like Locke and his school I maintain that all knowledge is to be derived
from the positive facts of experience. But my positivism is not of the
old kind; it is neither sensationalism nor materialism nor Comtism. It is
a new positivism broadened by a study of Kantian philosophy and Kant’s
problem of the _a priori_; and this new positivism, I hope, deserves the
attention of the thinkers of mankind.
Mr. Peirce calls it a “straddling of the question,” by which he means
that a man is “on both sides of the fence,” and has learned so to
formulate the issues, “that both parties can readily subscribe to his
propositions.”
2. DETERMINISM AND FATALISM.
Fatalism and determinism must not be confounded. We define determinism
as that view, according to which every event is determined by its
conditions. The decision of a man whose liberty is not curtailed by any
compulsion, so that he can act as he pleases exactly in agreement with
his character, is determined objectively by the motive and subjectively
by his character. A man of a certain character in a given situation will
act in a way that is perfectly determinable.
Determinism, as I take it, does not exclude free-will. Nor does it
exclude such chance as is, for instance, the incidental turning up of the
various faces of a die.
Determinism is the basis of science, and also of ethics as a science. If
the decision of a free will were merely the result of chance, why should
our teachers and preachers take so much trouble to form character?
While determinism is a sound doctrine, fatalism is a superstition.
Fatalism excludes the idea of free will. We define fatalism as that view
which regards the fate of a man, whatsoever he may do, as fixed. For
instance, we call the orthodox Mohammedan a fatalist; he looks at the
flame without quenching it, because he argues, “if it is Allah’s will
that my house burn down, it will burn down, whatever I may do.”
In my reply to Mr. Peirce (_The Monist_, Vol. II, p. 572) I approvingly
quoted from him a passage containing the word “fate,” adding that here
“the word ‘fate’ must be understood as Mr. Peirce understands it.” In
spite of this warning, Mr. Peirce employs this quotation made from _his_
writings as if it were mine, and calls attention to the inconsistency
involved in the different application of the word. This charge of
inconsistency is neither judicious nor fair!
We define “necessary” as “that which is determined.”
Determined means describable. Necessity is that feature of things which
makes it possible that we can, in proportion to our knowledge, describe
beforehand or predict the course of events.
Kant’s definition of “necessary,” as given in his “Critique of Pure
Reason,” is narrower. He says:
“That the coherence of which with the real is determined
according to universal conditions of experience is necessary,
or exists necessarily.”
This means in our phraseology, “that feature of the real which is
determined by the laws of form.”
The word “determinism” has been inappropriately used in the sense of
fatalism, in which sense it has to be condemned as a superstition.
The term is needed, however, to denote a basic principle of great
value. “Determinism,” if used in the sense which the word literally
indicates, means “that view which regards all events as determined by its
conditions.” Determinism does not mean that everything is decreed by some
fate, that some Deity or other power has determined the course of events.
It means that definite conditions produce definite results, and that the
results can be ascertained and described, if _all_ the conditions are
known.
Fatalism is a peculiar kind of determinism, and, indeed, an obviously
erroneous one. Fatalism rests upon a dualistic conception, regarding
necessity as a foreign force residing outside and above things and
compelling them to act in a special way. It is the Moira of the ancients
and the Kismet of the Mohammedans. The monistic view knows nothing of
a foreign force or supermundane _fatum_ enacting a special course
of affairs. Necessity, in the monistic conception, simply denotes
the determinedness of results by its conditions; it signifies that
_Gesetzmässigkeit_, or regularity according to law, is a feature of
reality. We need not repeat again that the monistic view of determinism
excludes neither chance nor free-will. It only excludes “absolute” chance
and that indeterminable arbitrariness which is sometimes said to be
free-will.
If events were not determined, if under the very same conditions the
same causes could bring about different results, so that no regularities
formulable in laws existed, the world would be a chaos and no cosmos,
absolute chance would prevail, and science would be impossible.
Mr. Peirce not only confounds fate and necessity, but he also identifies
them with resistance, and with reality. My idea of necessity has as
little to do with the experience of, reaction as, for instance, with
the idea of density, or with pleasure and pain. To confound such
heterogeneous concepts must be productive of confusion. No wonder that
Mr. Peirce makes the confession that these ideas seem to him “of a mixed
nature.”
That my presentation of the case of Determinism _versus_ Free-will
results in “a doctrine to which the advocates of free-will will generally
subscribe as readily as their opponents,” is used as a reproach; but I do
not take it as such, for my intention is not to side with one party, but
to bring out the truth of both views.
3. NATURAL LAWS, DESCRIPTIONS.
Mr. Peirce makes the following allegation of inconsistency. He says of me:
“The declaration (§ 198) that ‘natural laws are simply a
description of nature as nature is,’ and that ‘the facts of
nature express the character of nature,’ are nominalistic. But
in another place (107-116) he says distinctly that uniformities
are real.” (P. 531.)
I am unable to detect any inconsistency in these expressions. The gist of
these three statements is this: the formulas usually called natural laws
describe certain uniformities of reality.
The expression “description of nature” is by no means nominalistic. If
law is said to be a description, it is not a mere name, but presupposes
the existence of some objective reality for the description of which it
has been formulated.
4. CAUSATION.
Mr. Peirce’s usage of the word “cause” is very unsettled. He says (p.
538):
“The original idea of an efficient cause is that of an agent,
more or less like man.”
The original idea of “cause” is the struggle of reaching an end or
bringing about a certain state of things. The Latin _causa_ means “a
lawsuit.”
In a similar way, the German _Ursache_ does not mean the original thing,
but a “seeking.” _Sache_ is the English _sake_ and Gothic _sakjô_,
meaning “struggle,” or “quarrel.” It is derived from the same root as the
verb “to seek.”
Like _causa_, the word _Ursache_ was used as a legal term.
Mr. Peirce further states:
“The modern mechanical conception, on the other hand, is
that the relative positions of particles determine their
accelerations at the instants when they occupy those
positions.” (P. 538.)
“In dynamics, it is the fixed force, gravitation, or whatever
else, together with those relative positions of the bodies that
determine the intensity and direction of the forces, that is
regarded as the cause.” (P. 540.)
“The practice which I endeavor to follow in regard to the
word _cause_ is, to use it in the Aristotelian sense of an
_efficient cause_ in all its crudeness.” (P. 541.)
“When my idea is a more general and logical one, I prefer to
speak of the explanation.” (P. 541.)
No wonder that some causes are prior to their effects, others
simultaneous, and that effects may even be prior to their causes! Using
the word in various senses, Mr. Peirce becomes so entangled about
causation, that in mustering the ideas force, position, reason, law,
cause, and explanation, he no longer knows which is which.
* * * * *
Mr. Peirce being unable to bring any consistency into the usage of the
term “cause,” drops it entirely as a philosophical word. This is Dr.
Ironbeard’s method, who kills his patient to save him pain.
There was a time when I felt inclined to follow that plan of dealing
with words in this predicament. But I found out very soon that there is
not one difficult word in philosophical language which is not or was not
at some time or other almost universally maltreated by the professional
thinkers of mankind. What, then, is to be done? Shall we eradicate all
old terms that are erroneously used and create a philosophical Volapük,
which will have the advantage of being unincumbered with the errors of a
long historical inheritance, but the disadvantage of being nowhere spoken
and nowhere understood, except by its inventors?
Dr. Ironbeard’s method of dealing with terms is radical. It imitates the
method of the social reformers who, on finding something wrong in society
generally, propose to tear down the entire social structure, and begin
the world over again from its beginning.
Most of the terms which have been in use for centuries and even
millenniums, I have found to correspond to a special want of expressing
some definite reality or constant group of realities or important
relation among realities. The misuse of different words almost invariably
has its origin in a consideration of the name alone, to the neglect
of the reality denoted by the name. And misuses can be mended only by
carefully investigating the realities themselves for the denotation of
which the words have been invented. If we were to make a clean sweep
of the “superstitions,” soul, God, cause, natural law, etc., because
in many minds there are superstitious notions connected with these
ideas, we should soon have to invent new terms for the realities which
necessitated the formation of the old ones. The great bulk of religious
and philosophical words originated because in each case there was an
actual want of a phrase to denote some specific reality. The errors of
the various terms arise because our ideas concerning the nature of these
realities have not as yet been matured, and it is the office of the
philosopher to contribute his mite toward their clarification.
Causation, in my conception, is transformation. Take any system of
conditions and let it somehow be changed. The event which starts the
change is called the cause, the new configuration produced, the effect.
The various factors of the system are the conditions or circumstances.
Taking this view, I _do not say_ that the effect is the cause
transformed. The total effect is the cause plus all the circumstances
transformed. The effect is something radically different from the cause.
The cause is always an event, that is a motion of some kind; the effect,
a new arrangement, a new formation, a new state of things, or perhaps the
dissolution of an old state of things.
While cause and effect are different, the whole process of causation,
including cause, circumstances, and effect, is to be viewed as one
fact, or, rather, as one system of facts; and a process of causation is
explained, (as we have seen above) as soon as it is so described that we
recognise it as a transformation.[137]
There is a popular usage which calls the cause of the falling stone
gravitation. This kind of cause is not an event, not a motion, but a law
of nature, and I prefer to call it “the reason” for the stone’s fall.
Mr. Peirce defines a reason as follows:
“A reason, in one sense, is the replacement of a
multiple-subject of an observational proposition by a general
subject, which by the very conditions of the special experience
is predicable of the multiple subject.” (P. 558.)
This somewhat stilted definition seems upon the whole to agree with what
I also call “a reason.” All the reasons by which we comprehend nature are
formulated in statements which describe those general features of reality
which we call “laws of nature.”
Who does not see that causes (i. e., events which produce effects) and
reasons (i. e., the formulas by which we comprehend the uniformities of
nature) are two radically different ideas, and who can deny that the
denotation of these two radically different ideas, by one and the same
term, must and actually does bring about lamentable confusion in the
minds of philosophers! Accordingly, let us call them by different names;
never mind what we call them, but let us distinguish them. I regard the
usage stated here as the most appropriate. We call “the cause” of the
stone’s fall that event which removed its support; but when we inquire
after the reason why the stone falls, we want to know the law of nature
which describes in a general formula that quality of stones which makes
them fall.
5. THE FUTURE IN MENTAL CAUSATION.
It seems as if some evil genius had caused Mr. Peirce to cross my
position everywhere, even where I should expect to find him in perfect
agreement.
Concerning mental and mechanical causation he first startles me with an
italicised proposition which declares:
“_There is no mechanical truth in saying that the past
determines the future rather than the future the past._” (P.
539.)
Mr. Peirce apparently intends to discredit the belief that the past
determines the future. He adds:
“We continue, for convenience, to talk of mechanical phenomena
as if they were regulated, in the same manner in which our
intentions regulate our actions, (which is essentially a
determination of the future by the past,) although we are quite
aware that it is not really so.” (P. 539.)
In other words, Mr. Peirce contends that our view of mechanical causation
is based upon an analogy with mental causation; the latter being a
determination of the future by the past, we conclude that the former is
regulated in the same manner.
This is an old error which rests on the supposition that cognition begins
with introspection or self-knowledge. The truth is that all cognition
begins with objective observation.
We have to say, (1) that man’s view of mechanical causation has not been
fashioned after the model of mental causation, and (2) that the future
actually enters as a factor in mental causation. We do not believe that
the future determines the past, but it does determine the present.
Should we judge of the causation of mechanical motions from our own
mental experience, we should certainly reach other conclusions than we
do, for the most characteristic feature of mental causation, that which
essentially distinguishes it from mechanical causation, is the fact that
the future actually enters into it as the main factor.
We as rational beings, and the lower animals also on a smaller scale,
do know to some extent the future. We know by experience the effects of
certain actions. This fact of the future’s being partly known, makes
it possible for the future to enter as a factor in mental causation.
I go so far as to maintain that there is no mental causation except
some consideration of the future be contained in the motive cause. The
presence of a plan, of an end kept in view, of an aim to be reached
in the future, is exactly what distinguishes the purposive action of
thinking beings from mechanical events.
6. MENTAL CAUSATION.
Mr. Peirce has discovered in my expositions of mechanical and mental
action what he believes to be a flagrant contradiction, and, as if
it were the exhibition of my scalp, displays it triumphantly (§ 27)
in capitals and italics. “No objection can be made,” I said, “to the
possibility of explaining the motions ... of the brain by the laws of
molar and molecular mechanics.” And “yet the simplest psychical reflexes
cannot be explained from mechanical or physical laws alone.”
Is this really a contradiction, or is it Mr. Peirce’s inability to
discover the agreement between the two statements? Let us see.
Take a little toy fish of tin with a small iron rod in its snout,
floating in the water, and push the fish so that it shoots forward with
a certain velocity in a straight line. Now take a magnet and hold it at
a short distance from the prolonged path of the fish. The fish at once
changes its course; it now describes a curve which according to the
laws of mechanics is determined (omitting any other possible modifying
circumstances) by the momentum of the push, the velocity of which is
gradually diminished by the friction of the water, and the attraction of
the magnet. These are the data, and from these data the motion of the
fish is unequivocally determined by the laws of mechanics.
Now, when we speak of the motion of the fish, we mean the motion, and
not the iron rod, or the qualities of the iron rod, in its snout. While
speaking of motion or the laws of motion, and while calculating the curve
of a motion, our ideas move in a perfectly defined sphere of abstraction
from which all other things and considerations are excluded. This method
of abstraction which is the essence of human thought and also of that
special kind of human thought called science, is the way by which alone
we are enabled to arrive at clear distinctions and lucid explanations. We
have to keep our various abstractions stored in an orderly manner in our
mind, each one in a special box. If we do not distinguish the different
spheres of abstraction and their limits, we shall soon confound all
issues in a hopeless chaos.
But we find, on further examination, that in this limitation of the
description to the abstract sphere of pure motion only a part of
the process before us is described. The description explains fully,
exhaustively, and satisfactorily the mechanical aspect of the case, but
it does not explain why the magnet attracts iron. The attraction of
the magnet consists in the definite qualities of (1) the magnet, (2)
the iron, and (3) the medium between them. When we inquire after an
explanation of the physical qualities of things, we enter into another
sphere of abstraction, viz., that of physics. That physics will have
to be explained as a domain of molecular mechanics may be mentioned
incidentally.
Take another and simpler instance: the fall of a stone. The motion of
the stone, its increasing velocity during the fall can be explained
according to the laws of mechanics; but that quality of the stone called
gravity, which is the reason of its fall, cannot be deduced from the laws
of mechanics. The gravity of a mass is treated in mechanics as the given
fact or datum, an investigation into the nature of which is excluded from
the sphere of mechanics. He who demands of mechanics an explanation of
gravity searches in the wrong box.
When we come to the investigation of psychical phenomena, we strike a
feature which is entirely absent in mechanics, physics, and chemistry.
It is the appearance of feeling. Feelings vary according to the various
impressions made by surrounding objects. The same objects making the
same impressions, special kinds of feelings come to stand for or to
represent their respective kinds of objects, and thus feelings acquire
meaning, feelings become ideas. This peculiarity of sentiency, that it
has acquired meaning, is the characteristic feature of “mind.”
When speaking of mind I refer to all those phenomena of meaning-freighted
feelings which ensoul thinking beings; and the domain of psychology is
thus again quite a distinct domain of abstraction.
Now let us return to the contradiction of which Mr. Peirce accuses me.
An idea which physiologically considered is a special brain-structure or
combination of brain-structures, reacts upon a given stimulus, which, let
us say, is the sound of a certain word. The word is a sound-symbol and
the word possesses a certain meaning. The word spoken having the same
meaning as a special idea that is thought, while its brain-structure is
agitated, possesses a quality comparable to chemical affinities. This
peculiar word will serve as a stimulus for this peculiar idea. It will
not (at least not directly) stimulate other ideas—as little as a chemical
that has no affinity for the ingredients of another chemical will cause a
reaction. Why the motion takes place calls for a psychical explanation,
but the motion itself takes place in strict accord with the laws of
mechanics.
But are not the laws of mechanics annulled by the laws of physics, and
those of physiology by the laws of psychology?
No, they are not annulled, but modified.
A piece of iron that falls to the ground with the same velocity as a
stone of equal weight will be held up by a magnet strong enough to hold
it. This is not an annulment of the gravity of the iron; it is not a
reversion of the law of gravitation; gravitation holds in this case as
good as in any other. It is only a modification and a complication. We
must remember that the law of gravity does not say, the non-supported
piece of iron or stone will drop, it says that all bodies are attracted
by the earth with a definite force depending upon their mass and
position. And this attraction takes place in our example; the iron
supported by the magnet retains all its inherent gravity, which is
constantly asserting itself, although counteracted by the force of the
attraction of the magnet.
Since the mechanical, chemical, psychical, etc. qualities represent
reality in various abstract aspects, we should know that there are no
purely mechanical, no purely chemical, no purely psychical phenomena.
Every real phenomenon, i. e. the original whole from which the
abstractions have been made, presents a complex state of things of which
many various aspects can and must be taken.
I repeat now without fear of contradiction or miscomprehension,
that brain-motions are perfectly explainable by the laws of molar
and molecular mechanics, while psychical reflexes, not being purely
mechanical processes, cannot be explained by mechanical laws. The
properly psychical and the properly mental are other elements of an
entirely different nature from the mechanical and the physical. They
belong to a radically different sphere of abstraction. He who tries to
explain the psychical by the mechanical, looks for his explanation in the
wrong box. And he who regards the proposition that the mechanical laws
hold good for all motions without any exception, but that they cannot be
called upon to explain that which is not motion, as a contradiction, has
not as yet learned practically to apply the method of abstraction.
It is strange that we have to give this little lesson in the elements
of abstraction lore to so prominent a logician as Mr. Peirce. We feel
inclined to exclaim: “Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these
things?”
STRAY SHOTS.
There are a number of incidental comments aimed at scattered points of
my position. I call them “stray shots”; they have exploded without harm.
While going over the battle-field I shall pick them up and will throw
some of them back into Mr. Peirce’s camp, whence they came.
Mr. Peirce is in the habit of calling every approach to his views “deep,”
while divergencies are branded as “shallow.”—
Hume’s scepticism is called Leibnitz’s principle, by which latter Mr.
Peirce apparently means that innumerable single cases of experience
alone do not constitute certainty. Why Mr. Peirce demands that Hume’s
conclusion which Leibnitz never would have countenanced, should be
identified with Leibnitz’s principle from which it is derived is not
apparent.—
How easily Mr. Peirce changes his opinion! Venn’s “Logic of Chance,”
which Mr. Peirce so much admired formerly, has become “a blundering
little book.”—
Synechism and agapasticism, viz., the principle of continuity and the
idea of love as main factors of evolution are nothing new. I have
always defended them, although not in the peculiar way that Mr. Peirce
does.[138] In his article “Evolutionary Love” he appears to me unjust
toward Darwin. I do not think that I should improve my propositions,
which are in their way synechistic as well as agapastic, by adopting
either Mr. Peirce’s terms or his presentation of these principles.—
Mr. Peirce says, he does not doubt that my idea of mental causation was
intended to be an improvement on his molecular theory of protoplasm. I
can assure Mr. Peirce that I had no such intentions. I held my view long
before I ever had a chance of knowing Mr. Peirce’s molecular theory of
protoplasm. Moreover, I am unable to discover any similarity between his
views and mine.—