Reason in Theory and Practice

Reason in Theory and Practice, BY RoY EDGLEY. (Hutchinson, 1969. Pp. 180. Price 30s. Paper back 13s.) It will, I hope, seem no detraction from the originality of Mr. Edgley's impressive book to welcome it, in a way, as long overdue. Philosophers, pretty generally it seems, teach Plato academically, and remain hypnotised by Hume: Plato surely having made clear enough that, in its very nature, to think is something we do better or worse, appealing to standards. As to these last, we doubtless need not conceive them quite as he does; but we might have found enough here, I think, to dispose of the pseudoproblems neatly put in the title of Kohler's book The Place of Value in a World of Fact. Facts in brief, or at least putative fact-statements, are themselves things eminently calling for evaluation; a process without which there would never have existed that pure 'World of Fact' for values to be supposed to be divorced from. Thus we find Mr. Edgley first recalling 'the simple platitude that people's inferences and beliefs can be appraised, criticised and evaluated, not from a moral but what we may provisionally call a logical point of view'; which, it says, 'seems to run counter to some current assumptions'. (p. 52) It is, or at least ought to be, a 'platitude' (the description being perhaps over optimistic for what admittedly runs counter to current assumptions). What I call overdue is, of course, not the mere statement of that 'platitude' but in its full philosophical working-out; Mr. Edgley's achievement lies in his power, novelty and rigor in applying it. His starting-point is Hume's notion-which, despite the generally antiHumean tenor of his conclusions, it is his merit to take at face value and seriously-of reason as passive or inert; so that passions impel us, not reasons; whose job concerns the connection of means with ends. Reason, for Hume, only points out means to end in themselves intrinsically nonrational. Mr. Edgley, as I say, takes it seriously, extracting from it an important truth, namely this: that any inference from some premise, believed or stated, must have for its conclusion-not, following Aristotle, an action-but likewise a statement or a belief. Between statement and action the gulf remains; and no less where the statement is an evaluative one. Suppose we get to the conclusion, from appropriate premises, 'I ought to do such and such'; what we cannot reach is the act itself, the doing of it. Hence, no less than Aristotle's, Professor Hare's account fails; from appropriate imperative premises I may indeed deduce imperative conclusions. It remains that 1 may still fail to act on them. The way round the gap is a radical one. Actions of course must be physical; but partly, like beliefs, psychological, too; hence, from this standpoint, comes an unlooked-for but welcome step forward. Mr. Edgley stirs the mists to disperse, or take measures to disperse, that oppressively prevalent philosophical climate; I mean the general orthodoxy of anti-psychologism-in some forms, of course, harmless, indeed salutary. Yet this too: the 'laws of thought', with appropriate qualifications, are after all laws of thought. Granted that in a pure deduction relation, say that p implies q, we find nothing psychological; yet applied to the processes of thinking-not least, let us note, where the step is what is called purely formal or even (infelicitous phrase) tautological-it has