Part 3 (2/2)

Now it can be shown, first, that there is a difference between knowing and mere presence in consciousness. If the smell is simply displaced by a felt movement, and this in turn is displaced by the enjoyment of the rose, in such a way that there is no experience of connection between the three stages of the process,--that is, without the appearance of memory or antic.i.p.ation,--then ”such an experience neither is, in whole or in part, a knowledge”. ”Acquaintance is presence honored by an escort; presence is introduced as familiar, or an a.s.sociation springs up to greet it. Acquaintance always implies a little friendliness; a trace of re-knowing, of antic.i.p.atory welcome or dread of the trait to follow.... To be a smell (or anything else) is one thing, to be _known_ as a smell, another; to be a 'feeling' is one thing, to be _known_ as a 'feeling' is another. The first is thinghood; existence indubitable, direct; in this way all things _are_ that are in 'consciousness' at all. The second is _reflected_ being, things indicating and calling for other things--something offering the possibility of truth and hence of falsity. The first is genuine immediacy; the second (in the instance discussed) a pseudo-immediacy, which in the same breath that it proclaims its immediacy smuggles in another term (and one which is unexperienced both in itself and in its relation) the subject of 'consciousness', to which the immediate is related.... To be acquainted with a thing is to be a.s.sured (from the standpoint of the experience itself) that it is of such and such a character; that it will behave, if given an opportunity, in such and such a way; that the obviously and flagrantly present trait is a.s.sociated with fellow traits that will show themselves if the leading of the present trait is followed out. To be acquainted is to antic.i.p.ate to some extent, on the basis of previous experience”. (pp.

81, 82).

Besides mere existence, there is another type of experience which is often confused with knowledge,--a type which Dewey calls the 'cognitive' as distinct from genuine knowledge or the 'cognitional'.

In this experience ”we retrospectively attribute intellectual force and function to the smell”. This involves memory but not antic.i.p.ation.

As we look back from the enjoyment of the rose, we can say that in a sense the odor meant the rose, even though it led us here blindly.

That is, if the odor suggests the finding of its cause, without specifying what the cause is, and if we then search about and find the rose, we can say that the odor meant the rose in the sense that it actually led to the discovery of it. ”Yet the smell is not cognitional because it did not knowingly intend to mean this, but is found, after the event, to have meant it”. (p. 84).

Now, ”before the category of confirmation or refutation can be introduced, there must be something which _means_ to mean something”.

Let us therefore introduce a further complexity into the ill.u.s.tration.

Let us suppose that the smell occurs at a later date, and is then ”aware of something else which it means, which it intends to effect by an operation incited by it and without which its own presence is abortive, and, so to say, unjustified, senseless”. Here we have something ”which is contemporaneously aware of meaning something beyond itself, instead of having this meaning ascribed to it by another at a later period. _The odor knows the rose_, _the rose is known by the odor_, and the import of each term is const.i.tuted by the relations.h.i.+p in which it stands to the other”. (p. 88). This is the genuine 'cognitional' experience.

When the odor recurs 'cognitionally', both the odor and the rose are present in the same experience, though both are not present in the same way. ”Things can be presented as absent, just as they can be presented as hard or soft”. The enjoyment of the rose is present as _going_ to be there in the same way that the odor is. ”The situation is inherently an uneasy one--one in which everything hangs upon the performance of the operation indicated; upon the adequacy of movement as a connecting link, or real adjustment of the thing meaning and the thing meant. Generalizing from this instance, we get the following definition: An experience is a knowledge, if in its quale there is an experienced distinction and connection of two elements of the following sort: one means or intends the presence of the other in the same fas.h.i.+on in which it itself is already present, while the other is that which, while not present in the same fas.h.i.+on, must become present if the meaning or intention of its companion or yoke-fellow is to be fulfilled through the operation it sets up”. (p. 90).

Now in the transformation from this tensional situation into a harmonious situation, there is an experience either of fulfilment or disappointment. If there is a disappointment of expectation, this may throw one back in reflection upon the original situation. The smell, we may say, seemed to mean a rose, yet it did not in fact lead to a rose. There is something else which enters in. We then begin an investigation. ”Smells may become the object of knowledge. They may take, _pro tempore_, the place which the rose formerly occupied. One may, that is, observe the cases in which the odors mean other things than just roses, may voluntarily produce new cases for the sake of further inspection; and thus account for the cases where meanings had been falsified in the issue; discriminate more carefully the peculiarities of those meanings which the event verified, and thus safeguard and bulwark to some extent the employing of similar meanings in the future”. (p. 93). When we reflect upon these fulfilments or refusals, we find in them a quality ”quite lacking to them in their immediate occurrence as just fulfilments and disappointments”,--the quality of affording a.s.surance and correction. ”Truth and falsity are not properties of any experience or thing, in and of itself or in its first intention; but of things where the problem of a.s.surance consciously enters in. Truth and falsity present themselves as significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and their already experienced fulfilments and non-fulfilments are intentionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question of the worth, as to the reliability of meaning, of the given meaning or cla.s.s of meanings. Like knowledge itself, truth is an experienced relation of things, and it has no meaning outside of such relation”.

(p. 95).

Though this paper is by t.i.tle a discussion of a theory of knowledge, we may find in this last paragraph a very clear relating of the whole to a theory of truth. If we attempt to differentiate in this article between knowledge and truth, we find that while Dewey uses 'knowledge'

to refer either to the prospective or to the retrospective end of the experimental experience, he evidently intends to limit truth to the retrospective or confirmatory end of the experience. When he says, ”Truth and falsity are not properties of any experience or thing in and of itself or in its first intention, but of things where the problem of a.s.surance consciously enters in. Truth and falsity present themselves as significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and their already experienced fulfilments are intentionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question of the worth, as to reliability of meaning, of the given meaning or cla.s.s of meanings”, it seems that truth is to be confined to retrospective experience. The truth of an idea means that it allows one at its fulfilment to look back at its former meaning and think of it as now confirmed. The difference between knowledge and truth is then a difference in the time at which the developing experience is examined.

If one takes the experience at the appearance of the knowing odor, he gets acquaintance; if one takes it at the stage at which it has developed into a confirmation, he gets truth. Knowledge may be either stage of the experience of verification, but truth is confined to the later, confirmatory, stage.

Truth, then, is simply a matter of confirmation of prediction or of fulfilment of expectation. An idea is made true by leading as it promised. And an idea is made false when it leads to refutation of expectation. There seems to be no necessity here for an absolute reality for the ideas to conform to, or 'correspond' to, for truth is a certain kind of relation between the ideas themselves--the relation, namely, of leading to fulfilment of expectations.

CONTRAST BETWEEN JAMES AND DEWEY.

If, now, we wish to bring out the difference between the account of truth which we have just examined and the account that is given by James, we will find the distinction quite evident. Truth, for Dewey, is that relation which arises when, at an experience of fulfilment, one looks back to the former experience and thinks of its leading as now confirmed. An idea is true, therefore, when we can refer back to it in this way and say, ”That pointing led me to this experience, as it said it would”. The pointing, by bringing a fulfilment, is _made_ true--at this point of confirmation it _becomes_ true.

Since a true idea is defined, then, as one which leads as it promised, it is obvious that truth will not be concerned in any way with incidental or accidental _values_ which might be led to by the idea.

It has no relation to whether the goal is _worth while_ being led to or not. James speaks of truth as a leading that is worth while. For Dewey the goal may be valuable, useless, or even pernicious,--these are entirely irrelevant to truth, which is determined solely by the fact that the idea leads _as it promised_.

The existence of this distinction was pointed out, after the appearance of James' ”Pragmatism”, by Dewey himself.[14] After a careful discussion of some other points of difference, he says of this matter of the place of the value of an idea in reference to its truth: ”We have the theory that ideas as ideas are always working hypotheses concerning attaining particular empirical results, and are tentative programs (or sketches of method) for attaining them. If we stick consistently to this notion of ideas, only consequences which are actually produced by the working of the idea in cooperation with, or application to, prior realities are good consequences in the specific sense of good which is relevant to establis.h.i.+ng the truth of an idea.

This is, at times, unequivocally recognized by Mr. James.... But at other times any good that flows from acceptance of a belief is treated as if it were an evidence, _in so far_, of the truth of the idea. This holds particularly when theological notions are under consideration.

Light would be thrown upon how Mr. James conceives this matter by statements from him on such points as these: If ideas terminate in good consequences, but yet the goodness of the consequence was no part of the intention of the idea, does the goodness have any verifying force? If the goodness of consequences arises from the context of the idea rather than from the idea itself, does it have any verifying force? If an idea leads to consequences which are good in the _one_ respect only of fulfilling the intent of the idea, (as when one drinks a liquid to test the idea that it is a poison), does the badness of the consequences in every other respect detract from the verifying force of these consequences?

[14] ”What Does Pragmatism Mean by Practical?”, Journal of Philosophy, etc., 1908, v. 5, p. 85.

”Since Mr. James has referred to me as saying 'truth is what gives satisfaction' (p. 234), I may remark ... that I never identified _any_ satisfaction with the truth of an idea, save _that_ satisfaction which arises when the idea as working hypothesis or tentative method is applied to prior existences in such a way as to fulfil what it intends....

”When he says ... of the idea of an absolute, 'so far as it affords such comfort it surely is not sterile, it has that amount of value; it performs a concrete function. As a good pragmatist I ought to call the absolute true _in so far forth_ then; and I unhesitatingly now do so', the doctrine seems to be unambiguous: that _any_ good, consequent upon acceptance of belief, is, in so far forth, a warrant for truth. Of course Mr. James holds that this 'in so far' goes a very small way....

But even the slightest concession, is, I think, non-pragmatic unless the satisfaction is relevant to the idea as intent. Now the satisfaction in question comes not from the _idea as idea_, but from its acceptance _as true_. Can a satisfaction dependent upon an a.s.sumption that an idea is already true be relevant to testing the truth of an idea? And can an idea, like that of the absolute, which, if true, 'absolutely' precludes any appeal to consequences as test of truth, be confirmed by use of the pragmatic test without sheer self-contradiction”?[15] ”An explicit statement as to whether the carrying function, the linking of things, is satisfactory and prosperous and hence true in so far as it executes the intent of the idea; or whether the satisfaction and prosperity reside in the material consequences on their own account and in that aspect make the idea true, would, I am sure, locate the point at issue and economize and fructify future discussion. At present pragmatism is accepted by those whose own notions are thoroughly rationalistic in make-up as a means of refurbis.h.i.+ng, galvanizing, and justifying those very notions.

It is rejected by non-rationalists (empiricists and naturalistic idealists) because it seems to them identified with the notion that pragmatism holds that the desirability of certain beliefs overrides the question of the meaning of the idea involved in them and the existence of objects denoted by them. Others (like myself) who believe thoroughly in pragmatism as a method of orientation as defined by Mr.

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