ABSTRACT
We inherit and develop many different forms of thought and statement. When we reflect in very general terms upon these forms of thought and statement, they may seem at various points inadequate to our experience or to our needs; if we criticize them, we are doing philosophy. We must have some standard of adequacy for the type of thought and statement criticized. The standard of adequacy must be found in some other type of thought and statement known to us. The criticism of any type of discourse therefore takes the form of a comparison with some other types of discourse which are taken as models of clearness and adequacy; in the extreme case all types of thought and statement are dismissed by philosophers as inadequate unless they approximate to some single standard of clarity, derived, for instance, from mathematics, or from singular categorical statements referring to our personal experience, or from these two taken together. The type of thought and statement taken as the model of clear thought and clear statement has varied from age to age and from philosopher to philosopher; a philosophical position can be defined by asking what type of statement is being taken as the standard and model of an adequate statement. But if there are different philosophical theories, it is natural to assume that almost all of them must be false and that at least one must be true, or very nearly true. Then the question arises: What grounds can be given for choosing one type of thought and statement rather than another as the standard? If it is in principle impossible to suggest any independently based criterion of adequacy, it is impossible to decide rationally between competing philosophical theories. If no one of the theories could ever be shown to be correct, there is no place for theories. We can come to understand the motives, historical and personal, for the various philosophical preferences of one type of discourse to another. But if there is no decision procedure there is no reason for constructing further theories; we need only notice and record, neutrally and without preference, the characteristic differences between different types of thought and statement, each of which has its own distinguishing type of clarity. This principle of tolerance has been the obvious feature of contemporary British philosophy; it is the new form of scepticism. It suggests that we cannot step outside the language which we use, and judge it from some ulterior and superior vantage-point. Every type of statement has its own kind of logic; we should in philosophy explore and record these differences, and not try to override them, or assimilate all discourse to a single type or closed set of types. Philosophy should be descriptive only, and not constructive.
