Minimalism and Maximalism in Philosophy

Minimalism and Maximalism in Philosophy

There are two broad tendencies in philosophy, which I will label minimalism and maximalism. Minimalism tends to minimize the number of entities and kinds in the world; maximalism tends to maximize them. The few versus the many. Occam’s razor characterizes the former tendency; the latter has no established metaphor, so I will call it Liberace’s pompadour. The spare versus the luxuriant. One likes desert landscapes, the other prefers tropical jungles. Minimalism is influenced by epistemological considerations (ease of thought); maximalism is excited by ontological variety (the more the merrier). The minimalist loves the general; the maximalist loves the particular. This polarity operates across the whole field of philosophy and determines its shape. We would do well to decide which doctrine is true.

Let’s first consider mental minimalism, arguably the paradigm. It comes in several forms: a single substance (usually the body), ideas and impressions, behavioral reflexes, beliefs and desires, brain states, computational states. The maximalist is less easily characterized, but the general idea is to include more kinds of mental state: perceptions, emotions, decisions, intentions, images, thoughts, meanings, bodily sensations. These are held not to reduce to items on my first list, e.g., beliefs and desires. An ultra-maximalist might add telepathic powers and forms of mental energy (more on this later). Depending on the details, there might be, say, ten times as many items on the maximalist’s list than the minimalist’s list. Typically, the maximalist will insist on an irreducibility thesis, such as that intentions are not reducible to beliefs and desires (reasons). The minimalist will try to get by with as little as possible while saving the appearances. He will brandish Occam’s razor, while the maximalist will groom Liberace’s bouffon. The mental minimalist will typically be an anti-maximalist, as opposed to a right-off-the-bat minimalist for whom it is evident at first sight that the mind consists of only a couple of basic natural kinds; ordinary language certainly does not encourage such a view. Minimalism is reductive in the sense of reducing the number of mental kinds in the world.

What about linguistic minimalism? The Tractatus is extremely minimalist—just names and assertive sentences. The Investigations is exuberantly maximalist: there are indefinitly many kinds of sentence and words are irreducibly various. Frege and Russell are also minimalist. J.L. Austin is of the maximalist school, what with his performatives and illocutionary forces. Davidson is a minimalist regarding logical form and he takes truth as semantically universal. Chomsky is both syntactically minimalist and syntactically maximalist at different periods. Kripke is maximalist about proper names compared to description theorists (there are two semantic categories here not one). Grice is maximalist about the structure of meaning (those complex intentions) but minimalist about the scope of his theory (it is supposed to apply to all speech acts).

In logic we also have the minimalists and the maximalists: the only true logic is first-order predicate calculus (Quine), or there are many equally worthy logics using different basic concepts (second-order, modal, tense, deontic, etc.). Logical maximalism would not jib at granting logical status to any type of valid inference, including simple analytic inferences. It might even talk of a “logic of emotion” or some such. The extreme logical minimalist might favor the rejection of quantifiers from logic proper (where would that end?), preferring the purity of the propositional calculus, perhaps using only the Scheffer stroke. Then there are those ultra-maximalists who fear not a paraconsistent logic—contradictions are just another kind of logical form useful for certain purposes.

Then we have epistemological minimalism and maximalism. The maximally minimalist view would be that all knowledge fits the empiricist paradigm, i.e., all knowledge is based on sense experience. Maximalism would find room for a priori knowledge, itself subdividing into the analytic and the synthetic, and possibly including ethical knowledge. It might further be maintained that knowledge divides into a large plurality consisting of the special sciences, history, folk psychology, aesthetics, and bottle washing. Just as there are many language games, so there are many knowledge games, each with its own style of justification. Some enthusiasts may claim knowledge in areas not usually deemed respectable, such as telepathic knowledge; or suggest that female knowledge is separate from male knowledge. The minimalist will shake his head, observing that this is what you get if you reject epistemological minimalism. Epistemology should be minimized not maximized (naturalized minimalism being the preferred doctrine).

Further, we have ethics: does everything good and right spring from a single source or is it that ethics divides into many goods and rights? Thus, utilitarianism versus deontology—one big right or a plurality of little rights. It is the same pattern repeating itself, depending on temperament or philosophical conviction. Do we prefer a single general principle or a variety of sui generis principles? The universal or the particular? Minimalism offers to simplify moral reasoning, while maximalism promises to respect complexity. Do we reduce or multiply, level or differentiate? Should there be a moral Tractatus or a moral Investigations (and why didn’t Wittgenstein talk about this?). We can even extend the question to mathematics: are there many kinds of numbers linked only by family resemblance or are all numbers basically the same (variations on the natural numbers)? Is arithmetic a menagerie or an assembly line? In the case of natural languages, we have the dispute about whether all languages are basically the same or whether there are as many languages as dialects (Chomsky versus the anthropologists, roughly).

Finally, metaphysics: is the world, reality, one or many? Is it all physical or all mental or both? Monism versus dualism. What about the abstract? And then we have extreme ontological pluralism: there are indefinitely many types of things and no overarching categorization of them. Our love of generality deceives us about the real variety of nature. Distinctions like particular and universal are too general to capture the full range of reality. It is plurality all the way down. Then too, we have substance ontologies and event ontologies: do we need both or can we get by with only one of them? Are there several types of substances and a great variety of events or just one of each? Should we give up trying to generalize and unify and instead revel in multiplicity? Is it life’s rich pageant or the Sahara Desert? After all, even elementary particles have revealed considerable variety in their basic types, as have celestial bodies. The observable universe is a zoo of giant objects; or do they all reduce to a common denominator? Astronomical minimalism or astronomical maximalism?

Is there any pattern in this range of subject-matters? Can we infer minimalism in one area from minimalism in another (say, mind and language)? Does maximalism spread from one area to another? How minimal can things get, or how maximal? Is there such a thing as total minimalism in which a single natural kind covers the whole of Creation–as it might be, Euclidian extension? Could ethics be a variation on geometry? On the other hand, could maximalism dispense even with the idea of shared properties, holding each thing to be its own unique universe? Could things have nothing in common? Or could there be a kind of law governing reality according to which there is an upper bound on ontological multiplicity—say, never more than 99 kinds of things? A kind of universal constant limiting how various things can be. There doesn’t seem to be any upper bound on how many biological species there could be, but is the same thing true of particles or numbers or ethical duties or emotions? Are there any relations of dependency among classes of things—for example, are there as many kinds of mental state as there of are brain state? How many kinds of logic are there and does this bear any relation to the kinds of lexical item in human language? What about the varieties of knowledge and the varieties of being? Is there a kind of arithmetic of philosophy, whereby the numerosity of an area correlates with that of another area? For example, are there precisely double the number of emotion words as the number of emotions? Is there a kind of philosophical mathematics?

Are there any a priori reasons to favor philosophical minimalism or philosophical maximalism? Minimalism goes with simplicity, so is there any a priori reason to believe that reality is simple? It would make things simpler epistemologically, to be sure, but isn’t that a rather anthropocentric attitude? Isn’t it, frankly, suspiciously anti-realist? Why should the universe care about our cognitive limitations? Maximalism allows the world to outstrip our classificatory powers, or at least tax them; this is something a realist will want to allow. Yet is there any a priori reason to suppose that all universes are complex and multi-storied? Why not a universe conforming to strict minimalist principles? It seems to be an empirical question how variegated a universe is (God had a lot of leeway). Ours is actually pretty complicated to judge by appearances—our minds, our bodies, our language, our ethics, our types of knowledge, our sciences, our mathematics. Simple it isn’t. We might well have to make room for what could be called mysterian maximalism: there are a large number of unknown, or even unknowable, kinds of fact in the universe. We have only scratched the surface of the universe’s plurality. We have certainly expanded our sense of variety as our knowledge has advanced, and we might be in store for more of the same (types of matter, types of force, types of mind). There could be more kinds of things than Horatio has ever dreamt of. Unless, dream of dreams, it all comes down to a couple of basic kinds, hitherto unknown.[1]

[1] I have not in this paper tried to adjudicate between minimalism and maximalism, or between the different varieties of these doctrines, but it should be evident that I side with the maximalists in most cases (though not in the case of telepathy or unicorns or phlogiston–I am a moderate maximalist). Rather, I wanted to set out an identifiable common theme in philosophy, to be set beside realism and anti-realism and like dichotomies. What I find interesting is this temperamental or doctrinal split—its origin and dynamics. How and why does it arise and play out as it does? Why are some people in love with the One while others adore the Many?