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

by Unknown

Schleiermacher in his dialectic regards logic from the standpoint of epistemological realism, in which the real deliverances of the senses are conceptually transformed by the spontaneous activity of reason. This spirit of realism is similar to that of Aristotle, in which the one-sided a priori view of knowledge is controverted. Space and time are forms of the existence of things, and not merely a priori forms of knowing. Logic he divides into dialectic and technical logic. The former regards the idea of knowledge as such; the formal or technical regards knowledge in the process of becoming or the idea of knowledge in motion. The forms of this process are induction and deduction. The Hegelian theory of the generation of knowledge out of the processes of pure thought is emphatically rejected.

Lotze, who is undoubtedly one of the most influential and fruitful writers on logic in the last century, attempts to bring logic into closer relations with contemporary science, and is an antagonist of one-sided formal logics. For him logic falls into the three parts of (1) pure logic or the logic of thought; (2) applied logic or the logic of investigation; (3) the logic of knowledge or methodology; and this classification of the matter and problems of logic has had an important influence on subsequent treatises on the discipline. His logic is formal, as he describes it himself, in the sense of setting forth the modes of the operation of thought and its logical structure; it is real in the sense that these forms are dependent on the nature of things and not something independently given in the mind. While he aims to maintain the distinct separation of logic and metaphysics, he says (in the discussion of the relations between formal and real logical meaning) the question of meaning naturally raises a metaphysical problem: "Ich thue besser der Metaphysik die weitere Erörterung dieses wichtigen Punktes zu überlassen." (Log. 2d ed. p. 571.) How could it be otherwise when his whole view of the relations and validity of knowledge is inseparable from his realism or teleological idealism, as he himself characterizes his own standpoint?

Drobisch, a follower of Herbart, is one of the most thoroughgoing formalists in modern logical theory. He attempts to maintain strictly the distinction between thought and knowledge. Logic is the science of thought. He holds that there may be formal truth, for example, logically valid truth, which is materially false. Logic, in other words, is purely formal; material truth is matter for metaphysics or science. Drobisch holds, therefore, that the falsity of the judgment expressed in the premise from which a formally correct syllogism may be deduced, is not subject-matter for logic. The sphere of logic is limited to the region of inference and forms of procedure, his view of the nature and function of logic being determined largely by the bias of his mathematical standpoint. The congruity of thought with itself, judgments, conclusions, analyses, etc., is the sole logical truth, as against Trendelenburg, who took the Aristotelian position that logical truth is the "agreement of thought with the object of thought."

Sigwart looks at logic mainly from the standpoint of the technology of science, in which, however, he discovers the implications of a teleological metaphysic. Between the processes of consciousness and external changes he finds a causal relation and not parallelism. Inasmuch as thought sometimes misses its aim, as is shown by the fact that error and dispute exist, there is need of a discipline whose purpose is to show us how to attain and establish truth and avoid error. This is the practical aim of logic, as distinguished from the psychological treatment of thought, where the distinction between true and false has no more place than the distinction between good and bad. Logic presupposes the impulse to discover truth, and it therefore sets forth the criteria of true thinking, and endeavors to describe those normative operations whose aim is validity of judgment. Consequently logic falls into the two parts of (1) critical, (2) technical, the former having meaning only in reference to the latter; the main value of logic is to be sought in its function as art. "Methodology, therefore, which is generally made to take a subordinate place, should be regarded as the special, final, and chief aim of our science." (Logic, vol. i, p. 21, Eng. Tr.) As an art, logic undertakes to determine under what conditions and prescriptions judgments are valid, but does not undertake to pass upon the validity of the content of given judgments. Its prescriptions have regard only to formal correctness and not to the material truth of results. Logic is, therefore, a formal discipline. Its business is with the due procedure of thought, and it attempts to show no more than how we may advance in the reasoning process in such way that each step is valid and necessary. If logic were to tell us what to think or give us the content of thought, it would be commensurate with the whole of science. Sigwart, however, does not mean by formal thought independence of content, for it is not possible to disregard the particular manner in which the materials and content of thought are delivered through sensation and formed into ideas. Further, logic having for its chief business the methodology of science, the development of knowledge from empirical data, it ought to include a theory of knowledge, but it should not so far depart from its subjective limits as to include within its province the discussion of metaphysical implications or a theory of being. For this reason, Sigwart relegates to a postscript his discussion of teleology, but he gives an elaborate treatment of epistemology extending through vol. i and develops his account of methodology in vol. ii. The question regarding the relation between necessity, the element in which logical thought moves, and freedom, the postulate of the will, carries one beyond the confines of logic and is, in his opinion, the profoundest problem of metaphysics, whose function is to deal with the ultimate relation between "subject and object, the world and the individual, and this is not only basal for logic and all science, but is the crown and end of them all."

Wundt's psychological and methodological treatment of logic stands midway between the purely formal treatises on the one hand, and the metaphysical treatises on the other hand. The general standpoint of Wundt is similar to that of Sigwart, in that he discovers the function of logic in the exposition of the formation and methods of scientific knowledge; for example, in epistemology and methodology. Logic must conform to the conditions under which scientific inquiry is actually carried on; the forms of thought, therefore, cannot be separate from or indifferent to the content of knowledge; for it is a fundamental principle of science that its particular methods are determined by the nature of its particular subject-matter. Scientific logic must reject the theory that identifies thought and being (Hegel) and the theory of parallelism between thought and reality (Schleiermacher, Trendelenburg, and Ueberweg), in which the ultimate identity of the two is only concealed. Both of these theories base logic on a metaphysics, which makes it necessary to construe the real in terms of thought, and logic, so divorced from empirical reality, is powerless to explain the methods of scientific procedure. One cannot, however, avoid the acceptance of thought as a competent organ for the interpretation of reality, unless one abandons all question of validity and accepts agnosticism or skepticism. This interpretative power of thought or congruity with reality is translated by metaphysical logic into identity. Metaphysical logic concerns itself fundamentally with the content of knowledge, not with its evidential or formal logical aspects, but with being and the laws of being. It is the business of metaphysics to construct its notions and theories of reality out of the deliverances of the special sciences and inferences derived therefrom. The aim of metaphysics is the development of a world-view free from internal contradictions, a view that shall unite all particular and plural knowledges into a whole. Logic stands in more intimate relation to the special sciences, for here the relations are reciprocal and immediate; for example, from actual scientific procedure logic abstracts its general laws and results, and these in turn it delivers to the sciences as their formulated methodology. In the history of science the winning of knowledge precedes the formulation of the rules employed, that is, precedes any scientific methodology. Logic, as methodology, is not an a priori construction, but has its genesis in the growth of science itself and in the discovery of those tests and criteria of truth which are found to possess an actual heuristic or evidential value. It is not practicable to separate epistemology and logic, for such concepts as causality, analogy, validity, etc., are fundamental in logical method, and yet they belong to the territory of epistemology, are epistemological in nature, as one may indeed say of all the general laws of thought. A formal logic that is merely propædeutic, a logic that aims to free itself from the quarrels of epistemology, is scientifically useless. Its norms are valueless, in so far as they can only teach the arrangement of knowledge already possessed, and teach nothing as to how to secure it or test its real validity. While formal logic aims to put itself outside of philosophy, metaphysical logic would usurp the place of philosophy. Formal logic is inadequate, because it neither shows how the laws of thought originate, why they are valid, nor in what sense they are applicable to concrete investigation. Wundt, therefore, develops a logic which one may call epistemological methodological, and which stands between the extremes of formal logic and metaphysical logic. The laws of logic must be derived from the processes of psychic experience and the procedure of the sciences. "Logic therefore needs," as he says, "epistemology for its foundation and the doctrine of methods for its completion."

Lipps takes the view outright that logic is a branch of psychology; Husserl in his latest book goes to the other extreme of a purely formal and technical logic, and devotes almost his entire first volume to the complete sundering of psychology and logic.

Bradley bases his logic on the theory of the judgment. The logical judgment is entirely different from the psychological. The logical judgment is a qualification of reality by means of an idea. The predicate is an adjective or attribute which in the judgment is ascribed to reality. The aim of truth is to qualify reality by general notions. But inasmuch as reality is individual and self-existent, whereas truth is universal, truth and reality are not coincident. Bradley's metaphysical solution of the disparity between thought and reality is put forward in his theory of the unitary Absolute, whose concrete content is the totality of experience. But as thought is not the whole of experience, judgments cannot compass the whole of reality. Bosanquet objects to this, and maintains that reality must not be regarded as an ideal construction. The real world is the world to which our concepts and judgments refer. In the former we have a world of isolated individuals of definite content; in the latter, we have a world of definitely systematized and organized content. Under the title of the Morphology of Knowledge Bosanquet considers the evolution of judgment and inference in their varied forms. "Logic starts from the individual mind, as that within which we have the actual facts of intelligence, which we are attempting to interpret into a system" (Logic, vol. i, p. 247). The real world for every individual is his world. "The work of intellectually constituting that totality which we call the real world is the work of knowledge. The work of analyzing the process of this constitution or determination is the work of logic, which might be described ... as the reflection of knowledge upon itself" (Logic, vol. i, p. 3). "The relation of logic to truth consists in examining the characteristics by which the various phases of the one intellectual function are fitted for their place in the intellectual totality which constitutes knowledge" (ibid.). The real world is the intelligible world; reality is something to which we attain by a constructive process. We have here a type of logic which is essentially a metaphysic. Indeed, Bosanquet says in the course of his first volume: "I entertain no doubt that in content logic is one with metaphysics, and differs, if at all, simply in mode of treatment—in tracing the evolution of knowledge in the light of its value and import, instead of attempting to summarize its value and import apart from the details of its evolution" (Logic, vol. i, 247).

Dewey (Studies in Logical Theory, p. 5) describes the essential function of logic as the inquiry into the relations of thought as such to reality as such. Although such an inquiry may involve the investigation of psychological processes and of the concrete methods of science and verification, a description and analysis of the forms of thought, conception, judgment, and inference, yet its concern with these is subordinate to its main concern, namely, the relation of "thought at large to reality at large." Logic is not reflection on thought, either on its nature as such or on its forms, but on its relations to the real. In Dewey's philosophy, logical theory is a description of thought as a mode of adaptation to its own conditions, and validity is judged in terms of the efficiency of thought in the solution of its own problems and difficulties. The problem of logic is more than epistemological. Wherever there is striving there are obstacles; and wherever there is thinking there is a "material-in-question." Dewey's logic is a theory of reflective experience regarded functionally, or a pragmatic view of the discipline. This logic of experience aims to evaluate the significance of social research, psychology, fine and industrial art, and religious aspiration in the form of scientific statement, and to accomplish for social values in general what the physical sciences have done for the physical world. In Dewey's teleological pragmatic logic the judgment is essentially instrumental, the whole of thinking is functional, and the meaning of things is identical with valid meaning (Studies in Logical Theory, cf. pp. 48, 82, 128). The real world is not a self-existent world outside of knowledge, but simply the totality of experience; and experience is a complex of strains, tensions, checks, and attitudes. The function of logic is the redintegration of this experience. "Thinking is adaptation to an end through the adjustment of particular objective contents" (ibid. p. 81). Logic here becomes a large part, if not the whole, of a metaphysics of experience; its nature and function are entirely determined by the theory of reality.

In this brief and fragmentary résumé are exhibited certain characteristic movements in the development of logical theory, the construction put upon its subject-matter and its relation to other disciplines. The résumé has had in view only the making of the diversity of opinion on these questions historically salient. There are three distinct types of logic noticed here: (1) formal, whose concern is merely with the structural aspect of inferential thought, and its validity in terms of internal congruity; (2) metaphysical logic whose concern is with the functional aspect of thought, its validity in terms of objective reference, and its relation to reality; (3) epistemological and methodological logic, whose concern is with the genesis, nature, and laws of logical thinking as forms of scientific knowledge, and with their technological application to the sciences as methodology. I am not at present concerned with a criticism of these various viewpoints, excepting in so far as they affect the problem of the interrelationship of logic and the allied disciplines.

For my present purpose I reject the extreme metaphysical and formal positions, and assume that logic is a discipline whose business is to describe and systematize the formal processes of inferential thought and to apply them as practical principles to the body of real knowledge.