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

by Unknown

QUESTIONS OF THE ULTIMATE NATURE OF REALITY

We come, then, to the question of the rationale of this correlation, and it is clear here that we are dealing with a phase of the problem of the ultimate nature of reality. For the question of the correlation now is how it is possible that our thoughts should affect things so that they move in response; how mind influences body or the reverse, how, when we will, the arm moves through space. And without going into details of discussion here, let us say at once, that whatever the situation may be for any science,—and it may be that some form of dualism is a necessary presupposition of science,—for metaphysics it is clear that no dualism of substances or orders can be regarded as final. The life of metaphysics depends on finding the one for the many; the one that when found will also ground the many. If, then, the phenomenon of mind and body presents the appearance of a correspondence of two different and, so far as can be determined, mutually exclusive agencies, the problem of metaphysics is the reduction of these agencies to one species. Here we come upon the issue between materialism and immaterialism. But inasmuch as the notion of metaphysics itself seems to exclude materialism, the vital alternative is that of immaterialism. Again, if psycho-physics presents as its basal category a parallelism between two orders of phenomena, psychic and physical, it is the business of metaphysics to seek the explanation of this dualism in some more ultimate and unitary conception. Now, since the very notion of metaphysics again excludes the physical alternative from the category of finality, we are left with the psychic term as the one that, by virtue of the fact that it embodies a form of conscious activity, promises to be most fruitful for metaphysics. From one point of view, then, we have reduced our world to immaterialism; from another, to some form or analogue of the psychic. Now it is not necessary here to carry the inquiry further in this direction. For what metaphysics is interested in, specially, is the fact that the world must be reduced to one kind of being and one type of agency. If this be done, it is clear that the dualism of body and mind and the parallel orders of psycho-physics cannot be regarded as final, but must take their places as phenomena that are relative and reducible to a more fundamental unity. The metaphysician will say that the arm moves through space in response to the will, and that everywhere the correlation between mechanical and teleological agency takes place because in the last analysis there is only one type of agency; an agency that finds its initiative in interest, thought, purpose, design, and thus works out its results in the fields of space and mechanical activities.

Furthermore, on the question to which these considerations lead up; that of the ultimate interpretation we are to put on the reality of the world, the issue is not so indeterminate as it might seem from some points of view. Taking it that the very notion of metaphysics excludes the material and the physical as ultimate types of the real, we are left with the notions of the immaterial and the psychic; and while the former is indefinite, it is a fact that in the psychic and especially in the form of it which man realizes in his own experience, he finds an intelligible type and the only one that is available to him for the definition of the immaterial. He has his choice, then, either to regard the world as absolutely opaque, showing nothing but its phenomenal dress which ceases to have any meaning; or to apply to the world's inner nature the intelligible types and analogies of his own form of being. That this is the alternative that is embodied in the existence of metaphysics is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the metaphysical interpretation embodies itself in the categories of reason, design, purpose, and aim. Whatever difficulties we may encounter, then, in the use and application of the psychic analogy in determining the nature of the real, it is clear that its employment is inevitable and indispensable. Let us, then, employ the term rational to that characterization of the nature of things which to metaphysics is thus inevitable and indispensable. The world must in the last analysis be rational in its constitution, and its agencies and forms of being must be construed as rational in their type.

And here we come upon the last question in this field, that of the ultimate being of the world. We have already concluded that the real is in the last analysis rational. But we have not answered the question whether there shall be one rational or many. Now it has become clear that with metaphysics unity is a cardinal interest; that, therefore, the world must be one in thought, purpose, aim. And it is on this insight that the metaphysical doctrine of the absolute rests. There must be one being whose thought and purpose are all-inclusive, in order that the world may be one and that it may have meaning as a whole. But the world presents itself as a plurality of finite existents which our metaphysics requires us to reduce in the last analysis to the psychic type. What of this plurality of psychic existents? It is on this basis that metaphysics constructs its doctrine of individuality. Allowing for latitude of opinion here, the trend of metaphysical reflection sets strongly toward a doctrine of reality that grounds the world in an Absolute whose all-comprehending thought and purpose utters or realizes itself in the plurality of finite individuals that constitutes the world; the degree of reality that shall be ascribed to the plurality of individuals being a point in debate, giving rise to the contemporary form of the issue between idealism and realism. Allowing for minor differences, however, there is among metaphysicians a fair degree of assent to the doctrine that in order to be completely rational the world of individual plurality must be regarded as implying an Absolute, which, whether it is to be conceived as an individual or not, is the author and bearer of the thought and design of the world as a whole.

V

QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE AND ULTIMATE CRITERIA OF TRUTH

We have only time to speak very briefly, in conclusion, of two vital problems in metaphysics: (1) that of the nature and limits of metaphysical knowledge; (2) that of the ultimate criteria of truth. In regard to the question of knowledge, we may either identify thought with reality, or we may regard thought as wholly inadequate to represent the real; in one case we will be gnostic, in the other agnostic. Now whatever may be urged in favor of the gnostic alternative, it remains true that our thought, in order to follow along intelligible lines, must be guided by the categories and analogies of our own experience. This fixes a limit, so that the thought of man is never in a position to grasp the real completely. Again, whatever may be urged in behalf of the agnostic alternative, it is to be borne in mind that our experience does supply us with intelligible types and categories; and that under the impulse of the infinite and absolute, or the transcendent, to which our thought responds (to put it no stronger), a dialectical activity arises; on the one hand, the application of the experience-analogies to determine the real; on the other, the incessant removal of limits by the impulse of transcendence (as we may call it). Thus arises a movement of approximation which while it never completely compasses its goal, yet proceeds along intelligent lines; constitutes the mind's effort to know; and results in an approximating series of intelligible and relatively adequate conceptions. Metaphysically, we are ever approximating to ultimate knowledge; though it can never be said that we have attained it. The type of metaphysical knowledge cannot be characterized, therefore, as either gnostic or agnostic.

As to the question of ultimate criteria, it is clear that we are here touching one of the living issues of our present-day thought. Shall the judgment of truth, on which certitude must found, exclude practical considerations of value, or shall the consideration of value have weight in the balance of certitude? On this issue we have at the opposite extremes (1) the pure rationalist who insists on the rigid exclusion from the epistemological scale of every consideration except that of pure logic. The truth of a thing, he urges, is always a purely logical consideration. On the other hand, we have (2) the pure pragmatist, who insists on the "will to believe" as a legitimate datum or factor in the determination of certitude. The pragmatic platform has two planks: (1) the ontological—we select our world that we call real at the behest of our interests; (2) the ethical—in such a world practical interest has the right of way in determining what we are to accept as true as well as what we are to choose as good. It is my purpose in thus outlining the extremes of doctrine to close with a suggestion or two toward less ultra-conclusions. It is a sufficient criticism on the pure rationalist's position to point out the fact that his separation of practical and theoretic interests is a pure fiction that is never realized anywhere. The motives of science and the motives of practice are so blended that interest in the conclusion always enters as a factor in the process. A conclusion reached by the pure rationalist's method would be one that would only interest the pure rationalist in so far as he could divest himself of all motives except the bare love of fact for its own sake. The pure pragmatist is, I think, still more vulnerable. He must, to start with, be a pure subjective idealist, otherwise he would find his world at many points recalcitrant to his ontology. Furthermore, the mere will to believe is arbitrary and involves the suppression of reason. In order that the will to believe may work real conviction, the point believed must at least amount to a postulate of the practical reason; it must become somehow evident that the refusal to believe would create a situation that would be theoretically unsound or irrational; as, for instance, if we assume that the immortality of the soul is a real postulate of practical reason, it must be so because the negative of it would involve the irrationality of our world; and therefore a degree of theoretic imperfection or confusion. Personally I believe the lines here converge in such a way that the ideal of truth will always be found to have practical value; and conversely, as to practical ideals, that a sound practical postulate will have weight in the theoretic scales. And it is doubtless true, as Professor Royce urges in his presidential address on The Eternal and The Practical, that all judgments must find their final warrant at the Court of the Eternal where, so far as we can see, the theoretical and practical coalesce into one.

[1] I do not raise the question of qualitative mathematics at all. It is clear that the first mathematical reflection will be quantitative.

[2] By natural causation I mean such a relationship between a and b in a phenomenal system as enables a through its connection with its ground to determine b.