III
I have attempted, in the foregoing pages, a description of the function of knowledge in its own terms and on its merits—a description which in intention is realistic, if by realistic we are content to mean naturalistic, a description undertaken on the basis of what Mr. Santayana has well called “following the lead of the subject-matter.” Unfortunately at the present time all such undertakings contend with a serious extraneous obstacle. Accomplishing the undertaking has difficulties enough of its own to reckon with; and first attempts are sure to be imperfect, if not radically wrong. But at present the attempts are not, for the most part, even listened to on their own account, they are not examined and criticised as naturalistic attempts. They are compared with undertakings of a wholly different nature, with an epistemological theory of knowledge, and the assumptions of this extraneous theory are taken as a ready-made standard by which to test their validity. Literally of course, “epistemology” means only theory of knowledge; the term might therefore have been employed simply as a synonym for a descriptive logic; for a theory that takes knowledge as it finds it and attempts to give the same kind of an account of it that would be given of any other natural function or occurrence. But the mere mention of what might have been only accentuates what is. The things that pass for epistemology all assume that knowledge is not a natural function or event, but a mystery.
Epistemology starts from the assumption that certain conditions lie back of knowledge. The mystery would be great enough if knowledge were constituted by non-natural conditions back of knowledge, but the mystery is increased by the fact that the conditions are defined so as to be incompatible with knowledge. Hence the primary problem of epistemology is: How is knowledge überhaupt, knowledge at large, possible? Because of the incompatibility between the concrete occurrence and function of knowledge and the conditions back of it to which it must conform, a second problem arises: How is knowledge in general, knowledge überhaupt, valid? Hence the complete divorce in contemporary thought between epistemology as theory of knowledge and logic as an account of the specific ways in which particular beliefs that are better than other alternative beliefs regarding the same matters are formed; and also the complete divorce between a naturalistic, a biological and social psychology, setting forth how the function of knowledge is evolved out of other natural activities, and epistemology as an account of how knowledge is possible anyhow.
It is out of the question to set forth in this place in detail the contrast between transcendental epistemology and an experimental theory of knowledge. It may assist the understanding of the latter, however, if I point out, baldly and briefly, how, out of the distinctively empirical situation, there arise those assumptions which make knowledge a mystery, and hence a topic for a peculiar branch of philosophizing.
As just pointed out, epistemology makes the possibility of knowledge a problem, because it assumes back of knowledge conditions incompatible with the obvious traits of knowledge as it empirically exists. These assumptions are that the organ or instrument of knowledge is not a natural object, but some ready-made state of mind or consciousness, something purely “subjective,” a peculiar kind of existence which lives, moves, and has its being in a realm different from things to be known; and that the ultimate goal and content of knowledge is a fixed, ready-made thing which has no organic connections with the origin, purpose, and growth of the attempt to know it, some kind of Ding-an-sich or absolute, extra-empirical “Reality.”
(1) It is not difficult to see at what point in the development of natural knowledge, or the signifying of one thing by another, there arises the notion of the knowing medium as something radically different in the order of existence from the thing to be known. It arises subsequent to the repeated experience of non-fulfilment, of frustration and disappointment. The odor did not after all mean the rose; it meant something quite different; and yet its indicative function was exercised so forcibly that we could not help—or at least did not help—believing in the existence of the rose. This is a familiar and typical kind of experience, one which very early leads to the recognition that “things are not what they seem.” There are two contrasted methods of dealing with this recognition: one is the method indicated above (p. 93). We go more thoroughly, patiently, and carefully into the facts of the case. We employ all sorts of methods, invented for the purpose, of examining the things that are signs and the things that are signified, and we experimentally produce various situations, in order that we may tell what smells mean roses when roses are meant, what it is about the smell and the rose that led us into error; and that we may be able to discriminate those cases in which a suspended conclusion is all that circumstances admit. We simply do the best we can to regulate our system of signs so that they become as instructive as possible, utilizing for this purpose (as indicated above) all possible experiences of success and of failure, and deliberately instituting cases which will throw light on the specific empirical causes of success and failure.
Now it so happens that when the facts of error were consciously generalized and formulated, namely in Greek thought, such a technique of specific inquiry and rectification did not exist—in fact, it hardly could come into existence until after error had been seized upon as constituting a fundamental anomaly. Hence the method just outlined of dealing with the situation was impossible. We can imagine disconsolate ghosts willing to postpone any professed solution of the difficulty till subsequent generations have thrown more light on the question itself; we can hardly imagine passionate human beings exercising such reserve. At all events, Greek thought provided what seemed a satisfactory way out: there are two orders of existence, one permanent and complete, the noumenal region, to which alone the characteristic of Being is properly applicable, the other transitory, phenomenal, sensible, a region of non-Being, or at least of mere Coming-to-be, a region in which Being is hopelessly mixed with non-Being, with the unreal. The former alone is the domain of knowledge, of truth; the latter is the territory of opinion, confusion, and error. In short, the contrast within experience of the cases in which things successfully and unsuccessfully maintained and executed the meanings of other things was erected into a wholesale difference of status in the intrinsic characters of the things involved in the two types of cases.
With the beginnings of modern thought, the region of the “unreal,” the source of opinion and error, was located exclusively in the individual. The object was all real and all satisfactory, but the “subject” could approach the object only through his own subjective states, his “sensations” and “ideas.” The Greek conception of two orders of existence was retained, but instead of the two orders characterizing the “universe” itself, one was the universe, the other was the individual mind trying to know that universe. This scheme would obviously easily account for error and hallucination; but how could knowledge, truth, ever come about such a basis? The Greek problem of the possibility of error became the modern problem of the possibility of knowledge.
Putting the matter in terms that are independent of history, experiences of failure, disappointment, non-fulfilment of the function of meaning and contention may lead the individual to the path of science—to more careful and extensive investigation of the things themselves, with a view to detecting specific sources of error, and guarding against them, and regulating, so far as possible, the conditions under which objects are bearers of meanings beyond themselves. But impatient of such slow and tentative methods (which insure not infallibility but increased probability of valid conclusions), by reason of disappointment a person may turn epistemologist. He may then take the discrepancy, the failure of the smell to execute its own intended meaning, as a wholesale, rather than as a specific fact: as evidence of a contrast in general between things meaning and things meant, instead of as evidence of the need of a more cautious and thorough inspection of odors and execution of operations indicated by them. One may then say: Woe is me; smells are only my smells, subjective states existing in an order of being made out of consciousness, while roses exist in another order made out of a radically different sort of stuff; or, odors are made out of “finite” consciousness as their stuff, while the real things, the objects which fulfil them, are made out of an “infinite” consciousness as their material. Hence some purely metaphysical tie has to be called in to bring them into connection with each other. And yet this tie does not concern knowledge; it does not make the meaning of one odor any more correct than that of another, nor enable us to discriminate relative degrees of correctness. As a principle of control, this transcendental connection is related to all alike, and hence condemns and justifies all alike.[16]
It is interesting to note that the transcendentalist almost invariably first falls into the psychological fallacy; and then having himself taken the psychologist’s attitude (the attitude which is interested in meanings as themselves self-inclosed “ideas”) accuses the empiricist whom he criticises of having confused mere psychological existence with logical validity. That is, he begins by supposing that the smell of our illustration (and all the cognitional objects for which this is used as a symbol) is a purely mental or psychical state, so that the question of logical reference or intention is the problem of how the merely mental can “know” the extra-mental. But from a strictly empirical point of view, the smell which knows is no more merely mental than is the rose known. We may, if we please, say that the smell when involving conscious meaning or intention is “mental,” but this term “mental” does not denote some separate type of existence—existence as a state of consciousness. It denotes only the fact that the smell, a real and non-psychical object, now exercises an intellectual function. This new property involves, as James has pointed out, an additive relation—a new property possessed by a non-mental object, when that object, occurring in a new context, assumes a further office and use.[17] To be “in the mind” means to be in a situation in which the function of intending is directly concerned.[18] Will not some one who believes that the knowing experience is ab origine a strictly “mental” thing, explain how, as matter of fact, it does get a specific, extra-mental reference, capable of being tested, confirmed, or refuted? Or, if he believes that viewing it as merely mental expresses only the form it takes for psychological analysis, will he not explain why he so persistently attributes the inherently “mental” characterization of it to the empiricist whom he criticises? An object becomes meaning when used empirically in a certain way; and, under certain circumstances, the exact character and worth of this meaning becomes an object of solicitude. But the transcendental epistemologist with his purely psychical “meanings” and his purely extra-empirical “truths” assumes a Deus ex Machina whose mechanism is preserved a secret. And as if to add to the arbitrary character of his assumption, he has to admit that the transcendental a priori faculty by which mental states get objective reference does not in the least help us to discriminate, in the concrete, between an objective reference that is false and one that is valid.
(2) The counterpart assumption to that of pure aboriginal “mental states” is, of course, that of an Absolute Reality, fixed and complete in itself, of which our “mental states” are bare transitory hints, their true meaning and their transcendent goal being the Truth in rerum natura. If the organ and medium of knowing is a self-inclosed order of existence different in kind from the Object to be known, then that Object must stand out there in complete aloofness from the concrete purpose and procedure of knowing it. But if we go back to the knowing as a natural occurrence, capable of description, we find that just as a smell does not mean Rose in general (or anything else at large), but means a specific group of qualities whose experience is intended and anticipated, so the function of knowing is always expressed in connections between a given experience and a specific possible wanted experience. The “rose” that is meant in a particular situation is the rose of that situation. When this experience is consummated, it is achieved as the fulfilment of the conditions in which just that intention was entertained—not as the fulfilment of a faculty of knowledge or a meaning in general. Subsequent meanings and subsequent fulfilments may increase, may enrich the consummating experience; the object or content of the rose as known may be other and fuller next time and so on. But we have no right to set up “a rose” at large or in general as the object of the knowing odor; the object of a knowledge is always strictly correlative to that particular thing which means it. It is not something which can be put in a wholesale way over against that which cognitively refers to it, as when the epistemologist puts the “real” rose (object) over against a merely phenomenal or empirical rose which this smell happens to mean. As the meaning gets more complex, fuller, more finely discriminated, the object which realizes or fulfils the meaning grows similarly in quality. But we cannot set up a rose, an object of fullest, complete, and exhaustive content as that which is really meant by any and every odor of a rose, whether it consciously meant to mean it or not. The test of the cognitional rectitude of the odor lies in the specific object which it sets out to secure. This is the meaning of the statement that the import of each term is found in its relationship to the other. It applies to object meant as well as to the meaning. Fulfilment, completion are always relative terms. Hence the criterion of the truth or falsity of the meaning, of the adequacy, of the cognitional thing lies within the relationships of the situation and not without. The thing that means another by means of an intervening operation either succeeds or fails in accomplishing the operation indicated, while this operation either gives or fails to give the object meant. Hence the truth or falsity of the original cognitional object.