Studies in Logical Theory

XI

There may be those who will object to some of these questions as "logical" problems—those who would limit logic to a description of the forms and processes of reconstruction, relegating the question of the criterion of truth and error to "epistemology." This objection we must here dismiss summarily by saying that, by whatever name it is called, a treatment of the forms and processes of thought must deal with the criterion of truth and error, since these different "forms" are just those which thought assumes in attempting to reach truth under different conditions.

Certainly in the beginning the Greeks regarded their newly discovered power of thought as anything but formal. Indeed, it soon became so "substantial" that it was regarded as simply a new world of fact, of existence alongside of, or rather above, the world of perception. But Socrates hailed ideas as deliverers from the contradictions and paradoxes into which experience interpreted in terms of immediate sense-perception had fallen. In the concept Socrates found a solution for the then pressing problems of social life. The Socratic universal is not a mere empty form which thought imposes upon the world. It is something which thought creates in order that a life of social interaction and reciprocity may go on. This need not mean that the Greeks were reflectively conscious of this, but that this was the way the concept was actually used and developed by Socrates.

In attempting to formulate the relation between this new world of ideas and immediate sense-experience, Plato constructed his scheme of substantiation and participation. The Platonic doctrine of substantiation and participation is an expression of the conviction that anything so valuable as Socrates had shown ideas to be could not be merely formal or unreal. Up to the discovery of these ideas reality lay in the "substances" of perception. Hence in order to have that reality to which their worth, their value in life, entitled them, the ideas must be substantiated.

This introduction of the newly discovered ideas into the world of substances and reality wrought, of course, a change in the conception of the latter—a change which has well-nigh dominated the entire philosophic development ever since. Let us recall that the aim of Socrates was to find something that would prevent society from going to pieces under the influence of the disintegrating conception of experience as a mere flux of given immediate content. Now, in the concepts Socrates discovered the basis for just this much-needed wholeness and stability. Moreover, the fact that unity and stability were the actual social needs of the hour led not only to the concepts which furnished them being conceived as substantial and real, but to their being regarded as a higher type of reality, as "more real" than the given, immediate experiences of perception. They were higher and more real because, just then, they answered the pressing social need.

The ideas supplied this unity because they furnished ends, purposes, to the given material of perception. The given is now given for something; for something more, too, than mere contemplation. Socrates also showed, by the most acute analysis, that the content of these ends, these purposes, was social through and through.

From the ethical standpoint this teleological character of the idea is clearly recognized. But as "real," the ideas must be stated in the metaphysical terms of substance and attribute. Here the social need is abstracted from and lost to sight. The fundamental attributes of the ideas are now a metaphysical unity and stability. Hence unity and stability, wholeness and completeness, are the very essence of reality, while multiplicity and change constitute the nature of appearance. Thus does Plato's reality become, as Windelband says, "an immaterial eleaticism which seeks true being in the ideas without troubling itself about the world of generation and occurrence which it leaves to perception and opinion."[164]

Now it is the momentum of this conception of reality as a stable and complete system of absolute ideas, the development of which we have just roughly sketched, that is so important historically. Why this conception of reality, which apparently grew out of a particular historical situation, should have dominated philosophic theory for over two thousand years appears at first somewhat puzzling. Those who still hold and defend it will of course say that this survival is evidence of its validity. But, after all, our human world may be yet very young. It may be that "a thousand years are but as yesterday." At any rate philosophy has never been in a hurry to reconstruct conceptions which served their day and generation with such distinction as did the Platonic conception of reality. And this is true to the evolutionary instinct that experience has only its own products as material for further construction. On the other hand, the principle of evolution with equal force demands that only as material, not as final forms of experience, shall these products continue. It may be that philosophy has not yet taken the conception of evolution quite seriously. At all events it is certain that long after it has been found that, instead of being eternal and complete, the concept undergoes change, that it has simply the stability and wholeness demanded by a particular and concrete situation; after it has been discovered, in other words, that the stability and wholeness, instead of attaching to the content of an idea, are simply the functions of any content used as a purpose—after all this has been accepted in psychology, the conception of truth and reality which arose under an entirely different conception of the nature of thought still survives.

This change in the conception of the character of the ideas, with no corresponding change in the conception of reality, marks the divorce of thought and reality and the rise of the epistemological problem. Let us recall that in Plato the relation between the higher and ultimate reality, as constituted by the complete and "Eternal Ideas," and the lower reality of perception, is that of archetype and ectype. Perceptions attempt to imitate and copy the ideas. Now, when the ideas are found to be changing, and when further the interpenetration of perception and conception is discovered, reality as fixed and complete must be located elsewhere. And just as in the old system it was the business of perception to imitate the "Eternal Ideas," so here it is still assumed that thought is to imitate the reality wherever now it is to be located. And as regards the matter of location, the old conception is not abandoned. The elder Plato is mighty yet. Reality must still be a completed system of fixed and eternal "things in themselves," "relations," or "noumena" of some sort which our ideas, now constituted by both perception and conceptional processes, are still to "imitate," "copy," "reflect," "represent," or at least "symbolize" in some fashion.

From this point on, then, thought has two functions: one, to help experience meet and reorganize into itself the results of its own past activity; the other, to reflect or represent in some sense the absolute system of reality. For a very long time the latter has continued to constitute the logical problem, the former being relegated to the realm of psychology.

But this discovery of the reconstructive function of the idea and its assignment to the jurisdiction of psychology did not leave logic where it was before, nor did it lighten its task. Logic could not shut its eyes to this "psychological" character of the idea.[165] Indeed, logic had to take the idea as psychology described it, then do the best it could with it for its purpose.

The embarrassment of logic by this reconstructive character of the idea even Aristotle discovered to some extent in the relation of the Platonic perceptions to the eternal ideas. He found great difficulty in getting a flowing stream of consciousness to imitate or even symbolize an eternally fixed and completed reality. And since we have discovered, in addition, that the idea is so palpably a reconstructive activity, the difficulties have not diminished.

In such a situation it could only be a question of time until solutions of the problem should be sought by attempting to bring together these two functions of the idea. Perhaps after all the representation of objects in an absolute system is involved in the reconstruction of our experience. Or perhaps what appears as reconstructions of our experience—as desiring, struggling, deliberating, choosing, willing, as sorrows and joys, failures and triumphs—are but the machinery by which the absolute system is represented. At any rate, these two functions surely cannot be regarded as belonging to the idea as color and form belong to a stone. We should never be satisfied with such a brute dualism as this.

Without any further historical sketch of attempts at this synthesis, I desire to pass at once to a consideration of what I am sure everyone will agree must stand as one of the most brilliant and in every way notable efforts in this direction—Mr. Royce's Aberdeen lectures on "The World and the Individual." It is the purpose here to examine that part of these lectures, and it is the heart of the whole matter, in which the key to the solution of the problem of the relation between ideas and reality is sought precisely in the purposive character of the idea. This will be found especially in the "Introduction" and in the chapter on "Internal and External Meaning of Ideas."[166]

I. THE PURPOSIVE CHARACTER OF IDEAS

With his unerring sense for fundamentals, Mr. Royce begins by telling us that the first thing called for by the problem of the relation of ideas to reality is a discussion of the nature of ideas. Here Mr. Royce says he shall "be guided by certain psychological analyses of the mere contents of our consciousness, which have become prominent in recent discussion."[167]

From all this it is quite evident that Mr. Royce accepts and welcomes the results of the work of modern psychology on the nature of the idea. The difficulty will come in making the connection between these accepted results and the Platonic conception of ultimate reality as stated in the following:

It may be well to note here in passing that, notwithstanding the avowed subordination here of the representative to the reconstructive character of the ideas, the former becomes very important in the chapter on the relation of internal to external meaning, where the problem of truth and error is considered.

In this account of the two meanings of the idea, which I have tried to state as nearly as possible in the author's own words, there appear some conceptions of idea, of purpose, and of their relation to each other, that play an important part in the further treatment and in determining the final outcome. In the description of the internal meaning there appear to be two quite different conceptions of the relation of idea to purpose. One regards the idea as itself constituting the purpose or plan of action; the other describes the idea as "the partial fulfilment" of the purpose. (1) "Complex scientific ideas, viewed as to their conscious significance, are, as Professor Stout has well said, plans of action." (2) "You sing to yourself a melody; you are then and there conscious that the melody, as you hear yourself singing it, partially fulfils and embodies a purpose."[172] When we come to the problem of the relation between the internal and external meaning, we shall find that the idea as internal meaning comes into a third relation to purpose, viz., that of having the further purpose to agree or correspond to the external meaning. "Is the correspondence reached between idea and object the precise correspondence that the idea itself intended? If it is, the idea is true.... Thus it is not mere agreement, but intended agreement, that constitutes truth."[173] Thus the idea is (1) the purpose, (2) the partial fulfilment of the purpose, and (3) has a further purpose—to correspond to an object in the "absolute system of ideas."

The first statement of the internal meaning as constituting the plan or purpose is, I take it, the conception of the internal meaning as an ideal construction which gives a working form, a definition to the "indefinite sort of restlessness" and blind feeling of dissatisfaction out of which the need of and demand for thought arises.[174] This accords with the scientific conception of the idea as a working hypothesis. If this interpretation of idea were steadily followed throughout, it is difficult to see how it could fail to lead to a conception of reality quite different from that described as "a certain absolute system of ideas."

The second definition of internal meaning is the one in which it is stated as the "partial expression," "embodiment," and "fulfilment" of a single conscious purpose, and in which subsequently and consequently the idea is identified with "any conscious act," for example, singing. The first part of the statement appears to say that the idea of a melody is in "partial fulfilment" of the idea regarded as the purpose to sing the melody. But, as the first statement of internal meaning implies, how can one have a purpose to sing the melody except in and through the idea? It is precisely the construction of an idea that transforms the vague "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction into a purpose. The idea is the defining, the sharpening of the blind activity of mere sensation, mere want, into a plan of action.

However, Mr. Royce meets this difficulty at once by the statement that the term "idea" here not only covers the activity involved in forming the idea, e. g., the idea of singing, but includes the action of singing, which fulfils this purpose. "In the same sense any conscious act at the moment when you perform it not merely expresses, but is, in my present sense, an idea."[175]

But this sort of an adjustment between the idea as the purpose and as the fulfilment of the purpose raises a new question. What here becomes of the distinction between immediate and mediating experience? Surely there is a pretty discernible difference between experience as a purposive idea and the experience which fulfils this purpose. To call them both "ideas" is at least confusing, and indeed it appears that it is just this confusion that obscures the fundamental difficulty in dealing, later on, with the problem of truth and error. To be sure, the very formation of the idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," is the beginning of the relief from the "indefinite restlessness." On the other hand, it defines and sharpens the dissatisfaction. When this vague unrest takes the form of a purpose to attain food or shelter, or to sing in tune, it is of course the first step toward solution. But this very definition of the dissatisfaction intensifies it. The idea as purpose, then, instead of being the fulfilment, appears to be the plan, the method of fulfilment. The fulfilling experience is the further experience to which the idea points and leads.

To follow a little farther this relation between the purposive and fulfilling aspects of experience, it is of course apparent that the idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," must as a function go over into the fulfilling experience. My purpose to sing the melody must remain, in so far as the action is a conscious one, until the melody is sung. I say "as a function," for the specific content of this purpose is continuously changing. The purpose is certainly not the same in content after half the melody has been sung as it is at the beginning. This means that the purpose is being progressively fulfilled; and as part of the purpose is fulfilled each moment, so a part of the original content of the idea drops out; and when the fulfilling process of this particular purpose is complete, or is suspended—for, in Mr. Royce's view, it never is complete in human experience—that purpose then gives way to some other, perhaps one growing out of it, but still one regarded as another. A purpose realized, fulfilled, cannot persist as a purpose. We may desire to repeat the experience in memory; i. e., instead of singing aloud, simply, as Mr. Royce says, "silently recall and listen to its imagined presence." But here we must remember that the memory experience, as such, is not an idea in the logical sense at all. It is an immediate experience that is fulfilling the idea of the song which constitutes the purpose to recall it, just as truly as the singing aloud fulfils the idea of singing aloud. Shouting, whistling, or "listening in memory to the silent notes" may all be equally immediate, fulfilling experiences. Doubtless the idea as purpose involves memory, as Mr. Royce says.[176] But it is a memory used as a purpose, and it is just this use of the memory material as a purpose that makes it a logical idea. In its content the purposive idea is just as immediate and as mechanical as any other part of experience. "Psychology explains the presence and the partial present efficacy of this purpose by the laws of motor processes, of habit, or of what is often called association."[177] Here "idea," however, simply means, as Mr. Royce takes it in his second statement, conscious content of any sort. But this is not the meaning of "idea" in the logical sense. The logical idea is a conscious content used as an organizer, as "a plan of action," to get other contents. If, for example, in the course of writing a paper one wishes to recall an abstract distinction, as the distinction dawns in consciousness, it is not an idea in the logical sense. It is just as truly an immediate fulfilling experience as is a good golf stroke. So in the mathematician's most abstruse processes, which Mr. Royce so admirably portrays, the results for which he watches "as empirically as the astronomer alone with his star" are not ideas in the logical sense; they are immediate, fulfilling experiences.[178] The distinction between the idea as the mediating experience—that is, the logical idea—and the immediate fulfilling experience is therefore not one of content, but of use.

There is a sense, however, in which the idea as a purpose can be taken as the partial fulfilment of another purpose; in the sense that any purpose is the outgrowth of activity involving previous purposes. This becomes evident when we inquire into the "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction out of which the idea as purpose springs. Dissatisfaction presupposes some activity already going on in attempted fulfilment of some previous purpose. If one is dissatisfied with his singing, or with not singing, it is because one has already purposed to participate in the performance of a company of people which now he finds singing a certain melody, or one has rashly contracted to entertain a strenuous infant who is vociferously demanding his favorite ditty. This is only saying that any given dissatisfaction and the purpose to which it gives rise grow out of activity involving previous purposing. But this does not do away with the distinction between the idea as a purpose and the immediate fulfilling experience.

If the discussion appears at this point to be growing somewhat captious, let us pass to a consideration of the relation between internal and external meanings, where the problem of truth and error appears, and where the vital import of these distinctions becomes more obvious.

II. PURPOSE AND THE JUDGMENT

Mr. Royce begins with the traditional definition of truth, which he then proceeds to reinterpret:

The universal judgment.—The problem is, then, to discover just the nature and ground of this relation between the internal and external meaning, between the idea and its object. This relation is established in the act of judgment. Taking first the universal judgment, we find here that the internal meaning has at best only a negative relation to the external meaning.

The universal judgments then "tell us indirectly what is in the realm of external meaning; but only by first telling us what is not."[182]

However, these universal judgments have after all a positive value in the realm of internal meaning; that is, as mere thought.

This passage deserves especial attention. In the light of Kant, and in view of Mr. Royce's general definition of the judgment as the reference of internal to external meanings, one is puzzled to find that for the mathematician the positive value of the judgment "two and two are four" is confined to the realm of internal meaning. To be sure, Mr. Royce says that this limitation of the positive value of the universal judgment to the world of internal meaning occurs only when the external and internal meaning are sundered. But the point is: Does the mathematician or anyone else ever so sunder as to regard the judgment "two and two are four" as of positive value only as internal meaning? Indeed, in another connection Mr. Royce himself shows most clearly that mathematical results are as objective and as empirical as the astronomer's star.[184] Nor would it appear competent for anyone to say here: "Of course, they are not internal meanings after we come to see, through the kind offices of the epistemologist, that the internal meanings are valid of the external world." We are insisting that they are never taken by the mathematician and scientists at first as merely internal meaning whose external meaning is then to be established. Surely the mathematical judgment, or any other, does not require an epistemological midwife to effect the passage from internal to external meaning. The external meaning is there all the while in the form of the diagrams and motor tensions and images with which the mathematician works. The difficulty here again seems to be that the distinction above discussed between the idea in the logical sense, as purpose, and the immediate fulfilling experience is lost sight of. The relation between two and four is not first discovered as a merely internal meaning. It is discovered in the process of fulfilling some purpose involving the working out of this relation. So the sum of the angles of a triangle is not discovered as a mere internal meaning whose external meaning is then to be found. It is found in working with the triangle. It is discovered in the triangle. And, once more, it matters not if the triangle here is a mere memory image. In relation to the purpose, to the logical idea, it is as truly external and objective as pine sticks or chalk marks. The streams of motor, etc., images that flow spontaneously under the stimulus of the purpose are just as immediate fulfilling experiences as the manipulation of sticks or chalk lines.

The difficulty in keeping the universal judgment, as a judgment, in terms of merely internal meaning may be seen from the following:

One is somewhat puzzled to know just what is meant by the fusion "of experience and idea." We must infer that it means the fusion of some aspect of experience which can be set over against idea, and this has always meant the external meaning, and this interpretation seems further warranted by the statement immediately following which describes the fusion as one "of fact and idea." The situation then seems to be this: An internal and an external meaning, a fact and an idea, "fuse into one whole" and thus constitute that which is yet "precisely the realm of internal meanings," which aims to be valid of still another world of external meanings. And this waives the question of how experience fused into one whole can be an internal meaning, since as such it must be in opposition and reference to an external meaning; or conversely, how experience can be at once fact and idea and still be "fused into one whole."

Nor does the difficulty disappear when we turn to the aspects of universality and necessity. What is the significance and basis of universality and necessity as confined merely to the realm of internal meaning?

But what is it that we "experience within" which makes us call this judgment necessary? In the discussion of the relation of the universal judgment to the disjunctive judgment, through which the former is shown to get even its negative force, there is an interesting statement:

The last sentence is the statement referred to. What is meant by "further research shows universally, perhaps, that No A is B"? What kind of "research," internal or external, can show this? In short, there appears to be as much difficulty with universality and necessity in the realm of internal meaning as in the reference of internal to external meaning.[187]

Instead, however, of discussing this point, Mr. Royce pursues the problem of the relation of the external and internal meaning, and finds that regarded as sundered there is no basis so far for even the negative universality and necessity in the reference of the internal meaning to the external.

But in the universal judgment this determination, as referred to the external meaning, is only negative.

The particular judgment.—It is then through the particular judgment that the universal judgment is to get any positive value in its reference to the external meaning.

It is now high time to ask why the internal meaning seeks this external meaning. Why does it seek an object? Why does it want to cross the chasm? In other words, what is the significance of the demand for the particular judgment? In the introduction we have been told, as a matter of description, that the internal meanings do seek the external meaning, but why do they? We have also been told that universal judgments "develop and enrich the realm of internal meaning." Why, then, should there be a demand for the external meaning, for a further object? The answer is:

It is, then, the incomplete and fragmentary character of the internal meaning that demands the particular judgment. The particular judgment is to further complete and determine the incomplete and indeterminate internal meaning. And yet no sooner is this particular judgment made than we are told that "it is a form at once positive, and very unsatisfactorily indeterminate." Again:[190]

Apparently, then, the particular judgment to which the internal meaning appeals for completion and determination only succeeds in increasing the fragmentary and indeterminate character.

This brings us to another "previous question." Just what are we to understand by this "fragmentary" and "indeterminate" character of the internal meaning? In what sense, with reference to what, is it incomplete and fragmentary? Later we shall be told that it is with reference to "its own final and completely individual expression." This is to be reached in the individual judgment. And if we ask what is meant by this final, complete, and individual expression—which, by the way, no human being can experience—we read, wondering all the while how it can be known, that it is simply "the expression that seeks no other," that "is satisfied," that "is conclusive of the search for perfection."[192] Waiving for the present questions concerning the basis of this satisfaction and perfection, all this leaves unanswered our query concerning the other end of the matter, viz., the meaning and criterion of the fragmentary and indeterminate character of these internal meanings.

If we here return to the first definition of internal meaning of the idea as a purpose in the sense of "a plan of action," such as "singing in tune," or getting the properties of a geometrical figure, it does not seem difficult to find a basis and meaning for this fragmentary and indeterminate character. First we may note in a general way that it is of the very essence of a plan or purpose to lead on to a fulfilling experience such as singing in tune, or reaching a mathematical equation. But here this fulfilling experience to which the plan points is not a mere working out of detail inside the plan itself, although, indeed, this does take place. If this were all the fulfilling experience meant, it is difficult to see how we should escape subjective idealism.[193] We start with a relatively indeterminate idea and end with a more determinate idea, though, indeed, there is yet no criterion for this increased determination. To be sure, the idea as a plan of action, as has already been stated, does undergo change and does become, if you please, more definite and complete as a plan; but this does not constitute its fulfilment. Its fulfilment surely is to be found in the immediate experiences of singing, etc., to which the idea points and leads.

The fragmentary and incomplete character of the internal meaning as a plan of action does not, then, after all, so much describe the plan itself as it does the general condition of experience out of which the idea arises. Experience takes on the form of a plan, of an idea, precisely because it has fallen apart, has become "fragmentary." It is just the business of the internal meaning, as Mr. Royce so well shows, to form a plan, an ideal, an hypothetical synthesis that shall stimulate an activity, which shall satisfactorily heal the breach. "Fragmentary" is a quality, then, that belongs, not to the idea in itself considered, but to the general condition of experience, of which the idea as a plan is an expression.

If, now, the fragmentary character of the internal meaning is determined simply with relation to the fulfilling experiences, such as singing in tune, adjustments of geometrical figures, etc., to which it points and leads, it seems as if the completion of the internal meaning must be defined in the same terms. And this would appear to open a pretty straight path to the redefinition of truth and error.

III. THE CRITERION OF TRUTH AND ERROR

At the outset, truth was defined as the "correspondence" or "agreement" of an idea with its object. But we have seen that correspondence or agreement with an object means the completion and determination of the idea itself, and since the idea is here a specific "plan of action," it would seem that the "true" idea would be the one that can complete itself by stimulating a satisfying activity. The false idea would be one that cannot complete itself in a satisfying activity, such as singing in tune, constructing a mathematical equation, etc., and just this solution is very clearly expounded by our author. In the case of mathematical inquiry,

So "when other facts of experience are sought," if I watch for stars or for a chemical precipitate, or for a turn in the stock market, or in the sickness of a friend, my ideas are true when they are satisfied with "the presented facts." Again,