 Essays and Experimental Logic by John Dewey. Chapter 2. The Relationship of Thought and its Subject Matter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. No one doubts the thought. At least reflective, as distinct from what is sometimes called constitutive thought, is derivative and secondary. It comes after something and out of something, and for the sake of something. No one doubts the thinking of everyday practical life and of sciences of this reflective type. We think about. We reflect over. We ask what is the final objective for the sake of which thought intervenes. If we ask in what sense we are to understand thought as a derived procedure, we are plunging ourselves into the very heart of the logical problem. The relation of thought to its empirical antecedents, and to its consequent, truth, and the relation of truth to reality. Yet from the naive point of view, no difficulty attaches to these questions. The antecedents of thought are our universe of life and love, of appreciation and struggle. We think about anything and everything, snow on the ground, the alternating clinks and thuds that rise from below. The relation of the Monroe Doctrine to the Embroglio in Venezuela. The relation of art to industry. The poetic quality of a painting by Botticelli. The Battle of Marathon. The economic interpretation of history. The proper definition of cause. The best method of reducing expenses. Whether and how to renew the ties of a broken friendship. The interpretation of an equation in hydrodynamics, etc. Through the madness of this miscellaneous citation, there appears so much of method. Anything. Event. Act. Value. Maybe an object of thought. Reflection busies itself alike with physical nature, the record of social achievement, and the endeavors of social aspiration. It is with reference to such affairs that thought is derivative. It is with reference to them that it intervenes or mediates. Taking some part of the universe of action, of affection, of social construction, under its special charge, and having busy to self therewith sufficiently to meet the special difficulty presented, thought releases that topic and enters into further more direct experience. Sticking for a moment to this naive standpoint, we recognize a certain rhythm of direct practice and drive theory, of primary construction and of secondary criticism, of living appreciation and abstract description, of active endeavor and of pale reflection. We find that every more direct primary attitude passes upon occasion into its secondary, deliberative and discursive counterpart. We find that when the latter has done its work, it passes away and passes on. From the naive standpoint, such rhythm is taken as a matter of course. There is no attempt either to state the nature of the occasion which demands the thinking attitude or to formulate a theory of the standard by which is judged its success. No general theory is propounded as to the exact relationship between thinking and what antecedes and succeeds it. Much less do we ask how empirical circumstances can generate rationality of thought, nor how it is possible for reflection to lay claim to power, of determining truth and thereby of constructing further reality. If we were to ask the thinking of naive life to present with a minimum of theoretical elaboration, its conception of its own practice, we should get an answer running not unlike this. Thinking is a kind of activity, which we perform at specific need, just as at other need we engage in other sorts of activity. As converse with a friend, draw a plan for a house, take a walk, eat a dinner, purchase a suit of clothes, etc. In general, its material is anything in the wide universe which seems to be relevant to this need. Anything which may serve as a resource in defining the difficulty or in suggesting modes of dealing effectively with it. The measure of its success, the standard of its validity, is precisely the degree in which the thinking actually disposes of the difficulty and allows us to proceed with more direct modes of experiencing that are forthwith possessed of more assured and deepened value. If we inquire why the naive attitude does not go on to elaborate these implications of its own practice into a systematic theory, the answer on its own basis is obvious. Thought arises in response to its own occasion, and this occasion is so exacting that there is time and there is need only to do the thinking which is needed in that occasion, not to reflect upon the thinking itself. Reflection follows so naturally upon its appropriate cue. Its issue is so obvious, so practical. The entire relationship is so organic that once grant the position that thought arises in reaction to specific demand, and there is not the particular type of thinking called logical theory because there is not the practical demand for reflection of that sort. Our attention is taken up with particular questions and specific answers. What we have to reckon with is not the problem of how can I think uberhopped, but how shall I think right here and now? Not what is the test of thought at large, but what validates and confirms this thought. In conformity with this view, it follows that a generic account of our thinking behavior, the generic account termed logical theory, arises at historic periods in which the situation has lost the organic character above described. The general theory of reflection as over against its concrete exercise appears when occasions for reflection are so overwhelming and so mutually conflicting that specific adequate response in thought is blocked. Again, it shows itself when practical affairs are so multifarious, complicated and remote from control that thinking is held off from successful passage into them. Anyhow, sticking to the naive standpoint, it is true that the stimulus to that particular form of reflective thinking termed logical theory is found when circumstances require the act of thinking and nevertheless impede clear and coherent thinking in detail, or when they occasion thought and then prevent the results of thinking from exercising directive influence upon the immediate concerns of life. Under these conditions, we get such questions as the following. What is the relation of rational thought to crude or unreflective experience? What is the relation of thought to reality? What is the barrier which prevents reason from complete penetration into the world of truth? What is it that makes us live alternately in that concrete world of experience in which thought as such finds not satisfaction, and in a world of ordered thought which is yet only abstract and ideal? It is not my intention here to pursue the line of historical inquiry just suggested. Indeed, the point would not be mentioned did it not serve to fix attention upon the nature of the logical problem? It is in dealing with this latter type of question that logical theory has taken a turn which separates it widely from the theoretical implications of practical deliberation and of scientific research. The two latter, however much they differ from each other in detail, agree in a fundamental principle. They both assume that every reflective problem in operation arises with reference to some specific situation and has to serve a specific purpose dependent upon its own occasion. They assume and observe distinct limits, limits from which and to which. There is the limit of origin in the needs of the particular situation which evokes reflection. There is the limit of terminus in successful dealing with the particular problem presented or in retiring baffled to take up some other question. The query that it once faces us regarding the nature of logical theory is whether reflection upon reflection shall recognize these limits. Endeavoring to formulate them more exactly and to define their relationship to each other more adequately or shall it abolish limits? Do away with the matter of specific conditions and specific aims of thought and discuss thought and its relation to empirical antecedents and rational consequence, truth at large. At first blush it might seem as if the very nature of logical theory is generalization of the reflective process must of necessity disregard the matter of particular conditions and particular results as irrelevant. How the implication runs could reflection become generalized save by elimination of details as irrelevant. Such conception in fixing the central problem of logic fixes once for all its future career and material. The essential business of logic is henceforth to discuss the relation of thought as such to reality as such. It may indeed involve much psychological material particularly in the discussion of the processes which antecede thinking and which call it out. It may involve much discussion of the concrete methods of investigation and verification employed in the various sciences. It may busily concern itself with the differentiation of various types and forms of thought different modes of conveying various confirmations of judgment various types of inferential reasoning but it concerns itself with any and all of these three fields not on their own account or his ultimate but a subsidiary to the main problem. The relation of thought as such or at large to reality as such or at large. Some of the detailed considerations referred to may throw light upon the terms under which thought transacts its business with reality. Upon say certain peculiar limitations it has to submit to as best it may. Other considerations throw light upon the ways in which thought gets at reality. Still other considerations throw light upon the forms which thought assumes in attacking and apprehending reality but in the end all this is incidental. In the end the one problem holds. How do the specifications of thought as such hold good of reality as such? In fine logic is supposed to grow out of the epistemological inquiry and to lead up to its solution. From this point of view various aspects of logical theory are well stated by an author whom later on we shall consider in some detail. Lotza refers to universal forms and principles of thought which hold good everywhere both in judging of reality and in weighing possibility irrespective of any difference in the objects. This defines the business of pure logic. This is clearly the question of thought as such of thought at large or in general. Then we have the question of how far the most complete structure of thought can claim to be an adequate account of that which we seem compelled to assume as the object and occasion of our ideas. This is clearly the question of the relation of thought at large to reality at large. It is epistemology. Then comes applied logic having to do with the actual employment of concrete forms of thought with reference to investigation of specific topics and subjects. This applied logic would if the standpoint of practical deliberation and of scientific research were adopted be the sole genuine logic. But the existence of thought in itself having been agreed upon we have in this applied logic only an incidental inquiry of how the particular resistances and oppositions which pure thought meets from particular matters may best be discounted. It is concerned with methods of investigation which obviate defects in the relationship of thought at large to reality at large as these present themselves under the limitations of human experience. It deals merely with hindrances and with devices for overcoming them. It is directed by considerations of utility. When we reflect that this field includes the entire procedure of practical deliberation and of concrete scientific research we begin to realize something of the significance of the theory of logic which regards the limitations of specific origination and specific outcome as irrelevant to its main problem which assumes an activity of thought pure or in itself that is irrespective of any difference in its object. This suggests by contrast the opposite mode of stating the problem of logical theory. Generalization of the nature of the reflective process certainly involves elimination of much of the specific material and contents of the thought situations of daily life and of critical science. Quite compatible with this however is the notion that it seizes upon certain specific conditions and factors and aims to bring them into clear consciousness not to abolish them while eliminating the particular material of particular practical and scientific pursuits. One, it may strive to hit upon the common denominator in the various situations which are antecedent or primary to thought and which evoke it. Two, it may attempt to show how typical features in the specific antecedents of thought call out diverse typical modes of thought reaction. Three, it may attempt to state the nature of the specific consequences in which thought fulfills its career. One, it does not eliminate dependence upon specific occasions as provocative of thought but endeavors to define what in the various occasions renders them thought-provoking. The specific occasion is not eliminated but insisted upon and brought into foreground. Consequently, empirical considerations are not subsidiary incidents but are of essential importance so far as they enable us to trace the generation of the thought situation. Two, from this point of view the various types and modes of conceiving, judging and inference are treated not as qualifications of thought per se or at large but a reflection engaged in a specific most economic effective response to its own particular occasion. They are adaptations for control of stimuli. The distinctions and classifications that have been accumulated in formal logic are relevant data but they demand interpretation from the standpoint of use as organs of adjustment to material antecedents and stimuli. Three, finally the question of validity or ultimate objective of thought is relevant but relevant as a matter of the specific issue of the specific career of a thought function. All the typical investigatory and verificatory procedures of the various sciences indicate the ways in which thought actually brings to successful fulfillment its dealing with various types of problems. While the epistemological type of logic may, as we have seen, leave under the name of applied logic a subsidiary place open for the instrumental type. The type which deals with thinking as a specific procedure relative to a specific antecedent occasion and to a subsequent specific fulfillment is not able to reciprocate the favor. From its point of view an attempt to discuss the antecedents data forms and objectives of thought apart from reference to particular position occupied and particular part played in the growth of experience is to reach results which are not so much either true or false as they are radically meaningless because they are considered apart from limits. Its results are not only abstractions for all theorizing ends and abstractions but abstractions without possible reference or bearing. From this point of view the taking of something whether that's something be a thinking activity its empirical stimulus or its objective goal apart from the limits of a historical or developing situation is the essence of metaphysical procedure in that sense of metaphysical which makes a gulf between it and science. As the reader will doubtless anticipate it is the object of this chapter to present the problem in industry of reflective thought from the standpoint of naive experience using the term in a sense wide enough to cover both practical procedure and concrete scientific research. I resume by saying that this point of view knows no fixed distinction between the empirical things and values of unreflective life and the most abstract process of rational thought. It knows no fixed gulf between the highest flight of theory and a control of the details of practical construction and behavior. It passes according to the occasion and opportunity of the moment from the attitude of loving and struggling and doing to that of thinking in the reverse. Its contents or material shift their values back and forth from technological or utilitarian to aesthetic ethical or affectational. It utilizes data of perception of meaning or of discursive ideation as need calls just as an inventor now utilizes heat now mechanical strain now electricity according to the demands set by his aim. Anything from past experience may be taken which appears to be an element in either the statement or the solution of the present problem. Thus we understand the coexistence without contradiction of an indeterminate possible field and a limited actual field. The undefined range of possible materials becomes specific through reference to an end. In all this there is no difference of kind between the methods of science and those of the plain man. The difference is the greater control by science of the statement of the problem and of the selection and use of relevant material both sensible and conceptual. The two are related to each other just as the hit or miss trial and error inventions of uncivilized man stand to the deliberate and consecutively persistent efforts of a modern inventor to produce a certain complicated device for doing a comprehensive piece of work. Neither the plain man nor the scientific inquirer is aware as he engages in his reflective activity of any transition from one sphere of existence to another. He knows no two fixed worlds reality on one side and mere subjective ideas on the other. He is aware of no gulf to cross. He assumes uninterrupted free and fluid passage from ordinary experience to abstract thinking from thought to fact from things to theories and back again. Observation passes into development of hypothesis deductive methods pass into use in description of the particular inference passes into action all with no sense of difficulty save those found in the particular task in question. The fundamental assumption is continuity. This does not mean that fact is confused with idea or observe datum with voluntary hypothesis theory with doing any more than a traveler confuses land and water when he journeys from one to the other. It simply means that each is placed and used with reference to service rendered the other and with reference to the future use of the other. Only the epistemological spectator of traditional controversies is aware of the fact that the everyday man and the scientific man in this free and easy intercourse are rashly assuming the right to glide over a cleft in the very structure of reality. This fact raises a query not favorable to the epistemologist. Why is it that the scientific man who is constantly applying his venturous traffic of exchange of facts for ideas of theories for laws of real things for hypotheses should be so wholly unaware of the radical and generic as distinct from specific difficulty of the undertakings in which he is engaged. We thus come afresh to our inquiry. Does not the epistemological logician unwittingly transfer the specific difficulty which always faces the scientific man the difficulty in detail of correct and adequate translation back and forth of this set of facts and this group of reflective consideration into a totally different problem of the wholesale relation of thought at large to reality in general. If such be the case it is clear that the very way in which the epistemological type of logic states the problem of thinking in relation both to empirical antecedents and to objective truth makes that problem insoluble. Working terms terms which as working are flexible and historic relative and methodological are transformed into absolute fixed and predetermined properties of being. We come a little closer to the problem when we recognize that every scientific inquiry passes historically through at least four stages. A, the first of these stages is if I may be allowed the bull that in which scientific inquiry does not take place at all because no problem or difficulty in the quality of the experience presents itself to provoke reflection. We have only to cast our eye back from the existing status of any science or back from the status of any particular topic in any science to discover a time when no reflective or critical thinking busied itself of the matter when the facts and relations were taken for granted and thus were lost and absorbed in the net meaning which accrued from the experience. B, after the dawning of the problem there comes a period of occupation with relatively crude and unorganized facts hunting for locating and collecting raw material. This is the empirical stage which no existing science however proud in its attained rationality can disavow as its own virginity. C, then there is also a speculative stage a period of guessing of making hypotheses of framing ideas which later on are labeled and condemned as only ideas. There is a period of distinction making and classification making which later on is regarded as only mentally gymnastic in character and no science however proud in its present security of experimental assurance can disavow a scholastic ancestor. D, finally there comes a period of fruitful interaction between the mere ideas and the mere facts. A period when observation is determined by experimental conditions depending upon the use of certain guiding conceptions. When reflection is directed and checked at every point by the use of experimental data and by the necessity of finding such a form for itself as will enable it to serve in a deduction leading to evolution of new meanings and ultimately to experimental inquiry which brings slight new facts. In the emerging of a more orderly insignificant region of fact and of a more coherent and self-illuminous system of meaning we have the natural limit of evolution of the logic of a given science. But consider what has happened in this historic record. Unanalyzed experience has broken up into distinctions of facts and ideas. The factual side has been developed by indefinite and almost miscellaneous descriptions and cumulative listings. The conceptual side has been developed by unchecked and speculative elaboration of definitions, classifications, etc. Then there has been a relegation of accepted meanings to the limbo of mere ideas. There has been a passage of some of the accepted facts into the region of mere hypothesis and opinion. Conversely there has been a continued issuing of ideas from the region of hypotheses and theories into that of facts, of accepted objective and meaningful objects. Out of a world of only seeming facts and of only doubtful ideas, there emerges a world continually growing in definiteness, order, and luminosity. This progress, verified in every record of science, is an absolute monstrosity from the standpoint of the epistemology which assumes a thought in general on one side and a reality in general on the other. The reason that it does not present itself as such a monster and miracle to those actually concerned with it is because continuity of reference and of use controls all diversities in the modes of existence specified and the types of significance assigned. The distinction of meaning and fact is treated in the growth of a science or of any particular scientific problem as an induced and intentional practical division of labor, as assignment of relative position with reference to performance of a task, as deliberate distribution of forces at command for their more economic use. The absorption of bald fact and hypothetical idea into the formation of a single world of scientific apprehension and comprehension is but the successful achieving of the aim on account of which the distinctions in question were instituted. Thus we come back to the problem of logical theory. To take the distinctions of thought and fact, etc., as ontological, as inherently fixed in the makeup of the structure of being, results in treating the actual technique of scientific inquiry and scientific control as a mere subsidiary topic, ultimately of only utilitarian worth. It also states the terms upon which thought and being transact business in a way so totally alien to concrete experience that it creates a problem which can only be discussed in terms of itself, not in terms of the conduct of life. As against this, the logic which aligns itself with the origin and employ of reflective thought in everyday life and critical science follows the natural history of thinking as a life process, having its own generating antecedents and stimuli, its own states and career, and its own specific objective or limit. This point of view makes it possible for logical theory to come to terms with psychology. When logic is considered as having to do with the wholesale activity of thought per se, the question of the historic process by which this or that particular thought came to be, of how its object happens to present itself as sensory or perceptual or conceptual, is quite irrelevant. These things are mere temporal accidents. The psychologist, not lifting his gaze from the realm of the changeable, may find in them matters of interest. His whole industry is just with natural history, to trace events as they mutually excite and inhibit one another. But the logician we are told has a deeper problem and an outlook of more unbounded horizon. He deals with the question of the eternal nature of thought and its eternal validity in relation to an eternal reality. He is concerned not with genesis, but with value, not with historic cycle, but with absolute entities and relations. Still the query haunts us, is this so in truth, or has the logician of a certain type arbitrarily made it so by taking his terms apart from reference to the specific occasions in which they arise and situations in which they function. If the latter, then the very denial of historical relationship, the denial of the significance of historical method, is indicative of the unreal character of his own abstraction. It means in effect that the affairs under consideration have been isolated from the conditions in which alone they have determinable meaning and assignable worth. It is astonishing that in the face of the advance of the evolutionary method in natural science, any logician can persist in the assertion of a rigid difference between the problem of origin and of nature, between genesis and analysis, between history and validity. Such assertion simply reiterates his final distinction which grew up and had meaning in pre-evolutionary science. It asserts against the most marked advance which scientific method has yet made, a survival of a crude period of logical scientific procedure. We have no choice save either to conceive of thinking as a response to a specific stimulus or else to regard it as something in itself having just in and of itself certain traits, elements and laws. If we give up the last few, we must take the former. In this case, it will still possess distinctive traits but they will be traits of a specific response to a specific stimulus. The significance of the evolutionary method in biology and social history is that every distinct organ, structure or formation, every grouping of cells or elements is to be treated as an instrument of adjustment or adaptation to a particular environing situation. Its meaning, its character, its force is known when and only when it is considered as an arrangement from meeting the conditions involved in some specific situation. This analysis is carried out by tracing successive stages of development by endeavoring to locate the particular situation in which each structure has its origin and by tracing the successive modifications through which in response to changing media it has reached its present confirmation. To persist in condemning natural history from the standpoint of what natural history meant before it identified itself with an evolutionary process is not so much to exclude the natural history standpoint from philosophical consideration as it is to events ignorance of what it signifies. Psychology as the natural history of the various attitudes and structures through which experiencing passes as an account of the conditions under which this or that attitude emerges and of the way in which it influences by stimulation or inhibition production of other states or confirmations of reflection is indispensable to logical evaluation the moment we treat logical theory as an account of thinking as a response to its own generating conditions and consequently judges validity by reference to its efficiency in meeting its problems. The historical point of view describes the sequence the normative follows the history to its conclusion and then turns back and judges each historical step by viewing it in reference to its own outcome. In the course of changing experience we keep our balance in moving from situations of an affectionate quality to those which are practical or appreciative or reflective because we bear constantly in mind the context in which any particular distinction presents itself. As we submit each characteristic function and situation of experience to our gaze we find it has a dual aspect wherever there is striving there are obstacles wherever there is affection there are persons who are attached wherever there is doing there is accomplishment wherever there is appreciation there is value wherever there is thinking there is material in question we keep our footing as we move from one attitude to another from one characteristic quality to another because of the position occupied in the whole movement by the particular function in which we are engaged the distinction between each attitude and function and its predecessor and successor is serial dynamic operative the distinctions within any given operation or function are structural contemporaneous and distributive thinking follows we will say striving and doing follows thinking each in the fulfillment of its own function inevitably calls out its successor but coincidence simultaneous and correspondent within doing is the distinction of doer and of deed within the function of thought of thinking a material upon thought within the function of striving of obstacle and aim of means and end we keep our paths straight because we do not confuse the sequential and functional relationship of types of experience with the contemporaneous and structural distinctions of elements within a given function in the seeming maze of endless confusion and unlimited shiftings we find our way by the means of the stimulations and checks occurring within the process in which we are actually engaged operating within empirical situations we do not contrast or confuse a condition which is an element of the formation of one operation with the status which is one of the distributive terms of another function when we ignore the specific empirical clues and limitations we have at once an insoluble because meaningless problem upon our hands now the epistemological logician deliberately shuts himself off from those cues and checks upon which the plain man instinctively relies and which the scientific man deliberately searches for and adopts as constituting his technique consequently he is likely to set the attitude which has place and significance only in one of the serial functional situations of experience over against the active attitude which describes part of the structural constitution of another situation or with equal lack of justification to assimilate materials characteristic of different stages to one another he sets the agent as he is found in the intimacy of love or appreciation over against the externality of the fact as that is defined within the reflective process he takes the material which thoughts selects as its problematic data as identical with the significant content which results from successful pursuit of inquiry and this in turn he regards as the material which was presented before thinking began whose peculiarities were the means of awakening thought he identifies the final deposit of the thought function with its own generating antecedent and then disposes of the resulting served by reference to some metaphysical consideration which remains when logical inquiry when science as interpreted by him has done its work he does this not because he prefers confusion to order or error to truth but simply because when the chain of historic sequences cut the vessel of thought is afloat to veer upon a sea without soundings or moorings there are but two alternatives either there is an object in itself of mind in itself or else there are a series of situations where elements vary with the varying functions to which they belong if the latter the only way in which the characteristic terms of situations can be defined is by discriminating the functions to which they belong and the epistemological logician in choosing to take this question is one of thought which has its own form just as thought apart from the limits of the special work it has to do has deprived himself of these supports and stays the problem of logic has a more general and a more specific phase in its generic form it deals with this question how does one type of functional situation and attitude and experience pass out of and into another for example the technological or utilitarian into the aesthetic the aesthetic into the religious the religious into the scientific and this into the socio-ethical and so on the more specific question is how does the particular functional situation term the reflective behave how shall we describe it what in detail are its diverse contemporaneous distinctions or divisions of labor in correspondence statuses in what specific ways do these operate with reference to each other so as to affect the specific aim which is proposed by the needs of the affair this chapter may be brought to conclusion by reference to the more ultimate value of the logic of experience of logic taken in its wider sense that is as an account of the sequence of the various typical functions or situations of experience and their determining relations to one another philosophy defined as such a logic makes no pretense to be an account of a closed and finished universe its business is not to secure or guarantee any particular reality or value per contra it gets the significance of a method the right relationship and adjustment of the various typical phases of experience to one another is a problem felt in every department of life intellectual rectification and control of these adjustments cannot fail to reflect itself in an added clearness and security on the practical side it may be that general logic cannot become an instrument in the immediate direction of the activities of science or art or industry but it is of value in criticizing and organizing tools of immediate research it also has direct significance in the valuation for social or life purposes of results achieved in particular branches much of the immediate business of life is badly done because we do not know the genesis and outcome of the work that occupies us the manner and degree of appropriation of the goods achieved in various departments of social interest and vocation are partial and faulty because we are not clear as to the due rights and responsibilities of one function of experience in reference to others the value of research for social progress the bearing of psychology upon educational procedure the mutual relation of fine and industrial art the question of the extent and nature of specialization in science in comparison with the claims of applied science the adjustment of religious aspirations to scientific statements the justification of a refined culture for a few in face of economic insufficiency for the mass the relation of organization to individuality such are a few of the many social questions whose answer depends upon the possession and use of a general logic of experience as a method of inquiry and interpretation I do not say the headway cannot be made in such questions apart from the method indicated a logic of experience but unless we have a critical and assured view of the juncture in which and with reference to which a given attitude or interest arises unless we know the service it is thereby called upon to perform and hence the organs or methods by which it best functions in that service our progress is impeded and irregular we take apart for a whole a means for an end or we attack wholesale some interest because it interferes with the deified sway of one we have selected as ultimate a clear and comprehensive consensus of social conviction and a consequent concentrated and economic direction of effort are assured only as there is some way of locating the position and role of each typical interest and occupation the domain of opinion is one of conflict its rule is arbitrary and costly only intellectual method affords a substitute for opinion a general logic of experience alone can do for social qualities and aims what the natural sciences after centuries of struggle are doing for activity in the physical realm this does not mean that systems of philosophy which have attempted to state the nature of thought and of reality at large apart from limits of particular situations in the movement of experience have been worthless though it does mean that their industry has been somewhat misapplied the unfolding of metaphysical theory has made large contributions to positive evaluations of the typical situations and relationships of experience even when its conscious intention has been quite otherwise every system of philosophy is itself a mode of reflection consequently if our main contention be true it too has been evoked out of specific social antecedents and has had its use as a response to them it has affected something in modifying the situation within which it found its origin it may not have solved the problem which it consciously put itself in many cases we may freely admit that the question put has been found afterward to be so wrongly put as to be insoluble yet exactly the same thing is true in precisely the same sense in the history of science for this reason if for no other it is impossible for the scientific man to cast the first stone at the philosopher the progress of science in any branch continually brings with it a realization that problems in their previous form of statement are insoluble because put in terms of unreal conditions because the real conditions have been mixed up with mental artifacts or misconceptions every science is continually learning that its opposed solutions are only apparent because the solution solves not the actual problem but one which has been made up but the very putting of the question the very giving of the wrong answer induces modification of existing intellectual habits standpoints and aims wrestling with the problem there is evolution of new technique to control inquiry there is search for new facts institution of new types of experimentation there is gain in the methodic control of experience and all this is progress it is only the worn out cynic the devitalized sensualist and the fanatical dogmatist who interpret the continuous change of science as proving that since each successive statement is wrong the whole record is error and folly and that the present truth is only the error not yet found out such draw the moral of caring not for all these things or a flying to some external authority which will deliver once for all the fixed and unchangeable truth but historic philosophy even in its aberrant forms has proved a factor in the valuation of experience it has brought problems to light it has provoked intellectual conflicts without which values are only nominal even through its would be absolutistic isolations it has secured recognition of mutual dependencies and reciprocal reinforcements yet if it can define its work more clearly it can concentrate its energy upon its own characteristic problem the genesis and functioning and experience of various typical interests and occupations with reference to one another end of chapter two chapter three the antecedents and stimuli of thinking this LibriVox recording is in the public domain we've discriminated logic in its wider sense concerned with the sequence of characteristic functions and attitudes and experience from logic in its stricter meaning concerned with the function of reflective thought we must avoid yielding to the temptation to identify logic with either of these to the exception of the other or to suppose that it is possible to isolate one finally from the other the more detailed treatment of the organs and methods of reflection cannot be carried on with security save as we have a correct idea of the position of reflection amid the typical functions of experience yet it is impossible to determine this larger placing save as we have a defined and analytic as distinct from a merely vague and gross view of what we mean by reflection what is its actual constitution it is necessary to work back and forth between the larger and the narrower fields transforming every increment on one side into a method of work upon the other and thereby testing it the evident confusion of existing logical theory its uncertainty as to its own bounds and limits its tendency to oscillate from larger questions of the meaning of judgment and the validity of inference over to details of scientific technique and to translate distinctions of formal logic into acts in an investigatory or verificatory process or indications of the need of this double movement in the next three chapters is proposed to take up some of the considerations that lie in the borderland between the larger and the narrower conceptions of logical theory I shall discuss the locus of the function of thought and experience so far as such locus enables us to characterize some of the most fundamental distinctions or distinctions of labor within the reflective process in taking up the problem of the subject matter of thought I shall try to make clear that it assumes three quite distinct forms according to the apocal moment reached in control of experience I shall attempt to show that we must consider subject matter from the standpoint first of the antecedents or conditions that evoke thought secondly of the datum or immediate material presented to thought and thirdly of the proper objective of thought of these three distinctions the first that of antecedents and stimuli clearly refers to the situation that is immediately prior to the thought function as such the second that of datum or immediately given matter refers to a distinction which is made within the thought process as a part of and for the sake of its own modus operandi it is a status in the scheme of thinking the third that of content or object refers to the progress made in any thought function material which is organized by inquiry so far as inquiry has fulfilled its purpose this chapter will get at the matter of preliminary conditions of thought indirectly rather than directly by indicating the contradictory positions into which one of the most vigorous and acute of modern logicians lotsa has been forced through failing to define logical distinctions in terms of the history of readjustment and control of things and experience and being thereby compelled to interpret certain notions as absolute instead of as historic and methodological before passing directly to the exposition and criticism of lotsa it will be well however to take the matter in a somewhat freer way we cannot approach logical inquiry in a wholly direct and uncompromised manner of necessity we bring to a certain distinctions distinctions partly the outcome of concrete experience partly due to the logical theory which has got embodied in ordinary language and in current intellectual habits partly because of deliberate scientific and philosophical inquiry these more or less ready-made results are resources they are the only weapons with which we can attack the new problem yet they are full of unexamined assumptions they commit us to all sorts of logically predetermined conclusions in one sense our study of the new subject matter let us say logical theory is in truth only a review a retesting and criticizing of the intellectual standpoints and methods which we bring with us to the study nowadays everyone comes with certain distinctions already made between this objective and the objective between the physical and the mental between the intellectual and the factual one we have learned to regard the region of emotional disturbance of uncertainty and aspiration as belonging peculiarly to ourselves we have learned to set over against this the world of observation and a valid thought is something unaffected by our moods hopes fears and opinions 2. we have also come to distinguish between what is immediately present in our experience and the past and the future we contrast the realms of memory and anticipation with that of sense perception more generally we contrast the given with the inferential 3. we are confirmed in a habit of distinguishing between what we call actual fact and our mental attitude toward that fact the attitude of surmise or wonder or reflective investigation while one of the aims of logical theory is precisely to make us critically conscious of the significance and bearing of these various distinctions to change them from ready-made assumptions into controlled conceptions our mental habits are so set that they tend to have their own way with us we read into logical theory conceptions that were formed before we had even dreamed of the logical undertaking which after all has for its business to assign to the terms and question their proper meaning our conclusions are thus controlled by the very notions which need criticism and revision we find in Lotza an unusually explicit inventory of these various preliminary distinctions and an unusually serious effort to deal with the problems which arise from introducing them into the structure of logical theory 1. he expressly separates the matter of logical worth from that of psychological genesis he consequently abstracts the subject matter of logic as such wholly from the question of historic locus and citus 2. he agrees with common sense in holding that logical thought is reflective and thus presupposes a given material he occupies himself with the nature of the antecedent conditions 3. he wrestles with the problem of how a material formed prior to thought and irrespective of it can yet afford stuff upon which thought may exercise itself 4. he expressly raises the question of how thought working independently and from without upon a foreign material can shape the latter into results which are valid that is objective if this discussion is successful if Lotza can provide the intermediaries which span the gulf between the exercise of logical functions by thought upon a material wholly external to it if he can show that the question of the origin of subject matter of thought and if thought activity is irrelevant to the question of its meaning and validity we shall have to surrender the position already taken but if we find that Lotza's elaborations only elaborate the fundamental difficulty presenting it now in this light and now in that but always presenting the position as if it were its own solution we shall be confirmed in our idea of the need of considering logical questions from a different point of view if we find that whatever his formal treatment he always as a matter of fact falls back upon some organized situation or function as the source of both the material and the process of inquiry we shall have in so far an elucidation and even a corroboration of our theory we begin with the question of the material antecedents of thought antecedents which condition reflection and which call it out as reaction or response by giving it its cue Lotza differs from many logicians of the same type in furnishing an explicit account of these antecedents 1. The ultimate material antecedents of thought are found in impressions which are due to external objects of stimuli taken in themselves these impressions are mere psychical states or events they exist in us side by side or one after the other according as the objects which excite them operate simultaneously or successively the occurrence of these various psychical states is not however entirely dependent upon the presence of the exciting thing after a state has once been excited it gets the power of reawakening other states which have accompanied it or followed it the associative mechanism of revival plays a part if we had a complete knowledge of both the stimulating object and its effects and of the details of the associative mechanism we should be able from given data to predict the whole course of any given train or current of ideas for the impressions as can join simultaneously or successively become ideas and a current of ideas taken in itself a sensation or impression is nothing but a state of our consciousness a mood of ourselves any given current of ideas is a necessary sequence of existences just as necessary as any succession of material events happening in some particular sensitive soul or organism just because under their respective conditions every such series of ideas hangs together by the same necessity and law as every other there would be no ground for making any such distinction of value as that between truth and untruth thus placing one group in opposition to all the others 2. Thus far as the last quotation clearly indicates there is no question of reflective thought and hence no question of logical theory but further examination reveals a peculiar property of the current of ideas some ideas are merely coincident while others may be termed coherent that is to say the exciting causes of some of our simultaneous and successive ideas really belong together while in other cases they simply happen to act at the same time without there being a real connection between them by the associative mechanism however both the coherent and the merely coincident combinations recur the first type of recurrence supplies positive material for knowledge the second gives occasion for error 3. It is a peculiar mixture of the coincident and the coherent which sets the peculiar problem of reflective thought the business of thought is to recover and confirm the coherent the really connected adding to its reinstatement an accessory justifying notion of the real ground of coherence while it eliminates the coincident as such while the mere current of ideas is something which just happens within us the process of elimination and of confirmation by means of statement of real ground and basis of connection is an activity which mined as such exercises this distinction marks off thought as activity from any psychical event and from the associative mechanism as mere happenings one is concerned with mere de facto coexistences and sequences the other with a cognitive worth of these combinations considerations of the peculiar work of thought in going over sorting out and determining various ideas according to a standard of value will occupy us in our next chapter here we are concerned with the material antecedents of thought as they are described by lotsa at first glance he seems to propound a satisfactory theory he avoids the extravagancies of transcendental logic which assumes that all the matter of experience is determined from the very start by rational thought and he also avoids the pitfall of purely empirical logic which makes no distinction between the mere occurrence and association of ideas and the real worth and validity of the various conjunctions thus produced he allows unreflective experience defined in terms of sensations and their combinations to provide material conditions for thinking while he reserves for thought a distinctive work and dignity of its own since experience furnishes the antecedents thought has to introduce and develop systematic connection rationality a further analysis of lotsa's treatment may however lead us to believe that his statement is riddled through and through with inconsistencies and self-contradictions that indeed any one part of it can be maintained only by the denial of some other portion one the impression is the ultimate antecedent in its purest and crudest form according to the angle from which one views it it is that which has never felt for good or for bad the influence of thought combined into ideas these impressions stimulate or arouse the activities of thought which are forthwith directed upon them as the recipient of the activity which they have excited and brought to bear upon themselves they furnish also the material content of thought its actual stuff as lotsa says over and over again it is the relations themselves already subsisting between impressions when we become conscious of them by which the action of thought which is never anything but reaction is attracted and this action consists merely in interpreting relations which we find existing between our passive impressions into aspects of the matter of impressions and again thought can make no difference where it finds none already in the matter of impressions and again the possibility and the success of thoughts procedure depend upon this original constitution and organization of the whole world of ideas a constitution which though not necessary in thought is all the more necessary to make thinking possible the impressions and ideas thus play a versatile role they now assume the part of ultimate antecedents and provocative conditions of crude material and somehow when arranged of content for thought this very versatility awakens suspicion while the impression is merely subjective and a bare state of our own consciousness yet it is determined both as to its existence and as to its relation to other similar existences by external objects as stimuli if not as causes it is also determined by a psychical mechanism so thoroughly objective or regular in its workings as to give the same necessary character to the current of ideas that is possessed by any physical sequence thus that which is nothing but a state of our consciousness turns out straight away to be a specifically determined objective fact in a system of facts that this absolute transformation is a contradiction is no clearer than that just such a contradiction is indispensable to lotsa if impressions were nothing but states of consciousness moods of ourselves bear psychical existences it is sure enough that we should never even know them to be such to say nothing of conserving them as adequate conditions and material for thought it is only by treating them as real facts in a real world and only by carrying over into them in some assumed and unexplained way the capacity of representing the cosmic facts which cause them that impressions or ideas come in any sense within the scope of thought but if the antecedents are really impressions in their objective setting then lotsa's whole way of distinguishing thought worth from mere existence or event without objective significance must be radically modified the implication that impressions have actually a quality or meaning of their own becomes explicit when we refer to lotsa's theory that the immediate antecedent of thought is found in the matter of ideas when thought is said to take cognizance of relations which its own capacity does not originate but which have been prepared for it by the unconscious mechanism of the psychic states the attribution of objective content of reference and meaning to ideas is unambiguous the idea forms the most convenient halfway house for lotsa on one hand as absolutely prior to thought as material antecedent conditions it is merely psychical bald subjective event but as subject matter for thought as antecedent which affords stuff for thoughts exercise it characteristically qualifies content although we have been told that the impression is a mere receptive irritation without participation of mental activity we are not surprised in view of this capacity of ideas to learn that the mind actually has a determining share in both the reception of stimuli and in their further associative combinations the subject always enters into the presentation of any mental object even the sensational to say nothing of the perceptional and the imagined the perception of a given state of things is possible only on the assumption that the perceiving subject is at once enabled and compelled by its own nature to combine the excitations which reach it from objects into those forms which it is to perceive in the objects and which it supposes itself simply to receive from them it is only by continual transition from impressions and ideas as middle states and events to ideas as logical objects or contents that lotsa bridges the gulf from bare exciting antecedent to concrete material conditions of thought this contradiction again is necessary to lotsa standpoint to set out frankly with objects as antecedents would demand reconsideration of the whole viewpoint which supposes that the difference between the logical and its antecedent is a matter of the difference between worth and mere existence or occurrence it would indicate that since meaning or value was already there the task of thought must be that of the transformation or reconstruction of meaning through an intermediary process on the other hand to stick by the standpoint of mere existence is not to get anything which can be called even antecedent of thought two why is there a task of transformation consideration of the material and its function of evoking thought giving its cue will serve to complete the picture of the contradiction and of the real facts it is the conflict between ideas as merely coincident and ideas as coherent which constitutes the need that provokes the response of thought here lotsa vibrates a between considering both coincidence and coherence as psychical events b considering coincidence is purely psychical and coherence as at least quasi logical and c making them both determinations within the sphere of reflective thought in strict accordance with its own premises coincidence and coherence ought both to be mere peculiarities of the current of ideas as events within ourselves but so taken the distinction becomes absolutely meaningless events do not cohere at the most certain sets of them happen more or less frequently than other sets the only intelligible difference is one of frequency of coincidence and even this attributes to an event the supernatural trait of reappearing after it is disappeared even coincidence has to be defined in terms of the relation of the objects which are supposed to excite the psychical events that happen together as recent psychological discussion has made clear enough it is the matter meaning or content of ideas that is associated not the ideas as states or existences take such an idea sun revolving about earth we may say it means the conjunction of various sense impressions but it is connection or mutual reference of attributes that we have in mind in the assertion it is absolutely certain that our psychical image of the sun is not psychically engaged in revolving around our psychical image of the earth it would be amusing if such were the case theaters and all dramatic representations would be at a discount but in truth sun revolving about earth is a single meaning or intellectual object it is unified subject matter within which certain distinctions of reference appear it is concerned with what we intend when we think earth and sun and think them in their relation to each other it is a rule specification or direction of how to think when we have occasion to think a certain subject matter to treat this mutual references if it were simply a case of conjunction of mental events produced by psychophysical irritation and association is a profound case of the psychological fallacy we may indeed analyze an experience involving belief in an object of a certain kind and find that it has its origin in certain conditions of the sensitive organism in certain peculiarities of perception and of association and hence conclude that the belief involved in it was not justified by the facts themselves but the significance of the belief and sun revolving about earth by those who held it consisted precisely in the fact that it was taken not as a mere association of feelings but as a definitive portion of the whole structure of objective experience guaranteed by other parts of the fabric and lending its support and giving its tone to them it was to them part of the experienced frame of things of the real world put the other way if such an instance meant a mere conjunction of psychical states there would be in it absolutely nothing to evoke thought each idea as event as lots of himself points out may be regarded as adequately and necessarily determined to the place it occupies there is absolutely no question on the side of events of mere coincidence versus genuine connection as event it is there and it belongs there we cannot treat something as at once a bare fact of existence and a problematic subject matter of logical inquiry to take the reflective point of view is to consider the matter in a totally new light as lots of says it is to raise the question of rightful claim to a positional relation the point becomes clearer when we contrast coincidence with connection to consider coincidence is simply psychical and coherence as at least quasi logical is to put the two on such different bases that no question of contrasting them can arise the coincidence which proceeds a valid or grounded coherence the conjunction which as coexistence of objects in sequence of acts is perfectly adequate never is as antecedent the coincident which is set over against coherence the side by side in this of books on my bookshelf the succession of noises that rise through my window do not trouble me logically they do not appear as errors or even as problems one coexistence is just as good as any other until some new point of view or new end presents itself if it is a question of the convenience of arrangement of books then the value of their present co-location becomes a problem then I contrast their present state as bare conjunction over against another scheme as one which is coherent if I regard the sequence of noises as a case of articulate speech their order becomes important it is a problem to be determined the inquiry whether a given combination presents a parent or real connections shows that reflective inquiry is already going on does this phase of the moon really mean rain or does it just happen that the rainstorm comes when the moon has reached this phase to ask such question shows that a certain portion of the universe of objective experience is subjected to critical analysis for purpose of definitive restatement the tendency to regard some combination is mere coincidence is absolutely a part of the movement of mind in its search for the real connection if coexistence as such is to be said against coherence as such as the non logical against the logical then since our whole spatial universe is one of co-location and since thought in this universe can never get farther than substituting one co-location for another the whole realm of space experience is condemned offhand and then perpetuity to anti-rationality but in truth coincidence is over against coherence conjunction as over against connection is just suspected coherence one which is under the fire of active inquiry the distinction is one which arises only within the logical reflective function three this brings us explicitly to the fact that there is neither coincidence nor coherence in terms of the elements or meanings contained in any couple or pair of ideas taken by itself it is only when they are co-factors in a situation or function which includes more than either the coincident or the coherent and more than the arithmetical sum of the two that thoughts activity can be evoked lotsa is continually in this dilemma thought either shapes its own material or else just accepts it in the first case since lotsa cannot rid himself of the presumption that thought must have a fixed ready-made antecedent its activity can only alter this stuff and thus lead the mind farther away from reality but if thought just accepts its material how can there be any distinctive aim or activity of thought at all as we have seen lotsa endeavors to escape this dilemma by supposing that while thought receives its material yet checks it up it eliminates certain portions of it and reinstates others plus the stamp and seal of its own validity lotsa objects most strenuously to the Kantian notion that thought awaits its subject matter with certain ready-made modes of apprehension this notion would raise the insoluble question of how thought contrives to bring the matter of each impression under the particular form which is appropriate to it but he has not avoided the difficulty how does thought know which of the combinations are merely coincident and which are merely coherent how does it know which to eliminate as irrelevant and which to confirm is grounded either this evaluation is an imposition of its own or else gets its cue and clue from the subject matter now if the coincident and coherent taken in and of themselves are competent to give this direction they are already labeled the further work of thought is one of super-arrogation it has it most barely to note and seal the material combinations that are already there such a view clearly renders thoughts work as unnecessary in form as it is futile in force but there is no alternative except to recognize that an entire situation or environment within which exist both that which is afterward found to be mere coincident and that found to be real connection actually provokes thought it is only as an experience previously accepted comes up in its wholeness against another one equally integral and only as some larger experience dawns which requires each as a part of itself and yet within which the required factors show themselves mutually incompatible that thought arises it is not bare coincidence or bare connection or bare addition of one to the other that excites thought the stimulus is a situation which is organized or constituted as a whole and yet which is falling to pieces in its parts a situation which is within conflict within itself that arouses the search to find what really goes together and a correspondent effort to shut out what only seemingly goes together and real coherence means precisely capacity to exist within the comprehending whole to read back into the preliminary situation those distinctions of mere conjunction of material and a valid coherence which get existence to say nothing of fixation only within the process of inquiry is a fallacy we must not leave this phase of the discussion however until it is quite clear that our objection is not to lots of position that reflective thought arises from an antecedent which is not reflectional in character nor yet to his idea that this antecedent has a certain structure and content of its own setting the peculiar problem of thought giving the cue to its specific activities and determining its object on the contrary is this latter point upon which we would insist so as by insisting to point out negatively that this view is absolutely inconsistent with lots of theory that psychical impressions and ideas are the true antecedents of thought and positively to show that it is the situation as a whole and not any one isolated part of it or distinction within it that calls forth and directs thinking we must beware the fallacy of assuming that some one element in its prior situation in isolation or detachment induces the reflection which in reality comes forth only from the whole disturbed situation on the negative side characterizations of impressions and ideas are distinctions which arise only within reflection upon that situation which is the genuine antecedent of thought positively it is the whole dynamic experience with its qualitative and pervasive continuity and its interactive distraction its elements at odds with each other intention against each other each contending for its proper placing in relationship which generates the thought situation from this point of view at this period of development the distinctions of objective and subjective have a characteristic meaning the antecedent to repeat is a situation in which the various factors are actively incompatible with each other and yet in and through the striving tend to a reformation of the whole and to a restatement of the parts this situation as such is clearly objective it is there it is there as a whole the various parts are there and their active incompatibility with one another is there nothing is conveyed at this point by asserting that any particular part of the situation is a loser or subjective or mere appearance or that any other is truly real the experience exists as one of vital and active confusion and conflict among its elements the conflict is not only objective in a de facto sense that is really existent but is objective in a logical sense as well it is just this conflict which affects a transition into the thought situation this in turn being only a constant movement toward a defined equilibrium the conflict has objective worth because it is the antecedent condition and cue of thought deny an organization of things within which competing incompatible tendencies appear and thinking becomes merely mental every reflective attitude and function whether of naive life deliberate invention or controlled scientific research has arisen through the medium of some such total objective situation the abstract logician may tell us that sensations or impressions or associated ideas or bare physical things or conventional symbols are antecedent conditions which such statements cannot be verified by reference to a single instance of thought in connection with actual practice or actual scientific research of course by extreme mediation symbols may become conditions of evoking thought they get to be objects in an active experience but they are stimuli to thinking only in case their manipulation to form a new whole occasions resistance and thus reciprocal tension symbols and their definitions developed to a point where dealing with them becomes itself an experience having its own identity just as the handling of commercial commodities or arrangement of parts of an invention is a specific experience there is always as antecedent to thought an experience of subject matter of the physical or social world of the previously organized intellectual world whose parts are actively at war with each other so much so that they threaten to disrupt the situation which accordingly for its own maintenance requires deliberate redefinition and re-relation of its tensional parts this redefining and re-relating is the constructive thought termed thinking the reconstructive situation with its parts intention and in such movement towards each other as tends to a unified arrangement of things is the thought situation this would once suggest the subjective phase the situation the experience as such is objective there is an experience of the confused and conflicting tendencies but just what in particular is objective just what form the situation shall take as an organized harmonious whole is unknown that is the problem it is the uncertainty as to the what of the experience together with the certainty that there is such an experience that evokes the thought function viewed from this standpoint of uncertainty the situation as a whole is subjective no particular content or reference could be asserted off hand definite assertion is expressly reserved it is to be the outcome of the procedure of reflective inquiry now undertaken this holding up of contents from deliberately assertive position this viewing them as candidates for reform is what we mean at the stage of the natural history of thought by the subjective we have followed lotsa through this torturous course of inconsistencies it is better perhaps to run the risk of vain repetition than that of leaving the impression that these are mere dialectical contradictions it is an idle task to expose contradictions unless we realize them in relation to the fundamental assumption which breeds them lotsa is bound to differentiate thought from its antecedents he is intent upon doing this however through a preconception that marks off the thought situation radically from its predecessor through a difference that is complete fixed in absolute or at large there is a total contrast of thought as such to something else as such that he requires not a contrast with an experience of one temporal phase of a process one period of a rhythm from others this complete and rigid difference lotsa finds in the difference between an experience which is mere existence or occurrence and one which has to do with worth truth right relationship now things have connection organization value or force practical and aesthetic meaning on their own account the same is true of deeds affections etc only states of feelings bare impressions etc seem to fulfill the prerequisite of being given as existence and yet without qualification as to worth etc then the current of ideas offers itself a ready made stream of events of existences which can be characterized as wholly innocent of reflective determination and as the natural predecessor of thought but this stream of existences is no sooner regarded than its total incapacity as material condition and cue of thought appears it is about as relevant to thinking as our changes that may be happening on the other side of the moon so one by one the whole series of determinations of force and worth already traced are introduced into the very makeup the inner structure of what was to be mere existence this one things of whose spatial and temporal relations the mere impressions are somehow representative two meanings the idea is a significant possessed of quality and not a mere event three distinguished traits of coincidence and coherence within the stream all these features are explicitly asserted as we have seen underlying and running through them all is the recognition of the supreme value of a situation which has been organized as a whole yet is now conflicting in its inner constitution these contradictions all arise in the attempt to put thoughts work as concerned with objective validity over against experience is a mere antecedent happening or occurrence this contrast arises because of the attempt to consider thought as an independent somewhat in general which nevertheless in our experience is dependent upon a raw material of mere impressions given to it hence the sole radical avoidance of the contradictions can be secured only when thinking is seen to be a specific event in the movement of experience things having its own specific occasion or demand and its own specific place the nature of the organization and force that the antecedent conditions of the thought process possess is too large a question here to enter upon in detail lotsa himself suggests the answer he speaks of the current of ideas just as a current supplying us with the mass of well grounded information which regulates daily life it gives rise to useful combinations correct expectations seasonable reactions he speaks of it indeed as if it were just the ordinary world of naive experience the so-called empirical world as distinct from the world is critically revised and rationalized and scientific and philosophic inquiry the contradiction between the interpretation and that of a mere stream of psychical impressions is only another instance of the difficulty already discussed but the phraseology suggests the real state of things the unreflective world is a world of practical things of ends and means of their effective adaptations of control and regulation of conduct and view of results the world of uncritical experience also is a world of social aims and means involving in every term the goods and objects of affection and attachment of competition and cooperation it has incorporated also in its own being the surprise of aesthetic values the sudden joy of light the gracious wonder of tone and form i do not mean that this holds in gross of the unreflective world of experience over against the critical thought situation such a contrast implies the very wholesale at large consideration of thought which i am striving to avoid doubtless many and many an act of thought has intervened in affecting the organization of our commonest practical affectional aesthetic environment i only mean to indicate that thought does take place in such a world not after a world of bare existences that while the more systematic reflection we call organized science may in some fair sense be said to come after it comes after affectional artistic and technological interests which have found realization having entered so far upon a suggestion which cannot be followed out i venture one other digression the notion that value or significance as distinct from mere existentiality is the product of thought or reason and that the source of lots of contradictions lies in the effort to find any situation prior or antecedent to thought is a familiar one it is even possible that my criticisms of lots have been interpreted by some readers in this sense this is the position frequently called neo hegelianism though i think with questionable accuracy and has been developed by many writers and criticizing cunt this position and that taken in this chapter do indeed agree in certain general regards they are at one in denial of the factuality and the possibility of developing fruitful reflection out of antecedent bare existence or mere events they unite in denying that there is or can be any such thing as mere existence phenomenon unqualified as respects organization and force whether such phenomenon be psychic or cosmic they agree that reflective thought grows organically out of an experience which is already organized and that it functions within such an organism but they part company when a fundamental question is raised is all organized meaning the work of thought does it therefore follow that the organization out of which reflective thought grows is the work of thought of some other type of pure thought creative or constitutive thought intuitive reason etc i shall indicate briefly the reasons for divergence at this point to cover all the practical social aesthetic objects involved the term thought has to be so stretched that the situation might as well be called by any other name that designates a typical form of experience more specifically when the differences minimize between the organized and arranged scheme out of which reflective inquiry proceeds and reflective inquiry itself and there can be no other reason for insisting that the antecedent of reflective thought is itself somehow thought exactly the same type of problem recurs which presents itself when the distinction is exaggerated into one between bare existences and rational coherent meanings for the more one insists that the antecedent situation is constituted by thought the more one has to wonder why another type of thought is required what need arouses it and how is it possible for it to improve upon the work of previous constitutive thought this difficulty at once forces ideal this difficulty at once forces idealist from a logic of experience as it is concretely experienced into a metaphysics of purely hypothetical experience constitutive thought precedes our conscious thought operations hence it must be the working of some absolute universal thought which unconsciously to our reflection builds up an organized world but this recourse only deepens the difficulty how does it happen that the absolute constitutive and intuitive thought does such a poor and bungling job that it requires a finite discursive activity to patch up its products here more metaphysics is called for the absolute reason is now supposed to work under limiting conditions of finitude of a sensitive and temporal organism the antecedents of reflective thought are not therefore determinations of thought pure and undefiled but of what thought can do when it stoops to assume the yoke of change and of feeling i pass by the metaphysical problem left unresolved by this flight why and how should a perfect absolute complete finished thought find it necessary to submit to alien disturbing and corrupting conditions in order in the end to recover through reflective thought in a partial piecemeal wholly inadequate way what it possessed at the outset in a much more satisfactory way i can find myself to the logical difficulty how can thought relate itself to the fragmentary sensations impressions feelings which in their contrast with the disparity from the workings of constitutive thought mark it off from the latter and which in their connection with his products give the cue to reflective thinking here we have again exactly the problem with which lotsa has been wrestling we have the same insoluble question of the reference of thought activity to a wholly indeterminate unrationalized independent prior existence the absolute idealist who takes up the problem at this point will find himself forced into the same continuous seesaw the same scheme of alternate rude robbery and gratuitous gift that lotsa engaged in the simple fact is that here is just where lotsa began he saw the previous transcendental logicians had left untouched the specific question of relation of our supposedly finite reflective thought to its own antecedents and he set out to make good that effect if reflective thought is required because constitutive thought works under externally limiting conditions of sense then we have some elements which are after all mere existences events etc or if they have organization from some other source than thought and induce reflective thought not as bare impressions etc but through their place in some whole then we have admitted the possibility of organization and experience apart from reason and the ground for assuming pure constitutive thought is abandoned the contradiction appears equally when viewed from the side of thought activity and its characteristic forms all our knowledge after all of thought as constitutive is gained by consideration of the operations of reflective thought the perfect system of thought is so perfect that it is a luminous harmonious whole without definite parts or distinctions or if there are such it is only reflection that brings them out the categories and methods of constitutive thought itself must therefore be characterized in terms of the modus operandi of reflective thought yet the latter takes place just because of the peculiar problems of the peculiar conditions under which it arises its work is progressive reformatory reconstructive synthetic in the terminology made familiar by Kant we are not only not justified accordingly in transferring its determinations over to constitutive thought but are prohibited from attempting any such transfer to identify logical processes states devices results which are conditioned upon the primary fact of resistance to thought as constitutive with the structure of constitutive thought is as complete an instance of the fallacy of recourse from one genus to another as could well be found constitutive and reflective thought are first defined in terms of their dissimilarity and even opposition and then without more ado the forms of the description of the latter are carried over bodily to the former this is not a merely controversial criticism it points positively towards the fundamental thesis of these chapters all the distinctions discovered within thinking of conception is over against sense perception of various modes and forms of judgment of inference in its vast diversity of operation all these distinctions come within the thought situation as growing out of a characteristic antecedent typical formation of experience and have for their purpose the solution of the peculiar problem with respect to which the thought function is generated or evolved the restoration of a deliberately integrated experience from the inherent conflict into which it has fallen the failure of transcendental logic has the same origin as the failure of the empiristic whether taken pure or in the mixed form in which lots of presents it it makes into absolute and fixed distinctions of existence and meaning and of one kind of meaning and another kind things which are historic or temporal in their origin and their significance it views thought as attempting to represent or state reality once for all instead of trying to determine some phases or contents of it with reference to their more effective and significant employ instead of as reconstructive the rock against which every such logic splits is that either existence already has the statement which thought is endeavoring to give it or else it has not in the former case thought is futile reiterative in the latter it is falsificatory the significance of lots of her critical purposes is that his peculiar effort to combine a transcendental view of thought i.e. of thought as active in forms of its own pure in and of themselves with certain obvious facts of the dependence of our thought upon specific empirical antecedents brings to light fundamental defects in both the empiristic and the transcendental logics we discover a common failure in both the failure to view logical terms and distinctions with respect to their necessary function in the reintegration of experience end of chapter three essays and experimental logic by john dewey chapter four data and meanings this libra vox recording is in the public domain we have reached the point of conflict in the matters of an experience it is in this conflict and because of it that the matters or significant quails stand out as matters as long as the sun revolves about earth without question this content is not in any way abstracted its distinction from the form or mode of experience as its matter is the work of reflection the same conflict makes other experiences assume discriminated objectification they too cease to be ways of living and become distinct objects of observation and consideration the movements of planets ellipses et cetera are cases in point the maintenance of a unified experience has become a problem an end for it is no longer secure but this involves such restatement of the conflicting elements as will enable them to take a place somewhere in the world of the new experience they must be disposed of somehow and they can be disposed of finally only as they are provided for that is they cannot be simply denied or excluded or eliminated they must be taken into the fold but such introduction clearly demands more or less modification or transformation on their part the thought situation is the deliberate maintenance of an organization and experience with a critical consideration of the claims of the various conflicting contents to a place and a final assignment of position the conflicting situation inevitably polarizes or dichotomizes itself there is somewhat which is untouched in the contention of incompatibles there is something which remains secure unquestioned on the other hand there are elements which are doubtful and precarious this gives the framework of the general distribution of the field into facts the given the presented the datum and ideas the quesitum the conceived the inferential a there is always something unquestioned in any problematic situation at any stage of its process even if it be only the fact of conflict or tension for this is never mere tension at large it is thoroughly qualified or characteristically toned and colored by the particular elements which are in strife hence it is this conflict unique and irreplaceable that it comes now means precisely that it has never come before that it is now passed in review when some sort of a settlement reached means that just this conflict will never recur in a word the conflict is immediately of just this and no other sort and this immediately given quality is an irreducible datum it is fact even if all else be doubtful as it is subjected to examination it loses vagueness and assumes more definite form only in very extreme cases however does the assured unquestioned element reduced to terms as low as we have here imagined certain things come to stand forth as facts no matter what else may be doubted there are certain apparent diurnal changes of the sun there is a certain annual course or track there are certain nocturnal changes in the planets and certain seasonal rhythmic paths the significance of these may be doubted do they mean real change in the sun or in the earth but change and change of a certain definite and numerically determinate character is there it is clear that such outstanding facts x instances constitute the data the given or presented in the thought function b it is obvious that this is only one correspondent or status in the total situation with the consciousness of this as certain as given to be reckoned with goes the consciousness of uncertainty as to what it means of how it is to be understood or interpreted that is of its reference and connection the facts qua presentations or existences are sure qua meanings position and relation in an experience yet to be secured they are doubtful yet doubt does not preclude memory or anticipation indeed it is possible only through them the memory of past experience makes sun revolving about earth an object of attentive regard the recollection of certain other experiences suggests the idea of earth rotating daily on axis and revolving annually about sun these contents are as much present as is the observation of change but as respects connection they are only possibilities accordingly they are categorized or disposed of as ideas meanings thoughts ways of conceiving comprehending interpreting facts correspondence of reference here is as obvious as correlation of existence in the logical process the datum is not just external existence and the idea mirrors psychical existence both are modes of existence one of given existence the other of possible of inferred existence and if the latter is regarded from the standpoint of the unified experience aimed at as having only possible existence the datum also is regarded as incomplete and unassured or as we commonly put it while the ideas or impressions suggestions guesses theories estimates etc facts are crude raw unorganized brute they lack relationship that is a short place they are deficient as to continuity mere change of relative position of sun which is absolutely unquestioned as datum is a sheer abstraction from the standpoint either of the organized experience left behind or of the reorganized experience which is the end the objective it is impossible as a persistent object in other words datum and ideatum are divisions of labor cooperative instrumentalities for economical dealing with the problem of the maintenance of the integrity of experience once more and briefly both datum and ideatum may and positively veritably do break up each for itself into physical and mental in so far as the conviction gains ground that the earth revolves around the sun the old fact is broken up into a new cosmic existence and a new psychological condition the recognition of a process in virtue of which movements of smaller bodies in relation to very remote larger bodies are interpreted in a reverse sense we do not just eliminate the source of error in the old content we reinterpret it as valid in its own place visit case of the psychology of perception although invalid as a matter of cosmic structure until we have detected the source of error as itself a perfectly genuine existence we are not scientifically satisfied if we decide that the snake is but a hallucination our reflection is not in purport complete until we have found some fact just as existential as the snake would have been had it been there which accounts for the hallucination we never stop except temporarily with a reference to the mind or know her as source of an error we hunt for a specific existence in other words with increasing accuracy of determination of the given there comes a distinction for methodological purposes between the quality or matter of the sense experience and its form the sense perceiving as itself a psychological fact having its own place and laws or relations moreover the old experience that of sun revolving abides but it is regarded as belonging to me to this experiencing individual rather than to the cosmic world here then within the growth of the thought situation and as a part of the process of determining specific truth under specific conditions we get for the first time the clue to that distinction with which as ready made and prior to all thinking lotsa started out namely the separation of the matter of impression from impression as a personal event the separation which taken at large engenders an insoluble problem appears within a particular reflective inquiry as an inevitable differentiation of a scheme of existence the same sort of thing occurs on the side of thought or meaning the meaning or idea which is growing in acceptance which is gaining ground as meaning of datum gets logical or intellectual or objective force that which is losing standing which is increasingly doubtful gets qualified as just a notion a fancy a prejudice misconception or finally just an error a mental slip evaluated as fanciful and validity it becomes a mere fancy in its existence it is not eliminated but receives a new reference or meaning thus the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is not one between meaning as such and datum as such it is a specification that emerges correspondently in both datum and ideatum that which is left behind in the evolution of accepted meaning is still characterized as real but real now in relation only to a way of experiencing to a peculiarity of the organism that which is moved toward is regarded as real in a cosmic or extra organic sense one the data of thought when we turn to lotsa we find that he makes a clear distinction between the presented material of thought it's datum and the typical characteristic modes of thinking in virtue of which the datum gets organization or system it is interesting to note also that he states the datum in terms different from those in which the antecedents of thought are defined from the point of view of the data or material upon which ideas exercise themselves it is not coincidence co-location or succession accounts but gradation of degrees and a scale it is not things in spatial or temporal arrangements that are emphasized the qualities as mutually distinguished yet resembling in class there is no inherent inconceivability in the idea that every impression should be as incomparably different from every other as sweet is from warm but by a remarkable circumstance such is not the case we have series and networks of series we have diversity of a common diverse colors sounds smells tastes etc in other words the data are since qualities which fortunately for thought are given arranged as shades degrees variations or qualities of some white that is identical all this is given presented to our ideational activities even the universal the common color which runs through the various qualities of blue green white etc is not a product of thought but something which thought finds already in existence it conditions comparison and reciprocal distinction particularly all mathematical determinations whether of counting number degree more or less and quantity greatness and smallness come back to this peculiarity of the datum here lots of dwells at considerable length upon the fact that the very possibility as well as the success of thought is due to this peculiar universalization or prima facie ordering with which its material is given to it such pre-established fitness in the meeting of two things that have nothing to do with each other is certainly cause enough for wonder and congratulation it should not be difficult to see why lots of uses different categories in describing the material of thought from those employed in describing its antecedent conditions even though according to him the two are absolutely the same he has different functions in mind in one case the material must be characterized as evoking as incentive as stimulus from this point of view the peculiar feature of spatial and temporal arrangement in contrast with coherence or connection is emphasized but in the other case the material must be characterized as affording stuff actual subject matter data are not only what is given to thought but they are also the food the raw material of thought they must be described as on the one hand wholly outside of thought this clearly puts them into the region of sense perception they are matters of sensation given free from all inferring judging relating influence sensation is just what is not called up in memory or in anticipated projection it is the immediate the irreducible on the other hand sensory matter is qualitative and quails are made up on a common basis they are degrees or grades of a common quality thus they have a certain ready made setting of mutual distinction and reference which is already almost if not quite the effect of comparing of relating effects which are the express traits of thinking it is easy to interpret this miraculous gift of grace in the light of what has been said the data are in truth precisely that which is selected and set aside as present as immediate thus they are given to further thought but the selection has occurred in view of the need for thought it is a listing of the capital and the way of the undisturbed the undiscussed which thought can count upon in this particular problem hence it is not strange that it has a peculiar fitness of adaptation for thoughts further work having been selected with precisely that end in view the wonder would be if it were not so fitted a man may coin counterfeit money for use upon others but hardly with the intent of passing it off upon himself our only difficulty here is that the mind flies away from the logical interpretation of sense datum to a ready made notion of it brought over from abstract psychological inquiry the belief in isolated sensory quails which are somehow forced upon us and forced upon us at large and thus conditioning thought wholly ab extra instead of determining it as instrumentalities or elements selected from experience things for that very purpose is too fixed sensory qualities are forced upon us but not at large the sensory data of experience always comes in a context they always appear as variations in a continuum even the thunder which breaks in upon me to take the extreme of apparent discontinuity and irrelevancy disturbs me because it is taken as thunder as a part of the same space world as that in which my chair and room and house are located and it is taken as an influence which interrupts and disturbs because it is part of a common world of causes and effects the solution of continuity is itself practical or teleological and thus presupposes an effects continuity of purpose occupations and means in a life process it is not metaphysics it is biology which enforces the idea that actual sensation is not only determined as an event in a world of events but is an occurrence occurring at a certain period in the control and use of stimuli two forms of thinking data as sensory data is material set for work of thought so the ideational forms with which thought does its work are apt and prompt to meet the needs of the material the accessory notion of ground of coherence turns out in truth not to be a formal or external addition to the data but a requalification of them thought is accessory as accomplice not as a dendym thought is to eliminate mere coincidence and to assert grounded coherence lotsa makes it clear that he is not a bottom conceivable thought as an activity in itself imposing a form of coherence but that the organizing work of thought is only the progressive realization of an inherent unity or system in the material experienced the specific modes in which thought brings its accessory power to bear names conception judgment and inference our successive stages in the adequate organization of the matter which comes to us first as data they are successive stages of the effort to overcome the original defects of the data conception starts from the universal the common element of sense yet and this is the significant point it does not simply abstract this common element and consciously generalize it over against its own differences such a universal is not coherence just because it does not include and dominate the temporal and local heterogeneity the true concept is a system of attributes held together on the basis of some ground or determining dominating principle a ground which so controls all its own instances as to make them into an inwardly connected hole and which so specifies its own limits as to be exclusive of all else if we abstract color as the common element of various colors the result is not a scientific idea or concept discovery of a process of light waves whose various rates constitute the various colors of the spectrum gives the concept and when we get such a concept the former merely temporal abruptness of color experiences gives way to ordered parts of a color system the logical product the concept in other words is not a formal seal or stamp it is a thorough going connection of data in a dynamic continuity of existence the form remote of thought which marks the continued transformation of the data and the idea in reference to each other is judgment judgment makes explicit the assumption of a principle which determines connection within an individualized hole it definitely states red as this case or instance of the law or process of color and thus further overcomes the defect in subject matter or data still left by conception now judgment logically terminates in disjunction it gives a universal which may determine any one of a number of alternative defined particulars but is arbitrary as to what one is selected systematic inference brings to light the material conditions under which the law or dominating universal applies to this rather than that alternative particular and so completes the ideal organization of the subject matter if this act were complete we should finally have present to us a hole on which we should know the determining and effective or authorizing elements and the order of development or hierarchy of dependence in which others follow from them in this account by lots of the operations of the forms of thought there is clearly put before us the picture of a continuous correlative determination of data on one side and of idea or meaning on the other till experience is again integral data being thoroughly defined and connected and ideas being the relevant meanings of subject matter that we have here an outline a description of what actually occurs there can be no doubt but there is as little doubt that the description is thoroughly inconsistent with lots of supposition that the material or data of thought is precisely the same as the antecedent of thought or that ideas conceptions are purely mental somewhat extraneously brought to bear as the sole essential characteristics of thought upon a material provided ready-made it means but one thing the maintenance of unity and wholeness and experience through conflicting contents occurs by means of a strictly corresponded setting a part of facts to be accurately described and properly related and meanings to be adequately construed and properly referred the datum is given in the thought situation and to further qualification of ideas or meanings but even in this aspect it presents a problem to find out what is given is an inquiry which taxes reflection to the utmost every important advance and scientific method means better agencies more skilled technique for simply detaching and describing what is barely there or given to be able to find out what can safely be taken as there as given in any particular inquiry and hence be taken as material for orderly and verifiable inference for fruitful hypothesis making for entertaining of explanatory and interpretive ideas is one phase of the effort of systematic scientific inquiry it marks its inductive phase to take what is discovered to be reliable evidence within a more complex situation as if it were given absolutely and in isolation or apart from a particular historic situs in context is the fallacy of empiricism as a logical theory to regard the thought forms of conception judgment and inference as qualifications of pure thought apart from any difference in objects instead of as successive dispositions in the progressive organization of the material or objects is the fallacy of rationalism lotsa like Kant attempts to combine the two thinking thereby to correct each by the other lotsa recognizes the futility of thought if the sense data as data are final if they alone are real the truly existent self-justificatory and valid he sees that if the empiricists were right in his assumption as to the real worth of the given data thinking would be a ridiculous pretender either toyfully and poorly doing over again what needs no doing or making a willful departure from truth he realizes the thought is evoked because it is needed and that it has a work to do which is not merely formal but which affects a modification of the subject matter of experience consequently he assumes a thought in itself with certain forms and modes of action of its own a realm of meaning possessed of a directive and normative worth of its own the root fallacy of rationalism his attempted compromise between the two turns out to be based on the assumption of the indefensible ideas of both the notion of an independent matter given to thought on one side and of an independent worth or force of thought forms on the other this pointing out of inconsistencies becomes stale and unprofitable save as we bring them back into connection with their root origin the erection of distinctions that are genetic and historic and working or instrumental divisions of labor into rigid and ready-made structural differences of reality lotsa clearly recognizes the thought's nature is dependent upon its aim its aim upon its problem and this upon the situation in which it finds its incentive and excuse its work is cut out for it it does not what it would but what it must as lotsa puts it logic has to do with thought not as it would be under hypothetical conditions but as it is and this statement is made an explicit combination with statements to the effect that the peculiarity of the material of thought conditions its activity similarly he says in a passage already referred to the possibility in the success of thoughts production in general depends upon this original constitution an organization of the whole world of ideas a constitution which though not necessary in thought is all the more necessary to make thought possible as we have seen the essential nature of conception judgment and inference is dependent upon the peculiarities of the propounded material they being forms dependent for their significance upon the stage of organization in which they begin from this only one conclusion is possible if thoughts nature is dependent upon its actual conditions and circumstances the primary logical problem is to study thought in its conditioning it is to detect the crisis within which thought and its subject matter present themselves in their mutual distinction and cross-reference but lotsa is so thoroughly committed to a ready-made antecedent of some sort that this genetic consideration is of no account to him the historic method is a mere matter of psychology and has no logical worth we must presuppose a psychological mechanism and psychological material but logic is concerned not with origin or history but with authority worth value again logic is not concerned with the manner in which the elements utilized by thought come into existence but their value after they have somehow come into existence for the carrying out of intellectual operations and finally i have maintained throughout my work that logic cannot derive any serious advantage from a discussion of the conditions under which thought as a psychological process comes about the significance of logical forms is to be found in the utterances of thought the laws which it imposes after or during the act of thinking not in the conditions which lie back of any which produce thought lotsa in truth represents a halting stage in the evolution of logical theory is too far along to be contented with the reiteration of the purely formal distinctions of a merely formal thought by itself he recognizes that thought as formal is the form of some matter and has its worth only is organizing that matter to meet the ideal demands of reason and that reason is in truth only an adequate systemization of the matter content consequently he has to open the door to admit psychological processes which furnish this material having led in the material he is bound to shut the door again in the face of the processes from which the material proceeded to dismiss them as impertinent intruders if thought gets its data in such a surreptitious manner there is no occasion for wonder that the legitimacy of its dealings with the material remains an open question logical theory like every branch of the philosophic disciples waits upon a surrender of the obstinate conviction that while the work and aim of thought is conditioned by the material supplied to it yet the war