Part 21

Now, it must be granted that, if the "simple idea of sensation" is without objective reference, no association with it of similarly abstract sensations can supply the lack. A "movement" sensation, or a tactual, having in itself no such meaning, cannot merely by being "associated" with a similarly meaningless visual sensation endow this latter with reference to an object. Objective reference is, in fact, not a sensuous thing; it is not a conscious "element," nor does it arise from any combination or fusion of such. It is neither _in_ the association of ideas as a constituent member, nor does it belong to the association considered as a sequence of psychical states. Instead, in our present view, it belongs to or arises out of the activity through which and with reference to which associations are first of all established. It is an aspect or kind of reference or category under which any sense-quality or datum is apperceived when it is held apart from the stream of consciousness in order that it may receive new meaning as a stimulus; and a sensation functioning in such a "state of consciousness"[117] is a psychical phenomenon very different from the conscious element of "analytical" psychology. The extent to which it is true that the objective world of sense-perception is pre-eminently visual and tactual is then merely an evidence of the extent to which the exigencies of the life-process have required finer sense-discrimination for the sake of more refined reaction within these spheres as compared with others. Our conclusion, then, must be that the consciousness of objectivity is not as such sensuous, even as given in our perception of the material world. The world, as viewed from the standpoint of a particular, practical emergency, is an objective world, not in virtue of its having a "sensuous" or a "material" aspect as something existent _per se_, but because it is a world of stimuli in course of definition for the guidance of activity.[118]

It will be well to give further positive exposition of the meaning of the view thus stated. To return once more to our fundamental psychological conception, knowledge is essentially relevant to the solution of particular problems of more or less urgency and of various kinds and figures in the solution of such problems as the assemblage of consciously recognized symbols or stimuli by which various actions are suggested. The object as known is therefore not the same as the object as apprehended in other possible modes of being conscious of it. The workman who is actually using his tool in shaping his material, or the warrior who is actually using his weapon in the thick of combat, is, if conscious of these objects at all (and doubtless he may be conscious of them at such times), not conscious of them _as objects_--as the one might be, for example, in adjusting the tool for a particular kind of use, and the other in giving a keen edge to his blade. Under these latter circumstances the tool or weapon is an _object_, and its observed condition, viewed in the light of a purpose of using the object in a certain way, is regarded as properly suggesting certain changes or improvements. And likewise will the tool or the weapon have an objective character in the agent's apprehension in the moment of identifying and selecting it from among a number of others, or even in the act of reaching for it, especially if it is inconveniently placed. But in the act of freely using one's objective means the category of the objective plays no part in consciousness, because at such times there is no judgment respecting the means--because there is no sufficient occasion for the isolation of certain conscious elements from the rest of the stream of conscious experience to be defined as stimuli to certain needed responses. Such isolation will not normally take place so long as the reactions suggested by the conscious contents involved in the experience are fully adequate to the situation. Objects are not normally held apart as such from the stream of consciousness in which they are presented and recognized as possessing qualities warranting certain modes of conduct, excepting as it has become necessary to the attainment of the agent's purposes to modify or reconstruct his activity.[119]

Are things, then, apprehended as objective in virtue of the agent's attitude toward them, or is the agent's attitude in a typical case grounded upon an antecedent determination of the objectivity of the things in question? We must answer, in the first place, that there can be no such antecedent determination. We may, it is true, speak of believing, on the evidence of sight or touch, that a certain object is really present before us. But neither sight nor touch possesses in itself, as a particular sense-quality, any objective meaning. If touch is _par excellence_ the sense of the objective and the appeal to touch the test of objectivity, this can only be because touch is the sense most closely and intimately connected in our experience with action. After any interval of hesitation and judgment, action begins with contact with and manipulation of the physical means which have been under investigation. Not only is touch the proximate stimulus and guide to manipulation, but all relevant knowledge which has been gained in any judgment-process, through the other senses, and especially through sight, must ultimately be reducible to terms of touch or other contact sense. The alleged tactual evidence of objectivity is, then, rather a confirmation than a difficulty for our present view. In short, we must dismiss as impossible the hypothesis that there can be a consciousness of objectivity which is not dependent upon and an expression of primary antecedent tendencies toward motor response to the presented stimulus. It is our attitude toward the prospective stimulus that mediates the consciousness of an object standing over against us.

So far, indeed, is it from being true that objectivity is a matter for special determination antecedently to action that by common testimony the conviction of objectivity comes to us quite irresistibly. The object forces itself upon us, as we say, and "whether we will or no" we must recognize its presence there before us and its independence of any choice of ours or of our knowledge. In the cautious manipulation of an instrument, in the laborious shaping of some refractory material, in the performance of any delicate or difficult task, one's sense of the objectivity of the thing with which one works is as obtrusive as remorse or grief, and as little to be shaken off. We shall revert to this suggested analogy at a later stage in our discussion.

We are now in a position to define more precisely the nature of the conditions in which the sense of objectivity emerges, and this will bring us to the point at which the objective import of our economic and ethical judgments can profitably be discussed. We have said that the world of the physical is objective, not in virtue of the sensuous terms in which it is presented, but because it is a world of stimuli for the guidance of human conduct. Under what circumstances, then, are we conscious of stimuli in their capacity of guides or incentives or grounds of conduct? And the answer must be that stimuli are interpreted as such, and so take on the character of objectivity, when their precise character as stimuli is still in doubt, and they must therefore receive further definition.

For example, a man pursued by a wild beast must find some means of escape or defense, and, seeing a tree which he may climb or a stone which he may hurl, will inspect these as well as may be with reference to their fitness for the intended purpose. It is at just such moments as these, then, that physical things become things for knowledge and take on their stubbornly objective character--that is to say, when they are essentially problematic. Now, in order that any physical thing may be thus problematic and so possess objective character for knowledge, it must (1) be in part understood, and so prompt certain more or less indiscriminate responses; and (2) be in part as yet not understood--in such wise that, while there are certain indefinite or unmeasured tendencies on the agent's part to respond to the object--climb the tree or hurl the stone--there is also a certain failure of complete unity in the co-ordination of these activities, a certain contradiction between different suggestions of conduct which different observed qualities of the tree or stone may give, and so hesitation and arrest of final action. The pursued man views the tree suspiciously before trusting himself to its doubtful strength, or weighs well the stone and tests its rough edges before pausing to throw it. Thus, to state the matter negatively, there are two possible situations in which the sense of objectivity, if it emerge into consciousness at all, cannot long continue. An object---as, for example, some strange shrub or flower--which, in the case we are supposing, may attract the pursued wayfarer's notice, may awaken no responses relevant to the emergency in which the agent finds himself; and it will therefore forthwith lapse from consciousness. Or, on the other hand, the object, as the tree or stone, may rightly or wrongly seem to the agent so completely satisfactory, or, rather, in effect may _be_ so, as instantly to prompt the action which otherwise would come, if at all, only after a period of more or less prolonged attention. In neither of these cases, then, is there a problematic object. In the one the thing in question is wholly apart from any present interest, and therefore lapses. In the other case the thing seen is comprehended on the instant with reference to its general use and merges immediately into the main stream of the agent's consciousness without having been an object of express attention. In neither case, therefore, is there hesitation with reference to the thing in question--any conflict between inconsiderate positive responses prompted by certain features of the object and inhibitions due to recognition of its shortcomings. In a word, in neither case is there any judgment or possibility of judgment, and hence no sense of objectivity. We can have consciousness of an object, in the strict sense of the term, only when some part or general aspect of the total situation confronting an agent excites or seems to warrant responses which must be held in check for further determination. In terms of consciousness, an object is always an object of attention--that is, an object which is under process of development and reconstruction with reference to an end.

An inhibited impulse to react in a more or less definite way to a stimulus is, then, the adequate condition of the emergence in consciousness of the sense of objectivity. So long as an activity is proceeding without check or interruption, and no conflict develops between motor responses prompted by different parts or aspects of the situation, the agent's consciousness will not present the distinction of Objective and Subjective. The mode of being conscious which accompanies free and harmonious activity of this sort may be exemplified by such experiences as æsthetic appreciation, sensuous enjoyment, acquiescent absorption in pleasurable emotion, or even intellectual processes of the mechanical sort, such as easy computation or the solution of simple algebraic problems--processes in which no more serious difficulty is encountered than suffices to stimulate a moderate degree of interest. If, however, reverting to the illustration, our present need for a stone calls for some property which the stone we have seized appears to lack, consciousness must pass over into the reflective or attentive phase. The stone will now figure as an _object_ possessing certain qualities which render it in a general way relevant to the emergency before us. A needed quality is missing, and this defect must hold in check all the imminent responses until discovery of the missing quality can set them free. In a word, the stone as known to us has assumed the station of subject in a judgment-process, and our effort is, if possible, to assign to it a new predicate relevant to our present situation. Psychologically speaking, the stone is an object, a stimulus to which we are endeavoring to find warrant for responding in some new or reconstructed way.

In this process we must assume, then, first of all, an interest on the agent's part in the situation as a whole, which in the first place, in terms of the illustration, makes the pursued one note the tree or stone--which might otherwise have escaped his notice as completely as any passing cloud or falling leaf--and suggests what particular qualities or adaptabilities should be looked for in it. Given this interest in "making something" out of the total situation as explaining the recognition of the stone and the impulse to seize and hurl it, we find the sense of the stone's objectivity emerging just in the arrest of the undiscriminating impulse. The stone must have a certain meaning as a stimulus first of all, but it must be a meaning not yet quite defined and certain of acceptance. The stone will be an _object_ only if, and so long as, the undiscriminating impulses suggested by these elements of meaning are held in check in order that they may be ordered, supplemented, or made more definite. It is, then, the essence of the present contention that physical things are _objective_ in our experience in virtue of their recognized inadequacy as means or incentives of action--an inadequacy which, in turn, is felt as such in so far as we are seeking to use them as means or grounds of conduct, or to avail ourselves of them as conditions, in coping with the general situation from which our attention has abstracted them.

From this analysis of the conditions of the consciousness of objectivity we must now proceed to inquire whether in the typical ethical and economic situations, as they have been described, essentially these same conditions are present.

In the ethical situation, according to our statement, the subject of the judgment (the object of attention) is the new end which has just been presented in imagination, and we have now to see that the agent's attitude toward this end is for our present purpose essentially the same as toward a physical object which is under scrutiny. For just as the physical object is such for consciousness because it is partly relevant (whether in the way of furthering or of hindering) to the agent's purpose, but as yet partly not understood from this point of view, so the imaged end may likewise be ambiguous. The agent's moral purpose may be the (very likely mythical) primitive one of which we read in "associational" discussions of the moral consciousness--that of avoiding punishment. It may be that of "imitative," sympathetic obedience to authority--a sentiment whose fundamental importance for ethical psychology has long remained without due recognition.[120] It may be loyalty to an ideal of conscience, or yet again a purpose of enlargement and development of personality. But on either supposition the compatibility of the end with the prevailing standard or principle of decision may be a matter of doubt and so call for judgment. The problem will, of course, be a problem in the full logical sense as involving judgment of the type described in our discussion of the ethical situation only when the attitudes of obedience to authority and to fixed ideals have been outgrown; but, on the other hand, as might be shown, it is just the inevitable increasing use of judgment with reference to these formulations of the moral life which gradually undermines them and, by a kind of "internal dialectic" of the moral consciousness, brings the agent to recognition as well as to more perfect practice of a logical or deliberative method.

The end, then, is, in the typical ethical situation, an _object_ which one must determine by analysis and reconstruction as a means or condition of moral "integrity" and progress. It is, accordingly, in the second place, an object upon whose determination a definite activity of the agent is regarded by him as depending. Just as in the physical judgment-process the object is set off over against the self and regarded as a given thing which, when once completely defined, will prompt certain movements of the body, so here the contemplated act is an object which, when fully defined in all its relevant psychological and sociological bearings, will prompt a definite act of rejection or acceptance by the self. Now, it might be shown, as we believe, that the complete psychological and sociological definition of the course of conduct _is_ in truth the full explanation of the choice; there is no _separate_ reaction of the moral self to which the course of conduct is, as defined, an external stimulus. So also in the sphere of physical judgment complete definition passes over into action--or the appreciative mode of consciousness which accompanies action--without breach of continuity. But within the judgment-process in all its forms there is in the agent's apprehension this characteristic feature of apparent separation between the subject as an objective thing presently to be known and used or responded to, and the predicate as a response yet to be perfected in details, but at the right time, when one has proper warrant, to be set free. It is not our purpose here to speak of metaphysical interpretations or misinterpretations of this functional distinction; but only to argue from the presence of the distinction in the ethical type of judgment as in the physical as genuine an objectivity for the ethical type as can be ascribed to the other. The ethical judgment is objective in the sense that in it an object--an imaged mode of conduct taken as such--is presented for development to a degree of adequacy at which one can accept it or reject it as a mode of conduct. The ethical predicates Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, each pair representing a particular standpoint, as we shall later see, signify this accepting or rejecting movement of the self, this "act of will," of which, as an act in due time to be performed, the agent is more or less acutely conscious in the course of moral judgment.

In the economic situation also, as above described, there is present the requisite condition of the consciousness of objectivity. Here, as in the ethical situation, an object is presented which one must redetermine, and toward which one must presently act in a way likewise to be determined in detail in judgment. We shall defer until a later stage discussion of the reason why this subject of the economic judgment is the _means_ in the activity that is in progress. We are not yet ready to show that the means _must_ be the center of attention under the conditions which have been specified. Here we need only note the fact of common experience that economic judgment does center upon the means, and show that in this fact is given the objective status of the means in the judgment-process; for the economic problem is essentially that of withdrawing a portion, a "marginal increment," of the means from some use or set of uses to which they are at present set apart, and applying it to the new end that has come to seem, on ethical grounds at least, desirable; and we may regard this diversion as the essentially economic act which, in the agent's apprehension during judgment, is contingent upon the determination of the means. The object as economic is accordingly the means, or a marginal portion of the means, which is to be thus diverted (or, so to speak, exposed to the likelihood of such diversion), and its determination must be of such a nature as to show the economic urgency, or at least the permissibility, of this diversion. Into this determination, manifestly, the results of much auxiliary inquiry into physical properties of the means must enter--such properties, for example, as have to do with its technological fitness for its present use as compared with possible substitutes, and its adaptability for the new use proposed. Taking the word in the broad sense of _object of thought_, it is always an object in space and time to which the economic judgment assigns an economic value; and it is true here (just the same is true, _mutatis mutandis_, of the psychological and sociological determinations necessary to the fixation of ethical value) that the _economically motivated_ physical determination of the objective means from the standpoint of the emergency in hand is the full "causal" explanation of the economic act. It must, however, be carefully observed that this physical determination is in the typical case altogether incidental, from the agent's standpoint, to the assignment of an economic character or value to the means--a value which will at the close of the judgment come to conscious recognition. As we shall see, the process is directed throughout by reference to economic principles and standards, and what shall be an adequate determination in the case depends upon the precision with which these are formulated and the strenuousness with which they are applied. In a word, the economic judgment assigns to the physical object, as known at the outset, a new non-physical character. Throughout the judgment-process this character is gaining in distinctness, and at the end it is accepted as the Value of the means, as warrant for the diversion of them to the new use which has been decided on.[121]

We have now to consider whether in the actual ethical and economic experience of men there is any direct evidence confirming the conclusions which our logical analysis of the respective situations would appear to require. Can any phases of the total experience of working out a satisfactory course of conduct in these typical emergencies be appealed to as actually showing at least some tacit recognition that these types of judgment present each one an order of reality or an aspect of the one reality?