Essays in Experimental Logic · John Dewey
III
We are brought to a consideration of the notion of "primitive" sense data. It was long customary to treat the attempt to define true knowledge in terms derived from sense data as a confusion of psychology--or the history of the growth of knowledge--with logic, the theory of the character of knowledge as knowledge. As matter of fact, there _is_ confusion, but in the opposite direction. The attempt involved a confusion of logic with psychology--that is, it treated a phase of the technique of inference as if it were a natural history of the growth of ideas and beliefs. The chief source of error in ordinary inference is an unrecognized complexity of data. Perception which is not experimentally controlled fails to present sufficiently wide data to secure differentia of possible inferences, and it fails to present, even in what is given, lines of cleavage which are important for proper inference. This is only an elaborate way of saying what scientific inquiry has made clear, that, for purposes of inference as to conditions of production of what is present, _ordinary_ sense perception is too narrow, too confused, too vivid as to some _quales_ and too blurred as to some others. Let us confine our attention for the moment to confusion. It has often been pointed out that sense qualities being just what they are, it is illegitimate to introduce such notions as obscurity or confusion into them: a slightly illuminated color is just as irretrievably what it is, as clearly itself, as an object in the broad glare of noonday. But the case stands otherwise when the _quale_ is taken as a datum for inference. It is not so easy to identify a perceived object _for purposes of inference_ in the dusk as in bright light. From the standpoint of an inference to be effected, the confusion is the same as an unjustifiable simplification.
This over-simplification has the effect of making the _quale_, as a term of inference, ambiguous. To infer from it is to subject ourselves to the danger of all fallacies of ambiguity which are expounded in the textbooks. The remedy is clearly the resolution, by experimental means, of what seems to be a simple datum into its "elements." This is a case of analysis; it differs from other modes of analysis only in the subject-matter upon which it is directed, viz., something which had been previously accepted as a simple whole. The result of this analysis is the existence as objects of perception of isolated qualities like the colors of the spectrum scientifically determined, the tones of the scale in all their varying intensities, etc., in short, the "sensations" or sense qualities of contemporary psychology textbooks or the "simple ideas" of sensation of Locke or the "objects of sense" of Russell. They are the material of sense perception discriminated for the purpose of better inferences.
Note that these simple data or elements are not original, psychologically or historically; they are _logical_ primitives--that is, irreducible for purposes of inference. They are simply the most unambiguous and best defined objects of perception which can be secured to serve as _signs_. They are experimentally determined, with great art, precisely because the naturally given, the customary, objects in perception have been ambiguous or confused terms in inference. Hence they are replaced, through experimental means involving the use of wide scientific knowledge deductively employed, by simpler sense objects. Stated in current phraseology, "sensations" (i.e., qualities present to sense) are not the elements out of which perceptions are composed, constituted, or constructed; they are the finest, most carefully discriminated objects of perception. We do not first perceive a single, thoroughly defined shade, a tint and hue of red; its perception is the last refinement of observation. Such things are the limits of perception, but they are final, not initial, limits. They are what is perceived to be given under the most favorable possible conditions; conditions, moreover, which do not present themselves accidentally, but which have to be intentionally and experimentally established, and detection of which exacts the use of a vast body of scientific propositions.
I hope it is now evident what was meant by saying that current logic presents us not with a confusion of psychology with logic, but with a wholesale mistaking of logical determinations for facts of psychology. The confusion was begun by Locke--or rather made completely current through the enormous influence exercised by Locke--and some reference to Locke may be of aid in clearing up the point. Locke's conception of knowledge was logical, not psychological. He meant by knowledge thoroughly justified beliefs or propositions, "certainty," and carefully distinguished it from what passed current as knowledge at a given time. The latter he called "assent," opinion, belief, or judgment. Moreover, his interest in the latter was logical. He was after an art of controlling the proper degree of assent to be given in matters of probability. In short, his sole aim was to determine certainty where certainty is possible and to determine the due degree of probability in the much vaster range of cases where only probability is attainable. A natural history of the growth of "knowledge" in the sense of what happens to pass for knowledge was the last of his interests. But he was completely under the domination of the ruling idea of his time; namely, that _Nature_ is the norm of truth.
Now the earliest period of human life presents the "work of nature" in its pure and unadulterated form. The normal is the original, and the original is the normative. Nature is both beneficent and truthful in its work; it retains all the properties of the Supreme Being whose vice-regent it is. To get the logical ultimates we have only, therefore, to get back to the natural primitives. Under the influence of such deistic ideas, Locke writes a mythology of the history of knowledge, starting from clear and distinct meanings, each simple, well defined, sharply and unambiguously just what it is on its face, without concealments and complications, and proceeds by "natural" compoundings up to the store of complex ideas, and to the perception of simple relations of agreement among ideas: a perception always certain if the ideas are simple, and always controllable in the case of complex ideas if we consider the simple ideas and their compoundings. Thus he established the habit of taking logical discriminations as historical or psychological primitives--as "sources" of beliefs and knowledge instead of as checks upon inference and as means of knowing.
I hope reference to Locke will not make a scapegoat. I should not have mentioned him if it were not that this way of looking at things found its way over into orthodox psychology and then back again into the foundations of logical theory. It may be said to be the stock in trade of the school of empiricist logicians, and (what is even more important) of the other schools of logic whenever they are dealing with propositions of perception and observation: _vide_ Russell's trusting confidence in "atomic" propositions as psychological primitives. It led to the supposition that there is a kind of _knowledge_ or simple apprehension (or sense acquaintance) implying no inference and yet basic to inference. Note, if you please, the multitude of problems generated by thinking of whatever is present in experience (as sensory qualities are present) as if it were intrinsically and apart from the use made of its subject-matter of knowledge.
And if it occurred to one that the sole generating condition of _these_ two worlds is the assumption that sense objects are modes of apprehension or knowledge (are so intrinsically and not in the use made of them), he might think it a small price to pay to inquire into the standing of this assumption. For it was precisely the fact that sense perception and physical science appeared historically (in the seventeenth century) as rival modes of knowing the same world which led to the conception of sense objects as "subjective"--since they were so different from the objects of science. Unless sense and science had both first been thought of as modes of knowing and then as modes of knowing the same things, there would not have been the slightest reason for regarding immediate data, as "merely subjective." They would have been natural phenomena, like any other. That they are phenomena which involve the interaction of an organism with other things is just an important discovery about them, as is also a discovery about starch in plants.
Physical science is the _knowledge_ of the world by their means. It is a rival, not of them, but of the medley of prior dogmas, superstitions, and chance opinions about the world--a medley which grew up and nourished precisely because of absence of a will to explore and of a technique for detecting unambiguous data. That Mr. Russell, who is a professed realist, can do no better with the problem (once committed to the notion that sense objects are of themselves _objects_ of knowledge) than to hold that although the world of physics is not a legitimate inference from sense data, it is a permissible logical construction from them--permissible in that it involves no logical inconsistencies--suggests that the pragmatic difference between idealist and realist--of this type--is not very great. From necessary ideal constructions to permissible logical constructions involves considerable difference in technique but no perceptible practical difference. And the point of this family likeness is that both views spring from regarding sense perception and science as ways of knowing the same objects, and hence as rivals until some scheme of conciliation has been devised.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.