The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Does it make sense to hold that transcendental ethics, in its way, is also concerned with structure—specifically, the structure of right belief and action, transcendental as well as categorial—as distinct from meaning? Perhaps a positive answer depends on whether it makes sense, having distinguished between the structure of ultimate reality in itself and its meaning for us, to distinguish further between the meaning of ultimate reality for us and its structure, i.e., the structure of the meaning of ultimate reality for us. 

One reason for thinking that such a further distinction makes sense is provided by what I've taken to be implied by Bochenski's distinctions between "instructions" and "propositions," and then between "practical propositions" and "theoretical propositions." Just as, according to Bochenski, "practical propositions," although distinct from "instructions," may be understood to provide the reasons for them, so "theoretical propositions," I have inferred, may be understood to provide the reasons for "practical propositions." Assuming, then, that transcendental metaphysics consists in (a certain kind of) theoretical propositions, one may say that it provides the reasons for the (certain kind of) practical propositions in which transcendental ethics consists—even as transcendental ethics, in turn, provides the reasons, at the level of first principles, for all valid instructions. 

Appealing, then, to the connections I've also made between Bochenski's analysis as thus appropriated and (1) Bultmann's distinction between "direct address" and "indirect address"; and (2) the distinction made by many between "executive authority" and "nonexecutive authority," as well as the distinction made by some between "causative authority" and "normative authority"; and assuming that it makes at least analogical sense to speak of the authority of reality and of reason-on the basis of all this, one could perhaps conclude as follows: 

The meaning of ultimate reality for us is to its structure as instructions / direct address / executive authority / causative authority are to practical propositions / indirect address / nonexecutive authority / normative authority respectively. On the other hand, the structure of the meaning of ultimate reality for us is to the structure of ultimate reality in itself as practical propositions / indirect address / nonexecutive authority / normative authority respectively are to theoretical propositions. 

The basic idea, in other words, is that it makes sense to hold that transcendental ethics, in its way, is also concerned with structure because the practical propositions in which it consists, like all propositions, have to do precisely with structure, the structure of the meaning of ultimate reality for us, analogously to the way in which the theoretical propositions in which transcendental metaphysics consists have to do with the structure of ultimate reality in itself.

5 October 2005

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