brought out clearly, on the basis of a criticism of the theory of
meaning and fulfilment advanced in Royce’s “World and Individual,” the
full consequences of this distinction. I quote one sentence (p. 350):
“Surely there is a pretty discernible difference between experience as
a purposive idea, and the experience which fulfils this purpose. To
call them both ‘ideas’ is at least confusing.” The text above simply
adds that there is also a discernible and important difference between
experiences which, _de facto_, are purposing and fulfilling (that is,
are seen to be such _ab extra_), and those which meant to be such, and
are found to be what they meant.
[14] The association of science and philosophy with leisure, with a
certain economic surplus, is not accidental. It is practically worth
while to postpone practice; to substitute theorizing, to develop a new
and fascinating mode of practice. But it is the excess achievement of
practice which makes this postponement and substitution possible.
[15] It is the failure to grasp the coupling of truth of meaning with
a _specific_ promise, undertaking, or intention expressed by a thing
which underlies, so far as I can see, the criticisms passed upon the
experimental or pragmatic view of the truth. It is the same failure
which is responsible for the wholly _at large_ view of truth which
characterizes the absolutists.
[16] The belief in the _metaphysical_ transcendence of the object of
knowledge seems to have its real origin in an _empirical_ transcendence
of a very specific and describable sort. The thing meaning is one
thing; the thing meant is another thing, and is (as already pointed
out) a thing presented as not given in the same way as is the thing
which means. It is something _to be_ so given. No amount of careful
and thorough inspection of the indicating and signifying things can
remove or annihilate this gap. The _probability_ of correct meaning may
be increased in varying degrees--and this is what we mean by control.
But final certitude can never be reached except experimentally--except
by performing the operations indicated and discovering whether or
no the intended meaning is fulfilled _in propria persona_. In this
experimental sense, truth or the object of any given meaning is always
beyond or outside of the cognitional thing that means it. Error as well
as truth is a necessary function of knowing. But the non-empirical
account of this transcendent (or beyond) relationship puts _all_ the
error in one place (_our_ knowledge), and _all_ the truth in another
(absolute consciousness or else a thing-in-itself).
[17] Compare his essay, “Does Consciousness Exist?” in the _Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. I., p. 480.
[18] Compare the essay on the “Problem of Consciousness,” by Professor
Woodbridge, in the Garman Memorial Volume, entitled “Studies in
Philosophy and Psychology.”
[19] Reprinted, with many changes, from an article in _Mind_, Vol.
XVI., N.S., July 1907. Although the changes have been made to render
the article less technical, it still remains, I fear, too technical
to be intelligible to those not familiar with recent discussions of
logical theory.
[20] I follow chiefly Chapter XV. of “Appearance and Reality”--the
chapter on “Thought and Reality.”
[21] The crux of the argument is contained in Chapters XIII. and XIV.,
on the “General Nature of Reality.”
[22] The same point comes out in Mr. Bradley’s treatment of the way in
which the practical demand for the good or satisfaction is to be taken
account of in a philosophical conception of the nature of reality.
He admits that it comes in; but holds that it enters not directly,
but because if left outside it indirectly introduces a feature of
“discontent” on the intellectual side (see p. 155). This, as an
argument for the supremacy of the isolated theoretical standard, loses
all its force if we cease to conceive of intellect as from the start an
independent function, and realize that intellectual discontent is the
practical conflict becoming deliberately aware of itself as the most
effective means of its own rectification.
[23] This suggests that many of the stock arguments against pragmatism
fail to take its contention seriously enough. They proceed from the
assumption that it is an account of truth which leaves untouched
current notions of the nature of intelligence. But the essential
point of pragmatism is that it bases its changed account of truth on
a changed conception of the nature of intelligence, both as to its
objective and its method. Now this different account of intelligence
may be wrong, but controversy which leaves standing the conventionally
current theories about thought and merely discusses “truth” will not
go far. Since truth is the adequate fulfilment of the function of
intelligence, the question turns on the nature of the latter.
[24] Such a statement as, for example, Mr. Bradley’s (_Mind_, Vol.
XIII., No. 51, N.S., p. 3, article on “Truth and Practice”) “The idea
works ... but is able to work because I have chosen the right idea”
surely loses any argumentative force it may seem to have, when it is
recalled that, upon the theory argued against, ability to work and
rightness are one and the same thing. If the wording is changed to
read “The idea is able to work because I have chosen an idea which is
able to work” the question-begging character of the implied criticism
is evident. The change of phraseology also may suggest the crucial and
pregnant question: How does any one know that an idea is able to work
excepting by setting it at work?
[25] A paper read in the spring of 1909 before the Philosophical Club
of Smith College and not previously published.
[26] Read as the Presidential Address at the fifth annual meeting of
the American Philosophical Association, at Cambridge, December 28,
1905, and reprinted with verbal revisions from the _Philosophical
Review_, Vol. XV., March, 1906. The substitution of the word
“Existences” for the word “Realities” (in the original title) is due
to a subsequent recognition on my part that the eulogistic historic
associations with the word “Reality” (against which the paper was a
protest) infected the interpretation of the paper itself, so that the
use of some more colorless word was desirable.
[27] Since writing the above I have read the following words of a
candidly unsympathetic friend of philosophy: “Neither philosophy nor
science can institute man’s relation to the universe, because such
reciprocity must have existed before any kind of science or philosophy
can begin; since each investigates phenomena by means of the intellect,
and independent of the position and feeling of the investigator;
whereas the relation of man to the universe is defined, not by the
intellect alone, but by his sensitive perception aided by all his
spiritual powers. However much one may assure and instruct a man that
all real existence is an idea, that matter is made up of atoms, that
the essence of life is corporality or will, that heat, light, movement,
electricity, are different manifestations of one and the same energy,
one cannot thereby explain to a being with pains, pleasures, hopes, and
fears his position in the universe.” Tolstoi, essay on “Religion and
Morality,” in “Essays, Letters, and Miscellanies.”
[28] Hegel may be excepted from this statement. The habit of
interpreting Hegel as a Neo-Kantian, a Kantian enlarged and purified,
is a purely Anglo-American habit. This is no place to enter into the
intricacies of Hegelian exegesis, but the subordination of both logical
meaning and of mechanical existence to _Geist_, to life in its own
developing movement, would seem to stand out in any unbiased view of
Hegel. At all events, I wish to recognize my own personal debt to Hegel
for the view set forth in this paper, without, of course, implying that
it represents Hegel’s own intention.
[29] There will of course come in time with the development of this
point of view an organon of beliefs. The signs of a genuine as against
a simulated belief will be studied; belief as a vital personal reaction
will be discriminated from habitual, incorporate, unquestioned
(because unconsciously exercised) traditions of social classes and
professions. In his “Will to Believe” Professor James has already
laid down two traits of genuine belief (viz., “forced option,” and
acceptance of responsibility for results) which are almost always
ignored in criticisms (really caricatures) of his position. In the
light of such an organon, one might come to doubt whether _belief_
in, say, immortality (as distinct from hope on one side and a sort
of intellectual balance of probability of opinion on the other) can
genuinely exist at all.
[30] Reprinted, with slight verbal changes, from the _Philosophical
Review_, Vol. XV. (1906).
[31] C. S. Peirce, _Monist_, Vol. XVI., p. 150.
[32] _Psychology_, Vol. II., p. 618.
[33] “Essay concerning Human Understanding,” Book II., Chapter II., §
2. Locke doubtless derived this notion from Bacon.
[34] It is hardly necessary to refer to the stress placed upon
mathematics, as well as upon fundamental propositions in logic, ethics,
and cosmology.
[35] Of course there are internal historic connections between
experience as effective “memory,” and experience as “observation.”
But the motivation and stress, the problem, has quite shifted. It
may be remarked that Hobbes still writes under the influence of the
Aristotelian conception. “Experience is nothing but Memory” (“Elements
of Philosophy,” Part I., Chapter I., § 2), and hence is opposed to
science.
[36] There are, of course, anticipations of Hume in Locke. But to
regard Lockeian experience as equivalent to Humian is to pervert
history. Locke, as he was to himself and to the century succeeding him,
was not a subjectivist, but in the main a common sense objectivist.
It was this that gave him his historic influence. But so completely
has the Hume-Kant controversy dominated recent thinking that it is
constantly projected backward. Within a few weeks I have seen three
articles, all insisting that the meaning of the term experience must
be subjective, and stating or implying that those who take the term
objectively are subverters of established usage! But a casual study of
the dictionary will reveal that experience has always meant “_what_
is experienced,” observation as a source of knowledge, as well as the
act, fact, or mode of experiencing. In the Oxford Dictionary, the
(obsolete) sense of “experimental testing,” of actual “observation
of facts and events,” and “the fact of being consciously affected by
an act” have almost contemporaneous datings, viz., 1384, 1377, and
1382 respectively. A usage almost more objective than the second, the
Baconian use, is “what has been experienced; the events that have taken
place within the knowledge of an individual, a community, mankind at
large, either during a particular period or generally.” This dates back
to 1607. Let us have no more captious criticisms and plaints based
on ignorance of linguistic usage. [This pious wish has not been met.
J. D., 1909.]
[37] The relationship of organization and thought is precisely that
which we find psychologically typified by the rhythmic functions of
habit and attention, attention being always, _ab quo_, a sign of the
failure of habit, and, _ad quem_, a reconstructive modification of
habit.
[38] Compare, for example, Dr. Stuart’s paper in the “Studies in
Logical Theory,” pp. 253-256. I may here remark that I remain
totally unable to see how the _interpretation_ of objectivity to
mean controlling conditions of action (negative and positive as
above) derogates at all from its naïve objectivity, or how it
connotes cognitive subjectivity, or is in any way incompatible with a
common-sense realistic theory of perception.
[39] For this suggested interpretation of the esthetic as surprising,
or unintended, gratuitous collateral reinforcement, see Gordon,
“Psychology of Meaning.”
[40] This, however, is not strictly true, since Locke goes far
to supply the means of his own correction in his account of the
“workmanship of the understanding.”
[41] Plato, especially in his “Theætetus,” seems to have begun the
procedure of blasting the good name of perceptive experience by
identifying a late and instrumental distinction, having to do with
logical control, with all experience whatsoever.
[42] Compare James, “Continuous transition is one sort of conjunctive
relation; and to be a radical empiricist means to hold fast to this
conjunctive relation of all others, for this is the strategic point,
the position through which, if a hole be made, all the corruptions
of dialectics and all the metaphysical fictions pour into our
philosophy.”--_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific
Methods_, Vol. I., p. 536.
[43] One of the not least of the many merits of Santayana’s “Life of
Reason” is the consistency and vigor with which is upheld the doctrine
that significant idealism means idealization.
[44] Reprinted, with very slight change, from the _Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. II., No. 15,
July, 1905.
[45] All labels are, of course, obnoxious and misleading. I hope,
however, the term will be taken by the reader in the sense in which
it is forthwith explained, and not in some more usual and familiar
sense. Empiricism, as herein used, is as antipodal to sensationalistic
empiricism, as it is to transcendentalism, and for the same reason.
Both of these systems fall back on something which is defined in
non-directly-experienced terms in order to justify that which is
directly experienced. Hence I have criticised such empiricism
(_Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI., No. 4, p. 364) as essentially
absolutistic in character; and also (“Studies in Logical Theory,”
pp. 30, 58) as an attempt to build up experience in terms of certain
methodological checks and cues of attaining _certainty_.
[46] I hope the reader will not therefore assume that from the
empiricist’s standpoint knowledge is of small worth or import. On the
contrary, from the empiricist’s standpoint it has _all_ the worth which
it is concretely experienced as possessing--which is simply tremendous.
But the exact _nature_ of this worth is a thing to be found out in
describing what we mean by experiencing objects as known--the actual
differences made or found in experience.
[47] Since the non-empiricist believes in things-in-themselves (which
he may term “atoms,” “sensations,” transcendental unities, _a priori_
concepts, _an_ absolute experience, or whatever), and since he finds
that the empiricist makes much of change (as he must, since change is
continuously experienced) he assumes that the empiricist means _his
own_ non-empirical Realities are in continual flux, and he naturally
shudders at having his divinities so violently treated. But, once
recognize that the empiricist doesn’t have any such Realities at all,
and the entire problem of the relation of change to reality takes a
very different aspect.
[48] It would lead us aside from the point to try to tell just what
is the nature of the experienced difference we call truth. Professor
James’s recent articles may well be consulted. The point to bear in
mind here is just what sort of a thing the empiricist must mean by
true, or truer (the noun Truth is, of course, a generic name for all
cases of “Trues”). The adequacy of any particular account is not a
matter to be settled by general reasoning, but by finding out what sort
of an experience the truth-experience actually is.
[49] I say “relatively,” because the transcendentalist still holds
that finally the cognition is imperfect, giving us only some symbol
or phenomenon of Reality (which _is_ only in the Absolute or in some
Thing-in-Itself)--otherwise the curtain-wind fact would have as
much ontological reality as the existence of the Absolute itself: a
conclusion at which the non-empiricist perhorresces, for no reason
obvious to me--save that it would put an end to his transcendentalism.
[50] In general, I think the distinction between -_ive_ and -_ed_ one
of the most fundamental of philosophic distinctions, and one of the
most neglected. The same holds of -_tion_ and -_ing_.
[51] What is criticised, now as “geneticism” (if I may coin the word)
and now as “pragmatism” is, in its truth, just the fact that the
empiricist does take account of the experienced “drift, occasion, and
contexture” of things experienced--to use Hobbes’s phrase.
[52] Perhaps the point would be clearer if expressed in this way:
Except as subsequent estimates of _worth_ are introduced, “real”
means only existent. The eulogistic connotation that makes the term
Reality equivalent to _true_ or _genuine_ being has great pragmatic
significance, but its confusion with reality as existence is the point
aimed at in the above paragraph.
[53] One does not so easily escape medieval Realism as one thinks.
Either every experienced thing has its own determinateness, its own
unsubstitutable, unredeemable reality, or else “generals” _are_
separate existences after all.
[54] Excepting, of course, some negative ones. One could say that
certain views are certainly _not_ true, because, by hypothesis,
they refer to nonentities, _i.e._, non-empiricals. But even here
the empiricist must go slowly. From his own standpoint, even the
most professedly transcendental statements are, after all, real as
experiences, and hence negotiate some transaction with facts. For
this reason, he cannot, in theory, reject them _in toto_, but has to
show concretely how they arose and how they are to be corrected. In a
word, his logical relationship to statements that profess to relate to
things-in-themselves, unknowables, inexperienced substances, etc., is
precisely that of the psychologist to the Zöllner lines.
[55] Delivered as a public address before the Philosophic Union of the
University of California, with the title “Psychology and Philosophic
Method,” May, 1899, and published in the _University Chronicle_ for
August, 1899. Reprinted, with slight verbal changes, mostly excisions.
[56] This is a fact not without its bearings upon the question of the
nature and value of introspection. The objection that introspection
“alters” the reality and hence is untrustworthy, most writers dispose
of by saying that, after all, it need not alter the reality so very
much--not beyond repair--and that, moreover, memory assists in
restoring the ruins. It would be simpler to admit the fact: that the
purpose of introspection is precisely to effect the right sort of
alteration. If introspection should give us the original experience
again, we should just be living through the experience over again in
direct fashion; as psychologists we should not be forwarded one bit.
Reflection upon this obvious proposition may bring to light various
other matters worthy of note.
[57] Thus to divorce “structure psychology” from “function psychology”
is to leave us without possibility of scientific comprehension of
function, while it deprives us of all standard of reference in
selecting, observing, and explaining the structure.
[58] The following answer may fairly be anticipated: “This is true of
the operations cited, but only because complex processes have been
selected. Such a term as ‘knowing’ does of course express a function
involving a system of intricate references. But, for that very reason,
we go back to the sensation which is the genuine type of the ‘state of
consciousness’ as such, pure and unadulterate and unsophisticated.” The
point is large for a footnote, but the following considerations are
instructive: (1) The same psychologist will go on to inform us that
sensations, as we experience them, are networks of reference--they
are perceptual, and more or less conceptual even. From which it
would appear that whatever else they are or are not, the sensations,
for which self-inclosed existence is claimed, are _not_ states of
consciousness. And (2) we are told that these are reached by scientific
abstraction in order to account for complex forms. From which it would
appear that they are hypothecated as products of interpretation and for
purposes of further interpretation. Only the delusion that the more
complex forms are just aggregates (instead of being acts, like seeing,
hoping, etc.) prevents recognition of the point in question--that the
“state of consciousness” is an instrument of inquiry or methodological
appliance.
[59] On the other hand, if what we are trying to get at is just the
course and procedure of experiencing, of course any consideration that
helps distinguish and make comprehensible that process is thoroughly
pertinent.
[60] It may avoid misunderstanding if I anticipate here a subsequent
remark: that my point is not in the least that “states of
consciousness” require some “synthetic unity” or faculty of substantial
mind to effect their association. Quite the contrary; for this theory
also admits the “states of consciousness” as existences in themselves
also. My contention is that the “state of consciousness” as such is
always a methodological product, developed in the course and for the
purposes of psychological analysis.
[61] The “functions” are in truth ordinary everyday acts and attitudes:
seeing, smelling, talking, listening, remembering, hoping, loving,
fearing.
[62] This is perhaps a suitable moment to allude to the absence, in
this discussion, of reference to what is sometimes termed rational
psychology--the assumption of a separate, substantialized ego, soul,
or whatever, existing side by side with particular experiences and
“states of consciousness,” acting upon them and acted upon by them. In
ignoring this and confining myself to the “states of consciousness”
theory and the “natural history” theory, I may appear not only to have
unduly narrowed the concerns at issue, but to have weakened my own
point, as this doctrine seems to offer a special vantage ground whence
to defend the close relationship of psychology and philosophy. The
“narrowing,” if such it be, will have to pass--from limits of time and
other matters. But the other point I cannot concede. The independently
existing soul restricts and degrades individuality, making of it a
separate thing outside of the full flow of things, alien to things
experienced and consequently in either mechanical or miraculous
relations to them. It is vitiated by just the quality already objected
to--that psychology has a separate piece of reality apportioned to
it, instead of occupying itself with the manifestation and operation
of any and all existences in reference to concrete action. From this
point of view, the “states of consciousness” attitude is a much more
hopeful and fruitful one. It ignores certain considerations, to be
sure; and when it turns its ignoring into denial, it leaves us with
curious hieroglyphics. But after all, there is a key; these symbols
can be read; they may be translated into terms of the course of
experience. When thus translated, selfhood, individuality, is neither
wiped out nor set up as a miraculous and foreign entity; it is seen as
the unity of reference and function involved in all things when fully
experienced--the pivot about which they turn.
[63] Delivered before the Philosophical Club of the University of
Michigan, in the winter of 1897, and reprinted with slight change from
a monograph in the “University of Chicago Contributions to Philosophy,”
1897.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.
Page 24: “transgression” was misprinted as “trangression”; changed here.
Page 39: “bewrayeth” was printed that way.