(1) As to proper names. It seems clear that those who regard the true proper name as a meaningless label are nearer the truth than those who assert with Jevons that a proper name has for its intension all the predicates which can be truly ascribed to the object named. As has often been observed, it is a sufficient proof that, for example, John does not mean "a human being of the male sex," to note that he who names his daughter, his dog, or his canoe John, makes no false assertion, though he may commit a solecism. So far the followers of Mill seem to have a satisfactory answer to Jevons, when they say, for example, that he confuses the intension of a term with its accidental or acquired associations. (So, again, we can see that Socrates cannot mean "the wisest of the Greek philosophers," by considering that I may perfectly well understand the statement "there goes Socrates" without being aware that Socrates is wise or a Greek or a philosopher.) And if we objected that no proper name actually in use is ever without some associations which in part determine its meaning by restricting its applicability, it would be a valid rejoinder that in pure logic we have to consider not the actual usages of language, but those that would prevail in an ideal language purged of all elements of irrelevancy. In such an ideal scientific language, it might be said, the proper name would be reduced to the level of a mere mark serviceable for identification, but conveying no implication whatever as to the special nature of the thing identified. Thus it would be indifferent what mark we attach to any particular individual, just as in mathematics it is indifferent what alphabetical symbol we appropriate to stand for a given class or number. I think, however, that even in such an ideal scientific language the proper name would have a certain intension. In the first place, the use of proper name seems to inform us that the thing named is not unique, is not the only member of a class. To a monotheist, for instance, the name "God" is no true proper name, nor can he consistently give a proper name to his Deity. It is only where one member of a class has to be distinguished from others that the bestowal of a proper name has a meaning. And, further, to give a thing a proper name seems to imply that the thing is itself not a class. In logic we have, of course, occasion to form the concept of classes which have other classes for their individual members. But the classes which compose such classes of classes could not themselves be identified by means of proper names. Thus the employment of a proper name seems to indicate that the thing named is not the only member of its class, and further that it is not itself a class of individuals. Beyond this it seems to be a mere question of linguistic convention what information the use of a proper name shall convey. Hence it ought to be said, not that the proper name has no intension, but that it represents a limiting case in which intension is at a minimum.
(2) As to abstract terms. Ought we to say, with so many English formal logicians, that an abstract term is always singular and non-intensional? The case for asserting that such terms are all singular, I own, seems unanswerable. For it is clear that if the name of an attribute or relation is equally the name of another attribute or relation, it is ambiguous and thus not properly one term at all. To say, for example, that whiteness means two or more distinct qualities seems to amount to saying that it has no one definite meaning. Of course, it is true that milk is white, paper is white, and snow is white, and yet the color-tones of the three are distinct. But what we assert here is, not that there are different whitenesses, but only that there are different degrees of approximation to a single ideal standard or type of whiteness. It is just because the whiteness we have in view is one and not many that we can intelligibly assert, for example, that newly fallen snow is whiter than any paper. All the instances produced by Mill to show that abstract terms may be general seem to me either to involve confusion between difference of kind and difference in degree of approximation to type, or else to depend upon treating as abstract a term which is really concrete. Thus when we say red, blue, green, are different kinds of color, surely what we mean is different kinds of colored surface. Quà colored, they are not different; I mean just as much and no more when I say "a red thing is colored," or "has color," as when I say "a green thing is colored." If Mill were right, the proposition "red is a color" ought to mean exactly the same as "red is red." Or, to put it in another way, it would become impossible to form in thought any concept of a single class of colored things.
But need we infer because abstract terms are singular that therefore they have no intension and are mere meaningless marks? Commonly as this inference is made, it seems to me clearly mistaken. It seems, in fact, to rest upon the vague and ill-defined principle that an attribute can have no attributes of its own. That it is false is shown, I think, by the simple reflection that scientific definitions are one and all statements as to the meaning of abstract names of attributes and relations. For example, the definition of a circle is a statement as to the meaning of circularity, the legal definition of responsible persons a statement as to the meaning of the abstraction "responsibility," and so on. (We only evade the point if we argue that abstract terms when used as the subjects of propositions are really being employed concretely. For "cruelty is odious," for instance, does not merely mean that cruel acts are odious acts, but that they are odious because they are cruel.) In fact, the doctrine that abstract terms have no intension would seem, if thought out, to lead to the view that there are only classes of individuals, but no classes of classes. Thus to say "cruel acts are odious because cruel" implies, not only that I can form the concept of a class of cruel acts, but also that of classes of odious acts of which the class of cruel acts in its turn is a member. And to admit as much as this is to admit that the class of cruel acts, considered as a member of the class of odious acts, shares the common predicate of odiousness with the other classes of acts composing the higher class. Hence the true account of abstract terms seems to me to be that we have in them another limiting case, a case in which the extension and the intension are coincident. Incidentally, by illustrating the ambiguity of the principle that attributes have no attributes of their own, our discussion seems to indicate the advantage of taking the purely extensional view is opposed to the predicative view of the import of propositions as the basis of an elementary treatment of logical doctrine.
THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSICS
BY ALEXANDER T. ORMOND
[Alexander Thomas Ormond, McCosh Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University, since 1897. b. 1847, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Mental Science Fellow, Princeton, 1877-78; Post-grad. Bonn and Berlin, 1884-85; Ph.D. Princeton, 1880; A.B. ibid. 1877; LL.D. Miami, 1899. Professor of Philosophy and History, University of Minnesota, 1880-83; Professor of Mental Science and Logic, Princeton University, 1883-97. Member American Philosophical Association, American Psychological Association.]
I
THE PRELIMINARY QUESTION
The living problems of any science arise out of two sources: (1) out of what men may think of it, in view of its nature and claims, and (2) the problems that at any period are vital to it, and in the solution of which it realizes the purpose of its existence. Now if we distinguish the body of the sciences which deal with aspects of the world's phenomena—and here I would include both the psychic and the physical—from metaphysics, which professes to go behind the phenomenon and determine the world in terms of its inner, and, therefore, ultimate reality, it may be truly said of the body of the sciences that they are in a position to disregard in a great measure questions that arise out of the first source, inasmuch as the data from which they make their departure are obvious to common observation. Our world is all around us, and its phenomena either press upon us or are patent to our observation. Lying thus within the field of observation, it does not occur to the average mind to question either the legitimacy or the possibility of that effort of reflection which is devoted to their investigation and interpretation. Metaphysics, however, enjoys no such immunity as this, but its claims are liable to be met with skepticism or denial at the outset, and this is due partly to the nature of its initial claims, and partly to the fact that its real data are less open to observation than are those of the sciences. I say partly to the nature of the initial claims of metaphysics, for it is characteristic of metaphysics that it refuses to regard the distinction between phenomena and ground or inner nature, on which the sciences rest, as final, and is committed from the outset to the claim that the real is in its inner nature one and to be interpreted in the light of, or in terms of, its inner unity; whereas, science has so indoctrinated the modern mind with the supposition that only the outer movements of things are open to knowledge, while their inner and real nature must forever remain inaccessible to our powers; I say that the modern mind has been so imbued with this pretension as to have almost completely forgotten the fact that the distinction of phenomenon and ground is one of science's own making. Neither the plain man nor the cultured man, if he happens not to be tinctured with science, finds his world a duality. The things he deals with are the realities, and it is only when his naïve realism begins to break down before the complex demands of his growing life, that the thought occurs to him that his world may be more complex than he has dreamed. It is clear, then, that the distinction of our world into phenomena and ground, on which science so largely rests, is a first product of reflection, and not a fact of observation at all.
If this be the case, it may be possible and even necessary for reflection at some stage to transcend this distinction. At least, there can be no reason except an arbitrary one for taking this first step of reflection to be a finality. And there would be the same justification for a second step that would transcend this dualism, as for the initial step out of which the distinction arose; provided, it should be found that the initial distinction does not supply an adequate basis for a rational interpretation of the world that can be taken as final. Now, it is precisely because the dualistic distinction of the sciences does fail in this regard, that a further demand for a reflective transformation of the data arises. Let us bear in mind that the data of the sciences are not the simple facts of observation, but rather those facts transformed by an act of reflection by virtue of which they become phenomena distinguished from a more fundamental nature on which they depend and which itself is not open to observation. The real data of science are found only when the world of observation has been thus transformed by an act of reflection. If then at some stage in our effort to interpret our world it should become clear that the sciences of phenomena, whatever value their results may possess, are not giving us an interpretation in terms that can be taken as final, and that in order to ground such an interpretation a further transformation of our data becomes necessary, I do not see why any of the sciences should feel that they have cause to demur. In truth, it is out of just such a situation as this that the metaphysical interpretation arises (as I propose very briefly here to show), a situation that supplies a genuine demand in the light of which the effort of metaphysics to understand its world seems to possess as high a claim to legitimacy as that of the sciences of phenomena. Let us take our stand with the plain man or the child, within the world of unmodified observation. The things of observation, in this world, are the realities, and at first we may suppose have undergone little reflective transformation. The first reflective effort to change this world in any way will, no doubt, be an effort to number or count the things that present themselves to observation, and out of this effort will arise the transformation of the world that results from considering it under the concepts and categories of number. In short, to mathematical reflection of this simple sort, the things of observation will resolve themselves into a plurality of countable things, which the numbering reflection becoming explicit in its ordinal and cardinal moments will translate into a system that will be regarded as a whole made up of the sum of its parts. The very first step, then, in the reflective transformation of things resolves them into a dual system, the world conceived as a cardinal whole that is made up of its ordinal parts, and exactly equal to them. This mathematical conception is moreover purely quantitative; involving the exact and stable equivalence of its parts or units and that of the sum of the parts with the whole. Now it is with this purely quantitative transformation that mathematics and the mathematical sciences begin. We may ask, then, why should there be any other than mathematical science,[[1]] and what ground can non-mathematical science point to as substantiating its claims? I confess I can see no other final reason than this, that mathematical science does not meet the whole demand we feel obliged to make on our world. If mathematics were asked to vindicate itself, it no doubt would do so by claiming that things present quantitative aspects on which it founds its procedure. In like manner non-mathematical, or, as we may call it, physical or natural science, will seek to substantiate its claims by pointing to certain ultra-quantitative or qualitative aspects of things. It is true that, so far as things are merely numerable, they are purely quantitative; but mathematics abstracts from the content and character of its units and aggregates, which may and do change, so that a relation of stable equivalence is not maintained among them. In fact, the basis of these sciences is found in the tendency of things to be always changing and becoming different from what they were before. The problem of these sciences is how to ground a rational scheme of knowledge in connection with a fickle world like that of qualitative change. It is here that reflection finds its problem, and noticing that the tendency of this world of change is for a to pass into b and thus to lose its own identity, the act of reflection that rationalizes the situation is one that connects a and b by relating them to a common ground x of which they stand as successive manifestations or symbols. X thus supplies the thread of identity that binds the two changes a and b into a relation to which the name causation may be applied. And just as quantitative equivalence is the principle of relationship among the parts of the simple mathematical world, so here in the world of the dynamic or natural sciences, the principle of relation is natural causation.[[2]] We find, then, that the non-mathematical sciences rest on a basis that is constituted by a second act of reflection; one that translates our world into a system of phenomena causally inter-related and connected with their underlying grounds.