Essays in Experimental Logic

by John Dewey

We must not leave this phase of the discussion, however, until it is quite clear that our objection is not to Lotze's position that reflective thought arises from an antecedent which is not reflectional in character; nor yet to his idea that this antecedent has a certain structure and content of its own setting the peculiar problem of thought, giving the cue to its specific activities and determining its object. On the contrary, it is this latter point upon which we would insist; so as (by insisting) to point out, negatively, that this view is absolutely inconsistent with Lotze's theory that psychical impressions and ideas are the true antecedents of thought; and, positively, to show that it is the situation as a whole, and not any one isolated part of it, or distinction within it, that calls forth and directs thinking. We must beware the fallacy of assuming that some one element in the prior situation in isolation or detachment induces the reflection which in reality comes forth only from the whole disturbed situation. On the negative side, characterizations of impression and idea are distinctions which arise only within reflection upon that situation which is the genuine antecedent of thought. Positively, it is the whole dynamic experience with its qualitative and pervasive continuity, and its inner active distraction, its elements at odds with each other, in tension against each other, each contending for its proper placing and relationship, which generates the thought-situation.

From this point of view, at this period of development, the distinctions of objective and subjective have a characteristic meaning. The antecedent, to repeat, is a situation in which the various factors are actively incompatible with each other, and yet in and through the striving tend to a re-formation of the whole and to a restatement of the parts. This situation as such is clearly 'objective.' It is there; it is there as a whole; the various parts are there; and their active incompatibility with one another is there. Nothing is conveyed at this point by asserting that any particular part of the situation is illusory or subjective, or mere appearance; or that any other is truly real. The experience exists as one of vital and active confusion and conflict among its elements. The conflict is not only objective in a de facto sense (that is, really existent), but is objective in a logical sense as well; it is just this conflict which effects a transition into the thought-situation—this, in turn, being only a constant movement toward a defined equilibrium. The conflict has objective worth because it is the antecedent condition and cue of thought. Deny an organization of things within which competing incompatible tendencies appear and thinking becomes merely "mental."

Every reflective attitude and function, whether of naïve life, deliberate invention, or controlled scientific research, has risen through the medium of some such total objective situation. The abstract logician may tell us that sensations or impressions, or associated ideas, or bare physical things, or conventional symbols, are antecedent conditions. But such statements cannot be verified by reference to a single instance of thought in connection with actual practice or actual scientific research. Of course, by extreme mediation symbols may become conditions of evoking thought. They get to be objects in an active experience. But they are stimuli to thinking only in case their manipulation to form a new whole occasions resistance, and thus reciprocal tension. Symbols and their definitions develop to a point where dealing with them becomes itself an experience, having its own identity; just as the handling of commercial commodities, or arrangement of parts of an invention, is a specific experience.

There is always as antecedent to thought an experience of subject-matter of the physical or social world, or the previously organized intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with each other—so much so that they threaten to disrupt the situation, which accordingly for its own maintenance requires deliberate redefinition and re-relation of its tensional parts. This redefining and re-relating is the constructive process termed thinking: the reconstructive situation, with its parts in tension and in such movement toward each other as tends to a unified arrangement of things, is the thought-situation.

This at once suggests the subjective phase. The situation, the experience as such, is objective. There is an experience of the confused and conflicting tendencies. But just what in particular is objective, just what form the situation shall take as an organized harmonious whole, is unknown; that is the problem. It is the uncertainty as to the what of the experience together with the certainty that there is such an experience, that evokes the thought-function. Viewed from this standpoint of uncertainty, the situation as a whole is subjective. No particular content or reference can be asserted offhand. Definite assertion is expressly reserved—it is to be the outcome of the procedure of reflective inquiry now undertaken. This holding off of contents from definitely asserted position, this viewing them as candidates for reform, is what we mean, at this stage of the natural history of thought, by the subjective.

We have followed Lotze through his tortuous course of inconsistencies. It is better, perhaps, to run the risk of vain repetition than that of leaving the impression that these are mere dialectical contradictions. It is an idle task to expose contradictions unless we realize them in relation to the fundamental assumption which breeds them. Lotze is bound to differentiate thought from its antecedents. He is intent upon doing this, however, through a preconception that marks off the thought-situation radically from its predecessor, through a difference that is complete, fixed and absolute, or at large. It is a total contrast of thought as such to something else as such that he requires, not a contrast within experience of one temporal phase of a process, one period of a rhythm, from others.

This complete and rigid difference Lotze finds in the difference between an experience which is mere existence or occurrence, and one which has to do with worth, truth, right relationship. Now things have connection, organization, value or force, practical and aesthetic meaning, on their own account. The same is true of deeds, affections, etc. Only states of feelings, bare impressions, etc., seem to fulfil the prerequisite of being given as existence, and yet without qualification as to worth, etc. Then the current of ideas offers itself, a ready-made stream of events, of existences, which can be characterized as wholly innocent of reflective determination, and as the natural predecessor of thought.

But this stream of existences is no sooner regarded than its total incapacity to officiate as material condition and cue of thought appears. It is about as relevant to thinking as are changes that may be happening on the other side of the moon. So, one by one, the whole series of determinations of force and worth already traced are introduced into the very make-up, the inner structure, of what was to be mere existence: viz., (1) things of whose spatial and temporal relations the mere impressions are somehow representative; (2) meaning—the idea as significant, possessed of quality, and not a mere event; (3) distinguished traits of coincidence and coherence within the stream. All these features are explicitly asserted, as we have seen; underlying and running through them all is the recognition of the supreme value of a situation which has been organized as a whole, yet is now conflicting in its inner constitution.

These contradictions all arise in the attempt to put thought's work, as concerned with objective validity, over against experience as a mere antecedent happening, or occurrence. This contrast arises because of the attempt to consider thought as an independent somewhat in general which nevertheless, in our experience, is dependent upon a raw material of mere impressions given to it. Hence the sole radical avoidance of the contradictions can be secured only when thinking is seen to be a specific event in the movement of experienced things, having its own specific occasion or demand, and its own specific place.

The nature of the organization and force that the antecedent conditions of the thought-function possess is too large a question here to enter upon in detail. Lotze himself suggests the answer. He speaks of the current of ideas, just as a current, supplying us with the "mass of well-grounded information which regulates daily life" (I, 4). It gives rise to "useful combinations," "correct expectations," "seasonable reactions" (I, 7). He speaks of it, indeed, as if it were just the ordinary world of naïve experience, the so-called empirical world, as distinct from the world as critically revised and rationalized in scientific and philosophic inquiry. The contradiction between this interpretation and that of a mere stream of psychical impressions is only another instance of the difficulty already discussed. But the phraseology suggests the real state of things. The unreflective world is a world of practical things; of ends and means, of their effective adaptations; of control and regulation of conduct in view of results. The world of uncritical experience also is a world of social aims and means, involving at every turn the goods and objects of affection and attachment, of competition and co-operation. It has incorporate also in its own being the surprise of aesthetic values—the sudden joy of light, the gracious wonder of tone and form.