Studies in Logical Theory · John Dewey
IV
In the illustration we have been considering, it will be observed, there is an extensive schedule of present uses which the new project calls in question and from which the means must be diverted. This is in fact the commoner case. A new use of money will affect, as a rule, not simply a single present mode of expenditure, but will very probably involve a readjustment throughout the whole schedule of expenditure which our separate past valuations of money have in effect co-operated in establishing. So likewise if we wish to use part of a store of building materials or of food, or of any other subdivisible commodity, we encounter an ordered system of consumption rather than a single predetermined use which we have not yet enjoyed. Where this is the case the whole process of valuation is greatly facilitated, but this is not essential. The means in cases of true economic valuation may be capable of but a single use, like a railroad ticket or a perishable piece of fruit, or of a virtually endless series of uses, like a painting or a literary masterpiece. Whether the means figure as representing but a single use or stand for the conservation of an extensive system, their economic significance is the same. They are the "energy-equivalent" of this use or system of uses considered as an act or system of acts of consumption in furtherance of the self. Their past assignment meant then and means now simply this, that the "energetic" self would thereby gain more than it would lose through the inevitable sacrifices. This is the economic significance of the means in virtue of which they are now problematic to the extent of checking, for a time at least, forward tendency toward the desired end.[146]
3. The judgment of energy-equivalence, then, defines the inhibiting economic aspect of the means, and moreover defines it for the means as subdivided and set apart for a schedule of uses if this was the form of the past adjustments to which reference is made. The problem of the third stage of the process is that of "bringing subject and predicate together," as we have elsewhere expressed it--that is, of determining, in the light of the economic character of the means as just ascertained, what measure of satisfaction, if any, may be accorded to the new and as yet undefined desire. The new disposition of the means, if one is to be made, must bring to the "energetic" self a degree of furtherance and development which shall be sensibly as great as would come from the established method of consumption. The means, as economic, are means to the conservation of the old adjustment, and any new disposal of them or of any portion of them for a full or partial execution of the new purpose must make out at least as good a case. It must appear that the new disposition is not only physically possible, but also economically necessary in the light of the same principle of expansion of the self as sanctioned the disposition now in force. It must make the self in some way more efficient--whether more strong and symmetrical in body, more skilled in work, more clear of brain, or more efficient in whatever other concrete way may be desired.
Psychologically the sanction of any course of action which is taken as evidence of conformity to the general rule thus inadequately stated is the more or less strong sense of "relaxation" of attentive strain which comes with the shift of attention, in the final survey, from means to end. We may accordingly, for the sake of greater definiteness, restate in the following terms the process which has just been sketched: The ends in conflict at the outset are ends which do not sensibly bear upon each other through their dependence upon a common fund of psychical capacities or energies. They are related in the agent's experience solely through their dependence upon a common stock of physical means, and they do not therefore admit of adjustment through the ethical type of process. The economic process consists essentially of a revival in imagination of the experiences accompanying the former disposition of the means and a re-enforcement by these of the means in their adherence to that former and still recognized disposition. If an adapted form of the new end can be imagined which will mediate a like experience of relaxation when the attention shifts from the means, thus emotionally re-enforced in their economic status, to the end as thus conceived, the means will be recognized as economically redisposable. Thus the method of valuation of the means makes possible, through appeal to the sensibly invariable experience of relaxation or assurance in the outcome of judgment, a co-ordination of disparate ends which the ethical method of direct adjustment could not effect.[147]
The economic process thus presents on analysis the same factors as does the ethical. On the subject side we have the means--which as economic are problematic as to their reapplicability. On the predicate side we have the suggested mode of reapplication in tension against conservative ideals of application to established purposes. Just as it may be held that the general ethical predicate is that of Right or Good--that is, deserving of adoption into the system of one's ends--so the economic predicate applied to the means as these come in the end to be defined is the general concept Reappliable. And in general the distinction of the types is not an ultimate one, for the more deliberately and rigorously the method of economic valuation is pursued--in such a case, for example, as that of the prospective emigrant--the stronger will be the agent's sense of a genuinely ethical sanction as belonging to the decision which is in the end worked out. The more certain and sincere, therefore, will be the agent's judgment that the means must be reapplied, for on the sense of sanction of which we speak rests the explicit judgment that the purpose formed is expansive of the self.
From the analysis thus presented it must appear, therefore, that the economic type of judgment is in our sense a constructive process. Its function is to determine a particular commodity or portion of a stock of some commodity in its economic character as _disposable_, and in performing this function it presents a definite reality in the economic order. Moreover, in thus defining the particular, recourse is had to more or less distinctively namable economic standards which are in the last resort symbols representing established habits of consumption in the light of which the means, _prima facie_, seem not to be available for any other purposes. These economic standards, like ethical standards and the class concepts of science and our ordinary perceptual experience, are, with all due respect to nominalism, constitutive of a real world--a world which is real because it lends form and significance to our knowledge of particulars as stimuli to conduct. We have now before us sufficient reason for our thesis that the valuation-process in both its forms is constructive of an order of reality, and we have sufficiently explained the relation which the economic order bears to the inclusive and logically prior order of ethical objects and relations. We are now in a position to see that in being thus constructive of reality (taking the conception in its proper functional meaning) they are at the same time constructive of the self, since the reality which they construct is in its functional aspect the assemblage of means and conditions, of stimuli, in short, for the development and expansion of the self. We shall bring this main division of our study to a close with a series of remarks in explanation and illustration of this view.
Let us consider once more the factors present in the agent's final survey of the situation after the completion of the judgment-process and on the verge of action. These factors are, as we have seen, (1) recognition of conditions sanctioning the purpose formed, (2) recognition of the purpose as, in view of this sanction, warranted to the "energetic" self as an eligible method of expansion and development, and (3) recognition of the "energetic" self, conversely, as in possession, in virtue of the favorable conditions given in factual judgment, of this new method of furtherance. These three factors are manifestly not so much factors co-operating in the situation as inseparable aspects of it distinguishable from each other and admitting of discriminative emphasis in accordance with the degree of reflective power which the individual may possess or choose to exercise. Strictly speaking these three aspects are present in every conscious recognition of a purpose as one's own and as presently to be carried into effect, but they are not always present in equal conspicuousness, and never with equal logical importance for the individual. In fact this enumeration of aspects coincides with our enumeration of the three stages in the evolution of the individual's conscious moral attitude toward new purposes given in impulse--in the third of which the last named of these aspects comes to the fore with the others in logical or functional subordination to it.
Now it will be apparent on grounds of logic, as on the evidence of simple introspection, that in this third type of attitude--in the attitude of true valuation, that is to say--the energetic self cannot be identified with the chosen purpose. The purpose is a determinate specified act to be performed subject to recognized conditions, and with the use of the co-ordinated means; the self, on the other hand, is a process to which this particular purpose is, indeed, from the standpoint of the self's conservation and increase, indispensable, but which is nevertheless apart from the purpose in the sense that without the purpose it would still be a self, though perhaps a narrower and less developed one. Our standpoint here as elsewhere, the reader must remember, is the logical. It is the standpoint of the agent's own interpretation of his experience of judgment during the judgment-process and at its close, and not the standpoint of the psychological mediation of this experience as a series of occurrences. Thus we are here far from wishing to deny the general proposition that a man's purposes are an expression of his nature, as the psychologist might describe it, or the proposition that a man's conduct and his character are one and the same thing viewed from different points of view.
We wish merely to insist upon the fact that these psychological propositions are not a true account of the agent's own experience of himself and of his purposes _while these latter are in the making or are on the verge of execution_. There is indeed no conflict between this "inside view" of the judgment-process and of the final survey and the psychological propositions just mentioned. The identity of conduct and character means not simply that as the man is so does he act, but quite as much, and in a more important way, that as he acts so is he and so does he become. It is, then, the essence of the agent's own view of the situation that his character is in the making and that the purpose is the method to be taken. To the agent the self is not, indeed, independent of the purpose, for plainly it is recognized that upon just this purpose the self is, in the sense explained, in a vital way dependent. Nevertheless the self is in the agent's apprehension essentially beyond the purpose, and larger than the purpose, and even, we may say, metaphysically apart from it.
Now the conclusion which we wish to draw from this examination of the agent's attitude in judgment is that no formulation of an ideal self can ever be adequate to his purposes, not simply because any such formulation must, as Green allows, inevitably be incomplete and inconsistent, but because the self as a process is in the agent's own apprehension of it inherently incapable of formulation. Any formulation that might be attempted must be in terms of particular purposes (since in a modern ethical theory the self must be a "concrete" and not an abstract universal), and it is easy to see that any such would be, to the agent in the attitude of true ethical judgment, worse than useless. It could as contentual and concrete only be a composite of existing standards, more or less coherently put together, offered to the agent as a substitute for the new standard which he is trying to work out. If there were not need of a new standard there would be no judgment-process; the agent must be, to say the least, embarrassed, even if the unwitting imposture does not deceive him, when such a composite, useful and indeed indispensable in its proper place as a standard of reference and a source of suggestion, is urged upon him as suitable for a purpose which in the very nature of the case it is logically incapable of serving.[148]
To the agent, then, the "energetic" self can never be represented as an ideal--can never be expressed in terms of purpose--since it is in its very nature logically incongruous with any possible particular purpose or generalization of such purposes. It is commonly imaged by the agent in some manner of sensuous terms, but it is imaged, in so far as the case is one of judgment in a proper sense, for use as a stimulus to the methodical process of valuation--not as a standard, which if really adequate would make valuation unnecessary. The agent's consciousness of himself as "energetic" cannot be an ideal; it comes to consciousness only through the endeavor, first to follow, and then, in a later stage of moral development, to use ideals, and has for its function, as a presentation, the incitement of the process of methodical use of standards in the control of the agent's impulsive ends. It is not an anticipatory vision of the final goal of life, but the agent's coming to consciousness of the general impulse and movement of the life that is.
It is an inevitable consequence of acceptance of a contentual view of the "energetic" self as one's ideal that reflective morality should tend to degenerate into an introspective conscientiousness constantly in unstable equilibrium between a pharisaical selfishness on the one hand and a morally scarcely more dangerous hypocrisy on the other. There is certainly much justice in the stinging characterization of "Neo-Hegelian Egoism" which Mr. Taylor somewhere in his unsearchable book applies to the currently prevailing conventionalized type of idealistic ethics. If the self of the valuation-process is an ultimate goal of effort, then there must certainly be an irreconcilable contrast to the disadvantage of the latter between the plain man's objective desire for right conduct, as such, and for the welfare of his fellow-beings, and the moralist's anxious questionings of the rectitude of the motives by which his conformity to the fixed moral standard are prompted.[149] Into the value and significance of the attitude of conscientious examination of one's moral motives we are not here concerned to inquire, but need only insist, in accordance with our present view, that its value must be distinctly subordinate and incidental to the general course and outcome of the valuation-process. In the valuation-process, consciousness of self is not an object of solicitude, but simply, we repeat, a pure presentation of stimulus, having for its office the incitement, and if need be the reincitement, of the attitude of deference to the suggestions of old standards and openness to the petitions of new impulse, and of methodically bringing these to bear upon each other.
The outcome of such a process, of course, cannot be predicted--and for the same reasons as make unpredictable the scientist's factual hypothesis. Just as the scientist's data are incomplete and ill-assorted and unorganized, for the reason that they have, of necessity, been collected, and must at the outset be interpreted, in the light of present concepts, whose inadequacy the very existence of the problem at issue demonstrates, so the final moral purpose that shall be developed is not to be deduced from any possible inventory of the situation as it stands. The process in both cases is one of reconstruction, and the test of the validity of the reconstruction must in both cases be of the same essentially practical character. In both cases the process is constructive of reality, in the functional signification of the term. In both, the judgment process is constructive also of the self, in the sense that upon the determination of the agent's future attitude the cumulative outcome of his past attitudes is methodically brought to bear.[150]
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.