Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude

by John Dewey; Boyd Henry Bode; Harold Chapman Brown; Horace Meyer Kallen; George H. Mead; Addison Webster Moore; Henry Waldgrave Stuart; James Hayden Tu

It need scarcely be said that in inference thus defined there is scant room for hypotheses. There is nothing "hypothetical," "experimental," or "tentative" in this process of reproduction by the objective universal as such. As little is there any possibility of error. If there is anything hypothetical, or any possibility of error, in inference, it is due to the temporal, finite human being in which, paradoxically enough, this process of "reproduction" goes on and to whom, at times, is given an "infinitesimal" part in the operation, while at other times he is said merely to "witness" it. But the real inference does not "proceed by hypotheses"; it is only the finite mind in witnessing the real logical spectacle or in its "infinitesimal" contribution to it that lamely proceeds in this manner.

Here, again, we have the same break in continuity between the finite, human act of knowing and the operations that constitute the real world. When the logic of the objective universal rejects imputations of harboring a despoiled psychical knower it has in mind, of course, the objective universal as knower, not the finite, human act. But, if the participations of the latter are all accidents of inference, as they are said to be, its advantage over a purely psychical knower, or "states of consciousness," is difficult to see. The rejection of metaphysical dualism is of no consequence if the logical operations of the finite, human being are only "accidents" of the real logical process. As already remarked, the metaphysical disjunction is merely a schematism of the more fundamental, logical disjunction.

As for tautology and miracle, the follower of Mill might well ask: how an association of particulars, whether mental states or things, could be more tautologous than a universal reproducing its own differences? And if the transition from particular to particular is a miracle in which the grace of God is disguised as "habit," why is not habit as good a disguise for Providence as universals? Moreover, by what miracle does the one all-inclusive universal become a universal? And since perception always presents a number of universals, what determines which one shall perform the reproduction? Finally, since there are infinite differences of the universal that might be reproduced, what determines just which differences shall be reproduced? In this wise the controversy has gone on ever since the challenge of the old rationalistic logic by the nominalists launched the issue of empiricism and rationalism. All the charges which each makes against the other are easily retorted upon itself. Each side is resistless in attack, but helpless in defense.

In a conception of inference in which both data and hypothesis are regarded as the tentative, experimental results of the processes of perception, memory, and constructive imagination engaged in the special task of removing conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition, and in which these processes are not conceived as the functions of a private mind nor of an equally private brain and nervous system, but as functions of interacting beings,—in such a conception there is no ground for anxiety concerning the simplicity of data, nor the objectivity of hypotheses. Simplicity and objectivity do not have to be secured through elaborate and labored metaphysical construction. The data are simple and the hypothesis objective in so far as they accomplish the work where unto they are called—the removal of conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition in conduct and affection.

In the experimental conception of inference it is clear that the principles of formal logic must play their rôle wholly inside the course of logical operations. They do not apply to relations between these operations and "reality"; nor to "reality" itself. Formal identity and non-contradiction signify, in experimental logic, the complete correlativity of data and hypothesis. They mean that in the logical procedure data must not be shifted without a corresponding change in the hypothesis and conversely. The doctrine that "theoretically" there may be any number of hypotheses for "the same facts" is, when these multiple hypotheses are anything more than different names or symbols, nothing less than the very essence of formal contradiction. It doubtless makes little difference whether a disease be attributed to big or little, black or red, demons or whether the cause be represented by a, b, or c, etc. But where data and hypotheses are such as are capable of verification, i.e., of mutually checking up each other, a change in one without a corresponding modification of the other is the principle of all formal fallacies.[18]

With this conception of the origin, nature, and functions of logical operations little remains to be said of their truth and falsity. If the whole enterprise of logical operation, of the construction and verification of hypothesis, is in the interest of the removal of ambiguity, and inhibition in conduct, the only relevant truth or falsity they can possess must be determined by their success or failure in that undertaking. The acceptance of this view of truth and error, be it said again, depends on holding steadfastly to the conception of the operations of knowing as real acts, which, though having a distinct character and function, are yet in closest continuity with other acts of which indeed they are but modifications and adaptations in order to meet the logical demand.

Here, perhaps, is the place for a word on truth and satisfaction. The satisfaction which marks the truth of logical operations—"intellectual satisfaction"—is the satisfaction which attends the accomplishment of their task, viz., the removal of ambiguity in conduct, i.e., in our interaction with other beings. It does not mean that this satisfaction is bound to be followed by wholly blissful consequences. All our troubles are not over when the distress of ambiguity is removed. It may be indeed that the verdict of the logical operation is that we must face certain death. Very well, we must have felt it to be "good to know the worst," or no inquiry would have been started. We should have deemed ignorance bliss and sat with closed eyes waiting for fate to overtake us instead of going forward to meet it and in some measure determine it. Death anticipated and accepted is realiter very different from death that falls upon us unawares, however we may estimate that difference. If this distinction in the foci of satisfaction is kept clear it must do away with a large amount of the hedonistic interpretations of satisfaction in which many critics have indulged.

But hereupon some one may exclaim, as did a colleague recently: "Welcome to the ranks of the intellectualists!" If so, the experimentalist is bound to reply that he is as willing, and as unwilling, to be welcomed to the ranks of intellectualism as to those of anti-intellectualism. He wonders, however, how long the welcome would last in either. Among the intellectualists the welcome would begin to cool as soon as it should be discovered that the ambiguity to which logical operations are the response is not regarded by the experimentalist as a purely intellectual affair. It is an ambiguity in conduct with all the attendant affectional values that may be at stake.[19] It is, to be sure, the fact of ambiguity, and the effort to resolve it, that adds the intellectual, logical character to conduct and to affectional values. But if the logical interest attempts entirely to detach itself it will soon be without either subject-matter or criterion. And if it sets itself up as supreme, we shall be forced to say that our quandaries of affection, our problems of life and death are merely to furnish occasions and material for logical operations.

On the other hand, the welcome of the anti-intellectualists is equally sure to wane when the experimentalist asserts that the doctrine that logical operations mutilate the wholeness of immediate experience overlooks the palpable fact that it is precisely these immediate experiences—the experiences of intuition and instinct—that get into conflict and inhibit and mutilate one another, and as a consequence are obliged to go into logical session to patch up the mutilation and provide new and better methods of coöperation.

At this point the weakness in Bergson's view of logical operations appears. Bergson, too, is impressed by the break in continuity between logical operations and the rest of experience. But with Mr. Bradley he believes this breach to be essentially incurable, because the mutilations and disjunctions are due to and introduced by logical operations. Just why the latter are introduced remains in the end a mystery. Both, to be sure, believe that logical operations are valuable for "practical" purposes,—for action. But, aside from the question of how operations essentially mutilative can be valuable for action, immediate intuitional experience being already in unity with Reality, why should there be any practical need for logical operations—least of all such as introduce disjunction and mutilation?