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On logic, intersubjectivity, and meaning: is reality an assumption we just don't need?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2012

OLIVER KESSLER
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Extract

The idea that our world is not just a mixture of unrelated incidents but shows some intelligible characteristics is probably the starting point of every analysis in International Relations (IR). We assume that what happens shows structure and significant connections of processes and flows. Unfortunately, opinions diverge soon thereafter: how does that assumed structure relate to our minds? Is it independent of our theories, cultural presuppositions, or opinions? What kind of objectivity can we hope for? Critical realists and radical constructivists seem to entertain different ideas about what the ‘ontological status of reality’ is and whether and how we can know about it. An intellectual encounter between Colin Wight and Friedrich Kratochwil has shown to what extent related questions about intersubjectivity, reference, and meaning touch upon questions about the logos. Interestingly enough, both agree that the ‘classic’ bivalent logic provides only an insufficient grounding for an adequate understanding of the world. Yet both are silent on providing reasons why this is the case. Hence, it might well be that constructivists and critical realists actually do share some reservation or critique.

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Review of International Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 253 - 265
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Copyright © British International Studies Association 2012

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References

1 A crucial concept at this point is the notion of truth. Various strands in constructivist and Critical Realist thought alike seem to entertain different convictions. A reconstruction of these differences and their implications would require a longer discussion than this article can provide. In the context of Critical Realism, an intriguing reference can be found in Bhaskar, Roy, ‘Where do we go from here’, in Bhaskar, Roy and Hartwig, Mervyn (eds), The Formation of Critical Realism: A Personal Perspective (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 195–215, in particular p. 215Google Scholar. I thank Benjamin Herborth for pointing this out to me. A good discussion from a constructivist perspective, see Kratochwil, Friedrich, Rules, Norms and Decisions: On the condition of practical and legal reasoning in international relations and domestic affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 29 and 149ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an overview on different truth theories see for example Schmitt, Frederick F., Theories of Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003)Google Scholar.

2 Kratochwil, Friedrich, ‘Of False Promises and Safe Bets: A Plea for a Pragmatic Perspective in Theory Building’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 10:1 (2007), pp. 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wight, Colin, ‘Inside the epistemological cave all bets are off’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 10:1 (2007), pp. 40–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Wight's endnote 10 on p. 253 in this respect reads: ‘The rejection of formal analytical logic requires qualification, for to reject it in absolute terms is to affirm it. Like Derrida, I do not reject “all or nothing” logic in total. Some things are susceptible to this form of logic and some are not.’ It would be interesting to know more about what bits and pieces he accepts and what not – and on what basis.

4 See Bhaskar, Roy, A Realist Theory of Science (London: Verso, 1997)Google Scholar; and Patomäki, Heikki, After International Relations (London: Routledge, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I thank an anonymous reader to point out this deficiency in a previous draft and point this literature out to me.

5 One caveat is in order. Given the objective of this article, the following discussion does neither engage with Critical Realist positions, nor does it ‘proof’ its relevance for IR literature narrowly defined. The relevance of this discussion results from previous debates that raised these points. This could be read as some bias or that this contribution is too far away from IR. However, the ‘excluded’ dimensions are included through the very objective of the article.

6 Wight, ‘Inside the epistemological cave’, p. 42.

7 See Kratochwil, Friedrich and Kessler, Oliver, ‘Systems Theory between Explaining and Understanding’, in Albert, Mathias, Cederman, Lars-Eric, and Wendt, Alexander (eds), New Systems Theories of World Politics (London: Palgrave, 2010)Google Scholar. See also Kessler, Oliver, ‘From Agents and Structures to Minds and Bodies: of supervenience, quantum and the linguistic turn’, Journal for International Relations and Development, 10 (2007), pp. 243–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For paradoxes see Grelling, Nelson, ‘Bemerkungen zu den Paradoxien von Russell und Burali-Forti’ Abhandlungen der Fries'schen Schule, 2 (1908), pp. 301–33Google Scholar; Rescher, Nicholas, Paradoxes: their roots, range and resolution (Chicago: Open Court, 2001)Google Scholar. For the importance of Russell's paradox for early analytic philosophy see Dummett, Michael, Logical Basis of Metaphysics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, and Nagel, Ernest and Newman, James, Gödel's Proof (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar.

9 For a discussion of basic ideas see Bloor, David, Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions (London: Routledge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Miller, Alexander and Wight, Crispin, Rule-following and Meaning (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002)Google Scholar. In IR, the philosophy of Wittgenstein has been explored in particular by Onuf, Nicolas, World of Our Making (Columbia: University of Southern Carolina Press, 1989), p. 42 ffGoogle Scholar; Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules; see also Kessler, Oliver, ‘From Agents and Structures to Minds and Bodies’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 10:1 (2007), pp. 243–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 See, for example, Polanyi, Michael, The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967)Google Scholar.

11 Bourdieu, Pierre, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge. Polity Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Margolis, Joseph, ‘Pierre Bourdieu: Habitus and the Logic of Practice’, in Shusterman, R. (ed.), Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999)Google Scholar. For other alternatives see, for example, Lakoff, George and Nâuänez, Rafael E., Where mathematics comes from: how the embodied mind brings mathematics into being (New York: Basic Books, 2000)Google Scholar.

12 See in particular supra 1.

13 Questions of identity are of course nicely captured in the Cartesian ‘ego’ or Kant's transcendental subject in his transcendental aesthetic. One of the most intriguing exchanges in this respect is actually in Alexander, H. G. (ed.), The Leibniz-Clark Correspondence (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1956)Google Scholar. For a detailed description of monads see Mates, Benson, The philosophy of Leibniz. Metaphysics and language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Hartz, Glenn A., Leibniz's Final System: Monads, Matter, and Animals (London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar.

14 See in particular Aristotle's Metaphysik III, Chapter 4. A fun page is {www.non-contradiction.com}. Of relevance in this respect is the question of ‘dialectics’, the principle of double negation and the ‘negation of negation’. For the latter see Taylor, Charles, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Tertium non datur is most famously known by its associated distinction of ‘appearance’ and ‘being’. See Theunissen, Michael, Schein und Sein (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1978)Google Scholar.

16 Heidegger, Martin, Der Satz vom Grund, 6th edn (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2006)Google Scholar.

17 See fn. 12 above.

18 See in particular the recent publications by Alexander Wendt, in particular Alexander Wendt, ‘Flatland: The Quantum Mind and the International Hologram’, in Albert, Cederman and Wendt, New Systems Theories. Consider in this context Einstein's twin paradox. It introduces a spatial-temporal aspect to identity. For a description see for example Bohm, David, The Special Theory of Relativity (London: Routledge 2006 [1965]), p. 68Google Scholar.

19 This unmoving, stare and prevailing being is then seen as the very antithesis of the moving, subjective, and circular human life. See Günther, Gotthard, ‘Metaphysik, Logik und die Theorie der Reflexion’, in Gotthard Günther, Grundlegung zu einer operationsfähigen Logik (Hamburg: Meiner, 1976), p. 8Google Scholar; or Koselleck, Reinhart, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

20 The debate between verification and falsification cannot be dealt with in this article. But the irremediable link to methodological issues such as the historical question of the ‘evidence of evidence’ is noteworthy. See Feyerabend, Paul, Against Method, 3rd edn (London: Verso, 1996)Google Scholar.

21 Gotthard Günther, ‘Metaphysik, Logik und die Theorie der Reflexion’, p. 8.

22 See in particular Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund.

23 See ‘Letter from Russell to Frege’, in Frege, Gottlob, Briefwechsel mit D.Hilbert, E. Husserl, B. Russell, eds Gabriel, G., Kambartel, F., Thiel, C. (Hamburg, 1980), pp. 59fGoogle Scholar.

24 For a discussion see Nagel, Ernest and Newman, James, Gödel's Proof (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar.

25 Tarski, Alfred, ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4:3 (1944), pp. 341–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Carnap, Rudolf, Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

27 Quine, William Van Orman, ‘Carnap and Logical Truth’, The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 107–32Google Scholar and ‘Truth by Convention’, The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 70–99Google Scholar.

28 See, for example, also Carnap, Rudolf, Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1922)Google Scholar; and Reichenbach, Hans, The Philosophy of Space and Time (New York, Dover Publications, 1958)Google Scholar.

29 Carnap, Meaning and Necsessity, §17.

30 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Über Gewissheit [On Certainty] (Frankfurt am Main. Suhrkamp, 1984), p. 61Google Scholar.

31 See Crispin Wight, Rule-following.

32 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1954), §31Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., §42

34 Ibid., §188.

35 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956), Part V, §23Google Scholar.

36 Wittgenstein, Über Gewißheit [On Certainty], p. 65, Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics., Part VI, §28.

37 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §17. See also Goodman, Nelson, Douglas, Mary, and Hull, David, How Classification Works: Nelson Goodman among the social sciences (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Lakoff, George, Woman, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories reveal about the Mind (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Doulgas, Mary, Risk Acceptability According to the Social Science (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1985), p. 80Google Scholar.

39 Wight, ‘Inside the epistemological cave’, p. 4.

40 Searle, John R., The Construction of Social Reality (London: Allen Lane, 1995), p. 32Google Scholar.

41 Colin Wight, ‘Inside the epistemological cave’, p. 7.