Essays in Experimental Logic · John Dewey
[24] I, 28-34.
It is judgment which grows out of the former, because judgment is the whole situation as such; conception is referable to the latter because it _is_ one abstraction within the whole (the solution of possible meanings of the data) just as the datum is another. In truth, since the sensory datum is not absolute, but comes in a historical context, the qualities apprehended as constituting the datum simply define the locus of conflict in the entire situation. They are attributives of the contents-in-tension of the colliding things, not calm untroubled ultimates. On pp. 33 and 34 of Vol. I, Lotze recognizes (as we have just seen) that, as matter of fact, it is both sensory qualities in their systematic grading, or quantitative determinations (see I, 43, for the recognition of the necessary place of the quantitative in the true concept), and the "rich variety of local and temporal combinations," that provoke thought and supply it with material. But, as usual, he treats this simply as a historical accident, not as furnishing the key to the whole matter. In fine, while the heterogeneous collocations and successions constitute the problematic element that stimulates thought, quantitative determination of the sensory quality furnishes one of the two chief means through which thought deals with the problem. It is a reduction of the original colliding contents to a form in which the effort at redintegration gets maximum efficiency. The concept, as ideal meaning, is of course the other partner to the transaction. It is getting the various possible meanings-of-the-data into such shape as to make them most useful in construing the data. The bearing of this upon the subject and predicate of judgment cannot be discussed here. [30] See I, 38, 59, 61, 105, 129, 197, for Lotze's treatment of these distinctions. [31] I, 36; see also II, 290, 291. [32] II, 246; the same is reiterated in II, 250, where the question of origin is referred to as a corruption in logic. Certain psychical acts are necessary as "conditions and occasions" of logical operations, but the "deep gulf between psychical mechanism and thought remains unfilled."
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.