In his further analysis of logical theory, Dewey states that it has two phases, one general and one specific. The general problem concerns the relations of the various functions of experience to one another; how they give rise to each other, and what is their order of succession. This wider logic is identified with philosophy in general.[187] The specific phase of logic, logic proper, concerns itself with the function of knowing as such, inquiring into its typical behavior, occasion of operation, divisions of labor, content, and successful employment. Dewey indicates the danger of identifying logic with either of these to the exclusion of the other, or of supposing that they can be finally isolated from one another. "It is necessary to work back and forth between the larger and the narrower fields."[188]
Why is it necessary to make such a distinction at all? And why necessary to move back and forth between the two provisional standpoints? Dewey might answer by the following analogy: The thought function may be studied, first of all, as a special organ, as an anatomist might study the structure of any special organ of the body; but in order to understand the part played by this member in the organism as a whole, it would be necessary to adopt a wider view, so that its place in the system could be determined. This is probably what Dewey means by his two standpoints. He says: "We keep our paths straight because we do not confuse the sequential, efficient, and functional relationship of types of experience with the contemporaneous, correlative, and structural distinctions of elements within a given function."[189] The first objection to be made to this treatment of thought is that it makes knowing the activity of a special organ, like liver or lungs. If this objection is surmounted, there remains another from the side of general method. The biologist not only studies the particular organs as to their structure and their relationships within the body, but he has a view of the body as a whole, of its general end and purpose. His study of the particular organ is in part determined by his knowledge of the relations between body and environment. But experience as a whole cannot be treated like a body, because it has no environment. The analogy between body and its processes and experience and its processes breaks down, therefore, at a vital point. Dewey's genetic interpretation gains in plausibility when the human body, and not the whole of experience, is taken as the ground upon which the 'functions' are to be explained, for the body has an environment and purposes in relation to that environment. Experience as a whole possesses no such external reference.
It will be seen that Dewey's interpretation of the function of knowing is not as empirical as it proposes to be. Its underlying conceptions are biological in character, and these conceptions are brought ready-made to the study of thought. Logical theory does not arise naturally and spontaneously from a study of the facts of mind, but the facts are aligned and interpreted in terms of categories selected in advance. Empiricism develops its theories in connection with facts, but rationalism (in the bad sense of the word) fits the facts into prepared theories. Dewey's treatment of thought is, after all, more rationalistic than empirical.
To sum up Dewey's conclusions so far: Logic is the study of the function of knowing in relation to the other functions of experience. The wider logic distinguishes the function of knowing from other activities, and discovers its general purpose; the narrower logic examines the function of knowing in itself, with the object of determining its structure and operation. The aim of logic as a whole is to understand the operations of the concrete activity called knowing, with the purpose of rendering it more efficient. This concrete treatment of thought contrasts sharply with the 'epistemological' method, which sets thought over against the concrete processes of experience, and thus generates the false problem of the relation of thought in general to reality in general.
Having stated his position, we might expect Dewey, in the course of the next three chapters, to enter upon a consideration of one phase or other of his logic. On the contrary, he proposes to take up "some of the considerations that lie on the borderland between the larger and the narrower conceptions of logical theory."[190] First, he will consider the antecedent conditions and cues of the thought-process; the conditions which lead up to and into the function of knowing. These conditions lie between the thought-process and the preceding function (in order of time), and are therefore on the borderland between the wider and narrower spheres of logic.
In defining the conditions which precede and evoke thought, Dewey says: "There is always as antecedent to thought an experience of some subject-matter of the physical or social world, or organized intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with each other—so much so that they threaten to disrupt the entire experience, which accordingly for its own maintenance requires deliberate re-definition and re-relation of its tensional parts."[191] Thought is always called into action by the whole concrete situation in which it occurs, not by any particular sensation, idea, or feeling.
The opposite interpretation of the nature of the antecedents of thought is furnished by Lotze, who makes them consist in bare impressions, 'moods of ourselves,' mere states of consciousness. Dewey is quite right in calling these bare impressions purely fictitious, though the observation is by no means original. From the manner in which he approaches the study of the "antecedents of thought" it appears, however, that Dewey has something in common with Lotze. The functional theory, that is, allows a certain initial detachment of thought from reality, which must be bridged over by an empirical demonstration of its natural connection with preceding processes.
Dewey is wholly justified, again, in maintaining that thought is not a faculty set apart from reality, and that what is 'given' to thought is a coherent world, not a mass of unmeaning sensations. He recognizes his substantial agreement with the modern idealists in these matters.[192] But the idealists, he believes, hold a constitutive conception of thought which is in conflict with the empirical description of thinking as a concrete activity in time. Reality, according to this conception, is a vast system of sensations brought into a rational order by logical forms, and finite thought, in its operations, simply apprehends or discovers the infinite order of the cosmos. "How does it happen," Dewey asks, "that the absolute constitutive and intuitive Thought does such a poor and bungling job that it requires a finite discursive activity to patch up its products?"[193]
Against Lotze, such an indictment has considerable force, but its applicability to modern idealism is not so obvious. Modern idealism has insisted upon an empirical treatment of thought, and has definitely surrendered the abstract sensations of the older psychologies. Nor does idealism tend to treat finite thought as a process which merely 'copies' an eternally present nature. The issue between Dewey and the idealists is this: Does functionalism render an accurate empirical account of the nature of thought as a concrete process?
In his third chapter Dewey discusses "Thought and its Subject-matter: The Datum of Thinking." The tensional situation passes into a thought situation, and reflection enters upon its work of restoring the equilibrium of experience. Certain characteristic processes attend the operation of thought. "The conflicting situation inevitably polarizes or dichotomizes itself. There is somewhat which is untouched in the contention of incompatibles. There is something which remains secure, unquestioned. On the other hand, there are elements which are rendered doubtful and precarious."[194] The unquestioned element is the datum; the uncertain element, the ideatum. Ideas are "impressions, suggestions, guesses, theories, estimates, etc., the facts are crude, raw, unorganized, brute."[195] There is an approximation to bare meaning on the one hand, and bare existence on the other.