Transrationality and Ethical Closure

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Ethical Closure

In a social system whose ideal is ethical closure we may seek to ensure - as is the case of classical liberalism - that any binding moral and legal demand made on a free and equal citizen must be of a kind that he can consent to by invoking his own evaluative standards. Under these premises, ethical closure may appear to be without alternative, as its absence implies arbitrary preponderance of the preferences of some over those of others. Thus, a free society seems to demand ethical closure. This is a rough sketch  of Gerald Gaus' concept of Justificatory Liberalism (for more see the links below), i.e. the basic presupposition upon which his further arguments in favour of "public reasoning" are built.

By contrast, I argue, it is unlikely that ethical closure can be attained. By implication, theoretical attempts to trace or to prescribe ethical closure are likely to be unproductive, even counter-productive, at least beyond the point where theses and questions related to closure may still serve a useful heuristic function.

To put another angle to it, by ethical closure I mean

- a system of  informal and formal justice that

• unites a population (capable of conscious consent with respect to a certain range of fundamental principles), and is therefore

• the functional basis of political order and social cohesion, that is: people obey the pertinent rules and do not ignore or act in opposition to them, but rather countenance or, indeed, internalise and profess them.

As we noted above, ethical closure is the more or less conscious ambition of classical liberalism.

In this conception of ethical closure freedom or the liberal society are defined by a set of principles and rules that comprehensively delimitate the inside and outside of freedom, and can be presented to the population in a way that they are able to voluntarily agree to - or that would be irrational not to agree to.

The programme of ethical closure is an inheritance of rationalism. 

With its progenitor it shares 

• an overextension and claim to exclusiveness 

• on the part of rational justification with respect to 

• the legitimacy and, ultimately, the functional feasibility of a social order.

Rational Behaviour and Transrationality

Underlying the idea of ethical closure, I surmise, is a guiding analogy that unfortunately misleads those who follow it.

Some games - like ludo (similar to "Mensch-ärgere-dich-nicht") - that we play, and innumerable purposive actions (like "taking the bus, shopping at Tescos, and returning home") that we engage in can be described as fully defined by a finite number of rules that need to be

• comprehended at some stage (later to be followed unthinkingly or only in terms of selective deliberation) and 

• applied in order to play the game correctly or achieve the purpose of one's actions ("the shopping trip" e.g.). 

We can completely explain and reconstruct these games and purposive actions in terms of the rules underlying them. In this sense closure is accomplished. There is a complete logic of action, explaining the why, how, and their relation to the outcome.

Sure enough, rational behaviour does play an important role in the emergence, development, and maintenance of social order. However, it is my contention that rational conduct is a tributary among other tributaries to social order, rather than being the sole condition of cohesion.

In fact, a social order whose member's rational conduct is unaided by other cohesive functions is incapable of survival.

What makes a social order viable beyond the contribution of rational comportment is a system of transrational "synapses" which mediate between the lines of rationality that extend from individuals and may or may not link these up with one another. 

The system of transrational "synapses" ensures that the whole fits together in spite of the fact that the various rational representations of the world expressed or implied in human interaction may be inconclusive, contradictory, erroneous, aggressively or unproductively rivalrous or characterised by other features that undermine or disable or preclude the capacity of rational motives (commitment) and rational forms of signal processing (communication) or other rational strategies to support societal coordination and cooperation.

Transrationality is put into effect by a web of

• traditions,

• unintended experiments,

• unreasoned habits and conventions (more recent than traditions), but also by

• deliberate strategies that change or are changed by other elements within the web of transrationality, and

• complex evolutionary processes of emergence, such as long and intricate chains of trust-building repeated games etc

Postscript - Rational versus Transrational "Closure"

Admittedly, I may be well advised to either use a word other than "closure," or differentiate various kinds of closure. For the time being, let me try the latter approach.

Take a look at the above image: If we were to seek information on the whole system by investigating the black spots alone, we will not be able to recognise that the spots are part of the depiction of a Dalmatian. Such is the problem of "ethical closure" as I referred to it above. Owing to focussing on a selective paradigm, the whole is not accounted for. It is not recognisable.

Perhaps we might warm to a new and alternative meaning of "closure": "transrational closure." If we care to link the white areas to the black areas in the above picture, we may be able to discern an overall pattern of relatedness between black and white surfaces. In fact, a closed system emerges, in the sense of a complete image - hence closure. Now, the white areas serve to connect the black spots in such a way as to assign them a position that makes them contributory markers of a closed whole, a meaningful totality. 

This is also the intuition behind my criticism of Gausian Justificatory Liberalism, which focusses on the black spots (rational justification) with no or insufficient regard for the cohering function of the white areas (transrationality).

True, Gaus does come up with a cursory account of institutions and strategies: democracy's and the state's umpireship, evolutionary aspects of overall social order etc. - needed to ensure a social order based on communally recognised principles and rules of justice, which result he had initially set out to represent as capable of being arrived at via public rationality ("public reasoning").

But when he finally divulges the denouement of his theory of public reasoning it transpires that it is not  the latter that bears the brunt of work. 

The final straw Gaus clutches at is the contention that democratic umpireship (a very loosely explicated concept, at that) has somehow been established or can be justified by public reasoning.

So, the Gausian bottom line is that only very few principles and rules of the liberal society are to be arrived at by public reasoning ("black spots"). The vast majority of publicly relevant issues cannot be handled by public reasoning and is left to be sorted out by other processes, particularly social interaction arbitrated under the sovereignty of the Umpire.

At this point, Gaus can discern the Dalmatian, but he has no theory of the white surfaces and their relationship to the black spots. Picture a three-dimensional rendering of the canine, and we may argue that Gaus contents himself with the presumption that the black spots are literally the basis on which the Dalmatian stands, when in fact there is a need for additional factors to work out the dog's entire figure, including the basis.

See also Justificatory Liberalism (3) - Criticism, Justificatory Liberalism (2) - The Theory - A Second Attempt, Justificatory Liberalism (1) - The Theory - A First Attempt.