No one will deny that, as seen from one angle science is a pursuit, an
enterprise--a mode of practice. It is at least that, no matter how
much more or else it is. In course of the practice of knowing
distinctive practical judgments will then naturally be made.
Especially does this hold good when an intellectual class is
developed, when there is a body of persons working at knowing as
another body is working at farming or engineering. Moreover, the
instrumentalities of this inquiring class gain in importance for all
classes in the degree in which it is realized that success in the
conduct of the practice of farming or engineering or medicine depends
upon use of the successes achieved in the business of knowing. The
importance of the latter is thrown into relief from another angle if
we consider the enterprises, like diplomacy, politics, and, to a
considerable extent, morals, which do not acknowledge a thoroughgoing
and constant dependence upon the practice of science. As Hobbes was
wont to say, the advantages of a science of morals are most obvious in
the evils which we suffer from its lack.
To say that something is to be learned, is to be found out, is to be
ascertained or proved or believed, is to say that something is to be
done. Every such proposition in the concrete is a practical
proposition. Every such proposition of inquiry, discovery and testing
will have then the traits assigned to the class of practical
propositions. They imply an incomplete situation going forward to
completion, and the proposition as a specific organ of carrying on the
movement. I have not the intention of dwelling at length upon this
theme. I wish to raise in as definite and emphatic a way as possible a
certain question. Suppose that the propositions arising within the
_practice_ of knowing and functioning as agencies in its conduct could
be shown to present all the distinctions and relations characteristic
of the subject-matter of logic: what would be the conclusion? To an
unbiased mind the question probably answers itself: All purely logical
terms and propositions fall within the scope of the class of
propositions of inquiry as a special form of propositions of practice.
My further remarks are not aimed at _proving_ that the case accords
with the hypothesis propounded, but are intended to procure
hospitality for the hypothesis.
If thinking is the art by which knowledge is practiced, then the
materials with which thinking deals may be supposed, by analogy with
the other arts, to take on in consequence special shapes. The man who
is making a boat will give wood a form which it did not have, in order
that it may serve the purposes to which it is to be put. Thinking may
then be supposed to give its material the form which will make it
amenable to its purpose--attaining knowledge, or, as it is ordinarily
put, going from the unknown to the known. That physical analysis and
synthesis are included in the processes of investigation of natural
objects makes them a part of the practice of knowing. And it makes any
general traits which result in consequence of such treatment
characters of _objects as they are involved in knowledge-getting_.
That is to say, if there are any features which natural existences
assume in order that inference may be more fertile and more safe than
it would otherwise be, those features correspond to the special traits
which would be given to wood in process of constructing a boat. They
are manufactured, without being any worse because of it. The question
which I raised in the last paragraph may then be restated in this
fashion: Are there such features? If there are, are they like those
characters which books on logic talk about?
Comparison with language may help us. Language--I confine myself for
convenience to spoken language--consists of sounds. But it does not
consist simply of those sounds which issue from the human organs prior
to the attempt to communicate. It has been said that an American baby
before talking makes almost every sound found in any language. But
elimination takes place. And so does intensification. Certain sounds
originally slurred over are made prominent; the baby has to work for
them and the work is one which he neither undertakes nor accomplishes
except under the incitation of others. Language is chiefly marked off,
however, by articulation; by the arrangement of what is selected into
an orderly sequence of vowels and consonants with certain rules of
stress, etc. It may fairly be said that speech is a manufactured
article: it consists of natural ebullitions of sound which have been
shaped for the sake of being effective instrumentalities of a purpose.
For the most part the making has gone on under the stress of the
necessities of communication with little deliberate control. Works on
phonetics, dictionaries, grammars, rhetorics, etc., mark some
participation of deliberate intention in the process of manufacture.
If we bring written language into the account, we should find the
conscious factor extended somewhat. But making, shaping for an end,
there is, whether with or without conscious control.
Now while there is something in the antecedent properties of sound
which enters into the determination of speech, the _worth_ of speech
is in no way measured by faithfulness to these antecedent properties.
It is measured only by its efficiency and economy in realizing the
special results for which it is constructed. Written language need not
look like sounds any more than sounds look like objects. It must
_represent_ articulate sounds, but faithful representation is wholly a
matter of carrying the mind to the same outcome, of exercising the
same function, not of resemblance or copying. Original structure
_limits_ what may be made out of anything: one cannot (at least at
present) make a silk purse out of pigs' bristles. But this
conditioning relationship is very different from one in which the
antecedent existences are a model or prototype to which the
consequent must be servilely faithful. The boatmaker must take account
of the grain and strength of his wood. To take account of, to reckon
with, is a very different matter, however, from repetition or literal
loyalty. The measure is found in the consequences for which existences
are used.
I wish, of course, to suggest that logical traits are just features of
original existences as they have been worked over for use in
inference, as the traits of manufactured articles are qualities of
crude materials modified for specific purposes. Upon the whole, past
theories have vibrated between treating logical traits as
"subjective," something resident in "mind" (mind being thought of as
an immaterial or psychical existence independent of natural things and
events), and ascribing ontological pre-existence to them. Thus far in
the history of thought, each method has flourished awhile and then
called out a reaction to its opposite. The reification (I use the word
here without prejudice) of logical traits has taken both an Idealistic
form (because of emphasis upon their spiritual or ideal nature and
stuff) and a Realistic one, due to emphasis upon their immediate
apprehension and givenness. That mathematics have been from Plato to
Descartes and contemporary analytic realism the great provocative of
Realistic Idealisms is a familiar fact. The hypothesis here propounded
is a _via media_. What has been overlooked is the reality and
importance of art and its works. The tools and works of art are
neither mental, subjective things, nor are they antecedent entities
like crude or raw material. They are the latter shaped for a purpose.
It is impossible to overstate their objectivity from the standpoint of
their existence and their efficacy within the operations in question;
nor their objectivity in the sense of their dependence upon prior
natural existences whose traits have to be taken account of, or
reckoned with, by the operations of art. In the case of the art of
inference, the art securely of going from the given to the absent, the
dependence of mind upon inference, the fact that wherever inference
occurs we have a conscious agent--one who recognizes, plans, invents,
seeks out, deliberates, anticipates, and who, reacting to
anticipations, fears, hates, desires, etc.--explains the theories
which, because of misconception of the nature of mind and
consciousness, have labeled logical distinctions psychical and
subjective. In short, the theory shows why logical features have been
made into ontological entities and into mental states.
To elaborate this thesis would be to repeat what has been said in all
the essays of this volume. I wish only to call attention to certain
considerations which may focus other discussions upon this hypothesis.
1. The existence of inference is a fact, a fact as certain and
unquestioned as the existence of eyes or ears or the growth of plants,
or the circulation of the blood. One observes it taking place
everywhere where human beings exist. A student of the history of man
finds that history is composed of beliefs, institutions, and customs
which are inexplicable without acts of inference. This fact of
inference is as much a datum--a hard fact--for logical theory as any
sensory quality whatsoever. It is something men do as they walk, chew,
or jump. There is nothing a priori or ideological about it. It is just
a brute empirically observable event.
2. Its importance is almost as conspicuous as its existence. Every act
of human life, not springing from instinct or mechanical habit,
contains it; most habits are dependent upon some amount of it for
their formation, as they are dependent upon it for their readaptation
to novel circumstances. From the humblest act of daily life to the
most intricate calculations of science and the determination and
execution of social, legal, and political policies, things are used as
signs, indications, or evidence from which one proceeds to something
else not yet directly given.
3. The act of inferring takes place naturally, i.e., without
intention. It is at first something we do, not something which we
_mean_ to do. We do it as we breathe or walk or gesture. Only after it
is done do we notice it and reflect upon it--and the great mass of men
no more reflect upon it after its occurrence than they reflect upon
the process of walking and try to discover its conditions and
mechanism. That an individual, an animal organism, a man or a woman
performs the acts is to say something capable of direct proof through
appeal to observation; to say that something called mind, or
consciousness does it is itself to employ inference and dubious
inference. The fact of inference is much surer, in other words, than
that of a particular inference, such as that to something called
reason or consciousness, in connection with it; save as mind is but
another word for the fact of inference, in which case of course it
cannot be re-referred to as its cause, source, or author. Moreover, by
all principles of science, inference cannot be referred to mind or
consciousness as its condition, unless there is _independent_ proof of
the existence of that mind to which it is referred. Prima facie we are
conscious or aware _of_ inference precisely as we are of anything
else, not by introspection of something within the very consciousness
which is supposed to be its source, but by observation of something
taking place in the world--as we are conscious of walking _after_ we
have walked. After it has been done naturally--or "unconsciously"--it
may be done "consciously," that is, with intent or on purpose. But
this means that it is done _with_ consciousness (whatever
consciousness may be discovered to mean), not that it is done _by_
consciousness. Now if other natural events characteristic only (so far
as can be ascertained) of highly organized beings are marked by unique
or by distinctive traits, there is good ground for the assumption
that inference will be so marked. As we do not find the circulation of
blood or the stimulation of nerves in a stone, and as we expect as a
matter of course to find peculiar conditions, qualities, and
consequences in the being where such operations occur, so we do not
find the act of inference in a stone, and we expect peculiar
conditions, qualities, and consequences in whatever beings perform the
act. Unless, in other words, all the ordinary canons of inquiry are
suspended, inference is not an isolated nor a merely formal event. As
against the latter, it has its own distinctive structure and
properties; as against the former, it has specific generating
conditions and specific results.
4. Possibly all this seems too obvious for mention. But there is often
a virtual conspiracy in philosophy, not to mention obvious things nor
to dwell upon them: otherwise remote speculations might be brought to
a sudden halt. The point of these commonplaces resides in the push
they may give anyone to engage in a search for _distinctive features
in the act of inference_. The search may perhaps be best initiated by
noting the seeming inconsistency between what has been said about
inference as an art and inference as a natural, unpremeditated
occurrence. The obvious function of spontaneous inference is to bring
before an agent absent considerations to which he may respond as he
otherwise responds to the stimulating force of the given situation. To
infer rain is to enable one to behave _now_ as given conditions would
not otherwise enable him to conduct himself. This instigation to
behave toward the remote in space or time is the primary trait of the
inferential act; descriptively speaking, the act consists in taking up
an attitude of response to an absent thing as if it were present. But
just because the thing is absent, the attitude taken may be either
irrelevant and positively harmful or extremely pertinent and
advantageous. We may infer rain when rain is not going to happen, and
acting upon the inference be worse off than if there had been no
inference. Or we may make preparations, which we would not otherwise
have made; the rain may come, and the inference save our lives--as the
ark saved Noah. Inference brings, in short, truth and falsity into the
world, just as definitely as the circulation of the blood brings its
distinctive consequences, both advantages and liabilities into the
world, or as the existence of banking brings with it consequences of
business extension and of bankruptcy not previously existent. If the
reader objects to the introduction of the terms "truth" and "falsity",
I am perfectly willing to leave the choice of words to him, provided
the fact is recognized that through inference men are capable of a
kind of success and exposed to a kind of failure not otherwise
possible: dependent upon the fact that inference takes absent things
as being in a certain real continuum with present things, so that our
attitude toward the latter is bound up with our reaction to the
former as parts of the same situation. And in any event, I wish to
protest against a possible objection to the introduction of the terms
"false" and "true." It may be said that inference is not responsible
for the occurrence of errors and truths, because these accompany
simple apprehensions where there is no inference: as when I see a
snake which isn't there--or any other case which may appear to the
objector to afford an illustration of his point. The objection
illustrates my point. To affirm a snake is to affirm potentialities
going beyond what is actually given; it says that what is given is
_going_ to do something--the doing characteristic of a snake, so that
we are to react to the given as to a snake. Or if we take the case of
a face in the cloud recognized as a phantasy; then (to say nothing of
"in the cloud" which involves reference beyond the given) "phantasy,"
"dream," equally means a reference to objects and considerations _not_
given as the actual datum is given.
We have not got very far with our question of distinctive, unique
traits called into existence by inference, but we have got far enough
to have light upon what is called the "transcendence" of knowledge.
All inference is a _going beyond_ the assuredly present to an absent.
Hence it is a more or less precarious journey. It is transcending
limits of security of immediate response. The stone which reacts only
to stimuli of the present, not of the future, cannot make the
mistakes which a being reacting to a future taken to be connected with
the present is sure to make. But it is important to note just what
this transcendence consists in. It has nothing to do with transcending
mental states to arrive at an external object. _It is behaving to the
given situation as involving something not given._ It is Robinson
Crusoe going from a seen foot to an unseen man, not from a mental
state to something unmental.
5. The mistakes and failures resulting from inference constitute the
ground for transition from natural spontaneous performance to a
technique or deliberate art of inference. There is something humorous
about the discussion of the problem of error as if it were a rare or
exceptional thing--an anomaly--when the barest glance at human history
shows that mistakes have been the rule, and that truth lies at the
bottom of a well. As to inferences bound up with barely keeping alive,
man has had to effect a considerable balance of good guesses over bad.
Aside from this somewhat narrow field, the original appearance of
inference upon the scene probably added to the interest of life rather
than to its efficiency. If the classic definition of man as a rational
animal means simply an inferring or guessing animal, it applies to the
natural man, for it allows for the guesses being mostly wrong. If it
is used with its customary eulogistic connotations, it applies only to
man chastened to the use of a hardly won and toilsome art. If it
alleges that man has any natural preference for a reasonable inference
or that the rationality of an inference is a measure of its hold upon
him, it is grotesquely wrong. To propagate this error is to encourage
man in his most baleful illusion, and to postpone the day of an
effective and widespread adoption of a perfected art of knowing.
Summarily put, the waste and loss consequent upon the natural
happening of inference led man, slowly and grudgingly, to the adoption
of safeguards in its performance. In some part, the scope of which is
easily exaggerated, man has come to attribute many of the ills from
which he suffers to his own premature, inept, and unguarded performing
of inference, instead of to fate, bad luck, and accident. In some
things, and to some extent in all things, he has invented and
perfected an art of inquiry: a system of checks and tests to be used
before the conclusion of inference is categorically affirmed. Its
nature has been considered in many other places in these pages, but it
may prove instructive to restate it in this context.
_a_) Nothing is less adapted to a successful accomplishing of an
inference than the subject-matter from which it ordinarily fares
forth. That subject-matter is a nest of obscurities and ambiguities.
The ordinary warnings against trusting to imagination, the bad name
which has come intellectually to attach to fancy, are evidences that
anything may suggest anything. Regarding most of the important
happenings in life no inference has been too extravagant to obtain
followers and influence action, because subject-matter was so
variegated and complex that any objects which it suggested had a prima
facie plausibility. That every advance in knowledge has been effected
by using agencies which break up a complex subject-matter into
independent variables (from each of which a distinct inference may be
drawn), and by attacking each one of these things by every conceivable
tool for further resolution so as to make sure we are dealing with
something so simple as to be unambiguous, is the report of the history
of science. It is sometimes held that knowledge comes ultimately to a
necessity of belief, or acceptance, which is the equivalent of an
incapacity to think otherwise than so and so. Well, even in the case
of such an apparently simple "self-evident" thing as a red, this
inability, if it is worth anything, is a residuum from experimental
analysis. We do not believe in the thing as red (whenever there is a
need of scientific testing) till we have exhausted all kinds of active
attack and find the red still resisting and persisting. Ordinarily we
move the head; we shade the eyes; we turn the thing over; we take it
to a different light. The use of lens, prism, or whatever device, is
simply carrying farther the use of like methods as of physical
resolution. Whatever endures all these active (not mental) attacks, we
accept--pending invention of more effective weapons. To make sure
that a given fact _is_ just and such a shade of red is, one may say, a
final triumph of scientific method. To turn around and treat it as
something naturally or psychologically given is a monstrous
superstition.
When assured, such a simple datum is for the sake of guarding the act
of inference. Color may mean a lot of things; any red may mean a lot
of things; such things are ambiguous; they afford unreliable evidence
or signs. To get the color down to the last touch of possible
discrimination is to limit its range of testimony; ideally, it is to
secure a voice which says but one thing and says that unmistakably.
Its simplicity is not identical with isolation, but with _specified_
relationship. Thus the hard "facts," the brute data, the simple
qualities or ideas, the sense elements of traditional and of
contemporary logic, get placed and identified within the art of
controlling inference. The allied terms "self-evident," "sensory
truths," "simple apprehensions" have their meanings unambiguously
determined in this same context; while apart from it they are the
source of all kinds of error. They are no longer notions to conjure
with. They express the last results attainable by present physical
methods of discriminative analysis employed in the search for
dependable data for inference. Improve the physical means of
experimentation, improve the microscope or the registering apparatus
or the chemical reagent, and they may be replaced tomorrow by new,
simple apprehensions of simple and ultimate data.
_b_) Natural or spontaneous inference depends very largely upon the
habits of the individual in whom inferring takes place. These habits
depend in turn very largely upon the customs of the social group in
which he has been brought up. An eclipse suggests very different
things according to the rites, ceremonies, legends, traditions, etc.,
of the group to which the spectator belongs. The average layman in a
civilized group may have no more personal science than an Australian
Bushman, but the legends which determine his reactions are different.
His inference is better, neither because of superior intellectual
capacity, nor because of more careful personal methods of knowing, but
because his instruction has been superior. The instruction of a
scientific inquirer in the best scientific knowledge of his day is
just as much a part of the control (or art) of inference as is the
technique of observational analysis which he uses. As the bulk of
prior ascertainments increases, the tendency is to identify this stock
of learning, this store of achieved truth, with knowledge. There is no
objection to this identification save as it leads the logician or
epistemologist to ignore that which _made_ it "knowledge" (that which
gives it a right to the title), and as a consequence to fall into two
errors: one, overlooking its function in the guidance and handling of
future inferences; the other, confusing the mere act of reference to
what is known (known so far as it has accrued from prior tested
inquiries) with knowing. To remind myself of what is known as to the
topic with which I am dealing is an indispensable performance, but to
call this reminder "knowing" (as the presentative realist usually
does) is to confuse a psychological event with a logical achievement.
It is from misconception of this act of reminding one's self of what
is known, as a check in some actual inquiry, that arise most of the
fallacies about simple acquaintance, mere apprehension, etc.--the
fallacies which eliminate inquiry and inferring from knowledge.
_c_) The art of inference gives rise to specific features
characterizing the _inferred_ thing. The natural man reacts to the
suggested thing as he would to something present. That is, he tends to
accept it uncritically. The man called up by the footprint on the sand
is just as real a man as the footprint is a real footprint. It is a
_man_, not the idea of a man, which is indicated. What a thing means
is another _thing_; it doesn't mean a meaning. The only difference is
that the thing indicated is farther off, or more concealed, and hence
(probably) more mysterious, more powerful and awesome, on that
account. The man indicated to Crusoe by the footprints was like a man
of menacing powers seen at a distance through a telescope. Things
naturally inferred are accepted, in other words, by the natural man on
altogether too realistic a basis for adequate control; they impose
themselves too directly and irretrievably. There are no alternatives
save either acceptance or rejection _in toto_. What is needed for
control is some device by which they can be treated for just what they
are, namely, _inferred_ objects which, however assured as objects of
_prior_ experiences, are uncertain as to their existence in connection
with the object from which present inference sets out. While more
careful inspection of the given object--to see if it be really a
footprint, how fresh, etc.--may do much for safe-guarding inference;
and while forays into whatever else is known may help, there is still
need for something else. We need some method of freely examining and
handling the object in its status as an inferred object. This means
some way of detaching it, as it were, from the particular act of
inference in which it presents itself. Without some such detachment,
Crusoe can never get into a free and effective relation with the man
indicated by the footprint. He can only, so to speak, go on repeating,
with continuously increasing fright, "There's a man about, there's a
man about." The "man" needs to be treated, not as man, but as
something having a merely inferred and hence potential status; as a
meaning or thought, or "idea." There is a great difference between
meaning and _a_ meaning. Meaning is simply a function of the
situation: this thing means that thing: meaning is this relationship.
A meaning is something quite different; it is not a function, but a
specific entity, a peculiar thing, namely the man _as_ suggested.
Words are the great instrument of translating a relation of inference
existing between two things into a new kind of thing which can be
operated with on its own account; the term of discourse or reflection
is the solution of the requirement for greater flexibility and
liberation. Let me repeat: Crusoe's inquiry can play freely around and
about the man inferred from the footprint only as he can, so to say,
get away from the immediate suggestive force of the footprint. As it
originally stands, the man suggested is on the same coercive level as
the suggestive footprint. They are related, tied together. But a
gesture, a sound, may be used as a _substitute_ for the thing
inferred. It exists independently of the footprint and may therefore
be thought about and ideally experimented with irrespective of the
footprint. It at once preserves the meaning-force of the situation and
detaches it from the immediacy of the situation. It is a meaning, an
idea.
Here we have, I submit, the explanation of notions, forms, essences,
terms, subsistences, ideas, meanings, etc. They are surrogates of the
objects of inference of such a character that they may be elaborated
and manipulated exactly as primary things may be, so far as inference
is concerned. They can be brought into relation with one another,
quite irrespective of the things which originally suggested them.
Without such free play reflective inquiry is mockery, and control of
inference an impossibility. When a speck of light suggests to the
astronomer a comet, he would have nothing to do but either to accept
the inferred object as a real one, or to reject it as a mere fancy
unless he could treat "comet" for the time being not as a thing at
all, but as a meaning, a conception; a meaning having, moreover, by
connection with other meanings, implications--meanings consequent from
it. Unless a meaning is an inferred object, detached and fixed as a
term capable of independent development, what sort of a ghostly Being
is it? Except on the basis stated, what is the transition from the
function of meaning to _a_ meaning as an entity in reasoning? And,
once more, unless there is such a transition, is reasoning possible?
Cats have claws and teeth and fur. They do not have implications. No
physical thing has implications. The _term_ "cat" has implications.
How can this difference be explained? On the ground that we cannot use
the "cat" object inferred from given indications in such a way as will
test the inference and make it fruitful, helpful, unless we can detach
it from its existential dependence upon the particular things which
suggest it. We need to know what a cat would be _if_ it were there;
what other things would also be indicated if the cat is really
indicated. We therefore create a _new_ object: we take something to
stand for the cat-in-its-status-as-inferred in contrast with the cat
as a live thing. A sound or a visible mark is the ordinary mechanism
for producing such a new object. Whatever the physical means employed,
we now have a new object; a term, a meaning, a notion, an essence, a
form or species, according to the terminology which may be in vogue.
It is as much a specific existence as any sound or mark is. But it is
a mark which notes, concentrates, and records an outcome of an
inference which is not yet accepted and affirmed. That is to say, it
designates an object which is _not yet_ to be reacted to as one reacts
to the given stimulus, but which is an object of further examination
and inquiry, a medium of a postponed conclusion and of investigation
continued till better grounds for affirming an object (making a
definite, unified response) are given. _A term is an object so far as
that object is undergoing shaping in a directed act of inquiry._ It
may be called a possible object or a hypothetical object. Such objects
do not walk or bite or scratch, but they are nevertheless actually
present as the vital agencies of reflection. If we but forget where
they live and operate--within the event of controlled inference--we
have on our hands all the mysteries of the double world of existence
and essence, particular and universal, thing and idea, ordinary life
and science. For the world of science, especially of mathematical
science, is the world of considerations which have approved themselves
to be effectively regulative of the operations of inference. It is
easier to wash with ordinary water than with H{2}O, and there is a
marked difference between falling off a building and 1/2_gt_^{2}. But
H{2}O and 1/2_gt_^{2} are as potent for the distinctive act of
inference--as genuine and distinctive an act as washing the hands or
rolling down hill--as ordinary water and falling are impotent.
Scientific men can handle these things-of-inference precisely as the
blacksmith handles his tools. They are not thoughts as they are
ordinarily used, not even in the logical sense of thought. They are
rather things whose manipulation (as the blacksmith manipulates his
tools) yield knowledge--or methods of knowledge--with a minimum of
recourse to thinking and a maximum of efficiency. When one considers
the importance of the enterprise of knowledge, it is not surprising
that appropriate tools have been devised for carrying it on, and that
these tools have no prototypes in pre-existent materials. They are
real objects, but they are just the real objects which they are and
not some other objects.