III
Just as logical processes may be regarded as, at the same time, psychological processes, so they may be regarded, with equal right, as vital processes, coming thus under the categories of evolution. The tendency so to regard them is very marked at the present day, especially in France and in this country. In France, the movement has perhaps received the clearer definition. In America the union of logic and biology is complicated—and at times even lost sight of—by emphasis on the idea of evolution generally. It is not my intention to trace the history of this movement, but I should like to call attention to its historic motive in order to get it in a clear light.
That the theory of evolution, even Darwinism itself, has radically transformed our historical, scientific, and philosophical methods, is quite evident. Add to this the influence of the Hegelian philosophy, with its own doctrine of development, and one finds the causes of the rather striking unanimity which is discoverable in many ways between Hegelian idealists, on the one hand, and philosophers of evolution of Spencer's type, on the other. Although two men would, perhaps, not appear more radically different at first sight than Hegel and Spencer, I am inclined to believe that we shall come to recognize more and more in them an identity of philosophical conception. The pragmatism of the day is a striking confirmation of this opinion, for it is often the expression of Hegelian ideas in Darwinian and Spencerian terminology. The claims of idealism and of evolutionary science and philosophy have thus sought reconciliation. Logic has been, naturally, the last of the sciences to yield to evolutionary and genetic treatment. It could not escape long, especially when the idea of evolution had been so successful in its handling of ethics. If morality can be brought under the categories of evolution, why not thinking also? In answer to that question we have the theory that thinking is an adaptation, judgment is instrumental. But I would not leave the impression that this is true of pragmatism alone, or that it has been developed only through pragmatic tendencies. It is naturally the result also of the extension of biological philosophy. In the biological conception of logic, we have, then, an interesting coincidence in the results of tendencies differing widely in their genesis.
It would be hazardous to deny, without any qualifications, the importance of genetic considerations. Indeed, the fact that evolution in the hands of a thinker like Huxley, for instance, should make consciousness and thinking apparently useless epiphenomena, in a developing world, has seemed like a most contradictory evolutionary philosophy. It was difficult to make consciousness a real function in development so long as it was regarded as only cognitive in character. Evolutionary philosophy, coupled with physics, had built up a sort of closed system with which consciousness could not interfere, but which it could know, and know with all the assurance of a traditional logic. If, however, we were to be consistent evolutionists, we could not abide by such a remarkable result. The whole process of thinking must be brought within evolution, so that knowledge, even the knowledge of the evolutionary hypothesis itself, must appear as an instance of adaptation. In order to do this, however, consciousness must not be conceived as only cognitive. Judgment, the core of logical processes, must be regarded as an instrument and as a mode of adaptation.
The desire for completeness and consistency in an evolutionary philosophy is not the only thing which makes the denial of genetic considerations hazardous. Strictly biological considerations furnish reasons of equal weight for caution. For instance, one will hardly deny that the whole sensory apparatus is a striking instance of adaptation. Our perceptions of the world would thus appear to be determined by this adaptation, to be instances of adjustment. They might conceivably have been different, and in the case of many other creatures, the perceptions of the world are undoubtedly different. All our logical processes, referring ultimately as they do to our perceptions, would thus appear finally to depend on the adaptation exhibited in the development of our sensory apparatus. So-called laws of thought would seem to be but abstract statements or formulations of the results of this adjustment. It would be absurd to suppose that a man thinks in a sense radically different from that in which he digests, or a flower blossoms, or that two and two are four in a sense radically different from that in which a flower has a given number of petals. Thinking, like digesting and blossoming, is an effect, a product, possibly a structure.
I am not at all interested in denying the force of these considerations. They have, to my mind, the greatest importance, and due weight has, as yet, not been given to them. To one at all committed to a unitary and evolutionary view of the world, it must indeed seem strange if thinking itself should not be the result of evolution, or that, in thinking, parts of the world had not become adjusted in a new way. But while I am ready to admit this, I am by no means ready to admit some of the conclusions for logic and metaphysics which are often drawn from the admission. Just because thought, as a product of evolution, is functional and judgment instrumental, it by no means follows that logic is but a branch of biology, or that knowledge of the world is but a temporary adjustment, which, as knowledge, might have been radically different. In these conclusions, often drawn with Protagorean assurance, two considerations of crucial importance seem to be overlooked, first, that adaptation is itself metaphysical in character, and secondly, that while knowledge may be functional and judgment instrumental, the character of the functioning has the character of knowledge, which sets it off sharply from all other functions.
It seems strange to me that the admission that knowledge is a matter of adaptation, and thus a relative matter, should, in these days, be regarded as in any way destroying the claims of knowledge to metaphysical certainty. Yet, somehow, the opinion widely prevails that the doctrine of relativity necessarily involves the surrender of anything like absolute truth. "All our knowledge is relative, and, therefore, only partial, incomplete, and but practically trustworthy," is a statement repeatedly made. The fact that, if our development had been different, our knowledge would have been different, is taken to involve the conclusion that our knowledge cannot possibly disclose the real constitution of things, that it is essentially conditional, that it is only a mental device for getting results, that any other system of knowledge which would get results equally well would be equally true; in short, that there can be no such thing as metaphysical or epistemological truth. These conclusions do indeed seem strange, and especially strange on the basis of evolution. For while the evolutionary process might, conceivably, have been different, its results are, in any case, the results of the process. They are not arbitrary. We might have digested without stomachs, but the fact that we use stomachs in this important process ought not to free us from metaphysical respect for the organ. As M. Rey suggests, in the Revue Philosophique for June, 1904, a creature without the sense of smell would have no geometry, but that does not make geometry essentially hypothetical, a mere mental construction; for we have geometry because of the working out of nature's laws. Indeed, instead of issuing in a relativistic metaphysics of knowledge, the doctrine of relativity should issue in the recognition of the finality of knowledge in every case of ascertainably complete adaptation. In other words, adaptation is itself metaphysical in character. Adjustment is always adjustment between things, and yields only what it does yield. The things or elements get into the state which is their adjustment, and this adjustment purports to be their actual and unequivocal ordering in relation to one another. Different conditions might have produced a different ordering, but, again, this ordering would be equally actual and unequivocal, equally the one ordering to issue from them. To suppose or admit that the course of events might have been and might be different is not at all to suppose or admit that it was or is different; it is, rather, to suppose and admit that we have real knowledge of what that course really was and is. This seems to be very obvious.
Yet the evolutionist often thinks that he is not a metaphysician, even when he brings all his conceptions systematically under the conception of evolution. This must be due to some temporary lack of clearness. If evolution is not a metaphysical doctrine when extended to apply to all science, all morality, all logic, in short, all things, then it is quite meaningless for evolutionists to pronounce a metaphysical sentence on logical processes. But if evolution is a metaphysics, then its sentence is metaphysical, and in every case of adjustment or adaptation we have a revelation of the nature of reality in a definite and unequivocal form. This conclusion applies to logical processes as well as to others. The recognition that they are vital processes can, therefore, have little significance for these processes in their distinctive character as logical. They are like all other vital processes in that they are vital and subject to evolution. They are unlike all others in that thought is unlike digestion or breathing. To regard logical processes as vital processes does not in any way, therefore, invalidate them as logical processes or make it superfluous to consider their claim to give us real knowledge of a real world. Indeed, it makes such a consideration more necessary and important.
A second consideration overlooked by the Protagorean tendencies of the day is that judgment, even if it is instrumental, purports to give us knowledge, that is, it claims to reveal what is independent of the judging process. Perhaps I ought not to say that this consideration is overlooked, but rather that it is denied significance. It is even denied to be essential to judgment. It is claimed that, instead of revealing anything independent of the judging process, judgment is just the adjustment and no more. It is a reorganization of experience, an attempt at control. All this looks to me like a misstatement of the facts. Judgment claims to be no such thing. It does not function as such a thing. When I make any judgment, even the simplest, I may make it as the result of tension, because of a demand for reorganization, in order to secure control of experience; but the judgment means for me something quite different. It means decidedly and unequivocally that in reality, apart from the judging process, things exist and operate just as the judgment declares. If it is claimed that this meaning is illusory, I eagerly desire to know on what solid ground its illusoriness can be established. When the conclusion was reached that gravitation varies directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance, it was doubtless reached in an evolutionary and pragmatic way; but it claimed to disclose a fact which prevailed before the conclusion was reached, and in spite of the conclusion. Knowledge has been born of the travail of living, but it has been born as knowledge.
When the knowledge character of judgment is insisted on, it seems almost incredible that any one would think of denying or overlooking it. Indeed, current discussions are far from clear on the subject. Pragmatists are constantly denying that they hold the conclusions that their critics almost unanimously draw. There is, therefore, a good deal of confusion of thought yet to be dispelled. Yet there seems to be current a pronounced determination to banish the epistemological problem from logic. This is, to my mind, suspicious, even when epistemology is defined in a way which most epistemologists would not approve. It is suspicious just because we must always ask eventually that most epistemological and metaphysical question: "Is knowledge true?" To answer, it is true when it functions in a way to satisfy the needs which generated its activity, is, no doubt, correct, but it is by no means adequate. The same answer can be made to the inquiry after the efficiency of any vital process whatever, and is, therefore, not distinctive. We have still to inquire into the specific character of the needs which originate judgments and of the consequent satisfaction. Just here is where the uniqueness of the logical problem is disclosed. With conscious beings, the success of the things they do has become increasingly dependent on their ability to discover what takes place in independence of the knowing process. That is the need which generates judgment. The satisfaction is, of course, the attainment of the discovery. Now to make the judgment itself and not the consequent action the instrumental factor seems to me to misstate the facts of the case. Nothing is clearer than that there is no necessity for knowledge to issue in adjustment. And it is clear to me that increased control of experience, while resulting from knowledge, does not give to it its character. Omniscience could idly view the transformations of reality and yet remain omniscient. Knowledge works, but it is not, therefore, knowledge.