I
In a general survey of the development of logical theory one is struck
by the similarity, not to say identity, of the indictments which
reformers, since the days of Aristotle, have brought against it. The
most fundamental of these charges are: first, that the theory of logic
has left it formal and with little significance for the advancement of
science and the conduct of society; second, that it has great difficulty
in avoiding the predicament of logical operations that are merely
labored reproductions of non-logical activities and therefore
tautologous and trifling, or of logical operations that are so far
removed from immediate, non-logical experience that they are irrelevant;
third, that logical theory has had trouble in finding room in its own
household for both truth and error; each crowds out the other.
The identity of these indictments regardless of the general
philosophical faith, empiricism, or rationalism, realism, or idealism to
which the reformer or the logic to be reformed has belonged, suggests
that whatever the differences in the doctrines of these various
philosophic traditions, they possess a common ground from which these
common difficulties spring.
It is the conviction of a number who are at present attempting to rid
logic of these ancient disabilities that their common source is to be
found in a lack of continuity between the acts of intelligence (or to
avoid the dangers of hypostasis, intelligent acts) and other acts;
between logical conduct and other conduct. So wide, indeed, is this
breach, that often little remains of the act of knowing but the name. It
may still be called an act, but it has no describable instruments nor
technique of operation. It is an indefinable and often mystical
performance of which only the results can be stated. In recent logical
discussion this techniqueless act of knowing has been properly enough
transformed into an indefinable "external relation" in which an entity
called a knower stands to another entity called the known.
For many centuries this breach between the operations of intelligence
and other operations has been closed by various metaphysical devices
with the result that logic has been a hybrid science,--half logic, half
metaphysics and epistemology. So great has been the momentum of the
metaphysical tradition that long after we have begun to discover the
connection between logical and non-logical operations its methods remain
to plague us. Efforts to heal the breach without a direct appeal to
metaphysical agencies have been made by attempting a complete logicizing
of all operations. But besides requiring additional metaphysics to
effect it, the procedure is as fatal to continuity as is an impassable
disjunction. Continuity demands distinction as well as connection. It
requires the development, the _growth_ of old material and functions
into new forms.
Driven by the difficulties of this complete logicization, which are as
serious as those of isolation, logical theory was obliged to reinstate
some sort of distinction. This it did by resorting to the categories of
"explicit" and "implicit." All so-called non-logical operations were
regarded as "implicitly" logical. And, paradoxically, logical operations
had for their task the transformation of the implicit into the explicit.
An adequate account of the origin and continuance of this isolation of
the conduct of intelligence from other conduct is too long a story to be
told here. Suffice it to recall that in the society in which the
distinction between immediate and reflective experience, between opinion
and science, between percepts and universals was first made,
intelligence was largely the possession of a special and privileged
class removed in great measure from hand-to-hand contact with nature and
with much of society. Because it did not fully participate in the
operations of nature and society intelligence could not become fully
domesticated, i.e., fully naturalized and socialized in its world. It
was a charmed spectator of the cosmic and social drama. Doubtless when
Greek intelligence discovered the distinction between immediate and
reflective experience--possibly the most momentous discovery in
history--"the world," as Kant says of the speculations of Thales, "must
suddenly have appeared in a new light." But not recognizing the full
significance of this discovery, ideas, universals, became but a wondrous
spectacle for the eye of reason. They brought, to be sure, blessed
relief from the bewildering and baffling flux of perception. But it was
the relief of sanctuary, not of victory.
That the brilliant speculations of Greek intelligence were barren
because there was no technique for testing and applying them in detail
is an old story. But it is merely a restatement, not a solution, of the
pertinent question. This is: why did not Greek intelligence develop such
a technique? The answer lies in the fact that the technique of
intelligence is to be found precisely in the details of the operations
of nature and of human conduct from which an aristocratic intelligence
is always in large measure shut off. Intelligence cannot operate
fruitfully in a vacuum. It must be incarnate. It must, as Hegel said,
have "hands and feet." When we turn to the history of modern science the
one thing that stands out is that it was not until the point was reached
where intelligence was ready (continuing the Hegelian figure) to thrust
its hands into the vitals of nature and society that it began to acquire
a real control over its operations.
In default of such controlling technique there was nothing to be done
with this newly found instrument of intelligence--the universal--but to
retain it as an object of contemplation and of worshipful adoration.
This involved, of course, its hypostasis as the metaphysical reality of
supreme importance. With this, the only difference between "opinion" and
"science" became one of the kind of objects known. That universals were
known by reason and particulars by sense was of little more logical
significance than that sounds are known by the ear and smells by the
nose. Particulars and universals were equally given. If the latter
required some abstraction this was regarded as merely auxiliary to the
immediate vision, as sniffing is to the perception of odor. That
universals should or could be conceived as experimental, as hypotheses,
was, when translated into later theology, the sin against the Holy
Ghost.
However, the fact that the particulars in the world of opinion were the
stimuli to the "recollection" of universals and that the latter in turn
were the patterns, the forms, for the particulars, opened the way in
actual practice for the exercise of a great deal of the controlling
function of the universals. But the failure to recognize this control
value of the universal as fundamental, made it necessary for the
universal to exercise its function surreptitiously, in the disguise of a
pattern and in the clumsy garb of imitation and participation.
With perceptions, desires, and impulses relegated to the world of
opinion and shadows, and with the newly discovered instrument of
knowledge turned into an object, the knower was stripped of all his
knowing apparatus and was left an empty, scuttled entity definable and
describable only as "a knower." The knower must know, even if he had
nothing to know with. Hence the mystical almost indefinable character of
the knowing act or relation. I say "almost indefinable"; for as an act
it had, of course, to have some sort of conceptualized form. And this
form vision naturally furnished. "Naturally," because intelligence was
so largely contemplative, and vision so largely immediate, unanalyzed,
and diaphanous. There was, to be sure, the concept of effluxes. But
this was a statement of the fact of vision in terms of its results, not
of the process itself. Thus it was that the whole terminology of knowing
which we still use was moulded and fixed upon a very crude conception of
one of the constituents of its process. There can be no doubt that this
terminology has added much to the inertia against which the advance of
logical theory has worked. It would be interesting to see what would be
the effect upon logical theory of the substitution of an auditory or
olfactory terminology for visual; or of a visual terminology revised to
agree with modern scientific analysis of the _act_ of vision as
determined by its connections with other functions.
With the act of knowing stripped of its technique and left a bare,
unique, indescribable act or relation, the foundations for
epistemological and metaphysical logic were laid. That Greek logic
escaped the ravages of epistemology was due to the saving materialism in
its metaphysical conception of mind and to the steadfastness of the
aristocratic regime. But when medieval theology and Cartesian
metaphysics had destroyed the last remnant of metaphysical connection
between the knowing mind and nature, and when revolutions had torn the
individual from his social moorings, the stage for epistemological logic
was fully set. I do not mean to identify the epistemological situation
with the Cartesian disjunction. That disjunction was but the
metaphysical expression of the one which constitutes the real foundation
of epistemology--the disjunction, namely, between the act of knowing and
other acts.
From this point logic has followed one of two general courses. It has
sought continuity by attempting to reduce non-logical things and
operations to terms of logical operations, i.e., to sensations or
universals or both; or it has attempted to exclude entirely the act of
knowing from logic and to transfer logical distinctions and operations,
and even the attributes of truth and error to objects which,
significantly enough, are still composed of these same hypostatized
logical processes. The first course results in an epistemological logic
of some form of the idealistic tradition, rationalism, sensationalism,
or transcendentalism, depending upon whether universals, or sensations,
or a combination of both, is made fundamental in the constitution of the
object. The second course yields an epistemological logic of the
realistic type,--again, sensational or rationalistic (mathematical), or
a combination of the two--a sort of realistic transcendentalism. Each
type has essentially the same difficulties with the processes of
inference, with the problem of change, with truth and error, and, on the
ethical side, with good and evil.
With the processes of knowing converted into objects, and with the act
of knowing reduced to a unique and external relation between the
despoiled knower and the objects made from its own hypostatized
processes, all knowing becomes in the end immediate. All attempts at an
inference that is anything more than an elaborated and often confused
restatement of non-logical operations break down. The associational
inference of empiricism, the subsumptive inference of rationalism, the
transcendental inference of objective idealism, the analytical
inference of neo-realism--all alike face the dilemma of an inference
that is trifling or miraculous, tautologous or false. Where the knower
and its object are so constituted that the only relation in which the
latter can stand to the former is that of presence or absence, and if to
be present is to be known, how, as Plato asked, can there be any false
knowing?
For those who accept the foregoing general diagnosis the prescription is
obvious. The present task of logical theory is the restoration of the
continuity of the act and agent of knowing with other acts and agents.
But this is not to be done by merely furnishing the act of knowing with
a body and a nervous system. If the nervous system be regarded as only
an onlooking, beholding nervous system, if no connection be made between
the logical operations of a nervous system and its other operations a
nervous system has no logical advantage over a purely psychical mind.
It was to be expected that this movement toward restoration of
continuity made in the name of "instrumental" or "experimental" logic
would be regarded, alike, by the logics of rationalism and empiricism,
of idealism and of realism, as an attempt to rob intelligence of its own
unique and proper character; to reduce it to a merely "psychological"
and "existential" affair; to leave no place for genuine intellectual
interest and activity; and to make science a series of more or less
respectable adventures. The counter thesis is, that this restoration is
truly a restoration--not a despoliation of the character and rights of
intelligence; that only such a restoration can preserve the unique
function of intelligence, can prevent it from becoming merely
"existential," and can provide a distinct place for intellectual and
scientific interest and activity. It does not, however, promise to
remove the stigma of "adventure" from science. Every experiment is an
adventure; and it is precisely the experimental character of scientific
logic that distinguishes it from scholasticism, medieval or modern.