I
There is something a little baffling in much of the current discussion
regarding the reference of ideas to facts. The not uncommon assumption
is that there was a satisfactory and consistent theory of their
relation in existence prior to the somewhat impertinent intrusion of a
functional and practical interpretation of them. The way the
instrumental logician has been turned upon by both idealist and
realist is suggestive of the way in which the outsider who intervenes
in a family jar is proverbially treated by both husband and wife, who
manifest their unity by berating the third party.
I feel that the situation is due partly to various misapprehensions,
inevitable perhaps in the first presentation of a new point of
view[52] and multiplied in this instance by the coincidence of the
presentation of this logical point of view with that of the larger
philosophical movements, humanism and pragmatism. I wish here to
undertake a summary statement of the logical view on its own account,
hoping it may receive clearer understanding on its own merits.
In the first place it was (apart from the frightful confusion of
logical theories) precisely the lack of an adequate and generally
accepted theory of the nature of fact and idea, and of the kind of
agreement or correspondence between them which constitutes the truth
of the idea, that led to the development of a functional theory of
logic. A brief statement of the difficulties in the traditional views
may therefore be pertinent. That fruitful thinking--thought that
terminates in valid knowledge--goes on in terms of the distinction of
facts and judgment, and that valid knowledge is precisely genuine
correspondence or agreement, _of some sort_, of fact and judgment, is
the common and undeniable assumption. But the discussions are largely
carried on in terms of an epistemological dualism, rendering the
solution of the problem impossible in virtue of the very terms in
which it is stated. The distinction is at once identified with that
between mind and matter, consciousness and objects, the psychical and
the physical, where each of these terms is supposed to refer to some
fixed order of existence, a world in itself. Then, of course, there
comes up the question of the nature of the agreement, and of the
recognition of it. What is the experience in which the survey of both
idea and existence is made and their agreement recognized? Is it an
idea? Is the agreement ultimately a matter of self-consistency of
ideas? Then what has become of the postulate that truth is agreement
of idea with existence beyond idea? Is it an absolute which
transcends and absorbs the difference? Then, once more, what is the
test of any specific judgment? What has become of the correspondence
of fact and thought? Or, more urgently, since the pressing problem of
life, of practice and of science, is the discrimination of the
_relative_, or _superior_, validity of this or that theory, plan, or
interpretation, what is the criterion of truth within present
non-absolutistic experience, where the distinction between factual
conditions and thoughts and the necessity of some working adjustment
persist?
Putting the problem in yet another way, either both fact and idea are
present all the time or else only one of them is present. But if the
former, why should there be an idea at all, and why should it have to
be tested by the fact? When we already have what we want, namely,
existence, reality, why should we take up the wholly supernumerary
task of forming more or less imperfect ideas of those facts, and then
engage in the idle performance of testing them by what we already know
to be? But if only ideas are present, it is idle to speak of comparing
an idea with facts and testing its validity by its agreement. The
elaboration and refinement of ideas to the uttermost still leaves us
with an idea, and while a self-consistent idea stands a show of being
true in a way in which an incoherent one does not, a self-consistent
idea is still but a hypothesis, a candidate for truth. Ideas are not
made true by getting bigger. But if only 'facts' are present, the
whole conception of agreement is once more given up--not to mention
that such a situation is one in which there is by definition no
thinking or reflective factor at all.
This suggests that a strictly monistic epistemology, whether
idealistic or realistic, does not get rid of the problem. Suppose for
example we take a sensationalistic idealism. It does away with the
ontological gulf between ideas and facts, and by reducing both terms
to a common denominator seems to facilitate fruitful discussion of the
problem. But the problem of the distinction and reference (agreement,
correspondence) of two types or sorts of sensations still persists. If
I say the box there is square, and call "box" one of a group of ideas
or sensations and "square" another sensation or "idea," the old
question comes up: Is "square" already a part of the "facts" of the
box, or is it not? If it is, it is a supernumerary, an idle thing,
both as an idea and as an assertion of fact; if it is not, how can we
compare the two ideas, and what on earth or in heaven does their
agreement or correspondence mean? If it means simply that we
experience the two "sensations" in juxtaposition, then the same is
true, of course, of any casual association or hallucination. On the
sensational basis, accordingly, there is still a distinction of
something "given," "there," brutally factual, the box, and something
else which stands on a different level, ideal, absent, intended,
demanded, the "square," which is asserted to hold good or be true of
the thing "box." The fact that both are sensations throws no light on
the logical validity of any proposition or belief, because by theory a
like statement holds of every possible proposition.[53]
The same problem recurs on a realistic basis. For example, there has
recently been propounded[54] the doctrine of the distinction between
relations of space and time and relations of meaning or significance,
as a key to the problem of knowledge. Things exist in their own
characters, in their temporal and spatial relations. When knowledge
intervenes, there is nothing new of a subjective or psychical sort,
but simply a new relation of the things--the suggesting or signifying
of one thing by another. Now this seems to be an excellent way of
stating the logical problem, but, I take it, it states and does not
solve. For the characteristic of such situations, claiming to
terminate in knowledge, is precisely that the meaning-relation is
predicated _of_ the other relations; it is referred to them; it is not
simply a supervention existing side by side with them, like casual
suggestions or the play of phantasy. It is something which the facts,
the qualitative space and time things, must bear the burden of, must
accept and take unto themselves as part of themselves. Until this
happens, we have only "thinking," not accomplished knowledge. Hence,
logically, the existential relations play the rôle of fact, and the
relation of signification that of idea,[55] distinguished from fact
and yet, if valid, to hold _of_ fact.
This appears quite clearly in the following quotation: "It is the ice
which means that it will cool the water, just as much as it is the ice
which does cool the water when put into it." There is, however, a
possible ambiguity in the statement, to which we shall return later.
That the "ice" (the thing regarded as ice) _suggests_ cooling is as
real as is a case of actual cooling. But, of course, not every
suggestion is valid. The "ice" may be a crystal, and it will not cool
water at all. So far as it is already certain that this _is_ ice, and
also certain that ice, under all circumstances, cools water, the
meaning-relation stands on the same level as the physical, being not
merely suggested, but part of the facts ascertained. It is not a
meaning-relation as such at all. We already have truth; the entire
work of knowing as logical is done; we have no longer the relation
characteristic of reflective situations. Here again the implication of
the thinking situation is of some "correspondence" or "agreement"
between two sets of distinguished relations; the problem of valid
determination remains the central question of any theory of knowing in
its relation to facts and truth.[56]