Studies in Logical Theory

by John Dewey

The first statement of the internal meaning as constituting the plan or purpose is, I take it, the conception of the internal meaning as an ideal construction which gives a working form, a definition to the "indefinite sort of restlessness" and blind feeling of dissatisfaction out of which the need of and demand for thought arises.[174] This accords with the scientific conception of the idea as a working hypothesis. If this interpretation of idea were steadily followed throughout, it is difficult to see how it could fail to lead to a conception of reality quite different from that described as "a certain absolute system of ideas."

The second definition of internal meaning is the one in which it is stated as the "partial expression," "embodiment," and "fulfilment" of a single conscious purpose, and in which subsequently and consequently the idea is identified with "any conscious act," for example, singing. The first part of the statement appears to say that the idea of a melody is in "partial fulfilment" of the idea regarded as the purpose to sing the melody. But, as the first statement of internal meaning implies, how can one have a purpose to sing the melody except in and through the idea? It is precisely the construction of an idea that transforms the vague "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction into a purpose. The idea is the defining, the sharpening of the blind activity of mere sensation, mere want, into a plan of action.

However, Mr. Royce meets this difficulty at once by the statement that the term "idea" here not only covers the activity involved in forming the idea, e. g., the idea of singing, but includes the action of singing, which fulfils this purpose. "In the same sense any conscious act at the moment when you perform it not merely expresses, but is, in my present sense, an idea."[175]

But this sort of an adjustment between the idea as the purpose and as the fulfilment of the purpose raises a new question. What here becomes of the distinction between immediate and mediating experience? Surely there is a pretty discernible difference between experience as a purposive idea and the experience which fulfils this purpose. To call them both "ideas" is at least confusing, and indeed it appears that it is just this confusion that obscures the fundamental difficulty in dealing, later on, with the problem of truth and error. To be sure, the very formation of the idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," is the beginning of the relief from the "indefinite restlessness." On the other hand, it defines and sharpens the dissatisfaction. When this vague unrest takes the form of a purpose to attain food or shelter, or to sing in tune, it is of course the first step toward solution. But this very definition of the dissatisfaction intensifies it. The idea as purpose, then, instead of being the fulfilment, appears to be the plan, the method of fulfilment. The fulfilling experience is the further experience to which the idea points and leads.

To follow a little farther this relation between the purposive and fulfilling aspects of experience, it is of course apparent that the idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," must as a function go over into the fulfilling experience. My purpose to sing the melody must remain, in so far as the action is a conscious one, until the melody is sung. I say "as a function," for the specific content of this purpose is continuously changing. The purpose is certainly not the same in content after half the melody has been sung as it is at the beginning. This means that the purpose is being progressively fulfilled; and as part of the purpose is fulfilled each moment, so a part of the original content of the idea drops out; and when the fulfilling process of this particular purpose is complete, or is suspended—for, in Mr. Royce's view, it never is complete in human experience—that purpose then gives way to some other, perhaps one growing out of it, but still one regarded as another. A purpose realized, fulfilled, cannot persist as a purpose. We may desire to repeat the experience in memory; i. e., instead of singing aloud, simply, as Mr. Royce says, "silently recall and listen to its imagined presence." But here we must remember that the memory experience, as such, is not an idea in the logical sense at all. It is an immediate experience that is fulfilling the idea of the song which constitutes the purpose to recall it, just as truly as the singing aloud fulfils the idea of singing aloud. Shouting, whistling, or "listening in memory to the silent notes" may all be equally immediate, fulfilling experiences. Doubtless the idea as purpose involves memory, as Mr. Royce says.[176] But it is a memory used as a purpose, and it is just this use of the memory material as a purpose that makes it a logical idea. In its content the purposive idea is just as immediate and as mechanical as any other part of experience. "Psychology explains the presence and the partial present efficacy of this purpose by the laws of motor processes, of habit, or of what is often called association."[177] Here "idea," however, simply means, as Mr. Royce takes it in his second statement, conscious content of any sort. But this is not the meaning of "idea" in the logical sense. The logical idea is a conscious content used as an organizer, as "a plan of action," to get other contents. If, for example, in the course of writing a paper one wishes to recall an abstract distinction, as the distinction dawns in consciousness, it is not an idea in the logical sense. It is just as truly an immediate fulfilling experience as is a good golf stroke. So in the mathematician's most abstruse processes, which Mr. Royce so admirably portrays, the results for which he watches "as empirically as the astronomer alone with his star" are not ideas in the logical sense; they are immediate, fulfilling experiences.[178] The distinction between the idea as the mediating experience—that is, the logical idea—and the immediate fulfilling experience is therefore not one of content, but of use.

There is a sense, however, in which the idea as a purpose can be taken as the partial fulfilment of another purpose; in the sense that any purpose is the outgrowth of activity involving previous purposes. This becomes evident when we inquire into the "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction out of which the idea as purpose springs. Dissatisfaction presupposes some activity already going on in attempted fulfilment of some previous purpose. If one is dissatisfied with his singing, or with not singing, it is because one has already purposed to participate in the performance of a company of people which now he finds singing a certain melody, or one has rashly contracted to entertain a strenuous infant who is vociferously demanding his favorite ditty. This is only saying that any given dissatisfaction and the purpose to which it gives rise grow out of activity involving previous purposing. But this does not do away with the distinction between the idea as a purpose and the immediate fulfilling experience.

If the discussion appears at this point to be growing somewhat captious, let us pass to a consideration of the relation between internal and external meanings, where the problem of truth and error appears, and where the vital import of these distinctions becomes more obvious.

II. PURPOSE AND THE JUDGMENT

Mr. Royce begins with the traditional definition of truth, which he then proceeds to reinterpret:

Truth is very frequently defined in terms of external meaning as that about which we judge.... In the second place, truth has been defined as the correspondence between our ideas and their objects[179].... When we undertake to express the objective validity of any truth, we use judgment. These judgments, if subjectively regarded, that is, if viewed merely as processes of our own present thinking, whose objects are external to themselves, involve in all their more complex forms, combinations of ideas, devices whereby we weave already present ideas into more manifold structure, thereby enriching our internal meaning; but the act of judgment has always its other, its objective aspect. The ideas when we judge are also to possess external meaning.... It is true, as Mr. Bradley has well said, that the intended subject of every judgment is reality itself. The ideas that we combine when we judge about external meanings are to have value for us as truth only in so far as they not only possess internal meaning, but also imitate, by their structure, what is at once other than themselves, and, in significance, something above themselves. That, at least, is the natural view of our consciousness, just in so far as, in judging, we conceive our thought as essentially other than its external object, and as destined merely to correspond thereto. Now we have by this time come to feel how hard it is to define the Reality to which our ideas are thus to conform, and about which our judgments are said to be made, so long as we thus sunder external and internal meanings.[180]