The argument advanced in this discussion has had the aim of emphasizing the fact that in knowledge we have actually given, as content, reality as it is in independence of the act of knowing, that the real world is self-existent, independent of the judgments we make about it. This fact has been emphasized in order to confine the field of logic to the field of knowledge as thus understood. In the course of the argument, I have occasionally indicated what some of the resulting problems of logic are. These I wish now to state in a somewhat more systematic way.
The basal problem of logic becomes, undoubtedly, the metaphysics of knowledge, the determination of the nature of knowledge and its relation to reality. It is quite evident that this is just the problem which the current tendencies criticised have sought, not to solve, but to avoid or set aside. Their motives for so doing have been mainly the difficulties which have arisen from the Kantian philosophy in its development into transcendentalism, and the desire to extend the category of evolution to embrace the whole of reality, knowledge included. I confess to feeling the force of these motives as strongly as any advocate of the criticised opinions. But I do not see my way clear to satisfying them by denying or explaining away the evident character of knowledge itself. It appears far better to admit that a metaphysics of knowledge is as yet hopeless, rather than so to transform knowledge as to get rid of the problem; for we must ultimately ask after the truth of the transformation. But I am far from believing that a metaphysics of knowledge is hopeless. The biological tendencies themselves seem to furnish us with much material for at least the beginnings of one. Reality known is to be set over against reality unknown or independent of knowledge, not as image to original, idea to thing, phenomena to noumena, appearance to reality; but reality as known is a new stage in the development of reality itself. It is not an external mind which knows reality by means of its own ideas, but reality itself becomes known through its own expanding and readjusting processes. So far I am in entire agreement with the tendencies I have criticised. But what change is effected by this expansion and readjustment? I can find no other answer than this simple one: the change to knowledge. And by this I mean to assert unequivocally that the addition of knowledge to a reality hitherto without it is simply an addition to it and not a transformation of it. Such a view may appear to make knowledge a wholly useless addition, but I see no inherent necessity in such a conclusion. Nor do I see any inherent necessity of supposing that knowledge must be a useful addition. Yet I would not be so foolish as to deny the usefulness of knowledge. We have, of course, the most palpable evidences of its use. As we examine them, I think we find, without exception, that knowledge is useful just in proportion as we find that reality is not transformed by being known. If it really were transformed in that process, could anything else than confusion result from the multitude of knowing individuals?
To me, therefore, the metaphysics of the situation resolves itself into the realistic position that a developing reality develops, under ascertainable conditions, into a known reality without undergoing any other transformation, and that this new stage marks an advance in the efficiency of reality in its adaptations. My confidence steadily grows that this whole process can be scientifically worked out. It is impossible here to justify my confidence in detail, and I must leave the matter with the following suggestion. The point from which knowledge starts and to which it ultimately returns is always some portion of reality where there is consciousness, the things, namely, which, we are wont to say, are in consciousness. These things are not ideas representing other things outside of consciousness, but real things, which, by being in consciousness, have the capacity of representing each other, of standing for or implying each other. Knowledge is not the creation of these implications, but their successful systematization. It will be found, I think, that this general statement is true of every concrete case of knowledge which we possess. Its detailed working out would be a metaphysics of knowledge, an epistemology.
Since knowledge is the successful systematization of the implications which are disclosed in things by virtue of consciousness, a second logical problem of fundamental importance is the determination of the most general types of implication with the categories which underlie them. The execution of this problem would naturally involve, as subsidiary, the greater part of formal and symbolic logic. Indeed, vital doctrines of the syllogism, of definition, of formal inference, of the calculus of classes and propositions, of the logic of relations, appear to be bound up ultimately with a doctrine of categories; for it is only a recognition of basal types of existence with their implications that can save these doctrines from mere formalism. These types of existence or categories are not to be regarded as free creations or as the contributions of the mind to experience. There is no deduction of them possible. They must be discovered in the actual progress of knowledge itself, and I see no reason to suppose that their number is necessarily fixed, or that we should necessarily be in possession of all of them. It is requisite, however, that in every case categories should be incapable of reduction to each other.
A doctrine of categories seems to me to be of the greatest importance in the systematization of knowledge, for no problem of relation is even stateable correctly before the type of existence to which its terms belong has been first determined. I submit one illustration to reinforce this general statement, namely, the relation of mind to body. If mind and body belong to the same type of existence, we have one set of problems on our hands; but if they do not, we have an entirely different set. Yet volumes of discussion written on this subject have abounded in confusion, simply because they have regarded mind and body as belonging to radically different types of existence and yet related in terms of the type to which one of them belongs. The doctrine of parallelism is, perhaps, the epitome of this confusion.
The doctrine of categories will involve not only the greater part of formal and symbolic logic, but will undoubtedly carry the logician into the doctrine of method. Here it is to be hoped that recent tendencies will result in effectively breaking down the artificial distinctions which have prevailed between deduction and induction. Differences in method do not result from differences in points of departure, or between the universal and the particular, but from the categories, again, which give the method direction and aim, and result in different types of synthesis. In this direction, the logician may hope for an approximately correct classification of the various departments of knowledge. Such a classification is, perhaps, the ideal of logical theory.
SECTION D—METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE
SECTION D—METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE
(Hall 6, September 22, 3 p. m.)