THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION
Logic--like philosophy itself--suffers from a curious oscillation. It is
elevated into the supreme and legislative science only to fall into the
trivial estate of keeper of such statements as A is A and the scholastic
verses for the syllogistic rules. It claims power to state the laws of
the ultimate structure of the universe, on the ground that it deals with
the laws of thought which are the laws according to which Reason has
formed the world. Then it limits its pretensions to laws of correct
reasoning which is correct even though it leads to no matter of fact, or
even to material falsity. It is regarded by the modern objective
idealist as the adequate substitute for ancient ontological metaphysics;
but others treat it as that branch of rhetoric which teaches proficiency
in argumentation. For a time a superficial compromise equilibrium was
maintained wherein the logic of formal demonstration which the Middle
Ages extracted from Aristotle was supplemented by an inductive logic of
discovery of truth that Mill extracted from the practice of scientific
men. But students of German philosophy, of mathematics, and of
psychology, no matter how much they attacked one another, have made
common cause in attack upon the orthodox logics both of deductive proof
and inductive discovery.
Logical theory presents a scene of chaos. There is little agreement as
to its subject-matter, scope or purpose. This disagreement is not formal
or nominal but affects the treatment of every topic. Take such a
rudimentary matter as the nature of judgment. Reputable authority can be
quoted in behalf of every possible permutation of doctrine. Judgment is
the central thing in logic; and judgment is not logical at all, but
personal and psychological. If logical, it is the primary function to
which both conception and inference are subordinate; and it is an
after-product from them. The distinction of subject and predicate is
necessary, and it is totally irrelevant; or again, though it is found in
some cases, it is not of great importance. Among those who hold that the
subject-predicate relationship is essential, some hold that judgment is
an analysis of something prior into them, and others assert that it is a
synthesis of them into something else. Some hold that reality is always
the subject of judgment, and others that "reality" is logically
irrelevant. Among those who deny that judgment is the attribution of
predicate to subject, who regard it as a relation of elements, some
hold that the relation is "internal," some that it is "external," and
others that it is sometimes one and sometimes the other.
Unless logic is a matter of some practical account, these contrarieties
are so numerous, so extensive, and so irreconcilable that they are
ludicrous. If logic is an affair of practical moment, then these
inconsistencies are serious. They testify to some deep-lying cause of
intellectual disagreement and incoherency. In fact, contemporary logical
theory is the ground upon which all philosophical differences and
disputes are gathered together and focussed. How does the modification
in the traditional conception of the relation of experience and reason,
the real and ideal affect logic?
It affects, in the first place, the nature of logic itself. If thought
or intelligence is the means of intentional reconstruction of
experience, then logic, as an account of the procedure of thought, is
not purely formal. It is not confined to laws of formally correct
reasoning apart from truth of subject-matter. Neither, on the contrary,
is it concerned with the inherent thought structures of the universe, as
Hegel's logic would have it; nor with the successive approaches of human
thought to this objective thought structure as the logic of Lotze,
Bosanquet, and other epistemological logicians would have it. If
thinking is the way in which deliberate reorganization of experience is
secured, then logic is such a clarified and systematized formulation of
the procedures of thinking as will enable the desired reconstruction to
go on more economically and efficiently. In language familiar to
students, logic is both a science and an art; a science so far as it
gives an organized and tested descriptive account of the way in which
thought actually goes on; an art, so far as on the basis of this
description it projects methods by which future thinking shall take
advantage of the operations that lead to success and avoid those which
result in failure.
Thus is answered the dispute whether logic is empirical or normative,
psychological or regulative. It is both. Logic is based on a definite
and executive supply of empirical material. Men have been thinking for
ages. They have observed, inferred, and reasoned in all sorts of ways
and to all kinds of results. Anthropology, the study of the origin of
myth, legend and cult; linguistics and grammar; rhetoric and former
logical compositions all tell us how men have thought and what have been
the purposes and consequences of different kinds of thinking.
Psychology, experimental and pathological, makes important contributions
to our knowledge of how thinking goes on and to what effect. Especially
does the record of the growth of the various sciences afford instruction
in those concrete ways of inquiry and testing which have led men astray
and which have proved efficacious. Each science from mathematics to
history exhibits typical fallacious methods and typical efficacious
methods in special subject-matters. Logical theory has thus a large,
almost inexhaustible field of empirical study.
The conventional statement that experience only tells us how men have
thought or _do_ think, while logic is concerned with norms, with how men
_should_ think, is ludicrously inept. Some sorts of thinking are shown
_by_ experience to have got nowhere, or worse than nowhere--into
systematized delusion and mistake. Others have proved in manifest
experience that they lead to fruitful and enduring discoveries. It is
precisely in experience that the different consequences of different
methods of investigation and ratiocination are convincingly shown. The
parrot-like repetition of the distinction between an empirical
description of what is and a normative account of what should be merely
neglects the most striking fact about thinking as it empirically
is--namely, its flagrant exhibition of cases of failure and
success--that is, of good thinking and bad thinking. Any one who
considers this empirical manifestation will not complain of lack of
material from which to construct a _regulative_ art. The more study that
is given to empirical records of actual thought, the more apparent
becomes the connection between the specific features of thinking which
have produced failure and success. Out of this relationship of cause and
effect as it is empirically ascertained grow the norms and regulations
of an art of thinking.
Mathematics is often cited as an example of purely normative thinking
dependent upon _a priori_ canons and supra-empirical material. But it is
hard to see how the student who approaches the matter historically can
avoid the conclusion that the status of mathematics is as empirical as
that of metallurgy. Men began with counting and measuring things just as
they began with pounding and burning them. One thing, as common speech
profoundly has it, led to another. Certain ways were successful--not
merely in the immediately practical sense, but in the sense of being
interesting, of arousing attention, of exciting attempts at improvement.
The present-day mathematical logician may present the structure of
mathematics as if it had sprung all at once from the brain of a Zeus
whose anatomy is that of pure logic. But, nevertheless, this very
structure is a product of long historic growth, in which all kinds of
experiments have been tried, in which some men have struck out in this
direction and some in that, and in which some exercises and operations
have resulted in confusion and others in triumphant clarifications and
fruitful growths; a history in which matter and methods have been
constantly selected and worked over on the basis of empirical success
and failure.
The structure of alleged normative _a priori_ mathematics is in truth
the crowned result of ages of toilsome experience. The metallurgist who
should write on the most highly developed method of dealing with ores
would not, in truth, proceed any differently. He too selects, refines,
and organizes the methods which in the past have been found to yield the
maximum of achievement. Logic is a matter of profound human importance
precisely because it is empirically founded and experimentally applied.
So considered, the problem of logical theory is none other than the
problem of the possibility of the development and employment of
intelligent method in inquiries concerned with deliberate reconstruction
of experience. And it is only saying again in more specific form what
has been said in general form to add that while such a logic has been
developed in respect to mathematics and physical science, intelligent
method, logic, is still far to seek in moral and political affairs.
Assuming, accordingly, this idea of logic without argument, let us
proceed to discuss some of its chief features. First, light is thrown by
the _origin_ of thinking upon a logic which shall be a method of
intelligent guidance of experience. In line with what has already been
said about experience being a matter primarily of behavior, a
sensori-motor matter, is the fact that thinking takes its departure from
specific conflicts in experience that occasion perplexity and trouble.
Men do not, in their natural estate, think when they have no troubles
to cope with, no difficulties to overcome. A life of ease, of success
without effort, would be a thoughtless life, and so also would a life of
ready omnipotence. Beings who think are beings whose life is so hemmed
in and constricted that they cannot directly carry through a course of
action to victorious consummation. Men also do not tend to think when
their action, when they are amid difficulties, is dictated to them by
authority. Soldiers have difficulties and restrictions in plenty, but
_qua soldiers_ (as Aristotle would say) they are not notorious for being
thinkers. Thinking is done for them, higher up. The same is too true of
most workingmen under present economic conditions. Difficulties occasion
thinking only when thinking is the imperative or urgent way out, only
when it is the indicated road to a solution. Wherever external authority
reigns, thinking is suspected and obnoxious.
Thinking, however, is not the only way in which a personal solution of
difficulties is sought. As we have seen, dreams, reveries, emotional
idealizations are roads which are taken to escape the strain of
perplexity and conflict. According to modern psychology, many
systematized delusions and mental disorders, probably hysteria itself,
originate as devices for getting freedom from troublesome conflicting
factors. Such considerations throw into relief some of the traits
essential to thinking as a way of responding to difficulty. The
short-cut "solutions" alluded to do not get rid of the conflict and
problems; they only get rid of the feeling of it. They cover up
consciousness of it. Because the conflict remains in fact and is evaded
in thought, disorders arise.
The first distinguishing characteristic of thinking then is facing the
facts--inquiry, minute and extensive scrutinizing, observation. Nothing
has done greater harm to the successful conduct of the enterprise of
thinking (and to the logics which reflect and formulate the undertaking)
than the habit of treating observation as something outside of and prior
to thinking, and thinking as something which can go on in the head
without _including_ observation of new facts as part of itself. Every
approximation to such "thinking" is really an approach to the method of
escape and self-delusion just referred to. It substitutes an emotionally
agreeable and rationally self-consistent train of meanings for inquiry
into the features of the situation which cause the trouble. It leads to
that type of Idealism which has well been termed intellectual
somnambulism. It creates a class of "thinkers" who are remote from
practice and hence from testing their thought by application--a socially
superior and irresponsible class. This is the condition causing the
tragic division of theory and practice, and leading to an unreasonable
exaltation of theory on one side and an unreasonable contempt for it on
the other. It confirms current practice in its hard brutalities and dead
routines just because it has transferred thinking and theory to a
separate and nobler region. Thus has the idealist conspired with the
materialist to keep actual life impoverished and inequitable.
The isolation of thinking from confrontation with facts encourages that
kind of observation which merely accumulates brute facts, which occupies
itself laboriously with mere details, but never inquires into their
meaning and consequences--a safe occupation, for it never contemplates
any use to be made of the observed facts in determining a plan for
changing the situation. Thinking which is a method of reconstructing
experience treats observation of facts, on the other hand, as the
indispensable step of defining the problem, of locating the trouble, of
forcing home a definite, instead of a merely vague emotional, sense of
what the difficulty is and where it lies. It is not aimless, random,
miscellaneous, but purposeful, specific and limited by the character of
the trouble undergone. The purpose is so to clarify the disturbed and
confused situation that reasonable ways of dealing with it may be
suggested. When the scientific man appears to observe aimlessly, it is
merely that he is so in love with problems as sources and guides of
inquiry, that he is striving to turn up a problem where none appears on
the surface: he is, as we say, hunting for trouble because of the
satisfaction to be had in coping with it.
Specific and wide observation of concrete fact always, then, corresponds
not only with a sense of a problem or difficulty, but with some vague
sense of the _meaning_ of the difficulty, that is, of what it imports or
signifies in subsequent experience. It is a kind of anticipation or
prediction of what is coming. We speak, very truly, of _impending_
trouble, and in observing the signs of what the trouble is, we are at
the same time expecting, forecasting--in short, framing an _idea_,
becoming aware of meaning. When the trouble is not only impending but
completely actual and present, we are overwhelmed. We do not think, but
give way to depression. The kind of trouble that occasions thinking is
that which is incomplete and developing, and where what is found,
already in existence can be employed as a sign from which to infer what
is likely to come. When we intelligently observe, we are, as we say
apprehensive, as well as apprehending. We are on the alert for something
still to come. Curiosity, inquiry, investigation, are directed quite as
truly into what is going to happen next as into what has happened. An
intelligent interest in the latter is an interest in getting evidence,
indications, symptoms for inferring the former. Observation is diagnosis
and diagnosis implies an interest in anticipation and preparation. It
makes ready in advance an attitude of response so that we shall not be
caught unawares.
That which is not already in existence, that which is only anticipated
and inferred, cannot be observed. It does not have the status of fact,
of something given, a datum, but of a meaning, an idea. So far as ideas
are not fancies, framed by emotionalized memory for escape and refuge,
they are precisely anticipations of something still to come aroused by
looking into the facts of a developing situation. The blacksmith watches
his iron, its color and texture, to get evidence of what it is getting
ready to pass into; the physician observes his patient to detect
symptoms of change in some definite direction; the scientific man keeps
his attention upon his laboratory material to get a clue as to what
_will_ happen under certain conditions. The very fact that observation
is not an end in itself but a search for evidence and signs shows that
along with observation goes inference, anticipatory forecast--in short
an idea, thought or conception.
In a more technical context, it would be worth while to see what light
this logical correspondence of observed fact and projected idea or
meaning throws upon certain traditional philosophical problems and
puzzles, including that of subject and predicate in judgment, object and
subject in knowledge, "real" and "ideal" generally. But at this time,
we must confine ourselves to pointing out that this view of the
correlative origin and function of observed fact and projected idea in
experience, commits us to some very important consequences concerning
the nature of ideas, meanings, conceptions, or whatever word may be
employed to denote the specifically _mental_ function. Because they are
suggestions of something that may happen or eventuate, they are (as we
saw in the case of ideals generally) platforms of response to what
is going on. The man who detects that the cause of his difficulty
is an automobile bearing down upon him is not guaranteed safety;
he may have made his observation-forecast too late. But if his
anticipation-perception comes in season, he has the basis for doing
something which will avert threatening disaster. Because he foresees an
impending result, he may do something that will lead to the situation
eventuating in some other way. All intelligent thinking means an
increment of freedom in action--an emancipation from chance and
fatality. "Thought" represents the suggestion of a way of response that
is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent
observation had not effected an inference as to the future.
Now a method of action, a mode of response, intended to produce a
certain result--that is, to enable the blacksmith to give a certain form
to his hot iron, the physician to treat the patient so as to facilitate
recovery, the scientific experimenter to draw a conclusion which will
apply to other cases,--is by the nature of the case tentative, uncertain
till tested by its results. The significance of this fact for the theory
of truth will be discussed below. Here it is enough to note that
notions, theories, systems, no matter how elaborate and self-consistent
they are, must be regarded as hypotheses. They are to be accepted as
bases of actions which test them, not as finalities. To perceive this
fact is to abolish rigid dogmas from the world. It is to recognize that
conceptions, theories and systems of thought are always open to
development through use. It is to enforce the lesson that we must be on
the lookout quite as much for indications to alter them as for
opportunities to assert them. They are tools. As in the case of all
tools, their value resides not in themselves but in their capacity to
work shown in the consequences of their use.
Nevertheless, inquiry is free only when the interest in knowing is so
developed that thinking carries with it something worth while for
itself, something having its own esthetic and moral interest. Just
because knowing is not self-enclosed and final but is instrumental to
reconstruction of situations, there is always danger that it will be
subordinated to maintaining some preconceived purpose or prejudice. Then
reflection ceases to be complete; it falls short. Being precommitted to
arriving at some special result, it is not sincere. It is one thing to
say that all knowing has an end beyond itself, and another thing, a
thing of a contrary kind, to say that an act of knowing has a particular
end which it is bound, in advance, to reach. Much less is it true that
the instrumental nature of thinking means that it exists for the sake of
attaining some private, one-sided advantage upon which one has set one's
heart. Any limitation whatever of the end means limitation in the
thinking process itself. It signifies that it does not attain its full
growth and movement, but is cramped, impeded, interfered with. The only
situation in which knowing is fully stimulated is one in which the end
is developed in the process of inquiry and testing.
Disinterested and impartial inquiry is then far from meaning that
knowing is self-enclosed and irresponsible. It means that there is no
particular end set up in advance so as to shut in the activities of
observation, forming of ideas, and application. Inquiry is emancipated.
It is encouraged to attend to every fact that is relevant to defining
the problem or need, and to follow up every suggestion that promises a
clue. The barriers to free inquiry are so many and so solid that mankind
is to be congratulated that the very act of investigation is capable of
itself becoming a delightful and absorbing pursuit, capable of enlisting
on its side man's sporting instincts.
Just in the degree in which thought ceases to be held down to ends fixed
by social custom, a social division of labor grows up. Investigation has
become a dominant life occupation for some persons. Only superficially,
however, does this confirm the idea that theory and knowledge are ends
in themselves. They are, relatively speaking, ends in themselves for
some persons. But these persons represent a social division of labor;
and their specialization can be trusted only when such persons are in
unobstructed co-operation with other social occupations, sensitive to
others' problems and transmitting results to them for wider application
in action. When this social relationship of persons particularly engaged
in carrying on the enterprise of knowing is forgotten and the class
becomes isolated, inquiry loses stimulus and purpose. It degenerates
into sterile specialization, a kind of intellectual busy work carried on
by socially absent-minded men. Details are heaped up in the name of
science, and abstruse dialectical developments of systems occur. Then
the occupation is "rationalized" under the lofty name of devotion to
truth for its own sake. But when the path of true science is retaken
these things are brushed aside and forgotten. They turn out to have been
the toyings of vain and irresponsible men. The only guarantee of
impartial, disinterested inquiry is the social sensitiveness of the
inquirer to the needs and problems of those with whom he is associated.
As the instrumental theory is favorable to high esteem for impartial and
disinterested inquiry, so, contrary to the impressions of some critics,
it sets much store upon the apparatus of deduction. It is a strange
notion that because one says that the cognitive value of conceptions,
definitions, generalizations, classifications and the development of
consecutive implications is not self-resident, that therefore one makes
light of the deductive function, or denies its fruitfulness and
necessity. The instrumental theory only attempts to state with some
scrupulousness _where_ the value is found and to prevent its being
sought in the wrong place. It says that knowing begins with specific
observations that define the problem and ends with specific observations
that test a hypothesis for its solution. But that the idea, the meaning,
which the original observations suggest and the final ones test, itself
requires careful scrutiny and prolonged development, the theory would be
the last to deny. To say that a locomotive is an agency, that it is
intermediate between a need in experience and its satisfaction, is not
to depreciate the worth of careful and elaborate construction of the
locomotive, or the need of subsidiary tools and processes that are
devoted to introducing improvements into its structure. One would rather
say that _because_ the locomotive is intermediary in experience, not
primary and not final, it is impossible to devote too much care to its
constructive development.
Such a deductive science as mathematics represents the perfecting of
method. That a method to those concerned with it should present itself
as an end on its own account is no more surprising than that there
should be a distinct business for making any tool. Rarely are those who
invent and perfect a tool those who employ it. There is, indeed, one
marked difference between the physical and the intellectual
instrumentality. The development of the latter runs far beyond any
immediately visible use. The artistic interest in perfecting the method
by itself is strong--as the utensils of civilization may themselves
become works of finest art. But from the practical standpoint this
difference shows that the advantage as an instrumentality is on the side
of the intellectual tool. Just because it is not formed with a special
application in mind, because it is a highly generalized tool, it is the
more flexible in adaptation to unforeseen uses. It can be employed in
dealing with problems that were not anticipated. The mind is prepared in
advance for all sorts of intellectual emergencies, and when the new
problem occurs it does not have to wait till it can get a special
instrument ready.
More definitely, abstraction is indispensable if one experience is to
be applicable in other experiences. Every concrete experience in its
totality is unique; it is itself, non-reduplicable. Taken in its full
concreteness, it yields no instruction, it throws no light. What is
called abstraction means that some phase of it is selected for the sake
of the aid it gives in grasping something else. Taken by itself, it is a
mangled fragment, a poor substitute for the living whole from which it
is extracted. But viewed teleologically or practically, it represents
the only way in which one experience can be made of any value for
another--the only way in which something enlightening can be secured.
What is called false or vicious abstractionism signifies that the
_function_ of the detached fragment is forgotten and neglected, so that
it is esteemed barely in itself as something of a higher order than the
muddy and irregular concrete from which it was wrenched. Looked at
functionally, not structurally and statically, abstraction means that
something has been released from one experience for transfer to another.
Abstraction is liberation. The more theoretical, the more abstract, an
abstraction, or the farther away it is from anything experienced in its
concreteness, the better fitted it is to deal with any one of the
indefinite variety of things that may later present themselves. Ancient
mathematics and physics were much nearer the gross concrete experience
than are modern. For that very reason they were more impotent in
affording any insight into and control over such concretes as present
themselves in new and unexpected forms.
Abstraction and generalization have always been recognized as close kin.
It may be said that they are the negative and positive sides of the same
function. Abstraction sets free some factor so that it may be used.
Generalization is the use. It carries over and extends. It is always in
some sense a leap in the dark. It is an adventure. There can be no
assurance in advance that what is extracted from one concrete can be
fruitfully extended to another individual case. Since these other cases
are individual and concrete they _must_ be dissimilar. The trait of
flying is detached from the concrete bird. This abstraction is then
carried over to the bat, and it is expected in view of the application
of the quality to have some of the other traits of the bird. This
trivial instance indicates the essence of generalization, and also
illustrates the riskiness of the proceeding. It transfers, extends,
applies, a result of some former experience to the reception and
interpretation of a new one. Deductive processes define, delimit, purify
and set in order the conceptions through which this enriching and
directive operation is carried on, but they cannot, however perfect,
guarantee the outcome.
The pragmatic value of organization is so conspicuously enforced in
contemporary life that it hardly seems necessary to dwell upon the
instrumental significance of classification and systematization. When
the existence of qualitative and fixed species was denied to be the
supreme object of knowledge, classification was often regarded,
especially by the empirical school, as merely a linguistic device. It
was convenient for memory and communication to have words that sum up a
number of particulars. Classes were supposed to exist only in speech.
Later, ideas were recognized as a kind of _tertium quid_ between things
and words. Classes were allowed to exist in the mind as purely mental
things. The critical disposition of empiricism is well exemplified here.
To assign any objectivity to classes was to encourage a belief in
eternal species and occult essences and to strengthen the arms of a
decadent and obnoxious science--a point of view well illustrated in
Locke. General _ideas_ are useful in economizing effort, enabling us to
condense particular experiences into simpler and more easily carried
bunches and making it easier to identify new observations.
So far nominalism and conceptualism--the theory that kinds exist only in
words or in ideas--was on the right track. It emphasized the
teleological character of systems and classifications, that they exist
for the sake of economy and efficiency in reaching ends. But this truth
was perverted into a false notion, because the active and doing side of
experience was denied or ignored. Concrete things have _ways_ of acting,
as many ways of acting as they have points of interaction with other
things. One thing is callous, unresponsive, inert in the presence of
some other things; it is alert, eager, and on the aggressive with
respect to other things; in a third case, it is receptive, docile. Now
different ways of behaving, in spite of their endless diversity, may be
classed together in view of common relationship to an end. No sensible
person tries to do everything. He has certain main interests and leading
aims by which he makes his behavior coherent and effective. To have an
aim is to limit, select, concentrate, group. Thus a basis is furnished
for selecting and organizing things according as their ways of acting
are related to carrying forward pursuit. Cherry trees will be
differently grouped by woodworkers, orchardists, artists, scientists and
merry-makers. To the execution of different purposes different ways of
acting and reacting on the part of trees are important. Each
classification may be equally sound when the difference of ends is borne
in mind.
Nevertheless there is a genuine objective standard for the goodness of
special classifications. One will further the cabinetmaker in reaching
his end while another will hamper him. One classification will assist
the botanist in carrying on fruitfully his work of inquiry, and another
will retard and confuse him. The teleological theory of classification
does not therefore commit us to the notion that classes are purely
verbal or purely mental. Organization is no more merely nominal or
mental in any art, including the art of inquiry, than it is in a
department store or railway system. The necessity of execution supplies
objective criteria. Things have to be sorted out and arranged so that
their grouping will promote successful action for ends. Convenience,
economy and efficiency are the bases of classification, but these things
are not restricted to verbal communication with others nor to inner
consciousness; they concern objective action. They must take effect in
the world.
At the same time, a classification is not a bare transcript or duplicate
of some finished and done-for arrangement pre-existing in nature. It is
rather a repertory of weapons for attack upon the future and the
unknown. For success, the details of past knowledge must be reduced from
bare facts to meanings, the fewer, simpler and more extensive the
better. They must be broad enough in scope to prepare inquiry to cope
with any phenomenon however unexpected. They must be arranged so as not
to overlap, for otherwise when they are applied to new events they
interfere and produce confusion. In order that there may be ease and
economy of movement in dealing with the enormous diversity of
occurrences that present themselves, we must be able to move promptly
and definitely from one tool of attack to another. In other words, our
various classes and kinds must be themselves classified in graded series
from the larger to the more specific. There must not only be streets,
but the streets must be laid out with reference to facilitating passage
from any one to any other. Classification transforms a wilderness of
by-ways in experience into a well-ordered system of roads, promoting
transportation and communication in inquiry. As soon as men begin to
take foresight for the future and to prepare themselves in advance to
meet it effectively and prosperously, the deductive operations and their
results gain in importance. In every practical enterprise there are
goods to be produced, and whatever eliminates wasted material and
promotes economy and efficiency of production is precious.
Little time is left to speak of the account of the nature of truth given
by the experimental and functional type of logic. This is less to be
regretted because this account is completely a corollary from the nature
of thinking and ideas. If the view held as to the latter is understood,
the conception of truth follows as a matter of course. If it be not
understood, any attempt to present the theory of truth is bound to be
confusing, and the theory itself to seem arbitrary and absurd. _If_
ideas, meanings, conceptions, notions, theories, systems are
instrumental to an active reorganization of the given environment, to a
removal of some specific trouble and perplexity, then the test of their
validity and value lies in accomplishing this work. If they succeed in
their office, they are reliable, sound, valid, good, true. If they fail
to clear up confusion, to eliminate defects, if they increase confusion,
uncertainty and evil when they are acted upon, then are they false.
Confirmation, corroboration, verification lie in works, consequences.
Handsome is that handsome does. By their fruits shall ye _know_ them.
That which guides us truly is true--demonstrated capacity for such
guidance is precisely what is meant by truth. The adverb "truly" is more
fundamental than either the adjective, true, or the noun, truth. An
adverb expresses a way, a mode of acting. Now an idea or conception is a
claim or injunction or plan to _act_ in a certain way as the way to
arrive at the clearing up of a specific situation. When the claim or
pretension or plan is acted upon _it guides us truly or falsely_; it
leads us to our end or away from it. Its active, dynamic function is the
all-important thing about it, and in the quality of activity induced by
it lies all its truth and falsity. The hypothesis that works is the
_true_ one; and _truth_ is an abstract noun applied to the collection of
cases, actual, foreseen and desired, that receive confirmation in their
works and consequences.
So wholly does the worth of this conception of truth depend upon the
correctness of the prior account of thinking that it is more profitable
to consider why the conception gives offence than to expound it on its
own account. Part of the reason why it has been found so obnoxious is
doubtless its novelty and defects in its statement. Too often, for
example, when truth has been thought of as satisfaction, it has been
thought of as merely emotional satisfaction, a private comfort, a
meeting of purely personal need. But the satisfaction in question means
a satisfaction of the needs and conditions of the problem out of which
the idea, the purpose and method of action, arises. It includes public
and objective conditions. It is not to be manipulated by whim or
personal idiosyncrasy. Again when truth is defined as utility, it is
often thought to mean utility for some purely personal end, some profit
upon which a particular individual has set his heart. So repulsive is a
conception of truth which makes it a mere tool of private ambition and
aggrandizement, that the wonder is that critics have attributed such a
notion to sane men. As matter of fact, truth as utility means service in
making just that contribution to reorganization in experience that the
idea or theory claims to be able to make. The usefulness of a road is
not measured by the degree in which it lends itself to the purposes of a
highwayman. It is measured by whether it actually functions _as_ a road,
as a means of easy and effective public transportation and
communication. And so with the serviceableness of an idea or hypothesis
as a measure of its truth.
Turning from such rather superficial misunderstandings, we find, I
think, the chief obstacle to the reception of this notion of truth in an
inheritance from the classic tradition that has become so deeply
engrained in men's minds. In just the degree in which existence is
divided into two realms, a higher one of perfect being and a lower one
of seeming, phenomenal, deficient reality, truth and falsity are thought
of as fixed, ready-made static properties of things themselves. Supreme
Reality is true Being, inferior and imperfect Reality is false Being. It
makes claims to Reality which it cannot substantiate. It is deceitful,
fraudulent, inherently unworthy of trust and belief. Beliefs are false
not because they mislead us; they are not mistaken ways of thinking.
They are false because they admit and adhere to false existences or
subsistences. Other notions are true because they do have to do with
true Being--with full and ultimate Reality. Such a notion lies at the
back of the head of every one who has, in however an indirect way, been
a recipient of the ancient and medieval tradition. This view is
radically challenged by the pragmatic conception of truth, and the
impossibility of reconciliation or compromise is, I think, the cause of
the shock occasioned by the newer theory.
This contrast, however, constitutes the importance of the new theory as
well as the unconscious obstruction to its acceptance. The older
conception worked out practically to identify truth with authoritative
dogma. A society that chiefly esteems order, that finds growth painful
and change disturbing, inevitably seeks for a fixed body of superior
truths upon which it may depend. It looks backward, to something already
in existence, for the source and sanction of truth. It falls back upon
what is antecedent, prior, original, _a priori_, for assurance. The
thought of looking ahead, toward the eventual, toward consequences,
creates uneasiness and fear. It disturbs the sense of rest that is
attached to the ideas of fixed Truth already in existence. It puts a
heavy burden of responsibility upon us for search, unremitting
observation, scrupulous development of hypotheses and thoroughgoing
testing. In physical matters men have slowly grown accustomed in all
specific beliefs to identifying the true with the verified. But they
still hesitate to recognize the implication of this identification and
to derive the definition of truth from it. For while it is nominally
agreed upon as a commonplace that definitions ought to spring from
concrete and specific cases rather than be invented in the empty air
and imposed upon particulars, there is a strange unwillingness to act
upon the maxim in defining truth. To generalize the recognition that the
true means the verified and means nothing else places upon men the
responsibility for surrendering political and moral dogmas, and
subjecting to the test of consequences their most cherished prejudices.
Such a change involves a great change in the seat of authority and the
methods of decision in society. Some of them, as first fruits of the
newer logic, will be considered in the following lectures.