THE PRAGMATIC DOCTRINE AS SET FORTH BY DEWEY.
The position of Dewey is best represented in his paper called "The
Experimental Theory of Knowledge".[13] In the method of presentation,
this article is much like James' account "The Function of Cognition".
Both assume some simple type of consciousness and study it by
gradually introducing more and more complexity. In aim, also, the two
are similar, for the purpose of each is simply to describe. Dewey
attempts here to tell of a knowing just as one describes any other
object, concern, or event. "What we want", he announces "is just
something which takes itself for knowledge, rightly or wrongly".
[13] Mind, N. S. 15, July 1906. Reprinted in "The Influence
of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays", p. 77.
Page references are to the latter.
Let us suppose, then, that we have simply a floating odor. If this
odor starts changes that end in picking and enjoying a rose, what sort
of changes must these be to involve some where within their course
that which we call knowledge?
Now it can be shown, first, that there is a difference between knowing
and mere presence in consciousness. If the smell is simply displaced
by a felt movement, and this in turn is displaced by the enjoyment of
the rose, in such a way that there is no experience of connection
between the three stages of the process,--that is, without the
appearance of memory or anticipation,--then "such an experience
neither is, in whole or in part, a knowledge". "Acquaintance is
presence honored by an escort; presence is introduced as familiar, or
an association springs up to greet it. Acquaintance always implies a
little friendliness; a trace of re-knowing, of anticipatory welcome or
dread of the trait to follow.... To be a smell (or anything else) is
one thing, to be _known_ as a smell, another; to be a 'feeling' is one
thing, to be _known_ as a 'feeling' is another. The first is
thinghood; existence indubitable, direct; in this way all things _are_
that are in 'consciousness' at all. The second is _reflected_ being,
things indicating and calling for other things--something offering the
possibility of truth and hence of falsity. The first is genuine
immediacy; the second (in the instance discussed) a pseudo-immediacy,
which in the same breath that it proclaims its immediacy smuggles in
another term (and one which is unexperienced both in itself and in its
relation) the subject of 'consciousness', to which the immediate is
related.... To be acquainted with a thing is to be assured (from the
standpoint of the experience itself) that it is of such and such a
character; that it will behave, if given an opportunity, in such and
such a way; that the obviously and flagrantly present trait is
associated with fellow traits that will show themselves if the leading
of the present trait is followed out. To be acquainted is to
anticipate to some extent, on the basis of previous experience". (pp.
81, 82).
Besides mere existence, there is another type of experience which is
often confused with knowledge,--a type which Dewey calls the
'cognitive' as distinct from genuine knowledge or the 'cognitional'.
In this experience "we retrospectively attribute intellectual force
and function to the smell". This involves memory but not anticipation.
As we look back from the enjoyment of the rose, we can say that in a
sense the odor meant the rose, even though it led us here blindly.
That is, if the odor suggests the finding of its cause, without
specifying what the cause is, and if we then search about and find the
rose, we can say that the odor meant the rose in the sense that it
actually led to the discovery of it. "Yet the smell is not cognitional
because it did not knowingly intend to mean this, but is found, after
the event, to have meant it". (p. 84).
Now, "before the category of confirmation or refutation can be
introduced, there must be something which _means_ to mean something".
Let us therefore introduce a further complexity into the illustration.
Let us suppose that the smell occurs at a later date, and is then
"aware of something else which it means, which it intends to effect by
an operation incited by it and without which its own presence is
abortive, and, so to say, unjustified, senseless". Here we have
something "which is contemporaneously aware of meaning something
beyond itself, instead of having this meaning ascribed to it by
another at a later period. _The odor knows the rose_, _the rose is
known by the odor_, and the import of each term is constituted by the
relationship in which it stands to the other". (p. 88). This is the
genuine 'cognitional' experience.
When the odor recurs 'cognitionally', both the odor and the rose are
present in the same experience, though both are not present in the
same way. "Things can be presented as absent, just as they can be
presented as hard or soft". The enjoyment of the rose is present as
_going_ to be there in the same way that the odor is. "The situation
is inherently an uneasy one--one in which everything hangs upon the
performance of the operation indicated; upon the adequacy of movement
as a connecting link, or real adjustment of the thing meaning and the
thing meant. Generalizing from this instance, we get the following
definition: An experience is a knowledge, if in its quale there is an
experienced distinction and connection of two elements of the
following sort: one means or intends the presence of the other in the
same fashion in which it itself is already present, while the other is
that which, while not present in the same fashion, must become present
if the meaning or intention of its companion or yoke-fellow is to be
fulfilled through the operation it sets up". (p. 90).
Now in the transformation from this tensional situation into a
harmonious situation, there is an experience either of fulfilment or
disappointment. If there is a disappointment of expectation, this may
throw one back in reflection upon the original situation. The smell,
we may say, seemed to mean a rose, yet it did not in fact lead to a
rose. There is something else which enters in. We then begin an
investigation. "Smells may become the object of knowledge. They may
take, _pro tempore_, the place which the rose formerly occupied. One
may, that is, observe the cases in which the odors mean other things
than just roses, may voluntarily produce new cases for the sake of
further inspection; and thus account for the cases where meanings had
been falsified in the issue; discriminate more carefully the
peculiarities of those meanings which the event verified, and thus
safeguard and bulwark to some extent the employing of similar meanings
in the future". (p. 93). When we reflect upon these fulfilments or
refusals, we find in them a quality "quite lacking to them in their
immediate occurrence as just fulfilments and disappointments",--the
quality of affording assurance and correction. "Truth and falsity are
not properties of any experience or thing, in and of itself or in its
first intention; but of things where the problem of assurance
consciously enters in. Truth and falsity present themselves as
significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and
their already experienced fulfilments and non-fulfilments are
intentionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question
of the worth, as to the reliability of meaning, of the given meaning
or class of meanings. Like knowledge itself, truth is an experienced
relation of things, and it has no meaning outside of such relation".
(p. 95).
Though this paper is by title a discussion of a theory of knowledge,
we may find in this last paragraph a very clear relating of the whole
to a theory of truth. If we attempt to differentiate in this article
between knowledge and truth, we find that while Dewey uses 'knowledge'
to refer either to the prospective or to the retrospective end of the
experimental experience, he evidently intends to limit truth to the
retrospective or confirmatory end of the experience. When he says,
"Truth and falsity are not properties of any experience or thing in
and of itself or in its first intention, but of things where the
problem of assurance consciously enters in. Truth and falsity present
themselves as significant facts only in situations in which specific
meanings and their already experienced fulfilments are intentionally
compared and contrasted with reference to the question of the worth,
as to reliability of meaning, of the given meaning or class of
meanings", it seems that truth is to be confined to retrospective
experience. The truth of an idea means that it allows one at its
fulfilment to look back at its former meaning and think of it as now
confirmed. The difference between knowledge and truth is then a
difference in the time at which the developing experience is examined.
If one takes the experience at the appearance of the knowing odor, he
gets acquaintance; if one takes it at the stage at which it has
developed into a confirmation, he gets truth. Knowledge may be either
stage of the experience of verification, but truth is confined to the
later, confirmatory, stage.
Truth, then, is simply a matter of confirmation of prediction or of
fulfilment of expectation. An idea is made true by leading as it
promised. And an idea is made false when it leads to refutation of
expectation. There seems to be no necessity here for an absolute
reality for the ideas to conform to, or 'correspond' to, for truth is
a certain kind of relation between the ideas themselves--the relation,
namely, of leading to fulfilment of expectations.
CONTRAST BETWEEN JAMES AND DEWEY.
If, now, we wish to bring out the difference between the account of
truth which we have just examined and the account that is given by
James, we will find the distinction quite evident. Truth, for Dewey,
is that relation which arises when, at an experience of fulfilment,
one looks back to the former experience and thinks of its leading as
now confirmed. An idea is true, therefore, when we can refer back to
it in this way and say, "That pointing led me to this experience, as
it said it would". The pointing, by bringing a fulfilment, is _made_
true--at this point of confirmation it _becomes_ true.
Since a true idea is defined, then, as one which leads as it promised,
it is obvious that truth will not be concerned in any way with
incidental or accidental _values_ which might be led to by the idea.
It has no relation to whether the goal is _worth while_ being led to
or not. James speaks of truth as a leading that is worth while. For
Dewey the goal may be valuable, useless, or even pernicious,--these
are entirely irrelevant to truth, which is determined solely by the
fact that the idea leads _as it promised_.
The existence of this distinction was pointed out, after the
appearance of James' "Pragmatism", by Dewey himself.[14] After a
careful discussion of some other points of difference, he says of this
matter of the place of the value of an idea in reference to its truth:
"We have the theory that ideas as ideas are always working hypotheses
concerning attaining particular empirical results, and are tentative
programs (or sketches of method) for attaining them. If we stick
consistently to this notion of ideas, only consequences which are
actually produced by the working of the idea in cooperation with, or
application to, prior realities are good consequences in the specific
sense of good which is relevant to establishing the truth of an idea.
This is, at times, unequivocally recognized by Mr. James.... But at
other times any good that flows from acceptance of a belief is treated
as if it were an evidence, _in so far_, of the truth of the idea. This
holds particularly when theological notions are under consideration.
Light would be thrown upon how Mr. James conceives this matter by
statements from him on such points as these: If ideas terminate in
good consequences, but yet the goodness of the consequence was no part
of the intention of the idea, does the goodness have any verifying
force? If the goodness of consequences arises from the context of the
idea rather than from the idea itself, does it have any verifying
force? If an idea leads to consequences which are good in the _one_
respect only of fulfilling the intent of the idea, (as when one drinks
a liquid to test the idea that it is a poison), does the badness of
the consequences in every other respect detract from the verifying
force of these consequences?
[14] "What Does Pragmatism Mean by Practical?",
Journal of Philosophy, etc., 1908, v. 5, p. 85.
"Since Mr. James has referred to me as saying 'truth is what gives
satisfaction' (p. 234), I may remark ... that I never identified _any_
satisfaction with the truth of an idea, save _that_ satisfaction which
arises when the idea as working hypothesis or tentative method is
applied to prior existences in such a way as to fulfil what it
intends....
"When he says ... of the idea of an absolute, 'so far as it affords
such comfort it surely is not sterile, it has that amount of value; it
performs a concrete function. As a good pragmatist I ought to call the
absolute true _in so far forth_ then; and I unhesitatingly now do so',
the doctrine seems to be unambiguous: that _any_ good, consequent upon
acceptance of belief, is, in so far forth, a warrant for truth. Of
course Mr. James holds that this 'in so far' goes a very small way....
But even the slightest concession, is, I think, non-pragmatic unless
the satisfaction is relevant to the idea as intent. Now the
satisfaction in question comes not from the _idea as idea_, but from
its acceptance _as true_. Can a satisfaction dependent upon an
assumption that an idea is already true be relevant to testing the
truth of an idea? And can an idea, like that of the absolute, which,
if true, 'absolutely' precludes any appeal to consequences as test of
truth, be confirmed by use of the pragmatic test without sheer
self-contradiction"?[15] "An explicit statement as to whether the
carrying function, the linking of things, is satisfactory and
prosperous and hence true in so far as it executes the intent of the
idea; or whether the satisfaction and prosperity reside in the
material consequences on their own account and in that aspect make the
idea true, would, I am sure, locate the point at issue and economize
and fructify future discussion. At present pragmatism is accepted by
those whose own notions are thoroughly rationalistic in make-up as a
means of refurbishing, galvanizing, and justifying those very notions.
It is rejected by non-rationalists (empiricists and naturalistic
idealists) because it seems to them identified with the notion that
pragmatism holds that the desirability of certain beliefs overrides
the question of the meaning of the idea involved in them and the
existence of objects denoted by them. Others (like myself) who believe
thoroughly in pragmatism as a method of orientation as defined by Mr.
James, and who would apply the method to the determination of the
meaning of objects, the intent and worth of ideas as ideas, and to the
human and moral value of beliefs, when these problems are carefully
distinguished from one another, do not know whether they are
pragmatists or not, because they are not sure whether the 'practical',
in the sense of the desirable facts which define the worth of a
belief, is confused with the practical as an attitude imposed by
objects, and with the practical as a power and function of idea to
effect changes in prior existences. Hence the importance of knowing
what pragmatism means by practical....
[15] The last four sentences appear in a footnote.
"I would do Mr. James an injustice, however, to stop here. His real
doctrine, I think, is that a belief is true when it satisfies _both_
the personal needs _and_ the requirements of objective things.
Speaking of pragmatism, he says, 'Her only test of probable truth is
what works best in the way of _leading us_, what fits every part of
life best _and combines with the collectivity of experience's
demands_, nothing being omitted'. And again, 'That new idea is truest
which performs most felicitously its function of satisfying _our
double urgency_'. (p. 64). It does not appear certain from the context
that this 'double urgency' is that of the personal and the objective
demands, but it is probable.... On this basis, the 'in so far forth'
of the truth of the absolute because of the comfort it supplies, means
that _one_ of the two conditions which need to be satisfied has been
met, so that if the absolute met the other one also it would be quite
true. I have no doubt that this is Mr. James' meaning, and it
sufficiently safeguards him from charges that pragmatism means that
anything that is agreeable is true. At the same time, I do not think,
in logical strictness, that satisfying one of two tests, when
satisfaction of both is required, can be said to constitute a belief
true even 'in so far forth'".