 Chapter 14 of Essays in Experimental Logic Recording by Jennifer Henry Essays in Experimental Logic by John Dewey The Logic of Judgments of Practice Judgments of Value 1 and 2 Judgments of Value 1 It is my purpose to apply the conclusions previously drawn as to the implications of practical judgment to the subject of judgments of value. First I shall try to clear away some sources of misunderstanding. Unfortunately, however, there is a deep-seated ambiguity which makes it difficult to dismiss the matter of value summarily, the experience of a good, and the judgment that something is a value of a certain kind and amount have been almost inextricably confused. The confusion has a long history. It is found in medieval thought. It is revived by Descartes. Recent psychology has given it a new career. The senses were regarded as modes of knowledge of greater or less adequacy, and the feelings were regarded as modes of sense, and hence as modes of cognitive apprehension. Descartes was interested in showing for scientific purposes that the senses are not organs of apprehending the qualities of bodies as such, but only of apprehending their relation to the well-being of the sentient organism. Sensations of pleasure and pain, along with those of hunger, thirst, etc., most easily lent themselves to this treatment. Colors, tones, etc. were them assimilated, of them all, he says. These perceptions of sense have been placed within me by nature for the purpose of signifying what things are beneficial or harmful. Thus it was possible to identify the real properties of bodies with their geometrical ones without exposing himself to the conclusion that God, or nature, deceives us in the perception of color, sound, etc. These perceptions are only intended to teach us what things to pursue and avoid, and as such apprehensions they are adequate. His identification of any and every experience of good with a judgment or cognitive apprehension is clear in the following words. When we are given news, the mind first judges of it, and if it is good, it rejoices. This is a survival of the scholastic psychology of the viz aestimativa, Lotus theory that the emotions as involving pleasure and pain are organs of value judgments, or in more recent terminology that they are cognitive appreciations of worth, corresponding to immediate apprehensions of sensory qualities, presents the same tradition in a new terminology. As against all this, the present paper takes its stand with the position stated by Hume in the following words. A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence, and contains not any representative quality which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification. When I am angry, I am actually possessed with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five feet high. In so doing, I may seem to some to be begging the question at issue, but such is surely the prima facie fact of the matter. Only a prior dogma to the effect that every conscious experience is ipso facto, a form of cognition, leads to any obscuration of the fact, and the burden of proof is upon those who uphold the dogma. A further word upon appreciation seems specially called for in view of the currency of the doctrine that appreciation is a peculiar kind of knowledge, or cognitive revelation of reality. Peculiar in having a distinct type of reality for its object, and in having for its organ a peculiar mental condition differing from the intelligence of everyday knowledge and of science. Actually, there do not seem to be any grounds for regarding appreciation as anything, but an intentionally enhanced or intensified experience of an object. Its opposite is not descriptive or explanatory knowledge, but depreciation, a degraded realization of an object. A man may climb a mountain to get a better realization of a landscape. He may travel to Greece to get a realization of the Parthenon more full than that which he has had from pictures. Intelligence, knowledge may be involved in the steps taken to get the enhanced experience, but that does not make the landscape or the Parthenon as fully savored a cognitive object. So the fullness of a musical experience may depend upon prior critical analysis, but that does not necessarily make the hearing of music a kind of non-analytic cognitive act. Either appreciation means just an intensified experience, or it means a kind of criticism, and then it falls within the sphere of ordinary judgment, differing and being applied to a work of art instead of to some other subject matter. The same mode of analysis may be applied to the older but cognate term, intuition, the terms acquaintance and familiarity and recognition, acknowledgement, are full of like pitfalls of ambiguity. In contemporary discussion of value judgments, however, appreciation is a peculiarly treacherous term. It is first asserted or assumed that all experiences of good are modes of knowing, that good is a term of a proposition. Then when experience forces home the immense difference between evaluation as a critical process, a process of inquiry for the determination of a good precisely similar to that which is undertaken in science in the determination of the nature of an event, and ordinary experience of good and evil, appeal is made to the difference between direct apprehension and indirect or inferential knowledge, and appreciation is called into play the convenient role of an immediate cognitive apprehension. Thus a second error is used to cover up and protect a primary one. To savor a thing fully, as Arnold Bennett's heroines are wont to do, is no more a knowing than is the chance savoring which arises when things smelled or found good, or then is being angry or thirsty or more than five feet high. All the language which we can employ is charged with a force acquired through reflection. Even when I speak of a direct experience of a good or bad, one is only too likely to read in traits characterizing a thing which is found in consequence of thinking to be good. One has to use language simply to stimulate a recourse to a direct experiencing in which language is not dependent upon. If one is willing to make such an imaginative excursion, no one can be compelled, he will note that finding a thing good apart from reflective judgment means simply treating the thing in a certain way, hanging on to it, dwelling upon it, welcoming it and acting to perpetuate its presence, taking delight in it. It is a way of behaving towards it, a mode of organic reaction. A psychologist may indeed bring in the emotions, but if his contribution is relevant it will be because the emotions which figure in his account are just part of the primary organic reaction to the object. In contrary fashion, to find a thing bad in a direct experience as distinct from the result of a reflective examination is to be moved to reject it, to try to get away from it, to destroy or at least to displace it. It connotes not an act of apprehension, but an act of repuning, of repelling. To term the thing good or evil is to state the fact, noted in recollection, that it was actually involved in a situation of organic acceptance or rejection with whatever qualities specifically characterize the act. All this is said because I am convinced that contemporary discussion of values and valuation suffers from confusion of the two radically different attitudes, that of direct, active, non-cognitive experience of goods and bads, and that of valuation, the latter being simply a mode of judgment, like any other form of judgment, differing in that its subject matter happens to be a good or a bad instead of a horse or planet or curve. But unfortunately for discussion, to value means two radically different things. To prize and appraise. To esteem and to estimate. To find good in the sense described above, and to judge it to be good, to know it as good. I call them radically different because to prize names a practical, non-intellectual attitude, and to appraise names a judgment. That men love and hold things dear, that they cherish and care for some things and neglect, and condemn other things is an undoubted fact. To call these things values is just to repeat that they are loved and cherished. It is not to give a reason for their being loved and cherished. To call them values and then import into them the traits of objects of valuation or to import into values, meaning valuated objects, the traits which things possess as held dear, is to confuse the theory of judgments of value past all remedy. And before coming to the more technical discussion, the currency of the confusion and the bad result consequences may justify dwelling upon the matter. The distinction may be compared to that between eating something and investigating the food properties of the thing eaten. A man eats something. It may be said that his very eating implies that he took it to be food, that he judged it or regarded it cognitively, and that the question is just whether he judged truly or made a false proposition. Now if anybody will condescend to a concrete experience, he will perceive how often a man eats without thinking that he puts into his mouth what is set before him from habit as an infant does from instinct. An onlooker or anyone who reflects is justified in saying that he acts as if he judged the material to be food. He is not justified in saying that any judgment or intellectual determination has entered in. He has acted. He has behaved towards something as food. That is only to say that he has put it in his mouth and swallowed it instead of spewing it forth. The object may then be called food, but this does not mean either that it is food, namely digestible and nourishing material, or that the eater judged it to be food and so formed a proposition which is true or false. The proposition would arise only in case he is in some doubt. Or if he reflects that in spite of his immediate attitude of aversion, the thing is wholesome and his system needs recuperation, etc. Or later, if the man is ill, a physician may inquire what he ate and pronounce that something not food at all, but poison. In the illustration employed there is no danger of any harm arising from using the retroactive term food. There is no likelihood of confusing the two senses actually eaten and nourishing article. But with the terms value and good there is a standing danger of just such a confusion, overlooking the fact that good and bad as reasonable terms involve a relationship to other things exactly similar to that implied in calling a particular article food or poison. We suppose that when we are reflecting upon or inquiring into the good or value of some act or object, we are dealing with something as simple, as self-enclosed, as the simple act of immediate prizing or welcoming or cherishing performed without rhyme or reason from instinct or habit. In truth, just as determining a thing to be food means considering its relations to digestive organs, to its distribution and ultimate destination in the system, so determining a thing found good, namely treated in a certain way. To be good means precisely ceasing to look at it as a direct, self-sufficient thing and considering it in its consequences, that is, in its relations to a large set of other things. If the man in eating consciously implies that what he eats is food, he anticipates or predicts certain consequences with more or less adequate grounds for so-doing. He passes a judgment or apprehends or knows truly or falsely, so a man may not only enjoy a thing, but he may judge the thing enjoyed to be good, to be of value. But in so-doing, he is going beyond the thing immediately present and making an inference to other things which he implies are connected with it. The thing taken into the mouth and stomach has consequences whether a man thinks of them or not, but he does not know the thing he eats, he does not make it a term of a certain character unless he thinks of the consequences and connects them with the thing he eats. If he just stops and says, oh, how good this is, he is not saying anything about the object except the fact that he enjoys eating it. We may, if we choose, regard this exclamation as a reflection or judgment, but if it is intellectual it is asserted for the sake of enhancing the enjoyment. It is a means to an end. A very hungry man will generally satisfy his appetite to some extent before he indulges in even such rudimentary propositions, too. But we must return to a placing of our problem in this context. My theme is that a judgment of value is simply a case of a practical judgment, a judgment about the doing of something. This conflicts with the assumption that it is a judgment about a particular kind of existence independent of action, concerning which the main problem is whether it is subjective or objective. It conflicts with every tendency to make the determination of the right or wrong course of action, whether in morals, technology, or scientific inquiry, dependent upon an independent determination of some ghostly things called value objects, whether their ghostly character is attributed to their existing in some transcendental eternal realm or in some realm called states of mind. It asserts that value objects mean simply objects as judged to possess a certain force within a situation temporarily developing toward a determinant result. To find a thing good is, I repeat, to attribute or impute nothing to it. It is just to do something to it. But to consider whether it is good and how good it is is to ask how it, as if acted upon, will operate in promoting a course of action. Hence the great contrast which may exist between a good or an immediate experience and an evaluated or judged good. The rain may be most uncomfortable, just be it, as a man is more than five feet tall and yet be good for growing crops, that is, favour or promote their movement in a given direction. This does not mean that two contrasting judgments of value are passed. It means that no judgment has yet taken place. If, however, I am moved to pass a value judgment, I should probably say that, in spite of the disagreeableness of getting wet, the shower is a good thing. I am now judging it as a means in two contrasting situations, as a means with respect to two ends. I compare my discomfort as a consequence of the rain with the prospective crops as another consequence and say, let the latter consequence be. I identify myself as agent with it, rather than with the immediate discomfort of the wedding. It is quite true that in this case I cannot do anything about it. My identification is, so to speak, sentimental rather than practical, so far as stopping the rain or growing the crops is concerned. But in effect it is an assertion that one would not, on account of the discomfort of the rain, stop it, that one would, if one could, encourage its continuance. Go it, rain, one says. The specific intervention of action is obvious enough in plenty of other cases. It occurs to me that this agreeable food, which I am eating, isn't a food for me. It brings on indigestion. It functions no longer as an immediate good as something to be accepted. If I continue eating, it will be after I have deliberated. I have considered it as a means to two conflicting possible consequences, the present enjoyment of eating and the later state of health. One or other is possible, not both. Though of course I may solve the problem by persuading myself that in this instance they are congruent. The value object now means thing judged to be a means of procuring this or that end, as prizing, esteeming, holding dear denote ways of acting. So valuing denotes a passing judgment upon such acts with reference to their connection with other acts, or with respect to the continuum of behavior in which they fall. Valuation means change of mode of behavior from direct acceptance and welcoming to doubting and looking into, acts which involve postponement of direct or so-called overt action, and which imply a future act having a different meaning from that just now occurring. For even if one decides to continue in the previous act, its meaning content is different when it is chosen after reflective examination. A practical judgment has been defined as a judgment of what to do or what is to be done, a judgment respecting the future termination of an incomplete and insofar indeterminate situation, and to say that judgments of value fall within this field is to say two things. One, that the judgment of value is never complete in itself but always in behalf of determining what is to be done. The other, that judgments of value, as distinct from the direct experience of something as good, imply that value is not anything previously given but is something to be given by future action, itself conditioned upon, varying with the judgment. This statement may appear to contradict the recent assertion that a value object for knowledge means one investigated as a means to competing ends. For such a means it already is. The lobster will give me present enjoyment and future indigestion if I eat it. But as long as I judge, value is indeterminate. The question is not what the thing will do. I may be quite clear about that. It is whether to perform the act which will actualize its potentiality. What will I have the situation become as between alternatives and that means what force shall the thing as means be given. Shall I take it as a means to present enjoyment or as a negative condition of future health when its status in these respects is determined its value is determined. Judgment ceases, action goes on. Practical judgments do not therefore primarily concern themselves with the value of objects but with the course of action demanded to carry an incomplete situation to its fulfillment. The adequate control of such judgments may, however, be facilitated by judgment of the worth of objects which enter as ends and means into the action contemplated. For example, my primary and ultimate judgment has to do say with buying a suit of clothes, whether to buy and if so what. The question is of better and worse with respect to alternative courses of action, not with respect to various objects. But the judgment will be a judgment and not a chance reaction in the degree in which it takes for its intervening subject matter the value status of various objects. What are the prices of given suits? What are their styles in respect to current fashion? How do their patterns compare? What about their durability? How about their respective adaptability to the chief wearing use I have in mind? Relative or comparative, durability, cheapness, suitability, style, aesthetic attractiveness constitute value traits. They are traits of objects, not per se, but as entering into a possible and foreseen completing of the situation. Their value is their force in precisely this function. The decision of better and worse is the determination of their respective capacities and intensities in this regard. Apart from their status in this office they have no traits of value for knowledge. A determination of better value as found in some one suit is equivalent to has the force of a decision as to what it is better to do. It provided the lacking stimulus so that action occurs or passes from its indeterminate indecisive state into decision. Reference to the terms subjective and objective will perhaps raise a cloud of ambiguities. But for this very reason it may be worthwhile to point out the ambiguous nature of the term objective as applied to valuations. Objective may be identified quite erroneously with qualities existing outside of and independently of the situation in which a decision as to future course of action has to be reached. Or objective may denote the status of qualities of an object in respect to the situation to be completed through judgment. Independently of the situation requiring practical judgment, clothes already have a given price, durability, pattern, etc. These traits are not affected by the judgment. They exist. They are given. But as given, they are not determinant values. They are not objects of valuation. They are data for evaluation. We may have to take pains to discover that these given qualities are, but their discovery is in order that there may be a subsequent judgment of value. Were they already definite values, they would not be estimated. They would be stimuli to direct response. If a man had already decided that cheapness constituted value, he would simply take the cheapest suit offered. What he judges is the value of cheapness, and this depends upon its weight or importance in the situation requiring action, as compared with durability, style, adaptability, etc. Discovery of shoddy would not affect the de facto durability of the goods, but it would affect the value of cheapness. That is, the weight assigned that trait in influencing judgment, which it would not do if cheapness already had a definite value. A value, in short, means a consideration, and a consideration does not mean an existence merely, but an existence having a claim upon judgment. Value judged is not existential quality noted, but is the influence attached by judgment to a given existential quality in determining judgment. The conclusion is not that value is subjective, but that it is practical. The situation in which judgment of value is required is not mental, much less fanciful. I can but think that much of the recent discussion of the objectivity of value and of value judgments rests upon a false psychological theory. It rests upon giving certain terms meanings that flow from an introspective psychology which accepts a realm of purely private states of consciousness, private not in a social sense, a sense implying courtesy or may have secrecy toward others, but existential independence and separateness. To refer value to choice or desire, for example, is in that case to say that value is subjectively conditioned. Quite otherwise, if we have steered clear from such a psychology, choice, decision, means primarily a certain act, a piece of behavior on the part of a particular thing, that a horse chooses to eat hay means only that it eats hay, that the man chooses to steal means at least that he tries to steal. This trial may come, however, after an intervening act of reflection. It then has a certain intellectual or cognitive quality, but it may mean simply the bare fact of an action which is retrospectively called a choice. As a man, in spite of all temptation to belong to another nation, chooses to be born an Englishman, which, if it has any sense at all, signifies a choice to continue in a line adopted without choice. Taken in this latter sense, in which case terms like choice and desire refer to ways of behavior, there uses only a specification of the general doctrine that all valuation has to do with the determination of a course of action. Choice, preference, is originally only a bias in a given direction, a bias which is no more subjective or psychical than is the fact that a ball thrown is swerving in a particular direction rather than in some other curve. It is just a name for the differential character of the action, but let continuance in a certain line of action become questionable. Let, that is to say, it be regarded as a means to a future consequence, which consequence has alternatives, and then choice gets a logical or intellectual sense. A mental status, if the term mental is reserved for acts having this intellectualized quality, choice still means the fixing of a course of action. It means at least the set to be released as soon as physically possible. Otherwise man has not chosen but has quieted himself into a belief that he has chosen in order to relieve himself of the strain of suspense. Exactly the same analysis applies to desire. Diverse anticipated ends may provoke divided and competing present reactions. The organism may be torn between different courses, each interfering with the completion of the other. This intra-organic pulling and hauling, this strife of active tendencies is a genuine phenomenon. The pull in a given direction measures the immediate hold of an anticipated termination or end upon us as compared with that of some other. If one asked after the mechanism of the valuing process, I have no doubt that the answer would be in terms of desires thus conceived. But unless everything related to the activity of a highly organized being is to be denominated subjective, I see no ground for calling it subjective. So far as I can make out, the emphasis upon a psychological treatment of value and valuation in a subjective sense is but a highly awkward and negative way of maintaining a positive truth. That value and valuation fall within the universe of action, that as welcoming, accepting is an act. So valuation is a present act determining an act to be done, a present act taking place because the future act is uncertain and incomplete. It does follow from this fact that valuation is not simply a recognition of the force or efficiency of a means with respect to continuing a process. For unless there is question about its continuation, about its termination, valuation will not occur. And there is no question save where activity is hesitant in direction because of conflict within it. Metaphorically we may say that rain is good to lay the dust, identifying force or efficiency with value. I do not believe that valuations occur and values are brought into being save in a continuing situation where things have potency for carrying forward processes. There is a close relationship between prevailing valiancy, valency and value. But the term value is not a mere re-duplication of the term efficiency. It adds something. When we are moving toward the result and at the same time are stimulated to move toward something else which is incompatible with it, as in the case of the lobster as a cause of both enjoyment and indigestion, a thing has a dual potency. Not until the end has been established is the value of the lobster settled, although there need be no doubt about its efficiencies. As was pointed out earlier, the practical judgment determines means and end at the same time. How then can value be given as efficiency is given until the end is chosen? The rain is metaphorically valuable for laying dust. Whether it is valuable for us to have the dust laid and if so how valuable? We shall never know until some activity of our own which is a factor in dust laying comes into conflict with an incompatible activity. Its value is its force, indeed, but it is its force in moving us to one end rather than to another. Not every potency, in other words, but potency with the specific qualification of falling within judgment about future action means value or valuable thing. Consequently, there is no value save in situations where desires and the need of deliberation in order to choose are found, and yet this fact gives no excuse for regarding desire and deliberation and decision as subjective phenomena. To use an Irish bull, as long as a man knows what he desires, there is no desire. There is movement or endeavor in a given direction. Desire is desires, and simultaneous desires are incompatible. They mark, as we have noted, competing activities, movements in directions which cannot both be extended. Reflection is a process of finding out what we want, what, as we say, we really want, and this means the formation of new desire, a new direction of action. In this process things get values, something they did not possess before, although they had their efficiencies. At whatever risk of shock, this doctrine should be exposed in all its nakedness. To judge value is to engage in instituting a determinate value where none is given. It is not necessary that antecedently given values should be the data of the evaluation. And where they are given data, they are only terms in the determination of a not yet existing value. When a man is ill and after deliberation concludes that it be well to see a doctor, the doctor doubtless exists antecedently. But it is not the doctor who is judged to be the good of the situation, but the seeing of the doctor. A thing which, by description, exists only because of an act dependent upon a judgment. Nor is the health the man antecedently possessed, or which somebody has, the thing which he judges to be a value. The thing judged to be a value is the restoring of health, something, by description, not yet existing. The results flowing from his past health will doubtless influence him in reaching his judgment that it will be a good to have restored health. But they do not constitute the good which forms his subject matter and object of his judgment. He may judge that they were good without judging that they are now good, for to be judged now good means to be judged to be the object of a course of action still to be undertaken. And to judge that they were good as distinct from merely recalling certain benefits which accrued from health is to judge that if the situation had required a reflective determination of a course of action, one would have judged health and existence to be attained or preserved by action. There are dialectic difficulties which may be raised about judgments of this sort, for they imply the seeming paradox of a judgment whose proper subject matter is its own determinant formation, but nothing is gained by obscuring the fact that such is the nature of the practical judgment. It is a judgment of what and how to judge, of the weight to be assigned to various factors in the determination of judgment. It would be interesting to inquire into the question whether this peculiarity may not throw light upon the nature of consciousness, but into that field we cannot now go. End of Section 16 Chapter 14 of Essays in Experimental Logic This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jennifer Henry Essays in Experimental Logic by John Dewey The Logic of Judgments of Practice Judgments of Value 3, 4, and 5 Judgments of Value 3 From what has been said, it immediately follows, of course, that a determinant value is instituted as a decisive factor with respect to what is to be done. Wherever a determinant good exists, there is an adequate stimulus to action and no judgment of what is to be done or of the value of an object is called for. It is frequently assumed, however, that valuation is a process of applying some fixed or determinant value to the various competing goods of a situation. That valuation implies a prior standard of value and consists in comparing various goods with the standard as the supreme value. This assumption requires examination. If it is sound, it deprives the position which has been taken of any validity, for it renders the judgment of what to do a matter of applying a value existing ready made, instead of making, as we have done, the valuation a determination within the practical judgment. The argument would run this way. Every practical judgment depends upon a judgment of the value of the end to be attained. This end may be such only approximately, but that implies something else judged to be good, and so logically till we have arrived at the judgment of a supreme good, a final end, or sumum bonum. If this statement correctly describes the state of the case, there can be no doubt that a practical judgment depends upon a prior recognition of value. Consequently, the hypothesis upon which we have been proceeding reverses the actual facts. The first thing, by way of critical comment, is to point out the ambiguity in the term end. I should like to fall back upon what was said earlier about the thoroughly reciprocal character of means and end in the practical judgment. If this be admitted, it is also admitted that only by a judgment of means, things having value in the carrying of an indeterminate situation to a completion, is the end determinately made out in judgment. But I fear I cannot count upon this as granted. So I will point out that end may mean either the de facto limit to judgment, which by definition does not enter into judgment at all, or it may mean the last and completing object of judgment, the conception of that object in which a transitive, incompletely given situation would come to rest. Of end in the first sense, it is to be said that it is not a value at all. Of end in the second sense, that it is identical with a finale of the kind we have just been discussing, or that it is determined in judgment, not a value given by which to control the judgment. It may be asserted that in the illustration used, some typical suit of clothes is the value which affords the standard of valuation of all the suits which are offered to the buyer. That he passes judgment on their value as compared with the standard suit as an end and supreme value. This statement brings out the ambiguity just referred to. The need of something to wear is the stimulus to the judgment of the value of suits offered, and possession of a suit puts an end to judgment. It is an end of judgment in the objective, not in the possessive sense of the preposition of. It is an end not in the sense of aim, but in the sense of a terminating limit. When possession begins, judgment has already ceased. And if argument ad verucondium has any weight, I may point out that this is a doctrine of Aristotle when he says, we never deliberate about ends, but only about means. That is to say, in all deliberation, or practical judgment or inquiry, there is always something outside of judgment which fixes its beginning and end, or terminus. And I would add that, according to Aristotle, deliberation always ceases when we have come to the first link in the chain of causes which is last in the order of discovery. And this means, when we have traced back the chain of causes, means to ourselves. In other words, the last end in view is always that which operates as the direct or immediate means of setting our own powers in operation. The end in view upon which judgment of action settles down is simply the adequate or complete means to the doing of something. We do deliberate, however, about aims, about ends in view, a fact which shows their radically different nature from ends as limits to deliberation. The aim in the present instance is not the suit of clothes, but the getting of a proper suit. That is what is precisely estimated or evaluated. And I think I may claim to have shown that the determination of this aim is identical with the determination of the value of a suit through comparison of the values of cheapness, durability, style, pattern of different suits offered. Value is not determined by comparing various suits with an ideal model, but by comparing various suits with respect to cheapness, durability, adaptability with one another, involving, of course, reference also to length of purse, suits already possessed, etc., and other specific elements in the situation which demand that something be done. The purchaser may, of course, have settled upon something which serves as a model before he goes to buy, but that only means that his judging has been done beforehand. The model does not then function in judgment, but in his act as stimulus to immediate action. And there is a consideration here involved of the utmost importance as to the practical judgments of the moral type. The more completely the notion of the model is formed outside and irrespective of the specific conditions which the situation of action presents, the less intelligent is the act. Most men might have their ideals of the model changed somewhat in the face of the actual offering, even in the case of buy and close. The man who is not accessible to such change in the case of moral situations has ceased to be a moral agent and become a reacting machine. In short, the standard evaluation is formed in the process of practical judgment or valuation. It is not something taken from outside and applied within it. Such application means there is no judgment. 4. Nothing has been said thus far about a standard. Yet the conception of a standard or a measure is so closely connected with valuation that its consideration affords a test of the conclusions reached. It must be admitted that the concepts of the nature of a standard pointed to by the course of the prior discussion is not in conformity with current conceptions. For the argument points to a standard which is determined within the process of valuation, not outside of it, and hence not capable of being employed ready made, therefore, to settle the valuing process. To many persons this will seem absurd to the point of self-contradiction. The prevailing conception, however, has been adopted without examination. It is a preconception. If accepted, it deprives judgment and knowledge of all significant import in connection with moral action. If the standard is already given, all that remains is its mechanical application to the case in hand, as one would apply a yard rule to dry goods. Genuine moral uncertainty is then impossible. Where it seems to exist, it is only a name for a moral unwillingness due to inherent viciousness, to recognize and apply the rules already made and provided, or else for a moral corruption which has enfeebled man's power of moral apprehension. When the doctrine of standards prior to an independent of moral judgment is accompanied by these other doctrines of original sin and corruption, one must respect the thoroughgoing logic of the doctrine. Such is not, however, the case with the modern theories which make the same assumption of standards preceding instead of resulting from moral judgments and which ignore the question of uncertainty and error in their apprehension. Such considerations do not, indeed, decide anything, what they may serve to get a more unprejudiced hearing for a hypothesis which runs counter to current theories, since it but formulates the trend of current practices in their increasing tendency to make the act of intelligence the central factor in morals. Let us, accordingly, consider the alternatives to regarding the standard of value as something evolved in the process of reflective valuation. How can such a standard be known? Either by an a priori method of intuition or by abstraction from prior cases. The latter conception throws us into the arms of hedonism, for the hedonistic theory of the standard of value derives its logical efficiency from the consideration that the notion of a prior and fixed standard, one which is not determined within the situation by reflection, forces us back upon antecedent, irreducible pleasures and pains which alone our values definite and certain enough to supply standards. They alone are simple enough to be independent and ultimate. The apparently common sense alternative would be to take the value of prior situations in total, say, the value of an act of kindness to a sufferer, but any such good is a function of the total unanalyzed situation. It has consequently no application to a new situation unless the new exactly repeats the old one. Only when the good is resolved into simple and unalterable units in terms of which old situations can be equated to new ones on the basis of the number of units contained can an unambiguous standard be found. The logic is unimpeachable and points to irreducible pleasures and pains as the standard of valuation. The difficulty is not in the logic but in empirical facts, facts which verify our prior contention, conceding for the sake of argument, that there are definite existences such as are called pleasures and pains they are not value objects but are only things to be valued. Exactly the same pleasure or pain as an existence has different values at different times according to the way in which it is judged. What is the value of the pleasure of eating the lobster as compared with the pains of indigestion? The rule tells us, of course, to break up the pleasure and pain into elementary units and count. Such ultimate simple units seem, however, to be about as much within the reach of ordinary knowledge as atoms or electrons are within the grasp of the man of the street. Their resemblance to the ultimate neutral units which analytic psychologists have postulated as a methodological necessity is evident. Since the value of even such a definite entity as a toothache varies according to the organization constructed and presented in reflection, it is clear that ordinary empirical pleasures and pains are highly complex. This difficulty, however, may be waived. We may even waive the fact that a theory which set out to be ultra empirical is now enmeshed in the need for making empirical facts meet dialectical requirements. Another difficulty is too insupprable to be waived. In any case, the quantity of elementary existences which constitutes the criterion of measurement is dependent upon the very judgment which is assumed to be regulated by it. The standard of valuation is the units which will result from an act. They are future consequences. Now the character of the agent judging is one of the conditions of the production of these consequences. A callous person not only will not foresee certain consequences and will not be able to give them proper weight, but he does not afford the same condition of their occurrence which is constituted by a sensitive man. It is quite possible to employ judgment so as to produce acts which will increase this organic callousness. The analytic conception of the moral criterion provides logically for deliberate blunting of susceptibilities. If the matter at issue is simply one of number of units of pleasure over pain, a range matters so that certain pains will not as matter of fact be felt. While this result may be achieved by manipulation of extra organic conditions, it may also be affected by rendering the organism insensitive. Persistence in a course which in the short run yields uneasiness and sympathetic pains will in the long run eliminate these pains and leave a net pleasure balance. This is a time-honored criticism of hedonism. My present concern with it is purely logical. It shows that the attempt to bring over from past objects the elements of a standard for valuing future consequences is a hopeless one. The express object of evaluation judgment is to release factors which, being new, cannot be measured on the basis of the past alone. This discussion of the analytic logic as applied in morals would, however, probably not be worthwhile, did it not serve to throw into relief the significance of any appeal to fulfillment of a system or organization as the moral good, the standard. Such an appeal, if it is wary, is an appeal to the present situation as undergoing that reorganization that will confer upon it the unification which it lacks, to organization as something to be brought about, to be made. And it is clear that this appeal meets all the specifications of judgments of practice as they have been described. The organization which is to be fulfilled through action is an organization which, at the time of judging, is present in conception, in idea, in, that is, reflective inquiry as a phase of reorganizing activity. And since its presence in conception is both a condition of the organization aimed at and a function of the adequacy of the reflective inquiry, it is evident that there is here a confirmation of our statement that the practical judgment is a judgment of what and how to judge as an integral part of the completion of an incomplete temporal situation. More specifically, it also appears that the standard is a rule for conducting inquiry to its completion. It is a counsel to make examination of the operative factors complete, a warning against suppressing recognition of any of them. However a man may impose upon himself or upon others, a man's real measure of value is exhibited in what he does, not in what he consciously thinks or says, for the doing is the actual choice, it is the completed reflection. It is comparatively easy at the present time in moral theory to slam both hedonism and a priorism. It is not so easy to see the logical implications of the alternative to them. The conception of an organization of interests or tendencies is often treated as if it were a conception which is definite in subject matter as well as clear cut in form. It is taken not as a rule for procedure in inquiry, a direction and a warning, which it is, but as something all of whose constituents are already given for knowledge, even though not given in fact. The act of fulfilling or realizing must then be treated as devoid of intellectual import. It is a mere doing, not a learning and a testing, but how can a situation which is incomplete in fact be completely known until it is complete? Short of the fulfillment of a conceived organization, how can the conception of the proposed organization be anything more than a working hypothesis, a method of treating the given elements in order to see what happens? Does not every notion which implies the possibility of an apprehension of knowledge of the end to be reached also imply either an a priori revelation of the nature of that end or else that organization is nothing but a whole composed of elementary parts already given the logic of hedonism? The logic of subsumption in the physical sciences meant that a given state of things could be compared with a ready made concept as a model, the phenomena of the heavens with the implication of say the circle. The methods of experimental science broke down this motion. They substituted for an alleged, regulative model, a formula which was the integrated function of the particular phenomena themselves, a formula to be used as a method of further observations and experiments and thereby tested and developed. The unwillingness to believe that in a similar fashion, moral standards or models can be trusted to develop out of the specific situations of action shows how little the general logical force of the method of science has been grasped. Physical knowledge did not, as a matter of fact, advance till the dogma of models or forms as standards of knowledge had been ousted, yet we hang tenaciously to a like doctrine in morals for fear of moral chaos. It once seemed to be impossible that the disordered phenomena of perception could generate a knowledge of law and order. It was supposed that independent principles of order must be supplied and the phenomena measured by approach to or deviation from the fixed models. The ordinary conception of a standard in practical affairs is a precise analogue. Physical knowledge started on a secure career when men had courage to start from the irregular scene and to treat the suggestions to which it gave rise as methods for instituting new observations and experiences. Acting upon the suggested conceptions, analyzed, extended, and ordered phenomena, and thus made improved conceptions, methods of inquiry, possible. It is reasonable to believe that what holds moral knowledge back is above all the conception that there are standards of good given to knowledge apart from the work of reflection in constructing methods of action. As the bringer of bad news gets a bad name being made to share in the production of the evil which he reports, so honest acknowledgement of the uncertainty of the moral situation and of the hypothetical character of all rules of moral mensuration prior to acting upon them is treated as if it originated the uncertainty and created the skepticism. It may be contended, however, that all this does not justify the earlier statement that the limiting situation which occasions and cuts off judgment is not itself a value. Why it will be asked does a man buy a suit of clothes unless that is a value or at least approximate means to a further value? The answer is short and simple, because he has to, because the situation in which he lives demands it. The answer probably seems too summary, but it may suggest that while a man lives he never is called upon to judge whether he shall act, but simply how he shall act. A decision not to act is a decision to act in a certain way, it is never a judgment not to act unqualifiedly. It is a judgment to do something else, to wait for example. A judgment that the best thing to do is to retire from active life to become a Simon Stylates is a judgment to act in a certain way conditioned upon the necessity that irrespective of judging a man will have to act somehow anyway. A decision to commit suicide is not a decision to be dead, it is a decision to perform a certain act. The act may depend upon reaching the conclusion that life is not worth living, but as a judgment this is a conclusion to act in a way to terminate the possibility of further situations requiring judgment and action. And it does not imply that a judgment about life as a supreme value and standard underlies all judgments as to how to live. More specifically it is not a judgment upon the value of life per se, but a judgment that one does not find at hand the specific means of making life worthwhile. As an act to be done it falls within and assumes life. As a judgment upon the value of life by definition it evades the issue. No one ever influenced a person considering committing suicide by arguments concerning the value of life, but only by suggesting or supplying conditions and means which make life worth living. In other words by furnishing direct stimuli to living. However I fear that all this argument may only obscure a point obvious without argument. Namely that all deliberation upon what to do is concerned with the completion and determination of a situation in some respect incomplete and so indeterminate. Every such situation is specific. It is not merely incomplete. The incompleteness is of a specific situation. Hence the situation sets limits to the reflective process. What is judged has reference to it and that which limits never is judged in the particular situation in which it is limiting. Now we have in ordinary speech a word which expresses the nature of the conditions which limit the judgments of value. It is the word invaluable. The word does not mean something of supreme value as compared with other things any more than it means something of zero value. It means something out of the scope of valuation, something out of the range of judgment. Whatever in the situation at hand is not and cannot be any part of the subject matter of judgment in which yet instigates and cuts short the judgment. It means in short that judgment at some point runs against the brute act of holding something dear as its limit. Five. The statement that values are determined in the process of judgment of what to do, that is in situations where preference depends upon reflection upon the conditions and possibilities of a situation requiring action, will be met by the objection that our practical deliberations usually assume precedent, specific values and also a certain order or grade among them. There is a sense in which I am not concerned to deny this. Our deliberate choices go on in situations more or less like those in which we have previously chosen. When deliberation has reached evaluation and action has confirmed or verified the conclusion, the result remains. Situations overlap. The M which is judged better than N in one situation is found worse than L in another and so on. Thus a certain order of precedence is established. And we have to broaden the field to cover the habitual order of reflective preferences in the community to which we belong. The value-eds or valuables thus constituted present themselves as facts in subsequent situations. Moreover, by the same kind of operation the dominating objects of past valuations present themselves as standardized values. But we have to note that such value standards are only presumptive. Their status depends on one hand upon the extent in which the present situation is like the past. In a progressive or rapidly altering social life, the presumption of identical present value is weakened. And while it would be foolish not to avail oneself of the assistance in present valuations of the valuables established in other situations, we have to remember that habit operates to make us overlook differences and presume identity where it does not exist, to the misleading of judgment. On the other hand, the contributory worth of past determinations of value is dependent upon the extent in which they were critically made, especially upon the extent in which the consequences brought about through acting upon them have been carefully noted. In other words, the presumptive force of a past value in present judgment depends upon the pains taken with its verification. In any case, so far as judgment takes place, instead of the reminiscence of a prior good operating as a direct stimulus to present action, all valuation is in some degree a revaluation. Nietzsche would probably not have made so much of a sensation, but he would have been within the limits of wisdom if he had confined himself to the assertion that all judgment, in the degree in which it is critically intelligent, is a transvaluation of prior values. I cannot escape recognition that any illusion to modification or transformation of an object through judgment arouses partisan suspicion and hostility. To many it appears to be a survival of an idealistic epistemology. But I see only three alternatives. Either there are no practical judgments, as judgments they are wholly illusory, or the future is bound to be but a repetition of the past or a reproduction of something eternally existent in some transcendent realm, which is the same thing logically, or the object of a practical judgment is some change, some alteration to be brought about in the given, the nature of the change depending upon the judgment and yet constituting its subject matter. Unless the epistemological realist accepts one of the two first alternatives, he seems bound in accepting the third, to admit not merely that practical judgments make a difference in things as an after effect, this he seems ready enough to admit, but that the import and validity of judgments is a matter of the difference thus made. One may, of course, hold that this is just what marks the distinction of the practical judgment from the scientific judgment, but one who admits this fact as respect to practical judgment can no longer claim that it is fatal to the very idea of judgment to suppose that its proper object is some difference to be brought about in things, and that the truth of the judgment is constituted by the differences in consequences actually made. And a logical realist who takes seriously the notion that moral good is a fulfillment of an organization or integration must admit that any proposition about such an object is prospective, for it is something to be attained through action and that the proposition is made for the sake of furthering the fulfillment. Let one start at this point and carry back the conception into a consideration of other kinds of propositions, and one will have, I think, the readiest means of apprehending the intent of the theory that all propositions are but the propoundings of possible knowledge, not knowledge itself. For unless one marks off the judgment of good from other judgment by means of an arbitrary division of the organism from the environment or of the subjective from the objective, no ground for any sharp line of division in the propositional continuum will appear. But to obviate misunderstanding this does not mean that some psychic state or act makes the difference in things. In the first place the subject matter of the judgment is a change to be brought about, and in the second place this subject matter does not become an object until the judgment has issued in act. It is the act which makes the difference, but nevertheless the act is but the complete object of judgment and the judgment is complete as a judgment only in the act. The anti-pragmatists have been asked, notably by Professor A. W. Moore, how they sharply distinguish between judgment or knowledge and act, and yet freely admit and insist that knowledge makes a difference in action and hence in existence. This is the crux of the whole matter, and it is a logical question. It is not a query, as it seems to have been considered, as to how the mental can influence a physical thing like action, a variant of the old question of how the mind affects the body. On the contrary, the implication is that the relation of knowledge to action becomes a problem of the action of a mental or logical entity upon a physical one only when the logical import of judgment has been misconceived. The positive contention is that the realm of logical propositions presents in a realm of possibility the specific rearrangement of things which overt action presents in actuality. Hence the passage of a proposition into action is not a miracle, but the realization of its own character, its own meaning as logical. I do not profess, of course, to have shown that such is the case for all propositions. That is a matter which I have not discussed. But in showing the tenability of the hypothesis that practical judgments are of that nature, I have at least ruled out any purely dialectic proof that the nature of knowledge as such forbids entertaining the hypothesis that the import, indirect if not direct, of all logical propositions is some difference to be brought about. The road is at least cleared for a more unprejudiced consideration of this hypothesis on its own merits. End of Section 17. Recording by Jennifer Henry Chapter 14 of Essays in Experimental Logic This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Essays in Experimental Logic by John Dewey Chapter 14. The Logic of Judgments of Practice Sense Perception as Knowledge I mentioned incidentally in the first section that it is conceivable that failure to give adequate consideration to practical judgments may have a compromising effect upon the consideration of other types. I now intend to develop this remark with regard to sense perception as a form of knowledge. The topic is so bound up with a multitude of perplexing physiological and epistemological traditions that I have first to make it reasonably clear what it is and what it is not which I propose to discuss. I endeavored in an earlier series of papers to point out that the question of the material of sense perception is not, as such, a problem of the theory of knowledge at all, but simply a problem of the occurrence of a certain material, a problem of causal conditions and consequences. That is to say, the problem presented by an image of a bent stick, or by a dream, or by secondary sensory qualities, is properly a problem of physics, of conditions of occurrence, and not of logic, of truth, or falsity, fact, or fiction. That the existence of a red quail is dependent upon disturbances of a certain velocity of a medium in connection with certain changes of the organism is not to be confused with the notion that red is a way of knowing, in some more or less adequate fashion, some more real object, or else of knowing itself. The fact of causation, or functional dependent, no more makes the quail an appearance to the mind of something more real than itself, or of itself than it makes bubbles on the water a real fish transferred by some cognitive distortion into a region of appearance. With a little stretching, we may use the term appearance in either case, but the term only means that the red quail, or the water bubble, is an obvious or conspicuous thing from which we infer something else not so obvious. This position, thus freely resumed here, needs to be adequately guarded on all sides. It implies that the questions of the existence or presence of the subject matter of even a complex sense perception may be treated as a question of physics. It also implies that the existence of a sense perception may be treated as a problem of physics, but the position is not that all the problems of sense perception are thereby exhausted. There is still, on the contrary, the problem of the cognitive status of sense perception. So far from denying this fact, I mean rather to emphasize it in holding that this knowledge aspect is not to be identified, as it has been in both realistic and idealistic epistemologies, with the simple occurrence of presented subject matter and with the occurrence of a perspective act. It is often stated, for example, that primitive sense objects, when they are stripped of all inferential material, cannot possibly be false, but with the implication that they, therefore, must be true. Well, I meant to go this statement one better, to state that they are neither true nor false. That is, that the distinction of true or false is as irrelevant and inapplicable as to any other existence, as it is, say, to being more than five feet high or having a low blood pressure. This position, when taken, leaves over the question of sense perception as knowledge, as capable of truth or falsity. It is this question then, which I intend to discuss in this paper. 1. My first point is that some sense perceptions, at least, as a matter of fact, at the great bulk of them, are without any doubt forms of practical judgment, or, more accurately, are terms and practical judgments as propositions of what to do. When in walking down a street I see a sign on the lamppost at the corner, I assuredly see a sign. Now, in ordinary context, I do not say always or necessarily, this is a sign of what to do, to continue walking or to turn. The other term of the proposition may not be stated, or it may be. It is probably more often tacit. Of course, I have taken the case of the sign purposely. But the case may be extended. The lamppost, as perceived, is to a lamp-lighter a sign of something else than a turn, but still a sign of something to be done. To another man it may be a sign of a possible support. I am anxious not to force the scope of cases in this class beyond what would be accepted by an unbiased person, but I wish to point out that certain features of the perceived object, as a cognitive term, which do not seem at first sight to fall within this conception of the object, as an intellectual sign of what to do, turn out upon analysis to be covered by it. It may be said, for example, that our supposed pedestrian perceives much besides that which serves as evidence of the thing to be done. He perceives the lamppost, for example, and possibly the carbons of the arc, and these assuredly do not enter into the indication of what to do or how to do it. The reply is threefold. In the first place it is easy, unusual, to read back into the sense perception more than was actually in it. It is easy to recall the familiar features of the lamppost. It is practically impossible, or at least very unusual, to recall what was actually perceived. So we read the former into the latter. The tendency is for actual perception to limit itself to the minimum which will serve as a sign. But in the second place, since it is never wholly so limited, since there is always a surplusage of perceived object, the first stated in the objection is admitted. But it is precisely this surplusage which is not cognitive status. It does not serve as a sign, but neither is it known as a term in knowledge. A child walking by his father's side with no aim and hence no reason for securing indications of what to do will probably seem more in his idle curiosity than his parent. He will have more presented material, but this does not mean that he is making more propositions, but only that he is getting more material for possible propositions. It means, in short, that he is in an aesthetic attitude of realization rather than in a cognitive attitude. But even the most economical observer has some aesthetic non-cognitive surplusage. In the third place, surplusages is necessary for the operation of the signifying function, independently of the fact that surplusage may be required to render the sign specific, action is free, its variation is under control, in the degree in which alternatives are present. The pedestrian has probably the two alternatives in mind, to go straight on or to turn. The perceived object might indicate to him another alternative, to stop an inquire of a passer-by. And, as is obvious in a more complicated case, it is the extent of the perceived object which both multiplies alternative ways of acting and gives the grounds for selecting among them. A physician, for example, deliberately avoids such hard and fast alternatives as had been postulated in our instance. He does not observe simply to get an indication of whether the man is well or ill, but in order to determine what to do he extends his explorations over a wide field. Much of his perceived object field is immaterial to what he finally does, that is, does not serve his sign. But it is all relevant to judging what he is to do. Sense perception as a term in practical judgment must include more than the element which finally serves as sign. If it did not, there would be no perception, but only a direct stimulus to action. The conclusion that such perceptions as we have been considering, are terms and an inference, is to be carefully discriminated from the loose statement that sense perceptions are unconscious inferences. There is a great difference between saying that the perception of a shape affords an indication for an inference, and saying that the perception of shape is itself an inference. That definite shapes would not be perceived, were it not for neural changes brought about in prior inferences, is a possibility. It may be, for ought I know, an ascertained fact. Such telescoping of a perceived object with the object inferred from it may be a constant function. But in any case, the telescoping is not a matter of a present inference going on unconsciously, but is a result of an organic modification which has occurred in the consequence of prior inferences. In similar fashion, to say that to see a table is to get an indication of something to write on, is in no way to say that the perception of a table is an inference from sensory data. To say that certain earlier perceived objects not having as perceived the character of a table have now fused with the results of inferences drawn from them, is not to say that the perception of the table is now an inference. Suppose we say that the first perception was of colored patches, that we inferred from this the possibility of reaching and touching, and that on performing these acts we secured certain qualities of hardness, smoothness, etc., and that these are now all fused with the color patches. At most, this only signifies that certain previously inferred qualities have now become consolidated with qualities from which they were formerly inferred. And such fusion or consolidation is precisely not inference. As matter of fact, such fusion of qualities, given and formally inferred, is but a matter of speaking. What has really happened is that brain processes which formerly happened successively, now happen simultaneously. What we are dealing with is not a fact of cognition, but a fact of the organic conditions of the occurrence of an act of perception. Let us apply the result to the question of sense illusions. The bench reads in the water comes naturally to mind. Purely physical considerations account for the refraction of the light which produces an optical image of a bent stick. This has nothing to do with knowledge or with sense perception, with seeing. It is simply and wholly a matter of the properties of light and a lens. Such refractions are constantly produced without our noting them. In the past, however, light refracted and unrefracted has been a constant stimulus to responsive actions. It is a matter of the native constitution of the organism that light stimulates the eyes to follow and the arms to reach and the hands to clutch and handle. As a consequence, certain arrangements of reflected and refractive light have become a sign to perform certain specific acts of handling and touching. As a rule, stimuli and reactions occur in an appropriately homogeneous medium, the air. The system of signs or indexes of action set up has been based upon this fact and accommodated to it. A habit or bias in favor of a certain kind of inference has been set up. We infer from a bent ray of light that the hand in touching the reflecting object will, at a certain point, have to change its direction. This habit is carried over to a medium in which their conclusion does not hold. Instead of saying that light is bent, which it is, we infer that the stick is bent. We infer that the hand could not protract a straight course in handling the object. But an expert fisherman never makes such an error in spearing fish. Reacting in media of different refractive capacities, he bases his signs and inferences upon the conditions and results of his media. I see no difference between these cases and that of a man who can read his own tongue. He sees the word pain and infers it means a certain physical discomfort. As a matter of fact, the thing perceived exists in an unfamiliar medium and signifies bread. To the one accustomed to the French language, the right inferences occurs. There is neither error nor truth in the optical image. It just exists physically. But we take it for something else. We behave to it as if it were something else. We mistake it. 2. So far as I can see, the pronounced tendency to regard the perceived object as itself the object as a particular kind of knowledge instead of as a term and knowledge of the practical kind has two causes. One is a confirmed habit of neglecting the wide scope and import of practical judgments. This leads to overlooking the responsive act as the other term indicated by the perception and to taking the perceived object as the whole of the situation just by itself. The other cause is the fact that because perceived objects are constantly employed as evidence of what is to be done or how to do something, they themselves become the objects of prolonged and careful scrutiny. We pass naturally and inevitably from recognition to observation. Inference will usually take care of itself if the data is properly determined. In the present day, a skilled physician will have little difficulty in inferring typhoid instead of malaria from certain symptoms provided he can make certain observations, that is, secure certain data from which to infer. The labor of intelligence is thus transferred from inference to the determination of data, the data being determined, however, in the interest of inference and its parts of an inference. At this point, a significant complication enters in. The ordinary assumption in the discussion of the relation of perceived objects to knowledge is that the object, the real object, of knowledge and perception is the thing which caused the qualities which are given. It is assumed, that is, that the other term of a proposition in which a sense datum is one term must be the thing which produced it. Since this producing object is not, for the most part, appear in ordinary sense perception, we have on our hands perception as an epistemological problem, the relation of an appearance to some reality which it somehow conceals rather than indicates. Hence also the difficulties of reconciling scientific knowledge in physics, where these causes are the terms in the propositions with empirical or sense perception knowledge where they do not even appear. Here is where the primary advantage of recognizing that ordinary sense perceptions are forms of practical judgment comes in. In practical judgments the other term is as open and above board as is a sensory equality. It is the thing to be done, the response to be selected. To borrow an illustration of Professor Woodbridge's, a certain sound indicates to the mother that her baby needs attention. If she turns out to be an error, it is not because sound ought to mean so many vibrations of the air, and as a matter of fact it doesn't even suggest air vibrations, but because there is a wrong inference as to the act to be performed. I imagine that if error never occurred in inferences of this practical sort, a human race would have gone on quite contented with them. However that may be, errors do occur, and the endeavor to control inference as to consequence, so as to reduce their livelihood of error, leads to propositions where the knowledge object of the perceived thing is not something to be done, but to cause which produced it. The mother finds her baby peacefully sleeping and says the baby didn't make the noise. She investigates and decides a swinging door made it. Instead of inferring a consequence, she infers a cause. If she had identified the noise in the first place, she would have concluded that the hinges needed oiling. Now where does the argument stand? The proper control of inference in specific cases is found, a, to lie in the proper identification of the datum. If the perception is of a certain kind, the inference takes place as a matter of course, or else inference can be suspended until more adequate data are found, and thus error is avoided even if truth be not found. Furthermore, b, it is discovered that the most effective way of identifying datum, and securing adequate data, is by inference to its cause. The mother stops short with the baby and the door as causes, but the same motives which made her transfer inference from consequences to conditions are the motives which lead others to inferring from sounds to vibrations of air, and so are scientific propositions about sensory data. They are not, as such, about things to do, but about things which have been done, have happened, facts. But they have reference, nevertheless, to inferences regarding consequences to be affected. They are the means of securing data which will prevent errors which would otherwise occur, and which facilitate an entirely new crop of inferences as to possibilities, means, and ends of action. That scientific men should be conscious of this reference, or even interested in it, is not at all necessary, for I am talking about the logic of propositions, not about biography or psychology. If I reverted to psychology, it would be to point out that there is no reason in the world why the practical activity of some men should not be predominantly directed into the pursuits connected with discovery. The extent in which they actually are so directed depends upon social conditions. 3. We are brought to a consideration of the notion of primitive sense data. It was long customary to treat the attempt to define true knowledge in terms derived from sense data as a confusion of psychology, or the history of the growth of knowledge with logic, the theory of the character of knowledge as knowledge. As a matter of fact, there is confusion, but in the opposite direction. The attempt involved a confusion of logic with psychology, that is, it treated a phase of the technique of inference as if it were a natural history of the growth of ideas and belief. The chief source of error in an ordinary inference is an unrecognized complexity of data. Perception which is not experimentally controlled fails to present sufficiently wide data to secure a differential of possible inferences, and it fails to present, even in what is given, lines of cleavage which are important for proper inference. This is only an elaborate way of saying what scientific inquiry has made clear, that for purposes of inference as to conditions of production of what is present, ordinary sense perception is too narrow, too confused, too vivid as to some quails, and too blurred as to some others. Let us confine our attention for the moment to confusion. It has often been pointed out that sense qualities being just what they are, it is illegitimate to introduce such notions as obscurity or confusion into them. A slightly illuminated color is just as irretrievably what it is, as clearly itself, as an object in the broad glare of noonday. But the case stands otherwise when the quail is taken as a datum for inference. It is not so easy to identify a perceived object for purposes of inference in the dusk as in dark light. From the standpoint of an inference to be affected, the confusion is the same as an unjustifiable simplification. This oversimplification has the effect of making the quail, as a term of inference, ambiguous. To infer from it is to subject ourselves to the danger of all fallacies of ambiguity which are expounded in the textbooks. The remedy is clearly the resolution, by experimental means, of what seems to be a simple datum into its elements. This is a case of analysis. It differs from other modes of analysis only in the subject matter upon which it is directed. This is something which has been previously accepted as a simple whole. The result of this analysis is the existence as objects of perception of isolated qualities like the colors of the spectrum scientifically determined, the tones of the scale and all their varying intensities, etc. In short, the sensations or sense qualities of contemporary psychological textbooks or the simple ideas of sensation of Locke or the object of sense of Russell. They are the material of sense perception discriminated for the purpose of better inferences. Note that these simple data or elements are not original, psychologically or historically. They are logical primitives, that is, irreducible for purposes of inference. They are simply the most unambiguous and best-defined objects of perception which can be secured to serve as signs. They are experimentally determined, with great art, precisely because the naturally given, the customary, objects in perception have been ambiguous or confused terms in inference. Hence they are replaced through experimental means involving the use of wide scientific knowledge deductively employed by simpler sense objects. Stated in current physiology, sensations, that is, qualities present to sense, are not the elements out of which perceptions are composed, constituted or constructed. They are the finest, most carefully discriminated objects of perception. We do not first perceive a single, thoroughly defined shade, a tint and hue of red. Its perception is the last refinement of observation. Such things are the limits of perception, but they are final, not initial, limits. They are what is perceived to be given under the most favorable possible conditions. Conditions, moreover, which do not present themselves accidentally, but which have to be intentionally and experimentally established, and detection of which exacts the use of a vast body of scientific propositions. I hope it is now evident what was meant by saying that current logic presents us not with a confusion of psychology with logic, but with a wholesale mistaking of logical determinations for facts of psychology. The confusion was begun by Locke, or rather made completely current through the enormous influence exercised by Locke, and some reference to Locke may be of aid in clearing up the point. Locke's conception of knowledge was logical, not psychological. He meant by knowledge thoroughly justify beliefs or propositions, certainty, and carefully distinguished it from what passed current as knowledge at the given time. The latter he called ascent, opinion, belief, or judgment. Moreover, his interest in the latter was logical. He was after an art of controlling the proper degree of ascent to be given in matters of probability. In short, his sole aim was to determine certainty where certainty is possible, and to determine the due degree of probability in the much vaster range of cases where only probability is attainable. A natural history of the growth of knowledge in the sense of what happens to pass for knowledge was the last of his interests. But he was completely under the domination of the ruling idea of his time, namely that nature is the norm of truth. Now the earliest period of human life presents the work of nature in its pure and unadulterated form. The normal is the original, and the original is the normative. Nature is both beneficent and truthful in its work. It retains all the properties of the supreme being whose vice-regent it is. To get the logical ultimates, we have only, therefore, to get back to the natural primitives. Under the influence of such deistic ideas, Locke writes a mythology of the history of knowledge, starting from clear and distinct meanings, each simple, well-defined, sharply and unambiguously just what it is on its face, without concealments or complications, and proceeds by natural compoundings up to the store of complex ideas and to the perception of simple relations of agreement among ideas. A perception always certain if the ideas are simple and always controllable in the case of complex ideas if we consider the simple ideas in their compoundings. Thus he established the habit of taking logical discriminations as historical or psychological primitives, as sources of beliefs and knowledge, instead of as checks upon inference and as means of knowing. I hope reference to Locke will not make a scapegoat. I should not have mentioned him if it were not that this way of looking at things found its way over into orthodox psychology and then back again into the foundations of logical theory. It may be said to be the stock and trade of the school of imperialistic logicians and, what is even more important, of the other schools of logic whenever they are dealing with propositions of perception and observation, V. de Russell's trusting confidence in atomic propositions as psychological primitives. It led to this opposition that there is a kind of knowledge or simple apprehension, or sense acquaintance, implying no inference and yet basic to inference. Note, if you please, the multitude of problems generated by thinking of whatever is present in experience, as sensory qualities are present, as if it were intrinsically and apart from the use made of its subject matter of knowledge. A. the mind-body problem becomes an integral part of the problem of knowledge. Sense organs, neurons, and neuronic connections are certainly involved in the occurrence of a sense quality. If the occurrence of the latter is in and of itself a mode of knowledge, it becomes a matter of utmost importance to determine just how the sense organs take part in it. If one is an idealist, he responds with joy to any intimation that the process of apprehension, and that is, speaking truly, the physical condition of the occurrence of the sensory datum, transforms the extraorganic stimulus. The alteration is testimony somehow to the constituentative nature of mind. But if he is a realist, he can seize himself under obligation to show that the external stimulus is transmitted without any alteration and is apprehended just as it is. Color must be shown to be, simply, after all, a compacting of vibrations, or else the validity of knowledge is impunged. Consider that knowledge is something about the color, whether about its conditions or causes or consequences or whatever, and that we don't have to identify color itself with a mode of knowing and the situation changes. We know a color when we understand, just as we know a thunderstorm when we understand. More generally speaking, the relation of brain change to consciousness is thought to be an essential part of the problem of knowledge. But if the brain is involved in knowing simply as part of the mechanism of acting, as the mechanism for coordinating partial and competing stimuli into a single scheme of response, as part of the mechanism of actual experimental inquiry, there is no miracle about the participation of the brain in knowing. One might as well make a problem with the fact that it takes a hammer to drive a nail and takes a hand to hold a hammer, as to make a problem out of the fact that it also requires a physical structure to discover and to adapt to the particular acts of holding and striking which are needed. B. The propositions of physical science are not found among the data of apprehension. Mathematical propositions may be disposed of by making them purely a priori. Propositions about sense objects by making them purely a posteriori. But physical propositions, such as make-up physics, chemistry, biology, to say nothing of the propositions of history, anthropology, and society, are neither one nor the other. I could not state the case better than Mr. Russell has stated it, although I am bound to add. The stating did not arouse in Mr. Russell any suspicion of the premises with which he was operating. Men of science, for the most part, are willing to condemn immediate data as merely subjective, while yet maintaining the truth of the physics inferred from those data. But such an attitude, though it may be capable of justification, obviously stands in need of it, and the only justification possible may be one which exhibits matter as a logical construction from sense data. It is therefore necessary to find some way of bridging the gulf between the world of physics and the world of sense. I do not see how anyone familiar with the two world schemes which have played such a part in the history of humanity can read this statement without depression, and if it occurred to one that the sole generating condition of these two worlds is the assumption that sense objects are modes of apprehension or knowledge, are so intrinsically and not in the use made of them, they could of small price to pay to inquire into the standing of this assumption. For it was precisely the fact that sense perception and physical science appeared historically, in the seventeenth century, as rival modes of knowing the same world, which led to the conception of sense objects as subjective, since they were so different from the objects of science. Unless sense and science had both first been thought of as modes of knowing, and then as modes of knowing the same things, there would not have been the slightest reason for regarding immediate data as merely subjective. They would have been a natural phenomena like any other. That they are phenomena which involve the interaction of an organism with such things is just an important discovery about them, as is also a discovery about starch in plants. Physical science is the knowledge of the world by their means. It is a rival, not of them, but of the medley of prior dogmas, superstitions, and chance opinions about the world, a medley which grew up and nourished precisely because of absence of a will to explore and of a technique for detecting unambiguous data, that Mr. Russell, who is a professed realist, can do no better with the problem, once committed to the notion that sense objects are themselves objects of knowledge, than to hold that although the world of physics is not a legitimate inference from sense data, it is a permissible logical construction from them. Permissible in that it involves no logical inconsistencies, suggests that the pragmatic difference between idealist and realist of this type is not very great. From necessary ideal constructions to permissible logical constructions involves considerable difference in technique, but no perceptible practical difference. And the point of this family likeness is that both views bring from regarding sense perception and science as ways of knowing the same objects and hence as rivals until some scheme of conciliation has been devised. C. It is but a variant of this problem to pass on what may be called either the egocentric predicament or the private public problem. Sense data differ from individual to individual. If they are recognized to be natural events, this variation is no more significant than any change depending upon variation of generating conditions. One does not expect two lumps of wax at different distances from a hot body to be affected exactly alike. The upsetting thing would be if they were. Neither does one expect cast iron to react exactly as does steel. That organisms, because of different positions or different internal structures, should introduce differences in the phenomena which they respectively have a share in producing, is a fact of the same nature. But make the sense qualities thus produced not natural events, which may then be made other objects of inquiry or means of inquiring to something else, but modes of knowing and every such deviation marks a departure from two knowing. It constitutes an anomaly. Taken en masse, the deviations are so marked as to lead to the conclusion, even on a part of a realist like Mr. Russell, that they constitute a world of private existences, which, however, may be correlated without logical inconsistency with other such worlds. Not all realists are as alive as Indian modernists as is Mr. Russell. I do not wish to leave the impression that all come to just this solution. But all who regard sense data as apprehensions have on their hands in some form the problem of the seemingly distorting action exercised by an individual knower, upon a public or common thing known or believed in. Four. I am not trying to discuss or solve these problems. On the contrary, I am trying to show that these problems exist only because of the identification of a datum determined with reference to control of inference with a self-sufficient knowledge object. As against this assumption, I point to the following facts. What is actually given as a matter of empirical fact may be indefinitely complicated and diffused. As empirically existent perceived objects never constitute the whole scope of a given, they have a context of indefinite extent in which they are set. To control inference, it is necessary to analyze this complex situation to determine what is data for inference and what is irrelevant. This analysis involves discriminative resolution into more ultimate symbols. The resources of experimentation, all sorts of microscopic, telescopic and registering apparatus are called in to perform that analysis. As a result, we differentiate not merely visual data from auditory, a discrimination affected by experiments within the reach of everybody, but a vast multitude of visual and auditory data. Physics and psychology and anatomy all play a part in the analysis. We even carry the analysis to the point of regarding, say, a color as a self-included object unreferred to any other object. We may avoid a false inference by conceiving it, not as a quality of any object, but as merely a product of a nervous stimulation and reaction, instead of referring it to a ribbon or piece of paper, we may refer it to the organism. But this is only a part of the technique of suspended inference. We avoid some habitual inference in order to make a more careful inference. Thus we escape by astraining out of our logic, by avoiding erecting a system of logical distinctions and checks into a mythological natural history, the epistemological problems. We also avoid the contradiction which haunts every epistemological scheme so far propounded. As a matter of fact, every proposition regarding what is given to sensation or perception is dependent upon the assumption of a vast amount of scientific knowledge which is the result of a multitude of prior analysis, verifications, and inferences. What a combination of tantalus and sycivus we get when we fancy that we have cleared the slate of all these material implications. Fancy that we have really started with simple and independent givens and then try to show how from these original givens we can arrive at the very knowledge which we have all the time employed in the discovery and fixation of the simple sense data. End of section 18, recording by Todd.