Theoretical framework

“ All the just remarks made by experienced persons on human character and conduct, are so many special laws, which the general laws of the human mind explain and resolve. The empirical generalizations on which the operations of the arts have usually been founded, are continually justified and confirmed on the one hand, or corrected and improved on the other, by the discovery of the simpler scientific laws on which the efficacy of those operations depends. ”

“ If the symbols of our system stand for entities for which the axioms hold, then all the propositions of the system will be true of those entities. Or, in other words: If entities can be found which satisfy the axioms of the system, then the system will be science of these entities. ”

“ Its aim and its raison d’être are not solely to construct the rational scheme of some possible world, but to construct that particular rational scheme of the particular real world in which we live and breathe. ”

“ And since it is by these laws, combined with the facts of each particular case, that the whole of the phenomena of human action and feeling are produced, it is on these that every rational attempt to construct the science of human nature in the concrete, and for practical purposes, must proceed. ”

“ Principles of Evidence and Theories of Method are not to be constructed a priori. The laws of our rational faculty, like those of every other natural agency, are only learned by seeing the agent at work. ”

“ For our view of the that predetermines indeed the general constitution of the what, but not our power to predict, apart from experience, what nature and finite mind, what space and time, are to contain. Accordingly in reviewing the empirical world with reference to the special nature of its unity, we must once more be subject to the control of the facts of the universe as known to common sense and to science. ”

“ Those sciences, which thus got the name of philosophy, we call empirical sciences, for the reason that they take their departure from experience. Still the essential results which they aim at and provide, are laws, general propositions, a theory—the thoughts of what is found existing. ”

“ The obvious conclusion is that one theory is as good as another, provided always that the mode of operation under it does not depart, in any essential particular, from the standard, and that the operator has the requisite faith in his own theory and practice. ”

“ Thus, not merely is a would-be objective science, through its bondage to technique, made formal and empty, but also, as perhaps only the other side of the same truth, a would-be objective science materially—that is, for its scientific doctrines—and formally—that is, for its motives and methods—is always in practice dependent upon the demands and sanctions of real life, and so not purely, or not dualistically, objective after all. ”

“ We have seen in the last chapter that there is a point of generality at which empirical laws become as certain as laws of nature, or, rather, at which there is no longer any distinction between empirical laws and laws of nature. ”

“ Once more the difficulty is in the assumption, so natural to an objective science, of fixed conceptions. Are purpose and social feeling so fixed in their nature, and above all so well understood, that their presence or absence can be established by an experiment or two or ten thousand conducted on strictly objective principles? No conceptions are fixed, and instead of questions of fact we should have, what a strictly objective science cannot have, questions of meaning. ”

“ The laws of mind as characterized in the preceding chapter, compose the universal or abstract portion of the philosophy of human nature; and all the truths of common experience, constituting a practical knowledge of mankind, must, to the extent to which they are truths, be results or consequences of these. Such familiar maxims, when collected a posteriori from observation of life, occupy among the truths of the science the place of what, in our analysis of Induction, have so often been spoken of under the title of Empirical Laws. ”

“ Certain elementary principles, a certain philosophy, will however be recognized as the essence of that which is being illustrated in all of the practical examples which will be given. And the broad principles in which the scientific system differs from the ordinary or "rule-of-thumb" system are so simple in their nature that it seems desirable to describe them before starting with the illustrations. ”

“ The laws, then, of the formation of character being the principal object of scientific inquiry into human nature, it remains to determine the method of investigation best fitted for ascertaining them. And the logical principles according to which this question is to be decided, must be those which preside over every other attempt to investigate the laws of very complex phenomena. For it is evident that both the character of any human being, and the aggregate of the circumstances by which that character has been formed, are facts of a high order of complexity. ”

“ The general classification of objective, absolute or public realities, on the one hand, and of relative or private ones, on the other, might yet appear to present none but a methodological interest and to have no bearing on the problem of the genuinely real. ”

“ Thus a priori principles form the basis of objectively valid, though empirical judgments, that is, of the possibility of experience so far as it must connect objects as existing in nature. These principles are the proper laws of nature, which may be termed dynamical. ”

“ From this he singles out the principles and distinctions which are of general applicability, and employs the powers and resources of a most precise and analytic mind to give to those principles and distinctions a philosophic basis, grounded in the universal reason of mankind, and not in mere technical convenience. ”

“ In the first place, logic, giving primarily the relations between concepts as such, and the relations between natural facts only secondarily or so far as the facts have been already identified with concepts and defined by them, must of course stand or fall with the conceptual method. But the conceptual method is a transformation which the flux of life undergoes at our hands in the interests of practice essentially and only subordinately in the interests of theory. We live forward, we understand backward, said a danish writer ”

“ Such difficulties have made people doubtful how far objective reality could be known by sense at all, and have made them suppose that there were positive arguments against the view that it can be so known. Our hypothetical construction meets these arguments, and shows that the account of the world given by common sense and physical science can be interpreted in a way which is logically unobjectionable, and finds a place for all the data, both hard and soft. It is this hypothetical construction, with its reconciliation of psychology and physics, which is the chief outcome of our discussion. ”

“ Thus the objective explanation of a subjective fact, once entertained, tends by force of logic to become general, to include a whole class of similar phenomena, to become a system, and, if need be, a cosmological and metaphysical system. ”

“ We have in mind not the objective unity of different studies considered as complete and related sciences, nor any general model to which each mind is to be conformed, but the practical union of all the experiences and knowledge that find entrance into a particular mind. ”

“ All the uniformities which exist in the succession of phenomena, and most of the uniformities in their co-existence, are either, as we have seen, themselves laws of causation, or consequences resulting from, and corollaries capable of being deduced from, such laws. If we could determine what causes are correctly assigned to what effects, and what effects to what causes, we should be virtually acquainted with the whole course of nature. ”

“ Truth may be conveniently defined as universal consistency; or that which perfectly conforms to facts, and agrees with the widest experience, when tested by means of all our intellectual powers, the reasoning faculty in particular. The usual modern criterion of it, is consistency with the fundamental axioms of logic, and with all the great principles of nature as established by means of scientific research, such as the universality of causation, the continuity of phenomena, the indestructibility of matter and energy, the convertibility and equivalency of forces, &c. ”

“ For the absence of uniformity and of synthetic comprehensive treatment is unfavourable to the discovery and formulation of universal principles and fundamental laws that may be generalised out of the facts and phenomena of the world. ”

“ The problem that confronts you, then, in either kind of analysis, however formal or informal it may be, is, How shall I go to work? The first necessity is the choosing of a basis for division of the subject, whether it be in classification or partition. The necessity for this arises from the demand of the human mind for logical consistency. Life seems often wildly inconsistent, but we demand that explanation of it or any phase of it be arranged according to what seems to us some logical law of progression, some consistent point of view. ”

“ But, by the constitution of my nature, my belief is irresistibly carried along by my apprehension of the axiom; and by the constitution of my nature, my belief is no less irresistibly carried along by my perception of the tree. All reasoning is from principles. The first principles of mathematical reasoning are mathematical axioms and definitions; and the first principles of all our reasoning about existences, are our perceptions. ”

“ And may not the determination of this one characteristic, wherein they all agree, suffice to determine the conception of philosophy itself? A science has systematic form. All propositions in it are connected in one single fundamental proposition or principle, and unite with it to form a whole. ”

“ There is, then, a philosophia prima peculiar to Art, as there is one which belongs to Science. There are not only first principles of Knowledge, but first principles of Conduct. There must be some standard by which to determine the goodness or badness, absolute and comparative, of ends, or objects of desire. And whatever that standard is, there can be but one; for if there were several ultimate principles of conduct, the same conduct might be approved by one of those principles and condemned by another; and there would be needed some more general principle, as umpire between them. ”

“ And so, as we saw, it is possible, at least by way of trial, to undertake to define Being wholly in terms of validity, to conceive that whoever says, of any object, It is, means only that a certain idea, — perhaps an idea suggested by passing experience, perhaps the thought of an empirically discovered law in a natural science, perhaps a free construction of an ideal object in mathematics, — but in any case an idea, is valid, has truth, defines an experience that, at least as a mathematical ideal, and perhaps as an empirical event, is determinately possible. ”

“ The empirical laws of those phenomena which depend on known causes, and of which a general theory can therefore be constructed, have, whatever may be their value in practice, no other function in science than that of verifying the conclusions of theory. ”

“ We shall fall into no error, then, if in treating of Induction, we limit our attention to the establishment of general propositions. The principles and rules of Induction, as directed to this end, are the principles and rules of all Induction; and the logic of Science is the universal Logic, applicable to all inquiries in which man can engage. ”

“ When, however, we find it possible to connect many of these detached generalizations together, by discovering the more general laws of which they are cases, and to the operation of which in some particular sets of viii circumstances they are due, we gain not only a scientific, but a practical advantage ”

“ The scientific, modern, or American theory of universals, which results necessarily from analysis of the scientific method, is Scientific Realism, as opposed to Philosophical Idealism; and it determines the subdivision of scientific philosophy into its three great departments, the theories of Being, of Knowing, and of Doing. The scientific theory of Being results from analysis of the Genus-in-itself, and constitutes ontology or Constructive Realism, as opposed to all forms of Constructive Idealism. ”

“ Our question in the present discussion being this, “What determines us to acknowledge as real one rather than another system of particular facts?” we have here pointed out that the first determining principle, namely, the Ought, requires us to acknowledge at each moment as real certain particular facts which, even while they are conceived as limiting, constraining, and so determining our acts, are also conceived as thereby enabling us even now to accomplish our will better than we could if we did not acknowledge these facts. ”

“ It is conceivable that those laws might be such, and the general circumstances of the human race such, as to determine the successive transformations of man and society to one given and unvarying order. But even if the case were so, it can not be the ultimate aim of science to discover an empirical law. ”

“ Every art is thus a joint result of laws of nature disclosed by science, and of the general principles of what has been called Teleology, or the Doctrine of Ends;289 which, borrowing the language of the German metaphysicians, may also be termed, not improperly, the principles of Practical Reason.
A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice. ”

“ A right understanding of the mental process itself, of the conditions it depends on, and the steps of which it consists, is the only basis on which a system of rules, fitted for the direction of the process, can possibly be founded. ”