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Title: Studies in Logical Theory
Author: John Dewey
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STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY
by
JOHN DEWEY
Professor of Philosophy
With the Co-Operation of Members and Fellows of the
Department of Philosophy
The Decennial Publications
Second Series Volume Xi
Chicago
The University of Chicago Press
1903
Copyright, 1903
By the University of Chicago
PREFACE
This volume presents some results of the work done in the matter of
logical theory in the Department of Philosophy of the University of
Chicago in the first decade of its existence. The eleven Studies are the
work of eight different hands, all, with the exception of the editor,
having at some period held Fellowships in this University, Dr. Heidel in
Greek, the others in Philosophy. Their names and present pursuits are
indicated in the Table of Contents. The editor has occasionally, though
rarely, added a footnote or phrase which might serve to connect one
Study more closely with another. The pages in the discussion of
Hypothesis, on Mill and Whewell, are by him. With these exceptions, each
writer is individually and completely responsible for his own Study.
The various Studies present, the editor believes, about the relative
amount of agreement and disagreement that is natural in view of the
conditions of their origin. The various writers have been in contact
with one another in Seminars and lecture courses in pursuit of the same
topics, and have had to do with shaping one another's views. There are
several others, not represented in this volume, who have also
participated in the evolution of the point of view herein set forth, and
to whom the writers acknowledge their indebtedness. The disagreements
proceed from the diversity of interests with which the different writers
approach the logical topic; and from the fact that the point of view in
question is still (happily) developing and showing no signs of becoming
a closed system.
If the Studies themselves do not give a fair notion of the nature and
degree of the harmony in the different writers' methods, a preface is
not likely to succeed in so doing. A few words may be in place, however,
about a matter repeatedly touched upon, but nowhere consecutively
elaborated--the more ultimate philosophical bearing of what is set
forth. All agree, the editor takes the liberty of saying, that judgment
is the central function of knowing, and hence affords the central
problem of logic; that since the act of knowing is intimately and
indissolubly connected with the like yet diverse functions of affection,
appreciation, and practice, it only distorts results reached to treat
knowing as a self-inclosed and self-explanatory whole--hence the
intimate connections of logical theory with functional psychology; that
since knowledge appears as a function within experience, and yet passes
judgment upon both the processes and contents of other functions, its
work and aim must be distinctively reconstructive or transformatory;
that since Reality must be defined in terms of experience, judgment
appears accordingly as the medium through which the consciously effected
evolution of Reality goes on; that there is no reasonable standard of
truth (or of success of the knowing function) in general, except upon
the postulate that Reality is thus dynamic or self-evolving, and, in
particular, except through reference to the specific offices which
knowing is called upon to perform in readjusting and expanding the means
and ends of life. And all agree that this conception gives the only
promising basis upon which the working methods of science, and the
proper demands of the moral life, may co-operate. All this, doubtless,
does not take us very far on the road to detailed conclusions, but it is
better, perhaps, to get started in the right direction than to be so
definite as to erect a dead-wall in the way of farther movement of
thought.
In general, the obligations in logical matters of the writers are
roughly commensurate with the direction of their criticisms. Upon the
whole, most is due to those whose views are most sharply opposed. To
Mill, Lotze, Bosanquet, and Bradley the writers then owe special
indebtedness. The editor acknowledges personal indebtedness to his
present colleagues, particularly to Mr. George H. Mead, in the Faculty
of Philosophy, and to a former colleague, Dr. Alfred H. Lloyd, of the
University of Michigan. For both inspiration and the forging of the
tools with which the writers have worked there is a pre-eminent
obligation on the part of all of us to William James, of Harvard
University, who, we hope, will accept this acknowledgment and this book
as unworthy tokens of a regard and an admiration that are coequal.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Thought and its Subject-Matter 1
By JOHN DEWEY
II. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Antecedents of Thought 23
By JOHN DEWEY
III. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Datum of Thinking 49
By JOHN DEWEY
IV. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Content and
Object of Thought 65
By JOHN DEWEY
V. Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 86
By HELEN BRADFORD THOMPSON, Ph.D., Director of the
Psychological Laboratory of Mount Holyoke College
VI. Typical Stages in the Development of Judgment 127
By SIMON FRASER MCLENNAN, Ph.D., Professor of
Philosophy in Oberlin College
VII. The Nature of Hypothesis 142
By MYRON LUCIUS ASHLEY, Ph.D., Instructor,
American Correspondence School
VIII. Image and Idea in Logic 183
By WILLARD CLARK GORE, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
of Psychology in the University of Chicago
IX. The Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy 203
By WILLIAM ARTHUR HEIDEL, Ph.D., Professor of
Latin in Iowa College
X. Valuation as a Logical Process 227
By HENRY WALDGRAVE STUART, Ph.D., Instructor in
Philosophy in the State University of Iowa
XI. Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 341
By ADDISON WEBSTER MOORE, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
of Philosophy in the University of Chicago
I
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF LOGICAL THEORY
No one doubts that thought, at least reflective, as distinct from what
is sometimes called constitutive, thought, is derivative and secondary.
It comes after something and out of something, and for the sake of
something. No one doubts that the thinking of everyday practical life
and of science is of this reflective type. We think about; we reflect
over. If we ask what it is which is primary and radical to thought; if
we ask what is the final objective for the sake of which thought
intervenes; if we ask in what sense we are to understand thought as a
derived procedure, we are plunging ourselves into the very heart of the
logical problem: the relation of thought to its empirical antecedents
and to its consequent, truth, and the relation of truth to reality.
Yet from the naïve point of view no difficulty attaches to these
questions. The antecedents of thought are our universe of life and love;
of appreciation and struggle. We think about anything and everything:
snow on the ground; the alternating clanks and thuds that rise from
below; the relation of the Monroe Doctrine to the embroglio in
Venezuela; the relation of art to industry; the poetic quality of a
painting by Botticelli; the battle of Marathon; the economic
interpretation of history; the proper definition of cause; the best
method of reducing expenses; whether and how to renew the ties of a
broken friendship; the interpretation of an equation in hydrodynamics;
etc.
Through the madness of this miscellaneous citation there appears so much
of method: anything--event, act, value, ideal, person, or place--may be
an object of thought. Reflection busies itself alike with physical
nature, the record of social achievement, and the endeavors of social
aspiration. It is with reference to _such_ affairs that thought is
derivative; it is with reference to them that it intervenes or mediates.
Taking some part of the universe of action, of affection, of social
construction, under its special charge, and having busied itself
therewith sufficiently to meet the special difficulty presented, thought
releases that topic and enters upon further more direct experience.
Sticking for a moment to this naïve standpoint, we recognize a certain
rhythm of direct practice and derived theory; of primary construction
and of secondary criticism; of living appreciation and of abstract
description; of active endeavor and of pale reflection. We find that
every more direct primary attitude passes upon occasion into its
secondary deliberative and discursive counterpart. We find that when the
latter has done its work it passes away and passes on. From the naïve
standpoint such rhythm is taken as a matter of course. There is no
attempt to state either the nature of the occasion which demands the
thinking attitude, nor to formulate a theory of the standard by which is
judged its success. No general theory is propounded as to the exact
relationship between thinking and what antecedes and succeeds it. Much
less do we ask how empirical circumstances can generate rationality of
thought; nor how it is possible for reflection to lay claim to power of
determining truth and thereby of constructing further reality.
If we were to ask the thinking of naïve life to present, with a minimum
of theoretical elaboration, its conception of its own practice, we
should get an answer running not unlike this: Thinking is a kind of
activity which we perform at specific need, just as at other need we
engage in other sorts of activity: as converse with a friend; draw a
plan for a house; take a walk; eat a dinner; purchase a suit of
clothes; etc., etc. In general, its material is anything in the wide
universe which seems to be relevant to this need--anything which may
serve as a resource in defining the difficulty or in suggesting modes of
dealing effectively with it. The measure of its success, the standard of
its validity, is precisely the degree in which the thinking actually
disposes of the difficulty and allows us to proceed with more direct
modes of experiencing, that are forthwith possessed of more assured and
deepened value.
If we inquire why the naïve attitude does not go on to elaborate these
implications of its own practice into a systematic theory, the answer,
on its own basis, is obvious. Thought arises in response to its own
occasion. And this occasion is so exacting that there is time, as there
is need, only to do the thinking which is needed in that occasion--not
to reflect upon the thinking itself. Reflection follows so naturally
upon its appropriate cue, its issue is so obvious, so practical, the
entire relationship is so organic, that once grant the position that
thought arises in reaction to specific demand, and there is not the
particular type of thinking called logical theory because there is not
the practical demand for reflection of that sort. Our attention is taken
up with particular questions and specific answers. What we have to
reckon with is not the problem of, How can I think _überhaupt_? but, How
shall I think right _here and now_? Not what is the test of thought at
large, but what validates and confirms _this_ thought?
In conformity with this view, it follows that a generic account of our
thinking behavior, the generic account termed logical theory, arises at
historic periods in which the situation has lost the organic character
above described. The general theory of reflection, as over against its
concrete exercise, appears when occasions for reflection are so
overwhelming and so mutually conflicting that specific adequate
response in thought is blocked. Again, it shows itself when practical
affairs are so multifarious, complicated, and remote from control that
thinking is held off from successful passage into them.
Anyhow (sticking to the naïve standpoint), it is true that the stimulus
to that particular form of reflective thinking termed logical theory is
found when circumstances require the act of thinking and nevertheless
impede clear and coherent thinking in detail; or when they occasion
thought and then prevent the results of thinking from exercising
directive influence upon the immediate concerns of life. Under these
conditions we get such questions as the following: What is the relation
of rational thought to crude or unreflective experience? What is the
relation of thought to reality? What is the barrier which prevents
reason from complete penetration into the world of truth? What is it
that makes us live alternately in a concrete world of experience in
which thought as such finds not satisfaction, and in a world of ordered
thought which is yet only abstract and ideal?
It is not my intention here to pursue the line of historical inquiry
thus suggested. Indeed, the point would not be mentioned did it not
serve to fix attention upon the nature of the logical problem.
It is in dealing with this latter type of questions that logical theory
has taken a turn which separates it widely from the theoretical
implications of practical deliberation and of scientific research. The
two latter, however much they differ from each other in detail, agree in
a fundamental principle. They both assume that every reflective problem
and operation arises with reference to some _specific_ situation, and
has to subserve a _specific_ purpose dependent upon its own occasion.
They assume and observe distinct limits--limits from which and to which.
There is the limit of origin in the needs of the particular situation
which evokes reflection. There is the limit of terminus in successful
dealing with the particular problem presented--or in retiring, baffled,
to take up some other question. The query that at once faces us
regarding the nature of logical theory is whether reflection upon
reflection shall recognize these limits, endeavoring to formulate them
more exactly and to define their relationships to each other more
adequately; or shall it abolish limits, do away with the matter of
specific conditions and specific aims of thought, and discuss thought
and its relation to empirical antecedents and rational consequents
(truth) at large?
At first blush, it might seem as if the very nature of logical theory as
generalization of the reflective process must of necessity disregard the
matter of particular conditions and particular results as irrelevant.
How, the implication runs, could reflection become generalized save by
elimination of details as irrelevant? Such a conception in fixing the
central problem of logic fixes once for all its future career and
material. The essential business of logic is henceforth to discuss the
relation of thought as such to reality as such. It may, indeed, involve
much psychological material, particularly in the discussion of the
processes which antecede thinking and which call it out. It may involve
much discussion of the concrete methods of investigation and
verification employed in the various sciences. It may busily concern
itself with the differentiation of various types and forms of
thought--different modes of conceiving, various conformations of
judgment, various types of inferential reasoning. But it concerns itself
with any and all of these three fields, not on their own account or as
ultimate, but as subsidiary to the main problem: the relation of thought
as such, or at large, to reality as such, or at large. Some of the
detailed considerations referred to may throw light upon the terms under
which thought transacts its business with reality; upon, say, certain
peculiar limitations it has to submit to as best it may. Other
considerations throw light upon the ways in which thought gets at
reality. Still other considerations throw light upon the forms which
thought assumes in attacking and apprehending reality. But in the end
all this is incidental. In the end the one problem holds: How do the
specifications of thought as such hold good of reality as such? In fine,
logic is supposed to grow out of the epistemological inquiry and to lead
up to its solution.
From this point of view various aspects of logical theory are well
stated by an author whom later on we shall consider in some detail.
Lotze[1] refers to "universal forms and principles of thought which hold
good everywhere both in judging of reality and in weighing possibility,
_irrespective of any difference in the objects_." This defines the
business of _pure_ logic. This is clearly the question of thought as
such--of thought at large or in general. Then we have the question "of
how far the most complete structure of thought ... can claim to be an
adequate account of that which we seem compelled to assume as the object
and occasion of our ideas." This is clearly the question of the relation
of thought at large to reality at large. It is epistemology. Then comes
"applied logic," having to do with the actual employment of concrete
forms of thought with reference to investigation of specific topics and
subjects. This "applied" logic would, if the standpoint of practical
deliberation and of scientific research were adopted, be the sole
genuine logic. But the existence of thought _in itself_ having been
agreed upon, we have in this "applied" logic only an incidental inquiry
of how the particular resistances and oppositions which "pure" thought
meets from particular matters may best be discounted. It is concerned
with methods of investigation which obviate defects in the relationship
of thought at large to reality at large, as these present themselves
under the limitations of human experience. It deals merely with
hindrances, and with devices for overcoming them; it is directed by
considerations of utility. When we reflect that this field includes the
entire procedure of practical deliberation and of concrete scientific
research, we begin to realize something of the significance of the
theory of logic which regards the limitations of specific origination
and specific outcome as irrelevant to its main problem, which assumes an
activity of thought "pure" or "in itself," that is, "irrespective of any
difference in its objects."
This suggests, by contrast, the opposite mode of stating the problem of
logical theory. Generalization of the nature of the reflective process
certainly involves elimination of much of the specific material and
contents of the thought-situations of daily life and of critical
science. Quite compatible with this, however, is the notion that it
seizes upon _certain_ specific conditions and factors, and aims to bring
them to clear consciousness--not to abolish them. While eliminating the
particular material of particular practical and scientific pursuits,
(1) it may strive to hit upon the common denominator in the various
situations which are antecedent or primary to thought and which evoke
it; (2) it may attempt to show how typical features in the specific
antecedents of thought call out to diverse typical modes of
thought-reaction; (3) it may attempt to state the nature of the specific
consequences in which thought fulfils its career.
(1) It does not eliminate dependence upon specific occasions as
provocative of thought; but endeavors to define _what_ in the various
situations constitutes them thought-provoking. The specific occasion is
not eliminated, but insisted upon and brought into the foreground.
Consequently psychological considerations are not subsidiary incidents,
but of essential importance so far as they enable us to trace the
generation of the thought-situation. (2) So from this point of view the
various types and modes of conceiving, judging, and inference are
treated, not as qualifications of thought per se or at large, but of
thought engaged in its specific, most economic, effective response to
its own particular occasion; they are adaptations for control of
stimuli. The distinctions and classifications that have been accumulated
in "formal" logic are relevant data; but they demand interpretation from
the standpoint of use as organs of adjustment to material antecedents
and stimuli. (3) Finally the question of validity, or ultimate objective
of thought, is relevant; but is such as a matter of the specific issue
of the specific career of a thought-function. All the typical
investigatory and verificatory procedures of the various sciences are
inherently concerned as indicating the ways in which thought actually
brings itself to its own successful fulfilment in dealing with various
types of problems.
While the epistemological type of logic may, as we have seen, leave
(under the name of applied logic), a subsidiary place open for the
instrumental type, the type which deals with thinking as a specific
procedure relative to a specific antecedent occasion and to a subsequent
specific fulfilment, is not able to reciprocate the favor. From its
point of view, an attempt to discuss the antecedents, data, forms, and
objective of thought, apart from reference to particular position
occupied, and particular part played in the growth of experience is to
reach results which are not so much either true or false as they are
radically meaningless--because they are considered apart from limits.
Its results are not only abstractions (for all theorizing ends in
abstractions), but abstractions without possible reference or bearing.
From this point of view, the taking of something, whether that something
be thinking activity, its empirical condition, or its objective goal,
apart from the limits of a historic or developing situation, is the
essence of _metaphysical_ procedure--in the sense of metaphysics which
makes a gulf between it and science.
As the reader has doubtless anticipated, it is the object of this
chapter to present the problem and industry of reflective thought from
this latter point of view. I recur again to the standpoint of naïve
experience, using the term in a sense wide enough to cover both
practical procedure and concrete scientific research. I resume by saying
that this point of view knows no fixed distinction between the empirical
values of unreflective life and the most abstract process of rational
thought. It knows no fixed gulf between the highest flight of theory and
control of the details of practical construction and behavior. It
passes, according to the occasion and opportunity of the moment, from
the attitude of loving and struggling and doing to that of thinking and
the reverse. Its contents or material shift their values back and forth
from technological or utilitarian to æsthetic, ethic, or affectional. It
utilizes data of perception or of discursive ideation as need calls,
just as an inventor now utilizes heat, now mechanical strain, now
electricity, according to the demands set by his aim. From this point of
view, more definite logical import is attached to our earlier statements
(p. 2) regarding the possibility of taking anything in the universe of
experience as subject-matter of thought. Anything from past experience
may be taken which appears to be an element in either the statement or
the solution of the present problem. Thus we understand the coexistence
without contradiction of an indeterminate possible field and a limited
actual field. The undefined set of means becomes specific through
reference to an end.
In all this, there is no difference of kind between the methods of
science and those of the plain man. The difference is the greater
control in science of the statement of the problem, and of the
selection and use of relevant material, both sensible or ideational. The
two are related to each other just as the hit-or-miss, trial-and-error
inventions of uncivilized man stand to the deliberate and consecutively
persistent efforts of a modern inventor to produce a certain complicated
device for doing a comprehensive piece of work. Neither the plain man
nor the scientific inquirer is aware, as he engages in his reflective
activity, of any transition from one sphere of existence to another. He
knows no two fixed worlds--reality on one side and mere subjective ideas
on the other; he is aware of no gulf to cross. He assumes uninterrupted,
free, and fluid passage from ordinary experience to abstract thinking,
from thought to fact, from things to theories and back again.
Observation passes into development of hypothesis; deductive methods
pass to use in description of the particular; inference passes into
action with no sense of difficulty save those found in the particular
task in question. The fundamental assumption is _continuity_ in and of
experience.
This does not mean that fact is confused with idea, or observed datum
with voluntary hypothesis, theory with doing, any more than a traveler
confuses land and water when he journeys from one to the other. It
simply means that each is placed and used with reference to service
rendered the other, and with reference to future use of the other.
Only the epistemological spectator is aware of the fact that the
everyday man and the scientific man in this free and easy intercourse
are rashly assuming the right to glide over a cleft in the very
structure of reality. This fact raises a query not favorable to the
epistemologist. Why is it that the scientific man, who is constantly
plying his venturous traffic of exchange of facts for ideas, of theories
for laws, of real things for hypotheses, should be so wholly unaware of
the radical and generic (as distinct from specific) difficulty of the
undertakings in which he is engaged? We thus come afresh to our inquiry:
Does not the epistemological logician unwittingly transfer the specific
difficulty which always faces the scientific man--the difficulty in
detail of correct and adequate translation back and forth of _this_ set
of facts and _this_ group of ideas--into a totally different problem of
the wholesale relation of thought at large with reality in general? If
such be the case, it is clear that the very way in which the
epistemological type of logic states the problem of thinking, in
relation both to empirical antecedents and to objective truth, makes
that problem insoluble. Working terms, terms which as working are
flexible and historic, relative, are transformed into absolute, fixed,
and predetermined forms of being.
We come a little closer to the problem when we recognize that every
scientific inquiry passes historically through at least four stages.
(_a_) The first of these stages is, if I may be allowed the bull, that
in which scientific inquiry does not take place at all, because no
problem or difficulty in the quality of the experience has presented
itself to provoke reflection. We have only to cast our eye back from the
existing status of any science, or back from the status of any
particular topic in any science, to discover a time when no reflective
or critical thinking busied itself with the matter--when the facts and
relations were taken for granted and thus were lost and absorbed in the
value which accrued from the experience. (_b_) After the dawning of the
problem, there comes a period of occupation with relatively crude and
unorganized facts--the hunting for, locating, and collecting of raw
material. This is the empiric stage, which no existing science, however
proud in its attained rationality, can disavow as its own progenitor.
(_c_) Then there is also a speculative stage: a period of guessing, of
making hypotheses, of framing ideas which later on are labeled and
condemned as only ideas. There is a period of distinction and
classification-making which later on is regarded as only
mentally-gymnastic in character. And no science, however proud in its
present security of experimental assurance, can disavow a scholastic
ancestor. (_d_) Finally, there comes a period of fruitful interaction
between the mere ideas and the mere facts: a period when observation is
determined by experimental conditions depending upon the use of certain
guiding conceptions; when reflection is directed and checked at every
point by the use of experimental data, and by the necessity of finding
such form for itself as will enable it to serve as premise in a
deduction leading to evolution of new meanings, and ultimately to
experimental inquiry, which brings to light new facts. In the emerging
of a more orderly and significant region of fact, and of a more coherent
and self-luminous system of meaning, we have the natural limit of
evolution of the logic of a given science.
But consider what has happened in this historic record. Unanalyzed
experience has broken up into distinctions of facts and ideas; the
factual side has been developed by indefinite and almost miscellaneous
descriptions and cumulative listings; the conceptual side has been
developed by unchecked and speculative elaboration of definitions,
classifications, etc. There has been a relegation of accepted meanings
to the limbo of mere ideas; there has been a passage of some of the
accepted facts into the region of mere hypothesis and opinion.
Conversely, there has been a continued issuing of ideas from the region
of hypotheses and theories into that of facts, of accepted objective and
meaningful contents. Out of a world of only _seeming_ facts, and of only
_doubtful_ ideas, there emerges a universe continually growing in
definiteness, order, and luminosity.
This progress, verified in every record of science, is an absolute
monstrosity from the standpoint of the epistemology which assumes a
thought in general, on one side, and a reality in general, on the other.
The reason that it does not present itself as such a monster and miracle
to those actually concerned with it is because there is a certain
_homogeneity_ or _continuity_ of reference and of use which controls all
diversities in both the modes of existence specified and the grades of
value assigned. The distinction of thought and fact is treated in the
growth of a science, or of any particular scientific problem, as an
_induced_ and _intentional_ practical division of labor; as relative
assignments of position with reference to performance of a task; as
deliberate distribution of forces at command for their more economic
use. The interaction of bald fact and hypothetical idea into the outcome
of a single world of scientific apprehension and comprehension is but
the successful achieving of the aim on account of which the distinctions
in question were instituted.
Thus we come back to the problem of logical theory. To take the
distinctions of thought and fact, etc., as ontological, as inherently
fixed in the make-up of the structure of being, is to treat the actual
development of scientific inquiry and scientific control as a mere
subsidiary topic ultimately of only utilitarian worth. It is also to
state the terms upon which thought and being transact business in a way
so totally alien to the use made of these distinctions in concrete
experience as to create a problem which can be discussed only in terms
of itself--not in terms of the conduct of life--metaphysics again in the
bad sense of that term. As against this, the problem of a logic which
aligns itself with the origin and employ of reflective thought in
everyday life and in critical science, is to follow the natural history
of thinking as a life-process having its own generating antecedents and
stimuli, its own states and career, and its own specific objective or
limit.
This point of view makes it possible for logical theory to come to terms
with psychology.[2] When logic is considered as having to do with the
wholesale activity of thought per se, the question of the historic
process by which this or that particular thought came to be, of how its
object happens to present itself as sensation, or perception, or
conception, is quite irrelevant. These things are mere temporal
accidents. The psychologist (not lifting his gaze from the realm of the
changeable) may find in them matters of interest. His whole industry is
just with natural history--to trace series of psychical events as they
mutually excite and inhibit one another. But the logician, we are told,
has a deeper problem and an outlook of more unbounded horizon. He deals
with the question of the eternal nature of thought and its eternal
validity in relation to an eternal reality. He is concerned, not with
genesis, but with value, not with a historic cycle, but with absolute
distinctions and relations.
Still the query haunts us: Is this so in truth? Or has the logician of a
certain type arbitrarily made it thus by taking his terms apart from
reference to the specific occasions in which they arise and situations
in which they function? If the latter, then the very denial of historic
relationship and of the significance of historic method, is indicative
only of the unreal character of his own abstraction. It means in effect
that the affairs under consideration have been isolated from the
conditions in which alone they have determinable meaning and assignable
worth. It is astonishing that, in the face of the advance of the
evolutionary method in natural science, any logician can persist in the
assertion of a rigid difference between the problem of origin and of
nature; between genesis and analysis; between history and validity. Such
assertion simply reiterates as final a distinction which grew up and
had meaning in pre-evolutionary science. It asserts against the most
marked advance which scientific method has yet made a survival of a
crude period of logical scientific procedure. We have no choice save
either to conceive of thinking as a response to a specific stimulus, or
else to regard it as something "in itself," having just in and of itself
certain traits, elements, and laws. If we give up the last view, we must
take the former.
The entire significance of the evolutionary method in biology and social
history is that every distinct organ, structure, or formation, every
grouping of cells or elements, has to be treated as an instrument of
adjustment or adaptation to a particular environing situation. Its
meaning, its character, its value, is known when, and only when, it is
considered as an arrangement for meeting the conditions involved in some
specific situation. This analysis of value is carried out in detail by
tracing successive stages of development--by endeavoring to locate the
particular situation in which each structure has its origin, and by
tracing the successive modifications through which, in response to
changing media, it has reached its present conformation.[3] To persist
in condemning natural history from the standpoint of what natural
history meant before it identified itself with an evolutionary process
is not so much to exclude the natural-history standpoint from
philosophic consideration as it is to evince ignorance of what it
signifies.
Psychology as the natural history of the various attitudes and
structures through which experiencing passes, as an account of the
conditions under which this or that state emerges, and of the way in
which it influences, by stimulation or inhibition, production of other
states or conformations of consciousness, is indispensable to logical
evaluation, the moment we treat logical theory as an account of
thinking as a mode of adaptation to its own generating conditions, and
judge its validity by reference to its efficiency in meeting its
problems. The historical point of view describes the sequence; the
normative follows the sequence to its conclusion, and then turns back
and judges each historical step by viewing it in reference to its own
outcome.[4]
In the course of changing experience we keep our balance as we move from
situations of an affectional quality to those which are practical or
appreciative or reflective, because we bear constantly in mind the
context in which any particular distinction presents itself. As we
submit each characteristic function and situation of experience to our
gaze, we find it has a dual aspect. Wherever there is striving there are
obstacles; wherever there is affection there are persons who are
attached; wherever there is doing there is accomplishment; wherever
there is appreciation there is value; wherever there is thinking there
is material-in-question. We keep our footing as we move from one
attitude to another, from one characteristic quality to another, because
we know the position occupied in the whole growth by the particular
function in which we are engaged, and the position within the function
of the particular element that engages us.
The distinction _between_ each attitude and function and its predecessor
and successor is serial, dynamic, operative. The distinctions _within_
any given operation or function are structural, contemporaneous, and
distributive. Thinking follows, we will say, striving, and doing follows
thinking. Each in the fulfilment of its own function inevitably calls
out its successor. But coincident, simultaneous, and correspondent
_within_ doing, is the distinction of doer and of deed; _within_ the
function of thought, of thinking and material thought upon; within the
function of striving, of obstacle of aim, of means and end. We keep our
paths straight because we do not confuse the sequential, efficient, and
functional relationship of types of experience with the contemporaneous,
correlative, and structural distinctions of elements within a given
function. In the seeming maze of endless confusion and unlimited
shiftings, we find our way by the means of the stimulations and checks
occurring within the process we are actually engaged with. We do not
contrast or confuse a condition or state which is an element in the
formation of one operation with the status or element which is one of
the distributive terms of another function. If we do, we have at once an
insoluble, because meaningless, problem upon our hands.
Now the epistemological logician deliberately shuts himself off from
those cues and checks upon which the plain man instinctively relies, and
which the scientific man deliberately searches for and adopts as
constituting his technique. Consequently he is likely to set the sort of
object or material which has place and significance only in one of the
serial functional situations of experience, over against the active
attitude which describes part of the structural constitution of another
situation; or with equal lack of justification to assimilate terms
characteristic of different stages to one another. He sets the agent, as
he is found in the intimacy of love or appreciation, over against the
externality of the fact, as that is defined within the reflective
process. He takes the material which thought selects as its own basis
for further procedure to be identical with the significant content which
it secures for itself in the successful pursuit of its aim; and this in
turn he regards as the material which was presented at the outset, and
whose peculiarities were the express means of awakening thought. He
identifies the final deposit of the thought-function with its own
generating antecedent, and then disposes of the resulting surd by
reference to some metaphysical consideration, which remains when logical
inquiry, when science (as interpreted by him), has done its work. He
does this, not because he prefers confusion to order, or error to truth,
but simply because, when the chain of historic sequence is cut, the
vessel of thought is afloat to veer upon a sea without soundings or
moorings. There are but two alternatives: either there is an object "in
itself" of thought "in itself," or else there are a series of values
which vary with the varying functions to which they belong. If the
latter, the only way these values can be defined is by discriminating
the functions to which they belong. It is only conditions relative to a
specific period or epoch of development in a cycle of experience
which-enables one to tell what to do next, or to estimate the value and
meaning of what is already done. And the epistemological logician, in
choosing to take his question as one of thought which has its own form
just as "thought," apart from the limits of the special work it has to
do, has deprived himself of these supports and stays.
The problem of logic has a more general and a more specific phase. In
its generic form, it deals with this question: How does one type of
functional situation and attitude in experience pass out of and into
another; for example, the technological or utilitarian into the
æsthetic, the æsthetic into the religious, the religious into the
scientific, and this into the socio-ethical and so on? The more specific
question is: How does the particular functional situation termed the
reflective behave? How shall we describe it? What in detail are its
diverse contemporaneous distinctions, or divisions of labor, its
correspondent _statuses_; in what specific ways do these operate with
reference to each other so as to effect the specific aim which is
proposed by the needs of the affair?
This chapter may be brought to conclusion by reference to the more
alternate value of the logic of experience, of logic taken in its wider
sense; that is, as an account of the sequence of the various typical
functions or situations of experience in their determining relations to
one another. Philosophy, defined as such a logic, makes no pretense to
be an account of a closed and finished universe. Its business is not to
secure or guarantee any particular reality or value. _Per contra_, it
gets the significance of a method. The right relationship and adjustment
of the various typical phases of experience to one another is a problem
felt in every department of life. Intellectual rectification and control
of these adjustments cannot fail to reflect itself in an added clearness
and security on the practical side. It may be that general logic can not
become an instrument in the immediate direction of the activities of
science or art or industry; but it is of value in criticising and in
organizing the tools of immediate research in these lines. It also has
direct significance in the valuation for social or life-purposes of
results achieved in particular branches. Much of the immediate business
of life is badly done because we do not know in relation to its
congeners the organic genesis and outcome of the work that occupies us.
The manner and degree of appropriation of the values achieved in various
departments of social interest and vocation are partial and faulty
because we are not clear as to the due rights and responsibilities of
one function of experience in reference to others.
The value of research for social progress; the bearing of psychology
upon educational procedure; the mutual relations of fine and industrial
art; the question of the extent and nature of specialization in science
in comparison with the claims of applied science; the adjustment of
religious aspirations to scientific statements; the justification of a
refined culture for a few in face of economic insufficiency for the
mass--such are a few of the many social questions whose _final_ answer
depends upon the possession and use of a general logic of experience as
a method of inquiry and interpretation. I do not say that headway cannot
be made in such questions apart from the method indicated: a logic of
genetic experience. But unless we have a critical and assured view of
the juncture in which and with reference to which a given attitude or
interest arises, unless we know the service it is thereby called upon to
perform and hence the organs or methods by which it best functions in
that service, our progress is impeded and irregular. We take a part for
a whole, a means for an end, or attack wholesale some other interest
because it interferes with the deified sway of the one we have selected
as ultimate. A clear and comprehensive consensus of social conviction,
and a consequent concentrated and economical direction of effort, are
assured only as there is some way of locating the position and rôle of
each typical interest and occupation in experience. The domain of
opinion is one of conflict; its rule is arbitrary and costly. Only
intellectual method affords a substitute for opinion. The general logic
of experience can alone do for the region of social values and aims what
the natural sciences after centuries of struggle are doing for activity
in the physical realm.
This does not mean that systems of philosophy which have attempted to
state the nature either of thought and of reality at large, apart from
limits of particular crises in the growth of experience, have been
worthless--though it does mean that their industry has been somewhat
misapplied. The unfolding of metaphysical theory has made large
contributions to positive evaluations of the typical situations and
relationships of experience--even when its conscious intention has been
quite otherwise. Every system of philosophy is itself a mode of
reflection; consequently (if our main contention be true), it too has
been evoked out of specific social antecedents, and has had its use as
a response to them. It has effected something in modifying the situation
within which it found its origin. It may not have solved the problem
which it consciously put itself; in many cases we may freely admit that
the question put has afterward been found to be so wrongly put as to be
insoluble. Yet exactly the same thing is true, in precisely the same
sense, in the history of science. For this reason, if for no other, it
is impossible for the scientific man to cast the first stone at the
philosopher.
The progress of science in any branch continually brings with it a
realization that problems in their previous form of statement are
insoluble because put in terms of unreal conditions; because the real
conditions have been mixed up with mental artifacts or misconstructions.
Every science is continually learning that its supposed solutions are
only apparent, because the "solution" solves, not the actual problem,
but one which has been made up. But the very putting of the question,
the very giving of the wrong answer, induces modification of existing
intellectual habits, standpoints, and aims. Wrestling with the problem,
there is evolution of new forms of technique to control its treatment,
there is search for new facts, institution of new types of
experimentation; there is gain in the methodic control of experience.
And all this is progress. It is only the worn-out cynic, the devitalized
sensualist, and the fanatical dogmatist who interpret the continuous
change of science as proving that, since each successive statement is
wrong, the whole record is error and folly; and that the present truth
is only the error not yet found out. Such draw the moral of caring
naught for all these things, or of flying to some external authority
which will deliver once for all the fixed and unchangeable truth. But
historic philosophy even in its aberrant forms has proved a factor in
the valuation of experience; it has brought problems to light, it has
provoked intellectual conflicts without which values are only nominal;
even through its would-be absolutistic isolations, it has secured
recognition of mutual dependencies and reciprocal reinforcements. Yet if
it can define its work more clearly, it can concentrate its energy upon
its own characteristic problem: the genesis and functioning in
experience of various typical interests and occupations with reference
to one another.
II
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE ANTECEDENT CONDITIONS AND CUES OF
THE THOUGHT-FUNCTION
We have discriminated logic in its wider sense, concerned with the
sequence of characteristic functions and attitudes in experience, from
logic in its stricter meaning, concerned in particular with description
and interpretation of the function of reflective thought. We must avoid
yielding to the temptation of identifying logic with either of these to
the exclusion of the other; or of supposing that it is possible to
isolate one finally from the other. The more detailed treatment of the
organs and methods of reflection cannot be carried on with security save
as we have a correct idea of the historic position of reflection in the
evolving of experience. Yet it is impossible to determine this larger
placing, save as we have a defined and analytic, as distinct from a
merely vague and gross, view of what we mean by reflection--what is its
actual constitution. It is necessary to work back and forth between the
larger and the narrower fields, transforming every increment upon one
side into a method of work upon the other, and thereby testing it. The
apparent confusion of existing logical theory, its uncertainty as to its
own bounds and limits, its tendency to oscillate from larger questions
of the inherent worth of judgment and validity of inference over to
details of scientific technique, and to translation of distinctions of
formal logic into terms of an investigatory or verificatory process, are
indications of the need of this double movement.
In the next three chapters it is proposed to take up some of the
considerations that lie on the borderland between the larger and the
narrower conceptions of logical theory. I shall discuss the _locus_ of
the function of thought, so far as such _locus_ enables us to select and
characterize some of the most fundamental distinctions, or divisions of
labor, within the reflective process. In taking up the problem of the
subject-matter of thought, I shall try to make clear that it assumes
three quite distinct forms according to the epochal moment reached in
transformation of experience; and that continual confusion and
inconsistency are introduced when these respective meanings are not
identified and described according to their respective geneses and
places. I shall attempt to show that we must consider subject-matter
from the standpoint, first, of the _antecedents_ or conditions that
evoke thought; second, of the _datum_ or _immediate material_ presented
to thought; and, third, of the _proper content_ of thought. Of these
three distinctions the first, that of antecedent and stimulus, clearly
refers to the situation that is immediately prior to the
thought-function as such. The second, that of datum or immediately given
matter, refers to a distinction which is made within the thought-process
as a part of and for the sake of its own _modus operandi_. It is a
status in the scheme of thinking. The third, that of content or object,
refers to the progress actually made in any thought-function; the
material which is organized into the thought-situation, so far as this
has fulfilled its purpose. It goes without saying that these are to be
discriminated as stages of a life-process in the natural history of
experience, not as ready-made or ontological; it is contended that, save
as they are differentiated in connection with well-defined historical
stages, they are either lumped off as equivalents, or else treated as
absolute divisions--or as each by turns, according to the exigencies of
the particular argument. In fact, this chapter will get at the matter of
preliminary conditions of thought indirectly rather than directly, by
indicating the contradictory positions into which one of the most
vigorous and acute of modern logicians, Lotze, has been forced through
failing to define logical distinctions in terms of the history of
readjustment of experience, and therefore endeavoring to interpret
certain notions as absolute instead of as periodic and methodological.
Before passing directly to the exposition and criticism of Lotze, it
will be well, however, to take the matter in a somewhat freer way. We
cannot approach logical inquiry in a wholly direct and uncompromised
manner. Of necessity we bring to it certain distinctions--distinctions
partly the outcome of concrete experience; partly due to the logical
theory which has got embodied in ordinary language and in current
intellectual habits; partly results of deliberate scientific and
philosophic inquiry. These more or less ready-made results are
resources; they are the only weapons with which we can attack the new
problem. Yet they are full of unexamined assumptions; they commit us to
all sorts of logically predetermined conclusions. In one sense our study
of the new subject-matter, let us say logical theory, is in truth only a
review, a re-testing and criticising of the intellectual standpoints and
methods which we bring with us to the study.
Everyone comes with certain distinctions already made between the
subjective and the objective, between the physical and the psychical,
between the intellectual and the factual. (1) We have learned to regard
the region of emotional disturbance, of uncertainty and aspiration, as
belonging somehow peculiarly to ourselves; we have learned to set over
against this a world of observation and of valid thought as something
unaffected by our moods, hopes, fears, and opinions. (2) We have also
come to distinguish between what is immediately present in our
experience and the past and the future; we contrast the realms of memory
and anticipation of sense-perception; the given with the ideal. (3) We
are confirmed in a habit of distinguishing between what we call actual
fact and our mental attitude toward that fact--the attitude of surmise
or wonder or reflective investigation. While one of the aims of logical
theory is precisely to make us critically conscious of the significance
and bearing of these various distinctions, to change them from
ready-made assumptions into controlled constructs, our mental habits are
so set that they tend to have their own way with us; and we read into
logical theory conceptions that were formed before we had even dreamed
of the logical undertaking which after all has for its business to
assign to the terms in question their proper meaning.
We find in Lotze an unusually explicit inventory of these various
preliminary distinctions; and an unusually serious effort to deal with
the problems which arise from introducing them into the structure of
logical theory. (1) He expressly separates the matter of logical worth
from that of psychological genesis. He consequently abstracts the
subject-matter of logic as such wholly from the question of historic
_locus_ and _situs_. (2) He agrees with common-sense in holding that
logical thought is reflective and thus presupposes a given material. He
occupies himself with the nature of the antecedent conditions. (3) He
wrestles with the problem of how a material formed prior to thought and
irrespective of it can yet afford it stuff upon which to exercise
itself. (4) He expressly raises the question of how thought working
independently and from without upon a foreign material can shape the
latter into results which are valid--that is, objective.
If his discussion is successful; if Lotze can provide the intermediaries
which span the gulf between an independent thought-material and an
independent thought-activity; if he can show that the question of the
origin of thought-material and of thought-activity is irrelevant to the
question of its worth, we shall have to surrender the position already
taken. But if we find that Lotze's elaborations only elaborate the same
fundamental difficulty, presenting it now in this light and now in that,
but never effecting more than presenting the problem as if it were its
own solution, we shall be confirmed in our idea of the need of
considering logical questions from a different point of view. If we find
that, whatever his formal treatment, he always, as matter of fact, falls
back upon some organized situation or function as the source of both the
specific thought-material and the specific thought-activity in
correspondence with each other, we shall have in so far an elucidation
and even a corroboration of our theory.
1. We begin with the question of the material antecedents of
thought--antecedents which condition reflection, and which call it out
as reaction or response, by giving it its cue. Lotze differs from many
logicians of the same type in affording us an explicit account of these
antecedents. The ultimate material antecedents of thought are found in
impressions, which are due to external objects as stimuli. Taken in
themselves, these impressions are mere psychical states or events. They
exist in us side by side, or one after the other, according as the
objects which excite them operate simultaneously or successively. The
occurrence of these various psychical states is not, however, entirely
dependent upon the presence of the exciting thing. After a state has
once been excited, it gets the power of reawakening other states which
have accompanied it or followed it. The associative mechanism of revival
plays a part. If we had a complete knowledge of both the stimulating
object and its effects, and of the details of the associative mechanism,
we should be able from given data to predict the whole course of any
given train or current of ideas (for the impressions as conjoined
simultaneously or successively become ideas and a current of ideas).
Taken in itself, a sensation or impression is nothing but a "state of
our consciousness, a mood of ourselves." Any given current of ideas is a
necessary sequence of existences (just as necessary as any succession of
material events), happening in some particular sensitive soul or
organism. "Just because, under their respective conditions, every such
series of ideas hangs together by the same necessity and law as every
other, there would be no ground for making any such distinction of value
as that between truth and untruth, thus placing one group in opposition
to all the others."[5]
2. Thus far, as the last quotation clearly indicates, there is no
question of reflective thought, and hence no question of logical theory.
But further examination reveals a peculiar property of the current of
ideas. Some ideas are merely coincident, while others may be termed
coherent. That is to say, the exciting causes of some of our
simultaneous and successive ideas really belong together; while in other
cases they simply happen to act at the same time, without there being a
real connection between them. By the associative mechanism, however,
both the coherent and the merely coincident combinations recur. The
first type of recurrence supplies positive material for knowledge; the
second gives occasion for error.
3. It is a peculiar mixture of the coincident and the coherent which
sets the peculiar problem of reflective thought. The business of thought
is to recover and confirm the coherent, the really connected, adding to
its reinstatement an accessory justifying notion of the real ground of
coherence, while it eliminates the coincident as such. While the mere
current of ideas is something which just happens within us, the process
of elimination and of confirmation by means of statement of real ground
and basis of connection is an activity which mind as such exercises. It
is this distinction which marks off thought as activity from any
psychical event and from the associative mechanism as receptive
happenings. One is concerned with mere _de facto_ coexistences and
sequences; the other with the _worth_ of these combinations.[6]
Consideration of the peculiar work of thought in going over, sorting
out, and determining various ideas according to a standard of value will
occupy us in our next chapter. Here we are concerned with the material
antecedents of thought as they are described by Lotze. At first glance,
he seems to propound a satisfactory theory. He avoids the extravagancies
of transcendental logic, which assumes that all the matter of experience
is determined from the very start by rational thought; and he also
avoids the pitfall of purely empirical logic, which makes no distinction
between the mere occurrence and association of ideas and the real worth
and validity of the various conjunctions thus produced. He allows
unreflective experience, defined in terms of sensations and their
combinations, to provide material conditions for thinking, while he
reserves for thought a distinctive work and dignity of its own.
Sense-experience furnishes the antecedents; thought has to introduce and
develop systematic connection--rationality.
A further analysis of Lotze's treatment may, however, lead us to believe
that his statement is riddled through and through with inconsistencies
and self-contradictions; that, indeed, any one part of it can be
maintained only by the denial of some other portion.
1. The impression is the ultimate antecedent in its purest or crudest
form (according to the angle from which one views it). It is that which
has never felt, for good or for bad, the influence of thought. Combined
into ideas, these impressions stimulate or arouse the activities of
thought, which are forthwith directed upon them. As the recipient of the
activity which they have excited and brought to bear upon themselves,
they furnish also the material content of thought--its actual stuff. As
Lotze says over and over again: "It is the relations themselves already
subsisting between impressions, when we become conscious of them, by
which the action of thought which is never anything but reaction, is
attracted; and this action consists merely in interpreting relations
which we find existing between our passive impressions into aspects of
the matter of impressions."[7] And again:[8] "Thought can make no
difference where it finds none already in the matter of the
impressions." And again:[9] "The possibility and the success of
thought's procedure depends upon this original constitution and
organization of the whole world of ideas, a constitution which, though
not necessary in thought, is all the more necessary to make thinking
possible."
The impressions and ideas play a versatile rôle; they now assume the
part of ultimate antecedents and provocative conditions; of crude
material; and somehow, when arranged, of content for thought. This very
versatility awakens suspicion.
While the impression is merely subjective and a bare state of our own
consciousness, yet it is determined, both as to its existence and as to
its relation to other similar existences, by external objects as
stimuli, if not as causes. It is also determined by a psychical
mechanism so thoroughly objective or regular in its workings as to give
the same necessary character to the current of ideas that is possessed
by any physical sequence. Thus that which is "nothing but a state of our
consciousness" turns out straightway to be a specifically determined
objective fact in a system of facts.
That this absolute transformation is a contradiction is no clearer than
that just such a contradiction is indispensable to Lotze. If the
impressions were nothing but states of consciousness, moods of
ourselves, bare psychical existences, it is sure enough that we should
never even know them to be such, to say nothing of conserving them as
adequate conditions and material for thought. It is only by treating
them as real facts in a real world, and only by carrying over into them,
in some assumed and unexplained way, the capacity of representing the
cosmic facts which arouse them, that impressions or ideas come in any
sense within the scope of thought. But if the antecedents are really
impressions-in-their-objective-setting, then Lotze's whole way of
distinguishing thought-worth from _mere_ existence or event without
objective significance must be radically modified.
The implication that impressions have actually a matter or quality or
meaning of their own becomes explicit when we refer to Lotze's theory
that the immediate antecedent of thought is found in the _matter_ of
ideas. When thought is said to "take cognizance of _relations_ which its
own activity does not originate, but which have been prepared for it by
the unconscious mechanism of the psychic states,"[10] the attribution of
objective content, of reference and meaning to ideas, is unambiguous.
The idea forms a most convenient half-way house for Lotze. On one hand,
as absolutely prior to thought, as material antecedent condition, it is
merely psychical, a bald subjective event. But as subject-matter for
thought, as antecedent which affords stuff for thought's exercise, it is
_meaning_, characteristic quality of content.
Although we have been told that the impression is a mere receptive
irritation without participation of mental activity, we are not
surprised, in view of this capacity of ideas, to learn that the mind
actually has a determining share in both the reception of stimuli and in
their further associative combinations. The subject always enters into
the presentation of any mental object, even the sensational, to say
nothing of the perceptional and the imaged. The perception of a given
state of things is possible only on the assumption that "the perceiving
subject is at once enabled and compelled by its own nature to combine
the excitations which reach it from objects into those forms which it is
to perceive in the objects, and which it supposes itself simply to
_receive_ from them."[11]
It is only by continual transition from impression and ideas as mental
states and events to ideas as cognitive (or logical) _objects or
contents_, that Lotze bridges the gulf from bare exciting antecedent to
concrete material conditions of thought. This contradiction, again, is
necessary to Lotze's standpoint. To set out frankly with "meanings" as
antecedents would demand reconsideration of the whole view-point, which
supposes that the difference between the logical and its antecedent is a
matter of the difference between _worth_ and mere _existence_ or
_occurrence_. It would indicate that since meaning or value is already
there, the task of thought must be that of the transformation or
_reconstruction of worth_ through an intermediary process of valuation.
On the other hand, to stick by the standpoint of _mere_ existence is not
to get anything which can be called even antecedent of thought.
2. Why is there a task of transformation? Consideration of the material
in its function of evoking thought, giving it its cue, will serve to
complete the picture of the contradiction and of the real facts. It is
the conflict between ideas as merely coincident and ideas as coherent
that constitutes the need which provokes the response of thought. Here
Lotze vibrates (_a_) between considering coincidence and coherence as
both affairs of existence of psychical events; (_b_) considering
coincidence as purely psychical and coherence as at least quasi-logical,
and (_c_) the inherent logic which makes them both determinations within
the sphere of reflective thought. In strict accordance with his own
premises, coincidence and coherence both ought to be mere peculiarities
of the current of ideas as events within ourselves. But so taken the
distinction becomes absolutely meaningless. Events do not cohere; at the
most certain sets of them happen more or less frequently than other
sets; the only intelligible difference is one of repetition of
coincidence. And even this attributes to an event the supernatural trait
of reappearing after it has disappeared. Even coincidence has to be
defined in terms of relation of the _objects_ which are supposed to
excite the psychical events that happen together.
As recent psychological discussion has made clear enough, it is the
matter, meaning, or content, of ideas that is associated, not the ideas
as states or existences. Take such an idea as sun-revolving-about-earth.
We may say it means the conjunction of various sense-impressions, but it
is conjunction, or mutual reference, of _attributes_ that we have in
mind in the assertion. It is absolutely certain that our psychical image
of the sun is not psychically engaged in revolving about our psychical
image of the earth. It would be amusing if such were the case; theaters
and all dramatic representations would be at a discount. In truth,
sun-revolving-about-earth is a single meaning or idea; it is a unified
subject-matter within which certain distinctions of reference appear. It
is concerned with what we intend when we think earth and sun, and think
them in their relation to each other. It is really a specification or
direction of how to think when we have occasion to think a certain
subject-matter. To treat the origin of this mutual reference as if it
were simply a case of conjunction of ideas produced by conditions of
original psycho-physical irritation and association is a profound case
of the psychological fallacy. We may, indeed, analyze an experience and
find that it had its origin in certain conditions of the sensitive
organism, in certain peculiarities of perception and of association,
and hence conclude that the belief involved in it was not justified
by the facts themselves. But the significance of the belief in
sun-revolving-about-earth as an item of the experience of those who
meant it, consisted precisely in the fact that it was taken not as a
mere association of feelings, but as a definite portion of the whole
structure of objective experience, guaranteed by other parts of the
fabric, and lending its support and giving its tone to them. It was to
them part of the experience-frame of things--of the real universe.
Put the other way, if such an instance meant a mere conjunction of
psychical states, there would be in it absolutely nothing to evoke
thought. Each idea as event, as Lotze himself points out (Vol. I, p. 2),
may be regarded as adequately and necessarily determined to the place it
occupies. There is absolutely no question on the side of events of mere
coincidence _versus_ genuine connection. As event, it is there and it
belongs there. We cannot treat something as at once bare fact of
existence and as problematic subject-matter of logical inquiry. To take
the reflective point of view is to consider the matter in a totally new
light; as Lotze says, it is to raise the question of rightful claims to
a position or relation.
The point becomes clearer when we contrast coincidence with connection.
To consider coincidence as simply psychical, and coherence as at least
quasi-logical, is to put the two on such different bases that no
question of contrasting them can arise. The coincidence which precedes a
valid or grounded coherence (the conjunction which as coexistence of
objects and sequence of acts is perfectly adequate) never is, as
antecedent, the coincidence which is set over against coherence. The
side-by-sideness of books on my bookshelf, the succession of noises that
rise through my window, do not as such trouble me logically. They do not
appear as errors or even as problems. One coexistence is just as good as
any other until some new point of view, or new end, presents itself. If
it is a question of the convenience of arrangement of books, then the
value of their present collocation becomes a problem. Then I may
contrast their present bare conjunction with a scheme of possible
coherence. If I regard the sequence of noises as a case of articulate
speech, their order becomes important--it is a problem to be determined.
The inquiry whether a given combination means only apparent or real
connection, shows that reflective inquiry is already going on. Does this
phase of the moon really mean rain, or does it just happen that the
rain-storm comes when the moon has reached this phase? To ask such
questions shows that a certain portion of the universe of experience is
subjected to critical analysis for purposes of definitive restatement.
The tendency to regard one combination as bare conjunction or mere
coincidence is absolutely a _part_ of the movement of mind in its search
for the real connection.
If coexistence as such is to be set over against coherence as such, as
the non-logical against the logical, then, since our whole spatial
universe is one of collocation, and since thought in this universe can
never get farther than substituting one collocation for another, the
whole realm of space-experience is condemned off-hand and in perpetuity
to anti-rationality. But, in truth, coincidence as over against
coherence, conjunction as over against connection, is just _suspected_
coherence, one which is under the fire of active inquiry. The
distinction is one which arises only within the grasp of the logical or
reflective function.
3. This brings us explicitly to the fact that there is no such thing as
either coincidence or coherence in terms of the elements or meanings
contained in any couple or pair of ideas taken by itself. It is only
when they are co-factors in a situation or function which includes more
than either the "coincident" or the "coherent" and more than the
arithmetical sum of the two, that thought's activity can be evoked.
Lotze is continually in this dilemma: Thought either shapes its own
material or else just accepts it. In the first case (since Lotze cannot
rid himself of the presumption that thought must have a fixed ready-made
antecedent) its activity can only alter this stuff and thus lead the
mind farther away from reality. But if thought just accepts its
material, how can there be any distinctive aim or activity of thought at
all? As we have seen, Lotze endeavors to escape this dilemma by
supposing that, while thought receives its material, it yet checks it
up: it eliminates certain portions of it and reinstates others, plus the
stamp and seal of its own validity.
Lotze objects most strenuously to the notion that thought awaits its
subject-matter with certain ready-made modes of apprehension. This
notion would raise the insoluble question of how thought contrives to
bring the matter of each impression under that particular form which is
appropriate to it (Vol. I, p. 24). But he has not really avoided the
difficulty. How does thought know which of the combinations are merely
coincident and which are merely coherent? How does it know which to
eliminate as irrelevant and which to confirm as grounded? Either this
evaluation is an imposition of its own, or else gets its cue and clue
from the subject-matter. Now, if the coincident and the coherent taken
in and of themselves are competent to give this direction, they are
already practically labeled. The further work of thought is one of
supererogation. It has at most barely to note and seal the material
combinations that are already there. Such a view clearly renders
thought's work as unnecessary in form as it is futile in force.
But there is no alternative in this dilemma except to recognize that an
entire situation of experience, within which are both that afterward
found to be mere coincidence and that found to be real connection,
actually provokes thought. It is only as an experience previously
accepted comes up in its wholeness against another one equally integral;
and only as some larger experience dawns which requires each as a part
of itself and yet within which the required factors show themselves
mutually incompatible, that thought arises. It is not bare coincidence,
or bare connection, or bare addition of one to the other, that excites
thought. It is a situation which is organized or constituted as a whole,
and which yet is falling to pieces in its parts--a situation which is in
conflict within itself--that arouses the search to find what really goes
together and a correspondent effort to shut out what only seemingly
belongs together. And real coherence means precisely capacity to exist
within the comprehending whole. It is a case of the psychologist's
fallacy to read back into the preliminary situation those distinctions
of mere conjunction of material and of valid relationship which get
existence, to say nothing of fixation, only within the thought-process.
We must not leave this phase of the discussion, however, until it is
quite clear that our objection is not to Lotze's position that
reflective thought arises from an antecedent which is not reflectional
in character; nor yet to his idea that this antecedent has a certain
structure and content of its own setting the peculiar problem which
evokes thought and gives the cue to its specific activities. On the
contrary, it is this latter point upon which we would insist; and, by
insisting, point out, negatively, that this view is absolutely
inconsistent with Lotze's theory that psychical impressions and ideas
are the true antecedents of thought; and, positively, that it is the
_situation as a whole_, and not any one isolated part of it, or
distinction within it, that calls forth and directs thinking. We must
beware the fallacy of assuming that some one element in the prior
situation in isolation or detachment induces the thought which in
reality comes forth only from the whole disturbed situation. On the
negative side, characterizations of impression and idea (whether as
mental contents or as psychical existences) are distinctions which arise
only within reflection upon the situation which is the genuine
antecedent of thought; while the distinction of psychical existences
from external existences arises only within a highly elaborate technical
reflection--that of the psychologist as such.[12] Positively, it is the
whole dynamic experience with its qualitative and pervasive identity of
value, and its inner distraction, its elements at odds with each other,
in tension against each other, contending each for its proper placing
and relationship, that generates the thought-situation.
From this point of view, at this period of development, the distinctions
of objective and subjective have a characteristic meaning. The
antecedent, to repeat, is a situation in which the various factors are
actively incompatible with each other, and which yet in and through the
striving tend to a re-formation of the whole and to a restatement of the
parts. This situation as such is clearly objective. It is there; it is
there as a whole; the various parts are there; and their active
incompatibility with one another is there. Nothing is conveyed at this
point by asserting that any particular part of the situation is illusory
or subjective, or mere appearance; or that any other is truly real. It
is the further work of _thought_ to exclude some of the contending
factors from membership in experience, and thus to relegate them to the
sphere of the merely subjective. But just at this epoch the experience
exists as one of vital and active confusion and conflict. The conflict
is not only objective in a _de facto_ sense (that is, really existent),
but is objective in a logical sense as well; it is just this conflict
which effects the transition into the thought-situation--this, in turn,
being only a constant movement toward a defined equilibrium. The
conflict has objective logical value because it is the antecedent
condition and cue of thought.
Every reflective attitude and function, whether of naïve life,
deliberate invention, or controlled scientific research, has risen
through the medium of some such total objective situation. The abstract
logician may tell us that sensations or impressions, or associated
ideas, or bare physical things, or conventional symbols, are antecedent
conditions. But such statements cannot be verified by reference to a
single instance of thought in connection with actual practice or actual
scientific research. Of course, by extreme mediation symbols may become
conditions of evoking thought. They get to be objects in an active
experience. But they are stimuli only in case their manipulation to form
a new whole occasions resistance, and thus reciprocal tension. Symbols
and their definitions develop to a point where dealing with them becomes
itself an experience, having its own identity; just as the handling of
commercial commodities, or arrangement of parts of an invention, is an
individual experience. There is always as antecedent to thought an
experience of some subject-matter of the physical or social world, or
organized intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with each
other--so much so that they threaten to disrupt the entire experience,
which accordingly for its own maintenance requires deliberate
re-definition and re-relation of its tensional parts. This is the
reconstructive process termed thinking: the reconstructive situation,
with its parts in tension and in such movement toward each other as
tends to a unified experience, is the thought-situation.
This at once suggests the subjective phase. The situation, the
experience as such, is objective. There is an experience of the confused
and conflicting tendencies. But just _what in particular_ is objective,
just _what_ form the situation shall take as an organized harmonious
whole, is unknown; that is the problem. It is the uncertainty as to the
_what_ of the experience together with the certainty _that_ there is
such an experience, that evokes the thought-function. Viewed from this
standpoint of uncertainty, the situation as a whole is subjective. No
particular content or reference can be asserted off-hand. Definite
assertion is expressly reserved--it is to be the outcome of the
procedure of reflective inquiry now undertaken. This holding off of
contents from definitely asserted position, this viewing them as
candidates for reform, is what we mean at this stage of the natural
history of thought by the subjective.
We have followed Lotze through his tortuous course of inconsistencies.
It is better, perhaps, to run the risk of vain repetition, than that of
leaving the impression that these are _mere_ self-contradictions. It is
an idle task to expose contradictions save we realize them in relation
to the fundamental assumption which breeds them. Lotze is bound to
differentiate thought from its antecedents. He is intent to do this,
however, through a preconception that marks off the thought-situation
radically from its predecessor, through a difference that is complete,
fixed, and absolute, or at large. It is a total contrast of thought as
such to something else as such that he requires, not a contrast within
experience of one phase of a process, one period of a rhythm, from
others.
This complete and rigid difference Lotze finds in the difference between
an experience which is _mere existence_ or occurrence, and one which has
to do with worth, truth, right relationship. Now things, objects, have
already, implicitly at least, determinations of worth, of truth,
reality, etc. The same is true of deeds, affections, etc., etc. Only
states of feelings, bare impressions, etc., seem to fulfil the
prerequisite of being given as existence, and yet without qualification
as to worth, etc. Then the current of ideas offers itself, a ready-made
stream of events, of existences, which can be characterized as wholly
innocent of reflective determination, and as the natural predecessor of
thought.
But this stream of existences is no sooner there than its total
incapacity to officiate as material condition and cue of thought
appears. It is about as relevant as are changes that may be happening on
the other side of the moon. So, one by one, the whole series of
determinations of value or worth already traced are introduced _into_
the very make-up, the inner structure, of what was to be _mere_
existence: viz., (1) value as determined by things of whose spatial and
temporal relations the things are somehow _representative_; (2) hence,
value in the shape of _meaning_--the idea as significant, possessed of
quality, and not a mere event; (3) distinguished values of coincidence
and coherence within the stream. All these kinds of value are explicitly
asserted, as we have seen; underlying and running through them all is
the recognition of the supreme value of a situation which is organized
as a whole, yet conflicting in its inner constitution.
These contradictions all arise in the attempt to put thought's work, as
concerned with value or validity over against experience as a mere
antecedent happening, or occurrence. Since this contrast arises because
of the deeper attempt to consider thought as an independent somewhat in
general which yet, in _our_ experience, is specifically dependent, the
sole radical avoiding of the contradictions can be found in the endeavor
to characterize thought as a specific mode of valuation in the evolution
of significant experience, having its own specific occasion or demand,
and its own specific place.
The nature of the organization and value that the antecedent conditions
of the thought-function possess is too large a question here to enter
upon in detail. Lotze himself suggests the answer. He speaks of the
current of ideas, just as a current, supplying us with the "mass of
well-grounded information which _regulates_ daily life" (Vol. I, p. 4).
It gives rise to "_useful combinations_," "_correct expectations_,"
"_seasonable reactions_" (Vol. I, p. 7). He speaks of it, indeed, as if
it were just the ordinary world of naïve experience, the so-called
empirical world, as distinct from the world as critically revised and
rationalized in scientific and philosophic inquiry. The contradiction
between this interpretation and that of a mere stream of psychical
impressions is only another instance of the difficulty already
discussed. But the phraseology suggests the type of value possessed by
it. The unreflective world is a world of practical values; of ends and
means, of their effective adaptations; of control and regulation of
conduct in view of results. Even the most purely utilitarian of values
are nevertheless values; not _mere_ existences. But the world of
uncritical experience is saved from reduction to just material uses and
worths; for it is a world of social aims and means, involving at every
turn the values of affection and attachment, of competition and
co-operation. It has incorporate also in its own being the surprise of
æsthetic values--the sudden joy of light, the gracious wonder of tone
and form.
I do not mean that this holds in gross of the unreflective world of
experience over against the critical thought-situation--such a contrast
implies the very wholesale, at large, consideration of thought which I
am striving to avoid. Doubtless many and many an act of thought has
intervened in effecting the organization of our commonest
practical-affectional-æsthetic region of values. I only mean to indicate
that thought does take place in such a world; not _after_ a world of
bare existences lacking value-specifications; and that the more
systematic reflection we call organized science, may, in some fair
sense, be said to come _after_, but to come after affectional, artistic,
and technological interests which have found realization and expression
in building up a world of values.
Having entered so far upon a suggestion which cannot be followed out, I
venture one other digression. The notion that value or significance as
distinct from mere existentiality is the product of thought or reason,
and that the source of Lotze's contradictions lies in the effort to find
_any_ situation prior or antecedent to thought, is a familiar one--it is
even possible that my criticisms of Lotze have been interpreted by some
readers in this sense.[13] This is the position frequently called
neo-Hegelian (though, I think, with questionable accuracy), and has been
developed by many writers in criticising Kant. This position and that
taken in this chapter do indeed agree in certain general regards. They
are at one in denial of the factuality and the possibility of
developing fruitful reflection out of antecedent bare existence or mere
events. They unite in denying that there is or can be any such thing as
mere existence--phenomenon unqualified as respects meaning, whether such
phenomenon be psychic or cosmic. They agree that reflective thought
grows organically out of an experience which is already organized, and
that it functions within such an organism. But they part company when a
fundamental question is raised: Is all organized meaning the work of
thought? Does it therefore follow that the organization out of which
reflective thought grows is the work of thought of some other type--of
Pure Thought, Creative or Constitutive Thought, Intuitive Reason, etc.?
I shall indicate briefly the reasons for divergence at this point.
To cover all the practical-social-æsthetic values involved, the term
"thought" has to be so stretched that the situation might as well be
called by any other name that describes a typical value of experience.
More specifically, when the difference is minimized between the
organized and arranged scheme of values out of which reflective inquiry
proceeds, and reflective inquiry itself (and there can be no other
reason for insisting that the antecedent of reflective thought is itself
somehow thought), exactly the same type of problem recurs that presents
itself when the distinction is exaggerated into one between bare
unvalued existences and rational coherent meanings.
For the more one insists that the antecedent situation is constituted by
thought, the more one has to wonder why another type of thought is
required; what need arouses it, and how it is possible for it to improve
upon the work of previous constitutive thought. This difficulty at once
forces us from a logic of experience as it is concretely experienced
into a metaphysic of a purely hypothetical experience. Constitutive
thought precedes _our_ conscious thought-operations; hence it must be
the working of some absolute universal thought which, unconsciously to
our reflection, builds up an organized world. But this recourse only
deepens the difficulty. How does it happen that the absolute
constitutive and intuitive Thought does such a poor and bungling job
that it requires a finite discursive activity to patch up its products?
Here more metaphysic is called for: The Absolute Reason is now supposed
to work under limiting conditions of finitude, of a sensitive and
temporal organism. The antecedents of reflective thought are not,
therefore, determinations of thought pure and undefiled, but of what
thought can do when it stoops to assume the yoke of change and of
feeling. I pass by the metaphysical problem left unsolved by this flight
into metaphysic: Why and how should a perfect, absolute, complete,
finished thought find it necessary to submit to alien, disturbing, and
corrupting conditions in order, in the end, to recover through
reflective thought in a partial, piecemeal, wholly inadequate way what
it possessed at the outset in a much more satisfactory way?
I confine myself to the logical difficulty. How can thought relate
itself to the fragmentary sensations, impressions, feelings, which, in
their contrast with and disparity from the workings of constitutive
thought, mark it off from the latter; and which in their connection with
its products give the cue to reflective thinking? _Here we have again
exactly the problem with which Lotze has been wrestling_: we have the
same insoluble question of the reference of thought-activity to a wholly
indeterminate unrationalized, independent, prior existence. The absolute
rationalist who takes up the problem at this point will find himself
forced into the same continuous seesaw, the same scheme of alternate
rude robbery and gratuitous gift, that Lotze engaged in. The simple fact
is that here _is_ just where Lotze himself began; he saw that previous
transcendental logicians had left untouched the specific question of
relation of _our_ supposedly finite, reflective thought to its own
antecedents, and he set out to make good the defect. If reflective
thought is required because constitutive thought works under externally
limiting conditions of sense, then we have some elements which are,
after all, mere existences, events, etc. Or, if they have organization
from some other source, and induce reflective thought not as bare
impressions, etc., but through their place in some whole, then we have
admitted the possibility of organic unity in experience, apart from
Reason, and the ground for assuming Pure Constitutive Thought is
abandoned.
The contradiction appears equally when viewed from the side of
thought-activity and its characteristic forms. All our knowledge, after
all, of thought as constitutive is gained by consideration of the
operations of reflective thought. The perfect system of thought is so
perfect that it is a luminous, harmonious whole, without definite parts
or distinctions--or, if there are such, it is only reflection that
brings them out. The categories and methods of constitutive thought
itself must therefore be characterized in terms of the _modus operandi_
of reflective thought. Yet the latter takes place just because of the
peculiar problem of the peculiar conditions under which it arises. Its
work is progressive, reformatory, reconstructive, synthetic, in the
terminology made familiar by Kant. We are not only _not_ justified,
accordingly, in transferring its determinations over to constitutive
thought, but we are absolutely prohibited from attempting any such
transfer. To identify logical processes, states, devices, results that
are conditioned upon the primary fact of resistance to thought as
constitutive with the structure of such thought is as complete an
instance of the fallacy of recourse from one genus to another as could
well be found. Constitutive and reflective thought are, first, defined
in terms of their dissimilarity and even opposition, and then without
more ado the forms of the description of the latter are carried over
bodily to the former![14]
This is not meant for a merely controversial criticism. It is meant to
point positively toward the fundamental thesis of these chapters: All
the distinctions of the thought-function, of conception as over against
sense-perception, of judgment in its various modes and forms, of
inference in its vast diversity of operation--all these distinctions
come within the thought-situation as growing out of a characteristic
antecedent typical formation of experience; and have for their purpose
the solution of the peculiar problem with respect to which the
thought-function is generated or evolved: the restoration of a
deliberately integrated experience from the inherent conflict into which
it has fallen.
The failure of transcendental logic has the same origin as the failure
of the empiristic (whether taken pure or in the mixed form in which
Lotze presents it). It makes absolute and fixed certain distinctions of
existence and meaning, and of one kind of meaning and another kind,
which are wholly historic and relative in their origin and their
significance. It views thought as attempting to represent or state
reality once for all, instead of trying to determine some phases or
contents of it with reference to their more effective and significant
reciprocal employ--instead of as reconstructive. The rock against which
every such logic splits is that either reality already has the statement
which thought is endeavoring to give it, or else it has not. In the
former case, thought is futilely reiterative; in the latter, it is
falsificatory.
The significance of Lotze for critical purposes is that his peculiar
effort to combine a transcendental view of thought (_i. e._, of Thought
as active in forms of its own, pure in and of themselves) with certain
obvious facts of the dependence of our thought upon specific empirical
antecedents, brings to light fundamental defects in both the empiristic
and the transcendental logics. We discover a common failure in both: the
failure to view logical terms and distinctions with respect to their
necessary function in the redintegration of experience.
III
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE DATUM OF THINKING
We have now reached a second epochal stage in the evolution of the
thought-situation, a crisis which forces upon us the problem of the
distinction and mutual reference of the datum or presentation, and the
ideas or "thoughts." It will economize and perhaps clarify discussion if
we start from the relatively positive and constructive result just
reached, and review Lotze's treatment from that point of regard.
We have reached the point of conflict in the matters or contents of an
experience. It is _in_ this conflict and because of it that the matters
or contents, or significant quales, stand out as such. As long as the
sun revolves about earth without tension or question, this "content," or
fact, is not in any way abstracted _as_ content or object. Its very
distinction as content from the form or mode of experience as such is
the result of post-reflection. The same conflict makes other experiences
assume conscious objectification; they, too, cease to be ways of living,
and become distinct objects of observation and consideration. The
movements of planets, eclipses, etc., are cases in point.[15] The
maintenance of a unified experience has become a problem, an end. It is
no longer secure. But this involves such restatement of the conflicting
elements as will enable them to take a place somewhere in the new
experience; they must be disposed of somehow, and they can be disposed
of finally only as they are provided for. That is, they cannot be
simply denied or excluded or eliminated; they must be taken into the
fold of the new experience; such introduction, on the other hand,
clearly demands more or less modification or transformation on their
part. The thought-situation is the conscious maintenance of the unity of
experience, with a critical consideration of the claims of the various
conflicting contents to a place within itself, and a deliberate final
assignment of position.
The conflicting situation inevitably polarizes or dichotomizes itself.
There is somewhat which is untouched in the contention of incompatibles.
There is something which remains secure, unquestioned. On the other
hand, there are elements which are rendered doubtful and precarious.
This gives the framework of the general distribution of the field into
"facts," the given, the presented, the Datum; and ideas, the ideal, the
conceived, the Thought. For there is always something unquestioned in
any problematic situation at any stage of its process,[16] even if it be
only the fact of conflict or tension. For this is never _mere_ tension
at large. It is thoroughly qualified, or characteristically toned and
colored, by the particular elements which are in strife. Hence it is
_this_ conflict, unique and irreplaceable. That it comes now means
precisely that it has never come before; that it is now passed in review
and some sort of a settlement reached, means that just _this_ conflict
will never recur. In a word, the conflict as such is immediately
expressed, or felt, as of just this and no other sort, and this
immediately apprehended quality is an irreducible datum. _It_ is fact,
even if all else be _doubtful_. As it is subjected to examination, it
loses vagueness and assumes more definite form.
Only in very extreme cases, however, does the assured, unquestioned
element reduce to as low terms as we have here imagined. Certain things
come to stand forth as facts, no matter what else may be doubted. There
are certain _apparent_ diurnal changes of the sun; there is a certain
annual course or track. There are certain nocturnal changes in the
planets, and certain seasonal rhythmic paths. The significance of these
may be doubted: Do they _mean_ real change in the sun or in the earth?
But change, and change of a certain definite and numerically determinate
character is there. It is clear that such out-standing facts
(ex-istences) constitute the data, the given or presented, of the
thought-function.
It is obvious that this is only one correspondent, or status, in the
total situation. With the consciousness of _this_ as certain, as given
to be reckoned with, goes the consciousness of uncertainty as to _what
it means_--of how it is to be understood or interpreted. The facts _qua_
presentation or existences are sure; _qua_ meaning (position and
relationship in an experience yet to be secured) they are doubtful.
Yet doubt does not preclude memory or anticipation. Indeed, it is
possible only through them. The memory of past experience makes
sun-revolving-about-earth an object of attentive regard. The
recollection of certain other experiences suggests the idea of
earth-rotating-daily-on-axis and revolving-annually-about-sun. These
contents are as much present as is the observation of change, but as
respects worth, they are only possibilities. Accordingly, they are
categorized or disposed of as just ideas, meanings, thoughts, ways of
conceiving, comprehending, interpreting facts.
Correspondence of reference here is as obvious as correlation of
existence. In the logical process, the datum is not just real existence,
and the idea mere psychical unreality. Both are modes of existence--one
of _given_ existence, the other of _mental_ existence. And if the
mental existence is in such cases regarded, from the standpoint of the
unified experience aimed at, as having only _possible_ value, the datum
also is regarded, from the value standpoint, as incomplete and
unassured. The very existence of the idea or meaning as separate _is_
the partial, broken up, and hence objectively unreal (from the validity
standpoint) character of the datum. Or, as we commonly put it, while the
ideas are impressions, suggestions, guesses, theories, estimates, etc.,
the facts are crude, raw, unorganized, brute. They lack relationship,
that is, assured place in the universe; they are deficient as to
continuity. Mere change of apparent position of sun, which is absolutely
unquestioned as datum, is a sheer abstraction from the standpoint either
of the organized experience left behind, or of the reorganized
experience which is the end--the objective. It is impossible as a
persistent object in experience or reality. In other words, datum and
ideatum are divisions of labor, co-operative instrumentalities, for
economical dealing with the problem of the maintenance of the integrity
of experience.
Once more, and briefly, both datum and ideatum may (and positively,
veritably, do) break up, each for itself, into physical and psychical.
In so far as the conviction gains ground that the earth revolves about
the sun, the old fact is broken up into a new cosmic existence, and a
new psychological condition--the recognition of a mental process in
virtue of which movements of smaller bodies in relation to very remote
larger bodies are interpreted in a reverse sense. We do not just
eliminate as false the source of error in the old content. We
reinterpret it as valid in its own place, viz., a case of the psychology
of apperception, although invalid as a matter of cosmic structure. In
other words, with increasing accuracy of determination of the given,
there comes a distinction, for methodological purposes, between the
_quality_ or matter of the sense-experience and its _form_--the
sense-perceiving, as itself a psychological fact, having its own place
and laws or relations. Moreover, the old experience, that of
sun-revolving, abides. But it is regarded as belonging to "me"--to this
experiencing individual, rather than to the cosmic world. It is
_psychic_.
Here, then, _within_ the growth of the thought-situation and as a part
of the process of determining _specific_ truth under _specific_
conditions, we get for the first time the clue to that distinction with
which, as ready-made and prior to all thinking, Lotze started out,
namely, the separation of the matter of impression from impression as
psychical event. The separation which, taken at large, engenders an
insoluble problem, appears within a particular reflective inquiry, as an
inevitable differentiation of a scheme of values.
The same sort of thing occurs on the side of thought, or meaning. The
meaning or idea which is growing in acceptance, which is gaining ground
as meaning-of-datum, gets logical or intellectual or objective force;
that which is losing standing, which is increasingly doubtful, gets
qualified as just a notion, a fancy, a pre-judice, mis-conception--or
finally just an error, a mental slip.
Evaluated as fanciful in validity it becomes mere image--subjective;[17]
and finally a psychical existence. It is not eliminated, but receives a
new reference or meaning. Thus the distinction between subjectivity and
objectivity is not one between meaning as such and datum as such. It is
a specification that emerges, correspondently, in _both_ datum and
ideatum, as affairs of the direction of logical movement. That which is
left behind in the evolution of accepted meaning is characterized as
real, but only in a psychical sense; that which is moved toward is
regarded as real in an objective, cosmic sense.[18]
The implication of the psychic and the logical within both the given
presentation and the thought about it, appears in the continual shift to
which logicians of Lotze's type are put. When the psychical is regarded
as existence over against meaning as just ideal, reality seems to reside
in the psychical; it is _there_ anyhow, and meaning is just a curious
attachment--curious because as _mere meaning_ it is non-existent as
event or state--and there seems to be nothing by which it can be even
tied to the psychical state as its bearer or representative. But when
the emphasis falls on thought as _content_, as significance, then the
psychic event, the idea as image[19] (as distinct from idea as meaning)
appears as an accidental but necessary evil, the unfortunate irrelevant
medium through which _our_ thinking has to go on.[20]
1. _The data of thought._--When we turn to Lotze, we find that he makes
a clear distinction between the presented material of thought, its
datum, and the typical characteristic modes of thinking in virtue of
which the datum gets organization or system. It is interesting to note
also that he states the datum in terms different from those in which the
antecedents of thought are defined. From the point of view of the
material upon which ideas exercise themselves, it is not coincidence,
collocation, or succession that counts; but gradation of degrees in a
scale. It is not things in spatial or temporal grouping that are
emphasized, but qualities as mutually distinguished, yet classed--as
differences of a common somewhat. There is no inherent inconceivability
in the idea that every impression should be as incomparably different
from every other as sweet is from warm. But by a remarkable circumstance
such is not the case. We have series, and networks of series. We have
diversity of a common--diverse colors, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. In
other words, the datum is sense-qualities which, fortunately for
thought, are given arranged, as shades, degrees, variations, or
qualities of somewhat that is identical.[21]
All this is given, presented, to our ideational activities. Even the
universal, the common-color which runs through the various qualities of
blue, green, white, etc., is not a product of thought, but something
which thought finds already in existence. It conditions comparison and
reciprocal distinction. Particularly all mathematical determinations,
whether of counting (number), degree (more or less), and quantity
(greatness and smallness), come back to this peculiarity of the datum of
thought. Here Lotze dwells at considerable length upon the fact that the
very possibility, as well as the success, of thought is due to this
peculiar universalization or _prima facie_ ordering with which its
material is given to it. Such pre-established fitness in the meeting of
two things that have nothing to do with each other is certainly cause
enough for wonder and congratulation.
It should not be difficult to see why Lotze uses different categories in
describing the given material of thought from those employed in
describing its antecedent conditions, even though, according to him, the
two are absolutely the same.[22] He has different _functions_ in mind.
In one case, the material must be characterized as evoking, as
incentive, as stimulus--from this point of view the peculiar combination
of coincidence and coherence is emphasized. But in the other case the
material must be characterized as affording stuff, actual
subject-matter. Data are not only what is given _to_ thought, but they
are also the food, the raw material, _of_ thought. They must be
described as, on the one hand, wholly outside of thought. This clearly
puts them into the region of sense-perception. They are matter of
_sensation_ given free from all inferring, judging, relating influence.
Sensation is just what is _not_ called up in memory or in anticipated
projection--it is the immediate, the irreducible. On the other hand,
sensory-_matter_ is qualitative, and quales are made up on a common
basis. They are degrees or grades of a common quality. Thus they have a
certain ready-made setting of mutual distinction and reference which is
already almost, if not quite, the effect of comparing, of relating, and
these are the express traits of thinking.
It is easy to interpret this miraculous gift of grace in the light of
what has been said. The data are in truth precisely that which is
selected and set aside _as_ present, as immediate. Thus they are _given_
to _further_ thought. But the selection has occurred in view of the need
for thought; it is a listing of the capital in the way of the
undisturbed, the undiscussed, which thought can count upon in this
particular problem. Hence it is not strange that it has a peculiar
fitness of adaptation for thought's further work. Having been selected
with precisely that end in view, the wonder would be if it were not so
fitted. A man may coin counterfeit money for use upon others, but hardly
with the intent of passing it off upon himself.
Our only difficulty here is that the mind flies away from the logical
interpretation of sense-datum to a ready-made notion of it brought over
from abstract psychological inquiry. The belief in sensory quales as
somehow forced upon us, and forced upon us at large, and thus
conditioning thought wholly _ab extra_, instead of determining it as
instrumentalities or elements in its own scheme, is too fixed. Such
qualities _are_ forced upon us, but _not_ at large. The sensory data of
experience, as distinct from the psychologists' constructs, always come
_in a context_; they always appear as variations in a continuum of
values. Even the thunder which breaks in upon me (to take the extreme of
apparent discontinuity and irrelevancy) disturbs me because it is taken
as a part of the same space-world as that in which my chair and room and
house are located; and it is taken as an influence which interrupts and
disturbs, _because_ it is part of my common world of causes and effects.
The solution of continuity is itself practical or teleological, and thus
presupposes and affects continuity of purpose, occupations, and means in
a life-process. It is not metaphysics, it is biology which enforces the
idea that actual sensation is not only determined as an event in a world
of events,[23] but is an occurrence occurring at a certain period in the
evolution of experience, marking a certain point in its cycle, and,
consequently--having always its own conscious context and bearings--is a
characteristic function of reconstruction in experience.[24]
2. _Forms of thinking data._--As sensory datum is material set for the
work of thought, so the ideational forms with which thought does its
work are apt and prompt to meet the needs of the material. The
"accessory"[25] notion of ground of coherence turns out, in truth, not
to be a formal, or external, addition to the data, but a requalification
of them. Thought is accessory as accomplice, not as addendum. "Thought"
is to eliminate mere coincidence, and to assert grounded coherence.
Lotze makes it absolutely clear that he does not at bottom conceive of
"thought" as an activity "in itself" imposing a form of coherence; but
that the organizing work of "thought" is only the progressive
realization of an inherent unity, or system, in the material experience.
The specific modes in which thought brings its "accessory" power to
bear--names, conception, judgment, and inference--are successive stages
in the adequate organization of the matter which comes to us first as
datum; they are successive stages of the effort to overcome the
original defects of the datum. Conception starts from the given
universal (the common element) of sense. Yet (and this is the
significant point) it does not simply abstract this common element, and
consciously generalize it as over against its own differences. Such a
"universal" is _not_ coherence, just because it does not _include_ and
dominate the temporal and local heterogeneity. The _true_ concept (see
Vol. I, p. 38) is a system of attributes, held together on the basis of
some ground, or determining, dominating principle--a ground which so
controls all its own instances as to make them into an inwardly
connected whole, and so specifies its own limits as to be exclusive of
all else. If we abstract color as the common element of various colors,
the result is not a scientific idea or concept. Discovery of a process
of light-waves whose various rates constitute the various colors of the
spectrum gives the concept. And when we get such a concept, the former
mere temporal abruptness of color experiences gives way to organic parts
of a color system. The logical product--the concept, in other words--is
not a formal seal or stamp; it is a thoroughgoing transformation of data
in a given sense.
The form or mode of thought which marks the continued transformation of
the data and the idea in reference to each other is judgment. Judgment
makes explicit the assumption of a principle which determines connection
within an individualized whole. It definitely states red as _this_ case
or instance of the law or process of color, and thus overcomes further
the defect in _subject-matter_ or data still left by conception.[26] Now
judgment logically terminates in disjunction. It gives a universal
which may determine any one of a number of alternative defined
particulars, but which is arbitrary as to _what_ one is selected.
Systematic _inference_ brings to light the material conditions under
which the law, or dominating universal, applies to this, rather than
that alternative particular, and so completes the ideal organization of
the subject-matter. If this act were complete, we should finally have
present to us a whole on which we should know the determining and
effective or authorizing elements, and the order of development or
hierarchy of dependence, in which others follow from them.[27]
In this account by Lotze of the operations of the forms of thought,
there is clearly put before us the picture of a continuous correlative
determination of datum on one side and of idea or meaning on the other,
till experience is again integral, data thoroughly defined and
corrected, and ideas completely incarnate as the relevant meaning of
subject-matter. That we have here in outline a description of what
actually occurs there can be no doubt. But there is as little doubt that
it is thoroughly inconsistent with Lotze's supposition that the material
or data of thought is precisely the same as the antecedents of thought;
or that ideas, conceptions, are purely mental somewhats brought to bear,
as the sole essential characteristics of thought, extraneously upon a
material provided ready-made. It means but one thing: The maintenance of
unity and wholeness in experience through conflicting contents occurs by
means of a strictly correspondent setting apart of fact to be accurately
described and properly related, and meaning to be adequately construed
and properly referred. The datum is given _in_ the thought-situation,
and _to_ further qualification of ideas or meanings. But even in this
aspect it presents a problem. To find out _what is_ given is an inquiry
which taxes reflection to the uttermost. Every important advance in
scientific method means better agencies, more skilled technique for
simply detaching and describing what is barely there, or given. To be
able to find out what can safely be taken as _there_, as given in any
particular inquiry, and hence be taken as material for orderly and
verifiable thinking, for fruitful hypothesis-making, for entertaining of
explanatory and interpretative ideas, is one phase of the effort of
systematic scientific inquiry. It marks its inductive phase. To take
what is given _in_ the thought-situation, for the sake of accomplishing
the aim of thought (along with a correlative discrimination of ideas or
meanings), as if it were given absolutely, or apart from a particular
historic situs and context, is the fallacy of empiricism as a logical
theory. To regard the thought-forms of conception, judgment, and
inference as qualifications of "pure thought, apart from any difference
in objects," instead of as successive dispositions in the progressive
organization of the material (or objects) is the fallacy of rationalism.
Lotze attempts to combine the two, thinking thereby to correct each by
the other.
Lotze recognizes the futility of thought if the sense-data are final, if
they alone are real, the truly existent, self-justificatory and valid.
He sees that, if the empiricist were right in his assumption as to the
real worth of the given data, thinking would be a ridiculous pretender,
either toilfully and poorly doing over again what needs no doing, or
making a wilful departure from truth. He realizes that thought really is
evoked because it is needed, and that it has a work to do which is not
merely formal, but which effects a modification of the subject-matter of
experience. Consequently he assumes a thought-in-itself, with certain
forms and modes of action of its own, a realm of meaning possessed of a
directive and normative worth of its own--the root-fallacy of
rationalism. His attempted compromise between the two turns out to be
based on the assumption of the indefensible ideas of both--the notion of
an independent matter of thought, on one side, and of an independent
worth or value of thought-forms, on the other.
This pointing out of inconsistencies becomes stale and unprofitable save
as we bring them back into connection with their root-origin--the
erection of distinctions that are genetic and historic, and working or
instrumental divisions of labor, into rigid and ready-made differences
of structural reality. Lotze clearly recognizes that thought's nature is
dependent upon its aim, its aim upon its problem, and this upon the
situation in which it finds its incentive and excuse. Its work is cut
out for it. It does not what it would, but what it must. As Lotze puts
it, "Logic has to do with thought, not as it would be under
hypothetical conditions, but as it is" (Vol. I, p. 33), and this
statement is made in explicit combination with statements to the effect
that the peculiarity of the material of thought conditions its activity.
Similarly he says in a passage already referred to: "The possibility and
the success of thought's production in general depends upon this
original constitution and organization of the whole world of ideas, a
constitution which, though not necessary in thought, is all the more
necessary to make thought possible."[28]
As we have seen, the essential nature of conception, judgment, and
inference is dependent upon peculiarities of the propounded material,
they being forms dependent for their significance upon the stage of
organization in which they begin.
From this only one conclusion is suggested. If thought's nature is
dependent upon its actual conditions and circumstances, the primary
logical problem is to study thought-in-its-conditioning; it is to detect
the crisis within which thought and its subject-matter present
themselves in their mutual distinction and cross-reference. But Lotze is
so thoroughly committed to a ready-made antecedent of some sort, that
this genetic consideration is of no account to him. The historic method
is a mere matter of psychology, and has no logical worth (Vol. I, p. 2).
We must presuppose a psychological mechanism and psychological material,
but logic is concerned not with origin or history, but with authority,
worth, value (Vol. I, p. 10). Again: "Logic is not concerned with the
manner in which the elements utilized by thought come into existence,
but their value _after_ they have somehow come into existence, for the
carrying out of intellectual operations" (Vol. I, p. 34). And finally:
"I have maintained throughout my work that logic cannot derive any
serious advantage from a discussion of _the conditions under which
thought as a psychological process comes about_. The significance of
logical forms ... is to be found in the utterances of thought, the laws
which it imposes, after or during the act of thinking, not in the
conditions which lie back of and which produce thought."[29]
Lotze, in truth, represents a halting-stage in the evolution of logical
theory. He is too far along to be contented with the reiteration of the
purely formal distinctions of a merely formal thought-by-itself. He
recognizes that thought as formal is the form of some matter, and has
its worth only as organizing that matter to meet the ideal demands of
reason; and that "reason" is in truth only an ideal systematization of
the matter or content. Consequently he has to open the door to admit
"psychical processes" which furnish this material. Having let in the
material, he is bound to shut the door again in the face of the
processes from which the material proceeded--to dismiss them as
impertinent intruders. If thought gets its data in such a surreptitious
manner, there is no occasion for wonder that the legitimacy of its
dealings with the material remains an open question. Logical theory,
like every branch of the philosophic disciplines, waits upon a surrender
of the obstinate conviction that, while the work and aim of thought is
conditioned by the material supplied to it, yet the _worth_ of its
performances is something to be passed upon in complete abstraction from
conditions of origin and development.
IV
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE CONTENT AND OBJECT OF THOUGHT
In the foregoing discussion, particularly in the last chapter, we were
led repeatedly to recognize that thought has its own content. At times
Lotze gives way to the tendency to define thought entirely in terms of
modes and forms of activity which are exercised by it upon a strictly
foreign material. But two motives continually push him in the other
direction. (1) Thought has a distinctive work to do, one which involves
a qualitative transformation of (at least) the _relationships_ of the
presented matter; as fast as it accomplishes this work, the
subject-matter becomes somehow thought's own. As we have just seen, the
data are progressively organized to meet thought's ideal of a complete
whole, with its members interconnected according to a determining
principle. Such progressive organization throws backward doubt upon the
assumption of the original total irrelevancy of the data and
thought-form to each other. (2) A like motive operates from the side of
the subject-matter. As merely foreign and external, it is too
heterogeneous to lend itself to thought's exercise and influence. The
idea, as we saw in the first chapter, is the convenient medium through
which Lotze passes from the purely heterogeneous psychical impression or
event, which is totally irrelevant to thought's purpose and working,
over to a state of affairs which can reward thought. Idea as meaning
forms the bridge from the brute factuality of the psychical impression
over to the coherent value of thought's own content.
We have, in this chapter, to consider the question of the idea or
content of thought from two points of view: first, the _possibility_ of
such a content--its consistency with Lotze's fundamental premises;
secondly, its _objective_ character--its validity and test.
I. The question of the possibility of a specific content of thought is
the question of the nature of the idea as meaning. Meaning is the
characteristic content of thought as such. We have thus far left
unquestioned Lotze's continual assumption of meaning as a sort of
thought-unit; the building-stone of thought's construction. In his
treatment of meaning, Lotze's contradictions regarding the antecedents,
data, and content of thought reach their full conclusion. He expressly
makes meaning to be the product of thought's activity and also the
unreflective material out of which thought's operations grow.
This contradiction has been worked out in accurate and complete detail
by Professor Jones.[30] He summarizes it as follows (p. 99): "No other
way was left to him [Lotze] excepting this of first attributing all to
sense and afterwards attributing all to thought, and, finally of
attributing it to thought only because it was already in its material.
This _seesaw_ is essential to his theory; the elements of knowledge as
he describes them can subsist only by the alternate robbery of each
other." We have already seen how strenuously Lotze insists upon the fact
that the given subject-matter of thought is to be regarded wholly as the
work of a physical mechanism, "without any action of thought."[31] But
Lotze also states that if the products of the psychical mechanism "are
to admit of combination in the definite form of a _thought_, they each
require some previous shaping to make them into logical building-stones
and to convert them from _impressions_ into _ideas_. Nothing is really
more familiar to us than this first operation of thought; the only
reason why we usually overlook it is that in the language which we
inherit, it is already carried out, and it seems, therefore, to belong
to the self-evident presuppositions of thought, _not to its own specific
work_."[32] And again (Vol. I, p. 23) judgments "can consist of nothing
but combinations of ideas which are no longer mere impressions: every
such idea must have undergone at least the simple formation mentioned
above." Such ideas are, Lotze goes on to urge, already rudimentary
concepts--that is to say, logical determinations.
The obviousness of the logical contradiction of attributing to a
preliminary specific work of thought exactly the condition of affairs
which is elsewhere explicitly attributed to a psychical mechanism prior
to any thought-activity, should not blind us to its meaning and relative
necessity. The impression, it will be recalled, is a mere state of our
own consciousness--a mood of ourselves. As such it has simply _de facto_
relations as an event to other similar events. But reflective thought is
concerned with the relationship of a content or matter to other
contents. Hence the impression must have a matter before it can come at
all within the sphere of thought's exercise. How shall it secure this?
Why, by a preliminary activity of thought which objectifies the
impression. Blue as a mere sensuous irritation or feeling is given a
quality, the meaning "blue"--blueness; the sense-impression is
objectified; it is presented "no longer as a condition which we undergo,
but as a something which has its being and its meaning in itself, and
which continues to be what it is, and to mean what it means whether we
are conscious of it or not. It is easy to see here the _necessary
beginning of that activity which we above appropriated to thought as
such_: it has not yet got so far as converting coexistence into
coherence. It has first to perform the previous task of investing each
single impression with an independent validity, without which the later
opposition of their real coherence to mere coexistence could not be made
in any intelligible sense."[33]
This objectification, which converts a sensitive state into a sensible
matter to which the sensitive state is referred, also gives this matter
"position," a certain typical character. It is not objectified in a
merely general way, but is given a specific sort of objectivity. Of
these kinds of objectivity there are three mentioned: that of a
substantive content; that of an attached dependent content; that of an
active relationship connecting the various contents with each other. In
short, we have the types of meaning embodied in language in the form of
nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It is through this preliminary formative
activity of thought that reflective or _logical_ thought has presented
to it a world of meanings ranged in an order of relative independence
and dependence, and ranged as elements in a complex of meanings whose
various constituent parts mutually influence each other's meanings.[34]
As usual, Lotze mediates the contradiction between material constituted
_by_ thought and the same material just presented _to_ thought, by a
further position so disparate to each that, taken in connection with
each in a pair, and by turns, it seems to bridge the gulf. After
describing the prior constitutive work of thought as above, he goes on
to discuss a _second_ phase of thought which is intermediary between
this and the third phase, viz., reflective thought proper. This second
activity is that of arranging experienced quales in series and groups,
thus ascribing a sort of universal or common somewhat to various
instances (as already described; see p. 55). On one hand, it is clearly
stated that this second phase of thought's activity is in reality the
_same_ as the first phase: since all objectification involves positing,
since positing involves distinction of one matter from others, and since
this involves placing it in a series or group in which each is
measurably marked off, as to the degree and nature of its diversity,
from every other. We are told that we are only considering "a really
inseparable operation" of thought from two different sides: first, as to
the effect which objectifying thought has upon the matter as set over
against the feeling _subject_, secondly, the effect which this
objectification has upon the matter in relation to _other matters_.[35]
Afterward, however, these two operations are declared to be radically
different in type and nature. The first is determinant and formative; it
gives ideas "the shape without which the logical spirit could not accept
them." In a way it dictates "its own laws to its object-matter."[36] The
second activity of thought is rather passive and receptive. It simply
recognizes what is already there. "Thought can make no difference where
it finds none already in the matter of impressions."[37] "The first
universal, as we saw, can only be experienced in immediate sensation. It
is no product of thought, but something that thought finds already in
existence."[38]
The obviousness of this further contradiction is paralleled only by its
inevitableness. Thought is in the air, is arbitrary and wild in dealing
with meanings, unless it gets its start and cue from actual experience.
Hence the necessity of insisting upon thought's activity as just
recognizing the contents already given. But, on the other hand, prior to
the work of thought there is to Lotze no content or meaning. It requires
a work of thought to detach anything from the flux of sense-irritations
and invest it with a meaning of its own. This dilemma is inevitable to
any writer who declines to consider as correlative the nature of
thought-activity and thought-content from the standpoint of their
generating conditions in the movement of experience. Viewed from such a
standpoint the principle of solution is clear enough. As we have already
seen (p. 53), the internal dissension of an experience leads to
detaching certain values previously absorptively integrated into the
concrete experience as part of its own qualitative coloring; and to
relegating them, for the time being, (pending integration into further
immediate values of a reconstituted experience) into a world of bare
meanings, a sphere qualified as ideal throughout. These meanings then
become the tools of thought in interpreting the data, just as the
sense-qualities which define the presented situation are the immediate
object to thought. The two _as mutually referred_ are content. That is,
the datum and the thought-mode or idea as connected are the object of
thought.
To reach this unification is thought's objective or goal. Exactly the
same value is idea, as either tool or content, according as it is taken
as instrumental or as accomplishment. Every successive cross-section of
the thought-situation presents what may be taken for granted as the
outcome of previous thinking, and consequently as the determinant of
further reflective procedure. Taken as defining the point reached in the
thought-function and serving as constituent unit of further thought, it
is content. Lotze's instinct is sure in identifying and setting over
against each other the material given to thought and the content which
is thought's own "building-stone." His contradictions arise simply from
the fact that his absolute, non-historic method does not permit him to
interpret this joint identity and distinction in a working, and hence
relative, sense.
II. The question of how the possibility of meanings, or
thought-contents, is to be understood merges imperceptibly into the
question of the real objectivity or validity of such contents. The
difficulty for Lotze is the now familiar one: So far as his logic
compels him to insist that these meanings are the possession and product
of thought (since thought is an independent activity), the ideas are
merely ideas; there is no test of objectivity beyond the thoroughly
unsatisfactory and formal one of their own mutual consistency. In
reaction from this Lotze is thrown back upon the idea of these contents
as the original matter given in the impressions themselves. Here there
seems to be an objective or external test by which the reality of
thought's operations may be tried; a given idea is verified or found
false according to its measure of correspondence with the matter of
experience as such. But now we are no better off. The original
independence and heterogeneity of impressions and of thought is so great
that there is no way to compare the results of the latter with the
former. We cannot compare or contrast distinctions of worth with bare
differences of factual existence (Vol. I, p. 2). The standard or test of
objectivity is so thoroughly external that by original definition it is
wholly outside the realm of thought. How can thought compare its own
contents with that which is wholly outside itself?
Or again, the given material of experience apart from thought is
precisely the relatively chaotic and unorganized; it even reduces itself
to a mere sequence of psychical events. What rational meaning is there
in directing us to compare the highest results of scientific inquiry
with the bare sequence of our own states of feeling; or even with the
original data whose fragmentary and uncertain character was the exact
motive for entering upon scientific inquiry? How can the former in any
sense give a check or test of the value of the latter? This is
professedly to test the validity of a system of meanings by comparison
with that whose defects and errors call forth the construction of the
system of meanings by which to rectify and replace themselves. Our
subsequent inquiry simply consists in tracing some of the phases of the
characteristic seesaw from one to the other of the two horns of the now
familiar dilemma: either thought is separate from the matter of
experience, and then its validity is wholly its own private business; or
else the objective results of thought are already in the antecedent
material, and then thought is either unnecessary, or else has no way of
checking its own performances.
1. Lotze assumes, as we have seen, a certain independent validity in
each meaning or qualified content, taken in and of itself. "Blue" has a
certain validity, or meaning, in and of itself; it is an object for
consciousness as such. After the original sense-irritation through which
it was mediated has entirely disappeared, it persists as a valid idea,
as a meaning. Moreover, it is an object or content of thought for others
as well. Thus it has a double mark of validity: in the comparison of one
part of my own experience with another, and in the comparison of my
experience as a whole with that of others. Here we have a sort of
validity which does not raise at all the question of _metaphysical_
reality (Vol. I, pp. 14, 15). Lotze thus seems to have escaped from the
necessity of employing as check or test for the validity of ideas any
reference to a real outside the sphere of thought itself. Such terms as
"conjunction," "franchise," "constitution," "algebraic zero," etc.,
etc., claim to possess objective validity. Yet none of these professes
to refer to a reality beyond thought. Generalizing this point of view,
validity or objectivity of meaning means simply that which is "identical
for all consciousness" (Vol. I, p. 3); "it is quite indifferent whether
certain parts of the world of thought indicate something which has
beside an independent reality outside of thinking minds, or whether all
that it contains exists only in the thoughts of those who think it, but
with equal validity for them all" (Vol. I, p. 16).
So far it seems clear sailing. Difficulties, however, show themselves,
the moment we inquire what is meant by a self-identical content for all
thought. Is this to be taken in a static or in a dynamic way? That is to
say: Does it express the fact that a given content or meaning is _de
facto_ presented to the consciousness of all alike? Does this coequal
presence guarantee an objectivity? Or does validity attach to a given
meaning or content in so far as it directs and controls the further
exercise of thinking, and thus the formation of further _new_ contents
of consciousness?
The former interpretation is alone consistent with Lotze's notion that
the independent idea as such is invested with a certain validity or
objectivity. It alone is consistent with his assertion that concepts
precede judgments. It alone, that is to say, is consistent with the
notion that reflective thinking has a sphere of ideas or meanings
supplied to it at the outset. But it is impossible to entertain this
belief. The stimulus which, according to Lotze, goads thought on from
ideas or concepts to judgments and inferences, is in truth simply the
lack of validity, of objectivity in its original independent meanings or
contents. A meaning as independent is precisely that which is not
invested with validity, but which is a mere idea, a "notion," a fancy,
at best a surmise which may turn out to be valid (and of course this
indicates possible reference); a standpoint to have its value determined
by its further active use. "Blue" as a mere detached floating meaning,
an idea at large, would not gain in validity simply by being entertained
continuously in a given consciousness; or by being made at one and the
same time the persistent object of attentive regard by all human
consciousnesses. If this were all that were required, the chimera, the
centaur, or any other subjective construction, could easily gain
validity. "Christian Science" has made just this notion the basis of its
philosophy.
The simple fact is that in such illustrations as "blue," "franchise,"
"conjunction," Lotze instinctively takes cases which are not mere
independent and detached meanings, but which involve reference to a
region of cosmic experience, or to a region of mutually determining
social activities. The conception that reference to a _social_ activity
does not involve the same sort of reference of thought beyond itself
that is involved in physical matters, and hence may be taken quite
innocent and free of the metaphysical problem of reference to reality
beyond meaning, is one of the strangest that has ever found lodgment in
human thinking. Either both physical and social reference or neither, is
metaphysical; if neither, then it is because the meaning functions, as
it originates, in a specific situation which carries with it its own
tests (see p. 17). Lotze's conception is made possible only by
unconsciously substituting the idea of object as content of thought for
a large number of persons (or a _de facto_ somewhat for every
consciousness), for the genuine definition of object as a determinant in
a scheme of experience. The former is consistent with Lotze's conception
of thought, but wholly indeterminate as to validity or intent. The
latter is the test used experimentally in all concrete thinking, but
involves a radical transformation of all Lotze's assumptions. A given
idea of the conjunction of the franchise, or of blue, is valid, not
because everybody happens to entertain it, but because it expresses the
factor of control or direction in a given movement of experience. The
test of validity of idea[39] is its functional or instrumental use in
effecting the transition from a relatively conflicting experience to a
relatively integrated one. If Lotze's view were correct, "blue" valid
once would be valid always--even when red or green were actually called
for to fulfil specific conditions. This is to say validity always refers
to rightfulness or adequacy of performance in an asserting of
connection--not to the meaning as detached and contemplated.
If we refer again to the fact that the genuine antecedent of thought is
a situation which is tensional as regards its existing status, or
disorganized in its structural elements, yet organized as emerging out
of the unified experience of the past and as striving as a whole, or
equally in all its phases, to reinstate an experience harmonized in
make-up, we can easily understand how certain contents may be detached
and held apart as meanings or references, actual or possible (according
as they are viewed with reference to the past or to the future). We can
understand how such detached contents may be of use in effecting a
review of the entire experience, and as affording standpoints and
methods of a reconstruction which will maintain the integrity of
experience. We can understand how validity of meaning is measured by
reference to something which is not mere meaning; by reference to
something which lies beyond the idea as such--viz., the reconstitution
of an experience into which thought enters as mediator. That paradox of
ordinary experience and of scientific inquiry by which objectivity is
given alike to matter of perception and to conceived relations--to
facts and to laws--affords no peculiar difficulty, because we see that
the test of objectivity is everywhere the same: anything is objective in
so far as, through the medium of conflict, it controls the movement of
experience in its reconstructive transition from one unified form to
another. There is not first an object, whether of sense-perception or of
conception, which afterward somehow exercises this controlling
influence; but the objective is such in virtue of the exercise of
function of control. It may only control the act of inquiry; it may only
set on foot doubt, but this is direction of subsequent experience, and,
in so far, is a token of objectivity.
So much for the thought-content or meaning as having a validity of its
own. It does not have it as isolated or given or static; it has it in
its dynamic reference, its use in determining further movement of
experience. In other words, the "meaning" or idea as such, having been
selected and made-up with reference to performing a certain office in
the evolution of a unified experience, can be tested in no other way
than by discovering whether it does what it was intended to do and what
it purports to do.[40]
2. Lotze has to wrestle with this question of validity in a further
aspect: What constitutes the objectivity of thinking as a total
attitude, activity, or function? According to his own statement, the
meanings or valid ideas are after all only building-stones for logical
thought. Validity is thus not a question of them in their independent
existences, but of their mutual reference to each other. Thinking is the
process of instituting these mutual references; of building up the
various scattered and independent building-stones into the coherent
system of thought. What is the validity of the various forms of thinking
which find expression in the various types of judgment and in the
various forms of inference? Categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive
judgment; inference by induction, by analogy, by mathematical equation;
classification, theory of explanation--all these are processes of
reflection by which mutual connection in an individualized whole is
given to the fragmentary meanings or ideas with which thought as it sets
out is supplied. What shall we say of the validity of such processes?
On one point Lotze is quite clear. These various logical acts do not
really enter into the constitution of the valid world. The logical forms
as such are maintained _only_ in the process of thinking. The world of
valid truth does not undergo a series of contortions and evolutions,
paralleling in any way the successive steps and missteps, the succession
of tentative trials, withdrawals, and retracings, which mark the course
of our own thinking.[41]
Lotze is explicit upon the point that it is only the thought-content in
which the process of thinking issues that has objective validity; the
act of thinking is "purely and simply an inner movement of our own
minds, made necessary to us by reason of the constitution of our nature
and of our place in the world" (Vol. II, p. 279).
Here the problem of validity presents itself as the problem of the
relation of the act of thinking to its own product. In his solution
Lotze uses two metaphors: one derived from building operations, the
other from traveling. The construction of a building requires of
necessity certain tools and extraneous constructions, stagings,
scaffoldings, etc., which are necessary to effect the final
construction, but yet which do not enter into the building as such. The
activity has an instrumental, though not a constitutive, value as
regards its product. Similarly, in order to get a view from the top of a
mountain--this view being the objective--the traveler has to go through
preliminary movements along devious courses. These again are antecedent
prerequisites, but do not constitute a portion of the attained view.
The problem of thought as activity, as distinct from thought as content,
opens up altogether too large a question to receive complete
consideration at this point. Fortunately, however, the previous
discussion enables us to narrow the point which is in issue just here.
It is once more the question whether the activity of thought is to be
regarded as an independent function supervening entirely from without
upon antecedents, and directed from without upon data; or whether it
marks merely a phase of the transformation which the course of
experience (whether practical, or artistic, or socially affectional or
whatever) undergoes in entering into a tensional status where the
maintenance of its harmony of content is problematic and hence an aim.
If it be the latter, a thoroughly intelligent sense can be given to the
proposition that the activity of thinking is instrumental, and that its
worth is found, not in its own successive states as such, but in the
result in which it comes to conclusion. But the conception of thinking
as an independent activity somehow occurring after an independent
antecedent, playing upon an independent subject-matter, and finally
effecting an independent result, presents us with just one miracle the
more.
I do not question the strictly instrumental character of thinking. The
problem lies not here, but in the interpretation of the nature of the
organ and instrument. The difficulty with Lotze's position is that it
forces us into the assumption of a means and an end which are simply and
only external to each other, and yet necessarily dependent upon each
other--a position which, whenever found, is so thoroughly
self-contradictory as to necessitate critical reconsideration of the
premises which lead to it. Lotze vibrates between the notion of thought
as a tool in the external sense, a mere scaffolding to a finished
building in which it has no part nor lot, and the notion of thought as
an immanent tool, as a scaffolding which is an integral part of the very
operation of building, and set up for the sake of the building-activity
which is carried on effectively only with and through a scaffolding.
Only in the former case can the scaffolding be considered as a _mere_
tool. In the latter case the external scaffolding is not itself the
instrumentality; the actual tool is the _action_ of erecting the
building, and this action involves the scaffolding as a constituent part
of itself. The work of erecting is not set over against the completed
building as mere means to an end; it _is_ the end taken in process or
historically, longitudinally viewed. The scaffolding, moreover, is not
an external means to the process of erecting, but an organic member of
it. It is no mere accident of language that "building" has a double
sense--meaning at once the process and the finished product. The outcome
of thought is the thinking activity carried on to its own completion;
the activity, on the other hand, _is_ the outcome taken anywhere short
of its own realization, and thereby still going on.
The only consideration which prevents easy and immediate acceptance of
this view is the notion of thinking as something purely formal. It is
strange that the empiricist does not see that his insistence upon a
matter extraneously given to thought only strengthens the hands of the
rationalist with his claim of thinking as an independent activity,
separate from the actual make-up of the affairs of experience. Thinking
as a merely formal activity exercised upon certain sensations or images
or objects sets forth an absolutely meaningless proposition. The
psychological identification of thinking with the process of association
is much nearer the truth. It is, indeed, on the way to the truth. We
need only to recognize that association is of contents or matters or
meanings, not of ideas as bare existences or events; and that the type
of association we call thinking differs from the associations of casual
fancy and revery in an element of control by reference to an end which
determines the fitness and thus the selection of the associates, to
apprehend how completely thinking is a reconstructive movement of actual
contents of experience in relation to each other, and for the sake of a
redintegration of a conflicting experience.
There is no miracle in the fact that tool and material are adapted to
each other in the process of reaching a valid conclusion. Were they
external in origin to each other and to the result, the whole affair
would, indeed, present an insoluble problem--so insoluble that, if this
were the true condition of affairs, we never should even know that there
was a problem. But, in truth, both material and tool have been secured
and determined with reference to economy and efficiency in effecting the
end desired--the maintenance of a harmonious experience. The builder has
discovered that his building means building tools, and also building
material. Each has been slowly evolved with reference to its fit employ
in the entire function; and this evolution has been checked at every
point by reference to its own correspondent. The carpenter has not
thought at large on his building and then constructed tools at large,
but has thought of his building in terms of the material which enters
into it, and through that medium has come to the consideration of the
tools which are helpful. Life proposes to maintain at all hazards the
unity of its own process. Experience insists on being itself, on
securing integrity even through and by means of conflict.
This is not a formal question, but one of the placing and relations of
the matters or values actually entering into experience. And this in
turn determines the taking up of just those mental attitudes, and the
employing of just those intellectual operations, which most effectively
handle and organize the material. Thinking is adaptation _to_ an end
_through_ the adjustment of particular objective contents.
The thinker, like the carpenter, is at once stimulated and checked in
every stage of his procedure by the particular situation which confronts
him. A person is at the stage of wanting a new house: well then, his
materials are available resources, the price of labor, the cost of
building, the state and needs of his family, profession, etc.; his tools
are paper and pencil and compass, or possibly the bank as a credit
instrumentality, etc. Again, the work is beginning. The foundations are
laid. This in turn determines its own specific materials and tools.
Again, the building is almost ready for occupancy. The concrete process
is that of taking away the scaffolding, clearing up the grounds,
furnishing and decorating rooms, etc. This specific operation again
determines its own fit or relevant materials and tools. It defines the
time and mode and manner of beginning and ceasing to use them. Logical
theory will get along as well as does reflective practice, when it
sticks close by and observes the directions and checks inherent in each
successive phase of the evolution of the cycle of experiencing. The
problem in general of validity of the thinking process as distinct from
the validity of this or that process arises only when thinking is
isolated from its historic position and its material context.
3. But Lotze is not yet done with the problem of validity, even from his
own standpoint. The ground shifts again under his feet. It is no longer
a question of the validity of the idea or meaning with which thought is
supposed to set out; it is no longer a question of the validity of the
process of thinking in reference to its own product; it is the question
of the validity of the product. Supposing, after all, that the final
meaning, or logical idea, is thoroughly coherent and organized;
supposing it is an object for all consciousness as such. Once more
arises the question: What is the validity of even the most coherent and
complete idea?--a question which rises and will not down. We may
reconstruct our notion of the chimera until it ceases to be an
independent idea and becomes a part of the system of Greek mythology.
Has it gained in validity in ceasing to be an independent myth, in
becoming an element in systematized myth? Myth it was and myth it
remains. Mythology does not get validity by growing bigger. How do we
know the same is not the case with the ideas which are the product of
our most deliberate and extended scientific inquiry? The reference again
to the content as the self-identical object of all consciousness proves
nothing; the matter of a hallucination does not gain worth in proportion
to its social contagiousness. Or the reference proves that we have not
as yet reached any conclusion, but are entertaining a hypothesis--since
social validity is not a matter of mere common content, but of securing
participation in a commonly adjudged social experience through action
directed thereto and directed by consensus of judgment.
According to Lotze, the final product is, after all, still thought. Now,
Lotze is committed once for all to the notion that thought, in any form,
is directed by and at an outside reality. The ghost haunts him to the
last. How, after all, does even the ideally perfect valid thought apply
or refer to reality? Its genuine subject is still beyond itself. At the
last Lotze can dispose of this question only by regarding it as a
metaphysical, not a logical, problem (Vol. II, pp. 281, 282). In other
words, _logically_ speaking, we are at the end just exactly where we
were at the beginning--in the sphere of ideas, and of ideas only, plus a
consciousness of the necessity of referring these ideas to a reality
which is beyond them, which is utterly inaccessible to them, which is
out of reach of any influence which they may exercise, and which
transcends any possible comparison with their results. "It is vain,"
says Lotze, "to shrink from acknowledging the circle here involved ...
all we know of the external world depends upon the ideas of it which are
within us" (Vol. II, p. 185). "It is then this varied world of ideas
within us which forms the sole material directly given to us" (Vol. II,
p. 186). As it is the only material given to us, so it is the only
material with which thought can end. To talk about knowing the external
world through ideas which are merely within us is to talk of an inherent
self-contradiction. There is no common ground in which the external
world and our ideas can meet. In other words, the original implication
of a separation between an independent thought-material and an
independent thought-function and purpose lands us inevitably in the
metaphysics of subjective idealism, plus a belief in an unknown reality
beyond, which unknowable is yet taken as the ultimate test of the value
of our ideas as just subjective. The subjectivity of the psychical
event infects at the last the meaning or ideal object. Because it has
been taken to be something "in itself," thought is also something "in
itself," and at the end, after all our maneuvering we are where we
began:--with two separate disparates, one of meaning, but no existence,
the other of existence, but no meaning.
The other aspect of Lotze's contradiction which completes the circle is
clear when we refer to his original propositions, and recall that at the
outset he was compelled to regard the origination and conjunctions of
the impressions, the elements of ideas, as themselves the effects
exercised by a world of things already in existence (see p. 31). He sets
up an independent world of thought, and yet has to confess that both at
its origin and termination it points with absolute necessity to a world
beyond itself. Only the stubborn refusal to take this initial and
terminal reference of thought beyond itself as having a historic
meaning, indicating a particular place of generation and a particular
point of fulfilment in the drama of evolving experience, compels Lotze
to give such bifold objective reference a purely metaphysical turn.
When Lotze goes on to say (Vol. II, p. 191) that the measure of truth of
particular parts of experience is found in asking whether, when judged
by thought, they are in harmony with other parts of experience; when he
goes on to say that there is no sense in trying to compare the entire
world of ideas with a reality which is non-existent, excepting as it
itself should become an idea, Lotze lands where he might better have
frankly commenced.[43] He saves himself from utter skepticism only by
claiming that the explicit assumption of skepticism, the need of
agreement of a ready-made idea as such, with an extraneous independent
material as such, is meaningless. He defines correctly the work of
thought as consisting in harmonizing the various portions of experience
with each other: a definition which has meaning only in connection with
the fact that experience is continually integrating itself into a
wholeness of coherent meaning deepened in significance by passing
through an inner distraction in which by means of conflict certain
contents are rendered partial and hence objectively conscious. In this
case the test of thought is the harmony or unity of experience actually
effected. In that sense the test of reality is beyond thought, as
thought, just as at the other limit thought originates out of a
situation which is not reflectional in character. Interpret this before
and beyond in a historic sense, as an affair of the place occupied and
rôle played by thinking as a function in experience in relation to other
functions, and the intermediate and instrumental character of thought,
its dependence upon unreflective antecedents for its existence, and upon
a consequent experience for its test of final validity, becomes
significant and necessary. Taken at large, it plunges us in the depths
of a hopelessly complicated and self-revolving metaphysic.
V
A CRITICAL STUDY OF BOSANQUET'S THEORY OF JUDGMENT[44]
Bosanquet's theory of the judgment, in common with all such theories of
the judgment, necessarily involves the metaphysical problem of the
nature of reality and of the relation of thought to reality. That the
judgment is the function by which knowledge is attained is a proposition
which would meet with universal acceptance. But knowledge is itself a
relation of some sort between thought and reality. The view which any
logician adopts as to the nature of the knowledge-process is accordingly
conditioned by his metaphysical presuppositions as to the nature of
reality. It is equally true that the theory of the judgment developed
from any metaphysical standpoint serves as a test of the validity of
that standpoint. We shall attempt in the present paper to show how
Bosanquet's theory of the judgment develops from his view of the nature
of reality, and to inquire whether the theory succeeds in giving such an
account of the knowledge-process as to corroborate the presupposition
underlying it.
Bosanquet defines judgment as "the intellectual function which defines
reality by significant ideas and in so doing affirms the reality of
those ideas" (p. 104).[45] The form of the definition suggests the
nature of his fundamental problem. There is, on the one hand, a world
of reality which must be regarded as having existence outside of and
independently of the thoughts or ideas we are now applying to it; and
there is, on the other hand, a world of ideas whose value is measured by
the possibility of applying them to reality, of qualifying reality by
them. The judgment is the function which makes the connection between
these two worlds. If judgment merely brought one set of ideas into
relation with another set, then it could never give us anything more
than purely hypothetical knowledge whose application to the real world
would remain forever problematic. It would mean that knowledge is
impossible, a result which seems to be contradicted by the existence of
knowledge. The logician must, therefore, as Bosanquet tells us, regard
it as an essential of the act of judgment that it always refers to a
reality which goes beyond and is independent of the act itself (p. 104).
His central problem thus becomes that of understanding what the nature
of reality is which permits of being defined by ideas, and what the
nature of an idea is that it can ever be affirmed to be real. How does
the real world get representation in experience, and what is the
guarantee that the representation, when obtained, is correct?
The defining of the problem suggests the view of the nature of reality
out of which Bosanquet's theory of the judgment grows. The real world is
to him a world which has its existence quite independently of the
process by which it is known. The real world is there to be known, and
is in no wise modified by the knowledge which we obtain of it. The work
of thought is to build up a world of ideas which shall represent, or
correspond to, the world of reality. The more complete and perfect the
correspondence, the greater our store of knowledge.
Translated into terms of the judgment, this representational view means
that the subject of the judgment must always be reality, while the
predicate is an idea. But when we examine the content of any universal
judgment, or even of an ordinary judgment of perception, the subject
which appears in the judgment is evidently not reality at all, if by
reality we mean something which is in no sense constituted by the
thought-process. When I say, "The tree is green," the subject, tree,
cannot be regarded as a bit of reality which is given ready-made to the
thought-process. The ability to perceive a tree, to distinguish it from
other objects and single it out for the application of an idea,
evidently implies a long series of previous judgments. The content
"tree" is itself ideal. As Bosanquet forcibly states it: "If a sensation
or elementary perception is in consciousness (and if not we have nothing
to do with it in logic), it already bears the form of thinking" (p. 33).
How, then, can it serve as the subject of a judgment? Bosanquet's
solution of the problem is to say that the real subject of a judgment is
not the grammatical subject which appears in a proposition, but reality
itself. In the more complex forms of judgment the reference to reality
is disguised by the introduction of explicit ideas to designate the
portion of reality to which reference is made (pp. 78, 79). In the
simplest type of judgment known, however, the qualitative judgment of
perception, the reference to reality appears within the judgment itself.
The relations of thought to reality and of the elements of the judgment
to one another can, accordingly, most readily be seen in the
consideration of this rudimentary form of judgment in which the various
parts lie bare before us.
Bosanquet describes it as follows:
If I say, pointing to a particular house, "That is my home," it is
clear that in this act of judgment the reference conveyed by the
demonstrative is indispensable. The significant idea "my home" is
affirmed, not of any other general significant idea in my mind,
but of something which is rendered unique by being present to me
in perception. In making the judgment, "That is my home," I extend
the present sense-perception of a house in a certain landscape by
attaching to it the ideal content or meaning of "home;" and
moreover, in doing this, I pronounce the ideal content to be, so
to speak, of one and the same tissue with what I have before me in
my actual perception. That is to say, I affirm the meaning of the
idea, or the idea considered as a meaning, to be a real quality of
that which I perceive in my perception.
The same account holds good of every perceptive judgment; when I
see a white substance on a plate and judge that "it is bread" I
affirm the reference, or general meaning which constitutes the
symbolic idea "bread" in my mind, to be a real quality of the spot
or point in present perception which I attempt to designate by the
demonstrative "this." The act defines the given but indefinite
real by affirmation of a quality, and affirms reality of the
definite quality by attaching it to the previously undefined real.
Reality is given for me _in_ present sensuous perception, and _in_
the immediate feeling of my own sentient existence that goes with
it. (Pp. 76, 77.)
Again, he says that the general features of the judgment of perception
are as follows:
There is a presence of a something in contact with our sensitive
self, which, as being so in contact, has the character of reality;
and there is the qualification of this reality by the reference to
it of some meaning _such as can_ be symbolized by a name (p. 77).
Our point of contact with reality, the place where reality gets into the
thought-process, is, according to this view, to be found in the
simplest, most indefinite type of judgment of perception. We meet with
reality in the mere undefined "this" of primitive experience. But each
such elementary judgment about an undefined "this" is an isolated bit of
experience. Each "this" could give us only a detached bit of reality at
best, and the further problem now confronts us of how we ever succeed in
piecing our detached bits of reality together to form a real world.
Bosanquet's explanation is, in his words, this:
The real world, as a definite organized system, is _for me_ an
extension of this present sensation and self-feeling by means of
judgment, and it is the essence of judgment to effect and sustain
such an extension (p. 77).
Again he says:
The subject in every judgment of Perception is some given spot or
point in sensuous contact with the percipient self. But, as all
reality is continuous, the subject is not _merely_ this given spot
or point. It is impossible to confine the real world within this
or that presentation. Every definition or qualification of a point
in present perception is affirmed of the real world which is
continuous with present perception. The ultimate subject of the
perceptive judgment is the real world as a whole, and it is of
this that, in judging, we affirm the qualities or characteristics.
(P. 78.)
The problem is the same as that with which Bradley struggles in his
treatment of the subject of the judgment, and the solution is also the
same. Bradley's treatment of the point is perhaps somewhat more
explicit. Like Bosanquet, he starts with the proposition that the
subject of the judgment must be reality itself and not an idea, because,
if it were the latter, judgment could never give us anything but a union
of ideas, and a union of ideas remains forever universal and
hypothetical. It can never acquire the uniqueness, the singularity,
which is necessary to make it refer to the real. Uniqueness can be found
only in our contact with the real. But just where does our contact with
the real occur? Bradley recognizes the fact that it cannot be the
_content_--even in the case of a simple sensation--which gives us
reality. The content of a sensation is a thing which is in my
consciousness, and which has the form which it presents because it is in
my consciousness. Reality is precisely something which is not itself
sensation, and cannot be in my consciousness. If I say, "This is white,"
the "this" has a content which is a sensation of whiteness. But the
sensation of whiteness is not reality. The experience brings with it an
assurance of reality, not because its content is the real, but because
it is "my direct encounter in sensible presentation with the real
world."[46] To make the matter clearer, Bradley draws a distinction
between the _this_ and the _thisness_. In every experience, however
simple, there is a content--a "thisness"--which is not itself unique.
Considered merely as content, it is applicable to an indefinite number
of existences; in other words, it is an idea. But there is also in every
experience a "this" which is unique, but which is not a content. It is a
mere sign of existence which gives the experience uniqueness, but
nothing else. The "thisness" falls on the side of the content, and the
"this" on the side of existence. It is exactly the distinction which
Bosanquet has in mind in the passages quoted in which he tells us that
"reality is given for me _in_ present sensuous perception, and _in_ the
immediate feeling of my own sentient existence which goes with it;" and
again when he says: "There is a presence of a something in contact with
our sensitive self, which, as being so in contact, has the character of
reality." The same point is made somewhat more explicitly in his
introduction when he says that the individual's present perception is
not, indeed, reality as such, but is his present point of contact with
reality as such (p. 3).
But has this distinction between the content of an experience and its
existence solved the problem of how we _know_ reality? When Bosanquet
talks of knowing reality, he means possessing ideas which are an
accurate reproduction of reality. It is still far from clear how,
according to his own account, we could ever have any assurance that our
ideas do represent reality accurately, if we can nowhere find a point
at which the content of an experience can be held to give us reality.
The case is still worse when we go beyond the problem of how any
particular bit of reality can be known, and ask ourselves how reality as
a whole can be known. The explanation offered by both Bradley and
Bosanquet is that by means of judgment we extend the bit of reality of
whose existence we get a glimpse through a peep-hole in the curtain of
sensuous perception, and thus build up the organized system of reality.
In a passage previously quoted, Bosanquet tells us that all reality is
continuous, and therefore the real subject of a judgment cannot be the
mere spot or point which is given in sensuous perception, but must be
the real world as a whole. But how does he know that reality is
continuous, and that the real world is an organized system? Our only
knowledge of reality comes through judgment, and judgment brings us into
contact with reality only at isolated points. When he tells us that
reality is a continuous whole, he does so on the basis of a metaphysical
presupposition which is not justifiable by his theory of the judgment.
The only statement about reality which could be maintained on the basis
of his theory is that some sort of a reality exists, but the theory
furnishes equal justification for the assurance that this reality is of
such a nature that we can never know anything more about it than the
bare fact of its existence. Moreover, the bare fact of the existence of
reality comes to us merely in the form of a feeling of our own sentient
existence which goes with sense-perception. But the mere assurance that
somewhere behind the curtain of sensuous perception reality exists (even
if this could go unchallenged), accompanied by the certainty that we can
never by any possibility know anything more about it, is practically
equivalent to the denial of the possibility of knowledge.[47]
Although the denial of the possibility of knowledge seems to be the
logical outcome of the premises, it is not the conclusion reached by
Bosanquet. At the outset of his treatise, Bosanquet propounds the
fundamental question we have been considering in these words: "How does
the analysis of knowledge as a systematic function, or system of
functions, explain that relationship in which truth appears to consist,
between the human intelligence on the one hand, and fact or reality on
the other?" His answer is: "To this difficulty there is only one reply.
If the object-matter of reality lay genuinely outside the system of
thought, not only our analysis, but thought itself, would be unable to
lay hold of reality." (Pp. 2, 3.) The statement is an explicit
recognition of the impossibility of bridging the chasm between a reality
outside the content of knowledge and a known real world. It brings
before us the dilemma contained in Bosanquet's treatment of the subject
of the judgment. On the one hand the subject of the judgment must be
outside the realm of my thoughts. If it were not, judgment would merely
establish a relation between my ideas and would give me no knowledge of
the real world. On the other hand, the subject of the judgment must be
within the realm of my thoughts. If it were not, I could never assert
anything of it; could never judge, or know it. The stress he lays on the
first horn of the dilemma has been shown. It remains to show his
recognition of the second horn, and to find out whether or not he
discovers any real reconciliation between the two.
Bosanquet sums up the section of the introduction on knowledge and its
content, truth, with the following paragraph:
The real world for every individual is thus emphatically _his_
world; an extension and determination of his present perception,
which perception is to him not indeed reality as such, but his
point of contact with reality as such. Thus in the enquiry which
will have to be undertaken as to the logical subject of the
judgment, we shall find that the subject, however it may shift,
contract, and expand, is always in the last resort some greater or
smaller element of this determinate reality, which the individual
has constructed by identifying significant ideas with that world
of which he has assurance through his own perceptive experience.
In analyzing common judgment it is ultimately one to say that _I
judge_ and that _the real world for me, my real world, extends
itself_, or maintains its organized extension. This is the
ultimate connection by which the distinction of subject and
predication is involved in the act of affirmation or enunciation
which is the differentia of judgment. (Pp. 3, 4).
Here the subject of the judgment appears as an element of a reality
_which the individual has constructed_ by identifying significant ideas
with that world of which he has assurance through his own perceptive
experience. But the very point with reference to the subject of the
judgment previously emphasized is that it is not and cannot be something
which the individual has constructed. The subject of the judgment must
be reality, and reality does not consist of ideas, even if it be
determined by them. It does not mend matters to explain that the
individual has constructed his real world by identifying significant
ideas with that world of which he has assurance through his own
perceptive experiences, because, as we have seen, "the individual's
perceptive experiences" either turn out to be merely similar mental
constructions made at a prior time, so that nothing is gained by
attaching to them, or else they mean once more the mere shock of contact
which is supposed to give assurance that some sort of reality exists,
but which gives no assurance of what it is. That and what, this and
thisness still remain detached. When he talks of _the real world for any
individual_ we are left entirely in the dark as to what the relation
between _the real world as it is for any individual_ and _the real
world as it is for itself_ may be, or how the individual is to gain any
assurance that _the real world as it is for him_ represents _the real
world as it is for itself_.
Another attempt at a reconciliation of these opposing views leaves us no
better satisfied. The passage is as follows:
The real world, as a definite organized system, is _for me_ an
extension of this present sensation and self-feeling by means of
judgment, and it is the essence of judgment to effect and sustain
such an extension. It makes no essential difference whether the
ideas whose content is pronounced to be an attribute of reality
appear to fall within what is given in perception, or not. We
shall find hereafter that it is vain to attempt to lay down
boundaries between the given and its extension. The moment we try
to do this we are on the wrong track. The given and its extension
differ not absolutely but relatively; they are continuous with
each other, and the metaphor by which we speak of an extension
conceals from us that the so-called "given" is no less artificial
than that by which it is extended. It is the character and quality
of being directly in contact with sense-perception, not any fixed
datum of content, that forms the constantly shifting center of the
individual's real world, and spreads from that center over every
extension which the system of reality receives from judgment. (P.
77.)
In this passage by the "given" he evidently means the content of sensory
experience, the thisness, the what. It is, as he says, of the same stuff
as that by which it is extended. Both the given and that by which it is
extended are artificial in the sense of not being _real_ according to
Bosanquet's interpretation of reality; they are ideas. But if all this
is admitted, what becomes of the possibility of knowledge? Bosanquet
undertakes to rescue it by assuring us again that it is the character
and quality of being directly in contact with sense-perception, not any
fixed datum of content, that forms the center of the individual's real
world and gives the stamp of reality to his otherwise ideal extension of
this center. Here again we find ourselves with no evidence that the
_content_ of our knowledge bears any relation to reality. We have merely
the feeling of vividness attached to sensory experience which seems to
bring us the certainty that there is some sort of a reality behind it,
but this is not to give assurance that our ideal content even belongs
rightfully to that against which we have bumped, much less of _how_ it
belongs--and only this deserves the title "knowledge."
In the chapter on "Quality and Comparison," in which he takes up the
more detailed treatment of the simplest types of judgment of perception,
he comes back to the same contradiction, and again attempts to explain
how both horns of his dilemma must be true. The passage is this:
The Reality to which we ascribe the predicate is undoubtedly
self-existent; it is not _merely_ in my mind or in my act of
judgment; if it were, the judgment would only be a game with my
ideas. It is well to make this clear in the case before us, for in
the later forms of the judgment it will be much disguised. Still
the reality which attracts my concentrated attention is also
within my act of judgment; it is not even the whole reality
present to my perception; still less of course the whole
self-existent Reality which I dimly presuppose. The immediate
subject of the judgment is a mere aspect, too indefinite to be
described by explicit ideas except in as far as the qualitative
predication imposes a first specification upon it. _This_ Reality
_is_ in my judgment; it is the point at which the actual world
impinges upon my consciousness as real, and it is only by judging
with reference to this point that I can refer the ideal content
before my mind to the whole of reality which I at once believe to
exist, and am attempting to construct. The Subject is both in and
out of the Judgment, as Reality is both in and out of my
consciousness. (Pp. 113, 114.)
The conclusion he reaches is a mere restatement of the difficulty. The
problem he is trying to solve is how the subject _can_ be both in and
out of the judgment, and how the subject without is related to the
subject within. The mere assertion that it is so does not help us to
understand it. His procedure seems like taking advantage of two
meanings of sense-perception, its conscious quality and its brute abrupt
immediacy, and then utilizing this ambiguity to solve a problem which
grows out of the conception of judgment as a reference of idea to
reality.
Turning from his treatment of the world of fact to his discussion of the
world of idea, from the subject to the predicate, as it appears in his
theory of the judgment we find again a paradox which must be recognized
and cannot be obviated. An idea is essentially a meaning. It is not a
particular existence whose essence is uniqueness as is the case with the
subject of the judgment, but is a meaning whose importance is that it
may apply to an indefinite number of unique existences. Its
characteristic is universality. And yet an idea regarded as a psychical
existence, an idea as a content in my mind, is just as particular and
unique as any other existence. How, then, does it obtain its
characteristic of universality? Bosanquet's answer is that it must be
universal by means of a reference to something other than itself. Its
meaning resides, not in its existence as a psychical image, but in its
reference to something beyond itself. Now, any idea that is affirmed is
referred to reality, but do ideas exist which are not being affirmed? If
so, their reference cannot be to reality. Bosanquet discusses the
question in the second section of his introduction as follows:
It is not easy to deny that there is a world of ideas or of
meanings, which simply consists in that identical reference of
symbols by which mutual understanding between rational beings is
made possible. A _mere_ suggestion, a _mere_ question, a _mere_
negation, seem all of them to imply that we sometimes _entertain_
ideas without affirming them of reality, and therefore without
affirming their reference to be a reference to something real or
their meaning to be fact. We may be puzzled indeed to say what an
idea can mean, or to what it can refer, if it does not mean or
refer to something real--to some element in the fabric
continuously sustained by the judgment which is our consciousness.
On the other hand, it would be shirking a difficulty to neglect
the consideration that an idea, while denied of reality, may
nevertheless, or even must, possess an identical and so
intelligible reference--a symbolic value--for the rational beings
who deny it. A reference, it may be argued, must be a reference to
something. But it seems as if in this case the something were the
fact of reference itself, the rational convention between
intelligent beings, or rather the world which has existence,
whether for one rational being or for many, merely as contained in
and sustained by such intellectual reference.
I only adduce these considerations in order to explain that
transitional conception of an objective world or world of
meanings, distinct from the real world or world of facts, with
which it is impossible wholly to dispense in an account of thought
starting from the individual subject. The paradox is that the real
world or world of fact thus seems for us to fall within and be
included in the objective world or world of meanings, as if all
that is fact were meaning, but not every meaning were fact. This
results in the contradiction that something is objective, which is
not real. (Pp. 4, 5.)
In the seventh section of the introduction Bosanquet explains his
meaning further by what the reader is privileged to regard as a flight
of the imagination--a mere simile--which he thinks may, nevertheless,
make the matter clearer.
We might try to think that the world, _as known to each of us_, is
constructed and sustained by his individual consciousness; and
that every other individual also frames for himself, and sustains
by the action of his intelligence, the world in which he in
particular lives and moves. Of course such a construction is to be
taken as a reconstruction, a construction by way of knowledge
only; but for our present purpose this is indifferent. Thus we
might think of the ideas and objects of our private world rather
as corresponding to than as from the beginning identical with
those which our fellow-men are occupied in constructing each
within his own sphere of consciousness. And the same would be true
even of the objects and contents within our own world, in as far
as an act or effort would be required to maintain them, of the
same kind with that which was originally required to construct
them.... Thus the paradox of reference would become clearer. We
should understand that we refer to a correspondence by means of a
content. We should soften down the contradiction of saying that a
name to meet which we have and can get nothing but an idea,
nevertheless does not stand for that idea but for something else.
We should be able to say that the name stands for those elements
in the idea which correspond in all our separate worlds, and in
our own world of yesterday and of today, considered as so
corresponding. (Pp. 45, 46.)
According to this view, the idea obtains the universality which
constitutes it an idea by a sort of process of elimination. It is like a
composite photograph. It selects only the common elements in a large
number of particular existences, and thus succeeds in representing, or
referring to, all the particular existences which have gone to make it
up. But when we come to consider the bearing which this view of
universality, or generalized significance, has on our estimate of the
knowledge-process, we feel that it has not solved the problem for us. In
the first place, the idea _in its existence_ is just as particular when
regarded as made up of the common elements of many ideas as is any of
the ideas whose elements are taken. A composite photograph is just as
much a single photograph as any one of the photographs which are taken
to compose it. The chasm between the particularity of the psychical
image and the universality of its meaning is not bridged by regarding
the content of the image as made up by eliminating unlike elements in a
number of images. The stuff with which thought has to work is still
nothing more than a particular psychical image, and the problem of what
gives it its logical value as a general significance is still unsolved.
Nor does it seem possible to find anything in the _existence_ of the
image which could account for its reference to something outside of
itself. The _fact_ of reference itself becomes an ultimate mystery.[48]
But even waiving this difficulty, the judgment must still
appear truncated, if it really totally disregard a part of its
content--_i. e._, the particular existence of the image as part of the
judging consciousness. The theory holds that the particular existence of
the image has no logical value. It is only its meaning, or general
reference, which has logical value. But the image _qua_ image is just as
real as that to which it is supposed to refer. If the judgment really
does ignore its existence, then it ignores a portion of the reality it
attempts to represent, and stands self-confessed as a failure.[49] At
still another point, ideas, as Bosanquet represents them, prove to be
unsatisfactory tools to use in the work of building up reality. In
Bosanquet's words: "The meaning tyrannizes over the psychical image in
another respect. Besides crushing out of sight its particular and
exclusive existence, it also crushes out part of its content" (p. 74).
The idea, as we use it, is not, as to content, a complete or accurate
representation of anything real. To take Bosanquet's illustration:
Some one speaks to me of the Ægean sea, which I have never seen.
He tells me that it is a deep blue sea under a cloudless sky,
studded with rocky islands. The meanings of these words are a
problem set to my thought. I have to meet him in the world of
objective references, which as intelligent beings we have in
common. How I do this is my own affair, and the precise images at
my command will vary from day to day, and from minute to minute.
It sounds simple to say that I combine my recollections of sea and
sky at Torbay with those of the island-studded waters of Orkney
or the Hebrides. Even so, there is much to adjust and to neglect;
the red cliffs of Torbay, and the cloudy skies of the north. But
then again, my recollections are already themselves symbolic
ideas; the reference to Torbay or the Hebrides is itself a problem
set to thought, and puts me upon the selection of index-elements
in fugitive images that are never twice the same. I have _first_
to symbolize the color of Torbay, using for the purpose any blue
that I can call to mind, and fixing, correcting, subtracting from,
the color so recalled, till I reduce it to a mere index quality;
and _then_ I have to deal in the same way with the meaning or
significant idea so obtained, clipping and adjusting the qualities
of Torbay till it seems to serve as a symbol of the Ægean. (Pp.
74, 75.)
And by the time all this is performed what sort of a representation of
reality is the idea? Evidently a very poor and meager and fragmentary
one.
It is so poor and fragmentary, that it cannot itself be that which is
affirmed of reality. It must be some other fuller existence to be found
in the world of meanings which is affirmed. And yet how the meager
content of the idea succeeds in referring to the world of meanings, and
acting as the instrument for referring a meaning to reality, is not at
all clear. It seems impossible to explain reference intelligibly by the
concept of a _correspondence_ of contents.
The fundamental difficulty in the interpretation of the predicate is the
same one that we encountered in the interpretation of the subject. If
the predicate is to be affirmed of reality (and if it be not, it has no
logical value), then it must, when affirmed, be in some sense an
accurate representation of reality. But the predicate is an idea, and,
moreover, an idea which is, both in its existence and in its meaning
palpably the outcome of transformations wrought upon given sensory
contents by the individual consciousness. Since the one point of contact
with reality is in sensory experience, the more simple sensory
experiences are reacted upon and worked over, the farther they recede
from reality. The idea seems, therefore, in its very essence, a thing
which never can be affirmed of reality. As image it is itself a reality,
but not affirmed; as meaning it is that reality (the image) manipulated
for individual ends. Why suppose that by distorting reality we get it in
shape to affirm _of_ reality? Moreover, the farther an idea is removed
from immediate sensory experience--in other words, the more abstract it
becomes--the less is the possibility of affirming it of reality. The
final outcome of this point of view, if we adhere rigorously to its
logic is that the more thinking we do, the less we know about the real
world. Bosanquet avoids this conclusion by a pure act of faith. If
knowledge is to be rescued, we must believe that the work done by
consciousness upon the bits of reality given in sensory experience
really does succeed in building up a knowledge of reality for us. As
Bosanquet puts it: "The presentation of Reality, qualified by an ideal
content, is one aspect of Subject and Predication; and my individual
percipient consciousness determining itself by a symbolic idea is the
other. That the latter is identified with the former follows from the
claim of conscious thought that its nature is to know."[50] (P. 83.)
To sum up the situation, Bosanquet starts out with the assumption that
by knowledge we must mean knowledge of a world entirely independent of
our ideas. If we fail to make this assumption, knowledge becomes merely
a relation between ideas. But its whole importance seems to us to rest
on the conviction that it does give us knowledge of a world which is
what it is quite independently of our ideas about it, and cannot in any
sense be modified by what we think about it. What knowledge does is to
give us a copy or representation of the real world, whose value depends
on the accuracy of the representation. And yet when we examine any
individual knowing consciousness, the subject which appears within the
judgment is never some portion of the world which exists outside of the
knowing consciousness, but always some portion of the world which exists
within the knowing consciousness, and which is constituted by the
knowledge process. The predicate which is affirmed of reality is
constantly found to derive its meaning, its generalized significance,
not from its correspondence with, or reference to, the real world
outside of the knowing consciousness, but from reference to a world of
meanings, which consists in a sort of convention among rational
beings--a world whose existence is distinctly within the knowing
consciousness and not outside of it.[51] Between the real world, as
Bosanquet conceives it, and the world of knowledge, we find inserted on
the side of the subject, the world _as known to each of us_, and on the
side of the predicate, the _objective world of meanings_. Neither of
these is the real world. Both of them are ideal, _i. e._, are
constructions of the individual consciousness. We nowhere find any
satisfactory explanation of how these ideal worlds are related to the
real world. There is merely the assertion that we must believe that they
represent the real world in order that we may believe that knowledge
exists. But the fact remains that whenever we try to analyze and explain
any particular judgment, what we find ourselves dealing with is always
the world as it exists to us as subject, and the objective world of
meanings as predicate. If we stop here, then knowledge turns out to be
just what Bosanquet asserted at the outset that it was _not, i. e._, a
relation between ideas. When we demand a justification for going farther
than this, we find none except the claim of conscious thought that its
nature is to know--a claim whose justice we have no possible means of
testing, and which would not, even if admitted, be of the slightest
value in deciding which _particular_ judgment is true and which false.
Bosanquet's development of his subject has proved to be throughout the
necessary logical outcome of the presuppositions with reference to
reality from which he starts. The fundamental difficulty of erecting a
theory of the knowledge-process upon such a basis is recognized by him
at the start in a passage already quoted: "If the object-matter of
reality lay genuinely outside the system of thought, not only our
analysis, but thought itself, would be unable to lay hold of reality"
(p. 2). But, in spite of this assertion, his fundamental conception of
reality remains that of a system which does lie outside the
thought-process. His theory is an attempt to reconcile the essentially
irreconcilable views that reality is outside of the thought-process, and
that it is inside of the thought-process, and he succeeds only by
calling upon our faith that so it is.
If it be true, as it seems to him to be, that we are compelled to adhere
to both of these views of reality, then surely there is no other
outcome. It means, however, that we finally resign all hope of _knowing_
reality. We may _have faith_ in its existence, but we have no way of
deciding what particular judgment has reality in it as it should have
it, and what as it should not. All stand (and fall) on the same basis.
But does not Bosanquet himself point out a pathway which, if followed
farther, would reach a more satisfactory view of the realm of knowledge?
He has shown us that the only sort of reality _we know_, or can know, is
the reality which appears within our judgment-process--the reality as
known to us. Would it not be possible to drop the presupposed reality
outside of the judgment-process (with which judgment is endeavoring to
make connections) and content ourselves with the sort of reality which
appears within the judgment-process? In other words, may there not be a
satisfactory view of reality which frankly recognizes its organic
relation to the knowledge-process, without at the same time destroying
its value as reality? Is it possible to admit that reality is in a sense
constituted in the judgment without making it at the same time the
figment of the individual imagination--"a game with ideas"?
Let us assume for the moment that the real difficulty with Mr.
Bosanquet's conception, the error that keeps him traveling in his
hopeless circles, is the notion that truth is a matter of reference of
ideas as such to reality as such, leading us to oscillate between the
alternatives that either all ideas have such reference, and so are true,
constitute knowledge; or else none have such reference, and so are
false; or else are mere ideas to which neither truth nor falsity can be
attributed. Let us ask if truth is not rather some _specific_ relation
within experience, something which characterizes one idea rather than
another, so that our problem is not how an idea can refer to a reality
beyond itself, but what are the marks by which we discriminate a true
reference from a false one. Then let us ask for the criterion used in
daily life and in science by which to test reality.
If we ask the philosophically unsophisticated individual why he believes
that his house still exists when he is away from it and has no immediate
evidence of the fact, he will tell you it is because he has found that
he can go back to it time and again and see it and walk into it. It
never fails him when he acts upon the assumption that it is there. He
would never tell you that he believed in its existence when he was not
experiencing it because his mental picture of his house stood for and
represented accurately an object in the real world which was
nevertheless of a different order of existence from his mental picture.
When you ask the physicist why he believes that the laws of motion are
true, he will tell you that it is because he finds that bodies always
do behave according to them. He can predict just what a body will do
under given circumstances. He is never disappointed however long he
takes it for granted that the laws of motion are true and that bodies
behave according to them. The only thing that could make him question
their truth would be to find some body which did not prove to behave in
accordance with them. The criterion is the same in both cases. It is the
practical criterion of what as a matter of fact will work. That which
can safely be taken for granted as a basis for further action is
regarded as real and true. It remains real so long, and only so long, as
it continues to fulfil this condition. As soon as it ceases to do so, it
ceases to be regarded as real. When a man finds that he can no longer
obtain the accustomed experience of seeing and entering his house, he
ceases to regard it as real. It has burned down, or been pulled down.
When a physicist finds that a body does not, as a matter of fact, behave
as a given law leads him to expect it would behave, he ceases to regard
the law as _true_.
The contrast between the naïve view of the criterion of reality and the
one we have just been discussing may be brought out by considering how
we should have to interpret from each standpoint the constant succession
of facts in the history of science which have ceased to be facts. For
illustration take the former fact that the earth is flat. It ceased to
be a fact, says the theory we have been reviewing, because further
thought-constructions of the real world convinced us that there is no
reality which the idea "flat-world" represents. The idea "round-world"
alone reproduces reality. It ceased to be a fact, says the naïve view,
because it ceased to be a safe guide for action. Men found they could
sail around the world. Correspondence in one case is pictorial, and its
existence or non-existence can, as we have seen, never be ascertained.
In the other, correspondence is response, adjustment, the co-meeting of
specific conditions in further constituting of experience.
In actual life, therefore, the criterion of reality which we use is a
practical one. The test of reality does not consist in ascertaining the
relationship between an idea and an _x_ which is not idea, but in
ascertaining what experience can be taken for granted as a safe basis
for securing other experiences. The evident advantage of the latter
view, leaving aside for the moment the question of its adequacy in other
respects, is that it avoids the fundamental skepticism at once suggested
by the former. How can we ever be sure that the fact which we have
discovered will stand the test of further thought-constructions? Perhaps
it comes no nearer to reality than the discarded one. Obviously we never
_can_ be sure that any particular content of thought represents reality
so accurately and perfectly that it will never be subject to revision.
If, however, the test of reality is the _adequacy_ of a given content of
consciousness as a stimulus to action, as a mode of control, we have an
applicable standard. A given content of consciousness is real--is a
fact--so long as the act resulting from it is adequate in adaptation to
other contents. It ceases to be real as soon as the act it stimulates
proves to be inadequate.
The view which places the ultimate test of facts, not in any
relationship of contents or existences, but in the practical outcome of
thought, is the one which seems to follow necessarily from a
thoroughgoing conception of the judgment as a function--an act. Our
fundamental biological conception of the activities of living organisms
is that acts exist for the sake of their results. Acts are always
stimulated by some definite set of conditions, and their value is always
tested by the adequacy with which they meet this set of conditions. The
judgment is no exception to the rule. It is always an act stimulated by
some set of conditions which needs readjusting. Its outcome is a
readjustment whose value is and can be tested only by its adequacy. It
is accordingly entirely in line with our reigning biological conceptions
to expect to find the ultimate criterion of truth and reality in the
practical outcome of thought, and to seek for an understanding of the
nature of the "real" and of the "ideal" within the total activity of
judgment.
One difficulty besets us at the outset of such an investigation--that of
being sure that we have a genuine judgment under examination. A large
portion of the so-called judgments considered by logicians, even by
those who emphasize the truth that a judgment is an _act_, are really
not judgments at all, but contents of thought which are the outcome of
judgments--what might be called dead judgments, instead of live
judgments. When we analyze a real act of judgment, as it occurs in a
living process of thought, we find given elements which are always
present. There is always a certain situation which demands a reaction.
The situation is always in part determined and taken for granted, and in
part questioned. It is determined in so far as it is a definite
situation of some sort; it is undetermined in so far as it furnishes an
inadequate basis for further action and therefore comes to consciousness
as a problem. For example, take one of the judgments Bosanquet uses.
"This is bread." We have first to inquire when such a judgment actually
occurs in the living process of thought. A man does not make such a
judgment in the course of his thinking unless there is some instigation
to do so. Perhaps he is in doubt as to whether the white object he
perceives is bread or cake. He wants some bread, but does not want cake.
A closer inspection convinces him that it is bread, and the finished
judgment is formulated in the proposition: "This is bread." What is the
test of the reality of the bread, and the truth of the judgment?
Evidently the act based on it. He eats the bread. If it tastes like
bread and affects him like bread, then the bread was real and the
judgment true. If, on the other hand, it does not taste like bread, or
if it makes him violently ill, then the "bread" was not real and the
judgment was false. In either case, the "this"--the experience to be
interpreted--is unquestioned. The man does not question the fact that he
has a perception of a white object. So much is taken for granted and is
unquestioned within that judgment. But there is another part of the
experience which is questioned, and which remains tentative up to the
conclusion of the act of judgment; that is the doubt as to whether the
perceived white object is bread or something else. Every live judgment,
every judgment as it normally occurs in the vital process of thought,
must have these phases. It is only when a judgment is taken out of its
context and reduced to a mere memorandum of past judgments that it fails
to reveal such parts. The man may, of course, go farther back. He may
wonder whether this is really white or not. But he falls back then on
something else which he takes unquestioningly--a "this" experience of
some sort or other.
So far we have considered the practical criterion of reality merely as
the one which is actually operative in everyday life, and as the one
suggested by our biological theory of the functions of living organisms.
It also offers a suggestion for the modified view of the nature of
reality for which we are in search. Our previous discussion brought out
incidentally a contradiction in the traditional theory of the nature of
reality which it will be worth while to consider further. In dealing
with the subject of the judgment, reality seemed to be made synonymous
with fact. In this sense fact, or the real, was set off against the
ideal. Knowledge was viewed as the correspondence between real and
ideal. When we came to deal with the ideal itself--with the predicate
of the judgment--there appeared in it an element of fact or reality
which proved a serious stumbling-block for the theory. As image in my
mind, the idea is just as real as the so-called facts; but this sort of
reality according to the theory in question is neither the reality about
which we are judging nor a real quality of it. Both Bradley and
Bosanquet are forced to admit that the judgment ignores it, and is in so
far by nature inadequate to its appointed task of knowing reality.
The suggestion which the situation offers for a new theory is that the
view of reality has been too narrow. Reality must evidently be a broad
enough term to cover both fact and idea. If so, the reality must be
nothing more nor less than the total process of experience with its
continual opposition of fact and idea, and their continual resolution
through activity. That which previous theory has been calling the real
is not the total reality, but merely one aspect of it. The problem of
relation of fact and idea is thus the problem of the relation of one
form of reality to another, and so a determinate soluble one, not a
_merely_ metaphysical or general one. Granting this, does it still
remain true that reality in the narrower sense, reality as fact, can be
regarded as a different order of existence from the ideal, and set over
against the thought-process? Evidently not. Fact and idea become merely
two aspects of a total reality. The way in which fact and idea are
distinguished has already been suggested by the practical and biological
criterion of fact, or reality in the narrower sense. From this point of
view, fact is not a different order of existence from idea, but is
merely a part of the total process of experience which functions in a
given way. It is merely that part of experience which is taken as given,
and which serves as a stimulus to action. Thus the essential nature of
fact, or reality in the popular sense, falls not at all on the side of
its content, but on the side of its function. Similarly the ideal is
merely that part of the total experience which is taken as tentative.
There is no problem as to how either of them is related to reality. In
this relationship they _are_ reality. That which previous theories had
been calling the whole of reality now appears as merely one aspect of
it--the fact aspect--artificially isolated from the rest.
When we translate this view of the nature of reality into terms of a
theory of the judgment, we find that we can agree with Bosanquet in his
definition of a judgment. It is an act, and an act which refers an ideal
content to reality. The judgment must be an act, because it is
essentially an adaptation--a reaction toward a given situation. The
subject of the judgment is that part of the content of experience which
represents the situation to be reacted to. It is that which is taken for
granted as given in each case. Now this is, as we have seen, reality--in
the narrower sense of that term. What Bosanquet has been calling reality
now appears merely as the subject of the judgment taken out of its
normal function and considered as an isolated thing. It is an artificial
abstraction. It is accordingly true, as Bosanquet insists, that the
subject of the judgment must always be reality--both in his sense of the
term and in ours. This reality is not real, however, by virtue of its
independence from the judgment, but by virtue of its function within the
judgment. His fundamental problem with reference to the subject of the
judgment is disposed of from this point of view. The subject is wholly
within the judgment, not in any sense outside of it; but it is at the
same time true that the subject of the judgment is reality. The fact
that the subjects of all judgments--even those of the most elementary
type--bear evident marks of the work done by thought upon them, ceases
to be a problem. The subject is essentially a thing constituted by the
doubt-inquiry process, and functioning within it. The necessity for an
intermediate _real world as it is to me_ between the real world and the
knowing process disappears, because the _real world as it is to me_ is
the only real world of which the judgment can take account. There is no
longer any divorce between the content of the subject and its existence.
Reality in his sense of the term--reality as fact--does not fall on the
side of _existence_ in distinction from content, but on the side of
_function_ in distinction from content.
The predicate of the judgment is that part of the total experience which
is taken as doubtful, or tentative. As we have seen, every act of
adaptation involves a definite situation to be reacted to (subject) and
an indefinite or tentative material with which to react (predicate). We
have pointed out that a situation which demands a judgment never appears
in consciousness as mere questioned or questionable situation.[52] There
is always present, as soon as the doubt arises, some sort of tentative
solution. This is the predicate or idea. Just as the fact, or real in
the narrower sense, is that which is taken as given in the situation, so
the ideal is that which is taken as tentative. Its ideality does not
consist in its reference to another order of existence, the objective
world of meanings, but in its function within the judgment, the estimate
of the whole situation as leading up to the adequate act. Just as we no
longer have any need for the mediation of the _real world as known to
me_ between subject and reality, so we no longer need _the objective
world of meanings_ to bridge the chasm between the predicate and
reality. The difficulty of understanding how ideas can be used to build
up facts disappears when we regard fact and idea, not as different
orders of existence, but as contents marking different phases of a total
function.
Ideas, as Bosanquet represented them, proved to be extremely
unsatisfactory tools to use in building up a knowledge of reality. In
the first place, their value as instruments of thought depends upon
their universality. We have already reviewed Bosanquet's difficulties in
attempting to explain the universality of ideas. The universality of an
idea cannot reside in its mere existence as image. Its existence is
purely particular. Its universality must reside in its reference to
something outside of itself. But no explanation of how the particular
existence--image--could refer to another and fuller content of a
different order of existence could be discovered. The fact of reference
remained an ultimate mystery. From the new point of view the image gains
its universality through its organizing function. It represents an
organized habit which may be brought to bear upon the present situation,
and which serves, by directing action, to organize and unify experience
as a whole. It is only as function that the concept of reference can be
made intelligible.
Of course, considered as content, the idea is just as particular from
this point of view as from any other. We still have to discuss the
question as to whether or not the particularity of the idea has a
logical value. The fact that it had none in Bosanquet's theory sets a
limit to the validity of thought. But if the real test of the validity
of a judgment is the act in which it issues, then the existential aspect
of the idea must have logical value. The existential aspect of the idea
is the "my" side of it. It is as my personal experience that it exists.
But it is only as my idea that it has any impulsive power, or can issue
in action. Far from being ignored, therefore, the existential aspect is
essential to the logical, the determinative, value of an idea.
Ideas, according to the representational theory of knowledge, proved to
be a poor medium for knowing reality in still another respect. They are
in their very nature contents that have been reduced from the fulness
of experience to mere index-signs. Even though their reference to a
fuller content in the objective world of meanings presented no problem,
still this objective world of meanings is far removed from reality. And
yet, in order to know, we must be able to affirm ideas of reality. On
the functional theory of ideas, their value does not rest at all upon
their representational nature. They are not taken either in their
existence or in their meaning as representations of any other content.
They are taken as contents which mark a given function, and their value
is determined entirely by the adequacy of the function of which they are
the conscious expression. Their content may be as meager as you please.
It may have been obtained by a long process of reducing and transforming
sensory experience, but if it serve to enable its possessor to meet the
situation which called it up with the appropriate act, then it has truth
and value in the fullest sense. The reduction of the idea to a mere
index-sign presents no problem when we realize that it is the tool of a
given function, not the sign for a different and fuller content. The
idea thus becomes a commendable economy in the thought-process, rather
than a reprehensible departure from reality.
We have already upon general considerations criticised the point of view
which holds that ideality consists in reference to another content. In
arguing that this reference cannot be primarily to reality itself, but
rather to an intermediate world of meanings, Bosanquet cites the
question and the negative judgment. In the question ideas are not
affirmed of reality, and in negation they are definitely denied of
reality, hence their reference cannot be to reality. It must therefore
be to an objective world of meanings. It may be worth while to point out
in passing that, from the functional point of view, the part played by
ideas in the question and in negative judgment is the same that it is in
affirmation.
We have brought out the fact that all judgment arises in a doubt. The
earliest stage of judgment is accordingly a question. Whether the
process stops at that point, or is carried on to an affirmation or
negation, depends upon the particular conditions. The ideas which appear
in questions present no other problem than those of affirmation. They
are ideas, not by virtue of their reference to another content in the
world of meanings, but by virtue of their function, _i. e._, that of
constituting that part of the total experience which is taken as
doubtful, and hence as in process.
In order to make this point clear with reference to negative judgments,
it will be necessary to consider the relation of negative and positive
judgments somewhat more in detail. All judgment is in its earliest
stages a question, but a question is never _mere_ question. There are
always present some suggestions of an answer, which make the process
really a disjunctive judgment. A question might be defined as a
disjunctive judgment in which one member of the disjunction is expressed
and the others implied. If the process goes on to take the form of
affirmation or negation, one of the suggested answers is selected. To
follow out the illustration of the bread used above, the judgment arises
in a doubt as to the nature of the white object perceived, but the doubt
never takes the form of a blank question. It at once suggests certain
possible solutions drawn from the mass of organized experience at the
command of the person judging. At this stage the judgment is
disjunctive. In the illustration it would probably take the form: "This
is either bread or cake." The further course of the judgment rejects the
cake alternative, and selects the bread, and the final outcome of the
judgment is formulated in the proposition: "This is bread." But how did
it happen that it did not take the form: "This is not cake"? That
proposition is also involved in the outcome, and implied in the judgment
made. The answer is that the form taken by the final outcome depends
entirely on the direction of interest of the person making the judgment.
If his interest happened to lie in obtaining bread, then the outcome
would naturally take the form: "This is bread," and his act would
consist in eating it. If he happened to want cake, the natural form
would be, "This is not cake," and his act would consist in refraining
from eating. In other words, the question as to whether a judgment turns
out to be negative or positive is a question of whether the stress of
interest happens to fall on the selected or on the rejected portions of
the original disjunction. Every determination of a subject through a
predicate includes both. The selection of one or the other according to
interest affects the final formulation of the process, but does not
change the relations of its various phases. An idea in a negative
judgment is just what it is in a positive judgment. In neither case is
it constituted an idea by reference to some other content.
So far we have outlined Bosanquet's theory of the judgment; have noted
the apparently insoluble problems inherent in his system, and have
sketched a radically different theory which offered a possible solution
for his difficulties. It now remains to develop the implications of the
new theory further by comparing its application to some of the more
important problems of logic with that of Bosanquet. In closing we shall
have to inquire to what extent the new theory of the judgment with its
metaphysical implications has proved more satisfactory than that of
Bosanquet.
The special problems to be considered are (1) the relation of judgment
to inference; (2) the parts of the judgment and their relationship; (3)
the time element in the judgment; and (4) the way in which one judgment
can be separated from another.
1. The discussion of the relation between judgment and inference comes
up incidentally in Bosanquet's treatment of the distinction between a
judgment and a proposition (p. 79). The proposition, he says, is merely
the enunciative sentence which represents the act of thought called
judgment. With this distinction we should agree. In his discussion of
the point, however, he criticises Hegel's doctrine that a judgment is
distinguished from a proposition in that a judgment maintains itself
against a doubt, while a proposition is a mere temporal affirmation, not
implying the presence of a doubt. The ground of his criticism is that
judgment must be regarded as operative before the existence of a
conscious doubt, and that, while it is true, as Hegel suggests, that
judgment and inference begin together, they both begin farther back than
the point at which conscious doubt arises. Doubt marks the point at
which inference becomes conscious of its ground. Now, it is undoubted
that inferences in which the ground is implicit exist at an earlier
stage of experience than those in which it is explicit. The former we
usually call simple apprehension, and the latter judgment. What
Bosanquet wishes to do is to make the term "judgment" cover both the
implicit and the explicit activities. The question at once arises
whether such a use of terms is accurate. There is certainly a wide
difference between an inference which is conscious of its ground, and
one which is not. It is conceivably a distinction of philosophic
importance. To slur the difference by applying one name to both
accomplishes nothing. It will be remembered that the presence of a
conscious doubt is the criterion of judgment adopted in the standpoint
from which we have been criticising Bosanquet's theory. We should
accordingly make the term "inference" a wider one than the term
"judgment." A judgment is an inference which is conscious of its ground.
Since fact and idea have been represented as constituted in and through
judgment, the question which at once suggests itself is: What, from such
a standpoint, is the criterion of fact and idea in the stage of
experience previous to the appearance of judgment? The answer is that
the question involves the psychological fallacy. There is no such
distinction as fact and idea in experience previous to the appearance of
judgment. The distinction between fact and idea arises only at the
higher level of experience at which inference becomes conscious of its
grounds. To ask what they were previous to that is to ask _what_ they
were before they _were_--a question which, of course, cannot be
answered.
Our reason for not adopting Hegel's distinction between a judgment and a
proposition would accordingly not be the same as Bosanquet's. The
question has already been touched upon in the distinction between dead
and live judgments. What Hegel calls a proposition is really nothing but
a dead judgment. His illustration of a temporal affirmation is the
sentence: "A carriage is passing the house." That sentence would be a
judgment, he says, only in case there were some doubt as to whether or
not a carriage was passing. But the question to be answered first is:
When would such a "statement" occur in the course of our experience? It
is impossible to conceive of any circumstances in which it would
naturally occur, unless there were some doubt to be solved either of our
own or of another. Perhaps one is expecting a friend, and does not know
at first whether it is a carriage or a cart which is passing. Perhaps
some one has been startled, and asks: "What is this noise?" What Hegel
wishes to call a proposition is, accordingly, nothing but a judgment
taken out of its setting.
2. In dealing with the traditional three parts of the judgment--subject,
predicate, and copula--Bosanquet disposes of the copula at once, by
dividing the judgment into subject and predication. But the two terms
"subject" and "predication" are not co-ordinate. Subject, as he uses it,
is a static term indicating a _content_. Predication is a dynamic term
indicating the act of predicating. It implies something which is
predicated of something else, _i. e._, two contents and the act of
bringing them into relation. Now, if what we understand by the copula is
the _act_ of predicating abstracted from the content which is predicated
of another content, then it does not dispose of the copula as a separate
factor in judgment to include thing predicated and act of predicating
under the single term "predication." The term "predication" might just
as reasonably be made to absorb the subject as well, and would then
appear--as it really is--synonymous with the term "judgment."
But Bosanquet's difficulties with the parts of the judgment are not
disposed of even by the reduction to subject and predication. He goes on
to say:
It is plain that the judgment, however complex, is a single idea.
The relations within it are not relations between ideas, but are
themselves a part of the idea which is predicated. In other words,
the subject must be outside the judgment in order that the content
of the judgment may be predicated of it. If not, we fall back into
"my idea of the earth goes round my idea of the sun," and this, as
we have seen, is never the meaning of "The earth goes round the
sun." What we want is, "The real world has in it as a fact what I
mean by earth-going-round-sun." (P. 81.)
We have already pointed out the difficulties into which Bosanquet's
presupposition as to the nature of reality plunges him. This is but
another technical statement of the same problem. If the subject is
really outside of judgment, then the entire _content_ of the judgment
must fall on the side of predicate, or idea. In the paragraphs that
follow, Bosanquet brings out the point that the judgment must
nevertheless contain the distinction of subject and predicate, since it
is impossible to affirm without introducing a distinction into the
_content_ of the affirmation. Yet he considers this distinction to be
_merely_ a difference within an identity. It serves to mark off the
grammatical subject and predicate, but cannot be the essential
distinction of subject and predicate. His solution of the puzzle is
really the one for which we have been contending, _i. e._, that "the
real world is primarily and emphatically my world," but he still cannot
be satisfied with that kind of a real world as ultimate. Behind the
subject which presents my world he postulates a real world which is not
my world, but which my world represents. It is the relation between this
real world and the total content of a judgment which he considers the
essential relation of judgment. This leaves him--as we have pointed
out--as far as ever from a theory of the relation of thought to reality,
and, moreover, with no criterion for the distinction of subject and
predicate within the judgment. To say that it is a difference within an
identity does not explain how, on a mere basis of content, such a
difference is distinguished within an identity or how it assumes the
importance it actually has. He vibrates between taking the whole
intellectual content as predicate, the reality to be represented as
subject (in which case the copula would be the "contact of
sense-perception") and a distinction appearing without reasonable ground
or bearing _within_ the intellectual content. When subject and predicate
are regarded as the contents in which phases of a function appear, this
difficulty no longer exists.
3. In discussing the time relations within judgment (p. 85) Bosanquet
first disposes of the view which holds that the subject is prior to the
predicate in time, and is distinguished from the predicate by its
priority. He emphasizes the fact that no content of consciousness can
have the significance of a subject, except with reference to something
already referred to it as predicate. But while it cannot be true that
the parts of the judgment fall outside of one another in time, it is yet
evident that in one sense at least the judgment is in time. To make this
clear, Bosanquet draws a provisional distinction between the process of
arriving at a judgment and the completed judgment. The process of
arriving at a judgment is a process of passing from a subject with an
indefinite provisional predicate--a sort of disjunctive judgment--to a
subject with a defined predicate. This process is evidently in time, but
it is as evidently not a transition from subject to predicate. It is, as
he says, a modification, _pari passu_, of both subject and predicate.
The same distinction, he thinks, must hold of the judgment when
completed. But this throws us into a dilemma with reference to the
time-factor in judgment. Time either is or is not an essential factor in
judgment. If it is not essential, then how explain the evident fact that
the judgment as an intellectual process does have duration? If it is
essential, then how explain the fact that its parts do not fall outside
one another in time? Bosanquet evidently regards the former problem as
the easier of the two. His solution is that, while the judgment is an
intellectual process in time, still this is a purely external aspect.
The essential relation between subject and predicate is not in time,
since they are coexistent; therefore time is not an essential element in
judgment.
The first point at which we take issue with this treatment of time in
relation to judgment is in the distinction between the process of
arriving at the judgment and the completed judgment. Bosanquet himself
defines judgment as an intellectual act by which an ideal content is
referred to reality. Now, at what point does this act begin? Certainly
at the point where an ideal content is first applying to reality, and
this, as he points out, is at the beginning of the process which he
describes as the process of arriving at a judgment. It is nothing to the
point that at this stage the predicate is tentative, while later it
becomes defined. His process of arriving at the judgment is exactly the
process we have been describing as the early stages of any and every
judgment. When he talks about the judgment as completed, he has
apparently shifted from the dynamic view of judgment implied in his
definition to a static view. All he could mean by a completed
judgment--in distinction to the total activity of arriving at a
judgment--is the new content of which we find ourselves possessed when
the total process of predication is complete. But this content is not a
judgment at all. It is a new construction of reality which may serve
either as subject or as predicate in future judgments.
Now, if we regard the judgment as the total activity by which an ideal
content is referred to reality, then must we not regard time as an
essential element? Bosanquet answers this question in the negative,
because he believes that if time is an essential element, then the parts
of the judgment must necessarily fall outside one another in time. But
is this necessary? If the essence of judgment is the very modification,
_pari passu_, of subject and predicate, then time must be an essential
element in it, but it is not at all necessary that its elements should
fall outside of one another in time. In other words, the dilemma which
Bosanquet points out on p. 87 is not a genuine one. There is no
difficulty involved in admitting that the judgment is a transition in
time, and still holding that its _parts_ do not fall outside _one
another_ in time. His own solution of the problem--_i. e._, that,
although judgment is an intellectual process in time, still time is not
an essential feature of it, because subject and predicate are coexistent
and judgment is a relation between them--involves a desertion of his
dynamic view of judgment. He defines judgment, not as a relation between
subject and predicate, but as an intellectual _act_.[53]
4. The discussion of the time-element in judgment leads up to the next
puzzle--that as to the way in which one judgment can be marked off from
another in the total activity of thought. Bosanquet has pointed out that
subject and predicate are both of them present at every stage of the
judging process, and are undergoing progressive modification. If,
therefore, we take a cross-section of the process at any point, we find
both subject and predicate present; but a cross-section at one point
would not reveal quite the same subject and predicate as the
cross-section at another point. He comes to the conclusion that judgment
breaks up into judgments as rhomboidal spar into rhomboids (p. 88). It
is, accordingly, quite arbitrary to mark out any limits for a single
judgment. The illustration he gives of the point is as follows:
Take such an every-day judgment of mixed perception and inference
as, "He is coming down stairs and going into the street." It is
the merest chance whether I break up the process thus, into two
judgments as united by a mere conjunction, or, knowing the man's
habits, say, when I hear him half way down stairs, "He is going
out." In the latter case I summarize a more various set of
observations and inferences in a single judgment; but the judgment
is as truly single as each of the two which were before separated
by a conjunction; for each of them was also a summary of a set of
perceptions, which might, had I chosen, have been subdivided into
distinct propositions expressing separate judgments; _e. g._, "He
has opened his door, and is going toward the staircase, and is
half way down, and is in the passage," etc. If I simply say, "He
is going out," I am not a whit the less conscious that I judge all
these different relations, but I then include them all in a single
systematic content "going out." (P. 89.)
But is it a question of merest chance which of these various
possibilities is actualized? Is Bosanquet really looking--as he
thinks--at the actual life of thought, or is he considering, not what as
a matter of fact does take place under a concrete set of circumstances,
but what might take place under slightly differing sets of
circumstances? If it is true that judgment is a crisis developing
through adequate interaction of stimulus and response into a definite
situation, beginning with doubt and ending with a solution of the doubt,
then it is not true that its limits are purely arbitrary. It begins with
the appearance of the problem and its tentative solutions, and ends with
the solution of a final response. It does, of course, depend upon
momentary interest, but this does not make its limits arbitrary, for the
interest is inherent, not external. In the case of Bosanquet's
illustration, the question of whether one judgment or half a dozen is
made is not a question of merest chance. It depends upon where the
interest of the person making the judgment is centered--in other words,
upon what is the particular doubt to be solved. If the real doubt is as
to whether the man will stay in his room or go out, then when he is
heard leaving his room the solution comes in the form: "He is going
out." But if the doubt is as to whether he will stay in his room, go
out, or go into some other room, then the succession of judgments
occurs, each of which solves a problem. "He has opened his door"--then
he is not going to stay in his room; "He is going toward the
staircase"--then he is not going into a room in the opposite direction,
etc. It is impossible to conceive of such a series of judgments as
actually being made, unless each one represents a problematic situation
and its determination. The only time that a man would, as a matter of
fact, choose to break up the judgment, "He is going out," into such a
series, would be the time when each member of the series had its own
special interest as representing a specific uncertain aim or problem.
Nor is it altogether true that in making the judgment, "He is going
out," one is not a whit the less conscious that he judges all these
different relations. He judges only such relations as are necessary to
the solution of the problem in hand. If hearing the man open his door is
a sufficient basis for the solution, then that is the only one which
consciously enters into the formation of the judgment.
We have attempted to bring out in the preceding pages what seem to be
the contradictions and insoluble problems involved in Bosanquet's theory
of the judgment, and to exhibit them as the logical outcome of his
metaphysical presuppositions. We have also tried to develop another
theory of the judgment involving a different view of the nature of
reality, and to show that the new theory is able to avoid the
difficulties inherent in Bosanquet's system. The change in view-point
briefly is this: Instead of regarding the real world as self-existent,
independently of the judgments we make about it, we viewed it as the
totality of experience which is assured, _i. e._, determined as to
certainty or specific availability, through the instrumentality of
judgment. We thus avoided the essentially insoluble problem of how a
real world whose content is self-existent quite outside of knowledge can
ever be correctly represented by ideas. The difficulty in understanding
the relation of the subject and the predicate of judgment to reality
disappears when we cease to regard reality as self-existent outside of
knowledge. Subject and predicate become instrumentalities in the process
of building up reality. Thought no longer seems to carry us farther and
farther from reality as ideas become abstract and recede from the
immediate sensory experience in which contact with the real occurs. On
the contrary, thought carries us constantly toward reality. Finally, we
avoid the fundamental skepticism about the possibility of knowledge
which, from the other standpoint, is forced upon us by the long
succession of facts which have faded into the realm of false opinions,
and the lack of any guarantee that our present so-called knowledge of
reality shall not meet the same fate. From that point of view, reality
seems to be not only unknown, but unknowable.
The criticism sure to be passed upon the alternative view developed is
that the solution of Bosanquet's problems which it affords is not a real
solution, but rather the abandonment of an attempt at a solution. It
represents reality as a thing which is itself in process of development.
It would force us to admit that the reality of a hundred years ago, or
even of yesterday, was not in content the reality of today. A growing,
developing reality is, it will be said, an imperfect reality, while we
must conceive of reality as complete and perfect in itself. The only
answer which can be made is to insist again that we have no right to
assume that reality is such an already completed existence, unless such
an assumption enables us to understand experience and organize it into a
consistent whole. The attempt of this paper has been to show that such a
conception of reality really makes it inherently impossible to give an
intelligible account of experience as a whole, while the view which
regards reality as developing in and through judgment does enable us to
build up a consistent and understandable view of the world. This
suggests that the "perfect" may not after all be that which is finished
and ended, but that whose reality is so abundant and vital as to issue
in continuous self-modification. The Reality that evolves and moves may
be more perfect, less finite, than that which has exhausted itself.
Moreover, only the view that Reality is developmental in quality, and
that the instrument of its development is judgment involving the
psychical in its determination of subject and predicate gives the
psychical as such any significant place in knowledge or in reality.
According to the view of knowledge as representation of an eternal
content, the psychical is a mere logical surd.
VI
TYPICAL STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF JUDGMENT
Logic aims at investigating the general function of knowing. But
knowing, it is commonly asserted, is constituted as judgment.
Furthermore, there is reason to believe that judgment undergoes
well-marked changes in its development. Consequently, an understanding
of the judgment-function and of its epochs in development is of prime
importance. In carrying through the investigation we shall endeavor,
first, to state and to defend a certain presupposition with reference to
the character of the judgment-function; second, to exhibit the
application of this presupposition in the typical stages of judgment.
I
Judgment is essentially _instrumental_. This is the presupposition which
we must explain and make good. And we shall accomplish this by way of an
analysis of judgment as meaning.
It cannot be denied that what we call knowledge is concerned with the
discrimination of valid meaning. To know is to appreciate the _meaning_
of things and the meaning _of things_ is the same with valid meaning.
Judging determines knowledge, and in the same act develops meaning. To
put it otherwise, knowledge is a matter of _content_; _content_ is
_meaning_, and we have knowledge when we have meaning satisfactorily
determined. It is evident, therefore, that if we would understand the
judging-function, we must first make clear to ourselves the nature and
rôle of _meaning_.
Meaning is universally embodied in _ideas_. To know, to understand the
meaning, to get ideas, are the same. Now, in ideas two factors may be
distinguished. First, every idea has as its base an image or emphasized
portion of experience. In some forms of ideation we are more immediately
aware of the presence of images than in others, but no idea--even the
most abstract--can exist apart from an ultimate base. Second, every idea
is equally a function of _reference_ and _control_. As _reference_, the
idea projects in the mind's view an anticipation of experiences and of
the conditions upon which these experiences depend for their
realization; as _control_, ideas are agencies in turning anticipations
into realizations.[54]
To be more specific on both points: Since the days of Galton it has been
almost a commonplace in psychology that ideas are embodied in forms of
imagery which vary for and in different individuals. It has been
maintained, it is true, that in abstract forms of thought, imagery
disappears. This objection is met in two ways. For one, words--the
vehicle of many abstract ideas--involve imagery of a most pronounced
type: for another, every idea, when examined closely, discloses an
image, no matter how much for the time being this has been driven into
obscurity by the characteristics of reference and control. Furthermore,
when we examine the anticipatory aspect of ideas, the presence of
imagery both with reference to outcome and to conditions is so evident
that its presence will scarcely be denied.
The second point may be illustrated in several ways. In everyday life
anticipation and realization are inseparable from the nature and use of
ideas. "Hat" means anticipation of protection to the head and the
tendency toward setting in motion the conditions appropriate to the
realization of this anticipation. The same factors are evident in the
boy's definition of a knife as "something to whittle with." Again it is
maintained that intelligence is an essential factor in human
self-consciousness. By this is meant that human beings are universally
aware in some degree of what they are about. And this awareness consists
in understanding the meaning of their actions, of forecasting the
outcome of various kinds of activity, of apprehending beforehand the
conditions connected with determinate results. Within this sphere we
speak of certain men as being pre-eminently intelligent, meaning that
for such men outcomes are previewed and connected with their appropriate
conditions far beyond the range of ordinary foresight. Finally,
scientific intelligence is essentially of this kind. It aims at
understanding the varying types of process which operate in nature and
thus at possessing itself of information with reference to results to be
expected under determinate conditions. For example, the knowledge
acquired in his researches by Louis Pasteur enabled him to predict the
life or death of animals inoculated with charbon virus according as they
had or had not been vaccinated previously. His information, in other
words, became an instrument for the control and eradication of the
disease. And what is true of this case is true of all science. To the
scientist ideas are "working hypotheses" and have their value only as
they enable him to predict, and to control. And while it is true that
the scientist usually overlooks the so-called _practical_ value of his
discoveries, it is none the less true that in due time the inventor
follows the investigator. The investigator is content to construct and
show the truth of his idea. The inventor assumes the truth of the
investigator's work and carries his idea as a constructive principle
into the complications of life. To both men "knowledge is power,"
although the "power" may be realized in connection with different
interests. But if this be true, ideas can no longer be regarded as
copies in individual experience of some pre-existing reality. They are
rather instruments for transforming and directing experience, by way of
constructing anticipations and the conditions appropriate to their
realization. Herein also consists their truth or falsity. The true idea
is reliable, carrying us from anticipation to realization; the false
idea is unreliable, and fails in bringing the promised result.
Now, in the development of instruments generally, we may distinguish a
rule-of-thumb or more or less unreflective stage of construction, and
one entirely reflective. As to use there is the distinction of inexpert
and expert control. This leads us to expect that in the thought-function
also certain typical stages of construction and of control may be found.
To the investigation of this point we shall next direct attention.
II
In its development from crude to expert forms judgment exhibits three
typical stages--_the impersonal_, _the reflective_, and _the intuitive_.
These we shall consider in order of development. But first it is to be
noticed that these stages of judgment are not to be regarded as hard and
fast distinctions of the kind that no indications of the higher are to
be found in the lower types, but rather as working distinctions within a
process of continuous development.
1. _The impersonal judgment._--Ever since the days of the Greek
grammarians the impersonal judgment has been considered an anomaly in
logic. And the reason is not far to seek. From the time of Aristotle it
has been customary to maintain that judgments, when analyzed, disclose a
subject and a predicate. Logically considered, these appear to be
entirely correlative, for, as Erdmann puts it,[55] "an event without a
substrate, a quality without a subject, is altogether unpresentable."
But there is in all languages a class of judgments, such as, "It rains,"
"It snows," "Fire!" in which no directly asserted subject is
discoverable. To these the name impersonal and subjectless has been
given. Here then is the difficulty. If we admit that the impersonal
expression involves predication, we must, in all consistency, search for
a subject, while at the same time the subject refuses to disclose
itself. In ancient days the orthodox logician confined his search to
language and to the spoken or written proposition. The unorthodox critic
maintained, in opposition to this, that a subject was provided only by
warping and twisting the natural sense of the impersonal expression. And
thus the matter stood until the development of modern comparative
philology. It was then demonstrated beyond the possibility of doubt that
the "it" (or its equivalent) of the impersonal is a purely contentless
form word. Language provides no subject whatsoever. So strong, however,
is the hold of tradition that the search has been renewed. Attention has
been turned upon the mental processes involved, and this time with more
apparent result. Although there has been no general agreement with
reference to the subject, a classification of the different views may
still be made. (_a_) The subject is universal and undetermined; (_b_) it
is individual and more or less determined; (_c_) between these extremes
lies almost every intermediate degree conceivable.
Ueberweg maintains that the subject of the impersonal is the actual
totality of present experience. When we ask, "What rains?" we must
understand a reference to our general environment, in which no special
element is singled out. Sigwart, on the other hand, maintains that the
subject can be construed only as the actual sense-impression. This
diversity of opinion might seem to indicate that, were it not for the
constraining power of theory, a subject would scarcely be thought of
for the impersonal. Still it must be admitted that when we examine the
impersonal expression closely we can discover a sense-impression,
whether definite or indefinite, combined with an idea. This would seem
to give the case to the orthodox logician, for he will at once claim the
sense-impression as the subject and the idea as the predicate of the
judgment. But we must have a care. Predication is usually held to
consist in a _reference_ of predicate _to_ subject. The factors of the
judgment are, as it were, held apart. In the impersonal no such thing as
this can be discovered. The meaning is so close a unity that impression
and idea are entirely fused. We may analyze the expression and find them
there, but by so doing we destroy the immediacy which is an essential
characteristic of the impersonal. In other words, the impersonal does
not analyze itself. It is entirely unconscious of its make-up. And yet
it is definite and applies itself with precision: If I am in a
lecture-hall and hear the fire-alarm, the thought "Fire!" which enters
my mind leads to an immediate change in my conduct. I arise, move
quietly out, and prepare for duty. If, on the other hand, I open the
street door and the rain strikes my face, I ejaculate "Raining!" turn,
reach for my umbrella, and pass out protected. In both cases I act
_knowingly_ and with _meaning_, but I do not analyze the movement either
of thought or of action. A correlate to the unreflective impersonal
judgment is found in early custom. Custom embodies social ideas and is
an instrument for the determination and control of action. Individuals
moved by custom know what they are about and act with precision
according as custom may demand. But it is notorious that custom is
direct and unreflective. It represents social instruments of control
which have grown up without method and which represent the slow
accretion of rule-of-thumb activities through many ages. So in the
impersonal judgment we have a type of intellectual instrument which has
been brought to a high degree of precision in use, but which still
retains the simplicity and certainty of an unquestioned instrument of
action. For this reason, whatever complexity of elements the impersonal
may present to a reflective view, it does not contain to itself.
Consequently it may be best to say that to the impersonal there is
neither subject, predicate, nor reference of the one to the other. These
are distinctions which arise only when the instrument of action has been
questioned and the mind turns back upon the meaning which it has
unhesitatingly used, analyzing, investigating, constructing, laying bare
the method and function of its tools. Thus arises a new and distinctive
type of judgment, viz., the reflective.
2. _The reflective judgment._--By the reflective judgment is to be
understood that form of meaning whose structure and function have become
a problem to itself. The days of naïve trust and spontaneous action have
gone by. Inquiry, criticism, aloofness, stay the tendency to immediate
action. Meaning has grown worldly wise and demands that each situation
shall explain itself and that the general principles and concrete
applications of its own instruments shall be made manifest. Hence in the
various forms of reflective thought we find the progressive steps in
which meaning comes to full consciousness of its function in experience.
The demonstrative judgment (the simplest of the reflective type) carries
doubt, criticism, construction, and assertion written on the face of it.
For example, in the expression, "That is hot," we do not find the
directness and immediacy of response characteristic of the simpler
impersonal "hot." Instead, we note a clash of tendencies, a suspension
of the proposed action, a demand for and a carrying out of a
reconsideration of the course of action, the emergence of a new meaning,
and the consequent redirection of activities. An iron lies upon the
hearth; I stretch out my hand to return it to its place; I stop
suddenly, having become conscious of signs of warmth; the thought arises
in my mind, "That is hot;" I experiment and find my judgment correct; I
search for a cloth, and thus protected carry out my first intention.
Again, a hunter notes a movement in the thicket, quickly raises his gun,
and is about to fire. Something in the movement of the object arrests
him. He stops, thinking, "That is a man, perhaps." What has caught the
eye has arrested his action, has become a demand, and not until the
situation has become clear can the hunter determine what to do. In other
words, he must reflectively assure himself what the object is before he
can satisfy himself as to how he should act. Subject and predicate have
arisen and have consciously played their parts in the passage from doubt
to decision.
Under the heading "individual judgments" are classed such expressions
as, "That ship is a man-o'-war," "Russia opposes the policy of the open
door in China." In both these cases it is evident that an advance in
definiteness of conception and of complexity of meaning has been made,
while at the same time we recognize that the instrumental
characteristics of the thought-movement remain the same. In considering
the subject of the judgment we note that the stimulus presents itself
partly as a determinate factor and partly as a problem--an insistent
demand. The expression, "That ship is a man-o'-war," might be written,
"That is a ship and of the kind man-o'-war," and it thus constitutes
what Sigwart calls a "double synthesis." As used in actual judgment,
however, the two are held together and constitute the statement of a
single stimulus of which a certain portion is evident and a certain
portion is in doubt. The working out of the difficulty is given in the
predicate "is a man-o'-war," in which we at once detect the instrumental
characteristics fundamental to all judgment. To illustrate: At the
close of the battle of Santiago, in the Spanish-American war, smoke
appeared upon the horizon revealing the presence of a strange ship.
Instantly attention was directed to it, and it became a problem for
action--a demand for instrumental information. Soon it was identified as
a man-o'-war, and the American ships were cleared for action. Closer
approach raised a further question with reference to its nationality.
After some debate this also was resolved, and hostile demonstrations
were abandoned.
The universal judgment is sometimes said to exhibit two distinct forms.
Investigation, however, has proved this statement to be incorrect.
Instances taken in themselves and apart from their character are of no
logical significance. Advance is made by weighing instances and not by
counting them. In short, the true universal is the hypothetical
judgment, and the reason for this may be readily shown. The hypothetical
judgment is essentially double-ended. On the one hand, it is a statement
of the problem of action in terms of the conditions which will turn the
problem into a solution. On the other hand, it is an assertion that once
the conditions of action have been determined the result desired may be
attained. Here we note that the judgment has come to clear consciousness
of itself and of the part which it plays in experience. It has now
obtained an insight into the criterion of its legitimate employment,
_i. e._, of its truth and falsity. And this insight makes the
justification of its claim almost self-evident. For, inasmuch as the
hypothetical judgment says, "If such and such conditions be realized,
such and such a result will be obtained," the test of the claim is made
by putting the conditions into effect and watching whether the promised
experience is given. And further, since it has been found that the
judgment formulated as a hypothesis actually accomplishes what it
promises, we must admit that the hypothetical judgment is also
categorical. These two factors cannot be separated from each other. It
is true that the hypothetical judgment reduces every valid meaning to
the form, "_If_ certain conditions be realized," but it as plainly and
positively asserts, "such and such results _will_ be obtained." When we
grasp the absolute correlativity of the hypothetical and categorical
aspects of judgment, we realize at once the essentially instrumental
character of judgment, when it comes to consciousness of its structure
and function. It arises in the self-conscious realization of a problem.
This it reflects upon and sizes up. When the difficulty has been
apprehended, the judgment emerges as the consciousness of the conditions
which will attain the desired end of action freed and unimpeded. This
may be illustrated by reference to the work of Pasteur cited above. His
investigations began in a problem set for him by agricultural conditions
in France. A certain disease had made the profitable rearing of sheep
and cattle almost an impossibility. After long and careful examination
he discovered the beneficial effects of vaccination. To him the
conditions which governed the presence of the disease became apparent,
and this knowledge furnished him with an instrument by means of which
one difficulty was removed from the path of the stock-raiser. In this
illustration we have an epitome of the work accomplished everywhere by
the scientist. It is his task to develop and to reduce to exact terms
instruments of control for the varied activities of life. In its parts
and as a whole each instrument is intelligently constructed and tested
so that its make-up and function are exactly known. Because of this,
reasoned belief now takes the place of unreflective trust as that was
experienced in the impersonal stage of judgment. What at first hand
might appear to be a loss was in reality a gain; the breakdown of the
impersonal was the first step in the development of an instrument of
action conscious of its reason for being, its methods and conditions of
action. These latter constitute the distinctive subject and predicate of
the reflective judgment.
This brings us to the connection between the hypothetical character of
this form of judgment and its universality. And this perhaps will now be
quite apparent. The reflective judgment lays bare an objective
connection between the conditions and outcomes of actions. It proves its
point by actually constructing the event. Such being the case,
universality is no more than a statement of identical results being
predictable wherever like conditions are realized. If it be true that
"man is mortal," then it is an identical statement to insist that,
"Wherever we find men there we shall also find mortality."
And this point brings us naturally to the treatment of the disjunctive
judgment: "A is either B or C or D." In the disjunctive judgment the
demand is not for the construction of a reliable instrument of action,
but for the resolution of a doubt as to which instrument is precisely
fitted to the circumstances. In fact, the disjunctive judgment involves
the identification of the practical problem. When we say of a man, "He
is either very simple or very deep," we have no doubt as to our proper
course of action in either case. If he is simple, then we shall do so
and so; if he is deep, then another course of action follows. We can lay
out alternative courses beforehand, but the point of difficulty lies
here: "But just which is he?" In short, the disjunctive judgment is the
demand for and the attempt at a precise diagnosis of a concrete problem.
To illustrate: A patient afflicted with aphasia is brought to a
physician. The fact that the trouble is aphasia may be quite evident.
But what precisely is the form and seat of the aphasia? To the mind of
the educated physician the problem will take on the disjunctive form:
"This is either subcortical or cortical aphasia. If subcortical,
intelligence will not be impaired; if cortical, the sensor and motor
tracts will be in good condition." Appropriate tests are made and the
subcortical possibilities are shut out. The disjunction disappears and
the judgment emerges: "This is a case of cortical aphasia." But now a
new disjunction arises. It is either the sensory or motor form of
cortical aphasia, and, whichever one of these, it is again one of
several possibilities. As the alternatives arise, the means for
discriminating them arise also; determinate symptoms are observed, and
in due time the physician arrives at the final conclusion: "This is
sensory cortical aphasia of the visual type." Having determined this,
his method of action is assured, and he proceeds to the appropriate
operation. Thus, finally, we are brought to a form of judgment aware not
only of its motive, method, and justification, but also to one aware of
its specific application to individual cases. Thus it would seem as
though judgment had returned upon itself and had completed the
determination of its sphere of action. And in one sense this is true. In
the disjunctive judgment, as inclusive of the motives of the
hypothetical and categorical forms, the reflective judgment would appear
to have come to its limit of development. One thing, however, remains to
be considered, viz., the development from crude to expert uses of
intellectual instruments.
3. _The intuitive judgment._--As stated above, the intuitive type of
judgment depends upon efficiency in the use of judgment. In this regard
there is a great similarity between the impersonal and the intuitive
judgments. Both are immediate and precise. But there is a radical and
essential difference. The impersonal judgment knows nothing of the
strict analysis, insight, and constructive power of the reflective
judgment. The intuitive judgment, on the other hand, includes the
results of reflection and brings them to their highest power.
Paradoxically put, in the intuitive judgment there is so much reflection
that there is no need for it at all. To the intuitive judgment there is
no hesitation, no aloofness. Action is direct, but entirely
self-conscious. That such a type of judgment as the intuitive exists
there can be no doubt. There is all the difference in the world between
the quality of consciousness of a mere layman and that of an expert, no
matter what the line. The layman must size up a situation. It is a
process whose parts are successive, whether much or little difficulty be
experienced. For the expert situations are taken in at a glance, parts
and whole are simultaneous and immediate. Yet the meaning is entirely
exact. The expert judgment is self-conscious to the last degree. While
other individuals are thinking out what to do, the expert has it, sees
the advantage, adjusts, and moves. Demand and solution jump together.
How otherwise can we explain, for example, the action of an expert
ball-player? Witness his rapid reactions, his instantaneous adjustments.
Mistakes of opponents which would never be noticed by the average player
are recognized and seized upon. On the instant the new opening is seen,
the adjustment is evident, the movement made. Illustrations to the same
effect could be drawn from other modes of life, _e. g._, music, the
military life, etc. That intuitive judgments are not more common is a
proof in itself of their distinctive character and value. Only in so far
as we become experts in our special fields of experience and have
reduced our instruments of action to precise control, can we expect the
presence of intuitive judgments. They remain, therefore, as the final
outcome of the judgment-function made perfect in its technique and use.
In conclusion we shall make a brief summary of our investigation and a
criticism of certain current theories of judgment.
Judgment is essentially instrumental. Its function is to construct,
justify, and refine experience into exact instruments for the direction
and control of future experience through action. It exhibits itself
first in the form of instruments developed unsystematically in response
to the hard necessities of life. In a higher stage of development the
instrumental process itself is taken into account, and systematically
developed until in the methodical procedure of science the general
principles of knowledge are laid bare and efficient instruments of
action constructed. Finally, constant, intelligent use results in
complete control, so that within certain spheres doubt and hesitancy
would seem to disappear as to the character of the tools used, and
remain only as a moment in determining their wisest or most appropriate
employ.
The criticism indicated is based upon the instrumental character of
judgment and is directed against all theories which contend that
knowledge is a "copying" or "reproducing" of reality. In whatever form
this "copy" theory be stated, the question inevitably arises how we can
compare our ideas with reality and thus know their truth. On this
theory, what we possess is ever the copy; the reality is beyond. In
other words, such a theory logically carried out leads to the breakdown
of knowledge. Only a theory which contains and constructs its criterion
within its own specific movement can verify its constructions. Such a
theory is the instrumental. Judgment constructs a situation in
consciousness. The values assigned in this situation have a determining
influence upon values further appreciated. The construction arrived at
concerns future weal and woe. Thus gradually a sense of truth and
falsity attaches to the construing of situations. One sees that he
_must_ look beyond _this_ situation, because the way he estimates _this_
situation is fraught with meaning beyond itself. Hence the critically
reflective judgment in which hesitancy and doubt direct themselves at
the attitude, elements, and tools involved in defining and identifying
the situation, instead of at the situation itself _in toto_. Instead of
developing a complex of experience through assigning qualities and
meanings to the _situation_ as such, some one of the quales is selected,
to have _its_ significance determined. It becomes, _pro tempore_, the
situation judged. Or the same thing takes place as regards some "idea"
or value hitherto immediately fastened upon and employed. In either case
we get the reflective judgment, the judgment of pure relationship as
distinct from the constructive judgment. But the judgment of relation,
employing the copula to refer a specified predicate to a specified
object, is after all only for the sake of controlling some immediate
judgment of constructive experience. It realizes itself in forming the
confident habit of prompt and precise mental adjustment to
individualized situations.
VII
THE NATURE OF HYPOTHESIS
In the various discussions of the hypothesis which have appeared in
works on inductive logic and in writings on scientific method, its
structure and function have received considerable attention, while its
origin has been comparatively neglected. The hypothesis has generally
been treated as that part of scientific procedure which marks the stage
where a definite plan or method is proposed for dealing with new or
unexplained facts. It is regarded as an invention for the purpose of
explaining the given, as a definite conjecture which is to be tested by
an appeal to experience to see whether deductions made in accordance
with it will be found true in fact. The function of the hypothesis is to
unify, to furnish a method of dealing with things, and its structure
must be suitable to this end. It must be so formed that it will be
likely to prove valid, and writers have formulated various rules to be
followed in the formation of hypotheses. These rules state the main
requirements of a good hypothesis, and are intended to aid in a general
way by pointing out certain limits within which it must fall.
In respect to the origin of the hypothesis, writers have usually
contented themselves with pointing out the kind of situations in which
hypotheses are likely to appear. But after this has been done, after
favorable external conditions have been given, the rest must be left to
"genius," for hypotheses arise as "happy guesses," for which no rule or
law can be given. In fact, the genius differs from the ordinary plodding
mortal in just this ability to form fruitful hypotheses in the midst of
the same facts which to other less gifted individuals remain only so
many disconnected experiences.
This unequal stress which has been laid on the structure and function of
the hypothesis in comparison with its origin may be attributed to three
reasons: (1) The facts, or data, which constitute the working material
of hypotheses are regarded as given to all alike, and all alike are more
or less interested in systematizing and unifying experience. The purpose
of the hypothesis and the opportunity for forming it are thus
practically the same for all, and hence certain definite rules can be
laid down which will apply to all cases where hypotheses are to be
employed. (2) But beyond this there seems to be no clue that can be
formulated. There is apparently a more or less open acceptance of the
final answer of the boy Zerah Colburn, who, when pressed to give an
explanation of his method of instantaneous calculation, exclaimed in
despair: "God put it into my head, and I can't put it into yours."[56]
(3) And, furthermore, there is very often a strong tendency to disregard
investigation into the origin of that which is taken as given, for,
since it is already present, its origin, whatever it may have been, can
have nothing to do with what it is now. The facts, the data, are _here_,
and must be dealt with as they _are_. Their past, their history or
development, is entirely irrelevant. So, even if we could trace the
hypothesis farther back on the psychological side, the investigation
would be useless, for the rules to which a good hypothesis must conform
would remain the same.
Whether or not it can be shown that Zerah Colburn's ultimate explanation
is needed in logic as little as Laplace asserted a similar one to be
required in his celestial mechanics, it may at least be possible to
defer it to some extent by means of a further psychological inquiry. It
will be found that psychological inquiry into the origin of the
hypothesis is not irrelevant in respect to an understanding of its
structure and function; for origin and function cannot be understood
apart from each other, and, since structure must be adapted to function,
it cannot be independent of origin. In fact, origin, structure, and
function are organically connected, and each loses its meaning when
absolutely separated from each other. It will be found, moreover, that
the data which are commonly taken as the given material are not
something to which the hypothesis is subsequently applied, but that,
instead of this external relation between data and hypothesis, the
hypothesis exercises a directive function in determining what are the
data. In a word, the main object of this discussion will be to contend
against making a merely convenient and special way of regarding the
hypothesis a full and adequate one. Though we speak of facts and of
hypotheses that may be applied to them, it must not be forgotten that
there are no facts which remain the same whatever hypothesis be applied
to them; and that there are no hypotheses which are hypotheses at all
except in reference to their function in dealing with our subject-matter
in such a way as to facilitate its factual apprehension. Data are
selected in order to be determined, and hypotheses are the ways in which
this determination is carried on. If, as we shall attempt to show, the
relation between data and hypothesis is not external, but strictly
correlative, it is evident that this fact must be taken into account in
questions concerning deduction and induction, analytic and synthetic
judgments, and the criterion of truth. Its bearing must be recognized in
the investigation of metaphysical problems as well, for reality cannot
be independent of the knowing process. In a word, the purpose of this
discussion of the hypothesis is to determine its nature a little more
precisely through an investigation of its rather obscure origin, and to
call attention to certain features of its function which have not
generally been accorded their due significance.
I
_The hypothesis as predicate._--It is generally admitted that the
function of the hypothesis is to provide a way of dealing with the data
or subject-matter which we need to organize. In this use of the
hypothesis it appears in the rôle of predicate in a judgment of which
the data, or facts, to be construed constitute the subject.
In his attempts to reduce the movements of the planets about the sun to
some general formula, Kepler finally hit upon the law since known as
Kepler's law, viz., that the squares of the periodic times of the
several planets are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances
from the sun. This law was first tentatively advanced as a hypothesis.
Kepler was not certain of its truth till it had proved its claim to
acceptance. Neither did Newton have at first any great degree of
assurance in regard to his law of gravitation, and was ready to give it
up when he failed in his first attempt to test it by observation of the
moon. And the same thing may be said about the caution of Darwin and
other investigators in regard to accepting hypotheses. The only reason
for their extreme care in not accepting at once their tentative
formulations or suggestions was the fear that some other explanation
might be the correct one. This rejection of other possibilities is the
negative side of the matter. We become confident that our hypothesis is
the right one as we lose confidence in other possible explanations; and
it might be added, without falling into a circle, that we lose
confidence in the other possibilities as we become more convinced of our
hypothesis.
It appears that such may be the relation of the positive and negative
sides in case of such elaborate hypotheses as those of Kepler and
Newton; but is it true where our hypotheses are more simple? It is not
easy to understand why the fact that the hypothesis is more simple, and
the time required for its formulation and test a good deal shorter,
should materially change the state of affairs. The question remains:
Why, if there is no opposition, should there be any uncertainty? In all
instances, then, the hypothesis appears as one among other possible
predicates which may be applied to our data taken as subject-matter of a
judgment.
_The predicate as hypothesis._--Suppose, then, the hypothesis is a
predicate; is the predicate necessarily a hypothesis? This is the next
question we are called upon to answer, and, since the predicate cannot
very well be taken aside from the judgment, our question involves the
nature of the judgment.
While it will not be necessary to give a very complete account of the
various definitions of the judgment that might be adduced, still the
mention of a few of the more prominent ones may serve to indicate that
something further is needed. In definitions of the judgment sometimes
the subjective side is emphasized, sometimes the objective side, and in
other instances there are attempts to combine the two. For instance,
Lotze regards the judgment as the idea of a unity or relation between
two concepts, with the further implication that this connection holds
true of the object referred to. J. S. Mill says that every proposition
either affirms or denies existence, coexistence, sequence, causation, or
resemblance. Trendelenburg regards the judgment as a form of thought
which corresponds to the real connection of things, while Ueberweg
states the case a little differently, and says that the essence of
judgment consists in recognizing the objective validity of a subjective
connection of ideas. Royce points to a process of imitation and holds
that in the judgment we try to portray by means of the ideas that enter
into it. Ideas are imitative in their nature. Sigwart's view of the
judgment is that in it we say something about something. With him the
judgment is a synthetic process, while Wundt considers its nature
analytic and holds that, instead of uniting, or combining, concepts into
a whole, it separates them out of a total idea or presentation. Instead
of blending parts into a whole, it separates the whole into its
constituent parts. Bradley and Bosanquet both hold that in the judgment
an ideal content comes into relation with reality. Bradley says that in
every judgment reality is qualified by an idea, which is symbolic. The
ideal content is recognized as such, and is referred to a reality beyond
the act. This is the essence of judgment. Bosanquet seems to perceive a
closer relation between idea and reality, for although he says that
judgment is the "intellectual function which defines reality by
significant ideas," he also tells us that "the subject is both in and
out of the judgment, as Reality is both in and out of my consciousness."
In all these definitions of judgment the predicate appears as ideal. An
ideal content is predicated of something, whether we regard this
something as an idea or as reality beyond, or as reality partly within
and partly without the act of judging; and it is ideal whether we
consider it as one of the three parts into which judgments are usually
divided, or whether we say, with Bosanquet and Bradley, that subject,
predicate, and copula all taken together form a single ideal content,
which is somehow applied to reality. Moreover, we not only judge about
reality, but it seems to be quite immaterial to reality whether we judge
concerning it or not.
Many of our judgments prove false. Not only do we err in our judgments,
but we often hesitate in making them for fear of being wrong; we feel
there are other possibilities, and our predication becomes tentative.
Here we have something very like the hypothesis, for our ideal content
shows itself to be a tentative attempt in the presence of alternatives
to qualify and systematize reality. It appears, then, on the basis of
the views of the judgment that have been mentioned, that not only do we
find the hypothesis taking its place as the predicate of a judgment, but
the predicate is itself essentially of the nature of a hypothesis.
In the views of the judgment so far brought out, reality, with which it
is generally admitted that the judgment attempts to deal in some way,
appears to lie outside the act of judging. Now, everyone would say that
we make some advance in judging, and that we have a better grasp of
things after than before. But how is this possible if reality lies
without or beyond our act of judging? Is the reality we now have the
same that we had to begin with? If so, then we have made no advance as
far as the real itself is concerned. If merely our conception of it has
changed, then it is not clear why we may not be even worse off than
before. If reality does lie beyond our judgment, then how, in the nature
of the case, can we ever know whether we have approached it or have gone
still farther away? To make any claim of approximation implies that we
do reach reality in some measure, at least, and, if so, it is difficult
to understand how it lies beyond, and is independent of, the act of
judging.
_Further analysis of judgment._--It remains to be seen whether a further
investigation of the judgment will still show the predicate to be a
hypothesis. It is evident that in some cases the judgment appears at the
end of a more or less pronounced reflective process, during which other
possible judgments have suggested themselves, but have been rejected.
The history of scientific discovery is filled with cases which
illustrate the nature of the process by which a new theory is developed.
For instance, in Darwin's _Formation of Vegetable Mould through the
Action of Earth Worms_, we find the record of successive steps in the
development of his hypothesis. Darwin suspected from his observations
that vegetable mold was due to some agency which was not yet determined.
He reasoned that if vegetable mold is the result of the life-habits of
earthworms, _i. e._, if earth is brought up by them from beneath the
surface and afterward spread out by wind and rain, then small objects
lying on the surface of the ground would tend to disappear gradually
below the surface. Facts seemed to support his theory, for layers of red
sand, pieces of chalk, and stones were found to have disappeared below
the surface in a greater or less degree. A common explanation had been
that heavy objects tend to sink in soft soil through their own weight,
but the earthworm hypothesis led to a more careful examination of the
data. It was found that the weight of the object and the softness of the
ground made no marked difference, for sand and light objects sank, and
the ground was not always soft. In general, it was shown that where
earthworms were found vegetable mold was also present, and _vice versa_.
In this investigation of Darwin's the conflicting explanations of
sinking stones appear within the main question of the formation of
vegetable mold by earthworms. The facts that disagreed with the old
theory about sinking stones were approached through this new one. But
the theories had something in common, viz., the disappearance of the
stones or other objects: they differed in their further determination of
this disappearance. In this case it may seem as if the facts which were
opposed to the current theory of sinking stones were seen to be
discrepant only after the earthworm hypothesis had been advanced; the
conflict between the new facts and the old theory appears to have
arisen through the influence of the new theory.
There are cases, however, where the facts seem clearly to contradict the
old theory and thus give rise to a new one. For example, we find in
Darwin's introduction to his _Origin of Species_ the following: "In
considering the origin of species it is quite conceivable that a
naturalist reflecting on the mental affinities of organic beings, on
their embryological relations, their geographical distribution,
geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the
conclusion that species had not been independently created but had
descended, like varieties, from other species." It would seem from this
statement that certain data were found for which the older theory of
independent creation did not offer an adequate explanation. And yet the
naturalist would hardly "reflect" on all these topics in a comparative
way unless some other mode of interpretation were already dawning upon
him, which led him to review the accepted reflections or views.
As a more simple illustration, we may cite the common experience of a
person who is uncertain concerning the identity of an approaching
object, say, another person. At first he may not be sure it is a person
at all. He then sees that it is someone, and as the person approaches he
is inclined to believe him to be an acquaintance. As the supposed
acquaintance continues to approach, the observer may distinguish certain
features that cause him to doubt, and then relinquish his supposition
that it is an acquaintance. Or, he may conclude at once that the
approaching person is another individual he knows, and the transition
may be so readily made from one to the other that it would be difficult
to determine whether the discordant features are discordant before the
new supposition arises, or whether they are not recognized as
conflicting till this second person is in mind. Or, again, the
identification of the new individual and the discovery of the features
that are in conflict with the first supposition may appear to go on
together.
Now, marked lines of likeness appear between this relatively simple
judgment and the far more involved ones of scientific research. In the
more extended scientific process we find data contradicting an old
theory and a new hypothesis arising to account for them. The hypothesis
is tested, and along with its verification we have the rejection, or
rather the modification, of the old theory. Similarly, in case of the
approaching stranger all these features are present, though in less
pronounced degree. In scientific investigation there is an interval of
testing by means of more careful consideration of the data and even
actual experimentation. Before an explanation is accepted subject to
test, a number of others may have been suggested and rejected. They may
not have received even explicit recognition. In case of the
identification of the stranger this feature is also present. Between two
fairly definite attempts to identify the mind does not remain a mere
blank or stationary, but other possible identifications may be suggested
which do not have sufficient plausibility to command serious attention;
they are only comparatively brief suggestions or tendencies.
It is to be noted that in all these instances the first supposition was
not _entirely_ abandoned, but was modified and more exactly determined.
(Why it could not be wholly false and the new one wholly new, will be
considered later in connection with discussion of the persistence and
re-formation of habit.) There was such a modification of the old theory
as would meet the requirements of the new data, and the new explanations
thus contained both old and new features.
We have seen that the predicate of the scientific judgment is a
hypothesis which is consciously applied to certain data. If the
similarity between the scientific judgment and the more immediate and
simple judgment is to be maintained, it is clear that the predicate of
the simple judgment must be of like nature. The structure of the two
varieties of judgment differs only in the degree of explicitness which
the hypothesis acquires. That is, the predicate of a judgment, as such,
is ideal; it is meaning, significant quality. If conditions are such as
to make the one judging hesitant or doubtful the mind wavers; the
predicate is not applied at once to the determination or qualification
of data, and hence comes to more distinct consciousness on its own
account. From being "ideal," it becomes _an_ idea. Yet its sole purpose
and value remains in its possible use to interpret data. Let the idea
remain detached, and let the query whether it be a true predicate
(_i. e_., really fit to be employed in determining the present data)
become more critical, and the idea becomes clearly a hypothesis.[57] In
other words, the hypothesis is just the predicate-function of judgment
definitely apprehended and regarded with reference to its nature and
adequacy.
_Psychological analysis of judgment._--This hypothetical nature of the
predicate will be even more apparent after a further psychological
analysis, which, while applying more directly to the simpler and more
immediate judgments, may be extended to the more involved ones as well.
In psychological terms, we may say, in explanation of the judging
process, that some stimulus to action has failed to function properly as
a stimulus, and that the activity which was going on has thus been
interrupted. Response in the accustomed way has failed. In such a case
there arises a division in experience into sensation content as subject
and ideal content as predicate. In other words, an activity has been
going on in accordance with established habits, but upon failure of the
accustomed stimulus to be longer an adequate stimulus this particular
activity ceases, and is resumed in an integral form only when a new
habit is set up to which the new or altered stimulus is adequate. It is
in this process of reconstruction that subject and predicate appear.
Sensory quality marks the point of stress, or seeming arrest, while the
ideal or imaged aspect defines the continuing activity as projected, and
hence that with which start is to be made in coping with the obstacle.
It serves as standpoint of regard and mode of indicated behavior. The
sensation stands for the interrupted habit, while the image stands for
the new habit, that is, the new way of dealing with the
subject-matter.[58]
It appears, then, that the purpose of the judgment is to obtain an
adequate stimulus in that, when stimulus and response are adjusted to
each other, activity will be resumed. But if this reconstruction and
response were to follow at once, would there be any clearly defined act
of judging at all? In such a case there would be no judgment, properly
speaking, and no occasion for it. There would be simply a ready
transition from one line of activity to another; we should have changed
our method of reaction easily and readily to meet the new requirements.
On the one hand, our subject-matter would not have become a clearly
recognized datum with which we must deal; on the other hand, there would
be no ideal method of construing it.[59] Activity would have changed
without interruption, and neither subject nor predicate would have
arisen.
In order that judgment may take place there must be interruption and
suspense. Under what conditions, then, is this suspense and uncertainty
possible? Our reply must be that we hesitate because of more or less
sharply defined alternatives; we are not sure which predicate, which
method of reaction, is the right one. The clearness with which these
alternatives come to mind depends upon the degree of explicitness of the
judgment, or, more exactly, the explicitness of the judgment depends
upon the sharpness of these alternatives. Alternatives may be carefully
weighed one against the other, as in deliberative judgments; or they may
be scarcely recognized as alternatives, as in the case in the greater
portion of our more simple judgments of daily conduct.
_The predicate is essentially hypothetical._--If we review in a brief
résumé the types of judgment we have considered, we find in the explicit
scientific judgment a fairly well-defined subject-matter which we seek
further to determine. Different suggestions present themselves with
varying degrees of plausibility. Some are passed by as soon as they
arise. Others gain a temporary recognition. Some are explicitly tested
with resulting acceptance or rejection. The acceptance of any one
explanation involves the rejection of some other explanation. During the
process of verification or test the newly advanced supposition is
recognized to be more or less doubtful. Besides the hypothesis which is
tentatively applied there is recognized the possibility of others. In
the disjunctive judgment these possible reactions are thought to be
limited to certain clearly defined alternatives, while in the less
explicit judgments they are not so clearly brought out. Throughout the
various forms of judgment, from the most complex and deliberate down to
the most simple and immediate, we found that a process could be traced
which was like in kind and varied only in degree. And, finally, in the
most immediate judgments where some of these features seem to disappear,
the same account not only appears to be the most reasonable one, but
there is the additional consideration, from the psychological side, that
were not the judgment of this doubtful, tentative character, it would be
difficult to understand how there could be judgment as distinct from a
reflex. It appears, then, that throughout, the predicate is essentially
of the nature of a hypothesis for dealing with the subject-matter. And,
however simple and immediate, or however involved and prolonged, the
judgment may be, it is to be regarded as essentially a process of
reconstruction which aims at the resumption of an interrupted
experience; and when experience has become itself a consciously
intellectual affair, at the restoration of a unified objective
situation.
II
_Criticism of certain views concerning the hypothesis._--The explanation
we have given of the hypothesis will enable us to criticise the
treatment it has received from the empirical and the rationalistic
schools. We shall endeavor to point out that these schools have, in
spite of their opposed views, an assumption in common--something given
in a fixed, or non-instrumental way; and that consequently the
hypothesis is either impossible or else futile.
Bacon is commonly recognized as a leader in the reactionary inductive
movement, which arose with the decline of scholasticism, and will serve
as a good example of the extreme empirical position. In place of
authority and the deductive method, Bacon advocated a return to nature
and induction from data given through observation. The new method which
he advanced has both a positive and a negative side. Before any
positive steps can be taken, the mind must be cleared of the various
false opinions and prejudices that have been acquired. This preliminary
task of freeing the mind from "phantoms," or "eidola," which Bacon
likened to the cleansing of the threshing-floor, having been
accomplished, nature should be carefully interrogated. There must be no
hasty generalization, for the true method "collects axioms from sense
and particulars, ascending continuously and by degrees, so that in the
end it arrives at the most general axioms." These axioms of Bacon's are
generalizations based on observation, and are to be applied deductively,
but the distinguishing feature of Bacon's induction is its carefully
graduated steps. Others, too, had proceeded with caution (for instance
Galileo), but Bacon laid more stress than they on the subordination of
steps.
It is evident that Bacon left very little room for hypotheses, and this
is in keeping with his aversion to anticipation of nature by means of
"phantoms" of any sort; he even said explicitly that "our method of
discovery in science is of such a nature that there is not much left to
acuteness and strength of genius, but all degrees of genius and
intellect are brought nearly to the same level."[60] Bacon gave no
explanation of the function of the hypothesis; in his opinion it had no
lawful place in scientific procedure and must be banished as a
disturbing element. Instead of the reciprocal relation between
hypothesis and data, in which hypothesis is not only tested in
experience, but at the same time controls in a measure the very
experience which tests it, Bacon would have a gradual extraction of
general laws from nature through direct observation. He is so afraid of
the distorting influence of conception that he will have nothing to do
with conception upon any terms. So fearful is he of the influence of
pre-judgment, of prejudice, that he will have no judging which depends
upon ideas, since the idea involves anticipation of the fact.
Particulars are somehow to arrange and classify themselves, and to
record or register, in a mind free from conception, certain
generalizations. Ideas are to be registered derivatives of the given
particulars. This view is the essence of empiricism as a logical theory.
If the views regarding the logic of thought before set forth are
correct, it goes without saying that such empiricism is condemned to
self-contradiction. It endeavors to construct judgment in terms of its
subject alone; and the subject, as we have seen, is always a
co-respondent to a predicate--an idea or mental attitude or tendency of
intellectual determination. Thus the subject of judgment can be
determined only with reference to a corresponding determination of the
predicate. Subject and predicate, fact and idea, are contemporaneous,
not serial in their relations (see pp. 110-12).
Less technically the failure of Bacon's denial of the worth of
hypothesis--which is in such exact accord with empiricism in
logic--shows itself in his attitude toward experimentation and toward
observation. Bacon's neglect of experimentation is not an accidental
oversight, but is bound up with his view regarding the worthlessness of
conception or anticipation. To experiment means to set out from an idea
as well as from facts, and to try to construe, or even to discover,
facts in accordance with the idea. Experimentation not only anticipates,
but strives to make good an anticipation. Of course, this struggle is
checked at every point by success or failure, and thus the hypothesis is
continuously undergoing in varying ratios both confirmation and
transformation. But this is not to make the hypothesis secondary to the
fact. It is simply to remain true to the proposition that the
distinction and the relationship of the two is a thoroughly
contemporaneous one. But it is impossible to draw any fixed line between
experimentation and scientific observations. To insist upon the need of
systematic observation and collection of particulars is to set up a
principle which is as distinct from the casual accumulation of
impressions as it is from nebulous speculation. If there is to be
observation of a directed sort, it must be with reference to some
problem, some doubt, and this, as we have seen, is a stimulus which
throws the mind into a certain attitude of response. Controlled
observation is inquiry, it is search; consequently it must be search for
something. Nature cannot answer interrogations excepting as such
interrogations are put; and the putting of a question involves
anticipation. The observer does not inquire about anything or look for
anything excepting as he is after something. This search implies at once
the incompleteness of the particular given facts, and the
possibility--that is ideal--of their completion.
It was not long until the development of natural science compelled a
better understanding of its actual procedure than Bacon possessed.
Empiricism changed to experimentalism. With experimentalism inevitably
came the recognition of hypotheses in observing, collecting, and
comparing facts. It is clear, for instance, that Newton's fruitful
investigations are not conducted in accordance with the Baconian notion.
It is quite clear that his celebrated four rules for philosophizing[61]
are in truth statements of certain principles which are to be observed
in forming hypotheses. They imply that scientific technique had advanced
to a point where hypotheses were such regular and indispensable factors
that certain uniform conditions might be laid down for their use. The
fourth rule in particular is a statement of the relative validity of
hypothesis as such until there is ground for entertaining a contrary
hypothesis.
The subsequent history of logical theory in England is conditioned upon
its attempt to combine into one system the theories of empiristic logic
with recognition of the procedure of experimental science. This attempt
finds its culmination in the logic of John Stuart Mill. Of his interest
in and fidelity to the actual procedure of experimental science, as he
saw it, there can be no doubt. Of his good faith in concluding his
_Introduction_ with the words following there can be no doubt: "I can
conscientiously affirm that no one proposition laid down in this work
has been adopted for the sake of establishing, or with any reference for
its fitness in being employed in establishing, preconceived opinions in
any department of knowledge or of inquiry on which the speculative world
is still undecided." Yet Mill was equally attached to the belief that
ultimate reality, as it is for the human mind, is given in sensations,
independent of ideas; and that all valid ideas are combinations and
convenient ways of using such given material. Mill's very sincerity made
it impossible that this belief should not determine, at every point, his
treatment of the thinking process and of its various instrumentalities.
In Book III, chap. 14, Mill discusses the logic of explanation, and in
discussing this topic naturally finds it necessary to consider the
matter of the proper use of scientific hypotheses. This is conducted
from the standpoint of their use as that is reflected in the technique
of scientific discovery. In Book IV, chap. 2, he discusses "Abstraction
or the Formation of Conceptions"--a topic which obviously involves the
forming of hypotheses. In this chapter, his consideration is conducted
in terms, not of scientific procedure, but of general philosophical
theory, and this point of view is emphasized by the fact that he is
opposing a certain view of Dr. Whewell.
The contradiction between the statements in the two chapters will serve
to bring out the two points already made, viz., the correspondent
character of datum and hypothesis, and the origin of the latter in a
problematic situation and its consequent use as an instrument of
unification and solution. Mill first points out that hypotheses are
invented to enable the deductive method to be applied earlier to
phenomena; that it does this by suppressing the first of the three
steps, induction, ratiocination, and verification. He states that:
The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first
sight confused, set of appearances is necessarily tentative; we
begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what
consequences will follow from it; and by observing how these
differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make
in our assumption.... _Neither induction nor deduction would
enable us to understand even the simplest phenomena_, if we did
not often commence by anticipating the results; by making a
provisional supposition, at first essentially conjectural, as to
some of the very notions which constitute the final object of the
inquiry.[62]
If in addition we recognize that, according to Mill, our direct
experience of nature always presents us with a complicated and confused
set of appearances, we shall be in no doubt as to the importance of
ideas as anticipations of a possible experience not yet had. Thus he
says:
The order of nature, as perceived at a first glance, presents at
every instant a chaos followed by another chaos. We must decompose
each chaos into single facts. We must learn to see in the chaotic
antecedent a multitude of distinct antecedents, in the chaotic
consequent a multitude of distinct consequents.[63]
In the next section of the same chapter he goes on to state that, having
discriminated the various antecedents and consequents, we then "are to
inquire which is connected with which." This requires a still further
resolution of the complex and of the confused. To effect this we must
vary the circumstances; we must modify the experience as given with
reference to accomplishing our purpose. To accomplish this purpose we
have recourse either to observation or to experiment: "We may either
_find_ an instance in nature _suited to our purposes_, or, by an
artificial arrangement of circumstances, _make_ one" (the italics in
"suited to our purpose" are mine; the others are Mill's). He then goes
on to say that there is no real logical distinction between observation
and experimentation. The four methods of experimental inquiry are
expressly discussed by Mill in terms of their worth in singling out and
connecting the antecedents and consequents which actually belong
together, from the chaos and confusion of direct experience.
We have only to take these statements in their logical connection with
each other (and this connection runs through the entire treatment by
Mill of scientific inquiry), to recognize the absolute necessity of
hypothesis to undertaking any directed inquiry or scientific operation.
Consequently we are not surprised at finding him saying that "the
function of hypotheses is one which must be reckoned absolutely
indispensable in science;" and again that "the hypothesis by suggesting
observations and experiments puts us on the road to independent
evidence."[64]
Since Mill's virtual retraction, from the theoretical point of view, of
what is here said from the standpoint of scientific procedure, regarding
the necessity of ideas is an accompaniment of his criticism of Whewell,
it will put the discussion in better perspective if we turn first to
Whewell's views.[65] The latter began by stating a distinction which
easily might have been developed into a theory of the relation of fact
and idea which is in line with that advanced in this chapter, and indeed
in this volume as a whole. He questions (chap. 2) the fixity of the
distinction between theory and practice. He points out that what we term
facts are in effect simply accepted inferences; and that what we call
theories are describable as facts, in proportion as they become
thoroughly established. A true theory is a fact. "All the great theories
which have successively been established in the world are now thought of
as facts." "The most recondite theories when firmly established are
accepted as facts; the simplest facts seem to involve something of the
nature of theory."
The conclusion is that the distinction is a historic one, depending upon
the state of knowledge at the time, and upon the attitude of the
individual. What is theory for one epoch, or for one inquirer in a given
epoch, is fact for some other epoch, or even for some other more
advanced inquirer in the same epoch. It is theory when the element of
inference involved in judging any fact is consciously brought out; it is
fact when the conditions are such that we have never been led to
question the inference involved, or else, having questioned it, have so
thoroughly examined into the inferential process that there is no need
of holding it further before the mind, and it relapses into
unconsciousness again. "If this greater or less consciousness of our own
internal act be all that distinguishes fact from theory, we must allow
that the distinction is still untenable" (untenable, that is to say, as
a fixed separation). Again, "fact and theory have no essential
difference except in the degree of their _certainty and familiarity_.
Theory, when it becomes firmly established and steadily lodged in the
mind becomes fact." (P. 45; italics mine.) And, of course, it is equally
true that as fast as facts are suspected or doubted, certain aspects of
them are transferred into the class of theories and even of mere
opinions.
I say this conception might have been developed in a way entirely
congruous with the position of this chapter. This would have happened if
the final distinction between fact and idea had been formulated upon the
basis simply of the points, "relative certainty and familiarity." From
this point of view the distinction between fact and idea is one purely
relative to the doubt-inquiry function. It has to do with the evolution
of an experience as regards its conscious surety. It has its origin in
problematic situations. Whatever appears to us as a problem appears as
contrasted with a possible solution. Whatever objects of thought refer
particularly to the problematic side are theories, ideas, hypotheses;
whatever relates to the solution side is surety, unquestioned
familiarity, fact. This point of view makes the distinctions entirely
relative to the exigencies of the process of reflective transformation
of experience.
Whewell, however, had no sooner started in this train of thought than he
turns his back upon it. In chap. 3 he transforms what he had proclaimed
to be a relative, historic, and working distinction into a fixed and
absolute one. He distinguishes between sensations and ideas, not upon a
genetic basis with reference to establishing the conditions of further
operation; but with reference to a fundamentally fixed line of
demarkation between what is passively _given_ to the mind and the
_activity_ put forth by the mind. Thus he reinstates in its most
generalized and fixed, and therefore most vicious, form the separation
which he has just rejected. Sensations are a brute unchangeable element
of fact which exists and persists independent of ideas; an idea is a
mode of mental operation which occurs and recurs in an independent
individuality of its own. If he had carried out the line of thought with
which he began, sensation as fact would have been that residuum of
familiarity and certainty which cannot be eliminated, however much else
of an experience is dissolved in the inner conflict. Idea as hypothesis
or theory would have been the corresponding element in experience which
is necessary to redintegrate this residuum into a coherent and
significant experience.
But since Whewell did not follow out his own line of thought, choosing
rather to fall back on the Kantian antithesis of sense and thought, he
had no sooner separated his fact and idea, his given datum and his
mental relation, than he is compelled to get them together again. The
idea becomes "a general relation which is imposed upon perception by an
act of the mind, and which is different from anything which our senses
directly offer to us" (p. 26). Such conceptions are necessary to connect
the facts which we learn from our senses into truths. "The ideal
conception which the mind itself supplies is superinduced upon the facts
as they are originally presented to observation. Before the inductive
truth is detected, the facts are there, but they are many and
unconnected. The conception which the discoverer applies to them gives
them connection and unity." (P. 42.) All induction, according to
Whewell, thus depends upon superinduction--imposition upon sensory data
of certain ideas or general relations existing independently in the
mind.[66]
We do not need to present again the objections already offered to this
view: the impossibility of any orderly stimulation of ideas by facts,
and the impossibility of any check in the imposition of idea upon fact.
"Facts" and conception are so thoroughly separate and independent that
any sensory datum is indifferently and equally related to any
conceivable idea. There is no basis for "superinducing" one idea or
hypothesis, rather than any other, upon any particular set of data.
In the chapter already referred to upon abstraction, or the formation of
conceptions, Mill seizes upon this difficulty. Yet he and Whewell have
one point in common: they both agree in the existence of a certain
subject-matter which is given for logical purposes quite outside of the
logical process itself. Mill agrees with Whewell in postulating a raw
material of pure sensational data. In criticising Whewell's theory of
superinduction of idea upon fact, he is therefore led to the opposite
assertion of the complete dependence of ideas as such upon the given
facts as such--in other words, he is led to a reiteration of the
fundamental Baconian empiricism; and thus to a virtual retraction of
what he had asserted regarding the necessity of ideas to fruitful
scientific inquiry, whether in the way of observation or
experimentation. The following quotation gives a fair notion of the
extent of Mill's retraction:
The conceptions then which we employ for the colligation and
methodization of facts, do not develop themselves from within,
_but are impressed upon the mind from without_; they are never
obtained otherwise than by way of comparison and abstraction, and,
in the most important and most numerous cases, are evolved by
abstraction _from the very phenomena which it is their office to
colligate_.[67]
Even here Mill's sense for the positive side of scientific inquiry
suffices to reveal to him that the "facts" are somehow inadequate and
defective, and are in need of assistance from ideas--and yet the ideas
which are to help out the facts are to be the impress of the unsure
facts! The contradiction comes out very clearly when Mill says: "The
really difficult cases are those in which the conception destined to
create light and order out of darkness and confusion has to be sought
for among the very phenomena which it afterward serves to arrange."[68]
Of course, there is a sense in which Mill's view is very much nearer the
truth than is Whewell's. Mill at least sees that "idea" must be relevant
to the facts or data which it is to arrange, which are to have "light
and order" introduced into them by means of the idea. He sees clearly
enough that this is impossible save as the idea develops _within_ the
same experience in which the "dark and confused" facts are presented. He
goes on to show correctly enough how conflicting data lead the mind to a
"confused feeling of an analogy" between the data of the confused
experience and of some other experience which is orderly (or already
colligated and methodized); and how this vague feeling, through
processes of further exploration and comparison of experiences, gets a
clearer and more adequate form until we finally accept it. He shows how
in this process we continually judge of the worth of the idea which is
in process of formation, by reference to its appropriateness to _our
purpose_. He goes so far as to say: "The question of appropriateness is
relative to the _particular object we have in view_."[69] He sums up his
discussion by stating: "We cannot frame good general conceptions
beforehand. That the conception we have obtained is the one we want can
only be known when we have _done the work for the sake of which we
wanted it_."[70]
This all describes the actual state of the case, but it is consistent
only with a logical theory which makes the distinction between fact and
hypothesis instrumental in the transformation of experience from a
confused into an organized form; not with Mill's notion that sensations
are somehow finally and completely given as ultimate facts, and that
ideas are mere re-registrations of such facts. It is perfectly just to
say that the hypothesis is impressed upon the mind (in the sense that
any notion which occurs to the mind is impressed) _in the course_ of an
experience. It is well enough, if one define what he means, to say that
the hypothesis is impressed (that is to say, occurs or is suggested)
through the medium of given facts, or even of sensations. But it is
equally true that the _facts_ are presented and that _sensations_ occur
within the course of an experience which is larger than the bare facts,
because involving the conflicts among them and the corresponding
intention to treat them in some fashion which will secure a unified
experience. Facts get power to suggest ideas to the mind--to
"impress"--only through their position in an entire experience which is
in process of disintegration and of reconstruction--their "fringe" or
feeling of tendency is quite as factual as they are. The fact that "the
conception we have obtained is the one we want can be known only when we
have done the work for the sake of which we wanted it," is enough to
show that it is not bare facts, but facts in relation to want and
purpose and purpose in relation to facts, which originate the
hypothesis.
It would be interesting to follow the history of discussion of the
hypothesis since the time of Whewell and of Mill, particularly in the
writings of Jevons, Venn, and Bosanquet. This history would refine the
terms of our discussion by introducing more complex distinctions and
relations. But it would be found, I think, only to refine, not to
introduce any fundamentally new principles. In each case, we find the
writer struggling with the necessity of distinguishing between fact and
idea; of giving the fact a certain primacy with respect to testing of
idea and of giving the idea a primacy with respect to the significance
and orderliness of the fact; and of holding throughout to a relationship
of idea with fact so intimate that the idea develops only by being
"compared" with facts (that is, used in construing them), and facts get
to be known only as they are "connected" through the idea--and we find
that what is a maze of paradoxes and inconsistencies from an absolute,
from a non-historic standpoint, is a matter of course the moment
it is looked at from the standpoint of experience engaged in
self-transformation of meaning through conflict and reconstitution.
But we can only note one or two points. Jevons's "infinite ballot-box"
of nature which is absolutely neutral as to any particular conception or
idea, and which accordingly requires as its correlate the formation of
every possible hypothesis (all standing in themselves upon the same
level of probability) is an interesting example of the logical
consequences of feeling the need of both fact and hypothesis for
scientific procedure and yet regarding them as somehow arising
independently of each other. It is an attempt to combine extreme
empiricism and extreme rationalism. The process of forming hypotheses
and of deducing their rational consequences goes on at random, because
the disconnectedness of facts as given is so ultimate that the facts
suggest one hypothesis no more readily than another. Mathematics, in its
two forms of measurements as applied to the facts, and of calculation as
applied in deduction, furnishes Jevons the bridge by which he finally
covers the gulf which he has first himself created. Venn's theory
requires little or no restatement to bring it into line with the
position taken in the text. He holds to the origin of hypothesis in the
original practical needs of mankind, and to its gradual development into
present scientific form.[71] He states expressly:
The _distinction between what is known and what is not known is
essential to Logic_, and peculiarly characteristic of it in a
degree not to be found in any other science. Inference is the
process of passing from one to the other; from facts which we had
accepted as premises, to those which we have not yet accepted,
_but are in the act of doing so by the very process in question_.
No scrutiny of the facts themselves, regarded as objective, can
ever detect these characteristics of their greater or less
familiarity to our minds. We must introduce also the subjective
element if we wish to give any adequate explanation of them.[72]
Venn, however, does not attempt a thoroughgoing statement of logical
distinctions, relations, and operations, as parts "of the act of passing
from the unknown to the known." He recognizes the relation of reflection
to a historic process, which we have here termed "reconstruction," and
the origin and worth of hypothesis as a tool in the movement, but does
not carry his analysis to a systematic form.
III
_Origin of the hypothesis._--In our analysis of the process of judgment,
we attempted to show that the predicate arises in case of failure of
some line of activity going on in terms of an established habit. When
the old habit is checked through failure to deal with new conditions
(_i. e._, when the situation is such as to stimulate two habits with
distinct aims) the problem is to find a new method of response--that is,
to co-ordinate the conflicting tendencies by building up a single aim
which will function the existing situation. As we saw that, in case of
judgment, habit when checked became ideal, an idea, so the new habit is
first formalized as an ideal type of reaction and is the hypothesis by
which we attempt to construe new data. In our inquiry as to how this
formulation is effected, _i. e._, how the hypothesis is developed, it
will be convenient to take some of the currently accepted statements as
to their origin, and show how these statements stand in reference to the
analysis proposed.
_Enumerative induction and allied processes._--It is pointed out by
Welton[73] that the various ways in which hypotheses are suggested may
be reduced to three classes, viz., enumerative induction, conversion of
propositions, and analogy. Under the head of "enumeration" he reminds us
that "every observed regularity of connection between phenomena suggests
a question as to whether it is universal." There are numerous instances
of this in mathematics. For example, it is noticed that 1+3=2^2,
1+3+5=3^2, 1+3+5+7=4^2, etc.; and one is led to ask whether there is any
general principle involved, so that the sum of the first _n_ odd numbers
will be _n_^2, where _n_ is any number, however great. In this early
form of inductive inference there are two divergent tendencies. One is
the tendency to complete enumeration. This _tendency_ is clearly
ideal--it transcends the facts as given. To look for all the cases is
thus itself an experimental inquiry, based upon a hypothesis which it
endeavors to test. But in most cases enumeration can be only incomplete,
and we are able to reach nothing better than probability. Hence the
other tendency in the direction of an analysis of content in search for
a principle of connection in the elements in any _one_ case. For if a
characteristic belonging to a number of individuals suggests a class
where it belongs to all individuals, it must be that it is found in
every individual as such. The hypothesis of complete class involves a
hypothesis as to the character of each individual in the class. Thus a
hypothesis as to extension transforms itself into one as to intension.
But it is analogy which Welton considers "the chief source from which
new hypotheses are drawn." In the second tendency mentioned under
enumerative induction, that is, the tendency to analysis of content or
intension, we are naturally led to analogy, for in our search for the
characteristic feature which determines classification among the
concrete particulars our first step will be an inference by analogy. In
analogy attention is turned from the number of observed instances to
their character, and, because particulars have some feature in common,
they are supposed to be the same in still other respects. While the best
we can reach in analogy is probability, the arguments may be such as to
result in a high degree of certainty. The form of the argument is
valuable in so far as we are able to distinguish between essential and
nonessential characteristics on which to base our analogy. What is
essential and what nonessential depends upon the particular end we have
in view.
In addition to enumerative induction, which Welton has mentioned, it is
to be noted that there are a number of other processes which are very
similar to it in that a number of particulars appear to furnish a basis
for a general principle or method. Such instances are common in
induction, in instruction, and in methods of proof.
If one is to be instructed in some new kind of labor, he is supposed to
acquire a grasp of the method after having been shown in a few instances
how this particular work is to be done; and, if he performs the
manipulations himself, so much the better. It is not asked why the
experience of a few cases should be of any assistance, for it seems
self-evident that an experienced man, a man who has acquired the skill,
or knack, of doing things, should deal better with all other cases of
similar nature.
There is something very similar in inductive proofs, as they are called.
The inductive proof is common in algebra. Suppose we are concerned in
proving the law of expansion of the binomial theorem. We show by actual
calculation that, if the law holds good for the _n_th power, it is true
for the _n_+first power. That is, if it holds for any power, it holds
for the next also. But we can easily show that it does hold for, say,
the second power. Then it must be true for the third, and hence for the
fourth, and so on. Whether this law, though discovered by inductive
processes, depends on deduction for the conclusiveness of its proof, as
Jevons holds;[74] whether, as Erdmann[75] contends, the proof is
thoroughly deductive; or whether Wundt[76] is right in maintaining that
it is based on an exact analogy, while the fundamental axioms of
mathematics are inductive, it is clear that in such proofs a few
instances are employed to give the learner a start in the right
direction. Something suggests itself, and is found true in this case, in
the next, and again in the next, and so on. It may be questioned whether
there is usually a very clear notion of what is involved in the "so on."
To many it appears to mark the point where, after having been taken a
few steps, the learner is carried on by the acquired momentum somewhat
after the fashion of one of Newton's laws of motion. Whether the few
successive steps are an integral part of the proof or merely serve as
illustration, they are very generally resorted to. In fact, they are
often employed where there is no attempt to introduce a general term
such as _n_, or _k_, or _l_, but the few individual instances are deemed
quite sufficient. Such, for instance, is the custom in arithmetical
processes. We call attention to these facts in order to show that
successive cases are utilized in the course of explanation as an aid in
establishing the generality of a law.
In geometry we find a class of proofs in which the successive steps seem
to have great significance. A common proof of the area of the circle
will serve as a fair example. A regular polygon is circumscribed about
the circle. Then as the number of its sides are increased its area will
approach that of the circle, as its perimeter approaches the
circumference of the circle. The area of the circle is thus inferred to
be [pi]_R_^2, since the area of the polygon is always (1/2)_R_×
perimeter, and in case of the circle the circumference = 2[pi]_R_.
Here again we get under such headway by means of the polygon that we
arrive at the circle with but little difficulty. Had we attempted the
transition at once, say, from a circumscribed square, we should
doubtless have experienced some uncertainty and might have recoiled from
what would seem a rash attempt; but as the number of the sides of our
polygon approach infinity--that mysterious realm where many paradoxical
things become possible--the transition becomes so easy that our polygon
is often said to have truly become a circle.
Similarly, some statements of the infinitesimal calculus rest on the
assumption that slight degrees of difference may be neglected. Though
the more modern theory of limits has largely displaced this attitude in
calculus and has also changed the method of proof in such geometrical
problems as the area of the circle, the underlying motive seems to have
been to make transitions easy, and thus to make possible a continued
application of some particular method or way of dealing with things.
But granted that this is all true, what has it to do with the origin of
the hypothesis? It seems likely that the hypothesis may be suggested by
a few successive instances; but are these to be classed with the
successive steps in proof to which we have referred? In the first place,
we attempt to prove our hypothesis because we are not sure it is true;
we are not satisfied that there are no other tenable hypotheses. But if
we do test it, is not such test enough? It depends upon how thorough a
grasp we have of the situation; but, in general, each test case adds to
its probability. The value of tests lies in the fact that they
strengthen and tend to confirm our hypothesis by checking the force of
alternatives. One instance is not sufficient because there are other
possible incipient hypotheses, or more properly tendencies, and the
enumeration serves to bring one of these tendencies into prominence in
that it diminishes other vague and perhaps subconscious tendencies and
strengthens the one which suddenly appears as the mysterious product of
genius.
The question might arise why the mere repetition of conflicting
tendencies would lead to a predominance of one of them. Why would they
not all remain in conflict and continue to check any positive result? It
is probably because there never is any absolute equilibrium. The
successive instances tend to intensify and bring into prominence some
tendency which is already taking a lead, so to speak. And it may be said
further in this connection that only as seen from the outside, only as a
mechanical view is taken, does there appear to be an excluding of
definitely made out alternatives.
In explanation of the part played by analogy in the origin of
hypotheses, Welton points out that a mere number of instances do not
take us very far, and that there must be some "_specification_ of the
instances as well as numbering of them," and goes on to show that the
argument by enumerative induction passes readily into one from analogy,
as soon as attention is turned from the number of the observed instances
to their character. It is not necessary, however, to pass to analogy
through enumerative induction. "When the instances presented to
observation offer immediately the characteristic marks on which we base
the inference to the connection of S and P, we can proceed at once to an
inference from analogy, without any preliminary enumeration of the
instances."[77]
Welton, and logicians generally, regard analogy as an inference on the
basis of partial identity. Because of certain common features we are led
to infer a still greater likeness.
Both enumerative induction and analogy are explicable in terms of habit.
We saw in our examination of enumerative induction that a form of
reaction gains strength through a series of successful applications.
Analogy marks the presence of an identical element together with the
tendency to extend this "partial identity" (as it is commonly called)
still farther. In other words, in analogy it is suggested that a type of
reaction which is the same in certain respects may be made similar in a
greater degree. In enumerative induction we lay stress on the number of
instances in which the habit is applied. In analogy we emphasize the
content side and take note of the partial identity. In fact, the
relation between enumerative induction and analogy is of the same sort
as that existing between association by contiguity and association by
similarity. In association by contiguity we think of the things
associated as merely standing in certain temporal or spatial relations,
and disregard the fact that they were elements in a larger experience.
In case of association by similarity we regard the like feature in the
things associated as a basis for further correction.
In conversion of propositions we try to reverse the direction of the
reaction, so to speak, and thereby to free the habit, to get a mode of
response so generalized as to act with a minimum cue. For instance, we
can deal with A in a way called B, or, in other words, in the same way
that we did with other things called B. If we say, "Man is an animal,"
then to a certain extent the term "animal" signifies the way in which we
regard "man." But the question arises whether we can regard all animals
as we do man. Evidently not, for the reaction which is fitting in case
of animals would be only partially applicable to man. With the animals
that are also men we have the beginning of a habit which, if unchecked,
would lead to a similar reaction toward all animals, _i. e._, we would
say: "All animals are men." Man may be said to be the richer concept, in
that only a part of the reaction which determines an object to be a man
is required to designate it as an animal. On the other hand, if we start
with animal, then (except in case of the animals which are men) there is
lacking the subject-matter which would permit the fuller concept to be
applied. By supplying the conditions under which animal=man we get a
reversible habit. The equation of technical science has just this
character. It represents the maximum freeing or abstraction of a
predicate _qua_ predicate, and thereby multiplies the possible
applications of it to subjects of future judgments, and lessens the
amount of shearing away of irrelevancies and of re-adaptation necessary
when so used in any particular case.
_Formation and test of the hypothesis._--The formation of the hypothesis
is commonly regarded as essentially different from the process of
testing, which it subsequently undergoes. We are said to observe facts,
invent hypotheses, and _then_ test them. The hypothesis is not required
for our preliminary observations; and some writers, regarding the
hypothesis as a formulation which requires a difficult and elaborate
test, decline to admit as hypotheses those more simple suppositions,
which are readily confirmed or rejected. A very good illustration of
this point of view is met with in Wundt's discussion of the hypothesis,
by an examination of which we hope to show that such distinctions are
rather artificial than real.
The subject-matter of science, says Wundt,[78] is constituted by that
which is actually given and that which is actually to be expected. The
whole content is not limited to this, however, for these facts must be
supplemented by certain presuppositions, which are not given in a
factual sense. Such presuppositions are called hypotheses and are
justified by our fundamental demand for unity. However valuable the
hypothesis may be when rightly used, there is constant danger of
illegitimately extending it by additions that spring from mere
inclinations of fancy. Furthermore, the hypothesis in this proper
scientific sense must be carefully distinguished from the various
inaccurate uses, which are prevalent. For instance, hypotheses must not
be confused with expectations of fact. As cases in point Wundt mentions
Galileo's suppositions that small vibrations of the pendulum are
isochronous, and that the space traversed by a falling body is
proportional to the square of the time it has been falling. It is true
that such anticipations play an important part in science, but so long
as they relate to the facts themselves or to their connections, and can
be confirmed or rejected any moment through observation, they should not
be classed with those added presuppositions which are used to
co-ordinate facts. Hence not all suppositions are hypotheses. On the
other hand, not every hypothesis can be actually experienced. For
example, one employs in physics the hypothesis of electric fluid, but
does not expect actually to meet with it. In many cases, however, the
hypothesis becomes proved as an experienced fact. Such was the course of
the Copernican theory, which was at first only a hypothesis, but was
transformed into fact through the evidence afforded by subsequent
astronomical observation.
Wundt defines a theory as a hypothesis taken together with the facts for
whose elucidation it was invented. In thus establishing a connection
between the facts which the hypothesis merely suggested, the theory
furnishes at the same time partly the foundation (_Begründung_) and
partly the confirmation (_Bestätigung_) of the hypothesis.[79] These
aspects, Wundt insists, must be sharply distinguished. Every hypothesis
must have its _Begründung_, but there can be _Bestätigung_ only in so
far as the hypothesis contains elements which are accessible to actual
processes of verification. In most cases verification is attainable in
only certain elements of the hypothesis. For example, Newton was obliged
to limit himself to one instance in the verification of his theory of
gravitation, viz., the movements of the moon. The other heavenly bodies
afforded nothing better than a foundation in that the supposition that
gravity decreases as the square of the distance increases enabled him to
deduce the movements of the planets. The main object of his theory,
however, lay in the deduction of these movements and not in the proof of
universal gravity. With the Darwinian theory, on the contrary, the main
interest is in seeking its verification through examination of actual
cases of development. Thus, while the Newtonian and the greater part of
the other physical theories lead to a deduction of the facts from the
hypotheses, which can be verified only in individual instances, the
Darwinian theory is concerned in evolving as far as possible the
hypothesis out of the facts.
Let us look more closely at Wundt's position. We will ask, first,
whether the distinction between hypotheses and expectations is as
pronounced as he maintains; and, second, whether the relation between
_Begründung_ and _Bestätigung_ may not be closer than Wundt would have
us believe.
As examples of the hypothesis Wundt mentions the Copernican hypothesis,
Newton's hypothesis of gravitation, and the predictions of the
astronomers which led to the discovery of Neptune. As examples of mere
expectations we are referred to Galileo's experiments with falling
bodies and pendulums. In case of Newton's hypothesis there was the
assumption of a general law, which was verified after much labor and
delay. The heliocentric hypothesis of Copernicus, which was invented for
the purpose of bringing system and unity into the movements of the
planets, has also been fairly well substantiated. In the discovery of
Neptune we have, apparently, not the proof of a general law or the
discovery of further peculiarities of previously known data, but rather
the discovery of a new object or agent by means of its observed effects.
In each of these instances we admit that the hypothesis was not readily
suggested or easily and directly tested.
If we turn to Galileo's pendulum and falling bodies, it is clear first
of all that he did not have in mind the discovery of some object, as was
the case in the discovery of Neptune. Did he, then, either contribute to
the proof of a general law or discover further characteristics of things
already known in a more general way? Wundt tells us that Galileo only
determined a little more exactly what he already knew, and that he did
this with but little labor or delay.
What, then, is the real difference between hypothesis and expectation?
If we compare Galileo's determination of the law of falling bodies with
Newton's test of his hypothesis of gravitation, we see that both
expectation and hypothesis were founded on observation and took the form
of mathematical formulæ. Each tended to confirm the general law
expressed in its formula, though there was, of course, much difference
in the time and labor required. If we compare the Copernican hypothesis
with Galileo's supposition concerning the pendulum, we find again that
they agree in regard to general purpose and method, and differ in the
difficulty of verification. If the experiment with the pendulum only
substituted exactness for inexactness, did the Copernican theory do
anything different in _kind_? It is true that the more exact statement
of the swing of the pendulum was expressed in quantitative form, but
quantitative statement is no criterion of either the presence or the
absence of the hypothesis.
Again, we may compare the pendulum with Kepler's laws. What was Kepler's
hypothesis, that the square of the periodic times of the several planets
are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun,
except a more exact formulation of facts which were already known in a
more general way? Wundt's position seems to be this: whenever a
supposition or suggestion can be tested readily, it should not be
classed as a hypothesis. This would make the distinction one of degree
rather than kind, and it does not appear how much labor we must expend,
or how long our supposition must evade our efforts to test it, before it
can win the title of hypothesis.
In the second place, we have seen that Wundt draws a sharp line between
_Begründung_ and _Bestätigung_. It is doubtless true that every
hypothesis requires a certain justification, for unless other facts can
be found which agree with deductions made in accordance with it, its
only support would be the data from which it is drawn. Such support as
this would be obtained through a process too clearly circular to be
seriously entertained. The distinction which Wundt draws between
_Begründung_ and _Bestätigung_ is evidently due to the presence of the
experimental element in the latter. For descriptive purposes this
distinction is useful, but is misleading if it is understood to mean
that there is mere experience in one case and mere inference in the
other. The difference is rather due to the relative parts played by
inference and by accepted experience in each. In _Begründung_ the
inferential feature is the more prominent, while in _Bestätigung_ the
main emphasis is on the experiential aspect. It must not be supposed,
however, that either of these aspects can be wholly absent. It is
difficult to understand how any hypothesis can be entertained at all
unless it meets in some measure the demand with reference to which it
was invented, viz., a unification of conflicts in experience. And, _in
so far_, it is confirmed. The motive which casts doubt upon its adequacy
is the same that leads to its re-forming as a hypothesis, as a mental
concept.
The difficulties in Wundt's position are thus due to a failure to take
account of the reconstructive nature of the judgment. The predicate,
supposition, or hypothesis, whatever we may choose to call it, is formed
because of the check of a former habit. The judgment is an ideal
application of a new habit, and its test is the attempt to act in
accordance with this ideal reconstruction. It must not be thought,
however, that our supposition is first fully developed and then tried
and accepted or rejected without modification. On the contrary, its
growth is the result of successive minor tests and corresponding minor
modifications in its form. Formation and test are merely convenient
distinctions in a larger process in which forming, testing, and
_re_-forming go on together. The activity of experimental verification
is not only a testing, a confirming or weakening of the validity of a
hypothesis, but it is equally well an evolution of the _meaning_ of the
hypothesis through bringing it into closer relations with specific data
not previously included in defining its import. _Per contra_, a purely
reflective and deductive consideration which develops the idea as
hypothesis, _in so far_ as it introduces the determinateness of
previously accepted facts within the scope, comprehension, or intension
of the idea, is in so far forth, a verification.
If the view which we have maintained is correct, the hypothesis is not
to be limited to those elaborate formulations of the scientist which he
seeks to confirm by crucial tests. The hypothesis of the investigator
differs from the comparatively rough conjecture of the plain man only in
its greater precision. Indeed, as we have attempted to show, the
hypothesis is not a method which we may employ or not as we choose; on
the contrary, as predicate of the judgment it is present in a more or
less explicit form if we judge at all. Whether the time and labor
required for its confirmation or rejection is a matter of a lifetime or
a moment, its nature remains the same. Its function is identical with
that of the predicate. In short, the hypothesis is the predicate so
brought to consciousness and defined that those features which are not
noticed in the ordinary judgment are brought into prominence. We then
recognize the hypothesis to be what in fact the predicate always is,
viz., a method of organization and control.
VIII
IMAGE AND IDEA IN LOGIC
The logic of sense-impressions and of ideas as copies of
sense-impressions has had its day. It engaged in a conflict with
dogmatism, and scored a decisive victory. It overthrew the dynasty of
prescribed formulæ and innate ideas, of ideas derived ready-made from
custom and social usage, ancient enough to be lost in the remote
obscurity of divine sources; and enthroned in their place ideas derived
from, and representative of, the sense-experiences of a very real and
present world. It marked a reaction from dogma back to the original
meaning of dogma, back to the seeming, the appearance, of things. So
thoroughly did Bacon and Hobbes, Locke and Hume, to mention only these
four, do their work, that many of the problems growing out of the
conflict itself, to say nothing of the scholastic traditions that were
combated, have come to have merely a historical rather than a logical
interest. Logic no longer concerns itself very eagerly with the content
or sensuous qualities of ideas, with their derivation from
sense-impressions, or with questions as to the relation of copy to
original, of representative to that which is presented. It is concerned
rather with the constructive operations of thought, with meaning,
reference to reality, inference--with intellectual processes. Perhaps in
no respect is this shifting of logical standpoint indicated more clearly
than in the unregretful way with which the old logical interest in the
sense-qualities of ideas is now made over to psychology. States of
consciousness as such, we are told, are the proper study of psychology;
whereas logic concerns itself with the relation of thought to its
object. True, these states of consciousness include thought-states, as
well as sense-impressions; ideas and concepts, as well as feelings and
fancies; and the business of psychology is to observe, compare and
classify, describe and chronicle, these states and whatever else is
carried along in the stream of consciousness. But logic is concerned,
not with these states of consciousness _per se_, least of all with the
flotsam and jetsam of the stream, but with its reference to reality; not
with the true, but with truth; not even with what consciousness does,
but with how consciousness is to outdo itself, transcend itself, in a
rational and universal whole. Even an empirical logic has to arrange
somehow the way to get from one sense-impression to another.
In drawing this distinction between logic and psychology--a distinction
which virtually amounts to a separation--two things are overlooked:
first, that the distinction itself is a logical distinction, and may
properly constitute a problem falling under the province of logical
inquiry and theory; and, second, that the rather arbitrary and official
setting apart of psychology to look after the task of studying states of
consciousness does not carry with it the guarantee that psychology will
confine itself exclusively to that task. This last point in particular
must be my excuse for discussing the question of image and idea from the
psychological rather than from the logical standpoint. The logic of
ideas derived from sense-impressions has had its day. But even the very
leavings of the past may have been gathered up and reconstructed by
psychology in such a way as to anticipate some of the newer developments
of logical theory and meet some of its difficulties. One can hardly hope
to justify in advance a discussion based on such a sheer possibility.
Let us begin, rather, by noting down from the standpoint of logic some
of the distinctions between image and idea, and the estimate of the
logical function and value of mental imagery, and see in what direction
they take us and whether they suggest a resort to an analysis from the
standpoint of psychology.
Proceeding from the standpoint of logic to inquire into the logical
function of mental imagery and into the distinction between image and
idea, we shall come upon two opposed but characteristic answers. If the
inquiry be directed to a member of the empirical school of logic, he
would be bound to answer in the affirmative, so far as the question
regarding the function of mental imagery is concerned. He would be
likely to say, if he were loyal to the traditions of his school, that
mental imagery is the counterpart of sense-perception, and is thus the
representative of the data with which empirical logic is concerned.
Mental imagery, he would continue, is a representative in a literal
sense, a copy, a reflection, of what comes to us through the avenues of
sensation. True, it is not the perfect twin of sense-experience; else we
could not tell them apart; indeed, there are times when the copy becomes
so much like the original that we are deceived by it, as in dreams or in
hallucinations. Ordinarily, however, we are able to distinguish one from
the other. Two criteria are usually present; (1) imagery is fainter,
more fleeting, than the corresponding sense-experience; and (2), save in
the case of accurate memory-images, it is subject to a more or less
arbitrary rearrangement of its parts, as when, for example, we make over
the images of scenes we have actually experienced, to furnish forth the
setting of some remote historical event.
Barring, or controlling and rectifying, its tendencies toward both
arbitrary and constructive variations from the original, mental imagery
is on the same level as sense-experience, and serves the same logical
purpose. That is to say, it contributes to the data which constitute the
foundations of empirical logic. It furnishes materials for the
operations of observing, comparing, abstracting and generalizing.
Mental imagery helps to piece out the fragments that may be presented to
sense-experience. It supplies the entire anatomy when only a single
bone, say, is actually given. Yet, however useful as a servant of truth,
it has to be carefully watched, lest its spontaneous tendency to vary
the actual order and coexistence of data lead the investigator astray.
The copy it presents is, after all, a temporary makeshift, until it can
be shown to correspond point for point to the now absent reality. Mental
imagery furnishes one with an illustrated edition of the book of nature,
but the illustrations await the confirmation of comparison with the
originals.
Mental imagery functions logically when it extends the area of data
beyond the range of the immediate sense-perceptions of any given time,
and thus makes possible a more comprehensive application of the
empirical methods of observation, comparison, abstraction, and
generalization. It functions logically when it acts as a feeder of
logical machinery, though it is not indispensable to this machinery and
does not modify its principles. The logical mill could grind up in the
same way the pure grain of sense-perceptions, unmixed with mental
images, but it would have to grind more slowly for lack of material. In
other words, empirical logic could carry on its operations of observing,
comparing, abstracting, and generalizing, solely on the basis of objects
or data present to the senses, and with no extension of this basis in
terms of imagery, or copies of objects not immediately present; but it
would take more time for it to apply and carry through its operations.
The logical machinery is the same in each case. The materials fed and
the product issuing are the same in each case. Imagery simply fulfils
the function of providing a more copious grist.
The empiricist's answer to our question regarding the logical function
of mental imagery leaves that function in an uncertain and parlous
state. Imagery lacks the security of sense-perception on the one hand,
and it has no part in the operation of thought on the other. It is a
sort of hod-carrier, whose function it is to convey the raw materials of
sense-perception to a more exalted position where someone else does all
the work. I suppose this could be called a functional interpretation of
a logical element. The question, then, would be whether an element so
functioning is in any sense logical. As an element lying outside of the
thought-process it owes no responsibility to logic; it is not amenable
to its regulations. Thought simply finds it expedient to operate with an
agent over which it has no intrinsic control. The case might be allowed
to rest here. Yet were this extra-logical element of imagery to abandon
thought, all conscious thinking as opposed to sense-perception would
cease. A false alarm, perhaps. Imagery may be so constituted that it is
inseparably subordinated to thought and can never abandon it. Thought
may simply exude imagery. But imagery somehow has to represent
sense-perception, also. It can hardly be a secretion of thought and a
copy of sense-perceptions at one and the same time, unless the
empiricist is willing to turn absolute idealist! Before taking such a
desperate plunge as this, it might be desirable to see whether there is
any other recourse.
There is another and a very different answer to the question regarding
the logical function of mental imagery. To distinguish this answer from
that of the associationist or empiricist, I will call it the answer of
the conceptualist. I am not at all positive that this label would stick
even to those to whom it might be applied with considerable
justification. The terms "rationalistic" and "transcendental" might be
preferred in opposition to the term "empirical." And we have the term
"apperceptionist" in opposition to the term "associationist." If the
term "conceptualist" is admissible, it should be brought down to date,
perhaps, by making it "neo-conceptualist." The present difficulties
regarding terminology would be eased considerably if we only had a
convenient set of derivatives made from the word "meaning." Since we
have not, I will use derivatives made from the word "concept" to denote
views opposite to those held by the empirical school.
The conceptualist could be depended upon to answer our question in the
negative. Logical functions begin where the image leaves off. They begin
with the _idea_, with meaning. The conceptualist distinguishes sharply
between the image as a psychical existence and the idea, or concept, as
logical meaning. On the one hand, you have the "image," not only as a
mere psychical existence, but a mocking existence at that, fleeting,
inconstant, shifting, never perhaps twice alike; yet, mind you, an
_existence_, a _fact_--that must be admitted. On the other hand, you
have the "idea," with "a fixed content or logical meaning,"[80] which is
referred by an act of judgment to a reality beyond the act.[81]
The "idea," the logical meaning, begins where the "image" leaves off.
Does this mean that the "idea" is wholly independent of the "image"? Yes
and no. The "idea" is independent of that which is ordinarily regarded
as the special characteristic of an "image," namely, its quality, its
sense-content. That is to say, the "idea" is independent of any
particular "image," any special embodiment of sense-content. Any image
will do. As Mr. Bosanquet remarks in comparing the psychical images that
pass through our minds to a store of signal flags:
Not only is it indifferent whether your signal flag of today is
the same bit of cloth that you hoisted yesterday, but also, no one
knows or cares whether it is clean or dirty, thick or thin, frayed
or smooth, as long as it is distinctly legible as an element of
the signal code. Part of its content, of its attributes and
relations, is a fixed index which carries a distinct reference;
all the rest is nothing to us, and, except in a moment of idle
curiosity, we are unaware that it exists.[82]
On the other hand, the "idea" could not operate as an idea, could not be
in consciousness, save as it involves some imagery, however old, dirty,
thin, and frayed. Take the statement, "The angles of a triangle are
equal to two right angles." If the statement means anything to a given
individual, if it conveys an idea, it must necessarily involve some form
of imagery, some qualitative or conscious content. But so far as the
_meaning_ is concerned, it is a matter of complete indifference as to
_what_ qualities are involved. These qualities may be in terms of
visual, auditory, tactual, kinæsthetic, or verbal imagery. The
individual may visualize a blackboard drawing of a triangle with its
sides produced, or he may imagine himself to be generating a triangle
while revolving through an angle of 180°. Any imagery anyone pleases may
be employed, so long as there goes with it somehow the _idea_ of the
relation of equality between the angles of a triangle and two right
angles. But the conceptualist does not stop here. The act of judgment
comes in to affirm that the "idea" is no mere idea, but is a quality of
the real. "The act [of judgment] attaches the floating adjective [the
idea, the logical meaning] to the nature of the world, and, at the same
time, tells one it was there already."[83] The "idea," the logical
meaning, begins where the "image" leaves off. Yet, somehow, the "idea"
could not begin, unless there were an "image" to leave off.
An "image" is not an "idea," says the conceptualist. An "idea" is not an
"image." (1) An "image" is not an "idea," because an "image" is a
particular, individual fragment of consciousness. It is so bound up
with its own existence that it cannot reach out to the existence of an
"idea," or to anything beyond itself. Chemically speaking, it is an
_avalent_ atom of consciousness, if such a thing is thinkable. Mr.
Bosanquet raises the question:
Are there at all ideas which are not symbolic?... The answer is
that _(a)_ in judgment itself the idea can be distinguished _qua_
particular in time or psychical fact, and _so far_ is not
symbolic; and _(b)_ in all those human experiences from which we
draw our conjectures as to the animal intelligence, when in
languor or in ignorance image succeeds image without conscious
judgment, we feel what it is to have ideas as facts and not as
symbols.[84]
(2) An "idea" is not an "image," because an idea _is_ meaning, which
consists in a part of the content of the image, cut off, and considered
apart from the _existence_ of the content or sign itself.[85] This
meaning, this fragment of psychical existence, lays down all claim to
existence on its own account, that it may refer through an act of
judgment to a reality beyond itself and beyond the act also. An "image"
is not an "idea" and an "idea" is not an "image," because an "image"
exists only as a quality, a sense-content, whereas an "idea" exists only
as a relation, a reference to reality beyond. "On the one hand," to
recall Bradley's antinomy, "no possible idea [as a psychical image] can
be that which it means.... On the other hand, no idea [as logical
signification] is anything but just what it means."
There is a significant point of agreement between the conceptualist and
the empiricist. Both regard imagery as on the level with
sense-perception. For the empiricist, as we have seen, the fact that
imagery may be compelled to serve as a yoke-fellow of sense-experience
constitutes its logical value. For the conceptualist, however, the
association of imagery with sense-experience is of no logical
consequence whatsoever, save as it may help to intensify the distinction
between imagery and meaning. To quote again from Bradley:
For logical purposes the psychological distinction of idea and
sensation may be said to be irrelevant, while the distinction of
idea and fact is vital. The image, or psychological idea, is for
logic nothing but a sensible reality. It is on a level with the
mere sensations of the senses. For both are facts and neither are
meanings. Neither are cut from a mutilated presentation and fixed
as a connection. Neither are indifferent to their place in the
stream of psychical events, their time and their relations to the
presented congeries. Neither are adjectives to be referred from
their existence, to live on strange soils, under other skies, and
through changing seasons. The lives of both are so entangled with
their environment, so one with their setting of sensuous
particulars, that their character is destroyed if but one thread
is broken.[86]
This point of agreement between conceptualism and empiricism, this
placing of imagery and sense-experience on a common level, serves to
bring into relief fundamental differences between the two schools of
thought; fundamental, because they have to do with the nature of reality
itself. The conceptualist in his zealous endeavor to distinguish between
imagery and logical meaning has come perilously near driving imagery
into the arms of reality. It is the opportunity of empiricism to make
them one. How can conceptualism prevent the union? Has it not disarmed
itself? The act of judgment, which includes within itself logical
meaning as predicate, refers to a reality beyond the act. Both imagery
and reality, then, lie outside of the act of judgment! What alliance, or
_mésalliance_, may they not form, one with the other?
The difficulties we have noted thus far in the discussion are due to a
large extent, I believe, to incomplete psychological analysis of
logical machinery. The empiricist has not carried the psychology of
logic as far as the conceptualist, although the latter might be the
loudest to disclaim the honor. I will not try to prove this statement,
but simply give it as a reason why, in the interest of brevity, I shall
pass with little comment over the psychological shortcomings and
contributions of empirical logic, and devote what space remains to the
psychology implicitly worked out by conceptual logic, and to its
possible development, with special reference, of course, to the problem
of the logical function of imagery.
The logical distinction, which practically amounts to a separation
between imagery and meaning, is the counterpart of the psychological
distinction between stimulus and response, between the two poles of
sensori-motor activity, where the stimulus is defined in consciousness
in the form of imagery, in the form of sense-qualities centrally
excited, and where the response is directed and controlled _via_ this
imagery, so as to function in bringing some end, project, purpose, or
ideal, nearer to realization, some problem nearer to solution.
Psychologically, there is no break between image and response, between
thought and action. The stimulus is a condition of action, in both
senses of the ambiguity of the word "condition." (1) It _is_ action; it
is a state or condition of action. (2) It is also an initiation of
action. _If_ the appropriate stimulus, then the desired action. The
response to an image is the meaning of the image. Or, the response to
any stimulus _via_ an image--mediated, controlled or directed by an
image--is the meaning of that image. The less imagery involved in any
response, the greater the presumption in favor of the belief that the
response is either an instinctive impulse or else has become a habit of
mind, an adequate idea. The reduction and loss of sense-content which an
image may undergo--the wearing away of an image, it is sometimes
called--is not a sign that this sense-content has no logical function;
but rather that it has fulfilled a logical function so well that it has
made part of itself useless. The husk, to recall one of Mr. Bradley's
comparisons, that useless husk, tends to fall away, to lapse from
consciousness, after it has served the purpose of helping to bring the
kernel of truth to fruition.
This raises again the original question as to whether the sense-content,
the quality, the existential quality, of an image has a logical
function. I will ask first whether it has a function from the standpoint
of psychology. We will agree with the empiricist that the content of an
image is representative, that it is a return, a revival, of a
sense-content previously experienced through the activity of
sense-organs stimulated from the periphery. What is the function, then,
of the representative image? Sensation, quality, as we have implied
above, is the stimulus come to consciousness. To explain how a stimulus
can "come" to consciousness is a problem I will not attempt to go into
here. I assume as a fact that there are times when we know what we are
about; when we are conscious of the stimuli, or conditions of action,
which are tending in this direction or in that, and when through this
consciousness we exercise a controlling influence over action by
selecting and reinforcing certain stimuli and suppressing or inhibiting
others. It is true that we do not always realize to how great an extent
our actions are controlled by stimuli which do not come to
consciousness, by reflexes, instincts, and habits which do not rise
above the threshold of imagery. And when this vast complex of hidden
machinery is partly revealed to us, it may either cause the beholder to
take a materialistic, mechanical, or fatalistic view of existence, to
say that we are the victims of our own machinery, or else it may induce
the other extreme of more or less mystic pronouncements regarding the
province of the subconscious, of the subliminal self; thus out of
partial views, out of half-truths, metaphysical problems arise and arm
for mutual conflict. Nevertheless, there is a presumption, amounting in
most minds to a conviction, that we do at times consciously control some
of our actions. And it is only making this conviction a little more
explicit to say that we consciously control our actions through becoming
aware of the stimuli, or conditions of action, and through selecting and
reinforcing them.
Is it begging the question to speak of consciousness as exercising a
selective function with reference to stimuli? From the standpoint of
psychology, I cannot see that it is. No characteristic of consciousness
has been more clearly made out, both reflectively and experimentally,
than its selective function, than its ability to pick out and intensify
within certain limits the stimuli or conditions of action.
The representational image is a stimulus come to consciousness in the
same way that a sensation is a stimulus come to consciousness. It is
both a direct and an indirect stimulus. The terms "direct" and
"indirect" are used as relative solely to the demands of the particular
situation out of which they arise. By direct stimulus I mean a stimulus
which initiates with almost no appreciable delay the response or
attitude appropriate to the demands of a given situation, bridging the
difficulties, removing the obstacles, or solving the problem with the
minimum of conscious reflection. As an image becomes more and more of a
working symbol, an idea, it tends to become simply a direct stimulus.
By an "indirect stimulus" is meant a stimulus initiating a response
which, if not inhibited, would be irrelevant to the situation, yet which
may represent stimuli which are not found in the immediate field of
sense-perception, and which are essential to the carrying on of the
activity. The situation is a problematic one. Acquired habits or mental
adjustments break down at some point or fail to operate smoothly, either
owing to the absence of customary stimuli or to the presence of new and
untried conditions of action. Part of the stress of meeting such a
situation as this falls on the side of discovering appropriate stimuli
and part on the side of developing out of habits already acquired new
methods of response.
In such a situation as this, imagery may function on the side of
_stimulus_ when, taking its cue from the stimuli which are actually
present, and which grow out of the strain and friction, it represents
the missing conditions of action sufficiently to direct a search for
them. It projects a map, so to speak, in which the fragmentary
conditions immediately present to sense-perception may find their
bearings, or in which in some way the missing members may be discovered.
A familiar instance of this would be the experience one sometimes has in
trying to recall the forgotten name of an acquaintance. The images of
scenes associated with the acquaintance, of various letters and sounds
of words associated with his name, which may be called to mind, do not
function so much as direct stimuli as they do as intermediate or
indirect stimuli. It is a case of casting about for the image that will
function as a direct stimulus in bringing an acquired but temporarily
lost adjustment into play.
Image functions on the side of _response_, on the side of developing new
habits, new forms of adjustment, in so far as the conditions of action
which it represents, or projects, are not the actual conditions of
action, either because they are so inaccessible as to demand development
of new habits for purposes of attaining them, or else because, though
actually present, they stimulate relatively uncontrolled æsthetic or
emotional responses, whose very expression, however, may be translated
into a demand for more adequate, intelligent, controlled habits or
adjustments. The conscious projection of the unattained, even of the
unattainable, not only marks a certain degree of attainment, but is the
initiation of further development. Here we see again that a stimulus is
a condition of action in both senses of the ambiguity of the word
"condition." It is both a state or condition of activity, and an
initiation or condition of further activity.
As an indirect stimulus growing out of a problematic situation imagery
necessarily brings in more or less irrelevant material. If I may be
permitted the paradox, imagery would not be relevant if it did not bring
in the irrelevant. The novelty of the situation makes it impossible to
say in advance what will be relevant. Hence the demand for range and
play of imagery. It is only the successful adjustment finally hit upon
and worked out that is the test of the relevancy of the imagery which
anticipated it. Even this test may be unfair, since it is likely to
discount the value of imagery which is now ruled out, but which may have
been indispensable in turning up the proper cues in the course of the
process of reflection and experiment.
To restate the point in regard to the psychological function of imagery.
Imagery functions in representing control as ideal, not as fact. It
represents a possible process of reconstructing adjustments and habits;
it is not an actual and complete readjustment. It arises normally in a
stress, in the presence of fresh demands and new problems. It looks
forward in every possible direction, because it is important and
difficult to foresee consequences. But suppose the new adjustment to be
made with reasonable success--reasonable, note. Suppose the ideal to be
realized. With practice the adjustment becomes less problematic, more
under control--that is, it comes to require less conscious attention to
bring it about. The image loses some of its sensuous content. It becomes
worn away, more remote, until at last it becomes respectably vague and
abstract enough to be classed as a concept. Imagery is the stimulus of
the reconstructive process between habit and habit, concept and concept,
idea and idea.
We now return to the original question regarding the logical function of
imagery. There is only one condition, I believe, on which we can accept
the assumption of both empiricist and conceptualist that imagery is on
the same level with sense-perception, and that is the assumption that
meaning, logical meaning, is on the same level with habit, habit naming
the more obvious, overt forms of response to stimuli, logical meaning
naming the more internal forms of response or reference. Psychical
response and logical reference thus become equivalent terms.
We have seen that imagery may exercise two functions with reference to
habit, as direct and as indirect stimulus; so also with reference to
logical meaning, imagery may be the stimulus to a direct reference of
the idea to reality, or it may present, or mirror, conditions with
regard to which some new meaning is to be worked out. The quality, the
sense-content, of imagery may _per se_ suffice directly to arouse a
habitual attitude, to call forth an immediate reference to reality. It
may cause one to "tumble" to what is taking place, to "catch on," to
apprehend (pardon these expressions for the sake of their description of
the motor aspect of meaning), as when we say, for example: "It came over
me like a flash what I was to do, and I did it." Our more abstract and
complicated forms of judgment and reasoning, in which the imagery
involved is reduced to the minimum of conscious, qualitative content,
are of the same order, though at the other extreme, so far as immediate
overt expression is concerned. We are working along lines of habitual
activity so familiar that we can work almost in the dark. We need no
elaborate imagery. Guided only by the waving of a signal flag or by the
shifting gleam of a semaphore, we thread our way swiftly through the
maze of tracks worn smooth by use and habit. But suppose a new line of
habit is to be constructed. No signal flags or semaphores will suffice.
A detailed survey of the proposed route must be had, and here is where
imagery with a rich and varied yet flexible sensuous content, growing
out of previous surveys, may function in projecting and anticipating the
new set of conditions, and thus become the stimulus of a new line of
habit, of a new and more far-reaching meaning. As this new line of
habit, of meaning, gets into working order with the rest of the system,
imagery tends normally to decline again to the rôle of signal flags and
semaphores.
The distinction in logical theory between "image" and "idea" which we
have been considering is only a half-truth from the point of view of
psychology. It virtually limits the "idea" to a fixed, unalterable
reference of a fragment of a desiccated image to a reality beyond. It
indifferently loses the play and richness of imagery to the floating
remnants of sense-content, or to an external reality. It limits itself
to an examination of a final stage in thinking, a stage in which the
image acts as a direct stimulus, a stage in which the sense-content of
the image has little or no function _per se_, because this content now
initiates directly a habitual adjustment, a worked-out and established
adaptation of means to end. It overlooks the process of conscious
reflection which logically precedes every such adjustment not purely
instinctive or accidental, a process in which imagery as
representational functions indirectly in bringing the resources of past
experience, the fund of acquired habits, to bear upon the fragmentary
and problematic elements of sense-experience actually present, thus
maintaining the flow and continuity of experience. It fails to recognize
that in the inseparable association of meaning with quality, of "idea"
with "image," there goes the possibility of working out and applying
new meanings from old, of developing deeper meanings, of testing and
affirming more inclusive and universal meaning.
We are confronted with this alternative. Either the image has a logical
function in virtue of its sense-content, or else the image functions
logically merely as a symbol, the sense-content of which is a matter of
complete logical indifference. According to the empiricist, the former
is the case, according to the conceptualist, the latter. The empiricist
would say that he needs the image to piece out the data upon which
logical processes operate. Having met this need, the image is retired
from active service. For the empiricist the processes of thought,
observing, comparing, generalizing, etc., are as independent of the data
they use as, for the conceptualist, logical meaning, reference, and
"idea" are independent of the sense-content of the "image." In reality
he agrees with the conceptualist in excluding the sense-content of the
image from the processes of thought, and hence from the domain of logic.
From the standpoint of psychological theory the conceptualist is an
improvement over the empiricist. He has gone a step farther in the
analysis of thought-processes by showing that they are bound up with
some kind of imagery, however irrelevant, inconsequential, and worn down
the sense-quality of that imagery may be. His statement of ideas as
references to reality lends itself readily, as we have seen, to the
unitary conception in psychology of ideo-motor, or sensori-motor,
activity. But is this where logical theory is to stop, while psychology
as a study of "states of consciousness" takes up the unfinished tale and
carries it forward? It seems hardly possible, unless logic is willing to
give over its task of thinking about thinking.
Reduce the image to a mere symbol. Let its sense-quality be a matter of
complete indifference. What have you, then, but an elementary and
primitive type of reflex action? It is of no particular consequence even
from what sense-organ it appears to proceed, or whether it appears to be
peripherally or centrally excited. It is simply a case of feel and act;
touch and go. Is this thinking? It may be regarded as either the germ or
the finality of thinking, but what most of us are inclined to believe is
the true subject-matter of logic is not to be limited to a simple
reflex, or even to a chain of reflexes. It is something more complex,
even if nothing more than an intricate tangle of chains of reflexes.
The complexity of the process called thinking does not reside alone in
the instinctive or habitual reflexes involved. The more instinctive and
habitual any adjustment may be, the less is it a matter of thought, as
everyone knows, although its biological complexity is none the less
patent to one who looks at it from the outside. The complexity of the
thinking process resides in consciousness also; it resides in the
imagery, the stimuli, the mere symbols, if you like, that have "come" to
consciousness. As soon as the complexity begins to be _felt_, as soon as
any discrimination whatsoever begins to be introduced or appreciated, at
that instant the sense-content, the quale, of imagery begins to have a
logical function. Conscious discrimination, however vague and
evanescent, and the logical function of the quale of imagery are born
together, unless one chooses to regard the more obvious and deliberate
forms of conscious discrimination as more characteristic of a logical
process. It is only as the sense-contents of various images are
discriminated and compared that anything like thinking can be conceived
to go on. The particular sense-content of an image, instead of being a
matter of logical indifference, is the condition, the possibility, of
thinking.
The conceptualist has contributed to the data of descriptive psychology
by calling attention, by implication at least, to the remote and
reduced character of the imagery which may characterize thinking. But it
by no means follows that the more remote and reduced the sense-content
of an image becomes, the less important is that sense-content for
thinking, the less demand for discrimination. On the contrary, the
sense-content that remains may be of supreme logical importance. It may
be the quintessence of meaning. It may be the conscious factor which,
when discriminated from another almost equally sublimated conscious
factor, may determine a whole course of action. The delicacy and
rapidity with which these reduced forms of imagery as they hover about
the margin of consciousness or flit across its focus are discriminated
and caught, are points in the technique of that long art of
thinking, begun in early childhood. The fact that questionnaire
investigations--like that of Galton's, for example--have in many
instances failed to discover in the minds of scientists and advanced
thinkers a rich and varied furniture of imagery does not argue the
poverty of imagery in such minds; it argues, rather, a highly developed
technique, a species of virtuosity, with reference to the sense-content
of the types of imagery actually in use.
To push a step farther the alternative we have already stated in a
preliminary way: Either the "idea," or "logical meaning," lies outside
of the process of thinking, as a mere impulse or reflex; or else, in
virtue of the sense-content of its "image," it enters into that
conscious process of discrimination, comparison, and selection, of light
and shade, of doubt and inquiry, which constitutes the evolution of a
judgment, which makes the life-history of a movement of thought.
IX
THE LOGIC OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY[87]
It is not the purpose of this study to show that the Pre-Socratics
possessed a system of logic which is now for the first time brought to
the notice of the modern world. Indeed, there is nothing to indicate
that they had reflected on mental processes in such a way as to call for
an organized body of canons regulating the forms of concepts and
conclusions. Aristotle attributed the discovery of the art of dialectic
to Zeno the Eleatic, and we shall see in the sequel that there was much
to justify the opinion. But logic, in the technical sense, is
inconceivable without concepts, and from the days of Aristotle it has
been universally believed that proper definitions owe their origin to
Socrates. A few crude attempts at definition, if such they may be
rightly called, are referred to Empedocles and Democritus. But in so far
as they were conceived in the spirit of science, they essayed to define
things materially by giving, so to speak, the chemical formula for their
production. Significant as this very fact is, it shows that even the
rudiments of the canons of thought were not the subjects of reflection.
In his _Organon_ Aristotle makes it evident that the demand for a
regulative art of scientific discourse was created by the eristic
logic-chopping of those who were most deeply influenced by the Eleatic
philosophy. Indeed, the case is quite parallel to the rise of the art of
rhetoric. Aristotle regarded Empedocles as the originator of that art,
as he referred the beginnings of dialectic to Zeno. But the formulation
of both arts in well-rounded systems came much later. As men conducted
lawsuits before the days of Tisias and Corax, so also were the essential
principles of logic operative and effective in practice before Aristotle
gave them their abstract formulation.
While it is true, therefore, that the Pre-Socratics had no formal logic,
it is equally true, and far more significant, that they either received
from their predecessors or themselves developed the conceptions and the
presuppositions on which the Aristotelian logic is founded. One of the
objects of this study is to institute a search for some of these basic
conceptions of Greek thought, almost all of which existed before the
days of Socrates, and to consider their origin as well as their logical
significance. The other aim here kept in view is to trace the course of
thought in which the logical principles, latent in all attempts to
construct and verify theories, came into play.
It is impossible, no doubt, to discover a body of thought which does not
ground itself upon presuppositions. They are the warp into which the
woof of the system, itself too often consisting of frayed ends of other
fabrics, is woven with the delight of a supposed creator. Rarely is the
thinker so conscious of his own mental processes that he is aware of
what he takes for granted. Ordinarily this retirement to an interior
line takes place only when one has been driven back from the advanced
position which could no longer be maintained. Emerson has somewhere
said: "The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we
through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to
the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight
and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us and not the
history of theirs?" The difficulty lies precisely in our faith in
immediate insight and revelation, which are themselves only short-cuts
of induction, psychological short circuits, conducted by media we have
disregarded. Only a fundamentally critical philosophy pushes its doubt
to the limit of demanding the credentials of those conceptions which
have come to be regarded as axiomatic.
The need of going back of Aristotle in our quest for the truth is well
shown by his attitude toward the first principles of the several
sciences. To him they are immediately given--[Greek: amesoi
protaseis]--and hence are ultimate _a priori_. The historical
significance of this fact is already apparent. It means that in his day
these first principles, which sum up the outcome of previous inductive
movements of thought, were regarded as so conclusively established that
the steps by which they had been inferred were allowed to lapse from
memory.
No account of the history of thought can hope to satisfy the demands of
reason that does not _explain_ the origin of the convictions thus
embodied in principles. The only acceptable explanation would be in
terms of will and interest. To give such an account would, however,
require the knowledge of secular pursuits and ambitions no longer
obtainable. It might be fruitful of results if we could discover even
the theoretical interests of the age before Thales; but we know that in
modern times the direction of interest characteristic of the purely
practical pursuits manifests its reformative influences in speculation a
century or more after it has begun to shape the course of common life.
Hence we might misinterpret the historical data if they were obtainable.
But general considerations, which we need not now rehearse, as well as
indications contained in the later history of thought, hereinafter
sketched, point to the primacy of the practical as yielding the
direction of interest that determines the course it shall take.
It was said above that the principles of science are the result of an
inductive movement, and that the inductive movement is directed by an
interest. Hence the principles are contained in, or rather are the
express definition of, the interest that gave them birth. In other
words, there is implied in all induction a process of deduction. Every
stream of thought embraces not only the main current, but also an eddy,
which here and there re-enters it. And this is one way of explaining the
phenomenon which has long engaged the thought of philosophers, namely,
the fact of successful anticipations of the discoveries of science or,
more generally still, the possibility of synthetic judgments _a priori_.
The solution of the problem is ultimately contained in its
statement.[88]
To arrive at a stage of mentality not based on assumptions one would
have, no doubt, to go back to its beginnings. Greek thought, even in the
time of Thales, was well furnished with them. We cannot pause to
catalogue them, but it may further our project if we consider a few of
the more important. The precondition of thought as of life is that
nature be uniform, or ultimately that the world be rational. This is not
even, as it becomes later, a conscious demand; it is the primary ethical
postulate which expresses itself in the confidence that it is so. Viewed
from a certain angle it may be called the principle of sufficient
reason. Closely associated with it is the universal belief of the early
philosophers of Greece that everything that comes into being is bound up
inseparably with that which has been before; more precisely, that there
is no absolute, but only relative, Becoming. Corollaries of this axiom
soon appeared in the postulates of the conservation of matter or mass,
and the conservation of energy, or more properly for the ancients, of
motion. Logically these principles appear to signify that the subject,
while under definition, shall remain just what it is; and that, in the
system constituted of subject, predicate, and copula, the terms shall
"stay put" while the adjustment of verification is in progress. It is a
matter of course that the constants in the great problem should become
permanent landmarks.
Other corollaries derive from this same principle of uniformity. Seeing
that all that comes to be in some sense already is, there appears the
postulate of the unity of the world; and this unity manifests itself not
only in the integrity and homogeneity of the world-ground, but also in
the more ideal conception of a universal law to which all special modes
of procedure in nature are ancillary. In these we recognize the
insistent demand for the organization of predicate and copula. Side by
side with these formulæ stands the other, which requires an ordered
process of becoming and a graduated scale of existences, such as can
mediate between the extremes of polarity. Such series meet us on every
hand in early Greek thought. The process of rarefaction and condensation
in Anaximenes, the [Greek: hodos anô katô] of Heraclitus, the regular
succession of the four Empedoclean elements in almost all later
systems--these and other examples spontaneously occur to the mind. The
significance of this conception, as the representative of an effective
copula, will presently be seen. More subtle, perhaps, than any of these
principles, though not allowed to go so long unchallenged, is the
assumption of a [Greek: physis], that is, the assumption that all nature
is instinct with life. The logical interpretation of this postulate
would seem to be that the concrete system of things--subject, predicate,
copula--constitutes a totality complete in itself and needing no jog
from without.
In this survey of the preconceptions of the early Greek philosophers I
have employed the terms of the judgment without apology. The
justification for this course must come ultimately, as for any
assumption, from the success of its application to the facts. But if
"logic" merely formulates in a schematic way that which in life is the
manipulation of concrete experience, with a view to attaining practical
ends, then its forms must apply here as well as anywhere. Logical
terminology may therefore be assumed to be welcome to this field where
judgments are formed, induction is made from certain facts to defined
conceptions, and deductions are derived from principles or premises
assumed. Speaking then in these terms we may say that the Pre-Socratics
had three logical problems set for them: First, there was a demand for a
predicate, or, in other words, for a theory of the world. Secondly,
there was the need of ascertaining just what should be regarded as the
subject, or, otherwise stated, just what it was that required
explanation. Thirdly, there arose the necessity of discovering ways and
means by which the theory could be predicated of the world and by which,
in turn, the hypothesis erected could be made to account for the
concrete experience of life: in terms of logic this problem is that of
maintaining an efficient copula. It is not assumed that the sequence
thus stated was historically observed without crossing and overlapping;
but a survey of the history of the period will show that, in a general
way, the logical requirements asserted themselves in this order.
1. Greek philosophy began its career with induction. We have already
stated that the preconceptions with which it approached its task were
the result of previous inductions, and indeed the epic and theogonic
poetry of the Greeks abounds in thoughts indicative of the consciousness
of all of these problems. Thus Homer is familiar with the notion that
all things proceed from water,[89] and that, when the human body decays,
it resolves itself into earth and water.[90] Other opinions might be
enumerated, but they would add nothing to the purpose. When men began,
in the spirit of philosophy, to theorize about the world, they assumed
that it--the subject--was sufficiently known. Its existence was taken
for granted, and that which engaged their attention was the problem of
its meaning. What predicate--so we may formulate their question--should
be given to the subject? It is noticeable that their induction was quite
perfunctory. But such is always the case until there are rival theories
competing for acceptance, and even then the impulse to gather up
evidence derived from a wide field and assured by resort to experiment
comes rather with the desire to test a hypothesis than to form it. It is
the effort to _verify_ that brings out details and also the negative
instances. Hence we are not to blame Thales for rashness in making his
generalization that all is Water. We do not know what indications led to
this conclusion. Aristotle ventured a guess, but the motives assumed for
Thales agree too well with those which weighed with Hippo to admit of
ready acceptance.
Anaximander, feeling the need of deduction as a sequel to induction,
found his predicate in the Infinite. We cannot now delay to inquire just
what he meant by the term; but it is not unlikely that its very
vagueness recommended it to a man of genius who caught enthusiastically
at the skirts of knowledge. Anaximenes, having pushed verification
somewhat farther and eliciting some negative instances, rejected water
and the Infinite and inferred that all was air. His [Greek: archê] must
have the quality of infinity, but, a copula having been found in the
process of rarefaction and condensation, it must occupy a determinate
place in the series of typical forms of existence. The logical
significance of this thought will engage our attention later.
Meanwhile it may be well to note that thus far only _one_ predicate has
been offered by each philosopher. This is doubtless due to the
preconception of the unity and homogeneity of the world, of which we
have already made mention. Although at the beginning its significance
was little realized, the conception was destined to play a prominent
part in Greek thought. It may be regarded from different points of view
not necessarily antagonistic. One may say, as indeed has oftentimes been
said, that it was due to ignorance. Men did not know the complexity of
the world, and hence declared its substance to be simple. Again, it may
be affirmed that the assumption was merely the naïve reflex of the
ethical postulate that we shall unify our experience and organize it for
the realization of our ideals. While increased knowledge has multiplied
the so-called chemical elements, physics knows nothing of their
differences, and chemistry itself demands their reduction.
The extension and enlarged scope of homogeneity came in two ways: First,
it presented itself by way of abstraction from the particular predicates
that may be given to things. This was due to the operation of the
fundamental assumption that the world must be intelligible. Thus, even
in Anaximander, the world-ground takes no account of the diversity of
things except in the negative way of providing that the contrariety of
experience shall arise from it. We are therefore referred for our
predicate to a somewhat behind concrete experience. The Pythagoreans fix
upon a single aspect of things as the essential, and find the meaning of
the world in mathematical relations. The Eleatics press the conception
of homogeneity until it is reduced to identity. Identity means the
absence of difference; hence, spatially considered, it requires the
negation of a void and the indivisibility of the world; viewed
temporally, it precludes the succession of different states and hence
the possibility of change.
We thus reach the acute stage of the problem of the One and the Many.
The One is here the predicate, the subject is the Many. The solution of
the difficulty is the task of the copula, and we shall recur to the
theme in due time. It may be well, however, at this point to draw
attention to the fact that the One is not always identical with the
predicate, nor the Many with the subject. In the rhythmic movement of
erecting and verifying hypotheses the interest shifts and what was but
now the predicate, by taking the place of the premises, comes to be
regarded as the given from which the particular is to be derived or
deduced. There is thus likewise a shift in the positions of existence
and meaning. The subject, or the world, was first assumed as the given
means with which to construct the predicate, its meaning; once the
hypothesis has been erected, the direction of interest shifts back to
the beginning, and in the process of verification or deduction the
quondam predicate, now the premises, becomes the given, and the task set
for thought is the derivation of fact. For the moment, or until the
return to the world is accomplished, the One is the only real, the
Manifold remains mere appearance.
The second form in which the sense of the homogeneity of the world
embodies itself is not, like the first, static, but is altogether
dynamic. That which makes the whole world kin is neither the presence
nor the absence of a quality, but a principle. The law thus revealed is,
therefore, not a matter of the predicate, but is the copula itself.
Hence we must defer a fuller consideration of it for the present.
2. As has already been said, the inductive movement implies the
deductive, and not only as something preceding or accompanying it, but
as its inner meaning and ultimate purpose. So too it was with the
earliest Greek thinkers. Their object in setting up a predicate was the
derivation of the subject from it. In other words their ambition was to
discover the [Greek: archê] from which the genesis of the world
proceeds. But deduction is really a much more serious task than would
at first appear to one who is familiar with the Aristotelian machinery
of premises and middle terms. The business of deduction is to reveal the
subject, and ordinarily the subject quite vanishes from view. Induction
is rapid, but deduction lags far behind. It may require but a momentary
flash of "insight" on the part of the physical philosopher to discover a
principle; if it is really significant, inventors will be engaged for
centuries in deducing from it applications to the needs of life by means
of contrivances. Thus after ages we come to know more of the subject,
which is thereby enriched. The contrivances are the representatives of
the copula in practical affairs; in quasi-theoretical spheres they are
the apparatus for experimentation. It has just been remarked that by the
application of the principles to life it is enriched; in other words, it
receives new meaning, and new meaning signifies a new predicate. Theory
is at times painfully aware of the multitude of new predicates proposed;
rarely does it realize that there has been created a new heaven and a
new earth. Without the latter, the former would be absurd.
Men take very much for granted and regard almost every achievement as a
matter of course. Hence they do not become aware of their changed
position except as it reflects itself in new schemes and in a larger
outlook. The subject receives only a summary glance to discover what new
predicate shall be evolved. Hence, while there is in Greek philosophy a
strongly marked deductive movement, the theoretical results to the
subject are insignificant. Thales seems, indeed, to have had no means to
offer for the derivation of the world, but he evidently had no doubt
that it was possible. With him and with others the assumption, however
vaguely understood, seems to have been that the subject, like the
predicate, was simple. Thus the essential unity of the world, considered
as existence no less than as meaning, is a foregone conclusion. The
sense of a division in the subject seems to arise with Empedocles when,
reaping the harvest of the Eleatic definition of substance, he parted
the world, as subject and as predicate, into four elements.
We may, perhaps, pause a moment to consider the significance of the
assumption of four elements which plays so large a part in subsequent
philosophies. There is no need of enlarging on the importance of the
association of multiple elements with the postulate that nothing is
absolutely created and nothing absolutely passes away. These are indeed
the pillars that support chemical science, and they further imply the
existence of qualities of different rank; but that implication, as we
shall see, lay even in the process of rarefaction and condensation
introduced by Anaximenes. The four elements concern us here chiefly as
testifying to the fact that certain practical interests had summed up
the essential characteristics of nature in forms sufficiently
significant to have maintained themselves even to our day. In regard to
fire, air, and water this is not greatly to be wondered at; it is a
somewhat different case with earth. If metallurgy and other pursuits
which deal with that which is roughly classed as earth had been highly
enough developed to have reacted upon the popular mind, this element
could not possibly have been assumed to be so homogeneous. The
conception clearly reflects the predominantly agricultural interest of
the Greeks in their relation to the earth. This further illustrates the
slow progress which deduction makes in the reconstitution of the
subject.
It is different, however, with Anaxagoras and the Atomists. Apparently
the movement begun by Empedocles soon ran its extreme course. Instead of
four elements there is now an infinite number of substances, each
differentiated from the other. The meaning of this wide swing of the
pendulum is not altogether clear; but it is evident from the system of
Anaxagoras that the metals, for example, possessed a significance which
they can not have had for Empedocles.
The opposite swing of the pendulum is seen in the later course of the
Eleatics. Given a predicate as fixed and unified as they assumed, the
subject cannot possibly be conceived in terms of it and hence it is
denied outright. In the dialectic of Zeno and Melissus, dealing with the
problems of the One and the Many, there is much that suggests the
solution offered by the Atomists; but it is probably impossible now to
ascertain whether these passages criticise a doctrine already propounded
or pointed the way for successors. While the Eleatics asserted the sole
reality of the One, Anaxagoras and the Atomists postulated a
multiplicity without essential unity. But the human mind seems to be
incapable of resting in that decision; it demands that the world shall
have not meanings, but a meaning. This demand calls not only for a
unified predicate, but also for an effective copula.
3. We have already remarked that the steps by which the predicate was
inferred are for the most part unknown. Certain suggestions are
contained in the reports of Aristotle, but it is safe to say that they
are generally guesses well or ill founded. The summary inductive
mediation has left few traces; and the process of verification, in the
course of which hypotheses were rejected and modified, can be followed
only here and there in the records. Almost our only source of
information is the dialectic of systems. Fortunately for our present
purpose we do not need to know the precise form which a question assumed
to the minds of the several philosophers; the efforts which they made to
meet the imperious demands of logic here speak for themselves.
At first there was no scheme for the mediation of the predicate back to
the subject. Indeed there seems not to have existed in the mind of
Thales a sense of its need. Anaximander raised the question, but the
process of segregation or separation ([Greek: ekkrinesthai]) which he
propounded was so vaguely conceived that it has created more problems
than it solved. Anaximenes first proposed a scheme that has borne
fruits. He said that things are produced from air by rarefaction and
condensation. This process offers not only a principle of difference,
but also a regulative conception, the evaluation of which engaged the
thought of almost all the later Pre-Socratics. It implies that extension
and mass constitute the essential characters of substance, and, fully
apprehended, contains in germ the whole materialistic philosophy from
Parmenides at one extreme to Democritus and Anaxagoras at the other. The
difficulties inherent in the view were unknown to Anaximenes; for,
having a unitary predicate, he assumed also a homogeneous subject.
The logical position of Heraclitus is similar to that of Anaximenes. He
likewise posits a simple predicate and further signalizes its functional
character by naming it Fire. Without venturing upon debatable ground we
may say that it was the restless activity of the element that caused him
to single it out as best expressing the meaning of things. Its rhythmic
libration typified to him the principle of change in existence and of
existence in change. It is the "ever-living" copula, devouring subject
and predicate alike and re-creating them functionally as co-ordinate
expressions of itself. That which alone _is_, the abiding, is not the
physical composition of a thing, but the law of reciprocity by which it
maintains a balance. This he calls variously by the names of Harmony,
Logos, Necessity, Justice. In this system of functional co-ordinates
nothing escapes the accounting on 'Change;[91] all things are in
continuous flux, only the nodes of the rhythm remaining constant. It is
not surprising therefore that Heraclitus has been the subject of so much
speculation and comment in modern times; for the functional character of
all distinctions in his system marks the affinity of his doctrines for
those of modern psychology and logic.[92]
The Pythagoreans, having by abstraction obtained a predicate,
acknowledged the existence of the subject, but did not feel the need of
a copula in the theoretical sphere, except as it concerned the inner
relation of the predicate. To them the world was number, but number
itself was pluralistic, or let us rather say dualistic. The odd and the
even, the generic constituents of number, had somehow to be brought
together. The bond was found in Unity, or, again, in Harmony. When they
inquired how numbers constituted the world, their answer was in general
only a nugatory exercise of an unbridled fancy.[93] Such and such a
number was Justice, such another, Man. It was only in the wholly
practical sphere of experiment that they reached a conclusion worth
recording. Its significance they themselves did not perceive. Here, by
the application of mathematical measurements to sounds, they discovered
how to produce tones of a given pitch, and thus successfully
demonstrated the efficiency of their copula.
The Eleatics followed the same general course of abstraction; but with
them the sense of the unity of the world effaced its rich diversity.
Xenophanes does not appear to have pressed the conception so far as to
deny all change within the world. Parmenides, however, bated no jot of
the legitimate consequences of his logical position, interpreting, as he
did, the predicate, originally conceived as meaning, in terms of
existence. That which is simply _is_. Thus there is left only a one-time
predicate, now converted into a subject of which only itself, as a brute
fact, can be predicated. Stated logically, Parmenides is capable only of
uttering identical propositions: A=A. The fallacious character of the
report of the senses and the impossibility of Becoming followed as a
matter of course. Where the logical copula is a mere sign of equation
there can be neither induction nor deduction. We are caught in a
theoretical _cul-de-sac_.
We are not now concerned to know in what light the demand for a treatise
on the world of Opinion may have appeared to Parmenides himself. The
avenues by which men reach conclusions which are capable of
simplification and syllogistic statement are too various to admit of
plausible conjecture in the absence of specific evidence. But it is
clear that his resort to the expedient reflected a consciousness of the
state of deadlock. In that part of his philosophical poem he dealt with
many questions of detail in a rather more practical spirit. Following
the lead of Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans he was more successful here
than in the field of metaphysics. Thus we see once more that the wounds
of theory are healed by practice. But, as usual, even though the
metaphysician does receive the answer to his doubts by falling into a
severely practical pit and extricating himself by steps which he
fashions with his hands, his mental habit is not thereby reconstructed.
The fixed predicate of the Eleatics was bequeathed to the
Platonic-Aristotelian formal logic, and induction and deduction remained
for centuries in theory a race between the hedgehog and the hare.[94]
The true significance of the destructive criticism brought to bear by
Zeno and Melissus on the concepts of unity, plurality, continuity,
extension, time, and motion is simply this: that when by a shift of the
attention a predicate becomes subject or meaning fossilizes as
existence, the terms of the logical process lose their functional
reference and grow to be unmeaning and self-contradictory.
We have already remarked that Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists
sought to solve the problem of the One and the Many, of the subject and
the predicate, by shattering the unitary predicate and thus leaving the
field to plurality in both spheres. But obviously they were merely
postponing the real question. Thought, as well as action, demands a
unity somewhere. Hence the absorbing task of these philosophers is to
disclose or contrive such a bond of unity. The form which their quest
assumed was the search for a basis for physical interaction.[95]
Empedocles clearly believed that he was solving the difficulty in one
form when he instituted the rhythmic libration between unity under the
sway of Love and multiplicity under the domination of Hate. But even he
was not satisfied with that. While Love brought all the elements
together into a sphere and thus produced a unity, it was a unity
constituted of a mixture of elements possessing inalienable characters
not only different but actually antagonistic. On the other hand, Hate
did indeed separate the confused particles, but it effected a sort of
unity in that, by segregating the particles of the several elements from
the others, it brought like and like together. In so far Aristotle was
clearly right in attributing to Love the power to separate as well as to
unite. Moreover, it would seem that there never was a moment in which
both agencies were not conceived to be operative, to however small an
extent.
Empedocles asserted, however, that a world could arise only in the
intervals between the extremes of victory in the contest between Love
and Hate, when, so to speak, the battle was drawn and there was a
general _mêlée_ of the combatants. It may be questioned, perhaps,
whether he distinctly stated that in our world everything possessed its
portion of each of the elements; but so indispensable did he consider
this _mixture_ that its function of providing a physical unity is
unmistakable. A further evidence of his insistent demand for unity--the
copula--is found in his doctrine that only like can act on like; and the
scheme of pores and effluvia which he contrived bears eloquent testimony
to the earnest consideration he gave to this matter. For he conceived
that all interaction took place by means of them.
Empedocles, then, may be said to have annulled the decree of divorce he
had issued for the elements at the beginning. But the solution here too
is found, not in the theoretical, but in the practical, sphere; for he
never retracts his assertion that the elements are distinct and
antagonistic. But even so his problem is defined rather than solved; for
after the elements have been brought within microscopic distance of each
other in the mixture, since like can act only on like, the narrow space
that separates them is still an impassable gulf.[96]
Anaxagoras endowed his infinitely numerous substances with the same
characters of fixity and contrariety that mark the four elements of
Empedocles. For him, therefore, the difficulty of securing unity and
co-operation in an effective copula is, if that be possible, further
aggravated. His grasp of the problem, if we may judge from the
relatively small body of documentary evidence, was not so sure as that
of Empedocles, though he employed in general the same means for its
solution. He too postulates a mixture of all substances, more
consciously and definitely indeed than his predecessor. Believing that
only like can act on like,[97] he is led to assume not only an infinite
multiplicity of substances, but also their complete mixture, so that
everything, however small, contains a portion of every other. Food, for
example, however seeming-simple, nourishes the most diverse tissues of
the body. Thus we discover in the universal mixture of substances the
basis for co-operation and interaction.
Anaxagoras, therefore, like Empedocles, feels the need of bridging the
chasm which he has assumed to exist between his distinct substances.
Their failure is alike great, and is due to the presuppositions they
inherited from the Eleatic conception of a severe homogeneity which
implies an absolute difference from everything else. The embarrassment
of Anaxagoras increases with the introduction of the [Greek: Nous]. This
agency was conceived with a view to explaining the formation of the
world; that is, with a view to mediating between the myriad substances
in their essential aloofness and effecting the harmonious concord of
concrete things. While, even on the basis of a universal mixture, the
function of the [Greek: Nous] was foredoomed to failure, its task was
made more difficult still by the definition given to its nature.
According to Anaxagoras it was the sole exception to the composite
character of things; it is absolutely pure and simple in nature.[98] By
its definition, then, it is prevented from accomplishing the work it was
contrived to do; and hence we cannot be surprised at the lamentations
raised by Plato and Aristotle about the failure of Anaxagoras to employ
the agency he had introduced. To be sure, the [Greek: Nous] is no more
a _deus ex machina_ than were the ideas of Plato or the God of
Aristotle. They all labored under the same restrictions.
The Atomists followed with the same recognition of the Many, in the
infinitely various kinds of atoms; but it was tempered by the assumption
of an essential homogeneity. One atom is distinguished from another by
characteristics due to its spatial relations. Mass and weight are
proportional to size. Aristotle reports that, though things and atoms
have differences, it is not in virtue of their differences, but in
virtue of their essential identity, that they interact.[99] There is
thus introduced a distinction which runs nearly, but not quite, parallel
to that between primary and secondary qualities.[100] Primary qualities
are those of size, shape, and perhaps[101] position; all others are
secondary. On the other hand, that which is common to all atoms is their
corporeity, which does indeed define itself with reference to the
primary (spatial) qualities, but not alike in all. The atoms of which
the world is constituted are alike in essential nature, but they differ
most widely in position.
It is the void that breaks up the unity of the world--atomizes it, if we
may use the expression. It is the basis of all discontinuity. Atoms and
void are thus polar extremes reciprocally exclusive. The atoms in their
utter isolation in space are incapable of producing a world. In order to
bridge the chasm between atom and atom, recourse is had to motion
eternal, omnipresent, and necessary. This it is that annihilates
distances. In the course of their motion atoms collide, and in their
impact one upon the other the Atomists find the precise mode of
co-operation by which the world is formed.[102] To this agency are due
what Lucretius happily called "generating motions."
The problem, however, so insistently pursued the philosophers of this
time that the Atomists did not content themselves with this solution,
satisfactory as modern science has pretended to consider it. They
followed the lead of Empedocles and Anaxagoras in postulating a
widespread, if not absolutely universal, _mixture_. Having on principle
excluded "essential" differences among the atoms, the impossibility of
finally distinguishing essential and non-essential had its revenge.
Important as the device of mixture was to Empedocles and Anaxagoras,
just so unmeaning ought it to have been in the Atomic philosophy,
provided that the hypothesis could accomplish what was claimed for it.
It is not necessary to reassert that the assumption of "individua,"
utterly alienated one from the other by a void, rendered the problem of
the copula insoluble for the Atomists.
Diogenes of Apollonia is commonly treated contemptuously as a mere
reactionary who harked back to Anaximenes and had no significance of his
own. The best that can be said of such an attitude is that it regards
philosophical theories as accidental utterances of individuals,
naturally well or ill endowed, who happen to express conclusions with
which men in after times agree or disagree. A philosophical tenet is an
atom, set somewhere in a vacuum, utterly out of relation to everything
else. But it is impossible to see how, on this theory, any system of
thought should possess any significance for anybody, or how there should
be any progress even, or retardation.
Viewed entirely from without, the doctrine of Diogenes would seem to be
substantially a recrudescence of that of Anaximenes. Air is once more
the element or [Greek: archê] out of which all proceeds and into which
all returns. Again the process of transformation is seen in rarefaction
and condensation; and the attributes of substance are those which were
common to the early hylozoists. But there is present a keen sense of a
problem unknown to Anaximenes. What the early philosopher asserted in
the innocence of the youth of thought, the later physiologist reiterates
with emphasis because he believes that the words are words of life.
The motive for recurring to the earlier system is supplied by the
imperious demand for a copula which had so much distressed Empedocles,
Anaxagoras, and the Atomists. And here we are not left to conjecture,
but are able to refer to the _ipsissima verba_ of our philosopher. After
a brief prologue, in which he stated that one's starting-point must be
beyond dispute, he immediately[103] turned to his theme in these
words:[104] "In my opinion, to put the whole matter in a nutshell, all
things are derived by alteration from the same substance, and indeed all
are one and the same. And this is altogether evident. For if the things
that now exist in the world--earth and water and air and fire and
whatsoever else appears to exist in this world--if, I say, any one of
these were different from the other, different that is to say in its
proper peculiar nature, and did not rather, being one and the same,
change and alter in many ways, then in no-wise would things be able to
mix with one another, nor would help or harm come to one from the other,
nor would any plant spring from the earth, nor any other living thing
come into being, if things were not so constituted as to be one and the
same."
These words contain a singularly interesting expression of the need of
restoring the integrity of the process which had been lost in the effort
to solve the problem of the One and the Many without abandoning the
point of view won by the Eleatics. Aristotle and Theophrastus paraphrase
and sum up the passage above quoted by saying[105] that interaction is
impossible except on the assumption that all the world is one and the
same. Hence it is manifest, as was said above, that the return of
Diogenes to the monistic system of Anaximenes had for its conscious
motive the avoidance of the dualism that had sprung up in the interval
and had rendered futile the multiplied efforts to secure an effective
copula.
We should note, however, that in the attempt thus made to undo the work
of several generations Diogenes retained the principle which had wrought
the mischief. We have before remarked that the germ of the Atomic
philosophy was contained in the process of rarefaction and condensation.
Hence, in accepting it along with the remainder of Anaximenes's theory,
the fatal assumption was reinstated. It is the story of human systems in
epitome. The superstructure is overthrown, and with the débris a new
edifice is built upon the old foundations.
In the entire course of philosophical thought from Thales onward the
suggestion of an opposition between the subject and the predicate had
appeared. It has often been said that it was expressed by the search for
a [Greek: physis], or a _true nature_, in contrast with the world as
practically accepted. There is a certain truth in this view; for the
effort to attain a predicate which does not merely repeat the subject
does imply that there is an opposition. But the efforts made to return
from the predicate to the subject, in a deductive movement, shows that
the difference was not believed to be absolute. This is true, however,
only of those fields of speculation that lie next to the highways of
practical life, which lead equally in both directions, or, let us
rather say, which unite while they mark separation. In the sphere of
abstract ideas the sense of embarrassment was deep and constantly
growing deeper. The reconstruction, accomplished on lower levels, did
not attain unto those heights. Men doubted conclusions, but did not
think to demand the credentials of their common presuppositions.
Side by side with the later philosophers whom we have mentioned there
walked men whom we are wont to call the Sophists. They were the
journalists and pamphleteers of those days, men who, without dealing
profoundly with any special problem, familiarized themselves with the
generalizations of workers in special fields and combined these ideas
for the entertainment of the public. They were neither philosophers nor
physicists, but, like some men whom we might cite from our own times,
endeavored to popularize the teachings of both. Naturally they seized
upon the most sweeping generalizations and the preconceptions which
disclosed themselves in manifold forms. Just as naturally they had no
eyes with which to detect the significance of the besetting problems at
which, in matters more concrete, the masters were toiling. Hence the
contradictions, revealed in the analysis we have just given of the
philosophy of the age, stood out in utter nakedness.
The result was inevitable. The inability to discover a unitary
predicate, more still, the failure to attain a working copula, led
directly to the denial of the possibility of predication. There was no
truth. Granted that it existed, it could not be known. Even if known, it
could not be communicated. In these incisive words of Gorgias the
conclusion of the ineffectual effort to establish a logic of science is
clearly stated. But the statement is happily only the half-truth, which
is almost a complete falsehood. It takes no account of the indications,
everywhere present, of a needed reconstruction. Least of all does it
catch the meaning of such a demand.
The Sophists did not, however, merely repeat in abstract from the
teachings of the philosophers. It matters not whether they originated
the movement or not; at all events they were pioneers in the field of
moral philosophy. Here it was that they chiefly drew the inferences from
the distinction between [Greek: physei] and [Greek: nomô]. Nothing could
have been more effective in disengaging the firmly rooted moral
pre-possessions and rendering them amenable to philosophy. Just here, at
last, we catch a hint of the significance of the logical process. In a
striking passage in Plato's _Protagoras_,[106] which one is fain to
regard as an essentially true reproduction of a discourse by that great
man, Justice and Reverence are accorded true validity. On inquiring to
what characteristic this honorable distinction is due, we find that it
does not reside in themselves; it is due to _the assumption that a state
must exist_.
Here, then, in a word, is the upshot of the logical movement. Logical
predicates are essentially hypothetical, deriving their validity from
the interest that moves men to affirm them. When they lose this
hypothetical character, as terms within a volitional system, and set up
as entities at large, they cease to function and forfeit their right to
exist.
X
VALUATION AS A LOGICAL PROCESS
The purpose of this discussion is to supply the main outlines of a
theory of value based upon analysis of the valuation-process from the
logical point of view. The general principle which we shall seek to
establish is that judgments of value, whether passed upon things or upon
modes of conduct, are essentially objective in import, and that they are
reached through a process of valuation which is essentially of the same
logical character as the judgment-process whereby conclusions of
physical fact are established--in a word, that the valuation-process,
issuing in the finished judgment of value expressive of the judging
person's definitive attitude toward the thing in question, is
constructive of an order of reality in the same sense as, in current
theories of knowledge, is the judgment of sense-perception and science.
Our method of procedure to this end will be that of assuming, and
adhering to as consistently as possible, the standpoint of the
individual in the process of deliberating upon an ethical or economic
problem (for, as we shall hold, all values properly so called are either
ethical or economic), and of ascertaining, as accurately as may be, the
meaning of the deliberative or evaluating process and of the various
factors in it as these are presented in the individual's apprehension.
It is in this sense that our procedure will be logical rather than
psychological. We shall be concerned to determine the _meaning_ of the
object of valuation as object, of the standard of value as standard, and
of the valued object as valued, in terms of the individual's own
apprehension of these, rather than to ascertain the nature and
conditions of his apprehensions of these considered as psychical
events. Our attention will throughout be directed to these factors or
phases of the valuation-process in their functional aspect of
determinants of the valuing agent's practical attitude, and never,
excepting for purposes of incidental illustration and in a very general
and tentative way, as events in consciousness mediated by more
"elementary" psychical processes. The results which we shall gain by
adhering to this method will enable us to see not merely that our
judgments of value are in function and meaning objective, but also that
our judgments of sense-perception and science are, as such, capable of
satisfactory interpretation only as being incidental to the attainment
and progressive reconstruction of judgments of value.
The first three main divisions will be given over to establishing the
objectivity of content and function of judgments of value. The fourth
division will present a detailed analysis of the two types of judgment
of value, the ethical and economic, defining them and relating them to
each other, and correlating them in the manner just suggested with
judgment of the physical type. After considering, in the fifth part,
certain general objections to the positions thus stated, we shall
proceed in the sixth and concluding division to define the function of
the consciousness of value in the economy of life.[107]
I
The system of judgments which defines what one calls the objective order
of things is inevitably unique for each particular individual. No two
men can view the world from the standpoint of the same theoretical and
practical interests, nor can any two proceed in the work of gaining for
themselves knowledge of the world with precisely equal degrees of skill
and accuracy. Each must be prompted and guided, in the construction of
his knowledge of single things and of the system in which they have
their being, by his own particular interests and aims; and even when one
person in a measure shares in the interests and aims of another, the
rate and manner of procedure will not be the same for both, nor will the
knowledge gained be for both equally systematic in arrangement or in
interrelation of its parts. Each man lives in a world of his own--a
world, indeed, identical in certain fundamental respects with the worlds
which his fellow-men have constructed for themselves, but one
nevertheless necessarily unique through and through because each man is
a unique individual. There is, doubtless, a "social currency" of objects
which implies a certain identity of meaning in objects as experienced by
different individuals. The existence of society presupposes, and its
evolution in turn develops and extends, a system of generally accepted
objects and relations. Nevertheless, the "socially current object" is,
as such, an abstraction just as the uniform social individual is
likewise an abstraction. The only concrete object ever actually known or
in any wise experienced by any person is the object as constructed by
that person in accordance with his own aims and purposes, and in which
there is, therefore, a large and important share of meaning which is
significant to no one else.
It is needless in this discussion to dwell at length upon the general
principle of recent "functional" psychology, that practical ends are the
controlling factors in the acquisition of our knowledge of objective
things. We shall take for granted the truth of the general proposition
that cognition, in whatever sphere of science or of practical life, is
essentially teleological in the sense of being incidental always, more
or less directly, to the attainment of ends. Cognition, as the
apperceptive or attentive process, is essentially the process of
scrutinizing a situation (whether theoretical or practical) with a view
to determining the availability for one's intended purpose of such
objects and conditions as the situation may present. The objects and
conditions thus determined will be made use of or ignored, counted upon
as advantageous or guarded against as unfavorable--in a word, responded
to--in ways suggested by their character as ascertained through
reference to the interest in question. In this sense, then, objective
things as known by individual persons are essentially complex stimuli
whose proper function and reason for being it is to elicit useful
responses in the way of conduct--responses conducive to the realization
of ends.
From this point of view, then, the difference between one person's
knowledge of a particular object and another's signifies (1) a
difference between these persons' original purposes in setting out to
gain knowledge of the object, and (2) consequently a difference between
their present ways of acting with reference to the object. The bare
object as socially current is, at best, for each individual simply a
ground upon which subsequent construction may be made; and the
subsequent construction which each individual is prompted by his
circumstances and is able to work out in judgment first makes the
object, for this individual, real and for his purposes complete.
Now, it is our primary intention to show that objects are, in cases of a
certain important class, not yet ready to serve the person who knows
them in their proper character of stimuli, when they have been, even
exhaustively, defined in merely physical terms. It is very often not
enough that the dimensions of an object and its physical properties,
even the more recondite ones as well as those more commonly
understood--it is often not enough for the purposes of an agent that
these characters should make up the whole sum of his knowledge of the
object in question. A measure of knowledge in terms of physical
categories is often only a beginning--the result of a preliminary stage
of the entire process of teleological determination, which must be
carried through before the object of attention can be satisfactorily
known. In the present study of the logic of valuation we shall be
occupied exclusively with the discussion of cases of this kind. In our
judgments of sense-perception and physical science we have presented to
us material objects in their physical aspect. When these latter are
inadequate to suggest or warrant overt conduct, our knowledge of them
must be supplemented and reconstructed in ways presently to be
specified. It is in the outcome of judgment-processes in which this work
of supplementing and reconstructing is carried through that the
consciousness of value, in the proper sense, arises, and these
processes, then, are those which we shall here consider under the name
of "processes of valuation." They will therefore best be approached
through specification of the ways in which our physical judgments may be
inadequate.
Let us, then, assume, as has been indicated, that the process of
acquiring knowledge--that is to say, the process of judgment or
attention--is in every case of its occurrence incidental to the
attainment of an end. We must make this assumption without attempting
formally to justify it--though in the course of our discussion it will
be abundantly illustrated. Let us, in accordance with this view, think
of the typical judgment-process as proceeding, in the main, as follows:
First of all must come a sense of need or deficiency, which may, on
occasion, be preceded by a more or less violent and sudden shock to the
senses, forcibly turning one's attention to the need of immediate
action. By degrees this sense of need will grow more definite and come
to express itself in a more or less "clear and distinct" image of an
end, toward which end the agent is drawn by desire and to which he looks
with much or little of emotion. The emergence of the end into
consciousness immediately makes possible and occasions definite analysis
of the situation in which the end must be worked out. Salient features
of the situation forthwith are noticed--whether useful things or
favoring conditions, or, on the other hand, the absence of any such.
Thus predicates and then subjects for many subsidiary judgments in the
comprehensive judgment-process emerge together in action and interaction
upon each other. The predicates, developed out of the general end toward
which the agent strives, afford successive points of view for
fresh analyses of the situation. The logical subjects thus
discovered--_objects_ of attention and knowledge--require, on
the other hand, as they are scrutinized and judged, modification and
re-examination of the end. The end grows clearer and fuller of detail
as the predicates or implied ("constituent") ideas which are developed
out of it are distinguished from each other and used in making one's
inventory of the objective situation. Conversely, the situation loses
its first aspect of confusion and takes on more and more the aspect of
an orderly assemblage of objects and conditions, useful, indifferent,
and adverse, by means of which the end may in greater or less measure be
attained or must, in however greatly modified a form, be defeated. Now,
in this development of the judgment-process, it must be observed, the
end must be more or less clearly and consistently conceived throughout
as an _activity_, if the objective means of action which have been
determined in the process are not to be, at the last, separate and
unrelated data still requiring co-ordination. If the end has been so
conceived, the means will inevitably be known as members of a mechanical
_system_, since the predicates by which they have been determined have
at every point involved this factor of amenability to co-ordination.
The judgment-process, if properly conducted and brought to a conclusion,
must issue at the end in the functional unity of a finished plan of
conduct with a perfected mechanical co-ordination of the available
means.
We have now to see that much more may be involved in such a process as
this than has been explicitly stated in our brief analysis. For the end
itself may be a matter of deliberation, just as must be the physical
means of accomplishing it; and, again, the means may call for scrutiny
and determination from other points of view than the physical and
mechanical. The final action taken at the end may express the outcome of
deliberate ethical and economic judgment as well as of judgments in the
sphere of sense-perception and physical science. Let us consider, for
example, that one's end is the construction of a house upon a certain
plot of ground. This end expresses the felt need of a more comfortable
or more reputable abode, and has so much of general presumption in its
favor. There may, however, be many reasons for hesitation. The cost in
time or money or materials on hand may tax one's resources and
injuriously curtail one's activities along other lines. And there may be
ethical reasons why the plan should not be carried out. The house may
shut off a pleasing prospect from the view of the entire neighborhood
and serve no better end than the gratification of its owner's selfish
vanity. It will cost a sum of money which might be used in paying just,
though outlawed, debts.
Now, from the standpoint of such problems as these the fullest possible
preliminary knowledge of the physical and mechanical fitness of our
means must still be very abstract and general. It would be of use in any
undertaking like the one we have supposed, but it is not sufficient in
so far as the problem is one's own problem, concrete, particular, and
so unique. One may, of course, proceed to the stage of physical
judgment without having settled the ethical problems which may have
presented themselves at the outset. The end may be entertained
tentatively as a hypothesis until certain mechanical problems have been
dealt with. But manifestly this is only postponement of the issue. The
agent is still quite unprepared, even after the means have been so far
determined, to take the first step in the execution of the plan; indeed,
his uncertainty is probably only the more harassing than before.
Moreover, the economic problems in the case are now more sharply
defined, and these for the time being still further darken counsel.
Manifestly the need for deliberation is at this point quite as urgent as
the need for physical determination can ever be, and the need is
evidenced in the same way by the actual arrest and postponement of overt
conduct. The agent, despite his physical knowledge, is not yet free to
embrace the end and, having done so, use thereto the means at his
disposal. It is plainly impossible to use the physical means until one
knows in terms of Substance and Attribute or Cause and Effect, or
whatever other physical categories one may please, what manner of
behavior may be expected of them. So likewise is it as truly impossible,
for one intellectually and morally capable of appreciating problems of a
more advanced and complex sort, to exploit the physical properties thus
discovered until ethical determination of the end and economic
determination of the means have been completed.[108]
There are, then, we conclude, cases in which physical determination of
the means is by itself not a sufficient preparation for conduct--in
which there are ethical and economic problems which delay the
application of the physical means to the end to which they may be
physically adapted. Indeed, so much as this may well appear as
sufficiently obvious without extended illustration. Everyone knows that
it is nearly always necessary, in undertaking any work in which material
things are used as means, to count the cost; and everyone knows likewise
that not every end that is in any way attractive and within one's reach
may without more ado be taken as an object of settled desire and effort.
It is indeed needless to elaborate these commonplaces in the sense in
which they are commonly understood. However, such is not our present
purpose. Our purpose is the more specific one of showing that the
meaning of Objectivity must be widened so as to include (1) the
"universe" of ends in their ethical aspect and (2) the economic aspect
of the means of action, as well as (3) the physical aspect to which the
character of Objectivity is commonly restricted. We shall maintain that
these are parts or phases of a complete conception of Reality, and that
of them, consequently, Objectivity must be predicated for every
essential reason connoted by such characterization of the world of
things "external" to the senses. It has been with this conclusion in
mind, then, that we have sought to emphasize the frequent serious
inadequacy, for practical purposes, of the merely physical determination
of the means in one's environment.
The principle thus suggested would imply that the ethical and economic
stages in the one inclusive process of reflective attention should be
regarded as involving, when they occur, the same logical function of
judgment as is operative in the sphere of sense-perception and the
sciences generally. Ethical and economic factors must on occasion be
present at the final choice and shaping of one's course of conduct,
along with the physical determinations of environing means and
conditions which one has made in sense-perception. There is, then, it
would appear, at least a fair presumption, though not indeed an _a
priori_ certainty, that these ethical and economic factors or conditions
have, like the physical, taken form in a _judgment-process_ which will
admit of profitable analysis in accordance with whatever general theory
of judgment one may hold as valid elsewhere in the field of knowledge.
This presumption we shall seek to verify. Now, our interest in thus
determining, first of all, the logical character of these processes will
readily be understood from this, that, in the present view, these are
the processes, and the only ones in our experience, which are properly
to be regarded as processes of Valuation. We shall hold that Valuation,
and so all consciousness of Value, properly so called, must be either
ethical or economic; that the only conscious processes in which Values
can come to definition are these processes of ethical and economic
judgment. The present theory of Value is, then, essentially a logical
one, in the sense of holding that Values are determined in and by a
logical--that is, a judgmental--valuation-process and in its details is
closely dependent upon the general conception of judgment of which the
outlines have been sketched above. Accordingly, the exposition must
proceed in the following general order: Assuming the conception of
judgment which has been presented (which our discussion will in several
ways further illustrate and so tend to confirm), we shall seek to show
that the determinations made in ethical and economic judgment are in the
proper sense objective. This will involve, first of all, a statement of
the conditions under which the ethical and economic judgments
respectively arise--which statement will serve to distinguish the two
types of judgment from each other. We shall then proceed to the special
analysis of the ethical and economic forms from the standpoint of our
general theory of judgment, thereby establishing in detail the
judgmental character of these parts of the reflective process. This
analysis will serve to introduce our interpretation of the consciousness
of Value as a factor in the conduct and economy of life.
II
Let us then define the problem of the objective reference of the
valuational judgments by stating, as distinctly as may be, the
conditions by which ethical and economic deliberation, respectively, are
prompted. A study of these conditions will make it easier to see in what
way the judgments reached in dealing with them can be objective.
When will an end, presenting itself in consciousness in the manner
indicated in our brief analysis of the judgment-process, become the
center of attention, thereby checking the advance, through investigation
of the possible means, to final overt action? This is the general
statement of the problem of the typical ethical situation. Manifestly
there will be no ethical deliberation if the imaged end at once turns
the attention toward the environment of possible means, instead of first
of all itself becoming the object instead of the director of attention;
there will be no suspension of progress toward final action, excepting
such as may later come through difficulty in the discovery and
co-ordination of the means. However, there are cases in which the
emergence of the end forthwith is followed by a check to the reflective
process, and the agent shrinks from the end presented in imagination as
being, let us say, one forbidden by authority or one repugnant to his
own established standards. The end may in such a case disappear at once;
very often it will insistently remain. On this latter supposition, the
simplest possibility will be the development of a mere mechanical
tension, a "pull and haul" between the end, or properly the impulses
which it represents, and the agent's habit of suppressing impulses of
the class to which the present one is, perhaps intuitively, recognized
as belonging. The case is the common one of "temptation" on the one side
and "principle" or "conscience" on the other, and so long as the two
forces remain thus in hard-and-fast opposition to each other there can
be no ethical deliberation or judgment in a proper sense. The standard
or habit may gain the day by sheer mechanical excess of power, or the
new impulse, the temptation, may prevail because its onset can break
down the mechanical resistance.
Out of such a situation as this, however, genuine ethical deliberation
may arise on condition that standard and "temptation" can lose something
of their abstractness and their hard-and-fast opposition, and develop
into terms of concrete meaning. The agent may come to see that the end
is in some definite way of really vital interest and too important to be
put aside without consideration. He may, of course, in this fall into
gross self-sophistication, like the drunkard in the classical instance
who takes another glass to test his self-control and thereby gain
assurance, or he may act with wisdom and with full sincerity, like
Dorothea Casaubon when she renounced the impossible task imposed by her
departed husband. In the moral life one can ask or hope for complete
exemption from the risk of self-deception with as little reason as in
scientific research. But however this may be, our present interest is in
the method, not in particular results of ethical reflection. Whether
properly so in a particular case or not, the imaged end may come to
seem at least plausibly defensible on grounds of principle which serve
to sanction certain other modes of conduct to which a place is given in
the accepted scheme of life; or the end may simply press for a
relatively independent recognition on the very general ground that its
emergence represents an enlargement and new development of the
personality.[109] The end may thus cease to stand in the character of
blind self-assertive impulse, and press its claim as a positive means of
future moral growth, as bringing freedom from repressive and enfeebling
restraints and as tending to the reinforcement of other already valued
modes of conduct. On the other hand, the standard will cease to stand as
mere resistance and negation, and may discover something of its hidden
meaning as a product of long experience and slow growth, and as perhaps
a vital part of the organization of one's present life, not to be
touched without grave risk.
Now, on whichever side the development may first commence, a like
development must soon follow on the other, and it is the action and
reaction of standard and prospective or problematic end upon each other
that constitutes the process of ethical deliberation or judgment. Just
as in the typical judgment-process, as sketched above, so also here
predicate and subject _develop each other_, when once they have given
over their first antagonism and come to the attitude of reasoning
together. The predicate explains itself that the subject or new end may
be searchingly and fairly tested; and under this scrutiny the subject
develops its full meaning as a course of conduct, thereby prompting
further analysis and reinterpretation of the standard. But this is not
the place for detailed analysis of the process;[110] here we are
concerned only to define the type of situation, and this we may now do
in the following terms: The indispensable condition of ethical judgment
is the presence in the agent's mind of at least two rival interesting
ends or systems of such ends. In the foregoing, the subject of the
judgment is the new end that has arisen; the predicate or "standard" is
the symbol for the old ends or values which in the tension of the
judgment-process must be brought to more or less explicit
enumeration--and, we must add, reconstruction also. Indeed, it is
important, even at this stage of our discussion, to observe that
Predicate and Standard are not equivalent in meaning. The predicate, or
predicative side, of judgment is the imagery of control in the process,
which, as we have seen, develops with the subject side; while the term
"Standard" connotes the rigid fixity which belongs to the inhibiting
concept or ideal in the stage before the judgment-process proper can
begin. The ethical judgment-process is, in a word, just the process of
reconstructing standards--as in its other and corresponding aspect it is
the process of interpreting new ends. Those who oppose measures of
social reform or new modes of conduct or belief on alleged grounds of
"immorality" instinctively feel in doing so that the change may make its
way more easily against a resistance that will candidly explain itself;
and, on the other side of the social judgment-process, the more
fanatical know how to turn to good advantage for their propaganda the
bitterness or contempt of those who represent the established order. On
both sides there are those who trust more in mechanical "pull and haul"
than in the intrinsic merits of their cause.
Thus it is by encountering some rival end or entire system of ends, as
symbolized by an ideal, that a new end emerging out of impulse comes to
stand for an agent, as the center of a problem of conduct, and so to
occupy the center of attention. And it thereby becomes an Object, as we
shall hold, which must be more fully defined in order that it may be
_valued_, and accordingly be held to warrant a determinate attitude
toward itself on the agent's part. We have now to define in the same
general terms the typical economic situation.
In economic theory as in common thought it is not the contemplated act
of applying certain means to the attainment of an end regarded as
desirable that functions as the logical subject of valuation. The thing
or object valued in the economic situation is one's present wealth,
whether material or immaterial, one's services or labor--whatever one
gives in exchange or otherwise sets apart for the attainment of a
desired end or, proximately, to secure possession of the necessary and
sufficient means to the attainment of a desired end. The object of
attention in the valuing process is here not itself an end of action. In
this respect the economic type of judgment is like the physical, for in
both the object to be valued is a certain means which one is seeking to
adapt to some more or less definitely imaged purpose; or a condition of
which one wishes, likewise for some special purpose, to take advantage.
The ultimate goal of all judgment is the determination of a course of
conduct looking toward an end, and our present problem may accordingly
be stated in the following terms: Under what circumstances in the
judgment-process does it become necessary to the definition and
attainment of an end as yet vague and indeterminate that the requisite
means, as in part already physically determined, should be further
scrutinized in attention and determined from the economic point of view?
Or, in a word: What is the "jurisdiction" of the economic point of view?
For ordinary judgements of sense-perception the presence in
consciousness of a single unquestioned end is the adequate occasion, as
our analysis (assuming its validity) has shown. For ethical judgment we
have seen that the presence of conflicting ends is necessary; and we
shall now hold that this condition is necessary, though not, without a
certain qualification, adequate, for the economic type as well. If an
imaged end can hold its place in consciousness without a rival, and the
physical means of attaining it have been found and co-ordinated, then
the use or consumption of the means must inevitably follow, without
either ethical or economic judgement; for, to paraphrase the saying of
Professor James, nothing but an end can displace or inhibit effort
toward another end. The economic situation differs, then, from the
ethical in this, that the end or system of ends entering into
competition with the one for the time being of chief and primary
interest has been brought to consciousness through reference to those
"physical" means which already have been determined as necessary to this
latter end. The conflict of ends in the economic situation, that is to
say, is not due to a direct and intrinsic incompatibility between them.
Where there manifestly is such incompatibility, judgment will be of the
ethical type--as when building the house involves the foreclosure of a
mortgage, and so, in working an injury to the holder of the site, may do
violence to one's ideal of friendship or of more special obligation; or
when an impulse to intemperate self-indulgence is met by one's ideal of
social usefulness. In cases such as these one clearly sees, or can on
reflection come to see, in what way an evil result to personal character
will follow upon the imminent misdeed, and in what way suppression of
the momentary impulse will conserve the entire approved and established
way of life. Very often, however, the conflicting ends are related in no
such mutually exclusive way. Each may be in itself permissible and
compatible with the other, and, so far as any possible ethical
discrimination can determine, there is no ground for choice between
them. Thus it is only through the fact that both ends are dependent
upon a limited supply of means that one would, for example, ever bring
together and deliberately oppose in judgment the purpose of making
additions to his library and the necessity of providing a store of fuel
for the winter. Both ends in such a case are in themselves indeed
permissible in a general way, but they may very well not both of them be
economically possible, and hence, for the person in question and in the
presence of the economic conditions which confront him, not, in the last
analysis, both ethically possible. When there is a conflict between two
ends that stand in close organic relation in the sense explained above,
the problem is an ethical one; when the conflict is, in the sense
explained, one of competition between ends ethically permissible--not at
variance, either one, that is, with other ends _directly_--for the whole
or for a share of one's supply of means, the problem is of the economic
type.[111]
There are three typical cases in which economic judgment or valuation of
the means is necessary, and the enumeration of these will make clear the
relation between the ethical and the economic types of judgment: (1)
First may be mentioned the case in which ethical deliberation has
apparently reached its end in the formation of a plan of action which,
so far as one can see, on ethical grounds is unobjectionable. A definite
"temptation" may have been overcome, or out of a more complex situation
a satisfactory ethical compromise or readjustment may have been
developed with much difficulty. Now, there are very often cases in which
such a course of action still may not be entered on without further
hesitation; for, if the plan be one requiring for its working out the
use of material means, the fact of an existing limitation of one's
supply of means must bring hitherto unthought of ends into conflict with
it. There are doubtless many situations in which one's moral choice may
be carried into practice without consideration of ways and means, as
when one forgives an injury or holds his instinctive nature under
discipline in the effort to attain an ascetic or a genuinely social
ideal of character. But more often than the moral rigorist cares to see,
questions of an economic nature must be raised after the ethical
"evidence is all in"--questions which are probably more trying to a
sensitive moral nature than those more dramatic situations in which the
real perils of self-sophistication are vastly less, and the simpler,
sharper definition of the issue makes possible a less difficult, though
a more decisive and edifying, victory. (2) In the second place are those
cases in which the end that has emerged is without conspicuous moral
quality, because, although it may represent some worthy impulse, it has
not been obliged to make its way to acceptance against the resistance of
desires less worthy than itself. This is the ideal case of economic
theory in which "moral distinctions are irrelevant," and the economic
man is free, according to the myth, to perform his hedonistic
calculations without thought of moral scruple. The end ethically
acceptable in itself, like the enriching of one's library, must, when
the means are limited, divert a portion of the means from other uses,
and will thus, _through reference to the indispensable means_, engage in
conflict with other ends quite remotely, if in the agent's knowledge at
all, related with itself. (3) Finally we reach the limit of apparent
freedom from ethical considerations in the operations of business
institutions, and perhaps especially in those of large business
corporations. Apart from the routine operations of a business which
involve no present exercise of the valuing judgment, there are
constantly in such institutions new projects which must be considered,
and which commonly must involve revaluation of the means. In this
revaluation the principle of greatest revenue is supposed to be the sole
criterion, regardless of other personal or social points of view from
which confessedly the measure might be considered. But such a
supposition, however true to the facts of current business practice it
may be, we must hold to be an abstraction when viewed from the
standpoint of the social life at large, and hence no real exception to
our general principle. The economic and the ethical situations differ,
as types, only in the closeness of relation between the ends that are in
conflict and in the manner in which the ends are first brought into
conflict--not in respect of the intrinsic nature of the ends which are
involved in them.[112] It is this difference which, as we shall see,
explains why ethical valuation must be of ends, and economic valuation,
on the other hand, of means.
We have yet to see _in what way_ valuation of the means of action can
serve to resolve a difficulty of the type which has thus been designated
as Economic. The question must be deferred until a more detailed
analysis of the economic judgment-process can be undertaken. It is
enough for our present purpose to note that the subject of valuation in
this process _is_ the means, and to see that under the typical
conditions which have been described some further determination of the
means than the merely physical one of their factual availability for the
competing ends is needed.[113] Physically and mechanically the means are
available for each one of the ends or groups of ends in question; the
pressing problem is to determine for which one of the ends, if any, or
to what compromise or readjustment of certain of the ends or all of
them, the means at hand are in an economic sense most properly
available.[114]
From this preliminary discussion of the ethical and economic situations
we must now pass to discuss the objectivity of the judgments by which
the agent meets the difficulties which such situations as these present.
We shall seek to show that these judgments are constructive of an
objective order of reality. It will be necessary in the first place to
determine the psychological conditions of the more commonly recognized
experience of Objectivity in the restricted sphere of sense-perception.
There might otherwise remain a certain antecedent presumption against
the thesis which we wish to establish even after the direct argument had
been presented.[115]
III
Common-sense and natural science certainly tend to identify the
objectively real with the existent in space and time. The physical
universe is held to be palpably real in a way in which nothing not
presented in sensuous terms can be. To most minds doubtless it is
difficult to understand why Plato should have ascribed to the Ideas a
higher degree of reality than that possessed by the particular objects
of sense-perception, and still more difficult to understand his
ascription of real existence to such Ideas as those of Beauty, Justice,
and the Good. There is a certain apparent stability in a universe
presented in "immediate" sense-perception--a universe with which we are
in constant bodily intercourse--that seems not to belong to a mere
order of relations which, if known in any sense, is not known to us
through the senses. Moreover, knowledge of the physical world is felt to
possess a higher degree of certainty than does any knowledge we can have
of supposed economic or moral truth, or of economic or moral standards.
Of such knowledge one is disposed to say, as Mr. Spencer does of
metaphysics, that at the best it presupposes a long and elaborate
inferential process which, as long, is likely to be faulty; whereas
physical truth is immediate or else, when inference is involved in it,
easy to be tested by appeal to immediate facts. Physical reality is a
reality that can be seen and handled and felt as offering resistance,
and this is evidence of objectivity of a sort not to be found in other
spheres of knowledge for which the like claim is made.
The force of these impressions (and it would not be difficult to find
stronger statements in the history of scientific and ethical nominalism)
diminishes if one tries to determine in what consists that objectivity
which they uncritically assume as given in sense-perception. For one
must recognize that not all our possible modes of sense-experience are
equally concerned in the presentation of this perceived objective world.
Certain sensory "quales" are immediately referred to outward objects as
belonging to them. Certain others are, in a way, "inward," either not
more definitely localized at all or merely localized in the sense-organ
which mediates them. Now, the reason for this difference cannot lie in
the content of the various sense-qualities abstractly taken. A visual
sensation, apart from the setting in which it occurs in common
experience, can be no more objective in its reference--indeed, can have
no more reference of any kind--than the least definite and instructive
organic sensation. For the degree of distinctness with which one
discriminates sense-qualities depends upon the number and importance of
the interpretative associations which it is important from time to time
to "connect" with them; or, conversely, the sense-qualities are not
_self_-discriminating in virtue of an intrinsic objective reference or
meaning which each possesses and which drives it apart from all the
rest. Indeed, an intrinsic meaning, if a sensation could possess one,
would not only be superfluous in the development of knowledge, but, as
likely to be mistaken for the acquired or functional meaning, even
seriously confusing.[116]
Now, it must be granted that, if the "simple idea of sensation" is
without objective reference, no association with it of similarly
abstract sensations can supply the lack. A "movement" sensation, or a
tactual, having in itself no such meaning, cannot merely by being
"associated" with a similarly meaningless visual sensation endow this
latter with reference to an object. Objective reference is, in fact, not
a sensuous thing; it is not a conscious "element," nor does it arise
from any combination or fusion of such. It is neither _in_ the
association of ideas as a constituent member, nor does it belong to the
association considered as a sequence of psychical states. Instead, in
our present view, it belongs to or arises out of the activity through
which and with reference to which associations are first of all
established. It is an aspect or kind of reference or category under
which any sense-quality or datum is apperceived when it is held apart
from the stream of consciousness in order that it may receive new
meaning as a stimulus; and a sensation functioning in such a "state of
consciousness"[117] is a psychical phenomenon very different from the
conscious element of "analytical" psychology. The extent to which it is
true that the objective world of sense-perception is pre-eminently
visual and tactual is then merely an evidence of the extent to which the
exigencies of the life-process have required finer sense-discrimination
for the sake of more refined reaction within these spheres as compared
with others. Our conclusion, then, must be that the consciousness of
objectivity is not as such sensuous, even as given in our perception of
the material world. The world, as viewed from the standpoint of a
particular, practical emergency, is an objective world, not in virtue of
its having a "sensuous" or a "material" aspect as something existent
_per se_, but because it is a world of stimuli in course of definition
for the guidance of activity.[118]
It will be well to give further positive exposition of the meaning of
the view thus stated. To return once more to our fundamental
psychological conception, knowledge is essentially relevant to the
solution of particular problems of more or less urgency and of various
kinds and figures in the solution of such problems as the assemblage of
consciously recognized symbols or stimuli by which various actions are
suggested. The object as known is therefore not the same as the object
as apprehended in other possible modes of being conscious of it. The
workman who is actually using his tool in shaping his material, or the
warrior who is actually using his weapon in the thick of combat, is, if
conscious of these objects at all (and doubtless he may be conscious of
them at such times), not conscious of them _as objects_--as the one
might be, for example, in adjusting the tool for a particular kind of
use, and the other in giving a keen edge to his blade. Under these
latter circumstances the tool or weapon is an _object_, and its observed
condition, viewed in the light of a purpose of using the object in a
certain way, is regarded as properly suggesting certain changes or
improvements. And likewise will the tool or the weapon have an objective
character in the agent's apprehension in the moment of identifying and
selecting it from among a number of others, or even in the act of
reaching for it, especially if it is inconveniently placed. But in the
act of freely using one's objective means the category of the objective
plays no part in consciousness, because at such times there is no
judgment respecting the means--because there is no sufficient occasion
for the isolation of certain conscious elements from the rest of the
stream of conscious experience to be defined as stimuli to certain
needed responses. Such isolation will not normally take place so long as
the reactions suggested by the conscious contents involved in the
experience are fully adequate to the situation. Objects are not normally
held apart as such from the stream of consciousness in which they are
presented and recognized as possessing qualities warranting certain
modes of conduct, excepting as it has become necessary to the attainment
of the agent's purposes to modify or reconstruct his activity.[119]
Are things, then, apprehended as objective in virtue of the agent's
attitude toward them, or is the agent's attitude in a typical case
grounded upon an antecedent determination of the objectivity of the
things in question? We must answer, in the first place, that there can
be no such antecedent determination. We may, it is true, speak of
believing, on the evidence of sight or touch, that a certain object is
really present before us. But neither sight nor touch possesses in
itself, as a particular sense-quality, any objective meaning. If touch
is _par excellence_ the sense of the objective and the appeal to touch
the test of objectivity, this can only be because touch is the sense
most closely and intimately connected in our experience with action.
After any interval of hesitation and judgment, action begins with
contact with and manipulation of the physical means which have been
under investigation. Not only is touch the proximate stimulus and guide
to manipulation, but all relevant knowledge which has been gained in any
judgment-process, through the other senses, and especially through
sight, must ultimately be reducible to terms of touch or other contact
sense. The alleged tactual evidence of objectivity is, then, rather a
confirmation than a difficulty for our present view. In short, we must
dismiss as impossible the hypothesis that there can be a consciousness
of objectivity which is not dependent upon and an expression of primary
antecedent tendencies toward motor response to the presented stimulus.
It is our attitude toward the prospective stimulus that mediates the
consciousness of an object standing over against us.
So far, indeed, is it from being true that objectivity is a matter for
special determination antecedently to action that by common testimony
the conviction of objectivity comes to us quite irresistibly. The object
forces itself upon us, as we say, and "whether we will or no" we must
recognize its presence there before us and its independence of any
choice of ours or of our knowledge. In the cautious manipulation of an
instrument, in the laborious shaping of some refractory material, in the
performance of any delicate or difficult task, one's sense of the
objectivity of the thing with which one works is as obtrusive as remorse
or grief, and as little to be shaken off. We shall revert to this
suggested analogy at a later stage in our discussion.
We are now in a position to define more precisely the nature of the
conditions in which the sense of objectivity emerges, and this will
bring us to the point at which the objective import of our economic and
ethical judgments can profitably be discussed. We have said that the
world of the physical is objective, not in virtue of the sensuous terms
in which it is presented, but because it is a world of stimuli for the
guidance of human conduct. Under what circumstances, then, are we
conscious of stimuli in their capacity of guides or incentives or
grounds of conduct? And the answer must be that stimuli are interpreted
as such, and so take on the character of objectivity, when their precise
character as stimuli is still in doubt, and they must therefore receive
further definition.
For example, a man pursued by a wild beast must find some means of
escape or defense, and, seeing a tree which he may climb or a stone
which he may hurl, will inspect these as well as may be with reference
to their fitness for the intended purpose. It is at just such moments as
these, then, that physical things become things for knowledge and take
on their stubbornly objective character--that is to say, when they are
essentially problematic. Now, in order that any physical thing may be
thus problematic and so possess objective character for knowledge, it
must (1) be in part understood, and so prompt certain more or less
indiscriminate responses; and (2) be in part as yet not understood--in
such wise that, while there are certain indefinite or unmeasured
tendencies on the agent's part to respond to the object--climb the tree
or hurl the stone--there is also a certain failure of complete unity in
the co-ordination of these activities, a certain contradiction between
different suggestions of conduct which different observed qualities of
the tree or stone may give, and so hesitation and arrest of final
action. The pursued man views the tree suspiciously before trusting
himself to its doubtful strength, or weighs well the stone and tests its
rough edges before pausing to throw it. Thus, to state the matter
negatively, there are two possible situations in which the sense of
objectivity, if it emerge into consciousness at all, cannot long
continue. An object---as, for example, some strange shrub or
flower--which, in the case we are supposing, may attract the pursued
wayfarer's notice, may awaken no responses relevant to the emergency in
which the agent finds himself; and it will therefore forthwith lapse
from consciousness. Or, on the other hand, the object, as the tree or
stone, may rightly or wrongly seem to the agent so completely
satisfactory, or, rather, in effect may _be_ so, as instantly to prompt
the action which otherwise would come, if at all, only after a period of
more or less prolonged attention. In neither of these cases, then, is
there a problematic object. In the one the thing in question is wholly
apart from any present interest, and therefore lapses. In the other case
the thing seen is comprehended on the instant with reference to its
general use and merges immediately into the main stream of the agent's
consciousness without having been an object of express attention. In
neither case, therefore, is there hesitation with reference to the
thing in question--any conflict between inconsiderate positive responses
prompted by certain features of the object and inhibitions due to
recognition of its shortcomings. In a word, in neither case is there any
judgment or possibility of judgment, and hence no sense of objectivity.
We can have consciousness of an object, in the strict sense of the term,
only when some part or general aspect of the total situation confronting
an agent excites or seems to warrant responses which must be held in
check for further determination. In terms of consciousness, an object is
always an object of attention--that is, an object which is under process
of development and reconstruction with reference to an end.
An inhibited impulse to react in a more or less definite way to a
stimulus is, then, the adequate condition of the emergence in
consciousness of the sense of objectivity. So long as an activity is
proceeding without check or interruption, and no conflict develops
between motor responses prompted by different parts or aspects of the
situation, the agent's consciousness will not present the distinction of
Objective and Subjective. The mode of being conscious which accompanies
free and harmonious activity of this sort may be exemplified by such
experiences as æsthetic appreciation, sensuous enjoyment, acquiescent
absorption in pleasurable emotion, or even intellectual processes of the
mechanical sort, such as easy computation or the solution of simple
algebraic problems--processes in which no more serious difficulty is
encountered than suffices to stimulate a moderate degree of interest.
If, however, reverting to the illustration, our present need for a stone
calls for some property which the stone we have seized appears to lack,
consciousness must pass over into the reflective or attentive phase. The
stone will now figure as an _object_ possessing certain qualities which
render it in a general way relevant to the emergency before us. A
needed quality is missing, and this defect must hold in check all the
imminent responses until discovery of the missing quality can set them
free. In a word, the stone as known to us has assumed the station of
subject in a judgment-process, and our effort is, if possible, to assign
to it a new predicate relevant to our present situation. Psychologically
speaking, the stone is an object, a stimulus to which we are endeavoring
to find warrant for responding in some new or reconstructed way.
In this process we must assume, then, first of all, an interest on the
agent's part in the situation as a whole, which in the first place, in
terms of the illustration, makes the pursued one note the tree or
stone--which might otherwise have escaped his notice as completely as
any passing cloud or falling leaf--and suggests what particular
qualities or adaptabilities should be looked for in it. Given this
interest in "making something" out of the total situation as explaining
the recognition of the stone and the impulse to seize and hurl it, we
find the sense of the stone's objectivity emerging just in the arrest of
the undiscriminating impulse. The stone must have a certain meaning as a
stimulus first of all, but it must be a meaning not yet quite defined
and certain of acceptance. The stone will be an _object_ only if, and so
long as, the undiscriminating impulses suggested by these elements of
meaning are held in check in order that they may be ordered,
supplemented, or made more definite. It is, then, the essence of the
present contention that physical things are _objective_ in our
experience in virtue of their recognized inadequacy as means or
incentives of action--an inadequacy which, in turn, is felt as such in
so far as we are seeking to use them as means or grounds of conduct, or
to avail ourselves of them as conditions, in coping with the general
situation from which our attention has abstracted them.
From this analysis of the conditions of the consciousness of objectivity
we must now proceed to inquire whether in the typical ethical and
economic situations, as they have been described, essentially these same
conditions are present.
In the ethical situation, according to our statement, the subject of the
judgment (the object of attention) is the new end which has just been
presented in imagination, and we have now to see that the agent's
attitude toward this end is for our present purpose essentially the same
as toward a physical object which is under scrutiny. For just as the
physical object is such for consciousness because it is partly relevant
(whether in the way of furthering or of hindering) to the agent's
purpose, but as yet partly not understood from this point of view, so
the imaged end may likewise be ambiguous. The agent's moral purpose may
be the (very likely mythical) primitive one of which we read in
"associational" discussions of the moral consciousness--that of avoiding
punishment. It may be that of "imitative," sympathetic obedience to
authority--a sentiment whose fundamental importance for ethical
psychology has long remained without due recognition.[120] It may be
loyalty to an ideal of conscience, or yet again a purpose of enlargement
and development of personality. But on either supposition the
compatibility of the end with the prevailing standard or principle of
decision may be a matter of doubt and so call for judgment. The problem
will, of course, be a problem in the full logical sense as involving
judgment of the type described in our discussion of the ethical
situation only when the attitudes of obedience to authority and to fixed
ideals have been outgrown; but, on the other hand, as might be shown, it
is just the inevitable increasing use of judgment with reference to
these formulations of the moral life which gradually undermines them
and, by a kind of "internal dialectic" of the moral consciousness,
brings the agent to recognition as well as to more perfect practice of a
logical or deliberative method.
The end, then, is, in the typical ethical situation, an _object_ which
one must determine by analysis and reconstruction as a means or
condition of moral "integrity" and progress. It is, accordingly, in the
second place, an object upon whose determination a definite activity of
the agent is regarded by him as depending. Just as in the physical
judgment-process the object is set off over against the self and
regarded as a given thing which, when once completely defined, will
prompt certain movements of the body, so here the contemplated act is an
object which, when fully defined in all its relevant psychological and
sociological bearings, will prompt a definite act of rejection or
acceptance by the self. Now, it might be shown, as we believe, that the
complete psychological and sociological definition of the course of
conduct _is_ in truth the full explanation of the choice; there is no
_separate_ reaction of the moral self to which the course of conduct is,
as defined, an external stimulus. So also in the sphere of physical
judgment complete definition passes over into action--or the
appreciative mode of consciousness which accompanies action--without
breach of continuity. But within the judgment-process in all its forms
there is in the agent's apprehension this characteristic feature of
apparent separation between the subject as an objective thing presently
to be known and used or responded to, and the predicate as a response
yet to be perfected in details, but at the right time, when one has
proper warrant, to be set free. It is not our purpose here to speak of
metaphysical interpretations or misinterpretations of this functional
distinction; but only to argue from the presence of the distinction in
the ethical type of judgment as in the physical as genuine an
objectivity for the ethical type as can be ascribed to the other. The
ethical judgment is objective in the sense that in it an object--an
imaged mode of conduct taken as such--is presented for development to a
degree of adequacy at which one can accept it or reject it as a mode of
conduct. The ethical predicates Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, each pair
representing a particular standpoint, as we shall later see, signify
this accepting or rejecting movement of the self, this "act of will," of
which, as an act in due time to be performed, the agent is more or less
acutely conscious in the course of moral judgment.
In the economic situation also, as above described, there is present the
requisite condition of the consciousness of objectivity. Here, as in the
ethical situation, an object is presented which one must redetermine,
and toward which one must presently act in a way likewise to be
determined in detail in judgment. We shall defer until a later stage
discussion of the reason why this subject of the economic judgment is
the _means_ in the activity that is in progress. We are not yet ready to
show that the means _must_ be the center of attention under the
conditions which have been specified. Here we need only note the fact of
common experience that economic judgment does center upon the means, and
show that in this fact is given the objective status of the means in the
judgment-process; for the economic problem is essentially that of
withdrawing a portion, a "marginal increment," of the means from some
use or set of uses to which they are at present set apart, and applying
it to the new end that has come to seem, on ethical grounds at least,
desirable; and we may regard this diversion as the essentially economic
act which, in the agent's apprehension during judgment, is contingent
upon the determination of the means. The object as economic is
accordingly the means, or a marginal portion of the means, which is to
be thus diverted (or, so to speak, exposed to the likelihood of such
diversion), and its determination must be of such a nature as to show
the economic urgency, or at least the permissibility, of this diversion.
Into this determination, manifestly, the results of much auxiliary
inquiry into physical properties of the means must enter--such
properties, for example, as have to do with its technological fitness
for its present use as compared with possible substitutes, and its
adaptability for the new use proposed. Taking the word in the broad
sense of _object of thought_, it is always an object in space and time
to which the economic judgment assigns an economic value; and it is true
here (just the same is true, _mutatis mutandis_, of the psychological
and sociological determinations necessary to the fixation of ethical
value) that the _economically motivated_ physical determination of the
objective means from the standpoint of the emergency in hand is the full
"causal" explanation of the economic act. It must, however, be carefully
observed that this physical determination is in the typical case
altogether incidental, from the agent's standpoint, to the assignment of
an economic character or value to the means--a value which will at the
close of the judgment come to conscious recognition. As we shall see,
the process is directed throughout by reference to economic principles
and standards, and what shall be an adequate determination in the case
depends upon the precision with which these are formulated and the
strenuousness with which they are applied. In a word, the economic
judgment assigns to the physical object, as known at the outset, a new
non-physical character. Throughout the judgment-process this character
is gaining in distinctness, and at the end it is accepted as the Value
of the means, as warrant for the diversion of them to the new use which
has been decided on.[121]
We have now to consider whether in the actual ethical and economic
experience of men there is any direct evidence confirming the
conclusions which our logical analysis of the respective situations
would appear to require. Can any phases of the total experience of
working out a satisfactory course of conduct in these typical
emergencies be appealed to as actually showing at least some tacit
recognition that these types of judgment present each one an order of
reality or an aspect of the one reality?
In the first place, then, one must recognize that in the agent's own
apprehension a judgment of value has something more than a purely
subjective meaning. It is never offered, by one who has taken the
trouble to work it out more or less laboriously and then to express it
in terms which are certainly objective, as a mere announcement of _de
facto_ determination or a registration of arbitrary whim and caprice.
One no more means to announce a groundless choice or a choice based upon
pleasure felt in contemplation of the imaged end than in his judgments
concerning the physical universe he means to affirm coexistences and
sequences, agreements and disagreements, of "ideas" as psychical
happenings. That there is an ethical or economic truth to which one can
appeal in doubtful cases is, indeed, the tacit assumption in all
criticism of another's deliberate conduct; the contrary assumption, that
criticism is merely the opposition of one's own private prejudice or
desire to the equally private prejudice or desire of another, would
render all criticism and mutual discussion of ethical problems
meaningless and futile in the plain man's apprehension as in the
philosopher's. For the plain man has a spontaneous confidence in his
knowledge of the material world which makes him look askance at any
alleged analysis of his sense-perceptions and scientific judgments into
"associations of ideas," and the same confidence, or something very like
it, attaches to judgments of these other types. It may perhaps be
easier (though the concession is a very doubtful one) to destroy a naïve
confidence in the objectivity of moral truth than a like confidence in
scientific knowledge, but it must be remembered that the plain man's
sense of the urgency, at least of ethical problems, if not of economic,
is commonly less acute than for the physical. In the plain man's
experience serious moral problems are infrequent--problems of the true
type, that is, which cannot be disposed of as mere cases of temptation;
one must have attained a considerable capacity for sympathy and a
considerable knowledge of social relations before either the recognition
of such problems or proper understanding of their significance is
possible. Moral and economic crises are not vividly presented in
sensuous imagery excepting in minds of developed intelligence,
experience, and imaginative power; and the judgments reached in coping
with them do not, as a rule, obviously call for nicely measured,
calculated, and adjusted bodily movements. The immediate act of
executing an important economic judgment may be a very commonplace
performance, like the dictation of a letter, and an ethical decision
may, however great its importance for future overt conduct, be expressed
by no immediate visible movements of the body. But this possible
difference of impressiveness between physical and other types of
judgments is from our present standpoint unessential; and indeed, after
all, it cannot be denied that there are persons whose sense of moral
obligation is quite as distinct and influential, and even sensuously
vivid, as their conviction of the real existence of an external world.
To the average man it certainly is clear that, as Dr. Martineau
declares, "it is an inversion of moral truth to say ... that honour is
higher than appetite _because_ we feel it so; we feel it so because it
_is_ so. This '_is_' we know to be not contingent on our apprehension,
not to arise from our constitution of faculty, but to be a reality
irrespective of us in adaptation to which our nature is constituted, and
for the recognition of which the faculty is given."[122] And the
impressiveness, to most minds, of likening the sublimity of the moral
law to the visible splendor of the starry heavens would seem to suggest
that the apprehension of moral truth is a mode of consciousness, in form
at least, so far akin to sense-perception as to be capable of
illustration and even reinforcement from that type of experience.
At this point we must revert to a suggestion which presented itself
above in another connection, but which at the time could not be further
developed. This was, in a word, that there is often a feeling of
_obtrusiveness_ in our appreciation of the objectivity of the things
before us in ordinary sense-perception (or physical judgment) which is
not unlike the felt insistence of remorse and grief.[123] This feeling
is so conspicuous a feature of the state of consciousness in physical
judgment as frequently to serve the plain man as his last and
irrefragable evidence of the metaphysical independence of the material
world, and it is indeed a feature whose explanation does throw much
light upon the meaning of the consciousness of objectivity as a factor
within experience. Now, there is another common feeling--or, as we do
not scruple to call it, another emotion--which is perhaps quite as often
appealed to in this way; though, as we believe, never in quite the same
connection in any argument in which the two experiences are called upon
to do service to the same end. Material objects, we are told, are
_reliable_ and _stable_ as distinguished from the fleeting illusive
images of a dream--they have a "solidity" in virtue of which one can
"depend upon them," are "hard and fast" remaining faithfully where one
deposits them for future use or, if they change and disappear, doing so
in accordance with fixed laws which make the changes calculable in
advance. The material realm is the realm of "solid fact" in which one
can work with assurance that causes will infallibly produce their right
and proper effects, and to which one willingly returns from the
dream-world in which his adversary, the "idealist," would hold him
spellbound. We propose now briefly to consider these two modes of
apprehension of external physical reality in the light of the general
analysis of judgment given above--from which it will appear that they
are, psychologically, emotional expressions of what have been set forth
as the essential features of the judgment-situation, whether in its
physical, ethical, or economic forms. From this we shall argue that
there should actually be in the ethical and economic spheres similar, or
essentially identical, "emotions of reality," and we shall then proceed
to verify the hypothesis by pointing to those ethical and economic
experiences which answer the description.
We have seen that the center of attention or subject in the
judgment-process is as such problematic--in the sense that there are
certain of its observed and recognized attributes which make it in some
sense relevant and useful to the purpose in hand, while yet other of its
attributes (or absences of certain attributes) suggest conflicting
activities. The object which one sees is certainly a stone and of
convenient size for hurling at the pursuing animal. The situation has
been analyzed and found to demand a missile, and this demand has led to
search for and recognition of a stone. The stone, however, may be of a
color suggesting a soft and crumbling texture, or its form may appear
from a distance to be such as to make it practically certain to miss the
mark, however carefully it may be aimed and thrown. Until these points
of difficulty have been ascertained, the stone is wanting still in
certain essential determinations. So far as it has been certainly
determined, it prompts to the response directly suggested by one's
general end of defense and escape, but there are these other indications
which hold this response in check and which, if verified, will cause the
stone to be let lie unused. Now, we have, in this situation of conflict
or tension between opposed incitements given by the various
discriminated characters of the object, the explanation of the aspect of
obtrusiveness, of arbitrary resistance to and independence of one's
will, which for the time being seems the unmistakable mark or
coefficient of the thing's objectivity. For it is not the object as a
whole that is obtrusive; indeed, clearly, there could be no
obtrusiveness on the part of an "object as a whole," and in such a case
there could also be no judgment. The obtrusion in the case before us is
not a sense of the energy of a recalcitrant metaphysical object put
forth upon a coerced and helpless human will, but simply a conscious
interpretation of the inhibition of certain of the agent's motor
tendencies by certain others prompted by the object's "suspicious" and
as yet undetermined appearances or possible attributes. The object as
amenable to use--those of its qualities which taken by themselves are
unquestionable and clearly conducive to the agent's purpose--needs no
attention for the moment, let us say. The attention is rather upon the
dubious and to all appearance unfavorable qualities, and these for the
time being make up the sum and content of the agent's knowledge of the
object. On the other hand, the agent as an active self is identified
with the end and with those modes of response to the object which
promise to contribute directly to its realization. It is in this
direction that his interest is set and he strains with all his powers of
mind to move, and it is upon the self as identified with, and for the
time being expressed in, the "effort of the agent's will" that the
object as resistant, refusing to be misconstrued, obtrudes. One _must_
see the object and _must_ acknowledge its apparent, or in the end its
ascertained, unfitness. One is "coerced." The situation is one of
conflict, and it is out of the conflict that the essentially emotional
experience of "resistance" emerges.[124] The more special emotions of
impatience, anger, or discouragement may in a given case not be present
or may be suppressed, but the emotion of objectivity will still
remain.[125]
On the same general principles the other of our two coefficients of
reality may be explained. Let us assume that the stone in our
illustration has at last been cleared of all ambiguity in its
suggestion, having been taken as a missile, and that the man in flight
now holds it ready awaiting the most favorable moment for hurling it at
his pursuer. It will hardly be maintained that under these conditions
the coefficient of the stone's reality as an object consists in its
obtrusiveness, in its resistance to or coercion of the self. The stone
is now regarded as a fixed and determinate feature of the situation--a
condition which can be counted on, whatever else may fail. Over against
other still uncertain aspects of the situation (which are now in _their_
turn real because resistant, coercive, and obtrusive) stands the stone
as a reassuring fact upon and about which the agent can build up the
whole plan of conduct which may, if all goes well, bring him safely out
of his predicament. The stone has, so to speak, passed over to the "end"
side of the situation, and although it may have to be rejected for some
other means of defense, as the definition of the situation proceeds and
the plan of action accordingly changes (as in some degree it probably
must), nevertheless for the time being the imaged activities as stimulus
to which the stone is now accepted are a fixed part of the plan and
guide in further judgment of the means still undefined. The agent can
hardly recur to the stone, when, after attending for a time to the
bewildering perplexities of the situation, he pauses once more to take
an inventory of his certain resources, without something of an emotional
thrill of assurance and encouragement. In this emotional appreciation of
the "solidity" and "dependability" of the object the second of our
coefficients of reality consists. This might be termed the Recognition,
the other the Perception, coefficient. Classifying them as emotions,
because both are phenomena of tension in activity, we should group the
Perception coefficient with emotions of the Contraction type, like grief
and anger, and the Recognition coefficient with the Expansion emotions,
like joy and triumph.
Now, in the foregoing interpretation no reference has been made to any
conditions peculiar to the physical type of judgment-situation. The
ground of explanation has been the feature of arrest of activity for the
sake of reconstruction, and this, if our analyses have been correct, is
the essence of the ethical and economic situations as well as of the
physical. Can there then be found in these two spheres experiences of
the same nature and emerging under the same general conditions as our
Perception and Recognition coefficients of reality? If so, then our case
for the objective significance and value of ethical and economic
judgment is in so far strengthened. (1) In the first place, then, the
object in its economic character is problematic, assuming a desire on
the agent's part to apply it, as means, to some new or freshly
interesting end, because it has already been, and accordingly now is,
set apart for other uses and cannot thoughtlessly be withdrawn from
them. Extended illustration is not needed to remind one that these
established and hitherto unquestioned uses will haunt the economic
conscience as obtrusively and inhibit the desired course of economic
conduct with as much energy of resistance as in the other case will any
of the contrary promptings of a physical object. Moreover, the
Recognition coefficient may as easily be identified in this connection.
If one's scruples gain the day, in such a case one has at least a sense
of comforting assurance in the conservatism of his choice and its
accordance with the facts, however unreconciled in another way one may
be to the deprivation that has thus seemed to be necessary. If, however,
the new end in a measure makes good its case and the modes of
expenditure which the "scruples" represented have been readjusted in
accordance with it, then the means, no less than before the new
interpretation had been placed upon them, will enjoy the status of
Reality in the economic sense. They will be real now, however, not in
the obtrusive way, as presenting aspects which inhibit the leading
tendency in the judgment-process, but, instead, as means having a fixed
and certain character in one's economic life, which, after the
hesitation and doubt just now superseded, one may safely count upon and
will do well to keep in view henceforth. (2) In the second place, mere
mention of the corresponding ethical experiences must suffice, since
only extended illustration from literature and life would be fully
adequate: on the one hand, the "still small voice" of Conscience or the
authoritativeness of Duty, "stern daughter of the voice of God;" and, on
the other, the restful assurance with which, from the vantage-ground of
a satisfying decision, one may look back in wonder at the possibility of
so serious a temptation or in rejoicing over the new-won freedom from a
burdensome and repressive prejudice.
This must for the present serve as positive exposition of our view as
to the objective significance of the valuational types of judgment.
There are certain essential points which have as yet not been touched
upon, and there are certain objections to the general view the
consideration of which will serve further to explain it; but the
discussion of these various matters will more conveniently follow the
special analysis of the valuational judgments, to which we shall now
proceed.
IV
In the last analysis the ultimate motive of all reflective thought is
the progressive determination of the ends of conduct. Physical judgment,
or, in psychological terms, reflective attention to objects in the
physical world, is at every turn directed and controlled by reference to
a gradually developing purpose, so that the process may also be
described as one of bringing to fulness of definition an at first
vaguely conceived purpose through ascertainment and determination of the
means at hand. The problematic situation in which reflection takes its
rise inevitably develops in this two-sided way into consciousness of a
definite end on the one side, and of the means or conditions of
attaining it on the other.
It has been shown that there _may_ be involved in any finally
satisfactory determination of a situation an explicit reflection upon
and definition of the controlling end which is present and gives point
and direction to the physical determination. But very often such is not
the case. When a child sees a bright object at a distance and makes
toward it, availing himself more or less skilfully of such assistance as
intervening articles of furniture may afford, there is of course no
consciousness on his part of any definite purpose as such, and this is
to say that the child does not subject his conduct to criticism from the
standpoint of the value or its ends. There is simply strong desire for
the distant red ball, controlling all the child's movements for the
time being and prompting a more or less critical inspection of the
intervening territory with reference to the easiest way of crossing it.
The purpose is implicitly accepted, not explicitly determined, as a
preliminary to physical determination of the situation. If one may speak
of a development of the purpose in such a case as this, one must say
that the development into details comes through judgment of the
environing conditions. To change the illustration in order not to commit
ourselves to the ascription of too developed a faculty of judgment to
the child, this is true likewise of any process of reflective attention
in the mind of an adult in which a general purpose is accepted at the
outset and is carried through to execution without reflection upon its
ethical or economic character as a purpose. The specific purpose as
executed is certainly not the same as the general purpose with which the
reflective process took its rise. It is filled out with details, or may
perhaps even be quite different in its general outlines. There has
necessarily been development and perhaps even transformation, but our
contention is that all this has been effected in and through a process
of judgment in which the conditions of action, and not the purpose
itself, have been the immediate objects of determination. Upon these the
attention has been centered, though of course the attention was directed
to them by the purpose. To state the case in logical terms, it has been
only through selection and determination of the means and conditions of
action from the standpoint of predicates suggested by the general
purpose accepted at the outset that this purpose itself had been
rendered definite and practical and possible of execution. Probably such
cases are seldom to be found in the adult experience. As a rule, the
course of physical or technological judgment will almost always bring to
light implications involved in the accepted purpose which must
inevitably raise ethical and economic questions; and the resolution of
these latter will in turn afford new points of view for further physical
determination of the situation. In such processes the logical points of
the problem of ethical and economic valuation come clearly into view.
In our earlier account of the matter it was more convenient to use
language which implied that ethical and economic judgment must be
preceded by implicit or explicit acceptance of a definite situation
presented in sense-perception, and that these evaluating judgments could
be carried through to their goal only upon the basis of such an
inventory of fixed conditions. Thus the ultimate ethical quality of the
general purpose of building a house would seem to depend upon the
precise form which this purpose comes to assume after the actual
presence and the quality of the means of building have been ascertained
and the economic bearings of the proposed expenditure have been
considered. Surely it is a waste of effort to debate with oneself upon
the ethical rightness of a project which is physically impossible or
else out of the question from the economic point of view. We are,
however, now in a position to see that this way of looking at the matter
is both inaccurate and self-contradictory. In the actual development of
our purposes there is no such orderly and inflexible arrangement of
stages; and if it is a waste of effort to deliberate upon a purpose that
is physically impossible, it may, with still greater force, be argued
that we cannot find, and judge the fitness of, the necessary physical
means until we know what, precisely, it is that we wish to do. The truth
is that there is constant interplay and interaction between the various
phases of the inclusive judgment-process, or rather, more than this,
that there is a complete and thoroughgoing mutual implication. It is
indeed true that our ethical purposes cannot take form in a vacuum apart
from consideration of their physical and economic possibility, but it
is also true that our physical and economic problems are ultimately
meaningless and impossible, whether of statement or of solution, except
as they are interpreted as arising in the course of ethical conflict.
We have, then, to do, in the present division, with situations in which,
whether at the outset or from time to time during the course of the
reflective process, there is explicit conflict between ends of conduct.
These situations are the special province of the judgment of valuation.
Our line of argument may be briefly indicated in advance as follows:
1. The judgment of valuation, whether expressed in terms of the
individual experience or in terms of social evolution, is essentially
the process of the explicit and deliberate resolution of conflict
between ends. As an incidental, though nearly always indispensable, step
to the final resolution of such conflict, physical judgment, or, in
general, the judgment of fact or existence, plays its part, this part
being to define the situation in terms of the means necessary for the
execution of the end that is gradually taking form. The two modes of
judgment mutually incite and control each other, and neither could
continue to any useful purpose without this incitement and control of
the other. Both modes of judgment are objective in content and
significance. At the end of the reflective process and immediately upon
the verge of execution of the end or purpose which has taken form the
result may be stated or apprehended in either of two ways: (1) directly,
in terms of the end, and (2) indirectly, in terms of the ordered system
of existent means which have been discovered, determined, and arranged.
If such final survey of the result be taken by way of preparation for
action, or for whatever reason, the end will be apprehended as
possessing ethical value and the means, under conditions later to be
specified, as possessing economic value.
2. What then is the nature and source of this apprehension of end or
means as valuable? The consciousness of end or means as valuable is an
emotional consciousness expressive of the agent's practical attitude as
determined in the just completed judgment of ethical or economic
valuation and arising in consequence of the inhibition placed upon the
activities which constitute the attitude by the effort of apprehending
or imaging the valued object. Ethical and economic value are thus
strictly correlative; psychologically they are emotional incidents of
apprehending in the two respective ways just indicated the same total
result of the inclusive complex judgment-process. Finally, as the moment
of action comes on, the consciousness of the ethically valued end lapses
first; then the consciousness of economic value is lost in a purely
"physical," _i. e._, technological, consciousness of the means and their
properties and interrelations in the ordered system which has been
arranged; and this finally merges into the immediate and
undifferentiated consciousness of activity as use of the means becomes
sure and unhesitating.
When we say that the ends which oppose each other in an ethical
situation (that is, a situation for the time being seen in an ethical
aspect) are related, and the ends in an economic situation are not, we
by no means wish to imply that in the one case we have in this fact of
relatedness a satisfactory solution at hand which is wanting in the
other. To feel, for example, that there is a direct and inherent
relationship between a cherished purpose of self-culture and an ideal of
social service which seems now to require the abandonment of the purpose
does not mean that one yet knows just _how_ the two ends should be
related in his life henceforth; and again, to say that one can see no
inherent relation between a desire for books and pictures and the need
of food, excepting in so far as both ends depend for their realization
upon a limited supply of means, is not to say that the issue of the
conflict is not of ethical significance. Such a view as we here reject
would amount to a denial of the possibility of genuinely problematic
ethical situations[126] and would accord with the opinion that economic
judgment as such lies apart from the sphere of ethics and is at most
subject only to occasional revision and control in the light of ethical
considerations.
By the relatedness of the ends in a situation we mean the fact, more or
less explicitly recognized by the agent, that the new, and as yet
undefined, purpose which has arisen belongs in the same system with the
end, or group of ends, which the standard inhibiting immediate action
represents. The standard inhibits action in obedience to the impulse
that has come to consciousness, and the image of the new end is, on its
part, definite and impressive enough to inhibit action in obedience to
the standard. The relatedness of the two factors is shown in a practical
way by the fact that, in the first instance at least, they are tacitly
expected to work out their own adjustment. By the process already
described in outline, subject and predicate begin to develop and thereby
to approach each other, and a provisional or partial solution of the
problem may thus be reached without resort to any other method than that
of direct comparison and adjustment of the ends involved on either side.
The standard which has been called in question has enough of congruence
with the new imaged purpose to admit of at least some progress toward a
solution through this method.
We can best come to an understanding of this recognition of the
relatedness of the ends in ethical valuation by pausing to examine
somewhat carefully into the conditions involved in the acceptance or
reflective acknowledgment of a defined end of conduct as being one's
own. Any new end in coming to consciousness encounters some more or
less firmly established habit represented in consciousness by a sign or
symbolic image of some sort, the habit being itself the outcome of past
judgment-process. Our present problem is the significance of the agent's
recognition of a relatedness between his new impulsive end and the end
which represents the habit, and we shall best approach its solution by
considering the various factors and conditions involved in the agent's
conscious recognition of the established end as being such.
In any determinate end there is inevitably implied a number of groups of
factual judgments in which are presented the objective conditions under
which execution of the end or purpose must take place. There is in the
first place a general view of environing conditions, physical and
social, presented in a group of judgments (1) descriptive of the means
at hand, of the topography of the region in which the purpose is to be
carried out, of climatic conditions, and the like, and (2) descriptive
of the habits of thought and feeling of the people with whom one is to
deal, their prejudices, their tastes, and their institutions. The
project decided on may, let us say, be an individual or a national
enterprise, whether philanthropic or commercial, which is to be launched
in a distant country peopled by partly civilized races. In addition to
these groups of judgments upon the physical and sociological conditions
under which the work must proceed, there will also be a more or less
adequate and impartial knowledge of one's own physical and mental
fitness for the enterprise, since the work as projected may promise to
tax one's physical powers severely and to require, for its successful
conduct, large measure of industry, devotion, patience, and wisdom.
Indeed any determinate purpose whatever inevitably implies a more or
less varied and comprehensive inventory of conditions. Further
illustration is not necessary for our present purpose. We may say that
in a general way the conditions relevant to a practical purpose will
group themselves naturally under four heads of classification, as
physical, sociological, physiological, and psychological. All four
classes are objective, though the last two embrace conditions peculiar
to the agent as an individual over against the environment to which for
purposes of his present activity he stands in a sense opposed.
Now our present interest is not so much in the enumeration and
classification of possible relevant conditions in a typical situation as
in the significance of these relevant conditions in the agent's
apprehension of them. Perhaps this significance cannot better be
described than by saying that essentially and impressively the
conditions are apprehended as, taken together, _warranting_ the purpose
that has been determined. We appeal, in support of this account of the
matter, to an impartial introspection of the way in which the means and
conditions of action stand related to the formed purpose in the moment
of survey of a situation. The various details presented in the survey of
a situation are apprehended, not as bare facts such as one might find
set down in a scientist's notebook, but as warranting--as closely,
uniquely, and vitally relevant to--the action that is about to be taken.
This, as we believe, is a fair account of the situation in even the
commoner and simpler emergencies that confront the ordinary man. Quite
conspicuously is it true of cases in which the purpose is a purely
technological one that has been worked out with considerable difficulty
and is therefore not executed until after a somewhat careful survey of
conditions has been taken. It is often true likewise in cases of express
ethical judgment; if the ethical phases of the reflective process have
not been excessively long and difficult, our definite sense of the
ethical value of the act we are about to do lapses quite easily, and the
factual aspects and features of the situation as given in one or more of
the four classes which we have distinguished take on an access of
significance in their character of warranting, confirming, or even
compelling the act determined upon. Of our ordinary sense-perception in
the moments of its actual functioning no less than of conscience in its
aspect of a moral perceptive faculty are the words of Bishop Butler
sensibly true that "to preside and govern, from the very economy and
constitution of man, belongs to it."[127] I Even in cases of more
serious moral difficulty this sanctioning aspect of the means and
conditions of action is not overshadowed. If the situation is one in
which by reason of their complexity these play a conspicuous rôle and
must be surveyed, by way of preparation on the agents' part, for
performance of the act, they inevitably assume, for the agent, their
proper functional character. In general, the conditions presented in the
system of factual judgments have a certain "rightful authority" which
they seem to lend to the purpose or end with reference to which they
were worked out to their present degree of factual detail. The
conditions can thus seem to sanction the end because conditions and end
have been worked out together. Gradual development on the one side
prompts analytical inquiry upon the other and is in turn directed and
advanced by the results of this inquiry. In the end the result may be
read off either in terms of end or in terms of conditions and
means.[128] The two readings must be in accord and the agent's
apprehension of the conditions as warrant for the end is expression in
consciousness of this "agreement."[129]
Now in this mode of apprehension of factual conditions there is a highly
important logical implication--an implication which inevitably comes
more and more clearly into view with the continued exercise of judgment,
even though the agent's habit of interest in the scrutiny of perplexing
situations may still remain, by reason of the want of trained capacity
for a broader view, limited in its range quite strictly to the physical
sphere. This implication is, we shall declare at once, that of an
endeavoring, striving, active principle or self which can be helped or
hindered in its unfolding by particular purposes and sets of
corresponding conditions--can lose or gain, through devotion to
particular purposes, in the breadth, fulness, and energy of its life.
The agent's apprehension of and reference to this active principle of
course varies in all degrees of explicitness, according to
circumstances, from the vague awareness that is present in a simple case
of physical judgment to the clear recognition and endeavor at definition
that are characteristic of serious ethical crises.
That the situation should develop and bring to light this factor is what
should be expected on general grounds of logic--for to say that a set of
conditions warrants or sanctions or confirms a given purpose implies
that our purposes can stand in need of warrant, and this would seem to
be impossible apart from reference to a process whose maintenance and
development in and through our purposes are assumed as being as a matter
of course desirable. It is of the essence of our contention that the
apprehension of the conditions of action as _warranting the end_ is a
primordial and necessary feature of the situation--indeed, its
constitutive feature. If our concern were with the psychological
development of self-consciousness as a phase of reflective experience,
we should endeavor to show that this development is mediated in the
first instance by the "subjective" phenomena of feeling, emotion, and
desire which find their place _in the course_ of the judgment-process.
We should then hold that, with the _conclusion_ of the judgment-process
and the accompanying sense of the known conditions as reassuring and
confirmatory of the end, comes the earliest possibility of a
discriminative recognition of the self as having been all along a
necessary factor in the process. We should hold that outside of the
_process_ of reflective attention there can be no psychical or
"elementary" _beginnings_ of self-consciousness, and then that, except
as a development out of the experience to which we have referred as
marking the _conclusion_ of the attentive process, there can be no
recognized specific and in any degree definable consciousness of self.
All this, however, lies rather beside our present purpose. We wish
simply to insist that it is out of the apprehension of conditions as
reassuring and confirmatory, out of this "primordial germ," that the
agent's definite recognition of himself as a center of development and
expenditure of energy takes its rise. Here are the beginnings of the
possibility of self-conscious ethical and economic valuation.
This apprehension of the means as _warranting_ is, we have held, a fact
even when the means surveyed are wholly of the physical sort, and we
have thereby implied that consciousness of the self as "energetic" may
take its rise in situations of this type or during the physical stage in
the development of a more complex total situation. It would be an
interesting speculation to consider to what extent and in what way the
development of the sciences of sociology and physiology may have been
essentially facilitated by the emergence of this form of
self-consciousness. But however the case may stand with these sciences
or with the rise of real interest in them in the mind of a given
individual, interest in the objective psychological conditions of a
contemplated act is certainly very closely dependent upon interest in
that subjective self which one has learned to know through the past
exercise of judgment in definition and contemplation of conditions of
the three other kinds. The more diversified and complex the array of
physical and social conditions with reference to which one is to act,
the more important becomes not simply a clearly articulated knowledge of
these, but also a knowledge of oneself. The self that is warranted in
its purpose by the surveyed conditions must hold itself in a steady and
consistent attitude during the performance on pain of "falling short of
its opportunity" and thereby rendering nugatory the reflective process
in which the purpose was worked out. Experience abundantly shows how
easily the assurance that comes with the survey of conditions may come
to grief, though there may have been on the side of the conditions, so
far as defined, no visible change; and in so far as self-consciousness
has already emerged as a distinguishable factor in such situations,
failures of the sort we here refer to are the more easily identified and
interpreted. Some sudden impulse may have broken in upon the execution
of the chosen purpose; there may have been an unexpected shift of
interest away from that general phase of life which the purpose
represented; or in any one of a number of other ways may have come about
a wavering and a slackening in the resolution which marked the
commencement of action. The "energetic" self forthwith (if we may so
express it) recognizes that the sanction which the conditions so far as
then known gave to its purpose was a misleading because an incomplete
one, and it proceeds to develop within itself a new range of objective
fact in which may be worked out the explanation, and thereby a method of
control, of these new disturbing phenomena. The qualities of patience
under disappointment, courage in encountering resistance, steadiness and
self-control in sustained and difficult effort--these qualities and
others of like nature come to be discriminated from each other by
introspective analysis and may be as accurately measured, and in general
as objectively studied, as any of the conditions to a saving knowledge
and respect of which one may already have attained, and these newly
determined psychological conditions will henceforth play the same part
in affording sanction to one's purposes as do the rest. An ordered
system of psychological categories or points of view comes to be
developed, and an accurate statement of conditions of personal
disposition and capacity relevant to each emergency as it arises will
hereafter be worked out--over against and in tension with one's
gradually forming purposes in like manner as are statements of all the
other relevant objective aspects of the situation.[130]
In the "energetic" self, we shall now seek to show, we have the common
and essential principle of both ethical and economic valuation which
marks these off from other and subordinate types of judgment. Let us
determine as definitely as possible the nature and function of this
principle.
The recognition of the chosen purpose as one favorable or otherwise to
the self, and so the recognition of the self as capable of furtherance
or retardation by its chosen purposes, is not always a feature of the
state of mind which may ensue upon completed judgment. In the commoner
situations of the everyday life of normal persons, as practically always
in the lives of persons of relatively undeveloped reflective powers, it
is quite wanting as a separate distinguished phase of the experience. In
such cases it is present, if present at all, merely as the vaguely felt
implicit meaning of the recognition that the known conditions sanction
and confirm the purpose. Such situations yield easily to attack and
threaten none of those dangers, none of those possible occasions for
regret or remorse, of which complex situations make the person of
developed reflective capacity and long experience so keenly
apprehensive. They are disposed of with comparatively little of
conscious reconstruction on either the subject or the predicate side,
and when a conclusion has been reached the agent's recognition of the
conditions carries with it the comfortable though too often delusive
assurance of the complete and perfect eligibility of the purpose. If the
question of eligibility is raised at all, the answer is given on the
tacit principle that "whatever purpose is, is right." To the "plain
man," and to all of us on certain sides of our lives, every purpose for
which the requisite means and factual conditions are found to be at hand
is, just as our purpose, therefore right.
The same experience of failure and disappointment which proves our
purpose to have been, from the standpoint of enlargement and enrichment
of the self, a mistaken one brings a clearer consciousness of the logic
implicit in our first confident belief in the purpose, and at the same
time emphasizes the need of making this logic explicit. The purpose, as
warranted to us by the conditions and assembled means that lay before
us, was our own, and _as our own_ was implicitly a purpose of
furtherance of the self. The disappointment that has come brings this
implication more clearly into view, and likewise the need of methodical
procedure, not as before in the determination of _conditions_, but in
the determination of purposes as such; for the essence of the situation
is that the _execution_ of the purpose has brought to light some
unforeseen consequence now recognized as having been all the while in
the nature of things involved in the purpose. This consequence or group
of consequences consists (in general terms) in the abatement or arrest
of desirable modes of activity which find their motivation elsewhere in
the agent's system of accepted ends, and it is registered in
consciousness in that sense of restriction or repression from without
which is a notable phase of all emotional experience, particularly in
its early stages. The consequences are as undesirable as they are
unexpected, and the reaction against them, at first emotional, presently
passes over into the form of a reflective interpretation of the
situation to the effect that the self has suffered a loss by reason of
its thoughtless haste in identifying itself with so unsafe a
purpose.[131]
It is the essential logical function of the consciousness of self to
stimulate the valuation processes which take their rise in the stage of
reflective thought thus attained. The consciousness of self is a
peculiarly baffling theme for discussion from whatever point of view,
because one finds its meaning shifting constantly between the two
extremes of a subjectivity to which "all objects of all thought" are
external and an objective thing or system of energies which is known
just as other things are--known in a sense by itself, to be sure, but
_known_ nevertheless, and thought of as an object standing in possible
relations to other objects. Now, it is of the subjective self that we
are speaking when we say that its essential function is the stimulation
or incitement of the valuation processes, but manifestly in order to
serve thus it must nevertheless be presented in some sort of sensuous
imagery. The subjective self may, in fact, be thought of in many
ways--presented in many different sorts of imagery--but in all its forms
it must be distinguished carefully from that objective self which, as
described in psychology, is the assemblage of conditions under which the
subjective or "energetic" self works out its purposes. It may be the
pale, attenuated double of the body, or a personal being standing in
need of deliverance from sin, or an atom of soul-substance, or, in our
present terminology, a center of developing and unfolding energy. The
significant fact is that, however different in content and in motive
these various presentations of the subjective self may be, they are, one
and all, as presentations and as in so far objective, stimuli to some
definite response. The savage warrior deposits his double in a tree or
stone for safety while he goes into battle; the self that is to be saved
from sin is a self that prompts certain acceptable acts in satisfaction
of the quasi-legal obligations that the fact of sin has laid upon the
agent. The presented self, whatever the form it may assume as
presentation, has its function, and this function is in general that of
stimulus to the conservation and increase, in some sense, of the self
that is not presented, but for whom the presentation is. Now our own
present description of the self as "energetic," as a center or source of
developing and unfolding energy is in its way a presentation. It
consists of sensuous imagery and suggests a mechanical process, or the
growth of a plant perhaps, which if properly safeguarded will go on
satisfactorily--a process which one must not allow to be perturbed or
hindered by external resistance or internal friction or to run down. To
many persons doubtless such an account would seem arbitrary and
fantastic in the extreme, but no great importance need be attached to
its details. The kind and number and sensuous vividness of the details
in which this essential content of presentation may be clothed must of
course depend, for each person, upon his psychical idiosyncrasy.
Indeed, as the habit of reflection upon purposes comes to be more
firmly fixed, and the procedure of valuation to be consciously
methodical and orderly, the sensuous content of the presented self must
grow constantly more and more attenuated until it has declined into a
mere unexpressed principle or maxim or tacit presumption, prescribing
the free and impartial application of the method of valuation to
particular practical emergencies as these arise. For a self, consisting
of presented content of whatever sort, which one seeks to further
through attentive deliberation upon concrete purposes, must, just in so
far as it has _content_, determine the outcome of ethical judgment in
definite ways. Thus the soul that must be saved from sin (if this be the
content of the presented self) is one that has transgressed the law in
certain ways and the right relations that should subsist between
creature and Creator, and has thereby incurred a more or less
technically definable guilt. This guilt can only be removed and the self
rehabilitated in its normal relations to the law by an appropriate
response to the situation--by a choice on the agent's part, first, of a
certain technical procedure of repentance, and then of a settled purpose
of living as the law prescribes.[132] So also our own image of the self
as "energetic" after the manner of a growing organism may well seem, if
taken too seriously as to its presentational details, to foster a bias
in favor of over-conservative adherence to the established and the
accredited as such.[133]
The argument of the last few paragraphs may be restated in the
following way in terms of the evolution of the individual's moral
attitude or technique of self-control:
1. In the stage of moral evolution in which custom and authority are the
controlling principles of conduct, moral judgment in the proper sense of
self-conscious, critical, and reconstructive valuation of purposes is
wanting. Such judgment as finds here a place is at best of the merely
casuistical type, looking to a determination of particular cases as
falling within the scope of fixed and definite concepts. There is no
self-consciousness except such as may be mediated by the sentiment of
willing obedience. It is, at this stage, not the _particular sort_ of
conduct which the law prescribes that in the agent's apprehension
enlarges and develops the self; so far as any thought of enlargement and
development of the self plays a part in influencing conduct, these
effects are such as, in the agent's trusting faith, will come from an
entire and willing acceptance of the law as such. "If any man will do
His will, he shall know of the doctrine." Moreover, the stage of custom
and authority goes along with, in social evolution, either very simple
social conditions or else conditions which, though very complex, are
stable, so that in either case the conditions of conduct are in general
in harmony with the conduct which custom and authority prescribe. The
law, therefore, can be absolute and takes no account of possible
inability to obey. The divine justice punishes infraction of the law
simply as objective infraction; not as sin, in proportion to the
sinner's responsibility.
2. But inevitably custom and authority come to be inadequate. As social
conditions change, custom becomes antiquated and authority blunders,
wavers, contradicts itself in the endeavor to prescribe suitable modes
of individual conduct. Obedience no longer is the way to light. The self
becomes self-conscious through feeling more and more the repression and
the misdirection of its energies that obedience now involves. This is
the stage of subjective morality or conscience; and the rise of
conscience, the attitude of appeal to conscience, means the beginning of
endeavor at _methodical solution_ of those new problematic situations in
the attempt to deal with which authority as such has palpably collapsed.
We say, however, that conscience is the _beginning_ of this endeavor;
for conscience is, in fact, an ambiguous and essentially transitional
phenomenon. On the one hand conscience is the inner nature of a man
speaking within him, and so the self furthers its own growth in
listening to this expression of itself. In this aspect conscience is
methodological. But on the other hand conscience _speaks_, and,
speaking, must say something determinate, however general this something
may be. In this aspect conscience is a _résumé_ of the _generic_ values
realized under the system of custom and authority, but to the present
continued attainment of which the _particular prescriptions_ of custom
and authority are no longer adequate guides. Conscience is thus at once
an inward prompting to the application of logical method to the case in
hand and a body of general or specific rules under some one of which the
case can be subsumed. In ethical theory we accordingly find no unanimity
as to the nature of conscience. At the one extreme it is the voice of
God speaking in us or through us, in detailed and specific terms--and
so, virtually, custom and authority in disguise. At the other it is an
empty abstract intuition that the right is binding upon us--and, so,
simply the hypostasis of demand for a logical procedure. The history of
ethics presents us with all possible intermediate conceptions in which
these extreme motives are more or less skilfully interwoven or combined
in varying proportions. The truth is that conscience is essentially a
transitional conception, and so necessarily looks before and after. In
one of its aspects it is a self which has come to miss (and therefore to
image for itself) the values and, it may be, a certain dawning sense of
vitality and growth which obedience to authority once afforded.[134] In
its other aspect it is a self that is looking forward in a self-reliant
way to the determination on its own account of its purposes and values.
And finally, as for the environing world of means and conditions,
clearly this is not necessarily harmonious with and amenable to
conscience; indeed, in the nature of things it can be only partially so.
The morality of conscience is, therefore, either mystical, a morality
that seeks to escape the world in the very moment of its affirmation
that the world is unreal (because worthless), or else it takes refuge in
a virtual distinction between "absolute" and "relative" morality (to
borrow a terminology from a system in which properly it should have no
place), perhaps setting up as an intermediary between heaven and earth a
machinery of special dispensation.[135]
3. Conscience professes in general, that is, to be autonomous, and the
profession is, strictly speaking, a contradiction in terms. Moreover,
apart from considerations of the logic of the situation, theories of
conscience have, as a matter of fact, always lent themselves kindly to
theological purposes just as the theory of self-realization in its
classic modern statement rests upon a metaphysical doctrine of the
Absolute.[136] Inevitably the movement concealed within this essentially
unstable conception must have its legitimate outcome (1) in a clearing
of the presented self of its fixed elements of content, thus setting it
free in its character of a non-presentational principle of valuation,
and (2) a setting apart of these elements of content from the principle
of valuation as standards for reference and consultation rather than as
law to be obeyed.
We have thus correlated our account of the logic whereby the "energetic"
self comes to explicit recognition as stimulus to the valuation-process
with the three main stages in the moral evolution of the individual and
the race. We were brought to this first-mentioned part of our discussion
by our endeavor to find out the factors involved in the first acceptance
of a conscious purpose (or, indifferently, the subsequent recognition of
it as a standard)--an endeavor prompted by the need of distinguishing,
with a view to their special analysis, the two types of
valuation-process. We now return to this problem.
The following illustration will serve our present undertaking: A lawyer
or man of business is struck by the great need of honest men in public
office, or has had his attention in some impressive way called to the
fact of great inequality in the present distribution of wealth, and to
the diverse evils resulting therefrom. These facts hold his attention,
perhaps against his will, and at last suggest the thought of his making
some personal endeavor toward improvement of conditions, political or
social, as the case may be. On the other hand, however, the man has
before him the promise of a successful or even brilliant career in his
chosen occupation, and is already in the enjoyment of a substantial
income, which is rapidly increasing. Moreover, he has a family growing
up about him, and he is not simply strongly interested in the early
training and development of his children, and desirous of having himself
some share in conducting it, but he sees that the suitable higher
education of his children will in a few years make heavy demands upon
his pecuniary means. Here, then, we have a situation the analysis of
which will enable us to distinguish and define the provinces of ethical
and economic judgment.
It is easy to see that we have here a conflict between ends. On the one
side is the thought of public service in some important office or, let
us say, the thought of bettering society in a more fundamental way by
joining the propaganda of some proposed social reform. This end rests
upon certain social impulses in the man's nature and appeals to him as
strongly, we may fairly assume, as would any purpose of immediate
self-interest or self-indulgence, so that it stands before him and urges
him with an insistent pertinacity that at first even puts him on his
guard against it as a temptation. Over against this concrete end or
subject of moral valuation stand other ends comprehended or symbolized
in the ideals of regular and steady industry, of material provision for
family, of paternal duty toward children, of scholarly achievement as
lawyer or judge, and the like--ideals which are indeed practical and
personal, but which, as they now function, are general or universal in
character, are lacking in the concreteness and emotional quality which
belong to the new purpose which has just come to imagination and has
brought these ideals into action on the predicate side. Will this life
of social agitation really be quite "respectable," and befitting the
character of a sober and industrious man? Will it enable me to support
and educate my family? Will it permit me to devote sufficient attention
to their present care and training? And will it not so warp my nature,
so narrow and concentrate my interests, as in a measure to disqualify me
for the right exercise of paternal authority over them in years to come?
Moreover, will not a life of agitation, of constant intercourse with
minds and natures in many ways inferior to my own and those of my
present professional associates, lower my intellectual and moral
standards, and so make of me in the end a less useful member of society
than I am at present? These and other questions like them present the
issue in its earlier aspect. Presently, however, the tentative purpose
puts in its defense, appealing to yet other recognized ideals or
standards of self-sacrifice, benevolence, or social justice as witnesses
in its favor. The conflict thus takes on the subject-predicate form, as
has already been explained. On the one hand we have the undefined but
strongly insistent concrete purpose; on the other hand we have a number
of symbolic concepts or universals standing for accepted and accredited
habitual modes of conduct. The problem is that of working the two sides
of the situation together into a unified and harmonious plan of conduct
which shall be at once concrete and particular, as a plan chosen by way
of solution of a given present emergency, and universal, as having due
regard for past modes of conduct, and as itself worthy of consideration
in coping with future emergencies.
Now, how shall we discriminate the ethical and the economic aspects of
the situation which we have described? We shall most satisfactorily do
this through a consideration of the various sorts of conditions and
means of which account must be taken in working the situation through to
a solution, or (to express it more accurately) the various sorts of
conditions and means which need to be defined over against the purpose
as the purpose gradually develops into detailed form.
We may say, first of all, that there are _psychological_ conditions
which must be taken into consideration in the case before us. Our thesis
is that in so far as a situation gives rise to the determination of
psychological conditions and is advanced along the way toward final
solution through determination of these, the situation is an ethical
one. In other words, we hold that the ends at issue in the situation are
"related" in so far as they depend upon the same set of psychological
conditions. In so far as these statements are not true of the situation
there must be a resort to economic judgment.
By the general questions suggested above as presenting themselves to
the agent we have indicated in what way the course of action taken must
have regard to certain psychological considerations. Entering upon the
new way of life will inevitably lessen the agent's interest in his
present professional pursuits and so make difficult, and in the end even
irksome, any attempt at continuing in them either as a partial means of
livelihood or as a recreation. The new work will be absorbing--as indeed
it must be if it is to be worth while. In the same way the man must
recognize that his nature is not one of the rare ones so richly endowed
in capacity for sympathy that constant familiarity with general
conditions of misery and suffering does not dull their fineness of
sensibility to the special concerns and interests of particular
individuals. If he takes his suffering fellow-men at large for his
children, his own children will probably suffer just in so far the loss
of a father's special sympathy and understanding care. And likewise he
must be drawn away and isolated from his friends, for it will be hard
for him, he must foresee, to hold free and intimate converse with men
whose ways of thinking lie apart from his own controlling interest and
for whose insensibility to the things that move him so profoundly he
must come more and more to feel a certain impatience if not contempt.
Not to enlarge upon these possibilities and others of like nature, we
must see that reflection upon the situation must presently bring to
consciousness these various consequences of the kind of action which is
proposed and a recognition that the ground of relation between them and
the action proposed lies in certain qualities and limitations of his own
nature. These latter are for him the general psychological conditions of
action, his "empirical self," the general nature of which he has
doubtless already come to be familiar with in many former situations
perhaps wholly different in superficial aspect from from the present
one.
Now, just in so far as there is this relation of mutual exclusiveness
between the end proposed and certain of the standard ends or modes of
conduct which are involved, judgment will be by the direct or ethical
method of adjustment presently to be described. Let us assume
accordingly that a tentative solution of the problem has been reached to
the effect that a portion of the lawyer's time shall be given to his
profession and to his family life, and that the remainder shall be given
to a moderate participation in the social propaganda. Over against this
tentative ethical solution, as its warrant in the sense explained above,
will stand in the survey of the situation that may now be taken a
certain fairly definite disposition or _Anlage_ of the capacities and
functions of the empirical self.[137] Now on the basis of the ethical
solution thus reached there will be further study of the situation,
perhaps as a result of failure in the attempt to carry the solution into
practice, but more probably as a further preparation for overt action.
Forthwith it develops that the compromise proposed will be impossible.
Participation in the social agitation will excite hostility on the part
of the classes from which possible clients would come and will cause
distrust and a suspicion of inattention to details of business among the
lawyer's present clientage. There are, in a word, a whole assemblage of
"external" sociological conditions (and we need not stop to speak of
physical conditions which co-operate with these and contribute to their
effect) which effectually veto the plan proposed. In general these
external conditions are such as to deprive the agent of the means of
living in the manner which the ethical determination of the end
proposes. In the present case, unless some other more feasible
compromise can be devised, either the one extreme or the other must be
chosen--either continuance in the profession and the corresponding
general scheme of life or the social propaganda and reliance upon such
scant and precarious income as it may incidentally afford.
We can now define the economic aspect of a situation in terms of our
present illustration. The end which the lawyer had in view in a vague
and tentative way was, as we saw, defined with reference to his ethical
standards--that is to say, a certain measure of participation in the new
work was determined as satisfactory at once to his ideals of devotion to
the cause of social justice and to his sense of obligation to himself
and to his family. In this sense, logically speaking, a subject was
defined to which a system of predicates, comprehended perhaps under the
general predicate of right or good, applies. Now, however, it appears,
from the inspection of the material and social environment, that the
execution of this purpose, perfectly in accord though it may be with the
spiritual capacities and powers of the agent, is possible only on pain
of certain other consequences, certain other sacrifices, which have not
hitherto been considered. That a half-hearted interest in his profession
would still not prevent his earning a moderate income from it was never
questioned in the ethical "first approximation" to a final decision, but
now the issue is fairly presented, and, as we must see, in a very
difficult and distressing way; for the essence of the situation is that
the ends now in conflict, that of earning a living and caring for his
family and that of laboring for the social good, are not intrinsically
(that is, from the standpoint of the empirical self) incompatible. On
the contrary, these two ends are psychologically quite compatible, as
the outcome of the ethical judgment shows; only the "external"
conditions oppose them to each other. The difficulty of the case lies,
then, just in the fact that the conflicting ends, both standing, as they
do, for strong personal interests of the self, nevertheless cannot be
brought to an adjustment by the direct method of an apportionment
between them of the "spiritual resources" or "energies" of the self.
Instead, the case is one calling for an apportionment of the external
means, and so, proximately, not for immediate determination of the final
end, but for economic determination of the means.
We come now to the task of describing, so far as this may be possible,
the judgment or valuation-processes which correspond to the types of
situation thus distinguished. We are able now to see that these must be
constructive processes, in the sense that in and through them courses of
conduct adapted to unique situations are shaped by the concourse of
established standards with a new end which has arisen and put in its
claim for recognition. We can see, moreover, that these
valuation-processes effect a construction of a different order from that
given in factual judgment. Factual judgment determines external objects
as means or conditions of action from standpoints suggested by the
analysis and development of ends. Judgments of valuation determine
concrete purposes from standpoints given in recognized general purposes
of the self--purposes which are general in virtue of their having been
taken by abstraction from concrete cases, in which they have received
particular formulation as purposes, and set apart as typical modes of
conduct in general serviceable to the "energetic" self.[138] Logically
factual judgment is at all times subordinate to valuational; when
valuational judgment has become consciously deliberate, this logical
subordination becomes explicit and factual judgment appears in its true
character. Its essential function is that of presenting the conditions
which sanction and stimulate our ethically and economically determined
purposes.[139] Finally, in the construction of purposes and
reconstruction of standards in valuation the ideal of the expansion and
development of the "energetic" self controls--not as a "presented" or
contentual self prescribing particular modes of conduct, but as a
principle prescribing the greatest possible openness to suggestion and
an impartial application of the method of valuation to the case in hand.
As we have said, in whatever sensuous image we figure the "energetic"
self, its essential character lies in its function of stimulating
methodical valuation. In place of the two-faced and ambiguous
"presented" self, which is characteristic of the stage of conscience, we
now have in the stage of valuation the "energetic" self on the one hand
and standards on the other.[140]
We have now to consider the actual procedure of valuation, and first the
ethical form as above defined. Bearing in mind that we are not concerned
with cases of obedience to authority or deference to conscience, let us
take a case of genuine moral conflict such as we were considering some
time since. Suppose that one has the impulse to indulge in some form of
amusement which he has been in the habit of considering frivolous or
absolutely wrong. The end, as soon as imaged, or rather as the condition
of its being imaged, encounters past habits of conduct symbolized by
standards--standards which may be presented under a variety of forms, a
maxim learned in early childhood, the ideal of a Stoic sage or Christian
saint, the example of some friend, or a precept put in abstract terms,
but which, however presented, are essentially symbolic of established
habits of thought or action.[141] Solution of such a problem proceeds,
in general, along two closely interwoven lines: (1) collation and
comparison of cases recognized as conforming to the standard, with a
view to determining the standard type of conduct in a less ambiguous
way, and (2) definition of the relations between this type of conduct
and other recognized types in the catalogue of virtues.
Now, these two movements are in fact inseparable, for, without reference
to the entire system of virtues of which the one now asserting itself is
a member, the comparison of cases with a view to definition of the
virtue would be blind and hopeless of any outcome. The agent in the case
before us desires to be temperate in amusement and to make profitable
use of leisure time, but after all he may wonder whether these ideals
really require the austerities of certain mediæval saints or the Stoic
_ataraxy_. The saint's feats of spiritual athletics may have served a
useful purpose, in ruder times, as evidence of human power to lead a
virtuous and thoughtful life, but can such self-denial now be required
of the moral man? It is apparent, in short, that the superficially
conceived ideal must be analyzed. We must consider the "spirit" of our
saint or hero, not the letter of his conduct, as we say, and in
interpreting it make due allowance for the conditions of the time in
which he lived and the grade of general intelligence of those he sought
to edify. Whether our standard is a person or a parable or an abstractly
formulated precept, the logic of the situation is the same in every case
of judgment. The analysis of a standard cannot proceed without the
"synthesis" or co-ordination of the type of conduct thereby defined with
other distinguishable recognized types of conduct into a comprehensive
ideal of life as a whole. In the last resort the implicit relations of
all the virtues will be made explicit in the process of defining
accurately any one of them.
In the last resort, then, the predicate of the ethical judgment is the
whole system of the recognized habits of the agent, and each
judgment-process is in its outcome a readjustment of the system to
accommodate the new habit that has been seeking admission. Both the old
habits and the new impulse have been modified in the process just as the
intension of a class term and the particular "subsumed" under the class
are reciprocally modified in the ordinary judgment of sense-perception.
We are once more able to see that the process of ethical judgment or
valuation is not a process of subsumption or classification, of
_ascertaining_ the value of particular modes of conduct, but on the
contrary a process of determining or _assigning_ value. Each judgment
process means a new and more or less thoroughgoing redetermination of
the self and hence a fixation of the ethical value of the conduct whose
emergence as a purpose gave rise to the process. The moral experience is
not essentially and in its typical emergencies a _recognition_ of values
with a view to shaping one's course accordingly, but rather a
determining or a _fixation_ of values which shall serve for the time
being, but be subject at all times to re-appraisal.
If the present discussion were primarily intended as a contribution to
general ethical theory, it would be a part of our purpose to show in
detail that any formulation of an ethical ideal in contentual "material"
terms must always be inadequate for practical purposes and hence
theoretically indefensible. This, as we believe, could be shown true of
the popularly current ideal of self-realization as well as of hedonism
in its various forms and the older systems of conscience or the moral
sense. These all are essentially fixed ideals admitting of more or less
complete specification in point of content and regarded as tests or
canons by appeal to which the moral quality of any concrete act can be
deductively ascertained. They are the ethical analogues of such
metaphysical principles as the Cartesian God or the Substance of
Spinoza, and the logic implied in regarding them as adequate standards
for the valuation of conduct is the logic whereby the Rationalist
sought to deduce from concepts the world of particular things. The
present desideratum in ethical theory would appear to be, not further
attempts at definition of a moral ideal of any sort, but the development
of a logical method for the valuation of ideals and ends in which the
results of more modern researches in the theory of knowledge should be
made use of--in which the concept of self should play the part, not of
the concept of Substance in a rationalistic metaphysics,[142] but of
such a principle as that of the conservation of energy, for example, in
scientific inference.[143]
We have, then, in each readjustment of the activities of the self a
reconstruction in knowledge of ethical reality--a reconstruction which
at the same time involves the assignment of a definite value to the new
mode of conduct which has been worked out in the readjustment. We
conclude, then, that the ethical experience is one of continuous
construction and reconstruction of an order of objective reality, within
which the world of sense-perception is comprised as the world of more or
less refractory means to the attainment of ethical purposes. In this
process of construction of ethical reality current moral standards play
the same part as concepts already defined--that is to say, the agent's
present habits--do in the typical judgment of sense-perception. They
play the part of symbols suggestive of recognized and heretofore
habitual modes of action with reference to conduct of the type of the
particular instance that is under consideration, serving thus to bring
to bear upon the subject of the judgment sooner or later the entire
moral self. The outcome is a new self, and so for the future a new
standard, in which the past self as represented by the former standard
and the new impulse have been brought to mutual adjustment. Our position
is that this adjustment is essentially experimental and that in it the
_general principle_ of the unity and expansion of the self must be
presupposed, as in inductive inference general principles of teleology,
of the conservation of energy, and of organic interconnection of parts
in living things are presupposed. The unity and increase of the self is
not a test or canon, but a principle of moral experimentation.[144]
Finally, we must note one further parallel between ethical judgment and
the judgment of sense-perception and science. However the man of science
may, as a nominalist, regard the laws of nature as mere observed
uniformities of fact and particulars as the true realities, these same
laws will nevertheless on occasion have a distinctly objective character
in his actual apprehension of them. The stubbornness with which a
certain material may refuse to lend itself to a desired purpose will
commonly be reinforced, as a matter of apprehension, by one's
recognition of the "scientific necessity" of the phenomenon. As offering
resistance the thing itself, as we have seen, becomes objective; so also
does the law of which this case may be recognized as only a particular
example--and the other type of objectivity experience we need not here
do more than mention as likewise possible in one's apprehension of the
law as well as of the "facts" of nature. Both types of objectivity
attach to the moral law as well. The standard that restrains is one
"above" us or "beyond" us. Even Kant, as the similitude of the starry
heavens would suggest, was not incapable of a faint "emotion of the
heteronomous," and authority in one form or another is a moral force
whose objective validity as moral, both in its inhibiting and in its
sanctioning aspects, human nature is prone to acknowledge. The
apprehension of objectivity is everywhere, as we have held, emotional.
One type of situation in which the moral law takes on this character is
found in the interposition of the law to check a forward tendency; the
other is found in the instant of transition from doubt to the new
adjustment that has been reached. In the one case the law is
"inexorable" in its demands. In the other case there are two
possibilities: If the adjustment has been essentially a rejection of the
new "temptation," the law which one obeys is one no longer inexorable,
but sustaining, as a rock of salvation. If the adjustment is a
distinctly new attitude, the sense of the objectivity of the principle
embodied in it will commonly be less strong, if not for the time being
almost wholly wanting; but in the moment of overt action it will in some
degree wear the character of a firm truth upon which one has taken his
stand.
This general view of the logical constitution of the moral experience
may suggest a comparison with the fundamental doctrine of the British
Intellectualist school. The Intellectualist writers were very largely
guided in their expositions by the desire of refuting on the one hand
Hobbes and on the other Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Against Hobbes they
wished to establish the obligatory character of the moral law entirely
apart from sanction or enactment by political authority. Against the
Sentimentalists they wished to vindicate its objectivity and permanence.
This twofold purpose they accomplished by holding that the morality of
conduct lies in its conformity to the "objective nature of things," the
knowledge of which, in its moral aspects, is logically deducible from
certain moral axioms, self-evident like those of mathematics. Now this
mathematical analogy is the key to the whole position of the
Intellectualist writers. By so conceiving the nature of knowledge these
men seriously weakened their strong general position. Mathematics is
just that species of knowledge which is most remote from and apparently
independent of any reference to conduct, and the Intellectualists, by
choosing it as their ideal, were thereby rendered incapable of
explaining the obligatoriness of the moral law. An adequate psychology
of knowledge would have obviated this difficulty in their system.
The occasion for economic judgment is given, as we have seen, in a
conflict between ends not incompatible, in view of any ascertainable
conditions of the agent's nature as an empirical self, but inhibitory of
each other in view of what we have described as conditions external to
the agent. Thus the lawyer in our illustration found his plan of
compromise thwarted by the existence of such sociological conditions as
would make the practice of his profession, in the manner intended,
impossible, and so cut off his income. Similarly the peasant in a
European country finds that (for reasons which, more probably, he does
not understand) he can no longer earn a living in the accustomed way,
and emigrates to a country in which his capital and his physical
energies may be more profitably employed. So also in the everyday lives
of all of us ends and interests quite disparate, so far as any relation
to each other through our psychical capacities is concerned, stand very
frequently in opposition, nevertheless, and calling for adjustment. We
must make a choice between amusement or intellectual pursuits or the
means of æsthetic culture, on the one hand, and the common necessaries
of life on the other, and the difficulty of the situation lies just in
absence of any sort of "spiritual affinity" between these ends. There is
no necessary ratio between the satisfaction of the common needs of life
and the cultivation of the higher faculties--no ratio for which the
individual can ever find a sanction in the constitution of his empirical
self through the direct method of ethical valuation. The common needs
must have their measure of recognition, but no attempted ethical
valuation of them can ever come to a result convincingly warranted to
the "energetic" self by psychological conditions. The economic situation
as such is in this sense (that is, from the standpoint of any recognized
ethical standards) unintelligible. It is this ethical unintelligibility
that often lends a genuine element of tragedy to situations which press
urgently and in which the ends at issue are of great ethical moment. It
is no small matter to the emigrant, for example, that he must cut the
very roots by which he has grown to the sort of man he finds himself to
be. His whole nature protests against this violence, and questions its
necessity, though the necessity is unmistakable and it would be quite
impossible for him not to act accordingly. Nevertheless, tragic as such
a conflict may well be, it does not differ in any logically essential
way, does not differ in its degree of strictly logical difficulty, from
the ethically much less serious economic problems of our everyday life.
Now, we have already defined the economic act for which economic
judgment is preparatory as being, in general terms, the diversion of
certain means from a present use to which they have been devoted to a
new use which has come to seem in a general way desirable.[145] Thus, in
the cases just mentioned, the lawyer contemplates the virtual purchase
of his new career by the income which his profession might in years to
come afford him, the emigrant seeks a better market for his labor, and
the pleasure-seeker and the ambitious student and the buyer of a
commodity in the market propose to themselves, each one, the diversion
from some hitherto intended use of a sum of money. Manifestly it is
immaterial from our logical point of view whether the means in question
which one proposes to apply in some new way are in the nature of
physical and mental strength, or materials and implements of manufacture
ready to be used, or means of purchase of some sort wherewith the
desired service or commodity may be obtained at once. The economic
problem, to state it technically, is the problem of the _reapplicability
of the means_, interpreting the category of means quite broadly.
In a word, then, the method of procedure adapted to the economic type of
situation is that of valuation of the means, not that of direct
valuation of the ends. This method is one of valuation since, like the
ethical method, it is determinative of a purpose, but it accomplishes
this result in its own distinctive way. The problem of our present
analysis will accordingly be how this method of valuation of the means
is able to help toward an adjustment of disparate or unrelated ends
which the ethical method is inadequate to effect.
Let us assume that a vague purpose of foreign travel, for example, has
presented itself in imagination, and that the preliminary stage of
ethical judgment has been passed through, with the result that the
purpose, in a more definite form than it could have at first, is now
ready for economic consideration. In the first place the cost of the
journey must be determined, and this step, in terms of our present point
of view, is simply a methodological device whereby certain ends which
the standards involved in the stage of ethical judgment could not
suggest or could not effectually take into co-operation with themselves
in their determination of the end are brought into play. Ascertaining
the means suggests these disparate ends, these established modes of use
of the means, with the result that the agent's "forward tendency" is
checked. Shall the necessary sums be spent in foreign travel or shall
they be spent in the present ways--in providing various physical
necessities and comforts, or for various forms of amusement, or in
increasing investments in business enterprises? These modes of use do
not admit of ethical comparison with the plan of foreign travel, and the
agent's interest must therefore now be centered on the means.
It is in this check to the agent's forward tendency that the logical
status of the means is evinced. As merely so much money the means could
only serve to further the execution of the purpose that is forming,
since under the circumstances it could only prompt immediate
expenditure. Like the subject in factual judgment, the means in economic
judgment have their problematic aspect which as effectually hinders the
desired use of them as could any palpable physical defect. This
problematic aspect consists in the fact of the present established mode
of use which the now-forming purpose threatens to disturb, and it is the
agent's interest in this mode of use that turns his attention to the
valuation of the means.
It need hardly be pointed out that in the economic life we find
situations exactly corresponding to those of "conscience and temptation"
and mechanical "pull and haul" which were discriminated in the ethical
sphere and marked off from judgment properly so called. Indeed it seems
reasonable to think, on general grounds of introspection, that these
methods of decision (if they deserve the name) are, relatively speaking,
more frequently relied upon in the economic than in the moral life. The
economic method of true judgment is roundabout and more complex and more
difficult than ethical, and involves a more express recourse to those
abstract conceptions which for the most part are only implicitly
involved in valuation of the other type. The economic type of valuation,
in fact, differs from the ethical, not in an absolute or essential way,
but rather in the explicitness with which it brings to light and lays
bare the vital elements in valuation as such. In general, then, the
economic process would seem necessarily to embrace three stages, which
will first of all be enumerated and then very briefly explained and
discussed. These are: (1) a preliminary consideration of the means
necessary to attain the end--which must be vague and tentative, of
course, for the reason that the end as imagined is so, as compared with
the fulness of detail which must belong to it before it can be finally
accepted; (2) a consideration of the means, as thus provisionally taken,
in the light of their present devotion to other purposes, this present
devotion of them being the outcome, in some degree at least, of past
valuation; (3) final definition of the means with reference to the
proposed use through an adjustment effected between this and the factors
involved in the past valuation.
1. In the first stage as throughout, it must be carefully noted, the
means are under consideration not primarily in their physical aspect,
but simply as _subject to a possible redisposition_. Thus it is not
money as lawful currency receivable at the steamship office for an ocean
passage, nor tools and materials and labor-power technically suitable
for the production of a desired object, that is the subject of the
economic judgment. The problem of redisposition would of course not be
raised were the means not technically adaptable to the purpose, nor on
the other hand can the means in the course of economic judgment, as a
rule, escape some measure of further (factual) inquiry into their
technical properties; but the standpoints are nevertheless distinct.
Again, it must be noted that the means in this first stage will be only
roughly measured. The length of one's stay abroad, the size of the
house one wishes to build, the purpose whatever it may be, is still
undefined--these are in fact the very matters which the process must
determine--and in the first instance it is "money in general" or "a
large sum of money" with reference to which we raise the economic
problem. The category of quantity is in fact essentially an economic
one; it is essentially a standpoint for determining the means of action
in such a way as to facilitate their economic valuation. The reader
familiar with the writings of the Austrian school of economists will
easily recall how uniformly in their discussions of the principle of
marginal utility these writers assume outright in the first place the
division of the stock of goods into definite units, and then raise the
question of how the value of a unit is measured. The stock contains
already a hundred bushels of wheat or ten loaves of bread--apparently as
a matter of metaphysical necessity--whereas in fact the essential
economic problem is this very one of how "wheat at large" comes to be
put in sacks of a certain size and "bread in general" to be baked in
twelve-ounce loaves. The subdivision of the stock and the valuation of
the unit are not successive stages, but inseparably correlative phases
of the valuation-process as a whole. The outcome may be stated either
way, in accordance with one's interest in the situation.
2. But the unmeasured means as redisposable in an as yet undetermined
way bring to consciousness established measured uses to which the means
have been heretofore assigned in definite amounts. In this way the
process of determining a definite quantum as redisposable (which is to
say, of attaining to a definite acceptable plan of conduct) can begin.
How, then, does this fact of past assignment to uses still recognized as
desirable figure in the situation? In the first place the past
assignment may have been (1) an outcome of past economic valuation, (2)
an unhesitating or non-economic act executive of an ethical decision,
or (3) an act of more or less conscious obedience to "conscience" or
"authority." In either case it now stands as a course of conduct which
at the time was, in the way explained above, _sanctioned_ to the
agent, to the "energetic" self, by the means and conditions recognized
as bearing upon it. In this sense, then, we have, in this recognition
of the past adjustment and of the economic character which the
means now have in virtue of it, what we may term a judgment of
"energy-equivalence" between the means and their established uses. For
to the agent it was the essential meaning of the sense of sanction felt
when the means were assigned to these uses that the "energetic" self
would on the whole be furthered thereby--and this in view of all the
sacrifices that this use would entail, or in view of the sacrifices
required for the production of the means, if the case were one in which
the means were not at hand and could only be secured by a more or less
extended production process.
In the illustration we have been considering, it will be observed, there
is an extensive schedule of present uses which the new project calls in
question and from which the means must be diverted. This is in fact the
commoner case. A new use of money will affect, as a rule, not simply a
single present mode of expenditure, but will very probably involve a
readjustment throughout the whole schedule of expenditure which our
separate past valuations of money have in effect co-operated in
establishing. So likewise if we wish to use part of a store of building
materials or of food, or of any other subdivisible commodity, we
encounter an ordered system of consumption rather than a single
predetermined use which we have not yet enjoyed. Where this is the case
the whole process of valuation is greatly facilitated, but this is not
essential. The means in cases of true economic valuation may be capable
of but a single use, like a railroad ticket or a perishable piece of
fruit, or of a virtually endless series of uses, like a painting or a
literary masterpiece. Whether the means figure as representing but a
single use or stand for the conservation of an extensive system, their
economic significance is the same. They are the "energy-equivalent" of
this use or system of uses considered as an act or system of acts of
consumption in furtherance of the self. Their past assignment meant then
and means now simply this, that the "energetic" self would thereby gain
more than it would lose through the inevitable sacrifices. This is the
economic significance of the means in virtue of which they are now
problematic to the extent of checking, for a time at least, forward
tendency toward the desired end.[146]
3. The judgment of energy-equivalence, then, defines the inhibiting
economic aspect of the means, and moreover defines it for the means as
subdivided and set apart for a schedule of uses if this was the form of
the past adjustments to which reference is made. The problem of the
third stage of the process is that of "bringing subject and predicate
together," as we have elsewhere expressed it--that is, of determining,
in the light of the economic character of the means as just ascertained,
what measure of satisfaction, if any, may be accorded to the new and as
yet undefined desire. The new disposition of the means, if one is to be
made, must bring to the "energetic" self a degree of furtherance and
development which shall be sensibly as great as would come from the
established method of consumption. The means, as economic, are means to
the conservation of the old adjustment, and any new disposal of them or
of any portion of them for a full or partial execution of the new
purpose must make out at least as good a case. It must appear that the
new disposition is not only physically possible, but also economically
necessary in the light of the same principle of expansion of the self as
sanctioned the disposition now in force. It must make the self in some
way more efficient--whether more strong and symmetrical in body, more
skilled in work, more clear of brain, or more efficient in whatever
other concrete way may be desired.
Psychologically the sanction of any course of action which is taken as
evidence of conformity to the general rule thus inadequately stated is
the more or less strong sense of "relaxation" of attentive strain which
comes with the shift of attention, in the final survey, from means to
end. We may accordingly, for the sake of greater definiteness, restate
in the following terms the process which has just been sketched: The
ends in conflict at the outset are ends which do not sensibly bear upon
each other through their dependence upon a common fund of psychical
capacities or energies. They are related in the agent's experience
solely through their dependence upon a common stock of physical means,
and they do not therefore admit of adjustment through the ethical type
of process. The economic process consists essentially of a revival in
imagination of the experiences accompanying the former disposition of
the means and a re-enforcement by these of the means in their adherence
to that former and still recognized disposition. If an adapted form of
the new end can be imagined which will mediate a like experience of
relaxation when the attention shifts from the means, thus emotionally
re-enforced in their economic status, to the end as thus conceived, the
means will be recognized as economically redisposable. Thus the method
of valuation of the means makes possible, through appeal to the
sensibly invariable experience of relaxation or assurance in the outcome
of judgment, a co-ordination of disparate ends which the ethical method
of direct adjustment could not effect.[147]
The economic process thus presents on analysis the same factors as does
the ethical. On the subject side we have the means--which as economic
are problematic as to their reapplicability. On the predicate side we
have the suggested mode of reapplication in tension against conservative
ideals of application to established purposes. Just as it may be held
that the general ethical predicate is that of Right or Good--that is,
deserving of adoption into the system of one's ends--so the economic
predicate applied to the means as these come in the end to be defined is
the general concept Reappliable. And in general the distinction of the
types is not an ultimate one, for the more deliberately and rigorously
the method of economic valuation is pursued--in such a case, for
example, as that of the prospective emigrant--the stronger will be the
agent's sense of a genuinely ethical sanction as belonging to the
decision which is in the end worked out. The more certain and sincere,
therefore, will be the agent's judgment that the means must be
reapplied, for on the sense of sanction of which we speak rests the
explicit judgment that the purpose formed is expansive of the self.
From the analysis thus presented it must appear, therefore, that the
economic type of judgment is in our sense a constructive process. Its
function is to determine a particular commodity or portion of a stock of
some commodity in its economic character as _disposable_, and in
performing this function it presents a definite reality in the economic
order. Moreover, in thus defining the particular, recourse is had to
more or less distinctively namable economic standards which are in the
last resort symbols representing established habits of consumption in
the light of which the means, _prima facie_, seem not to be available
for any other purposes. These economic standards, like ethical standards
and the class concepts of science and our ordinary perceptual
experience, are, with all due respect to nominalism, constitutive of a
real world--a world which is real because it lends form and significance
to our knowledge of particulars as stimuli to conduct.
We have now before us sufficient reason for our thesis that the
valuation-process in both its forms is constructive of an order of
reality, and we have sufficiently explained the relation which the
economic order bears to the inclusive and logically prior order of
ethical objects and relations. We are now in a position to see that in
being thus constructive of reality (taking the conception in its proper
functional meaning) they are at the same time constructive of the self,
since the reality which they construct is in its functional aspect the
assemblage of means and conditions, of stimuli, in short, for the
development and expansion of the self. We shall bring this main division
of our study to a close with a series of remarks in explanation and
illustration of this view.
Let us consider once more the factors present in the agent's final
survey of the situation after the completion of the judgment-process and
on the verge of action. These factors are, as we have seen, (1)
recognition of conditions sanctioning the purpose formed, (2)
recognition of the purpose as, in view of this sanction, warranted to
the "energetic" self as an eligible method of expansion and development,
and (3) recognition of the "energetic" self, conversely, as in
possession, in virtue of the favorable conditions given in factual
judgment, of this new method of furtherance. These three factors are
manifestly not so much factors co-operating in the situation as
inseparable aspects of it distinguishable from each other and admitting
of discriminative emphasis in accordance with the degree of reflective
power which the individual may possess or choose to exercise. Strictly
speaking these three aspects are present in every conscious recognition
of a purpose as one's own and as presently to be carried into effect,
but they are not always present in equal conspicuousness, and never with
equal logical importance for the individual. In fact this enumeration of
aspects coincides with our enumeration of the three stages in the
evolution of the individual's conscious moral attitude toward new
purposes given in impulse--in the third of which the last named of these
aspects comes to the fore with the others in logical or functional
subordination to it.
Now it will be apparent on grounds of logic, as on the evidence of
simple introspection, that in this third type of attitude--in the
attitude of true valuation, that is to say--the energetic self cannot be
identified with the chosen purpose. The purpose is a determinate
specified act to be performed subject to recognized conditions, and with
the use of the co-ordinated means; the self, on the other hand, is a
process to which this particular purpose is, indeed, from the standpoint
of the self's conservation and increase, indispensable, but which is
nevertheless apart from the purpose in the sense that without the
purpose it would still be a self, though perhaps a narrower and less
developed one. Our standpoint here as elsewhere, the reader must
remember, is the logical. It is the standpoint of the agent's own
interpretation of his experience of judgment during the judgment-process
and at its close, and not the standpoint of the psychological mediation
of this experience as a series of occurrences. Thus we are here far from
wishing to deny the general proposition that a man's purposes are an
expression of his nature, as the psychologist might describe it, or the
proposition that a man's conduct and his character are one and the same
thing viewed from different points of view. We wish merely to insist
upon the fact that these psychological propositions are not a true
account of the agent's own experience of himself and of his purposes
_while these latter are in the making or are on the verge of execution_.
There is indeed no conflict between this "inside view" of the
judgment-process and of the final survey and the psychological
propositions just mentioned. The identity of conduct and character means
not simply that as the man is so does he act, but quite as much, and in
a more important way, that as he acts so is he and so does he become. It
is, then, the essence of the agent's own view of the situation that his
character is in the making and that the purpose is the method to be
taken. To the agent the self is not, indeed, independent of the purpose,
for plainly it is recognized that upon just this purpose the self is, in
the sense explained, in a vital way dependent. Nevertheless the self is
in the agent's apprehension essentially beyond the purpose, and larger
than the purpose, and even, we may say, metaphysically apart from it.
Now the conclusion which we wish to draw from this examination of the
agent's attitude in judgment is that no formulation of an ideal self can
ever be adequate to his purposes, not simply because any such
formulation must, as Green allows, inevitably be incomplete and
inconsistent, but because the self as a process is in the agent's own
apprehension of it inherently incapable of formulation. Any formulation
that might be attempted must be in terms of particular purposes (since
in a modern ethical theory the self must be a "concrete" and not an
abstract universal), and it is easy to see that any such would be, to
the agent in the attitude of true ethical judgment, worse than useless.
It could as contentual and concrete only be a composite of existing
standards, more or less coherently put together, offered to the agent as
a substitute for the new standard which he is trying to work out. If
there were not need of a new standard there would be no
judgment-process; the agent must be, to say the least, embarrassed, even
if the unwitting imposture does not deceive him, when such a composite,
useful and indeed indispensable in its proper place as a standard of
reference and a source of suggestion, is urged upon him as suitable for
a purpose which in the very nature of the case it is logically incapable
of serving.[148]
To the agent, then, the "energetic" self can never be represented as an
ideal--can never be expressed in terms of purpose--since it is in its
very nature logically incongruous with any possible particular purpose
or generalization of such purposes. It is commonly imaged by the agent
in some manner of sensuous terms, but it is imaged, in so far as the
case is one of judgment in a proper sense, for use as a stimulus to the
methodical process of valuation--not as a standard, which if really
adequate would make valuation unnecessary. The agent's consciousness of
himself as "energetic" cannot be an ideal; it comes to consciousness
only through the endeavor, first to follow, and then, in a later stage
of moral development, to use ideals, and has for its function, as a
presentation, the incitement of the process of methodical use of
standards in the control of the agent's impulsive ends. It is not an
anticipatory vision of the final goal of life, but the agent's coming to
consciousness of the general impulse and movement of the life that is.
It is an inevitable consequence of acceptance of a contentual view of
the "energetic" self as one's ideal that reflective morality should tend
to degenerate into an introspective conscientiousness constantly in
unstable equilibrium between a pharisaical selfishness on the one hand
and a morally scarcely more dangerous hypocrisy on the other. There is
certainly much justice in the stinging characterization of "Neo-Hegelian
Egoism" which Mr. Taylor somewhere in his unsearchable book applies to
the currently prevailing conventionalized type of idealistic ethics. If
the self of the valuation-process is an ultimate goal of effort, then
there must certainly be an irreconcilable contrast to the disadvantage
of the latter between the plain man's objective desire for right
conduct, as such, and for the welfare of his fellow-beings, and the
moralist's anxious questionings of the rectitude of the motives by which
his conformity to the fixed moral standard are prompted.[149] Into the
value and significance of the attitude of conscientious examination of
one's moral motives we are not here concerned to inquire, but need only
insist, in accordance with our present view, that its value must be
distinctly subordinate and incidental to the general course and outcome
of the valuation-process. In the valuation-process, consciousness of
self is not an object of solicitude, but simply, we repeat, a pure
presentation of stimulus, having for its office the incitement, and if
need be the reincitement, of the attitude of deference to the
suggestions of old standards and openness to the petitions of new
impulse, and of methodically bringing these to bear upon each other.
The outcome of such a process, of course, cannot be predicted--and for
the same reasons as make unpredictable the scientist's factual
hypothesis. Just as the scientist's data are incomplete and ill-assorted
and unorganized, for the reason that they have, of necessity, been
collected, and must at the outset be interpreted, in the light of
present concepts, whose inadequacy the very existence of the problem at
issue demonstrates, so the final moral purpose that shall be developed
is not to be deduced from any possible inventory of the situation as it
stands. The process in both cases is one of reconstruction, and the test
of the validity of the reconstruction must in both cases be of the same
essentially practical character. In both cases the process is
constructive of reality, in the functional signification of the term. In
both, the judgment process is constructive also of the self, in the
sense that upon the determination of the agent's future attitude the
cumulative outcome of his past attitudes is methodically brought to
bear.[150]
V
Judgments of value are, then, objective in their import in the same
sense as are the factual judgments in which the conditions of action are
presented. The ideal problematic situation is, in the last resort,
ethical, in the sense of requiring for its solution determination of the
new end that has arisen with reference to existing standards. In
structure and in function the judgment in which the outcome of this
process is presented is knowledge, and objective in the only valid
acceptation of the term.
But, after all, it may be urged, is it not the essential mark of the
objective that it should be accessible to all men, and not in the nature
of the case valid for only a single individual? At best the objectivity
of content which has been made out for the judgment of value is purely
functional, and not such as can be verified by appeal to the consensus
of other persons. The agent's _assurance_ of the reality of the economic
or ethical subject-matter which he is endeavoring to determine, and his
sense of the objectivity of the results which he reaches, need not be
denied. These may well enough be illusions of personal prejudice or
passion, or even normal illusions of the reflective faculty, like that
of interpreting the secondary qualities of bodies as objective in the
same sense as are the "bulk, figure, extension, number, and motion of
their solid parts."[151] Any man can see the physical object to which I
point, and verify with his own eyes the qualities which I ascribe to it,
but no man can either understand or verify my judgment that the purpose
I have formed is in accord with rational ideals of industry and
self-denial, or that this portion of my winter's fuel may be given to a
neighbor who has none.
But this line of objection proves too much, for, made consistent with
itself, it really amounts to a denial that the very judgment of
sense-perception, to which it appeals so confidently as a criterion, has
objective import. The first division of this study was intended to show
that every object in the experience of each individual is for the
individual a unique construction of his own, determined in form and in
details by individual interests and purposes, and therefore different
from that object in the experience of any other individual which in
social intercourse passes current as the same. The real object is for me
the object which functions in my experience, presenting problematic
aspects for solution, and lending itself more or less serviceably to my
purposes; and this object is, we hold, not the object as socially
current, but the complete object which, as complete in its determination
with reference to my unique purposes, cannot possibly have social
currency. The objection as stated cuts away the very ground on which it
rests, since the shortcoming which it finds in the judgment of ethical
or economic value is present in the particular judgment of
sense-perception also. The object about which I can assure myself by an
immediate appeal to other persons is the object in its bare "conceptual"
aspects--the object as a dictionary might define it, the commodity as it
might be described in a trade catalogue, or the ethical act as defined
by the criminal code or in the treatise of a moral philosopher. It is an
object consisting of a central core or fixed deposit of meaning, which
renders it significant in a certain general way to a number of persons,
or even to all men, but which is not yet adequately known by me from the
standpoint of my present forming purpose. In virtue of these conceptual
characters it is adaptable to my purpose, which is as yet general and
indeterminate; but in the nature of the case it cannot yet be known to
me as applicable to my prospective concrete purpose, as this shall come
to be through judgment.
Thus, if the test of objectivity of import is to be that the judgment
shall present an object or a fact which, as presented, is socially
current among men and not shut away in the individual intelligence
apart from the possibility of social verification, then the apparent
nominalism of the objection we are considering turns out to be the
uttermost extreme of realism. Such a test amounts to a virtual
affirmation that the sole objective reality is the conceptual, and that
the "accidents" of one's particular object of sense-perception are the
arbitrary play of private preference or fancy. At this point, however,
the objection may shift its ground and take refuge in some such position
as the following: The real object is indeed the object which the
individual knows in relation to his particular purpose, and it is indeed
impossible that the individual's judgment should be limited in its
content to coincidence with the conceptual elements of meaning which are
socially current. The building-stone which one has judged precisely fit
for a special purpose, the specimen which the mineralogist or the
botanist examines under his microscope, the tool whose peculiarity of
working one has learned to make allowance for in use--these all are, of
course, highly individual objects, possessing for the person in question
an indefinite number of objective aspects of which no other person can
possibly be conscious at the time. And, more than this, even though the
individual may, in his scrutiny of the object, have discovered no
conspicuous new qualities in it which were not present in the socially
current meaning, the object will still possess an individuality making
it genuinely unique merely through its co-ordination with other objects
in the mechanical process of working out the purpose in hand. It is at
least an object standing here at just this time, a tool cutting this
particular piece of stone and striking at this instant with this
particular ringing sound, and these perhaps wholly nonessential facts
will nevertheless serve to individualize the object (if one chances to
think of them) in the sense of making it such a one as no other person
knows. All this may be granted, the objection may allow, and yet the
vital point remains; for this is not what it was intended, even in the
first place, to deny. The vital point at issue is not whether the object
which I know _is_ known as I know it by any other person, but whether,
in the nature of things, it is one that _can_ be so known.
Herein, then, lies the difference between judgments of fact and
judgments of value. The mineralogist can train his pupil to see
precisely what he himself sees; and so likewise in any case of
sense-perception, the object, however recondite may be the qualities or
features which one may see in it, _can_ nevertheless be seen by any
other person in precisely the same way on the single, more often not
insuperably difficult, condition that the discoverer shall point these
out or otherwise prepare the other for seeing them. But with the ton of
coal which one may judge economically disposable for a charitable
purpose the case stands differently, since it is not in its visible or
other physical aspects that the ton of coal is here the subject of the
judgment. It is as having been set apart _by oneself exclusively_ for
other uses that the ton of coal now functions as an object and now
possesses the character which the economic judgment has given it; and
the case stands similarly with a contemplated act, of telling the truth
in a trying situation. The valuation placed upon the commodity or upon
the moral act depends essentially upon psychological conditions of
temperament, disposition, mood, or whim into which it would be
impossible for another person to enter, and these depend upon conditions
of past training and native endowment which can never occur or be
combined in future in precisely the same way for any other individual.
In short, the physical object is _describable_ and _can_ be made
socially current, though doubtless with more or less of difficulty, if
other persons will attend to it and learn to see it as I see it; but the
value of an economic object or a moral act depends upon my desires and
feelings, and therefore must remain a matter of my private appreciation.
In answering this amended form of the objection it is entirely
unnecessary to discuss the issue of fact which it has raised as to
whether or not complete description of a physical object or event is a
practical or theoretical possibility. It need only be pointed out that
at best such complete description can only be successful in its purpose
on condition that the individual upon whom the experiment is tried be
willing to attend and have the requisite "apperceptive background." The
accuracy with which another person's knowledge shall copy the knowledge
which I endeavor to impart to him must manifestly depend upon these two
leading conditions, not to mention also the measure of my own
pedagogical and literary skill. Any consideration of such a purely
psychological problem as is here suggested would be entirely out of
place in a discussion the purpose of which is not that of analyzing the
process of judgment, but that of interpreting its meaning aspects. Let
us grant the entire psychological possibility of making socially current
in the manner here suggested the most highly individual and concrete
cognition of an object one may please, and let us grant, moreover, that
this possibility has been actually realized. This concurrent testimony
of the witness will doubtless confirm one's impression of the accuracy
of the process of observation and inference whereby the knowledge which
has been imparted was first gained, but we must deny that it can do more
than this. For indeed, apart from some independent self-reliant
conviction of the objective validity of the knowledge in question, how
should another's assent be taken as _confirmation_ and not rather as
evidence of one's own mere skill in suggestion and of the other's
susceptibility thereto? We must deny that even in the improved form the
criterion of social currency is a valid one. In a word, the social
currency of knowledge to the extent to which it can exist requires as
its condition, and is evidence of, the equal social currency of certain
interests, purposes, or points of view for predication; and if it be
possible to make socially current an item of concrete knowledge, with
all its concrete fulness of detail, then _a fortiori_ it must be
possible to make socially current the concrete individual purpose with
reference to which this item of knowledge first of all took form.
Whether such a thing be psychologically possible at all the reader may
decide; but if it be possible in the sphere of knowledge of fact, then
it must be possible in the sphere of valuation. In short, judgment in
either field, in definition of a certain object or commodity or moral
act as, for the agent, an objective fact possessing certain characters,
involves the tacit assumption of social verifiability as a matter of
course; but it does not rest upon this assumption, nor is this
assumption the essence of its meaning. To say that my judgment is
socially verifiable, that my concrete object of perception or of
valuation would be seen as I see it by any person in precisely my place,
is merely a tautological way of formally announcing that _I have made
the judgment_ and have now a definite object which to me has a certain
definite functional meaning.
Thus, instead of drawing a distinction between the realms of fact and
value, as between what is or can be common to all intelligent beings and
what must be unique for each individual one, we must hold that the two
realms are coextensive. The socially current object answers to a certain
general type of conscious purpose or interest active in the individual
and so to a general habit of valuation, and the concrete object to a
special determination of this type of purpose with reference to others
in the recognized working system of life. The agent's final attitude, on
the conclusion of the judgment-process, may be expressed in either sort
of judgment--in a judgment of the value of commodity or moral purpose,
or in a judgment of concrete fact setting forth the "external"
conditions which warrant the purpose to the "energetic" self. Throughout
the judgment-process there is a correlation between the movement whereby
the socially current object develops into the adapted means and that
whereby the socially current type of conduct develops into the defined
and valued purpose.[152]
At this point, however, a second general objection presents itself.
However individual the content of my knowledge of physical fact may be,
and however irrelevant, from the logical point of view, to my confidence
in its objective validity may be the possibility of sharing it with
other persons, nevertheless it refers to an object which is in some
sense permanent, and therein differs from my valuations. In economic
valuation I reach a definition of a certain commodity and am confirmed
in it by all the conditions that enter into my final survey of the
situation. But my desire for the new sort of consumption may fail, and
so expose my valuation to easy attack from any new desire that may
arise; or my supply of the commodity in question may be suddenly
increased or diminished, and my valuation of the unit quantity thereby
changed. Likewise my ethical valuation may have to be reversed (as Mr.
Taylor has insisted) by reason of a change of disposition or particular
desire which makes impossible, except in obedience to some other and
inclusive valuation, further adherence to it. And these changes take
place without any accompanying sense of their doing violence to
objective fact or, on the other hand, any judgment of their being in
the nature of corrections of previous errors in valuation, and so more
closely in accordance with the truth. Moreover, a new valuation, taking
the place of an old, does not supplement its predecessor as one set of
judgments about a physical object may supplement another, made from a
different point of view, but does literally take its place, and this
without necessarily condemning it as having been erroneous.
This general objection rests upon a number of fairly obvious
misconceptions, and its strength is apparent only. In the first place,
the question of the objectivity of any type of judgment must in the end,
as we have seen, reduce itself to a question of the judgment's import to
the agent. However the agent's valuations may shift from time to time,
each several one will be sanctioned to the agent by the changed
conditions exhibited in the inventory which the agent takes at the close
of judgment which has formed it. The conditions have changed, and the
valuation of the earlier purpose has likewise changed; but the new
purpose is sanctioned by the new conditions, and the test of the
presumed validity of the new valuation can only be in the manner already
discussed[153] the test of actual execution of the purpose. In the
change, as the agent interprets the situation, there is no violation of
the former purpose nor a nearer approach to truth. Each valuation is
true for the situation to which it corresponds. We are obviously not
here considering the case of error. An error in valuation is evidenced
to the agent, not by the need of a new valuation answering to changed
conditions, but by the failure of a given valuation to make good its
promise, although to all appearance conditions have remained unchanged.
If the conditions have changed, then the purpose and the conditions
_must_ be redetermined, if the expansion of the "energetic" self is to
continue; but the former valuation does not thereby become untrue.
These brief remarks should suffice by way of answer, but it will serve
advantageously to illustrate our general position if we pursue the
objection somewhat farther. The physical object is, nevertheless,
_permanent_, it will be said, and this surely distinguishes it from the
object (now freely acknowledged as such) of the value-judgment. To one
man gold may be soluble in _aqua regia_ and to another worth so many
pence an ounce, but different and individual as are these judgments and
the standpoints they respectively imply, the gold is _one_, impartially
admitting at the same time of both characterizations. On the other hand,
one cannot judge an act good and bad at once. The purpose of deception
that may be good is one controlled and shaped by ideals quite different
from those which permit deception of the evil sort--is, in truth, taken
as a total act, altogether different from the purpose of deception which
one condemns, and not, like the "parcel of matter" in the two judgments
about gold, the subject of both valuations.
A brief consideration of the meaning of this "parcel of matter" will
easily expose the weakness of the plea. In the last analysis the "parcel
of matter" must for the agent reduce itself, let us say, to certain
controllable energies centering about certain closely contiguous points
in space and capable, in their exercise, of setting free or checking
other energies in the system of nature. Thus, put in _aqua regia_ the
gold will dissolve, but in the atmosphere it retains its brilliant
color, and in the photographer's solution its energies have still a
different mode of manifestation. And thus it would appear that the
various predicates which are applied to "gold" imply, each one, a unique
set of conditions. Gold is soluble in _aqua regia_, but not if it is to
retain its yellow luster; which predicate is to be true of it depends
upon the conditions under which the energies "resident in the gold" are
to be set free, just as the moral character of an act depends upon the
social conditions obtaining at the time of its performance--that is,
upon the ideals with reference to which it has been shaped in judgment.
How can one maintain that in a literal and concrete physical sense gold
in process of solution is the "same" as gold entering into chemical
combination? Surely the energy conditions which constitute the "gold" in
the two processes are not the same--and can one nowadays hope to find
sameness in unchangeable atoms?[154]
In a word, the permanent substance or "real essence" that admits of
various mutually supplementary determinations corresponding to diverse
points of view is, strictly speaking, a convenient abstraction, and not
an existent fact in time--and we shall maintain that the same species of
abstraction has its proper place, and in fact occurs, in the sphere of
moral judgment. The type of moral conduct that in every actual case of
its occurrence in the moral order is determined in some unique and
special way by relation to other standards is precisely analogous to the
"substance" that is now dissolved in _aqua regia_ and now made to pass
in the form of current coin, but cannot be treated in both ways at once.
Both are abstractions. The "gold" is a name for the general possibility
of attaining any one of a certain set of particular ends by
appropriately co-ordinating certain energies, resident elsewhere in the
physical system, with those at present stored in this particular "parcel
of matter;" the result to be attained depends not alone upon the "parcel
of matter," but also upon the particular energies brought to bear upon
it from without. Now let us take a type of conduct which is sometimes
judged good and sometimes bad. Deception, for example, is such a
type--and as a type it simply stands for the general possibility of
furtherance or detriment to the "energetic" self according as it is
determined in the concrete instance by ideals of social well-being or by
considerations of immediate personal advantage.
For the type-form of conduct--when considered, not as a type of mere
physical performance, but as conduct in the technical sense of a
possible purpose of the self--is, in the sense we have explained, a
symbol for the general possibility of access or dissipation of spiritual
energy--energy which must be set free by the bringing to bear of other
energies upon it, and which furthers or works counter to the enlargement
and development of the self according to the mode of its co-ordination
with other energies which the self has already turned to its
purposes.[155] But actual conduct is concrete always and never typical;
and so likewise, we have sought to show, actual "substance," the
objective thing referred to in the factual judgment, is always concrete
and never an essence. It is not a fixed thing admitting of a
simultaneous variety of conflicting determinations and practical uses,
but absolutely unique and already determined to its unique character by
the whole assemblage of physical conditions which affect it at the time
and which it in turn reacts upon. In the moral as in the physical sphere
the fundamental category would, on our present account, appear to be
that of energy. The particular physical object given in judgment is a
concrete realization, in the form of a particular means or instrument,
of that general possibility of attaining ends which the concept of a
fixed fund of energy, interpreted as a logical postulate or principle of
inference, expresses. The particular moral or economic act is a
particular way in which the energy of the self may be increased or
diminished. In both spheres the reality presented in the finished
judgment is objective as being a stimulus to the setting free of the
energies for which it stands. Once more, then, our answer to the
objection we have been considering must be that the object as the
permanent substrate is merely an abstract symbol standing for the
indeterminate means in general set over against the self. Corresponding
to it we have, on the other side, the concept of the "energetic"
self--the self that is purposive in general, expansive somehow or other.
The function of completed factual judgment in the development of
experience is, we have held, that of warranting to the agent the
completed purpose which his judgment of value expresses. This view calls
for some further comment and illustration in closing the present
division. In the first place the statement implies that the conditions
which factual judgment presents in the "final survey" as sanctioning the
purpose have not _determined_ the purpose, since prior to the
determination of the purpose the conditions were not, and could not be,
so presented. The question, therefore, naturally arises whether our
meaning is that in the formation of our purposes in valuation the
recognition of existing conditions plays no part. Our answer can be
indicated only in the barest outline as follows:
The agent must, of course, in an economic judgment-process, recognize
and take account of such facts as the technical adaptability of the
means he is proposing to use to the new purpose that is forming, as also
of environing conditions which may affect the success which he may meet
with in applying them. He must consider also his own physical strength
and qualities of mind with a view to this same technical problem. And
similarly in ethical valuation, as we have seen, the psychology of the
"empirical ego" must play its part. But the conditions thus recognized
are, as we might seek to show more in detail, explainable as the outcome
of past factual judgment-processes, and on the occasion of their
original definition in the form in which they now are known played the
sanctioning part of which we have so often spoken. They therefore
correspond to the agent's accepted practical ideals, so that the control
which his past experience exercises over his present conduct may be
stated equally well in either sort of terms--in terms of his prevailing
recognized standards, or in terms of his present knowledge of the
conditions which his new purpose must respect. Thus, in general, the
concept of a physical order conditioning the conduct of all men and
presented in a definite body of socially current knowledge is the
logical correlate of the moral law conceived as a categorical imperative
prescribing certain types of conduct.
Thus the error of regarding the agent's conduct in a present emergency
as an outcome of existing determining conditions is logically identical
with the corresponding error of the ethical theory of self-realization.
The latter holds the logical possibility of a determinate descriptive
ideal (already realized in the unchanging Absolute Self) which is
adequate to the solution of all possible ethical problems. The former
holds that all conduct must be subject to the determining force of
external conditions which, if not at present completely known, are at
least in theory knowable. The physical universe in its original nebulous
state contained the "promise and potency" of all that has been in the
way of human conduct and of all that is to be. Into the fixed mechanical
system no new energy can enter and from it none of the original fund of
energy can be lost. This mechanical theory of conduct is the essential
basis of the hedonistic theory of ethics; and it would not be difficult
to show that Green's criticism of this latter and his own affirmative
theory of the moral ideal (as also the current conventional criticism of
hedonism in the same tenor by the school of Green) are in a logical
sense identical with it. For the assumption that conduct is determined
by existing objective conditions is precisely the logical correlate of
the concept of a contentual and "realizable" ideal moral self.[156]
We may now interpret, in the light of our general view of the function
of factual judgment, the concept of the "empirical self" referred to in
our discussion of the various types of sanctioning condition which may
enter into the "final survey." The "empirical self" of psychological
science is a construction gradually put together by psychologist or
introspective layman as an interpretation of the way in which accepted
concrete modes of conduct, in the determination of which standards have
been operative, have worked out in practice to the furtherance or
impoverishment of the "energetic" self. We have seen that the ambiguous
presented self which functions in the moral attitude of obedience to
authority or to conscience gives place in the attitude of conscious
valuation to apprehension of the "energetic" self, on the one hand, and
descriptive concepts of particular types of conduct, on the other. The
"empirical self" at the same time makes its appearance as a constantly
expanding inventory of the "spiritual resources" which the "energetic"
self has at its disposal. These are the functions of the soul which a
functional psychology shows us in operation--powers of attention,
strength of memory, fertility in associative recall, and the like--and
these are the resources wherewith the "energetic" self may execute, and
so exploit to its own furtherance, the purposes which, in particular
emergencies, new end and recognized standards may work out in
co-operation.[157]
VI
In the foregoing pages we have consistently used the expressions
"ethical and economic judgment" and "judgment of valuation" as
synonymous. This may have seemed to the reader something very like a
begging of the question from the outset, as taking for granted that very
judgmental character of our valuational experience which it was the
professed object of our discussion to establish. We are thus called upon
very briefly to consider, first of all, the relations which subsist
between the consciousness of value and the process which we have
described as that of valuation. This will enable us, in the second
place, to determine the logical function which belongs to the
consciousness of value in the general economy of life. The consciousness
of value is a perfectly definite and distinctive psychical fact mediated
by a doubtless highly complex set of psychical or ultimately
physiological conditions. As such it admits of descriptive analysis, and
in a complete theory of value such descriptive analysis should certainly
find a place. It would doubtless throw much light upon the origin of
valuation as a process, and of valuing as an attitude, and admirably
illustrate the view of the function of the consciousness of value to
which a logical study of valuation as a process seems to lead us. This
problem in analysis belongs, however, to psychology, and therefore lies
apart from our present purpose; nor is it necessary to the establishment
of our present view to undertake it. It is necessary for our purpose
only to suggest, for purposes of identification, a brief description of
the value-consciousness, and to indicate its place in the process of
reflective thought.
The consciousness of value may best be described, by way of first
approximation, in the language of the Austrian economists as a sense of
the "importance" to oneself of a commodity or defined moral purpose. It
belongs to the agent's attitude of survey or recapitulation which ensues
upon the completion of the judgment-process and is mediated by attention
to the ethical or economic object in its newly defined character of
specific conduciveness to the well-being of the self. The commodity, in
virtue of its ascertained physical properties, is adapted to certain
modes of use or consumption which, through valuation of the commodity,
have come to be accepted as desirable. The moral act likewise has been
approved by virtue of its having certain definite sociological
tendencies, or being conducive to the welfare and happiness of a friend.
Thus commodity or moral act, as the case may be, has a determinate
complexity of meaning which has been judged as, in one sense, expansive
of the self, and the value-consciousness we may identify as that sense
of the valued object's importance which is mediated by recognition of it
as the bearer of this complexity of concrete meaning. The meaning is, as
we may say, "condensed" or "compacted" into the object as given in
sense-perception, and because the meaning stands for expansion of the
self, the object in taking it up into itself receives the character of
importance as a valued object.
The sense of importance thus is expressive of an attitude upon the
agent's part. The concrete meanings which make up the content of the
object's importance would inevitably, if left to themselves, prompt
overt action. The commodity would forthwith be applied to its new use or
the moral act would be performed. The self would, as we may express it,
possess itself of the spiritual energies resident in the chosen purpose.
The attitude of survey, however, inhibits this action of the self and
the sense of importance is the resulting emotional apprehension of the
value of the object hereby brought to recognition. Now, it should be
carefully observed that the particular concrete emotions appropriate to
the details of the valued purpose are not what we here intend. The
purpose may spring from some impulse of self-interest, hatred,
patriotism, or love, and the psychical material of its presentation
during the agent's survey will be the varied complex of qualitative
emotion that comes from inhibition of the detailed activities which make
up the purpose as a whole. So also the apprehension of the physical
object of economic valuation is largely, if not altogether, emotional in
its psychical constitution. Psychologically these emotions are the
purpose--they are the "stuff" of which the purpose as a psychical fact
occurring in time is made. But we must bear in mind that it is not the
purpose as a psychical fact that is the object of the agent's
valuing--any more than is the tool with which one cuts perceived as a
molecular mass or as an aggregation of centers of ether-stress. As a
cognized object of value the purpose is, in our schematic terminology, a
source of energy for the increase of the self, and thus the
consciousness of value is the perfectly specific emotion arising from
restraint put upon the self in its movement of appropriation of this
energy. In contrast with the concrete emotions which are the substance
of the purpose as presented, the consciousness of value may be called a
"formal" emotion or the emotion of a typical reflective attitude.
The valuing attitude we may then describe as that of "resolution" on the
part of the self to adhere to the finished purpose which it now surveys,
with a view to exploitation of the purpose. The connection between the
valuation-process and the consciousness of value may be stated thus: The
valuation-process works out (and necessarily in cognitive, objective
terms) the purpose which is valued in the agent's survey. But this
development of the purpose is at the same time determination of the
"energetic" self to acceptance of the purpose that shall be worked out.
Thus the valuation-process is the source of the consciousness of value
in the twofold way (1) of defining the object valued, and (2) of
determining the self to the attitude of resolution to adhere to it and
exploit it.[158] The consciousness of value is the apprehension of an
object in its complete functional character as a factor in experience.
The function of the consciousness of value must now be very briefly
considered. The phenomenon is a striking one, and apparently, as the
economists especially have insisted, of much practical importance in the
conduct of life.[159] And yet on our account of the phenomenon, as it
may appear, the problem of assigning to it a function must be, to say
the least, difficult. For the consciousness of value is, we have held,
emotional, and, on the conception of emotion in general which we have
taken for granted throughout our present discussion, this mode of being
conscious is merely a reflex of a state of tension in activity. As such
it merely reports in consciousness a process of motor co-ordination
already going on and in the nature of the case can contribute nothing to
the outcome.
Now if it were in a direct way as immediately felt emotion that the
consciousness of value must be functional if functional at all, then the
problem might well be given up; but it would be a serious blunder to
conceive the problem in this strictly psychological way. A logical
statement of the problem would raise a different issue--not the question
of whether emotion as emotion can in any sense be functional in
experience, but whether the consciousness of value and emotion in
general may not receive reflective interpretation and thereby, becoming
objective, play a part as a factor in subsequent valuation-processes.
Indeed, the psychological statement of the problem misses the entire
point at issue and leads directly to the wholly irrelevant general
problem of whether any mode of consciousness whatever can, _as
consciousness_, put forth energy and be a factor in controlling conduct.
The present problem is properly a logical one. What is the agent's
apprehension of the matter? In his subsequent reflective processes of
valuation does the consciousness of value, which was a feature of the
survey on a past occasion, receive recognition in any way and so play a
part? This is simply a question of fact and clearly, as a question
relating to the logical content of the agent's reflective process, has
no connection with or interest in the problem of a possible dynamic
efficacy of consciousness as such. The question properly is logical, not
psychological or metaphysical.
Thus stated, then, the problem seems to admit of answer--and along the
line already suggested in our account of economic valuation.[160]
Recognition of the fact that the consciousness of value was experienced
in the survey of a certain purpose on an earlier occasion confirms this
purpose, holding the means, in an economic situation, to their appointed
use and strengthening adherence to the standard in the ethical case.
This recognition serves as stimulus to a reproduction, in memory, of the
cognitive details of the earlier survey, and so in the ideal case to a
more or less complete and recognizably adequate reinstatement of the
earlier valuing attitude, and so to a reinstatement of the consciousness
of value itself. The result is a strengthening of the established
valuation, a more efficacious control of the new end claiming
recognition, and an assured measure of continuity of ethical development
from the old valuation to the new. The function thus assigned to the
consciousness of value finds abundant illustration elsewhere in the
field of emotion. The stated festivals of antiquity commemorative of
regularly recurrent phases of agricultural and pastoral life, as also
the festivals in observance of signal events in the private and
political life of the individual, would appear to find, more or less
distinctly, here their explanation. These festivals must have been
prompted by a more or less conscious recognition of the social value
inherent in the important functions making up the life of the community,
and of the individual citizen as a member of the community and as an
individual. They secured the end of a sustained and enhanced interest in
these normal functions by effecting, through a symbolic reproduction of
these, an intensified and glorified experience of the emotional meaning
normally and inherently belonging to them.[161] In the same way the
rites of the religious cults of Greece, not to mention kindred phenomena
so abundantly to be found in lower civilizations as well as in our own,
served to fortify the individual in a certain consistent and salutary
course of institutional and private life.[162]
It has been taken for granted throughout that there are but two forms of
valuation-process, the ethical and the economic. The reason for this
limitation may already be sufficiently apparent, but it will further
illustrate our general conception of the valuation-process briefly to
indicate it in detail. What shall be said, for example, of the common
use of the term "value" in such expressions as the "value of life," the
"emotional value" of an object or a moral act, the "natural value" of a
type of impulsive activity? In these uses of the word the reference is
apparently to one's own incommunicable inner experience of living, of
perception of the object, or of the impulse, which cannot be suggested
to any other person who has not himself had the experience. My pleasure,
my color-sensation in its affective aspect, my emotion, are inner and
subjective, and I distinguish them by such expressions as the above from
the visible, tangible object to which I ascribe them as constituting its
immediate or natural value to me. This broader use of the term "value"
has not found recognition in the foregoing pages, and it requires here a
word of comment. So long as these phases of the experience of the object
are not recognized as separable in thought from the object viewed as an
external condition or means, they would apparently be better
characterized in some other way. If, however, they are so recognized,
and are thereby taken as determinative of the agent's practical attitude
toward the thing, we have merely our typical situation of ethical
valuation of some implied purpose as conducive to the self and economic
valuation of the means as requisites for execution of the purpose. Our
general criterion for the propriety of terming any mode of consciousness
the _value_ of an object must be that it shall perform a logical
function and not simply be referred to in its aspect of psychical fact.
The feeling or emotion, or whatever the mode of consciousness in
question may be, must play the recognized part, in the agent's survey of
the situation, of prompting and supporting a definite practical attitude
with reference to the object. If, in short, the experience in question
enters in any way into a conscious purpose of the agent, it may properly
be termed a value.[163]
Æsthetic value also has not been recognized, and for the opposite
reason. The sense of beauty would appear to be a correlate of relatively
perfect attained adjustment between the agent and his natural
environment or the conditions suggested more or less impressively by the
work of art. There must, indeed, be present in the æsthetic experience
an element of unsatisfied curiosity sufficient to stimulate an interest
in the changing or diverse aspects of the beautiful object, but this
must not be sufficient to prompt reflective judgment of the details
presented. On the whole, the æsthetic experience would appear to be
essentially post-judgmental and appreciative. It comes on the particular
occasion, not as the result of a judgment-process of the valuational
type, but as an immediate appreciation. As an immediate appreciation it
has no logical function and on our principles must be denied the name of
value. Our standpoint must be that of the experiencing individual. The
æsthetic experience as a type may well be a development out of the
artistic and so find its ultimate explanation in the psychology of
man's primitive technological occupations in the ordinary course of
life. It is, as we have said, of the post-judgmental type, and so may
very probably be but the cumulative outcome of closer and closer
approximations along certain lines to a perfected adjustment with the
conditions of life. It may thus have its origin in past processes of the
reflective valuational type. Nevertheless, viewed in the light of its
actual present character and status in experience, the æsthetic must be
excluded from the sphere of values.
Thus the realms of fact and value are both real, but that of value is
logically prior and so the "more real." The realm of fact is that of
conditions warranting the purposes of the self; as a separate order,
complete and absolute in itself, it is an abstraction that has forgotten
the reason for which it was made. Reality in the logical sense is that
which furthers the development of the self. The purpose that falls short
of its promise in this regard is unreal--not, indeed, in the
psychological sense that it never existed in imagination, but in the
logical sense that it is no longer valued. Within the inclusive realm of
reality the realm of fact is that of the means which serve the concrete
purposes which the self accepts. The completed purpose, however, is not
_means_, since still behind and beyond it there can be no other concrete
valued purpose which it can serve. Nor is it an ultimate _end_, since in
its character of accepted and valued end the self adheres _to_ it, and
it therefore cannot express the _whole_ purpose of the self to whose
unspecifiable fulness and increase of activity it is but a temporary
probational contributor. It is rather in the nature of a formula or
method of behavior to which the self ascribes reality by recognizing and
accepting it as its own.
XI
SOME LOGICAL ASPECTS OF PURPOSE
INTRODUCTORY
Whenever and wherever it was discovered that the content of experience
as given in immediate perception could be reconstructed through ideas,
then and there began to emerge such questions as these: What is the
significance of this reconstructive power? What is the relation between
it and the immediate experience? What is the relative value of each in
experience as a whole? What is their relation to truth and error? If
thinking leads to truth, and thought must yet get its material from
perception, how then shall the product of thought escape infection from
the material? On the other hand, if truth is to be found in the
immediate experience, can it here be preserved from the blighting
effects of thought? For so insistent and pervasive is this activity of
thought that it appears to penetrate into the sanctum of perception
itself. Turning to a third possibility, if it should be found that truth
and error are concerned with both--that they are products of the
combined activity of perception and reflection--then just what does each
do? And what in their operations marks the difference between truth and
error? Or still again, if truth and error cannot be found in the
operations of perception and reflection as such, then they must be
located in the relation of these processes to something else. If so,
what is this something else? Out of such questions as these is logic
born.
There may be those who will object to some of these questions as
"logical" problems--those who would limit logic to a description of the
forms and processes of reconstruction, relegating the question of the
criterion of truth and error to "epistemology." This objection we must
here dismiss summarily by saying that, by whatever name it is called, a
treatment of the forms and processes of thought must deal with the
criterion of truth and error, since these different "forms" are just
those which thought assumes in attempting to reach truth under different
conditions.
Certainly in the beginning the Greeks regarded their newly discovered
power of thought as anything but formal. Indeed, it soon became so
"substantial" that it was regarded as simply a new world of fact, of
existence alongside of, or rather above, the world of perception. But
Socrates hailed ideas as deliverers from the contradictions and
paradoxes into which experience interpreted in terms of immediate
sense-perception had fallen. In the concept Socrates found a solution
for the then pressing problems of social life. The Socratic universal is
not a mere empty form which thought imposes upon the world. It is
something which thought creates in order that a life of social
interaction and reciprocity may go on. This need not mean that the
Greeks were reflectively conscious of this, but that this was the way
the concept was actually used and developed by Socrates.
In attempting to formulate the relation between this new world of ideas
and immediate sense-experience, Plato constructed his scheme of
substantiation and participation. The Platonic doctrine of
substantiation and participation is an expression of the conviction that
anything so valuable as Socrates had shown ideas to be could not be
merely formal or unreal. Up to the discovery of these ideas reality lay
in the "substances" of perception. Hence in order to have that reality
to which their worth, their value in life, entitled them, the ideas must
be substantiated.
This introduction of the newly discovered ideas into the world of
substances and reality wrought, of course, a change in the conception
of the latter--a change which has well-nigh dominated the entire
philosophic development ever since. Let us recall that the aim of
Socrates was to find something that would prevent society from going to
pieces under the influence of the disintegrating conception of
experience as a mere flux of given immediate content. Now, in the
concepts Socrates discovered the basis for just this much-needed
wholeness and stability. Moreover, the fact that unity and stability
were the actual social needs of the hour led not only to the concepts
which furnished them being conceived as substantial and real, but to
their being regarded as a higher type of reality, as "more real" than
the given, immediate experiences of perception. They were higher and
more real because, just then, they answered the pressing social need.
The ideas supplied this unity because they furnished ends, purposes, to
the given material of perception. The given is now given for something;
for something more, too, than mere contemplation. Socrates also showed,
by the most acute analysis, that the content of these ends, these
purposes, was social through and through.
From the ethical standpoint this teleological character of the idea is
clearly recognized. But as "real," the ideas must be stated in the
metaphysical terms of substance and attribute. Here the social need is
abstracted from and lost to sight. The fundamental attributes of the
ideas are now a metaphysical unity and stability. Hence unity and
stability, wholeness and completeness, are the very essence of reality,
while multiplicity and change constitute the nature of appearance. Thus
does Plato's reality become, as Windelband says, "an immaterial
eleaticism which seeks true being in the ideas without troubling itself
about the world of generation and occurrence which it leaves to
perception and opinion."[164]
Now it is the momentum of this conception of reality as a stable and
complete system of absolute ideas, the development of which we have just
roughly sketched, that is so important historically. Why this conception
of reality, which apparently grew out of a particular historical
situation, should have dominated philosophic theory for over two
thousand years appears at first somewhat puzzling. Those who still hold
and defend it will of course say that this survival is evidence of its
validity. But, after all, our human world may be yet very young. It may
be that "a thousand years are but as yesterday." At any rate philosophy
has never been in a hurry to reconstruct conceptions which served their
day and generation with such distinction as did the Platonic conception
of reality. And this is true to the evolutionary instinct that
experience has only its own products as material for further
construction. On the other hand, the principle of evolution with equal
force demands that only as _material_, not as final forms of experience,
shall these products continue. It may be that philosophy has not yet
taken the conception of evolution quite seriously. At all events it is
certain that long after it has been found that, instead of being eternal
and complete, the concept undergoes change, that it has simply the
stability and wholeness demanded by a particular and concrete situation;
after it has been discovered, in other words, that the stability and
wholeness, instead of attaching to the content of an idea, are simply
the functions of any content used as a purpose--after all this has been
accepted in psychology, the conception of truth and reality which arose
under an entirely different conception of the nature of thought still
survives.
This change in the conception of the character of the ideas, with no
corresponding change in the conception of reality, marks the divorce of
thought and reality and the rise of the epistemological problem. Let us
recall that in Plato the relation between the higher and ultimate
reality, as constituted by the complete and "Eternal Ideas," and the
lower reality of perception, is that of archetype and ectype.
Perceptions attempt to imitate and copy the ideas. Now, when the ideas
are found to be changing, and when further the interpenetration of
perception and conception is discovered, reality as fixed and complete
must be located elsewhere. And just as in the old system it was the
business of perception to imitate the "Eternal Ideas," so here it is
still assumed that thought is to imitate the reality wherever now it is
to be located. And as regards the matter of location, the old conception
is not abandoned. The elder Plato is mighty yet. Reality must still be a
completed system of fixed and eternal "things in themselves,"
"relations," or "noumena" of some sort which _our_ ideas, now
constituted by both perception and conceptional processes, are still to
"imitate," "copy," "reflect," "represent," or at least "symbolize" in
some fashion.
From this point on, then, thought has two functions: one, to help
experience meet and reorganize into itself the results of its own past
activity; the other, to reflect or represent in some sense the absolute
system of reality. For a very long time the latter has continued to
constitute the logical problem, the former being relegated to the realm
of psychology.
But this discovery of the reconstructive function of the idea and its
assignment to the jurisdiction of psychology did not leave logic where
it was before, nor did it lighten its task. Logic could not shut its
eyes to this "psychological" character of the idea.[165] Indeed, logic
had to take the idea as psychology described it, then do the best it
could with it for its purpose.
The embarrassment of logic by this reconstructive character of the idea
even Aristotle discovered to some extent in the relation of the Platonic
perceptions to the eternal ideas. He found great difficulty in getting a
flowing stream of consciousness to imitate or even symbolize an
eternally fixed and completed reality. And since we have discovered, in
addition, that the idea is so palpably a reconstructive activity, the
difficulties have not diminished.
In such a situation it could only be a question of time until solutions
of the problem should be sought by attempting to bring together these
two functions of the idea. Perhaps after all the representation of
objects in an absolute system is involved in the reconstruction of our
experience. Or perhaps what appears as reconstructions of our
experience--as desiring, struggling, deliberating, choosing, willing, as
sorrows and joys, failures and triumphs--are but the machinery by which
the absolute system is represented. At any rate, these two functions
surely cannot be regarded as belonging to the idea as color and form
belong to a stone. We should never be satisfied with such a brute
dualism as this.
Without any further historical sketch of attempts at this synthesis, I
desire to pass at once to a consideration of what I am sure everyone
will agree must stand as one of the most brilliant and in every way
notable efforts in this direction--Mr. Royce's Aberdeen lectures on "The
World and the Individual." It is the purpose here to examine that part
of these lectures, and it is the heart of the whole matter, in which the
key to the solution of the problem of the relation between ideas and
reality is sought precisely in the purposive character of the idea. This
will be found especially in the "Introduction" and in the chapter on
"Internal and External Meaning of Ideas."[166]
I. THE PURPOSIVE CHARACTER OF IDEAS
With his unerring sense for fundamentals, Mr. Royce begins by telling us
that the first thing called for by the problem of the relation of ideas
to reality is a discussion of the nature of ideas. Here Mr. Royce says
he shall "be guided by certain psychological analyses of the mere
contents of our consciousness, which have become prominent in recent
discussion."[167]
Your intelligent ideas of things never consist of mere imagery of
the thing, but always involve a consciousness of how you propose
to act toward the thing of which you have ideas.... Complex
scientific ideas viewed as to their conscious significance are, as
Professor Stout has well said, plans of action, ways of
constructing the object of your scientific consciousness.... By
the word idea, then, as we shall use it, when, after having
criticised opposing theory, we come to state in these lectures our
own thesis, I shall mean in the end any state of consciousness,
whether simple or complex, which when present is then and there
viewed as at least a partial expression, or embodiment of a single
conscious purpose.... In brief, an idea in my present definition
may, and in fact always does, if you please, appear to be
representative of a fact existent beyond itself. But the _primary_
character which makes it an idea is _not its representative
character_, is not its vicarious assumption of the responsibility
of standing for a being beyond itself, but is its inner character
as _relatively fulfilling the purpose_, that is as presenting the
partial fulfilment of the purpose which is in the consciousness of
the moment wherein the idea takes place.[168]... Now this purpose,
just in so far as it gets a present conscious embodiment in the
contents, and in the form of the complex state called the idea,
constitutes what I shall hereafter call the internal meaning of
the idea.[169]... But ideas often seem to have a meaning; yes, as
one must add, finite ideas always undertake or appear to have a
meaning that is not exhausted by this conscious internal meaning
presented and relatively fulfilled at the moment when the idea is
there for our finite view. The melody sung, the artists' idea, the
thought of your absent friend, a thought on which you love to
dwell, all these not merely have their obvious internal meaning
as meeting a conscious purpose by their very presence, but also
they at least appear to have that other sort of meaning, that
reference beyond themselves to objects, that cognitive relation to
outer facts, that attempted correspondence with outer facts, which
many accounts of our ideas regard as their primary inexplicable
and ultimate character. I call this second, and for me still
problematic, and derived aspect of the nature of ideas, their
apparently external meaning.[170]
From all this it is quite evident that Mr. Royce accepts and welcomes
the results of the work of modern psychology on the nature of the idea.
The difficulty will come in making the connection between these accepted
results and the Platonic conception of ultimate reality as stated in the
following:
To be means simply to express, to embody the complete internal
meaning of _a certain absolute system of ideas_. A system,
moreover, which is genuinely implied in the true internal meaning
or purpose of every finite idea, however fragmentary.[171]
It may be well to note here in passing that, notwithstanding the avowed
subordination here of the representative to the reconstructive character
of the ideas, the former becomes very important in the chapter on the
relation of internal to external meaning, where the problem of truth and
error is considered.
In this account of the two meanings of the idea, which I have tried to
state as nearly as possible in the author's own words, there appear some
conceptions of idea, of purpose, and of their relation to each other,
that play an important part in the further treatment and in determining
the final outcome. In the description of the internal meaning there
appear to be two quite different conceptions of the relation of idea to
purpose. One regards the idea as itself constituting the purpose or plan
of action; the other describes the idea as "the partial fulfilment" of
the purpose. (1) "Complex scientific ideas, viewed as to their
conscious significance, are, as Professor Stout has well said, _plans of
action_." (2) "You sing to yourself a melody; you are then and there
conscious that the melody, as you hear yourself singing it, _partially
fulfils_ and embodies a purpose."[172] When we come to the problem of
the relation between the internal and external meaning, we shall find
that the idea as internal meaning comes into a third relation to
purpose, viz., that of _having_ the further purpose to agree or
correspond to the external meaning. "Is the correspondence reached
between idea and object the precise correspondence that the idea itself
intended? If it is, the idea is true.... Thus it is not mere agreement,
but intended agreement, that constitutes truth."[173] Thus the idea is
(1) the purpose, (2) the partial fulfilment of the purpose, and (3) has
a further purpose--to correspond to an object in the "absolute system of
ideas."
The first statement of the internal meaning as constituting the plan or
purpose is, I take it, the conception of the internal meaning as an
ideal construction which gives a working form, a definition to the
"indefinite sort of restlessness" and blind feeling of dissatisfaction
out of which the need of and demand for thought arises.[174] This
accords with the scientific conception of the idea as a working
hypothesis. If this interpretation of idea were steadily followed
throughout, it is difficult to see how it could fail to lead to a
conception of reality quite different from that described as "a certain
absolute system of ideas."
The second definition of internal meaning is the one in which it is
stated as the "partial expression," "embodiment," and "fulfilment" of a
single conscious purpose, and in which subsequently and consequently the
idea is identified with "any conscious act," for example, singing. The
first part of the statement appears to say that the idea of a melody is
in "partial fulfilment" of the idea regarded as the purpose to sing the
melody. But, as the first statement of internal meaning implies, how can
one have a purpose to sing the melody except in and through the idea? It
is precisely the construction of an idea that transforms the vague
"indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction into a purpose. The idea
is the defining, the sharpening of the blind activity of mere sensation,
mere want, into a plan of action.
However, Mr. Royce meets this difficulty at once by the statement that
the term "idea" here not only covers the activity involved in forming
the idea, _e. g._, the idea of singing, but includes the action of
singing, which fulfils this purpose. "In the same sense _any conscious
act_ at the moment when you perform it not merely expresses, but is, in
my present sense, an idea."[175]
But this sort of an adjustment between the idea as the purpose and as
the fulfilment of the purpose raises a new question. What here becomes
of the distinction between immediate and mediating experience? Surely
there is a pretty discernible difference between experience as a
purposive idea and the experience which fulfils this purpose. To call
them both "ideas" is at least confusing, and indeed it appears that it
is just this confusion that obscures the fundamental difficulty in
dealing, later on, with the problem of truth and error. To be sure, the
very formation of the idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," is the
beginning of the relief from the "indefinite restlessness." On the other
hand, it defines and sharpens the dissatisfaction. When this vague
unrest takes the form of a purpose to attain food or shelter, or to sing
in tune, it is of course the first step toward solution. But this very
definition of the dissatisfaction intensifies it. The idea as purpose,
then, instead of being the fulfilment, appears to be the plan, the
method of fulfilment. The fulfilling experience is the further
experience to which the idea points and leads.
To follow a little farther this relation between the purposive and
fulfilling aspects of experience, it is of course apparent that the idea
as the purpose, the "plan of action," must as a function go over into
the fulfilling experience. My purpose to sing the melody must remain, in
so far as the action is a conscious one, until the melody is sung. I say
"as a function," for the specific content of this purpose is
continuously changing. The purpose is certainly not the same in content
after half the melody has been sung as it is at the beginning. This
means that the purpose is being progressively fulfilled; and as part of
the purpose is fulfilled each moment, so a part of the original content
of the idea drops out; and when the fulfilling process of this
particular purpose is complete, or is suspended--for, in Mr. Royce's
view, it never is complete in human experience--that purpose then gives
way to some other, perhaps one growing out of it, but still one regarded
as another. A purpose realized, fulfilled, cannot persist as a purpose.
We may desire to repeat the experience in memory; _i. e._, instead of
singing aloud, simply, as Mr. Royce says, "silently recall and listen to
its imagined presence." But here we must remember that the memory
experience, as such, is not an idea in the logical sense at all. It is
an immediate experience that is fulfilling the idea of the song which
constitutes the purpose to recall it, just as truly as the singing aloud
fulfils the idea of singing aloud. Shouting, whistling, or "listening in
memory to the silent notes" may all be equally immediate, fulfilling
experiences. Doubtless the idea as purpose involves memory, as Mr. Royce
says.[176] But it is a memory used as a purpose, and it is just this use
of the memory material as a purpose that makes it a logical idea. In
its content the purposive idea is just as immediate and as mechanical as
any other part of experience. "Psychology explains the presence and the
partial present efficacy of this purpose by the laws of motor processes,
of habit, or of what is often called association."[177] Here "idea,"
however, simply means, as Mr. Royce takes it in his second statement,
conscious content of any sort. But this is not the meaning of "idea" in
the logical sense. The logical idea is a conscious content used as an
organizer, as "a plan of action," to get other contents. If, for
example, in the course of writing a paper one wishes to recall an
abstract distinction, as the distinction dawns in consciousness, it is
not an idea in the logical sense. It is just as truly an immediate
fulfilling experience as is a good golf stroke. So in the
mathematician's most abstruse processes, which Mr. Royce so admirably
portrays, the results for which he watches "as empirically as the
astronomer alone with his star" are not ideas in the logical sense; they
are immediate, fulfilling experiences.[178] The distinction between the
idea as the mediating experience--that is, the logical idea--and the
immediate fulfilling experience is therefore not one of content, but of
use.
There is a sense, however, in which the idea as a purpose can be taken
as the partial fulfilment of another purpose; in the sense that any
purpose is the outgrowth of activity involving previous purposes. This
becomes evident when we inquire into the "indefinite restlessness" and
dissatisfaction out of which the idea as purpose springs.
Dissatisfaction presupposes some activity already going on in attempted
fulfilment of some previous purpose. If one is dissatisfied with his
singing, or with not singing, it is because one has already purposed to
participate in the performance of a company of people which now he finds
singing a certain melody, or one has rashly contracted to entertain a
strenuous infant who is vociferously demanding his favorite ditty. This
is only saying that any given dissatisfaction and the purpose to which
it gives rise grow out of activity involving previous purposing. But
this does not do away with the distinction between the idea as a purpose
and the immediate fulfilling experience.
If the discussion appears at this point to be growing somewhat captious,
let us pass to a consideration of the relation between internal and
external meanings, where the problem of truth and error appears, and
where the vital import of these distinctions becomes more obvious.
II. PURPOSE AND THE JUDGMENT
Mr. Royce begins with the traditional definition of truth, which he then
proceeds to reinterpret:
Truth is very frequently defined in terms of external meaning as
_that about which we judge_.... In the second place, truth has
been defined as the _correspondence between our ideas and their
objects_[179].... When we undertake to express the objective
validity of any truth, we use judgment. These judgments, if
subjectively regarded, that is, if viewed merely as processes of
our own present thinking, whose objects are external to
themselves, involve in all their more complex forms, combinations
of ideas, devices whereby we weave already present ideas into more
manifold structure, thereby enriching our internal meaning; but
the act of judgment has always its other, its objective aspect.
The ideas when we judge are also to possess external meaning....
It is true, as Mr. Bradley has well said, that the intended
subject of every judgment is reality itself. The ideas that we
combine when we judge about external meanings are to have value
for us as truth only in so far as they not only possess internal
meaning, but also imitate, by their structure, what is at once
other than themselves, and, in significance, something above
themselves. That, at least, is the natural view of our
consciousness, just in so far as, in judging, we conceive our
thought as essentially other than its external object, and as
destined merely to correspond thereto. Now we have by this time
come to feel how hard it is to define the Reality to which our
ideas are thus to conform, and about which our judgments are said
to be made, so long as we thus sunder external and internal
meanings.[180]
_The universal judgment._--The problem is, then, to discover just the
nature and ground of this relation between the internal and external
meaning, between the idea and its object. This relation is established
in the act of judgment. Taking first _the universal judgment_, we find
here that the internal meaning has at best only a negative relation to
the external meaning.
To say that all A is B is in fact merely to assert that the real
world contains no objects that are A, but that fail to be of the
class B. To say that no A is B is to assert that the real world
contains no objects that are at once A and B.[181]
The universal judgments then "tell us indirectly what is in the realm of
external meaning; but only by first telling us what is not."[182]
However, these universal judgments have after all a positive value in
the realm of internal meaning; that is, as mere thought.
This negative character of the universal judgments holds true of
them, as we have just said, just in so far as you sunder the
external and internal meaning, and just in so far as you view the
real as the beyond, and as the merely beyond. If you turn your
attention once more to the realm of ideas, viewed as internal
meaning, you see, indeed, that they are constantly becoming
enriched in their inner life by all this process. To know by inner
demonstration that 2+2=4 and that this is necessarily so, is not
yet to know that the external world, taken merely as the Beyond,
contains any true or finally valid variety of objects at all, any
two or four objects that can be counted.... On the other hand, so
far as your internal meaning goes, to have experienced within that
which makes you call this judgment necessary, is indeed to have
observed a character about your own ideas which rightly seems to
you very positive.[183]
This passage deserves especial attention. In the light of Kant, and in
view of Mr. Royce's general definition of the judgment as the reference
of internal to external meanings, one is puzzled to find that for the
mathematician the positive value of the judgment "two and two are four"
is confined to the realm of internal meaning. To be sure, Mr. Royce says
that this limitation of the positive value of the universal judgment to
the world of internal meaning occurs only when the external and internal
meaning are sundered. But the point is: Does the mathematician or anyone
else ever so sunder as to regard the judgment "two and two are four" as
of positive value only as internal meaning? Indeed, in another
connection Mr. Royce himself shows most clearly that mathematical
results are as objective and as empirical as the astronomer's star.[184]
Nor would it appear competent for anyone to say here: "Of course, they
are not internal meanings _after_ we come to see, through the kind
offices of the epistemologist, that the internal meanings are valid of
the external world." We are insisting that they are never taken by the
mathematician and scientists at first as merely internal meaning whose
external meaning is then to be established. Surely the mathematical
judgment, or any other, does not require an epistemological midwife to
effect the passage from internal to external meaning. The external
meaning is there all the while in the form of the diagrams and motor
tensions and images with which the mathematician works. The difficulty
here again seems to be that the distinction above discussed between the
idea in the logical sense, as purpose, and the immediate fulfilling
experience is lost sight of. The relation between two and four is not
first discovered as a merely internal meaning. It is discovered in the
process of fulfilling some purpose involving the working out of this
relation. So the sum of the angles of a triangle is not discovered as a
mere internal meaning whose external meaning is then to be found. It is
found _in working with_ the triangle. It is discovered _in_ the
triangle. And, once more, it matters not if the triangle here is a mere
memory image. In relation to the purpose, to the logical idea, it is as
truly external and objective as pine sticks or chalk marks. The streams
of motor, etc., images that flow spontaneously under the stimulus of the
purpose are just as immediate fulfilling experiences as the manipulation
of sticks or chalk lines.
The difficulty in keeping the universal judgment, as a judgment, in
terms of merely internal meaning may be seen from the following:
As to these two types of judgments, the universal and the
particular, they both, as we have seen, make use of experience.
The universal judgments arise in the realm where experience and
idea have already fused into one whole; and this is precisely the
realm of internal meanings. Here one constructs and observes the
consequences of one's construction. But the construction is at
once an experience _of fact and an idea_.... Upon the basis of
such ideal constructions one makes universal judgments. These in a
fashion still to us, at this stage, mysterious, undertake to be
valid of that other world--the world of external meaning.[185]
One is somewhat puzzled to know just what is meant by the fusion "of
experience and idea." We must infer that it means the fusion of some
aspect of experience which can be set over against idea, and this has
always meant the external meaning, and this interpretation seems
further warranted by the statement immediately following which describes
the fusion as one "of _fact_ and idea." The situation then seems to be
this: An internal and an external meaning, a fact and an idea, "fuse
into one whole" and thus constitute that which is yet "precisely the
realm of internal meanings," which aims to be valid of still another
world of external meanings. And this waives the question of how
experience fused into one whole can be an internal meaning, since as
such it must be in opposition and reference to an external meaning; or
conversely, how experience can be at once fact _and_ idea and still be
"fused into one whole."
Nor does the difficulty disappear when we turn to the aspects of
universality and necessity. What is the significance and basis of
universality and necessity as confined merely to the realm of internal
meaning?
So far as your internal meaning goes, _to have experienced within
that which makes you call this judgment necessary_ is, indeed, to
have observed a character about your own ideas which rightly seems
to you very positive.[186]
But what is it that we "experience within" which makes us call this
judgment necessary? In the discussion of the relation of the universal
judgment to the disjunctive judgment, through which the former is shown
to get even its negative force, there is an interesting statement:
One who inquires into a matter upon which he believes himself able
to decide in universal terms, _e. g._, in mathematics, has present
to his mind, at the outset, questions such as admit of alternative
answers. "A," he declares, "in case it exists at all, is either B
or C." Further research shows universally, perhaps, that No A is
B.
The last sentence is the statement referred to. What is meant by
"further research shows universally, perhaps, that No A is B"? What kind
of "research," internal or external, can show this? In short, there
appears to be as much difficulty with universality and necessity in the
realm of internal meaning as in the reference of internal to external
meaning.[187]
Instead, however, of discussing this point, Mr. Royce pursues the
problem of the relation of the external and internal meaning, and finds
that regarded as sundered there is no basis so far for even the negative
universality and necessity in the reference of the internal meaning to
the external.
For at this point arises the ancient question, How can you know at
all that your judgment is universally valid, even in this ideal
and negative way, about that external realm of validity, in so far
as it is external, and is merely your Other,--the Beyond? Must you
not just dogmatically say that that world must agree with your
negations? This judgment is indeed positive. But how do you prove
it? The only answer has to be in terms which already suggest how
vain is the very sundering in question. If you can predetermine,
even if but thus negatively, what cannot exist in the object, the
object then cannot be merely foreign to you. It must be somewhat
predetermined by your Meaning.[188]
But in the universal judgment this determination, as referred to the
external meaning, is only negative.
_The particular judgment._--It is then through the particular judgment
that the universal judgment is to get any positive value in its
reference to the external meaning.
As has been repeatedly pointed out in the discussions on recent
Logic, the particular judgments--whose form is Some A is B, or
Some A is not B--are the typical judgments that positively assert
Being in the object viewed as external. This fact constitutes
their essential contrast with the universal judgments. They
undertake to cross the chasm that is said to sunder internal and
external meanings; and the means by which they do so is always
what is called "external experience."
It is now high time to ask why the internal meaning seeks this external
meaning. Why does it seek an object? Why does it want to cross the
chasm? In other words, what is the significance of the demand for the
particular judgment? In the introduction we have been told, as a matter
of description, that the internal meanings do seek the external meaning,
but why do they? We have also been told that universal judgments
"develop and enrich the realm of internal meaning." Why, then, should
there be a demand for the external meaning, for a further object? The
answer is:
We have our internal meanings. We develop them in inner
experience. There they get presented as something of universal
value, _but always in fragments_. They, therefore, so far
dissatisfy. We conceive of the Other wherein these meanings shall
get some sort of final fulfilment.[189]
It is, then, the incomplete and fragmentary character of the internal
meaning that demands the particular judgment. The particular judgment is
to further complete and determine the incomplete and indeterminate
internal meaning. And yet no sooner is this particular judgment made
than we are told that "it is a form at once positive, and very
unsatisfactorily indeterminate." Again:[190]
The judgments of experience, the particular judgments, express a
positive but still imperfect determination of internal meaning
through external experience. The limit or goal of this process
would be an individual judgment wherein the will expressed its own
final determination.[191]
Apparently, then, the particular judgment to which the internal meaning
appeals for completion and determination only succeeds in increasing the
fragmentary and indeterminate character.
This brings us to another "previous question." Just what are we to
understand by this "fragmentary" and "indeterminate" character of the
internal meaning? In what sense, with reference to what, is it
incomplete and fragmentary? Later we shall be told that it is with
reference to "its own final and completely individual expression." This
is to be reached in the individual judgment. And if we ask what is meant
by this final, complete, and individual expression--which, by the way,
no human being can experience--we read, wondering all the while how it
can be known, that it is simply "the expression that seeks no other,"
that "is satisfied," that "is conclusive of the search for
perfection."[192] Waiving for the present questions concerning the basis
of this satisfaction and perfection, all this leaves unanswered our
query concerning the other end of the matter, viz., the meaning and
criterion of the fragmentary and indeterminate character of these
internal meanings.
If we here return to the first definition of internal meaning of the
idea as a purpose in the sense of "a plan of action," such as "singing
in tune," or getting the properties of a geometrical figure, it does not
seem difficult to find a basis and meaning for this fragmentary and
indeterminate character. First we may note in a general way that it is
of the very essence of a plan or purpose to lead on to a fulfilling
experience such as singing in tune, or reaching a mathematical equation.
But here this fulfilling experience to which the plan points is not a
mere working out of detail inside the plan itself, although, indeed,
this does take place. If this were all the fulfilling experience meant,
it is difficult to see how we should escape subjective idealism.[193] We
start with a relatively indeterminate idea and end with a more
determinate _idea_, though, indeed, there is yet no criterion for this
increased determination. To be sure, the idea as a plan of action, as
has already been stated, does undergo change and does become, if you
please, more definite and complete as a plan; but this does not
constitute its fulfilment. Its fulfilment surely is to be found in the
immediate experiences of singing, etc., to which the idea points and
leads.
The fragmentary and incomplete character of the internal meaning as a
plan of action does not, then, after all, so much describe the plan
itself as it does the general condition of experience out of which the
idea arises. Experience takes on the form of a plan, of an idea,
precisely because it has fallen apart, has become "fragmentary." It is
just the business of the internal meaning, as Mr. Royce so well shows,
to form a plan, an ideal, an hypothetical synthesis that shall stimulate
an activity, which shall satisfactorily heal the breach. "Fragmentary"
is a quality, then, that belongs, not to the idea in itself considered,
but to the general condition of experience, of which the idea as a plan
is an expression.
If, now, the fragmentary character of the internal meaning is determined
simply with relation to the fulfilling experiences, such as singing in
tune, adjustments of geometrical figures, etc., to which it points and
leads, it seems as if the completion of the internal meaning must be
defined in the same terms. And this would appear to open a pretty
straight path to the redefinition of truth and error.
III. THE CRITERION OF TRUTH AND ERROR
At the outset, truth was defined as the "correspondence" or "agreement"
of an idea with its object. But we have seen that correspondence or
agreement with an object means the completion and determination of the
idea itself, and since the idea is here a specific "plan of action," it
would seem that the "true" idea would be the one that can complete
itself by stimulating a satisfying activity. The false idea would be
one that cannot complete itself in a satisfying activity, such as
singing in tune, constructing a mathematical equation, etc., and just
this solution is very clearly expounded by our author. In the case of
mathematical inquiry,
In just so far as we _pause satisfied_ we observe that there "is
no other" mathematical fact to be sought _in the direction of the
particular inquiry in hand_. Satisfaction of purpose by means of
_presented fact_ and such determinate satisfaction as sends us to
no other experience for further light and fulfillment, precisely
this outcome is itself the Other that is sought when we begin our
inquiry.[194]
So "when other facts of experience are sought," if I watch for stars or
for a chemical precipitate, or for a turn in the stock market, or in the
sickness of a friend, my ideas are true when they are satisfied with
"the presented facts." Again,
It follows that the finally determinate form of the object of any
finite idea is that form which the idea itself would assume
whenever it became individuated, or in other words, became a
completely determined idea, an idea or will fulfilled by a wholly
adequate empirical content, for which no other content need be
substituted or from the point of view of the satisfied idea, could
be substituted.[195]
In such passages as these it seems clear that the test of the truth of
an idea is its power to bring us to the point where we "pause
satisfied," where "no other content need be substituted," etc. Nor in
such passages does there seem to be any doubt of reaching satisfaction
in particular cases. Here, it appears, we _may_ sing in tune, we _may_
get the desired precipitate, and possibly even interpret the stock
market correctly. Of course, the discord, the hunger, the loss, will
come again; but so will new ideas, new truths. "Man thinks in order to
get control of his world and thereby of himself."[196] Then the control
actually gained must measure the value, the truth of his thought. Do you
wish to sing in tune, "then your musical ideas are false if they lead
you to strike what are then called false notes."[197]
It should also be noticed that here this desired determination does not
consist in a further determination of the mere idea as such. It is found
in "the presented fact," in the immediate activity of singing, of
getting precipitates, etc. As has already been pointed out, it is only
by using the term "idea" for both the purpose and the fulfilling act of
singing that this "pause of satisfaction" can be ascribed to the further
determination of the idea. As such, as also before remarked, the sort of
determination that the idea here gets means its termination, its
disappearance in the immediate experiences of singing, etc., to which it
leads. The "indefinite restlessness" of hunger and cold would scarcely
be satisfied by getting more determinate and specific _ideas_ only of
food and shelter. The satisfaction comes when the ideas are "realized,"
when the "plans" are swallowed up in fulfilment.
But in all this nothing has been said about "the certain absolute system
of ideas," nor does there appear to be here any demand for it. To be
sure, in the passages just considered, experience has been found to
become "fragmentary," but it has also been found capable of healing, of
wholing itself, not of course into any "final whole," but into the unity
of "satisfaction" as regards "the particular inquiry in hand." There is
of course failure as well, but this also is not final. It means simply
that we must look farther for the "pause of satisfaction," that we must
construct another idea, another "plan of action."
But, after having shown that the idea as a plan of action may lead to
satisfaction in the particular case, and that its success or failure so
to do is one measure of its truth or falsity, we are now suddenly
aroused to the fact that after all thought does not lead us to the
completed "absolute system of ideas," to a final stage of eternal
unbroken satisfaction.
But never in our human process of experience do we reach that
determination. It is for us the object of love and of hope, of
desire and of will, of faith and of work, but never of present
finding.[198]
If at this point one asks: Whence this absolute system of ideas? Why
have we to reckon with it at all? there appears to be little that is
satisfying. Indeed, it seems difficult to get rid of the impression that
this "certain absolute system of ideas" is on our hands as a
philosophical heirloom from the time of Plato, so hallowed by time and
so established by centuries of acceptance that we have ceased to ask for
its credentials. To ground it in the "essentially fragmentary character
of human experience" appears to be a _petitio_, for experience does not
appear "essentially fragmentary" in this sense until after the absolute
system has been posited.
And this brings to notice that at this point both the fragmentary and
unitary characters of experience take on new meaning. So far this
fragmentary character has been defined with reference to "the particular
inquiry in hand." Now, since the distinction between absolute and human
experience has emerged, the fragmentary character becomes an absolute
quality of the latter in contrast with the former. So, _mutatis
mutandis_, of unity. Up to this point unity, wholeness, has been
possible within human experience in the case of particular problems,
such as singing in tune, etc. But with the appearance of the absolute
system of ideas, wholeness is now the exclusive quality of the latter,
as incompleteness is of human experience, though of course the _working_
unity, the unity resulting in "pauses of satisfaction," must still
remain in the latter.
The problem now is to somehow work the absolute system of ideas into
connection with the conception of the idea as a purpose, as a concrete
plan of action. Here is where the third conception of the relation
between idea and purpose, described at the beginning, comes into
play--the conception in which the idea, instead of being the purpose, or
the fulfilment of a purpose, _has_ the purpose to correspond with, or
represent "its own final and completely individual expression,"
contained in the absolute system. From the previous standpoint the
idea's "own final and completely individual expression" has been found
in the fulfilling experiences of singing in tune, getting mathematical
equations, chemical precipitates, etc. Here this complete individual
experience can never be found in finite, human experience, but must be
sought in the absolute system--and this can be only "the object of love
and hope, of desire and will, never of present finding."
Notwithstanding the many previous protestations that the purposive
function of the idea is its "primary" and "most essential" character, we
are here forced to fall back upon correspondence--representation as the
primary, the essential, and indeed, it appears at times, as the sole
function. For in the attempt to bring these two functions together the
purposive function is swallowed up in the representative. The idea still
is, or has a purpose, a "plan of action," but this purpose, this plan,
is now nothing but to represent and correspond with its own final and
completed form in the absolute system. By this simple _coup_ is the
purposive function of the idea reduced at once to the representative.
Nor is it pertinent to urge at this point that every purpose involves
representation, that the plan must be some sort of an image or scheme
which symbolizes and stimulates the thing to be done. This no one would
question, but now the sole "thing to be done" apparently is to perfect
this representation of the complete and individual form in the absolute
system.[199]
Once more, an array of passages could be marshaled from almost every
page refuting any such interpretation as this, but they would be
passages expounding the part played by the idea in such concrete
experiences as singing, measuring, etc., not in representing an absolute
system of ideas. Even as regards the latter one might urge that, by
insisting on the active character of the idea, we could after all regard
this absolute system as a life of will after the fashion of our own,
were it not at once described as "the complete embodiment," "the final
fulfilment," of finite ideas. A life consisting of mere fulfilment seems
a baffling paradox. And its timeless character only adds to the
difficulty. Moreover, if we regard the system as constituted by such
concrete activities as measuring and singing, etc., while we have saved
will, we shall now have to fallback upon our first conception of truth
as found in the idea which unifies the fragmentary condition of
experience as related to specific problems, not fragmentary as related
to an absolute system.
This brings us to the final and crucial point of the discussion, the
part which purpose plays in the determination of _truth_ and _error_
from the standpoint of "the absolute system of ideas." When is this
purpose of the idea to correspond with its absolute, final, and
completed form fulfilled, or partially fulfilled? And here at the very
outset is a difficulty. We have read repeatedly that the idea is itself
"the partial fulfilment of a purpose." It is now to seek an object which
shall increase this degree of fulfilment, but still this fulfilment
shall be incomplete. And when we come to consider error, it too will be
found to consist in a partial fulfilment. So it appears that there are
three stages of "partial fulfilment" to be discriminated, one belonging
to the idea itself, another to finite truth, and still another to error.
Returning to the problem, from this point on we find the two
standpoints, that of the specific situation and that of the absolute
system, so closely interwoven and entangled that they are followed with
great difficulty. We have already seen that the idea seeks
correspondence with its object, because it is "fragmentary,"
"incomplete," "indetermined." And there we found that this indeterminate
and fragmentary character belonged to the idea as a purpose, a plan of
seeking relief from some sort of "restlessness" and "dissatisfaction,"
such as singing out of tune, etc. Here it is the incompleteness of an
imperfect representation of its object in the absolute system that is
the _motif_, and how it is to effect an improvement in its imperfect
condition is now the problem. Here again the appeal is to purpose.
Whatever may constitute the absolute system, one thing is assured:
nothing in it can be an object except as the finite idea "intends it,"
purposes it, to be its object. Again must we ask: On what basis is this
object in the absolute system selected at all? In general the answer is:
On the basis of a need of "further determination;" but when we further
analyze this, we find it means on the basis of a specific want or need,
such as food, shelter, measuring, singing, etc. The basis of the
selection, then, is entirely on the side of the concrete, finite
situation.
Here, too, we might ask: Whence the confidence that there will be found
something in the absolute system that will fulfil the purpose generated
on the side of the finite? Must we not here fall back on something like
a pre-established harmony? To this our author would say: "Yea, verily.
The fact that the absolute system responds to the finite needs does
precisely show that the finite and the absolute cannot be sundered." But
when we try to state _how_ the purpose generated on the side of the
finite can be met by the absolute system, the account again seems to run
so much in terms of the finite experience that to call it a system of
"final," "completed," and "fulfilled" ideas does not seem accurate. We
must note here, too, the shifting in the sense of "purpose." The idea
selects its object on the basis of the material needed to relieve the
unrest and dissatisfaction of singing out of tune, etc. But now it is to
be satisfied by increasing the extent of its representation of its
object in the absolute system.
And now, finally, what shall mark the attainment of this purpose of the
idea to correspond and represent "its own completed form"? When is the
correspondence and representation true? Simply at the point where "we
pause satisfied," where "no other content need be substituted, or from
the point of view of the satisfied idea could be substituted." That is
all; there is no other answer. There are other statements, but they all
come to the same thing. For instance:
It is true--this instant's idea--if, in its own measure, and on
its own plan, it corresponds, even in its vagueness, to its own
final and completely individual expression.[200]
But the moment we ask what this "final and individual expression" is,
and what is meant by "in its own measure," and "on its own plan," we
are thrown back at once upon the preceding statement. The next sentence
following the passage just quoted does indeed define this "individual
expression." "Its expression would be the very life of fulfilment of
purpose which this present idea already fragmentarily begins, as it
were, to express." But how can we know that the expression is
"fragmentary" unless we have some experience of wholeness?
And here perhaps is the place to say, what has been implied all along,
that this absolutely "fragmentary" character of human experience is an
abstraction of the relatively disintegrated condition into which
experience temporarily falls, which abstraction is then reinstated as a
fixed quality, overlooking the fact that experience becomes fragmentary
only that it may again become whole. The absolute system, the final
fulfilment, is in the same case. It too is but the hypostatized
abstraction of the function of becoming whole, of wholing and
fulfilling, which manifests itself in the "pauses of satisfaction."
"But," Mr. Royce would say, "the wholeness of the particular instance is
after all not a true and perfect wholeness, because we can always think
of the fulfilling experience as possibly different, as having a possibly
different embodiment." But this implies also a different purpose.
Moreover, it abstracts the purpose from the specific conditions under
which the purpose develops. Thus in singing in tune one doubtless could
easily imagine himself singing another tune, on another occasion, in
another key, in a clear tenor instead of a cracked bass, etc. But if on
_this_ occasion, in _this_ song, and with _this_ cracked bass voice one,
accepting all these conditions, does, with malice aforethought, purpose
to strike the tune, and happily succeeds, why, for that purpose formed
under the known and accepted conditions, is not the accomplishment final
and absolute? Nor is the case any different, so far as I can see, in
mathematical experience. To quote again:
You think of numbers, and accordingly count one, two, three. Your
idea of these numbers is abstract, a mere generality. Why? Because
there could be other cases of counting, and other numbers counted
than the present counting process shows you, and why so? Because
your purpose in counting is not wholly fulfilled by the numbers
now counted.[201]
I confess I cannot see here in what respect the purpose is not
fulfilled. Doubtless there could be "other cases of counting," and
"other numbers," but these may not be included in my present purpose,
which is simply to count here and now. In this passage the purpose is
not very fully defined. One's counting is usually for something, if for
nothing more than merely to illustrate the process. In this latter case
one's purpose would be completely fulfilled by just the numbers used
when he should "pause satisfied" with the illustration. Or, if I wish to
show the properties of numbers, then the discovery that there can always
be more of them fulfils my purpose, since this endless progression is
one of the properties. Or yet again, if one should suddenly become
enamored of the process of counting, and forthwith should purpose to
devote the rest of his days to it, it would still be fortunate that
there were always other numbers to be counted. In other words, the idea
as a purpose is formed with reference to, and out of, specific
conditions. In the last analysis the problem always is: What is to be
done here and now with the actual material at hand, under the present
conditions? As the purpose is determined by these specific conditions,
so is the fulfilment. To say that the fulfilment might be different is
virtually to say that the purpose might have been different, or indeed
that the universe might have been different.
This necessity of falling back upon the character of the idea as a
purpose in the sense of the specific "plan of action" comes into still
bolder relief in the consideration of error from the standpoint of "the
absolute system of ideas." As already mentioned, the initial and
persistent problem here is to distinguish at all between truth and error
in our experience from this standpoint. All our efforts at representing
the absolute system must fall short. What can we mean, then, by calling
some of our ideas true and others false? The definition of error is as
follows:
An error is an error about a specific object, only in case the
purpose, imperfectly defined by the vague idea at the instant when
the error is made, is better defined, is in fact, better fulfilled
by an object whose determinate character in some wise, although
never absolutely, opposes the fragmentary efforts first made to
define them.[202]
But in relation to the absolute system the later part of this statement
holds of all our ideas. There always is the absolute object which would
"better define" and "better fulfil" our purposes. Hence it is only in
reference to the "specific" instances of singing, measuring, etc., that
a basis for the distinction can be found. Here our plan is not true so
long as its mission of relieving the specific unrest and
dissatisfaction, the specific discord or hunger, is unfulfilled.
The only criterion, then, which we have been able to find for the
fulfilment of the purpose, for the truth of the idea as representing an
object in the absolute system, is the sense of wholeness, the "pause of
satisfaction," which we experience in realizing such specific purposes
as "singing in tune." And if it be said again: "Precisely so; this only
shows how intimate is the relation between our experience and the
absolute system of ideas;" then must it also be said once more, either
that the absolute system can be nothing more than an abstraction of the
element of wholeness or wholing in our experience, or that thus far the
relation appears to rest upon sheer assumption.
Again, it may be insisted, as suggested at the outset of this
discussion, that the idea can well have two purposes: one to help
constitute and solve the specific problems of daily life; the other to
represent the absolute system. Very well, we must then make out a case
for the latter. If the purposes are to be different, the purpose to
represent the Absolute should have a criterion of its own. This we have
not been able to find. On the contrary, whenever pushed to the point of
stating a criterion for the representation of the absolute system, we
have had to appeal, in every case, to the fulfilment of a specific
finite purpose. And even if this purpose to represent the absolute
system had some apparent standard of its own, we should not be content
to leave the matter so. We should scarcely be satisfied to observe as a
mere matter of fact that the idea has a reconstructive function, and
_also_ a representative function. Such a brute dualism would be
intolerable.
IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
In the end, the outcome of the endeavor to establish a connection
between the relation of the idea to human experience and its relation to
the absolute system does not appear satisfying. The idea is left either
with two independent purposes--one to reconstruct finite experience, the
other to represent and symbolize the absolute system--or one of these
purposes is merged in the other. When the attempt is made from the
standpoint of the absolute system, the reconstructive purpose is
swallowed up in the representative. When, on the other hand, the need
for a basis of distinction between truth and error "here on this bank
and shoal of time" is felt, the representative disappears in the
reconstructive function. Nowhere are we able to discover a true
unification. To be sure, we have been told again and again that the
representation of the absolute object, if only we could accomplish it,
would be "the final fulfilment," "completion," and "realization" of the
human, finite purpose. But besides a confessed impotency at the very
start, this involves, as we have seen, either a sudden transformation of
the specific purpose of singing in tune, etc., into that of representing
the absolute system, or a sheer assumption that the representation of
the absolute object does somehow help in the realization of the specific
finite purpose. Nowhere is there any account of _how_ this help would be
given.
And this suggests that if the analysis of the idea as purpose, given at
the outset of Mr. Royce's lecture, had been developed further, if the
conditions and origin of purpose had been examined, it is difficult to
see how this discrepancy could have escaped disclosure. Mr. Royce starts
his account by simply accepting from psychology a general description of
the purposive character of the idea. Even in the more detailed passages
on purpose we have nothing but descriptions of purpose after it is
formed. Nothing is said of the origin of this purposiveness. The
purposive character of experience is of course very manifest, but what
is the significance of this purposing in experience as a whole? What is
the source and the material of the purposes?
It is this uncritical acceptance of the purposive quality of the idea
that obscures the irrelevancy of its relation to the absolute system. If
the idea must merely be or have a purpose, then it may as well be that
of representing the absolute system as any other. Of course, there are
troublesome questions as to how our finite ideas ever got such a
purpose; but, after all, if it is simply a matter of having any sort of
a purpose, representing the absolute system may answer as well as
anything. But when now we come to deal with the problem of fulfilment,
with the question of truth and error, we have to reckon with this
neglect of the source of this purposiveness.
It is this unanalyzed ground of the purpose that makes the matter of
fulfilment so ambiguous. Such an analysis, we believe, would have shown
that the conditions out of which the idea as a purpose arises determine
also the sort of fulfilment possible. There are, indeed, one or two very
general, but very significant, statements in this direction, if they
were only followed up. For instance:
In doing what we often call "making up our minds" we pass from a
vague to a definite state of will and of resolution. In such cases
we begin with perhaps a very indefinite sort of restlessness which
arouses the question: "What is it that I want, what do I desire,
what is my real purpose?"
In other words, what does this restlessness mean? What is the matter?
What is to be done?
Purpose is born, then, out of restlessness and dissatisfaction. But
whence comes this restlessness and dissatisfaction? Surely we cannot at
this point charge it to a discrepancy between our finite idea and the
absolute object, since it is just this restlessness that is giving birth
to the purposive idea. One thing, at any rate, appears pretty certain:
this "indefinite restlessness" presupposes some sort of activity already
going on. The restlessness is not generated in a vacuum. But why should
this activity get into a condition to be described as "indefinite
restlessness" and dissatisfaction?
Repugnant as it will be to many to have psycho-physical, to say nothing
of biological, doctrines introduced into a logical discussion, I confess
that, at this point facing the issue squarely, I see no other way. And
it appears to me that just at this point it is the fear of
phenomenalistic giants that has kept logic wandering so many years in
the wilderness.
What, then, in this action already going on is responsible for this
restlessness? First let us note that "indefinite restlessness" and
"dissatisfaction" are terms descriptive of what Mr. James calls "the
first thing in the way of consciousness." This assumes consciousness as
a factor in activity. So that our question now becomes: What is the
significance of this factor of restless, dissatisfied consciousness in
activity? Now, there appears no way of getting at the part which
consciousness plays different from that of discovering the function of
anything else. And this way is simply that of observing, as best we may,
the conditions under which consciousness operates, and what it does.
Here the biologist and psychologist with one voice inform us that this
indefinite restlessness which marks the point of the operation of
consciousness arises where, in a co-ordinated system of activities,
there develop out of the continuation of the activity itself new
conditions calling for a readjustment and reconstruction of the
activity, if it is to go on. Consciousness then appears to be the
function which makes possible the reorganization of the results of a
process back into the process itself, thus constituting and preserving
the continuity of activity. So interpreted, consciousness appears to be
an essential element in the conception of a self-sustaining activity.
This "indefinite restlessness," in which consciousness begins, marks,
then, the operation of the function of reconstruction without which
activity would utterly break down.
Precisely because, then, the idea "as a plan" is projected and
constructed in response to this restlessness must its fulfilment be
relevant to it. It is when the idea as a purpose, a plan, born out of
this matrix of restlessness, begins to aspire to the absolute system,
and attempts to ignore or repudiate its lowly antecedents, that the
difficulties concerning fulfilment begin. They are the difficulties that
beset every ambition which aspires to things foreign to its inherited
powers and equipment.
A detailed account at this point of the construction and fulfilment of
the idea as "a plan of action" would contain a consecutive
reinterpretation of Mr. Royce's principal rubrics. Such an account the
limits of this paper forbid. We shall have to be content with pointing
out in a general way a few instances by way of illustration.
In the first place, it is in this matrix of indefinite restlessness out
of which the idea is born that the "fragmentary character of
experience," of which Mr. Royce is so keenly conscious, appears. But,
once more, this fragmentary character is discernible only by contrast
with the wholeness on both sides of the fragments; the wholeness that
precedes the restlessness, and the new "pause of satisfaction" toward
which it points. Nor must we forget that the habit matrix, out of the
disintegration of which the restlessness is immediately born, does not
exist as some metaphysical ultimate out of which thought as such has
evolved. Back of it is some previous purpose in whose service habit was
enlisted. On the other hand, this disintegration means that the old
purpose, the old plan, must be reconstructed; that it, along with the
disintegrated habit, becomes the material for a new plan, a new wholing
of experience.
In the next place, the construction of this new plan of action does
involve "re-presentation." The first step in the transition from the
condition of "indefinite restlessness" toward a "plan" is the diagnosis,
the definition of the restlessness. This involves the re-presentation in
consciousness of the activities, out of which the restlessness has
arisen. This re-presentation is also the beginning of the
reconstruction. The diagnosis of the singing activity as being "out of
tune" is the negative side of beginning to sing in tune. It is now a
commonplace of psychology that all representation is reconstruction. And
this is where Mr. Royce's emphasis of the symbolic, the algebraic, as
against the copy type of representation, has its application. All we
want here is some sort of an image--visual, auditory, motor, it matters
not--that shall serve to focus attention upon the singing activities
until they are reconstructed sufficiently to bring us to the "pause of
satisfaction."[203] But nowhere in all this is there any reference to
the idea's object in the absolute system. Nor does there appear to be
any call or place for such reference. The representation here is a part
of the very process of forming the plan of further reconstruction out of
the materials of the specific situation. Representation is not the
plan's own end and aim. This is to stimulate a new set of activities
that shall lead out of the present state of unrest and dissatisfaction.
It is also true, as already mentioned, that in the process of fulfilling
the plan, of realizing the idea, further determination and specification
is produced in the plan itself. The idea as a plan is certainly not
formed all at once. Nor does it reach and maintain a fixed content. No
purpose is ever realized in its original content. But this does not mean
that its realization is, therefore, "partial," "incomplete," or
"fragmentary." It is a part of its business to change. The purpose is
not there for its own sake. The purpose is there as a _means_ to the
reorganization and reconstruction of experience. It exists, as Mr. Royce
says, as an instrument, "as a tool" for "introducing control into
experience." And as, in the process of use, a tool always undergoes
modification, so here, as an instrument for reconstructing habit, the
plan, too, undergoes reconstruction. Indeed, as regards its content, it
is itself, as Mr. Royce says, as much a habit, as much "the product of
association," as any part of experience. The purposing function, the
purposing activity, remains; its content is constantly shifting.
Here, too, is where "the submission of the idea to the object" takes
place. Only, here, it is not a submission to an object already
constituted as it is in Mr. Royce's conception of the absolute system.
The idea as an hypothetical plan of action, as a trial construction,
must be tested by the activities it is attempting to reconstruct. That
is to say, at this point the question is: Does the plan apply to the
activities actually involved in the unrest? Has it diagnosed the case
properly, and is it therefore one in and through which these activities
can operate and come to unity again? The "submission" here is the
submission of the purpose, the end, to the material out of which it is
formed, and with which it must work. But again this material to which
the idea submits itself is anything but finally fixed and "complete" in
form. On the contrary, as we have seen, it is just the fragmentary and
incomplete condition of this material that calls for the idea. Yet the
idea as a plan must be true to its mission, and to this material, and in
this sense must submit itself to whatever modifications and
reconstruction the material "dictates" as necessary in order that it may
function in and through the plan.[204]
On the other hand--and this is the point to which Mr. Royce gives most
emphasis--it is equally apparent that "the idea must determine its
object." On this all philosophy, from Plato down, which approaches
reality "from the side of ideas" is at stake. And this does not appear
impossible if, again, the object is not already and eternally fixed and
complete. If the object is one constructed out of the very mass of habit
material which the idea is reconstructing, and if "determination" means
not copying, but construction, then, indeed, must the idea "determine
its object." Just for that does it have its being. That is its sole
mission. Here the determination of the object by the idea is not a mere
abstract postulate; it is not based upon a general consideration of the
disastrous consequences to our logical and ethical assumptions, if it
were not so determined. Here not only the general necessity for it, but
the _modus operandi_ of this determination, is apparent. But, at the
risk of tedious iteration, must it again be said that for the
determination of the completed and perfected object in the absolute
system not only is there nowhere any _modus_ to be found, but, even if
there were, it is difficult to see what it would have to do with the
kind of determination demanded by such a specific sort of unrest as
"singing out of tune," etc. The process of submission is thus a
reciprocal one. Neither in the object nor in the idea is there a fixed
scheme or order _to_ which the other must submit and conform. And this
is simply the logical commonplace that submission cannot be a one-sided
affair, that determination must be reciprocal.
This brings us to what might as well have been our introductory as our
concluding observation. It has just been said that the determination of
the object by the idea is a vital matter in any philosophy which
approaches reality "from the side of ideas." Such a way of approach must
assert "the primacy of the world of ideas over the world as a
fact."[205] Mr. Royce thus further states the case:
I am one of those who hold that when you ask what is an idea, and
how can ideas stand in any true relation to reality, you attack
the world knot in the way that promises most for the untying of
its meshes. This way is of course very ancient. It is the way of
Plato.... It is in a different sense the way of Kant. If you view
philosophy in this fashion, you subordinate the study of the world
as fact to a reflection upon the world as idea. Begin by accepting
upon faith and tradition the mere brute reality of the world as
fact, and there you are sunk deep in an ocean of mystery.... The
world of fact surprises you with all sorts of strange
contrasts.... It baffles you with caprices like a charming and yet
hopelessly wayward child, or like a bad fairy. The world of fact
daily announces itself to you as a defiant mystery.[206]
Here we have concisely stated at the outset of the lectures the position
which we have seen to be fraught with so many difficulties: the
position, namely, which accepts to start with the opposition of the
world as idea and the world as fact, as something given, instead of
something to be accounted for; and which assumes that this opposition
stands in the way of reaching reality, whereas it possibly may be of the
very essence of reality. To be sure, the above statement of this
opposition between the world as fact and as idea is but the expository
starting-point. And it is true that the rest of the argument is occupied
in the attempt to close this breach. But, as we have seen, except where
the idea is expounded as a specific purpose, arising out of a specific
experience of unrest, such as singing out of tune, etc.--except in this
case, the breach is taken as found and the attempt to heal it is made by
working forward from the opposition as given instead of back to its
source. This opposition, of course, has its forward goal, but the
difficulty is to find it without an exploration of its source. It is
back in that matrix out of which the opposition has arisen that the line
of direction to the goal is to be found.
Moreover, in starting from this opposition of fact and idea as given,
the only method of quelling it seems to be either that of reducing one
side to terms of the other, or of appealing to some new, and therefore
external unifying, agency. But if the factors in the opposition are
found, not one in submission _to_ the other, nor having the "primacy"
_over_ the other, but as co-ordinate and mutually determining functions,
developed from a common matrix and co-operating in the work of
reconstructing experience, some of the difficulties involved in the
alternative methods just mentioned appear to drop out.[207]
The point may be clearer if we recur to the passage and ask just what is
meant by "the defiantly mysterious," "baffling," and "capricious"
character of the world as fact--as "brute reality." First, if by the
world as "fact;" as "brute reality," we mean experience so brute that it
is not yet "lighted up with ideas," it is difficult to see how it could
be mysterious or capricious, since mystery and caprice appear only when
experience ceases to be taken merely as it comes and an inquiry for
connections and meanings has begun. That is to say, there can be neither
mystery nor caprice except in relation to some sort of order. And order
is always a matter of ideas. But it is sufficient to submit Mr. Royce's
own statement on this point:
We all of us from moment to moment have experience. This
experience comes to us in part as brute fact; light and shade,
sound and silence, pain and grief and joy.... These given facts
flow by; and were they all, our world would be too much of a blind
problem for us even to be puzzled by its meaningless
presence.[208]
If next we take the world of fact as in contrast and co-ordinate with
the world of ideas, mystery and caprice here, certainly, are not all on
the side of the fact. Here, again, must they be functions of the
relation between fact and idea. We have seen that without thought there
is neither mystery nor caprice. The idea then cannot take part in the
production of mystery and caprice, and forthwith deny its parenthood. Of
course, mystery and caprice are not the final fruits of this co-ordinate
opposition of fact and idea. They are but the _first_ fruits--the
relatively unorganized embryonic mass which through the further
activities of the parent functions shall develop into the symmetry of
truth and law.
There appears then no ultimate "primacy" of either idea or fact over the
other. Nor does either appear as a better way of approach _to_ reality
than the other. It is only when we say: "Lo! here in the idea," _or_
"Lo! there in the fact is reality," that we find it "imperfect,"
"incomplete," and "fragmentary," and must straightway "look for
another." But surely not in "a certain absolute system of ideas," which
is "the object of love and hope, of desire and will, of faith and work,
but never of present finding," shall we seek it. Rather precisely in the
loving and hoping, desiring and willing, believing and working, shall we
find that reality in which and for which both the "World as fact" and
the "World as idea" have their being.
INDEX
ABSOLUTE:
as constituting reality, 348;
as related to truth and error, 363 ff.;
as a hypostatized abstraction, 369.
ABSOLUTE SELF, 330.
ACCESSORY:
thought as, 58 ff.
ACTIVITY:
as social, 74;
thought as, 78;
interrupted, and judgment, 154;
and hypothesis, 170;
as sensori-motor, 193, 200;
(see Function, Reconstruction).
ÆSTHETIC EXPERIENCE:
appreciative rather than reflective, 255;
not a form of valuation, 339, 340.
ALTERNATIVES: in judgment, 155;
(see Disjunction).
ANALOGY, 171, 172, 175;
in relation to habit, 176.
ANAXAGORAS:
in relation to the One and the Many, 219;
his [Greek: nous], 220, 221.
ANAXIMANDER:
and the infinite, 209;
his process of segregation, 214, 215.
ANAXIMENES:
his [Greek: archê], 209;
his scheme of rarefaction and condensation, 209, 213, 215, 224.
ANGELL, J. R., 14 note, 345 note.
ANIMISM, 49 note.
ANTECEDENTS OF THOUGHT (see Stimulus).
APPLIED LOGIC: Lotze's definition, 6.
APPRECIATION:
distinguished from reflection, 255, 339;
not to be identified with valuation, 320-24, 338.
[Greek: Archê]:
meaning of search for, 211 ff.
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS:
refers to meanings, 33, 34;
connection with thought, 80;
doctrine of: analogous to subjectivism in ethics, 261;
presupposes a mechanical metaphysics, 330, 331 note.
ATOMISTS:
treatment of the One and the Many, 221.
AUSTRIAN ECONOMISTS, 307, 333.
AUTHORITY AND CUSTOM:
logic of attitude of obedience to, 286;
social conditions compatible with dominance of, 286;
failure of, as moral control, 286.
BACON:
extreme empirical position, 156 ff.;
view of induction, 157, 158.
"BAD":
practical significance of, as moral predicate, 259;
relation to "wrong," 335.
BALDWIN, J. M., 257 note, 378 note.
Becoming: as relative, 206.
"BEGRÜNDUNG" AND "BESTÄTIGUNG":
Wundt's distinction of, 179;
criticised, 181, 182.
BIOLOGY:
view of sensation, 58;
use of, in logic, 374, 375.
BOSANQUET, B., 59 note, 147, 189, 190, 191, 300;
(see Study V).
BRADLEY, F. H., 47 note, 54 note, 90 ff., 147, 189, 190, 191, 192,
194, 299 note 2, 331 note, 332 note, 353.
BRENTANO, 250 note.
BUTLER, J., 277.
CERTAIN, THE:
relation to tension, 50, 51;
as datum, 57.
COEFFICIENTS OF REALITY, PERCEPTION, AND RECOGNITION:
defined, 263-7;
present in economic and ethical experience, 267-9.
COEXISTENCE, COINCIDENCE, AND COHERENCE, 28, 29, 33-6, 58, 59, 68.
CONCEPTIONS:
Lotze's view of, 59;
Bacon's attitude toward, 157;
relation to fact, 168;
function in Greek philosophy, 342;
(see Idea, Image, Hypothesis).
CONCEPTUAL LOGIC:
as related to idea and image, 188-92.
CONSCIENCE:
evolution of, 286, 287;
ambiguous and transitional character of, 287;
metaphysical implications of, as moral standard, 288;
not autonomous, 288.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS:
dangers of, consequent upon ideal of self-realization, 316;
Green's defense of, referred to, 316 note.
CONSERVATION:
of energy and mass, 206;
(see Energy).
CONTENT OF KNOWLEDGE:
and logical object, originates in tension, 49;
thought's own, 65;
and datum, 69;
as truth, 79 ff.;
as static and dynamic, 73, 93 ff., 110 ff.;
(see Study IV; Objectivity, Validity).
CONTINUITY, 10, 13, 55.
CONTROL:
idea and, 75, 129.
CONVERSION OF PROPOSITIONS, 171;
in relation to habit, 176.
COPERNICUS:
his theory, 178;
compared with Galileo's supposition, 179-81.
COPULA, 118 ff.;
scheme of mediation between subject and predicate, 208, 214 ff.
CORRESPONDENCE:
of datum and idea, 51;
of thought-content and thought-activity, 70;
as criterion of truth, 82 ff., 353 ff.
DARWIN, CHARLES, 146, 150, 179.
DATUM OF THOUGHT, 7, 8, 24;
as fact, 26, 50, 52;
Lotze's theory of, stated, 55;
criticised, 56 ff.;
relation to induction, 61;
and content, 60, 70;
(see Study III; Content, Fact, Stimulus).
DEDUCTION, 211, 212.
DEFINITION:
invented by Socrates, 203.
DEMOCRITUS:
attempts at definition, 203.
DEMONSTRATIVE JUDGMENT, 134.
DETERMINATION:
as criterion of truth, 362 ff.;
impossibility of complete, in finite experience, 364.
DEWEY, JOHN, 58 note, 86 note, 266 note 2, 316 note, 381 note.
DIALECTIC:
Zeno as originator of, 203.
DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA, 222 ff.
DISJUNCTION:
in judgment, 115, 138.
DYNAMIC:
ideas as, and as static, 73, 76;
reality as, 126.
EARTH:
as an element, 213.
ECONOMIC JUDGMENT:
involves same type of process as physical, 235;
a process of valuation, 236;
type of situation evoking, 241-6, 293-5, 302, 303;
distinguished from ethical, 243 note, 246 note, 271, 302, 303;
relation to physical, 246 note 3;
subject of, the means of action, 259, 304;
analysis of process of, 304-12;
distinguished from "pull and haul," 237, 238;
psychological account of, 310, 311;
a reconstructive process, 311, 312.
"EGOISM, NEO-HEGELIAN," 316.
EHRENFELS, C. VON, 318 note.
EIDOLA:
Bacon's view of, 157.
ELEATICS:
their logical position, 216 ff.
ELEMENTS:
as four, 213;
as infinite, 213 ff.
EMERSON, R. W., 204, 246 note.
EMPEDOCLES:
attempts at definition, 203;
treatment of the One and the Many, 218 ff.
EMPIRICISM, 11, 29, 47, 48, 61 ff.;
and rationalism, 80;
criticised, 156;
Jevons, 169;
treatment of imagery, 186-8.
ENDS:
controlling factors in acquisition of knowledge, 229;
may themselves be objects of attention and judgment, 233;
judgment of, inseparable from factual judgment, 234;
conflict of, related, the occasion for ethical judgment, 238-41;
indirect conflict of unrelated, the occasion for economic judgment,
241-3;
the subject-matter of ethical judgment, 258, 259;
definition of, the goal of all judgment, 264, 272;
not always explicit in judgment-process, 269, 270;
nature of relation between, in ethical judgment, 273, 274, 291, 292;
types of factual condition implied in acceptance of, 275, 276;
warranted by factual judgment, 276;
nature of, unrelatedness of, in economic judgment, 293-5, 302, 303;
(see Purpose).
ENERGY:
principle of conservation of, 206, 299, 300;
not valid in sphere of valuation, 328.
"ENERGY-EQUIVALENCE":
principle of, in economic judgment, 308, 309;
meaning of, 309 note.
EPISTEMOLOGY, 5-7, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 47, 73, 341;
origin of problem of, 344, 345.
ERDMANN, BENNO:
concerning induction, 173.
ERROR:
criterion of, 371.
ETHICAL JUDGMENT:
involves same type of process as physical, 235;
a process of valuation, 236, 332;
type of situation evoking, 237-41, 291-4;
distinguished from mechanical "pull and haul" between ends, 237,
238;
distinguished from economic judgment, 243 note, 246 note, 271, 302,
303;
subject of, an end of action, 258;
analysis of process of, 295-302;
a reconstructive process, 295, 299.
EXISTENCE:
_versus_ meaning, 216, 217.
EXPERIENCE:
duality of, 16;
logic of, 19-21;
how organized, 42;
relation of thought to organization of, 43-8;
as disorganized, 75;
(see Absolute, Functions).
EXPERIMENT:
as form of deduction, 212.
FACT:
as equivalent to datum, 26, 50 ff.;
criteria for determining, 106 ff.;
as reality, 110;
in relation to both idea and reality, 380 ff.;
and theory, conflict between, 150, 151;
mutual dependence of, 168;
Whewell's view of, 163;
(see Datum, Idea, Reality, Truth).
FACTUAL JUDGMENT:
inadequate to complete mediation of conduct, 230-34;
controlled by ends, 269;
incidental to judgments of valuation, 272, 295;
types of, implied in acceptance of an end, 275, 276;
presents warrant for acceptance of ends, 277.
FITE, W., 331 note.
FRAGMENTARY, 72;
as quality of internal meaning, 360, 361;
as an attribute of finite experience, 364, 376;
(see Stimulus, Tension).
FUNCTIONS: OF EXPERIENCE, 16;
logic of, 18, 23;
distinguished from status, 16;
of thought, 23, 24, 78, 85;
total, as stimulus to thought, 36-8, 80;
different, and logical distinctions, 42;
different, confused by Lotze, 56;
sensations as, 58.
GENETIC:
method, significance of, 14, 15, 187;
distinctions, importance of, 24, 53, 62, 71, 85;
effect of ignoring, 53, 62, 71;
(see Psychology).
"GOOD":
practical significance of, as moral predicate, 259;
relation to "right," 335.
GORE, W. C., 377 note.
GORGIAS, 225.
GREEK VIEW OF THOUGHT AND REALITY, 342 ff.
GREEN, T. H., 274 note, 288 note 3, 315 note, 316 note, 330, 331.
HABIT:
relation of judgment to, interruption and resumption of, 154;
and hypothesis, 170;
and analogy, 176;
and simple enumeration, 176;
and conversion, 176;
and logical meaning, 198;
logical function of, 375, 376.
HERACLITUS:
his position, 215 ff.
HIPPO, 209.
HOBBES, THOMAS, 301.
HOMOGENEITY:
of the world-ground, 207;
of the world, 209, 210.
HUTCHESON, F., 301.
HYPOTHESIS:
nature of, VII, 143-83;
unequal stress commonly laid on its origin, structure, and function,
143-5;
relation of data and hypothesis strictly correlative, 145, 152, 168;
as predicate, 146, 183;
negative and positive sides of, 146, 155;
came to be recognized with rise of experimentalism, 159;
and test, 174, 175, 177 ff.;
origin of, 170, 171 ff.;
supposition and, 178;
interdependence of formation and test of, 182.
IDEA:
continuous with fact, 9, 10, 12;
distinction from fact, 13, 110;
Lotze's confusion regarding, 31, 32, 41, 65;
association of, 33;
contrast with datum, 52-4;
functional conception of, 70, 112 ff.;
objective validity of, 72-5;
as entire content of judgment, 119;
existential aspect of, 97, 99 ff., 113;
in relation to reference, 97 ff., 103, 129;
representational theory of, 100 ff., 113 ff., 141, 347 ff., 372 ff.;
universality of, 97 ff., 113 ff.;
as not referred to reality, 97 ff.;
as forms of control, 129;
function in judgment, 153, 154;
distinguished from image, 183-93;
distinction criticised, 199-202;
problems accompanying discovery of, 341;
in Greek thought, 342;
instrumental and representative functions of, 346 ff., 372 ff.;
purposive character of, 347 ff.;
external and internal meaning of, 347 ff.;
Royce's absolute system of, 348;
triple relation to purpose in Royce's account, 349 ff.;
logical _versus_ memorial, 351;
in relation to fact and reality, 379 ff.;
(see Hypothesis, Image, Predicate).
IDEAS:
Platonic, 247.
IMAGE:
as merely fanciful, 53;
in relation to meaning, 54;
place of, in judgment, 154;
distinction from idea, 189-93;
distinction criticised, 199-202;
as direct and indirect stimulus, 195-7.
IMAGERY:
empirical criteria of, 186;
function of, 187;
as representative, 186-8, 194;
psychological function of, 193-7;
logical function of, 198, 199.
IMMEDIATE:
as related to mediation, 342, 350 ff.
IMPRESSION:
Lotze's definition of, 27, 28, 29, 32;
objective determination of, 30, 31;
objective quality of, 31, 68;
as psychic, 53;
as transformed by thought into meanings or ideas, 67 ff.;
(see Idea, Meaning, Sensation).
INDETERMINATE:
as quality of finite experience, 364.
INDUCTION:
Bacon's view of, 157;
by enumeration and allied processes, 171;
and habit, 176;
_versus_ deduction, 211, 212.
INFERENCE:
Lotze's view of, 60;
in relation to judgment, 117.
INSTRUMENTAL:
as character of thought, 78-82, 128, 140, 346 ff., 372 ff.;
(see Purpose).
INTERACTION:
physical, 218 ff.
INTEREST:
direction of, 205.
INVENTION:
form of deduction, 212.
JAMES, WILLIAM, 81 note, 352 note, 375.
JEVONS, W. STANLEY, 169, 173.
JONES, HENRY, 43 note, 59 note, 66.
JUDGMENT:
Lotze's definition of, 59 and note;
relation of, to ideas, 60;
structure of, 75 note;
Bosanquet's theory of, 86 ff.;
as a function, 107 ff.;
dead and live, 108;
definition of, 86, 111;
relation to inference, 116 ff.;
limits of single, 123 ff.;
negative, 114 ff.;
of perception, 88 ff., 96;
parts of, 118 ff., 207, 208;
time relations of, 120 ff.;
as individual, 136;
as instrumental, 128, 140;
as categorical and hypothetical, 136;
as impersonal, 131;
as intuitive, 139;
various definitions of, 147 ff.;
analysis of, 149 ff.;
disjunctive, 155;
psychology of, 153;
purpose of, 154;
and interrupted activity, 154;
unique system of, 224-30;
general analysis of, 230-32;
purposive character of, 353 ff.;
universal, 354;
particular, 358;
individual, 359, 360;
mathematical, 354 ff., 370;
(see Economic, Ethical, Factual judgments, Copula, Predicate,
Reflection, Subject).
KANT, I., 43, 46, 60 note, 163, 263, 301.
KEPLER, 146, 181.
KNOWLEDGE:
in relation to reality, 102 ff.;
meaning and, 128;
"copy" and "instrumental" theories of, 129, 140, 141;
(see Judgment, Truth).
KÜLPE, O., 250 note.
LOGIC:
origin of, 4;
types of, 5-22;
as generic and specific, 18, 23;
relations to psychology, 14, 15, 63, 64, 184, 185, 192 ff.;
effect of modern psychology upon, 345;
relation to genetic method, 15-18;
problems illustrated, 19, 20;
social significance of, 20;
eristic the source of formal, 203;
pre-Socratic, 203;
and epistemology, 341, 342;
(see Epistemology, Psychology).
LOTZE:
criticised, Studies II, III, IV;
applied logic, 6;
thought as accessory, 56;
view of judgment, 147;
similarity between him and Whewell, 165 note;
quoted, 6, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 42, 56 note, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67,
68, 69, 73, 77, 83, 84.
MANY:
the, and the One, 210 ff., 218 ff.
MARGINAL UTILITY:
principle of, 307, 337 note.
Martineau, J., 262.
MATHEMATICS:
certain forms of proof in, 172 ff.;
judgments of, 354 ff., 370.
MCGILVARY, E. B., 257 note.
MEAD, G. H., 38 note, 337 note.
MEANING:
and logical idea, 30, 31, 32, 33, 41, 97;
as content of thought, 66 ff.;
three types of, 68;
as property of independent idea, 73-5;
and association of ideas, 33, 80;
and reference, 97;
world of, 98, 103, 112;
and knowledge, 89, 128, 190;
equivalent to response, 198;
_versus_ existence, 216-18;
inner and outer, 347 ff.;
(see Content, Idea, Reference).
MEANS:
as external and constitutive, 78;
reapplication of, the problem of economic valuation, 242, 243, 246,
259, 260, 303, 304;
objective in so far as not known adequately for one's purpose, 256;
definition of, incidental to all judgment, 272;
factual determination of, sometimes determinative of ends also, 270.
MEDIATION:
in relation to the immediate, 350 ff.
MELISSUS:
his dialectic, 214.
METAPHYSICS, 8, 9, 13, 18, 85;
and logic of experience, 13;
as natural history, 13-18;
worth, 19-22;
logical and, 72, 74;
(see Epistemology, Logic).
MILL, J. STUART, 147, 160 ff., 162, 166.
MIXTURE:
logical meaning of idea of, 219, 220, 222.
MONISM, 224.
MOORE, A. W., 76 note, 346 note.
MOTION:
conservation of, 206.
NEGATION, 97, 114 ff.
NEO-HEGELIAN, 43, 316.
NEWTON, I., 146, 159, 179;
his notes for philosophizing, 159 note.
[Greek: Nomô] _versus_ [Greek: physei], 226.
NORMATIVE AND GENETIC, 16;
(see End, Purpose, Validity, Value).
OBEDIENCE:
a factor in genesis of morality, 257
(see also Authority and Custom).
OBJECT:
how defined, 38, 39, 74, 76;
socially current, 230;
real, individual in significance, 230;
nature of the ethical, 240, 328;
of the economic, 259, 260, 328;
(see Substance).
OBJECTIVITY:
Lotze's view of, 68 (see Study IV);
types of, 68;
Lotze's distinction of logical and ontological, 72, 73;
distinction denied, 341, 342;
scope of conception of, 235;
commonly denied to other than factual judgments, 247, 248;
not a property of sense-elements as such, 248, 249;
a category of "apperception," 250;
a mark of the problematic as such, 250, 251, 255;
not ascertainable by any specific method, 252;
"obtrusiveness" as evidence of, 253;
"reliability" as evidence of, 263;
conditions of experience of, 253-6;
conditions of, present in the ethical and economic situations,
257-60;
a real characteristic of ethical and economic judgment, 261-3;
not dependent on social currency, 318-20;
nor on possibility of social currency, 320-24;
nor on permanence, 324-9;
(see Reality, Validity).
ONE:
the, and the Many, 210 ff., 218 ff.
PARMENIDES:
his logical position, 216 ff.;
influence on Platonic-Aristotelian logic, 217.
PARTICIPATION:
significance of, in Plato, 342 ff.
PARTICULARITY:
of an idea, 99, 113;
of a judgment, 358.
PERCEPTION:
judgments of, 88 ff., 96.
PERFECT, THE, 126.
PHYSICAL JUDGMENT (see Factual judgment).
[Greek: Physei] _versus_ [Greek: nomô], 226.
[Greek: Physis], 207, 224.
PLATO, 53 note;
on ideas and reality, 342 ff., 378, 379.
PLURALISM, 81 note.
POSITING:
thought as, 68.
PREDICATE:
how constituted, 75 note;
in relation to reality, 101, 103;
as hypothesis, 147, 153, 155, 156, 183, 186;
develops out of imaged end, 232;
interaction with subject, 232;
in ethical judgment, 258, 291-6;
in economic, 259, 260, 309-11;
(see Copula, Judgment, Hypothesis, Idea, Image).
PREDICATION, 118 ff.
PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY:
in Royce's philosophy, 368.
PRESUPPOSITIONS, 204, 206.
PROBLEMATIC (see Tension).
PROOF:
inductive, 172, 173;
of hypothesis, 174, 175;
relation of, to origin of hypothesis, 179-82;
Wundt's view of, 177, 178.
PROPOSITION:
and judgment, 118.
PROTAGORAS, 226.
PRUDENCE:
ethical status of, as a virtue, 246.
PYTHAGOREANS, THE:
their logical position, 216;
use of experiment, 216.
PSYCHICAL:
distinguished from physical, 25;
Lotze's view of impression as barely, 27, 28, 30;
view criticised, 31-4, 41, 42;
two meanings of, 38 note;
psychical mechanism, 31;
idea as, 53;
problem of logical and, 54 and note, 64;
activity of thought also made, by Lotze, 77 and note;
subjective result, 84;
(see Impression).
PSYCHOLOGY:
and logic, 14-16, 26, 63, 64, 153, 154, 184, 185, 192 ff., 345, 348;
principle of, functional, 229, 230;
genesis of, 280, 281;
logical value of functional, 293.
PSYCHOLOGISTS' FALLACY, 37.
PURPOSE:
logical importance of, 4, 9, 10, 13, 15, 20, 35, 58, 76, 80, 154;
logical aspects of, Study XI;
in an idea, 347 ff.;
in judgment, 353 ff.;
in criterion of truth and error, 361 ff.;
origin of, as idea, 373 ff.;
as method, 377;
(see End, Reconstruction).
QUALES:
of sensation, 55, 56, 60 note.
QUALITIES:
primary and secondary, 221.
QUESTION:
and judgment, 97, 114 ff.
RATIONALISM:
criticised, 156 ff., 188 ff., 298 ff.
RATIONALITY:
of world, 206.
REALITY:
as constructed by thought, 94 ff., 104;
as developing, 126;
as including fact and idea, 108, 110, 125, 382;
as independent of thought, 85, 87 ff., 104;
as subject of subject, 88 ff.;
popular criterion of, 105 ff.;
possibility of knowledge of, 91 ff., 102 ff., 125;
for the individual, 94 ff., 103, 112, 224 ff.;
as relative to judging, 149;
as given in sensation, 160;
"perception" and "recognition" coefficients of, 263-7, 277;
these present in ethical and economical experience, 267-9;
apprehension of, emotional, 263;
scope of complete conception of, 235, 340;
degrees of, 340;
Platonic conception of, 343 ff.;
Royce's conception of, 348;
as related to fact and idea, 379 ff.;
(see Fact, Truth, Validity).
REASON, SUFFICIENT:
principle of, 206.
RECONSTRUCTION:
the function of thinking, 38, 40, 46, 75, 76, 85;
effect of denying this, 47, 71, 72;
data and, 49 ff.;
in judgment, 154, 291, 295, 299, 311, 312, 346, 347;
(see Habit, Stimulus, Tension).
REFERENCE:
as social, 74;
problem of reference of ideas, 82 ff.;
as meaning, 97 ff.;
functional conception of, 113;
paradox of, 99;
idea as, 129.
REFLECTION:
as derived, 1-12;
naïve, 3, 9;
subject-matter of, 7, 8;
logic and, 3, 18, 23;
_versus_ constitutive thought, 43-8;
distinguished, 255;
general nature of, 269;
end not always explicit in, 270;
outcome of, statable in terms of end or means, 272;
(see Judgment, Thought).
REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT, 134.
REPRESENTATION:
as one of the two functions of an idea, 345, 347 ff., 372;
significance of, in ideal reconstruction, 376.
RESPONSE:
failure of, and origin of judgment, 154.
RESTLESSNESS:
as source of reflection and purpose, 374 ff.;
(see Tension).
RHETORIC:
origin of, 203, 204.
"RIGHT" (see "Good").
ROYCE, JOSIAH:
referred to, 76 note, 147;
theory of ideas discussed, 346-82;
quoted, 347, 348, 349, 350, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359,
362, 364, 366 note, 368, 370, 371, 374, 379, 380, 381.
SATISFACTION:
pause of, as marking attainment of truth, 362 ff.
SCHILLER, F. C. S., 327 note, 345 note.
SCIENCE:
relation to naïve experience, 10, 11;
its historic stages, 11, 12;
distinction of logical procedure from epistemology, 13;
same history as philosophy, 21, 22.
SELF, EMPIRICAL:
genesis and content of concept of, 290, 292, 331, 332 note 1.
SELF, "ENERGETIC":
implied in experience of "warrant," 277, 278;
stimulus to development of concept of empirical self, 279-81;
essential principle in all valuation, 281-5;
evolution of moral attitude of reference to, 285-9;
logical function of, in valuation, 296;
important place in economic valuation, 308, 309;
not capable of being described in terms of purpose or ideal, 313-16;
Bradley's misinterpretation of, 332 note.
SELF-REALIZATION (see also Green, T. H.):
theory of, as moral ideal futile, 298;
logically congruous with determinism and hedonism, 330, 331.
SENSATIONS:
logical import of, 57;
as functions of experience, 58;
as point of contact with reality, 90;
place in judgment, 154;
and ideas, 164 ff.;
(see Impressions, Psychical).
SENSORI-MOTOR ACTIVITY, 193, 200.
SHAFTESBURY, 301.
SIGWART, C.:
view of judgment, 147.
SKEPTICISM, 50 note, 85.
"SOCIAL CURRENCY":
implies an identity of aspect of an object to different persons,
229;
object having, an abstraction like social individual, 229;
not a test of objectivity, 318-29.
SOCRATES:
function of concept, 342.
SOPHISTS, THE, 225.
SPENCER, H., 248, 250 note 1, 315 note.
STANDARD (see also Predicate):
identified with predicate in ethical judgment, 238-40;
function of, in ethical judgment, 274, 299, 300;
morphology and mode of reconstruction of, 296, 297;
an ultimate ethical, impossible, 299;
objectivity of, 300, 301.
STIMULUS:
of thought, 7, 8, 17, 24, 37-40, 47, 81;
Lotze's view of, 27, 29, 30;
view criticised, 30-36;
confusion of datum with, 61;
defined, 75;
and judgment, 153-4;
as condition of thinking, 193 ff.;
as direct and indirect, 195-7;
of ethical judgment, 238-41, 291;
of economic, judgment, 241-6, 302;
(see Content, Datum).
STOUT, G. F.:
referred to, 349.
STRATTON, G. M., 318 note.
STRUCTURE, 15, 16, 17, 18, 24, 75;
(see Function).
SUBJECT:
of judgment, how constituted, 75 note;
as constructed by thought, 94 ff., 103;
as a part of judgment, 118 ff.;
as reality, 88 ff.;
as inside and outside of judgment, 93, 96;
functional theory of, 111, 125;
as that requiring explanation, 208, 211 ff.;
as modified by deduction, 212;
given by analysis of situation, 232;
interacts with predicate in judgment, 232;
of ethical judgment, 258, 296-8;
of economic judgment, 259, 260, 304, 309-11;
(see Copula, Datum, Judgment, Predicate).
SUBJECTIVE:
distinguished from objective, 25;
Lotze's view of impressions as purely, 27, 28;
view criticised, 31;
definition of, 39;
developed only within reflection, 52, 53;
(see Psychical).
SUBJECTIVISM:
in Lotze, 83, 84;
in Royce, 360.
SUBJECT-MATTER OF THOUGHT:
distinguished as stimulus, datum, and content, 7, 8, 24;
confusion of these (genetic) distinctions, 17, 18;
as antecedent, Study II;
as datum, Study III;
as content, Study IV.
SUBSTANCE:
ethical theories based on logic involved in rationalistic conception
of, 298, 299;
meaning of concept of, 326, 327;
type-form of conduct analogous to concept of a particular kind of,
327, 328.
SUBSTANTIATION:
significance of Plato's, of ideas, 342 ff.
SUPPOSITION AND HYPOTHESIS, 178-81.
SWEET, HENRY: quoted, 153 note.
SYNTHETIC (see Reconstruction).
TAYLOR, A. E., 299 note 2, 315 note, 316, 324.
TELEOLOGY (see End, Purpose).
TEMPTATION:
ethical, 238, 301;
economic, 305.
TENSION:
as stimulus to thought, 37, 38, 49, 50, 53, 70, 85;
in relation to constitution of sensory datum, 53, 58, 59, 70;
constitution of meaning as distinct from fact, 75, 85, 154, 237-46,
250, 251, 255, 291-5, 374 ff.;
(see Purpose, Reconstruction).
THALES:
his [Greek: archê], water, 209;
in relation to deduction, 212, 214.
THOUGHT:
forms of, 58 ff.;
as modes of organizing data, 63;
three kinds according to Lotze, 68, 69;
as positing and distinguishing, 69;
validity of its function, 76-82;
of its products, 82-5;
instrumental character, 78-82;
as discriminating sensory qualities, 200-202;
(see Judgment, Reflection).
TIME:
as involved in judgment, 120 ff.
TRANSCENDENTALISM, 29, 43-8.
TRENDELENBURG, A.:
view of judgment, 147.
TRUTH: criterion of, 84;
Bosanquet's conception of, 105;
popular criterion of, 105 ff.;
and purpose, Study XI;
representational _versus_ teleological view of, 341 ff.;
criterion of, 361 ff.;
(see Objectivity, Validity).
UEBERWEG:
view of judgment, 147.
UNIFORMITY:
of nature, 206.
UNITY:
of the world, 207.
UNIVERSAL:
first and second according to Lotze, 56, 59, 69;
ideas as, 97 ff., 113;
judgment as, 136;
Mr. Royce's treatment of, 354 ff.;
necessity and, 357.
VALIDITY:
of thought, 7, 8;
relation to genesis, 14, 15;
test, 17, 18;
defines content of thought, 24;
problem of, Study IV;
Lotze's dilemma regarding, 71-85;
of bare object of thought, 72-6;
of activity of thought, 76-82;
of product of thought, 82-5;
(see Objectivity, Reality, Truth).
VALUE:
Lotze's distinction of, from existence, 28, 29;
view criticised, 31, 41, 45;
organized, of experience, 42-8;
determined in and by a logical process, 233;
nature of consciousness of, 273, 333-5;
function of consciousness of, 335-7;
properly mediate and functional in character, 338-40.
VALUATION (see also Ethical judgment, Economic judgment):
includes only ethical and economic types of judgment, 227, 236,
338-40;
general account of process of, 272, 295;
reconstructive of self as well as of reality, 312.
VENN, JOHN:
origin of hypothesis, 169.
"WARRANT":
consciousness of, accompanies purely factual as well as valuational
judgment processes, 276, 277;
the constitutive feature of survey of factual conditions, 278, 279.
WELTON, J.:
origin of hypothesis, 171.
WHEWELL, WILLIAM, 163;
view of sensations and ideas, 164, 165;
of induction, 165;
a certain agreement between him and Mill, 166.
WIESER, F. VON, 335 note 2.
WILL:
as related to thought, 366 note;
(see Activity, End, Purpose).
WUNDT, W.:
view of judgment, 147;
view of mathematical induction, 173;
formation and proof of hypothesis, 177 ff.;
distinction between supposition and hypothesis, 178 ff.
"WRONG" (see "Bad").
XENOPHANES:
his logical position, 216.
ZENO:
his dialectic, 214.
FOOTNOTES
[1] _Logic_ (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, pp. 10, 11. Italics
mine.
[2] See ANGELL, "The Relations of Structural and Functional Psychology
to Philosophy," _The Decennial Publications of the University of
Chicago_, Vol. III (1903), Part II, pp. 61-6, 70-72.
[3] See _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI, pp. 117-20.
[4] See statements regarding the psychological and the logical in _The
Child and the Curriculum_, pp. 28, 29.
[5] LOTZE, _Logic_ (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, p. 2. For the
preceding exposition see Vol. I, pp. 1, 2, 13, 14, 37, 38; also
_Microkosmus_, Book V, chap. 4.
[6] LOTZE, _Logic_, Vol. I, pp. 6, 7.
[7] LOTZE, _Logic_ (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, p. 25.
[8] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 36.
[9] _Ibid._
[10] _Microkosmus_, Book V, chap. 4.
[11] _Logic_, Vol. II, p. 235; see the whole discussion, §§ 325 through
327.
[12] The emphasis here is upon the term "existences," and in its plural
form. Doubtless the distinction of some experiences as belonging to me,
as mine in a peculiarly intimate way, from others as chiefly concerning
other persons, or as having to do with things, is an early one. But this
is a distinction of _concern_, of value. The distinction referred to
above is that of making an _object_, or presentation, out of this felt
type of value, and thereby breaking it up into distinct "events," etc.,
with their own laws of inner connection. This is the work of
psychological analysis. Upon the whole matter of the psychical I am glad
to refer to PROFESSOR GEORGE H. MEAD'S article entitled "The Definition
of the Psychical," Vol. III, Part II, of _The Decennial Publications of
the University of Chicago_.
[13] We have a most acute and valuable criticism of Lotze from this
point of view in PROFESSOR HENRY JONES, _Philosophy of Lotze_, 1895. My
specific criticisms agree in the main with his, and I am glad to
acknowledge my indebtedness. But I cannot agree in the belief that the
business of thought is to qualify reality as such; its occupation
appears to me to be determining the reconstruction of some aspect or
portion of reality, and to fall within the course of reality itself;
being, indeed, the characteristic medium of its activity. And I cannot
agree that reality as such, with increasing fulness of knowledge,
presents itself as a thought-system, though, as just indicated, I have
no doubt that reality appears as thought-specifications or values, just
as it does as affectional and æsthetic and the rest of them.
[14] Bradley's criticisms of rationalistic idealism should have made the
force of this point reasonably familiar.
[15] The common statement that primitive man projects his own volitions,
emotions, etc., into objects is but a back-handed way of expressing the
truth that "objects," etc., have only gradually emerged from their
life-matrix. Looking back, it is almost impossible to avoid the fallacy
of supposing that somehow such objects were there first and were
afterward emotionally appreciated.
[16] Of course, this very element may be the precarious, the ideal, and
possibly fanciful of some other situation. But it is to change the
historic into the absolute to conclude that therefore everything is
uncertain, all at once, or as such. This gives metaphysical skepticism
as distinct from the working skepticism which is an inherent factor in
all reflection and scientific inquiry.
[17] But this is a slow progress within reflection. Plato, who was
influential in bringing this general distinction to consciousness, still
thought and wrote as if "image" were itself a queer sort of objective
existence; it was only gradually that it was disposed of as psychical,
or a phase of immediate experience.
[18] Of course, this means that what is excluded and so left behind in
the problem of determination of _this_ objective content is regarded as
psychical. With reference to other problems and aims this same psychic
existence is initial, not survival. Released from its prior absorption
in some unanalyzed experience it gains standing and momentum on its own
account; _e. g._, the "personal equation" represents what is eliminated
from a given astronomic time-determination as being purely subjective,
or "source-of-error." But it is initiatory in reference to new modes of
technique, re-readings of previous data--new considerations in
psychology, even new socio-ethical judgments. Moreover, it remains a
fact, and even a worthful fact, as a part of one's own "inner"
experience, as an immediate _psychical reality_. That is to say, there
is a region of _personal_ experience (mainly emotive or affectional)
already recognized as a sphere of value. The "source of error" is
disposed of by making it a _fact_ of this region. The recognition of
falsity does not _originate_ the psychic (p. 38, note).
[19] Of course, this is a further reflective distinction. The plain man
and the student do not determine the extraneous, irrelevant, and
misleading matter as image in a _psychological_ sense, but only as
_fanciful_ or fantastic. Only to the psychologist and for _his_ purpose
does it break up into image and meaning.
[20] Bradley, more than any other writer, has seized upon this double
antithesis, and used it first to condemn the logical as such, and then
turned it around as the impartial condemnation of the psychical also.
See _Appearance and Reality_. In chap. 15 he metes out condemnation to
"thought" because it can never take in the psychical existence or
reality which is present; in chap. 19, he passes similar judgment upon
the "psychical" because it is brutally fragmentary. Other
epistemological logicians have wrestled--or writhed--with this problem,
but I believe Bradley's position is impregnable--from the standpoint of
ready-made differences. When the antithesis is treated as part and lot
of the process of defining the truth of a particular subject-matter, and
thus as historic and relative, the case is quite otherwise.
[21] Vol. I, pp. 28-34.
[22] It is interesting to see how explicitly Lotze is compelled finally
to differentiate two aspects in the antecedents of thoughts, one of
which is necessary in order that there may be anything to call out
thought (a lack, or problem); the other in order that when thought is
evoked it may find data at hand--that is, material in shape to receive
and respond to its exercise. "The manifold matter of ideas is brought
before us, not only in the _systematic order of its qualitative
relationships_, but in the rich _variety of local and temporal
combinations_.... The _combinations of heterogeneous ideas_ ... forms
the _problems_, in connection with which the efforts of thought to
reduce coexistence to coherence will _subsequently_ be made. The
_homogeneous or similar_ ideas, on the other hand, give occasion to
separate, to connect, and to count their repetitions." (Vol. I, pp. 33,
34; italics mine.) Without the heterogeneous variety of the local and
temporal juxtapositions there would be nothing to excite thought.
Without the systematic arrangement of quality there would be nothing to
meet thought and reward it for its efforts. The homogeneity of
qualitative relationships, _in the pre-thought material_, gives the
tools or instruments by which thought is enabled successfully to tackle
the heterogeneity of collocations and conjunctions also found in the
same material! One would suppose that when Lotze reached this point he
might have been led to suspect that in this remarkable adjustment of
thought-stimuli, thought-material, and thought-tools to one another, he
must after all be dealing, not with something prior to the
thought-function, but with the necessary elements in and of the
thought-situation.
[23] _Supra_, p. 30.
[24] For the identity of sensory experience with the point of greatest
strain and stress in conflicting or tensional experience, see "The
Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," _Psychological Review_, Vol. III, p.
57.
[25] For the "accessory" character of thought, see LOTZE, Vol. I, pp. 7,
25-7, 61, etc.
[26] BOSANQUET, _Logic_ (Vol. I, pp. 30-34), and Jones (_Philosophy of
Lotze_, 1895, chap. 4) have called attention to a curious inconsistency
in Lotzes's treatment of judgment. On one hand, the statement is as
given above. Judgment grows out of conception in making explicit the
determining relation of universal to its own particular, implied in
conception. But, on the other hand, judgment grows not out of conception
at all, but out of the question of determining connection in change.
Lotze's nominal reason for this latter view is that the conceptual world
is purely static; since the actual world is one of change, we need to
pass upon what really goes together (is causal) in the change as
distinct from such as are merely coincident. But, as Jones clearly
shows, it is also connected with the fact that, while Lotze nominally
asserts that judgment grows out of conception, he treats conception as
the result of judgment since the first view makes judgment a mere
explication of the content of an idea, and hence merely expository or
analytic (in the Kantian sense) and so of more than doubtful
applicability to reality. The affair is too large to discuss here, and I
will content myself with referring to the oscillation between
conflicting contents, and gradation of sensory qualities already
discussed (p. 56, note). It is judgment which grows out of the former,
because judgment is the whole situation as such; conception is referable
to the latter because it _is_ one abstraction within the whole (the
solution of possible meanings of the data) just as the datum is another.
In truth, since the sensory datum is not absolute, but comes in a
historical context, the qualities apprehended as constituting the datum
simply define the locus of conflict in the entire situation. They are
attributives of the contents-in-tension of the colliding things, not
calm untroubled ultimates. On pp. 33 and 34 of Vol. I, Lotze recognizes
(as we have just seen) that, as matter of fact, it is both sensory
qualities in their systematic grading, or quantitative determinations
(see Vol. I, p. 43, for the recognition of the necessary place of the
quantitative in the true concept), _and_ the "rich variety of local and
temporal combinations," that provoke thought and supply it with
material. But, as usual, he treats this simply as a historical accident,
not as furnishing the key to the whole matter. In fine, while the
heterogeneous collocations and successions constitute the problematic
element that stimulates thought, quantitative determination of the
sensory quality furnishes one of the two chief means through which
thought deals with the problem. It is a reduction of the original
colliding contents to a form in which the effort at redintegration gets
maximum efficiency. The concept, as ideal meaning, is of course the
other partner to the transaction. It is getting the various possible
meanings-of-the-data into such shape as to make them most useful in
construing the data. The bearing of this upon the subject and predicate
of judgment cannot be discussed here.
[27] See Vol. I, pp. 38, 59, 61, 105, 129, 197, for Lotze's treatment of
these distinctions.
[28] Vol. I, p. 36; see also Vol. II, pp. 290, 291.
[29] Vol. II, p. 246; the same is reiterated in Vol. II, p. 250, where
the question of origin is referred to as a corruption in logic. Certain
psychical acts are necessary as "conditions and occasions" of logical
operations, but the "deep gulf between psychical mechanism and thought
remains unfilled."
[30] _Philosophy of Lotze_, chap. 3, "Thought and the Preliminary
Process of Experience."
[31] Vol. I, p. 38.
[32] Vol. I, p. 13; last italics mine.
[33] Vol. I, p. 14; italics mine.
[34] See Vol. I, pp. 16-20. On p. 22 this work is declared to be not
only the first, but the most indispensable of all thought's operations.
[35] Vol. I, p. 26.
[36] Vol. I, p. 35.
[37] Vol. I, p. 36; see the strong statements already quoted, p. 30.
What if this canon were applied in the first act of thought referred to
above: the original objectification which transforms the mere state into
an abiding quality or meaning? Suppose, that is, it were said that the
first objectifying act cannot make a substantial (or attached) quale out
of a mere state of feeling; it must _find_ the distinction it makes
there already! It is clear we should at once get a _regressus ad
infinitum_. We here find Lotze face to face with this fundamental
dilemma: thought either arbitrarily forces in its own distinctions, or
else just repeats what is already there--is either falsifying or futile.
This same contradiction, so far as it affects the impression, has
already been discussed. See p. 31.
[38] Vol. I, p. 31.
[39] As we have already seen, the concept, the meaning as such, is
always a factor or status in a reflective situation; it is always a
predicate of judgment, in use in interpreting and developing the logical
subject, or datum of perception. See Study VII, on the Hypothesis.
[40] ROYCE, in his _World and Individual_, Vol. I, chaps. 6 and 7, has
criticised the conception of meaning as valid, but in a way which
implies that there is a difference between validity and reality, in the
sense that the meaning or content of the valid idea becomes real only
when it is experienced in direct feeling. The above implies, of course,
a difference between validity and reality, but finds the test of
validity in exercise of the function of direction or control to which
the idea makes pretension or claim. The same point of view would
profoundly modify Royce's interpretation of what he terms "inner" and
"outer" meaning. See MOORE, _The University of Chicago Decennial
Publications_, Vol. III, on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality."
[41] Vol. II, pp. 257, 265 and in general Book III, chap. 4. It is
significant that thought itself, appearing as an act of thinking over
against its own content, is here treated as psychical. Even this
explicit placing of thinking in the psychical sphere, along with
sensations and the associative mechanism, does not, however, lead Lotze
to reconsider his statement that the psychological problem is totally
irrelevant and even corrupting as regards the logical. Consequently, as
we see in the text, it only gives him one more difficulty to wrestle
with: how a process which is _ex officio_ purely psychical and
subjective can yet yield results which are valid, in a logical, to say
nothing of an ontological, sense.
[42] Professor James's satisfaction in the
contemplation of bare pluralism, of disconnection, of radical
having-nothing-to-do-with-one-another, is a case in point. The
satisfaction points to an æsthetic attitude in which the brute diversity
becomes itself one interesting object; and thus unity asserts itself in
its own denial. When discords are hard and stubborn, and intellectual
and practical unification are far to seek, nothing is commoner than the
device of securing the needed unity by recourse to an emotion which
feeds on the very brute variety. Religion and art and romantic affection
are full of examples.
[43] Lotze even goes so far in this connection as to say that the
antithesis between our ideas and the objects to which they are directed
is itself a part of the world of ideas (Vol. II, p. 192). Barring the
phrase "world of _ideas_" (as against world of continuous experiencing)
he need only have commenced at this point to have traveled straight and
arrived somewhere. But it is absolutely impossible to hold both this
view and that of the original independent existence of something given
to and in thought and an independent existence of a thought-activity,
thought-forms, and thought-contents.
[44] The criticism of Bosanquet's theory of the judgment offered in this
paper is from the standpoint of the theory of the judgment developed by
Professor John Dewey, in his lectures on "The Theory of Logic." While
the chief interest of the paper, as the title implies, is critical, it
has been necessary to devote a portion of it to the exposition of the
point of view from which the criticism is made.--H. B. T.
[45] The references throughout this paper are to the pages of Vol. I of
BERNARD BOSANQUET, _Logic or the Morphology of Knowledge_, Oxford, 1888.
[46] F. H. BRADLEY, _Principles of Logic_, p. 64.
[47] The difficulty, of course, is not a merely formal one, much less a
verbal one. Instinctively we grant to Bosanquet his statement that
reality is a continuous whole; we feel it almost captious to question
his right to it. But why? Because the _content of judgment_ is
continuous; judgment is always engaged with the determination of a
related totality. But if all content is ideal, and judgment is just the
application of this content to reality in virtue of an isolated contact,
surely it begs the entire question to say that reality apart from the
content applied is continuous, and then to use this assertion to justify
the objective validity of the judgment--its element of permanent truth.
[48] There is good reason for believing that Mr. Bosanquet escapes, in
his own mind, the difficulty by the term "correspondence." "The name
stands for these elements in the idea which _correspond_ in the separate
worlds;" we may even be accused of injustice in confusing this
correspondence with bare identity of existence. But if one idea
corresponds to another in the sense of referring to it, what is this but
the fact to be explained--how an existence can refer beyond itself?
[49] This conclusion is clearly recognized by BRADLEY, _Appearance and
Reality_, chap. 4.
[50] It would be suggestive to inquire in what sense conscious thought
claims to know. Is it a general claim which thought _qua_ thought puts
forth, or is it the claim of the content of some particular thought? The
former, of course, is a mere pious aspiration having no reference to
specific validity or truth; the latter is precisely the problem under
consideration.
[51] Bosanquet would seem to have followed Lotze in this insertion of a
world of "meanings" intermediate between the individual idea as such and
the real object as such. See the criticism already passed, pp. 93-5.
[52] Or, the situation as questioned is itself a fact, and a perfectly
determinate (though not determined) one. See pp. 38, 50.
[53] Of course, the distinction between the process of arriving as
temporal, and the essential relation of subject and predicate as
eternal, harks back to the notion of judgment as the process by which
"we" reproduce, or make real for ourselves, a reality already real
within itself. And it involves just the same difficulties. The relation
of subject and predicate--this simultaneous distinction and mutual
reference--has meaning only in an act of adjustment, of attempt to
control, within which we distribute our conditions. When the act is
completed, the relation of subject and predicate, as subject and
predicate, quite disappears. An eternal relation of the two is
meaningless; we might as well talk of an eternal reaching for the same
distant object by the same hand. In such conceptions, we have only
grasped a momentary phase of a situation, isolated it, and set it up as
an entity. Significant results would be reached by considering the
"synthetic" character (in the Kantian sense) of judgment from this point
of view. All modern logicians agree that judgment must be ampliative,
must extend knowledge; that a "trifling proposition" is no judgment at
all. What does this mean save that judgment is developmental,
transitive, in effect and purport? And yet these same writers conceive
of Reality as a _finished system of content in a complete and
unchangeable single Judgment_! It is impossible to evade the
contradiction save by recognizing that since it is the business of
judgment to transform, its test (or Truth) is successful performance of
the particular transformation it has set itself, and that transformation
is temporal.
[54] It is worth considering whether this may not be the reality of
Royce's distinction between outer and inner meaning. An anticipation of
experience is the working prerequisite of the control which will realize
the idea, _i. e._, the experience anticipated. One is no more "inner" or
"outer" than the other.
[55] _Logik_, p. 304.
[56] DE MORGAN, _Budget of Paradoxes_, pp. 55, 56; quoted by WELTON,
_Logic_, Vol. II, p. 60.
[57] Advanced grammarians treat this matter in a way which should be
instructive to logicians. The hypothesis, says SWEET (§ 295 of _A New
English Grammar, Logical and Historical_, Oxford, 1892), suggests an
affirmation or negation "as objects of thought." "In fact, we often say
_supposing_ (that is, 'thinking') _it is true_, instead of _if it is
true_." In a word, the hypothetical judgment as such puts explicitly
before us the content of thought, of the predicate or hypothesis; and in
so far is a moment in judgment rather than adequate judgment itself.
[58] This carries with it, of course, the notion that "sensation" and
"image" are not distinct psychical existences in themselves, but are
distinguished logical forces.
[59] Concerning the strict correlativity of subject and predicate, data
and hypothesis, see p. 34.
[60] _Novum Organum_, Vol. I, p. 61.
[61] Newton's "Rules for Philosophizing" (_Principia_, Book III) are as
follows:
Rule I. "No more causes of natural things are to be admitted than such
as are both true, and sufficient to explain the phenomena of those
things."
Rule II. "Natural effects of the same kind are to be referred as far as
possible to the same causes."
Rule III. "Those qualities of bodies that can neither be increased nor
diminished in intensity, and which are found to belong to all bodies
within reach of our experiments are to be regarded as qualities of all
bodies whatever."
Rule IV. "In experimental philosophy propositions collected by induction
from phenomena are to be regarded either as accurately true or very
nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis, till other
phenomena occur, by which they are made more accurate or are rendered
subject to exceptions."
[62] Book III, chap. 2, sec. 5; italics mine. The latter part of the
passage, beginning with the words "If we did not often commence," etc.,
is quoted by Mill from Comte. The words "neither induction nor deduction
would enable us to understand even the simplest phenomena" are his own.
[63] Book III, chap. 7, sec. 1.
[64] Book III, chap. 14, secs. 4 and 5.
[65] WILLIAM WHEWELL, _The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_,
London, 1840.
[66] The essential similarity between Whewell's view and that of Lotze,
already discussed (see chap. 3) is of course explainable on the basis of
their common relationship to Kant.
[67] _Logic_, Book IV, chap. 2, sec. 2; italics mine.
[68] _Ibid._
[69] _Ibid._, sec. 4; in sec. 6 he states even more expressly that any
conception is appropriate in the degree in which it "helps us toward
what we wish to understand."
[70] _Ibid._, sec. 6; italics mine.
[71] VENN, _Empirical Logic_, p. 383.
[72] VENN, _Empirical Logic_, p. 25; italics mine.
[73] WELTON, _Manual of Logic_, Vol. II, chap. 3.
[74] W. S. JEVONS, _Principles of Science_, pp. 231, 232.
[75] B. ERDMANN, "Zur Theorie des Syllogismus und der Induktion,"
_Philosophische Abhandlungen_, Vol. VI, p. 230.
[76] WUNDT, _Logik_, 2d ed., Vol. II, p. 131.
[77] WELTON, _Manual of Logic_, Vol. II, p. 72.
[78] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 452 ff.
[79] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 454-461.
[80] BOSANQUET, _Logic_, Vol. I, p. 46.
[81] BRADLEY, _Principles of Logic_, p. 10.
[82] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 74.
[83] BRADLEY, _Principles of Logic_, p. 11.
[84] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 75, 76.
[85] BRADLEY, _op. cit._, pp. 4-6.
[86] _Op. cit._, pp. 7, 8.
[87] This study may be regarded as in some sense a development of pp.
7-10 of _The Necessary and the Contingent in the Aristotelian System_,
published in 1896 by The University of Chicago Press. While quite
independent in treatment, the two papers supplement each other.
[88] The best special illustration of this truth with which I am
acquainted is presented for the science of chemistry in an article by F.
WALD, "Die Genesis der stöchiometrischen Grundgesetze," in _Zeitschrift
für physikalische Chemie_, Vol. XVIII (1895), pp. 337 ff.
[89] [Greek: Xi] 201, 246.
[90] H 99.
[91] In allusion to fr. 90 (DIELS). DIELS finds in fr. 108 (fr. 18,
BYWATER), [Greek: oti sophon esti pantôn kechôrismenon] the thought that
God is the Absolute, comparing the [Greek: Nous] of Anaxagoras and the
[Greek: chôristê idea] of Plato and the [Greek: ousia chôristê] of
Aristotle. He assumes that [Greek: sophon]=[Greek: logos] and concedes
great significance to the fragment. But this interpretation is utterly
incompatible with everything else that we know of Heraclitus, and should
be admitted only if it were the only one admissible. ZELLER discusses
the fragment at length, Vol. I, p. 629, 1. If Diels's interpretation be
accepted, the exposition above given of Heraclitus's logical position
must be abandoned.
[92] It has been, and in some quarters is still, the fashion to say that
Heraclitus is the originator of the doctrine of relativity; but Zeller
is quite right in denying the charge. No doubt his teachings lent
themselves readily to such a development, but he did not so express
himself. According to him the _contrarieties coexist in the process_.
[93] _Cf._ RITTER-PRELLER, § 65_c_.
[94] This, in a word, is the burden of my study of _The Necessary and
the Contingent in the Aristotelian System_.
[95] I have in preparation a study of the problem of physical
interaction in Pre-Socratic philosophy which deals with this question in
all its phases.
[96] This statement is, of course, figurative, since Empedocles denied
the existence of a void.
[97] I cannot now undertake a defense of this statement, which runs
counter to certain ancient reports, but must reserve a full discussion
for my account of physical interaction.
[98] The motive for making this assumption was clearly the desire to
make of the [Greek: Nous] the prime mover in the world while exempting
it from reaction on the part of the world, which would have been
unavoidable if its nature had contained parts of other things. It is the
same problem of "touching without being touched in return" that led
Aristotle to a similar definition of God and of the rational soul. The
same difficulty besets the absolutely "simple" soul of Plato's _Phaedo_
and the causality of the Ideas.
[99] ARISTOTLE, _De Generatione et Corruptione_, 323^b 10 f.
[100] We have seen that this distinction was latent in Anaximenes's
process of rarefaction and condensation. For other matters see CHAIGNET,
_Histoire de la Psychologie_, Vol. I, p. 114, whose account, however,
needs to be corrected in some particulars.
[101] I say "perhaps" because ancient reports differ as to the precise
relation of position and arrangement to the distinction between
qualities, primary and secondary.
[102] This is only another instance of what MR. VENN (_Empirical Logic_,
p. 56) has wittily alluded to as "screwing up the cause and the effect
into close juxtaposition."
[103] Simplicius says [Greek: euthys meta to prooimion]; see DIELS, _Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_ (Berlin, 1903), p. 347, l. 18.
[104] Fr. 2, DIELS.
[105] See DIELS, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_, p. 343, l. 2; p. 344, l.
27.
[106] 320 C f.
[107] Considerations of space as well as circumstances attending the
immediate preparation of this discussion for the press have precluded
any but the most general and casual reference to the recent literature
of the subject. Much of this literature only imperfectly distinguishes
the logical and psychological points of view, so that critical reference
to it, unaccompanied by detailed restatement and analysis of the
positions criticised, would be useless.
[108] In order to avoid complicating the problems, we have here employed
the common notion that the physical world, physical object, and property
may be taken for granted as possible adequate contents of judgment, and
that the problem is only as to the objectivity of economic and ethical
contents. Of course we may, in the end, come to believe that the
"physical" object is itself an economic construct, in the large sense of
"economic;" that is, an instrument of an effective or successful
experience. Thus in terms of the illustration used above, in the
attitude of entertaining in a general way the plan of building a house
_of some sort or other_, one may have before him various building
materials the ascertained qualities of which are, it may be, socially
recognized as in a general way fitting them for such a use. There is
doubtless so much of real foundation for the common notion here referred
to. But along with the _definition_ of the plan in ethical and economic
judgment, along with the determination actually to build a house, and a
house of a certain specific kind, must go _further_ determination of the
means in their physical aspects, a determination which all the while
reacts into the process of determination of the end. See below, p. 246,
note 3.
[109] In the moral life, as elsewhere, the distinction of deduction and
induction is one of degree. There is but one _type_ or _method_ of
inference, though some inferences may approach more closely than do
others the limit of pure "subsumption."
[110] See III below.
[111] It is no part of the present view that the ends which enter into
economic conflict are incapable of becoming organic and intrinsically
interrelated members of the provisional system of life. On the contrary,
the very essence of our contention is that adjustment established
between two such conflicting ends in economic judgment is in itself
ethical and a member of the provisional system of the individual's ends
of life, and will stand as such, subject to modification through changes
elsewhere in the system, so long as the economic conditions in view of
which it was determined remained unchanged. The "mutual exclusiveness"
of the ends in ethical deliberation is simply the correlate of a
relative fixity in certain of the conditions of life. A man's command
over the means of obtaining such things as books and fuel varies much
and often suddenly in a society like ours from time to time; but, on the
other hand, his physical condition, his intelligence, his powers of
sympathy, and his spiritual capacity for social service commonly do not.
Hence there can be and is a certain more or less definite and permanent
comprehensive scheme of conduct morally obligatory upon him so far as
the exercise of these latter faculties is concerned, but so far as his
conduct depends upon the variable conditions mentioned, it cannot be
prescribed in general terms, nor will any provisional ideal of moral
selfhood admit any such prescriptions as integral elements into itself.
The moral self is an ideal construct based upon these fixed conditions
of life--conditions so fixed that the spiritual furtherance or
deterioration likely to result from certain modes of conduct involving
and affecting them can be estimated directly and with relative ease by
the "ethical" method of judgment. Implied in such a construct is, of
course, a reference to certain relatively permanent social and also
physical conditions. In so far as society and physical nature, and for
that matter the individual's own nature, are _variable_, these are the
subjects of "scientific" or "factual" judgments incidental to the
determination of problems by the "economic" method--problems, that is,
for which no _general_ answer, through reference to a more or less
definite and stable working concept of the self, can be given. Thus our
knowledge of the physical universe is largely, if not chiefly,
incidental to and conditioned by our economic experience. Again, our
economic judgments are in every case determinative of the self in
situations in which, as presented by (perhaps even momentarily) variable
conditions, physical, social, or personal, the ethical method is
inapplicable. In a socialistic state, in which economic conditions might
be more stable than in our present one, many problems in consumption
which now are economic in one sense would be ethical because admitting
of solution by reference to the type of self presupposed in the
established state program of production and distribution. Even now it is
not easy to specify an economic situation the solution of which is
absolutely indifferent ethically. There is a possibility of intemperance
even in so "æsthetic" an indulgence as Turkish rugs.
[112] Accordingly there can be no distinction of ends, some as ethical,
others as economic, but from an ethical standpoint indifferent, and yet
others as amenable neither to ethical nor to economic judgment. The type
of situation and the corresponding mode of judgment employed determines
whether an end shall be for the time being ethical, economic, or of
neither sort conspicuously.
[113] The right of Prudence to rank among the virtues cannot, on our
present view, be questioned. Economic judgment, though it must be
valuation of means, is essentially choice of ends--and, as would appear,
choice of a sort peculiarly difficult by reason of the usually slight
intrinsic relation between the ends involved and also by reason of the
absence of effective points of view for comparison. Culture, as Emerson
remarks, "sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name for
wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants." And again,
"The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and
cowards, and is the subject of all comedy.... [The true prudence] takes
the laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are,
and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good" (Essay on
_Prudence_).
[114] Here again we purposely use inaccurate language. Strictly, the
ends here spoken of as competing are such, we must say, only because
they are as yet in a measure indeterminate, wanting in "clearness," and
are not yet understood in their true economic character; likewise the
means are wanting in that final shade or degree of physical and
mechanical determinateness which they are presently to possess as means
to a finally determinate economic end. Thus economic judgment, by which
is to be understood determination of an end of action by the economic
method and in accordance with economic principles, involves in general
physical re-determination of the means. The means which at the outset of
the present economic judgment-process appear as physically available
indifferently for either of the tentative ends under consideration are
only in a general way the same means for knowledge as they will be when
the economic problem has been solved. They are, so far as now
determinate, the outcome of former physical judgment-processes
incidental to the definition of economic ends in former situations like
the present.
[115] In our discussion of this preliminary question there is no attempt
to furnish what might be called an _analysis_ of the consciousness of
objectivity. This has been undertaken by various psychologists in recent
well-known contributions to the subject. For our purpose it is necessary
only to specify the intellectual and practical attitude out of which the
consciousness of objectivity arises; not the sensory "elements" or
factors involved in its production as an experience.
[116] So, on the other hand, our vague organic sensations are possibly
more instructive as they are, _for their own purpose_, than they would
be if more sharply discriminated and complexly referred.
For convenience we here meet the view under consideration with its own
terminology; we by no means wish to be understood as indorsing this
terminology as psychologically correct. The sense-quality of which we
read in "structural psychology" is, we hold, not a structural unit at
all, but in fact a highly abstract development out of that unorganized
whole of sensory experience in which reflective attention begins. There
is, for example, no such thing as the simple unanalyzable sense-quality
"red" in consciousness until judgment has proceeded far enough to have
constructed a definite and measured experience which may be symbolized
as "object-before-me-possessing-the-attribute-red." In place of the
original sensory total-experience we now have a more or less developed
perceptual (_i. e._, judgmental) total-experience. It is an instance of
the "psychological fallacy" to interpret what are really elements of
_meaning_ in a perceived object constructed in judgment (for this is the
true nature of the "simple idea of sensation" or "sense-element") as so
many bits of psychical material which were isolated from each other at
the outset, and have been externally joined together in their present
combination.
[117] The phrase is Külpe's and is used in his sense of consciousness
taken as a whole, as, for example, attentive, apperceptive, volitional,
rather than in the sense made familiar by Spencer and others.
[118] The foregoing discussion is in many ways similar to Brentano's
upon the same subject. In discussing his first class of modes of
consciousness, the _Vorstellungen_, he says: "We find no contrasts
between presentations excepting those of the objects to which the
presentations refer. Only in so far as warm and cold, light and dark, a
high note and a low, form contrasts can we speak of the corresponding
presentations as contrasted; and, in general, there is in any other
sense than this no contrast within the entire range of these conscious
processes" (_Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte_, Bd. I, p. 29).
This may stand as against any attempt to find contrast between abstract
sense-qualities taken apart from their objective reference. What is,
however, the ground of distinction between the presented objects?
Apparently this must be answered in the last resort as above. In this
sense we should need finally to interpret "sensuous" and "material" in
terms of objectivity as above defined, rather than the reverse. They are
cases in or specifications of the determination of adequate stimuli.
[119] In this connection reference may be made to the well-known
disturbing effect of the forced introduction of attention to details
into established sensori-motor co-ordinations, such as "typewriting,"
playing upon the piano, and the like.
[120] _Cf._ PROFESSOR BALDWIN'S _Social and Ethical Interpretations_,
and PROFESSOR MCGILVARY'S recent paper on "Moral Obligation,"
_Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI, especially pp. 349 f.
[121] Manifestly, as indicated just above, this accepted value of the
object implies fuller physical knowledge of the object than was
possessed at the outset of the economic judgment. See above, p. 234,
note; p. 246, note 3; and p. 271, below.
[122] _Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. II, p. 5.
[123] See p. 253 above.
[124] It is not so much the case that the object, on the one side,
excites in the agent's consciousness, on the other, the "sensations of
resistance" which have played such a part in recent controversy on the
subject, as that (1) the object in certain of its promptings is
"resisting" certain other of its promptings, or that (2) certain
"positive" activities of the agent are being inhibited by certain
"negative" activities, thereby giving rise to the "emotion of
resistance." That "positive" and "negative" are here used in a
teleological way will be apparent. It is surely misleading to speak of
"_sensations_ of resistance" even in deprecatory quotation marks, except
as "sensation" is used in its everyday meaning, viz., experience of
strongly sensory quality.
[125] The general theory of emotion which is here presupposed, and
indeed is fundamental to the entire discussion, may be found in
PROFESSOR DEWEY'S papers on "The Theory of Emotion," _Psychological
Review_, Vol. I, p. 553; Vol. II, p. 13.
[126] Such is, in fact, the teaching of the various forms of ethical
intuitionism, and we find it not merely implied, but explicitly
affirmed, in a work in many respects so remote from intuitionism in its
standpoint as GREEN'S _Prolegomena to Ethics_. See pp. 178-81, and
especially pp. 355-9.
[127] Sermon II.
[128] Not to imply of course that psychologically or logically the
distinction of conditions and means is other than a convenient
superficial one.
[129] Manifestly we have here been approaching from a new direction the
"Recognition coefficient" of reality described above. See p. 266.
[130] This, if it were intended as an account of the genesis of
psychology as a science and of the psychological interest on the part of
the individual, would doubtless be most inadequate. We have, for one
thing, made no mention of the part which error and resulting practical
failure play in stimulating an interest in the _judgmental_ processes of
observation and the like, and in technique of the control of these.
Here, as well as in the processes of _execution_ of our purposes, must
be found many of the roots of psychology as a science. Moreover, no
explanation has been offered above for the appropriation by the
"energetic" self of these phenomena of interruption and retardation of
its energy as being, in fact, its own, or within itself. The problem
would appear to be psychological, and so without our province, and we
gladly pass it by.
[131] We can, of course, undertake no minute analysis of the
psychological mechanism or concatenation of the process here sketched in
barest outline. Our present purpose is wholly that of description.
Slight as our account of the process of transition is, we give it space
only because it seems necessary to do so in order to make intelligible
the accounts yet to be given of the conscious valuation processes for
which the movement here described prepares the way.
It will be observed that we assume above that the purpose is _successful
as planned_ and _by succeeding_ brings about the undesirable results.
Failure in execution of the purpose as such could only, in the manner
already outlined, prompt a more adequate investigation of the _factual
conditions_.
[132] The case is not essentially altered in logical character if for
the Levitical law be substituted the general principles of the new
dispensation read off details by an authoritative church or by "private
judgment."
[133] A remark may be added here by way of caution. The presented self,
we have said, attenuates to a mere maxim or tacit presumption in favor
of a certain type of logical procedure in dealing with the situation. It
must be remembered that the presented self, like all other presentation,
is and comes to be for the sake of its function in experience, and so is
practical from the start. The process sketched above is therefore not
from bare presented content as such to a methodological presumption,
which, as methodological and not contentual, is qualitatively different
from what preceded it.
[134] _Recognized_ authority is, of course, not the same thing by any
means as authority unrecognized because absolutely dominant.
[135] We may be pardoned for supplying from the history of ethics no
illustrations of this slight sketch.
[136] In fact, as suggested above, the _Prolegomena to Ethics_ is in
many respects essentially intuitional in spirit, though its intuitionism
is of a modern discreetly attenuated sort.
[137] This would appear to be the logical value of functional psychology
as a science of mental process.
[138] We have already given a slight sketch of the historical process
here characterized in the barest logical terms.
[139] Further consideration of the problem of factual judgment must be
deferred to Part V.
[140] The relation of the empirical self to the "energetic" and to
standards will come in for statement in Part V in the connection just
referred to.
[141] It might be possible to construct a "logic" of these various types
of working moral standard in such a way as to show that in each type
there is implied the one next higher morphologically, and ultimately the
highest--that is, some sort of concept of the "energetic" self.
[142] It matters not at all whether, in ethics or metaphysics, our
universal be abstract or on the other hand "concrete," like Green's
conception of the self, or a "Hegelian" Absolute. Its logical use in the
determination of particulars must be essentially the same in either
case.
[143] In this connection reference may be made to MR. TAYLOR'S recent
work, _The Problem of Conduct_. Mr. Taylor reduces the moral life to
terms of an ultimate conflict between the ideals of egoism and social
justice, holding that the conflict is in theory irreconcilable. With
this negative attitude toward current standards in ethical theory one
may well be in accord without accepting Mr. Taylor's further contention
that a theory of ethics is therefore impossible. Because the "ethics of
subsumption" is demonstrably futile it by no means follows that a method
of ethics cannot be developed along the lines of modern scientific logic
which shall be as valid as the procedure of the investigator in the
sciences. Mr. Taylor's _logic_ is virtually the same as that of the
ethical theories which he criticises; because an ethical _ideal_ is
impossible, a theory of ethics is impossible also. One is reminded of
MR. BRADLEY'S criticism of knowledge in the closing chapters of the
_Logic_ as an interesting parallel.
[144] MR. BOSANQUET'S discussion of the place of the principle of
teleology in analogical inference will be found suggestive in this
connection (_Logic_, Vol. II, chap. iii).
[145] See above, p. 243 and p. 259 _ad fin._
[146] We use the expression "energy-_equivalent_" because the "excess"
gained by the self through the past adjustment is not of importance at
just this point. The essential significance of the means now is not that
they "cost" less than they promised to bring in in energy, but that
_because they required sacrifice the self will now lose unless they are
allowed to fulfil the promise_. They are the logical equivalent of the
established modes of consumption from the standpoint of conservation of
the energies of the self, not the mathematical equivalent.
It would be desirable, if there were space, to present a brief account
of the psychological basis of the concepts of energy and
energy-equivalence which here come into play, but this must be omitted.
[147] Putting it negatively, the renunciation of the new end involves a
"greater" sacrifice than all the sacrifices which adherence to the
present system of consumption can compensate.
[148] Green, as is well known, allows that any formulation of the ideal
self must be incomplete, but holds that it is not for this reason
useless. But this is to assume that development in the ideal is never to
be radically reconstructive, that the ideal is to expand and fill out
along established and unchangeable lines of growth so that all increase
shall be in the nature of accretion. The self as a system is fixed and
all individual moral growth is in the nature of approximation to this
absolute ideal. This would appear to be essentially identical in a
logical sense with Mr. Spencer's hypothesis of social evolution as a
process of gradual approach to a condition of perfect adaptation of
society and the individual to each other in an environment to which
society is perfectly adapted--a condition in which "perfectly evolved"
individuals shall live in a state of blessedness in conformity to the
requirements of "absolute ethics." For a criticism of this latter type
of view see MR. TAYLOR'S above-mentioned work (chap. v, _passim_).
[149] For GREEN'S cautious defense of conscientiousness as a moral
attitude see the _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book IV, chap. i; and for a
statement of the present point of view as bearing upon Green's
difficulty, see DEWEY, _The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus_, p. 37 _ad
fin._, and _Philosophical Review_, Vol. II, pp. 661, 662.
[150] Along the line thus inadequately suggested might be found an
answer to certain criticisms of the attempt to dispense with a
metaphysical idea of the self. Such criticisms usually urge that without
reference to a metaphysical ideal no meaning attaches to such
conceptions as "adjustment," "expansion," "furtherance," and the like as
predicated of the moral acts of an agent in their effect upon the
"energetic" self. Anything that one may do, it is said, is expansive of
the self, if it be something new, except as we judge it by a
metaphysical ideal of a rightly expanded self. For an excellent
statement of this general line of criticism see STRATTON, "A
Psychological Test of Virtue," _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol.
XI, p. 200.
[151] The polemic of certain recent writers (as, for example, EHRENFELS
in his _System der Werttheorie_) against the objectivity of judgments of
value appears to rest upon an uncritical acceptance of the time-honored
distinction between "primary" and "secondary" qualities as equivalent to
the logical distinction of subjective and objective. Thus EHRENFELS
confutes "das Vorurteil von der objectiven Bedeutung des Wertbegriffes"
by explaining it as due to a misleading usage of speech expressive of
"an impulse, deep-rooted in the human understanding, to objectify its
presentations" and then goes on to say "We do not desire things because
we recognize the presence in them of a mysterious impalpable essence of
Value but we ascribe value to them because we desire them." (_Op. cit._,
Bd. I, p. 2.) This may serve to illustrate the easy possibility of
confusing the logical and psychological points of view, as likewise does
EHRENFELS's formal definition of value. (Bd. I., p. 65.)
[152] The essential dependence of factual judgment upon the rise of
economic and ethical conflict is implied in the widely current doctrine
of the teleological character of knowledge. It is indeed nowadays
something like a commonplace to say in one sense or another that
knowledge is relative to ends, but it is not always recognized by those
who hold this view that an end never appears as such in consciousness
alone. The end that guides in the construction of factual knowledge is
an end in ethical or economic conflict with some other likewise
indeterminate end in the manner above discussed.
[153] See above, pp. 282, 283.
[154] _Cf._ SCHILLER, _Riddles of the Sphinx_, chap. vii, §§ 10-14.
[155] It would appear that the principle of the conservation of energy
is valid only in the physical sphere; but the logical significance of
this limitation cannot be here discussed.
[156] That the assumption mentioned is the essential basis of the twin
theories of associationism in psychology and hedonism in ethics is shown
by DR. WARNER FITE in his article, "The Associational Conception of
Experience," _Philosophical Review_, Vol. IX, pp. 283 ff. _Cf._ MR.
BRADLEY's remarks on the logic of hedonism in his _Principles of Logic_,
pp. 244-9.
[157] The "energetic" self is apparently MR. BRADLEY'S fourth "meaning
of self," the self as monad--"something moving parallel with the life of
a man, or, rather, something not moving, but literally _standing_ in
relation to his successive variety" (_Appearance and Reality_ [1st ed.]
p. 86, in chap. ix, "The Meanings of the Self"). Mr. Bradley's
difficulty appears to come from his desiring a psychological content for
what is essentially a logical conception--a confusion (if we may be
permitted the remark) which runs through the entire chapter to which we
refer and is responsible for the undeniable and hopeless incoherency of
the various meanings of the self, as Mr. Bradley therein expounds them.
"If the monad stands aloof," says Mr. Bradley, "either with no character
at all or a private character apart, then it may be a fine thing in
itself, but it is a mere mockery to call it the self of a man" (p. 87).
Surely this is to misconstrue and then find fault with that very
character of essential _logical_ apartness from any possibility of
determination in point of descriptive psychological content which
constitutes the whole value of the "energetic" self as a logical
conception stimulative of the valuation-process and so inevitably of
factual judgment. See pp. 258, 259, above. The reader may find for
himself in Mr. Bradley's enumeration of meanings our concept of the
empirical self. But surely the "energetic" and empirical selves would
appear on our showing to have no necessary conflict with each other.
[158] In the first of these inseparable aspects valuation is
determinative of Rightness and Wrongness; in the second it presents the
object as Good or Bad. See p. 259, above.
[159] See, for example, WIESER, _Natural Value_ (Eng. trans.), p. 17.
[160] See pp. 307-12 above.
[161] The illustration, as also the general principle which it here is
used to illustrate, was suggested some years since by Professor G. H.
Mead in a lecture course on the "History of Psychology," which the
writer had the advantage of attending.
[162] The conservative function of valuation may be further illustrated
by reference to the well-known principle of marginal utility of which we
have already made mention (p. 307 above), and which has played so great
a part in modern economic theory. The value of the unit quantity of a
stock of any commodity is, according to this principle, measured by the
least important single use in the schedule of uses to which the stock as
a whole is to be applied. Manifestly, then, adherence to this valuation
placed upon the unit quantity is in so far conservative of the whole
schedule and the marginal value is a "short-hand" symbol expressive of
the value of the whole complex purpose presented in the schedule.
Moreover, the increase of marginal value concurrently with diminution of
the stock through consumption, loss, or reapplication is not indicative
so much of a change of purpose as of determination to adhere to so much
of the original program of consumption as may still be possible of
attainment with the depleted supply of the commodity.
[163] Thus except on this condition we should deny the propriety of
speaking of the value of a friend or of a memento or sacred relic. The
purpose of accurate definition of the function of such objects as these
in the attainment of one's ends is foreign to the proper attitude of
loving, prizing, or venerating them. We may ethically value the _act_ of
sacrifice for a friend or of solicitous care of the memento, but the
object of our sacrifice or solicitude has simply the direct or immediate
"qualitative" emotional character appropriate to the kinds of activity
to which it is the adequate stimulus.
[164] _History of Philosophy_ (TUFT's translation), p. 117.
[165] _Cf._ PROFESSOR J. R. ANGELL's article, "Relations of Structural
and Functional Psychology to Philosophy," _Decennial Publications of the
University of Chicago_, Vol. III, pp. 10-12; also _Philosophical
Review_, Vol. XII, No. 3. _Cf._ also MR. SCHILLER's essay on "Axioms as
Postulates" in _Personal Idealism_.
[166] From this point on this paper is an expansion of some paragraphs,
pp. 11-13, in an article on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality," printed
from Vol. III of the First Series of the _Decennial Publications of the
University of Chicago_.
[167] P. 22.
[168] Pp. 22, 23; italics mine.
[169] P. 25.
[170] P. 26.
[171] p. 36; italics mine.
[172] Pp. 22, 23; italics mine.
[173] P. 307.
[174] P. 327.
[175] P. 23; italics mine.
[176] _Cf._ p. 34; also p. 22.
[177] P. 35.
[178] This warns us that in the phrase, "a plan of action," the term
"action" must be more inclusive than it is in much current discussion.
It must not be limited to gymnastic performance. It must apply to any
sort of activity planned for, and which, when it arrives, fulfils the
plan. This, I take it, is the import of the paragraph at the top of p. 7
of PROFESSOR JAMES's _Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results_.
[179] P. 270.
[180] Pp. 270, 271.
[181] P. 276.
[182] P. 277.
[183] Pp. 280, 281.
[184] See p. 256.
[185] P. 289; italics mine.
[186] P. 281; italics mine.
[187] It is worth noting in passing that here the universal appears to
be located in finite experience, while the ground of the particular is
in the absolute.
[188] P. 282.
[189] P. 284; italics mine.
[190] P. 283.
[191] P. 332.
[192] P. 339.
[193] This ghost of subjectivism haunts the entire part of the essay in
which the final fulfilment of finite ideas is found in "a certain
absolute system of ideas."
[194] P. 330; italics mine.
[195] P. 337.
[196] P. 286.
[197] P. 307.
[198] P. 297.
[199] This reduction of the purposive to the representative function
carries with it an interesting implication concerning the whole
character and relationship of thought and will. From beginning to end,
on almost every page, Mr. Royce insists upon the idea as an expression
of will. At the outset we read: "When we try to define the idea in
itself, as a conscious fact, our best means is to lay stress upon the
sort of will or active meaning which any idea involves for the mind that
forms the idea" (p. 22). Again: "The idea is a will seeking its own
determination. It is nothing else" (p. 332)--and so on throughout the
lectures. And we have already seen how consistently this is worked out
in the analysis of concrete acts, such as singing, etc. But now, as
related to the absolute system, the will, as embodied in the idea, is to
find its final determination in approximating the certain absolute
system of ideas. This would seem to make will but little more than the
mere form of representation itself. The idea is a will, but in its
relation to truth its will is "to correspond even in its vagueness to
its own final and completely individual expression."
[200] P. 339.
[201] P. 338.
[202] P. 335.
[203] _Cf._ MR. GORE'S paper, above.
[204] _Cf._ BALDWIN'S _Development and Evolution_, pp. 250, 251, on the
necessity of the submission of the "new experience" to the test of its
ability to utilize habit. Interpreted broadly, habit might here mean the
whole mechanical side, including organism _and_ environment, and so
include Mr. Baldwin's second or "extra-organic" test.
[205] P. 19.
[206] Pp. 17, 18.
[207] See, above, PROFESSOR DEWEY'S Study III, pp. 49 ff.
[208] P. 55.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
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chapter to the end of the main text.
2. Other than that, printer's inconsistencies in spelling,
punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.
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