Creative Intelligence · John Dewey
IV
The prominence in current discussion of the logical reforms proposed by the "analytic logic" of the neo-realistic movement and the enthusiastic optimism of its representatives over the prospective results of these reforms for logic, science, and practical life are the warrant for devoting a special section to their discussion. There are indeed some marked differences of opinion among the expounders of the "new logic" concerning the results which it is expected to achieve. Some find that it clears away incredible accumulations of metaphysical lumber; others rejoice that it is to restore metaphysics, "once the queen of the sciences, to her ancient throne." But whatever the difference among the representatives of analytical logic all seem agreed at the outset on two fundamental reforms which the "new logic" makes. These are: first, that analytic logic gets rid entirely of the _act_ of knowing, the retention of which has been the bane of all other logics; second, in its discovery of "terms and relations," "sense-data and universals" as the simple elements not only of logic but of the world, it furnishes science at last with the simple neutral elements at large which it is supposed science so long has sought, and "mourned because it found them not." Taking these in order, we are told that "realism frees logic as a study of objective fact from all accounts of the states and operations of mind." ... "Logic and mathematics are sciences which can be pursued quite independently of the study of knowing."[20] "The new logic believes that it deals with no such entities as thoughts, ideas, or minds, but with entities that merely are."[20]
The motive for the banishment of the act of knowing from logic is that as an _act_ knowing is "mental," "psychological," and "subjective."[21] All other logics have indeed realized this subjective character of the _act_ of knowing, but have neither dared completely to discard it nor been able sufficiently to counteract its effects even with such agencies as the objective universal to prevent it from infecting logic with its subjectivity. Because logic has tolerated and attempted to compromise with this subjective act of knowing, say these reformers, it has been forced constantly into epistemology and has become a hybrid science. Had logic possessed the courage long ago to throw overboard this subjective Jonah it would have been spared the storms of epistemology and the reefs of metaphysics. Analytic logic is the first attempt in the history of modern logical theory at a deliberate, sophisticated exclusion of the act of knowing from logic. Other logics, to be sure, have tried to neutralize the effects of its presence, but none has had the temerity to cast it bodily overboard. The experiment, therefore, is highly interesting.
We should note at the outset that in regarding the act of knowing as incurably "psychical" and "subjective" analytic logic accepts a fundamental premise of the logics of rationalism, empiricism, and idealism which it seeks to reform. It is true that it is the bold proposal of analytic logic to keep logic out of the pit of epistemology by excluding the act of knowing from logic. Nevertheless analytic logic still accepts the subjective character of this act; and if it excludes it from its logic it welcomes it in its psychology. This is a dangerous situation. Can the analytic logician prevent all osmosis between his logic and his psychology?[22] If not, and if the psychological act is subjective, woe then to his logic. Had the new logic begun with a bold challenge of the psychical character of the act of knowing, the prospect of a logic free from epistemology would have been much brighter. With the desire to rid logic of the epistemological taint the "experimental logic" of the pragmatic movement has the strongest sympathy. But the proposal to effect this by the excision of the act of knowing appears to experimental logic to be a case of heroic but fatal surgery. _Prima facie_ a logic with no act of knowing presents an uncanny appearance. What sort of logical operations are possible in such a logic and of what kind of truth and falsity are they capable?
Before taking up these questions in detail it is worth while to note the character of the entities that "merely are" with which analytic logic proposes exclusively to deal. In their general form they are "terms" and "propositions," "sense-data" and universals. We are struck at once by the fact that these entities bear the names of logical operations. They are, to be sure, disguised as entities and have been baptised in a highly dilute solution of objectivity called "subsistence." But this does not conceal their origin, nor does it obscure the fact that if it is possible for any entities that "merely are" to have logical character those made from hypostatized processes of logical operations should be the most promising. They might be expected to retain some vestiges of logical character even after they have been torn from the process of inquiry and converted into "entities that merely are." Also it is not surprising that having stripped the act of knowing of its constituent operations analytic logic should feel that it can well dispense with the empty shell called "mind" and, as Professor Dewey says, "wish it on psychology." But if the analytic logician be also a philosopher and perchance a lover of his fellow-man, it is hard to see how he can have a good conscience over this disposition of the case.
Turning now to the character of inference and of truth and falsity which are possible in a logic which excludes the operation of knowing and deals only with "entities that are," all the expounders seem to agree that in such a logic inference must be purely deductive. All alleged induction is either disguised deduction or a lucky guess. This raises apprehension at the start concerning the value of analytic logic for other sciences. But let us observe what deduction in analytic logic is. We begin at once with a distinction which involves the whole issue.[23] We are asked to carefully distinguish "logical" deduction from "psychological" deduction. The latter is the vulgar meaning of the term, and is "the thinker's name for his own act of conforming his thought" to the objective and independent processes that constitute the real logical process. This act of conforming the mind is a purely "psychological" affair. It has no logical function whatever. In what the "conforming" consists is not clear. It seems to be merely the act of turning the "psychological" eye on the objective logical process. "One beholds it (the logical process) as one beholds a star, a river, a character in a play.... The novelist and the dramatist, like the mathematician and logician, are onlookers at the logical spectacle."[24] On the other hand, the term "conforming" suggests a task, with the possibilities of success and failure. Have we, then, two wholly independent possibilities of error--one merely "psychological," the other "logical"? The same point may be made even more obviously with reference to the term "beholding." The term is used as if beholding were a perfectly simple act, having no problems and no possibilities of mistakes--as if there could be no mis-beholding.[25]
But fixing our psychological eye on the "logical spectacle," what does it behold? A universal generating an infinite series of identical instances of itself--i.e., instances which differ only in "logical position." If in a world of entities that "merely are" the term "generation" causes perplexity, the tension is soon relieved; for this turns out to be a merely subsistential non-temporal generation which, like Hegel's generation of the categories, in no way compromises a world of entities that "merely are." Steering clear of the thicket of metaphysical problems that we here encounter, let us keep to the logical trail. First it is clear that logical operations are of the same reproductive repetitive type that we have found in the associational logic of empiricism, and in the logic of the objective universal. Indeed, after objective idealism has conceded that the finite mind merely "witnesses" or at most contributes only in an "infinitesimal" degree to the logical activity of the objective universal, what remains of the supposed gulf between absolute idealism and analytic realism?
It follows, of course, that there can be no place in analytic logic for "procedure by hypotheses." However, it is to the credit of some analytic logicians that they see this and frankly accept the situation instead of attempting to retain hypotheses by making them "accidents" or mere "auxiliaries" of inference. On the other hand, others find that the chief glory of analytic logic is precisely that it "gives thought wings"[26] for the free construction of hypotheses. In his lectures on "Scientific Methods in Philosophy" Mr. Russell calls some of the most elemental and sacred entities of analytic logic "convenient fictions." This retention of hypotheses at the cost of cogency is of course in order to avoid a break with science. Those who see that there is no place in analytic logic for hypotheses are equally anxious to preserve their connections with science. Hence they boldly challenge the "superstition" that science has anything to do with hypotheses. Newton's "_Hypotheses non fingo_" should be the motto of every conscientious scientist who dares "trust his own perceptions and disregard the ukase of idealism." "The theory of mental construction is the child of idealism, now put out to service for the support of its parents." "Theory is no longer regarded in science as an hypothesis added to the observed facts," but a law which is "found in the facts."[27] The identity of this with Mill's doctrine of hypotheses as "found in things" is obvious.
As against the conception of hypotheses as "free," "winged," constructions of a psychical, beholding, gossiping mind we may well take our stand with those who would exclude such hypotheses from science. And this doubtless was the sort of mind and sort of hypotheses Newton meant when he said "_Hypotheses non fingo_."[28] But had Newton's mind really been of the character which he, as a physicist, had learned from philosophers to suppose it to be, and had he really waited to find his hypotheses ready-made in the facts, there never would have been any dispute about who discovered the calculus, and we should never have been interested in what Newton said about hypotheses or anything else. What Newton did is a much better source of information on the part hypotheses play in scientific method than what he said about them. The former speaks for itself; the latter is the pious repetition of a metaphysical creed made necessary by the very separation of mind from things expressed in the statement quoted. Logically there is little to choose between hypotheses found ready-made in the facts and those which are the "winged" constructions of a purely psychical mind. Both are equally useless in logic and in science. One makes logic and science "trifling," the other makes them "miraculous." But if hypotheses be conceived not as the output of a cloistered psychical entity but as the joint product of all the beings and operations involved in the specific situation in which logical inquiry originates, and more particularly in all those involved in the operations of the inquiry itself (including all the experimental material and apparatus which the inquiry may require), we shall have sufficient continuity between hypotheses and things to do away with miracle, and sufficient reconstruction to avoid inference that is trifling.
It is, however, the second contribution of analytic logic that is the basis of the enthusiasm over its prospective value for other sciences. This is the discovery that terms and propositions, sense-data, and universals, are not only elements of logical operation but are the simple, neutral elements at large which science is supposed to have been seeking. "As the botanist analyzes the structures of the vegetable organism and finds chemical compounds of which they are built so the ordinary chemist analyzes these compounds into their elements, but does not analyze these. The physical chemist analyzes these elemental atoms, as now appears, into minuter components _which he in turn must leave to the mathematicians and logicians further to analyze_."[29] Again it is worth noting that this mutation of logical into ontological elements seems to differ only "in position" from the universal logicism of absolute idealism.
What are these simple elements into which the mathematician and logician are to analyze the crude elements of the laboratory? And how are these elements to be put into operation in the laboratory? Let us picture an analytic logician meeting a physical scientist at a moment when the latter is distressed over the unmanageable complexity of his elements. Will the logician say to the scientist: "Your difficulty is that you are trusting too much to your mundane apparatus. The kingdom of truth cometh not with such things. Forsake your microscopes, test tubes, refractors and resonators, and follow me, and you shall behold the truly simple elements of which you have dreamed."? And when the moment of revelation arrives and the expectant scientist is solemnly told that the "simple elements" which he has sought so long are "terms and propositions," sense-data and universals, is it surprising that he does not seem impressed? Will he not ask: "What am I to do with these in the specific difficulties of my laboratory? Shall I say to the crude and complex elements of my laboratory operations: 'Be ye resolved into terms and propositions, sense-data and universals'; and will they forthwith obey this incantation and fall apart so that I may locate and remove the hidden source of my difficulty? Are you not mocking me and deceiving yourself with the old ontological argument? Your 'simple' elements--are they anything but the hypostatized process by which elements may be found?"[30]
The expounders as well as the critics of analytic logic have agreed that it reaches its most critical junction when it faces the problem of truth and error. There is no doubt that the logic of objective idealism, in other respects so similar to analytic logic, has at this point an advantage; for it retains just enough of the finite operation of knowing--an "infinitesimal" part will answer--to furnish the culture germs of error. But analytic logic having completely sterilized itself against this source of infection is in serious difficulty. Here again it is Professor Holt who has the courage to follow--or shall we say "behold"?--his theory as it "generates" the doctrine that error is a given objective opposition of forces entirely independent of any such thing as a process of inquiry and all that such a process presupposes. "All collisions between bodies, all inference between energies, all process of warming and cooling, of starting and stopping, of combining and separating, all counterbalancings, as in cantilevers and gothic vaultings, are contradictory forces which can be stated only in propositions that manifestly contradict each other."[31] But the argument proves too much. For in the world of forces to which we have here appealed there is no force which is not opposed by others and no particle which is not the center of opposing forces. Hence error is ubiquitous. In making error objective we have made all objectivity erroneous. We find ourselves obliged to say that the choir of Westminster Abbey, the Brooklyn bridge, the heads on our shoulders are all supported by logical errors!
Following these illustrations of ontological contradictions there is indeed this interesting statement: "Nature is so full of these mutually negative processes that we are moved to admiration when a few forces cooeperate long enough to form what we call an organism."[32] The implication is, apparently, that as an "opposition" of forces is error, "cooeperation" of forces is truth. But what is to distinguish "opposition" from "cooeperation"? In the illustration it is clear that opposing forces--error--do not interfere with cooeperative forces--truth. Where should we find more counterbalancing, more starting and stopping, warming and cooling, combining and separating than in an organism? And if these processes can be stated only in propositions that are "manifestly contradictory," are we to understand that truth has errors for its constituent elements? Such paradoxes have always delighted the soul of absolute idealism. But, as we have seen, only the veil of an infinitesimal finitude intervenes between the logic of the objective universal of absolute idealism and the objective logic of analytic realism. It is, of course, this predicament regarding objective truth and error that has driven most analytic logicians to recall the exiled psychological, "mental" act of knowing. It had to be recalled to provide some basis of distinction between truth and error, but, this act having already been conceived as incurably "subjective," the result is only an exchange of dilemmas. For the reinstatement of this act _ipso facto_ reinstates the epistemological predicament to get rid of which it was first banished from logic.
Earnest efforts to escape this outcome have been made by attaching the act of knowing to the nervous system, and this is a move in the right direction. But so far the effort has been fruitless because no connection has been made between the knowing function of the nervous system and its other functions. The result is that the cognitive operation of the nervous system, as of the "psychical" mind, is that of a mere spectator; and the epistemological problem abides. An onlooking nervous system has no advantage over an "onlooking" mind. Onlooking, beholding may indeed be a part of a genuine act of knowing. But in that act it is always a stimulus or response to other acts. It is one of them;--never a mere spectator of them. It is when the act of knowing is cut off from its connection with other acts and finds itself adrift that it seeks metaphysical lodgings. And this it may find either in an empty psychical mind or in an equally empty body.[33]
If, in reinstating the act of knowing as a function of the nervous system, neo-realism had recognized the logical significance of the fact that the nervous system of which knowing is a function is the same nervous system of which loving and hating, desiring and striving are functions and that the transition from these to the operations of inquiry and knowing is not a capricious jump but a transition motived by the loving and hating, desiring and striving--if this had been recognized the logic of neo-realism would have been spared its embarrassments over the distinction of truth and error. It would have seen that the passage from loving and hating, desiring and striving to inquiry and knowing is made in order to renew and reform specific desires and strivings which, through conflict and consequent equivocation, have become fruitless and vain; and it must have seen that the results of the inquiry are true or false as they succeed or fail in this reformation and renewal.
But once more, it must steadily be kept in view that while the loving and hating, desiring and striving, which the logical operations are reforming and renewing, are functions of the nervous system, they are not functions of the nervous system alone, else the door of subjectivism again closes upon us. Loving and hating, desiring and striving have their "objects." Hence any reformation of these functions involves no less a reformation of their objects. When therefore we say that truth and error are relevant to desires and strivings, this means relevant to them as including their objects, not as entitized processes (such are the pitfalls of language) inclosed in a nervous system or mind. With this before us the relevance of truth and error to desires and strivings can never be made the basis for the charge of subjectivism. The conception of desires as peculiarly individual and subjective is a survival of the very isolation which is the source of the difficulty with truth and error. Hence the appeal to this isolation, made alike by idealism and realism, in charging instrumental logic with subjectivism is an elementary _petitio_.
Doubtless it will be urged again that the act of knowing is motived by an independent desire and striving of its own. This is of course consonant with the neo-realistic atomism, however inconsonant it may be with the conception of implication which it employs. If we take a small enough, isolated segment of experience we can find meaning for this notion, as we may for the idea that the earth is flat and that the sun moves around the earth. But as consequences accrue we find as great difficulties with the one as with the other. If the course of events did not bring us to book, if we could get off with a mere definition of truth and error we might go on piling up subsistential definitional logics world without end. But sublime adventurers, logically unregenerate and uninitiated, will go on sailing westward to the confusion and confounding of all definitional systems that leave them out of account.
The conclusion is plain. If logic is to have room in its household for both truth and error, if it is to avoid the old predicament of knowledge that is trifling or miraculous, tautologous or false, if it is to have no fear of the challenge of other sciences or of practical life, it must be content to take for its subject-matter the operations of intelligence conceived as real acts on the same metaphysical plane and in strictest continuity with other acts. Such a logic will not fear the challenge of science, for it is precisely this continuity that makes possible experimentation, which is the fundamental characteristic of scientific procedure. Science without experiment is indeed a strange apparition. It is a [Greek: logos] with no [Greek: legein], a science with no _scire_; and this spells dogmatism. How necessary such continuity is to experimentation is apparent when we recall that there is no limit to the range of operations of every sort which scientific experiment calls into play; and that unless there be thoroughgoing continuity between the logical demand of the experiment and all the materials and devices employed in the process of the experiment, the operations of the latter in the experiment will be either miraculous or ruinous. Finally, if this continuity of the operations of intelligence with other operations be essential to science, its relation to "practical" life is _ipso facto_ established. For science is "practical" life aware of its problems and aware of the part that experimental--i.e., creative--intelligence plays in the solution of those problems.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.