"Snàgairean" le M.C. ESCHER (1943)
§4 - EISIMPLEIREAN DE ANAILIS STRUCTAIREIL MHODALACHDAN-CÈILLE EILE GUS ÒRDAGH NAN RAON-LAGH A SHOILLEARACHADH._________________________
§4 - SOME EXAMPLES OF THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF LATER MODALITIES OF MEANING, INTENDED TO GIVE AN INSIGHT INTO THE ORDER OF SUCCESSION OF THE LAW-SPHERES.
_________________________
§4 - Grepen uit de structuur-analyse van kosmisch latere zin-modaliteiten tot verwerving van inzicht in de volgorde der wetskringen.
___________________
Structair ais-bhrathail raon na LOIDIG.
________________
The retrocipatory structure of the LOGICAL aspect [1].
______________________________
[1] How an actual analysis of the modal structure of the analytical aspect is possible will be explained in more detail in the second part of this Volume.
______________________________
In the first place there is an analogical moment to be found in the logical aspect which, as such, refers back to the psychical [sensory] sphere. This is the moment of logical apperception which discloses a retrocipatory meaning-coherence with the perceptive mode of experience inherent in feeling. LEIBNIZ was the first thinker who observed this inner coherence between logical apperception and sensory perception. But he interpreted it in the line of his lex continui, a cosmonomic Idea oriented to his discovery of the differential- and integral calculus.
As a matter of fact conceptual apperception in its first primitive or 'restrictive' state is rigidly bound to sensory representation.
The analytical relation of identity and diversity is immediately applied to sensory images of things and in these images the logical characteristics are analysed in a primitive way. For instance: an animal which has two legs and wings is a bird. A circle is a round thing. Here analytical apperception and sensory feeling-perception seem indeed to pass into one another without sharp limits. Actually the modal boundaries between analytical apperception and sensory perception are implicitly present even in the most primitive concept. They cannot be lost sight of in the analysis of the modal structures without our being involved in theoretical antinomies.
Analytical apperception can only function in the logical life of thought, and here we are confronted with a necessary biotical retrocipation within the modal structure of the logical aspect. The logical life of thought doubtless has a biotic foundation and would be meaningless without this retrocipatory coherence with life in its original modal sense. But it is not reducible to the latter; it is subject to logical and not to biotical laws. It manifests itself in every logical process of thinking, in every act of conceptual analysis, in every logical conclusion.
This biotic analogy in the modal structure of the logical aspect in its turn implies retrocipatory analogies of the physical meaning of energy, of movement, space and number in their original meaning-nuclei.
The analytical principium rationis sufficientis, which rules the logical process of concluding as its norm, is a real analytical principle of causality and shows an inner retrocipatory meaning-coherence with the relation of cause and effect in its original physical sense. This inner coherence urges itself upon human thought to such a degree that in modern philosophy the physical
and the logical principles of causality have often been identified.
The empiricist thinker J. STUART MILL employed the physical concept of causality conceived in the deterministic sense of classical mechanics, in his System of Logic. His theory of causality, called the theory of the condicio sine qua non, was introduced in continental European jurisprudence and was often viewed as an explanation of the logical principle of causality [2].
______________________
[2] Cf. my treatise De modale structuur van het juridisch causaliteitsverband in the Mededilingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Dl. 13 no. 5 (1950).
______________________
In the second part of Vol. I, I have outlined the rise and the development of the rationalist identification of physical and logical causality, and the reduction of the latter to the logical principle of contradiction.
KANT made causality into a transcendental logical category implying the 'pure logical' concept of force as its 'predicable'!
The real state of affairs is that the analytical relation of grounds and conclusion has a patent analogical character and cannot disclose the original meaning of the causal relation. Its validity is restricted to the logical process of concluding, which is a real analytical movement of thought, a procedere from premises to conclusion. The retrocipatory coherence of the logical meaning-aspect with the modal aspect of movement here discloses itself in an evident manner.
The movement of logical thought doubtless has an analogical character referring back to movement in its original modal sense of extensive flowing.
But at the same time it implies a spatial analogy. The analytical process of thinking pre-supposes an analytical (formal) space. Analytical space is a logical order of co-existence, a logical extension in which every analytical element can be localized.
Without this logical space no single analysis would be possible. It can have different 'analytical dimensions' which are only logical analogies of the original spatial ones. In logical space we synthesize a one- or more dimensional analytical multiplicity to a logical unity. The numerical analogy in this analytical synthesis has been explained in an earlier context. But it is not superfluous to stress the difference between this analytical synthesis and the inter-modal synthesis of meaning executed in theoretical thought. The former is only the analytical aspect of the latter. The consequences of this distinction will be explained in more detail in the third part of this volume.
The anticipatory structure of the logical aspect.
Historical, linguistic and social anticipations.
In pre-theoretical thought the logical aspect is only actualized in its retrocipatory structure examined above. Here it manifests itself in a merely restrictive function. In theoretical thought, however, it opens its anticipatory spheres.
The first anticipation which discloses itself in this opening-process is an historical one, viz. that of logical control or mastery. In our introductory examination of the analogical basic concepts we have remarked that the terms mastery, control or command have different meanings. But the fundamental signification appeared to be cultural authority over persons or things corresponding to a controlling manner of form-giving according to a free project. In this original sense it appeared to be used in the science of history, where it needs no further modal qualification.
In the light of our later examinations concerning the modal meaning-structures this is a strong indication that the term control designates the original meaning-kernel of the historical aspect. When in the continuation of our inquiry we shall be engaged in a closer analysis of the modal structure of this aspect, it will appear that this presumption is justified. Provisionally it will be assumed that it is correct.
In theoretical thought we are obliged to give logical form to our concepts and judgments, and because here our analytical activity displays a systematic character we indeed acquire logical control or mastery over our field of inquiry. Pre-theoretical analysis in its unsystematic character remains strictly bound to the sensory images of feeling-perception and shows a rigid uniformity in the course of time. Theoretical logic, on the other hand, has an historical development because it develops power in the process of a free shaping of the human mind.
But the opening of the historical anticipation in the modal structure of the analytical function is not possible without the opening of its linguistic anticipatory sphere. If theoretical thought is to elevate itself to systematic control over its material, it must free itself from the shackles of sensory images and direct itself to general symbols. Theoretical logic discloses a logical symbolism which replaces the sensory images by general signs only representing the abstract terms of analytical relations; it anticipates the lingual symbolism in its analytical process of thought.
Symbolic logic has developed this analytical symbolism to a high degree of perfection. But we must stress the necessity of a clear distinction between logical symbolism in its anticipatory analytical meaning and symbolic denotation in its linguistic sense. The former is not identical with linguistic symbolism but only an anticipatory function of analysis. In the theoretical act of thought logical symbolism cannot be actualized without the means of abstract symbols. But the latter are not themselves logical concepts and analytical relations; they can only denote them in a linguistic sense. Logical symbolism makes the analytical activity explicit, whereas pre-theoretical analysis remains implicit in sensorily founded representations.
The economic anticipation in the modal meaning of logical analysis.
In the opening-process of the logical law-sphere we also detect a modal anticipation of the original modal meaning of the economic law-sphere in the so-called economy of thought. A better term would be 'analytical economy'. This meaning-figure has been mentioned in our introductory consideration of the analogical basic concepts. Just like the other moments of the modal structure, analytical economy reveals itself both on the law-side of the sphere (the principle of economy of thought) and on the subject-side (the logical-economic activity of thinking subjected to this principle). It is doubtless a modal anticipation, not a retrocipation. In other words, the economic law-sphere is founded in the logical sphere and not the other way round. This appears convincingly from the fact that the meaning-moment of logical economy can only function in deepened, theoretical thought. In pre-theoretical logical thought — rigidly bound in its analysis to its sensory substratum of feeling as it is — analytical economy cannot develop because the pre-theoretical concept is not systematic.
The principle of economy of thought has played an important part in western logic. It was known, though not explicitly formulated, in Greek thought.
ARISTOTLE appealed to it in his critique of the Platonic Ideas. Especially in medieval and modern nominalism this principle has been given its logical formulation.
OCCAM formulated it in his well-known adage: 'Principia praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda.'
It must be clear that both logical control and logical symbolism require economy of thought, and that the latter appeals to the two former. But it must be denied that logical economy would be nothing but an application of the general economic principle [3] to human thought and that it would embrace the single task and ideal of scientific activity.
___________________________
[3] Probably the older 'objectivistic' formulation of this principle in economic theory has favoured its elevation to a general teleological standard of rational human activity. In this formulation it gave only expression to the striving after the highest result at the smallest costs.
This was the formulation of the technical-economic principle of efficiency rather than of the economic principle proper. It lacked the very moment of the alternative destination of scarce goods for the different needs after a scale of urgency, which is essential in a sparing administering of economic goods proper.
The theory of limiting profit has intended to give a better formulation to the principle concerned. But in accordance with its subjectivistic conception of economic value, it gave a circumscription which was psychological rather than economical.
See on this subject: PREISER, Das Rationalprinzip in der Wirtschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik (Jahrbücher f. Nat. Ökonomie, Bnd. 168, 1943; MARCHAL, Gegenstand und Wesen der Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Zeitschr. f. d. gesamte Staatswissenschaft Bnd, 106, 1950); MICHAEL KROLL, Das Rätsel "Volkswirtschaft" (Schmollers Jahrbuch f. Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, 73. Jrg. 3e Heft 1953, p. 1 fl.); and especially the great work of the Dutch economist P. HENNIPMAN, Economisch Motief en Economisch Principe (1943), who denies that the principle in its proper economical sense has any real signification in economic theory (p. 355 fl.). But this author has arrived at this negative conclusion, because he supposed it could not account for the factual behaviour of man in economic affairs. He observes that also irrational economic behaviour is a real economic activity. This is doubtless right but does not derogate from the fact that it can be an un-economical behaviour. The latter, too, has a modal economic meaning. The principle of economy proper cannot have a causal psychological [sense], but only a normative economical sense.
__________________________
MACH and AVENARIUS have absolutized this principle and therefore lost sight of its real place in the modal structure of the logical aspect and overlooked its analogical character. They have neglected its analytical qualification [4].
_______________________
[4] This is also the objection raised by M. SCHLICK against the conception of MACH and AVENARIUS. He, too, has stressed the logical character of the principle.
_______________________
The same must be said with reference to W. JAMES' eulogy of the economy of thought according to which the tendency to frugality, viz. to frugality with respect to the means of thought, would be the philosophical impulse 'par excellence'.
This absolutizing of the principle should be seen in close connection with the pragmatistic conception of scientific truth.
KANT was certainly no pragmatist, and he saw clearly that economy of thought pre-supposes transcendental conditions of knowledge. Nevertheless in his Critique of Pure Reason he speaks about the 'economizing of principles' as 'a law which is not only an economical principle of human reason, but rather an inner law of nature'. Here, too, the specific logical character of the principle is completely overlooked.
An accurate analysis of the modal structure of the logical aspect is necessary if we want to acquire a clear insight into its true meaning and the boundaries of its applicability.
The principle of economy in its logical qualification presupposes the general logical principles implied in the retrocipatory structure of the analytical law-sphere: those of identity, contradiction and the sufficient ground. Analytic economy can only deepen their modal meaning but becomes meaningless apart from them.
Especially in jurisprudence the principle of economy is often abused to justify the introduction of theoretical fictions which must mask the antinomies caused by the misinterpretation of the juridical basic concepts.
E.g., the figure of the legal person is called a fiction or an artificial construction, because only natural persons are supposed to have a will. But the fact is lost sight of that the concept of the legal subject as such is a concept of a modal function and may never be identified with a real person. In other words, if the juristic person (corporation) is called a fiction, the legal subjectivity of a natural person should be called so as well.
The misconception of this state of affairs began with the introduction of a psychological concept of will. The latter is unserviceable in theoretical jurisprudence because the juridical aspect of volition is different from the psychological one. Even to a natural person we cannot ascribe a will in the psychological sense, when we are theoretically confronted with his function as a juristic subject. One should be aware that the legal concept of will is an analogical basic concept of jurisprudence which can only have a modal-juridical meaning, though it may not be conceived apart from its inter-modal coherence with the psychological
concept of volition.
When it is alleged that the 'psychological will' is the only real one, we must reply that no single special science, aware of its boundaries, can pretend that its special theoretical viewpoint is capable of embracing 'reality' in an integral sense.
What is called 'psycho-physical reality' is an absolutized theoretical abstraction which has eliminated the entire series of normative aspects of human experience and consequently has no room for the normative juridical sphere.
Since the modal juristic meaning of volition cannot he eliminated from the juridical aspect it was called a fiction of 'legal technique' which finds its justification only in the principle of economy of thought.
The famous German jurist RUDOLPH VON JHERING held this technique to be the highest development of legal science, though in his last period he has abandoned this view.
This conception is based upon a twofold misinterpretation of the principle concerned. In the first place the fact is overlooked that it can have only a theoretical-logical character; merely technical fictions can never be 'economical' in a logical, but only in a technical sense. Legal technique concerns the formation of law, not legal theory. In the second place the fact is lost sight of that the logical principle of economy because of its analytic character does not permit itself to be employed apart from the principle of the sufficient ground. In its theoretical application it cannot derogate from the primordial scientific requirement to account for the states of affairs met with in the specific modal field of research. It can only imply that this requirement ought to be satisfied in a logical economical way, with the elimination of really superfluous grounds. Theoretical fictions, however, which are introduced in order to mask antinomies caused by a fundamental misinterpretation of the legal basic concepts, can never be justified by means of this anticipatory logical principle [5].
__________________________
[5] When v. JHERING in his famous Geist des römischen Rechtes (Volume II) argues that the juristic conception of the 'res' or of personality is nothing but an artificial expanding of the natural naive concept of a thing or a person respectively, he falls a victim to a fundamental misunderstanding of the relation between naive experience and theoretical thought. He overlooks the fact that the modal legal concepts of object and subject cannot be artificial expansions of the natural idea of a thing, since they refer only to modal functions, not to concrete things. A human person is never identical with his juristic subject-function. He can only have the latter. And the same holds with respect to the relation of a concrete thing to its juristic function as an object.
__________________________
At present VON JHERING'S view of the juristic technique is no longer generally accepted.
In the footsteps of the French jurist FRANCOIS GENY many modern students of jurisprudence make a sharp distinction between juridical science and juridical technique and deny that in the former fictions may be justified.
But now they have entangled themselves in another misunderstanding of the task of science. According to them, legal science would have to reduce the juristic basic concepts, wrongly conceived by them as 'technical fictions', to the 'only real physico-psychical states of affairs'. The principle of economy of thought was only accepted with respect to legal technique in which, as we saw, it cannot play any role.
This may suffice to establish our statement that only an accurate analysis of the modal structure of the logical aspect and that of its theoretical 'Gegenstand' can guarantee a correct insight into the meaning of the principle concerned.
Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II/ Part I/ Chapt 2/§4 pp 118-126)
