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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 87 certain length. So if I recognize the pencil as three-dimensional, and threedimensional things as having length, then I recognize the pencil as having length. Also notice that vertical consistency does not require that I be able to recognize something as having all the higher-order properties that in fact apply to it; just that the ones by which I do recognize it be implied by the relevant lower-order ones by which I recognize it. In Section 6 below, I argue that there must be at least one such higher-order property in order for me to recognize it as anything at all. Nor does vertical consistency require that I be able to recognize the relations that obtain between a thing, its properties, and the further properties that they have but that the thing does not (e.g. such that the pencil is not a primary color although red is). Because the requirement of vertical consistency applies only to the relations among properties that satisfy (VC), there may be "floating hierarchies" which are unconnected to others within an agent's perspective. However, I argue in Section 6 that all of them must be related as (VC) describes to the highest-order property that defines this perspective as an agent's perspective. The requirements of horizontal and vertical consistency systematize and unify the set S of concepts constitutive of an agent's perspective at a particular moment. (HC) and (VC) ensure that, whatever the concepts constitutive of S at that moment, they will be mutually rationally intelligible. However, (HC) and (VC) do not ensure, either separately or conjointly, the persistence through time of any such ordinary concept. It is consistent with the satisfaction of (HC) and (VC) at each moment in time that the concepts constitutive of S at t1 are almost entirely disjoint from those constitutive of S at tn. I qualify this claim in Section 6 and Chapter III, below; but it holds for most ordinary concepts. Envision, for example, the effect on S of constant and instantaneous transmission of global information, simultaneously with sudden and pervasive paradigm shift in the natural sciences. Practically everything could change very quickly, and very traumatically, with correspondingly traumatic consequences for an agent's perspective. Less traumatic changes in an agent's perspective are to be expected in the normal 20 process of growth and evolution of character and circumstance. 20 Here I make some very shaky assumptions, which I do not really believe, about statistical "normalcy," when in fact these assumptions must be strictly relativized to the economically privileged classes of political stable, industrially developed countries. Globally, these of course comprise a distinct statistical minority. Hence I assimilate these assumptions to the idealizations otherwise deployed in this first Part of the discussion. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
