Delton Thomas Howard

“ 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. ”

“ But psychology, like philosophy, turns out to be a science of the whole. Each special science investigates a special sphere of conscious experience. "From one science to another we go, asking for some explanation of conscious experience, until we come to psychology.... But the very process that has made necessary this new science reveals also that each of the former sciences existed only in abstraction from it. Each dealt with some one phase of conscious experience, and for that very reason could not deal with the totality which gave it its being, consciousness." ”

“ We do, as a matter of fact, make the transition in philosophy, because the facts force us back to Nature. Just as in Hegel's logic, the category of quality, when pressed, reveals itself as inadequate to express the facts, and is compelled to pass into the category of quantity, so does logic as a whole, when pressed, reveal its inadequacy to express the whole of reality. ”

“ Philosophers have always held that the purpose of reflection (whatever reflection may be, psychologically) is the attainment of a reliable insight into the nature of the world. Practical considerations compel this view. Ordinary, casual observation is superficial and unsystematic; it never penetrates beneath the surface. Doubtless reality is, in some degree, what it is in unreflective moments; but it is frequently something more, as man learns to his sorrow. Reflection displaces the casual, haphazard attitude, in the attempt to get at the real nature of the world. ”

“ Green's abstract conception of the self as that which forever sets itself over against its desires is, Dewey argues, not only useless as an ideal for action, but positively opposed to moral striving. "It supervenes, not as a power active in its own satisfaction, but to make us realize the unsatisfactoriness of such seeming satisfactions as we may happen to get, and to keep us striving for something which we can never get!" ”

“ As the intellectual life of man is more subtle and universal than Dewey represents it to be, so is truth, as that which thought seeks to establish, something deeper-lying and more comprehensive. Ideas are not simple and isolated facts; their truth is not strictly their own, but is reflected into them from the objective order to which they pertain. The possibility of making observations and experiments, and of having ideas, rests upon the presence in and through experience of that directing influence which we call valid knowledge, or truth. ”

“ But in another aspect man is infinite, the universal self-consciousness, and as such is the object of philosophy. This distinction between the two aspects of man's nature, Dewey believes, cannot be maintained. As a distinction, it must arise within consciousness, and it must therefore be a psychological distinction. Psychology cannot limit itself to anything less than the whole of experience, and cannot, therefore, be a special science dependent, like others, upon philosophy for its working concepts. On the contrary, the method of psychology must be the method of philosophy. ”

“ Only a living actual Fact can preserve within its unity that organic system of differences in virtue of which it lives and moves and has its being. It is with this fact, conscious experience in its entirety, that psychology as method begins. It thus brings to clear light of day the presupposition implicit in every philosophy, and thereby affords logic, as well as the philosophy of nature, its basis, ideal and surety. If we have determined the nature of reality, by a [Pg 13] process whose content equals its form, we can show the meaning, worth and limits of any one moment of this reality. ”

“ Experience can never be complete enough to have a content equal to that of self-consciousness, for experience can never escape its limitation through space 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 analysis 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. ”

“ Dewey would call a 'dark saying.' If by 'thought' be meant that period of high activity of all the faculties which is only occasional, it is doubtless true enough that a problem is frequently needed to awaken it. Man is content to let life glide along with a minimum of effort; he cannot, if he would, long maintain the state of high activity here called 'thinking.' As a consequence of not thinking when he should, man frequently finds himself involved in situations requiring the exercise of all the energy and resource he possesses. ”

“ In the third part of the essay, Dewey's discussion leads him back to sense perceptions as forms of practical judgment. There is no doubt, in his mind, that many perceptions do have an import for action. Not merely sign-posts, and familiar symbols of the kind, but many perceptions lacking this obvious reference, have a significance for conduct. It must not, of course, be supposed that all perception, at any one time, has cognitive properties; for some of the perceptions have esthetic, and other non-cognitive properties. Only certain elements of a situation have the function of cognition. ”

“ Throughout this introduction Dewey speaks with considerable feeling, as if the question were a moral one, rather than a disquisition concerning the best method of dealing with the personal aspects of thought. His meaning, however, is far from being apparent. What does it mean to say that a Stoic theory of knowledge holds a monopoly in modern philosophy? In what sense has the philosophy of the past been misanthropic? Is Humanism a product of the twentieth century? Dewey's assertions are broad and sweeping; too broad even for a popular discourse, let alone a philosophical address. ”

“ Ethical theory, in its wider significance, is a reflective process in which, as [Pg 36] one might say, the 'tools of analysis' are shaped and adapted to their work. These rules are not fixed things, made once and for all, but of such a nature that they preserve their effectiveness only as they are constantly renewed and reshaped. Ethical theory brings the Golden Rule together with other general ideas, conforms them to each other, and in this way gives the moral rule a great scope in practice. All moral theory, therefore, is finally linked up with practice. ”

“ Does the self merely trace out the meaning already present in reality, or is it a factor in the creation of meaning? It is clear that if the thinking process is a genuinely synthetic activity, imposing meaning on sensations, it literally 'makes the world' of our experience. But, on the other hand, if meaning is given to thought, as a part of its data, the self merely reproduces in a subjective experience the thought which exists objectively in the eternal mind. The dilemma arises as a result of Dewey's initial conception of reality as a structure of sensations and meanings. ”

“ Dewey begins this inquiry with the period of the rise of Christianity, which, because it emphasized faith and the personal attitude, seemed in a fair way to do justice to human belief. "That the ultimate principle of conduct is affectional and volitional; that God is love; that access to the principle is by faith, a personal attitude; that belief, surpassing logical basis and warrant, works out through its own operation its own fulfilling evidence: such was the implied moral metaphysic of Christianity." ”

“ But is it only in such moments that we deliberately resolve a situation into its elements, and abstract an 'essence' to serve as a middle term in inference? It is certain that at such moments these processes are more distinct than at other times; but the whole situation, for that matter, stands out more clearly and distinctly. Perception is keener, memory more definite, feeling more intense. In less degree, however, all attention involves analysis and abstraction. Experience has always a focus and a margin ”

“ In the 'Deduction' of the first Critique, Dewey continues, Kant begins with the consciousness of objects, rather than with the identity 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 analytic, but which is synthetic of sense, and which acts universally (according to principles) in this synthesis." ”

“ Action as psychological is one thing; as the subject-matter of judgment, it is another. In coming to a decision as to how to act, the agent sets his proposed action over against himself, and considers it in its universal and typical character. His motor tendencies, his feelings, his desires factor in the situation psychologically considered; but they do not enter judgment as psychological facts, but rather, if at all, as data which have a significance beyond their mere particularity. ”

“ The special sciences are regarded as abstractions from the central or psychological point of view, but they are legitimate abstractions, constituted by a proper analytic movement of the total self-consciousness, which specifies itself into the special branches of knowledge. If we begin with any special science, and drive it back to its fundamentals, it reveals its abstractness, and thought is led forward into other sciences, and finally into philosophy, as the science of the whole. But philosophy, first appearing as a special science, turns out to be science ”

“ 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 analyzed factors constituting, 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. ”

“ It may well be admitted that our real categories are not fixed and final, but are perpetually in process of reconstruction. The process of criticism inevitably makes manifest the human and empirical character of the particular forms of reflective thought. It recognizes the fact of development, both in knowledge and in reality, and by this very recognition the value of knowledge is enhanced. It is forced, by the very nature of its method, to recognize the concrete and practical bearings of thought. ”

“ In defining the conditions which precede and evoke thought, Dewey says: "There is always as antecedent to thought an experience of some subject-matter of the physical or social world, or organized intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with each other—so much so that they threaten to disrupt the entire experience, which accordingly for its own maintenance requires deliberate re-definition and re-relation of its tensional parts." [191] Thought is always called into action by the whole concrete situation in which it occurs, not by any particular sensation, idea, or feeling. ”

“ The chief point of Dewey's criticism of the idealists is that they fail to establish self-consciousness as an experienced fact; and, Dewey maintains, it must be so established if it is to be anything real and genuine. If it is anything that can be discussed at all, it must be an element in experience; and if it is in experience, it must be the subject-matter of psychology. It is inevitable, from Dewey's standpoint, that transcendentalism should adopt his psychological method. ”

“ This separation of the activities of life into several distinct processes having each a special function looks like a survival of the old faculty psychology, against which modern thought has protested as much as against anything whatever. The conception of the organic processes as separate in action has all the faults of a merely mechanical representation of consciousness. ”

“ To sum up Dewey's conclusions so far: Logic is the study of the function of knowing in relation to the other functions of experience. The wider logic distinguishes the function of knowing from other activities, and discovers its general purpose; the narrower logic examines the function of knowing in itself, with the object of determining its structure and operation. The aim of logic as a whole is to understand the operations of the concrete activity called knowing, with the purpose of rendering it more efficient. ”

“ With the doctrine of evolution, we can add to this statement that the interactions and changes of matter are themselves of a kind to bring about that complex and intensified interaction which is life." [279] Dewey holds that evolution rests upon the reality of time: "time itself, or genuine change in a specific direction, is itself one of the ultimate traits of the world irrespective of date." ”

“ 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? ”

“ The test of the mind and its newly projected modes of response [ideas] lies in its ability to meet the demands of the situation. The capacities and limits of mind are determined by the purpose for which it was evolved; it can enable a man to deal more effectively with his environment; it can do nothing else. It cannot speculate on the nature of reality as such, nor voyage on long journeys in search of truth! ”