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.