John Dewey's logical theory Part 2

In the 'Deduction' of the first _Critique_, Dewey continues, Kant begins with the consciousness of objects, rather than with the ident.i.ty of self-consciousness. Here also consciousness implies a unity, which is not merely formal, but one which actually connects the manifold of sense by an act. "Whether, then, we inquire what is involved in mere sameness of consciousness, or what is involved in an objective world, we get the same answer: a consciousness which is not formal or a.n.a.lytic, but which is synthetic of sense, and which acts universally (according to principles) in this synthesis."[44]

The term 'Self,' as thus employed by Kant, Dewey says, is the correlative of the intelligible world. "It is the transcendental self looked at as 'there,' as a product, instead of as an activity or process."[45] This, however, by no means exhausts what Kant means by the self, for while he proceeds in the 'Deduction' as if the manifold of sense and the synthetic unity of the self were strictly correlative, he a.s.sumes a different att.i.tude elsewhere. The manifold of sense is something in relation to the thing-in-itself, and the forms of thought have a reference beyond their mere application to the manifold. In the other connections the self appears as something purely formal; something apart from its manifestation in experience. In view of the wider meaning of the self, Dewey asks, "Can the result of the transcendental deduction stand without further interpretation?" It would appear that the content of the self is not the same as the content of the known world. The self is too great to exhaust itself in relation to sensation. "Sense is, as it were, inadequate to the relations which const.i.tute self-consciousness, and thus there must also remain a surplusage in the self, not entering into the make-up of the known world."[46] This follows from the fact that, while the self is unconditioned, the manifold of sensation is conditioned, as given, by the forms of s.p.a.ce and time. "Experience can never be complete enough to have a content equal to that of self-consciousness, for experience can never escape its limitation through s.p.a.ce and time. Self-consciousness is real, and not merely logical; it is the ground of the reality of experience; it is wider than experience, and yet is unknown except so far as it is reflected through its own determinations in experience,--this is the result of our a.n.a.lysis of Kant, the _Ding-an-Sich_ being eliminated but the Kantian method and all presuppositions not involved in the notion of the _Ding-an-Sich_ being retained."[47]

Dewey's interpretation of Kant's doctrine as presented in the 'Deductions' is no doubt essentially correct. But granting that Kant found it necessary to introduce a synthesis in imagination to account for the unity of experience and justify our knowledge of its relations, it must not be forgotten that this necessity followed from the nature of his presuppositions. If the primal reality is a 'manifold of sensations,' proceeding from a noumenal source, and lacking meaning and relations, it follows that the manifold must be gathered up into a unity before the experience which we actually apprehend can be accounted for.

But if reality is experience, possessing order and coherence in its own nature, the productive imagination is rendered superfluous. Dewey, however, clings to the notion that thought is a "synthetic activity"

which makes experience, and draws support from Kant for his doctrine.

Dewey now inquires what relation this revised Kantian conception of the self bears to the view advanced by Seth, viz., that the idea of self-consciousness is the highest category of thought and explanation.

Kant had tried to discover the different forms of synthesis, by a method somewhat artificial to be sure, and had found twelve of them. While Hegel's independent derivation and independent placing of the categories must be accepted, it does not follow that the idea of self-consciousness can be included in the list, even if it be considered the highest category. "For it is impossible as long as we retain Kant's fundamental presupposition--the idea of the partial determination of sensation by relation to perception, apart from its relation to conception--to employ self-consciousness as a principle of explaining any fact of experience."[48] It cannot be said of the self of Kant that it is simply an hypostatized category. "It is more, because the self of Kant ... is more than any category: it is a real activity or being."[49]

Hegel, Dewey continues, develops only one aspect of Kant's _Critique_, that is, the logical aspect, and consequently does not fulfil Kant's entire purpose. "This is, I repeat, not an immanent 'criticism of categories' but an a.n.a.lysis of experience into its aspects and really const.i.tuent elements."[50] Dewey, as usual, shows his opposition to a 'merely logical' method in philosophy. He plainly indicates his dissatisfaction with the Hegelian development of Kant's standpoint. He is unfair to Hegel, however, in attributing to him a 'merely logical'

method. Kant's self was, as Dewey a.s.serts, something more than a category of thought, but it is scarcely illuminating to say of Kant that his purpose was the a.n.a.lysis of experience into its 'const.i.tuent elements.' Kant did, indeed, a.n.a.lyze experience, but this a.n.a.lysis must be regarded as incidental to a larger purpose. No criticism need be made of Dewey's preference for the psychological, as opposed to the logical aspects of Kant's work. The only comment to be made is that this att.i.tude is not in line with the modern development of idealism.

The question which finally emerges, as the result of Dewey's inquiry, is this: What is the nature of this self-activity which is more than the mere category of self-consciousness? "As long as sensation was regarded as given by a thing-in-itself, it was possible to form a conception of the self which did not identify it with the world. But when sense is regarded as having meaning only because it is 'there' as determined by thought, just as thought is 'there' only as determining sense, it would seem either that the self is just their synthetic unity (thus equalling the world) or that it must be thrust back of experience, and become a thing-in-itself. The activity of the self can hardly be a third something distinct from thought and from sense, and it cannot be their synthetic union. What, then, is it?"[51] Green, Dewey says, attempted to solve the difficulty by his "idea of a completely realized self making an animal organism the vehicle of its own reproduction in time."[52]

This attempt was at least in the right direction, acknowledging as it did the fact that the self is something more than the highest category of thought.

Dewey admits his difficulties in a way that makes extended comment unnecessary. He does not challenge the validity of the Hegelian development of the Kantian categories, but proposes to make more of the self than the Hegelians ordinarily do. This synthetic self-activity must reveal itself as a concrete process; that is one of the demands of his psychological standpoint. It is impossible to foresee what this process would be as an actual fact of experience.

Although the next article which is to be considered does not offer a direct answer to the problems which have so far been raised, it nevertheless indicates the general direction which Dewey's thought is to take. This article, on "The Present Position of Logical Theory," was published in the _Monist_ in 1891.[53] Dewey appears at this time as the champion of the transcendental, or Hegelian logic, in opposition to formal and inductive logic. His att.i.tude toward Hegel undergoes a marked change at this period. Dewey's general objection to formal logic is well expressed in the following pa.s.sage: "It is a.s.sumed, in fine, that thought has a nature of its own independent of facts or subject-matter; that this thought, _per se_, has certain forms, and that these forms are not forms which the facts themselves take, varying with the facts, but are rigid frames, into which the facts are to be set. Now all of this conception--the notion that the mind has a faculty of thought apart from things, the notion that this faculty is constructed, in and of itself, with a fixed framework, the notion that thinking is the imposing of this fixed framework on some unyielding matter called particular objects, or facts--all of this conception appears to me as highly scholastic."[54]

The inductive logic, Dewey says, still clings to the notion of thought as a faculty apart from its material, operating with bare forms upon sensations. Kant had been guilty of this separation and never overcame it successfully. Because formal logic views thought as a process apart from the matter with which it has to deal, it can never be the logic of science. "For if science means anything, it is that our ideas, our judgments may in some degree reflect and report the fact itself. Science means, on one hand, that thought is free to attack and get hold of its subject-matter, and, on the other, that fact is free to break through into thought; free to impress itself--or rather to express itself--in intelligence without vitiation or deflection. Scientific men are true to the instinct of the scientific spirit in fighting shy of a distinct _a priori_ factor supplied to fact from the mind. Apriorism of this sort must seem like an effort to cramp the freedom of intelligence and of fact, to bring them under the yoke of fixed, external forms."[55]

In opposition to this formal, and, as he calls it, subjective standpoint in logic, Dewey stands for the transcendental logic, which supposes that there is some kind of vital connection between thought and fact; "that thinking, in short, is nothing but the fact in its process of translation from brute impression to lucent meaning."[56] Hegel holds this view of logic. "This, then, is why I conceive Hegel--entirely apart from the value of any special results--to represent the quintessence of the scientific spirit. He denies not only the possibility of getting truth out of a formal, apart thought, but he denies the existence of any faculty of thought which is other than the expression of fact itself."[57] At another place Dewey expresses his view of Hegel as follows: "Relations of thought are, to Hegel, the typical forms of meaning which the subject-matter takes in its various progressive stages of being understood."[58]

Dewey's defence of the transcendental logic is vigorous. He maintains that the disrespect into which the transcendental logic had fallen, was due to the fact that the popular comprehension of the transcendental movement had been arrested at Kant, and had never gone on to Hegel.

The objection made to Kant's standpoint is that it treated thought as a process over against experience, imposing its forms upon it from without. "Kant never dreams, for a moment, of questioning the existence of a special faculty of thought with its own peculiar and fixed forms.

He states and restates that thought in itself exists apart from fact and occupies itself with fact given to it from without."[59] While Kant gave the death blow to a merely formal conception of thought, indirectly, and opened up the way for an organic interpretation, he did not achieve the higher standpoint himself. Remaining at the standpoint of Kant, therefore, the critic of the transcendental logic has much to complain of. Scientific men deal with facts, look to them for guidance, and must suppose that thought and fact pa.s.s into each other directly, and without vitiation or deflection. They are correct in opposing a conception which would interpose conditions between thought on the one hand and the facts on the other.

But Hegel is true to the scientific spirit. "When Hegel calls thought objective he means just what he says: that there is no special, apart faculty of thought belonging to and operated by a mind existing separate from the outer world. What Hegel means by objective thought is the meaning, the significance of the fact itself; and by methods of thought he understands simply the processes in which this meaning of fact is evolved."[60]

If Hegel is true to the scientific spirit; if his logic presupposes that there is an intrinsic connection of thought and fact, and views science simply as the progressive realization of the world's ideality, then the only questions to be asked about his logic are questions of fact concerning his treatment of the categories. Is the world such a connected system as he holds it to be? "And, if a system, does it, in particular, present such phases (such relations, categories) as Hegel shows forth?"[61] These questions are wholly objective. Such a logic as Hegel's could scarcely make headway when it was first produced, because the significance of the world, its ideal character, had not been brought to light through the sciences. We are now reaching a stage, however, where science has brought the ideality of the world into the foreground, where it may become as real and objective a material of study as molecules and vibrations.

This appreciation of Hegel would seem to indicate that Dewey has finally grasped the significance of Hegel's development of the Kantian standpoint. A close reading of the article, however, dispels this impression. Dewey believes that he has found in Hegel a support for his own psychological method in philosophy. It is scarcely necessary to say that Hegel's standpoint was anything but psychological. Dewey has already given up Kant; he will presently desert Hegel. A psychological interpretation of the thought-process in its relations to reality is not compatible with the critical method in philosophy.

In the next article to be examined, "The Superst.i.tion of Necessity," in the _Monist_ (1893),[62] Dewey begins to attain the psychological description of thought at which he had been aiming. This article was suggested, as Dewey indicates in a foot-note, by Mr. C. S. Pierce's article, "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined," in the _Monist_ (1892).[63] Although Dewey acknowledges his indebtedness to Pierce for certain suggestions, the two articles have little in common.

Dewey had consistently maintained that thought is a synthetic activity through which reality is idealized or takes on meaning. It is from this standpoint that he approaches the subject of necessity. The following pa.s.sage reveals the connection between his former position and the one that he is now approaching: "The whole, although first in the order of reality, is last in the order of knowledge. The complete statement of the whole is the goal, not the beginning of wisdom. We begin, therefore, with fragments, which are taken for wholes; and it is only by piecing together these fragments, and by the transformation of them involved in this combination, that we arrive at the real fact. There comes a stage at which the recognition of the unity begins to dawn upon us, and yet, the tradition of the many distinct wholes survives; judgment has to combine these two contradictory conceptions; it does so by the theory that the dawning unity is an effect necessarily produced by the interaction of the former wholes. Only as the consciousness of the unity grows still more is it seen that instead of a group of independent facts, held together by 'necessary' ties, there is one reality, of which we have been apprehending various fragments in succession and attributing to them a spurious wholeness and independence. We learn (but only at the end) that instead of discovering and then connecting together a number of separate realities, we have been engaged in the progressive definition of one fact."[64]

Dewey adds to his idea that our knowledge of reality is a progressive development of its implicit ideality through a synthetic thought-process, the specification that the process of idealization occurs in connection with particular crises and situations. There comes a stage, he says, when unity begins to dawn and meaning emerges.

Necessity is a term used in connection with these transitions from partial to greater realization of the world's total meaning. Necessity is a middle term, or go-between. It marks a critical stage in the development of knowledge. No necessity attaches to a whole, as such.

"_Qua_ whole, the fact simply is what it is; while the parts, instead of being necessitated either by one another or by the whole, are the a.n.a.lyzed factors const.i.tuting, in their complete circuit, the whole."[65] But when the original whole breaks up, through its inability to comprehend new facts under its unity, a process of judgment occurs which aims at the establishment of a new unity. "The judgment of necessity, in other words, is exactly and solely the transition in our knowledge from unconnected judgments to a more comprehensive synthesis.

Its value is just the value of this transition; as negating the old partial and isolated judgments--in its backward look--necessity has meaning; in its forward look--with reference to the resulting completely organized subject-matter--it is itself as false as the isolated judgments which it replaces."[66] We say that things must be so, when we do not know that they are so; that is, while we are in course of determining what they are. Necessity has its value exclusively in this transition.

Dewey attempts to show, in a discussion which need not be followed in detail, that there is nothing radical in his view, and that it finds support among the idealists and empiricists alike. Thinkers of both schools (he quotes Caird and Venn) admit that the process of judgment involves a change in objects, at least as they are for us. There is a transformation of their value and meaning. "This point being held in common, both schools must agree that _the progress of judgment is equivalent to a change in the value of objects_--that objects as they are for us, as known, change with the development of our judgments."[67]

Dewey proposes to give a more specific description of this process of transformation, and especially, to show how the idea of necessity is involved in it.

The process of transformation is occasioned by practical necessity. Men have a tendency to take objects as just so much and no more; to attach to a given subject-matter these predicates, and no others. There is a principle of inertia, or economy, in the mind, which leads it to maintain objects in their _status quo_ as long as possible. "There is no doubt that the reluctance of the mind to give up an object once made lies deep in its economies.... I wish here to call attention to the fact that the forming of a number of distinct objects has its origin in practical needs of our nature. The a.n.a.lysis and synthesis which is first made is that of most practical importance...."[68] We tend to retain such objects as we have, and it is not until "the original subject-matter has been overloaded with various and opposing predicates that we think of doubting the correctness of our first judgments, of putting our first objects under suspicion."[69] Once the Ptolemaic system is well established, cycles and epicycles are added without number, rather than reconstruct the original object. When, finally, we are compelled to make some change, we tend to invent some new object to which the predicates can attach. "When qualities arise so incompatible with the object already formed that they cannot be referred to that object, it is easier to form a new object on their basis than it is to doubt the correctness of the old...."[70] Let us suppose, then, that under stress of practical need, we refer the new predicates to some new object, and have, as a consequence, two objects. (Dewey ill.u.s.trates this situation by specific examples.) This separation of the two objects cannot continue long, before we begin to discover that the two objects are related elements in a larger whole. "The wall of part.i.tion between the two separate 'objects' cannot be broken at one attack; they have to be worn away by the attrition arising from their slow movement into one another. It is the 'necessary' influence which one exerts upon the other that finally rubs away the separateness and leaves them revealed as elements of one unified whole."[71]

The concept of necessity has its validity in such a movement of judgment as has been described. "Necessity, as the middle term, is the mid-wife which, from the dying isolation of judgments, delivers the unified judgment just coming into life--it being understood that the separateness of the original judgments is not as yet quite negated, nor the unity of the coming judgment quite attained."[72] The judgment of necessity connects itself with certain facts in the situation which are immediately concerned with our practical activities. These are facts which, before the crisis arises, have been neglected; they are elements in the situation which have been regarded as unessential, as not yet making up a part of the original object. "Although after our desire has been met they have been eliminated as accidental, as irrelevant, yet when the experience is again desired their integral membership in the real fact has to be recognized. This is done under the guise of considering them as means which are necessary to bring about the end."[73] We have the if so, then so situation. "_If_ we are to reach an end we _must_ take certain means; while so far as we want an undefined end, an end in general, conditions which accompany it are mere accidents."[74] The end of this process of judgment in which necessity appears as a half-way stage, is the unity of reality; a whole into which the formerly discordant factors can be gathered together.

Only a detailed study of the original text, with its careful ill.u.s.trations, can furnish a thorough understanding of Dewey's position.

Enough has been said, however, to show that this psychological account of the judgment process is a natural outgrowth of his former views, and that, as it stands, it is still in conformity with his original idealism. The article as a whole marks a half-way stage in Dewey's philosophical development. Looking backward, it is a partial fulfilment of the demands of "The Psychological Standpoint." It is a psychological description of the processes whereby self-consciousness specifies itself into parts which are still related to the whole. Looking forward, it forecasts the functional theory of knowledge. We have, to begin with, objects given as familiar or known experiences. So long as these are not put under suspicion or examined, they simply are themselves, or are non-cognitionally experienced. But on the occasion of a conflict in experience between opposed facts and their meanings, a process of judgment arises, whose function is to restore unity. It is in this process of judgment as an operation in the interests of the unity of experience, that the concepts, necessity and contingency, have their valid application and use. They are instruments for effecting a transformation of experience. This is the root idea of functional instrumentalism. It is apparent, therefore, that Dewey's later functionalism resulted from the natural growth and development of the psychological standpoint which he adopted at the beginning of his philosophical career.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Vol. XII, pp. 382-396.

[22] _Ibid._, p. 394.

[23] _Op. cit._, p. 383.

[24] _Ibid._

[25] _Ibid._, p. 384.

[26] _Ibid._

[27] _Op. cit._, p. 385.

[28] _Ibid._

[29] _Ibid._, p. 388.

[30] _Op. cit._, p. 390.

[31] _Ibid._, p. 392.

[32] _Op. cit._

[33] _Ibid._, p. 393.

[34] _Ibid._, p. 394.

[35] _Ibid._, p. 395.

[36] _Op. cit._

[37] _Ibid._, p. 396. (The last sentence forecasts Dewey's later contention that knowing is a specific act operating upon the occasion of need.)

[38] Vol. XV, pp. 58-74.

[39] See _Mind_, Vol. XI, 1886, p. 170.

[40] _Ibid._, p. 63.

[41] _Ibid._

[42] _Ibid._, p. 64.