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.