CONCLUSIONS
Dewey's interest as a philosopher centres, from first to last, upon
knowledge and the knowing process. All that is vital in his ethical,
social, and educational theories depends ultimately upon the special
interpretation of the function of knowledge which constitutes his chief
claim to philosophical distinction. Dewey's logical theory, as has been
seen, was the natural and inevitable outcome of his demand for an
empirical and 'psychological' description of thought as a
'transformatory' process working actual changes in reality. If in the
beginning of his career he found the problem of the nature of knowledge
all-important for his own interests, he came in the end to regard it as
the problem of problems for all philosophers. There is no mistaking
Dewey's conviction that the special interpretation of knowledge which he
advocates opens the door to important advances in philosophical
speculation, while it ends all discussion of those pseudo-problems which
result from a false, epistemological formulation of the function of
knowledge.
The history of the development of Dewey's thought, set forth in the
preceding chapters, does not pretend to furnish an adequate estimate of
his philosophical system. The two questions, of origin and worth, are,
after all, distinct. The genetic account of Dewey's theory of knowledge
may serve to make its bearings and implications better understood, may
reveal its deeper meaning and import, but the final estimate of its
value as a philosophical hypothesis depends on other considerations. In
this final chapter, it is proposed to deal with the question of the
positive value of functionalism as a working hypothesis. This criticism
may also serve to gather together the threads of criticism and comment
which run through the previous chapters, and reveal the general ground
upon which the writer's opposition to Dewey's theory is based.
There can be no question that Dewey's theory of knowledge rests,
finally, upon the doctrine of 'immediate empiricism;' upon his belief in
"the necessity of employing in philosophy the direct descriptive method
that has now made its way in all the natural sciences...."[281] This
doctrine is clearly stated in the first essay reviewed in this study,
"The Psychological Standpoint" (1886). To quote again from that essay:
"The psychological standpoint as it has developed itself is this: all
that is, is for consciousness or knowledge. The business of the
psychologist is to give a genetic account of the various elements within
this consciousness, and thereby fix their place, determine their
validity, and at the same time show definitely what the real and eternal
nature of this consciousness is."[282] The descriptive method here
advocated does not differ, as an actual mode of procedure, from that of
Dewey's later empiricism. It lies at the basis of all his speculation,
earlier as well as later, and is undoubtedly the most important single
element in his philosophical system.
In "The Psychological Standpoint" Dewey ascribes the failure of the
earlier empiricists to their desertion of the direct descriptive method
(a criticism repeated frequently in later essays). Locke, for instance,
instead of describing experience as it actually occurs, interprets it in
terms of certain assumed simple sensations, the products of reflection.
These non-experienced elements, Dewey believes, have no place in a
purely empirical philosophy.
But the empiricist must deal in some manner with the products of
reflection. The atoms of chemistry and the elements of the psychologist
are not experienced facts, but still they play a valuable, indispensable
role in the technique of the sciences. What is to be done with them? It
must be made to appear that they are valid within knowledge, but invalid
elsewhere. This leads to a separation of knowing from other modes of
experiencing, and the descriptive method is depended upon to maintain
the empirical validity of the separation. It has been seen how Dewey's
attempt to interpret knowledge led gradually to a distinction between
the 'cognitional' and the 'non-cognitional' processes of experience.
The completed theory of knowledge depends for its validity upon the
distinction thus established between knowing (as reflective thought) and
the practical attitudes of life. The concepts, elements, and other
apparatus of reflection are employed, it is said, only when there is
thinking,--and this is only occasionally. Theory is an instrument to be
used in connection with that special activity, reflective thought, the
general aim of which is the furtherance of the practical ends of life.
One fairly obvious difficulty with this separation of reflection from
the other life activities is that the 'direct descriptive method,' as
here employed, is itself reflective. How does it come, then, that this
particular method achieves such an effective hegemony over the other
modes of reflection? The 'descriptive method,' as the method of pure
experience, is made to determine or supplant all other methods. It
defines the limits and aims of conceptual systems; it marks out the
limits, aims, and tests of reflective thought in general. How, it may be
asked, does the 'direct descriptive method' escape the limitations which
it imposes upon the other forms of reflective thought?
It has been seen that in Dewey's view logic is subsidiary to psychology.
But psychology (his psychology) results from the application of the
'descriptive method' to experience. The 'descriptive method,' it may be
inferred from this, is not subject to logical criticism. On the
contrary, it is the basis of all logic. Logic, as the criticism of
categories, is confined to the study of the instrumental concepts as
functioning within the knowledge experience, and its limits are set by
descriptive psychology. There is, apparently, no means by which the
'direct descriptive method' can itself be brought under criticism.
Dewey says: "By our postulate, things are what they are experienced to
be; and, unless knowing is the sole and only genuine mode of
experiencing, it is fallacious to say that Reality is just and
exclusively what it is or would be to an all-competent all-knower; or
even that it _is_, relatively and piece-meal, what it is to a finite and
partial knower."[283] Reality is not simply what it is known as, for it
is experienced in other ways than by being known. "But I venture to
repeat that ... the inferential factor must _exist_, or must occur, and
that all existence is direct and vital, so that philosophy can pass upon
its nature--as upon the nature of all of the rest of its
subject-matter--only by first ascertaining what it exists or occurs
_as_."[284]
Reflection, then, is not designed to furnish an insight into the nature
of things. Acquaintance with reality must be obtained, not by reflecting
upon it, but by describing it as it occurs. Whatever else this may mean,
it certainly aims at demonstrating the superiority of description to the
supposedly less effective modes of thought. It cannot be conceded,
however, that 'description,' as employed by Dewey, is non-reflective, or
super-reflective. If things are not what they are known as, then they
are not what they are known as to a describer. The point of this
objection will be obvious if it is remembered that it is the method of
'direct description' which enables Dewey to distinguish between the
'cognitional' and the 'non-cognitional' activities of life, and make
thought the servant of action. If Dewey's descriptive method is not
reflective, then there is no such thing as reflection.
Passing for the moment from this criticism, which is not apt to be
convincing in such abstract form, it may be well to consider for a time
the psychology upon which Dewey's logical theory is grounded: the
psychology which is established by the 'direct descriptive method.'
From the standpoint of the nervous correlates of experience, Dewey's
theory involves two postulates: first, that customary conduct is carried
on by an habitual set of nervous adjustments, and, second, that
reflection is a process whereby new reactions are established when
habitual modes of response fail to meet a critical situation.
It must be clearly recognized that, so far as the nervous system is
concerned, the scheme is highly speculative. The advance made by
physiology towards an analysis and understanding of the minute and
specialized parts of the nervous organism has necessarily been slow and
uncertain. Whatever plausibility Dewey's theory possesses must depend,
not upon the technical results of neurology, but upon the external
evidence which seems to justify some such scheme of nervous
organization.
An examination of this evidence shows that it falls under two main
heads: (1) facts drawn from the observation of the outward behavior of
the organism, and (2) facts derived from an introspective analysis of
the thought-process.
The study of behavior shows that man thinks only now and then. Most of
his conduct is, literally, thoughtless. It is said that thought is
outwardly manifested by a characteristic attitude, marked by hesitation
and an obvious effort at adjustment. The introspective analysis of the
thought-process shows that it alone, among experiences, is accompanied
by analysis, abstraction, and mediation. Again, both the internal and
external evidence show that a puzzling situation (whose nervous
correlate is a conflict of impulses) is the stimulus which awakens
thought. These are important items in the list of evidence which
supports the functional theory.
It would be a tedious and unnecessary task to subject each of these bits
of evidence to empirical criticism. It will be better to deal with them
by showing that they do not necessarily imply functionalism, since they
are compatible with a psychology directly opposed to the fundamental
assumptions of Dewey's theory.
It is doubtless true that men think only occasionally and with some
reluctance. This is a common observation. What is to be made of this
intermittance of thought? The evidence merely shows that man is more
wide awake, energetic, and alert at some times than at others. On these
occasions every faculty of the organism is in operation, higher as well
as lower centres are pitched to a high degree of responsiveness, not at
hap-hazard, to be sure, but _apropos_--tuned to the situation. In saying
that men think only now and then nothing more is necessarily implied
than that men are for the most part sluggish and indifferent, and the
periods of high intensification of the normal processes contrast sharply
with the habitual lethargy of conduct.
Against Dewey, it will be maintained here that thought cannot be
defined as a special kind of activity considered from the side of the
organism. The life processes are constantly welded into a single unified
activity, which may, as a whole, be directed upon different objects.
Thus, from the side of its objects, this life activity may be called
eating, running, reading, and whatever else one chooses. Thinking, from
this standpoint, may be defined as the direction of effort upon symbols
and abstract terms. But thinking in this case would be identified on the
basis of its content, not in terms of special nervous activities in the
organism. Whether, therefore, thinking signifies that intense periodical
activity which has been noted, or preoccupation with a certain kind of
subject-matter, it in no case implies the operation of a special organic
faculty of the type described by Dewey.
But, again, it is said that true reflection is marked by a certain
characteristic bodily attitude, which bespeaks inner conflict and a
search for adjustment. This contention seems to have little ground in
fact. The puzzled, hesitating, undecided expression that is usually
supposed to betray deep cogitation may in fact mean simply hesitation
and bewilderment,--the need for thought, rather than its presence. The
expression reveals a certain degree of incompetence and sluggishness in
the individual concerned, and signifies a lack of wide-awakeness and
responsiveness. A student puzzling over his algebra, a speaker
extemporizing an argument, a ball-player using all his resources to
defeat the enemy, have attitudes so unlike that no analysis could
discover in them a common form of expression. And yet it would be
madness to deny that thinking attends their various performances. There
is, in short, no evidence from the side of bodily expression to indicate
the presence in man of a special nervous faculty called reflection.
Consider next the contention that the cue to thought is a puzzling
situation, involving a problem. No problem, no thought; no thought, no
problem. This may mean either that a man finding himself in a difficult
situation uses all his energy and resource to escape from it, or, that
he never concerns himself with abstract symbols except under the spur of
necessity. The former meaning contains some truth, but the latter is
what Dewey would call a 'dark saying.' If by 'thought' be meant that
period of high activity of all the faculties which is only occasional,
it is doubtless true enough that a problem is frequently needed to
awaken it. Man is content to let life glide along with a minimum of
effort; he cannot, if he would, long maintain the state of high activity
here called 'thinking.' As a consequence of not thinking when he should,
man frequently finds himself involved in situations requiring the
exercise of all the energy and resource he possesses. But the really
efficient 'thinker' is the man who keeps his eyes open, who sees ahead.
He is not efficient merely because of the excellence of his established
modes of response, but, more particularly, because he is alive and
alert. His thinking is effective in preventing difficult situations, as
well as in getting out of them.
Defining 'thought,' however, as the direction of activity upon symbols
and conceptions, there seems to be little warrant for asserting that it
functions only on the occasion of a concrete, specific problem. One
would say, on the contrary, that this would be an unfavorable occasion
for the study of fundamental principles, whether scientific or
practical. Summing up the external evidence, then, one would say that it
accords as well with the hypothesis that the life processes constitute a
single activity directed upon various objects, as with the hypothesis
that thought is a very special organic activity, having a special
biological function. At least, the evidence for the existence of such a
special faculty is dubious and uncertain.
What does the internal evidence prove? The analysis of thought contained
in James's chapter on "Reasoning" in the _Principles of Psychology_ has
been the guide for Dewey and other pragmatists in this connection.[285]
James undertakes to show that reasoning is marked off from other
processes by the employment of analysis, abstraction, and the use of
mediating terms. It must be urged here, not only against James, but
against a considerable modern tradition, that this account of thinking
is misleading and inaccurate. The question to be faced, of course, is
whether the processes of thought differ radically from the
non-reflective processes _in kind_, or whether they are simply the
intensification of processes which attend all conscious life. It should
be noted that no concession is made to the notion that thinking is a
special kind of process; only its subject-matter is special, or else
thought is simply a period of wide-awakeness and alertness. In the
latter sense, thought involves an intensification of the powers of
observation, an awakening of memory, a general stimulation of all the
faculties. It calls for the fullest possible apprehension, demands the
most complete insight into the nature of the situation that the
capacities can provide. The contrast between the adequate view of
reality achieved in this manner and the common and inadequate
apprehension of ordinary life is very great, and might easily lead to
the supposition that thinking (so understood) contains elements which
are added through the activities of a special nerve process.
But is it only in such moments that we deliberately resolve a situation
into its elements, and abstract an 'essence' to serve as a middle term
in inference? It is certain that at such moments these processes are
more distinct than at other times; but the whole situation, for that
matter, stands out more clearly and distinctly. Perception is keener,
memory more definite, feeling more intense. In less degree, however, all
attention involves analysis and abstraction. Experience has always a
focus and a margin; there is a constant selecting and analyzing out of
important elements, which in turn lead to further conclusions and acts,
through associations by contiguity and similarity. This process appears
in an intensified form in the high moments of life. In short, thought
and passive perception are differentiated, not by the elements which
compose them, but by the degree of energy that goes into perception,
memory, feeling, and discrimination. There is nothing in the evidence to
show that thinking is a special kind of activity, which operates now and
then. On the contrary, there is every reason to hold to the position
that the life processes are one and inseparable, operating continually
in conjunction.
What shall be said, then, with reference to the assertion that thought
operates in the interests of the non-cognitive life processes? That it
comes 'after something and for the sake of something,' namely, 'direct'
experience? Since the separation of the activities into various
'functions' cannot be allowed, by occasional thought must then be meant
those moments of energetic aliveness described above. Translating,
Dewey's theory would read something like this: Man employs his faculties
to the fullest extent only when he is compelled to do so. He gets along
habitually, that is, with a minimum of effort, as long as he can, but
rouses himself and makes an earnest effort to comprehend the world only
when his environment presents him with difficulties which demand
solution. The test of man's thinking consists in its efficiency in
getting him out of trouble, and enabling him to return to his habitual
modes of sub-conscious conduct with a minimum of annoyance. In short,
thinking is an instrument which subserves man's natural laziness, and
its test is the efficiency with which it promotes an easy, or, at any
rate, a satisfactory mode of existence.
No doubt some men, perhaps many men, do follow such a programme; but it
would not be kind to Nature to assert that she planned it so.
This separation of the activities of life into several distinct
processes having each a special function looks like a survival of the
old faculty psychology, against which modern thought has protested as
much as against anything whatever. The conception of the organic
processes as separate in action has all the faults of a merely
mechanical representation of consciousness. Doubtless some advantage is
to be obtained, for purposes of investigation, by treating thought,
appreciation, and affection separately; but it is a serious error to
take this provisional distinction as real. It is a curious fact that
Dewey, with all his opposition to such modes of procedure, himself falls
into this abstract way of treating the 'functions' of experience, seeing
not the beam that is in his own eye.
It is this very form of treatment, strangely enough, which enables Dewey
to call biology to the support of his interpretation of the function of
knowledge. According to the Darwinian theory, survival of the species is
dependent upon the development of special structures and capacities
which enable the organism to adjust itself to its environment. Dewey
finds, following a familiar argument, that the lower animals are adapted
to their environment by special habits of reaction which are relatively
fixed and inelastic. Man, on the contrary, has an exceedingly plastic
nervous system, which enables him to meet changing conditions. Man is
not only highly adapted, but highly adaptable. This trait of plasticity,
or adaptability, Dewey believes, is a product of natural selection, and,
of course, in the final analysis, this high degree of plasticity is the
thought function.
It is scarcely necessary to say that this treatment of thought is highly
speculative. Dewey offers little concrete evidence to support his
position; indeed, it would require the labor of a Darwin to supply the
needed evidence. Instead of grounding his theories upon the results of
science, Dewey adapts the ever elastic 'evolutionary method' (not really
that of biological evolution, however indeterminate) to his own scheme
of things. It would be hard to discover in philosophical literature a
method more purely theoretical and even dialectical than that whereby
Dewey gives his logical theory the support of evolutionary theory.
The ultimately mechanical tendencies of his argument are conspicuous, in
spite of all disclaimers. The effect of his analysis is to set
plasticity or adaptability off by itself, as a special trait or feature
of the nervous system. The lower forms of life are governed, we are
told, by fixed reflexes, and the trait of adaptability appears at some
higher stage in the process as a superadded capacity of the nervous
system, correlated, no doubt, with special nervous structures.
Evolutionism would not serve Dewey so well, had he not previously made
this separation between the organic functions and their correlated
structures; but, given this abstract treatment of the life processes, he
is able to make the doctrine of selection contribute to its support. In
opposition to Dewey's argument, it would be reasonable to contend that
plasticity is inherent in all nervous substance. The higher organisms
are more adaptable, because there is more to be modified in them,--more
nerves and synapses, more pliability. There is no sound empirical reason
for accepting Dewey's biological conclusions.
Taking Dewey's theory at its face value,--and it would be presumptuous
to search for hidden meanings,--its net result is to place the function
of knowing in an embarrassing situation with respect to its capacity for
giving a correct report of reality. Dewey expressly denies, indeed, that
the purpose of knowing is to give an account of the nature of things.
Reality, he asserts, is whatever it is 'experienced as being,' and it is
normally experienced in other ways than by being known. The nature of
reality is not hidden behind a veil, to be searched out; but is here and
now, as it comes and goes in the form of passing experience. Knowing is
designed to transform experience, not to bring it within the survey of
consciousness.
How does it stand, then, with Dewey's own account of the knowledge
process? He has reflected upon experience, and claims to have given a
correct account of its nature. Dewey's conception of the processes of
experience is genuinely conceptual, a thought product, designed to
furnish a solid basis for belief and calculation. But reflection, by his
own account, is shut in to its own moment, cannot apprehend the true
nature of 'non-cognitional' experiences, and cannot, therefore, deal
adequately with any problems except such as are furnished it by other
'functions.' No wonder that 'anti-intellectualism' should result from
such a conception of knowledge.
Philosophers have always held that the purpose of reflection (whatever
reflection may be, psychologically) is the attainment of a reliable
insight into the nature of the world. Practical considerations compel
this view. Ordinary, casual observation is superficial and unsystematic;
it never penetrates beneath the surface. Doubtless reality is, in some
degree, what it is in unreflective moments; but it is frequently
something more, as man learns to his sorrow. Reflection displaces the
casual, haphazard attitude, in the attempt to get at the real nature of
the world.
The results of reflection, moreover, are cumulative. It tends to build
up, by gradual accretions, a conceptual view of reality which may serve
as a relatively stable basis for conduct and calculation. Thought does,
indeed, possess a transforming function. The reasoned knowledge of
things is gradually extended beyond the occasional moments of inquiring
thought, supplanting the casual view with a more penetrating insight;
reality becomes more and better _known_, and less merely _experienced_.
Dewey reverses this view in a curious manner. It is 'experience' that is
built up by the action of thought, not knowledge itself. This play on
terms might be innocuous, if it were not accompanied by his separation
of the knowing function from others. Dewey makes 'knowing' the servant
of 'direct experience' by giving it the function of reconstructing the
habits of the organism, in order that unreflective experience may be
maintained with a minimum of effort. The non-reflective experience
becomes the valuable experience, and knowledge is made to minister unto
it. This is truly a 'transvaluation of values.'
Dewey asks: "What is it that makes us live alternately in a concrete
world of experience in which thought as such finds not satisfaction, and
in a world of ordered thought which is yet only abstract and
ideal?"[286] This sharp separation of thought from action is vigorously
maintained. Following are some of the terms by means of which the
difference between direct and reflective experience is expressed:
'direct practice,' 'derived theory;' 'primary construction,' 'secondary
criticism;' 'living appreciation,' 'abstract description;' 'active
endeavor,' 'pale reflection.'[287] This casual, easy distinction escapes
criticism because it seems harmless and unimportant. The distinction,
however, is _not_ real. It does not correspond to the simple facts of
life. Thinking, far from being 'pale reflection,' is often a strenuous
and energetic 'activity.' Reflection, not 'direct experience,' is often,
at least, at the high moment of life. Experience becomes unmeaning on
any other basis. 'Living appreciation' and 'primary construction'
involve thought in a high degree; 'pale reflection' is lazy
contemplation, lacking the spark of life that characterizes true
thought.
There is no escape from Dewey's needlessly alarming conclusions, except
by maintaining that thought accompanies all conscious life, in greater
or less degree, and that the moment of _real_, earnest thinking is at
the high tide of life, when all the powers are awake and operating.
Thought must be made integral with all other activities, a feature of
the total life organization, rather than an isolated phenomenon. Man is
a thinking organism, not an organism with a thinker.
It is not to be supposed for a moment that by 'thought' is here meant
the activity of a merely subjective knower. Dewey does, indeed, deal
effectively with the subjective ego, and with representative
perceptionism. But by 'thought' is here meant reflection, judgment,
inference; and in this sense thought is said to be present in all
experience. There can be no question of the relation of thought, so
understood, to reality; for the reason that it has been so integrated
with experience as to be inseparable from it. Setting aside knowing as
the awareness of a conscious subject, there remains an issue with Dewey
concerning the actual place of thought, as an empirical process, in
experience, and the issue must be settled on definite and really
empirical grounds. So much, then, for 'functionalism' and its
psychology.
Something should be said, before closing this discussion, concerning
philosophical methods in general, since Dewey's psychological approach
to the problems of philosophy must be held responsible for his
anti-intellectualistic results, with their sceptical implications. In
the beginning of his career, as has been seen, Dewey adopted the
'psychological method,' and he has adhered to it consistently ever
since. This initial attitude, although he was not aware of it for many
years, cut him off from the community of understanding that exists among
modern idealists concerning the proper aims and purposes of
philosophical inquiry. Although at first a professed follower of Green
and Caird, Dewey's method was not reconcilable with idealistic
procedure, and in a very real sense he never was an idealist. The
virulence of his later attacks on 'intellectualism' may be explained in
terms of his reaction against a philosophical method which interfered
with the development of his own 'naturalistic' tendencies.
The method of idealism, or speculative philosophy, is logical; but it
may perfectly well be empirical at the same time. To the
anti-intellectualist empirical logic is an anomaly, a red blue-bird, so
to speak. The philosophical logician is represented as one who evolves
reality out of his own consciousness; who labors with the concepts which
have their abode in the mental sphere, and, by means of the principle of
contradiction, forces them into harmony until they provide a perfectly
consistent representation of the external world which, because of its
perfect rationality, must somehow correspond with the cosmic reality. In
spite of the fact that no man possesses, at least in a sane condition,
the mental equipment requisite for such a performance, certain critics
have not hesitated to impute this kind of logical procedure to the
idealists. To quote from Dewey himself: "For modern philosophy is, as
every college senior recites, epistemology; and epistemology, as perhaps
our books and lectures sometimes forget to tell the senior, has absorbed
Stoic dogma. Passionless imperturbability, absolute detachment, complete
subjection to a ready-made and finished reality ... is its professed
ideal.... Philosophy has dreamed the dream of a knowledge which is other
than the propitious outgrowth of beliefs that shall develop aforetime
their ulterior implications in order to recast them ..., the dream of a
knowledge that has to do with objects having no nature save to be
known."[288]
This charge against modern idealism has little foundation. Speculative
philosophy repudiated, long ago, the 'epistemological standpoint' as
defined by Dewey. Idealists have not fostered the conception of a
knowing subject shut in to its own states, seeking information about an
impersonal reality over against itself. Note, for example, this comment
of Pringle-Pattison on Kant, made over thirty-five years ago: "The
distinction between mind and the world, which is valid only from a
certain point of view, he took as an absolute separation. He took it, to
use a current phrase, abstractly--that is to say, as a mere fact, a fact
standing by itself and true in any reference. And of course when two
things are completely separate, they can only be brought together by a
bond which is mechanical, external, and accidental to the real nature
of both."[289] Dewey himself never condemned 'epistemology' more
effectively. But it is useless to cite instances, for any serious
student familiar with the literature of modern philosophy ought to know
that 'idealism' has never really been 'epistemological' in the sense
meant by Dewey and his disciples. Subjectivism is not idealism,--the
stolid dogmatism of neo-realism to the contrary notwithstanding.
Idealism holds, speaking more positively, that philosophers must submit
the conceptions and methods which they employ to a preliminary immanent
criticism, in order to determine the limits within which they may be
validly applied. Every genuine category or method is valid within a
certain sphere of relevance, and the business of criticism is to
determine by empirical investigation or by 'ideal experiment' (which
means much the same thing) what concrete significance the conception is
capable of bearing. Dewey, from the standpoint of idealism, is guilty of
a somewhat uncritical use of the categories of 'description' and
'evolution.' Are the categories of biology fitted to explain mind and
spirit? Instead of instituting an inquiry designed to answer that
question, Dewey accepts 'evolutionism' as final, and attempts to force
all phenomena into conformity with his resulting logical scheme. He
misses the valuable checks upon thought which are furnished by the
'critical method,' and is none too sensitive to the technical results of
the special sciences.
The logical approach to philosophy strictly involves certain
implications which have been overlooked by many of its critics. It may
well be admitted that our real categories are not fixed and final, but
are perpetually in process of reconstruction. The process of criticism
inevitably makes manifest the human and empirical character of the
particular forms of reflective thought. It recognizes the fact of
development, both in knowledge and in reality, and by this very
recognition the value of knowledge is enhanced. It is forced, by the
very nature of its method, to recognize the concrete and practical
bearings of thought. Indeed, there is a sense in which idealism would
declare that there is no thought--when thought, that is, is taken to
mean an isolated fact out of relation to the world. It is not possible
to make this retort upon the critics of idealism without recognizing
that there has been a vast misjudgment, amounting almost to
misrepresentation, of the intellectual ideals of modern speculative
philosophy.
To conclude, it is neither by abstract logical processes, nor yet by the
dogmatic employment of scientific categories, that philosophy makes
progress, but by an empirical process which unites criticism and
experiment. In speaking of the development of modern idealism, Bosanquet
says: "All difficulties about the general possibility--the possibility
in principle--of apprehending reality in knowledge and preception were
flung aside as antiquated lumber. What was undertaken was the direct
adventure of knowing; of shaping a view of the universe which should
include and express reality in its completeness. The test and criterion
were not any speculative assumption of any kind whatever. They were the
direct work of the function of knowledge in exhibiting what could and
what could not maintain itself when all the facts were confronted and
set in the order they themselves demanded. The method of inquiry was
ideal experiment."[290]
When all has been said, this method remains the natural and normal one.
Dewey's 'psychological method,' by contrast, seems strained and
far-fetched, an artificial and externally motived attempt to guide the
intellect, which only by depending upon its own resources and its own
increasing insight can hope to attain the distant and difficult, but
never really foreign goal.
FOOTNOTES:
[281] _The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy_, p. 240.
[282] _Op. cit._, Mind, Vol. XI, p. 8 f.
[283] "The Experimental Method," _Influence of Darwin on Philosophy_, p.
228.
[284] "The Experimental Method," _Influence of Darwin on Philosophy_, p.
240.
[285] See the review of Dewey's essay, "The Experimental Method," in
Chapter VII of this study, p. 91 ff.
[286] _Studies in Logical Theory_, p. 4.
[287] _Ibid._, p. 2.
[288] "Beliefs and Existences," _The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy_,
p. 172 f.
[289] _The Philosophical Radicals_, p. 297. The essay in which it
occurs, "Philosophy as a Criticism of Categories," was first published
in 1883, in the volume _Essays on Philosophical Criticism_.
[290] "Realism and Metaphysics," _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XXVI,
1917, p. 8.