Surrogates

UNSHACKLED PRAGMATISM

2. UNSHACKLED PRAGMATISM Explorations, adventures, probings, and discoveries often outrun formulae , deductions, analyses, and retreats. Adventures in scientific thought are not as different from adventures in art and philosophy as common reformulations of the conclusions and the surprisingly successful predictions of the sciences sometimes tempt one to suppose. It is unseemly for philosophers to envy and to try to imitate, at some remove, those who are interested in reaching other goals. Even if we wish to confine our studies within a restricted area, and we cherish precision and predictions, we are forced to face, if only to qualify or dismiss, many issues that are outside the provenance of the sciences. A similar misconception has led some to suppose that photography would replace portrait and even other kinds of paintings. Proof, prediction, and precision are eminently desirable, but they do not require one to dismiss insight, speculation, and adventure. The remarkable achievements of the sciences do not warrant a rejection of other methods in other areas, or a dismissal of other attempts to understand realities in the large and in the little, in depth and on the surface, as separate and as together, as alongside and as interinvolved. Surrogates are replacements for what is to the fore, used in the expectation that they will enable one to benefit from their involvements with what might otherwise be beyond one’s grasp, control, or beneficial use. A spoken word or sentence could become a surrogate for an idea if it could replace this, while continuing to be part of a world of communications. An idea could be used as a surrogate for a spoken word or a sentence, if it were used to replace either, while continuing to be in the mind. Both may fail to do what would justify their replacement of what had been accepted. There always is a risk involved in making use of any surrogate, since this always has a distinctive nature and an independent way of functioning. Surrogates continue to exist in the contexts from which they had been selected. They do not, though, assure that one who selects and makes use of them will act in appropriate ways. What invites, prompts, or lures awaits the use of them; their involvement in some context one expects will yield an increase in understanding, mastery, range, pleasure, or other satisfactions . When I say that I would like to relax, I give up my attention to something that may well be satisfying, and well worth cherishing or exploring, for an acceptance and use of what may not in fact yield anything as good as that which it replaced. The idea of a fortune has a sweet, seductive flavor . Sooner or later, it usually is made to give way to plans and acts that seem more likely to promote or to provide better outcomes than could have been obtained without them. Not many of those plans and acts, though, will in fact yield what one may hope they would. A gambler sometimes gives up one plan of action for another, but may continue to lose. Sometimes, he carries out one course of action for a while, with gains adding to gains, until lady luck absconds with someone else who is no better than the one she left behind. No matter what the virtues of a surrogate might be, it is desirable to know what it is to replace. Had we no understanding of what is being replaced , we would not know if we were providing a surrogate for what was false, incoherent, disagreeable, or just unsuited for some task. What is to be replaced, no matter how deficient it is supposed to be, should be sufficiently well enough understood to make some replacement of it appear to be more satisfactory than others are. The meaning of the supposedly obscure should be clear enough to warrant the use of this rather than that replacement for it. It is not always true that a more precise expression is to be preferred to one that is riddled with ambiguity. A court’s “innocent!” does not necessarily imply “blameless.” Different surrogates may advance different stages and different kinds of inquiry, to promote communication and understanding , or to enhance and extend the range of one’s achievements. A replacement should not be identified with, nor can it be known to improve on the meaning or intent of what it replaces, unless one knows what this is. If an expression is unclear, one cannot be sure that this...