 Chapter 8 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 Franklin Vies. Essays in experimental logic by John Dewey. The control of ideas by facts. 1. There is something a little baffling in much of the current discussion regarding the reference of ideas to facts. 2. The not uncommon assumption is that there was a satisfactory and consistent theory of their relation in existence prior to the somewhat impertinent intrusion of a functional and practical interpretation of them. 3. The way the instrumental logician has been turned upon by both idealist and realist is suggestive of the way in which the outsider who intervenes in a family jar is proverbially treated by both husband and wife who manifest their unity by berating the third party. I feel that the situation is due partly to various misapprehensions, inevitable perhaps in the first presentation of a new point of view and multiplied in this instance by the coincidence of the presentation of this logical point of view with that of the larger philosophical movements, humanism, and pragmatism. I wish here to undertake a summary statement of the logical view on its own account, hoping it may receive clearer understanding on its own merits. In the first place it was, apart from the frightful confusion of logical theories, precisely the lack of an adequate and generally accepted theory of the nature of fact and idea and of the kind of agreement or correspondence between them which constitutes the truth of the idea that led to the development of a functional theory of logic. A brief statement of the difficulties in the traditional views may therefore be pertinent. That fruitful thinking thought that terminates in valid knowledge goes on in terms of the distinction of facts and judgment and that valid knowledge is precisely genuine correspondence or agreement of some sort of fact and judgment is the common and undeniable assumption. But the discussions are largely carried on in terms of an epistemological dualism rendering the solution of the problem impossible in virtue of the very terms in which it is stated. The distinction is at once identified with that between mind and matter, consciousness and objects, the psychical and the physical, where each of these terms is supposed to refer to some fixed order of existence, a world in itself. Then of course there comes up the question of the nature of the agreement and of the recognition of it. What is the experience in which the survey of both idea and existence is made and their agreement recognized? Is it an idea? Is the agreement ultimately a matter of self-consistency of ideas? Then what has become of the postulate that truth is agreement of idea with existence beyond idea? Is it an absolute which transcends and absorbs the difference? Then once more, what is the test of any specific judgment? What has become of the correspondence of fact and thought? Or more urgently, since the pressing problem of life, of practice and of science, is the discrimination of the relative or superior validity of this or that theory, plan or interpretation? What is the criterion of truth within present non-absolutistic experience, where the distinction between factual conditions and thoughts and the necessity of some working adjustment persist? Putting the problem in yet another way, either both fact and idea are present all the time or else only one of them is present. But if the former, why should there be an idea at all? And why should it have to be tested by the fact? When we already have what we want, namely existence, reality, why should we take up the wholly super-numerary task of forming more or less imperfect ideas of those facts and then engage in the idle performance of testing them by what we already know to be? But if only ideas are present, it is idle to speak of comparing an idea with facts and testing its validity by its agreement. The elaboration and refinement of ideas to the uttermost still leaves us with an idea, and while a self-consistent idea stands a show of being true in a way in which an incoherent one does not, a self-consistent idea is still but a hypothesis, a candidate for truth. Ideas are not made true by getting bigger, but if only facts are present, the whole conception of agreement is only more given up not to mention that such a situation is one in which there is by definition no thinking or reflective factor at all. This suggests that strictly monistic epistemology, whether idealistic or realistic, does not get rid of the problem. Suppose, for example, we take a sensationalistic idealism, it does away with the ontological gulf between ideas and facts, and by reducing both terms to a common denominator seems to facilitate fruitful discussion of the problem. But the problem of the distinction and reference agreement correspondence of two types of sorts of sensations still persists. If I say the box there is square and call box one of a group of ideas or sensations and square another sensation or idea, the old question comes up, is square already a part of the facts of the box, or is it not? If it is, it is a supernumerary, an idle thing, both as an idea and as an assertion of fact. If it is not, how can we compare the two ideas and what on earth or in heaven does this agreement or correspondence mean? If it means simply that we experience the two sensations in juxtaposition, then the same is true of course of any casual association or hallucination. On the sensational basis, accordingly, there is still a distinction of something given, there, brutally factual, the box, and something else which stands on a different level, ideal, absent, intended, demanded, the square, which is asserted to hold good or be true of the thing box. The fact that both are sensations throws no light on the logical validity of any proposition or belief because, by theory, a like statement holds of every possible proposition. The same problem recurs on a realistic basis. For example, there has recently been propounded the doctrine of the distinction between relations of space and time and relations of meaning or significance as a key to the problem of knowledge. Things exist in their own characters, in their temporal and spatial relations. When knowledge intervenes, there is nothing new of a subjective or psychical sort, but simply a new relation of the things, the suggesting, or signifying of one thing by another. Now, this seems to be an excellent way of stating the logical problem, but I take it, it states, and does not solve. For the characteristic of such situations claiming to terminate in knowledge is precisely that the meaning relation is predicated of the other relations it is referred to them. It is not simply a supervention existing side by side with them, like casual suggestions or the play of fantasy. It is something which the facts, the qualitative space, and time things must bear the burden of, must accept, and take unto themselves as part of themselves. Until this happens, we have only thinking not accomplished knowledge. Hence, logically, the existential relations play the role of fact and the relation of signification that of idea distinguished from fact and yet if valid to hold of fact. This appears quite clearly on the following quotation. It is the ice which means that it will cool the water just as much as it is the ice which does cool the water when put into it. There is, however, a possible ambiguity in the statement to which we shall return later. That the ice, the thing regarded as ice, suggests cooling is as real as is a case of actual cooling, but of course not every suggestion is valid. The ice may be a crystal and it will not cool water at all. So far as it is already certain that this is ice and also certain that ice, under all circumstances, cools water, the meaning relation stands on the same level as the physical being not merely suggested but part of the facts ascertained. It is not a meaning relation as such at all. We already have truth, the entire work of knowing as logical is done. We have no longer the relation characteristic of reflective situations. Here again the implication of the thinking situation is of some correspondence or agreement between two sets of distinguished relations. The problem with valid determination remains the central question of any theory of knowing in its relation to facts and truth. 2. I hope this statement of the difficulty however inadequate will serve at least to indicate that a functional logic inherits the problem in question and does not create it that it has never for a moment denied the prima facie working distinction between ideas, thoughts, meanings and facts, existences, the environment, nor the necessity of a control of meaning by facts. It is concerned not with denying but with understanding. What is denied is not the genuineness of the problem of the terms in which it is stated but the reality and value of the orthodox interpretation. What is insisted upon is the relative instrumental or working character of the distinction that it is a logical distinction instituted and maintained in the interests of intelligence with all that intelligence imports in the exercise of the life functions. To this positive side I now turn. In the analysis it may prove convenient to take an illustration of a man lost in the woods taking this case as typical of any reflective situation in so far as it involves perplexity a problem to be solved. The problem is to find a correct idea of the way home a practical idea or plan of action which will lead to success or the realization of the purpose to get home. Now the critics of the experimental theory of logic make the point that this practical idea the truth of which is evidenced in the successful meeting of a need is dependent for its success upon a purely presentative idea that of the existent environment whose validity has nothing to do with success but depends on agreement with the given state of affairs. It is said that what makes a man's idea of his environment true is its agreement with the actual environment and generally a true idea in any situation consists in its agreement with reality. I have already indicated my acceptance of this formula but it was long my misfortune not to be possessed offhand of those perfectly clear notions of just what is meant in this formula by the terms idea existence and agreement which are possessed by other writers on epistemology and when I analyzed these notions I found the distinction between the practical idea and the theoretical not fixed nor final and I found a somewhat startling similarity between the notions of success and agreement just what is the environment of which an idea is to be formed i.e what is the intellectual content or objective detail to be assigned to the term environment it can hardly mean the actual visible environment the trees rocks etc which a man is actually looking at these things are there and it seems superfluous to form an idea of them moreover the way of fairing man though lost would have to be an unusually perverse fool if under such circumstances he were unable to form an idea supposing he chose to engage in this luxury in agreement with these facts the environment must be a larger environment than the visible facts it must include things not within the direct kin of the lost man it must for instance extend from where he is now to his home or to the point from which he started it must include unperceived elements in their contrast with a perceived otherwise the man would not be lost now we are at once struck with the facts that the lost man has no alternative except either to wander aimlessly or else to conceive this inclusive environment and that this conception is just what is meant by idea it is not some little psychical entity or piece of consciousness stuff but is the interpretation of the locally present environment in reference to its absent portion that part to which it is referred as another part so as to give a view of a whole just how such an idea would differ from one's plan of action in finding one's way i don't know for one's plan if it be really a plan a method is a conception of what is given in its hypothetical relations to what is not given employed as a guide to that act which results in the absence being also given it is a map constructed with one's self lost and one's self found whether at starting or at home again as its two points if this map in a specific character is not also the only guide to the way home once only plan of action then i hope i may never be lost it is the practical facts of being lost and desiring to be found which constitute the limits and the content of the environment then comes the test of agreement of the idea and the environment supposing the individual stands still and attempts to compare his idea with the reality with what reality is he to compare it not with a presented reality for that reality is the reality of himself lost not with a complete reality for at this stage of proceedings he has only the idea to stand for the complete theory what kind of comparison is possible or desirable then save to treat the mental layout of the whole situation as a working hypothesis as a plan of action and proceed to act upon it to use it as a director and controller of one's divisions instead of stumbling blindly around until one is either exhausted or accidentally gets out now suppose one uses the idea that is to say the present facts projected into a hole in the light of absent facts as a guide of action suppose by means of its specifications one works once way along until one comes upon familiar ground finds one's self now one may say my idea was right it was in accord with facts it agrees with reality that is acted upon sincerely it has led to the desired conclusion it has through action worked out the state of things which is contemplated or intended the agreement correspondence is between purpose plan and its own execution fulfillment between a map of a course constructed for the sake of guiding behavior and the result attained in acting upon the indications of the map just how does such agreement differ from success three if we exclude acting upon the idea no conceivable amount or kind of intellectualistic procedure can confirm or refute an idea or throw any light upon its validity how does the non-pragmatic view consider that verification takes place does it suppose that we first look a long while at the facts and then a long time at the idea until by some magical process the degree and kind of their agreement become visible unless there is some such conception as this what conception of agreement is possible except the experimental or practical one and if it be admitted that verification involves action how can that action be relevant to the truth of an idea unless the idea is itself already relevant to action if by acting in accordance with the experimental definition of facts this as obstacles and conditions and the experimental definition of the end or intent this as plan and method of action a harmonized situation effectively presents itself we have the adequate and the only conceivable verification of the intellectual factors if the action indicated be carried out and the disordered or disturbed situation persists then we have not merely confuted the tentative possessions of intelligence but we have in the very process of acting introduced new data and eliminated some of the old ones and thus afforded an opportunity for the resurvey of the facts and the revision of the plan of action by acting faithfully upon an inadequate reflective presentation we have at least secured the elements for its improvement this of course gives no absolute guarantee that the reflection will at any time be so performed as to prove its validity in fact but the self-rectification of intellectual content through acting upon it in good faith is the absolute of knowledge loyalty to which is the religion of intellect the intellectual definition or delimination assigned to the given is thus as tentative and experimental as that ascribed to the idea inform both are categorical and in content both are hypothetical facts really exist just as facts and meanings exist as meanings one is no more superfluous more subjective or less necessitated than the other in and of themselves as existences both are equally realistic and compulsive but on the basis of existence there is no element in either which may be strictly described as intellectual or cognitional there is only a practical situation in its brute and and rationalized form what is uncertain about the facts is given at any moment is whether the right exclusions and selections have been made since that is a question which can be decided finally only by the experimental issue this ascription of character is itself tentative and experimental if it works the characterization and delineation are found to be proper ones but every admission prior to inquiry of unquestioned categorical rigid objectivity compromises the probability that it will work the character assigned to the datum must be taken as hypothetically as possible in order to preserve the elasticity needed for easy and prompt reconsideration any other procedure virtually insists that all facts and details anywhere happening to exist and happening to present themselves all being equally real must all be given equal status and equal weight and that their outer ramifications and internal complexities must be indefinitely followed up the worthlessness of this sheer accumulation of realities its total irrelevancy the lack of any way of judging the significance of the accumulations are good proofs of the fallacy of any theory which ascribes objective logical content to facts wholly apart from the needs and possibilities of a situation the more stubbornly one maintains the full reality of either his facts or his ideas just as they stand the more accidental is the discovery of relevantly significant facts and a valid ideas the more accidental the less rational is the issue of the knowledge situation due progress is reasonably probable in just the degree in which the meaning categorical in its existing imperativeness and the fact equally categorical in its brute coerciveness are assigned only a provisional and tentative nature with reference to control of the situation that this render of a rigid and final character of the content of knowledge on the sides both in fact and of meaning in favor of experimental and functioning estimations is precisely the change which has marked the development of modern from medieval and greek science seems undoubted to learn the lesson one has only to contrast the rigidity of phenomena and conceptions in greek thought platonic ideas aristotelian forms with a modern experimental selection and determining of facts and experimental employment of hypotheses the former have ceased to be ultimate realities of a nondescript sort and have become provisional data the latter have ceased to be eternal meanings and have become working theories the fruitful application of mathematics and the evolution of a technique of experimental inquiry have coincided with this change that realities exist independently of their use as intellectual data and that meanings exist apart from their utilization as hypotheses are the permanent truths of greek realism as against the exaggerated subjectivism of modern philosophy but the conception that this existence is to be defined in the same way as our contents of knowledge so that perfect being is object of perfect knowledge and imperfect being object of imperfect knowledge is the fallacy which greek thought projected into modern science has advanced in its methods in just the degree in which it has ceased to assume that prior realities and prior meanings retained fixedly and finally when entering into reflective situations the characters they had prior to this entrance and in which it has realized that their very presence within the knowledge situation signifies that they have to be redefined and revalued from the standpoint of the new situation for this conception does not however commit us to the view that there is any conscious situation which is totally non-reflective it may be true that any experience which can properly be termed such comprises something which is meant over and against what is given or there but there are many situations into which the rational factor the mutual distinction and mutual reference of fact and meaning enters only incidentally and is slurred not accentuated many disturbances are relatively trivial and induce only a slight and superficial redefinition of contents this passing tension of facts against meaning may suffice to call up and carry a wide range of meaningful facts which are quite relevant to the intellectual problem such is the case where the individual is finding his way through any field which is upon the whole familiar and which accordingly requires only an occasional re-survey and reevaluation at moments of slight perplexity we may call these situations if we will knowledge situations for the reflective function characteristic of knowledge is present but so denominating them does not do away with their sharp difference from those situations in which the critical qualification of facts and definition of meanings constitute the main business to speak of the passing attention which a traveler has occasionally to give to the indication of his proper path in a fairly familiar and beaten highway as knowledge in just the same sense in which the deliberate inquiry of a mathematician or a chemist or a logician is knowledge is as confusing to the real issue involved as would be the denial to it of any reflective factor if then one bears in mind these two considerations one the unique problem and purpose of every reflective situation and two the difference as to range and thoroughness of logical function in different types of reflective situations one need have no difficulty with the doctrine that the great obstacle in the development of scientific knowing is that facts and meanings enter such situations with stubborn and alien characteristics imported from other situations this affords an opportunity to speak again of the logical problem to which reference and promise of return were made earlier in this paper facts may be regarded as existing qualitatively and in certain spatial and temporal relations when there is knowledge another relation is added that of one thing meaning or signifying another water exists for example as water in a certain place in a certain temporal sequence but it may signify the quenching of thirst and this signification relation constitutes knowledge this statement may be taken in a way congruous with the account developed in this paper but it may also be taken in another sense consideration of which will serve to enforce the point regarding the tentative nature of the characterization of the given as distinct from the intended and absent water means quenching thirst it is drunk and death follows it was not water but a poison which looks like water or it is drunk and is water but does not quench thirst for the drinker is in an abnormal condition and drinking water only intensifies the thirst or it is drunk and quenches thirst but it also brings on typhoid fever being not merely water but water plus germs now all these events demonstrate that error may apportain quite as much to the characterization of existing things suggesting or suggested as to the suggestion qua suggestion there is no ground for giving the things any superior reality in these cases indeed it may fairly be said that the mistake is made because qualitative thing and suggested or meaning relation were not discriminated the signifying force was regarded as a part of the direct quality of the given fact quite as much as its color liquidity etc it is only in another situation that it is discriminated as a relation instead of being regarded as an element it is quite as true to say that a thing is called water because it suggests thirst quenching as to say that it suggests thirst quenching because it is characterized as water the knowledge function becomes prominent or dominant in the degree in which there is a conscious discrimination between the fact relations and the meaning relations and this inevitably means that the water ceases to be surely water just as it becomes doubtful or hypothetical whether this thing whatever it is really means thirst quenching if it really means thirst quenching it is water so far as it may not mean it it perhaps is not water it is now just as much a question what this is as what it means whatever will resolve one question will resolve the other in just the degree then in which an existence or a thing it's intellectualized force or function it becomes a fragmentary and dubious thing to be circumscribed and described for the sake of operating a sign or clue of a future reality to be realized through action only as reality is reduced to a sign and questions of its nature as sign are considered does it get intellectual or cognitional status the bearing of this upon the question of practical character of the distinctions of facts and idea is obvious no one I take it would deny that action of some sort does follow upon judgment no one would deny that this action does somehow serve to test the value of the intellectual operations upon which it follows but if this subsequent action is merely subsequent if the intellectual categories operations and distinctions are complete in themselves without inherent reference to it what guarantee is there that they pass into relevant action and by what miracle does the action manage to test the worth of the idea but if the intellectual identification and description of the thing are as tentative and instrumental as is the description of significance then the exigencies of the active situation are operative in all the categories of the knowledge situation action is not a more or less accidental appendage or afterthought but is undergoing development and giving direction in the entire knowledge function in conclusion I remark that the ease with which the practical character of these fundamental logical categories fact meaning and agreement may be overlooked or denied is due to the organic way in which practical import is incarnate in them it can be overlooked because it is so involved in the terms themselves that it is assumed at every turn the pragmatist is in the position of one who is charged with denying the existence of something because in pointing out a certain fundamental feature of it he puts it in a strange light such confusion always occurs when the familiar is brought to definition the difficulties are more psychological difficulties of orientation and mental adjustment than logical and in the long run will be done away with by our getting used to the different viewpoint rather than by argument end of section nine recording by Franklin vias chapter nine 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 Franklin vias essays in experimental logic by John Dewey naive realism versus presentative realism one in spite of the elucidations of contemporary realists a number of idealists continue to adduce in behalf of idealism certain facts having an obvious physical nature and explanation the visible convergence of the real way tracks for example is cited as evidence that what is seen is a mental content yet this convergence follows from the physical properties of light and the lens and is physically demonstrated in a camera is the photograph then to be conceived as a psychical somewhat that the time of the visibility of the light does not coincide with the time at which a distant body emitted the light is employed to support a similar idealistic conclusion in spite of the fact that the exact difference in time may be deduced from a physical property of light its rate the dislocation in space of the light seen and the astronomical star is used as evidence of the mental nature of the former though the exact angular difference is a matter of simple computation from purely physical data the doubling of images of say the finger when the eyeball is pressed is frequently proffered as a clincher yet it is a simple matter to take anybody that reflects light and by a suitable arrangement of lenses to produce not only two but many images projected into space in the fact that under definite physical conditions misplacement of lenses a finger yields two images proves the psychical character of the latter then the fact that under certain conditions a sounding body yields one or more echoes is by parity of reasoning proof that the echo is made of mental stuff if once more the differences in form and color of a table to different observers occupying different physical positions is proof that what each sees is a psychical private isolated somewhat then the fact that one and the same physical body has different effects upon or relations with different physical media is proof of the mental nature of these effects take a lump of wax and subject it to the same heat located at different positions now the wax is solid now liquid it might even be gaseous how psychical these phenomena it almost seems as if the transformation of the physical into the mental in the cases cited exemplifies an interesting psychological phenomenon in each case the beginning is with a real and physical existence taking the real object the astronomical star on the basis of its physical reality the idealist concludes to the psychical object radically different taking the single object the finger from the premise of its real singleness he concludes to a double mental content which then takes the place of the original single thing taking one and the same object the table presenting its different surfaces and reflections of light to different real organisms he eliminates the one table in its different relations in behalf of a multiplicity of total separate psychical tables the logic reminds us of the story of the country man who after gazing at the giraffe remarked there ain't no such animal it almost seems a repeat as if this self contradiction in the argument creates in some minds the impression that the object not the argument is undergoing the extraordinary reversal of four however this may be the problem indicated in the foregoing cases is simply the good old problem of the many in one or less cryptically the problem of the maintenance of a continuity of process throughout differences i do not pretend that this situation though the most familiar thing in life is wholly without difficulties but its difficulty is not one of epistemology that is of the relation of known to and nowhere to take it as such and then to use it as proof of the psychical nature of a final term is also to prove that the trail the racket stick leaves behind is psychical or that the flower which comes in a continuity of process from a seed is mental to contemporary realists have so frequently and clearly expounded the physical explanation of such cases as have been cited that one is at a loss as to why idealists go on repeating the cases without even alluding to the realistic explanation one is moved to wonder whether this neglect is just one of those circumstances which persistently dog philosophical discussions or whether something in the realistic position gives ground from at least an ad hominem point of view for the neglect there is a reason for adopting the latter alternative many realists in offering the type of explanation adduced above have treated the cases of seen light doubled imagery as perception in a way that ascribes to perception and inherent cognitive status they have treated a perceptions as cases of knowledge instead of a simply natural events having in themselves apart from a use that may be made of them no more knowledge status or worth than say a shower or a fever what i intend to show is that if perceptions are regarded as cases of knowledge the gate is opened to the idealistic interpretation the physical explanation holds of them as long as they are regarded simply as natural events and a trend i shall call naive realism it does not hold of them considered as cases of knowledge the view i call presentative realism the idealists attribute to the realists the doctrine that the perceived object is the real object please note the wording it assumes that there is the real object something which stands in a contrasting relation with objects not real or else less real since it is easily demonstrable that there is a numerical duplicity between the astronomical star and its effect of visible light between the single finger and the doubled images the latter evidently when the former is dubbed the real object stands in disparaging contrast to its reality if it is a case of knowledge the knowledge refers to the star and yet not the star but something more or less and real that is if the star be the real object is known consider how simply the matter stands in what i have called naive realism the astronomical star is a real object but not the real object the visible light is another real object found when knowledge supervenes to be an occurrence standing in a process continuous with the star since the scene light is an evident within a continuous process there is no point of view from which its reality contrasts with that of the star but suppose that the realist accepts the traditionary psychology according to which every event in the way of a perception is also a case of knowing something is the way out now so simple in the case of the doubled fingers or the scene light the thing known in perception contrasts with the physical source and cost of the knowledge there is a numerical duplicity moreover the thing known by perception is by this hypothesis in relation to a nowhere while the physical cost is not is not the most plausible account of the difference between the physical cost of the perceptive knowledge and what the latter presents precisely this latter difference namely presentation to a nowhere if perception is a case of knowing it must be a case of knowing the star but since the real star is not known in the perception the knowledge relation must somehow have changed the object into a content thus when the realist conceives the perceptual occurrence as an intrinsic case of knowledge or of presentation to a mind or knower he lets the nose of the idealist camel into the tent he has then no great cost for surprise when the camel comes in and devours the tent perhaps it will seem as if in this last paragraph i had gone back on what i said earlier regarding the physical explanation of the difference between the visible light and the astronomical star on the contrary my point is that this explanation though wholly adequate as long as we conceive the perception to be itself simply a natural event is not at all available when we conceive it to be an attempt at knowing its costs in the former case we are dealing with a relation between natural events in the latter case we are dealing with the difference between an object as a cost of knowledge and an object as known and hence in relation to mind by the method of difference the sole explanation of the difference between the two objects is then the absence or presence of relation to a knower in the case of the seen light reference to the velocity of light is quite adequate to account for its time and space differences from the star but viewed as a case of what is known on this position that perception is knowing reference to it only increases the contrast between the real object and the object known in perception for being just as much a part of the object that causes the perception as is the star itself it the velocity of light ought logically to be part of what is known in the perception while it is not since the velocity of light is a constituent element in the star it should be known in the perception since it is not so known reference to it only increases discrepancy between the object of the perception the scene light and the real astronomical star the same is true to any physical condition that might be referred to the very things that from the standpoint of perception as a natural event are conditions that account for its happening are from the standpoint of perception as a case of knowledge part of the object which if knowledge is to be valid ought to be known but is not in this fact we have perhaps the ground of the idealists disregard of the oft-profered physical explanation of the difference between the perceptual event and the so-called real object and it is quite possible that some realists who read these lines will feel that in my last paragraphs I have been making a covert argument for idealism not so I repeat they are an argument for a truly naive realism the presentative realist in his appeal to common sense and the plain man first sophisticates the umpire and then appeals he stops a good way short of a genuine naivete the plain man for a surety does not regard noises heard lights seen etc as mental existences but neither does he regard them as things known that they are just things is good enough for him that they are in relation to mind or in relation to mind as they're nowhere no more a course to him than that they are mental by this I mean much more than that the formulae of epistemology are foreign to him I mean that his attitude to these things as things involves they're not being in relation to him as a mind or a knower he is in the attitude of a liker or hater a doer or an appreciator when he takes the attitude of a knower he begins to inquire once depart from thorough naivete and substitute for it the psychological theory that perception is a cognitive presentation to a mind of a causal object and the first step is taken on the road which ends in an idealistic system three for simplicity's sake I have written as if my main problem were to show how in the face of a supposed difficulty a strictly realistic theory of the perceptual event may be maintained but my interest is primarily in the facts and in the theory only because of the facts it formulates the significance of the facts of the case may perhaps be indicated by a consideration which has thus far been ignored in regarding a perception as a case of knowledge the percentative realist does more than shove into it a relation to mind which then naturally and inevitably becomes the explanation of any differences that exist between its subject matter and some causal object with which it contrasts in many cases very important cases too in the physical sciences the contrasting real object becomes known by a logical process by inference as the contemporary position of the star is determined by calculations of data not by perception this then is the situation of the presentative realist if perception is knowledge of its costs it stands in unfavorable contrast with another indirect mode of knowledge its object is less valid than the object of inference I do not adduce these considerations showing that the case is hopeless for the presentative realist I am willing to concede he can find a satisfactory way out but the difficulty exists and in existing it calls emphatic attention to a case which is certainly and indisputably a case of knowledge namely propositions arrived at through inference judgments as logical assertions with relation to the unquestionable case of knowledge the logical or inferential case perceptions occupy a unique status one which readily accounts for their being regarded as cases of knowledge although in themselves they are natural events one they are the sole ultimate data the sole media of inference to all natural objects and processes while we do not in any intelligible or verifiable sense know them we know all things that we do know with or by them they furnish the only ultimate evidence of the existence and nature of the objects which we infer and they are the sole ultimate checks and tests of the inferences the visible light is a necessary part of the evidence on the basis of which we infer the existence place and structure of the astronomical star and some other perception is a verifying check on the value of the inference because of this characteristic use of perceptions the perceptions themselves acquire by second intention a knowledge status they become objects of minute accurate and experimental scrutiny since the body of propositions that forms natural science hangs upon them for scientific purposes their nature as evidence as science entirely overshadows their natural status that of being simply natural events the scientific man as scientific cares for perceptions not in themselves but as they throw light upon the nature of some object reached by evidence and since every such inference tries to terminate in a further perception as its tests of validity the value of inferential knowing depends on perception to independently of science daily life uses perceptions as signs of other perceptions when a perception of a certain kind frequently recurs and is constantly used as evidence of some other impending perceptual event the function of habit a natural function be it noted that a psychical or epistemological function often brings it about that the perception loses its original quality in acquiring a signed value language is of course the typical case noises in themselves mere natural events through habitual use as signs of other natural events become integrated with what they mean what they stand for is telescoped as it were into what they are this happens also with other natural events colors tastes etc thus for practical purposes many perceptual events are cases of knowledge that is they have been used as such so often that the habit of so using them is established or automatic in this brief reference to facts that are perfectly familiar i have tried to suggest three points of crucial importance for a naive realism first that inferential or evidential knowledge that involving logical relation is in the field as an obvious and undisputed case of knowledge second that this function although embodying the logical relation is itself a natural and specifically detectable process among natural things it is not a non-natural or epistemological relation third that they use practical and scientific of perceptual events in the evidential or inferential function is such as to make them become objects of inquiry and limits of knowledge and to such a degree that this acquired characteristic quite overshadows in many cases their primary nature if we add to what has been said the fact that like every natural function the inferential function turns out better in some cases and worse in others we get a naturalistic or naively realistic conception of the problem of knowledge control of the conditions of inference the only type of knowledge detectable indirect existence so as to guide it toward better conclusions four i do not flatter myself that it will receive much gratitude from realists for attempting to rescue them from that error of fact which exposes their doctrine to an idealistic interpretation the superstition growing up in a false physics and physiology and perpetuated by psychology that sensations perceptions or cases of knowledge is too ingrained but creative expert though let them try the experiment of conceiving perceptions as pure natural events not as cases of awareness or apprehension and they will be surprised to see how little they miss save the burden of carrying traditionary problems meantime while philosophic argument such as this will do little to change the state of belief regarding perceptions the development of biology and the refinement of physiology will induce season do the work in concluding my article i ought to refer in order to guard against misapprehension to a reply that the percentative realist might make to my objection he might say that while the scene light is a case of knowledge or percentative awareness it is not a case of knowledge of the star but simply of the scene light just as it is in this case the appeal to the physical explanations of the difference of the scene light from its objective source is quite legitimate at first sight such a position seems innocent and tenable even if innocent it would however be ungrounded since there is no evidence of the existence of a knower and of its relation to the scene light but further consideration will reveal that there is a most fundamental objection if the notion of perception as a case of adequate knowledge of its own object matter be accepted the knowledge relation is absolutely ubiquitous it is an all-inclusive net the egocentric predicament is inevitable this result of making perception a case of knowing will now occupy us end of section 10 recording by franklin vias chapter 10 of essays in experimental logic this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org essays in experimental logic by john dewey chapter 10 epistemological realism the alleged ubiquity of the knowledge relation i have pointed out that if perception be treated as a case of knowledge knowledge of every form and kind must be treated as a case of a presentation to a knower the alleged discipline of epistemology is then inevitable in common usage the term knowledge tends to be employed eulogistically its meaning approaches the connotation of the term science more loosely it is used of course to designate all beliefs and propositions that are held with assurance especially with the implication that the assurance is reasonable or grounded in its practical sense it is used as the equivalent of knowing how of skill or ability involving such acquaintance with things and persons as enables one to anticipate how they behave under certain conditions and to take steps accordingly such usages of the term are all differential they all involve definite contrasts with ungrounded conviction or with doubt and mere guesswork or with the expertness that accompanies lack of familiarity in its epistemological use the term knowledge has a blanket value which is absolutely unknown in common life it covers any and every presentation of any and everything to a knower to an awareer if i may coin a word for the sake of avoiding some of the pitfalls of the term consciousness and i repeat this indiscriminate use of the term knowledge so foreign to science and daily life is absolutely unavoidable if perception be regarded as in itself a mode of knowledge and then and only that the problem of the possibility nature and extent of knowledge in general is also inevitable i hope i shall not be regarded as offensively pragmatic if i suggest that this undesirable consequence is a good reason for not accepting the premise from which it follows unless that premise be absolutely forced upon us at all events upon the supposition of the ubiquity of the knowledge relation in respect to a self presentative realism is compelled to accept the geniuses of the epistemological problem and thus to convert itself into an epistemological realism getting one more step away from both naive and naturalistic realism the problem is especially acute for a presentative realism because idealism has made precisely this ubiquity of relationship its axiom its shortcut one sample is as good as a thousand says bane there is no possible knowledge of a world except in relation to our minds knowledge means a state of mind the notion of material things is a mental fact we are incapable even of discussing the existence of an independent material world the very act is a contradiction we can speak only of a world presented to our own minds on the supposition of the ubiquity of the relation realism and idealism exhaust the alternatives if the ubiquity of the relation is a myth both doctrines are unreal because there is no problem of which they are the solution my first step in indicating the unreality of both solutions is formal i shall try to show that if the knowledge relation of things to a self is the exhaustive and inconclusive relation there is no intelligible point at issue between idealism and realism the differences between them are either verbal or else due to a failure on the part of one or the other to stick to their common premise one to my mind professor perry rendered philosophic discussion real service when he coined the phrase egocentric predicament the phrase designated something which whether or no would be real in itself is very real in current discussion and designating it rendered it more accessible to examination interming the alleged uniform complicity of a knower a predicament it is intended i take it to suggest among other things that we have here a difficulty with which all schools of thought alike must reckon so that it is a difficulty that cannot be used as an argument in behalf of one school and against another if the relation be ubiquitous it affects alike every view every theory every object experienced it is no respecter of persons no respecter of doctrines since it cannot make any difference to any particular object to any particular logical assertion or to any particular theory it does not support an idealistic as against a realistic theory being a universal common denominator of all theories it cancels out all of them alike it leaves the issue one of subject matter to be decided on the basis of that subject matter not on the basis of an unescapable attendant consideration that the subject matter must be known in order to be discussed in short the moral is quite literally forget it or cut it out but the idealist may be imagined to reply somewhat as follows if the ubiquity were of any kind other than precisely the kind it is the advice to disregard it as a mere attendant circumstance of discussion would be relevant thus for example we disregard gravitation when we are considering a particular chemical reaction there is no ground for supposing that it affects a reaction in any way that modifies it as a chemical reaction and if the egocentric relation were cited when the point at issue is something about one group of facts in distinction from another group it ought certainly to be cancelled from any statement about them but since the point at issue is precisely the most universally defining trait of existence as known the invitation deliberately to disregard the most universal trait is nothing more or less than an invitation to philosophic suicide if the idealist I have imagined is making the foregoing retort were up in recent realistic literature he might add the following argument ad hominem you my realistic opponent say that the doctrine of the external relation of terms expresses a ubiquitous mark of every genuine proposition or relational complex and that this ubiquity is a strong presumption in favor of realism why so uneven so partial in your attitude toward ubiquitous relations is it perchance that you were so uneasy at our possession of a ubiquitous relation that gives a shortcut to idealism that you felt you must also have a shortcut to realism if I terminate the controversy at this point it is not because I think the realist is unable to come back on the contrary I stop here because I believe for reasons that will come out surely that both realist and idealist have the same primary assumption can come back at each other indefinitely consequently I wish to employ the existence of this two co-co controversy to raise the question under what conditions is the relation of nowhere to known an intelligible question and I wish to show that it is not intelligible if the knowledge relation be ubiquitous and homogenous the controversy back and forth is in fact a warning of each side by the other not to depart from their common premise if the idealist begins to argue as he constantly does as if the relation to mind or to consciousness made some difference of a specific sort like that between error and fact or between sound perception and hallucination he may be reminded that since this relation is uniform it substantiates and nullifies all things alike and the realist is quite within the common premise when he points out that every special fact must be admitted for what it is specifically known to be no idealistic doctrine can turn the edge of the fact that knowledge has evolved historically out of a state in which there was no mind or of the fact that that knowledge is even now dependent on the brain provided that specific evidence shows these to be facts the realist on the other hand must admit that after all the entire body of known facts or of science including such facts as the above is held fast and tight in the net of relation to a mind or consciousness in specific cases this relation may be ignored but the exact ground for such an ignoring is precisely that the relation is not a specific fact but a uniform relation of facts and to call it an external relation makes no practical difference if it is universal and uniform so the idealist might reply imagine a situation like the following the soul relation an organism bears to things is that of an eater the soul relation to the environment bears to the organism is that of food that is things to eat this relation then is exhaustive it defines or identifies each term in relation to the other but this means that there are not as respects organism and environment two terms at all either of food and food being eaten are two names for one in the same situation could there be imagined a greater absurdity than to set to work to discuss the relation of either to food of organism to the environment or to argue as to whether one modifies the other or not given the premise the statements in such a discussion could have only a verbal difference from one another suppose however the discussion has somehow got underway sides have been taken the philosophical world is divided into two great camps foodists and eaterists the eaterists idealists contend that no object exists except in relation to eating hence that everything is constituted a thing by its relation to eating special sciences exist indeed which discuss the nature of various sorts of things in relation to one another and hence in legitimate abstraction from the fact that they are all foods but the discussion of their nature on sich depends upon etology which deals primarily with the problem of the possibility nature and extent or limits of eating food in general and thereby determines what food in general uberhaupt is and means nay replies the foodist realist since the eating relation is uniform it is negligible all propositions which have any intelligible meaning are about objects just as they are and in the relations they bear to one another foods pass in and out of the relation to either with no change in their own traits moreover the position of the eaterists is self-contradictory how can a thing be eaten unless it is in and of itself a food to suppose that a food is constituted by eating is to presuppose that eating eats eating and so on in infinite regress in short to be an eater is to be an eater of food take away the independent existence of foods you deny the existence and the possibility of an eater I respectfully submit that there is no terminus to such a discussion for either both sides are saying the same thing in different words or else both of them depart from their common premise and unwittingly smuggle in some relations between the organism and the environment other than that of food eater if to be an eater means that an organism which is more and other than an eater is doing something distinctive because contrasting with its other functions in eating then and then only is there an issue in this latter case the thing which food is may of course be provided to be something besides food because of some different relation to the organism than that of eating but if both stick consistently to their common premise we get the following trivial situation the idealist says every philosophy purports to be knowledge knowledge of objects all knowledge implies relation to mind therefore every object with which philosophy deals is object in relation to mind the realist says to be a mind is to be a knower to be a knower is to be a knower of objects without the objects to be known mind the knower is and means nothing the difficulties attending the discussion of epistemology are no way attended upon the special subject matter of epistemology they are found wherever any reciprocal relation is taken to define exclusively and exhaustively all the connections between any pair of things if there are two things that stand solely as buyer and seller to each other or as husband and wife then then that relation is unique and undefinable to discuss the relation of the relation to the terms of which it is the relation is an obvious absurdity to assert that the relation does not modify the seller the wife or the object known is to discuss the relation of the relation just as much as to assert the opposite the only reason I think why anyone has ever supposed the case of knower known to differ from any case of an alleged exhaustive and exclusive correlation is that while the knower is only one just knower the objects known are obviously many and sustain many relations to one another which vary independently of their relation to the knower this is the undoubted fact at the bottom of epistemological realism but the idealist is entitled to reply that the objects in their variable relations to one another nevertheless fall within a relation to a knower as long as that relation is regarded by both as exhaustive or ubiquitous to nevertheless I do not conceive that the realistic assertion and the idealistic assertion in this dilemma stand on the same level or have the same value the fact that objects vary in relation to one another independently of their relation to the knower is a fact and a fact recognized by all schools the idealistic assertion rests simply upon the presupposition of the ubiquity of the knowledge relation and consequently has only an ad hominem force that is as a force as against epistemological realists against those who admit that the soul and exhaustive relation of the self or ego to objects is that of knower of them the relation of buyer and seller is a discussable relation for buyer does not exhaust one party and seller does not exhaust the other each is a man or a woman a consumer or a producer or a middleman a green grocer or a dry goods merchant a taxpayer or a voter and so on indefinitely nor is it true that such additional relations are born merely to other things the buyer sellers are more than an other than buyer seller to each other they may be fellow clubmen belong to opposite political parties dislike each other's looks and be second cousins hence the buyer seller relation stands in intelligent connection and contrast with other relations so that it can be discriminated to find analyzed moreover there are specific differences in the buying selling relation because it is not ubiquitous it is not homogenous if wealthy and a householder the one who buys is a different buyer that is buys differently than of poor and of water consequently the seller sells differently has more or less goods left to sell more or less income to expend on other things and so on indefinitely moreover in order to be a buyer the man has to have been other things that is he is not a buyer per se but becomes a buyer because he is an eater wears clothes is married etc it is also quite clear that the organism is something else than an eater or something in relation to food alone i will not again call the role of perfectly familiar facts i will lessen my appeal to the reader's patience by confining my reiteration to one point even in relation to the things that are food the organism is something more than their eater he is their acquirer their pursuer their cultivator their beholder taster etc he becomes their eater only because he has so many other things and his becoming an eater is a natural episode in the natural unfolding of these other things precisely the same sort of assertions may be made about the knower known relation if the one who is knower is something else and more than the knower of objects and if objects are in relation to the one who knows them something else and other than things in a knowledge relation there is somewhat to define and discuss otherwise we are raising as we have already seen the quite foolish question as to what is the relation of a relation to itself or the equally foolish question of whether being a thing modifies the thing that is and moreover epistemological realism and idealism both say the same thing realism that a thing does not modify itself idealism that since the thing is what it is it stands in the relation that it does stand in there are many facts which prima facie support the claim that knowing is a connection of things which depends upon other and more primary connections between the self and things a connection which grows out of these more fundamental connections and which operates in their interests at specifiable crises i will not repeat what is so generally admitted and so little taken into account that knowing is biologically a differentiation of organic behavior but we'll cite some facts that are even more obvious and even more neglected one if we take a case of perception we find upon analysis that so far as a self or organism is concerned in it at all the self is so to say inside of it rather than outside of it it would be much more correct to say that a self is contained in a perception than that a perception is presented to a self that is to say the organism is involved in the occurrence of the perception in the same sort of way that hydrogen is involved in the happening producing of water we might about as well talk of the production of a specimen of water as a presentation of water to hydrogen as talk in the way we are only too accustomed to talk about perceptions and the organism when we consider a perception as a case of a perception the same thing holds good habits enter into the constitution of the situation they are in and of it not so far as it is concerned something outside of it here if you please is a unique relation of self and things but it is unique not in being wholly incomparable to all natural relations among events but in the sense of being distinctive or just the relation that it is two taking the many cases where the self may be said in an intelligible sense to lie outside a thing and hence to have dealings with it we find that they are extensively and primarily cases where the self is agent-patient doer sufferer and enjoyer this means of course that things the things that later come to be known are primarily not objects of awareness but causes of wheel and row things to get and things to avoid means and obstacles tools and results to a naive spectator the ordinary assumption that a thing is inexperienced only when it is an object of awareness or even only when a perception is nothing less than extraordinary the self experiences whatever it undergoes and there is no fact about life more assured or more tragic than that what we are aware of is determined by things that we are undergoing but of which we are not conscious and which we cannot be conscious of under the particular conditions three so far as the question of the relation of the self to known objects is concerned knowing is but one special case of the agent patient of the behavior enjoyer sufferer situation it is however the case constantly increasing in relative importance the connections of the self with things by way of wheel or woe are progressively found to depend upon the connections established in knowing things on the other hand the progress the advance of science is found to depend more and more upon the courage and patience of the agent making the widening and butchering of knowledge of business it is impossible to overstate the significance the reality of the relation of self as knower to things when it is thought of as a moral relation a deliberate and responsible undertaking of a self ultimately the modern insistence upon the self in reference to knowledge in contrast with the classic Greek view will be found to reside precisely here my purpose in citing the foregoing facts is not to prove a positive point that is that there are many relations of self and things of which knowing is but one differentiated case it concerns something less obvious that is showing what is meant by saying that the problems at issue concern matters of fact and are not matters to be decided by assumption definition and deduction I mean also to suggest what kind of matters of fact would naturally be adduced as evidential in such a discussion negatively put my point is that the whole question of the relation of knower to known is radically misconceived in what passes as epistemology because of an underlying unexamined assumption an assumption which more over when examined makes the controversy verbal or absurd positively put my point is that since prima facie plenty of connections other than the knower known one exists between self and things there is a context in which the problem of their relation concerns matters of fact capable of empirical determination by matter of fact inquiry the point about a difference being made or rather making and things when known is precisely of this sort three that question is not save upon the assumption of the ubiquity of the knowledge relation the absurd question of whether knowledge makes any difference to things already known or to things as knowledge objects as facts or truths until the epistemological realists have seriously considered the main propositions of the pragmatic realists that is that knowing is something that happens to things in the natural course of their career not the sudden introduction of a unique non-natural type of relation that to a mind or consciousness they are hardly in a position to discuss the second and derived pragmatic proposition that in this natural continuity things and becoming known undergo a specific and detectable qualitative change I had occasion earlier to remark that if one identifies knowledge with situations involving the function of inference the problem of knowledge means the art of guiding this function most effectively that statement holds when we take knowledge as a relation of the things in the knowledge situation if we are once convinced of the artificiality of the notion that the knowledge relation is ubiquitous there will be an existential problem as to the self and knowledge but it will be a radically different problem from that discussed in epistemology the relation of knowing to existence will be recognized to form the subject matter of no problem because involving an ungrounded and even absurd preconception but the problem of the relation of an existence in the way of knowing to other existences or events with which it forms a continuous process will then be seen to be a natural problem to be attacked by natural methods end of chapter 10 chapter 11 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 Franklin Vies essays in experimental logic by John Dewey the existence of the world as a logical problem of the two parts of this paper the first is a study on formal analysis it attempts to show that there is no problem logically speaking of the existence of an external world its point is to show that the very attempt to state the problem involves a self-contradiction that the terms cannot be stated so as to generate a problem without assuming what is professively brought into question the second part is a summary endeavor to state the actual question which is given rise to the unreal problem and the conditions which have led to its being misconstrued so far as subject matter is concerned it supplements the first but the argument of the first part is no it depends upon anything said in the second the latter may be false and its falsity have no implications for it first one there are many ways of stating the problem of the existence of an external world i shall make that of mr Bertrand Russell the basis of my examinations as it is set forth in his recent book our knowledge of the external world as a field for scientific method and philosophy i do this both because his statement is one recently made in a book of commanding importance and because it seems to me to be a more careful statement than most of those invoke if my point can be made up for a statement it will apply a fortiori to other statements even if there be those to whom this does not seem to be the case it will be admitted that my analysis must begin somewhere i cannot take the space to repeat the analysis in application to differing modes of statement with a view to showing that the method employed will yield like results in all cases but i take the liberty of throwing the burden upon the reader and asking him to show cause why it does not so apply after rejecting certain familiar formulations of the question because they employ the not easily definable notions of the self and independence mr Russell makes the following formulation can we know that objects of sense exist at times when we are not perceiving them or in another mode of statement can the existence of anything other than our own hard data be inferred from the existence of those data i shall try to show that identification of the data of sense as the sort of term which will generate the problem involves an affirmative answer to the question that it must have been answered in the affirmative before the question can be asked and this i take it is to say that it is not a question at all a point of departure may be found in the following passage i think it must be admitted as probable that the immediate objects of sense depend for their existence upon physiological conditions in ourselves and that for example the colored surfaces which we see sees to exist when we shut our eyes i have not quoted the passage for the sake of gaining an easy victory by pointing out that this statement involves the existence of physiological conditions for mr Russell himself affirms that fact as he points out such arguments assume precisely the common sense world of stable objects professly put in doubt my purpose is to ask what justification there is for calling immediate data objects of sense statements of this type always call color visual sound auditory and so on if it were merely a matter of making certain admissions for the sake of being able to play a certain game there would be no objection but if we are concerned with a matter of serious analysis one is bound to ask when's come these adjectives that color is visual in the sense of being an object of vision is certainly admitted in the common sense world but this is the world we have left that color is visual is a proportion about color and it is a proportion which color itself does not utter visible or visual color is already a synthetic proposition not a term nor an analysis of a single term that color is seen or is visible i do not call in question but i insist that fact already assumes an answer to the question which mr Russell has put it presupposes existence beyond the color itself to call the color a sensory object involves another assumption of the same kind but even more complex involving that is even more existence beyond the color i see no reply to this statement except to urge that the terms visual and sensory as applied to the object or pieces of verbal super irrigation having no force in the statement this supposed dishes answer brings the matter to a focus is it possible to institute even a preliminary disparaging contrast between immediate objects any world external to them unless the term sensory has a definite effect upon the meaning assigned to immediate data or object before taking up this question i shall however call attention to another implication of the passage quoted it appears to be implied that existence of color and being seen are equivalent terms at all events in similar arguments the identification is frequently made but by description all that is required for the existence of color is certain physiological conditions they may be present in color exist and yet not be seen things constantly act upon the optical apparatus in a way which fulfills the conditions of the existence of color without color being seen this statement does not involve any dubious psychology about an act of attention i only mean that the argument applies over and above the existence of color something called seeing or perceiving noting is perhaps a convenient neutral term and this clearly involves an assumption of something beyond the existence of the datum and this datum is by definition an external world without this assumption the term immediate could not be introduced is the object immediate or is it the object of an immediate noting if the latter then the hard datum already stands in connection with something beyond itself and this brings us to a further point the sense objects are repeatedly spoken of as known for example it is obvious that since the senses give knowledge of the latter kind believe on their own account without the support of any outside evidence the immediate facts perceived by sight or touch or hearing do not need to be proved by argument but are completely self-evident again they are spoken of as facts of sense and as facts going along for knowledge with the loss of logic i do not know what belief or knowledge means here nor do i understand what is meant by a fat being evidence for itself but obviously mr rustle knows and knows their application to the sense object and here is a further assumption of what by definition is a world external to the datum again we have assumed in getting a question stated just what is professely called into question and the assumption is not made the less simple in that mr rustle has defined belief as a case of a triadic relation and said that without the recognition of the three term relation the difference between perception and belief is inexplicable we come to the question passed over can such terms as visual sensory be neglected without modifying the force of the question that is without affecting the implications which give it the force of a problem can we know that objects of sense or very similar objects exist at times when we are not perceiving them secondly if this cannot be known can we know that other objects inferrable from objects of sense but not necessarily resembling them exist either when we are perceiving the objects of sense or at any other time i think a little reflection will make it clear that without the limitation of the term perceiving by the term sense no problem as to existence at other times can possibly arise for neither a reference to time nor be limitation to a particular time is given either in the fact of existence of color or of perceiving color mr rustle for example makes allusion to a patch of color which is momentarily seen this is the sort of thing that may pass without challenge in the common sense world but hardly in an analysis which professes to call that world in question mr rustle makes the allusion in connection with discriminating between sensation as signifying the mental event of our being aware and the sensation as object of which we are aware the sense object he can hardly be guilty then in the immediate context of proceeding to identify the momentariness of the event with the momentariness of the object there must be some grounds for assuming the temporal quality of the object and that immediateness belongs to it in any other way than as an object of immediate seeing what are these grounds however is it moreover that even the act of being aware is describable as momentary i know of no way of so identifying it except by discovering that it is delimited in a time continuum and if this be the case it is surely superfluous to bother about inference to other times they are assumed stating the question which thus turns out again to be no question it may be only a trivial matter that mr rustle speaks of that patch of color which is momentarily seen when we look at the table i would not attach undue importance to such phrases but the frequency with which they present themselves in discussions of this type suggests the question whether as a matter of fact the patch of color is not determined by reference to an object the table and not vice versa as we shall see later there is good ground for thinking that mr rustle is really engaged not in bringing into question the existence of an object beyond the datum but in redefining the nature of an object and that the reference to the patch of color as something more primitive than the table is really relevant to this reconstruction of traditional metaphysics in other words it is relevant to defining an object as a constant correlation of variations in qualities instead of defining it as a substance in which attributes in here or a subject of predicates a if anything is an eternal essence it is surely such a thing as color taken by itself as by definition it must be taken in the statement of the question by mr rustle anything more simple timeless and absolute than a red can hardly be thought of one might question the eternal character of the received statement of say the law of gravitation on the ground that it is so complex that it may depend upon conditions not yet discovered and the discovery of which would involve an alteration in the statement if 2 plus 2 equals 4 be taken as an isolated statement it might be conceived to depend upon hidden conditions and to be alterable with them but by conception we are dealing in the case of a colored surface with an ultimate simple datum if we have no implications beyond itself no concealed dependencies how then can its existence even its perception be but momentarily raise a question of other times at all be supposed a perceived blue surface to be replaced by a perceived red surface and it will be conceded that the change or replacement is also perceived there is still no ground for a belief in the temporarily limited duration of either the red or the blue surface anything that leads to this conclusion would lead to the conclusion that the number two seizes when we turn to think of an atom there is no way then of escaping the conclusion that the adjective sense in the term sense object is not taken innocently it is taken as qualifying for the purposes of statement of the problem the nature of the object aside from reference to the momentariness of the mental event a reference which is expressly ruled out there is no way of introducing delimited temporal existence into the object saved by reference to one and the same object which is perceived at different times to have different qualities if the same object however object be defined is perceived to be of one color at one time and of another color at another time then as a matter of course the color datum of either the earlier or later time is identified as of transitory duration but equally of course there is no question to inference to other times other times have already been used to describe define and delimit this brief time a moderate amount of unbiased reflection will i am confident convince anyone that apart from a reference to the same existence per doing through different times while changing in some respect no temporal delimitation of the existence of such a thing as sound or color can be made even Plato never doubted the eternal nature of red he only argued from the fact that a thing is read at one time and blew at another to the unstable and hence phenomenal character of the thing or put in a different way we can know that a red is a momentary or transitory existence only if we know of other things which determines beginning and cessation mr. Russell gives a specific illustration of what he takes to be the correct way of stating the question in an account of what in the common sense universe of discourse would be termed walking around a table if we exclude considerations to which we have apart from assuming just the things which are doubtful no right the datum turns out to be something to be stated as follows what is really known is a correlation of muscular and other bodily sensations with changes in visual sensations by sensations must be meant sensible objects not mental events this statement repeats the point already dealt with muscular visual in other bodily are all terms which are indispensable and which also assume the very thing professely brought into question the external world as that was defined really known assumes both noting and belief with whatever complex implications they may involve implications which for all that appears to the contrary may be indefinitely complex and which by mr. Russell's own statement involve relationship to at least two other terms beside the datum but in addition there appears the new term correlation i cannot avoid the conclusion that this term involves an explicit acknowledgement of the external world note in the first place that the correlation in question is not simple it is three-fold being a correlation of correlations the changes in visual sensations objects must be correlated in a temporal continuum the muscular and other bodily sensations objects must also constitute a connected series one set of changes belongs to the serial class visual the other set to the serial class muscular and these two classes sustain a point-to-point correspondence to each other they are correlated i'm not raising the old question of how such complex relations can be said to be either given or known in sense though it is worth a passing notice that it was an account of this sort of phenomenon that can't postulated his threefold intellectual synthesis of apprehension reproduction and recognition in conception and that it is upon the basis of necessity for such correlations that the rationalists have always criticized sensationalist imprecisim personally i agree that temporal and spatial qualities are quite as much given in experience as our particulars in fact as i have been trying to show particulars can be identified as particulars only in a relational complex my point is rather one that any such given is already precisely what is meant by the world and two that such highly specified correlation as mr. Russell here sets forth is in no case a psychological or historical primitive but is a logical primitive arrived at by an analysis of an empirical complex one the statement involves the assumption of two temporal spreads which moreover are determinately specified as to their constituent elements and as to their order and these sustain to each other a correlation element to element the elements moreover are all specifically qualitative and some of them at least are spatial how this differs from the external world of common sense i am totally unable to see it may not be a very big external world but having begged a small external world i do not see why one should not be too squeamish about extending it over the edges the reply i suppose is that this complex defined an ordered object is by conception the object of a single perception so that the question remains as to the possibility of inferring from it to something beyond but the reply only throws us back upon the point previously made a particular or single event of perceptual awareness can be determined as to its ingredients and structure only in a continuum of objects that is the series of changes in color and shape can be determined as just such and such an ordered series of specific elements with a determinant beginning and end only in respect to a temporal continuum of things anteceding and succeeding moreover the determination involves an analysis which disentangles qualities and shapes from contemporaneously given objects which are irrelevant in a word mr ross's object already extends beyond itself it already belongs to a larger world to a sensible object which can be described as a correlation of an ordered series of shapes and colors with an ordered series of muscular and other bodily objects presents a definition of an object not of psychological data what is stated is the definition of an object of any object in the world bearing ambiguities in the terms muscular and bodily it seems to be an excellent definition but good definition or poor it states what a datum is known to be as an object in a known system this definite correlations of specified and ordered elements as a definition it is general it is not made from the standpoint of any particular recipient it says if there be any recipient at the specified position in the space continuum then the object may be perceived as such and such and this implies that a recipient at any other position in the space continuum can deduce from the known system of correlations just what the series of shapes and colors will be from another position for as we have seen the correlation of the series of changes of shapes assumes a spatial continuum hence one perspective projection may be correlated with that of any position in the continuum i have no direct concern with mr russell's solution of his problem but if the prior analysis is correct one may anticipate in advance that it will consist simply in making explicit the assumptions which have tacitly been made in stating the problem subject to the conditions involved in failure to recognize that they have been made and i think an analytic reading of the solution will bear out the following statement he's various peculiar private points of view and their perspectives are nothing but names for the propositions and projection of perspectives of the ordinary space of the public worlds their correlation by likeness is nothing but the explicit recognition that they are all defined and located from the start in one common spatial continuum one quotation must suffice if two men are sitting in a room two somewhat similar worlds are perceived by them if a third man enters and sits between them a third world intermediate between the two others begins to be perceived pray what is this room and what defines the position standpoint and perspective of the two men and the standpoint intermediate between them if the room and all the positions and perspectives which they determine are only within say mr russell's private world that private world is interestingly complex but it gives only the original problem over again not the solution of it it is a long way from likenesses within a private world to likenesses between private worlds and if the worlds are all private pray who judges their likeness and likeness this sort of thing makes one conclude that mr russell's actual procedure is the universe of his professed one he really starts with one room as a spatial continuum within which different positions and projections are determined and which are readily correlated with one another just because there are projections from positions within one and the same space room having employed this he then can assign different positions to different recipients and institute a comparison between what each perceives and pass upon the extent of the likeness which exists between them what is the bearing of this account upon the empirical datum just this the correlation of correlative series of changes which defines the object of sense perception is in no sense an original historic or a psychologic datum it signifies the result of an analysis of the usual crude empirical data and an analysis which is made possible only by a very complex knowledge of the world it marks not a primitive psychologic datum but an outcome a limit of analysis of a vast amount of empirical objects the definition of an object as a correlation of various subcorrelations of changes represents a great advance so it seems to me over the definition of an object as a number of adjectives stuck into a substantive but it represents an improved definition made possible by the advance of scientific knowledge about the common sense world it is a definition not only wholly independent of the context in which mr. Russell arrives at it but is one which once more and finally assumes extensive and accurate knowledge of just the world professely called into question two i have gummed a point of transition to the other part of my paper a formal analysis is necessarily dialectical in character as an empiricist i share in the dissatisfaction which even the most correct dialectical discussion is likely to arouse when brought to bear on matters of fact i do not doubt that readers will feel that some fact of an important character in mr. Russell's statement has been left untouched by the previous analysis even upon the supposition that their criticisms are just particularly will it be felt i think that psychology affords to his statement of the problem as support of fact not affected by any logical treatment for this reason i append a summary statement as to the facts which are misconstrued by any statement which makes the existence of the world problematic i do not believe a psychologist would go as far as to admit that a definite correlation of elements as specific and ordered as that of mr. Russell statement is a primitive psychological datum many would doubtless hold that patches of colored extensity sounds like an aesthetic qualities etc are psychologically much more primitive than say a table to say nothing of a group of objects in space or series of events in time they would say accordingly that there is a real problem as to how we infer or construct the letter on the basis of the former at the same time i do not believe that they would deny that their own knowledge of the existence and nature of the ultimate and irreducible qualities of sense is the product of a long careful and elaborate analysis to which the sciences of physiology anatomy and controlled processes of experimental observation have contributed the ordinary method of reconciling these two seemingly inconsistent positions is to assume that the original sensible data of experience as they occurred in infancy have been overlaid by all kinds of associations and inferential constructions so that it is now a work of intellectual art to recover them in their innocent purity now i might urge that as matter of fact the reconstruction of the experience of infancy is itself an inference from present experience of an objective world and hence cannot be employed to make a problem out of the knowledge of the existence of that world but such a retort involves just the dialectic excurses which i am here anxious to avoid i am on matter of fact ground when i point out that the assumption that even infancy begins with such highly discriminated particulars as those enumerated is not only highly dubious but has been challenged by eminent psychologists according to mr james for example the original datum is large but confused and specific sensible qualities represent the result of discriminations in this case the elementary data instead of being primitive empirical data are the last terms the limits of the discriminations we have been able to make that knowledge grows from a confusedly experienced external world to a world experience as ordered and specified would then be the teaching of psychological science but at no point would the mind be confronted with a problem of inferring a world into the arguments in behalf of such a psychology of original experience i shall not go beyond pointing out the extreme improbability in view of what is known about instincts and about the nervous system that the starting point is a quality corresponding to the functioning of a single sense organ much less of a single neurotic unit of a sense organ if one adds as a hypothesis that even the most rudimentary conscious experience contains within itself the element of suggestion or expectation it will be granted that the object of conscious experience even with an infant is homogeneous with the world of the adult one may be unwilling to concede the hypothesis but no one can deny that inference from one thing to another is itself an empirical event and that just as soon as such inference occurs even in the simplest form of anticipation and provision a world exists like in kind to that of the adult i cannot think that it is a trivial coincidence that psychological analysis or sense perception came into existence along with that method of experimentally controlled observation which marks the beginning of modern science modern science did not begin with discovery of any new kind of inference it began with a recognition of the need of different data if inference is to proceed safely it was contended that starting with the ordinary or customary objects of perception hopelessly compromised in advance the work of inference and classification hence the demand for an experimental resolution of the common sense objects in order to get data less ambiguous more minute and more extensive increasing knowledge of the structure of the nervous system failing with increased knowledge of other objects to make possible a discrimination of specific qualities in all their diversity it brought to light that habits individual and social through influence on the formation of individual habits were large factors in determining the accepted or current system of objects it was brought to light in other words that factors of chance habits and other non-rational factors were greater influences than intellectual inquiry in determining what men currently believed about the world what psychological analysis contributed was then not primitive historic data out of which a world had somehow to be extracted but an analysis of the world which had been previously thought of and believed in into data making possible better inferences and beliefs about the world analysis of the influences customarily determining belief and inference was a powerful force in the movement to improve knowledge of the world this statement of matters of fact bears out it will be observed the conclusions of the dialectical analysis that brought out the fact that the ultimate and elementary data of the sense perception are identified and described as limiting elements in a complex world what is now added is that such an identification of elements marks a significant addition to the resources of the technique of inquiry devoted to improving knowledge of the world when these data are isolated from their logical status in office they are inevitably treated as self-sufficient and they leave upon our hands the insoluble because self-contradictory problem of driving from them the world of commonsense and science taken for what they really are they are elements detected in the world and serving to guide and check our inferences about they are never self-enclosed particulars they are always even as crudely given connected with other things in experience but analysis gets them in the form where they are keys to much more significant relations in short the particulars of perception taken as complete and independent make nonsense taken as objects discriminated for the purposes of improving reorganizing and testing knowledge of the world they are invaluable assets the material fallacy lying behind the formal fallacy which the first part of this paper noted is the failure to recognize that what is doubtful is not the existence of the world but the validity of certain customary yet inferential beliefs about things in it it is not the common sense world which is doubtful or which is inferential but common sense as a complex of beliefs about specific things and relations in the world hence never in any actual procedure of inquiry do we throw the existence of the world into doubt nor can we do so without self-contradiction we doubt some received piece of knowledge about some specific thing of that world and then set to work as best we can to rectify it the contribution of psychological science to determining an ambiguous data and eliminating the irrelevant influences of passion and habit which control the inferences of common sense is an important aid in the technique of such rectifications end of section 12 recording by franklin vieus