International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1 / Philosophy and Metaphysics

by Unknown

We have now reached a point where it will be possible in a few sentences to indicate the rise of the metaphysical reflection and the ground on which it rests. If we consider both the mathematical and the physical ways of looking at things, we will find that they possess this feature in common,—they are purely external, having nothing to say respecting the inner and, therefore, real nature of the things with which they deal. Or, if we concede the latest claims of some of the physical speculators and agree that the aim of physics is an ultimate physical explanation of reality, it will still be true that the whole standpoint of this explanation will be external. Let me explain briefly what I mean substantially by the term external as I use it here. Every interpretation of a world is a function of some knowing consciousness, and consequently of some knowing self. This is too obvious to need proof. A system will be external to such a knower just to the extent that the knower finds it dominated and determined by categories that are different from those of its own determination. A world physically interpreted is one that is brought completely under the rubrics of physics and mathematics; whose movements yield themselves completely, therefore, to a mechanical calculus that gives rise to purely descriptive formulæ; or to the control of a dynamic principle; that of natural causation, by virtue of which everything is determined without thought of its own, by the impulse of another, which impulse itself is not directly traceable to any thought or purpose. Now, the occasion for the metaphysical reflection arises when this situation that brings us face to face, with, nay, makes us part and parcel of, an alien system of things, becomes intolerable, and the knower begins to demand a closer kinship with his world. The knower finds the categories of his own central and characteristic activity in experience. Here he is conscious of being an agent going out in forms of activity for the realization of his world. The determining categories of the activity he is most fully conscious of, are interest, idea, prevision, purpose, and that selective activity which goes to its termination in some achieved end. The metaphysical interpretation arises out of the demand that the world shall be brought into bonds of kinship with the knower. And this is effected by generalizing the categories of consciousness and applying them as principles of interpretation to the world. The act of reflection on which the metaphysical interpretation proceeds is one, then, in which the world of science is further transformed by bringing the inner nature of things out of its isolation and translating the world-movements into process the terms of which are no longer phenomena and hidden ground, but rather inception and realization, or, more specifically, Idea and Reality. And the point to be noted here is the fact that these metaphysical categories are led up to positivity by an act of reflection that has for its guiding aim an interpretation of the world that will be more ultimately satisfactory to the knower than that of the physical or natural sciences; while negatively, it is led up to by the refusal of the knowing consciousness to rest in a world alien to its own nature and in which it is subordinated to the physical and made a mere epiphenomenon.

II

QUESTIONS OF POINT OF VIEW, PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF METAPHYSICS

It is clear from what has been said that the metaphysical interpretation proceeds on a presupposition radically different from that of mathematical and physical science. The presumption of these sciences is that the world is physical, that the physical categories supply the norms of reality, and that consciousness and the psychic, in general, are subordinate and phenomenal to the physical. On the contrary, metaphysics arises out of a revolt from these presumptions toward the opposite presumption, namely, that consciousness itself is the great reality, and that the norms of an ultimate interpretation of things are to be sought in its categories. This is the great transformation that conditions the possibility and value of all metaphysics. It is the Copernican revolution which the mind must pass through, a revolution in which matter and the physical world yields the primacy to mind; a revolution in which consciousness becomes central, its categories and analogies supplying the principles of final world-interpretation. Let us consider then, in the light of this great Copernican revolution, the questions of the point of view, principle, and method of metaphysics. And here the utmost brevity must be observed. If consciousness be the great reality, then its own central activity, that effort by which it realizes its world, will determine for us the point of view or departure of which we are in quest. This will be inner rather than outer; it will be motived by interest, will shape itself into interest-directed effort. This effort will be cognitive; dominated by an idea which will be an anticipation of the goal of the effort. It will, therefore, become directive, selective, and will stand as the end or aim of the completed effort. The whole movement will thus take the form, genetically, of a developing purpose informed by an idea, or teleologically, of a purpose going on to its fulfillment in some aim which is also its motive. Now, metaphysics determines its point of view in the following reasoning: if in consciousness we find the type of the inner nature of things, then the point of view for the interpretation of this inner nature will be to seek by generalizing the standpoint of consciously determined effort and asserting that this is the true point of view from which the meaning of the world is to be sought.

Having determined the metaphysical point of view, the next question of vital importance is that of its principle. And we may cut matters short here by saying at once that the principle we are seeking is that of sufficient reason, and we may say that a reason will be sufficient when it adequately expresses the world-view or concept under which an investigation is being prosecuted. Let us suppose that this world-view is that of simple mathematics, the principle of sufficient reason here will be that of quantitative equivalence of parts; or, from the standpoint of the whole, that of infinite divisibility. Whereas, if we take the world of the ultra-mathematical science, which is determined by the notion of phenomena depending on underlying ground, we will find that the sufficient reason in this sphere takes the form of adequate cause or condition. The determining condition or causes of any physical phenomenon supply, from that point of view, the ratio sufficiens of its existence. We have seen that the sufficiency of a reason in the above cases has been determined in view of that notion which defines the kind of world the investigation is dealing with. Let us apply this insight to the problem of the principle of metaphysics, and we will soon conclude that no reason can be metaphysically sufficient that does not satisfy the requirements of a world conceived under the notion of inception and realization; or, more specifically, idea and reality. In short, the reason of metaphysics will refuse to regard its world as a mechanism that is devoid of thought and intention; that lacks, in short, the motives of internal determination and movement, and will in all cases insist that an explanation or interpretation can be metaphysically adequate only when its ultimate reference is to an idea that is in the process of purposive fulfillment. Such an explanation we call teleological or rational, rather than merely mechanical, and such a principle is alone adequate to embody the ratio sufficiens of metaphysics.

Having determined the point of view and principle of metaphysics, the question of metaphysical method will be divested of some of its greatest difficulties. It will be clear to any one who reflects that the very first problem in regard to the method of metaphysics will be that of its starting-point and the kind of results it is to look for. And little can be accomplished here until it has been settled that consciousness is to have the primacy, and that its prerogative is to supply both standpoint and principle of the investigation. We have gone a long way toward mastering our method when we have settled these points: (1) that the metaphysical world is a world of consciousness; (2) that the conscious form of effort rather than the mechanical is the species of activity or movement with which we have to deal; and, (3) that the world it is seeking to interpret is ultimately one of idea and reality in which the processes take the purposive form. In view of this, the important steps of method (and we use the term method here in the most fundamental sense) will be (1) the question of the form of metaphysical activity or agency as contrasted with that of the physical sciences. This may be brought out in the contrast of the two terms finality and mere efficiency, in which by mere efficiency is meant an agency that is presumed to be thoughtless and purposeless, and consequently without foresight. All this is embodied in the term force or physical energy, and less explicitly in that of natural causation. Contrasted with this, finality is a term that involves the forward impulse of idea, prevision, and purpose. Anything that is capable of any sort of foretaste has in it a principle of prevision, selection, choice, and purpose. The impulse that motives and runs it, that also stands out as the end of its fulfillment, is a foretaste, an Ahnung, an anticipation, and the whole process or movement, as well as every part of it, will take on this character. (2) The second question of method will be that of the nature of this category of which finality is the form. What is its content, pure idea or pure will, or a synthesis that includes both? We have here the three alternatives of pure rationalism, voluntarism, and a doctrine hard to characterize in a single word; that rests on a synthesis of the norms of both rationalism and voluntarism. Without debating these alternatives, I propose here briefly to characterize the synthetic concept as supplying what I conceive to be the most satisfactory doctrine. The principle of pure rationalism is one of insight but is lacking in practical energy, whereas, that of voluntarism supplies practical energy, but is lacking in insight. Pure voluntarism is blind, while pure rationalism is powerless. But the synthesis of idea and will, provided we go a step further (as I think we must) and presuppose also a germ of feeling as interest, supplies both insight and energy. So that the spring out of which our world is to arise may be described as either the idea informed with purposive energy, or purpose or will informed and guided by the idea. It makes no difference which form of conception we use. In either case if we include feeling as interest we are able to conceive movements originating in some species of apprehension, taking the dynamic form of purpose, and motived and selected, so to speak, by interest; and in describing such activity we are simply describing these normal movements of consciousness with which our experience makes us most familiar. (3) The third question of method involves the relation or correlation of the metaphysical interpretation with that of the natural or physical science. Two points are fundamental here. In the first place, it must be borne in mind that it is the same world with which the plain man, the man of science, and the metaphysician are concerned. We cannot partition off the external world to the plain man, the atoms and ethers to the man of science, leaving the metaphysician in exclusive and solitary possession of the world of consciousness. It is the same world for all. The metaphysician cannot shift the physical world, with its oceans and icebergs, its vast planetary systems and milky ways, on to the shoulders of the physicist. This is the metaphysician's own recalcitrant world, which will doubtless task all his resources to explain. In the second place, though it is the same world that is clamoring for interpretation, it is a world that passes through successive transformations, in order to adapt itself to progressive modes of interpretation. The plain man is called to pass through a species of Copernican revolution that subordinates the phenomenon to its ground, before he can become a man of science. In turn, the man of science must go through the Copernican process, and learn to subordinate his atoms and ethers to consciousness before he can become a metaphysician. And it is this transformation that marks one of the most fundamental steps in the method of metaphysics. The world must experience this transformation, and it must become habitual to the thinker to subordinate the physical to the mental before the metaphysical point of view can be other than foreign to him. If, then, it be the same content with which the sciences and metaphysics are called on to deal, it is clear that we have on our hands another problem on the answer to which the fate of metaphysics vitally depends; the question of the correlation of its method with that of the sciences so that it may stand vindicated as the final interpretation of things.

III

QUESTION OF THE CORRELATION OF METAPHYSICS WITH THE SCIENCES

We have reached two conclusions that are vital here: (1) that the metaphysical way of looking at the world involves a transformation of the world of physical science; (2) that it is the same world that lies open to both science and metaphysics. Out of this arises the problem of the correlation of the two views; the two interpretations of the world. If science be right in conceiving the world under such categories as quantity and natural causation; if science be right in seeking a mechanical explanation of phenomena (that is, one that excludes prevision, purpose, and aim); and if metaphysics be right in refusing to accept this explanation as final and in insisting that the principle of ultimate interpretation is teleological, that it falls under the categories of prevision, purpose, and aim; then it is clear that the problem of correlation is on our hands. In dealing with this problem, it will be convenient to separate it into two questions: (1) that of the fact; (2) that of its rationale. The fact of the correlation is a thing of common experience. We have but to consider the way in which this Congress of Science has been brought about in order to have an exhibition of the method of correlation. Originating first in the sphere of thought and purpose, the design has been actualized through the operation of mechanical agencies which it has somehow contributed to liberate. On the scale of individual experience we have the classic instance of the arm moving through space in obedience to a hidden will. There can be no question as to the fact and the great difficulty of metaphysics does not arise in the task of generalizing the fact and conceiving the world as a system of thought-purposes working out into forms of the actual through mechanical agencies. This generalization somehow lies at the foundation of all metaphysical faith, and, this being the case, the real task here, aside from the profounder question of the rationale, is that of exhibiting the actual points of correlation; those points in the various stages of the sciences from physics to ethics and religion, at which the last category or result of science is found to hold as its immediate implication some first term of the more ultimate construction of metaphysics. The working out of this task is of the utmost importance, inasmuch as it makes clear to both the man of science and the metaphysician the intrinsic necessity of the correlation. It is a task analogous to the Kantian deduction of the categories.

IV