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Philosophical Fallacies
Ways of Erring in
Philosophical Exposition
n ic hol a s r e sc h e r
Nicholas Rescher
Ways of Erring in Philosophical Exposition
Nicholas Rescher
Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-97173-1 ISBN 978-3-030-97174-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97174-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Preface
Philosophers address large problems regarding mankind and our place in

the scheme of things, difficult issues where deliberations all too easily go
off track. And this is particularly so because the discipline tries to meet
almost unachievable high standards in its demand for the concurrent real-
ization of generality and precision. This renders certain various modes of
error—certain fallacies of reasoning—particularly tempting. The present
deliberations will endeavor to illustrate and clarify some of these.
Perhaps it was the bleakness of the yearlong isolation during the
2021–2021 pandemic that led me to contemplate the somber scene of
philosophical error; thereby, resulting in this book. But be this as it may, I
found the exercise instructive and hope that the reader will do so as well.
I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her patience and conscientious efforts
in preparing this material for the press and to the publisher’s reader for
cogent constructive commentary.
Pittsburgh, PA, USA Nicholas Rescher

May 2021
vii
Contents
1 Error, Mistake, and Fallacy in Philosophizing 1
2 Classifying Philosophical Fallacies 9
3 Illustrating Philosophical Fallacies 27
4 The Fallacy of Respect Neglect 57
5 Fallacies Regarding Free Will 67
6 Totalization Fallacies 83
7 The Significance of Philosophical Fallacies101
Bibliography121
Index127
ix
List of Displays
Display 2.1 The classification of fallacies 10

Display 2.2 Some infeasible inferential transits 20
Display 2.3 Philosophical fallacies 24
Display 3.1 The regress of idealization 30
Display 3.2 The common picture 39
Display 5.1 Timing issues 70
Display 5.2 Timing and determination 71
Display 5.3 Deliberating and probability: an example 73
Display 7.1 The ampliative approach 111
Display 7.2 The reductive approach 112
Display 7.3 A paradox of rational belief 114
xi
CHAPTER 1
Error, Mistake, and Fallacy in Philosophizing
Philosophical Error
Aristotle said it well: “Man by nature desires to know.” For us, the absence
of information can be almost as distressing as that of food.
Philosophizing is a purposive enterprise that addresses the “big ques-
tions” of the human condition: man’s place in the universe and the proper
management of the obligations and opportunities of human life. It is a
venture in rational inquiry that begins with problems and seeks solutions.
And the big issues that preoccupy it relate to fundamentals of human con-
cern, being universal in dealing with humans at large rather than particular
groups thereof (farmers or doctors or Europeans or contemporaries of
Shakespeare). Philosophical deliberations must have a bearing—direct or
oblique—upon the key essentials of the human condition—knowledge
and truth, justice and morality, beauty and goodness, and the other “big
questions” about our place in the world’s scheme of things.
In philosophizing, we accordingly engage a range of issues of a scope in
generality and fundamentality that removes them beyond the range of our
ordinary idealizing and consciously available experience. But the more
deeply we enter into the range of matters remote from the course of com-
monly available experience the more uniform our claims become and the
more likely we are to fall into error. And these basic facts of (cognitive) life
put our ventures into philosophical speculation on a shaky and problem-
atic basis. In answering our philosophical questions, we have no
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2 N. RESCHER
alternative but to do the best we can in the full recognition of how that it
may well not be good enough. By the very nature of the enterprise, avoid-
ing loose and fallacious thinking is of the essence.
A fallacy is a mode of failure in substantiative reasoning. When an argu-
ment for a conclusion is fallacious, this truth shows and accounts for its
ineffectiveness. And what is crucial here is not the truth of the conclusion
but the cogency of its supportive argumentation.
When someone falls into error, some crucial questions arise: (1) why
did the individual fall into error?; what sort of motivation was at work?;
what led the agent to go wrong? This first is a matter of the MOTIVE or
RATIONALE for erring—if accounting or the occurrence of error. But
there is also another question, (2) What sort or error did the individual fall
into?; what sort of error is at issue?; what is wrong with what the agent
did? This is a matter of the MODE or MANNER of erring. Fallacy—our
present concern—has to do (only) with the second issue. This distinction
between motive and mode is critical. The manner of error may be a mis-
spelling or a slip of the tongue or a miscalculation. The motive for its
occurrence may be confusion or over-haste. These latter are explanations
for the error, and this is for the occurrence of fallacies. They are not them-
selves fallacies. They explain how it is that the agent comes to commit a
fallacy, but are not themselves the particular sorts of error is at issue with
the commitment of the fallacy.
Committing a fallacy is always a flaw in philosophical exposition. But
not all flaws are fallacies. Leaving significant matters hanging as unsepa-
rated loose ends in one’s position is a significant flaw—consequentially a
defect in philosophizing. But it is not a fallacy. For example, it is clear that
in matters of social-political policy and practice it may well be unavailable
to ask the individuals of the present to make a sacrifice and pay a priori to
enhance the safety and well-being of the populace of the future. But the
classical precept of “the greatest good of the greatest number” never really
confronted the crucial issue of how to count. But it occurred as a matter of
neglect more than of fallacious thinking. Were those at issue to be only
one’s living, breathing contemporaries, or were future generations to be
taken into account—and how many of them? This lack was inherently a
flaw and a significant failure in developing the position.
A philosophical fallacy is not a special kind of fallacy peculiar to philoso-
phizing and not encountered elsewhere. It is, rather, a general mode of
flaw in reasoning that happens to achieve particular prominence in philo-
sophical discussions.
1 ERROR, MISTAKE, AND FALLACY IN PHILOSOPHIZING 3
The Rule of Reason

In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a crucial difference between motiva-
tion and substantiation. A thinker may be ardent in the articulation and
defense of a position that he believes, almost instinctively, on the basis of
deep psychic resonance and ideological affinity. But this does not make
him a philosopher. For what matters here is not the agent’s motivation,
however, heartfelt and compelling, but substantiation grounding in rea-
sons why the rest of us should share this sentiment. Reasoning for doc-
trines rather than their psychic appeal is what matters and the commitment
to the counteraction of reason is the crux. Why reason? Because it is of our
very essence as rational creations. This last thing we would be willing to
sacrifice is our reason, which is as dear to us as life itself.
But as thinkers have realized since the days of Aristotle, reasoning
requires premisses and these must somehow be made available to reason
from without. But whence can they come? This is a matter of the thematic
range of deliberations at issue: in mathematics—intuition, in science—
observation; in grammar—communicative practice. And in philosophy—
the life experience of the wider community as reflected in; proverbial
wisdom, common sense, the consensus gentian, the “wisdom of crowd,”
as well as the expertise of science and scholarship, all these provide the
data that feed grist to philosophy’s mill. The coherent systematization of
human experience at large—cognitive, affective, social, and so on—is the
definitive task of philosophy.
Philosophizing is subject to two principal modes of error:
Errors of Reason: Inferential flaws in the articulation of conclusions to be

drawn from given premisses.
Errors of Judgment: Assumption flaws in the supposition, presuppositions,
and grounds of reasoning.
Evaluation in the former case lies in the range valid/invalid; in the latter it
lies in the range plausible/implausible. Philosophical cogency lies in draw-
ing valid (or appropriate) conclusions for plausible (or reasonable) prem-
isses. And here their acceptability is not absolute but basis relevant, and
depends on the experience-determined context of judgment plausibility
that is available to the agent. What is judgmentally acceptable to a contem-
porary of Socrates may well not be so for one of Kant.
4 N. RESCHER
However, this does not make for an indifferent relativism of anything

goes. There are facts it is impossible for someone to realize. (Rutherford’s
model of the atom was not available to the atomists of ancient Greece.)
And, on the other hand, there are no facts that are inexcusable for some-
one to ignore. (The micro-organisms unavailable to the ancients are
unavoidable for the moderns.) Doctrinal availability is generally a matter
of historical context.
What philosophy strives to develop is an informative and comprehen-
sive view of our position in reality’s stagesetting able to orient us—both as
individuals and as social groups—in dealing with our human and natural
environment. In sum, it seeks to provide the information needed to guide
us in life’s dealings and illustrates the opportunities at our disposal for
action in the realization of the desirable and the good.
Error Versus Mistake

Error consists in getting it wrong—for whatever reason. Mistake is culpa-
ble error—error the agent could and should have avoided. Fallacy is the
way of proceeding that leads the agent into error—the pathway to error.
(An entire chapter will subsequently be dedicated to one particular fallacy,
namely, the Fallacy of Respect Neglect.)
Philosophical error can take many forms: oversimplification, inappro-
priate presupposition, probabilistic analogy, and more. All of these can
occur both by innocent and venial unknowing/inadventure and by heed-
less and compatible and feckless misjudgment. This latter occurrence—
outright mistake in philosophy—is fortunately rather rare. There is, to be
sure, the change made against Arthur Schopenhauer (1787–1860) that his
bourgeois mode of life was inconsistent with his austere and acerbic teach-
ing. But here Schopenhauer sensibly replied that it was quite enough for
someone to explain the nature of a good life; that he himself should also
exemplify it would be asking too much. Such a discrepancy can be consid-
ered as rather uncharacteristic or even hypocritical, but it hardly discerns
characterization as erroneous. In large measure, the errors in which phi-
losophizing becomes entangled are not culpable mistakes of incompetence
or carelessness, but are aspirationally rooted in the systemic structure of
the philosophical enterprise, evoked by the nature of the problem situa-
tion that philosophy confronts.
Mistakes in Versus About Philosophy

It is important to distinguish between error in philosophizing and error
about philosophizing. The former consists of errors arising when mistaken
views are operative within philosophical doctrine, be exemplified by such
matters as inconsistency or oversimplification or failure to draw due
distinctions.
Mistaken views about philosophy arise regarding the objective of phi-
losophy, its limits or boundaries, and its methods or practices. This will
include misjudgments regarding the thematic range of the subject—for
example, by allocating to it domains which do not belong to philosophy.
One key error abut philosophy is to believe that it involves the view that
there is uniquely one appropriate and correct philosophy so that one sys-
tem should suit all thinkers. Such a position reflects a misunderstanding of
the nature of philosophy.
Philosophy is a particular sort of enterprise. It addresses “the big ques-
tions” regarding man’s place in the world’s scheme of things. Thus, there
can be mistakes about philosophy as well as mistakes in philosophizing.
Ethics and metaphysics are clearly in; numeretrics and methodology are
out. Philosophy is not opinion-mongering. It is not a venture in simply
varying doctrines and assuming affirmations on relevant topics. Philosophy
is an exercise in reasoning. To philosophize is not to present—to tell people
what to do or think. Its job is to explain: to expand not simply the what but
the why; to explain the reasons why the issues should be resolved as is. If you
dispense with reason-why explanation you dispense with philosophy itself.
Philosophizing admits to various sorts of mistakes, not only mistakes of
substance about its own nature but also mistakes of procedure. Both in
(mis-)reasoning but also in (mal-)exposition.
Thus, mistakes within philosophizing would be exemplified by such
matters as inconsistency or oversimplification or failure to draw due dis-
tinctions. The radical skeptic who claims to know for certain that nothing
can be known for certain is clearly in difficulty.
While people can make mistakes in philosophizing, there is no such
thing as a winning or erroneous philosophy as such. Granted, every phi-
losopher will think that those who disagree with his position are wrong.
But that sort of thing is in fact mere disagreement and does really qualify
as error. Mere disagreement does not qualify as error, it cannot be said
that when two philosophers answer a question differently, then at least one
of them must be wrong. In these matters, it can be the question that is
indecisive and not just the answer.
6 N. RESCHER
Error Versus Disagreement

The not-infrequent objection—“that’s just not doing proper philoso-
phy”—is accordingly one only available to those engaged in on the battle-
field of philosophy itself. The external analyst of the matter cannot operate
the destructive good and bad philosophizing. Of course, rhetorical mat-
ters—good and bad exposition, reasoning, presentation—are at his com-
mand. But good and bad issue-resolution is not. At this stage taking a
position within the scope of the subject itself becomes necessary. Errors of
exposition are one thing, errors of philosophizing another. To be sure,
from within a given philosophical position, a doctrine there is almost
invariably the idea that other variant positions and doctrines are false.
While people can make mistakes in philosophizing, there is no such
thing as a wrong or erroneous philosophy as such.
When there is philosophical disagreement on substantive matters, each
party—proceeding from its own doctrinal standpoint—will, naturally
enough, charge the other with being in error. And the so-regarded recipi-
ent will then, of course, simply shrug off such a charge with its counter-
accusation. The recipient of such a charge will have to take the matter
more seriously as now there is a perceptible need for correction and repair.
Error—philosophical error included—comes in two forms. First, there
is an inadvertent and blameless error. The person who proceeds on the
basis of available information that happens to be wrong or the person
whose experience provides a misleading bias is blameless for any mistaken
resolution. Here, error is blameless and outside reprehension. By contrast,
there is the prospect of outright mistake, of insufficient heed to the correct
indications, of carelessness or incompetence. Here, we have an outright
mistake meriting the criticism that the agent “ought to have known bet-
ter.” Error of this more serious kind is fortunately rather rare in
philosophizing.
For example, the distinctions needed to avert confusion, of the infor-
mation needed to evade inappropriate presupposition needed to evade
inappropriate presuppositions may simply not have been available in the
state of knowledge of the day. The lack of the fallacy-averting information
may thus be due not to negligence, lack of effort, or unacceptance on the
agent’s part. The damaging ignorance can simply be an artifact of inacces-
sible information. In this matter as in others an agent cannot be repre-
hended for doing what cannot be helped in the circumstances. Is fallacious
reasoning blameworthy? Does a philosopher merit reproach and
reprehension for committing a fallacy in his reasoning? In the end, there is

one—and just one—exculpation for committing a fallacy, namely, excus-
able ignorance. For it is common that certain facts just were not accept-
able in the state of information obtaining at a given time.
The distinction between culpable and venial error is virtually important
for philosophy. When an idea or doctrine is first articulated, its defects or
shortcomings may well not be apparent. Only in the wake of further devel-
opment and critique may such defaults become apparent. The defects it
involves are, as such, certainly errors. But they are not mistakes and could
not have been avoided at the early stages. To say that a philosopher was in
error is simply a statement of descriptive fact. By contrast, to say was mis-
taken is a graver imputation of flawed workmanship. The history of phi-
losophy is a lack of errors. But outright mistakes are few and far between.
Only relation as we say of a philosopher that “he should have known
better.”
The important distinction between error and mistake is crucial to the
present deliberation Alike in matters of answering questions, solving prob-
lems, or seeking goals, error is simply a matter of getting it wrong—so
proceeding as it fails in creating the objection. Mistake, by contrast, is only
a certain sort of error, namely, culpable error, error that arises for some
improper proceeding on the agent’s part. With error as such there is no
alternative to responsibility, but such an attribution is inherent in mistakes,
which as such arises from some inappropriate proceeding on that agent’s
part. Mistakes are errors that the agent could and should have avoided.
Thus, when relevant information is simply not available to agents—after
all, they cannot be aware of discoveries as yet unmade—then one cannot
expect the corresponding distinctions or premisses to be taken into
account, and any correlative flaws will be unavoidable and thereby excus-
able/venial. We cannot say that the agent “should have known better” in
relation to that which he cannot possibly get to know. And so in philoso-
phy as elsewhere various fallacious reasonings must nevertheless be
accounted blameless. Error can be venial and excusable, but with mistakes
we have it that “the agent ought to have known better.” When an agent
takes the wrong fact in the route, he is in error; when he does so despite
good outcome to the contrary, he is mistaken.
Again, in the case of Distinction Failure, the agent may well have no
grounds in the prevailing conditions to think the distinction to be neces-
sary. On the other hand, if the fallacy is of flawed reasoning, such as post
8 N. RESCHER
hoc ergo propter hoc, then the mistake at issue is indeed culpable and the
agent “should have known better.”
When important distinctions were not drawn in his day, a philosopher
cannot be justly reprehensible for ignoring them. Whenever fallacies are
the result of understandable unknowing committing them can be excused.
Only when there is culpable ignorance—where it can reasonably be said
that the agent at issue “could and should have known better” is the resul-
tant fallacy discreditable. One cannot reasonably expect someone to
exceed the knowledge of their day, not hold them blameworthy for failing
to so do.
In philosophical exposition, a fallacy is something more serious than
just a flaw. For a flaw can be the failure to realize something positive, while
a fallacy is actually the realization of something negative. And yet, error—
as such—is not in and of itself a fallacy. Instead, a fallacy is a failed mode
of reasoning that results in error. Erroneous conclusion can be arrived at
without any fallacious reasoning at all, specifically when the reasoning—
while of itself perfectly correct and non-fallacious—is based on false prem-
isses. Even in the absence of fallacious reasoning philosophical deliberations
need not yield correct and tenable conclusions. Avoiding fallacies is a nec-
essary but not sufficient condition for good philosophizing.
CHAPTER 2
Classifying Philosophical Fallacies
Fallacy
Philosophical fallacies fall within the larger theme of fallacies in general,
regarding which there is a large and diffuse logical and rhetorical litera-
ture.1 Logicians have traditionally classified fallacies in line with the tax-
onomy of Display 2.1. But within this broader context, there is a varied
assortment of modes of fallacy that are especially common in specifically
philosophical deliberation. It is these characteristically philosophical mis-
takes that will be presently at issue.
Inconsistency
Inconsistency and self-contradiction constitute the most serious of philo-
sophical failings. When a thesis or doctrine is at odds with itself—counter-
indicated even on its own telling (such as a radical skepticism to the effect
that no philosophical thesis can reasonably be maintained)—we are clearly
in the presence of something unacceptable.

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10 N. RESCHER
Formal: improper modes of inference

EXAMPLES: Denying the Antecedent, Affirming the Consequent
Substantive [Material]: improper modes of assertion
—interpretative: errors regarding meaning
EXAMPLES: shifting Equal Terms, Inadequate Distribution
—Presumptive: errors regarding acceptability
EXAMPLES: Erroneous Presupposition Begging the Question, Non sequitur
Display 2.1 The classification of fallacies
Unreasonable Demand
The Fallacy of Unreasonable Demand hinges on requiring something that
cannot possibly be realized. One major form of philosophical improbabil-
ity turns on the infinite regress of presuppositions. Thus, consider
the theses:
• The adequate explanation of events calls for explaining their causes

adequately.
• A case is not adequately explained until all of its cases are so explained.
Clearly, these structures render the explanations of events impossible from

the very start.
And an analogous situation prevails with respect to the thesis
• Accepting a conclusion is not justified until all of its processes become

acceptably justified. Entanglement in such infinite regress is among
the salient flaws of philosophizing.2
Infinite proceedings are just too much to ask for.
A Survey of Philosophical Fallacies

Display B gives a survey of the principal sort of fallacies communally
encountered in philosophical exposition.
The falling observations are in order in this context.
2 CLASSIFYING PHILOSOPHICAL FALLACIES 11
• Philosophical fallacies so function that errors of omission can be

either innocent or culpable, as can errors of presumption; but errors
of logic are always culpable.
• Fallacies of presumption constitute efforts “to obtain by theft what
would by rights be the fruit of toil.” They are almost always culpable.
• Fallacies of logic are always culpable.
• Fallacies of omission and presumption may or may not be culpable,
although the former mainly are.
Failure to Heed Distinctions

Men and women differ. Granted, they are not different species—the one
from Mars and the other from Venus. But they differ biologically, socially,
behaviorally (?). And this is something philosophers can and should take
account of. But there are two crucially important respects in which men
and women do not differ. One is cognitively with respect to matters of
fact. The melting point of lead is the same for men as for women, as is the
atomic weight of measuring, and the square root of two. Matters of fact,
alike concrete and absurd, are the same for men as for women. There is no
male arithmetic or female physics—factual domains are the same for both.
The other crucially casting is ethics. Theft is uniformly reprehensible
for men and women, and kindness is uniformly virtuous. Moral virtues
and values do not admit of gender differentiation.
These considerations point to a characteristic fallacy in the philosophi-
cal treatment of gender issues. For her is it needful to heed and maintain
the essential difference between these issues where gender matters and
those where it does not. To proceed otherwise is a Failure to Heed to
Critical Distinction.
Contravening Common Sense

It is always difficult from a philosophical position to gain a fair hearing in
our antagonistic climate of opinion. But, of course, it would be fallacious
to reject a contention on grounds of unpopular rather than untenable
consequence.
The English philosopher Herbert Spencer thus rejected Kant’s theory
of space as absurd because it envisioned space as a mind-created thought-
thing. As Spencer saw it, this violated the common-sense fact that minds
12 N. RESCHER
have to exist and function within space and thus cannot create that which
is the essential prerequisite for their own existence.3
Some philosophical dictums are so bizarre in the way of common-sense
combination that no one has even actually espoused them and their side
status is that of discussable hypotheses available for purpose of contrast.
Perhaps the most striking of these is solipsism, the theory that the only
existing person is one oneself, and that everyone else is simply a matter of
one’s illusions.
And a comparably bizarre hypothesis is that the entire world has come
into being only a matter of minutes ago, complete with fossils, eroded
stones, grown trees, adult people, minds with memories, and so on. The
consequences of such a position can always be ironed out through accom-
modating conjectures. But it can carry no conviction through absurdity in
contravening common sense.
The classic instance of a purported refutation via common sense is
afforded by Dr. Samuel Johnson’s attempted demolition of Bishop
Barclay’s idealism: he kicked a stone. His line of thought was straightfor-
ward: “If a stone were not solid and material, you just couldn’t kick it.
That’s just common sense.” To be sure, Barclay would not have been
intimidated. As he saw it the whole business—the stone, the foot, the kick-
ing, the whole business is simply an experiential episode. And as such—
that is, as an experience—it is all mental. As Barclay saw it, that too is
simply common sense.
Thus, the philosopher who propounds the rule that “All rules have
exceptions” saws off the very limb on which his own position hinges by
subjecting his claimed “all” to the concession of exceptions.
It is not difficult to find other examples of this sort of failing:
• Radical skepticism. Consider the thesis that there is no achieving

knowledge in philosophical matters: that in this field nothing can be
established as true. As metaphilosophy is a part of philosophy and all
theories about philosophy are themselves philosophical, this doctrine
saws off the limb that keeps itself aloft.
• Sophomore relativism. Consider the doctrine maintaining that every-
thing is simply a matter of opinion: there is just what you think to be
so and what I think, and that there is nothing whatever that should
and must be thought in common—alike by you and me and all the
rest. But this very thesis that “Nothing qualifies as communally
cogent” simply flies in the face of what it itself purports.
• Global ineffability. Here, we have the doctrine that language is

unsayable of formulating philosophical truth: it is a practical resource
for dealing with common-place matters but cannot correctly articu-
late matters of abstract theory. Here, too, we once again have a self-
conflicting contention.
Such cases instantiate positions that are at odds with themselves—unsus-

tainable even from the point of view that they themselves insist on taking.
Consequence Unacceptability
Incongruity is closely related to consequence unacceptability. It flies in the
face of generally acknowledged fact—that it conflicts with “what everyone
acknowledged” to be so and goes against common sense on the consensus
generalism as it used to be called. To contradict the “common knowl-
edge” of what everyone realizes as on this basis seen as a decisive defect of
philosophical theorizing.
While self-contradiction spells self-inflicted disaster for a philosophical
position, refutation by consequence-unacceptability is less drastic, envi-
sioning the derivation of something that is not logically self-contradictory
but rather clearly unacceptable and false. What is at issue here is the mode
of argumentation proceeding by what logicians call modus tollens. A refu-
tation through noting that the thesis or doctrine in question yields a con-
sequence that conflicts with something seems non-negotiably certain.
Thus, the logical positivists of the 1930s sought to eliminate the very
possibility of metaphysics by denying its prospects of decisive experimental
testability. But as various critics soon observed, their position had the
unacceptable consequence of unraveling substantial sections of natural sci-
ence where a comparable decisive testability of significant theories is often
also impracticable.4
Again, consider the thesis: “Categorical certainty is never available in
matters of empirical fact”. Such a position has the consequence that we
could not properly claim such certainty for a proposition like “The moon
is not made of green cheese.” This is clearly unacceptable: the claim at
issue is being as certain as anything can be. To think otherwise would be
to deprive the idea of certainty of any meaningful applicability.
Or again, take, the ethical thesis that “All willful killings are murder and
therefore morally unjustifiable.” Given that this would have the conse-
quence of condemning those who will in ways that are legally and morally
14 N. RESCHER
not only accepted but even mandated—soldiers and executioners acting in

line of duty—this thesis cannot be endorsed unqualifiedly as is.
Then too, consider the stance of a radical idealism that there are no
objective facts that exist independently of what people think, so that the
being of fact consist in their by in thought. This would clearly lead to the
consequence that prior to the emergence of minds in the world there were
no facts whatsoever—no mind-antecedent state of things which mind-
endowed beings could emerge. This is clearly an unacceptable conse-
quence (moreover, it obliterates the distinction between acknowledged
fact and facts as such).
In all such cases, a position is refuted by showing that it leads inferen-
tially to untenable consequences.
Improper Possibility Elimination

In canvassing possibilities for search by elimination, it is important to
ensure that they are mutually exclusive and (above all) exhaustive. The
Fallacy of Ignoring Possibilities is thus a significant flaw in philosophical
exposition. It occurs when a canvas/survey has been made of possible
ways of resolving a philosophical issue and one (or more) of them elimi-
nated on grounds of having some supported flaw, shortcoming, or
deficiency.
Reasoning by elimination only works when the range of possibilities is
correctly and appropriately mapped out, and employment of this mode of
reasoning thus bares significant and substantial presuppositions. And so
possibility omission throws the door wide open to the entry of philosophi-
cal error.
Philosophers happily take recourse to the “Process of Elimination.” By
finding flaws and picking flaws in the contentions of their opponents, they
seek to establish their own favored positions. However, this proceeding of
proof by elimination—this extraction of positivities from negativities—
only works when the spectrum of alternatives is mapped out in a way that
is both exclusive and—even more critically—totalization with respect to
the probabilities. If this crucial aspect of completeness and exhaustiveness
is not pre-established and remains no more than a problematic assump-
tion—we have no more than a fallacious hodgepodge: an exercise in the
Fallacy of Incomplete Alternatives.
Another prominent philosophical fallacy is that of Issue Distortion,
which, in effect, improperly changes the subject. In Plato’s dialogue,
Socrates repeatedly changes his interlocution with this. When the question
under consideration was “What is justice?,” they instead provide answer to
the question “What (sort of things) are just?” and offered not a specifica-
tion but some examples. In effect, they provided the right answer to the
wrong question. Traditional rhetorician condemned this fallacy as ignora-
tio elenchi, ignoring the line of deliberation. This sort of subset-shifting of
the subject is particularly common in polished philosophy when issue of
ethical merit are often replaced by those of material advantage. This fallacy
of Issue Distortion can also be characterized as issue conflation or confu-
sion. In its general structure, it is a procedural/methodological flaw rather
than a substantive error—although specific cases often take the later guise.
Issue Distortion is always a culpable mistake whose perpetuators aught “to
know better.”
Coincidence Dismissal
The Fallacy of Coincidence Dismissal occurs through transmuting a mere
conjunction into an actual connection of some sort, thus moving from
and-also to and-thereby. It is a generalized version of the traditional fallacy
of post-hoc ergo propter-hoc. This highly problematic mode of reasoning is
particularly common in social and political philosophy where it is often
argued that because A is found alongside B, this constitutes a connection
so that reducing A will reduce B. One mistake is John Dewey’s argument
that because traditional literacy education accompanied political unsophis-
tication in the electorate, a more practical and scientific education would
make for improved democracy. And a further example would be the
Wilsonian idea that because Germany’s militarian existed in the old social
order, the augmentation of populism would engender a social benign sys-
tem. (What they got instead was Nazism!)
Obscurantism
Obscurantism is a major fallacy in philosophizing, especially diffuse in the
European continent since the days of the French revolution and post-
revolutionary idealism. Its hallmark is the use of obscure, never properly
explained terms that leaves understanding as “as exercise for the reader.”
What is Marxists? What is Proudhon’s equality? What is Heidigerian
annihilation? Those authors never tell us. The unclarity of these concep-
tions leaves the constitution of the correlative philosophy as a
16 N. RESCHER
do-it-yourself exercise for the reader. Every interpreter has his own doc-
trine, and the ideologically detached reader is left to stumble in a fog of
apprehension. Recent French philosophizing on issues of personal and
social philosophy affords a graphic instance of this sort of thing. Its dis-
course guidance is the principle that good philosophizing must be intelli-
gible. To be sure clarity is not enough. But by no reasonable standard is
unclarity an asset.
Bias and Dogmatism

The Fallacy of Bias arises in philosophy when undue and exaggerated
emphasis in important or significance is assigned to one aspect of a situa-
tion or relation to the rest, as Berkeley’s “To be is to be perceived” brushes
aside the equally significant “To be is to be conceived.”
Some philosophers seek to erect a construction on sand—without any-
thing like a firm base of support. They fail to fit out their salient commit-
ments without any basis of evidentiation and substantiation, and give
reciprocal no good reason for acceptance. (“Take it or leave it” seems to
be their motto.) This proceeding is substantially preaching from teaching.
It is accordingly the Fallacy of Dogmatism, which leaves the proponent in
the role of a guru rather than a philosopher. (Of course, people who are
too important for detailed examination and elaboration reasoning may
well prefer this sort of thing.)
Analogy Stretching
Analogy stretching is another major form of philosophical fallacy. Thus,
the analogy of statecraft in difficult circumstances with inauguration in
difficult weather has been prominent in political philosophy since ancient
times. And yet, the case that can be made for its cogency is feeble at best.
Here, the pattern of reasoning has the format “If you say X in this con-
text, you would also have to say X in that one, which—for good reasons—
would be quite unacceptable.” For outright refutation this analogy must
of course be very tight.
An example of such reasoning is found in the contention that heredity
bequests should be abolished because monetary awards should always
only be rewards—that they should only ever be given to those who have
done something to deserve them. Plausible though this may sound it is
clearly untenable on closer inspection. For one would now also have to
abolish the award of treasure troves as well as doing away with lotteries
and games of chance.
A further illustration of such analogy refutation occurs in the context of
a scientific positivism of the rigoristic sort advocated by Ernst Mach, which
admits the following critique: “If you reject grounds of experiential micro-
entities on grounds of their experiential unaccessibility then you must
forego any recourse to lawful generalization in explanation, since all expe-
rience is finite in scope and can never achieve the universality that is
required for actual lawfulness.”
Premiss Deficiency
Premiss Deficiency is yet another common form of philosophical fallacy.
The unavailability of a tenable rationale for substantiating a philosophical
doctrine is obviously a decisive impediment to accepting a philosophical
doctrine. It if cannot be plausibly substantiated then it does not really
“have a leg to stand on.” This sort of defect is going to be especially criti-
cal here: unavailable premisses. After all, philosophical contentions are—
or should be—the product of rational deliberation, and rational substation
inevitably involves premisses so that one salient way of refuting a philo-
sophical claim or position is to establish the untenability of one or more of
its sustaining premisses.
A classic example of the phenomenon of premiss untenability is afforded
by those parts of Aristotelian cosmology that were geared to a geocentric
conception of the universe.
Again, it is clear that what is wrong with the idea of Aryan physics or
Soviet biology or feminists astronomy is that all of them rest on the com-
mon yet deeply problematic and unsustainable premiss that nature’s
observable modus is somehow responsive to people’s socio-potential ori-
entation, so that the proper answer to certain questions about how things
work in the natural world is something that depends on the investigator’s
ideology.
Counterexample Admission
One prominent way of defeating a generalizing of the format “All Xs are
Ys” is by way of counterexample, that is, by adducing an instance of an X
that is not a Y. A classic instance of counterexamples in philosophical refu-
tation is given by René Descartes classic Cogito reasoning: “I think therefore
18 N. RESCHER
I am.” Descartes here projected a counterexample to the radical skeptic’s thesis

that certainty is unachievable with regard to factual matters. As he saw it,
doubting is by nature a way of thinking so that in doubting one’s own exis-
tence one actually affirms it as a thinking being.5
A further illustration of this procedure is set on stage by the thesis that:
“Only doings whose agent could have done otherwise in the circumstance
can possibly qualify as free acting.” John Locke provided a decisive coun-
terexample here—effectively as follows: “Consider the person who chooses
to remain in a certain room and in so doing entirely of his own unfettered
decision and unconstrued choice.” By hypothesis the individual remains in
the room of his free will. And yet if—unbeknownst to him—the room
were actually locked, he could not do otherwise.
Again, consider the philosophical contention, “To know a fact is justifi-
ably to believe something that is true.” But then consider a disperative fact
“P-or-Q” which is believed by Jones who indeed has justification for his
belief because he believes P (which happens to be false), but which hap-
pens to be true only because Q is true (which Jones disbelieves). We would
then certainly not want to say that Jones knows that P-or-Q, which never-
theless is something true that is believed by him.
Infinite Regression
The philosophical dismissal of infinite regresses found one of its earliest
instances in the paradoxes of the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (b. ca.
485 BC). He reasoned as follows:
Notoriously fleet-footed Achilles has a race with a proverbially slow tortoise.

Naturally enough, the tortoise demands a head start. But now by the time
that Achilles reaches the tortoise’s starting point, the tortoise will have
moved on and will be somewhat ahead. And when Achilles reaches that
position the tortoise will have moved on and will still be ahead a bit. And so
on. Thus Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise.6
Thus, in the face of an infinite and thereby incompletable process, Achilles

cannot reach that goal, and actually can never even get started en route to
it. With infinite regression thus ruled out as impracticable, Zeno saw his
argument as a refutation of motion.
Plato (c. 428–347 BC) has a prime place in the history of infinite
regress. His dialogue Parmenides is a locus classicus of regress
argumentation.
Parmenides here tries to saddle the Platonic theory of ideas with the
objects that it entails on an infinite regression of idea, idea of the idea, idea
of the idea of the idea, and so on.7
The reasoning set out here is a variant of that set out in Book X of the
Republic when Plato answers for the uniqueness of the Forms of things:
[In the realm of natural Form] there is no more than one couch, uniquely
wrought and created: the couch which really and in itself is (autên ekeinên
ho esti klinê) …. For if there were two, there would now have to be (a third)
Form which both of them would have, and then that would be the couch
which really and in itself is, and not the other two.8
Analogous reasoning is at issue in the so-called Third Man argument of

Aristotle, which criticizes the Platonic theory as requiring a third super
idea of man to cement men to the man-idea which links them and thereby
embark on an infinite regress.9
Improper Modal Transit

In cognition as in human dealings we have to pay our way: there is no such
thing as a free lunch. This inheres in the fundamental principle that ratio-
nal in a derivative as in material production ex nihilo nihil fit: you can only
take out what has been put in. And in philosophical contexts, this is most
striking and portentous in the context of the corollary principle that modal
innovation is impracticable, so that operative here is a Principle of
Inferential Homogeneity to the effect that:
In valid inference to a conclusion of a given thematic orientation informa-

tion must of this same thematicity must be provided by the premises.
On this basis a wide array of inferential transit must prove to be impracti-

cable, as per the register of Display 2.2. In each case, a cogent inferential
limitation from premisses in the first thematically modal category to a
conclusion in the second became possible only when the inference is
reconstrued enthymematically subject to the assumption of some tacit
premiss to bridge the gap between the modal availability of the antecedent
premiss to the modal commitments of the conclusion.
20 N. RESCHER
• fact to value
• actuality to necessity
• moves to morals
• appearance to reality
• subjectivity to objectivity
• legality to justice
Display 2.2 Some infeasible inferential transits
Some illustrations will help clarify the matter.

Take the philosophically common contention that the fact that people
do value something entails that it has value. It is readily seen, however,
that this fact-to-value transition pivots on the transit supposition that peo-
ple proceed rightly, properly, and correctly in matters of evaluation.
Without this (clearly non-factual) presupposition the transit from valuing
to value becomes unachievable.
Or again, take the transit from legality—what the law requires—to jus-
tice—what is ethically right and proper. Such a style of reasoning only is
cogent subject to the enthymematic supposition of a just legal system that
seeks to allocate in fact what is just and fully in principles.
As these examples indicate, the Fallacy of Improper Modal Transit can
come into play whenever such inferences are projected in the absence of
the presupposition and precommitments on whose basis alone the transi-
tion at issue will become practicable.
Category Confusion
Yet another way of refuting a philosophical position is by noting that it is
predicated on a category mistake. Thus, philosophers sometime ascribe
temporarily to timeless objects. They wonder whether π existed in
Neanderthal times and whether the Pythagorean Theorem will survive the
extraction of life in the Solar System. But themes of this sort simply bark
up the wrong tree. Quantities and method relationships just are not the
sort of thing that exists in space and time. To inquire into them on this
basis is to submit to a category mistake. One cannot posit this sort of thing
in time any more than one can position one’s right to vote or one’s respon-
sibility toward children in some spatial location or other.
In philosophy, as elsewhere, one must not conflate the things that

belong to different categories.
Consider an example. Theorists here suggested that our everyday
inductive reasoning has doubtful validity. One philosopher writes:
The real question is: Do any number of cases of a law [say of gravity] being
fulfilled in the past afford evidence that it will be fulfilled in the future? If not,
it becomes plain that we have no grounds whatever for expecting the sun to
rise tomorrow.10
But look at those stressed terms. Granted the past ponders no thematically
certain proof of what will happen in the future. But evidence? And we
indeed have no demonstrably failproof guarantee, but no cogent individual
basis? The argument against the rationality of our “individual” belief rid-
den roughshod over the doctrinarian between individual and deductive:
between evidentiation and proof. Different sorts of things are at issue here,
and the inaccessibility of the one does not entail that of the other.
Consider, again, the thesis that for aught we know to the contrary life
is but a dream, an idea loved by Renaissance philosophers and dramatists
alike. Among its fatal flaw is that of a mismanagement of language. For the
distinction between waking experience and sleeping experience is by its
very nature drawn from within the doctrine of experience as a whole to
distinguish two different modes thereof. In consequence, it cannot prop-
erly be redeployed to contrast experience-as-a-whole with something else
outside of it (e.g., reality). To do so would make no more sense than to
take the distinction between earlier and later that has to be drawn within
time-as-a-whole to attempt to distinguish between time-as-a-whole and
something else outside of it—as would be the case if we were to inquire
about what sorts of things value going out before time began. As distinc-
tion that is by its very nature domain eternal simply cannot be meaning-
fully redeployed to distinguish that domain from something else outside.
Again, Immanuel Kant deployed this sort of reasoning against the
Ontological Argument of St. Anselm to the effect that God must exist
because he is, by definition, the necessarily existent being. Kant rejected
this reasoning on grounds that the transit from in-name-only attribution
of a feature order its actual possession by a real object is never automatic.11
22 N. RESCHER
Meaning Deficiency
Yet another way of invalidating a philosophical position is by showing that
its salient terminology is defective—that some of the terms that figure
prominently in its articulation lack a viable sense. After all if the very ter-
minology of a position cannot bear a clear and definite meaning that posi-
tion becomes untenable. One cannot rationally endorse a thesis or doctrine
if one is not in a position to say intelligently what it is that it contends. In
philosophy, one certainly cannot buy a pig in a poke.
Proceeding from this angle of consideration, John Locke attacked tra-
ditional, Aristotle-inspired metaphysics by arguing that its key terms sub-
stance did not have a clear, intelligible, informatively constructive sense.
And similarly, the enemies of the logical Positivist’s rejection of metaphys-
ics held that their empiricist contention of meaning foundered on their
incapacity to provide a viable account of its core conception of “empirical
meaningfulness.”
If careful and accurate usage is at odds with formulation of a claim, then
it had best be qualified or abandoned. Usage-contravening claims are ipso
facto untenable.
Thus, it simply makes no sense to say “I know that p, but it is somehow
doubtful,” or “X knows that p but it may not be so.” Only what is flat out
true can appropriately be claimed as knowledge. Of course, one can indeed
speak of putative knowledge. It makes perfectly good sense to say “X
thinks he knows that p, but be really doesn’t,” or “I then thought I knew
p but I really didn’t.” But saying “I know p but may be wrong about it”
involves a mis-use of language. In philosophical discourse about knowl-
edge, the distinction between actual and putative knowledge is critical
and must be scrupulously honed. (And in view of the nature of substantial
philosophical issues, this means that it would be anomalous to speak of
philosophical knowledge.)
Value Distortion and Misprioritization

Refutation is often attempted via the consideration that while holing a
certain position does not make its exponent in error regarding matters of
descriptive fact it matters of value priority or the adoption of ends and
objectives.
Political theorists have, for example, held that the founding fathers
mis-prioritized group volition over individual rights, a flaw in their
institutional thinking that was not corrected until the adoption of the
Bill of Rights. Or again, adherents of the “critical thinking” approach
to logic have complained that twentieth-century logicians focused on
the mathematizable sectors of logic to the neglect of informal reason-
ing, judgmental assessment, and discursively rhetorical modes of
substation.
Another example is afforded by the oft-affirmed thesis that there are no
objective standards of merit in art: that one person’s opinion of artistic
merit is as good as any other and that (accordingly) with artists and art-
works one is every bit as good as any other. But this position runs afoul of
the elemental fact that artworks are generally created with some sort of
purpose in view—sometimes to decorate, sometimes to provoke thought,
sometimes to amuse, sometimes to evoke a specific emotion like awe or
admiration or surprise. And such purposiveness endows the evaluative
enterprise with an element of objective cogency that runs afoul of the
evaluative nihilism of the thesis at issue.
Coda
Display 2.3 presents a survey of philosophical fallacies. This fact is that
philosophical reflection puts no free lunch on offer. None among the
alternative problem resolution is important problems of its own—naive
affords cost-free resolution of the questions that involve no difficulties
and negativities of their own. The task is then not a matter of finding a
resolution that is problem-free, but rather one whose ratio of prob-
lems-resolved versus problems-raised is optimal It is, in sum, a matter
of cost-benefit analysis—of weighting the balance of the positivities
versus the negativities involved in the handling of philosophical
problems.
24 N. RESCHER
Omission Invariably
vs. Culpable
Commission ?
FALLACIES OF OMISSION
Failure to accept an evident fact O I
Failure to accept the clear implications and O I
consequence of one’s position
Failure to accommodate a needed complication O
(Oversimplification)
Failure to effect a needed simplification O
(Overcomplication)
Failure to differentiate respects O I
Failure to draw needed distinctions O
Ignoring relevant possibilities O
FALLACY OF LOGIC
Self-contradiction/inconsistency C I
Invalid inference C I
Obscurantism (lost meaning) C I
Infinite regress C I
Improper analogies C I
Counterexample admission C I
Category confusion C I
Improper modal transit C I
Dogmatism C I
Meaning deficiency C I
FALLACY OF PRESUMPTION
Consequence inacceptability C I
Conclusion jumping/Premiss deficiency C I
Unrealistic assumptions (controverting C I
common sense)
Unsupported or false presuppositions C
Coincidence dismissal C
Observantism C I
Unreasonable demands C I
Hasty generalization C I
Bias/Dogmatism C I
Over-ambition C I
Issue distortion (ignoratio elenchi) C I
Reimpersonalization C I
Display 2.3 Philosophical fallacies

Notes
1. Two particularly informative books are C. L. Hamblin, Fallacies (London:
Methuen, 1970) and Hans V. Hansen and R. C. Pinto (eds.), Fallacies:
Classical and Contemporary Readings (State College: Penn State University
Press, 1995). The general literature of the subject is vast, and much of it is
causal in the bibliographies of these two books. There is also a series of
special studies of particular fallacies. On fallacies of meaning rooted in
vagueness, equivocation, and semantical indeterminacy, see Rosanna Keafe
and Peter Smith (eds.), Vagueness: A Reader (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1970), as well as J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2003). On fallacies of circular reasoning and begging the question,
see Douglas N. Walton Begging the Question (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1991). On fallacies of self-refutation, see J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and
Heaps (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).
2. On such issues, see the author’s Infinite Regress (New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers, 2012). Relevant technicalities in formal logic are
addressed in J. Barwise and L. Moss, Vicious Circles (Stanford:
C. S. U. Publications, 1996).
3. Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography, 2 vol’s (New York: Appleton, 1904),
Vol. I, p. 289.
4. Carl G. Hempel. “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of
Meaning,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, vol. 416 (1950) pp. 41–63.
See also the Preface to the second edition of A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth,
and Logic (London: Gollancz, 1949), which acknowledges the criterio-
logical criticism of Alonzo Church.
5. René Descartes, Discourse in Method. (Many translations are available.)
6. Kirk, Raven, Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 272.
7. On the “Third Man” argument, see Gregory Vlastos, “The Third Man
Argument in the Parmenides,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 63 (1954),
pp. 319–49; reprinted in his Studies on Plato’s Metaphysics, ed. by R. E. Allen
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 231–63.
8. Plato, Republic, 597c.
9. See Vlastos, “The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides,” The
Philosophical Review, vol. 63 (1954), pp. 319–49; reprinted in his Studies
on Plato’s Metaphysics, ed. by R. E. Allen (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1965), pp. 231–63.
10. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (London: Oxford University
Press, 1912), p. 96.
11. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A592–B620 ff.
CHAPTER 3
Illustrating Philosophical Fallacies
Prioritization in Pre-Socratic Metaphysics

It is instructive to examine a representative sampling of philosophical fal-
lacies prominent in the history of the subject. Accordingly, some two
dozen examples will be considered here, beginning with classical antiquity.
The doctrine of the four elements was a common heritage of early
Greek proto-scientific thought. Its basis was the idea of a physical reality
composed of four sorts of constituents that exhibit the fundamental states
or conditions of the things we encounter in nature:
Earth (the solid)

Water (the liquid)
Air (the aetherial or gaseous)
Fire (the volatile)
Fire was the transformational agency that produces change among the
three material factors. Its heat provides for the evaporation that turned
water into air, and its absence in cold provides for the freezing that turns
water into solid. All three of the material basic elements are crucial for
human life: with solids via eating and expelling, with liquids via drinking
and evaporation, and with air via inhaling and exhaling.
However, the early Greek nature-philosophers differed crucially in the
question of fundamentality. Convinced that one particular element has to

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97174-8_3
28 N. RESCHER
be basic and primary, they disagreed in proposing different candidates for

the role:
Solidity/earth: Democritus and the Atomists

Liquidity/water: Thales
Ethereality/air: Anaximenes
Volatility/fire: Heraclitus
And the further prospect of an indefinite mixture of elements was also

canvassed by Anaximander as a fifth possibility.
This is not the place for a comprehensive account of early Greek phi-
losophizing. The salient point for present purposes is simply that with the
honorable exception of Anaximander, early Greek nature-philosophy was
based on a common and convenient presupposition, namely, that one or
another of the four elements must be fundamental. In their philosophy of
nature, as in axiomatic geometry and in their military and political organi-
zation, the early the Greeks in postulating a hieratical order of priority
where some agent has to be fundamental and supreme.
And so right from the start, Western philosophy got off on a deeply
problematic footing by espousing the idea that when multiple factors are
in play one of them must be dominant and basic. This tacit and deeply
problematic hierarchic order with a definite controlling factor—heavily
prominent in matters of religion, arms, and governance, as well as (in
antiquity at least) in familial affairs—came from the very outset to play a
prominent role in Western philosophizing.
Self-Contradiction: The Liar

From the start, philosophical concern for problems of self-contradiction
largely focused on the riddle of The Liar (pseudomenos) of the ancient
Greek philosopher Eubulides: “Does the man who says ‘I am lying’ lie?”
(Also: “Does the witness who declares ‘I am perjuring myself’ actually
perjure himself ?.”)1 The problem that arises here was posed via the follow-
ing dilemma:
The declaration that I lie will be either true or false. But if this declaration is
true, then I lie, and my declaration will be false. But if that declaration is
false, then what it says—namely that I lie—is not the case and I must be
speaking the truth. Thus either way the truth status being assigned is
inappropriate.
3 ILLUSTRATING PHILOSOPHICAL FALLACIES 29
Eubulides’ riddle was immensely popular in classical antiquity.2 And it

gave rise to the problem encapsulated in the ancient story of Epimendes
the Cretan, who is supposed to have said that “All Cretans are liars”—with
“liar” being understood in the sense of a “congenital liar,” someone inca-
pable of telling the truth.3 What we have here is a self-falsifying statement
that involves a conflict of truth claims. And clearly any self-refuting uber-
scandal philosophical contention such as the uber-skeptical “No universal
generalization is ever true” can be viewed as tenable. Accordingly, “This
statement is too complex to formulate” and “All universal statements are
false” are self-contradictory and effectively meaningless in their failure to
convey any coherent information.
To be sure, if by “liar” one meant someone who lies frequently, but not
necessarily always, then there would be nothing paradoxical about the Liar
Paradox.
The salient lesson here is that a sensible philosophical contention can-
not possibly conflict with itself. Self-consistency is a crucial and non-
negotiable requisite in philosophy, and the detection of its absence is a
salient mode of philosophical refutation.
Consider the variant paradox posed by the riddle:
“Does the person who says that he is now lying speak truly?”
This Self-Falsification Paradox now at issue roots in the thesis:
(S) This statement (i.e., this very statement now being enunciated) is false.
This statement confronts us with the perplex:
We class S as The truth-value of S according to itself, in consequence of

the preceding status of what it claims
T F
F T
In no case can we bring these two into alignment. Nor will it help to
introduce a third truth value (“indeterminate” or “undecided”). For
consider:
(S′) This statement is false or undecided

30 N. RESCHER
The situation now becomes:
We class S as Truth-value of S' in consequence of the preceding status of what if claims

T F
U T
F T
Again there is no way of bringing these two columns into accord. The only
viable alternative is to view such statements as (S) and (S″) as semantically
meaningless, that is, as lacking any stable truth-value status whatsoever—
even “indeterminateness” insofar as this is seen as a truth-value.
Plato and the Third Man

A key teaching of the “Theory of Ideas” espoused by Plato (428–348 B.C.)
was based on the principle:
Two particular items (man, horse, apple) qualify as instances of the same
kind of thing (X) when both (exemplify instantiate) the corresponding
kind-idea (X*)—the model or paradigm of what is at issue).
An objection to this doctrine that has been commonplace as of the time of

Plato’s student, Aristotle, runs as follows:
X* the ideal X, will itself also have to be an X. And then we will have not
only Plato the man, (X) and the man-ideal of his type/kind (X*) but a third
man, the ideal man-idea (X*) to provide the unifying idea that qualifies both
Plato and the man-ideal as exemplifying the same kind.
This line of regressive thinking soon became standard among critics of

Plato’s Theory of Ideas, beginning with Aristotle.
The problem posed by the objection arises from assuming the regres-
sive series as per Display 3.1. But, in fact, the Platonic theory admits of a
unifying unifying unifying

link link link
instance thing kind higher level idealization ...

[man X] [the ideal man X*] [the super-ideal man X**]
Display 3.1 The regress of idealization

straightforward solution. For the straightforward way to avert this regress

is to change this picture by adopting the principle that X* = X**. The
strategy is to see that thing-kind ideal as a reflectivity self-patterning con-
forms with and fits itself, so to speak. From this standpoint, the idealiza-
tion operator * is reflexive and redundantly self-replicating. In the language
of modern mathematics, idealization is an idempotent operator, one
which—like “multiplication by one” or “producing a perfect copy”—
yields the same identical outcome when operated upon itself.
The flaw of the Third Man critique of Plato’s Theory of Ideas is thus an
error of oversimplification. There are here at least two ways of proceeding,
namely, accumulative and the repetitive—and the critics prematurely
agreed on foisting the wrong one of them on Plato.
The Skeptical Diallelus

The ancient Skeptics of the Empiricist school argued their case by pressing
the following argument, which has come to be known as the “Diallelus”
or “Wheel.”
Let it be that C is our inquiry-guiding criterion for validating the truth of

claims. But now consider the pivotal procedural-justifying contention:
“Conformity to the criterion C actually yields truths.” If this itself fails to
hold as true, then that assessment procedure fails. But our truth-
determinative criterion cannot meaningfully endorse this, since this would
be circular and thereby ineffective. A satisfactory criterion cannot properly
be appointed judge in its own care. But then it cannot be claimed as gener-
ally sufficient either.
Accordingly, those Skeptics argued that authentic knowledge is inaccessi-

ble because a rationally viable truth-criterion able to certify claims as such
lies beyond our grasp.
However, this line of reasoning has a decisive shortcoming. It fails to
acknowledge the crucial distinction between substantive contentions about
matters of fact and procedural practices about matters of method and pro-
cess. True contentions need to be differentiated between those substantive
facts that are the products of inquiry and those of methodological impact
regarding the processes involved.
32 N. RESCHER
But once this crucial distinction is drawn, there is no longer room for
the expectation that the methods of fact-substantiation need to be the
same as those for procedural justification. The idea of a homogeneous
criteriology of factual truth and procedural appropriateness acceptability
must be abandoned. And on this basis the vitiating circularity of the
Diallelus argument is lost.
In particular, proceedings can be justified not only via the factual claim
that they will actually work out successfully but also via the pragmatic
consideration that they afford our best (or indeed only) access to the pos-
sibility that they might work.
The flaw of the skeptical argument at issue is at bottom that of over-
simplification—mistakenly supposing a homogenous criteriology for
acceptability of very different kinds of claims specifically that of factuality
and that of methodology.
Buridan’s Ass
The classic anecdote of the temped ass—ascribed to the schoolman John
Buridan (c. 1295–1356)—affords a good example of a mistake in philo-
sophical reasoning arising from reliance on a false presupposition among
its premises. For the Buridan’s Ass puzzle is based on the stipulation that:
This mythical creature is a hypothetical animal, hungry, and positioned
midway between essentially identical bundles of hay. There is assumed to
be no reason why the animal should have a preference for one of the
bundles of hay over the other. Yet, it must eat one or the other of them,
or else starve. Under these circumstances, the creature will, being reason-
able, prefer Having-one-bundle-of-hay to Having-no-bundle-of-hay. It
therefore must choose one of the bundles. Yet, there is, by hypothesis, sim-
ply no reasons for preferring either bundle. It appears to follow that rea-
sonable choice must—somehow—be possible in the absence of preference.4
But what the story itself demonstrates is exactly that this contention
is false.
Where there is inherent preferability, rational preference does indeed
demand heeding it. But where preferability is absent, selective preference
need not be the difference between reasons and motives. When a random
selection among indifferent objects is made by me, I do have a reason for
my particular selection, namely, the fact that it was indicated to me by a
random selector. But I have no preference or psychological motivation of
other sorts to incline me to choose this item instead of its (by hypothesis
indifferent) alternatives. Such absence of a psychologically motivating

preference does not, however, entail the impossibility of a logically justifi-
able selection. A choice can, therefore, be logically vindicated as having
been made reasonably even though it cannot be traced back to a rationale
of differentiating evaluation. In short, we can have reasons for a choice
even where there is no compelling motivation for it. The Buridan prob-
lem’s purported paradigmatically pivots on a mistaken presupposition.
To see the Buridan example as authentically paradoxical thus involves
decidedly problematic articulated in the presupposition formulated at the
outset of this article. In coordinating rational solidarity with merit it over-
simplifies a decidedly more complex conceptual situation. (It is an inter-
esting consideration that the problem cannot be resolved by delegating an
indifferent choice to a mechanism such as a coin-toss of a die-roll. For
consider choosing between A and B by giving A “heads” and B “tails.”
But now there is the entirely indifferent alternative of giving A “tails” and
B “heads.” By bringing the die into it, we simply recreate the very prob-
lem at hand through yet another situation of indifferent choice.)
Descartes Hasty Generalization

In developing the case for his skepticism, René Descartes (1596–1650)
presented the following argument:
All that up to the present time I have accepted as most true and certain I
have learned either through the senses or from the senses. But it is some-
times proved to me that these senses are deceptive. And it is wiser not fully
to trust anything by which we have once been deceived. (Mediation on First
Philosophy No. I)
But in formulating this principle of reason what is clearly missing is the

rider “in matters of the same kind.”
There is, of course, an evident plausibility to such thinking. Who would
want to trust someone who has previously maintained as falsehood on
similar issues? But because expertise is highly context-specific, this pro-
ceeding of moving from “actually wrong once” to “possibly wrong
always”—or even “possibly wrong here”—is very questionable. And the
same holds for various other matters as well. A source that went wrong
matters in geometry may be very reliable in matters of botany. And the
circumstances that sight goes away in situations of fog, air disturbance, or
34 N. RESCHER
optical manipulation does not mean that it can do so under ordinary, nor-
mal, and standard conditions.
What we thus have here is problematic through its oversimplification by
case a failure to divide the overall range of sensory case into ordinary and
extraordinary, instead simply putting everything into the same box.
Cartesian Certainty
As he himself pursued it, the quest of René Descartes (1596–1650) for
informative certainty is an exercise in futility. His notorious “I think,
therefore I am” [a thinking being] invites the response “You sound like an
interesting person, tell us more about yourself.” It is entirely subjective
about what is being thought; it tells us absolutely nothing about objective
reality. To exit from the cage into which he has enclosed himself and
emerge into the world’s existing actualities, Descartes needs entirely dif-
ferent resources. Asked about trans-subjective reality, Descartes reply is
“God only knows.” (This is very literally so as Descartes himself acknowl-
edges in: the “God is no deceiver” reasoning of Mediation II.)
There are indeed many things of which one can be certain: that one
thinks, that one has beliefs, that one is under the impression that it is rain-
ing, and so on. All these are entirely subjective matters regarding oneself.
The transit to objective reality about the world’s arrangements always
involves at least theoretical prospect of error—of only via something a
fanciful and unrealistic as Descartes “all powerful deceiver hypothesis.”
Descartes wants idealized absolutes—what is realistically good enough
for all practical purposes does not interest or concern him. And in the end
he must pay a substantial price for this—the transit from philosophy into
theology.
The fatal flaw of Cartesian epistemology lies in its conception—in ask-
ing more for a purely rational, mono-theological philosophy than it could
possibly deliver. The ultimate lesson here is that if you propose to follow
Descartes in his non-negotiable commitment to absolutes ultimacies, you
will be impelled beyond the rational limits of secular philosophizing.
As long as we remain within the thought confines of my mind via such
conceptions as “I think,” “I believe,” “I am convinced that,” “I take
myself to know,” and so on, I remain in the arena of subjectivity. And
rational inference is self-limiting—it cannot extract in its conclusion what
is not provided for in its premisses. Its machinery is such that when noth-
ing but subjectivity goes in, nothing but subjectivity can come out: its rule
is nihilo nihil.
Descartes’ Representative Ego

Descartes became ongoingly famous for his dictum “I think therefore I
am” (cogito ergo sum). He had much work for this dictum to do:
I noticed that even when I wanted to think all things false, it was absolutely
essential that the ‘I’ who thought this should be somewhat, and remarking
that this truth ‘I think, therefore I am’ was, so certain and so assured that all
the most extravagant suppositions brought forward by the sceptics were
incapable of shaking it, I came if to the conclusion that I could receive it
without scruple as the first principle of the Philosophy for which I
was seeking.5
But just here lies the problem with Descartes argumentation. He

rightly stresses that the move from “I think” to “I am” requires this sec-
ond condition to be construed as “I am a thought-capable being.” But he
does not acknowledge that this presupposes the tacit principle: “An activ-
ity can only be carried out by an agent: Any action demands an agency—a
being to conduct it.” And this bit of ontologizing from activity to per-
forming agent is deeply problematic. In principle, thinking does not
require a thinker like raining requires a rainer or freezing a freezer. The
Cartesian argument does not establish an ego-agent, it presupposes it, and
it thereby fails to achieve its mission.
In taking self-apprehension as the model-instance for knowledge,
Cartesian philosophy effectively inverted the Copernican revolution in sci-
ence. For while Copernicus expelled us humans from an Aristotelian cen-
trality in the world of nature, Descartes firmly emplaced us at the very
center of the cognitive realm.
In their philosophizing, the ancients wanted to know how matters
stand in the world; the moderns since Descartes focus their inquiries on
how we ourselves can and should proceed in explaining this issue. Their
emphasis shifted from “What is the case” to “How can we get to know
what the case is?,” with the center of concern now moved from being to
knowing, from ontology to epistemology. They refocused attention from
the object of investigation to its practitioners and thereby ultimately to the
individuals in whose activities any investigating must be grounded.
36 N. RESCHER
The prime example of the philosophical egocentrism that evolved in

this way was the English philosopher G. E. Moore.
I have asserted that I do have certain perceptions, which it is very unlikely I

should have, unless some other person had certain particular perceptions;
that, for instance, it is very unlikely I should be having precisely those per-
ceptions which I am now having unless someone else were hearing the
sound of my voice. And I now wish to ask: What reason have I for supposing
that this is unlikely? What reason has any of us for supposing that any such
proposition is true? And I mean by “having a reason” precisely what I for-
merly meant. I mean: What other proposition do I know, which would not
be true, unless my perception were connected with someone else’s percep-
tion, in the manner in which I asserted them to be connected? Here again I
am asking for a good reason; and am not asking a psychological question
with regard to origin. Here again I am not asking for a reason, in the strict
sense of Formal Logic; I am merely asking for a proposition which would
probably not be true, unless what I asserted were true. Here again I am ask-
ing for some proposition of a kind which each of us believes; I am asking:
What reason has each of us for believing that some of his perceptions are
connected with particular perceptions of other people in the manner I
asserted?—for believing that he would not have certain perceptions that he
does have, unless some other person had certain particular perceptions? And
here again I am asking for a reason.6
The presumption that underpins much modern philosophy is that in

regard to philosophical thinking one oneself is typical, paradigmatic, rep-
resentative—that what holds for me holds for us. This, of course, means
that one must take as the central focus those aspects of oneself that are
general and generic rather than personal, eccentric, and idiosyncratic. And
this is something that is a good deal easier said than done.
To take oneself as representative is typical of humanity in general in a
problematic and largely fallacious presumption that functions prominently
in much modern philosophizing.
Spinoza’s Necessitarianism
In his classic 1677 treatise on ethics, Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) based
his deliberation on the only model of necessity he had before him—that of
mathematics, and especially geometry, where everything emerges by
deductive inference from basic definitions and self-evident axioms. And
with an all-determinating role allotted to the laws of nature (both physical

and human, for he assimilated the two), he envisioned the world as one
vast law-scripted drama of omni-determination unfolding all around us.
The idea that these laws themselves—the ruling principles of all occur-
rence—could be contingent, and might at least theoretically be different
from what they actually are, is something that did not figure in Spinoza’s
thinking. And so, the prospect of a distinction between absolute and con-
ditional necessity did not enter into his deliberations. In the eyes of sub-
sequent philosophizing, this lack came to be accepted as a serious—perhaps
fatal—error of omission. Starting with Leibniz (1646–1716) his succes-
sors saw no reason—and Spinoza gave them no reason—why the laws of
nature and the principles of logic should be matters of a single, homoge-
neous, and absolute homogenous necessity.
Kant’s Things in Themselves

As the German philosopher-polymath Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) saw
it, our sense-perceptive capacity—“sensibility” he called it—enables us to
perceive the appearance of things under certain corresponding modes of
apprehension. They do not give us access to how things are in themselves,
but only manifest how they appear to beings equipped with our particular
sort of sensory apparatus:
Even if we could bring our perception to the highest degree of clearness, we

should not thereby come any nearer to the constitution of objects in them-
selves. We should still know only our way of perceiving, that is, our ways of
sensing (“sensibility”). We should, indeed know it completely, but always
only under the conditions that are originally inherent in the perceiving sub-
ject. What the objects may be in themselves would never become known to
us even through the most elaborate knowledge of that which is alone given
us, namely, their appearance.7
What things are like in and of themselves, apart from our modes of percep-
tion—what things actually are like, as distinct from how they appear to
us—is at best a matter of conjecture.
We humans differ in our conception of things: my conception of most
any item X is different from yours. But it would be a grave mistake to
move from these unquestionable facts to postulating a variety of different
X’s along the line of X-as-I-conceive-it; X-as-you-conceive-it; and so on.
38 N. RESCHER
For diversity of conceptions just does not provide for a diversity of objects.
Things are neither originated nor created by thought: They have a being
of their own.
And yet, exactly this error was made when various interpreters misun-
derstood his position as claiming such a position for Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804).
To be sure, Kant did distinguish between:
• the X as I (subjectively) see it—(viz. the phenomenal object)
and
• the X as seen correctly (objectively)—viz. the “thing as it is in itself.”
But these for him were different (epidemic) ways of conceiving some-
thing and not different (ontological) sorts of things. (The difference is
graphically illustrated in Display 3.2.)
In theory, Kant’s conception of the “thing in itself” is capable of two
constructions: For somewhat preemptive reasons most interpreters and
critics have opted for the “Common Picture” presented in Display 3.2 in
contrast to a variant. But it is clear that in relation to the Variant Picture,
the commonly accepted view introduces the needless complication of a
dualized ontology, reminiscent of the Platonic duality of mundane and
ideal objects. To adopt a dualism that views Appearance as a realm of
being unto itself, distinct and disjoint from that of Reality, is to succumb
to a misleading overcomplication. After all, Reality is all there is actually to
it, and Appearance—right of wrong—is how it presents itself to us.
And so, in the end the idea of an item-duality of a phenomenal object of
personal experience and a noumenal object of impersonal reality does not
do justice to what Kant actually had in mind. He argued explicitly the idea
that things are somehow created in thought. Those interpreters who
forced it upon him mistakenly saw him as involved in a questionable realm
of observative phenomenal object contrasting with a manifold of trans-
experiential ontological objects. What Kant envisioned, however, is an
epistemic differentiation of object conceptions and not an ontological dif-
ferentiation of objects.
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— haukkuu hallikoira linnan lukki luksuttelee, hiistää ensin
hiljemmältä, harviammalta murahtaa, perän lyöen
pientarehan, hännän maahan torkutellen.
Sen on niin turvaisa haukkua nyt, kun se tietää kaikkein valvovan

ja kun tuon tuostakin aina joku pistäytyy ulkona. Toista on, kun kaikki
käyvät makuulle tuvassa. Silloin sen turkin alla tahtoo kylmä karmia,
sillä toisen talon koiran ääni ei penikulmien päästä kuulu.
Keväinen luonto nukkuu. Nukkuvat myös
pyhät pihlajat pihalla, pyhät oksat pihlajissa.
Päivänkoiton ensimäiset häivät leikkivät taivaalla. Pihan poikki

kiiruhtaa nuori tyttö. Se on
Annikki, hyvänimikko,
yön tytti, hämärän neiti,
talon tyttäristä nuorin. Hän kiiruhtaa kapeaa metsäpolkua rannalle

päin. Käpy rasahtaa paljaan jalan alla. Käki havahtuu, kukahtaa. Se
löytää vastakaiun Annikin aamunvirkeässä mielessä. Hän alkaa
hyräillä:
Siinä kukkuos käkönen, helkyttele hietarinta, hoiloa

hopearinta, tinarinta riukuttele; kuku illoin, kuku aamuin,
kerran keskipäivälläki ihanoiksi ilmojani, mieluisiksi metsiäni.
Käet yltyvät herättyään kilpaa kukkumaan, laululinnut laulamaan.

Ja
Annikki tuntee selvästi:
kun käki kukahtelevi, niin syän sykähtelevi, itku silmähän
tulevi.
Tosia mahtavat olla vanhojen sanat:
kyynärän ikä kuluvi, vaaksan varsi vanhenevi kuultua

kevätkäkösen.
Mutta eipä tässä jouda käkiä kukuttelemaan, sillä kiire on
päähän portahan punaisen, laajan laiturin laelle pitkän

niemyen nenähän.
Ja kohta hän siellä
rannalla vesikivellä huntujahan huuhtelevi.
Iloista onkin työtä tehdä, sillä
ylähällä päivyt paistaa, alahalla aallot välkkyy.
Mutta kuta ylemmäs taivaalle kohoaa päivän kehrä, sitä

kiivaammin pärskyy vesi ympärille pestessä, sillä kiireesti olisi kotiin
jouduttava, etteivät muut luulisi hänen jouten
kuvoansa katselevan,
itseään ihastelevan,
verevyyttänsä vetehen.
Annikin palatessa rannasta kuuluu läävästä lehmänkellojen

kalkatus.
Vanha emäntä laitumelle laskee. Laskiessaan pyytelee
varjele vakainen luoja,
varjele vahingon tieltä.
Ell'ei emännän omat paimenet olisi kyllin tarkkoja, niin:
paju pannos paimeneksi, leppä lehmän katsojaksi, pihlaja

pitelijäksi, tuomi tuojaksi kotihin!
Sitten emäntä kääntyy loitsussaan Mielikin, »karjan eukon»,

Tellervon, »karjan kaitsijan», ja muitten metsän haltijoitten puoleen
pyydellen suojaamaan karjaansa
soista soiluvista, lähtehistä läilyvistä
ja antamaan karjalle hyvät ruokamaat, että se heruisi. Suvetarta

hän pyytää erityisen hellää huolta karjasta pitämään:
heitä hienot helmuksesi, esiliinasi levitä karjalleni

katteheksi, pienilleni peitteheksi, vihoin tuulen tuulematta,
vihoin saamatta satehen.
Vihdoin hän puhuttelee karhua, metsän kuningasta, mitä

kauneimmin, mielittelevimmin nimityksin,
otsonen, metsän omena,

mesikämmen käyretyinen,
ja neuvoo häntä välttämään syömisen kiusauksen, jonka karjan

näkeminen synnyttää:
konsa karja kankahalla,

sinä suolle soiverraite.
Ja ellei karhu mairitteluista talttuisi, koettaa emäntä pilkaten häntä
karaista:
en mä noissa noin asuisi aina akkojen jaloissa; onpa maata

muuallakin, tarhoa taempanakin juosta miehen joutilahan,
virattoman viiletellä.
Kuippanaa, Tapiota, pyytää emäntä lopuksi pitämään petojansa

tarkasti silmällä.
Lehmät laukkaavat vapauteen päästyään huimasti metsään päin.

Ne mölähtelevät iloisesti polkien kavioillaan ja huiskien hännällään
ilmaa. Emäntä
panee paimenen perähän, orjan lehmien ajohon.
Iloinen on mieli paimenenkin kontti selässä lehmien perässä

tarpoessaan ja tuon tuostakin torveensa törähytellessään. Hän
ajoi lehmät suota myöten,

itse kangasta kapusi.
Mutta päivän mittaan alkaa jo väsymyskin tulla ja tuntuu aivan kuin

lintunen laulaisi lehdossa:
jos ois aika orjan syöä, isottoman illastella.
Paimen ajaa karjansa levolle kankaalle,
itse istuu mättähälle, vihannalle turpehelle.
Hän päästelee kontin selästään, ottaa leivän laukustaan ja veitsen

tupestaan. Silloin valtaa hänet taas tuo tavallinen apea mieli, joka
koko päivän on ollut poissa, sillä
paimen parka kuivan leivän, kuivan kuoren karskuttavi,
Ja ainiaaksi särpimekseen
veen lipillä luikkoavi märän mättähän nenästä.
Mieleen johtuu talonväen paremmat ruuat. Ehkäpä sieltä orjallekin

jokunen parempi siru annettaisi. Siksipä pyyteleekin hän päivää
jouduttamaan aikaa kotiin päästäkseen:
kule päivä kuusikolle, viere vehnä vitsikölle, karkoa

katajikolle, lennä leppien tasalle, päästä paimenta kotihin
voivatia vuolemahan, rieskoa repäsemähän, kakkaroita
kaivamahan.
Karja on tuskin kerinnyt hävitä ensimäisen harjun taakse, kun

talonväki unohtaa sekä karjan että paimenen. Naisväen on lampaat
saatava kerityiksi ennen suurusta, että suuruksen jälkeen kerittäisiin
miesten mukana kaskelle ja saataisiin lampaat viereiselle pellolle
mukaan. Vanha emäntä, joka aina askareen kulkua valvoo, käskee
nytkin muistaen lampaat juottamattomiksi erästä miniöistään:
ota korvonen olalle, vesikappa kainalohon, ala astua

ve'elle!
Muistaen kiireen huutaa hän vielä miniän jälkeen:
tule tuulena takaisin, astuos ahavan lailla viikon veellä

viipymättä!
Kohta ovatkin lampaat kerityt. Naiset keräytyvät kaivolle

pestäkseen ihviset kätensä puhtaiksi. Miesväki, josta useimmat
olivat olleet aivan lähettyvillä valmistellen peltokaluja ja tahkoten
kirveitä
Kuutehen kovasimehen
seitsemähän sieran päähän,
saapuu samassa suurukselle. Mutta vanhaa isäntää ei näy.

Aamulla hän, kertoo Annikki,
otti ongen taskuhunsa, väkärauan väskyhynsä
ja läksi ensi kertaa tänä kevännä melomaan tutuille luodoilleen,

sillä ukon mielestä piti särenkudun kohtapuoleen alkaa. Varmaan
hän kokee verkot samalla. Jos ukko nyt saisi kaloja, päättelevät
nuoret miehet, niin kyllä sitten kohta »talkapohjat» taas työnnetään
vesille ja ukon kutomalla »sulkkunuotalla» lähdetään vetelemään
vienoja vesiä, lohiluotojen lomia, synkkiä syväntehiä, suuria

selän napoja.
Lyhyet unet otettua lähdetään palolle, lampaat ja niitten paimen

otetaan mukaan. Viime kesänä jo oli kaski kaadettu, pari päivää
sitten
pohjaistuuli kasken poltti, koillinen kovin porotti, poltti kaikki

puut poroksi, kypeniksi kyyätteli.
Tämä kaski oli täytynyt näin aikaiseen tehdä, sillä miesten

mielestä oli viereinen pelto kevätkauraksi liian pieni, siementä kun
oli. Naisväki määrätään kohta perille tultua pellolle turpeita
pienentelemään. Miehistä taas toiset menevät uutta paloa
aitaamaan, keskimäinen pojista alkaa kyntää eilen kesken jäänyttä
sarkaa. Mutta talon vanhin poika, joka isänsä jälkeen tulee perimään
isännyyden talossa, hankkiutuu kylvämään jo muokatulle pellolle nyt,
kun ukko niin kauvaksi aikaa oli kalalle jäänyt. Vakavana hän astuu
askeleen kerrallaan ja heittää oikealla kädellään kauroja vasemmalle
ja oikealle, vasen kannattaa tuohinauhalla olkapään ja selän ympäri
kiinnitettyä tuohikopsaa. Kylväessään hän lausuu:
minä kylvän kyyhättelen luojan sormien lomitse; käen

kautta kaikkivallan tälle maalle kasvavalle, ahollen ylenevälle.
Sitten pyytää hän maan haltioita kasvattamaan hyvin viljaa.

Lopuksi kääntyen Ukon puoleen hän anoo:
iätä iästä pilvi, nosta lonka luotehesta, toiset lännestä

lähetä, etelästä ennättele, vihmo vettä taivosesta, mettä
pilvistä pirota orahille nouseville, touoille tohiseville.
Ja ikäänkuin suopeana vastauksena kyntömiehen pyyntöön
paistavi Jumalan päivä
ja siihen ympärille ovat keräytyneet
linnut puuhun laulamahan, rastahat iloitsemahan, käki

päälle kukkumahan.
Vaikka suurin osa väkeä on ulkotöihin lähtenyt, niin ei talo silti

tyhjäksi jäänyt. Lapset leikkivät pihassa. Tytöt taputtelevat savileipiä
ja kulettavat kivilehmiään laitumelle ja kotiin. Pojat hevosina hirnuvat.
Mutta tuvassa helähtelee ahkera pirta. Talon kaunein tytär on siellä
aamusta varhain
pukehissa puhtahissa, valkehissa vaattehissa

kultakangasta kutonut, hopeista huolittanut kultaisesta
sukkulasta pirralla hopeisella.
Hän, kuuluisa kudonnastaan, jolla
suihki sukkula piossa, käämi käessä kääperöitsi, niiet

vaskiset vatisi, hopeinen pirta piukki,
oli nyt vihdoin lupautunut naapuriheimon miehelle
mesileivän leipojaksi, oluen osoajaksi, joka lautsan

laulajaksi, ikkunan iloitsijaksi.
Siksi hänellä on kiire, kun eivät kapiot ole vielä aivan valmiit. Ja
loimien väliin kutoutuu samalla monta toivorikasta ajatusta, sillä hän
on itse saanut sulhonsa valita, ei tarvinnut tyytyä isän ja veljien
valitsemiin.
Toivoa sykkii toinenkin rinta, sepon, nuorimman veljen, joka oli

lähtenyt rannalle
nenähän utuisen niemen, päähän saaren terhenisen.
Siellä hän rauhassa yksinään
veistävi venoista uutta purtta puuhoavi,
sillä hänellä on mieli
lähtä neittä kosjomahan, impeä anelemahan.
Vene on juuri valmistumaisillaan. Vielä tänään se työnnetään

vesille ja huomisaamuna varahin kantaisi se tekijänsä kauvas pois.
Siksipä olikin seppo jo aamulla pyytänyt Annikki-siskonsa
valmistamaan erityisellä huolella sulhassaunan. Annikki,
»hyvänimikko», sen mielellään tekee. Jo aamupäivällä hän lähtee
— luutoa lehosta, vastaksia varvikosta
ja sitoo veljelleen »lempivastasen». Kotiin tultuaan hän lämmittää

saunan ja hakee
veet lemmen lähtehestä,

heraisesta hettehestä.
Kun kaikki on valmiiksi varustettu, menee Annikki veljensä luo

kertomaan, että sauna on jo valmis, kehoittaen häntä:
kylve veikko kyllältäsi, valeleite vallaltasi, pese pääsi

pellavaksi, silmäsi lumisiruiksi.
Seppo menee saunaan, pesee itsensä siskonsa neuvon mukaan

ja tulee takaisin tupaan
— tuntemattomana, kasvot vallan kaunihina, poskipäät

punertavina.
Annikki tuo hänelle sulhasvaatteet, puhtaan palttinapaidan, äidin

tyttönä kutomat sukat ja ulkomaalta tuodut kengät. Näitten lisäksi
haki haljakan sinisen, alta maksankarvallisen, siihen

sarkakauhtanaisen, veroin neljin vieritetyn.
Hän varustaa vielä
tuhatnyplän uuen turkin, saoin kaunoin kaunistetun,

sekä kauniisti kirjaillun vyön, »kultasuiset» kintaat ja isän
sulhasmiehenä ostaman pystyisen kypärin.
Talon muu väki alkaa jo palailla ulkotöiltään, ukkokin tulee kalasta.

Kaikki käyvät halusta saunaan. Mutta kun paraillaan
sauna täynnä neitosia

vasta käessä vastoavat,
niin silloin
— haukkui linnan häkki, peni julma juhmutteli, saaren vartio

valitti, perän peltohon sysäten, hännän kääten käppyrähän,
Mennään katsomaan, kun luullaan vieraan tulevan. Mutta halli

erehtyikin tällä kertaa haukkumaan kotiväkeä. Tulija onkin vain
paimen, joka
lujahutti luikullansa, toitahutti torvellansa kolmasti

kotimäellä, kuuesti kujoisten suussa.
KALEVALAN MIEHET
Esittänyt O.A. Kallio
Kalevalan, samoinkuin muidenkin suurten kansanrunoelmain,

pääsisällyksenä on kertomus mahtavien, tavallisia ihmisiä
etevämpien sankarien toimista ja luonteista, mikäli nämä heidän
teoistaan kuvastuvat. Joko toimivat sankarit kukin erikseen tai myös
esiintyvät useat yhdessä ja rinnakkain, siis »yhteistoiminnassa».
Kansan runollinen ja luova mielikuvitus on varustanut sankarinsa
erityisillä avuilla ja ominaisuuksilla, jotka ovat omiansa antamaan
selvän kuvan asianomaisen kansan luonteesta ja
maailmankatsomuksesta. Kansa näkee runojensa sankareissa
juurikuin oman perikuvansa yksilöityneenä. Joko ovat nämä
kansanrunon sankarit alkuperältään todella historiallisia tai myös
jumalaistarullisia tai ainoasti pelkkiä mielikuvituksen hiomia, aina on
kansan luova mielikuvitus runoissa muodostellut heitä johonkin
määrättyyn suuntaan, ikäänkuin edustamaan eri puolia
asianomaisen kansan olemuksessa. Mikä on »jumalallinen» soturi,
mikä taas »neuvoissa viisas», kuten esim. kreikkalaisen
kansanrunon pääsankarit Akilles ja Odysseus; mikä mahtava
tietomies tai taitava takoja tai myös huimapäinen seikkailija ja
naisten naurattaja, kuten Kalevalan pääsankarit Väinämöinen,
Ilmarinen ja Lemminkäinen — aina sen mukaan mitä ominaisuuksia
kansanruno on tahtonut heissä etusijassa kuvata. Päähenkilöjen
rinnalle ja täydennykseksi luo kansan mielikuvitus muita vähempiä
uroita, kuten ovat esim. Kalevalan Kullervo, Joukahainen ja Tiera. Ja
jotta runojen antama elämän- ja maailmankuvaus olisi
mahdollisimman täydellinen, asetetaan niissä miesten rinnalle suuri
joukko naisia, taululle eloa ja väriä antamaan. Niinpä ne ovatkin juuri
naiset, jotka kansanrunoissa, samoinkuin tavallisessa
tosielämässäkin, saavat miehet toimintaan ja muodostuvat tapausten
keskustaksi. Niinpä Kalevalassakin kaunis Pohjolan neito on
sellainen keskus, johon Kalevalan uroitten työt ja toimet enimmälti
kohdistuvat. — Ihmisten rinnalla tuodaan kansanrunoissa myös
esille runsas jumala- ja tarumaailma jumalineen, haltioineen ja
taruolentoineen, antamaan kuvan kansan uskonnollisista käsitteistä.
Siten laajenee kansanrunoelma suureksi maailmankuvaksi.
*****
Kalevalan miessankarit, joihin seuraavassa tahdomme lyhyesti

tutustua, ovat etusijassa runollisen mielikuvituksen luomia ja
nykyisessä muodossaan usean eri runohenkilön teoista ja
luonnepiirteistä pitkän kehityksen kautta muodostuneita
kokonaiskuvia, joissa pakanalliset ja kristillisperäiset henkilöt ja
aiheet ovat toisiinsa kutoutuneet; mutta niin hyvin on sekä itse
kansanruno että sen johdolla vihdoin Kalevalan kokoonpanija nuo eri
piirteet toisiinsa sovitellut, että sankarit, kukin erikseen, yleensä
esiintyvät eheinä henkilökuvina, ja kaikki yhdessä antavat hyvän
kokonaiskuvan Suomen kansan miestyypeistä eli perikuvista, sekä
hyvistä että hylättävistä. Kansanruno näet ei yksistään ihannoi, vaan
pysyy samalla todellisuuden piirissä.
Kalevalan ylin pääuros, jonka työt ja toimet muodostavat
Kalevalan pääsisällyksen, on »vaka, vanha Väinämöinen, tietäjä
iänikuinen». Alkuaan hän näyttää olleen vedenhaltia, mihin
ominaisuuteen hänen nimensä (väinä = virran leveä ja tyyni suu) ja
toisintonimensä Suvantolainen viittaavat. Meri ja välkeät vedet vielä
Kalevalassakin ovat hänen mielitiensä; meritse hän tavallisimmin
liikuskelee. Kansanruno on hänestä kuitenkin monimutkaisen
kehityskulun kautta lopuksi luonut ihmissankarin, jonka ylempänä
mainitut seisovat mainesanat jo selvästi osottavat, mitä ihanteitaan
Suomen kansa on tahtonut Väinämöiskuvassa tuoda ilmi. Vanhuus,
vakavuus, viisaus, henkinen voima, tieto ja taito — siinä ne ovatkin
Väinämöisen persoonan pääominaisuudet. Ja niillehän kansamme
näyttääkin jo muinoin suurimman arvon antaneen, mikäli sen
runsaista runoista, saduista, sananlaskuista ja arvoituksista voimme
päättää. Väinämöisen mahtava tietäjä-olemus, joka aniharvoin
turvautuu miekkaan, vaikkapa kyllä osaa sitäkin hyvin käyttää,
edustaa siis kansamme henkistä voimaa; hän on juurikuin Suomen
kansan arvokas juhla- eli sunnuntaikuva. Vaan samalla hän on perin
havainnollinen ja selväpiirteinen ihminen, jolla on useita inhimillisiä
heikkouksiakin, jopa sellaisia, jotka tuntuvat hänen arvoiselleen
hengenuroolle vallan sopimattomilta. Mutta suomalainen kansanruno
ei kaunistelekkaan henkilökuviaan, vaan esittää ne todellisina
ansioineen ja vikoineen.
Kalevalan mukaan on Väinämöinen vanha jo syntyessään, sillä

hän vietti äitinsä, ilman immen, veden emosen, kohdussa satoja
vuosia, kunnes kyllästyi »ahtaaseen asuntoonsa» ja syntyi »uros
aaltojen sekahan». Meressä hän vielä uiskenteli 8 vuotta, kunnekka
kohosi sieltä »manterelle puuttomalle», jonka hänen äitinsä oli
luonut, ja asuskeli sitten »saaressa sanattomassa» monta vuotta
mitään merkillistä tekemättä. Vihdoin hän, vanhentuneena ja
viisastuneena, ryhtyy toimimaan ja hankkii ensin Sampsa
Pellervoisen avulla paljaalle maalle rehevän metsäpeitteen sekä
sitten panee alkuun maanviljelyksen, kylvämällä löytämänsä
ohransiemenet suureen kaskimaahan. Siten hänestä tulee
maanviljelyksen isä. Samalla hän kehittyy mahtavaksi laulajaksi ja
tietomieheksi, joka »päivät pääksytysten» laulelee »syntyjä syviä».
Sellaisena maankuuluna tietäjänä hän esiintyy kilpalaulannassa ja
voittaa siinä helposti kateellisen, kerskailevan Joukahaisen. Tämä
lappalaissukuinen nuori laulaja tietääkin tosin yhtä ja toista
tietämisen arvoista, mutta ei lähimainkaan riitä Väinämöiselle, jonka
laulaessa »järvet läikkyi, maa järisi, vuoret vaskiset vapisi, kalliot
kaheksi lenti». Joukahaiselle valheineen käy surkeasti.
Kilpalaulannalla Kalevala juurikuin tahtoo osottaa, kuinka paljoa

ylempänä arvossa todellinen oppi, nerous ja taito on tyhmänkorkeaa
tiedoilla rehentelemistä, mutta samalla se tahtoo näyttää, kuinka
mahtavinkin hengensankari pohjaltaan on vain heikko ihminen.
Väinämöinen näet kompastuu Joukahaisen asettamaan ansaan,
joka hänelle, vanhalle ja yksinäiselle miehelle, näkyy Joukahaisen
nuoren ja kauniin sisaren Ainon muodossa. Hän juurikuin unohtaa
kutsumuksensa ja korkeat tehtävänsä, jopa omat suuret tietonsa ja
taitonsakin, ja puuhailee nyt ankarasti pelkissä kosimahommissa,
välittämättä ollenkaan kosittavien estelyistä ja kujeista. Sankarimme
toimii aivankuin joku todellinen naimisasioissa hassahtanut
vanhapoika. Hän ahdistelee Joukahaisen sisarta naimatarjouksillaan
niin kovasti, että Ainon täytyy mennä meren omaksi, pelastuakseen
tuosta tungettelevasta, vanhahkosta kosijasta ja vanhempiensa
pakotuksista. Tosin hän joskus, kuten esim. hänen oman
tyhmyytensä ja hätiköimisensä vuoksi epäonnistuneen Ainon
merestä onginnan jälkeen, itsekin älyää, että häneltä »kaikki on mieli
melkeässä», s.o. nurinpäin, mutta yhä uudestaan hän ryhtyy
kosimahommiin, jopa niissä todellisia aikeita salatakseen helposti
livahuttaa suustaan valheenkin.
Pohjolan neito, »maan kuulu, ve'en valio», se nyt täyttää hänen

mielensä, ja Pohjolaan, vieraan heimon maahan, hän tekee
kosimamatkoja. Tosin ensimäisen matkan käy perin nolosti, kun
Joukahainen matkan varrella kostoksi ampuu häneltä hevosen, ja
hän saa uida merta, niin että »ei ole kynttä varpahissa, eikä
sormissa niveliä», ennenkuin kurjassa tilassa pelastuu Pohjolan
rantaan. Eipä noin nolosti perille tullut kosija edes rohkene imaista
asiatansakaan, hän vain voivottelee koti-ikäväänsä ja pyrkii päästä
jälleen kotimailleen, vaikkapa Pohjolan emäntä itsestään lupaa
hänelle tyttärensä, jos hän ihmeellisen taikamyllyn, sammon, takoisi.
Oman päänsä päästimiksi hän lupaa lähettää seppo Ilmarisen
sampoa takomaan ja neidon ansaitsemaan. Kuitenkin hän taas
kömmeltyy neitosiin kotimatkalla, kun näkee omin silmin Pohjolan
kauniin immen taivaan kaarella kultakangasta kutomassa. Neidon
käskystä hän, kuten rakastunut hupakko ainakin, tekee jos jotakin
neidon suosion voittamiseksi. Hän halkaisee jouhen »veitsellä
kärettömällä», hän vetää munan solmuun ja solmun
tuntumattomaksi, hän kiskoo kivestä tuohta ja särkee jäästä aidaksia
»pilkkehen pirahtamatta», jopa lopuksi ryhtyy veistämään venettä
neidon kehrävarren (värttinän) muruista. Mutta siinä hän kiireessä
iskee kirveellä ison haavan polveensa eikä edes, lemmestä
hömmelöitynyt kun on, muista verensulkusanoja, tukkiakseen
hirmuisen verentulvan.
Veren tukkijaa hänen, suuren tietäjän, täytyy etsiä ympäri kyliä.

Näissä puuhissa häneltä jälleen vähäksi aikaa unohtuu Pohjan neito,
ja viekkaasti hän toimittaa rehellisen, yksivakaisen Ilmarisen
Pohjolaan sampoa takomaan, kuten oli luvannut. Mutta kun
Ilmarinen ei vielä saanutkaan neitoa palkakseen, pälkähtää
Väinämöiselle päähän lähteä uudelleen Pohjolaan onneaan
koettamaan. Monien vaikeuksien jälkeen, matkattuaan urheasti
Tuonelan kamalat maat ja tietoviisaan jättiläisen, Antero Vipusen
vatsat hakemassa veneen teossa tarvittavia kolmea syntysanaa, hän
vihdoin tiedon ja laulun voimalla valmistaa itselleen komean
kosiopurren ja lähtee sillä viilettämään Pohjolaan.
Mutta kesken kaikkea hän tälläkin matkalla jo ohimennen

hätävaraksi kosaisee Ilmarisen vireää siskoa, Annikkia, tietysti
saaden rukkaset, juurikuin palkaksi valheista, joita Annikille oli
lasketellut. Joutuupa siitä Annikin ajamana vihdoin hidas
Ilmarinenkin kilpakosijaksi, ja hän se voittaakin neidon sydämen.
Väinämöinen, joka ei suinkaan ole tahtonut väkisin neitoa viedä,
silloin vihdoin huomaa, ettei ole vanhan, vaikkapa olisikin kuuluisa
tietäjä ja mahtimies, hyvä lähteä kosimisessa kilpasille nuorten kera.
Hän juurikuin herää huumauksestaan, ottaa ylimpänä vieraana osaa
Ilmarisen komeihin hääjuhliin ja pysyy täst'edes visusti poissa
naimistuumista. Kauan harhailtuaan itsekkäissä puuhissa, hän nyt
ikäänkuin jälleen löytää oman itsensä ja oikean kutsumuksensa,
kohoo heimonsa ensimäiseksi mieheksi, johtajaksi ja puolustajaksi ja
asettaa kokonaisedun, yhteishyvän, omien pikkupyrintöjen sijalle.
Hänen olemuksensa täst'edes kasvaa piirre piirteeltä kansan
johtajaksi ja pääsankariksi, jonka rinnalla toiset Kalevalan uroot
jäävät kokonaan varjoon.
Kun Ilmarisen vaimon kuoltua Kullervon koston uhrina välit

Kalevalan ja Pohjolan heimojen kesken ovat rikkuneet, panee
Väinämöinen rohkeasti toimeen sammonryöstöretken, saattaakseen
tuon Pohjolalle paljon onnea ja rikkautta tuottaneen, Kalevalan
sepän takoman ihmekapineen Kalevalaan onnea antamaan.
Epäröivä Ilmarinen ja urhea Lemminkäinen tulevat osallisiksi tähän
suureen kansalliseen yritykseen, jonka Väinämöinen, kalevalaisten
johtajana, meritse tekee Pohjolaan. Tällä retkellä hän osottaa m.m.
ihmeellistä soittotaitoaan, kun hän hauen leukaluusta tekemällään
kanteleella hurmaa sekä ihmiset että maan, ilman ja veden eläimet
jopa jumalat ja haltiatkin. Väinämöisen lumoavassa
kanteleensoitossa Kalevala tahtoo kuvata Suomen kansan suurta
mieltymystä sävelten tenhovoimaan. — Väinämöinen se
samporetkellä esiintyy kaikista pulista päästäjänä. Hän yksin jaksaa
irroittaa veneen jättiläishauen hartioilta; hän vaatii Pohjolassa
rohkeasti sampoa, nukuttaa taikakeinoillaan Pohjolan soturit ja avaa
laulunsa mahdilla vaskivuoren, jonne Sampo oli kätkettynä. Ja
hänpä se, kun meritaistelussa kalevalaisten ja takaa-ajavain
pohjolaisten välillä Sampo särkyi pirstaleiksi, huolekkaasti kokosi
rantamilta Sammon murut ja saattoi ne Kalevalaan »onnen aluksi» ja
»siemenen sikiöksi». Kokonaista onnea ei näet kansa enemmän
kuin yksityinenkään koskaan saavuta — hyväpä kun saa osakseen
onnen murujakin.
Pohjolan vihastunut emäntä lähettää Kalevalan turmioksi tauteja

— ne parantaa Väinämöinen; hän nostaa karhun kaatamaan
Kalevalan karjaa — sen Väinämöinen surmaa; hän varastaa
Kalevalasta kuun, auringon ja tulenkin — ne kaikki hankkii
neuvokkaasti Väinämöinen, vähäksi osaksi tosin Ilmarisen avulla,
takaisin Kalevalaan. Hän on nyt pitkin matkaa kansansa suuri
hyväntekijä. Ja kun vihdoin uusi usko Kristuslapsen mukana
tunkeutuu Kalevalan maille, silloin hän vapaaehtoisesti, vanhan
suomalaisen maailmankatsomuksen edustajana, väistyy
näyttämöltä, jättäen toki kansallensa perinnöksi henkensä aarteet
ynnä soiton ja laulun tenhoisat taidot. Merestä hän oli noussut, ja
merelle hän vaskiveneessään katoaa.
Kalevalan toinen pääuros on kuuluisa seppä Ilmarinen, »veli
seppo Ilmarinen», kuten Väinämöinen häntä nimittää. Alkujaan hän
on ollut ilman jumala ja epäilemättä vanhimpia jollei vanhin
muinaissuomalaisten jumalista. Mutta ilman piiristä on kansanruno
vähitellen vetänyt hänet alas maan päälle ja muodostellut luovan
mielikuvituksensa avulla ihmesepäksi, »taitavaksi takojaksi»,
jollaisena hän kauttaaltansa Kalevalassa esiintyy. Ja ilmielävänä
yksilönä hän astuu Kalevalassa eteemme, edustaen Väinämöisen,
hengen sankarin rinnalla ja vastakohtana suomalaisen
kansanluonteen käytännöllistä, aineellista puolta. Hän on kansamme
ilmehikäs arkikuva, ahkera, hidas, epäröivä, saamaton ja hieman
yksinkertainen seppä, mutta omassa ammatissaan perin taitava.
Hänellä ei ole Väinämöisen runollista mieltä eikä rohkeaa
päättäväisyyttä; toisten täytyy häntä juurikuin ajaa edellään; mutta
mitä hän ottaa tehtäväkseen, sen hän, vaikeuksia väistymättä,
kunnollisesti suorittaa. Väinämöiseen verraten on hänellä yksi
ulkonainen etu, joka tuottaa hänelle voiton kilpakosinnassa; se on
hänen nuorekas ja muhkea muotonsa, jota ei edes »kyynärä kyventä
päässä, syli syttä hartioilla» kykene hävittämään. Hän näet, kuten
kunnon sepän tuleekin, on ahkera saunassa-kylpijä ja sen kautta
suomalaisen saunaharrastuksen edustaja. Kaikessa
epärunollisuudessaankin Ilmarisen olemus herättää vilpitöntä
myötätuntoa, sekin kun osaltaan tuntuu niin perin suomalaiselta.
Kalevalan mukaan Ilmarinen »syntyikin sysimäellä, kasvoi

hiilikankahalla, vaskinen vasara käessä, pihet pikkuiset piossa», ja
ryhtyi heti laatimaan itselleen pajaa sekä rautaa ahjossaan
muovailemaan. Hän elää sitten aikojansa Kalevalan kuuluisana
seppänä, joka tilaajilleen takoo kaikenlaisia tarviskaluja, taidokkaita
koristeita, vahvoja varuksia, loistavia sota-aseita, jopa kerran laatii
itselleen jonkinmoisen lentokoneenkin (vaakalinnun) ja toisella
kertaa esiintyy taidokkaana kuvanveistäjänä takoessaan
kultaneidon. Sanotaanpa hänestä että hän on myös »taivoa takonut,
ilman kantta kalkutellut» juurikuin muistona hänen ilman
jumaluudestaan. Kerran hän koettaa laatia kullasta kuuta ja
hopeasta aurinkoa, mutta ei siinä oikein onnistu enemmän kuin
muissakaan yrityksissä, joihin hän nenäänsä pitemmälle
ajattelematta ryhtyy. Ilmarisen taidokkain ja ihmeellisin tuote on
kuitenkin ihmemylly sampo.
Muistamme edellisestä Väinämöisen luvanneen lähettää Ilmarisen

Pohjolaan sampoa takomaan. Tuntien Ilmarisen haluttoman mutta
samalla herkkäuskoisen luonteen hän, kun ei saa seppää Pohjolan
neidon kauneuden kuvaamisella liikkeelle, houkuttelee tämän
pajasta katsomaan kuusen latvaan laulamaansa kuuta ja Otavaa.
Utelias seppä menee ansaan, vieläpä herkkäuskoisena kiipeää
kuuseen kuuta ja Otavaa käsin tavoittamaan. Silloinpa Väinämöinen
loitsii ankaran myrskyn, joka kiidättää sepän ilmojen lävitse
Pohjolaan. Täällä Ilmarinen esiintyy taidostaan ylpeänä ja
itsetietoisena, jopa ihastuu koreaan Pohjan neitoonkin, niin että
neitoa saadakseen ryhtyy rohkeasti aivan mahdottomista
alkuaineista takomaan sampoa. Monien vaikeuksien jälkeen, joissa
kaikissa hän esiintyy kylläkin neuvokkaana miehenä, ne kun
koskevat hänen omaa ammattialaansa, hän, käyttämällä apuna itse
luonnon voimia, saakin valmiiksi sammon, ihmemyllyn sellaisen, joka
Pohjolalle jauhaa viljaa, suoloja ja rahoja ja jollaista ahnas ja äveriäs
Pohjolan emäntä oli niin hartaasti himoinnut. Mutta tyttöpä ei vielä
halunnutkaan vaihtaa neitiyden vapaita päiviä emännän huoliin, ja
»alla päin, pahoilla mielin» Ilmarinen palajaa kotipajalleen, edes
vaatimatta sampoa myötänsä.
Hän elelee jälleen uutterana seppänä kotikylässä, kunnekka saa
sisareltaan Annikilta kuulla, että Väinämöinen on komealla
kosiopurrella menossa Pohjolaan kosiin. Silloinpa »tunkihe sepolle
tuska, vasara käestä vaipui» — Pohjan neidon kaunis kuva ei siis
ollut vielä kokonaan haihtunut hänen sydämestään pajan nokeen. Ja
oikeinpa hänelle kerrankin tulee kiire joutua matkaan. Hän
valmistautuu kuin sulhasmies konsanaankin: kylpee saunassa noet
pois ruumiistaan, niin että on »kasvot vallan kaunihina, poskipäät
punertavina», pukeutuu parhaasen juhlapukuunsa ja lähtee
paraimmalla oriillaan ja komeimmalla reellään tavoittamaan
Väinämöistä. Luulisipa nyt vähintäin syntyvän neidosta kilpakosijain
välillä kaksintaistelun, mutta Ilmarisen mieli on jo ennättänyt
rauhoittua. Vaikka taitava miekkain takoja, hän muuten ei ole mikään
miekkamies. Niinpä hän nytkin itse ehdottaa Väinämöiselle sovintoa,
jotta neito saisi vapaasti valita. Ja neito valitseekin hänet vastoin
äitinsä tahtoa komean ulkomuodon ja sammon takomisen vuoksi.
Mutta monta vaarallista ansiotyötä hän saa vielä suorittaa,
ennenkuin Pohjan-akka suo hänelle tyttärensä. Näissä hän aluksi
esiintyy saamattomana ja avuttomana, mutta kun morsian »kädestä
pitäen» neuvoo, miten hänen tulee kussakin tapauksessa menetellä,
niin hän ne pelottomasti ja taitavasti suorittaa. Hän kyntää kyisen
pellon, kahlehtii Tuonen karhun ja pyytää Tuonelan joesta suuren
jättiläishauen. Kaikissa näissä ansiotöissä tulee hänen
sepäntaitonsa hyvään tarpeeseen.
Komeain häitten jälkeen Ilmarinen vie nuorikkonsa kotiinsa

Kalevalaan ja elelee siellä vaimoineen rauhaisaa perhe-elämää,
kunnekka paimen orja Kullervo pedoilla revittää emännän
kappaleiksi. Silloin seppo synkeässä surussaan, kun ei ollut »mieli
tervoa parempi, syän syttä valkeampi», ryhtyy, kuukauden
toimettomana jopa syömättömänäkin surtuaan, takomaan itselleen

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Philosophical Fallacies: Ways of Erring

in Philosophical Exposition 1st ed. 2022

ISBN 978-3-030-97173-1 ISBN 978-3-030-97174-8 (eBook)

Philosophers address large problems regarding mankind and our place in

Pittsburgh, PA, USA Nicholas Rescher

1 Error, Mistake, and Fallacy in Philosophizing 1

2 Classifying Philosophical Fallacies 9

3 Illustrating Philosophical Fallacies 27

4 The Fallacy of Respect Neglect 57

5 Fallacies Regarding Free Will 67

7 The Significance of Philosophical Fallacies101

Display 2.1 The classification of fallacies 10

Error, Mistake, and Fallacy in Philosophizing

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

The Rule of Reason

Errors of Reason: Inferential flaws in the articulation of conclusions to be

However, this does not make for an indifferent relativism of anything

Error Versus Mistake

Mistakes in Versus About Philosophy

Error Versus Disagreement

reprehension for committing a fallacy in his reasoning? In the end, there is

Classifying Philosophical Fallacies

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Formal: improper modes of inference

Substantive [Material]: improper modes of assertion

—interpretative: errors regarding meaning

EXAMPLES: shifting Equal Terms, Inadequate Distribution

—Presumptive: errors regarding acceptability

EXAMPLES: Erroneous Presupposition Begging the Question, Non sequitur

Display 2.1 The classification of fallacies

• The adequate explanation of events calls for explaining their causes

Clearly, these structures render the explanations of events impossible from

• Accepting a conclusion is not justified until all of its processes become

Infinite proceedings are just too much to ask for.

A Survey of Philosophical Fallacies

• Philosophical fallacies so function that errors of omission can be

Failure to Heed Distinctions

Contravening Common Sense

• Radical skepticism. Consider the thesis that there is no achieving

• Global ineffability. Here, we have the doctrine that language is

Such cases instantiate positions that are at odds with themselves—unsus-

not only accepted but even mandated—soldiers and executioners acting in

Improper Possibility Elimination

Bias and Dogmatism

I am.” Descartes here projected a counterexample to the radical skeptic’s thesis

Notoriously fleet-footed Achilles has a race with a proverbially slow tortoise.

Thus, in the face of an infinite and thereby incompletable process, Achilles

Analogous reasoning is at issue in the so-called Third Man argument of

Improper Modal Transit

In valid inference to a conclusion of a given thematic orientation informa-

On this basis a wide array of inferential transit must prove to be impracti-

Display 2.2 Some infeasible inferential transits

Some illustrations will help clarify the matter.

In philosophy, as elsewhere, one must not conflate the things that

Value Distortion and Misprioritization

Display 2.3 Philosophical fallacies

Illustrating Philosophical Fallacies

Prioritization in Pre-Socratic Metaphysics

Earth (the solid)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

be basic and primary, they disagreed in proposing different candidates for

Solidity/earth: Democritus and the Atomists

And the further prospect of an indefinite mixture of elements was also

Pittsburgh, PA, USA Nicholas Rescher

1 Error, Mistake, and Fallacy in Philosophizing 1

2 Classifying Philosophical Fallacies 9

3 Illustrating Philosophical Fallacies 27

4 The Fallacy of Respect Neglect 57

5 Fallacies Regarding Free Will 67

7 The Significance of Philosophical Fallacies101

Display 2.1 The classification of fallacies 10