Faith, Finitude, and the Conditions of Understanding

 

    

Faith, Finitude, and the Conditions of Understanding 

 

  The recognition of our radical finitude and fallibility seems the beginning of wisdom.   This follows because reality is big and the human heart and mind is limited by its very nature. For one thing, the long evolutionary prehistory trying to survive in the rather violent matrix of nature has left traces in our blood, so to speak, that makes it an almost impossible challenge to live in peace, justice, and love with our neighbors. We can’t help that. (How this probable fact fits in with the Christian concept of “original sin” and a Creator is a real problem.) Our personalities have been distorted over millennia by social injustice, exploitation, oppression, violence, failures of love – both the personalities of the actively unjust and those victims of injustice, and of course we are often both.  reasons, we are "cracked vessels" as Donne put it (which I first read in George Kennan's Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy - my favorite kind of philosophy, personal especially). We human beings are radically cognitively finite because reality always exceeds the limited perspective, lifespan, conceptual schemes, language, attention, and historical situation through which we encounter it; we know truly only by partial participation in a world whose full intelligibility transcends us. Emotionally, too, we are finite because our loves, fears, hopes, resentments, and attachments condition what can appear meaningful or visible to us at all, while themselves remaining vulnerable to distortion through suffering, self-interest, habit, ideology, and failures of love. Again, recognizing these basic truths is fundamental to any form of wisdom. Our biological inheritance often works against true community. Our minds and hearts are small; Being is big.

 

. . .

 

    We are thus fallible on the one hand, radically so, and yet I have often discussed the importance of “hinge beliefs” that we can't sanely question (ontological, epistemological), following Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and expanding the concept to morals, inspired by C. S. Lewis writings on the Natural Law (Abolition of Man). And I think that some kind of faith (e.g., that the external world is not generated by the Matrix - I cannot prove that it is not to a serious skeptic; and even that love can 'reach its object' and reveal it) is ultimately a part of all knowledge and understanding. How might one go about squaring this seeming circle?

      The circle may only seem vicious if we assume that certainty and fallibility are opposites in the wrong sense. I agree with those who think that human understanding has a structure something like this: there are things we cannot coherently doubt while remaining participants in thought and life at all; everything we say about those things remains finite, revisable, and vulnerable to distortion. That is very close to Wittgenstein in On Certainty, though my take is more existential and moral than his. The crucial distinction is between universal theoretical certainty achieved by proof/argument and lived trust or fidelity that makes thought possible in the first place. The second comes first.

    A child does not first prove that language refers to a world and then begin speaking. He is initiated into trust, attention, love, correction, and shared reality. Doubt itself parasitically depends upon this background; radically so. Even principled skepticism presupposes language, inference, memory, identity through time, distinctions between seeming and reality, and confidence that reasons matter. The skeptic cannot stand nowhere. He already inhabits a world of meaning before questioning it. This is why hinge beliefs are not merely arbitrary cultural postulates. They are closer to conditions of intelligibility, the (transcendental) conditions for the possibility of thought and language at all, to use Kant’s phrase. “There is an external world,” “other persons are real,” “memory is broadly trustworthy,” “truth matters,” “wanton cruelty is evil” – these are not ordinarily conclusions from argument. They are more like the soil in which argument grows. This, too, is part of our finitude.

   But because we are finite, wounded, self-deceiving creatures (Murdoch’s expression “fat, relentless ego” doesn’t only describe the narcissistic personality of consumer-capitalist society), our interpretations of reality are always partial and vulnerable. The recognition of finitude therefore does not abolish truth; but it does condition the possible sense truth can have for us. We do not possess it as gods might: that is, exhaustively, transparently, beyond revision; absolutely. We possess it analogically, perspectivally, historically, morally. Conditioned by the things I mentioned at the beginning. This is where I find Josef Pieper is illuminating. He develops more explicitly the Thomist thought that reality exceeds our conceptual grasp, yet the mind is genuinely ordered toward Being. The finite intellect is not autonomous creator of truth, but receptive. Knowledge is participatory rather than dominating. One sees truly, but never totally.

     And this is also why love becomes epistemologically important for thinkers like Raimond Gaita or Iris Murdoch. Love is not merely an emotion added onto perception. It can be a purification of attention. Hatred, vanity, ideology, resentment, fear, or utilitarian reduction can literally prevent us from seeing what is there. Conversely, fidelity, humility, and love can disclose realities otherwise hidden. That does not mean love is infallible. Parents can idolize children. Lovers can project fantasies. Cultures can sanctify injustice. But the possibility of distortion does not imply that all seeing is distortion. If it did, the claim “all perception is distortion” would itself collapse into self-refuting skepticism.

      So perhaps the circle becomes less paradoxical if reframed this way. We begin not with indubitable propositions but with participation in a meaningful world. This participation involves trust before proof. Reflection reveals that our understanding is finite and corrigible yet corrigibility itself presupposes some contact with reality; otherwise “correction” has no meaning. Therefore, humility and trust are not opposites but complementary virtues. You might even say that radical doubt detached from trust becomes unintelligible, while certainty detached from humility becomes idolatry. The middle position is neither Cartesian certainty nor postmodern dissolution, but something like faithful realism: reality transcends us, we genuinely encounter it yet never exhaust it.

    This also explains why the deepest hinge beliefs often have moral form. A child learns that reality is intelligible partly through being truthfully addressed by others. Betrayal, manipulation, and injustice damage not only emotion but the very conditions of trust on which rational life depends. Hence the point about “cracked vessels” is not accidental psychology added onto epistemology. Human woundedness belongs inside epistemology itself. In this light, faith is not primarily belief without evidence. It is a disciplined fidelity to the meaningfulness and reality of the world that makes inquiry, love, and correction possible at all.

 

. . .

 

Given this, Augustine’s credo ut intelligam (“I believe so that I may understand”) – which confounded me as a student and has never left me alone – need not mean irrational submission prior to thought. It should rather be understood as the recognition that finite knowers always begin from trust-laden participation in reality before reflective understanding becomes possible. We must first trust language before analyzing meaning, trust memory before reasoning from experience, trust that reality is intelligible before undertaking inquiry, and trust other persons before entering the moral world at all. Even science presupposes faith in the reliability of perception, reason, testimony, and the ordered intelligibility of nature. Augustine’s point is thus not that belief replaces understanding but that certain forms of faithful openness, fidelity, or trust are conditions for deeper understanding to emerge.

     The same applies morally and emotionally. A loveless or cynical person may possess information about another human being while failing truly to “know” him. Love, humility, repentance, friendship, and fidelity can become modes of cognitive purification. Such goods do not magically guarantee truth, true. But because they help overcome the egocentrism, fear, vanity, and resentment that narrow what reality can disclose itself to us as, they are integral to reason (i.e. our capacity to conform our minds to anything real, to that which cannot be reduced to our wishes or prejudices).  In that sense, faith is not the enemy of knowledge but one of its existential preconditions for radically finite beings.

 

 

GOODMAN’S NOMINALISM AS BACKGROUND TO WORLDMAKING (4)

 GOODMAN’S NOMINALISM AS BACKGROUND TO WORLDMAKING

 

    All versions of Nominalism are premised on deny that universals or abstract entities exist independently of our classificatory practices, i.e., that they map onto the world/reality/Being. Nominalism rejects the idea that the world comes pre-divided into natural kinds that thought simply discovers. Ockham’s nominalism is radical in denying that universals exist as independent entities but it is comparatively modest in its overall outlook. Only individual things exist and universals are mental signs or linguistic terms we use to group them. Yet this does not undermine the idea that the world itself has a diminished reality still independent of thought to which thought must conform. Individuals possess real similarities, causal powers, and stable natures, and our concepts, though not corresponding to separate universal entities, are nonetheless meant to conform to these features. Thus Ockham’s nominalism leaves conceptual space for a limited notion of truth as the mind’s conformity to reality and allows that classification can be more or less adequate to what is there.

     Goodman’s nominalism is more radical because it does not stop at denying universals but extends its skepticism to the very idea that the world has reality independent of logically possible versions of the world. On his view, the divisions we make (e.g., what counts as an object, a property, or a kind, etc.) are not grounded in mind-independent natures but arise within potentially incommensurable ways of conceiving such natures and nature as a whole. Hence, different, equally coherent ways of seeing the world as a whole and thus the particulars in it can yield different “world-versions,” none of which can claim privileged access to reality as it is in itself. Where Ockham preserves a distinction between our conceptual schemes and a structured reality they aim to describe, Goodman tends to dissolve that distinction, making the organization of the world inseparable from the ways we symbolize and describe it. Here a quote from the beginning of Ways of Worldmaking:

           

Consider, to begin with, the statements "The sun always moves" and "The sun never moves" which, though equally true, are at odds with each other. Shall we say, then, that they describe different worlds, and indeed that there are as many different worlds as there are such mutually exclusive truths? Rather, we are inclined to regard the two strings of words not as complete statements with truth-values of their own but as elliptical for some such statements as "Under frame of reference A, the sun always moves" and "Under frame of reference B, the sun never moves" – statements that may both be true of the same world.  Frames of reference, though, seem to belong less to what is described than to systems of description: and each of the two statements relates what is described to such a system. If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say? We are confined to ways of describing whatever is described. Our universe, so to speak, consists of these ways rather than of a world or of worlds.…   Yet doesn't a right version differ from a wrong one just in applying to the world, so that rightness itself depends upon and implies a world? We might better say that 'the world' depends upon rightness. We cannot test a version by comparing it with a world undescribed, undepicted, unperceived, but only by other means…. While we may speak of determining what versions are right as 'learning about the world', 'the world' supposedly being that which all right versions describe, all we learn about the world is contained in right versions of it; and while the underlying world, bereft of these, need not be denied to those who love it, it is perhaps on the whole a world well lost.

 You could say, I think, that for Goodman reality is constructed. Different symbolic systems yield different “world-versions.” Here are examples of world versions taken from Goodman’s work.

·       Physics describing the world in terms of particles, fields, and forces

·       Alternative scientific frameworks organizing the same domain differently

·       Astronomical description of stars and planets versus everyday perception of the sky

·       Everyday visual perception of objects, colors, and shapes

·       Perceptual organization such as figure/ground distinctions and constancies

·       Realist painting using perspective

·       Non-perspectival or abstract painting

·       Stylistic differences in depiction that alter what is seen and how it is organized

·       Ordinary language classifications of objects and properties

·       Alternative predicate systems such as “green” versus “grue”

·       Euclidean geometry

·       Non-Euclidean geometries

·       Alternative coordinate systems

·       Formal logical systems organizing relations differently

·       Narrative worlds in novels

·       Mythological worlds

·       Characters and events constituted within a literary framework

·       Musical works as defined by notation

·       Different performances as realizations of a work

·       Variations in interpretation within the same notational system

·       Musical scores

·       Maps

·       Diagrams

·       Symbol systems governed by syntactic and semantic rules

·       Chronological recording of events

·       Narrative or interpretive histories organizing events differently

·       Composition and decomposition of wholes and parts

·       Weighting or emphasis of certain features over others

·       Ordering of elements in time, space, or logic

·       Deletion and supplementation of elements

·       Deformation or transformation through distortion or stylization

 . . .

  I have never been able to do much with Goodman’s well-known grue-argument, a kind of proof of Nominalism, but I will try again. So here it is.

   Imagine you are looking at emeralds. You pick we up. It is green. You pick up another. It is also green. You look at many more, and all of them are green. At this point, you naturally say: “Emeralds are green.” And you go a step further: “Future emeralds will also be green.” This seems completely reasonable. We learn from experience. We notice patterns, and we expect those patterns to continue. This is something we all do constantly, in everyday life.

    Now a philosopher, Nelson Goodman, asks us to consider a strange alternative. He says: let us invent a new word, “grue.” We define it like this:

 

An object is grue if it has been observed up to now and is green, or if it is observed in the future and is blue.

 

Now notice something odd. Every emerald we have seen so far is not only green; it is also “grue,” because all of them have been observed up to now and are green. So the same evidence supports two statements:

 

• “All emeralds are green.”
• “All emeralds are grue.”

 

But these lead to different expectations about the future:

 

• If emeralds are green, they will stay green.
• If emeralds are grue, they will turn blue in the future.

 

So which should we believe?

    Goodman’s point is this that the past evidence alone does not tell us which way to go. Both “green” and “grue” fit everything we have seen so far. So why do we trust we and reject the other? This is meant to challenge our confidence in how we learn from experience. Most people immediately say: “But emeralds don’t just suddenly turn blue!” And that reaction is important. It shows that we are not merely thinking that “This is what has happened so far.” We are also thinking that “This is how things are.” We assume that emeralds have a certain nature, and that their color belongs to them in a stable way. We do not take seriously the idea that their color might depend on an arbitrary date in the future.

      The example works by introducing a made-up definition that is carefully designed to match all past observations while changing the future. In other words, it does not arise from studying emeralds. It arises from playing with words. This is easier to see with a simpler comparison. Imagine a number sequence: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 …. We naturally continue: 256, 512, and so on. But someone could say: “No, the rule is: double the number until 128, and then add 2.” So the next number would be 130. That rule fits all the numbers we have seen so far. But we do not take it seriously. Why not? Because it is not the rule we were actually following. It has been artificially constructed to fit the past while changing the future.

    Goodman wants to show that the evidence alone does not determine how we should describe the world. That seems true, as far as it goes. We always use concepts like “green” to organize what we see. But the example goes further and want to imply that perhaps no way of describing the world is more closely tied to reality than any other. And this is where I hesitate. We can accept the important insight – that our thinking uses concepts – without accepting that all concepts are on a par. There is a difference between a concept that arises from trying to understand what a thing is and a concept that is artificially constructed to fit past observations. “Green” is part of our attempt to describe a real feature of emeralds. It is connected to how they actually appear and behave. “Grue,” by contrast, is stitched together from unrelated conditions (color and time). It does not describe a stable feature of anything. So the fact that both can be made to fit the past does not show that they are equally good ways of understanding the world. It only shows that we can always invent alternative descriptions if we try hard enough.

   The “green and grue” problem is valuable because it reminds us that learning from experience is not just a matter of collecting data; it also depends on how we describe what we see. But it can mislead if we forget that not every possible description is equally rooted in reality. Some ways of speaking arise from genuine inquiry into things and help us understand them better. Others are clever constructions that fit the data but do not capture anything real. The difficulty, then, is not that we cannot learn from experience. It is that we must learn to distinguish between descriptions that merely fit the past and those that genuinely make sense of what things are.

 . . .

    The grue argument shows that the same evidence can support incompatible conceptual schemes. Worldmaking generalizes this result from predicates to full symbolic systems. A symbolic system determines what counts as an object, a property, and a relation. Different symbolic systems organize the same experiential input into different structured worlds. A world-version is constituted by the system of description through which it is articulated. No single world-version is uniquely forced by the given data. The plurality of world-versions follows from the underdetermination of description by evidence.

    The same night sky can be described within different symbolic systems, for instance. In a painterly system, as exemplified by Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” stars are organized in terms of color, movement, luminosity, and expressive form. The swirling patterns, intensified contrasts, and radiating halos do not merely depict stars but articulate a world in which the night sky is dynamic, vibrant, and charged with presence. In an astrophysical system, by contrast, stars are organized in terms of mass, energy, spectra, and causal laws. Each system determines what counts as a star and which properties are relevant. These systems are not reducible to we another because they serve different purposes and employ different criteria. Each system yields a distinct world-version of the same underlying reality. The example illustrates how world-versions differ not only in predicates but in entire modes of organization, extending from the classification of properties to the very way in which objects are constituted and related within a world.

 . . .

      The case of whales illustrates how classification depends on the symbolic system within which observations are organized. In we system, whales are classified as fish. In another, they are classified as mammals. Each classification is based on features that are observable. In the “fish” system: whales live in water, have fins, and resemble other sea creatures. In the “mammal” system: whales are warm-blooded, breathe air, bear live young, and nurse them. The choice of which features to treat as decisive is not dictated by the data alone. The same empirical input – observations of whales – can be organized under different predicates depending on which criteria are selected as relevant. Thus “Whale as fish” and “whale as mammal” are not simply correct vs incorrect labels imposed on a fixed world. They are elements of different classificatory systems, each of which determines what counts as a significant property and how objects are grouped.

    From this perspective there is no classification of whales uniquely forced by the given data. What counts as a “natural grouping” depends on the symbolic system employed. The shift from “fish” to “mammal” is not the discovery of a pre-given essence, but a reorganization of the classificatory scheme in light of new interests, criteria, and theoretical integration. The whale case thus parallels the lesson of the grue example: the same reality can be organized in different, internally coherent ways, and no single organization is uniquely determined by observation alone. 

      The nominalist reconstruction captures something important: classification is not a passive reading-off of data but involves selection, emphasis, and conceptual organization. But it does obscure an equally important feature of the whale case: namely, the transition from “fish” to “mammal” was not merely a change of scheme, but a deepening of understanding. In the earlier classification, whales were grouped with fish on the basis of surface similarity, i.e., habitat and outward form. In the later classification,whales were recognized as mammals on the basis of integrated biological structure, i.e., respiration, reproduction, physiology. The difference is not merely that different criteria were chosen, but that some criteria proved more revealing of how the animal is organized as a whole. Thus “fish” captures an aspect of whales (they live in water) but “mammal” articulates a deeper unity among their features. The nominalist account flattens this important distinction. Indeed, not all classifications are equal; some are more adequate disclosures of the object. Hence, classification, which is a key part of conceptualization, is not arbitrary, even though it is conceptually mediated. It is a response to the intelligibility of the thing itself. The data alone do not dictate the classification, true, but neither is the classification indifferent to what is there. The movement from “fish” to “mammal” should be understood as a process in which inquiry becomes progressively responsive to the structure of the object, bringing into view relations that were previously unnoticed or undervalued.

     The nominalist reading emphasizes that multiple classifications are compatible with the same observations and concludes that classification is system-relative. The reading I believe can accept the underdetermination of classification by data but hold that inquiry can nevertheless disclose more or less adequate ways of understanding what a thing is. The whale case shows that while different classifications are logically possible, they are not equally deep when it comes to understanding whales; some conceptualizations-classifications merely organize appearances, while others disclose a deeper unity.

 . . .

   I hope this clarifies my resistance to “grue.” “Grue” is like a constructed classification that fits the data but does not arise from inquiry into any stable feature, whereas “green” (and “mammal”) are candidates for disclosure, not just formal fit. The real divide is not

classification vs no classification but constructed predicates vs disclosive predicates. The grue-argument blurs that. I think Goodman was smarter and more philosophically sophisticated than I will ever be and I am sure he would have a reply. But I think the best he can achieve would be a logical draw, leaving folks like me who love and need the independent world to hold on to it.

 . . .

    The same entity can be described as a “fetus” or as an “unborn child” or “baby.” The same human being can be described as a “hairless biped” or as an “embodied soul.” These descriptions select different aspects of the same referent. Each description belongs to a broader conceptual and practical framework. Different frameworks generate different perceptions of significance and different practical responses. Some descriptions are selective, highlighting real aspects of the object. Some descriptions risk being reductive if they present a partial aspect as exhaustive.

   The choice of description has moral consequences, as the examples above illustrate, because it shapes thought and feeling, how to see the phenomenon and respond to it. The Goodman framework explains how different descriptions constitute different world-versions but the framework does not by itself determine whether some descriptions are more adequate to reality than others.

     Consider first the description of a developing human being as a “fetus” or as an “unborn child” or “baby.” The term “fetus” belongs to a medical and biological framework. Within that framework, the being is classified according to stages of development, physiological processes, and clinical criteria. This description highlights real aspects: growth, differentiation of organs, dependence on the mother’s body. It enables certain kinds of reasoning, e.g., diagnosis, prognosis, intervention.

     The terms “unborn child” or “baby,” by contrast, belong to a personal and relational framework – the language of love. Here the same being is understood as already standing in relations of kinship and care, as someone who can be awaited, named, loved, and mourned. This description highlights other real aspects: continuity of personal identity, vulnerability, and the beginnings of a human life that will unfold over time. It makes possible a different range of responses like anticipation, attachment, protection.

    The difference between these descriptions is not merely verbal. Each organizes the phenomenon in a way that brings certain features into prominence and recedes others into the background. The medical description tends toward abstraction and functional analysis; the personal description toward recognition and relation. Both can be true in what they say, but they do not say the same thing, and they do not carry the same weight in shaping how the being is regarded.

      The risk of reduction appears when we of these descriptions is taken as exhaustive. If “fetus” is treated not as a partial, context-bound description but as the whole truth about the being, then the personal dimension is obscured. Conversely, if “baby” is used without regard to biological realities, certain medical distinctions may be overlooked. The question, then, is not which description is simply correct, but whether a given description does justice to the full reality or narrows it in a way that affects perception and response.

    A similar structure appears in the second example. A human being can be described as a “hairless biped.” This description belongs to a classificatory, zoological framework. It identifies features that distinguish humans from other animals: upright posture, lack of body hair. These are real properties, and the description is not false. It captures something about the kind of organism a human being is.

    The description “embodied soul,” however, belongs to a different framework, we that aims to articulate the unity of bodily life and inwardness such as thought, feeling, intention, and self-awareness. Here the human being is not primarily an instance of a biological type but a center of experience and agency, whose bodily existence is integral to, but not reducible to, that inner life. This description brings into view dimensions such as dignity, responsibility, and the capacity for truth and love.

     Again, the difference lies in what is made salient. “Hairless biped” isolates external, measurable traits; “embodied soul” attempts to express the kind of being that lives through those traits. The former is thin but precise within its domain; the latter is richer but also more demanding, because it seeks to articulate a unity that is not immediately visible in the same way.

     The reductive danger arises if the thinner description is taken as sufficient. If a human being is treated simply as a biological organism characterized by certain physical features, then the dimensions of inward life and moral significance can be eclipsed. The description is not false, but it is inadequate if it is allowed to stand as the whole account of what a human being is.

     These examples show how descriptions do not merely label a pre-given object but shape the way the object is encountered. They determine how we see, feel, and think about the phenomena being thus disclosed. The Goodman framework helps to explain this by showing how different systems of description yield different “world-versions.” But it leaves open the question that presses in these cases: namely, whether some descriptions, while partial, are nevertheless more adequate to the reality because they disclose aspects that others leave out or obscure. In moral contexts especially, this is absolutely critical. It is not enough to note that different descriptions are possible; we must also ask whether a given way of speaking allows the phenomenon to appear in its full meaning/reality or diminishes it by restricting what can be seen and felt.

 . . .

       Goodman investigates what follows from logic and evidence considered in abstraction from lived experience. This standpoint brackets familiarity, practice, and the felt naturalness of concepts. It is indeed a view from nowhere. Indeed, from this standpoint, conceptual schemes are underdetermined by evidence and the predictable result is that multiple incompatible descriptions remain logically possible. Lived experience, in contrast, presents the world as stable, intelligible, and structured, something not captured by a purely logical analysis. The sense that “green” is natural and “grue” is artificial arises within lived practice. Goodman accounts for this difference in terms of entrenchment (deeply entrenched conventions/habits) rather than reality as discloses (and concealed) through lived experience. This purely logical view-of-the-world-as-if-from-no-place-within-it standpoint (Nagel) reveals the purely abstract-logical freedom of conceptualization but risks neglecting the authority of what reality actually reveals to us.

 

. . .

 

   I learned about Goodman from a friend who is an anthropologist, and on reflection I can see the attraction. Cultural anthropology encounters diverse systems of classification and meaning across cultures that often resist reduction to a single universal framework. Goodman provides a philosophical justification for treating these systems as distinct world-versions, thereby avoiding the imperialist-sounding claim that other cultures are simply mistaken about reality. Goodman undermines the assumption that Western scientific description is uniquely privileged, which thus allows anthropologists to treat myth, ritual, and science as different forms of worldmaking. He supports the idea that entering another culture involves entering a different world-version and helps explain incommensurability between conceptual systems. And indeed, I value the philosophy for protecting against the reductionism that treats other ways of seeing the world as inferior approximations of science – no only concerning other cultures but my own predecessor cultures (the high Middle Ages, for example, cannot be reduced to bad science and superstition. It produced more advances than is usually realized and produced Thomas Aquinas and Dante, the great cathedrals and flourishes independent cities).

    The approach raises the problem of how to evaluate truth or error across different world-versions. But I will have to deal with that later.

 . . . 

  Goodman wrote:

 

To demand full and sole reducibility to physics or any other one version is to forego nearly all other versions. The pluralists' acceptance of versions other than physics implies no relaxation of rigor but a recognition that standards different from yet no less exacting than those applied in science are appropriate for appraising what is conveyed in perceptual or pictorial or literary versions.

 

I full agree with this. I just don’t think it implies nominalism. Most of what Goodman calls world versions disclose something real, some real aspect of reality. Reality transcends all possible finite world versions.

 

 

 

NIETZSCHE'S NOMINALISM (3) and another comment on Gaita

 

A passage, quoted at length, from Nietzsche's "Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense." A pure statement of Nominalism, much more radical than Ockham's. Not surprising, given the author. 

In particular, let us further consider the formation of concepts. Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases – which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf”: the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted – but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model. We call a person “honest,” and then we ask “why has he behaved so honestly today?” Our usual answer is, “on account of his honesty.” Honesty! This in turn means that the leaf is the cause of the leaves. We know nothing whatsoever about an essential quality called “honesty”; but we do know of countless individualized and consequently unequal actions which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which we now designate as “honest” actions. Finally we formulate from them a qualitas occulta, which has the name “honesty.” We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us. For even our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond to the essence of things: that would of course be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as indemonstrable as its opposite.

      What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins. – Friedrich Nietzsche, “Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense”

 . . . 

     Ockham denies that universals exist as real entities but still believes that our concepts can correspond to reality, whereas Nietzsche denies both, claiming that concepts arise from the falsification of reality and that truth itself is a human fabrication. For Ockham, only individual things exist, and universals such as “leaf” or “honesty” are mental signs; yet these signs are not arbitrary because they track real similarities and regularities among things. Thus, even without real universal forms, knowledge and truth remain possible: our concepts, though abstract, are constrained by the way the world actually is. By contrast, Nietzsche (in typical fashion) radicalizes the critique of universals by arguing that concepts are formed through the “equation of unequal things,” that is, by ignoring differences and imposing artificial unity on what is in fact irreducibly diverse. In his view, the very idea that a concept corresponds to something in reality is an illusion born of habit and forgetfulness; concepts are metaphors that have lost their vividness, and “truth” is merely a collection of such worn-out metaphors. Where Ockham preserves a weakened but still genuine correspondence between thought and reality, Nietzsche dissolves that correspondence altogether, turning concepts into creative impositions rather than discoveries of an underlying intelligible order.

     I want to offer some reductios of Nietzsche’s position and an explanation of why they wouldn’t convince Nietzsche.

 1) If concepts arise solely by leveling differences and fixing convenient metaphors, then the norms governing their use reduce to internal coherence and practical success within a scheme. But in mature inquiry (e.g., biology), classificatory terms are not only convenient; they are answerable to patterns that constrain explanation and intervention: they justify inferences and guide successful prediction and technological manipulation. This answerability is not well captured by “fit within a system” alone, because systems can be internally coherent yet explanatorily sterile or misleading. A classification that groups whales with fish may be internally coherent and even convenient for certain purposes, yet it fails to capture the explanatory relations, such as mammalian physiology and evolutionary lineage, that make other classifications more adequate to the reality it seeks to articulate. Therefore, if all concepts are merely stabilized metaphors, then the distinction between apt and merely useful classification becomes unintelligible; yet our practices presuppose that distinction. Hence Nietzsche’s account, taken strictly, cannot explain why some classificatory uses are normatively better (not just handier).

 

2) If “honesty” is nothing over and above a convenient grouping of disparate acts, then there is no normative unity that distinguishes a stable disposition from a sequence of superficially similar behaviors. But our evaluative practices hinge on precisely that distinction, as can be seen in ordinary contexts such as testimony in court and trust in friendship. In a courtroom, we distinguish sharply between a witness who tells the truth by accident and one who is honest; the latter’s testimony carries weight across cases because it is grounded in a stable disposition, not a coincidence. Likewise, in friendship, we rely on a person’s honesty not merely in isolated statements but across situations. We confide in them, trust their word when it is inconvenient, and hold them accountable when they deceive. In both practices, “honesty” functions analogically: the honesty of testimony, the honesty of keeping a promise, and the honesty of frank self-disclosure are not identical, yet they are intelligibly related as expressions of a single virtue. This unity is not a mere re-labeling; it organizes expectations, warrants trust, and grounds criticism. If the unity of “honesty” were only a projection, then the normativity of these practices, and the real analogies that bind their different uses, would be illusory, even though social life depends on them. Therefore, the practice presupposes a unity that is more than a metaphor we have forgotten, even if our access to it is mediated by metaphorical language.

 3) If all value-terms are fabricated metaphors stabilized by use, then the experience of the other – for example, where a child or a suffering person is encountered as calling for care – must be redescribed as projection. But our moral practices distinguish sharply between projection and recognition: remorse, for instance, presupposes that one has wronged someone, not merely violated one’s own scheme. This presupposition involves answerability to the other as other, not just to communal norms. If Nietzsche’s view collapses recognition into projection, it undermines the intelligibility of remorse and responsibility as we actually live them. Therefore, unless one accepts that collapse, one must allow that our evaluative responses are constrained by the reality of the other, even if articulated through metaphor.

  I think Nietzsche's argument also suffers from internal tensions if not outright contradictions. If “truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions,” then the norm governing assertion cannot be that of getting it right, but only that of rhetorical effectiveness or life-serving utility. Yet Nietzsche’s own critique operates by distinguishing more and less adequate ways of speaking about our practices (e.g., exposing reification, criticizing misplaced objectification). This distinction presupposes a norm of better/worse articulation that is not reducible to mere efficacy, since the critique aims to correct, not just to replace, prior usages. Hence there is a tension: the practice of critique presupposes norms of answerability and aptness that the global thesis about truth as forgotten illusion appears to undercut.

     Nietzsche’s critique of truth can account for itself only by abandoning the status of a universal truth-claim and presenting itself instead as a perspectival, genealogical disclosure; yet in doing so it forfeits the normative authority required to decisively displace the views it critiques. If his claim that “truths are illusions” is taken universally, it becomes self-undermining, since it must either count as a genuine truth (thereby contradicting itself) or as an illusion (thereby giving us no reason to accept it). To avoid this collapse, the claim must be weakened into a perspective, i.e., an interpretive stance that redescribes how our concepts arise through abstraction, metaphor, and habit. Under this reading, the argument can make sense, but only as one way of seeing among others, lacking the force to declare rival accounts false in any robust sense. Moreover, even in its weakened form, the critique implicitly relies on distinctions such as more and less revealing, more and less honest, which function as norms akin to truth. Thus Nietzsche’s position survives only by relinquishing the very kind of universal authority it appears to claim, revealing a tension between its genealogical intent and its residual dependence on normative standards it cannot fully justify.

 I don’t think Nietzsche would be moved by these arguments. He can replace “answerability to what is” with life-enhancing success, coherence, and fecundity of a perspective and sort of save the phenomena. He can treat explanatory constraint as a feature of well-entrenched practices, not evidence of a deeper normative tie to reality. Or he can redescribe recognition (in agape) as a powerful, historically formed valuation that we cannot step outside, rather than a discovery of an independent normative demand. He can construe his own critique as perspectival re-valuation, not as an appeal to a higher, non-perspectival standard.

     So the arguments above probably do not strictly refute him; they show the cost of his position: it must reinterpret better, apt, and answerable in thinner, practice-bound terms, thereby relinquishing the stronger sense of truth as normative fit to what is. I suppose I am inclined to see this as one of Goodman’s incommensurable world versions and must make sense of the lives of real people, and not the most gullible or vain either. Or fail to do so.

 . . .

 A Footnote on Gaita

How would Gaita respond to this passage? (I wish I could ask him!) I assume he would reject Nietzsche’s argument not by advancing a competing metaphysical theory but by arguing that Nietzsche’s account fails to do justice to the lived intelligibility of our moral practices and authentic responses.  The idea being that philosophical clarity in morals comes from attending to the “grammar” of our moral life, which is to say, how concepts like remorse, cruelty, honesty, and love actually function, rather than from explaining them in terms of underlying ontological structures. Thus on this account Nietzsche’s reduction of truth to metaphor and illusion would be rejected as a misdescription: it cannot adequately capture the difference between recognition and projection, the authority experienced in remorse, or the seriousness of moral claims. Gaita can thus deny Nietzsche’s conclusions without committing himself to any metaphysical grounding, Thomistic or otherwise, because his appeal is to the adequacy of description and acknowledgment rather than to explanatory depth. I wish I could pin him down, metaphysically, but it seems hard to do. He would question my need for metaphysics, I suppose. I don’t care about sophisticated theories so much. I do think we live with implicit metaphysical views – Gaita’s gift of culture – and that when competing views become culturally dominant as in our time it is important to keep to door open between reality and morality. Morality only makes sense within a range of metaphysical attitudes (Einstellungen) and hinge beliefs. Metaphysics is the attempt to make explicit sense of these perhaps?

NOMINALISM (2) and another comment on Gaita

 

I’m afraid none of this is very original. Just trying to understand these issues.

Another critique of Nominalism: by denying analogical meaning, Ockham divorces faith from reason, the world from transcendence, man from God. Is that a fair criticism?

  

Analogy

    For Aquinas words can be used in three basic ways:

 

Univocally, i.e. same meaning in each case: e.g. triangle in geometry or phoneme in linguistic.

 

Equivocally, i.e., completely different meanings: “bank” (riverbank / financial bank)

 

Analogically, i.e., neither identical nor unrelated, but proportionally connected

 

A classic example: healthy

• A person is healthy (has health)
• Food is healthy (causes health)
• A complexion is healthy (sign of health)

The meanings differ, but they are ordered to one focal reality (health).

This is often called analogy of attribution.

 

A deeper example: good

• A knife is good (cuts well)
• A person is good (lives well)
• God is good (perfectly)

 

The meaning is not identical (univocal) but not unrelated either (equivocal). Rather, each case expresses goodness according to the kind of being involved. This is analogy of proportionality.

 

   The theological case: “God is good.” This is the crucial one for the Aquinas/Ockham debate. We do not mean exactly what we mean when we say “a person is good” (not univocal) but we also do not speak in a completely different sense (not equivocal, contra Ockham). God is good as the source and fullness of what creatures possess in a limited way. So creaturely goodness is participated, finite, whereas divine goodness identical with being itself.

   The use of the term proportional in connection with analogy has always confused me. Something like this is meant, sticking with the example of a good knife, person, and God: There is no single feature shared (like “cutting” or “seeing”). Instead, in each case, “good” means that the thing fulfills what it is, according to its nature. That is what unifies the concept, i.e., justifies using the same word-concept in each case despite the surface meaning differences. So the connection is:

 

             knife : cutting :: eye : seeing :: human : rational living

 

That is what “proportionately connected” means, i.e., that the same formal pattern (fulfillment) realized differently according to the kind of thing.

      At the risk of repeating myself, to say that analogical terms are “proportionately connected” thus means that they express a common intelligible pattern – such as fulfillment, perfection, or goodness – realized in different ways according to the nature of each particular, and grasped through concrete instances rather than imposed by a single abstract definition. This means that when we call a knife “good,” we are referring to its cutting well; when we call an eye “good,” we mean that it sees well; and when we call a person “good,” we mean that he or she lives well in a rational and moral sense. These uses do not share one identical definition, yet they are not unrelated either; in each case, the term tracks the thing’s proper perfection, what it is for as the kind of thing it is. The unity of meaning emerges not from an abstract formula applied in advance, but from recognizing across different concrete cases a similar relation between a thing and its fulfillment. Because these applications are grounded in the real natures and activities of things, they are neither arbitrary nor merely conventional. They are rather anchored in the intelligibility/reality of the beings themselves. Thus analogy allows us to speak meaningfully across different domains without collapsing their differences or severing their connection.

    Yet that which unifies these analogical concepts (and almost all interesting metaphysical and moral concepts are analogical) is not for Thomas an essence, strictly speaking. He terms such concepts transcendentals. The distinction can be put this way: in the strict Aristotelian sense, an essence is what can be defined univocally, which is to say, captured in a single account (genus and differentia) that applies in the same way to all instances, as with “human” or “triangle.” But many of the most important philosophical concepts, such as being, goodness, and truth, do not function like this. They apply across all kinds of things and therefore cannot be confined to a single genus or defined univocally. Their unity is not that of a shared, identical essence, but of an analogical pattern grounded in reality itself: for example, “good” names the fulfillment or perfection of a thing, though what counts as fulfillment differs according to the kind of being involved. Thus, when we move in central areas of philosophy like ethics, metaphysics, or theology, we are often not dealing with neatly definable essences but with these broader, analogically unified notions. This does not make them vague or subjective; on the contrary, their unity lies deeper than definition, in the structure of being itself, even though our language can only articulate that unity proportionately rather than in a single, univocal formula.

   For Thomas Aquinas, essence as such is grasped univocally (like triangle), but many of the most fundamental philosophical notions are not essences in this sense; they are transcendentals, whose unity is analogical rather than definitional. Thus, in cases like triangle or human, we can give a single definition that applies in the same way to every instance, capturing what the thing is through a stable genus-and-differentia account; here we are dealing with essences in the strict sense. By contrast, terms such as “being,” “good,” and “true” apply across all kinds of things and cannot be confined to a single genus or definition, since they cut across every category of reality. Their unity lies instead in a shared intelligible pattern – such as perfection or actuality (goodness) – realized differently according to the nature of each being, and therefore expressed analogically rather than univocally. The concept of essence is used univocally to mean “what a thing is,” but what counts as an essence varies according to the mode of being – fully definable in mathematics and many natural kinds, less so in moral and metaphysical contexts, and not in the same definitional sense when speaking of God. It is not that essence becomes analogical, but that it is applied within a reality whose structure is analogical. Thus Aquinas can preserve both the clarity of univocal definition where it is appropriate and the deeper, analogical intelligibility required for metaphysics, ethics, and theology.

   Analogy is structurally necessary for Thomist thought.  Without analogy theology collapses. If language about God were univocal, then good, being, wise, etc. would mean the same for God and creatures. God becomes just a bigger instance of the same kind of thing, which is to say, God is reduced to a creature. If concepts like good and being were equivocal as applied to man and God, i.e., if the words meant completely different things, then  “God is good” tells us nothing we understand and theology becomes meaningless. (This is Ockham’s view.) Therefore, only analogy allows meaningful, non-reductive God-talk.

     Aquinas’s project depends on reasoning from effects (creatures) to a cause (God). This requires that creatures really resemble their cause but in a finite way. Analogy provides exactly that: creatures are like God, but not in the same way. Without an analogical relation in reality, captured in the analogical use of concepts, there could be no inference from world to God, no bridge between reason and faith.

     At the metaphysical level, creatures do not just exist independently; they participate in being. Therefore, being, goodness, truth, etc. are said of creatures and God analogically because creatures possess them in a limited way, while God is them. Analogy is thus the linguistic expression of participation, which is central to Thomist thought.

     And analogy preserves intelligibility of reality. This connects directly to your my concerns. If analogy is rejected, then either reality becomes a set of unrelated facts (equivocity, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus) or everything is flattened into one level (univocity). With analogy, reality is a graded, ordered whole, where meaning flows from source to participation. Hence, science studies real structures, ethics reflects intrinsic goodness, and theology speaks meaningfully about their source.

     Thomist metaphysics requires analogy because it affirms both divine transcendence and creaturely participation; without analogy, one must either collapse God into the world (univocity) or separate God from the world entirely (equivocity), thereby destroying the possibility of metaphysics and theology as unified, intelligible disciplines. Analogy is the medium by which being, intelligibility, and intrinsic worth remain internally connected across levels of reality. So, translated into life, the child calls forth love, etc. Because being itself is analogically ordered toward goodness and that goodness is fully realized in God

  It is important to stress that analogy is not just a theory of words. It is the way a finite intellect can speak truthfully about an infinite source without collapsing the difference or losing the connection. And that is why, once it is weakened (as in Ockham), everything I have been worrying about – intelligibility, morality, the relation of world to source – begins to come apart. If analogical meaning is weakened or denied, then our language about God no longer bridges the gap between creatures and God. we can no longer reason from creatures to God in a rich way; moral intelligibility weakens; good as said of God and creatures risks losing inner connection; unity of knowledge loosens. Reason and faith occupy more separate domains. Less analogy means more separation. That is one way of putting what is at stake in this debate.

 

. . .

 

   Still, it would be unfair to say he denies meaningful God-talk. Ockham still holds that we can speak truly about God and believes that the concepts we predicate of God are not empty. But he argues against the Thomistic account of analogy, which posits that words like good, wise, or being signify in a proportionate but real way across God and creatures. Ockham tends toward a thinner semantics, which is closer to univocity (in some contexts) or equivocity. So the issue is weakening the metaphysical bridge.

    Once analogy is denied, several shifts follow (even if Ockham himself does not state them so starkly). The understanding of God is less grounded in metaphysical reasoning and thus more dependent on revelation and will. Morality is less rooted in participation in divine goodness and reality and more tied to divine command. And language is less expressive of real likeness as well as more cautious, less metaphysically loaded. Even if the connections between faith–reason, world–transcendence, and man–God do not collapse entirely on a charitable interpretation, their inner continuity weakens. In other words, by weakening analogical predication, Ockham removes the metaphysical framework that allows reason to move from creatures to God, thereby loosening the intrinsic connection between faith and reason, nature and grace, and human understanding and divine reality.

    For Ockham, this is not a loss but a safeguard, avoiding overconfidence in metaphysics, protecting divine transcendence, and preserving clarity and parsimony. Better a more limited but secure knowledge than a richer but speculative one. But I feel left with both a world of contingent facts and a God known only by will and revelation. Facts separate from value, reason from faith, and world from meaning. A leap toward the modern world.

 

. . .

 

Finally, I want to attempt a reductio argument against Ockham’s nominalism. Assume a broadly Ockhamist thesis: many moral truths do not arise from the natures of things but depend on divine command (so their obligatoriness is contingent). Consider three cases that seem to present intrinsic moral intelligibility: (i) a parent’s love for a child, where the child’s reality appears to call forth care; (ii) remorse after betraying a friend, where the agent recognizes having wronged someone; and (iii) honesty, where telling the truth seems fitting to what speech and trust are. Now suppose per the voluntarist hypothesis that God could have commanded differently: indifference to one’s child, betrayal without regret, or systematic deception. Then (a) either these acts would become genuinely good, or (b) they would remain intelligibly wrong despite the command. If (a), then the experienced authority of these cases – what Raimond Gaita calls the recognition of the other as someone – loses its grounding. “Love,” “remorse,” and “honesty” would track obedience to command rather than the reality of the child, the friend, or the practice of truthful speech. But that collapses the meanings of these terms: a “loving” neglect, a “remorseful” indifference, or an “honest” deception are not just counterintuitive, i.e., they are conceptually unstable. The practices themselves (parenting, friendship, testimony) would no longer be intelligible as what they are. If (b), then there are moral truths whose correctness does not depend on command. The child’s claim, the wrongness disclosed in remorse, and the fittingness of honesty would hold because of what these realities are. In that case, at least some norms are grounded in the intelligible structure of beings and relations, not merely in will. Either horn is problematic for the initial thesis: (a) empties moral language of its content; (b) concedes non-voluntarist grounding. Therefore, the strong claim that moral norms are (in many central cases) contingent on command alone is untenable. A more adequate account must allow that certain responses – e.g., love of the child, remorse for betrayal, honesty in speech – are fitting to reality itself, i.e., that value is internally connected to being rather than imposed from without.

     The force of moral experience, such as the love a child calls forth or the remorse following betrayal, presupposes an analogical connection between being and value; without such analogy, moral concepts lose their grounding in reality and collapse either into arbitrariness or emptiness. In these cases, we do not merely follow rules or apply conventions but recognize that certain realities stand in intelligible relation to fitting responses: the child to love, the friend to fidelity, speech to truthfulness. This pattern is not univocal, since each instance differs, yet it is not equivocal either, because the relations share a proportional intelligibility grounded in what the things are. Such recognition depends on analogy in the Thomistic sense, where terms like good signify a real unity expressed differently according to the nature of each being. If, with Ockham, this analogical link between being and value is weakened, then the connection between reality and moral meaning becomes contingent, reducible either to divine command or to human practice. But in that case, the intelligibility of moral concepts dissolves: either they become empty labels lacking intrinsic content, or they fragment into unrelated uses with no unifying ground. The very coherence of moral language thus depends on the analogical structure the reductio brings to light.

There is so much more to say about this.

. . .

Another footnote on Gaita

 

Gaita stands at a point where the phenomena he describes can be taken either as the end of philosophy (i.e., stopping at acknowledgment) or as pointing beyond themselves to a metaphysical account, as I am inclined to do. I assume Gaita would agree with much of my argument against nominalism: moral life is not projection or mere convention, and cases such as the child, remorse, and honesty are not arbitrary but present themselves as demanding acknowledgment. In this sense, the line of thought I am working on is indeed closer to his than to that of Ockham since both Gaita and I resist any account that reduces moral meaning to human imposition. However, Gaita’s discomfort appears not in what is seen but in how it is to be accounted for. Influenced by Wittgenstein, especially in his later philosophy, Gaita maintains that the authority of moral reality is not something that requires, or even admits of, further metaphysical grounding. When one moves from the recognition that the child calls forth love to the claim that there must be an analogical structure of being grounding this, Gaita worries that one is no longer attending to the phenomenon but substituting a theoretical construction for it. That, at least, is how I understand his position.

      This leads to his characteristic resistance to explanatory depth in this domain. For Gaita, moral understanding is fundamentally a matter of seeing rightly rather than explaining more deeply. The demand for a metaphysical ground, whether in terms of analogy, participation, or being, is, in his view, a misplaced demand modeled on forms of explanation appropriate to the natural sciences. The child’s claim upon us is not hidden behind appearances but is present in the reality we encounter. Or so I read him.

     Thus my reductio does not force Gaita into Thomistic metaphysics. While it shows that a thin nominalism cannot account for moral intelligibility, Gaita would deny that the only alternative is a metaphysical account grounded in analogy. Instead, he proposes acknowledgment without theory, in which moral reality is neither constructed nor explained away but faithfully described as it is experienced. To account for moral experience by giving an account of how the world must be in order to make the experience the experience of something real, he would argue, risks making moral reality depend on accepting a philosophical theory, thereby weakening its immediacy and authority. He seeks to preserve the idea that one can fully recognize the claim of the child without any commitment to a metaphysical framework.

   My position, by contrast, expresses the need for a deeper grounding. For whatever reason, I feel that if moral reality is objective and intelligible, it must be grounded in the structure of being itself; otherwise, it collapses into contingency or arbitrariness. Many believe that the world is contingent and arbitrary, and that skews how they think about and experience morality. Gaita believes, I think, that this demand for grounding misunderstands the kind of reality at issue, insisting that moral intelligibility does not require such an ontological foundation. I think we all have metaphysical frameworks, some which leave conceptual space for the moral realities he describes and others not.

      I feel there is a tension within Gaita’s position. He affirms the non-arbitrary, objective character of moral reality while refusing to explain why it is not contingent. Must he, therefore, confront a limit where he must either accept moral reality as primitive or concede the need for a deeper account?

    My reductio does not refute Gaita but perhaps brings his position to this limit. It reveals that the phenomena he so powerfully describes can be interpreted either as the terminus of philosophical reflection or as pointing beyond themselves to a metaphysical ground. The decision between these paths is not forced by the phenomena alone. My worry is that his descriptions (and experiences) depend on a silent metaphysical framework in the background and are only intelligible within this background. Thus metaphysics matters in so far as we have to fight to keep open the conceptual space in which such spontaneous responses of love, remorse, etc. remain intelligible.