Book Reviews 

COGNITIVE HARMONY By NICHOLAS RESCHER, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh 
University Press, 2005. Pp. 1-128. ISBN: 0822942437, pb. US$25.95. 

REALISM AND PRAGMATIC EPISTEMOLOGY. By NICHOLAS RESCHER, 
Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2005. Pp. 1-144. ISBN: 0822942496, pb. 
US$25.95. 

EPISTEMIC LOGIC. By NICHOLAS RESCHER, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University 
Press, 2005. Pp. 1-152. ISBN: 0822942461, pb. US$25.95. 

Nicholas Rescher has written extensively and eloquently on the coherence theory 
of truth, as well as, it seems, on most of the important topics in philosophy! The 
virtues of systemic harmony are manifest, but there are special challenges that 
make coherence a difficult topic to keep in sight: so much of a system's coherence 
is largely in the eye of the beholder-but so much of what makes a system coherent 
is larger than the eye can behold. Coherentism needs a roving eye with the broadest 
possible perspective. The philosophical vision presented in these three short 
books-not exactly a trilogy since they are an unordered set rather than a series-
is both coherent and coherentist. As Rescher himself argues, coherentist 
considerations pragmatically license, and perhaps even pragmatically mandate, 
assumptions, commitments, and postulates that go far beyond the given. There is 
more to these books than meets the eye. What this means in practice is that while 
the books are independent and self-contained, there are places where, if one were 
to read them in isolation, important questions would appear to be begged. 

There is an uneasy combination of robustly realist inclinations and cautiously 
fallibilist coherentism on display throughout these books. Perhaps that is an 
inevitable outcome when respect is given to both the exigencies of abstract 
metaphysical theory and the more pragmatic imperatives of applied epistemology. 
The systematicity of knowledge-and of the world-is front and center in Cognitive 
Harmony (Clf): the realist part of the equation is addressed more fully in Realism 
and Pragmatic Epistemology (RPE). Epistemic Logic (EL) distills and formally 
presents the conceptual and inferential structure implicit in the other discussions. 
That there is a single coherent story to be told about the universe is assumed from 
what he calls the "systematic harmony of facts." Mightn't there be a network of 
incommensurable theories covering the world in an over-lapping patchwork? After 
all, we were able to live as scientists with both wave and particle theories of light. It 
may have been uncomfortable in our more reflective moments, but Rescher offers 
the kind of meta-reflection-that is to say, philosophical reflection-that mitigates 
the tension between practice and theory. 

In the case of the physics of light, Rescher could point to our implicit faith that 
there would be some reconciliation eventually, but that sort of faith is more sorely 
tested by free will and determinist stories about human behavior than by wave and 

©InformalLogicVol. 25, No.2 (2005): pp. 179-184. 



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particle theories of light. Can we assume there is a single vocabulary up to this 
task? Can we assume there is a vocabulary up to all our tasks? The supporting 
argument, like the thesis itself, glosses over the difference between truth and fact. 
One line of argument leading to the conclusion that there must, in the end, be 
harmony rests on the idea that there would have to be changes pervading the entire 
system of facts were any single one of those facts to be changed because of the 
resultant changes to the various disjunctions and conjunctions that cover the 
original change. Rescher's argument here would inspire more confidence if the 
metaphysical status of disjunctive facts were as secure as the logical status of 
disjunctive propositions. 

A prominent motif throughout the exploration and valorization of the concepts 
of coherence, harmony, and systematization is Rescher's recurring recourse to 
economic metaphors. This is most prominent in eN, where the rhetorical theme 
generates philosophical theses: economic metaphors are used not merely to explain 
epistemological ideas and principles but to justifY them as well. Rather than being 
argument by analogy, however, Rescher's employment of economic metaphors is 
profitably read as a set of heuristic devices to help bring about a large-scale re-
conceptualization in epistemology. 

Rescher presents the business of epistemology as a matter of belief-management. 
Belief acquisition is only part of the job. He approaches the project like the manager 
of a mutual fund: make sure the holdings work together, judiciously balance 
acquisitions with existing holdings, fill in the gaps, weight the potential gains 
against calculated risks, and so on. Communication is sometimes cashed out in 
terms of transactions (especially in RPE). It does provide a pretty good hook for 
hanging some of his main theses, and it is organically consonant with the generally 
pragmatic provenance, tenor, and directions of the discussion. For example, it 
provides a new take on the justification of induction-as a practice for epistemological 
management, not as a metaphysical thesis about the world (although there are 
arguments leading to the rationality of our commitment to induction, and from there 
to the rationality of the belief, considered now as content rather than act, principle, 
or policy). Induction seeks simple answers, at least initially, and the cognitive 
"costs" of seeking and testing complex rather than simple hypotheses counts 
against other schemes. 

So what is the problem with economics as a dominant metaphor, a lens for 
looking at the phenomena in question? As either a pedagogical tool for explaining 
one's ideas or, for that matter, a heuristic vehicle for exploring and developing those 
ideas originally, it makes invaluable contributions. As a governing paradigm, its 
very success creates the possibility for metaphoric distortions, either in the form of 
blinders to features that don't fit into its template or Procrustean accommodations 
forcing a fit. Some of that is present here. Is the pursuit of knowledge like the 
pursuit of wealth? Can it become an obsession? Are there truths that are too 
expensive too keep in one's portfolio? In epistemology, as in economics, it is all too 
easy to lose sight of ethical constraints. 

What does this mean for argumentation theory? Should we start thinking of 
arguments as the commercial negotiations of our epistemic lives? While the 
economic metaphor serves Rescher well in bringing some important features of 
managing our beliefs into clearer relief, such as the costs involved in revision and 



Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus 181 

the potential gains from certain strategies, it breaks down when it comes to arguments 
for the simple reason that knowledge (for the most part!) is not best understood as 
a quantifiable commodity. I can give whatever knowledge I may possess to you 
without in any way diminishing my own "holdings." Argumentation is not a 
transaction regarding knowledge. That way of thinking leads back to one of the 
most obnoxious features of the adversarial war model, viz., that someone who 
learns something through convincing argumentation is the "loser" in the argument! 
There are, of course, cases of proprietary knowledge; and, manifestly, there are 
arguments that are conducted as if they really were win/lose-or profit/loss-
situations. But there are also arguments that exemplify the ideal of rational persuasion, 
and to have to think of them as give-aways, or some sort of charity, distorts our 
understanding of argumentation just as much as having to think of effective teachers 
as victorious and successful students as defeated. The important dialogical and 
social dimension to argumentation is missing. Epistemology is rather more than just 
a matter of gaining truths and avoiding errors. And since understanding is oftentimes 
an emergent (non-propositional) product of coherent knowledge, coherentists 
should be in an especially good position to appreciate this bit of knowledge about 
understanding. 

The situation is exacerbated in philosophy. Rescher argues that this is where 
systematicity is of paramount importance: "Here, as is the case throughout the 
domain of rational inquiry, if we do not have a doctrine that is consistent and 
coherent, then we have nothing" (CH, p. 104). This all-or-nothing schema is stretched 
to the breaking point by two competing considerations. On the one hand, reasoning 
and argumentation are the "lifeblood of philosophy," the sine qua non. On the 
other, "the parameters of harmonious systematicity-coherence, consistency, 
uniformity, and the rest-are regulative ideals toward whose realization our cognitive 
endeavors do and should strive. But this drive for systematicity is the operative 
expression of a governing ideal and not something whose realization can be taken 
for granted." That is, putting these together (a bit uncharitably, I'll admit), we get 
this picture: argumentation is the engine for moving us in the direction of an ideal 
whose realization mayor may not be possible, but until such time as we do in fact 
reach it, we have ... nothing!? Argumentation is an activity of commerce, but 
apparently without any commodity. It is, of course, precisely in the absence of a 
settled doctrine that we have to rely most heavily on argumentation. When we do 
have a doctrine that is both harmonious in all the right ways and accepted by all the 
relevant voices, there is no need to argue. (But, thankfully, argumentation can still 
be justified anyway.) 

Ironically, Epistemic Logic may be the least relevant of the three books for 
informal logic and argumentation theory. For that matter, even its contributions to 
epistemology and philosophy at large are limited. It exhibits all the strengths and all 
the weaknesses to which purely formal approaches to philosophical topics are 
prone. On the positive side of the ledger, it is extremely well suited to the task of 
precisely distinguishing and exhibiting the various subtly different senses of such 
concepts as group knowledge and unanswerable questions. Since so many of the 
key epistemological terms are under-defined or ill-defined, this is a significant 
accomplishment. For example, the formal mechanisms that are developed here are 
deftly employed in reconstructing a well-defined epistemic (rather than 



182 

psychological) concept of conceivability to connect with the (Iogico-metaphysical) 
notion of possibility. Those same mechanisms are also ably deployed in the task of 
disambiguating concepts that are all-too-easily confused in ordinary language, 
such as the distributive and collective knowledge of generalizations: knowing that 
all lions are mammals (which is quite possible for finite knowers like us) is not the 
same as knowing of each lion that it is a mammal (which is not). The de re knowledge 
in the latter case would require knowledge of each and every lion. Discovering and 
articulating limits to human knowledge comprises the lion's share of the project of 
Epistemic Logic. 

The fruits of formalization come with their usual price tag: the formal theory 
provides a Procrustean Bed for our ordinary concepts and the concepts that emerge 
can have the feel of awkward constructions. Secrets, for example, become knowledge 
that is held by only one person-perhaps because that is something the symbolism 
can easily accommodate-rather than knowledge that is being withheld from others 
(ch. 10). By design, the concept of knowledge in question is not the idealized 
knowledge of an omniscient being. There is neither completeness nor deductive 
closure. But the concept is not quite the ordinary one, either: there is closure along 
conjunction and other "obvious inference" lines, there are necessary but necessarily 
unknowable truths, and, since knowers know, skepticism is ruled out as a dead 
option from the start. It can be difficult to connect all the dots of data concerning 
"knowledge" into a single coherent concept, but that is mostly to the good: the all-
or-nothing manifesto at the end of CH is wisely left in the theoretician's laboratory. 

The volume succeeds, however, in showcasing what epistemic logic is all about 
and the significant contributions it can make to the discourse of epistemology. 
Rescher does identify most of the forks in the pathway to the development of a 
complete logic of epistemic concepts and tries to provide a word or two explaining 
his choices as well as the paths not taken, all in the interests of fairness. But in the 
interests of producing a clear, concise, and accessible survey, the controversies are 
generally settled by fiat, without adequate references to the wider debates in the 
literature. To be sure, it would have been a mistake for Rescher to try to settle all 
these questions in this kind of survey text, but it would also be a mistake for readers 
to assume that there is as much consensus on these issues as the presentation 
suggests. 

There are treatments of some apparently idiosyncratic topics, like "vagrant" 
predicates, the concept expressed by the locution "for all that anyone knows," and 
various forms of un know ability and insolubilia, But even these seemingly patchwork 
additions to the text do in the end make a contribution to the overall view. The 
presentation is no mere collection of topics, but more of an integrated collage. 

Some small degree of familiarity and level of comfort with predicate and modal 
logics is needed to appreciate what this book offers. And that fact both grounds 
and limits what it can do. It would not do well as an introductory text, but it could 
serve as a good sampler for the curious and interested. It could also act as either a 
quick refresher or a handy reference tool for anyone in tangential fields with a need 
for a more grounded familiarity with the subject. Its very short chapters makes it 
very easy to negotiate. There is a small but definite audience that stands to benefit 
from this book. 



Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus 183 

In contrast, Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology deserves a wider audience. 
Its discussion provide the most grist for the philosophical mill, mixing innovative 
and fertile suggestions into traditional approaches to standard philosophical 
questions. Rescher begins with a very Cartesian model, and never really escapes 
the dualism of objective reality and subjective experience that is implicit in 
representational accounts of cognition: "There is no compelling transit from 
personal experience to objective fact," he begins, adding, "Experience ... is invariably 
somebody's experience." Thus, the claimed starting point-experience-is implicitly 
preceded by a subject! There is inaccessibility at the other end, too: "The existence 
of this latent (hidden, occult) sector [of objects] is a crucial feature of our conception 
of a real thing." Realism, he argues, is implicit in and integral to our very conception 
of things and in our communicative practices. However, he takes great pains to 
make it clear that mind-independent reality is not deduced from the evidence of the 
senses but postulated. It is a "stipulative commitment that is ultirp.atelyretrojustified" 
as the way to make sense of, among other things, sense itself-and in both senses 
of "sense": meaning and sensation. Realism is rationally justified but it cannot be 
evidentially based because the concept of evidence presupposes it. 

The nature of our commitment to realism becomes clear in the implicit 
assumptions behind our communicative practice. First, realism is implicated by our 
intentions to refer, but a corollary to that is that we can never hope to exhaust the 
implied content of our referring words! We are always talking about more than we 
can know. Our own conceptions of things cannot, on pain of incoherence, ever be 
supposed to be the whole and final story. But neither can they be supposed to be 
the subject of discourse: it cannot be assumed that we share a conception, but it 
must be assumed that we share a world. The burden of proof is on would-be 
skeptics. 

In short, realism is characterized as cognitively "cost effective," thereby re-
opening the floodgates for the economic metaphor: "we proceed in cognitive contexts 
in much the same manner that banks proceed in financial contexts. We extend credit 
... amortize ... trust ... risk ... venture ... much to be gained .... The fact is that our 
cognitive practices have a fundamentally economic rationale" (pp. 32-3). 

Rescher complements the procedural rationale for realism with a second argument 
with a novel twist. Rather than pointing to the convergence of substantial scientific 
achievements as evidence for a reality grounding objective truth, he argues from 
our ignorance! The fact of our cognitive limitations is taken as grounds for realism 
precisely because our descriptions inevitably fail to. do justice to the world. That is, 
thinking of the world-the concept of real things-implies their inexhaustiveness 
by any description, which implies a depth beyond our comprehension, which implies 
some mind-independence-which is presupposed by all communication. Thinking 
and communicating converge on the postulate of a mind-independent, knowledge-
transcending reality. Ironically, the only reality worth having is a knowable one, so 
there is a permanent tension in our epistemic lives. 

The justification for the economic metaphors and conception of epistemic 
management is pragmatic: practical reason is basic while theoretical reason is ancillary. 
Such givenness as is to be found in experience is not so much in the experience 
itself, but in the consequences of our actions, the gains from successes and the 



184 

costs of disappointments. Actions arise from beliefs, but the upshots of those 
actions are in no way psychogenetic. The "quality control" for our beliefs comes 
not from initial, given experiences of the world, but from the interactive transactions 
we have with the world through our actions. 

The theoretical'upshot of this pragmatic tum is what Rescher calls "the principle 
of specificity precedence." It is a blanket license for preferring the specific to the 
general, the observational to the theoretical, and the theoretical to the meta-
theoretical. As a further corollary, "in any conflict between philosophy and everyday 
commonsense beliefs it is the latter that must prevail." (RPE, p. 70, discussing, with 
approval, Thomas Reid). The logical-epistemological justification is: "As a rule, 
generalities are more vulnerable that specificities" (RPE, p. 71). But couldn't more 
thoroughgoing pragmatists also ask whether generalization aren't more valuable, 
too? What happened to asset management? 

Rescher recognizes a noteworthy exception to the principle of specificity 
precedence that may in the end re-valorize theory: counterfactuals. Counterfactuals 
are the substance of hypothetical and speculative reasoning. In all such reasoning, 
generality precedence must come into play. Counterfactual situations are understood 
not as given specifics but instantiations constructed from false (or unknown) 
specifics in conjunction with generalizations. The empiricist in Rescher remains a 
bit queasy when it comes to counterfactuals as candidates for genuine knowledge 
because he is still operating within a representationalist model for cognitive states, 
and counterfactuals are not easily cast as representations of facts in the world. His 
inner pragmatist, however, is more accommodating, and rightly so. Knowing is not 
the only epistemic game in town. There is also understanding to be achieved. He 
would do well, then, to bring into the foreground just how essential such speculative 
reasoning is to understanding, if not to knowledge per se. Rescher invokes the 
concept of "systemic informativeness" to explain the different values of 
generalizations and specificities in the enterprises of "factual inquiry" and 
"counterfactual speculation," enterprises that, he says, occupy "different sectors 
of the cognitive terrain." I would add that the boundary between them is less like 
a river dividing two countries that a marshy wetlands dividing land and sea. I 
believe there is an important lesson to be learned from all this for argumentation 
theory and the practice of argumentation. Rescher may not yet have reached it, but 
he has blazed a path in the right direction and he has left us a map of where he has 
gone. 

DANIEL H. COHEN Colby College