of possibilities of experience—though they do not determine which possibility will becomeactual. We can never know the precise range of possibilities orthe complete implications of any conceptual delineation that wemake.

What is implied here is an objectivity in an epistemologicalsense. Lewis is not here asserting that we cannot know a “spacetime slab of reality” in absolute completeness, though of coursewe cannot49—whether we mean the space-time slab denoted by


a single concept or by a systematic set of propositions—but ratherthat because we have limited intellectual capabilities, we cannotknow all the implications or range of possibilities allowed by anyconceptualization of experience.

The world is determined by a system of facts, but facts are notindependent of the selective knowledge process.50 “A fact is anactual state of affairs. But ‘fact’ is a crypto-relative term, like‘landscape’. A landscape is a terrain, but a terrain as seeable byan eye. And a fact is a state of affairs, but a state of affairs asknowable by a mind and statable by a statement.”51 And, thoughour knowledge ¤xates a system of facts or abstractions from theconcrete process, it cannot exhaust them because of their in¤nitenumber. Thus, no knowledge can be adequate to a world becausethe world requires precisely such a completed system of facts.

Just as knowledge cannot be adequate to a world, in that it can-not grasp the epistemological richness of its content—and, mu-tatis mutandis, the space-time concreteness of its content, so itwould seem that a world cannot be adequate to reality in thatdifferent worlds, as the concrete content or denotation of differentsystems, could ¤xate the concrete process from a different thoughperhaps equally adequate perspective. No one “¤xation” of theconcrete process, no matter how broad it be, can be exhaustiveof its in¤nite richness, for a process over®ows any rigid limits set.Or, in terms of the continuum of events that constitutes meta-physical reality in its total concreteness, it can perhaps be said,somewhat metaphorically, that while reality is the in¤nity of acontinuum or ongoing process, the world is the logical ¤xation ofan in¤nite number of possible cuts within it. Thus, the world isthe context of meaning within which all other frameworks andobjects may be articulated in the sense that “the world” is thedenotation or the “outermost” content or encompassing frame ofreference of the application of a set of de¤nitive categories andhence of the propositions that can delineate experience withinthe context of these categories.

The world is the ideal of a complete synthesis of possible expe-rience in the sense that “anything which could appropriately becalled a world must be such that one or other of every pair of


contradictory propositions would apply to or be true of it; andsuch that all the propositions thus holding of it will be mutuallyconsistent. “52 A world is by de¤nition consistent because a worldis that concrete content which is denoted by a total set of consis-tent propositions. The world answers to the laws of excludedmiddle and non-contradiction because it is that which has beenconceptually articulated, and hence made precise, to its ideallimit. In this sense reality is “simply a regulative ideal of reason.”53

“The world,” then, is at once the basis for every experience andthe ideal of a complete synthesis of possible experience.

To say that the world is the ¤xation of an in¤nite number ofpossible cuts may seem to indicate an arbitrariness in which theconcrete process is amenable to our wish or will, but here Lewis’sseveral precise meanings of possibility come into play. When hespeaks of possible experience, he at times means consistentlythinkable, at other times one or another of the two senses of pos-sibility determined by the nature of real connections. Such pos-sibilities embodied in the nature of real connections are to befound within the concrete process. They are there whether wechoose to focus upon them or not.

Moreover, “possible” in the sense of consistently thinkable isalso used in two ways. In addition to the distinction betweenthe consistently thinkable and the two types of metaphysical pos-sibilities indicated above, Lewis distinguishes, within the con-sistently thinkable, what he calls relative possibility and abso-lute possibility.54 Absolute possibility means logical conceivabilityor the absence of self-contradiction. Thus, absolute possibility islogical possibility. Relative possibility refers to the relationshipbetween what is being considered and a set of data or our knowl-edge as a whole. In this second sense, “possible” means “consis-tent with the data” or “consistent with everything known.” Pos-sible in this second sense seems to indicate a type of “physicalpossibility.” He points out that while relative possibility impliesabsolute possibility, absolute possibility does not imply relativepossibility.55 But if a proposition that is absolutely possible but notrelatively possible (not consistent with the given data) is com-


bined with the body of given data, a logically impossible set re-sults. In this sense, the range of relative possibilities is implied bythe absolutely possible. Thus, at any time, a range of what is rela-tively possible can be determined ideally or logically, thoughwhat speci¤c possibility will in fact be actualized in the futurecannot be determined in this manner.

The logically conceivable or the logically possible is the realmof the ideal or conceptual within which the facts of experiencemust be located. And what is logically possible from the perspec-tive of one organization of data will not be logically possible fromthe perspective of a different systematization. As Lewis states,there is a “plurality of equally cogent systems which may containthe same body of already veri¤ed propositions but differ in whatelse they include.”56 And what else they include is not merelywhat facts will be but also what facts conceivably may be. Thehereness and nowness of events is independent of our categoriza-tions and the possibilities that they allow, but what the herenessand nowness can consistently be held to be is determined by therange of “epistemological possibility” or relative possibility withinwhich facts can be consistently abstracted.

Thus, relative possibility, which in its broadest sense determineswhat may occur “in the world,” cannot be understood apartfrom the knowledge structure that grasps the concrete process—though this does not lead to an arbitrariness in which the con-crete process is amenable to our wish or will. What is “physicallypossible” within the context of our world itself arises from a “logi-cal ¤xation” of the in¤nite number of possible cuts inherent inthe concrete process in its nature as a continuum. Thus, in asomewhat loose sense it can be said that what occurs must be on-tologically possible, while what occurs must be epistemically pos-sible as well. What must be stressed again, however, is that whatis ontologically possible cannot be de¤ned as that which obeysthe law of non-contradiction, for the law of non-contradiction ap-plies to our conceptual structures and that which is grasped bythem, not to the continuous processes that are given for concep-tual interpretation. As Peirce has pointed out in similar fashion,


what is continuous is both general and vague and hence that towhich neither the law of non-contradiction nor the law of ex-cluded middle is perfectly applicable.57

This distinction between ontological possibility and epistemicpossibility must be clearly maintained if the most all-inclusivefunctioning of the pragmatic a priori is to be understood. The in-conceivable cannot occur “in the world” because the world is byde¤nition the outcome of the conceptual knowledge process andthus what occurs in the world must by de¤nition conform to therequirements of conceivability. The mind conceptually structuresthe concrete process that is given for interpretation; it is throughconceptual interpretation of that which is given that it creates theworld in which it lives; and it is the function of knowledge to sostructure what is given that it does become intelligible. What canoccur “in the world” must conform to the possibilities availablewithin the world we have structured—though the world we havestructured has itself arisen through the successful handling ofwhat is there to be dealt with in experience. Our surroundingnatural environment, our world of sensible experience, is the in-dependently real as it enters the contours of our ¤eld of active,purposive interest.

Because the hereness and nowness of events and the real con-nections they display are independent of our conceptualizationsand the possibilities they allow, coherence or consistency is not asuf¤cient criterion for the truth of empirical assertions. And be-cause of the indeterminacy inherent in the universe in its natureas an ongoing thick process, the concept of truth as conformityis senseless, indeed literally so. Rather, there must be a pragmaticinterplay between our concepts or categories and actual experi-ence. Truth is relative to a context of interpretation, then, not be-cause truth is relative but because truths can arise only with aninterpretive context.

The position that emerges from Lewis’s statements concerning“the world” both re®ects and helps complete the position he de-velops in his epistemology. For Lewis, our world is a world deter-mined through and through by the operation of the pragmatic apriori in interaction with the “hard” independently given ele-


ment. From the most all-inclusive re®ections upon that encom-passing frame of reference that determines what facts conceivablymay be to the most self-contained apprehension of a speci¤c rec-ognizable quale that presents itself in a given passage of experi-ence, that which we apprehend is partially determined by inter-pretive structures that have emerged from past experience butthat have been made prescriptive for the structuring of futureexperience.

The Dilemma of Labels

Lewis concludes that his metaphysical convictions “are, as ithappens, realistic,” because the very nature of knowledge presup-poses a reality there to be known which transcends the contentof the experiences by which it may become known.58 Here Lewisembraces realism not because there is a fully structured indepen-dent reality that mind mirrors in adequate knowledge, but par-tially because metaphysical nominalism is not adequate to expressthe operations of independent reality in its character as indepen-dent. Because of the nature of Lewis’s realism, when he discussesepistemic alternatives he rejects the realist alternatives of repre-sentation or identity, and instead states that pragmatism and ob-jective idealism are the two alternatives that allow for a realitythat transcends the content of experience.59

Lewis’s realism tends toward the idealist position because whatis real are not discrete individual substances but rather law-likerelations that go beyond the content of particular experiences—for Lewis, relations among events. However, Lewis rejects idealismon both epistemic and metaphysical grounds. Speaking withinthe context of epistemology, he notes that while for objective ide-alists there is a deductive relation between a real object and anexperience of it, for the pragmatist there is an inductive relation-ship.60 And within a more metaphysical context, he holds thatidealism, taking the relativity of knowledge as its main premise,argues from that to reality’s complete dependence on mind.61

Thus, he further embraces realism because it recognizes that thereality known is independent of mind in its brute “thereness,” yet


he explicitly rejects the realist efforts to “reconcile the possibilityof knowing reality with its independence of mind by one or an-other attempt to escape the relativity of knowledge.”62

When Lewis speaks within the context of epistemology, hereadily notes that his assertions are not merely a modi¤cation ofidealism or of realism, but rather are a switch to pragmatism.When ontological issues are discussed, however, Lewis fails to ex-plicitly recognize that if pragmatism presents, in matters of meta-physics, its own “principle of orientation in the search for positiveconclusions,”63 then traditional metaphysical alternatives are notsatisfactory. Thus Lewis, after attempting to claim af¤nities withseveral metaphysical positions but identity with none, acceptsmetaphysical realism as the lesser of the available evils, never ex-plicitly recognizing the possibility that he has redirected all theavailable alternatives into a path leading toward a distinctivelypragmatic metaphysics.

Such a metaphysics envisions a universe of interacting qualita-tive continuities guided by, but not determined by, the lawful-ness or potentialities inherent in a process in its nature as a con-tinuum; a universe in which the passing present brings with itchance reactions and the novel directions of emergent activities;a universe in which we are at home and with which our activitiesare continuous; a universe in which our lived qualitative experi-ence can grasp real emergent qualitative features of reality and inwhich our creative concepts embodying dispositionally generatedabstract or logical potentialities can grasp the real dynamic ten-dencies of reality to produce operations of a certain type with acertain regularity. A universe, in short, that is both grasped byand re®ected within the structure of meaning and experience.

It is meaning as dispositional that allows for the grasp, at itsmost basic level, of continuity, real relations and real potentiali-ties; for a sense of an anti-deterministic world in which one graspsreal alternative possibilities; for the “feel” of the surd, brute,otherness of the environment to which one must successfully re-spond. These subtle tones of experience that make our awarenessof a world of appearing objects possible are at once the subtletones, or modes of being, of that ontological reality that enters


into all experience, for, as has been seen, experience opens in onedirection toward the structures of the independently real and inthe other direction toward the structures of our modes of graspingor interacting with the independently real. Or, in other terms,what we experience is a function of both in interaction, and thusmirrors neither exactly, though it re®ects characteristics of each.

Overview and Signi¤cance

Lewis, like many contemporary philosophers, strives to recap-ture the richness of lived experience within nature. In so doing,his position has signi¤cant implications for contemporary analy-sis of meaning and experience broadly construed, illustrating thata rigorous analysis of meaning in terms of sense experience cancapture the richness of each rather than analyze it away.

Further, his emerging metaphysics of “cosmic activity” containsinsights helpful for the understanding and further developmentof contemporary process metaphysics in its various facets. Hisphilosophy illustrates clearly that the contemporary drive towardrigorous and “narrowly technical” analysis of meaning in termsof experience, and the renewed recognition in contemporarytimes that philosophy without metaphysical vision is incomplete,need be neither antagonistic nor externally related philosophicstrains, for Lewis’s pragmatic analysis of meaning in terms oforganism-environment interaction incorporates the textures of theontologically real within the very heart of the structure of mean-ingful experience. It is perhaps not an overstatement to say thatthose who ignore the internal structure of meaning in Lewis’sphilosophy have not just lost his pragmatic theory of meaning,they have truly lost his encompassing pragmatic vision.

Lewis’s technical understanding of world and its relation to theindependently real natural universe within which we have ourbeing can contribute its clarifying insights to the many issues andparadoxes that arise at the levels of both philosophy and commonsense as the ¤ndings of science and the deliverances of sense com-pete, con®ict, or collide. We do not know the natural universe inits pristine purity independently of the interpretations we bring


to it, but the natural universe is always that which we experience,providing the given or presented dimension within experience.Our lived perceptual world and the independently real naturaluniverse are not two spatially, temporally, or experientially dif-ferent realities, but rather our everyday worldly environment isthe result of the way the natural universe enters into our inter-pretive experience, into the horizons of our everyday active en-gagement with it. And the various worlds of various abstractlevels of re®ection arise from within this concrete everyday worldof lived perceptual experience as various explanatory nets castupon it.

The common sense world and the scienti¤c world result fromtwo diverse ways in which we approach the richness of the natu-ral universe in our interpretive activity. They do not each gethold of different realities, nor does one get hold of what is “reallyreal” to the exclusion of the other. Rather, they arise as differentways of understanding the natural universe in which we live, asdifferent areas of interest, serving different purposes. The natureonto which our concrete experience opens is not captured by thecontents of science, for its richness over®ows such abstractions.The perceived world of everyday experience grounds the abstractinferences and experimental developments of physical science,which, through its use of the tool of mathematics, leaves behind,for its own valid purposes, the very sense of concrete experiencethat grounds its endeavors. The things and events within natureas they arise within the world of science cannot be confoundedwith the natural universe in its ontological fullness. To speak ofa slab of concrete reality is not to indicate the ordered content ofsome particular mathematical system, but rather to indicate theongoing unfolding of the concrete universe that ultimately bothgrounds the possibility of, and renders “peculiar” to commonsense, the contents of the abstract world of science.

The concrete processes of nature are a dimension of our every-day natural environment. Nature as a system of scienti¤c objectsor events is a re®ective, creative, abstract explanatory net thatarises out of our meaningful everyday world and is cast upon an


inde¤nitely rich universe, one that works well for the purposesof scienti¤c explanation. If this explanatory net is substituted forthe temporally grounded features of an inde¤nitely rich uni-verse, or becomes in any way the absolute model for understand-ing it, then the roadblock constituted by the problems and dilem-mas that have haunted the philosophical tradition will remainimpassable.

The various abstract environments of the various disciplines,each utilizing its specialized tools of abstraction, are diverse, lim-ited approaches to the concrete matrix of the intertwined rela-tional webs within which individuals operate. There is needed arecognition that each area of interest is highlighting a dimensionof a uni¤ed concretely rich complexity from which each drawsits ultimate intelligibility and vitality. The problem is not to ¤gureout how to unite ontologically discrete facts studied by differentdisciplines. Rather, the problem is to distinguish various dimen-sions of the concrete matrix of relational webs in which humanexperience is enmeshed.

Distinguishing these dimensions is necessary for purposes of in-tellectual clarity and advancement of understanding, and is ac-complished through the dynamics of experimental method. If theproblem and solution are viewed in this way, then there will beno temptation to view the resultant “products” in ways that dis-tort both the inde¤nitely rich, concrete natural universe they areintended to clarify and the creative process by which these prod-ucts are obtained. If such distortion is allowed to happen, thenthese products can too easily become seen either as self-enclosedrelativistic environments immune from criticism from “outside”or as a direct grasp of “what is” in its pristine purity.

This is especially the case when one operates within more ab-stract environments with the speci¤c experimental tool of mathe-matical quanti¤cation and the “rigor” this allows. One tends toforget that this tool, in the very process of quantifying, leaves be-hind all of the richness of nature which cannot be caught by aquantitative net. The use of the tool of quanti¤cation predeter-mines the type of content that is apprehended as being inherently


mathematizable, while the exclusively mathematizable type ofcontent apprehended in turn reinforces the belief that quanti¤ca-tion is the tool for observational truth.

The abstract re®ections of philosophy itself are not a grasp ofthe universe in its purity, but rather they offer an interpretivenetwork, a theory, that attempts to make meaningful and inte-grated the full range and reality of human experience and humanknowledge, including scienti¤c knowledge. The universe as de-picted by Lewis’s metaphysics is different than that depicted byscience, for science and philosophy serve different purposes andhave different goals. For Lewis, speculative metaphysics is an en-deavor rooted in and veri¤ed by lived experience. It provides aspeculative analysis, via extrapolation from the pervasive fea-tures of lived experience, of what that independent reality mustbe like, in its character as independent, to give rise to the perva-sive features of experience and to the meanings by which it be-comes known to us. It thus offers an “explanation” of lived expe-rience by providing a speculative examination and integration ofthe features of the independently real universe that presents itselfin the immediacy of organism-environment interaction, that is“open to” certain meanings, and that is known only through suchmeanings.

The categories of speculative metaphysics are drawn from thephenomenological analysis of experience, and in this sense arerooted in experience; as attempting to describe the independentlyreal that provides the concrete basis for all experience, they mustbe “guided through” experience toward it by philosophical ex-trapolation of the pervasive textures of experience. And there isa vast difference between the illicit rei¤cation by past philosophiesof common sense or scienti¤c meanings and the speculative ex-trapolation from within experience of the pervasive tones andtextures of the thick processive “thereness” that enters into all ex-perience. The categories of metaphysics provide the illuminationby which traits of “what is there” can come into focus. Such cate-gories represent the persistent attempt to illuminate and articu-late, through a creative scheme or explanatory structure, the


processes and textures present within all experience. These cate-gories, as objects of second-level re®ection, are then held univer-sally applicable to the independently real because we make theminterpretive tools for the understanding of their data, to be veri-¤ed by their workability in accounting for our experience of andknowledge about the world in which we live.

Lewis’s understanding of metaphysics as that of an open systemor explanatory structure gives rise to a view of explanation rootedin, rather than distortive of, the pervasive features of lived expe-rience. And, though rooted in the lived level, it is never com-pletely adequate to the lived level, but must constantly be fedby, and veri¤ed by, the lived level. It is open to change and devel-opment, just as all interpretations or explanations are open tochange and development. The ultimate justi¤cation is pragmatic;do the metaphysical categories make sense of or explain how ex-perience and knowledge, as we have them, are possible? In thissense, philosophy “can be nothing more at bottom than persua-sion.”64

“Is Metaphysics Possible?” is a much debated question thesedays. Announcements of the death of metaphysics pour in fromcommanding ¤gures such as Rorty, Derrida, and others, whileopposing camps proclaim that the announcements themselves arefraught with unexamined metaphysical presuppositions. Debateoccurs almost as strongly among advocates of the importance ofmetaphysics. For many who accept some version of traditionalmetaphysics, the rejection of the possibility of metaphysics “in thegrand tradition” signals the rejection of metaphysics itself. Oppos-ing camps adamantly respond that the rejection of metaphysicstraditionally understood nonetheless allows for an understandingof metaphysics as an enterprise that, though changed in nature,yet retains its vital function. This new function is itself under-stood in widely varying ways, some limiting it to a phenomeno-logical depiction in one sense or another of the features of con-crete human existence, others including within its scope morecosmic claims of one sort or another, with varying types of justi¤-cation.


In the midst of this controversy, Lewis’s understanding of themetaphysical enterprise offers a positive path for the reconstruc-tion of metaphysics that avoids traditional paradigms and the falsedichotomies to which they give rise. In this way it is more con-temporary than much of what is contained in so-called cuttingedge contemporary debates. For much of contemporary meta-physical criticism, though operating within the seemingly novelparadigm of language or within other seemingly novel paradigmsradically restrictive of the nature and limits of metaphysical pur-suits, has yet not succeeded in breaking with the alternatives of-fered by, and hence the possible solutions allowable by, a longphilosophical tradition.

Though the alternative and possible solutions may take distinc-tively new turns and though seemingly new alternatives and newlimitations emerge, they can too often be seen as new paradig-matic twists to old paradigmatic offerings. Too often the collapseof spectator absolutes, of closed systems, of indubitable founda-tions, leads to the claims of the demise of metaphysics and arelativistic, antifoundationalist turn to conversation or to the playof differance. Lewis’s position has its foundations in the interac-tional unity of the noetic creativity of humans and the ontologicalpresence that “intrudes” within experience in a way that under-cuts the alternatives of foundationalism-antifoundationalism,objectivism-relativism, or realism-antirealism, providing insteadan objectively grounded perspectivalism at all levels of human ex-perience and knowledge.

In assessments of the positive value of metaphysics today, theclaim is frequently made that metaphysics provides meaningful-ness rather than truth and that it is interpretive rather than cog-nitive, but these are again false alternatives. No ¤eld of endeavorcan assert truth apart from a context of meaningfulness. And dif-ferent worlds give rise to different contexts, asserting differentkinds of truths. Truth involves veri¤cation, and it has been seenthat for Lewis the a priori organization of experience in meaning-ful ways sets the framework for anticipations of possible experi-ence and veri¤cation in experience. Until our world is infusedwith meanings that contain the conditions for the veri¤cation of


their application in experience, the concept of truth makes no realsense.

Thus the claims of common sense, science, and metaphysicsalike provide meaningfulness, a way of orienting oneself to theworld, before the issue of truth can emerge. If one does not con-¤ne truth to conformity or correspondence to non-perspectival,unchanging, totally structured reality that we merely “¤nd,” thenmeaningful, creative world orientation and truth as workabilitygo hand in hand. For Lewis, metaphysics is a cognitive enterprise,but cognition at all levels involves noetic creativity. Metaphysicsincludes interpretive activity, but so do the most rudimentary ex-periences of concrete existence. Cognitive experience is by itsvery nature interpretive. It is indeed concerned to discern mean-ing, but not meaning rather than fact, for facts themselves emergewithin the contours set by the meaning-bestowing activity of apriori structures or creative interpretations, and hence are par-tially the results of such activity.

Indeed, it can be said that Lewis’s understanding of the meta-physical enterprise re®ects the ingredients and dynamics, “writlarge,” of his pragmatic understanding of experience as experi-mental and transactional. One can see in the dynamics of hisunderstanding of metaphysical method an exaggeration of the ex-perimental method by which we have meaningful everyday ex-perience. Metaphysical meanings are more creative, more likeweaving a story, but the compulsive ontological element alwaysintrudes and renders some creations, some stories, more work-able than others. Thus, there should be and there is, for Lewis, aconcurrent heightened attentiveness to what appears in experi-ence, to its pervasive features or textures, to the sense of ourselvesas active beings, an attentiveness that both founds the catego-ries and serves to verify their adequacy. For that to which weattend opens onto the ontological presence with which we arein constant transaction. This transactional, experimental under-standing of the nature of metaphysics can be utilized both tocomplement and to illuminate the speculative excursions—attimes explicit, often implicit—within the writings of the otherclassical pragmatists. More broadly, it has important implications


for contemporary attempts to “situate” metaphysics in the con-text of philosophic inquiry, offering novel insights for the worldof contemporary philosophy at large.

Further, Lewis’s position opens a pathway for new constructivedialogue with later analytic/linguistic philosophies, such as thatof Donald Davidson. While rejecting traditional realism, Davidsonis open to the possibility that we can “get outside our beliefs andour language so as to ¤nd some test other than coherence” fortruth and knowledge.65 Thus, he does not accept an unquali¤edcoherence theory of truth but turns instead to a modi¤ed corre-spondence theory of truth in which there is “correspondencewithout confrontation.”66 What he is rejecting here is the viewthat true beliefs correspond to something real that can be con-fronted and compared with thoughts or sentences. But he can“accept objective truth conditions as the key to meanings, a realistview of truth, and we can insist that knowledge is of an objectiveworld independent of our thought and language.”67 However, cor-respondence without confrontation for Davidson is in fact corre-spondence with more beliefs, and these beliefs can be evaluatedonly in the description of their causes, which are physiological,cultural, or psychological.

Davidson holds that true sentences are true because of situationsin the world. For example, the sentence “Snow is white” is trueas a result of the situation of snow’s being white. But it is notappropriate to ask if snow is “really” white. This question can beinterpreted only as asking if the sentence “Snow is white” cohereswith the bulk of our accepted beliefs as these are expressed insentences. The grounding of beliefs is, ultimately, a web of wide-spread agreement by speakers as to what sentences about objects,situations, events, and so forth can be asserted. Davidson does nottry to understand how or in what ways reality is such that wecan provide evidence of the probable truth of our collective be-liefs. Rather he is concerned “to ¤nd a reason for supposing mostof our beliefs are true that is not a form of evidence.”68

What Davidson seems to be reacting against is the overdeter-mined “furniture” realism of a totally structured reality whichour beliefs confront and to which each must correspond, a ¤xed


set of thought-independent structured objects, or brute facts con-sisting of relations among atomic elements. He also seems to bereacting against the alternative position, which holds that wecannot get outside our beliefs/concepts/language and which thusembraces an unquali¤ed coherence theory of truth.

But Lewis’s understanding of knowledge and reality does notrequire, nor does it allow for, the confrontation to which David-son objects. For Lewis, the indeterminacy inherent in the uni-verse in its nature as an ongoing thick inde¤nitely rich process,combined with the interpretive nature of all experience, renderssuch a confrontation literally senseless. But coherence is not theonly remaining alternative. Rather, all that is necessary is to ac-knowledge, from within the con¤nes of our conceptual webs, aresistance that is not itself concepts, language, or beliefs, eventhough our grasp of it develops within these interpretive contextsand truths can arise only within these contexts. We do not knowthis resistance by escaping our linguistic/conceptual webs butby encountering it through such webs—whether at the level ofeveryday common-sense experience or at the more re®ective lev-els of science or philosophy. It is not that to which our beliefsconfrontationally correspond but that which instigates changesin networks of beliefs and constrains the way our networks ofbeliefs develop.

In large measure, Davidson’s world functions the way Lewis’sworld functions, but Lewis’s world making, for pragmatic rea-sons, is constrained and contoured by the resisting element thatlies within the conceptual web we cast upon it. Lewis’s under-standing of truth, like Davidson’s, can be said to incorporate as-pects of the coherence theory, with a resultant rejection of thetraditional realist correspondence of concepts, language, or be-liefs with a thought-independent prestructured, overdeterminedreality, what Davidson calls a confrontational correspondence.But the constraining, resisting element within experience allowsLewis, and pragmatism in general, to forge a new understand-ing of the meaning of truth. True beliefs are those that work inallowing us to engage a resisting, constraining reality in fruit-ful ways.


The pervasive features or textures of the resisting element inexperience, along with the experiential world that emerges throughthe conceptual web we cast upon it, provide the path for movingfrom epistemology to metaphysics without engaging in the im-possible task of trying to get “outside” all of our conceptual webs.We do not think to a reality to which language or concepts con-form, but rather we live through a reality with which we are in-tertwined and the intertwining of which constitutes experience.

Lewis’s pragmatic alternative does not seem totally alien towhat Davidson is attempting to achieve in trying to move be-tween the extremes of both coherence and correspondence. Inthis way it opens up new horizons for dialogue between the prag-matic and analytic/linguistic traditions and for the exploration ofthe implications for philosophy of both their convergences anddifferences.


Lewis’s moral theory incorporates and extends the themes devel-oped in his epistemology. He counters the view, popular in histime, that ethical assertions are merely emotive or persuasive, de-veloping the position that valuations are cognitive and that ethi-cal judgments are rational. His ethical theory, in keeping withpragmatism, accepts the continuity of experience and extends thegeneral method of gaining knowledge to all areas of human ac-tivity. Lewis held that “knowledge, action, and evaluation are es-sentially connected,”1 and his position provides, in its own way,the pragmatic connection between value knowledge and reason-able purposive action. Indeed, ultimately, for Lewis, all knowl-edge is for the sake of guiding our purposive activity.

Unlike the general pragmatic trend, however, Lewis makes asharp separation between values, goods, purposes, on the onehand, and imperatives, obligations, rules, on the other. Valuejudgments, judgments of goodness, are empirical, and while hav-ing an important function in his understanding of the right or theimperative, by themselves they cannot determine what is right,what ought to be. This chapter will focus on his general theory

5 The Process

of Valuation

of value, while the next chapter will turn to the development ofhis ethics and the imperative of the right.

Lewis characterizes his position as “a naturalistic or humanisticconception of values” because it holds the view that “the naturalbent of the natural man stands in no need of correction in ordervalidly to be the touchstone of intrinsic value.”2 He rejects tran-scendentalist views that claim just evaluations require a trans-valuation or correction of our natural valuings and disvaluings,as well as the various alternatives of relativism or the cynicismof the emotivist claim that normative expressions of any kind areneither true nor false. Valuations are empirical cognitions, the testof which is a quality disclosed in experience, directly apprehend-able and unmistakably identi¤able.

In presenting his position that value claims are a type of em-pirical knowledge and that there is a continuity of method indealing with value and empirical knowledge in general, Lewisdistinguishes three types of value assertions, corresponding tothe three types of empirical apprehensions discussed previously.Immediately apprehended experiences as reported in expressivelanguage are the closest we can come to direct reports of imme-diate value or disvalue in experience—of satisfaction or dissatis-faction, happiness or sadness, grati¤cation or grievousness, and soforth. Immediate value apprehensions are the experiential and“pragmatically certain” or unquestionable date upon which valuejudgment is founded. To understand value or goodness one mustexperience it; value exists only as it affects the experience of in-dividuals. Felt value or disvalue is disclosed in experience.

There is no attempt here to de¤ne value or goodness. Rather“immediate or directly ¤ndable value is not so much one qualityas a dimension like mode which is pervasive of all experience.”3

Lewis reminds us here that the neat categorization of what is em-pirically presented ignores what “spills over the edges” of the ver-bal containers. Moreover, in the area of immediate values thephenomenal as such does not require such neat determinationsbecause what is the focus of concern is “universally familiar anduniversally regarded. Value/disvalue is that mode or aspect of thegiven or the contemplated to which desire and aversion are ad-


dressed; and it is that by apprehension of which the inclinationto action is normally elicited.”4

Terminating judgments consisting of expressive terms predictthe quality of an experience resulting from a particular action,and can be decisively tested for veri¤cation. Non-terminatingjudgments are built up from a set of terminating judgments, andtheir predictions of value qualities cannot be decisively veri¤ed,but rather are inde¤nitely testable and subject to revision. Evenif they attain a “practical certainty” they are objective probabilityclaims attributing a value quality to an object or situation.

Utilizing the above types of value claims, Lewis clari¤es the am-biguities inherent in value words such as “good” or “valuable”and takes note of several different meanings or modes of valuethat are important to distinguish. Saying that something is goodor that something is valuable can mean that it has intrinsic, ex-trinsic (either inherent, instrumental, or utilitarian), contribu-tive, comparative, or social value.

Only experience can be intrinsically valuable, for intrinsic valueis immediate value. Objects and actions can have extrinsic valueonly, and such claims are non-terminating judgments. The attri-bution of value to an unexamined object or to an examined oneis no different than the attribution of any property to an object.It asserts a real connection between a hypothetical operation orobservation and a resultant experience or observation. In so do-ing, it is asserting the truth of an if-then conditional as a state-ment of a real connection, and such a truth is independent ofthe factual truth or falsity of either clause of the statement. Thus,Lewis stresses that the beauty of the gold, if it should be presentedto a connoisseur of beauty in metals, is no more “in the eye of thebeholder than is the speci¤c gravity of it.”5 Here again, the im-portance of Lewis’s development of a logic of strict implicationthat allows for the commitment to real relations or real potenti-alities comes to the forefront.

Objective value is extrinsic value and lies in the potentiality ofan object, action, or state of affairs to provide immediate satisfac-tion to someone under speci¤c conditions. Something may be ob-jectively valuable even though it is not valued by anyone, and

The Process of Valuation 131

things may be valued by someone without their being objectivelyvaluable. The fact that different individuals do not ¤nd value inthe same experiences does not negate the objectivity of the value,for objective value depends on its relation to actual or possibleexperience, and these experiences depend on the capacities of thesubject.6

In the area of objective value one must distinguish between in-herent value and instrumental value. Objects, situations, or ac-tions have inherent value if they lead directly to experiences thatare intrinsically valuable. Objects or actions have instrumentalvalue if they lead to something that is inherently valuable. Forexample, a ¤ne piece of sculpture is inherently valuable, for indi-viduals tend to experience immediate value in its presence, butthe tools and clay by which the sculpture is brought to fruitionhave instrumental value. Lewis distinguishes also between in-strumental value, which is a means to an end that is good, andutility, which identi¤es something as “good for” reaching some-thing further, irrespective of the question of whether or not whatit is “good for” is itself good or not. Not all utilities of things areinstrumental values of them. For example, matches and kerosenemay be good for engaging in arson, but arson is not inherentlygood.

The assessment of value is further complicated by the fact thatthe relation of the value potentialities of objects to our possibili-ties of action is a major factor that affects evaluations of objectsin every mode other than bare potentiality. Both the potentialitiesof objects and the degree to which their realizations are underour control affect their value to us. Positive values are greater inproportion to the control we have over their realization, and dis-values are greater accordingly as the conditions of their realiza-tion are uncontrollable.

Lewis notes that when it comes to instrumental values there isa dual type of predication of value. In one sense, they indicate asimple possibility that the object or situation of which they arepredicated will produce a particular type of effect. In anothersense, they are predicated “relative to circumstances known to beor assumed to be actual.” Returning to an example of gold, a gold


nugget hidden in the earth has potential as a thing of beauty andof great commercial value, but in another sense it has no valuebecause its potential will never be actualized.7 Lewis calls valueattribution in this second sense “value-in-fact,” a term that is ap-plicable when the conditions of realization or non-realization areactual or at least highly probable. He notes that “actual value”would be more idiomatic for what he intends, but he shies awayfrom this term as he considers it more likely to mislead, since val-ues in the mode of simple potentiality are actual values, thoughthey may not be actualized.8

These considerations allow Lewis to handle the relativity ofvalue to persons—be it one person, a class of persons, or all per-sons. Values-in-fact vary greatly in type because of the differ-ent actual or probable conditions within which they are located.Value attributions as relative to persons are one type of value-in-fact, and one that Lewis considers of special importance for clari-fying value theory. They attribute to something the potentialityfor producing value quality within the limits of personal circum-stances. For example, the gift of two theater tickets has no valueto you because you are already committed to attending a concertthat evening. The determining factor is found in circumstancesaccidental to your situation. Thus, Lewis points out, the impor-tance of the phrase “to you.”

While this makes objective value relative to personal experi-ence, the objective claims of any empirical knowledge rest ulti-mately in the actual or possible experience of someone. Andwhile value experiences or felt satisfactions are perhaps morevariable than other empirical experiences, such as the experienceof looking blue or feeling hard, the difference is one of degree andnot of kind. Values attributed relative to persons are not the sameas what we call “subjective.” They are personal, but not subjec-tive. That what has value for a person in one set of circumstanceshas no value for someone in another set of circumstances is notan issue of subjectivity, but rather is one type of value-in-fact.

The meanings of the terms “subjective” and “objective” as ap-plied to value terms is analogous to their meanings in other areas.All empirical apprehension is by way of appearances. Any presen-


tation can serve as a clue for the correct interpretation of someobjective situation, and additionally the particular state of thesubject may enter into the situation. At times, the state of the sub-ject will be a major fact, such as in illusions or hallucinations. Ifthe apprehended data lead to reliable judgments, judgments thatare veri¤ed by experience, we call them objective; if not, we cate-gorize them as subjective. If the value quality at issue is due tothe peculiarities of the individual, it is categorized as “subjective.”If it is due to the objective situation and generally shared humanapprehensions, it is categorized as “objective.”

Either way, the experience has positive intrinsic value if thereis a positive value-quality apprehension, although it may be mis-leading as concerns real instrumental value. As Lewis says, “Itsesse is percipi.”9 The experience is prior to any division into sub-jective and objective. Pain or enjoyment is immediately disclosedand is not an illusion. But while the experience is apparent, itmay be illusory as indicative of an objective state of affairs, andthe ways of dealing with it may differ from case to case.

If an actual existent brings satisfaction to somebody, it obvi-ously has the potential to do so for that particular individual un-der those particular circumstances. Even if an essential factor inthe realization of value is something peculiar to the individual, itis not completely worthless. If an essential factor in the realizationof value is something peculiar to the individual and misleadingas to further possibilities of value realization, and hence is “sub-jective,” this nonetheless indicates that the object producing ithas that much value, even if trivial.10 However, this does notprove the objectivity of the value apprehension or of the valueapprehended. This issue requires reference to the conditions ofthe value realization on the side of the subject. It is important tobe on guard about the subjectivity of value experiences not be-cause the value realized is unreal, but because it does not indicatethat the object possesses the potentiality for value experiences forothers.

Lewis recognizes that value disagreements are more commonthan disagreements regarding other types of phenomenal disclo-sures. But we only become aware of individual differences in ex-


perience of phenomenal qualia through incongruent behavior.And since there is such a close tie between apprehended valuequalities and conduct, we are more likely to become aware ofwhat differences there are. Moreover, there is a greater common-ness of language in, for example, the characterization of shapesor colors than in the characterization of values, which makes thedifferences more noticeable. But without the commonness, ourinterpersonal relations would be chaotic, and this is in fact notthe case.

Lewis thus holds that the different modes of value as he hasdistinguished them can help obviate the debates concerning the“relativity” or “non-relativity” and “subjectivity” or “objectivity”of values. He further takes note of the fact that help is providedalso by his distinction between value judgments or judgments ofgoods and ethical judgments or judgments right and his analysisof their interrelationship. For there is unnecessary concern aboutaccepting the relativity of values to persons because this issue ismistakenly intertwined with the concern that the acceptance ofgenuine value relative to persons denies the possibility of objec-tive moral standards and that accepting the validity of judgmentsof what has value for me but not for others will result in subjec-tivism or egoism in ethics. Judgments of goods are about if-thenjudgments of empirical relationships, of the potentialities of ob-jects, while judgments of rightness or justice are ethical, and theanswer cannot be derived from empirical facts alone.

It is also necessary to consider the comparative value of an ob-ject, situation, action, or experience, which is the assessment ofits relation to other objects, situations, actions, or experiences.Objects, situations, or actions that result in more of immediatelyapprehended value experiences than other alternatives are com-paratively most valuable, either instrumentally or inherently.

Lewis refers to the “Fallacy of the Epithet” and the similar fal-lacy that is a form of the “fallacy of the attribute” in showing theway names given to things bear with them valuational implica-tions that are false or misleading to the facts. And the issue of thecomparison of values and of whether or not all values can be ar-ranged in a single hierarchy he sees as affected by the same issues


involved in the naming of objects. For example, the question asto which is best, a warm fur coat, a ¤lling meal, or a sharp knife,cannot be resolved because the utilities of the objects do notoverlap.

Lewis uses comparative value to help clear up the paradoxin which objects having no objective value yet give rise to theexperience of intrinsic value in some persons. He does this byreference to a distinction between ascriptions of value as non-comparative or absolute and ascriptions of comparative value. Forexample, Lewis notes that one might consider a tool valuable be-cause it is better than average, but if the tool is virtually unusable,has no comparative value, one might still object to throwing itaway, claiming that it still has a value even if the value is senti-mental value. He points out that it would be a little dif¤cult to¤nd any object which has no potentialities whatever for leadingto satisfaction, and is thus absolutely without value of any kind.

A degree of utility does not necessarily correlate with a degreeof instrumental value. And as Lewis emphasizes, “It is not in thelowest category of utilities but in the highest category of contribu-tory values—the values of things as contributory to some indi-vidual life or to lives in general—that any two things are compa-rable as better or worse, and that we may be obliged to assess suchcomparative values of them”11 And, those intrinsically valuableexperiences that contribute more value to the whole of a person’slife are comparatively most intrinsically valuable.

This brings us to Lewis’s understanding of the summum bonumand focuses once again on the crucial role of temporality in hispragmatic vision. Contributory value involves the recognitionthat our lives are temporally continuous, and our experiencesare self-consciously cumulative; we live in time, as do all livingorganisms, but additionally, as human, we are self-consciouslyaware that we are temporal beings, that we live in time. For thisreason the quality of concern permeates our lives. Concern for thefuture and self direction as we step into it are at the very core ofrationality.12 It is concern that takes us past animal compulsion toself-direction, and because of concern and self-direction we makeappraisals. This is also “The root of what we call our rationality.”13


We are rational in that we are constrained by foresight, by a vi-sion of some future good or ill. The logical is derivative from thissense of ourselves as having foresight and self direction. The va-lidity of reasoning is rooted in consistency and consistency is theadherence to what we have accepted. Our concern for the futureleads us to be consistent or rational, and in achieving this, whatwe say, think, or do has logical validity, though the issue of truthor falsity still remains.

The summum bonum, represented by the good life, the life thatis found good in the living of it, is not, according to Lewis, some-thing to be argued. Rather it is “a datum of the human attitudeto life,” but it is not the kind of datum that we commonly callpsychological.14

The intrinsic values of immediate experiences are valued notjust for themselves but as they contribute to the good life. Thevalue immediately had in experience is not subject to critique.However, the goal of realizing and the value of having that par-ticular experience are subject to rational critique in accordancewith the value it may contribute to some whole of experiencewhich includes it.15 There are dual dimensions here in the processof valuation. Immediately experienced goods are good for theirown sake but are also valued according to their contribution tothe good life.

This whole of one’s life of which Lewis speaks is not limited toone’s physical existence but rather is marked off by its horizon.Individuals may live prospectively through what they may do fortheir children and the lives of others who come after, as well asby the hope of a good reputation. Accepting ends productive ofgoodness that lies beyond one’s possible experience genuinely in-fuses the living of one’s life with a goodness realizable in the liv-ing of it through relation to a temporally extended future beyondthe boundaries of one’s life.

Lewis, distances himself from Bentham’s position here. Bent-ham’s position, Lewis acknowledges, would not deny the neces-sary reference to the whole of experience in a ¤nal determinationof the value of any constituent of it. But, in contrast to his ownposition, it would nonetheless hold that this ¤nal determination


can be carried out in piecemeal fashion using the procedures ofarithmetic. But Lewis reminds us that not only is the quality ofthe whole quali¤ed by its constituent parts, but the quality of thewhole in turn quali¤es these constituent parts.

The intrinsic value that characterizes a whole life is realized inthe living of it. But the experiences that constitute it are not aseries of externally related moments. No experience is an isolatedbit, but is part of a whole. The value quality of an experience istransformed both by the value qualities of past experience andthe value qualities surrounding our anticipations of future expe-rience. Moreover, the value quality of the emergent whole or Ge-stalt is irreducible to, and may be different from, the value qualityof the various experiences from which it arises. This is one reason,among others, that Lewis considers a “calculus of values” to beimpossible.

The good life as a composition rather than an aggregate is inthis respect analogous to a literary or musical composition. Lewiscompares it to a symphony. The value quality of a musical com-position depends on its order and progression in experience, andthe realization of that value is progressive as well as cumulative.A symphony is not heard and appreciated in a segment of one ofits movements but as a progressive and cumulative whole. Theholistic value of it is realized in its progressive movement that be-gins with the beauty disclosed in its opening chord. Moreover, thevalue is not only progressive and cumulative but consummatory.Rather than leave in the middle of a movement, one would preferto leave at the end of the prior movement. Like the symphony,the good life is both cumulative and consummatory.16

The value quality of experience is thus not found in merely mo-mentary experiences or in an aggregate of such experiences asseparately disclosed. Rather, it is found in the temporal ®ow andrelational pattern of a whole of experience and the progression ofsuch a whole as both cumulative and consummatory. Lewis holdsthat this is particularly the case for the value of life as active. Agoal that one strives purposefully to achieve is different from thatgoal achieved through accidental circumstances. Moreover, thevalue quality of the goal infuses the striving, and the goodness of


the purposive striving colors the realized goal. A hike in themountains, for example, is more enjoyable if there is an objectivesuch as, perhaps, the view of a splendid panoramic vista or moun-tain lake, while the vista or lake is more enjoyable because of themanner in which it has been obtained. Experience has instru-mental and intrinsic value, and the ¤nal assessment of the valueor disvalue of any experience must take into account both dimen-sions. Or, perhaps more aptly put, means and ends are inextrica-bly fused in the holistic nature of ongoing experience in its tem-poral ®ow.

The goodness or badness of a life on the whole is thus mutatismutandis not immediately disclosed, but rather can be envisagedor contemplated only by an imaginative synthesis of its “on-the-whole quality.” Our assessment requires a synthetic apprehen-sion, which involves judgment and fallibility. Lewis suggests suchapprehension can be terms ‘synthetic intuition’, though it sharesthe characteristics of non-terminating judgments in general, andhence is inherently fallible and probable at best.

That a life found good in the living of it is the summum bonumis “a datum of the human attitude to life.” While in the routinesof our daily living we for the most part do not assess our actionsfrom the perspective of such a ¤nal value quality, yet the moreserious the decision in affecting the depth and breadth of ourlives, the more do we consider our actions from the perspectiveof such ¤nal value. This “moral concern for the whole of life setsthat end to which all particular aims must be subordinated, andconstitutes the rational imperative,”17 one of the imperatives thatwill be developed in his ethics. It is “that norm which can be re-pudiated only by repudiating all norms and the distinction ofvalid from invalid in general.”18

What is intrinsically valuable may be evaluated prudentiallyor socially. In evaluating it prudentially, we are judging, for ex-ample, how it will contribute to the value of an individual’s entirelife. In evaluating it socially, we are judging how it will contributeto the entire lives of all those whom it affects. And further com-plexities arise when considering social value. Bentham proposedhis calculus, Lewis points out, precisely to handle the complexi-


ties of social evaluations, though Bentham’s concern was acts andtheir consequences rather than objective existences and theirvalue effects. Lewis, as seen earlier, rejects values as measurableand additive. Values, however, can be compared and ordered atleast to some extent in terms of their contributory value, theircontribution to a good life. But the issue of social values bringsin the problem of comparison among persons. Lewis holds thatwe can know the orderings of other persons only though “em-pathetic imagination,” by putting ourselves in the place of theother.19

Judgment of social value is highly complex. It takes into accountall the value potentialities of the object rather than one type andinvolves some collation of them; it takes into account all personslikely to be affected by the object, in terms of both the numberimpacted and the degree to which they are affected; it requiresconsideration of the circumstances that affect these value realiza-tions and the assessment of their probability if beyond control;and ¤nally it involves bringing all these facts together in a resul-tant evaluation. It is this type of complexity of judgment that isrequired in deciding whether and to what extent something willbe in the public interest or socially desirable.

Lewis acknowledges that carrying out social judgments withthe complexities he analyzes, while theoretically possible, is prac-tically a “fantastic supposition.” However, it offers an ideal towardwhich to strive in our actual and practical estimates of some-thing’s value for society at large. These estimates will be more orless accurate in proportion to their approximation to the totalevaluation. The theoretical possibility of such value determina-tion gives practical signi¤cance to our practical estimates.

The ¤nal evaluation of any particular experience is evaluationof it as contributing to a whole of experience into which it entersas a constituent, and the overarching temporal gestalt that is ¤nalis the purview of a whole life.20 It is this that comes nearest toindicating an unquali¤ed imperative for rational actions. But forLewis, all ¤nal imperatives belong to ethics, and all valuation issubject to ethical critique. In this sense, he considers his discus-sion of valuation a “prolegomena to ethics.”21


Before turning to aesthetic value, we should note Lewis’s rele-vance for environmental concerns. He is explicit in extending therealm of valuings to non-human organisms. “The potentialities ofobjects for conducing to the enjoyment or suffering of animalsother than man, is equally a fact about the nature of things; andit is not necessary to erect human experience as an exclusivestandard of value-facts.”22 The consideration of this, he holds, canprevent confusing what grati¤es humans with some ultimate,transcendental standard of values ¤xed in the metaphysical na-ture of reality. Such a consideration further leads to the recogni-tion that we owe compassion and an attitude of respect to everysentient being to the degree that it is capable of enjoying or suf-fering. He will reintroduce this point in his discussion of impera-tives of rightness.

Aesthetic Value

In turning to aesthetic value, Lewis ¤rst offers what he calls a“phenomenology of the esthetic,”23 which focuses on the natureand conditions of the esthetic in experience. It is concerned withthe value quality of the given experience, with its phenomenalcontent.

Aesthetic values are intrinsic values and esthetically valuableobjects have inherent value, but neither all intrinsic values nor allobjects having inherent value are esthetic. For Lewis there is nosingle characteristic that delineates esthetic value from all othervalues. Rather, a complex set of criteria is called for, involving theattitude toward what is presented, the degree of positive valuequality, and the natural associations of one experience with an-other.24

Lewis believes all experience is esthetic in the sense that what-ever is presented to us is a value laden qualitative complex. Theesthetic runs through experience in general, a consideration thattakes center stage in Dewey’s writings. He would agree withDewey that experience is a unity such that characterizing it asemotional, practical, or intellectual, and so forth, is to name dis-tinctions that re®ection makes within it.25 As he emphasizes,


there is actually no such thing as “esthetic experience,” for allexperience has the aspects of both esthesis and cognitive signi¤-cance.26 But, in contrast to Dewey, his interest lies almost exclu-sively in marking off and focusing on those experiences that aremost intensely dominated by the esthetic dimension.

In so doing, Lewis distinguishes three types of attitude we cantake toward that which we encounter: the moral or active, thecognitive, and the esthetic. While these are neither mutually ex-clusive nor independent, in any experience one of them willdominate. The moral or active attitude is utilitarian; it is con-cerned with the way things can be used to reach certain ends.The cognitive attitude is closer to the esthetic than is the attitudeof action; both require that we be disinterested and dispassionate.But knowing is for guiding action, and our cognitive attitude isconcerned with possible ways of using immediate experience asa clue to future experience. The attitude that yields aesthetic val-ues is unconcerned with utilitarian goals and is “amoral” in thesense that it is not the active attitude. It primarily connotes theempirical apprehension and contemplation of what is presentedin its value character as given. He sees the aesthetic attitude asfocused upon what Prall calls the “esthetic surface.”27 Distinc-tively esthetic objects not only must possess inherent value butmust possess it in such a way and to such a degree that they solicitthe esthetic attitude of absorbed contemplation and afford a highdegree of grati¤cation.

Lewis recognizes that his initial characterizations of the estheticare too inclusive and narrows the category of distinctively es-thetic goods by turning to a further complex of criteria.28 Not onlymust distinctively esthetic objects have a predominant and reli-able potentiality to yield grati¤cations and be able to elicit andsatisfy the esthetic attitude, but also the values to which theygive rise must be enduring rather than transitory and must beunentangled with conditions that may spoil our satisfactions.

Additionally the realization of esthetic values should be non-competitive or non-exclusionary. An increase in value for oneperson does not decrease the possible value for others. Not onlyare the goods not divided by being shared, but the enjoyment may


be enriched by a sharing. Turning to the relevance of what herefers to as the economy of values, Lewis points out the way theesthetic may be tinged with the moral. By the rational economyof values, which arises through concern for the possibilities ofthe good life, he means that we particularly seek what Benthamrefers to as “fecund pleasures”; they yield or enhance our reali-zation of other intrinsic values or are reinforced by derivativegoods.29

Lewis is convinced that the measure of esthetic value, pri-mary esthetic quality, is to be found in the appreciation of theuntutored but esthetically sensitive person. While acknowledgingthe importance of technical excellence and virtuosity in art forcritical evaluation, he holds that focusing on these considerationsmay not only dominate but also subvert intrinsic enjoyments withtheir distractions. At the same time, however, appreciation or cul-tivation of virtuosity can provide a context of creative activityand intellectual satisfaction, thus contributing to keeping alive orenhancing our more purely esthetic values. In such cases, thecreative activity and intellectual satisfaction can perhaps be saidto infuse rather than replace primary esthetic quality. But Lewiswarns that “[i]t is a ¤rst dictate of cultivated taste that life shouldnot be too exclusively devoted to the mere exercise of cultivatedtaste, lest everything should become tasteless to it.”30

The direct having of immediate esthetic value is not judgmentbecause, like all apprehensions of givenness, it cannot be in error.Claims about the esthetic value of objects, however, are judg-ments, and like all non-terminating judgments are fallible. Asseen earlier in the chapter, Lewis holds that the failure to distin-guish between the intrinsic value of the quality of experience andthe inherent value in the object as a potentiality for such experi-ence gives rise to views of value as subjective and relative andvalue predications as “emotive” or non-cognitive, and hence de-void of either truth or falsity. For objective esthetic values, as forall objective qualities, there are conditions of the subject that mayaffect that person’s experience of the object. Immediate experi-ence is important as evidence of the qualities of any object, andfor esthetic experience it is the best evidence, but the inherent


value of an object is not subject to or reducible to the “subjective”conditions of immediate experience. Lewis sees the importanceof such conditions not as conditions of the value in the object butas conditions of reliable tests of an objective value that is inde-pendent of any particular valuing experience.

Because the esthetic qualities of things have an independentstatus, mistakes can be made in attributing aesthetic value tosomething, and cultivation of our capacity to discern these quali-ties is important.31 Those with more background, experience ortraining in the arts, awareness of an ongoing tradition, or betternatural discernment can make more reliable judgments concern-ing the objective esthetic value of an art object, and Lewis pointsout that the same can be said in eliciting the truths of naturalscience. In neither case are the objective properties of the objectcreated by the experts in the ¤eld.

In judgments of esthetic value, there are various levels of appre-hension to consider. First, the immediate value quality appre-hended in experience may be assessed. Lewis explains his inten-sion here by making a comparison with the experienced rednessof an apple. The immediately given appearance of redness is in-dubitable, but its comparative redness to some past redness, aredness remembered, is something requiring judgment, thoughhe holds that whether or not we call such assessment “judgment”is not important. In the same way, while the apprehension of theimmediately presented value quality does not involve judgment,the comparison of the degree of immediately apprehended es-thetic value quality of a presentation with past presentations in-volves a judgment. Lewis points out a difference in the two casesin that with the red appearance there is only the apparent red-ness, while value appearance is actual, not merely apparent, in-trinsic value. However, with this difference in mind, one can seehere something analogous to what, in the context of his generalepistemic focus, was called “pragmatic certainty” or “functionalcertainty.” The apprehension of a present content involves theprocess of assimilation to or comparison with past instances, withthe memory this involves. Hence it is a type of judgment, but it


is pragmatically certain in that no future experience can prove itfalse, for it does not refer to future experience.

Not only may the value quality directly experienced be con-fused with a comparative assessment of it, but complicating thematter even further, the comparative assessment may be con-fused with the objective value of the presented object. As a result,what does not require any objective judgment is confounded withwhat does require objective judgment. While these distinctionsare somewhat complex, failure to make them leads one astray inthe area of esthetics and results in highly regrettable errors.

Finally, even in the sense in which the apprehended value qualityis found and not judged, its quality as esthetic or non-esthetic re-quires judgment via certain indirect criteria such as whether ornot this kind of experience can endure or would perhaps lead todissatisfaction down the road. Lewis gives as an example a tea-taster who has cultivated a capacity to predict that a particulartype of tea will lose its bouquet in the near future, and as hesips the tea he ¤nds that the tea does not taste quite right. It isstill the predictable loss of bouquet that is signalized rather thanthe immediately experienced signal of it that allows the judgmentthat it is not a good-quality tea. This judgment is a judgment con-cerning the esthetic quality in the object presented and only in-directly of the aesthetic character of the immediately disclosedexperience. And even indirectly it is not a judgment of the imme-diately apprehended value quality, but a judgment classifying itas aesthetic.

Lewis is careful to distinguish his focus on the theory of es-thetic value from the positive science of aesthetics with which theesthetician is concerned. However, he does ¤nd it relevant to con-sider certain aspects of the esthetic object. Musical compositions,poems, and dramas are not physical objects, while paintings,sculptures, and buildings are physical objects. The former are ab-stract objects that are actualized in various performances or ren-ditions that can vary greatly in quality. But even for the latter,each physical object is one member in a class of actual or potentialreplicas, and what is actualized in each replica is something ab-


stract, just as in music, poetry, or drama. Lewis even includesnatural objects such as landscapes in this, for no natural ob-ject elicits aesthetic experience if we just let it pour through oursenses. In all of these cases there are essential contextual associa-tions that are not literally physical properties located within them.

What Lewis calls the “esthetic essence” is the abstract entity as-sociated with the physical object and in some sense literally em-bodied in, or capable of being embodied in, something physicalthat serves to present it. The differences in the various types ofesthetic objects discussed above result in the differences in thedegree to which the esthetic essence is embodied in the physicalproperties of the object. This is a difference in degree, but not inkind. For literary objects, as in a poem for example, the estheticactuality is physically presented through print or voice, thoughthe esthetic essence is for the most part constituted by the mean-ings symbolized and lies in the context associated with the physi-cal entity through which it is actualized.

On the other end of the spectrum, for example a natural ob-ject, the esthetic essence is constituted by and large by the physi-cal presentation, but nonetheless something that is essential isnot literally physically presented, but rather is associated withthe physical properties. Moreover, in any physical object that elic-its esthetic interest, there are some qualities that are not rele-vant and could be different without changing the esthetic quality.Thus, even for the landscape the esthetic essence is an abstrac-tion. The objective value of an esthetic object is not located solelyin the physical properties. The experienced gestalt that constitutesthe esthetic essence is never reducible to the mere physical pre-sentation. In any artistic creation, the artist aims at an ideality,and this is the esthetic essence and the object of esthetic appre-ciation. Thus, in confronting any kind of art object “one may, andpossibly should, seek to penetrate beyond the actual incorpora-tion to the intent of its creator.”32 The abstraction that is the es-thetic essence represents, for Lewis, the basic category of esthetics.

But he is quick to point out that this is no way implies thatesthetic objects are transcendental entities. He cautions againstviewing the esthetic essence as transcendental, arguing that in


what he has presented there are no more grounds for a transcen-dentalist interpretation of esthetic goals than there are, for ex-ample, for such interpretation of economic ones or engineeringones, or the creative endeavors of physics, which project idealitieswhile recognizing the limitations of materials and workmanship.In short, there is no more reason for turning the esthetically idealinto a metaphysical reality than there is for believing in “someNew Atlantis as a metaphysical reality.”33

As Lewis stresses, concerning things that are not ¤ne arts wealso at times grasp the intentions of another person, which thatperson not only may not fully achieve but may not even ade-quately envision. And what that person fails to actualize still hasits own standing as the object of a purpose and perhaps as realiz-able even though as yet unrealized. In such cases, our “interpre-tation” is made possible through an act of empathy and creativeimagination. But he also cautions that in esthetics as elsewhere,there is always the danger of winding up with a romanticized ordeceptive perception rather than a realistic grasp of the idealizedintention, and that in the case of objects in nature it is “sheerfolly” to attribute intentions concerning the object presented.34

For Lewis, then, esthetic contemplation is in a sense activerecreation, and the esthetic essence is the idealized meaning atwhich the artist aims and which is recreated in various ways andvarious approximations in art objects and the esthetic experi-ences to which they give rise. And while Lewis’s focus on theesthetic is usually narrowly con¤ned to the esthetic experienceof “¤ne art,” yet its features are continuous with, though moreintensi¤ed than, certain features that run though experience ingeneral. Moreover, an esthetic essence is ultimately a “world ofmeaning,” which experience in general, as experimental, as ac-tivity guided by purpose and expressive of meaning, always em-bodies in its ongoing course. Finally, experience, as value-ladenthroughout, leads us to direct this purposive activity toward theconsummation of ideal possibilities. These pervasive characteris-tics of experience, which manifest themselves in intensi¤ed formin esthetic experience and the art object, lead directly to Lewis’sethics and his pragmatic understanding of imperatives.


Lewis’s ethics integrates the importance of consequences, ex-perimentalism, workability, and the pragmatic understanding ofhumans and nature, with a vital role for imperatives. Human be-havior as goal oriented and problem solving is rule-guided behav-ior, and rules are normative, or in other terms, are imperativesdirecting right ways of acting. As such, all our purposive activityhas a normative dimension. Empirical knowledge in general, asincorporating conceptual schemes and criteria in mind, is rule-guided behavior.

Like all the pragmatists, Lewis embraces the view that knowl-edge is for the sake of guiding action. And the goal of action is alife found good in the living of it, or the summum bonum. But,while evaluations are a type of empirical knowledge, there is nocontinuous line from knowledge of good and bad consequencesto decisions that are morally right, to which among competinggoods ought to be pursued. While the empirical facts concern-ing the goodness or badness of the consequences of any act enterinto whether or not an act is right, empirical facts alone are notenough, because while “the good solicits,” it is the right that com-

6 Morality and

SocialityAn Evolving Enterprise

mands. “It is desirable to cleave to what is good, imperative toconform to what is right.”1

Humans, as free and self-governing, govern themselves throughrules. Human behavior is rule-guided modes of behavior or gen-eral ways of behaving, and rules, Lewis holds, are general impera-tives that are normative in that they prescribe what should bedone in particular situations.2 While Hume and others have madethe point that one cannot obtain an “ought” from an “is,” Lewisclaims that they have posed the issue in the wrong way. The issueis not whether an “is” can provide the validation of an “ought,”but whether any belief as to objective matters of fact can be vali-dated without antecedent presumptions of the validity of norma-tive principles.3

Again stressing the need for the distinction between justi¤ca-tion and veri¤cation as developed in his epistemology, Lewismakes a related critique of James, pointing out that while war-ranted beliefs usually lead to good results in practice, such resultsare not the criterion of justi¤ed believing. There is not a 100 per-cent correlation between beliefs that are warranted and beliefsthat work out well. For example, even the best diagnosis that thewisest of physicians makes may have an unfortunate outcome.But this does not show the diagnosis was unjusti¤ed any morethan a successful outcome can prove a diagnosis justi¤ed. Truthindicates a relation of the belief to existent actuality rather thana relation between the belief and the evidence, which is the rela-tion by which it meets the norms of cogency or justi¤ed accep-tance. In short, “The normative character of warranted beliefs isnot their good working, and good working is not the warrant ofthem, even though adherence to what is thus warranted has, asits sanction, that such adherence is the best we can do, in takingour commitments of belief, to assure a good result.”4

An act is absolutely right according to Lewis if its consequencesare cogently expected to be good and are good; it is objectivelyright if they are cogently expected to be good, whether they ac-tually are good or not; and it is subjectively right if they are ex-pected to be good, whether this expectation is cogent or not.5 Twothings are necessary to determine that an action is right. What is

Morality and Sociality 149

needed is both a rule of some sort to direct right doing and a judg-ment that the consequences of the act are good. Normally we con-sider the judgment of good consequences to sanction a particularact by the rule, and the rule to sanction acts of this general type,“as a general directive extending to this case.”6

Too frequently it is not recognized that both of these are neededto constitute an act as right, with only one of them being putforth as adequate for ethical judgment. Lewis sees this as a pos-sible explanation as to why there is such an intense and enduringopposition between those who emphasize goodness and conse-quences and those who emphasize conformity to principles andmoral perfection. If either one is presumed, then it is the otherthat explicitly makes the act the right thing to do. Yet in fact,without a presumption of the other, neither is adequate in deter-mining what is right to do in any particular instance. If an issueconcerns the imperativeness of any act or the ground of rightnessin any of its species, what is important is the rule or principle.The rule carries the sense of directive, while the consequences ofthe act are a matter of empirical fact.

Lewis’s interest in ethics is ultimately not an interest in ethicsnarrowly taken but in ethics as the normative basis of all knowl-edge. Science itself has normative imperatives in the form of itsexplicit rules of evidence that govern its procedures. The morallyright, which deals with justice and prudence, is one category ofrightness, with its correlative imperatives. Action requires deci-sion making, and for any decision making, the issue of its right-ness enters.

All areas of human activity as deliberate and self-governed, aresubject to critique as to their rightness. These areas of human ac-tivity are distinguished as thought, technique, prudence, and mo-rality or justice. Each of these areas involves a special type of rightas well as a special kind of good. Further, in each of these areasthere are rational imperatives, universal rules or principles thatgovern our activity. Thinking for Lewis, as for the pragmatists ingeneral, is itself a type of action.

Lewis considers that distinguishing a rule or principle as valid


or itself right is “the deepest and most dif¤cult of all questionsconcerning right and wrong.”7 His ethics integrates the impor-tance of consequences and the role of imperatives rooted in ournatural capacities as temporal, goal-oriented, problem-solvingbeings who, as free and self-governing, act according to rule-guided behavior. The ultimate justi¤cation of imperatives in gen-eral, like the ultimate justi¤cation of the laws of logic, is rootedin his pragmatic conception of humans, their natural capacities,and their natural embeddedness in a universe that they must en-gage in ways that allow the enrichment of human living.

In characterizing his position, Lewis observes that it is natural-istic in that no act can be found right or wrong without referenceto the goodness or badness of its consequences, and good and badare natural qualities of experience. However, he continues, his po-sition may be considered antithetical to naturalism in that the de-termination of right and wrong requires reference to rules orprinciples, and the validity of these imperatives is grounded inwhat is called the character of human nature.

But Lewis points out that these features of naturalism and so-called rationalism con®ict only if rationality is understood as non-natural in some sense or signi¤cant of some transcendent realminstead of naturalism being understood as inclusive of human na-ture.8 What cements Lewis’s position as a thoroughgoing prag-matic naturalism is that the roots of what we call rationality areto be found in the consistency required to engage the world inwhich we live in ways that work not just in letting human lifeproceed but in letting it thrive in enriching ways. The rule-guidedaction it sanctions is ground-up, not top-down.

The understanding of human behavior as rule-guided ways ofacting is found in Lewis’s understanding of the pragmatic na-ture of a priori knowledge and is operative in his understandingof a sense meaning as a rule or criterion in mind for the applica-tion of an a priori concept to the ®ow of experience. And, just asthe a priori arises from past experience but is held legislative forfuture experience, so the rules of rightness arise from the inter-actions of past experience and prescribe ways of acting in the fu-


ture. Neither are absolutes handed down from on high, but ratherthey are legislative because of their ongoing success in engagingthe world in which we live in enriching ways.

Rules of rightness in general are the way successful past expe-rience is formulated to guide us as we move into the future. Theserules cannot be true or false, but rather, like the a priori in gen-eral, they issue constraints on our decisions, actions, or interpre-tations while held, but may be rejected if experience shows themto be ill suited in the furtherance of human knowledge and theenrichment of human existence. All disciplines have rules of right-ness that issue constraints upon the method or ways of acting thatare justi¤ed.

Recognizing an ongoing tug between reason and impulse, Lewisholds that rationality itself includes the need to subordinate im-mediate goods for greater long-term goods. This need is part andparcel of our behavior as temporal and anticipatory, and gives riseto the imperative of consistency. The imperative of consistency,“Be Consistent,” is the ¤rst imperative of action. This is intendedin a broad sense of practical consistency, which requires that wenot pursue con®icting goals, but govern ourselves according torule-guided behavior geared to maximizing long-range goods.Logical consistency is but one species of practical consistency. Theclaim by Empimenides the Cretan, that all Cretans are liars, whilenot involving a logical contradiction, is pragmatically contradic-tory, for the assertion implies what the claim denies.

Lewis holds that a rule of decision is valid a priori if its denialinvolves a pragmatic contradiction. Such a non-repudiable prin-ciple is “pragmatically a priori.” “The broadest of imperatives, ‘Beconsistent,’ exempli¤es this matter. A decision without intent toadhere to it would not be a genuine decision. But one who shouldadopt the decision, ‘Disregard consistency,’ would be deciding todisregard his decisions as soon as made. And adherence to thatdecision would require that it be promptly disregarded.”9

If as the Cyrenaic does, one denies “this categorical imperative”to be consistent, one contradicts oneself, and could certainly notengage in argument from a point of view. Concerning those whoargue against the claim that there are imperatives that cannot be


rationally repudiated, Lewis points out that if their own claimsdid not implicitly contain the claim that their own views, as ex-pressed, are intelligent and rational, and hence imperative tobelieve, their expressed claims could carry no weight.10 More-over, to live by the dictum “have no concern for the future” is tolive or attempt to live according to a concern for the future anda particular way of dealing with it. Consistency is an impera-tive because of the temporal characteristics of human life; it is a“datum of human nature.” And indeed, ultimately for Lewis theprinciples that govern our lives neither have nor require any war-rant other than the nature of human life itself.

Logic is the critique of consistency, of validity in making infer-ences and drawing conclusions. If one repudiated this one wouldbe repudiating being reasonable. But consistency cannot by itselfanswer questions of relevancy and evidence. The critique of em-pirical knowledge leads to the imperative of cogency—followingrules of induction and considering all the relevant evidence. Thecritique of cogency draws from the consistent those choices thatmeet the demands of relevancy and evidence. The norms or rulesthat have worked in the past and continue to work are binding.

Knowledge itself is a normative word. What is cognitively right,what is right in the way of believing, are empirical judgments thatare justi¤ed. This requires more than consistency; it requires co-gency, meaning that, as seen previously, they take into accountall the relevant data and the degree of probability based on therules of induction. Cognitive rightness is necessary for any delib-erate activity, for an act cannot be right if the deliberation fromwhich the activity resulted is not right. Further, there must be aconsistency between right thinking and right doing, and thus theimperative to guide our actions in accordance with our knowl-edge of objective reference. The main modes in which the rightor wrong of doing is assessed are the technical, the prudential,and the just.

According to Lewis, hypothetical imperatives are binding if theobjective the rule-guided behavior is to achieve is accepted or as-sumed. But if you decide not to reach that objective, then you arenot bound by that rule. Imperatives in general have this hypo-


thetical or if-then character, but if the goal or objective cannot bedenied, then the “if” clause is always operative and the imperativeis categorical. The technical imperatives are hypothetical. If Iwant to achieve a particular end, then I must follow this courseof action. The technical critiques are the simplest, for they assumethe desirability of the results as already determined fact. Its direc-tives govern technical activity in ways that most reliably producethese results, and the rightness of the directives stems from theassumed goodness of the results and the reliability of achievingsuch results by following these directives.11

As distinct from the hypothetical imperatives of technical ac-tivity, the prudential and moral imperatives are categorical. Buthere it should be noted that Lewis has naturalized imperatives,including categorical imperatives of ethics, for rules or impera-tives govern our ways of acting and making decisions in all areas,not just the ethical, and in all areas some directives are categoricalin that the goals they specify cannot be repudiated if one is to berational. Prudence and justice are the two categorical imperativesthat govern the interrelation of individuals and society. In thisarea, objective reference involves the acknowledgment that indi-viduals are capable of governing themselves, have needs of theirown, and are involved in the complexities of interpersonal rela-tions.

Lewis holds that in the broadest and most important sense ofthe word, “moral” means rightness not only in the way we acttoward others but in the governance of deliberate actions in gen-eral. The moral dimensions of human life in general are the criti-cal dimensions. And they are critical in a twofold sense. The moralfactors determine the goals toward which human life directs it-self, and the morals and mores themselves are the result of criticaldetermination.12

A more narrow, but yet still broad, meaning of “moral” as in-dicating self-government at large refers to prudence and justice,and Lewis considers the prudential sense to be “the beginning ofmoral wisdom.”13 This broader sense founds the more narrow andmore common meaning of “moral,” which limits it to our acts asthey affect others. The constraint to respect our own interests of


the future, which are not now immediate, provides the basis forrespecting the future interests of others, which are not and nevercan be immediate to us. Just as we imagine our own future, sowe appreciate the future of others through what Lewis calls em-pathetic imagination.

Prudence is the critique of one’s actions from the perspective ofone’s life as a whole, the overall objective being the summumbonum. The imperative of prudence cannot be avoided, thoughthis gives the category no particular content. To say one need notbe prudent is to say that one need not develop as a person or thatone need not be consistent. Prudence is not some sort of self-concern set over against or in con®ict with social goods. Socialgoods involve a community of lives, and the shared ordering oflives presupposes the principles of ordering of individual lives,which is prudence.

Prudence is prior to justice in that we must be able to have theself-interests of prudence in order to even acknowledge the inter-ests of others as comparable with our own. We must be able torecognize rules governing our own lives that are valid in all likecases, in order to raise the issue of rules or principles or impera-tives for all. And we must be able to govern our own actions suchas to weigh future effects as if realized with the poignancy of theimmediate if we are to act toward others with the recognition ofthe effects of our actions on them as being experienced with thepoignancy of our own immediacies.

If there were no imperative for prudence there could be nonefor justice. Justice draws from among the alternatives that pru-dence offers. If we are to have rules governing our actions asthey affect others, the issue of justice has arisen. In the realm ofjustice, objectivity involves that one recognize that others arepersons who, like ourselves, feel, think, follow rules, are self-governing individuals in accordance their own knowledge anddecisions.

Since prudence and justice are both categorical, their demandsare always relevant. Sometimes the claims of prudence can beoverruled in the name of justice, but its claims remain valid, andchoices in the name of justice must seek to minimize con®icting


interests by offering creative resolutions of situations to the extentpossible. Moreover, in some extreme cases, it may be that the rea-sonable directive is for each person to follow the demands of pru-dence. Here prudence becomes “justice” for the moment.

Lewis at times suggested that what lies at the heart of all im-peratives, as the most fundamental imperative of both thinkingand doing, is what he called the “Law of Objectivity,” and thisalways remained for him an important imperative, though it per-haps lost its unique status in his later writings on ethics. It com-mands that decisions concerning one’s activities should conformto the objective actualities as we apprehend them rather than bein®uenced by immediate feeling, and that one’s conduct, with ref-erence to the predictable effects of future eventualities, should becarried out as if these eventualities were to be realized at the mo-ment of decision with the poignancy of the present instead of theless poignant feelings aroused by envisioning the future.

The basic imperative for humans in their social relations is thesocial counterpart of prudence. Actions that affect other individu-als should be carried out as if their effects were to have the poi-gnancy of what is immediate, in this case, as if their effects wereto be realized in one’s own person. Lewis divides the social im-perative into two parts. The law of compassion concerns the ef-fects of one’s actions on any sentient being, a claim on one’scompassion made by its capacity to enjoy or suffer; it applies toall sentient life. The Law of Moral Equality holds that any thoughtor action is valid for oneself only if, given the same premises con-cerning the circumstances and evidence, it is valid of everyone.The Law of Moral Equality applies to our “full peers,” and one ofits more morally important implications is that it is also the prin-ciple of Equality before the Moral Law: “There shall be no law forone which is not the law for all.”14

Recognition of the desirability or undesirability of what is notpresent, what is absent but possible to realize in the future, iswhat Lewis calls “intelligence.” The capacity to direct our ac-tions in accordance with deliberately adopted attitudes and pre-cepts is reasonableness or rationality.15 These are not distinct fea-tures of mentality but two dimensions of self-government, two


different ways of choosing a course of action which are helpful todistinguish, both of which are essential in any sense of right andwrong. It is a failure of intelligence if we fail to adequately graspa situation, while it is a failure of rationality if we do grasp thesituation adequately, know what is best to do, but do otherwise,governing our actions by how we feel rather than by what weknow.

Because we can recognize the value consequences of our choicesand can act deliberately in light of cognitively understood futuresatisfactions rather than merely impulsively in line with presentaffective feeling, governing our actions in accordance with whatwe know rather than merely how we feel has the force of an im-perative. Lewis holds that since we are all more or less stupid,failure of intelligence may not be an imputed fault, but rather thefault lies in refusing to conform to what intelligence advises. “Amaxim which formulates such a sanctioned way of acting—‘Donot sacri¤ce your future good to any lesser present good’—is rec-ognized as a valid prudential precept.” Or as he clari¤es it as“more accurately put”: “So act as to maximize your total probablerealizations of satisfaction over time.”16

Moreover, because we are able to place cognition of objectivesituations above immediate feeling and have the intelligence toappreciate the goods and bads of others as comparable to ourown, it becomes “a dictate of rationality” that just as we wouldcall upon others to respect our own interests we should respectthe interests of others.17 As he puts it “more clearly and obviously:a way of acting, to be right in a given case, must be one whichwould, in the same premises of action, be right in every instanceand right for anybody.”18 He considers this a basic principle of allsocial morals. But, because prudence is also a rational concern, ifone puts self interest ¤rst this is a failure of rationality only if theperson doing so does not recognize that this involves a claim asto what any other person who was to be in this precise situationshould do.

At this point it becomes important to balance Lewis’s emphasison imperatives with his emphasis on both their contentless na-ture and the crucial role of empirical consequences in giving


them content. The two main forms of critical judgment are of thegood or bad and the right or wrong. As seen in the previous chap-ter, qualities of good and bad are contextually emergent real natu-ral qualities. They cannot be reduced to physiological functionsor to epiphenomena or non-natural qualities. And the sense ofgood and bad must precede the appraisal of right and wrong, forif there were no immediately had value qualities of experience,there would be nothing to be right or wrong about.

But value qualities cannot lead to any sense of right and wronguntil there is not merely felt good and ill but knowledge of goodand ill, and this requires an understanding of what natural pro-cesses lead to good and bad results and what choices are condu-cive to obtaining the good and avoiding the bad. Conscious lifein general naturally tends to seek the gratifying and avoid thegrievous, but humans are the only beings capable of objectiveknowledge and thus are the only ones with a developed sense ofright and wrong. The sense of right and wrong is founded in ourknowledge of the good or bad in the consequences of our actions.We learn to guide our actions through knowledge of causal rela-tionships, and to recognize the desirability or undesirability of ouractions through inductive generalizations.

Lewis is quick to point out that there are no rules that categori-cally mandate some particular act rather than allow some free-dom of moral choice. For example, the manner in which onepays one’s debts is left open by the command to pay one’s debts,and the Law of Moral Equality leaves open the content of jus-tice.19 Basic moral principles must be highly abstract and general,though they ultimately apply to concrete moral situations, situa-tions requiring deliberate decisions that bring out consequencesinvolving others. This always requires “collateral judgment” of theconsequences and how they affect others for better or worse,something only experience can teach us.20

The reason fundamental moral principles do not depend on par-ticular empirical facts for their validity is that they do not applydirectly to empirical situations. They formulate the ultimate cri-teria of morally right action or of justice, but they become appli-cable only mediately, through another type of secondary premise.


They cannot specify whether a particular act under particular cir-cumstances will or will not meet the criteria they formulate. Thatmust be established by empirical facts about the good or bad re-sults of speci¤c ways of acting in speci¤c concrete situations. Tothe charge that such principles are “empty,” Lewis responds thatto ask for a principle that is at once comprehensive in extendingto every case, independent of empirical facts, yet able to deter-mine in every case whether the relevant act is right or wrong, isto “cry for the moon,” and to want what not only is not possiblebut is contradictory.21

A principle can set criteria for judging particular concrete situa-tions. But Lewis notes that it is suf¤cient only if phrases that referto “you” are properly understood. Thus, for example, if “you”choose to lift weights every day, and would be happy with thatas a practice for all, this does not justify such a universality, forthe “you” has its signi¤cance in directing our imagination to our-selves suffering the act in question from the standpoint of thegood and bad consequences imposed on others. Consequencesmust be viewed from the perspective of those who will enjoy orsuffer from the consequences, for the meaning of acts cannot beseparated from the possible consequences they embody if theywere to be performed. In this way personal preferences cannot betransformed into moral percepts at the expense of others, anduniversality is at once impartiality.

There are two different criteria involved, one formal and oneempirical. The formal criterion of a valid rule is universality andimpersonality, and this holds whether the rule concerns themoral, prudential, logical, or technical. The empirical criterionconcerns content, what practices we want as universal, and thismust be judged according to the good or bad consequences asevaluated from the perspective of those who will be affected bythese practices, and the viewpoint of the person acting can beconsidered only as that person is thus included.

Lewis recognizes that the most comprehensive moral preceptwill by its very nature not be derivable from any more underlyingpremise without circularity. It is in fact a priori “in some sense,”and this sense is that of the pragmatic contradiction discussed ear-


lier: repudiation of it would be self-contravening. However, whatactions will or will not comply with it must be decided empiri-cally by considering the consequences of an act for those who willbe affected by it. And, like judgments concerning any kind of em-pirical matter, this judgment is fallible.

One’s intent to conform to principles of right is what Lewis con-siders to be integrity, but integrity alone does not guarantee thatwhat is done is what should be done. In addition to the intent tofollow fundamental moral principles, good moral practices call forboth envisionment of the far-reaching consequences of differentways of acting and an enlightened sense of and attunement tohuman values.22

While Lewis draws from Kant in asserting categorical impera-tives, for Lewis happiness is the end toward which directives aim.As always, Lewis’s Kantianism is a pragmatically reconstructedKantianism in which he naturalizes Kantian insights to ¤ll in cer-tain dimensions of an issue—here dimensions of the ethical, di-mensions that pragmatism must assume but does not acknowl-edge in any explicit development.

Imperatives are not rules for making particular decisions, whichare context dependent. What is right or just is what will mostcontribute to the good life for those affected by the consequencesof the decision in the speci¤c concrete situation, with all its com-plexities. Moreover, rules of rightness offer choices, for any situa-tion may allow for alternative actions that can meet the demandsof universalization or impartiality.

The intermediate generalizations that must be utilized in con-crete moral judgments because of the remoteness of the funda-mental principle become our “moral rules” or maxims, familiaramong them being “Lying is wrong,” “Stealing is wrong,” “Bekind and charitable,” “Pay your debts,” and so forth. Experiencehas taught us that these indicate ways of acting that can, by andlarge, be counted upon to satisfy the requirement of the funda-mental principle.

Lewis stresses that there are exceptions to the rules. Moreover,rules are often in con®ict with each other in concrete cases. Forexample, common sense tells us that in being kind or charitable


one must at times “color the truth.” Trying to formulate any ofthese precepts as strictly universal would be impossible becauseof the endless number of quali¤cations that would be necessary—many of which could not even be envisioned until arising in someconcrete case, and every concrete case is at least a little differentthan any other, unique in its own way. Moreover, we sometimeshave a case where speci¤c rules just are not appropriate and wedo not know what should be done, and we have to turn to theultimate principle itself, implementing it by making a judgmentof the individual case in light of our general wisdom of life.23

The lesson to be learned from this, according to Lewis, is thatwhile the roots of the moral lie in something common to all hu-mans as a native endowment, correct moral practice, like cor-rect practice in general, has to be learned and developed throughrelevant experience, and requires social reinforcement and re-¤nement by the critical processes involved in social living andcommon thinking. Speci¤c issues of moral conduct need to callon accumulated social wisdom and social criticism. Moral wis-dom, like all wisdom, requires the maturation of rationality andempirical learning concerning ways of acting that work, andthis maturation and learning is inextricably interwoven with thesocial.

We inherit tendencies that are “savage and imprudent,” but areborn without beliefs. Thus criticism, even self-criticism, is a moredif¤cult task than merely collecting information. Like other formsof learning, moral and other rational insights, including prudenceand our native logical sense, ®ourish through social reinforce-ment. “The peculiarly human kind of life is imperatively social.That fact is a datum of ethics.”24

While Lewis holds that justice presupposes prudence, it mustbe emphasized that he also holds that the ordering of an indi-vidual life that is prudence involves the shared ordering of lives.Prudence, for Lewis, incorporates areas of mutual undertakings,common obligations, cooperative behavior involving diverse roles,and “reasonable competition” within cooperative institutionalframeworks. The practices of a society are part and parcel of thegood life. The social and the individual are inextricably inter-


woven; the development of social goods and the development ofindividual goods are inseparably intertwined, and together areconstitutive of the good life.

Prudence also includes the freedom to pursue self-chosen goals.Lewis’s focus on the role of society and its institutions does notlead to the ideal of conformity, for while he stresses our socialnature, he holds strongly to the concept of individual freedom.What he means by “freedom” is not merely the lack of constraintimposed by others, but the availability of concrete possibilities forrealizing self-chosen goals. Humans posses the capacity for self-determination and self-realization through participation in thesocial process as autonomous individuals.

Though freedom mainly refers to one’s individual liberty, it alsoincludes the freedom that individuals attain as part of a social or-der and its inheritance from the past. Disparity between indi-vidual inclinations and the requirements of the social order isbound to occur, and this requires self-criticism and self-restraint.25

Liberty is in fact rational self-government, and the restriction ofaction that this involves is not a limitation on the individual, forit springs from imperatives of the individual’s own nature.26

In this interwoven web the development of selfhood proceeds.While Lewis clearly acknowledges that all these issues are inex-tricably intertwined in the nature of selfhood, his understandingof selfhood is mostly implicit, with hints and assumptions ratherthan explicit development. But the self-society relation is an on-going dynamic process of mutual in®uence, and Lewis’s entireposition here, with its hints at the nature of selfhood it incorpo-rates, points to the individual-social relation as internal to andconstitutive of the very dynamics of developing selfhood.

Because of his view of the nature of selfhood, Lewis’s concernis not focused on traditional issues of the tensions between pru-dence and justice, egoism and altruism, self and other. He rejectsthe dichotomy of individual-social as a fundamental ethical dis-tinction because the ultimate demands of justice lie within thevery nature of selfhood as inherently social. This understandingundercuts the long-held dichotomies upon which Lewis choosesnot to direct his focus, instead embracing the pragmatic view,


best highlighted by Dewey and Mead, that the very constitutionof selfhood lies in the ongoing dynamic interplay between indi-vidual creativity or uniqueness and the “common other” of thesocial/cultural matrix in which this individual uniqueness is em-bedded.

Liberty, as implying autonomy and self-criticism, includes theright to a certain amount of privacy.27 But society is not an in-fringement on one’s absolute freedom, for the “natural” state ofhumans is to be relationally tied to others. Rights are not possiblewithout obligations, and freedom is not possible without con-straints. These are two sides of the same coin. Freedom does notlie in opposition to the restrictions of norms and authority, but ina self-direction that requires the proper dynamic interaction ofthe two dimensions of the self. Freedom does not lie in beingunaffected by others, but in the way one uses one’s incorpora-tion of “the other” in novel decisions and actions. A free society,like free individuals, requires the proper balance of novelty andconformity in an ongoing dynamic interaction.

What this indicates is that humans qua humans are born intoarrangements that in turn embody in their very nature reciprocity,accommodation, and justice. The position grounds autonomy, soli-darity, and fairness by rooting these features in the communalnature of human existence. Neither society and its institutionsnor an individual is means or end, but rather both are contributorand recipient in a reciprocal relationship. Indeed, the separa-tion of means and ends is itself rooted in a remnant of two lega-cies of the Modern World View: the fact-value distinction and anatomistic separation of cause and effect. Relations are qualitativethroughout and thus are infused with emergent value. The moralworth of the ®ourishing of the individual is inseparable from themoral worth of the ®ourishing of the human community.

Thus Lewis holds that as society advances there is at once anincreasing sense of community and also an increasing indepen-dence from the community. There is a heightened sense of com-munity as incorporating a high degree of individual creativityand initiative, of diversity, a freedom to participate, a freedom forself-realization. The sense of self is in large part formed by the


social context; increased freedom and sense of self as creative par-ticipant in turn increases the need for rational self-government orself-control. The role of social institutions is not to create con-forming individuals but rather to further the ®ourishing of freeparticipation, autonomy, and liberty of thought within the on-going evolution of society.

In this interwoven web of mutual in®uences social evolutionthus proceeds.28 Lewis stresses that social evolution is irreducibleto the effects of biological adaptation and the natural environ-ment or to instinctive sociality, taking note of the fact that hu-mans are the only species for whom modes of life evolve eventhough biological and environmental conditions remain virtuallythe same. The alteration of human life is progressive because hu-man inheritance changes progressively.

At any given time and in any historical context, prevailing mor-als are relative to the stage of human development, just as areprevailing science and technology. And the hope for further moralprogress is tied to that same working of the critical processes andof learning, and to the social inheritance of ideas, which likewisemake for progress in science and technology and in our politicaland other social institutions.

The enrichment of individual human life and the valid impera-tives of individual human action are in®uenced by the way socialagencies or social relations lead to modi¤cations of individualmentality itself, just as individual mentality feeds into and modi-¤es social agencies or relations. We learn from the cumulative“social recollection” of the successes and failures of past genera-tions, using these as guides for the shaping of our goals or ideals.Human decisions are shot through with social recollection, forsocial memory molds individual intelligence. In this sense we aremembers of the only species that has a history. Moreover, this so-cial recollection and the individual intelligence it molds in turnfeeds into and modi¤es our very apprehension of our own history.

Through institutions, as through imperatives in general, we makeuse of the successes of the past to anticipate the future. There isan inseparable interrelation not only between self and other, pri-vate goods and social goods, but also between individual intelli-


gence and social intelligence. There is an intimate functional reci-procity between individual and social intelligence, a reciprocitybased on the continual process of adjustment. Novelty within so-ciety is initiated by individuals, but such initiation can occur onlybecause individuals are continuous with others and with socialinstitutions of which they are a part. Individual intelligence andreasonable activity operate within and are products of the histori-cally evolving social matrix, even as social evolution is in®uencedby the individual intelligence that affects its ongoing direction.

And hence the crucial importance of the critique of social in-stitutions or social practices, for these are not merely instrumen-tal to the good life but enter into its very constitution. They arepart and parcel of it. For this reason, Lewis has a major con-cern with the development, ongoing critique, and reconstructionwhen necessary, of social institutions expressive of rational endsand the social ideals they represent.

In a manner analogous to his discussion of imperatives, Lewisstresses that while the quality of social life is a crucial factor inthe realization of selfhood, this does not imply any particular so-cial order, types of social institutions, or types and degrees of bal-ance between creative and conforming dimensions of the self-community relation. This requires a knowledge of temporallyrooted concrete situations and the needs, valuings, and demandsthat emerge within them. But these empirically based decisionsrequire directives as to what constitutes the public good, thoughthese themselves are evolving norms.

Like several of the pragmatists, Lewis turns to the history ofscience as the prime example of the way intelligence operates inthe context of sociality. Scienti¤c advancement depends on theself-corrective method of science as individual creativity feedsinto and modi¤es a collective intelligence that shares common in-terests and common history. And the creative discoveries of pastgenerations become part of our taken-for-granted “facts” withinour common-sense world, the way we perceive it, and our utili-zation of it to enrich quality of life. Moreover, scienti¤c methoditself—with its freedom of inquiry, ®ow of communication, andobjective, public imperatives of validity, consistency, cogency, and


truth—as well as the institutions or social order through whichit thrives—is a product of historical, sociocultural evolution. Inthis way not only does science allow for the development of idealsto enrich quality of life or enhance the value dimension of expe-rience, but the values of science themselves embody a moral com-munity.

Lewis makes a distinction between technology and science onthe one hand, and mores and morality on the other. This is notmeant as an absolute separation but is done in order to highlightdifferent dimensions or features of our sociocultural inheritance.The ¤rst is concerned mainly with material products and theirdistribution, while the second is concerned with developing andpreserving the quality of communal life. The evolving ideals ofuniversal rights and increased participation in community livingand the good life it offers are constitutive in the social domain,just as consistency and cogency are in science.

Our evolving mores or moralities both transmit knowledge ac-quired from the past and provide common, long-range goals orideals that extend into an inde¤nite future. They incorporate anevolving, growing sense of communal life and common interests,such as preserving social institutions and enriching the quality ofcommunity life. Without the social transmission of ideas therecould be no civilization and no continuing progress—in scienceor technology or in morals—but he emphasizes that if such ideasbecome authoritative in the sense of being uncriticizable, then atthat point progress would be halted.

Lewis not only considers the liberty of thought to be essentialto personality and to be one of the highest human ideals, but healso sees that the preservation of individual freedom of dissent hasa crucial social function. For anything learned or any social con-sensus attained originates in individual minds and re®ects boththe diversity and experimentalism characteristic of independentthinking. While the social order is the main selecting and pre-serving agency, without the freedom of private judgment, whichfrequently runs counter to established tradition, there would beno intellectual innovation, and no progress. Preserving freedomof thought and action is necessary for social progress.


Like the pragmatists in general, Lewis holds that human societymust be a pluralistic community, utilizing individual differencesof inclination, aptitude, and free choice to achieve a harmoniousaccommodation of varied interests and goals in a process of on-going growth. “Human good, whether in the individual life or inthe social order, is achieved as the ordered relationship of multipleingredients; as the enrichment of life, and not by reduction of itto any common denominator.”29 In this way he sees human so-ciety as the counterpart of the human individual. Individuals andsocieties alike achieve integrity and moral development througha consistent pattern of growth incorporating the harmoniousaccommodation of diverse interests.30 Free societies, like free in-dividuals, require this ongoing adjustment of diverse interestsand critical thinking, and such freedom is necessary for ongoinggrowth.

This is particularly so with respect to ideas having moral sig-ni¤cance. Moral traditions contain attitudes and practices thateither nurture or repress the free critical thinking about acceptedmores themselves. Prevailing mores can prohibit their own criti-cal reconsideration or provide for this reconsideration and im-provement. In considering diverse moral traditions as they relateto this issue, Lewis ¤nds it to be the key aspect of civilizations,the most decisive for their fates, and the point at which vast dif-ferences emerge. It determines whether the social inheritance ofideas will work for human betterment or become the source ofstagnation. He takes this to be the most deeply moral of all moralissues, the one most crucial for the future of humankind, and theone on which civilizations most differ.31

Lewis’s moral-social philosophy grows out of his pragmatic un-derstanding of humans as temporal, active, rule-guided social be-ings engaged in a process of ongoing growth. Imperatives as nor-mative, as rule-guided ways of behaving or choosing in all areasof human activity, are rooted ultimately in the need for consis-tency if we are to engage the natural universe in which we areembedded in the most fruitful ways as we cast upon it a perspec-tival network of meanings by which to anticipate and utilize itspossibilities and potentialities, if we are to engage it in ways that


nourish the ongoing growth of knowledge, humans, and the so-cieties in which they are embedded, an ongoing growth essentialin achieving the good life.

Imperatives are the fruits of lessons learned from the past anddirect rule-guided ways of behaving as we move into the future.Throughout human experience, there is an a priori dimensionthat arises out of past experience and is held legislative for futureexperience. As prescriptive or legislative of ways of behaving, in-terpreting, or choosing, no imperative can be proven false by fu-ture experience, but its adequacy in serving as a rule is subject toits workability in the ongoing course of experience. Imperatives,like a priori knowledge in general, are rooted in the concretenessof rudimentary purposive or intentional human behavior; theyarise from, are made possible by, and are alterable within, the¤nite temporal structure of such behavior. The norms are not ex-ternal to, but emerge within, the process of concrete human ex-istence as inherently experimental. And in all areas of humanexperience, some directives are categorical in that the goals theyspecify cannot be repudiated if one is to be rational.

The ultimate principles of consistency, prudence, and justice arerooted not in abstract human reason but in human praxis; farfrom being universal rules handed down from on high, they areelicited from the action-oriented need to deal successfully withthe natural/sociocultural environment in which we are embed-ded. The vague but rich moral sense that guides us in this ongoingactivity contains perceptions of universal signi¤cance not becausethese perceptions are clear to reason but because they are infusedwith a primal moral vitality rooted in our natural embeddednessin communal life and our drive for enriching lives.

The nurturing of this moral vitality for the ®ourishing of indi-viduals and the societies of which they are a part and in whichthey are embedded requires the promotion of individual creativity;shared meanings; participatory community life; attunement to theother, with the concomitant attunement to existence in its mani-fold relational contexts and in its manifold value-laden, qualita-tive richness; recognition of growth as an infusion of life withmeaningfulness, as an increase in the esthetic-moral richness of


human existence; and open experimental inquiry as a way of en-gaging the world that allows for ongoing growth. From the mostabstract excursions into the logical origins of the pragmatic a pri-ori to the most concrete analyses of primal human existence,Lewis’s philosophy is imbued with, and contributes to, the on-going vitality of the pulse of pragmatism.


Notes

1 . L i f e , Wor k , a n d I m p or t a nc e

1. Lewis, “Autobiography,” in The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis, 1. 2. Ibid., 3. 3. Ibid., 5. 4. Ibid., 9. 5. Lewis, “Logic and Pragmatism,” in Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis,

31–32. 6. Lewis, “Autobiography,” 10. 7. Ibid., 11. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 12.10. Ibid., 9–10.11. Lewis, “Logic and Pragmatism,” 32.12. Lewis, “Autobiography,” 15.13. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, xi, 133–34, 417n.14. Lewis, “Autobiography,” 16.15. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, xi.16. Lewis, “Autobiography,” 717. Ibid., 18.18. Lewis, “Logic and Pragmatism,” 19.19. Lewis, “Experience and Meaning,” in Collected Papers, 258–76.20. Ibid., 258.21. Ibid., 20.22. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation.23. Lewis, “Autobiography,” 20.24. Lewis, The Ground and Nature of the Right.25. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance.26. Lewis, “Foundations of Ethics,” in Values and Imperatives.

2 . R at i on a l C er t i t ude a n d P r a g m at i c E x p er i men t a l i s m

1. Lewis, “Logic and Pragmatism,” 6. 2. Ibid., 10. 3. Ibid., 12. 4. Ibid., 6. 5. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 39–56. 6. Peirce, MS 647, 8.

7. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 78. 8. Lewis, “Modes of Meaning,” in Collected Papers, 316 9. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 141.10. Ibid., 134.11. Ibid., 163.12. Ibid., 6.13. Ibid., 134. It is not unusual for Lewis to make explicit an important con-

ceptual distinction only once or twice in his writings, though the distinction isimplicit throughout his position.

14. Ibid., 143–44.15. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 88.16. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 110.17. Ibid., 17.18. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 375.19. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 260.20. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 210.21. Ibid., 210.22. Ibid., 213.23. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, 101.24. Ibid., 100–101.25. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 112.26. Lewis, “A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori,” in Collected Papers, 236.27. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 375.28. Ibid., 269.29. Ibid., 269.30. Ibid., appendix F, 434.31. Ibid., 86.32. Ibid., 265.33. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 105.34. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 259.35. Kuhn, Structure of Scienti¤c Revolutions.36. Lewis, “Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori,” 235–36. Lewis takes this

from Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, trans. R. W. Law-son (New York: Henry Holt, 1920), 26–28.

37. Lewis, “Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori,” 234–35.38. Lewis, “The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge,” in Collected Papers, 255.39. Ibid., 256.40. Ibid., 257.41. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 271.42. Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, in The Later Works, vol. 12, 17ff.43. Ibid., 18.44. Ibid., 296.45. Ibid., 255–56.46. Ibid., 283–84.47. Ibid., 242–43.48. Ibid., 25.

172 Notes to pages 11–59

49. Ibid.50. Dewey, “Experience and Objective Idealism,” in The Middle Works, vol. 3,

136.51. Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 288.52. Ibid., vol. 4, 233.53. Ibid., vol. 7, 498.54. Ibid., vol. 4, 480n.55. Ibid., vol. 2, 778.56. Peirce, New Elements of Mathematics, 850.57. Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 288.58. Ibid., vol. 2, 352.59. Ibid., vol. 8, 191; vol. 2, 29.60. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. 2, 1255.61. Ibid., 1269.62. Ibid., 1215–70.63. Ibid.64. Ibid.65. Ibid., 1255n.66. Ibid.67. Ibid., 1257.68. Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 195–97. Heidegger points out

that though Mill’s classi¤cation does not agree with Kant’s, this difference isirrelevant here. Ibid., 195.

69. Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings, 231.70. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in From a Logical Point of View.

3 . E m p i r i c a l C er t i t ude a n d P r a g m at i c F a l l i b i l i s m

1. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 171–72. 2. Lewis, “The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge,” in Collected Papers, 248. 3. Ibid. 4. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 54. 5. Ibid., 59. 6. Ibid., 58. 7. Ibid., 134. 8. Ibid., 54. 9. Ibid., 66.10. Ibid., 59.11. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 444.12. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 134.13. Ibid., 54.14. Lewis, “Autobiography,” 18.15. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 55.16. Ibid., 52–53, 57.17. Ibid., 56–57.18. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 444.19. James, The Works of William James, 651.

Notes to pages 59–77 173

20. Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, in The Later Works, vol. 4, 188–89; “DoesReality Possess Practical Character?” in The Middle Works, vol. 4, 137–38.

21. Dewey, Experience and Nature, in The Later Works, vol. 1, 18–19.22. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 64.23. Ibid., 121.24. Ibid., 123–24.25. Ibid., 124.26. Ibid., 125.27. Ibid., 271; Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 259.28. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 307.29. Ibid., 292.30. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 183.31. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 50.32. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 183.33. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 217.34. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 226–27.35. Ibid., 226–27.36. Ibid., 215.37. Ibid., 229.38. Ibid., 232.39. Ibid., 230–31.40. Lewis, “Replies to My Critics,” in The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis, 657.41. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 186.42. Ibid., 219.43. Ibid.44. Ibid., 331.45. Ibid., 330.46. Lewis, “A Comment on the Veri¤cation Theory of Meaning,” in Collected

Papers, 334.47. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 236.48. Ibid., 323.49. Ibid.50. Ibid., 290.51. Ibid., 320.52. Ibid.53. Ibid., 338.54. Ibid., 352.55. Ibid., 342.56. Ibid., 357–58.57. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 320.58. Ibid.59. Ibid., 345.60. Ibid., 368.61. Ibid., 383.62. Ibid., 386.


63. Ibid., 391.64. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 361.

4 . T h r ou g h E x p er i enc e t o Me t a phy s i c s

1. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 307. 2. Ibid., 11. 3. Ibid., 12. 4. Ibid., 14. 5. This role of metaphysical categories is indicated in Lewis, “Logic and

Pragmatism,” in Collected Papers, 17. 6. Lewis, “Realism or Phenomenalism?” in Collected Papers, 345. 7. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 173. 8. Lewis, “The Structure of Logic and Its Relation to Other Systems,” in Col-

lected Papers, 377–78. 9. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, appendix A, 399.10. Lewis, “Realism or Phenomenalism?” 345.11. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 330.12. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 58.13. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 320.14. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 169.15. Lewis, “Realism or Phenomenalism?” 345.16. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 155.17. Lewis, “Realism or Phenomenalism?” 345.18. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 173.19. Lewis, “Autobiography,” 18.20. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 187–88.21. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 10–11.22. Ibid., 57.23. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 409.24. Ibid., 149, 425.25. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 149–50.26. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 211.27. Ibid., 330.28. Lewis, “Realism or Phenomenalism?” 339.29. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 368.30. Ibid., 368.31. Lewis, “Realism or Phenomenalism?” 341.32. Ibid., 341.33. Ibid.34. Ibid., 342.35. Ibid., 346.36. Ibid.37. Ibid., 341.38. Ibid., 343–44.39. Ibid., 344.


40. Ibid.41. Ibid.42. Lewis, “Some Suggestions Concerning Metaphysics of Logic,” in Collected

Papers, 438.43. Lewis, “Facts, Systems, and the Unity of the World,” in Collected Papers,

387.44. Ibid., 390.45. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 301.46. Lewis, “A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori,” 232.47. Lewis, “Facts, Systems and Unity of the World,” 390.48. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 236.49. Ibid., 54.50. Lewis, “Facts, Systems and Unity of the World.”51. Lewis, “Replies to My Critics,” in Collected Papers, 660.52. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 56.53. Lewis, “Facts, Systems, and the Unity of the World,” 390.54. Lewis and Langford, Symbolic Logic, 160–61.55. Ibid.56. Lewis, “The Structure of Logic and Its Relation to Other Systems,” 372.57. Peirce asserts that the general is that to which the law of excluded middle

does not apply, while the vague is that to which the principle of non-contradictiondoes not apply. Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 448. He then explicitly identi¤escontinuity with generality.

58. Lewis, “A Comment on ‘The Veri¤cation Theory of Meaning,’” in CollectedPapers, 333.

59. Lewis, “Experience and Meaning,” in Collected Papers, 264–65.60. Ibid., 265.61. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 154.62. Ibid.63. Lewis, “Pragmatism and Current Thought,” in Collected Papers, 79.64. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 23, 207.65. Davidson, “The Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,” in Truth and

Interpretation, 1.66. Ibid., 307.67. Ibid.68. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 314.

5 . T he P r o c e s s o f Va l ua t i on

1. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 3. 2. Ibid., 398. 3. Ibid., 401. 4. Ibid., 403. 5. Ibid., 514. 6. Ibid., 532. 7. Ibid., 511. 8. Ibid., 520.


9. Ibid., 407.10. Ibid., 416.11. Ibid., 537.12. Ibid., 479.13. Ibid., 480.14. Ibid., 483.15. Ibid., 483–86.16. Ibid., 496–97.17. Ibid., 510.18. Ibid., 483.19. Ibid., 545.20. Ibid., 503.21. Ibid., 540.22. Ibid., 531.23. Ibid., 457.24. Ibid., 437.25. Dewey, Art as Experience, in The Later Works, vol. 10, 44.26. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, appendix B, 405.27. Lewis, Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 438.28. Ibid., 447ff.29. Ibid., 446–50.30. Ibid., 452.31. Ibid., 461.32. Ibid., 471.33. Ibid., 471–72.34. Ibid.

6 . Mor a l i t y a n d So c i a l i t y

1. Lewis, Values and Imperatives, 106–107. 2. Lewis, “Pragmatism and the Roots of the Moral,” in Values and Impera-

tives, 119–25. 3. Lewis, Values and Imperatives, 103–104. 4. Lewis, “Pragmatism and the Roots of the Moral,” 105–107. 5. Lewis, “The Right and the Good,” in Values and Imperatives, 38. 6. Lewis, Ground and Nature of the Right, 75–76. 7. Ibid., 72–77. 8. Ibid., 97. 9. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, 100–101.10. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, 100.11. Lewis, Ground and Nature of the Right, 80–81.12. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, 78.13. Ibid., 91.14. Lewis, Ground and Nature of the Right, 90–94.15. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, 86–87.16. Ibid., 91, 91n.17. Ibid., 92.


18. Ibid., 93.19. Lewis, Ground and Nature of the Right, 89–97.20. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, 96.21. Ibid., 97.22. Ibid., 101.23. Ibid., 103.24. Lewis, Ground and Nature of the Right, 90.25. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, 54–59.26. Lewis, “The Meaning of Liberty,” 14–22.27. Ibid., 17.28. Lewis, Ground and Nature of the Right, 90.29. Lewis, Our Social Inheritance, 107.30. Ibid.31. Ibid., 109.


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Index

a priori, the: and the analytic, 30–31,34–35, 39; and experience, 53–54,62–64, 151–52; in knowledge, 23;Lewis’s understanding of, 2–4, 26,45; pragmatic, 12, 56–68; synthetic,37–39

action, rightness of, 148–57actuality as category, 108, 109alternative logics, 2, 30analytic-synthetic distinction, 23, 26, 54,

57–58, 64–68analyticity, 28, 30–32, 39, 42–45, 66anticipation, 44–45anti-foundationalist turn, 124apprehension: immediate, 78–79, 81; of

value qualities, 144–45assertions, types of, 130–35attitude, types of, 142

behavior, human: imperatives rooted in,168; and meaning, 39–40, 42–45,47, 67–68; as rule-guided, 149–66

beliefs: Davidson on, 126–28; empirical,91–93; justi¤ed, 149

Bentham, Jeremy, 137–40

categories: as tools for analysis, 110;types of, 97–101

certitude: of apprehension, 78–80; empiri-cal, 69–96; rational, 25–69; of veri-¤cation, 86

cognition, 72, 125community, individual in, 162–69concepts: applicability of, 86–87; as cate-

gories, 97–98; vs. events, 116–17;and worldly properties, 68

“con¤rmation holism,” 65congruence, 92–93consistency, principle of, 46–48, 152–

53, 168containment, problem of, 37, 43, 60–62, 66continental philosophy, 63Copernican Revolution, 52Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 7–8

data: from experience, 91–92; pre-vs.post-analytic, 75; recognition of, 80

Davidson, Donald, 126–28de¤nitions, real, 34–36Derrida, Jacques, 123Dewey, John: on esthetics, 141–42; and

the given, 76; on interacting conti-nuities, 110; and Lewis, 5; andlogic, 58–60; and logical positiv-ism, 20

difference, play of, 124disposition: as rule of generation, 87; as a

rule of organization, 40–44, 60–64,87; and theory of meaning, 101–106, 118

duration, time as, 108

Einstein’s theory of relativity, 52–54Empimenides the Cretan, 152empirical statements, levels of, 81–82empiricism, 69–96“epistemic present,” the, 87–88epistemology and metaphysics, 97–98,

106–17“Epithet, Fallacy of the,” 135–36esthetics, 141–47ethics: as basis of knowledge, 150–66;

Lewis on, 4, 19, 23; social, 140–41,148–69; value and, 135, 140–41

excluded middle, law of, 109experience: a priori as structuring, 53–

54, 57–60, 62–64, 151–52; cogni-tive, 91–92; concepts and, 46–52;esthetic, 144–47; as experimental,45, 168–69; given element in, 69–80; imperatives and, 168–69; inter-pretive structures and, 116–17;and knowledge, 2–3, 17; meaningrooted in, 101–106; metaphysicsrooted in, 122–25; of objects, 72–75, 143–44; and reality, 98; resist-ing element in, 127–28; texture of,108; value of, 133–34, 138–39,143; world as synthesis of, 113–14

experimentalism, pragmatic, 45–56,168–69

fact, as not independent of knowledge,112–13

falliblism, 54–55, 65–66First Principles (Spencer), 8Firstness, 77, 107, 110freedom, 162–69

generalization, empirical, 49–52, 54–55,57, 66

given, the, 2–3, 17, 48, 69–81good, the, 3–4, 23; and action, 148–51;

social, 162–69; in valuation, 130–32, 137–39

Heidegger, Martin, 63, 64, 173n68Hume, David: on empirical knowledge,

89–90; on “ought/is,” 149; andskepticism, 93

idealism: attacks on, 15; and knowledge,104–105; objective, 11–12; vs. real-ism in Lewis’s thought, 117–19,127–28

image, 41–42imperatives: and goods, 3–4, 167–68;

categorical, 152–61; hypothetical,153–54; and the social, 161–69

implication: material, 18, 26–29; strict, 2,19, 82–83, 131

individual, the, in society, 162–69induction, rule of, 90, 94inference, ordinary, 47interpretation: conceptual, 83–84, 104;

levels of, 80; problem of, 71–73interpretative structures: and experience,

116–17; interrelationships of, 56

James, William: and a priori, 61–62;and belief, 149; on feeling, 77; andLewis, 5, 9, 10; and logical positiv-ism, 20; on truth, 55–56

judgments: of empirical matters, 160; inprobability, 91; terminating vs. non-terminating, 81–87; truth of, 88–90; in valuation, 131, 143–45

justice, as imperative, 4, 152–56, 158,161–62, 168

justi¤cation: and belief, 149–50; prag-matic, 92–96; types of, 123–24;vs. veri¤cation, 80–92

Kant, Immanuel: and categorical prin-ciples, 94, 160; and ethics, 22–23;

Lewis’s appropriation of, 7–8, 10,12, 14–15; synthetic a priori of,36–39

knowledge: a priori in, 23, 57–68, 151–52; action as goal of, 148–49; byacquaintance, 75; vs. apprehension,81; empirical, 59, 69, 81–96; ethicsas basis of, 150–66; fallible, 54–55; justi¤cation of, 80–92; Lewis’sunderstanding of, 2–4, 13–14, 37;and logic, 27; objective, 74–75;vs. qualia, 78; and reality, 126–28;value in, 15–16; and world, 112–17

Kuhn, Thomas, 53

language: expressive, 17, 81; as indeter-minate, 127; and object, 74–75;and sense meanings, 35–36, 69

Lewis, C. I.: at Berkeley, 13–16; develop-ment of doctrines, 1–4, 28; earlylife of, 6–9; Harvard association of,7, 9–13, 16; logic and, 28–29; meta-physics of, 119–28; realism vs. ideal-ism in, 117–19; retirement, 22–23

Library of Living Philosophers, 22–23logic: alternative, 2, 30; as consistent

thinking, 46–48, 152–53; exten-sional vs. intensional, 26–34; andknowledge, 27–28; in Lewis’sthought, 28–29, 46–47; of strictimplication, 2, 18–19, 82–83, 131

logical positivism, 20–21

mathematics: and perceived world, 120–22; revisability of, 65; theories of,61–62

Mead, George Herbert, 5, 163meaning: analytic vs. holophrastic, 31–

34; biological basis of, 39–41, 44–45, 67–68; change of, 61; as disposi-tional, 101–106, 118; intensional,41; and metaphysics, 101–106, 124–25; and propositions, 48–52; sensevs. linguistic, 34–36; as subject toerror, 66; theory of, 28–29, 101

meaningfulness, 124–25meanings: relations between, 52, 54–55,

64–65; as revisable, 5–6memory: in justi¤cation, 90; prima facie

correctness of, 92–96metaphysics: and empirical knowledge,

95–96; of process, 106–11; signi¤-cance of Lewis’s thought in, 119–28; speculative, 122; types of, 97–101; “world” concept in, 111–28

mind as structuring the world, 62–63

182 Index

morality: principles in, 157–61; in socialrelations, 163–65; vs. science, 166;as term, 154–55

Moral Equality, Law of, 156, 158

Newtonian mechanics, 52–53naturalism, 15, 21–22, 151nature: concrete processes of, 120–22;

philosophy of, 106non-contradiction, law of, 115

object: esthetic essence of, 146–47; expe-rience of, 73–75, 143; knowledgeof, 94; ontological status of, 108–10; phenomenal, 38; and terminat-ing judgment, 82–83, 87–89; valueof, 143–44

objectivity, 82, 87, 132–36, 155–56Objectivity, Law of, 156organism-environment interaction, 109,

111, 119, 122

Peirce, Charles Sanders: on containment,60–62; on the continuous, 115–16,176n57; on Firstness, 77, 107, 110;and Lewis, 5, 16–17, 22; and logi-cal positivism, 20

Perry, Ralph Barton, 9, 10–12phenomenalism, 104–105phenomenology, 64, 68Platonic ideas, 61possibility: as category, 108, 109, 112–

14; of metaphysics, 123–25; onto-logical vs. epistemic, 114–17

potentiality as category, 108, 109, 130–34pragmatism: a priori in, 12; American, 5–

24; as comprehensive vision, 1; con-ceptualism in, 19; empiricism in, 2–3, 6; and Kant, 36–39; metaphysicsin, 118; moral claims in, 3–4, 167–69; naturalism and, 21–22

Principia Mathematica (Whitehead/Russell), 14, 18–19, 26, 28

principles, moral, 157–62Principles A, B, and C, 94–95Principles of Psychology (James), 61–62probability: as factor in judgments, 83–

86; theory of, 90–96process: metaphysics of, 106–11; and real-

ism, 101–102propositions: analytic, 48–52; signi¤ca-

tion of, 31–34; synthetic, 69prudence, as imperative, 4, 152–56, 158,

161–62, 168Ptolemaic system, 52–53

qualia: vs. properties of objects, 109–11;and the real, 104–105; relations of,76–78

qualities, ontological status of, 109–11quanti¤cation, tool of, 120–22Quine, Willard V. O., 20–21, 64–68

real, the, 104–105, 108, 117–19realism: critical, 15; vs. idealism in

Lewis, 14–15, 117–19, 127–28;neo-, 10–11, 15; process, 101–102, 104

reality: and analytic claims, 68; categori-cal, 95–96; and experience, 98; andknowledge, 126–28; Lewis’s under-standing of, 3; objective, 104–105;and “world” concept, 112–28

relations/connections, real, 83–85, 87–88, 109, 131

right: rules of, 157–61; and wrong,148–54

Rorty, Richard, 123Royce, Josiah, 9, 11–15, 18Russell, Bertrand, 14, 26, 75

Santayana, George, 9, 10, 15schematism, Kantian, 37–44Schilpp, Paul, 22–23science: history of, 165–66; revolutions

in, 52–53; as world, 120–22selfhood, development of, 162–63Sellers, Roy Wood, 15sense data, 2–3, 69–73sense meaning: in analytic a priori, 67,

68; as disposition or habit, 40–44;and empirical knowledge, 59; vs.linguistic meaning, 34–36

sentences, true, 126–27series, generation of, 43–44skepticism, 80, 93, 95–96social ethics, 4, 19, 23, 140–41, 161–69Spencer, Herbert, 8strict implication, logic of, 2subjectivity vs. objectivity, 132–36summum bonum, the, 136–39, 148, 155Survey of Symbolic Logic (Lewis), 13–14Symbolic Logic (Lewis/Langford), 19symbols, meaning of, 35synonymy, 65–67

temporality, 44–45, 136–37truth: a priori, 62; analytic, 34–36, 52;

correspondence theory of, 126–28;of description vs. appreciation, 18;determination of, 5; and epistemo-logical analyses, 105; and experi-

Index 183

ence, 67; James on, 55–56; in logic,29; and meaningfulness, 124–25; ofterminating judgments, 88–90; andvalue, 143; vs. validity, 11–12, 88

“Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (Quine),20–21, 64–68

universe: as indeterminate, 127; meaningin, 118–22; real, 111–12

utility, 136–37

valuation, theory of, 3, 129–47value: aesthetic, 141–47; assessment of,

132–36, 139–40; claims of, 130–32; comparative, 136–40; as con-cept, 15–16; and morality, 156–58;social, 140–41

Vienna Circle, the, 20

Whitehead, Alfred North, 14, 18, 26world, as concept, 111–28

184 Index

Sandra B. Rosenthal, Provost Distinguished Pro-

fessor of Philosophy at Loyola University, New Or-

leans, has published 12 books and approximately

250 articles on pragmatism and on its relation to

other traditions. She has lectured extensively in the

United States and abroad, has served as president

of several major philosophical societies, and is a

member of numerous editorial boards of journals

and book series. Recently she received the Herbert

Schneider Award given by the Society for the Ad-

vancement of American Philosophy for “distin-

guished contributions to the understanding and

development of American philosophy.”

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C. I. LEWIS--ROSENTHAL