_must_ be used. Here the end is obviously postulated; save as it is
begged (presupposed), the necessity of the means has no sense. If,
when starving, I am to live I must steal a dinner, but, having stolen,
the logical but unsympathetic judge may question the relevancy (that
is, the necessity) of my end, and thus cut the ground out from under
the necessity of my means. My end requires _its_ justification, the
establishing of its validity, before the necessity of the means is
anything more than hypothetical. The proximate end must be referred to a
more ultimate and inclusive end to get any solid ground. Here we have our
choice: we may deny the existence of any organic whole in life and keep
chasing in a never-ending series, the _progressus ad infinitum_, after
an end valid in itself. In this case we never get beyond a hypothetical
necessity—something is necessary _if_ we are to have something else,
the necessity being relative to the implied doubt. Or, being convinced
that life is a whole and not a series merely, we may say there is one
comprehensive end which gives its own validity to the lesser ends in
so far as they constitute it. While, on the other alternative, we
reach only a hypothetical necessity, on this we reach none at all. The
comprehensive end is no end at all in the sense of something by itself
to be reached by means external to it. Any such end would be simply one
in the infinite series and would be itself hypothetical. Whenever minor
ends cease to be in turn means to further ends it is because they have
become parts, constituent elements, of the higher end and thus ceased to
be steps towards an end and beyond and outside of themselves. Given a
final (i. e., inclusive) end, eating and drinking, study and gossip, play
and business, cease to be means _towards_ an end and become its concrete
definition, its analytic content. The minor activities state the supreme
activity in its specific factors.
Our dilemma is the choice between an end which itself has no existence
save upon presupposition of another end, (is contingent,) and an end
which as an end in itself simply _is_.
The externality of means to end is merely a symptom of lack of
specification or concreteness in the end itself. _If_ I am going to
invent some improvement in a type-writer, the necessity of going through
certain preliminary steps is exactly proportionate to the indefiniteness
of my conception of what the improvement is to be; when the end is
realised, the operations which enter into the realisation cease to be
means necessary to an end and become the specific _content_ of that end.
The improvement is a _fact_, having such and such elements defining it.
If I simply want, in general, to get my mail I _must_ take this path
(there being but one road); but if my end is not thus general, if it is
individualised with concrete filling, the walk to the office may become
a part of the end, a part of the actual fact. In so far, of course, it
loses all aspect of necessitation. It simply _is_. And in general, so
far as my end is vague, or abstract, so far as it is not specified as
to its details, so far the filling up of its empty schema to give it
particularity (and thus make it fact) appears as a means necessary to
reach an end outside itself. The growth in concreteness of the end itself
is transformed into ways of effecting an end already presupposed. Or, to
state it in yet one other way, determination in the sense of definition
in consciousness is hypostatised into determination in the sense of a
physical making.
The point may come out more clearly if we consider it with the emphasis
on chance instead of upon necessity. The usual statement that chance is
relative to ignorance seems to me to convey the truth though not in the
sense generally intended—viz., that if we knew more about the occurrence
we should see it necessitated by its conditions. Chance is relative to
ignorance in the sense rather that it refers to an indefiniteness in
our conception of what we are doing. In our consciousness of our end
(our acts) we are always making impossible abstractions; we break off
certain phases of the act which are of chief interest to us, without
any regard to whether the concrete conditions of action—that is, the
deed in its whole definition—permits any such division. Then, when in
our actual doing the circumstances to which we have not attended thrust
themselves into consciousness—when, that is to say, the act appears in
more of its own specific nature—we dispose of those events, foreign to
our conscious purpose, as accidental; we did not want them or intend
them—what more proof of their accidental character is needed? The falling
of a stone upon a man’s head as he walks under a window is “chance,”
for it has nothing to do with what the man proposed to do, it is no
part of his conception of that walk. To an enemy who takes that means
of killing him, it is anything but an accident, being involved in
_his_ conscious purpose. It is “chance” when we throw a two and a six;
for the concreteness of the act falls outside of the content of our
intention. We intended _a_ throw, some throw, and in so far the result
is not accidental, but this special result, being irrelevant to our
conception of what we were to do, in so far is contingent. The vagueness
or lack of determinateness in our end, the irrelevancy of actual end to
conscious intent, chance, are all names for the same thing. And if I
am asked whether a gambler who has a hundred dollars upon the outcome
does not _intend_ to throw double sixes, I reply that he has no such
intention—unless the dice are loaded. He may _hope_ to make that throw,
but he cannot intend it save as he can define that act—tell how to do it,
tell, that is, just _what_ the act is. Or, once more, if I intend to get
my mail and there are four paths open to me it is chance which I take,
just in proportion to the abstractness of my end. If I have not defined
it beyond the mere “general result” of getting mail, anything else is
extraneous and in so far contingent. If the end is individualised to the
extent, say, of getting the mail in the shortest possible time, or with
the maximum of pleasant surroundings, or with the maximum of healthy
exercise, the indifferency of the “means,” and with it their contingency,
disappears. This or that path is no longer a mere means which _may_ be
taken to get a result foreign to its own value; the path is an intrinsic
part of the end.
In so far as a man presents to himself an end in general, he sets up an
abstraction so far lacking in detail as (taken _per se_) to exclude the
possibility of realisation. In order to exist as concrete or individual
(and of course, nothing can exist except as individual or concrete)
it must be defined or particularised. But so far as consciousness is
concerned the original vague end is _the_ reality; it is all that the man
cares about and hence constitutes his act. The further particularisation
of the end, therefore, instead of appearing as what it really is, viz.,
the discovery of the actual reality, presents itself as something
outside that end. This externality to the end previously realised in
consciousness is, taken as mere externality, contingency, or accident;
taken as none the less so bound up with the desired end that it must
be gone through before reaching that end, it is necessary. Chance, in
other words, stands for the irrelevancy as the matter at first presents
itself to consciousness; necessity is the required, but partial, negation
of this irrelevancy. Let it be complete, instead of partial, and we
have the one real activity defined throughout. With reference to this
reality, conditions are neither accidental nor necessary, but simply
constituting elements—they neither may be nor must be, but just are. What
is irrelevant is now not simply indifferent; it is excluded, eliminated.
What is relevant is no longer something required in order to get a result
beyond itself; it is incorporated into the result, it is integral.
It now remains to connect the two parts of our discussion, the logical
and the practical consideration of necessity, and show that, as
suggested, logical necessity rests upon teleological—that, indeed, it
is the teleological read backwards. The logical process of discovering
and stating the reality of some event simply reverses the process which
the mind goes through in setting up and realising an end. Instead of the
killing of an enemy as something to be accomplished, we have the fact of
a murder to be accounted for. Just as on the practical side, the end, as
it first arises in consciousness, is an end in general and thus contrasts
with the concrete end which is individualised; so the fact, as at first
realised in consciousness, is a _bare_ fact, and thus contrasts with the
actual event with its complete particularisation. The actual fact, the
murder as it really took place, is one thing; the fact as it stands in
consciousness, the phases of the actual event which are picked out and
put together, is another thing. The fact of knowledge, it is safe to
say, is no _fact_ at all; that is, if there had been in reality no more
particularisation, no more of detail, than there is consciousness, the
murder would never have happened. But just as, practically, we take the
end in general to be the real thing, (since it is the only thing of any
direct interest,) so in knowledge we take the bare fact as abstracted
from the actual whole, as _the_ fact. Just as the end of the savage is
merely to kill his enemy, so the “fact” is merely the dead body with
the weapon sticking in it. The fact, as it stands in consciousness, is
indeterminate and partial, but, since it is in consciousness by itself,
it is taken as a whole and as the certain thing. But as the abstractness
of the “end in general” is confessed in the fact that means are required
in order to make it real—to give it existence—so the unreal character of
the “fact” is revealed in the statement that the causes which produced
it are unknown and have to be discovered. The bare fact thus becomes
a result to be accounted for: in this conception the two sides are
combined; the “fact” is at once given a certain reality of its own while
at the same time the lack of concreteness is recognised in the reference
to external causes.
The gradual introduction of further factors, under the guise of causes
accounting for the effect, defines the original vague “fact,” until,
at last, when it is accounted for, we have before us the one and only
concrete reality. This done, we no longer have an effect to be accounted
for, and causes which produce it, but one fact whose statement or
description is such and such. But intermediate between the isolation and
the integration is the stage when necessity appears. We have advanced,
we will suppose, from the bare fact of the murder to the discovery of a
large amount of “circumstantial” evidence regarding that fact. We hear of
a man who had a quarrel with the deceased; he cannot account for himself
at the time when the murder _must_ have been committed; he is found
to have had a weapon like that with which the murder _must_ have been
committed. Finally we conclude he _must_ have been the murderer. What
do these “musts” (the “must” of the time, weapon, and murderer) mean?
Are they not obviously the gradual filling-in of the previously empty
judgment, through bringing things at first unconnected into relation
with each other? The existence of the man M. N. is wholly isolated from
the “fact” of the murder till it is learned that he had a grudge against
the murdered man; this third fact, also distinct _per se_, brought
into connection with the others (the “fact” of the murder and of the
existence of M. N.) compels them to move together; the result is at
first the possibility, later, as the points of connection get more and
more marked and numerous, the “necessity,” that M. N. is the murderer.
Further, it is clear that this “must” marks not a greater certainty or
actuality than a mere “is” would indicate, but rather a doubt, a surmise
or guess gradually gaining in certainty. When the fact is really made
out to our satisfaction, we drop the “must” and fall back on the simple
_is_. Only so long as there is room for doubt, and thus for argument
do we state that the time and weapon must have been such and such. So
when we finally conclude that the murderer must have been M. N., it
means that we have woven a large number of facts, previously discrete,
into such a state of inter-relationship that we do not see how to avoid
denying their discreteness and incorporating them all into one concrete
whole, or individual fact. That we still say “must” shows, however, that
we have not quite succeeded in overcoming the partial and indefinite
character of the original “fact.” Had we succeeded in getting the whole
fact before us the judgment would take this form: The murder _is_ a fact
of such and such definite nature, having as its content such and such
precise elements. In this comprehensive whole all distinction of effect
to be accounted for and causes which produce clean disappears. The idea
of necessity, in a word, comes in only while we are still engaged in
correcting our original error, but have not surrendered it root and
branch; this error being that the fragment of reality which we grasp is
concrete enough to warrant the appellation “fact.”
A great deal of attention has been directed to the category of cause
and effect. One striking feature of the ordinary consideration is, that
it takes for granted the matter most needing investigation and aims the
inquiry at the dependent member of the firm. The effect seems to be so
clearly _there_, while the cause is so obviously something to be searched
for that the category of effect is assumed, and it is supposed that only
the idea of causation is in need of examination. And yet this abstraction
of certain phases of fact, the erection of the parts thus abstracted into
distinct entities, which, though distinct, are still dependent in their
mode of existence, is precisely the point needing examination. It is but
another instance of the supreme importance of our practical interests.
The effect is the end, the practical outcome, which interests us; the
search for causes is but the search for the means which would produce
the result. We call it “means and end” when we set up a result to be
reached in the future and set ourselves upon finding the causes which
put the desired end in our hands; we call it “cause and effect” when
the “result” is given, and the search for means is a regressive one. In
either case the separation of one side from the other, of cause from
effect, of means from end, has the same origin: a partial and vague idea
of the whole fact, together with the habit of taking this part (because
of its superior practical importance) for a whole, for a fact.
I hope now to have made good my original thesis: that the idea of
necessity marks a certain stage in the development of judgment; that
it refers to a residuum, in our judgments and thus in our objects,
of indeterminateness or vagueness, which it replaces without wholly
negating; that it is thus relative to “chance” or contingency; that its
value consists wholly in the impulse given judgment towards the _is_, or
the concrete reality defined throughout. The analysis has been long; the
reader may have found it not only tedious, but seemingly superfluous,
since, as he may be saying to himself, no one nowadays regards necessity
as anything but a name for fixed uniformities in nature, and of this view
of the case nothing has been said. I hope, however, that when we come
to a consideration of necessity as equivalent to uniformity, it will be
found that the course of this discussion has not been irrelevant, but the
sure basis for going further.
JOHN DEWEY.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] This article, as the title may indicate, was suggested by Mr.
Peirce’s article upon “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined.” As, however,
my thought takes finally a different turn, I have deemed it better to let
it run its own course from the start, and so have not referred, except
indirectly, to Mr. Peirce’s argument. I hope this will not be taken as a
desire to slur over my indebtedness to him.
[66] The reason of this abstraction is in practical nature, as already
indicated. For all the savage _cares_ about it, the death in general,
_is_ the real fact. It is all that interests him. It is hardly worth
while to attempt to persuade the savage; indeed, if he were not only a
savage, but also a philosopher, he might boldly challenge the objector
to present _any_ definition of object which should not refer objectivity
to man’s practical activity; although he might, as a shrewd savage,
admit that some one activity (or self) to which the object is referred
has more content than another. In this case, I, for one, should not care
about entering the lists against the savage. But when the common-sense
philosopher, who resists all attempts to reconstruct the original object
on the ground that a fact is a fact and all beyond that is metaphysics,
is also a case-hardened nominalist (as he generally is), it is time to
protest. It might be true that the real object is always relative to the
value of some action; but to erect this pure universal into the object,
and then pride one’s self on enlightenment in rejecting the “scholastic
figment” of the reality of universals is a little too much.
THE ISSUES OF “SYNECHISM.”
In a late number of _The Monist_, (Vol. II, No. 4,) there appears a
singularly acute and profound article, from the pen of one of the ablest
of American logicians and mathematicians, Mr. Charles S. Peirce. Its
subject is “The Law of Mind”—the idea of continuity. The writer tells
us, (p. 534,) “the tendency to regard continuity, in the sense in which
I shall define it, as an idea of prime importance in philosophy, may
conveniently be termed _Synechism_.” With this _synechistic_ philosophy,
as applied to mind, the paper is occupied, to the exclusion, for the
nonce, of Mr. Peirce’s companion doctrine of _Tychism_,[67] which was
dealt with, by him, in the January, 1891, and April, 1892, issues of _The
Monist_. These conceptions are, both of them, to be viewed as essential
to philosophy as a whole, but the latter is; for the present, allowed
to drop out of sight, in order to allow of the due elaboration of the
former.[68]
THE FORMULA OF SYNECHISM.
The formula of Synechism, with which the article begins, is as follows:
“Logical analysis applied to mental phenomena shows that there
is but one law of mind, namely, that ideas tend to spread
continuously, and to affect certain others which stand to them
in a peculiar relation of affectibility. In this spreading they
lose intensity, and especially the power of affecting others,
but gain generality, and become welded with other ideas.” (Vol.
II, No. 4, p. 534.)
The individuality and continuity of ideas are, then, shown respectively
to involve no contradiction; an idea once past—in the sense of an
event in an individual consciousness—is not wholly past, it is only
going—“infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable past date.”
Thus the conclusion is reached that “the present is connected with the
past by a series of real, infinitesimal steps.” Again, “We are forced to
say that we are immediately conscious through an infinitesimal interval
of time. This is all that is requisite.” (_Ibid._, pp. 535-536.)
All that it is necessary to say at the outset is, that this view is
supported by an elaborate inquiry into the nature of infinity and
continuity in general, into which, for the purpose of the present paper,
it is not needful to enter. And this for two reasons: (1) The synechistic
philosophy, by itself, does not profess to be monistic. Its expounder
does not, even if his Tychism were not in reserve, profess to carry it
beyond the realm of mind, with all that is implied in such a reservation.
Now, it is the bearing of Mr. Peirce’s Synechism upon a monistic solution
of the universe with which the present article is concerned. And (2)
Mr. Peirce’s method of treatment, though precise and logical in the
direction of its own path, is too purely technical to be summarised for
the general reader’s benefit. But withal, Synechism is far too fertile,
not so much in respect of what it makes clear, as suggestively, and, if
the expression may be allowed, _obliquely_, to be passed over without
comment. Its excogitator is eminently frank; he does not conceal the
difficulties which, ever and anon, occur in his statement. Sometimes
his theory seems a trifle too wide for the facts encountered, sometimes
rather too scanty to contain them. Such phrases as the following: “No, I
think we can only hold”—p. 552; “we are driven to perceive”—p. 555; “this
obliges me to say”—p. 557; “the principle with which I set out requires
me to maintain”—p. 558; “the only answer that I can, at present, make
is”—p. 559, etc., etc., do every credit to the writer’s candor, but they
would scarcely occur in an exposition, which, in the mind of its author,
made the rough places altogether plain. Synechism, even with Tychism in
the background, probably does not, in Mr. Peirce’s own mind, completely
solve the world-riddle, at least, as yet. Still these very pauses
themselves, on the part of a thinker of such ability, are eminently
suggestive. To use his own words: “the present paper is intended to show
what Synechism is, and what it leads to.” Let us emphasise this latter
clause, as likely to be more fruitful than the former.
MR. PEIRCE’S POSITIVISM.
Mr. Peirce, in spite of his theory of chance, is, in his Synechism,
almost severely a positivist;[69] but his positivism, like most of that
current nowadays, does not go deep enough. He is positivist, _after_ he
has got externality—fertile in excitations—comfortably disposed around
his subject; and vibrations, undulations, attractions, etc., ready to
play upon the thousand-stringed harp, _but not before_. For, “we must not
tax introspection,” he tells us, p. 548, “to make a phenomenon manifest,
which essentially involves externality,” when the real problem at issue
is: Is there externality, in the vulgar sense, at all, or is it only that
_rationalised externality_ which _circumspection_, within the limits
of egoity, reveals? Now, upon this a good deal hinges. At all events
the difference in question, or, rather, that there _is_ a difference,
has been mooted, to say the least. And, this being the case, it is a
little tedious, when the really vital point of the spatial extension of
feelings is being debated, to have this illustration brought in, (p.
548,): “Moreover, our own feelings are focused in attention to such a
degree, that we are not aware that ideas are not brought to an absolute
unity. Just as nobody, not instructed by special experiment, has any idea
how very, very little of the field of vision is distinct.” Why, that is
reasoning in a circle, if some systems are true; and it is a begging of
the question, if they are the reverse.
If the system of so-called objective reality were, at sight, wholly
veracious, if everything existed just as it seems, this positivism of
Mr. Peirce’s might be workable. Then no one would seek to go beneath
the process of the apparent, the actually visible, for a _rationale_.
But modern science teaches, in its very primer, that many things are,
and act, quite otherwise than as they seem to be, and do. Appearances
_rationalised_ are alone to be accepted. The sun does not “rise”
and “set,” as it seems to do. The earth is not, as it appears to be,
an immovable plane, and so on. And, this once allowed, where is the
principle to end? If the superficial judgment may be thus corrected,
or reversed, it is liable to revision or reversal _ad infinitum_,
unless reason be shown to the contrary. It may thus be disputed whether
our author is quite in order in writing, as he does, and using the
statement to support his theory—“Precisely how primary sensations, as
colors and tones, are excited, we cannot tell, in the present state of
psychology.... As far as sight and hearing are in question, we know that
they are only excited by vibrations of inconceivable complexity; and the
chemical senses are probably not more simple.” (P. 557.)