Creative Intelligence Part 17

[20] _The New Realism_, pp. 40-41.

[21] Cf. Montague, pp. 256-57; also Russell, _The Problems of_ _Philosophy_, pp. 27-65-66, _et pa.s.sim_; and Holt's _Concept of Consciousness_, pp. 14ff., discussed below.

[22] Cf. Angell, "Relations of Psychology to Philosophy," _Decennial Publications of University of Chicago_, Vol. III; also Castro, "The Respective Standpoints of Psychology and Logic," _Philosophic Studies, University of Chicago_, No. 4.

[23] I am here following, in the main, Professor Holt because he alone appears to have had the courage to develop the full consequences of the premises of a.n.a.lytic logic.

[24] _The Concept of Consciousness_, pp. 14-15.

[25] It is interesting to compare this onlooking act with the account of consciousness further on. As "psychological" this act of onlooking must be an act of consciousness. But consciousness is a cross-section or a projection of things made by their interaction with a nervous system.

Here consciousness is a function of all the interacting factors. It is in the play. It _is_ the play. It is not in a spectator's box. How can consciousness be a function of all the things put into the cross-section and yet be a mere beholder of the process? Moreover, what is it that makes any particular, spectacle, or cross-section "logical"? If it be said all are "logical" what significance has the term?

[26] Cf. Russell's _Scientific Methods in Philosophy_, p. 59.

[27] Holt, _op. cit._, pp. 128-30.

[28] In fact, Newton, in all probability, had the Cartesian pure notions in mind.

[29] Holt, _op. cit._, p. 118 (italics mine). Cf. also Perry's _Present Philosophical Tendencies_, pp. 108 and 311.

[30] The character of elements and the nature of simplicity have been discussed in the preceding section.

[31] _Ibid._, p. 275.

[32] _Ibid._, p. 275.

[33] This lack of continuity between the cognitive function of the nervous system and its other functions accounts for the strange paradox in the logic of neo-realism of an act of knowing which is "subjective"

and yet is the act of so palpably an objective affair as a nervous system. The explanation is that the essence of all deprecated subjectivity is, as before pointed out, functional isolation. That this sort of subjectivity should be identified with the "psychical" is not strange, since a living organism is very difficult to isolate, while the term "psychical," in its metaphysical sense, seems to stand for little else than just this complete isolation. Having once appealed to the nervous system it seems incredible that the physiological continuity of its functions with each other and with its environment should not have suggested the logical corollary. Only the force of the prepossession of mathematical atomism in a.n.a.lytic logic can account for its failure to do so.

[34] But it would be better to use the term "logically-practical"

instead of "subjective" with the psychical implications of that term.

[35] An a.n.a.lysis which has been many times carried out has made it clear that scientific data never do more than approximate the laws and ent.i.ties upon which our science rests. It is equally evident that the forms of these laws and ent.i.ties themselves s.h.i.+ft in the reconstructions of incessant research, or where they seem most secure could consistently be changed, or at least could be fundamentally different were our psychological structure or even our conventions of thought different. I need only refer to the _Science et Hypothese_ of Poincare and the _Problems of Science_ of Enriques. The positivist who undertakes to carry the structure of the world back to the data of observation, and the uniformities appearing in the accepted hypotheses of growing sciences cannot maintain that we ever succeed in isolating data which must remain the same in the kaleidoscope of our research science; nor are we better served if we retreat to the ultimate elements of points and instants which our pure mathematics a.s.sumes and implicitly defines, and in connection with which it has worked out the modern theory of the number and continuous series, its statements of continuity and infinity.

[36] In other words, science a.s.sumes that every error is _ex post facto_ explicable as a function of the real conditions under which it really arose. Hence, "consciousness," set over against Reality, was not its condition.

[37] C. Judson Herrick, "Some Reflections on the Origin and Significance of the Cerebral Cortex," _Journal of Animal Behavior_, Vol. III, pp.

228-233.

[38] _Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 256.

[39] H. C. Warren, _Psychological Review_, Vol. XXI, Page 93.

[40] _Principles of Psychology_, I, p. 241, note.

[41] _Ibid._, p. 258.

[42] _Psychology. Briefer Course._ P. 468.

[43] Angell, _Psychology_, p. 65.

[44] _Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 251.

[45] Thorstein Veblen: _The Instinct of Workmans.h.i.+p_, p. 316.

[46] It may still be argued that we must depend upon a.n.a.logy in our acceptance or rejection of a new commodity. For any element of novelty must surely suggest something to us, must _mean_ something to us, if it is to attract or repel. Thus, the motor-car will whirl us rapidly over the country, the motor-boat will dart over the water without effort on our part. And in such measure as we have had them hitherto, we have always enjoyed experiences of rapid motion. These new instruments simply promise a perfectly well-known _sort_ of experience in fuller measure.

So the argument may run. And our mental process in such a case may accordingly be held to be nothing more mysterious than a pa.s.sing by a.n.a.logy from the _old_ ways in which we got rapid motion in the past to the _new_ way which now promises more of the same. And more of the same is what we want.

"More of the same" means here intensive magnitude and in this connection at all events it begs the question. Bergson's polemic seems perfectly valid against such a use of the notion. But kept in logical terms the case seems clearer. It is said that we reason in such a case by "a.n.a.logy." We do, indeed; but what is a.n.a.logy? The term explains nothing until the real process behind the term is clearly and realistically conceived. What I shall here suggest holds true, I think, as an account of a.n.a.logical inference generally and not simply for the economic type of case we have here to do with. Reasoning is too often thought of as proceeding from given independent premises--as here (1) the fact that hitherto the driving we have most enjoyed and the sailing we have most enjoyed have been _fast_ and (2) the fact that the motor-car is _fast_.

But do we accept the conclusion because the premises suggest it in a way we cannot resist? On the contrary, stated thus, the premises clearly do _not_ warrant the conclusion that the motor-car will be enjoyable. Such a statement of the premises is wholly formal and _ex post facto_. What, then, is our actual mental process in the case? The truth is, I think, that we simply--yes, "psychologically"--wish to try _that promised unheard-of rate of speed_! That comes first and foremost. But we mean to be reasonably prudent on the whole, although we are avowedly adventurous just now in this particular direction! We, therefore, ransack our memory for _other fast things_ we have known, to see whether they have encouragement to give us. We try to supply ourselves with a major premise because the new proposal in its own right interests us--instead of having the major premise already there to coerce us by a purely "logical" compulsion as soon as we invade its sphere of influence. And confessedly, in point of "logic," there is no such compulsion in the second figure: there is only a timid and vexatious neutrality, a mere "not proven."

Why, then, do we in fact take the much admired "inductive leap," in seeming defiance of strict logic? Why do we close our eyes to logic, turn our back upon logic, behave as if logic were not and had never been? In point of fact, we do nothing of the sort. The "inductive leap"

is no leap away from logic, but the impulsion of logic's mainspring seen only in its legitimate event. Because we have not taken care to see the impulse coming, it surprises us and we are frightened. And we look about for an illusive a.s.surance in some "law of thought," or some question-begging "universal premise" of Nature's "uniformity." We do not see that we were already conditionally committed to the "leap" by our initial interest. Getting our premises together is no hurried forging of a chain to save us from our own madness in the nick of time. We are only hoping to rid ourselves of an excess of conservative ballast. To reason by a.n.a.logy is not to repress or to dispense with the interest in the radically novel, but to give methodical and intelligent expression to that interest.

[47] Aristotle's _Nicomachaean Ethics_ (Welldon's transl.), Book VIII.

[48] Cf. Aristotle's _Politics_ (Jowett's trans.) III. 9. --6 ff. and elsewhere; _Nicom. Ethics_, I, Chap. III (end).

[49] Cf. Veblen: _op. cit._

[50] W. McDougall in his _Social Psychology_ (Ed. 1912, pp. 358 ff.) recognizes "incomplete antic.i.p.ation of the end of action" as a genuine type of preliminary situation in human behavior, but appears to regard this as in so far a levelling-down of man to the blindness of the "brutes." But "incompleteness" is a highly ambiguous term and seems here to beg the question. "Incompleteness" may be given an emphasis in which it imports conjecture and hypothesis--almost anything, in fact, but blindness. Rather do the brutes get levelled up to man by such facts as those McDougall cites.

[51] take _routine_ to be the essence and meaning of hedonism. There are two fundamental types of conduct--routine and constructiveness.

Reference may be made here to Bohm-Bawerk's p.r.o.nouncement on hedonism in _Kapital und Kapitalzins_, 1912 (II-2, pp. 310 ff.): "What people love and hate, strive towards or fight off--whether only pleasure and pain or other 'lovable' and 'hatable' things as well,--is a matter of entire indifference to the economist. The only thing important is that they do love and hate certain things.... The deductions of marginal utility theory lose no whit of their cogency even if certain ends (dependent for their realization upon a supply of goods inadequate to the fulfillment of all ends without limit) are held to have the character not of pleasure but of something else. The marginal utility may be a least pleasure or a competing least utility of some other sort...." (p. 317).

This is a not uncommon view. As W. C. Mitch.e.l.l has suggested, it is too obvious to be wholly convincing. (_Journ. Pol. Ec._, Vol. XVIII. "The Rationality of Economic Activity.") Veblen has made it perfectly clear that particular matters of theory are affected by the presupposition of hedonism. (_Journ. Pol. Ec._, Vol. XVII, _Quart. Journ. Econ._, Vol.

XXII, p. 147 ff.) The matter is too complex for a footnote, but I think it of little consequence whether "pleasure" be in any case regarded as substantively the end of desire or not. This is largely a matter of words. What is important is the practical question whether a thing is _so habitual with me that when the issue arises I cannot or will not give it up and take an interest in something new_ the "utility" of which I cannot as yet be cognizant of because it partly rests with me to create it. If this is the fact it will surely look as if pleasure or the avoidance of pain were my end in the case. Hedonism and egoism are in the end convertible terms. There is conduct wearing the outward aspect of altruism that is egotistic in fact--not because it was from the first insincere or self-delusive, but because it has become habitual and may in a crisis be held to for the sake of the satisfaction it affords.

Genuine altruism, on the other hand, is a form of constructiveness.

[52] Until after this essay was finished I had not seen John A. Hobson's book ent.i.tled _Work and Wealth, A Human Valuation_ (London, 1914). My attention was first definitely called to this work by a friend among the economists who read my finished MS. late in 1915, and referred me in particular to the concluding chapter on "Social Science and Social Art."

On now tardily reading this chapter I find that, as any reader will readily perceive, it distinctly antic.i.p.ates, almost _verbatim_ in parts, what I have tried, with far less success, to say in the foregoing two paragraphs above. Hobson argues, with characteristic clearness and effect, for the qualitative uniqueness and the integral character of personal budgets, holding that the logic of marginality is "an entirely illusory account of the psychical process by which a man lays out his money, or his time, or his energy" (p. 331). "So far as it is true that the last sovereign of my expenditure in bread equals in utility the last sovereign of my expenditure in books, that fact proceeds not from a comparison, conscious, or unconscious, of these separate items at this margin, but from the parts a.s.signed respectively to bread and books in the organic plan of my life. Quant.i.tative a.n.a.lysis, inherently incapable of comprehending qualitative unity or qualitative differences, can only pretend to reduce the latter to quant.i.tative differences. What it actually does is to ignore alike the unity of the whole and the qualitativeness of the parts" (p. 334). Hobson not only uses the a.n.a.logy of the artist and the picture (p. 330) precisely as I have done, but offers still other ill.u.s.trations of the principle that seem to me even more apt and telling. Though not indebted to him for what I have put into the above paragraphs, I am glad to be able to cite the authority of so distinguished an economist and sociologist for conclusions to which I found my own way. Other parts as well _of Work and Wealth_ (e.g., Chapter IV, on "The Creative Factor in Production") seem to have a close relation to the main theme of the present discussion.

[53] It may be worth while to glance here for the sake of ill.u.s.tration at an ethical view of preference parallel with the economic logic above contested. "The act which is right in that it promotes one interest, is, by the same principle," writes R. B. Perry, "wrong in that it injures another interest. There is no contradiction in this fact ... simply because it is possible for the same thing to possess several relations, the question of their compatibility or incompatibility being in each case a question of empirical fact. Now ... an act ... may be doubly right in that it conduces to the fulfillment of two interests. Hence arises the conception of comparative goodness. If the fulfillment of one interest is good, the fulfillment of two is better; and the fulfillment of all interests is best.... Morality, then, is _such performance as under the circ.u.mstances, and in view of all the interests affected, conduces to most goodness_. In other words, that act is morally right which is most right." (_Present Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 334. Cf.

also _The Moral Economy_). It is evident that constructive change in the underlying system (or aggregate?) of the agent's interests gets no recognition here as a matter of moral concern or as a fact of the agent's moral experience. Thus Perry understands the meaning of freedom to lie in the fact that "_interests operate_," i.e., that interests exist as a certain cla.s.s of operative factors in the universe along with factors of _other_ sorts. "I can and do, within limits, _act as I will_.

Action, in other words, is governed by desires and intentions." (pp. 342 ff.). The cosmical heroics of Bertrand Russell are thus not quite the last word in Ethics (p. 346). Nevertheless, the "free man," in Perry's view, apparently must get on with the interests that once for all initially defined him as a "moral constant" (p. 343).

[54] In a recent interesting discussion of "Self-interest" (T. N.

Carver, _Essays in Social Justice_, 1915, Chap. III) occurs the following: "We may conclude ... that even after we eliminate from our consideration all other beings than self, there is yet a possible distinction between one's present and one's future self. It is always, of course, the present self which esteems or appreciates all interests whether they be present or future. And the present self estimates or appreciates present interests somewhat more highly than it does future interests. In this respect the present self appreciates the interests of the future self according to a law quite a.n.a.logous to, if indeed it be not the same law as that according to which it appreciates the interests of others" (p. 71). This bit of "subjective a.n.a.lysis" (p. 60), a procedure rather scornfully condemned as "subjective quibbling" on the following page, must be counted a fortunate lapse. It could be bettered, I think, in only one point. Must the future self "of course" and "always" get license to live by meeting the standards of the present self? Has the present self no modesty, no curiosity, no "sense of humor"? If it is so stupidly hard and fast, how can a self new and qualitatively different ever get upon its feet in a man? In some men no such thing can happen--but must it be in all men impossible and impossible "of course"? And what of the other self? Carver has not applied the "methods of subjective a.n.a.lysis" to _change_ from self _to_ self or from interest in self _to_ interest in others. The present tense of formal logic governs fundamentally throughout the whole account.

If this essay were a volume I should try to consider, from the point of view of constructive intelligence, the explanation of interest as due to the undervaluation of future goods.

[55] Fite, _Introductory Study of Ethics_, pp. 3-8.

[56] Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, pp. 205-11.

[57] The term "egocentric predicament" (cf. R. B. Perry: _Present Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 129 ff.) has had, for a philosophic term, a remarkable literary success. But at best it conveys a partial view of the situation it purports to describe. The "egocentricity" of our experience, viewed in its relation to action, seems, rightly considered, less a "predicament" than an opportunity, a responsibility and an immunity. For in relation to _action_, it means (1) that an objective complex situation has become, in various of its aspects, a matter of my cognizance in terms significant to me. That so many of its aspects have come into relations of conflict or reenforcement significant _for me_ is _my_ opportunity for reconstructive effort if I choose to avail myself of it. Because, again, I am thus "on hand myself" (_op. cit._, p. 129) and am thus able to "report" upon the situation, I am (2) responsible, in the measure of my advantages, for the adequacy of my performance. And finally (3) I cannot be held to account for failure to reckon with such aspects of the situation as I cannot get hold of in the guise of "ideas, objects of knowledge or experiences" (_Ibid._). Our egocentricity is, then, a predicament only so long as one stubbornly insists, to no obvious positive purpose, on thinking of knowledge as a self-sufficing ent.i.tative complex, like a vision suddenly appearing full-blown out of the blue, and as inviting judgment in that isolated character on the representative adequacy which it is supposed to claim (cf. A. W. Moore, "Isolated Knowledge," _Journ. of Philos., etc._, Vol. XI). The way out of the predicament for Perry and his colleagues is to attack the traditional subjective and representative aspects of knowledge. But, this carried out, what remains of knowledge is a "cross-section of neutral ent.i.ties" which _still_ retains all the original unaccountability, genetically speaking, and the original intrinsic and isolated self-sufficiency traditionally supposed to belong to knowledge.

The ostensible gain achieved for knowledge is an alleged proof of its ultimate self-validation or the meaninglessness of any suspicion of its validity (because there is no uncontrolled and distorting intermediation of "consciousness" in the case). But to wage strenuous war on subjectivism and representationism and still to have on hand a problem calling for the invention _ad hoc_ of an entire new theory of mind and knowledge seems a waste of good ammunition on rather unimportant outworks. They might have been circ.u.mvented.

But what concerns us here is the ethical parallel. The egocentric predicament in this aspect purports to compel the admission by the "altruist" that since whatever he chooses to do must be his act and is obviously done because he wishes, for good and sufficient reasons of his own, to do it, therefore he is an egoist after all--perhaps in spite of himself and then again perhaps not. The ethical realism of G. E. Moore (_Principia Ethica_, 1903) breaks out of the predicament by declaring Good independent of all desire, wish or human interest and _indefinable_, and by supplying a partial list of things thus independently good. What I do, I do because it seems likely to put me in possession of objective _Good_, not because it accords with some habit or whim of mine (although my own pleasure is undoubtedly _one_ of the good things). It is noteworthy that Perry declines to follow Moore in this (_op. cit._, p. 331 ff.). Now such an ethical objectivism can give no account of the motivation, or the process, of the individual's efforts to attain, for guidance in any case, a "more adequate"