Rationalist Pragmatism. Mitchell Silver

of a sound practical justification, attests to a desire for consistency, the soul of rationality.¹⁶ Practice, has a higher threshold of rationality than does theory, because there are more way to act inconsistently than there are to believe inconsistently. The possibility of truth is sufficient to confer theoretical rationality. Beliefs’ rationalities are only challenged by other beliefs, for even evidence doesn’t contest theory until it inhabits belief. Rain is not inconsistent with my belief it is not raining, but a belief that it is raining is. Rational belief need only get along with other beliefs. But rational action must be compatible with a more diverse ontological array: an action can conflict with a belief or an action. There is inconsistency in believing that you ought to, all things considered, never torture cats, while knowingly torturing a cat, for the action is inconsistent with a judgment of the action—a belief. An action can also fail to be consistent with another action. It is irrational to torture a cat right now, while also attempting to prevent that cat from being tortured right now, regardless of any relevant judgments. When the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, they may have incompatible goals, in which case the hands’ owner stands guilty of irrationality. All of the goals of an agent’s actions must be realizable in the same possible world if the actions are to qualify as rational. And so practical is more complex than theoretical reason. ¹⁷ The beliefs constituting a practical justification must meet all of the requirements of theoretical rationality, and then some: first, the rationality of a practical justification requires the theoretical rationality we term “soundness.” Next, the rationality of acting from sincerely held judgments, which we call “character,” or “will power,” is needed, as is the rationality of practice itself, which, when it avoids subtle inconsistencies, we may term “strategic coherence,” avoiding blatant inconsistencies we call “sanity.” Finally, it is the burden of this book to persuade you that there is an additional criterion of practical rationality, morality, consistency in the treatment of self and others.¹⁸

      6. Justification and Explanation

      When we say “let me explain myself,” we usually mean “let me justify myself.” In “explaining ourselves,” seldom do we say how we came to do a questioned deed; mostly, we want to “explain” that its doing was blameless. This is justifying, not explaining, but the confusion is understandable, for while explanation and justification are distinct, they are entangled and are often playing a game of one-upmanship.

      There are formal and informal explanations. The informal explanations of daily life aim either to provide enough information to enable the adequate performance of a relevant task, or to satisfy the curiosity of a relevant inquirer. To be a truly good informal explanation, besides succeeding at the provision of sufficient information or the satisfaction of curiosity, the explanation must consist solely of true statements. If you ask why I bought a bed from Ikea, and I explain that my old bed broke, and I’ve been satisfied with other Ikea products, the explanation counts as good if you have no lingering questions about what drove me to the purchase. If I ask you how to assemble it, your explanation is good if it provided me all the information needed to complete the task.

      The orthodox view of formal, that is scientific, explanation, goes by the daunting moniker “the deductive-nomological” model of explanation.¹⁹ In the deductive-nomological model, that which is to be explained is explained when it is shown to be a deductive consequence of statements that include at least one law. The boiling of a particular liquid is explained by noting that (1) the liquid is water; (2) the liquid’s temperature has been raised to 100 degree centigrade, and (3) (here comes the law) all water boils at 100 degree. Given statements 1, 2, and 3, it deductively follows that the liquid boil, and so its boiling is explained. It is well explained if 1, 2, and 3 are true.

      The notoriously murky idea of causation, which was cavalierly invoked in the discussion of Reason above, lurks about both the informal and formal conceptions of explanation. The statements in the deductive-nomological model can be viewed as citing the causal factors for the boiling (the heat and the kind of thing being heated) and the claim that they are indeed causal factors in such situations (the “law” that water boils at 100 degree centigrade). Regarding the less formal “explanations,” it seems that curiosity is normally satisfied when we believe we have seen the causes of the curious phenomenon (we believe an old broken bed and good experience with the Ikea brand would cause buying a new Ikea bed), and to know what causes an achievement is to have all the information (albeit perhaps not all the skill or resources) to achieve it. Hence, we can speak generally of “explanations,” whether everyday informal ones or formal scientific ones, as causal accounts (although I will leave “causal account” philosophically undefined and rely on unanalyzed intuition of the notion) of the things explained.

      Whether we possess them or not, there are causal accounts of all that we do, and the true causal accounts doubtless would cite all manner of facts and “laws.” Not only do different sorts of acts likely have different sorts of causes, but highly similar acts may have very dissimilar causes. One man reddens because he is allergic to peanut butter, another because he is embarrassed that he ate too much peanut butter. The resulting complexions may be identical, not the causes. One woman kills her pained, dying husband because of a merciful, loving heart, another the quicker to get her hands on the dying man’s fortune, a third because she is hallucinating and imagines herself to be playing Othello and her dying husband to be performing Desdemona. The act of smothering may have been the same in all three instances, the causes of each act quite different.

      In principle, everything is liable to being explained, for presumably a causal account, however difficult to find, is there to be found. The existence of everything, the occurrence of every event, the sequence in every process, the performance of every act—in principle there is some story that uncovers the causes, and thereby the thing, event, process or act is explained.

      Justification has no necessary connection with causation. Sometimes justifications cause things or invoke causal claims, sometimes they don’t. Our interest in justifying may ultimately be that we wish to cause an action or belief, but justifications need make no causal claims. Justifications make claims of adequacy—claims that a belief or act meet a relevant standard or belong to a relevant category. A belief or act’s adequacy may well be affected by its causes, but it is determined by some criterion of adequacy—whether a benchmark of correctness, a standard of rightness, or a principle of goodness, truth or beauty. The existence of those justifying criteria may or may not have played a role in the causal story that created the item of interest. A yardstick may have been used to create a football field of regulation length, or merely invoked to demonstrate that it is of regulation length. It can build the field or prove its adequacy, or both. This possibility has confused many and led them to deny that there is anything more one can do beyond explanation, or to assert that to explain all is to justify all. But to only explain, regardless of how thorough and accurate the explanation, is to justify nothing. An explanation need never invoke any standard of adequacy or include a judgment as to whether the facts meet the standard. An explanation tells us how something came to be, a justification tells us how to categorize it.

      However, these distinct processes of explanation and justification can engulf one another. Like all things, justifications can be explained, and like all things that are subject to judgments of adequacy, explanations are liable to justification. To further complicate things, explanations can be explained and justifications justified. Finally, whenever we are sincerely attempting rationality (acting from Reason, not merely in accord with Reason), the explanation and justification of our belief or action overlap. The rain both justifies and causes me to wear boots when I act from Reason. I am sometimes kind because I accept a principle endorsing kindness, and that same principle may justify my kindness. A true explanation of how something came to be often does most of the work required to categorize it correctly.

      But justifications and explanations do not always coincide. Commonly, justificatory principles play no causal role: I may be kind (or cruel) because of unreflective sentiment. Sometimes a justificatory principle causes but fails to justify an act: I am kind to my plants because I believe nothing should suffer, but if plants are incapable of suffering, my kindness principle does not justify my behavior. (This is not to deny that my kindness to plants may be justifiable on other grounds, grounds which are not playing a causal role in this particular case. Perhaps