I am not trying to discuss or solve these problems. On the contrary, I
am trying to show that these problems exist only because of the
identification of a datum determined with reference to control of
inference with a self-sufficient knowledge-object. As against this
assumption I point to the following facts. What is actually given as
matter of empirical fact may be indefinitely complicated and diffused.
As empirically existent, perceived objects never constitute the whole
scope of the given; they have a context of indefinite extent in which
they are set. To control inference it is necessary to analyze this
complex situation--to determine what is data for inference and what is
irrelevant. This analysis involves discriminative resolution into more
ultimate simples. The resources of experimentation, all sorts of
microscopic, telescopic, and registering apparatus, are called in to
perform that analysis. As a result we differentiate not merely visual
data from auditory--a discrimination effected by experiments within
the reach of everybody--but a vast multitude of visual and auditory
data. Physics and physiology and anatomy all play a part in the
analysis. We even carry the analysis to the point of regarding, say, a
color as a self-included object unreferred to any other object. We may
avoid a false inference by conceiving it, not as a quality of any
object, but as merely a product of a nervous stimulation and
reaction. Instead of referring it to a ribbon or piece of paper we may
refer it to the organism. But this is only as a part of the technique
of suspended inference. We avoid some habitual inference in order to
make a more careful inference.
Thus we escape, by a straightening out of our logic (by avoiding
erecting a system of logical distinctions and checks into a
mythological natural history), the epistemological problems. We also
avoid the contradiction which haunts every epistemological scheme so
far propounded. As matter of fact every proposition regarding what is
"given" to sensation or perception is dependent upon the assumption of
a vast amount of scientific knowledge which is the result of a
multitude of prior analyses, verifications, and inferences. What a
combination of Tantalus and Sisyphus we get when we fancy that we have
cleared the slate of all these material implications, fancy that we
have really started with simple and independent givens, and then try
to show how from these original givens we can arrive at the very
knowledge which we have all the time employed in the discovery and
fixation of the simple sense data![97]