Part 29

[80] Supposing the question to be that of some molten state of the earth in past geologic ages. Taken as the complete subject-matter of a proposition--or science--the facts discovered cannot be regarded as causative of, or a mechanism of, the appearance of life. For by definition they form a closed system; to introduce reference to a future event is to deny the definition. Contrariwise, a statement of that past condition of the earth as a mechanical condition of the later emergence of life means that that past stage is taken not merely as past, but as in process of transition to its future, as in process of alteration in the direction of life. Change in this direction is an integral part of a statement of the early stage of the earth's history. A purely geologic statement may be quite accurate in its own universe of discourse and yet quite incomplete and hence inaccurate in another universe of discourse. That is to say, a geologist's propositions may accurately set forth a prior state of things, while ignoring any reference to a later state entailed by them. But a would-be philosophy may not ignore the implied future.

[81] _Philosophical Essays_, pp. 104, 105.

[82] _Sixth Meditation._

[83] _Principles of Philosophy_, p. 90.

[84] _Treatise of Human Nature_, Part III, sec. iii.

[85] It is perhaps poor tactics on my part to complicate this matter with anything else. But it is evident that "passions" and pains and pleasures may be used as _evidences_ of something beyond themselves (as may the fact of being more than five feet high) and so get a representative or cognitive status. Is there not also a prima facie presumption that all sensory qualities are of themselves bare existences or occurrences without cognitive pretension, and that they acquire the latter status as signs or evidence of something else? Epistemological idealists or realists who admit the non-cognitive character of pleasure and pain would seem to be under special obligations carefully to consider the thesis of the non-cognitive nature of all sensory qualities except as they are employed as indications or indexes of some other thing. This recognition frees logic from the epistemological discussion of secondary qualities.

[86] To readers who have grasped the thought of my argument, it may not be meaningless to say that the typical idealistic fallacy is to import into the direct experience the results of the intellectual or reflective examination, while that of realism is to treat the reflective operation as dealing with precisely the same subject-matter as the original act was concerned with--taking the good of "reason" and the good of immediate behavior to be the same sort of things. And both fallacies will result from any assimilation of two different acts to one another through giving them both the title "knowledge," and hence treating the difference between them as simply the difference between a direct apprehension and a mediated one.

[87] Analytic realism ought to be favorable to such a hedonism; the fact that present-day analytic realists are not favorable would seem to indicate that they have not taken their logic seriously enough, but have been restrained, by practical motives, from applying it thoroughly. To say that the moral life presents a high degree of organization and integration is to say something which is true, but is also to say something which by the analytic logic calls for its resolution into ultimate and independent simples. Unless they accept the pleasures and pains of Bentham as such ultimates, they are bound to present acceptable substitutes. But here they tend to shift their logic and to make the fulfilment of some _organization_ (variously defined) the standard good. Consistency would then admit the hypothesis that in _all_ cases an eventual organization rather than antecedent simples supply the standard of knowledge. Meanwhile the term "fulfilment" (or any similar term) stands as an acknowledgment that the organization in question is not something ontologically prior but is one yet to be achieved.

[88] It must not be overlooked that a mere reminder of an end previously settled upon may operate as a sufficient stimulus to action. It is probably this act of calling the end to mind which the realist confuses with knowledge, and therefore terms apprehension. But there is nothing cognitive about it, any more than there is in pressing a button to give the signal for an act already decided upon.

[89] Upholders of this view generally disguise the assumption of repetition by the notion that what is judged is progress in the direction of approximation to an eternal value. But as matter of fact, progress is never judged (as I have had repeated occasion to point out) by reference to a transcendent eternal value, but in reference to the success of the end-in-view in meeting the needs and conditions of the specific situation--a surrender of the doctrine in favor of the one set forth in the text. Logically, the notion of progress as approximation has no place. The thesis should read that we always try to repeat a given value, but always fail as a matter of fact. And constant failure is a queer name for progress.

[90] See IX and X _ante_.

[91] I use the term "image" in the sense of optics, not of psychology.

[92] That something of the cognitive, something of the sign or term function, enters in as a catalyzer, so to speak, in even the most aesthetic experiences, seems to be altogether probable, but that question it is not necessary to raise here.

[93] The superstition that whatever influences the action of a conscious being must be an unconscious sensation or perception, if it is not a conscious one, should be summarily dismissed. We are active beings from the start and are naturally, wholly apart from consciousness, engaged in redirecting our action in response to changes in our surroundings. _Alternative_ possibilities, and hence an indeterminate situation, change direct response into a response mediated by a perception as a sign of possibilities, that is, a physiological stimulus into a perceived quality: a sensory datum.

[94] Compare Woodbridge, _Journal of Philosophy and Psychology_, X, 5.

[95] See Russell, _Scientific Method in Philosophy_, p. 53.

[96] _Ibid._, p. 101.

[97] See the essay on _The Existence of the World as a Logical Problem_.

INDEX

Analysis, 37 ff., 426 ff. _See also_ Data; Sensations.

Appreciation, 351 ff., 394.

Apprehension, simple (also Acquaintance), 15, 352, 380, 408, 420, 430. _See also_ Inference; Perception; Presentationalism.

Behavior, 221, 313, 354. _See also_ Consequences; Practical.

Bosanquet, B., 149 n.

Bush, W. T., 221 n., 250 n.

Conflict, as stimulus to thinking, 10 ff., 20, 24, III, 136 ff., 163, 245, 341. _See also_ Practical.

Consciousness, 18, 221, 222, 234, 246.

Consequences, 31, 213, 308, 321 ff., 330 ff.

Constitutive thought, 130.

Data, 42 ff., 87, IV, VIII, XI, 345, 401, 427. _See also_ Sensations.

Deduction, 53, 435 ff.

Descartes, 350.

Design, 314 ff.

Desire, 364 ff.

Dialectic, 216.

Doubt, 184, 189, 195, 206, 212, 216, 248. _See also_ Conflict.

Ego-centric predicament, 263, 266, 410. _See also_ Subjectivity.

Ends and means, 340 ff., 367 ff., 371 ff.

Error, 398 ff.

Essence, 49, 58, 71, 288, 431 ff. _See also_ Meaning.

Evidence, 36, 39 ff., 226, 260, 392, 403. _See also_ Inference.

Experience, 2 ff., 10 n., 61 ff., 71 ff., 79, 122, 136 n., 241, 298, 334, 349, 412.

Experiment. _See_ Experience.

Facts. _See_ Data.

Genetic, 66, 92, 153.

Hedonism, 375 ff.

Hegel, 191.

Holt, E. B., 11 n.

Hume, 221 n., 350.

Hypothesis. _See_ Idea; Meaning.

Idea, 112, 116, 139, 179, 185 ff., VII, VIII, 239 ff., 304, 431. _See also_ Meaning.

Idealism, 20 ff., 130 ff., 233 ff., 267 ff., 343, 358 n.

Illusions, 396 ff.

Image, 142 n., 251, 390.

Implication, 52 n., 433. _See also_ Inference.

Indeterminate, 334.

Inference, 36, 209 ff., 220, 259, 274 n., 280, 299, 402-13, 419 ff., 423. _See also_ Data; Evidence; Ideas; Thinking.

Instrumentalism, 17, 30, 32, 38, 44, 85, 175, 230, 331.

Invaluable, 384.

James, William, 56, XII, 331, 348.

Jones, H., 129 n., 158, 159 n.

Klyce, S., 8-10 n.

Knowledge, 15 ff., 33, 64 ff., V, 222, 254 ff., 382, 429, 437 ff. _See also_ Apprehension; Perception; Thinking.

Language, 51, 186, 416, 431, 434.

Locke, 433 ff.

Logical theory, 78, 81 ff., 97 ff., 134, 178, 201, 222, 336, 415.

Lotze, II-V, 350.

Mathematics, 29, 56, 64, 418, 434.

Mead, G. H., 228.

Meaning, 16 ff., 33, 46, 48, 55, 90, 115, IV, 158 ff., 199, 234, 309, 431 ff. _See also_ Essence; Idea.

Mechanism, 343.

Montague, W. P., 11 n.

Moore, A. W., 388.

Mill, J. S., 36, 197, 202, 220, 234 n.

Nature as norm, 405.

Organization, 5, 127, 293, 380.

Peirce, C. S., 306, 330.

Perception, 254 ff., 349, 390-413.

Perry, R. B., 266, 273 n.

Philosophy, 98 ff.

Practical, XII, XIII, XIV.

Pragmatism, XII, 346. _See also_ Conflict; Consequences; Purpose.

Presentationalism, IX.

Privacy, 228, 295. _See also_ Subjectivity.

Psychology, 67, 92, 94, 140, 155, 221, 296 ff., 404. _See also_ Logical theory.

Purpose, 12, 20, 42, 68 ff., 77.

Realism, 26 ff., 39 ff., 60, 72, 234, IX, X, 358, 377 n.

Reality, 437 ff.

Royce, J., 172 n.

Russell, B., XI, 336, 348, 403 ff.

Santayana, G., 18, 57.

Self. _See_ Subjectivity.

Sensation, 145 ff., 160 ff., 233, XI, 402 ff., 428. _See also_ Data.

Sidgwick, A., 52 n.

Sign. _See_ Evidence.

Subjectivity, 66 ff., 106, 112, 125, 142, 197, 226, 278, 325, 337, 364.

Suggestion, 47 ff., 437 ff.

Temporal place, 1, 19, 27, 95 ff., 182, 337 ff., 343.

Terms, 51 ff., 434 ff.

Thinking, 1 ff., 13, 31 ff., 75 ff., 128, 183, 235, II-VI.

Transcendence, 424.

Truth, 24, 63, 181, 224, 231, 240, 304, 310, 316, 346, 387, 392, 423.

Two worlds, 409, 434.

Value, 349-89.

Woodbridge, F. J. E., 234 n., 250 n., 398 n., 400.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious printer's errors were repaired. Otherwise retained spellings and punctuation (including hypenation variations) as in the original.

P. 156: "philosophic disciplines"; original reads "philosophic disciples."

P. 354: "(in a direct experience"; original reads "in direct a experience." Transposition corrected.

Ten cases of lettered paragraph labels with closing but no opening parentheses were retained--"a)" on P. 137, 288, 407 and 426, "b)" on P. 139, 289, 408 and 429, and "c)" on P. 410 and 430.

End of Project Gutenberg's Essays in Experimental Logic, by John Dewey