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Show Chapter X. The Criterion of Inclusiveness 388 computers, or extra-terrestrials that, although looking like gigantic centipedes, can nevertheless play chess. Kant's own moral theory has, in effect, been under this type of review for the last 215 years, as we ascertain that its laws and principles apply equally to the women, blacks, and Jews that Kant himself would have excluded from it. 2.3. Inclusiveness vs. Strength A theory can have explanatory strength without being inclusive. For example, Kant's own theory might yield the valid futuristic inferences described above, yet be said to lack inclusiveness by making no provisions for the treatment of animals or the mentally impaired in its laws and principles. By confining his discussion to rational beings, Kant formulated his moral theory less inclusively than did Utilitarianism. Of course Kant's formulation of his moral theory does not rule out the possibility of supplemental laws that might describe a rational being's nonreciprocal moral obligations to children, animals, the mentally impaired, or the environment. It is not difficult to sketch a line of theoretical reasoning that implies such obligations. Additionally, a theory can be so inclusive as to lack explanatory strength entirely, as does the psychological egoist's that all actions are motivated by self-interest, or Anne Frank's that all human beings are good at heart, from which no testable hypotheses can be generated. So explanatory strength and inclusiveness are mutually independent. A theory that has explanatory strength but lacks inclusiveness is less adequate than one that has both, because its hypotheses are vulnerable to disconfirmation by the theoretically anomalous data excluded from them. Aristotle's exclusion of women and slaves from the moral domain might exemplify this vulnerability. A theory's explanatory strength enables us to forecast the future; its inclusiveness enables us to see what is under our noses. 2.4. Disconfirmability Note that satisfaction of the criterion of inclusiveness does not conflict with Popper's requirement of disconfirmability, since this is the requirement that the higher-level laws and theoretical constructs of a theory not be tautologous. A moral theory can satisfy criteria of inclusiveness and of disconfirmability simultaneously because it can be true both that the theory identifies all the relevant data and also that its explanations make inaccurate predictions. For example, a Kantian moral theory might generate practical principles that both apply to all agents who have any rational capacities whatsoever - hence satisfy inclusiveness to some degree, and also are disconfirmable by, say, an agent who fully exercises those capacities and disciplines his sensuous inclinations in the ways Kant specifies, yet regularly violates the prescriptions of moral principle. One consequence of tying his account of rationality so closely to his account of morality is that Kant rules out the possibility of a fully rational agent who is also morally vicious. This © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
