Integrity Within and Beyond Reasonableness: A Reflection on Lipman’s Ideas

Huen, K. S. S. (2012). Integrity within and beyond Reasonableness: A Reflection on Lipman’s Ideas. In Lee, C.-S. & Park, J.-W. (eds.), Moral and Multicultural Education through Philosophy, published by The Korean Academy of Teaching Philosophy in School

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Integrity Within and Beyond Reasonableness:

A Reflection on Lipman’s Ideas

Dr. Kenny Siu Sing Huen Universiti Brunei Darussalam

Abstract This paper expounds and reflects on Matthew Lipman’s dynamic, reasonableness-based conception of integrity, which emphasizes inquiries and judgments. To begin with, A. W. Musschenga’s ideas serve as a helpful reference point in my account of Lipman’s conception, since both Musschenga and Lipman contend that thinking education plays crucial roles in the cultivation process of integrity. One unique feature in Lipman’s view is that critical thinking is intrinsically related to creative and caring thinking, and that these dimensions of thinking are required to be balanced by reasonableness. On the other hand, he suggests that reasonableness is the aim of critical thinking. A question arises: Even though apart from intellectual values we may put equity and others such as modesty into the list of values that pertain to reasonableness, would a reasonable person as a reasonable person care or be independent of other values in her life? I argue that this intriguing question reveals an instance of the reconciliation problem between objectivity and internalism that Alice Crary, among others, has brought to light. Besides the many features that Crary’s and Lipman’s pragmatically oriented views share, there is one noteworthy point on which they diverge. For Crary, any judgment is embedded, together with its related sensitivities and visions, in a certain moral outlook; the circularity between judgments and beliefs is inevitable but non-vicious. For Lipman, a judgment of reasonableness is quite independent because reasonableness is ‘the criterion of ultimate appeal’. One may take this difference to be an advantage of Lipman’s thoughts, which put the critical dimension of thinking to the forefront. However, one central issue emerges subsequently: What kind of internalism can be advanced under his conception of reasonableness? Suppose that a Confucian and a Christian are in conflict on their various understandings of love (that is, ‘ren’ and agape, respectively). How does reasonableness operate in this case? If it is a kind of multidimensional-thinking outlook that is distinct from, and imposed on, the substantive moral outlook (e.g. Confucianism or Christianity) of an agent, then the reconciliation problem in question is yet to be dealt with. In contrasting Lipman’s standpoint with that of Crary, I arrived at Wittgenstein’s remark on the significance of the will. The case of the goalkeeper who is undergoing a crisis of integrity provides an illustration of my construal. In such a situation of radical uncertainty we can realize in what fundamental manner the person’s decision contributes to his integrity; it is an action within and beyond reasonableness. Key words

Integrity ∙ Reasonableness∙ Matthew Lipman ∙ Albert W. Musschenga ∙ Alice Crary ∙ Objectivity ∙ Internalism ∙ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Integrity and thinking In attributing integrity to a person, we expect that she is reliable and that her conduct is predictable. We are impressed by her consistency, not only the fact that she exhibits more or less the same pattern of behaviour in life, but that her actions are in accord with her goals, beliefs, values, commitments, statements, methods, principles, and so on. Moreover, the latter elements in her practices are


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themselves consistent and/or coherent. It follows that honesty alone need not be integrity if we find that it clashes with, for example, happiness with no resolution.

The Latin origin of the word ‘integrity’, integer (adj.), has connotations of being a whole and being complete. Literally, it means ‘untouched’ because the word is a combination of two parts: in- (‘not’) and the root of tangere (‘to touch’). Figuratively, it means untainted and upright. It is a kind of perfection loaded with something publicly regarded as noble or precious. In other words, integrity is not merely a formal thing. Rather, in general, people have in mind that integrity is concerned with admirable purposes, virtues and actions, not simply consistency within a particular value system.

One of the three tasks suggested by Albert W. Musschenga (2001) for moral educators to cultivate integrity is: (1) ‘furthering critical and imaginative thinking’. Mere doing the same is not integrity. A just person does not follow principles of justice only in those situations she is accustomed to but in any situation where justice is appropriate. In order to become just, she needs to acquire certain intellectual capacities and virtues (phronēsis), which enable her to recognize features in new circumstances that are similar and different to the old ones. What is more, it is crucial to distinguish a pattern of virtuous behaviour from moral habituation. We do not conceive integrity as nothing but a ‘form’ because such a ‘form’ might be the result of an imposition of certain norms on an individual from external power sources. Rather, the principles and obligations should be those (among other elements) that constitute the identity of the individual. There involves a process in which she accommodates social morality in dialogues and debates with a ‘tension between the demands of personal and moral integrity’ (p. 230), the alleviation of which requires empathetic thinking, self-reflection and so on.

It can be seen that the other two tasks Musschenga (2001) recommends, namely, (2) ‘strengthening motivational self-sufficiency’ and (3) ‘promoting moral unity’, are much dependent on the fulfillment of the first task (1). For (2), only if one has ‘a strong internal motivation’ (p. 230) can one rely less on social approval and endorsements, which might be lacking in some situations. And the sole possibility of achieving a sustainable internal motivation is to develop one’s ‘identities around moral concerns’ (ibid.) and that has to do with thinking education. Task (3) does not presume morality to be a perfectly coherent system; instead, ‘morality encompasses a plurality of diverse, sometimes conflicting, and partly incommensurable principles, virtues and values’ (p. 231). One important aim for moral educators is to ‘stimulate the development of … “moral completeness”’ (ibid.) because individuals nowadays, having diverse roles to play and leading their lives in various social practices, are in need of integrating themselves. They might have to make a decision or choice in response to the diverse requirements of the society where they live. Without an overarching insight into the accord and disaccord of normative requirements in different contexts and social roles, one would not be ‘able skilfully to interpret and to apply the relevant moral values, principles and rules in new situations’ (p. 232). A person of moral integrity is one who is ‘free from such blindness’ (ibid.). The condition for the ability ‘to surpass the limits of a role or context’ is the acquisition of the abilities to reflect upon ‘the incoherencies and inconsistencies in their moral life’ (ibid.) and to reflectively appropriate the relevant concepts, values and norms when new situations come up.

Musschenga’s ideas about education for moral integrity are quite congenial to the general framework of Matthew Lipman’s philosophy of education. Both emphasize the primary functions of thinking in education, in particular, its function (especially the function of ‘thinking for oneself’ *see Lipman (2003), p. 12, p. 50 and p. 96]) as a prerequisite for achieving independence. Like Musschenga, Lipman (ibid.) pays attention to imaginative thinking as well as to critical thinking, or better, their convergence; to potential new situations in which a person might be required to reflect upon her grasp of a concept, value or principle ‘in arriving at settlements where rules and precedents provide inadequate guidance’ (p. 123). Both agree that it is crucial to prepare an open and courageous state of mind to face various circumstances. However, Lipman uses a term ‘creative thinking’ with much broader implications than those of ‘imaginative thinking’. For the purpose of this paper, let us highlight three


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related features of creative thinking according to Lipman, which are especially relevant to moral education for integrity. (1) Lipman (2003) makes it explicit that creative thinking is not merely concerned with how to deal with unprecedented situations or to accommodate the world views of others, but a matter of self-transcendence that any forms of inquiry essentially need: ‘Not to endeavor to go beyond previous achievements is to risk engaging in a form of inquiry that lacks integrity’ (p. 246). (2) In Lipman’s conception, the sceptical and radical dimensions of thinking pertain to its creative domain; critical thinking is thought to be comparatively more conservative: reaching a closure when a reasonable belief that matches given intellectual criteria is attained. Creative thinking plays a role of persistently giving vital force to inquiries by identifying the new problematic that makes new disbeliefs emerge, and thus to open the closure. (3) Creative thinking does not simply rest on certain standards or principles. From time to time the content of these norms is updated; some rules may even be broken as a response to new needs and purposes in life (see p. 251, the section on deviant thinking). For Lipman, the spirit of inquiry, due to its creative nature, is essentially restless (see p. 246) and unsettling (see p. 290). Inquiry and problematicity are inseparable (see p. 254).

Whereas Musschenga highlights critical and imaginative thinking, Lipman sees the relevance of caring thinking as well. Actually the former’s second and third tasks of education for moral integrity depend also on caring thinking. This aspect of thinking is implicit in Musschenga’s ideas on cultivating moral integrity. To strengthen one’s internal motivation (that is, the second task), one does not only reflect upon one’s moral principles and values abstractly or in an alienated manner. These principles and values are for what one cares. To attain moral unity or to become less incoherent or inconsistent in moral thinking and behaviour (that is, the third task), what one has concerns for and what one needs to improve in terms of moral completeness must not merely remain at the cognitive level. One should be aware of, and feel, the importance of it: ‘Without emotion, thinking would be flat and uninteresting’ (Lipman, 2003, p. 262); ‘Without caring, thinking is devoid of a values component’ (p.270).

Lipman suggests that critical, creative and caring thinking should work together in a balanced way (see ibid., pp. 199, 202, 261 and 290) and function in life dynamically in a cycle of problematicity and equilibrium (see ibid., in particular, p. 254; 1996, pp. ii–iii).The ‘caring dimension [is aimed] to protect and maintain the equilibrium’ (p. 197), whereas the ‘creative dimension … to look for new solutions and ways to maintain this equilibrium’ (ibid.). It may be added that the critical dimension for Lipman aims to check the equilibrium. It seems to him that excellent thinking cannot do without any of these three dimensions (see p. 201 and p. 229). There must be a balance ‘between the cognitive and the affective’ (p. 199) and between ‘the rule-governed and the non-rule-governed’ (p. 200), among others. Musschenga highlights (1) the effects of social differentiation (roles) on the self. That involves the person’s responses in concrete situations to the different requirements of social roles that she is supposed to play. In addition, (2) the person is undergoing an internal integration. Lipman’s ideas are close to this perspective. What is at stake for his dynamic view is a balance between two orientations within a person, namely, that toward conflicts and that toward mediation. The key to attaining such a balance is ‘judgment that works within [the person] to redirect them toward wholeness and proportion and equity’ (p. 289, emphasis added).

As mentioned earlier, Musschenga recommends teaching children to engage in moral practice in which guiding principles do not merely indicate fixed patterns of behaviour but are to be applied in whatever relevant situations, including those not experienced before. Practical judgments are needed to identify the similarities and differences between new and old situations. This is actually an Aristotelian notion that lays stress on the effects of judgment on appropriateness, context-sensitivity, proportionality and balance (between justice and equity). Lipman shares this standpoint: ‘judgment is an art’ (p. 3), ‘To judge is to judge relationships … *including those of+ similarities and differences … part-whole, means-end, cause-effect, and countless others’ (p. 22), ‘*according to Aristotle+ it is the understanding that enables us to make judgments; that is, to decide what is appropriate in a given situation’ (p. 191), ‘What


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must be kept in mind is that proportionalities (unless they are strict ratios) are based upon resemblances and hence are matters of judgment’ (p. 250) and so on. What is more, judgments not only play the role of ‘restoring stability’ (p. 289), and of bringing about ‘settlements where rules and precedents provide inadequate guidance’ (p. 123), judgments could also be ‘provisional’ and ‘consciously problematic’ (see Lipman’s appreciation of this idea of Kant, p. 93n) and ‘may play the role of agent provocateur – an unsettling, disturbing force tipping the balance one way or another so as to clear the way for a new equilibrium’ (p. 290). Here Lipman draws our attention to the relevance of the convergence between creative thinking and critical thinking in philosophical judgments. Further, in settling a problematic situation or unsettling some fixation of beliefs or practices, judgments are by no means purely cognitive achievements, but what matter to the person who makes them.‘*A+t least some emotions are not merely the physiological consequences of human judgments: They are those judgments themselves’ (p. 266). Lipman agrees with Martha Nussbaum (1992) that ‘emotions *are] themselves forms of judgment or, more broadly, forms of thought’ (ibid.).

The problematicity–inquiry cycle cannot do without the judgments involved in it; it is judgment that resolves conflicts and inconsistencies, and that contributes to self-correction, and again it is judgment that leads to new issues and that opens up a new perspective and momentum on the solution of the crisis. However, how can we determine that a judgment is the right one? What counts as a ‘balance’ that a judgment aims to attain? We need to be guided by some higher-order criteria of right judgment and of balance. Yet in applying these criteria, some higher-order judgments are required, and the same questions would arise again. In response, Lipman would remind us, first, that in his view what inquiry aims at is never absolute right or truth. The judgment that he is concerned with is within the ‘spirit of fallibilism’ (p. 123). Second, one needs ‘to develop a sense of the appropriate’ (p. 21) in order to make a judicious and sensible judgment guided by criteria. Third, it is reasonableness that characterizes the judgment in question. Lipman remarks (p. 235):

[Reasonableness] is the criterion of ultimate appeal. While this may be vague, there seems to be no alternative to it, except to try to strengthen it by clarifying the standards that must be satisfied when that criterion is invoked.

He draws up a table of validities as standards for reasonableness (see p. 240). These standards are not separated from the ‘sense of the appropriate’ and the relevant dispositions and attitudes, that is, intellectual virtues, such as considerateness, attentiveness and consistency (see p. 115). And fourth, reasonableness (and other intellectual values) itself would not lie outside the scope of inquiry (see ibid.; and see next section for more explanation of Lipman’s notion of reasonableness).

In ending his book Thinking in Education (2003), Lipman includes a section entitled ‘Judgments as Expressive of Persons’. It reiterates a point that is in concert with Justus Buchler (1951): ‘a judgment is a microcosmic version of a person, or that a person is a judgment writ large’ (Lipman, 2003, p. 292; see also pp. 144 and 268). No matter whether one’s judgments are bad or good, they constitute the core part of one’s life because only through the power of choosing one’s goals and means (that involve judgments) can one exercise one’s freedom and thus become a genuine person (Lipman reminds us of this other important point advocated by John Dewey). Apart from self-expression, judgments play essential roles in self-formation and self-development, which is ‘cumulative’ (Lipman, 2003, p. 292):

each new judgment is projected upon and added to a composite image formed of all previous judicative projections. We are not like trees, whose cross-sections reveal the mere addition each year of a new circumference; we are cumulative beings, and each increment forces its way into our summed-up self and causes all the other parts


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to readjust their relationships with one another, even while the increment is itself altered as we seek to compel it to adapt to its new environment.

A judgment is basically not an indication of a state of mind that a person happens to have. Rather, it

contributes to the dynamic process of self-integration, in which a person is being aware of, maintaining and updating her identity. This can be described as a judgment-and-inquiry-based view of personal integrity. Its intellectual and pragmatic characters are prominent. To differentiate his position from that of Kant, Lipman notes that thinking for oneself is not ‘voluntary obedience of each individual to

universally generalizable principles’ (p. 12). Rather: A person undergoes a learning process to complete her unity through discernment, truthfulness, dialogues on the principles she follows, which require the attitudes of modesty and fallibilism.

Personal integrity rests so much on intellectual capacities and operations. Lipman highlights ‘intellectual autonomy’ (p. 214n), which we may consider as an important part of intellectual integrity. In his view, intellectual integrity overlaps with personal integrity. He writes: ‘If providing students with cognitive skills is a form of empowerment, such increased powers entail increased responsibilities, especially to and for oneself’ (ibid.). It is not merely epistemic responsibilities but responsibilities ‘to and for oneself’. Further, he remarks that ‘we have seriously underestimated the role the intellectual virtues play in the makeup of moral character’ (p. 115), such as ‘*r+espect for other points of view, patience with other deliberators’ (ibid.), and so on. This suggests that moral integrity, to some extent, is inseparable from intellectual integrity. Lipman’s notion of integrity is a complicated one, with personal, intellectual and moral dimensions. It should be noted that regarding the evaluative aspect, his attention is not restricted to moral concerns: ‘Making moral judgments is not an end in itself; it is a means for improving the quality of life’ (p. 26).

Reasonableness and balanced multidimensional thinking: a tension

On the one hand, in Lipman’s view, what educators should be concerned about in thinking education is not merely critical thinking because creative thinking and caring thinking are equally important. ‘*E+xcellent thinking will be strongly represented in all three categories’ (p. 229). Moreover, as discussed in the foregoing, these aspects of thinking should be in an equilibrium or balance, as opposed ‘to the hierarchical approach that ranks the purely theoretical over that which is practical and applied and that ranks the general and the abstract over anything that manifests itself only in its particularity’ (p. 200). On the other hand, reasonable judgments, which are always the results of inquiry and acted upon by further judgments, lie at the fundamental level. What finally account for a person’s integrity are her judgments. Even standards of reasonableness may be felt problematic someday and subject to inquiry. The outcome is supposed to be a grounded judgment that corrects or revises some of these standards. According to Lipman, it is reasonable judgments that bring an equilibrium to multidimensional thinking (see p. 289 and p. 290); it is ‘reasonableness *that+ is a regulative idea for the development of the character structure’ (p. 204), and that ‘is the criterion of ultimate appeal’ (p. 235). What is intriguing is that Lipman allocates reasonableness to critical thinking: ‘Critical thinking aims at reasonableness’ (p. 238), while contending that ‘thinking entails an interpenetration and interbreeding of different forms of mental behavior, which we are free to conceptualize as reasonableness, creativity, and care’ (p. 198; see also p. 84). These items correspond to critical, creative and caring thinking, respectively.

To illustrate the tension between the requirement of reasonableness and that of balanced multidimensional thinking, let us take a case concerning the integrity of a goalkeeper. He was struggling between telling and not telling the referee about the fact that the ball had already passed the line of the goal. The referee did not realize it but he saw it very clearly. He is strongly committed to sportsmanship,


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which demands that he should act as truthfully and fairly as he could in a game. However, he anticipated that the loss of one goal at that crucial point of time would very likely lead to the loss of the whole match and to the failure of entering the later stages of the World Cup. That consequence, he knew very well, was against the expectations of his coaches, many team members, fans and even the entire nation. He realized that being honest in this event would irreducibly damage his career and relation with his fans, and so on. What is more, a sportsman, who was thought to be responsible for the loss of a match that led to the country’s disappointment and shame, was recently killed by a fanatical fan. This kind of irrational behavior in sports is new in his country. The goalkeeper considered that he himself might become a similar victim and that if he had the same fate, his family would be in trouble. He loves his family very much.

The goalkeeper has to determine whether to tell the truth. This is an occasion on which he found it difficult to maintain the ideal of sportsmanship that demands being truthful in a game. Now sportsmanship and his family’s safety (happiness) seemed to be in conflict. Both matter to him. His caring thinking makes him inclined to restore the equilibrium that he enjoyed before. At the same time, he attempts to resolve the dilemma. He is not merely thinking through (1) algorithms alone (that is, reasoning without judgments, reasoning simply based on definitions or criteria, including those of sportsmanship, patriotism, teamwork, and family love, etc.), or through (2) heuristics alone (that is, judgments without reasoning, judgments only based on his experience and common sense, including the rule of thumb that after weighing the values of two alternatives which are at odds with each other, we need to test the result against our genuine feeling of preference). According to Lipman, (1) is an extreme of critical thinking and (2) is an extreme of creative thinking, respectively (see p. 275). As a critical thinker, the goalkeeper must be ‘sensitive to context’ as well as rely on ‘criteria’ (p. 212). The context of this particular case of sportsmanship is quite special. It involves the likelihood that his family’s safety would be threatened, not to say the likelihood that he would get into trouble with his team members and fans.

Lipman would say that the goalkeeper must make a judgment guided by standards of reasonableness or validities such as ‘Reasoning from acceptable assumptions’, ‘Consistency’, and so on (p. 240). He is required to judge, among others, (a) whether his assumptions are acceptable, such as the one that he would not have the excuse of not telling the truth for the sake of protecting his family in this situation, and (b) whether his decision to make his family avoid a high safety risk by being dishonest in the game is still consistent with sportsmanship. Reasonableness is not merely a matter of critical thinking; it has a function of balancing critical thinking with creative and caring thinking. That means, techniques of critical thinking are not employed independently of his value orientations (that is, of his caring thinking). It is unreasonable to be alienated from his thoughts, feelings and desires. Moreover, he is called by reasonableness not to simply rely on preexisting concepts, criteria or principles (of sportsmanship, family love and integrity, etc.); his creative thinking urges him to entertain new possibilities of solving this unprecedented problem, including updating his commitments and his grasp of the relevant concepts and norms, and so on.

As an intellectual virtue of balancing various intellectual virtues, reasonableness (‘the criterion of ultimate appeal’) should be higher than those of critical thinking alone. However, reasonableness is regarded as the aim of critical thinking, as distinguished from the other two aims (creativity and care) that pertain to creative and caring thinking, respectively. In response to this issue, one answer is that reasonableness has different senses. It is not very helpful, though, because we still need to consider whether the senses of reasonableness are coherent or not. We can anticipate another answer like this: there is no inconsistency or incoherence here because the balance among critical, creative and caring thinking is compatible with the priority of critical thinking. However, Lipman emphasizes the equalitarian feature of excellent multidimensional thinking, which means: not only are the three aspects of thinking essential, they should not be in a predetermined hierarchical order (see p. 200). A still further answer is that critical thinking is intrinsically related to creative and caring thinking. Critical thinking, in Lipman’s


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view, ‘is not just rational, in the sense of a thinking that is rule- and criterion-governed, but that it is also a thinking that accepts the fallibility of its procedure, that engages in self-corrective practice, that takes the contextual differences into account, and that is equitable, in the sense that respects the rights of others as well as its own’ (p. 238). He concludes that ‘*r+easonableness … entails the cultivation of multidimensional thinking’ (ibid.). However, even though apart from intellectual values we may put equity (and others such as modesty) into the list of values that pertain to reasonableness, what the reasonable person as a reasonable person cares about would not include all kinds of moral, aesthetic and religious values, and so on.

Objectivity and internalism In Lipman’s view, judgment, which functions as tempering rationality, is the central element of reasonableness (see pp. 11, 111 and 208). It is reasonable judgment that determines thinking, speech, action and creation appropriately without neglecting significant differences and similarities in various contexts (see pp. 211 and 208). The objectivity involved here is by no means a matter of conforming to fixed criteria or standards. In moral practice, moral concepts do not play the role of picking out moral values, characters and actions, and so on in a predetermined manner. The judgment that pertains to reasonableness, according to Lipman (who follows Aristotle in this regard), is not a mere exercise of abstract procedures but must have some bearing on understanding (see p. 191). Moreover, a good judgment is essentially based on what we have learnt in ‘our daily practice and daily experience’ (p. 79). These latter features of judgment indicate its internalist dimension, in a sense that a person who judges x is already motivated to do x. Her judgment is part of her life; there is no gulf between her judgment and action. The objectivity and internalism implied in Lipman’s conception of reasonableness would never be incompatible with each other. As shown in his comments on W. A. Hart (1978) and Kant, he rejects any rigid dichotomy between abstract rules, on the one hand, and human relevance, on the other. ‘It seems to me that to vest morality wholly in persons and to divest it wholly from methodologies, procedures, and institutions is the way to go if we want to compound our problems rather than resolve them,’ says Lipman (p. 193). Skills, he suggests, could be the key to resolving the tension, but in his conception, skills are not, as Aristotle conceives, opposed to understanding. Techniques of reasonableness are internalized practical knowhow that is acquired in a community of inquiry (a form of life that Lipman recommends to cultivate reasonableness).

In her recent book Beyond Moral Judgment (2007), Alice Crary addresses the contemporary ethical problem of accommodating both objectivity and internalism. This work shares much with the pragmatic ideas expressed by Lipman in his Thinking in Education. However, as the book title suggests, their discrepancies lie in their views on the role that judgments play in an agent’s engagement with the world and on how far judgments reflect the agent’s character and moral outlook. As mentioned in this paper, Lipman accentuates judgments as the most crucial part of a person’s life that constitutes her identity in an accumulative manner. For Crary, an adequate account that deals with the tension between objectivity and internalism is ‘the view that moral thinking is not exclusively, or even primarily, a matter of making judgments’ (pp. 10–11). A moral agent’s sensibilities and visions of importance and of the world, in her conception, ‘are prior to moral judgments’ (p. 46), in the sense that the latter takes for granted the former.

Crary’s insight is that whenever moral judgments are made, they do not function as ‘picking out members of some set of [purely neutral] properties but of tracing out patterns in an already moralized vision of the world’ (ibid.). That means, ‘the concerns of ethics … encompass her entire personality – her interests, fears and ambitions, her characteristic gestures and attitudes and her sense of what is humorous, what is offensive and what is profound’ (p. 47). These aspects are commonly regarded as


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subjective, and yet Crary suggests that, although subjective, they are the agent’s responses in appropriate circumstances. We should not conflate these, in her terminology, ‘problematically subjective’ elements, for instance ‘amusing’, with those ‘merely subjective’ elements that have nothing to do with merits, for instance, ‘seeming red to me’ (see pp. 15, 31–32). Crary rejects the tradition’s (what she calls) ‘narrower conception of objectivity’ according to which everything subjective is excluded. Instead, under the ‘wider conception of objectivity’ that includes the ‘problematically subjective’ properties, the gap between objectivity and internalism, she contends, can be closed.

Here our purpose is not to examine thoroughly Crary’s grounds, but to draw some relevant observations from Crary’s ideas in order to reveal the difference from Lipman’s position. Comparing these two views in terms of objectivity and internalism, we can attain a vantage point for probing into the nucleus of Lipman’s philosophy. One crucial point that Crary draws from Wittgenstein’s thoughts is, among others, concerned with ‘a visible section of rails invisibly laid to infinity’ (PI, §218). Many people take it for granted that rules determine correct applications as this image suggests. However, any given finite segment of, for instance, a numerical series is consistent with many different patterns of progression. As Wittgenstein discussed (PI, §187), we may come across a scenario like this: a student who learns to write the series of even natural numbers up to 1000 subsequently continues the series with 1004, 1008, 1012 and so on. No matter how prolonged the available pattern of correct, rule-governed behaviour is, it is consistent with patterns of incorrect behaviour. In Crary’s reading, Wittgenstein aims to show a fundamental problem of concept mastery (a kind of rule-following), such that we are inclined to restrict our attention to the concept user’s bare patterns of behaviour while realizing the significant relevance of understanding what it is to succeed in the task. We cannot but be frustrated by both requirements. The lesson ‘is a view of our concepts as essentially integrated into, to use some of Wittgenstein’s signature terms, customs or practices that instills us with the relevant sensibilities’ (Crary, p. 25); only with the practical sensibilities (maybe indicated by his exclamation ‘Now I see!’) can the student grasp the concept ‘+2’―not as a means ‘for picking out contents that are independently available (as the image of an ideally rigid rail suggests), but as one of the ‘resources for thinking about aspects of the world [we live in]’ (ibid.). Accordingly, Wittgenstein denies the ‘narrower conception of objectivity’ that abstracts away all subjective sensibilities. However, in Crary’s view, he thus rectifies the concept of objectivity by getting rid of the ‘abstract requirement’ while including the sensibilities for learning and using the concept. To master a concept is to acquire a practical ability that rests upon the sensibilities in question. In a broader vein, such an approach is inseparable from Wittgenstein’s view of language that is pragmatic in nature, according to which sensitivities are internal to linguistic capacities. Moreover, these sensibilities are a kind of ‘practical endowment’ (p. 43) due to ‘the adoption of a practical orientation towards the world’ (ibid.). Consequently, first, it is unintelligible to conceive linguistic competence to be fixed or ‘determining ahead of time, independently of efforts’ (p. 41) in the learning process, and second:

such a practical orientation to the world cannot help but encode a view of what matters most in life or of how best to live, it follows that here there is a significant respect in which learning to speak is inseparable from the development of an― individual―moral outlook (p. 43).

In this perspective, it is not merely judgment that reflects a person’s linguistic or thinking capacities;

other forms of thinking and sensibilities enter the picture. For what is at stake is the person’s practical responses in using the language or applying a concept, which have a bearing on people’s ‘total vision of life, as shown in their mode of speech or silence, their choice of words, their assessments of others, their conception of their own lives, what they think attractive or praiseworthy, what they think funny … one


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may call the texture of man’s being or the nature of his personal vision’ (Irish Murdoch, ‘Vision and Choice in Morality,’ pp. 80–81; an epigraph in Crary, pp. 39–40).

In the beginning of this section, we mentioned Lipman’s notion of skills that is supposed to reconcile the technical and the human. In Lipman’s view, skills, which are opposed to mechanical or merely habitual behaviour, are internalized methodologies and procedures. Thinking techniques, in particular reasoning with criteria (see p. 213), should not be external means for objectivity. Critical-thinking skills are learnt and practiced in a community of inquiry. Under this conception, the criteria or principles are ‘dissolved in the skill itself’ (p. 194), and Lipman would agree that they come along with certain attitudes, sensitivities (including especially some sense of importance) and visions of the world. In fact, he subscribes this idea to one of the two interpretations of Wittgenstein he has in mind, ‘the Wittgenstein (in On Certainty) who ponders the question of the relative worth of skills versus rule-gained behavior and comes down on the side of skills’ (ibid.).

Contending that skills should take the place of abstract rules, Lipman would not accept any conception of objectivity as ‘abstract requirement’. It can be seen that he is in favour of a wider conception of objectivity. However, it is not clear whether that conception is as wide as Crary’s. For the latter, objectivity is linked to internalism, which involves the agent’s entire ‘moral outlook’. In Lipman’s perspective, objectivity is achieved through communicative-dialogue-, criteria- and reasonableness-based practices in a community of inquiry. These practices orient participants towards certain directions. Surely their concerns are not only intellectual, but also ethical. They become modest, open-minded and fair to other participants. Yet, do these dispositions penetrate into the whole being of the agent (there is no question that these dispositions and attitudes pertain to the agent who is engaged in inquiry practices)? According to Lipman, a reasonable person has a mindset admitting fallibility. How can this feature be combined to the person’s moral and/or religious faiths? In a sense, these faiths are unconditional, being the core part of her identity.

Reasonableness stands out as a balancing element in Lipman’s dynamic view of thinking. It regards thinking as a cycle of problematicity and equilibrium. Without the set of intellectual virtues that constitute our reasonableness, we can hardly reflect upon our faiths and attain any discernment that can be said to be objective. In reality, as Musschenga (2001) points out, many people have to deal with problems concerning how to integrate their various concerns. Moreover, especially in pluralistic societies, there are more chances that the moral outlook of an individual will come across conflicts and at the same time more chances to continuously evolve. Against this background we can comprehend why reasonableness is wanted. However, does it mean that in maintaining reasonableness we need to avoid entrenched practical orientations and that our integrity is construed as mainly due to reasonableness? It seems that Lipman, who emphasizes so much caring thinking, would not find it sensible for, say, a Confucian to always put his differential notion of love in brackets, or for a Christian to always loosen his faith of agape (universal love). Rather, only when a problem about the disagreement between these two views of love is felt will the Confucian and Christian be called by reasonableness to reflect upon their own commitments and to consider the reason that the other offers.

Crary (2007) agrees that moral judgments play important roles in moral reflections, in evaluating one’s own commitments (see p. 46), and in growth (see p. 42). And in matters about encounters among different cultures, she indeed draws readers’ attention to ‘Wittgenstein’s receptivity to an idea of rational persuasion’ (p. 119), while arguing that ‘the exercise of rationality necessarily presupposes the possession of certain sensitivities’ (ibid.). Yet she does not want to highlight judgments, reasonableness or any ‘ultimate appeal’ as Lipman does. The basic point of On Certainty, in her construal, is that ‘By redirecting attention back to sensibilities we possess as speakers, Wittgenstein hopes to get us to confront our responsibility for what we say and think’ (p. 122, note 47). This conception of thinking for oneself differs from that of Lipman’s, although, as we discussed earlier, Lipman sees very clearly that inquirers have responsibility in their thinking. Crary reminds us of an observation of Wittgenstein that in


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philosophy, ‘[w]hat has to be overcome is a difficulty having to do with the will, rather than with the intellect’ (CV, p. 17; quoted in Crary, p. 122). Very often we find some obvious subject matters too difficult to be understood just because we do not want to see them. Our will underlies our understanding. Here it is not merely what intellectual integrity aims at, that is the will that concords with the intellect (see Hack, 2004, p. 12), but rather it is the will that bears upon the whole moral outlook of a person.

But then it seems we have not made any progress in these exchanges of ideas that come from Lipman and Crary. For Lipman would query: If we do not rely on reasonableness, what balances our various orientations and what settles our conflicts (both inner ones and those with other people)? We cannot simply let different desires and values, feelings and multidimensional thinking act upon one another in whatever ways. A certain ‘right’ or appropriateness has to be there, instead of having a will express the whole person. For Crary, the relevant normativeness pertains to a person’s life. At this crucial juncture, in order to review Lipman’s ideas further, let me suggest a construal about the will in question by continuing the inquiry about the case of the goalkeeper we discussed earlier, instead of following Crary’s illustrations with reference to literary works.

At that critical moment, in order to stop at a certain judgment, his sensibilities and vision of importance, including those nonjudgmental in nature, must be involved in his decision as his will because he has no preexisting judged sensibilities and vision of importance to rely on. This is the first time he has to compare the importance of both sportsmanship and family well-being. He cares about (1) sportsmanship, honesty, truth, happiness of his team members, coaches, fans and country, and safety of his family members, as well as his own safety, soccer career and so on. He also cares about (2) whether his deliberation and decision are reasonably valid (such as correct assumptions, consistency, and accuracy in calculating the risks, etc.). His concerns of (2) in fact come from his reasonableness (that is, a collection of intellectual virtues), whereas those of (1) are due to his ideal of sportsmanship, respect of his coaches, team players, fans and fellow countrymen, and love of his family, and so on. As a reasonable person, he exercised his critical-thinking skills, criteria, principles and methods on his own considerations and reflections.

Suppose through these means of reasonableness, he reached his final resolution: telling the truth to the referee and preparing to do whatever he can to reduce the risk to his family’s safety. That may be said to have balanced the various values he holds dear under reasonableness. However, suppose through these means of reasonableness, he could not reach his final resolution. He is still uncertain as to what to do because he realized that, while maintaining sportsmanship and honesty, the risk is too high for him to let the others know the truth about the ball passing across the line. Then he needs to rethink what it is to be reasonable, what it is to be honest, and what it is to fulfill the requirements of sportsmanship, and so on. Some issues arise: Is it unreasonable to protect his family by not telling the truth? Or if he chose to make sure that the well-being of his family, instead of sportsmanship, was to be protected, would he thus forfeit his reasonableness?

Lipman would say that these questions come along with the agent’s creative thinking’s urge to revise some basic conceptions or understandings, including those of reasonableness. The goalkeeper is a creative as well as critical thinker on this occasion; he needs ‘to go beyond his previous level’ (p. 246) (this being, as mentioned, a matter of ‘self-transcendence’ in his terminology). As an agent, he cannot depend entirely on his thinking methods and conceptions of the relevant values acquired in the past. He might need to correct or update his ways of thinking and some of his understandings of sportsmanship, family love and integrity. These radical attempts are yet to be constrained by at least some preexisting standards of reasonableness itself. However, at the bottom, the goalkeeper had to consider (Q*) whether protecting his family in that situation of high risk could be counted as a reason to relax the requirement of sportsmanship to play truthfully in a game. In fact, he is not entirely impartial though he is a reasonable person, for he has cares particularly for his own family, team, fans and country, and so on.


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What if in cases when an agent could communicate with other reasonable people in the same community of inquiry to investigate the issue in dialogues and good intellectual attitudes such as open-mindedness and modesty? Can Q* be dealt with? It would be an advantage if the members of this community come from many different cultural backgrounds. However, merely based on dialogues, and the preexisting dispositions and standards of reasonableness, can we suppose that some reasonable judgment about how to update the requirements of reasonableness as such, or reasonable judgment that evaluates various preferences between family’s safety and sportsmanship in that concrete situation, will be achieved? It is true that we cannot leave thoughts, feelings and cares to act upon one another without any constraint. Now reasonableness is meant to be independent because it serves as an ‘ultimate appeal’ to settle any conflict or imbalance. However, to play such a role, reasonableness cannot be independent of value orientations or some substantive moral outlooks. Otherwise it would not enable the discernment of the appropriate: both on the issue whether the above-discussed goalkeeper is right to avoid the high risk of family’s safety by not telling the truth and on the issue in what way the content of reasonableness has to be updated in order to accommodate this moral case.

In fact, here what is to be made is a decision or commitment that does not entirely rest on reasonable judgments. It is a caring action (not merely caring thinking) with significance in one’s life. Above all, the point is that the case not only involves a choice between two values; an updated meaning of what it is to be a person of integrity and reasonableness and so on may hence emerge. Lipman’s (2003) use of the term ‘judgment’ embraces decisions (see p. 271). As shown in his comment on Robert Ennis’s (1962) definition of critical thinking according to which critical thinking aims at deciding what to believe and do, Lipman argues that critical thinking should take a defensive role and that ‘until the inquiry is concluded, skepticism is the order of the day’ (p. 48). Beliefs are not given a positive affirmation as Ennis does. Lipman writes: ‘With the conclusion of an inquiry episode, when the problem has been resolved, there will be a renewed opportunity for belief, but it will be a reconstructed and chastened belief as a consequence of the inquiry that has just taken place’ (ibid.). However, it is an issue whether he would have in mind the sense of decision and foundational belief in radical uncertain situations like that of the goalkeeper. At that crucial moment, he has to make a leap, no sufficient grounds being available to him. And yet his groundless response is not without right, for it is, as Wittgenstein calls it, a matter of ‘my foundations’ (RFM, VI–46; see Huen [2011] for further discussion on this point).

Concluding remarks In this paper I attempted to expound a notion of integrity implicit in Lipman’s ideas by, first of all, comparing it with those of Musschenga. In Lipman’s view, integrity is inseparable from functions of critical, creative and caring thinking in problematicity–equilibrium cycles; personal, intellectual and moral aspects of integrity are accordingly interwoven. Moreover, reasonable judgments play a central role in accounting for the development of a person. I addressed issues about the groundwork of Lipman’s thoughts, in particular, that which is concerned with the tension between the requirements of reasonableness, on the one hand, and of balanced multidimensional thinking, on the other. Probing into this tension, I considered Lipman’s insights in terms of the relation between objectivity and internalism. This perspective, which benefits from Crary, seems pertinent to me. In contrasting Lipman’s standpoint with that of Crary, I arrived at Wittgenstein’s remark on the significance of the will. The case of the goalkeeper who is undergoing a crisis of integrity provides an illustration of my construal. In such a situation of radical uncertainty we can realize in what fundamental manner the person’s decision contributes to his integrity; it is an action within and beyond reasonableness.


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Integrity Within and Beyond Reasonableness: A Reflection on Lipman’s Ideas

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