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MODEL OF NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY by Vinsent Nandi, 41 aSWW



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



4  TRUTH


4.1  TRUTH AMONG OTHERS


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


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


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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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



4.2  THEORIES OF TRUTH


4.2.1  DEFINITION AND CRITERION


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



4.2.2  ATTEMPTS TO ELIMINATE TRUTH


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

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

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

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

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

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

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



4.2.3  CARRIED BEYOND BELIEF BY THE BEARERS OF TRUTH


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



4.3  WHAT SHOULD NOT BE HELD TRUE


4.3.1  KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



4.3.2  SOME CRITERIONS FOR UNJUSTIFIABLE BELIEF


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



5  RELEVANCY


5.1  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RELEVANCY


5.1.1  ITS WIDTH AND DEPTH


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

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

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

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

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

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

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



5.1.2  THE USE OF RELEVANCY IN ETHICS


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



5.1.3  "EQUAL, UNLESS .."


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



5.1.4  RELEVANCY OR RELATEDNESS IN OTHER DISCIPLINES


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

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

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

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

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



5.2  THE DIVERSITY OF THE NOTIONS OF RELEVANCY


5.2.1  LINGUISTIC, LOGICAL AND STATISTICAL NOTIONS


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

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

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

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

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

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



5.2.2  PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND OTHER NOTIONS


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

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

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



5.2.3  THE GENERAL STRUCTURE UNDERLYING THE DIVERSE NOTIONS


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

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

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

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



5.3  CONCEPTUAL STATUS OF RELEVANCY


5.3.1  REDUNDANT?


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

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

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



5.3.2  FORMAL OR SUBSTANTIVE?


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

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

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

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

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



5.3.3  OBJECTIVE OR SUBJECTIVE?


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

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

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

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

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



5.3.4  FACTUAL-MODAL OR NORMATIVE?


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

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

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



5.3.5  WHOLLY CONSEQUENTIALISTIC?


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

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

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

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

We shall not try to answer the question whether relevancy also ultimately
remains a consequentialist construct, even in deontological theories. As we
have not yet uttered a judgment on the goal(s) (moral or not) o