CHAPTER IV

THE DILEMMAS OF DOGMATISM

Every man, probably, is by instinct a dogmatist. He feels perfectly sure that he knows some things, and is right about them against the world. Whatever he believes in he does not doubt, but holds to be self-evidently or indisputably true. His naive dogmatism, moreover, spontaneously assumes that his truth is universal and shared by all others.

If now he could live like a fakir, wholly wrapped in a cloud of his own imaginings, and nothing ever happened to disappoint his expectations, to jar upon his prejudices, and to convict him of error; if he never held converse with anyone who took a different view and controverted him, his dogmatism would be lifelong and incurable. But as he lives socially, he has in practice to outgrow it, and this lands him in a serious theoretical dilemma. He has to learn to live with others who differ from him in their dogmatizing. Social life plainly would become impossible if all rigidly insisted on the absolute rightness of their own beliefs and the absolute wrongness of all others.

So compromises have to be made to get at a common 'truth.' It must be recognized that not everything which is believed to be 'knowledge' is knowledge. In fact, it is safer to assume that none have knowledge, though all think they have; to say fact, men only have 'opinions,' which may be nearer to or farther from 'the truth,' but are not of necessity as unquestionable as they seem to be. Out of this concession to the social life arise three problems. How are 'opinions' to be compared with each other, and how is the extent of their 'truth' or 'error' to be determined? How is the belief in absolute truth to be interpreted and discounted? How is the penitent dogmatist, once he has allowed doubt to corrupt his self-confidence, to be stopped from doubting all things and turning sceptic?

As regards the first problem, the first question is whether we shall try totestopinions and to arrive at a standard of value by which to measure them by comparing the opinions themselves with one another, or shall presume that there must be some absolute standard which alone is truly true, whether we are aware of it or not. The former view isrelativism, the latter isabsolutism, in the matter of truth.

Now, there can be no doubt that absolutism is more congenial to our natural prejudices. Accordingly it is the method tried first; but it soon conducts dogmatism to an awkward series of dilemmas.

1. If there is absolute truth, who has it? and who can use the absolute criterion of opinions it is supposed to form? Not, surely, everyone whothinkshe has. It will never do to let every dogmatist vote for himself and condemn all others. That way war and madness lie. Until there is absolute agreement, there cannot be absolute truth.

2. But absolute truth may still be reverenced as an ideal, to save us from the scepticism to which a complete relativity of truth would lead. But would it save us? If it is admitted that no one can arrogate to himself its possession, what use is it to believe that it is an ideal? For if no one can assume that he has it, allhumantruth is, in fact, such as the relativist asserted, and scepticism is just as inevitable as before. It makes no difference to the sceptical inference whether there is no absolute truth, or whether it is unattained by man, and human unattainable.

3. It was a mistake, therefore, to admit that opinions cannot be compared together. Some are much more certain than others, and, indeed, 'self-evident' and 'intuitive.' Let us therefore take these to be 'truer.' If so, the thinker who feels most certain he is right is most likely to be right.

4. This suggestion will be welcomed by all dogmatists—until they discover that it does not help them to agree together, because they are all as certain as can be. But a critically-minded man will urge against it that'certainty' is a subjective and psychological criterion, and that no one has been able to devise a method for distinguishing the alleged logical from the undeniable psychological certainty. He will hesitate to say, therefore, that because a belief seems certain it is true, and to trust the formal claim to infallibility which is made in every judgment. And when 'intuitions' are appealed to, he will ask how 'true' intuitions are to be discriminated from 'false,' sound from insane, and inquire to what he is committing himself in admitting the truth of intuitions. He will demand, therefore, the publication of a list of the intuitions which are absolutely true. But he will not get it, and if he did, it may be predicted that he would not find a single one which has not been disputed by some eminent philosopher.

5. Intuitions, therefore, are an embarrassment, rather than a help to Intellectualism. It has to maintain both that intuitions are the foundations of all truth and certitude, and also that not all are true. But our natural curiosity as to how these sorts are to be known apart is left unsatisfied. We must not ask which are true, and which not. No one can say in advance about what matters intuitive certainty is possible; what is, or is not, an intuition is revealed only to reflection after the event. Only if an intuitionhasplayed us false, we may be sure itwasnot infallible; it must either have been one of the fallible sort, or else no intuition at all

6. At this point universal scepticism begins to raise its hydra head, and to grin at the dogmatist's discomfiture. For in point of fact the history of thought reveals, not a steady accumulation of indubitable truth, but a continuous strife of opinions, in which the most widely accepted beliefs daily succumb to fresh criticism and fall into disrepute as the 'errors of the past.' Nothing, it seems, can guarantee a 'truth,' however firmly it may be believed for a time, from the corrosive force of new speculation and changed opinion; to survey the field of philosophic dispute, strewn with the remains of 'infallible' systems and 'absolute' certainties, is to be led irresistibly to a sceptical doubt as to the competence of human thought. If 'absolute truth' is our ideal and acquaintance with 'absolute reality' our aim, then, in view of the persistent illusions on both these points to which the human mind is liable, it seems necessary to recognize the hopelessness of our search. Thus the last dilemma of dogmatism is reached. In view of the diversity of human beliefs and the discredit which has historically fallen on the most axiomatic articles of faith, we must either admit scepticism to be the issue of the debate, or else, condemning our absolute view of truth, find some means of utilizing the relative truths which are all that humanity seems able to grasp. But to come to terms with relativism is to renounce the dogmatic attitude entirely, and to approach the problems of philosophy in a totally different spirit.

THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND ERROR

It has been shown in the last chapter how urgent has become the problem of discriminating between the true and false among relative 'truths.' For absolute truth has become a chimera, self-evidence an illusion, and intuition untrustworthy. All three are psychologically very real to those who believe in them, but logically they succumb to the assaults of a scepticism which infers from the fact that no 'truths' are absolute that all may reasonably be overthrown.

The only obstacle to its triumph lies in the existence of 'relative' truths which arenotabsolute, and do not claim to be, and in the unexamined possibility that in a relativist interpretation of all truth a meaning may be found for the distinction between 'true' and 'false.' Now, not even a sceptic could deny that the size of an object is better measured by a yard-measure than by the eye, even though it may be meaningless to ask what its size may be absolutely; or that it is probable that bread will be found more nourishing than stone, even though it may not be a perfect elixir of life. Even if he denied this, the sceptic'sactswould convict hiswordsof insincerity, andpractically, at any rate, no one has been or can be a sceptic, whatever the extent of histheoreticdoubts.

This fact is construed by the pragmatist as a significant indication of the way out of the epistemologicalimpasse. The 'relative' truths, which Intellectualism passed by with contempt, may differ inpractical valueand lead to the conceptions ofpractical truthand certainty which may be better adapted to the requirements of human life than the elusive and discredited ideals of absolute truth and certainty, and may enable us to justify the distinctions we make between the 'true' and the 'false. At any rate, this suggestion seems worth following up.

To begin with, we must radically disabuse our minds of the idea that thinkingstarts from certainty.Even the self-evident and self-confident 'intuitions' that impress the uncritical so much with their claim to infallibility are really the results of antecedent doubts and ponderings, and would never be enunciated unless there were thought to be a dispute about them. In real life thought starts from perplexities, from situations in which, as Professor Dewey says, beliefs have to be 'reconstructed,' and it aims at setting doubts at rest. It is psychologically impossible for a rational mind to assert what it knows to be true, and supposes everyone else to admit the truth of. This is why even a philosopher's conversation does not consist of a rehearsal of all the unchallenged truisms that he can remember.

Being thus conditioned by a doubt, every judgment is a challenge. It claims truth, and backs its claims by the authority of its maker; but it would be folly to imagine that it thereby becomesipso factotrue, or is meant to be universally accepted without testing. Its maker must know this as well as anyone, unless his dogmatism has quite blotted out his common sense. Indeed, he may himself have given preference to the judgment he made over the alternatives that occurred to him only after much debate and hesitation, and may propound it only as a basis for further discussion and testing.

Initially, then, every judgment is atruth-claim, and this claim is merelyformal. It does notmeanthat the claim is absolutely true, and that it is impious to question it. On the contrary, it has still to be validated by others, and may work in such a way that its own maker withdraws it, and corrects it by a better. The intellectualist accounts of truth have all failed to make this vital distinction between 'truth-claim' and validated truth. They rest on aconfusion of formal with absolute truth, and it is on this account that they cannot distinguish between 'truth' and error. For false judgments also formally claim 'truth,' No judgment alleges that it is false.[C]

On the other hand, if the distinction between truth-claims and validated truths is made, there ceases to be anytheoreticdifficulty about the conception and correction of errors, however difficult it may be to detect them in practice. 'Truths' will be 'claims' which have worked well and maintained themselves; 'errors,' such as have been superseded by better ones. All 'truths' must betestedby something more objective than their own self-assertiveness, and this testing by their working and the consequences to which they lead may go on indefinitely. In other words, however much a 'truth' has been validated, it is always possible to test it further.I.e.,it is never theoretically 'absolute,' however well it may practically be assured. For a confirmation of this doctrine Pragmatism appeals to the history of scientific truth, which has shown a continuous correction of 'truths,' which were re-valued as 'errors,' as better statements for them became available.

It may also be confirmed negatively by the breakdown of the current definitions of truth, which all seem in the end to mean nothing.

The oldest and commonest definition of a 'truth' which is given is that it is 'the correspondence of a thought to reality.' But Intellectualism never perceived the difficulties lurking in it. At first sight this seems a brave attempt to get outside the circle of thought in order to test its value and to control its vagaries. Unluckily, this theory can only assert, and neither explains nor proves, the connection between the thought and the reality it desiderates. For, granting that it is the intent of every thought to correspond with reality, we must yet inquire how the alleged correspondence is to be made out. Made out it must be; for as the criterion is quite formal and holds of all assertions, the claim to 'correspond' may be false. To prove the correspondence, then, the 'reality' would have somehow to be known apart from the truth-claim of the thought, in order that the two might be compared and found to agree. But if the reality were already known directly, what would be the need of asserting an idea of it and claiming 'truth' for this? How, moreover, could the claim be tested, if, as is admitted, the reality is not directly known? To assert the 'correspondence' must become a groundless postulate about something which is defined to transcend all knowledge. The correspondence theory, then, does nottestthe truth-claim of the assertion; it only gives a fresh definition of it. A 'true' thought, it says, is one whichclaims to correspondwith a 'reality.'But so does a false,and hence the theory leaves us as we were, puzzled to distinguish them.[D]

Yet the theory is not wholly wrong. Many of our thoughts do claim to correspond with reality in ways that can be verified. If the judgment 'There is a green carpet in my hall' is taken to mean 'If I enter my hall, I shallseea green carpet,' perception tests whether the judgment 'corresponds' with the reality perceived, and so goes to validate or disprove the claim. But the limits within which this correspondence works are very strait. It applies only to such judgments as are anticipations of perception,[E]and will test a truth-claim only where there is willingness to act on it. It implies an experiment, and is not a wholly intellectual process.

The superiority of the 'correspondence' theory over the belief in 'intuitions' lies in its insistence that thought is not to audit its own accounts. Its success or failure depends upon factors external to it, which establish the truth or falsehood of its claims. No such guarantee is offered by the next theory, which is known as the 'consistence' or 'coherence' theory. In order to avoid the difficulty which wrecked the 'correspondence' theory, that of making the truth of an assertion reside in an inexperienceable relation to an unattainable reality, this view maintains that an idea is true if it is consistent with the rest of our thoughts, and so can be fitted with them into a coherent system. No doubt a coherence among our ideas is a convenience and a part of their 'working,' but it is hardly a test of their objective truth. For a harmonious system of thoughts is conceivable which would either not apply to reality at all, or, if applied, would completely fail. On this theory systematic delusions, fictions, and dreams, might properly lay claim to truth. True, they might not be quite consistent: but neither are the systems of our sciences. If, then, thisabsolutecoherence be insisted on, this test condemns our whole knowledge; if not, it remains formal, and fails to recognize any distinctions of value in the claims which can be systematized.

To avoid thisreductio ad absurdum, it has been suggested that it is not the coherence of the idea in human, finite, minds which constitutes 'truth,' but the perfect consistency of the experience of an Absolute Mind. The test, then, of our limited coherency will lie in its relation to this Absolute System. But here we have the correspondence doctrine once again in a fresh disguise; our human systems are now 'true' if they correspond with the Absolute's, But as there is no way for us of sharing the Absolute Experience, our test is again illusory, and productive of a depressing scepticism; and, again, we have only asserted that truth is whatclaimsto be part of the Absolute System.

A word may be devoted to the simple refusal of intuitionists to give an account of Truth on the ground that it is 'indefinable.' Truth is taken to be an ultimate unanalyzable quality of certain propositions, intuitively felt, and incapable of description. Error, by the same token, should be equally indefinable and as immediately apprehended. How, then, can there be differences of opinion, and mistakes as to what is true and what false? How is it that a proposition which is felt to be 'true' so often turns out to be erroneous? If all errors are felt to be true by those they deceive, is it not clear that immediate feeling is not a good enough test of a validated truth? Thus, once again, we find that an account of truth-claim is being foisted on us in place of a description of truth-testing.

The intellectualist, then, being in every case unable to justify the vital distinction commonly made between the true and the false, we return to the pragmatist. He starts with no preconceptions as to what truth must mean, whether it exists or not; he is content to watch howde factoclaims to truth get themselves validated in experience. He observes that every question is intimately related to some scheme of human purposes. For it has to beput, in order to come into being. Hence every inquiry arises, and every question is asked, because of obstacles and problems which arise in the carrying out of human purposes. So soon as uncertainty arises in the course of fulfilling a purpose, an idea or belief is formulatedand acted on, to fill the gap where immediate certitude has broken down. This engenders the truth-claim, which is necessarily a 'good' in its maker's eyes, because it has been selected by him and judgedpreferableto any alternative that occurred to him.

How, then, is it tested? Simply by the consequences which follow from adopting it and using it as an assumption upon which to work. If these consequences are satisfactory, if they promote the purpose in hand, instead of thwarting it, and thus have a valuable effect upon life, then the truth-claim maintains its 'truth,' and is so far validated. This is the universal method of testing assertions alike in the formation of mathematical laws, physical hypotheses, religious beliefs, and ethical postulates. Hence such pragmatic aphorisms as 'truth is useful' or 'truth is a matter of practical consequences' mean essentially that all assertions must betested by being applied to a real problem of knowing.What is signified by such statements is that no 'truth' must be accepted merely on account of the insistence of its claim, but that every idea must be tested by the consequences of its working. Its truth will then depend upon those consequences being fruitful for life in general, and in particular for the purpose behind the particular inquiry in which it arose. Truth is avalueand a satisfaction; but 'intellectual satisfaction' is not a morbid delight in dialectical and verbal juggling: it is the satisfaction which rewards the hard labour of rationalizing experience and rendering it more conformable with human desires.

It should be clear, though it is often misunderstood, that there is nothing arbitrary or 'subjective' in this method of testing beliefs. It does not mean that we are free to assert the truth of every idea which seems to us pretty or pleasant. The very term 'useful' was chosen by pragmatists as a protest against the common philosophic licence of alleging 'truths' which could never be applied or tested, and were supposed to be none the worse for being 'useless.' It is clear both that such 'truths' must be a monopoly of Intellectualism, and also that they do allow every man to believe whatever he wishes, provided only that he boldly claims 'self-evidence' for his idiosyncrasy. In this purely subjective sense, into which Intellectualism is driven, it is, however, clear that there can be no useless ideas. For any idea anyone decided to adopt, because it pleased or amused him, would beipso factotrue. Pragmatism, therefore, by refuting 'useless' knowledge, shows that it doesnotadmit such merely subjective 'uses.' It insists that ideas must be more objectively useful—viz., by showing ability to cope with the situation they were devised to meet. If they fail to harmonize with the situation they are untrue, however attractive they may be. For ideas do not function in a void; they have to work in a world of fact, and to adapt themselves to all facts, though they may succeed in transforming them in the end.

Nor has an idea to reckon only with facts: it has also to cohere with other ideas. It must be congruous with the mass of other beliefs held for good reasons by the thinker who accepts it. For no one can afford to have a stock of beliefs which conflict too violently with those of his fellows. If his 'intuitions' contrast too seriously with those of others, and he acts on them, he will be shut up as a lunatic. If, then, the 'useful' idea has to approve itself both to its maker and his fellows without developing limitations in its use, it is clear that a pragmatic truth is really far less arbitrary and subjective than the 'truths' accepted as absolute, on the bare ground that they seem 'self-evident' to a few intellectualists.

If, however, it be urged that pragmatic truths never grow absolutely true at all, and that the most prolonged pragmatic tests do not exclude the possibility of an ultimate error in the idea, there is no difficulty about admitting this. The pragmatic test yieldspractical, and not 'absolute,' certainty. The existence of absolute certainty is denied, and the demand for it, in a world which contains only the practical sort, merely plays into the hands of scepticism. The uncertainty of all our verificatory processes, however, is not the creation of the pragmatist, nor is he a god to abolish it. Abstractly, there is always a doubt about what transcends our immediate experience, and this is why it is so healthy to have to repudiate so many theoretic doubts in every act we do. For beliefs have to be acted on, and the results of the action rightly react on the beliefs. The pragmatic test is practically adequate, and is the only one available. That it brings out the risk of action only brings out its superiority to a theory which cannot get started at all until it is supplied with absolute certainty, and meantime can only idly rail at all existing human truths.

We have in all this consistently referred the truth of ideas to individual experiences for verification. This evidently makes all truths in some sense dependent upon the personality of those who assert and accept them. Intellectualist logic, on the other hand, has always proclaimed that mental processes, if true, are 'independent' of the idiosyncrasies of particular minds. Ideas have afixedmeaning, and cohere in bodies of 'universal' truth, quite irrespective of whether any particular mind harbours them or not. This is not only a contention fatal to the pragmatic claims, but also bound up with other assumptions of Formal Logic. So it becomes necessary to inquire whether this Logic is a success, and so can coherently abstract from the personality of the knower and the particular situations that incite him to know.

FOOTNOTES:

[C]Not even 'I lie,' which is meaningless as it stands,Cf.Dr. Schiller'sFormal Logic, p. 373.

[D]This same difficulty reappears in various forms, ase.g., in a recent theory which makes the truth of a judgment lie in its asserting a relation between different objects, and not in the existence of those objects themselves. This formula also applies as evidently to false judgments as to true. It, too, brings no independent evidence of the existence of the objects referred to, and might fall into error through asserting a relation between objects which did not exist. It is, moreover, incapable of showing that a relation corresponding to the idea we have of it really exists when we judge that it does.

[E]Each perception, however, contains much that is supplied by the mind, not 'given' to it.

THE FAILURE OF FORMAL LOGIC

In order to escape the necessity of concerning itself with personality and particular circumstances in questions of truth and error, Intellectualism appeals to Logic, which it conceives as a purely formal science and its impregnable citadel. This appeal, however, rests on a number of questionable assumptions, and most of these are not avowed.

1. It assumes that forms of thought can be treated in abstraction from their matter—in other words, that the general types of thinking are never affected by the particular context in which they occur. Now, this means that the question of real truth must not be raised; for, as we have seen (Chapter V.), real truth is always an affair of particular consequences. The result is, that as truth-claims are no longer tested, theyall pass as truefor Logic, and are even raised to the rank of 'absolute truths,' or are mistaken for them. For the notion of a really ('materially') true judgment which someone has chosen, made, and tested, there is substituted that of a formally valid proposition, and in the end Logic gets so involved in the study of 'validity' that it puts aside altogether all real tests of truth, and becomes a game with verbal symbols which is entirely irrelevant to scientific thinking.

2. Formal Logic assumes the right of abstracting from the whole process of making an assertion. It presumes that the assertion has already been made somehow. How, it does not inquire. Yet it is clear that in each case there were concrete reasons why justthatassertion was preferred to any other. These concrete reasons it makes bold to dismiss as 'psychological,' and between 'logic' and 'psychology'[F]it decrees an absolute divorce. Where, when, why, by and to whom, an assertion was made, is taken to be irrelevant, and put aside as 'extralogical.'

3. This convenient assumption, however, ultimately necessitates an abstraction from meaning, though Formal Logic does not avow this openly. Every assertion is meant to convey a certain meaning in a certain context, and therefore its verbal 'form' has to take on its own individualnuanceof meaning. What any particular form of words does in fact mean on any particular occasion always depends upon the use of the words in a particular context. Meaning, therefore, cannot be depersonalized; if meanings are depersonalized, they cease to be real, and become verbal.

Formal Logic has, in fact, mistakenwords, which are (within the same language) identical on all occasions, for thethoughtsthey are intended to express, which are varied to suit each occasion. Words alone are tolerant of the abstract treatment Formal Logic demands. This 'science,' therefore, finally reduces to mere verbalism, distracted by inconsistent relapses into 'psychology.'

But will this conception of Logic either work out consistently in itself or lead to a tenable theory of scientific thinking? Emphatically not. What is the use of a logic which (1) cannot effect the capital distinction of all thought, that between the true and the false? (2) is debarred by its own principles from considering themeaningof any real assertion? and (3) is thus tossed helplessly from horn to horn of the dilemma 'either verbalism or psychology'?

We may select a few examples of this fatal dilemma.

1. In dealing with what it calls 'the meaning' of terms, propositions, etc., Formal Logic has always to choose between the meaning of thewordsand the meaning of theman. For it is clear that words which may be used ambiguously may on occasion leave no doubt as to their meaning, while conversely all may become 'ambiguous' in a context. If, therefore, the occasion is abstracted from, all forms must be treated verbally as ambiguous formulae, which may be used in different senses. If it is, nevertheless, attempted to deal with their actual meaning on any given occasion, what its maker meant the words to convey must be discovered, and the inquiry at once becomes 'psychological'—that is to say, 'extralogical.'

2. If judgments are not to be verbal ('propositions'), but real assertions which are actually meant, they must proceed from personal selections, and must have been chosen from among alternative formulations because of their superior value for their maker's purpose. But all this is plainly an affair of psychology. So inevitable is this that a truly formal Ideal of 'Logic' would exclude ail judgment whatever from the complete system of 'eternal' Truth. For from such a system no part could be rightly extracted to stand alone. Such a selection could be effected and justified only by the exigencies of a human thinker.

The impotent verbalism of the formal treatment of judgment appears in another way when the question is raisedhowa 'true' judgment is to be distinguished from a 'false.' For the logician, if his public will not accept either the relegation of this distinction to 'psychology' or the proper formal answer thatalljudgments are (formally) 'true' and even 'infallible,' can think of nothing better to say than that if the 'judgment' is not true it was not a 'true judgment,' but a false 'opinion' which may be abandoned to 'psychology.'[G]Apparently he is not concerned to help men to discriminate between 'judgments' and 'opinions,' or even to show that true 'judgments' do in fact occur.

3. Inference involves Formal Logic in a host of difficulties.

(a)If it is not to be a verbal manipulation of phrases whose coming together is not inquired into, it must be a connected train of thought. But such a connection of thoughts cannot be conceived or understood without reference to the purpose of a reasoner, whoselectswhat he requires from the totality of 'truths.' If, then, 'Logic' has merely to contemplate this eternal and immutable system of truth in its integrity, and forbids all selection from it for a merely human purpose, how can it either justify, or even understand, the drawing of any inference whatever?

(b) Formal Logic clearly will not quail before the charge of uselessness. But on its own principles it ought to be consistent. But by this test also, when it is rigorously judged by it, it fails completely. Its inconsistencies are many and incurable. It cannot even be consistent in its theory of the simplest fundamentals. It is found upon some occasions to define judgment as that which may beeithertrueorfalse; and upon others as that which is 'true' (formally)—i.e., it cannot decide whether or not to ignore the existence of error.

(c) The Formal view of inference regards it as a 'paradox.' An inference is required on the one hand to supply fresh information, and on the other to follow rigorously from its premisses; it must, in a word, exhibit bothnoveltyandnecessity. It would seem, however, that if our inference genuinely had imparted new knowledge, the event must be merely psychological; for how can any process or event perturb, or add to, the completed totality of truth in itself? On the other hand, if the 'necessity' of the operation be taken seriously, the 'inference' becomes illusory; for if the conclusion inferred is already contained in the premisses, what sense is there in the purely verbal process of drawing it out?

(d) Most glaringly inadequate of all, however, is the Formal doctrine of 'Proof' contained in its theory of the Syllogism. A Formal or verbal syllogism depends essentially on the ability of its Middle Term to connect the terms in its conclusion. If, however, the Middle Term has notthe samemeaning in the two premisses, the syllogism breaks in two, and no 'valid' conclusion can be reached. Now, whether in fact any particular Middle Term bears the same meaning in any actual reasoning Formal Logic has debarred itself from inquiring, by deciding that actual meaning was 'psychological.' It has to be content, therefore, with an identityin the wordemployed for its Middle, But this evidence may always fail; for when two premisses which are (in general) 'true' are brought together for the purpose of drawing a particular conclusion, a glaring falsehood may result.E.g., it would in general be granted that 'iron sinks in water,' yet it does not follow that because 'this ship is iron' it will 'sink in water,' Hence syllogistic 'proof' seems quite devoid of the 'cogency' it claimed. After a conclusion has been 'demonstrated'it has still to come true in fact. This flaw in the Syllogism was first pointed out by Mr. Alfred Sidgwick.

(e) The formal Syllogism, moreover, conceals another formal flaw. An infinite regress lurks in its bosom. For if its premisses are disputed, they must in turn be 'proved.' Four fresh premisses are needed, and if these again are challenged, the number of true premisses needed to prove the first conclusion goes on doubling at every stepad infinitum. The only way to stop the process that occurred to logicians was an appeal to the 'self-evident' truth of 'intuitions'; but this has been shown to be argumentatively worthless. From this difficulty the pragmatist alone escapes, by assuming his premissesprovisionallyand arguingforwards, in order to test them by their consequences. If the deduced conclusion can be verified in fact, the premisses grow more assured. Thus every real inference is an experiment, and 'proof' is an affair of continuous trial and verification—not an infinite falling back upon an elusive 'certainty,' but an infinite reaching forwards towards a fuller consummation.

(f) So long as the logician regards his premisses not as hypotheses to be tested, but as established truths, he must condemn the Syllogism as a formal fallacy. It is inevitably apetitio principii. If the argument 'All men are mortal; Smith is a man, therefore Smith is mortal,' means that we know, before drawing our inference, that literally all men are mortal, we must already have discovered that Smith is mortal; if we did not know beforehand that Smith is mortal, we were not justified in stating thatallmen are mortal. Nor is it an escape to interpret 'All men are mortal' to mean that immortals are excluded from 'man' by definition. For then the question is merely begged in the minor premiss. That 'Smith is a man' cannot be asserted without assuming that he is mortal. If, lastly, 'All men are mortal' be taken to state a law of nature conjoining inseparably mortality and humanity, the logician either already knows that Smith is rightly classed under the species 'man,' and so subject to its mortality, or else heassumesthis. But how does he know Smith is not like Elijah or Tithonus, a peculiar case, to which for some reason the law does not apply? Will he declare it to be 'intuitively certain' that whatever is called, or looks like, a case of a 'law'ipso factobecomes one?

The logician's analysis of reasoning, then, breaks down. In whichever way he interprets the Syllogism it is revealed as either a superfluity or a fallacy: it is never a 'formally valid inference' that can compel assent. But common sense is undismayed by the pragmatist's discovery that if the Syllogism is to have any sense its premissesmustbe taken as disputable; for, unlike Formal Logic, it has perceived that men do not reason about what they think they know for certain, but about matters in dispute.

4. It is not necessary to dwell at length on the futility of the formal notion of Induction. Formal Induction presupposes that enough particular instances have been collected to establish a general rule; but in actual practice inductions always repose, not on indiscriminate observation, but on aselection of relevant instances, and never claim to be based upon anexhaustiveknowledge of particulars. Hencein formthe most satisfactory induction is always incomplete, and differs in no wise from a bad one. 'All bodies fall to the ground' is an induction which has worked. 'All swans are white' broke down when black swans were discovered in Australia. The validity of an induction, then, is not a question of form.

The necessity for such selection no intellectualist theory of Induction has understood. All have aimed at exhaustiveness, and imagined that if it could be attained, inductive reasoning would be rendered sound, and not impossible. Their ideal 'cause' was the totality of reality, identified with its 'effect,' in a meaningless tautology. Nothing but voluntarism can enable logicians to see that our actual procedure in knowing is the reverse of this, that causal explanation is theanalysisof a continuum, and that 'phenomena,' 'events,' 'effects,' and 'causes' are all creations of our selective attention; that in selecting them we run a risk of analyzing falsely, and that if we do, our 'inductions' will be worthless. But whether they are right or wrong, valuable or not, real reasoning from 'facts' can never be a 'formally valid' process.

We are thus brought to see the hollowness of the contention that 'Pure Reason' can ignore its psychological context and dehumanize itself. A thought, to be thought at all, must seemworththinking to someone, it must convey the meaning he intends, it must be true in his eyes and relevant to his purposes in the situation in which it arises—i.e., it must have a motive, a value, a meaning, a purpose, a context, and be selected from a greater whole for its relevance to these. None of these features does intellectualist logic deign to recognize. For if truth is absolute and not relative, it is all or nothing. Yet no actual thinking has such transcendent aims. It is content with selections relative to a concrete situation. If it were permissible to diversify a debate—e.g., about the authorship of theOdyssey—by an irruption of undisputed truths—e.g., a recitation of the multiplication table—how would it be possible to distinguish a philosopher from a lunatic?

Formal Logic is either a perennial source of errors about real thinking, or at best an aimless dissection of acaput mortuum—i.e., of the verbal husks of dead thoughts, whose value Formal Logic could neither establish nor apprehend, A real Logic, therefore, would most anxiously avoid all the initial abstractions which have reduced Formal Logic to such impotence, and would abandon the insane attempt to eliminate the thinker from the theory of thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[F]The descriptive science of thought, in its concrete actuality in different minds.

[G]The most popular contribution which Oxford makes just now to the theory of Error is, 'A judgment which is erroneous is not really a judgment.' So when a professor 'judges' he is infallible—by definition!

THE BANKRUPTCY OF INTELLECTUALISM

We have now struggled through the quagmires of intellectualist philosophy, and found that neither in its Psychology, which divided the mind's integrity into a heap of faculties, and comminuted it into a dust-cloud of sensations; nor in its Epistemology, which ignored the will to know and the value of knowing; nor in its Logic, which abstracted thought wholly from the thinking and the thinker, and so finally from, all meaning, could man find a practicable route of philosophic progress. But our struggles will not have been in vain if they have left us with a willingness to try the pragmatist alternative, and convinced us that it is not a wanton innovation, but the only path of salvation for the scientific spirit.

But before we venture on it, it will be well to restore confidence in the solvency of human thought by analysing the causes of the bankruptcy of Intellectualism and exposing the extravagance of the assumptions which conducted to it.

Was it not, after all, an unwarranted assumption that severed the intellect from its natural connection with human activity? No doubt it seemed to simplify the problem to suppose that the functioning of the intellect could be studied as a thing apart, and unrelated to the general context of the vital functions. Again, it was to simplify to assume that thought could be considered apart from the personality of the human thinker. But it should not have been forgotten that it is possible to pay too dearly for simplifications and abstractions, and that they all involve a risk, which the event may show should never have been taken. So it is in this case. Its rash assumptions confront Intellectualism with a host of problems it cannot attack. It can do nothing to assuage the conflict of opinions which all claim truth with equal confidence. It cannot understand the correction of error which is continually proceeding. Nor can it understand, either the existence of error or the meaning of truth, or the means of distinguishing between them. It has no means of testing and confuting even the wildest and maddest assertions. It cannot discriminate between the intuitions of the sage and of the lunatic. It is forced to view energy of will in knowing as a source merely of corruption, and when it finds that as a psychic fact willing is ineradicable, it must conclude that we are constitutionally incapable of that passive reflection of reality which it regards as thesine qua nonof truth. Hence, if disinterestedness is the condition of knowing, knowledge is impossible. And it is so entangled in its unintelligible theory of truth as a copying of reality that, rather than renounce it, when it finds that human knowing isnotcopying, it prefers a surrender to Scepticism.

Yet is not its whole procedure a signal example of human arbitrariness and perversity? We professed to be impelled by logical necessity at every step, but were free to escape from all our perplexities by adopting the pragmatic inferences from them. The Pragmatic Method of observing the consequences readily suggests the means of discriminating between truth and error, of sifting values and of testing claims. And, though not infallible, it is adequate to all our needs. The pragmatic notion thatTruth is practicalcloses the artificial gulf between the theoretic and the practical side of life, and assigns to truth a biological function and vital value. The humanist contention thatTruth is humanrescues man from the despondency in which his failure to grasp absolute truth had left him. The Protagorean dictum thatMan is the measure of all thingsassures him thathisknowledge may become adequate tohisreality, and that the value of truths and the differences between truth and error also are susceptible of estimation.

True, this policy averts the bankruptcy of the intellect by scaling down the intolerable charges on it. True, practical knowledge is not absolute; but if it is enough to live by, is it not better to live by it than to be lured on to perish in the deserts of Scepticism by themirageof an absolute truth not humanly attainable? True, verification is not 'proof,' but as its conclusions are not incorrigible, its defects are not fatal, and its demands are not impracticable. True, no truth and no reality are wholly 'objective,' in the sense of wholly indifferent to our action; but to say that the human and 'subjective' factor in all knowledge must be taken into account does not preclude our apprehending and measuring an 'objective' world as real as, and more knowable than, any other theory can offer.

Thus the proposals of Pragmatism for reconstructing the business of the intellect, and rescuing it from the bankruptcy of Intellectualism, are not unreasonable. They open out to it a prospect of recovering its credit and its usefulness by returning to the service of Life.

THOUGHT AND LIFE

The mission of Pragmatism is to bring Philosophy into relation to real Life and Action. So far from regarding Thought as a self-centred, self-enclosed activity, Pragmatism insists upon replacing it in its context among the other functions of life, and in measuring its value by its effect upon them. So far, again, from regarding the abstract intellect as a vast Juggernaut machine which absorbs and crushes the individual thinker, it treats him individually as having his own constitution,raison d'être,and intrinsic interest, and credits him with a power to make new truths and to enrich the resources of thought. Each thinker has before him an individual situation, a system of aims and values, a stock of knowledge and of means from which he must select what is relevant to his ends, and so cannot escape in any judgment from the responsibilities of a personal decision.

Thus, for Pragmatismevery thought is an actwith a person behind it, who is responsible for launching it into the world of fact. The result of this change of attitude is immediate. In the first place, as has been shown in Chapter V., by bringing thought face to face with the whole experience upon which it claims to work, we are enabled to find a tangible rule for evaluating its assertions and distinguishing truth from error. And, secondly, by recognizing that the mind is not an apparatus which functions in a vacuum, but is a constituent of an individual organism, we see that thinking always depends upon a purpose; for it is the purpose of an inquiry which gives reflection its cue, and determines its scope and (most essential of all) its meaning.

We are thus led from the narrower logical question, 'What constitutes the "truth" of a statement?' to a wider outlook, from which we can survey the place of knowing in human life at large. This may be called the transition from Pragmatism to Humanism. This last word was introduced into philosophic terminology by Dr. Schiller in order to describe his general philosophical position as distinct from the original question of the theory of knowledge, which had been treated by James under the name of Pragmatism.

To the Humanist the best definition of life is one which displays it as throughout purposive, as a rational pursuit of ends. This raises the question of the validity of valuations. Valuation is a widespread human practice. In their most general aspect we classify all objects as 'good' and 'bad,' according as they are ends to be pursued or avoided, or means which further or frustrate the pursuit of ends. This general antithesis between the 'good' and the 'bad' has numerous specific forms, applicable to different departments of human activity. Thus, in conduct, actions are judged 'good' or 'evil' and 'right' or 'wrong'; in thinking, ideas are 'true' or 'false,' and 'relevant' or 'irrelevant'; for art, objects are 'beautiful' or 'ugly,' and so forth, for the modes of valuation in life are innumerable. Any one of these adjectives either denotes value or censures lack of worth, and each gets its meaning by reference to the specific purpose, moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, it appeals to. Thesummum bonum, or supreme good, will then be the ideal of the harmonious satisfaction of all purposes.

What, then, from the standpoint of Humanism, is the function of 'truth-values' in our life? They indicate a relation to the cognitive end. What is this end? Surely not self-sufficing? A truth that is merely true in itself has no interest for human life, and no human mind has an interest in discovering and affirming it. Truth, therefore, cannot stand aloof from life. It must somehow subserve our vital purposes. But how shall it do this? Only by becoming applicable to the reality we have to live with, by becoming useful for the changes we desire to effect in it. Whoever will not admit this, and renders truth inapplicable, does in fact render it unmeaning.

The fact that thought essentially refers to a 'reality' external to it in no way diminishes its purposive character. Whether the mind is idealizing an aspect of reality (as in mathematics) or abstracting, classifying, and predicting (as in science), it is always the fact that a particular kind of reality is needed for some serious or trivial purpose which guides the operations of the thinker. A mind which craved to embrace all or 'any' reality need notthink; it would do better to float without discrimination upon the flux of change. This procedure would be so absolutely antithetical to human knowing that it seems a wanton paradox on that account to treat it as the final goal of knowledge.

Actually, of course, the philosophers who claim to be devoted to pure theory follow no such course. They deliberately choose their ideal of what is worth knowing—e.g., 'God,' or 'the unity of all things,' or 'the laws of the universe'—and, disregarding all other existences, they pursue the kind of reality they desire because of its religious or moral or aesthetic value. For there could be no greater mistake than to suppose that the common antithesis between 'reality' and the 'un-real' usually means the same thing as the distinction between what 'exists' and what is absolutely non-existent. On the contrary, it is usually a judgment of value. We may say that the 'haunted' house is real and the 'ghost' is not; but as an hallucination the ghost is real enough. Utopia is unreal for the politician, but exists as an ideal for the theorist. The Platonist treats our physical world of sight and touch, which we think the most real of all, as a mere illusion compared to the 'Ideas' of his metaphysical world. The thinker who declares he wants to know all about 'reality' does not mean that he wishes to investigateeverythingwhich in any sense exists, but that he wishes to know whatheconsidersbest worth knowing—and this, of course, implies a personal valuation, a purged and expurgated extract, which will not offend his taste. So all philosophies are, in fact, selective. Even the more conscientious rationalists show very little anxiety to include in their intellectual scheme a knowledge of their opponents' opinions—indeed, they seem to think that the existence of such facts may be made dependent wholly on their will to recognize them. An exposition of Pragmatism is for them a 'reality' which does not count: it is not worth knowing about. And this is only natural, after all. For 'reality,' the object of the mind's search, is always a selection, conceived after the likeness of the heart's desire, the product of a human purpose.

To recognize this is to appreciate the wisdom of Humanism's refusal to treat the world, for good or bad, as a given and completed whole. For not only is what we call the real world always a selection from a larger whole from which we have ventured to exclude great masses of irrelevance, but every day brings fresh experience, and may bring fresh enlightenment. And since man has always an interest in improving his condition, is it not futile to forbid him to re-make his world as beat he can? Why prematurely claim to have reached finality, when unexpected novelties may shatter any system before it is even completed? Our world is plastic, it is most 'really' what we can make of it, and the process of our making is not ended. Whether a decree of Fate has fixed any ultimate limits to our efforts we have no means of knowing, and no occasion to assume. Is not our wisest course, then, to persist in trying? It is bad method ever to despair of knowing what we need.

For good or ill, the world with which the Humanist contends is always a world that reveals itself to him. Reality, as it is assumed, presumed, or guessed to be 'in itself,' apart from our experience of it, is cancelled from his reckonings. For he cannot discover how he (or anyone) can get any 'knowledge' or 'intuition' which transcends all human faculties. The theories of metaphysicians on these lofty themes he regards as personal postulates which, in so far as they cannot be subjected to the pragmatic method, must remain open questions. Human experience does not warrant such gratuitous demands. It confirms neither the rigid system of unchanging fact which realism postulates (seeing that the only facts that science speaks of are ever changing in its progress), nor finds its problems, conflicts, and errors credible as a reflexion of any Universal Mind, unless Idealism ultimately repudiates the sanity of its Absolute.

The superiority of Humanism, then, lies in this, that it does not discourage human enterprise by assuming that the real is completely rigid and eternally achieved without regard to human effort. In the drama that unrolls reality, every man, it teaches, has a duty and a power to play his humble but essential part. Humanism is neither an Optimism nor a Pessimism—both of which must consistently, in their extreme form, deny that reality can be improved—but concedes to man the right and duty to improve the world. It impresses us with the necessity of acting, it vindicates the procedure of acting on our hopes, it shows us how we may correct our errors, and so gives reasons for our faith in the possibility of Progress.

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