Creative Intelligence Part 4

III

The efforts of cla.s.sic empiricism at the reform of logic have long been an easy mark for idealistic reformers. But it is interesting to observe that the idealistic logic from the beginning finds itself in precisely the same predicament regarding hypotheses;--they are trifling or false.

And in the end they are made, as in Mill, "accidents" of inference.

The part played by Kant's sense-material and the categories is almost the reverse of those of data and hypothesis in science. Sense material and the categories are the given elements from which objects are somehow made; in scientific procedure data and hypothesis are derived through logical observation and imagination from the content and operations of immediate experience. In Kant's account of the process by which objects are constructed we are nowhere in sight of any experimental procedure.

Indeed, the real act of knowing, the selection and application of the category to the sense matter, is, as Kant in the end had to confess, "hidden away in the depths of the soul." Made in the presence of the elaborate machinery of knowing which Kant had constructed, this confession is almost tragic; and the tragic aspect grows when we find that the result of the "hidden" operation is merely a phenomenal object.

That this should be the case, however, is not strange. A phenomenal object is the inevitable correlate of the "hidden" act of knowing whether in a "transcendental" or in an "empirical" logic. In vain do we call the act of knowing "constructive" and "synthetic" if its method of synthesis is hidden. A transcendental unity whose method is indefinable has no advantage over empirical a.s.sociation.

It was the dream of Kant as of Mill to replace the logics of sensationalism and rationalism with a "logic of things" and of "truth."

But as Mill's things turned to states of consciousness, so Kant's are phenomenal. Their common fate proclaims their common failure--the failure to reestablish continuity between the conduct of intelligence and other conduct.

One of the chief counts in Hegel's indictment of Kant's logic is that "it had no influence on the methods of science."[15] Hegel's explanation is that Kant's categories have no genesis; they are not constructed in and as part of logical operations. As given, ready-made, their relevance is a miracle. But if categories be "generated" in the process of knowing, says Hegel, they are indigenous, and their fitness is inevitable. In such statements Hegel raises expectations that we are at last to have a logic which squares with the procedure of science. But when we discover that instead of being "generated" out of all the material involved in the scientific problem Hegel's categories are derived from each other, misgivings arise. And when we further learn that this "genesis" is timeless, which means that, after all, the categories stand related to each other in a closed, eternal system of implication, we abandon hope of a scientific--i.e., experimental--logic.

Hegel also says it is the business of philosophy "to subst.i.tute categories or in more precise language adequate notions for the several modes of feeling, perception, desire, and will." The word "subst.i.tute"

reveals the point at issue. If "to subst.i.tute" means that philosophy is a complete exchange of the modes of feeling, perception, desire, and will for a world of categories or notions, then, saying nothing of the range of values in such a world, the problem of the meaning of "adequate" is on our hands. What is the notion to be adequate to? But if "to subst.i.tute" means that the modes of feeling, perception, desire, and will, when in a specific situation of ambiguity and inhibition, go over into, take on, the modes of data and hypothesis in the effort to get rid of inhibiting conflict that is quite another matter. Here the "notion,"

as the scientific hypothesis, has a criterion for its adequacy. But if the notion usurps the place of feeling, perception, desire, and will, as many find, in the end, it does in Hegel's logic, it thereby loses all tests for the adequacy of its function and character as a notion.

In the development of the logical doctrines of Kant and Hegel by Lotze, Green, Sigwart, Bradley, Bosanquet, Royce, and others, there are indeed differences. But these differences only throw their common ground into bolder relief. This common ground is that, procedure by hypotheses, by induction, is, in the language of Professor Bosanquet, "a transient and external characteristic of inference."[16] And the ground of this verdict is essentially the same as Mill's, when he rejects hypotheses "made by the mind," namely, that such hypotheses are too subjective in their origin and nature to have objective validity. "Objective" idealism is trying, like Mill, to escape the subjectivism of the purely individual and "psychical" knower. But, being unable to reconstruct the finite knower, and being too sophisticated to make what it regards as Mill's nave appeal to "hypotheses found in things," it transfers the real process of inference to the "objective universal," and the process of all thought, including inference, is now defined as "_the reproduction, by a universal presented in a content, of contents distinguished from the presented content which also are differences of the same universal_."[17]

It need scarcely be said that in inference thus defined there is scant room for hypotheses. There is nothing "hypothetical," "experimental," or "tentative" in this process of reproduction by the objective universal as such. As little is there any possibility of error. If there is anything hypothetical, or any possibility of error, in inference, it is due to the temporal, finite human being in which, paradoxically enough, this process of "reproduction" goes on and to whom, at times, is given an "infinitesimal" part in the operation, while at other times he is said merely to "witness" it. But the real inference does not "proceed by hypotheses"; it is only the finite mind in witnessing the real logical spectacle or in its "infinitesimal" contribution to it that lamely proceeds in this manner.

Here, again, we have the same break in continuity between the finite, human act of knowing and the operations that const.i.tute the real world.

When the logic of the objective universal rejects imputations of harboring a despoiled psychical knower it has in mind, of course, the objective universal as knower, not the finite, human act. But, if the partic.i.p.ations of the latter are all accidents of inference, as they are said to be, its advantage over a purely psychical knower, or "states of consciousness," is difficult to see. The rejection of metaphysical dualism is of no consequence if the logical operations of the finite, human being are only "accidents" of the real logical process. As already remarked, the metaphysical disjunction is merely a schematism of the more fundamental, logical disjunction.

As for tautology and miracle, the follower of Mill might well ask: how an a.s.sociation of particulars, whether mental states or things, could be more tautologous than a universal reproducing its own differences? And if the transition from particular to particular is a miracle in which the grace of G.o.d is disguised as "habit," why is not habit as good a disguise for Providence as universals? Moreover, by what miracle does the one all-inclusive universal become _a_ universal? And since perception always presents a number of universals, what determines which one shall perform the reproduction? Finally, since there are infinite differences of the universal that might be reproduced, what determines just which differences shall be reproduced? In this wise the controversy has gone on ever since the challenge of the old rationalistic logic by the nominalists launched the issue of empiricism and rationalism. All the charges which each makes against the other are easily retorted upon itself. Each side is resistless in attack, but helpless in defense.

In a conception of inference in which both data and hypothesis are regarded as the tentative, experimental results of the processes of perception, memory, and constructive imagination engaged in the special task of removing conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition, and in which these processes are not conceived as the functions of a private mind nor of an equally private brain and nervous system, but as functions of interacting beings,--in such a conception there is no ground for anxiety concerning the simplicity of data, nor the objectivity of hypotheses.

Simplicity and objectivity do not have to be secured through elaborate and labored metaphysical construction. The data are simple and the hypothesis objective in so far as they accomplish the work where unto they are called--the removal of conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition in conduct and affection.

In the experimental conception of inference it is clear that the principles of formal logic must play their role wholly inside the course of logical operations. They do not apply to relations _between_ these operations and "reality"; nor to "reality" itself. Formal ident.i.ty and non-contradiction signify, in experimental logic, the complete correlativity of data and hypothesis. They mean that _in_ the logical procedure data must not be s.h.i.+fted without a corresponding change in the hypothesis and conversely. The doctrine that "theoretically" there may be any number of hypotheses for "the same facts" is, when these multiple hypotheses are anything more than different names or symbols, nothing less than the very essence of formal contradiction. It doubtless makes little difference whether a disease be attributed to big or little, black or red, demons or whether the cause be represented by a, b, or c, etc. But where data and hypotheses are such as are capable of verification, i.e., of mutually checking up each other, a change in one without a corresponding modification of the other is the principle of all formal fallacies.[18]

With this conception of the origin, nature, and functions of logical operations little remains to be said of their truth and falsity. If the whole enterprise of logical operation, of the construction and verification of hypothesis, is in the interest of the removal of ambiguity, and inhibition in conduct, the only relevant truth or falsity they can possess must be determined by their success or failure in that undertaking. The acceptance of this view of truth and error, be it said again, depends on holding steadfastly to the conception of the operations of knowing as _real acts_, which, though having a distinct character and function, are yet in closest continuity with other acts of which indeed they are but modifications and adaptations in order to meet the logical demand.

Here, perhaps, is the place for a word on truth and satisfaction. The satisfaction which marks the truth of logical operations--"intellectual satisfaction"--is the satisfaction which attends the accomplishment of their task, viz., the removal of ambiguity in conduct, i.e., in our interaction with other beings. It does not mean that this satisfaction is bound to be followed by wholly blissful consequences. All our troubles are not over when the distress of ambiguity is removed. It may be indeed that the verdict of the logical operation is that we must face certain death. Very well, we must have felt it to be "good to know the worst," or no inquiry would have been started. We should have deemed ignorance bliss and sat with closed eyes waiting for fate to overtake us instead of going forward to meet it and in some measure determine it.

Death antic.i.p.ated and accepted is _realiter_ very different from death that falls upon us unawares, however we may estimate that difference. If this distinction in the _foci_ of satisfaction is kept clear it must do away with a large amount of the hedonistic interpretations of satisfaction in which many critics have indulged.

But hereupon some one may exclaim, as did a colleague recently: "Welcome to the ranks of the intellectualists!" If so, the experimentalist is bound to reply that he is as willing, and as unwilling, to be welcomed to the ranks of intellectualism as to those of anti-intellectualism. He wonders, however, how long the welcome would last in either. Among the intellectualists the welcome would begin to cool as soon as it should be discovered that the ambiguity to which logical operations are the response is not regarded by the experimentalist as a purely intellectual affair. It is an ambiguity in conduct with all the attendant affectional values that may be at stake.[19] It is, to be sure, the fact of ambiguity, and the effort to resolve it, that adds the intellectual, logical character to conduct and to affectional values. But if the logical interest attempts entirely to detach itself it will soon be without either subject-matter or criterion. And if it sets itself up as supreme, we shall be forced to say that our quandaries of affection, our problems of life and death are merely to furnish occasions and material for logical operations.

On the other hand, the welcome of the anti-intellectualists is equally sure to wane when the experimentalist a.s.serts that the doctrine that logical operations mutilate the wholeness of immediate experience overlooks the palpable fact that it is precisely these immediate experiences--the experiences of intuition and instinct--that get into conflict and inhibit and mutilate one another, and as a consequence are obliged to go into logical session to patch up the mutilation and provide new and better methods of cooperation.

At this point the weakness in Bergson's view of logical operations appears. Bergson, too, is impressed by the break in continuity between logical operations and the rest of experience. But with Mr. Bradley he believes this breach to be essentially incurable, because the mutilations and disjunctions are due to and introduced by logical operations. Just why the latter are introduced remains in the end a mystery. Both, to be sure, believe that logical operations are valuable for "practical" purposes,--for action. But, aside from the question of _how_ operations essentially mutilative can be valuable for action, immediate intuitional experience being already in unity with Reality, why should there be any practical need for logical operations--least of all such as introduce disjunction and mutilation?

The admission of a demand for logical operations, whether charged to matter, the devil, or any other metaphysical adversary, is, of course, a confession that conflict and ambiguity are as fundamental in experience as unity and immediacy and that logical operations are therefore no less indigenous. The failure to see this implication is responsible for the paradox that in the logic of Creative Evolution the operations of intelligence are neither creative nor evolutional. They not only have no constructive part but are positively destructive and devolutional.

Since, moreover, these logical operations, like those of the objective universal, and like Mill's a.s.sociation of particulars, can only reproduce in fragmentary form what has already been done, it is difficult to see how they can meet the demands of action. For here no more than in Mill, or in the logic of idealism, is there any place for constructive hypotheses or any technique by which they can become effective. Whatever "Creative Evolution" may be, there is no place in its logic for "Creative Intelligence."

IV

The prominence in current discussion of the logical reforms proposed by the "a.n.a.lytic logic" of the neo-realistic movement and the enthusiastic optimism of its representatives over the prospective results of these reforms for logic, science, and practical life are the warrant for devoting a special section to their discussion.

There are indeed some marked differences of opinion among the expounders of the "new logic" concerning the results which it is expected to achieve. Some find that it clears away incredible acc.u.mulations of metaphysical lumber; others rejoice that it is to restore metaphysics, "once the queen of the sciences, to her ancient throne."

But whatever the difference among the representatives of a.n.a.lytical logic all seem agreed at the outset on two fundamental reforms which the "new logic" makes. These are: first, that a.n.a.lytic logic gets rid entirely of the _act_ of knowing, the retention of which has been the bane of all other logics; second, in its discovery of "terms and relations," "sense-data and universals" as the simple elements not only of logic but of the world, it furnishes science at last with the simple neutral elements at large which it is supposed science so long has sought, and "mourned because it found them not."

Taking these in order, we are told that "realism frees logic as a study of objective fact from all accounts of the states and operations of mind." ... "Logic and mathematics are sciences which can be pursued quite independently of the study of knowing."[20] "The new logic believes that it deals with no such ent.i.ties as thoughts, ideas, or minds, but with ent.i.ties that merely are."[20]

The motive for the banishment of the act of knowing from logic is that as an _act_ knowing is "mental," "psychological," and "subjective."[21]

All other logics have indeed realized this subjective character of the _act_ of knowing, but have neither dared completely to discard it nor been able sufficiently to counteract its effects even with such agencies as the objective universal to prevent it from infecting logic with its subjectivity. Because logic has tolerated and attempted to compromise with this subjective act of knowing, say these reformers, it has been forced constantly into epistemology and has become a hybrid science. Had logic possessed the courage long ago to throw overboard this subjective Jonah it would have been spared the storms of epistemology and the reefs of metaphysics.

a.n.a.lytic logic is the first attempt in the history of modern logical theory at a deliberate, sophisticated exclusion of the act of knowing from logic. Other logics, to be sure, have tried to neutralize the effects of its presence, but none has had the temerity to cast it bodily overboard. The experiment, therefore, is highly interesting.

We should note at the outset that in regarding the act of knowing as incurably "psychical" and "subjective" a.n.a.lytic logic accepts a fundamental premise of the logics of rationalism, empiricism, and idealism which it seeks to reform. It is true that it is the bold proposal of a.n.a.lytic logic to keep logic out of the pit of epistemology by excluding the act of knowing from logic. Nevertheless a.n.a.lytic logic still accepts the subjective character of this act; and if it excludes it from its logic it welcomes it in its psychology. This is a dangerous situation. Can the a.n.a.lytic logician prevent all osmosis between his logic and his psychology?[22] If not, and if the psychological act is subjective, woe then to his logic. Had the new logic begun with a bold challenge of the psychical character of the act of knowing, the prospect of a logic free from epistemology would have been much brighter.

With the desire to rid logic of the epistemological taint the "experimental logic" of the pragmatic movement has the strongest sympathy. But the proposal to effect this by the excision of the act of knowing appears to experimental logic to be a case of heroic but fatal surgery. _Prima facie_ a logic with no act of knowing presents an uncanny appearance. What sort of logical operations are possible in such a logic and of what kind of truth and falsity are they capable?

Before taking up these questions in detail it is worth while to note the character of the ent.i.ties that "merely are" with which a.n.a.lytic logic proposes exclusively to deal. In their general form they are "terms" and "propositions," "sense-data" and universals. We are struck at once by the fact that these ent.i.ties bear the names of logical operations. They are, to be sure, disguised as ent.i.ties and have been baptised in a highly dilute solution of objectivity called "subsistence." But this does not conceal their origin, nor does it obscure the fact that if it is possible for any ent.i.ties that "merely are" to have logical character those made from hypostatized processes of logical operations should be the most promising. They might be expected to retain some vestiges of logical character even after they have been torn from the process of inquiry and converted into "ent.i.ties that merely are." Also it is not surprising that having stripped the act of knowing of its const.i.tuent operations a.n.a.lytic logic should feel that it can well dispense with the empty sh.e.l.l called "mind" and, as Professor Dewey says, "wish it on psychology." But if the a.n.a.lytic logician be also a philosopher and perchance a lover of his fellow-man, it is hard to see how he can have a good conscience over this disposition of the case.

Turning now to the character of inference and of truth and falsity which are possible in a logic which excludes the operation of knowing and deals only with "ent.i.ties that are," all the expounders seem to agree that in such a logic inference must be purely deductive. All alleged induction is either disguised deduction or a lucky guess. This raises apprehension at the start concerning the value of a.n.a.lytic logic for other sciences. But let us observe what deduction in a.n.a.lytic logic is.

We begin at once with a distinction which involves the whole issue.[23]

We are asked to carefully distinguish "logical" deduction from "psychological" deduction. The latter is the vulgar meaning of the term, and is "the thinker's name for his own act of conforming his thought" to the objective and independent processes that const.i.tute the real logical process. This act of conforming the mind is a purely "psychological"

affair. It has no logical function whatever. In what the "conforming"

consists is not clear. It seems to be merely the act of turning the "psychological" eye on the objective logical process. "One beholds it (the logical process) as one beholds a star, a river, a character in a play.... The novelist and the dramatist, like the mathematician and logician, are onlookers at the logical spectacle."[24] On the other hand, the term "conforming" suggests a task, with the possibilities of success and failure. Have we, then, two wholly independent possibilities of error--one merely "psychological," the other "logical"? The same point may be made even more obviously with reference to the term "beholding." The term is used as if beholding were a perfectly simple act, having no problems and no possibilities of mistakes--as if there could be no mis-beholding.[25]

But fixing our psychological eye on the "logical spectacle," what does it behold? A universal generating an infinite series of identical instances of itself--i.e., instances which differ only in "logical position." If in a world of ent.i.ties that "merely are" the term "generation" causes perplexity, the tension is soon relieved; for this turns out to be a merely subsistential non-temporal generation which, like Hegel's generation of the categories, in no way compromises a world of ent.i.ties that "merely are."

Steering clear of the thicket of metaphysical problems that we here encounter, let us keep to the logical trail. First it is clear that logical operations are of the same reproductive repet.i.tive type that we have found in the a.s.sociational logic of empiricism, and in the logic of the objective universal. Indeed, after objective idealism has conceded that the finite mind merely "witnesses" or at most contributes only in an "infinitesimal" degree to the logical activity of the objective universal, what remains of the supposed gulf between absolute idealism and a.n.a.lytic realism?

It follows, of course, that there can be no place in a.n.a.lytic logic for "procedure by hypotheses." However, it is to the credit of some a.n.a.lytic logicians that they see this and frankly accept the situation instead of attempting to retain hypotheses by making them "accidents" or mere "auxiliaries" of inference. On the other hand, others find that the chief glory of a.n.a.lytic logic is precisely that it "gives thought wings"[26] for the free construction of hypotheses. In his lectures on "Scientific Methods in Philosophy" Mr. Russell calls some of the most elemental and sacred ent.i.ties of a.n.a.lytic logic "convenient fictions."

This retention of hypotheses at the cost of cogency is of course in order to avoid a break with science. Those who see that there is no place in a.n.a.lytic logic for hypotheses are equally anxious to preserve their connections with science. Hence they boldly challenge the "superst.i.tion" that science has anything to do with hypotheses. Newton's "_Hypotheses non fingo_" should be the motto of every conscientious scientist who dares "trust his own perceptions and disregard the ukase of idealism." "The theory of mental construction is the child of idealism, now put out to service for the support of its parents."

"Theory is no longer regarded in science as an hypothesis added to the observed facts," but a law which is "found in the facts."[27] The ident.i.ty of this with Mill's doctrine of hypotheses as "found in things"

is obvious.

As against the conception of hypotheses as "free," "winged,"

constructions of a psychical, beholding, gossiping mind we may well take our stand with those who would exclude such hypotheses from science. And this doubtless was the sort of mind and sort of hypotheses Newton meant when he said "_Hypotheses non fingo_."[28] But had Newton's mind really been of the character which he, as a physicist, had learned from philosophers to suppose it to be, and had he really waited to find his hypotheses ready-made in the facts, there never would have been any dispute about who discovered the calculus, and we should never have been interested in what Newton said about hypotheses or anything else. What Newton did is a much better source of information on the part hypotheses play in scientific method than what he said about them. The former speaks for itself; the latter is the pious repet.i.tion of a metaphysical creed made necessary by the very separation of mind from things expressed in the statement quoted.

Logically there is little to choose between hypotheses found ready-made in the facts and those which are the "winged" constructions of a purely psychical mind. Both are equally useless in logic and in science. One makes logic and science "trifling," the other makes them "miraculous."

But if hypotheses be conceived not as the output of a cloistered psychical ent.i.ty but as the joint product of all the beings and operations involved in the specific situation in which logical inquiry originates, and more particularly in all those involved in the operations of the inquiry itself (including all the experimental material and apparatus which the inquiry may require), we shall have sufficient continuity between hypotheses and things to do away with miracle, and sufficient reconstruction to avoid inference that is trifling.

It is, however, the second contribution of a.n.a.lytic logic that is the basis of the enthusiasm over its prospective value for other sciences.

This is the discovery that terms and propositions, sense-data, and universals, are not only elements of logical operation but are the simple, neutral elements at large which science is supposed to have been seeking. "As the botanist a.n.a.lyzes the structures of the vegetable organism and finds chemical compounds of which they are built so the ordinary chemist a.n.a.lyzes these compounds into their elements, but does not a.n.a.lyze these. The physical chemist a.n.a.lyzes these elemental atoms, as now appears, into minuter components _which he in turn must leave to the mathematicians and logicians further to a.n.a.lyze_."[29]

Again it is worth noting that this mutation of logical into ontological elements seems to differ only "in position" from the universal logicism of absolute idealism.

What are these simple elements into which the mathematician and logician are to a.n.a.lyze the crude elements of the laboratory? And how are these elements to be put into operation in the laboratory? Let us picture an a.n.a.lytic logician meeting a physical scientist at a moment when the latter is distressed over the unmanageable complexity of his elements.

Will the logician say to the scientist: "Your difficulty is that you are trusting too much to your mundane apparatus. The kingdom of truth cometh not with such things. Forsake your microscopes, test tubes, refractors and resonators, and follow me, and you shall behold the truly simple elements of which you have dreamed."? And when the moment of revelation arrives and the expectant scientist is solemnly told that the "simple elements" which he has sought so long are "terms and propositions,"