Man is the Measure

MAN IS THE MEASURE

A Cordial Invitation to the Central Problems of Philosophy

REUBEN ABEL

THE FREE PRESS 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

1976 The Free Press

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Copyright © 1976 by The Free Press, A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abel, Reuben

Man is the measure.

Bibliography:  p.

Includes index.

1. Philosophy.  2. Man.  3. Cosmology.

I. Title.

B53.A23   128   75-16646

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-83636-2

eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-1840-5

www.SimonandSchuster.com

COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint from the following material:

Charles Sherrington, Man on His Nature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 264-265.

George Sylvester Viereck, Slaves, My Flesh and Blood (New York: Liveright, 1931 [out of print]). Copyright © 1959 by Peter Viereck.

Judd Marmor, Psychoanalytic Therapy as an Educational Process, Psychoanalytic Education, vol. 5 (1962).

René Dubos, Biological Individuality, The Columbia Forum, vol. XII, no. 1 (Spring 1969), pp. 5-9 passim. Copyright © 1969 by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.

Moses Burg, A Psychoanalytic Study of Japanese Linguistic Symbolic Processes, Annual Journal of the Asia-Africa Cultural Research Institute (March 1969), pp. 1-25 passim.

Paul Bowles, Notes Taken in Thailand, Without Stopping (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972). Copyright © 1972 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, Four Quartets (1943). Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber, Ltd., London.

Mark Van Doren, Past Is Past. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., from Collected and New Poems, 1924-1963 by Mark Van Doren, Copyright © 1963 by the Estate of Mark Van Doren.

Lines from a poem by Stephen Spender. Reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.

To Marion and to Ernest sine quibus non

Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Preface

Introduction: The Philosophic Enterprise

The loose fit between mind and the world …

no unique structure …

philosophy and science are complementary …

the fear of knowledge …

philosophical analysis.

1.  Metaphysics: What in the World Is There?

Philosophy and science …

varieties of metaphysics …

reality …

the aim of metaphysics …

what is there? …

reduction and the reductive fallacy …

things and events …

other classifications …

naturalism …

absolute idealism …

mechanism …

determinism and chance …

causality: various interpretations; some problems …

universal …

necessary for knowledge …

their pragmatic status …

the truth of metaphysics.

2.  The Basis of Knowledge

The problem of knowledge …

knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description …

knowing that and knowing how …

knowledge and experience …

propositional knowledge …

four requirements … nine kinds of good reason.

3.  Our Knowledge of the External World

Perceptual knowledge is shaped by our senses; therefore limited, subjective, deceptive, discontinuous, outdated …

primary and secondary qualities …

sense data … things as constructs out of sense data … perceptual knowledge not certain, but pragmatically justified.

4.  The Task of Perception

Learning how to see …

perception interprets (seeing-as) and applies concepts (seeing what-is-the-case) …

no innocent eye …

perception selects … and solves a problem …

do things have a natural look? …

persistent influence of convention …

how primitive people look at photographs …

perspective …

influence of belief …

hearing-as …

perception as active inquiry …

we must cook the raw sensation before we can digest it.

5.  When Do We Attain Certainty?

Analytic and synthetic propositions … the analytic are a priori (known to be certainly true) by virtue of their meanings, but with no factual content …

ambiguity possible, but removable …

Kant’s view …

relevance of growth of knowledge …

of language …

recent attacks on this distinction …

its pragmatic justification …

alleged examples of synthetic a priori.

6.  Logic, Mathematics, and Metaphysics

Aristotelian logic …

three laws of thought …

criticism of traditional logic: propositional forms insufficiently precise; relations and sentence connectives ignored; laws of thought unclear …

the new logic …

divorce of logic from metaphysics …

temporal inference and timeless implication …

reason alone does not provide knowledge of the world …

logic as a calculus that functions uniquely to regulate inquiry, in pursuit of human ideals …

arithmetic and geometry both analytic … and not separable from logic …

the limits of logic …

the completeness of arithmetic …

Brouwer …

self-reference …

the Theory of Types …

Godel’s theorem.

7.  Meaning and Naming: How Language Bites on to the World

When are words meaningful? …

Aristotle’s categories …

reference: how language bites …

names … descriptions …

sense and reference …

connotation and denotation; intension and extension …

propositions and sentences …

some problems …

referential opacity …

Russell’s Theory of Descriptions …

names and acquaintance …

three kinds of sign: icon, index, symbol …

modern emphasis on language …

pragmatic and empiricist theories of meaning …

their importance, defects, and residual legacy.

8.  Truth and Belief

What is truth? correspondence, coherence, and pragmatist theories …

suitability of pragmatism to modern science … a final consensus? …

belief and action … and will …

and obligation.

9.  Science, Facts, and Hypotheses

Scientists: their methods, limitations, objectives; selection of a theory …

facts: relative to human organism, instruments, memory, personality, and language … and especially to hypothesis: which must be falsifiable, true, simple, beautiful, general, non-statistical, show analogies, and satisfy certain metaphysical criteria.

10.  Scientific Explanation

Varieties of explanation … psychological aspects …

science explains (i.e., allays doubt) by devising concepts to embed a fact within a general law …

some misconceptions …

progressive increase in generality or scope … can it ever end? …

explanation by reduction …

system…

emergence …

observation and theory mutually re-inforcing …

how the new theory incorporates the old one … scientific explanation by unobservables …

explanation and prediction …

science does not grow in a straight line: adventitious factors: choice of problems, chance, obscurity in logic of discovery, extra-scientific influences, differing opinions as to what requires explanation … fifteen examples … it is not obvious what is obvious … eleven current explanations …

uneliminable anthro-pocentric aspect of growth of science.

11.  The Social Sciences

Does the scientific study of human actions require the unique method of Verstehen (introspection and empathy) ? …

Twelve claims considered: experiments; repeatability and uniqueness; isolation and complexity; prediction; constants; unobservability of motives; qualitative data; influence of the past; interaction of the social scientist with his subjects; values; holism and contextuality of social facts; ideal types …

but differences in subject matter, technique, and degree do not exempt areas of science from the common logic of justification … Sociology of knowledge: social and historical coefficients in science; value judgments taken as facts; ideology … but this is empirical and remediable, not logical … Cultural relativity of conceptual framework: we are imprisoned in implicit basic presuppositions which we are not aware of … but this too is empirical only, and surmountable by continued growth.

12.  Space, Time, and Matter

The ultimate particles of matter …

now conceptual waves of probability …

Pauli’s exclusion principle and Leibniz’ identity of indiscernibles …

space, time, and motion: traditional views …

their merger in relativity theory …

irreversibility of time …

non-Euclidean geometries …

which is correct?

13.  Is There Purpose in Nature? The Evidence of Evolution

Darwin’s essential contribution: open-ended natural selection …

which favors whichever species leaves more descendants …

genetic mutations as the mechanism …

Nature’s lavish ingenuity is random …

apparently purposive adaptation is ambiguous, better explained by function …

Nature as the great destroyer …

teleonomy …

Nature’s successes …

can evolution be predicted? …

species redefined …

problems in theory of evolution …

any trends? …

sex and death …

what is life? …

our moral responsibility.

14.  Human Nature and Scientific Method in Anthropology, Psychology, and Psychoanalysis

Is there any consistent group of traits which identify human beings? …

typologies …

man is found only in societies …

no social or cultural constants …

complex evolutionary inter-action between man and culture …

functionalism and structuralism …

psychological models of man …

behaviorism … intervening variables …

two supplementary directions in psychology: toward the atomic part, and toward the structured whole …

psychoanalysis: a therapy and a theory …

how verified? analyst and patient jointly manufacture the data.

15.  The Study of History: What Is the Past?

We study history in order to understand how we came to be what we now are …

the Past not fixed, but re-constructed, and inferred …

facts selected and composed to be meaningful to us today …

patterns suggested but not uniquely dictated by the facts …

absolute idealism less plausible than historical pluralism …

no indisputable hard core of certainty, but history is not therefore incurably subjective …

frameworks, or philosophies of history: cyclical; functional; progressive; Christian; organismic …

the Zeitgeist …

the myth of historical inevitability …

criteria for appraisal … history explains genetically.

16.  Probability, Rationality, and Induction

Diverse meanings of probability: belief; weight of evidence; deductive or a priori; relative frequency …

importance in science …

diverse views of rationality …

can it be defined? but no alternative to reliance on reasons …

induction and the uniformity of nature …

the new riddle of induction …

paradoxes of confirmation …

pragmatic function of logic in inquiry.

17.  The Person

The Self as a metaphysical ultimate …

I and my body …

continuity of the person: an inner essence, or a series of accidents? …

criterion of individuation for same person …

genotype and phenotype …

bodily form …

discontinuity …

when does life begin? when end? …

memory …

illness and disease …

dialectic between rights of the person and needs of society …

have you an absolute right to your body? …

transplants …

creation of the person a never-ending process.

18.  Mind and Body

States of consciousness are private and non-spatial …

emotions … pain …

a conceptual problem, how to explain inter-action of the mental or non-spatial with the physical or spatial …

Dualism; its difficulties …

mind now seen not as an entity, or ghost in the machine, but as dispositions or ways of behaving …

scientific progress in correlating the physical with the mental …

physicalism …

double language theory …

six difficulties in knowledge of one’s own states of consciousness.

19.  Minds, Machines, Meanings, and Language

Intuition …

twelve elements in its decline …

minds and machines …

language and mind …

origin of language …

natural languages described …

constant change and expansion …

metaphor … mis-use? …

the judicial process …

the atmosphere of words …

synonymy …

varieties of linguistic structure …

peculiarities of language …

word origins …

antithetical senses of primal words …

vagueness …

ambiguity …

context …

can language be made perfect? …

how language can mislead us …

no meanings apart from words, although meanings are not identical with words …

the functions of language: cognitive; expressive; performatory; others …

ostension …

mental acts can not alter established meanings …

animal communication vs. human language …

Chomsky vs. Skinner on how to explain this …

no specific linguistic capacity need be postulated …

language is continuous with other human activities.

20.  Intention, Action, and Free Will

Intention as explanation for human actions …

but difficult to clarify or pin-point …

twenty-five questions …

reasons for actions are not causes …

human actions as logically primitive …

but difficulties …

freedom; determinism; fatalism …

freedom from external compulsion: what is? … choice by dominant motive …

responsibility …

freedom does not prevent science of human behavior …

self-determination by the growing person …

every man is a self-made man.

21.  Form in Art

Various senses of art …

difficulties of classification …

functions of art … the imitation of nature …

art as a language …

does not require unambiguous meanings …

the artist’s intention …

intentional fallacy …

variety of true interpretations …

what is a work of art? …

form …

five quandaries …

a status imputed to sensuous materials intentionally formed into a unity by a person, for the sake of doing so, and to evoke a response …

some problems thus resolved …

contemporary weakening of formal requirements …

art as a criterion of the human?

22.  Creativity

What does creative mean? …

what does the artist add to his materials? …

does creative new? …

does the artist know in advance what his work will be? …

is creativity passive? …

irrational? …

can the process be described, either by introspection or by observation? …

Freudian analysis …

Jungian archetypes …

creativity as quintessentially human.

23.  Man Is the Measure

What man can know hinges on what man is …

some dimensions of the human condition …

what this does not entail …

we know what we are, but we know not what we may be.

Guide to Further Reading

Index

Preface to the Paperback Edition

THIS REISSUE of Man is the Measure gave me the opportunity to reread it with a critical eye. I must admit, I was pleased! Of course, after twenty years, history has caught up with some of my claims. For example, in considering the possibility that there is life else where in this infinite universe, I boldly said (p. 149), no slightest bit of evidence exists. Well, now it does! A tiny bit of organic material has been found, embedded in a Martian rock. And, in discussing whether arithmetic is complete (p. 61), I declared that the famous last theorem of Fermat remains unproven after two hundred years. But now an ingenious new proof has been discovered, and is generally accepted. This bears on the comparison of minds and machines (p. 212), as does the problem of whether machines can be programmed to recognize patterns and to translate natural languages. There has been considerable progress here, but the problems cannot be regarded as solved.

My invitation to the central problems of philosophy is, I hope, as cordial as ever.

Preface

I TRY in this book to bridge three different gulfs: first, the abyss that scares the layman away from professional philosophy; second, the no-man’s land between philosophy and other sorts of intellectual inquiry; and third, the chasm that unhappily exists between the two disparate aims of philosophy, namely, critical analysis and speculative insight.

The first bridge has fallen into disrepair in our times, but was regularly traversed by many great philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition. I have in mind such notable figures as Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Mill, Russell, James, Schiller, and Dewey. They all succeeded in imparting pleasure and profit to their professional colleagues, as well as to the reader who has no familiarity with technical philosophy; yet they did so without distorting or minimizing the problems, and without patronizing the novice.

The second gap I attempt to close is the one that segregates philosophy (narrowly defined) from other significant cognitive enterprises. Thus I comment upon or try to analyze philosophical problems in such diverse fields as psychology, anthropology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, physics, biological evolution, mathematics, historiography, poetry, and art.

The third gulf is a transatlantic one, both literally (that is, between the English-speaking nations and continental Europe) and figuratively. It firmly separates the analytic philosophers, who insist on logic, precision, and clarity, from the imaginative metaphysicians, who claim that their vision resists the rigor of those requirements.

I have also tried, on many of the issues in philosophy, to present a variety of points of view with which I do not agree, so that the reader will have some notion of why I argue as vehemently as I sometimes do. My own position will (I imagine) be variously referred to as pragmatist, or humanist, or naturalist, or empiricist, or instrumentalist, or positivist, or analytical, or neo-Kantian, or even existentialist. Dear reader, be chary! In order to be coherent, it is not necessary to carry a banner.

I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Ernest Nagel, who has lighted the way for a generation of American philosophers; to Sidney Hook, Paul Edwards, and Donald Levy, who have also gone over the entire manuscript; to my late mentors Felix Kaufmann and Horace M. Kallen; and to the editorial talents of Robert Wallace and Margaret Miner. But my debts are much greater. I have been thinking about these problems, as well as teaching, studying, reading, and discussing them for so long, and with such concentration, that I no longer can identify how much of this book is my own and how much has been absorbed. I make little effort to document the attribution which scholarship requires. If I had his audacity, I would repeat Wittgenstein’s remark, in the preface to his Tractatus: It is a matter of indifference to me whether the thoughts that I have had have been anticipated by someone else. After all, no one ever said anything for the first time! I would rather claim no originality for whatever is valuable here, and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the great community of Philosophy.

Introduction: The Philosophic Enterprise

—Protagoras

Man is the measure of all things: of those that are, that they are; and of those that are not, that they are not.

THIS BOOK is not an introduction to philosophy, although it invites the layman to consider most of the problems dealt with by philosophers; it is not a survey of philosophy, although it scrutinizes much of the philosophical terrain; and it is not a history of philosophy, although it discusses many of the important philosophical traditions.

My intention, rather, is to put forth a philosophical point of view about man and the world—a point of view boldly stated a long time ago by Protagoras, but perhaps never fully grasped, nor properly applied. We can best make sense, I maintain, of the great human enterprise by taking into account the fact that it is, peculiarly and unavoidably, human. All our attempts to understand the world, to grasp this Sorry Scheme of Things entire,—all of science, metaphysics, poetry, history, art, and religion—depend upon certain distinctive characteristics of Homo sapiens. And, it would be misleading to speak as if man were a clearly fixed datum. What man is can best be understood in terms of how he came to be what he now is and what (as the geneticists make us so vividly aware) he can make of himself in time to come. The human endeavor to apprehend the world is an open-ended process. My aim is to exhibit the loose fit between mind and the world, by analysis of some of the aspects and limitations of knowledge. I hope to make manifest a radical and irreducible anthropo-centrism.

(The universe—so far as we can tell!—was not made for man. But neither is man the casual by-blow of nature. Intelligence is part of the world, not alien to it; it is nature becoming aware of itself. It is quite certain that there was a time when intelligent life did not exist on this planet; and it is perhaps equally certain that at some future time such life will no longer exist. However, it is not at all clearas we see in Chapter 13—whether or not, and in what sense, the existence of intelligence on this earth may be called an accident.)

Thus, in the following chapters I argue that there is no such thing as the structure of the world. Any attempt to say how things really are, or what objectively exists, requires a set of concepts (or terms, or symbols); and these concepts are not dictated unequivocally by the facts. Indeed, to refer to the facts or to the given as if it were obvious just what is given to us as fact is to disregard how the idiosyncrasies of human sensation, perception, and cognition select and shape the facts. Nor is there any clear and unambiguous single meaning to the truth. Can we assert that logic and mathematics, at least, are independent of human conceptualization, eternally subsistent in their crystalline purity? Is there a basic ultimate structure of mind? or of language? Can we reach the bedrock of certainty in knowledge of one’s own self? Or does even self-knowledge have built-in limitations? Is the past irrevocably fixed and unalterable? Or is the notion of an absolute past no clearer than that of the absolute given? Does art produce a kind of knowledge, and serve as a criterion of the human? These questions are examined and clarified.

But the inevitable anthropocentrism of knowledge does not imply that rational scientific inquiry is futile. There are philosophers who are scornful of science; I am not among them. I know of few things more misguided than the recent proof by an esteemed philosopher that, since man’s essence is unique, evolution is impossible. If the claims of a philosopher contradict those of a scientist, one or the other is confused or mistaken; but only prejudice will decide in advance. It is presumptuous for the philosopher to disparage the procedures of the scientist, and it is stultifying for the scientist to ignore the logical analysis of his concepts and suppositions. Science and philosophy are different kinds of intelligent inquiry, yet both are concerned with explaining the world. If in the long run they do not complement each other, the human enterprise will suffer. The absorption in philosophy without science may be illustrated by St. Simeon Stylites, who lived on top of a pillar for thirty-seven years; or by Cratylus, who, it is said, found language so unsatisfactory that he gave up talking altogether. Any philosopher who fears to lose his soul because of science is a lost soul to begin with.

Indeed, there is a recurring intellectual aberration that may be barbarously christened epistemophobia: an irrational fear of knowledge. This fear may appear as Gray’s where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise or as Keats’ Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings. Or it may emerge in the many currents of superstition, mythology, mysticism, dogmatic super-naturalism, and opposition to reason, which swirl through much of the twentieth century. Or it may be seen in the remark of former Premier George Papadopoulos of Greece that schooling that only broadened the child’s mind without fitting him for useful social work was dangerous; he added that much of the unrest in the world was due to excess knowledge, and concluded by asking whether it is really useful for everybody to know everything.

I consider it profoundly irrational, and ultimately delusive, to base any notion of human happiness, or utility, or dignity, upon the value of self-deception or ignorance.

Philosophy is, as its etymology reveals, the love of wisdom. Such love may issue in speculative synoptic vision, or it may issue in methodical critical analysis. In either event, however, philosophy is the kind of insight into fundamental questions that first requires that we make clear exactly what we are asking. In order to be profound, it is neither necessary to be obscure, nor sufficient to be vague! Thus, when we ask such questions as, is knowledge ever certain? or, is knowledge possible without language? or, are any statements necessarily true? or, does a computer think? or, how can a man be held accountable for his actions if all events have causes? or, is there a purpose in nature? or, are space and time infinitely divisible? we must analyze all these terms in order to ascertain how to proceed. But these philosophical questions differ from equally puzzling questions in science (such as, how did life originate? or, how many different kinds of subatomic particles are there? or, what causes cancer?) in that, usually, it is not additional facts that are needed. It has therefore been remarked that philosophical problems are not so much to be solved as to be dissolved. In any event, they seldom have simple solutions. Sometimes they have no solutions at all, which is part of what I mean by the loose fit of mind to the world. However, to realize this constraint is to enlarge our understanding. Even if philosophical analysis does not always produce new knowledge, or get us as far along the road to enlightenment as we would wish, it is nonetheless essential that we prefer articulate reasoned uncertainty over inarticulate or irrational dogma.

Let us begin our inquiry with the traditional core of philosophy, namely, metaphysics.

I Metaphysics: What in the World Is There?

THE PHILOSOPHER, the scientist, and the artist are all trying to describe the same world; they all want to tell us what is really there. But they do it in different ways. The artist endeavors to convey his insights by painting limp watches, red mountains, and three-eyed women. The scientist aims at factual accuracy, predictability, and control. The philosopher seeks conceptual clarity and precision. Thus, the scientist relies on what he can observe, whereas the philosopher asks what observe means. Do you observe what is really there when using a microscope? or a telescope? or X rays? or television? The scientist and the philosopher, unlike the artist, are expected to give reasons for what they say; but they give different kinds of reasons.

Varieties of Metaphysics

Metaphysics is that branch of philosophy which attempts to comprehend the universe as a whole—not so much by examining it in detail (which is the procedure of science) as by analyzing and organizing the ideas and concepts by means of which we examine and think about the world. Metaphysical presuppositions often determine the way we approach other central problems in philosophy. Thus materialism, for example, is the metaphysical theory that the motion of matter (which is anything that occupies space) can in principle account for all that there is in the world; whatever exists can be explained by physical conditions. The difficulty materialism encounters is how to fit consciousness and purposiveness into that format. Idealism takes as the fundamental and irreducible feature of the universe the existence of mind or spirit (whether subjective or objective, theist or pantheist). The drawback of idealism is that, in all its many versions, it depreciates the commonsense world of material things. The idealist in metaphysics, as we see in the next few chapters, is likely to be a rationalist rather than an empiricist in epistemology. Materialism and idealism are both monistic metaphysical theories; that is, each claims that there is only one kind of thing in the world. The metaphysics of dualism, however, posits two ultimate categories, mind and matter, neither of which can be reduced to the other. The dualist’s problem is to explain how mind and matter, if they are radically different, can ever influence or affect each other (as we examine in Chapter 18).

There are many other metaphysical positions. Aristotle called for eight (or sometimes ten) categories, or kinds of properties, to describe the ultimate substances that underlie everything else. These are the categories we cite in Chapter 7 as determining whether a proposition is meaningful or not. Kant was the first to recognize that certain alleged facts about the world are not really properties of things, but rather of the ways in which we organize our knowledge. Causality, for example, is not an inherent attribute of events, but rather provides the form for our cognitive discourse about the world; it is one of the categories of our understanding. Things cannot ever come within our experience or sensibility except insofar as they conform to those categories. Hegel devised some eighty metaphysical categories (such as quality, quantity, and measure) that go through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in a dialectical process. Peirce worked out an unusual schema involving three metaphysical levels which he designated, appropriately, as firstness, secondness, and thirdness.

These and other metaphysical doctrines have been attacked and defended over the centuries. The attacks are often violent, but never fatal; old philosophies do not die, they merely fade away. A metaphysics is not the sort of thing that can be proved or disproved by anything that happens; it need not submit to any test, since it can specify what a test is. Hylozoism (the view that all matter is alive) still has its advocates. Solipsism (the theory that only I exist) is irrefutable—Schopenhauer said that it needed not a refutation but a cure.

The term reality often enters the discussion at this point, but it is not of much help. All metaphysicians claim to distinguish what is real from what is mere appearance, but they can seldom agree on a criterion. Plato said that the bed you sleep on is less real than the Form, or Idea, of The Bed. Your bed may have lumps, but The Bed is perfect; your bed did not exist at one time and, someday, will disappear, but The Bed is eternal. Particular things for Plato are what they are because they imitate or partake of or participate in the Forms or Ideas; it is only these Forms that are truly real. Kant said that reality is that which is connected with perception according to laws. Hegel epitomized idealism when he declared that the essence of reality is consciousness. William James said, anything is real of which we find ourselves obliged to take account in any way. For Croce, physical facts have no reality, whereas art … is eminently real. Other philosophers, however, have insisted that reality is forever hidden from us by a veil of illusion. Thus the word reality tends to become a term of praise rather than a useful descriptive concept; it carries an agreeable afflatus without dependence on any definite meaning, says Morris Cohen.

The Aim of Metaphysics: What Is There?

The aim of metaphysics is to account for all that there is, and only for what there is, in as simple, complete, and compendious a scheme as possible. The metaphysician wants to sort into the fewest categories all that the