

E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



Transcriber's note:

      1. Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

      2. In the mathematical expressions in this text the carat
         character represents 'raised to the power' (example:
         1+3=2^2).

      3. The original text includes Greek characters. For this
         text file version these letters have been replaced with
         their transliterations, with the exception of Greek
         letter 'pi' which is represented as [pi].





STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY

by

JOHN DEWEY

Professor of Philosophy

With the Co-Operation of Members and Fellows of the
Department of Philosophy

The Decennial Publications
Second Series Volume Xi







Chicago
The University of Chicago Press
1903

Copyright, 1903
By the University of Chicago




PREFACE


This volume presents some results of the work done in the matter of
logical theory in the Department of Philosophy of the University of
Chicago in the first decade of its existence. The eleven Studies are the
work of eight different hands, all, with the exception of the editor,
having at some period held Fellowships in this University, Dr. Heidel in
Greek, the others in Philosophy. Their names and present pursuits are
indicated in the Table of Contents. The editor has occasionally, though
rarely, added a footnote or phrase which might serve to connect one
Study more closely with another. The pages in the discussion of
Hypothesis, on Mill and Whewell, are by him. With these exceptions, each
writer is individually and completely responsible for his own Study.

The various Studies present, the editor believes, about the relative
amount of agreement and disagreement that is natural in view of the
conditions of their origin. The various writers have been in contact
with one another in Seminars and lecture courses in pursuit of the same
topics, and have had to do with shaping one another's views. There are
several others, not represented in this volume, who have also
participated in the evolution of the point of view herein set forth, and
to whom the writers acknowledge their indebtedness. The disagreements
proceed from the diversity of interests with which the different writers
approach the logical topic; and from the fact that the point of view in
question is still (happily) developing and showing no signs of becoming
a closed system.

If the Studies themselves do not give a fair notion of the nature and
degree of the harmony in the different writers' methods, a preface is
not likely to succeed in so doing. A few words may be in place, however,
about a matter repeatedly touched upon, but nowhere consecutively
elaborated--the more ultimate philosophical bearing of what is set
forth. All agree, the editor takes the liberty of saying, that judgment
is the central function of knowing, and hence affords the central
problem of logic; that since the act of knowing is intimately and
indissolubly connected with the like yet diverse functions of affection,
appreciation, and practice, it only distorts results reached to treat
knowing as a self-inclosed and self-explanatory whole--hence the
intimate connections of logical theory with functional psychology; that
since knowledge appears as a function within experience, and yet passes
judgment upon both the processes and contents of other functions, its
work and aim must be distinctively reconstructive or transformatory;
that since Reality must be defined in terms of experience, judgment
appears accordingly as the medium through which the consciously effected
evolution of Reality goes on; that there is no reasonable standard of
truth (or of success of the knowing function) in general, except upon
the postulate that Reality is thus dynamic or self-evolving, and, in
particular, except through reference to the specific offices which
knowing is called upon to perform in readjusting and expanding the means
and ends of life. And all agree that this conception gives the only
promising basis upon which the working methods of science, and the
proper demands of the moral life, may co-operate. All this, doubtless,
does not take us very far on the road to detailed conclusions, but it is
better, perhaps, to get started in the right direction than to be so
definite as to erect a dead-wall in the way of farther movement of
thought.

In general, the obligations in logical matters of the writers are
roughly commensurate with the direction of their criticisms. Upon the
whole, most is due to those whose views are most sharply opposed. To
Mill, Lotze, Bosanquet, and Bradley the writers then owe special
indebtedness. The editor acknowledges personal indebtedness to his
present colleagues, particularly to Mr. George H. Mead, in the Faculty
of Philosophy, and to a former colleague, Dr. Alfred H. Lloyd, of the
University of Michigan. For both inspiration and the forging of the
tools with which the writers have worked there is a pre-eminent
obligation on the part of all of us to William James, of Harvard
University, who, we hope, will accept this acknowledgment and this book
as unworthy tokens of a regard and an admiration that are coequal.




TABLE OF CONTENTS


  I. Thought and its Subject-Matter                                  1

          By JOHN DEWEY

  II. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Antecedents of Thought    23

          By JOHN DEWEY

  III. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Datum of Thinking        49

          By JOHN DEWEY

  IV. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Content and
      Object of Thought                                             65

          By JOHN DEWEY

  V. Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment                                 86

          By HELEN BRADFORD THOMPSON, Ph.D., Director of the
          Psychological Laboratory of Mount Holyoke College

  VI. Typical Stages in the Development of Judgment                127

          By SIMON FRASER MCLENNAN, Ph.D., Professor of
          Philosophy in Oberlin College

  VII. The Nature of Hypothesis                                    142

          By MYRON LUCIUS ASHLEY, Ph.D., Instructor,
          American Correspondence School

  VIII. Image and Idea in Logic                                    183

          By WILLARD CLARK GORE, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
          of Psychology in the University of Chicago

  IX. The Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy                     203

          By WILLIAM ARTHUR HEIDEL, Ph.D., Professor of
          Latin in Iowa College

  X. Valuation as a Logical Process                                227

          By HENRY WALDGRAVE STUART, Ph.D., Instructor in
          Philosophy in the State University of Iowa

  XI. Some Logical Aspects of Purpose                              341

          By ADDISON WEBSTER MOORE, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
          of Philosophy in the University of Chicago




I

THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF LOGICAL THEORY


No one doubts that thought, at least reflective, as distinct from what
is sometimes called constitutive, thought, is derivative and secondary.
It comes after something and out of something, and for the sake of
something. No one doubts that the thinking of everyday practical life
and of science is of this reflective type. We think about; we reflect
over. If we ask what it is which is primary and radical to thought; if
we ask what is the final objective for the sake of which thought
intervenes; if we ask in what sense we are to understand thought as a
derived procedure, we are plunging ourselves into the very heart of the
logical problem: the relation of thought to its empirical antecedents
and to its consequent, truth, and the relation of truth to reality.

Yet from the naive point of view no difficulty attaches to these
questions. The antecedents of thought are our universe of life and love;
of appreciation and struggle. We think about anything and everything:
snow on the ground; the alternating clanks and thuds that rise from
below; the relation of the Monroe Doctrine to the embroglio in
Venezuela; the relation of art to industry; the poetic quality of a
painting by Botticelli; the battle of Marathon; the economic
interpretation of history; the proper definition of cause; the best
method of reducing expenses; whether and how to renew the ties of a
broken friendship; the interpretation of an equation in hydrodynamics;
etc.

Through the madness of this miscellaneous citation there appears so much
of method: anything--event, act, value, ideal, person, or place--may be
an object of thought. Reflection busies itself alike with physical
nature, the record of social achievement, and the endeavors of social
aspiration. It is with reference to _such_ affairs that thought is
derivative; it is with reference to them that it intervenes or mediates.
Taking some part of the universe of action, of affection, of social
construction, under its special charge, and having busied itself
therewith sufficiently to meet the special difficulty presented, thought
releases that topic and enters upon further more direct experience.

Sticking for a moment to this naive standpoint, we recognize a certain
rhythm of direct practice and derived theory; of primary construction
and of secondary criticism; of living appreciation and of abstract
description; of active endeavor and of pale reflection. We find that
every more direct primary attitude passes upon occasion into its
secondary deliberative and discursive counterpart. We find that when the
latter has done its work it passes away and passes on. From the naive
standpoint such rhythm is taken as a matter of course. There is no
attempt to state either the nature of the occasion which demands the
thinking attitude, nor to formulate a theory of the standard by which is
judged its success. No general theory is propounded as to the exact
relationship between thinking and what antecedes and succeeds it. Much
less do we ask how empirical circumstances can generate rationality of
thought; nor how it is possible for reflection to lay claim to power of
determining truth and thereby of constructing further reality.

If we were to ask the thinking of naive life to present, with a minimum
of theoretical elaboration, its conception of its own practice, we
should get an answer running not unlike this: Thinking is a kind of
activity which we perform at specific need, just as at other need we
engage in other sorts of activity: as converse with a friend; draw a
plan for a house; take a walk; eat a dinner; purchase a suit of
clothes; etc., etc. In general, its material is anything in the wide
universe which seems to be relevant to this need--anything which may
serve as a resource in defining the difficulty or in suggesting modes of
dealing effectively with it. The measure of its success, the standard of
its validity, is precisely the degree in which the thinking actually
disposes of the difficulty and allows us to proceed with more direct
modes of experiencing, that are forthwith possessed of more assured and
deepened value.

If we inquire why the naive attitude does not go on to elaborate these
implications of its own practice into a systematic theory, the answer,
on its own basis, is obvious. Thought arises in response to its own
occasion. And this occasion is so exacting that there is time, as there
is need, only to do the thinking which is needed in that occasion--not
to reflect upon the thinking itself. Reflection follows so naturally
upon its appropriate cue, its issue is so obvious, so practical, the
entire relationship is so organic, that once grant the position that
thought arises in reaction to specific demand, and there is not the
particular type of thinking called logical theory because there is not
the practical demand for reflection of that sort. Our attention is taken
up with particular questions and specific answers. What we have to
reckon with is not the problem of, How can I think _ueberhaupt_? but, How
shall I think right _here and now_? Not what is the test of thought at
large, but what validates and confirms _this_ thought?

In conformity with this view, it follows that a generic account of our
thinking behavior, the generic account termed logical theory, arises at
historic periods in which the situation has lost the organic character
above described. The general theory of reflection, as over against its
concrete exercise, appears when occasions for reflection are so
overwhelming and so mutually conflicting that specific adequate
response in thought is blocked. Again, it shows itself when practical
affairs are so multifarious, complicated, and remote from control that
thinking is held off from successful passage into them.

Anyhow (sticking to the naive standpoint), it is true that the stimulus
to that particular form of reflective thinking termed logical theory is
found when circumstances require the act of thinking and nevertheless
impede clear and coherent thinking in detail; or when they occasion
thought and then prevent the results of thinking from exercising
directive influence upon the immediate concerns of life. Under these
conditions we get such questions as the following: What is the relation
of rational thought to crude or unreflective experience? What is the
relation of thought to reality? What is the barrier which prevents
reason from complete penetration into the world of truth? What is it
that makes us live alternately in a concrete world of experience in
which thought as such finds not satisfaction, and in a world of ordered
thought which is yet only abstract and ideal?

It is not my intention here to pursue the line of historical inquiry
thus suggested. Indeed, the point would not be mentioned did it not
serve to fix attention upon the nature of the logical problem.

It is in dealing with this latter type of questions that logical theory
has taken a turn which separates it widely from the theoretical
implications of practical deliberation and of scientific research. The
two latter, however much they differ from each other in detail, agree in
a fundamental principle. They both assume that every reflective problem
and operation arises with reference to some _specific_ situation, and
has to subserve a _specific_ purpose dependent upon its own occasion.
They assume and observe distinct limits--limits from which and to which.
There is the limit of origin in the needs of the particular situation
which evokes reflection. There is the limit of terminus in successful
dealing with the particular problem presented--or in retiring, baffled,
to take up some other question. The query that at once faces us
regarding the nature of logical theory is whether reflection upon
reflection shall recognize these limits, endeavoring to formulate them
more exactly and to define their relationships to each other more
adequately; or shall it abolish limits, do away with the matter of
specific conditions and specific aims of thought, and discuss thought
and its relation to empirical antecedents and rational consequents
(truth) at large?

At first blush, it might seem as if the very nature of logical theory as
generalization of the reflective process must of necessity disregard the
matter of particular conditions and particular results as irrelevant.
How, the implication runs, could reflection become generalized save by
elimination of details as irrelevant? Such a conception in fixing the
central problem of logic fixes once for all its future career and
material. The essential business of logic is henceforth to discuss the
relation of thought as such to reality as such. It may, indeed, involve
much psychological material, particularly in the discussion of the
processes which antecede thinking and which call it out. It may involve
much discussion of the concrete methods of investigation and
verification employed in the various sciences. It may busily concern
itself with the differentiation of various types and forms of
thought--different modes of conceiving, various conformations of
judgment, various types of inferential reasoning. But it concerns itself
with any and all of these three fields, not on their own account or as
ultimate, but as subsidiary to the main problem: the relation of thought
as such, or at large, to reality as such, or at large. Some of the
detailed considerations referred to may throw light upon the terms under
which thought transacts its business with reality; upon, say, certain
peculiar limitations it has to submit to as best it may. Other
considerations throw light upon the ways in which thought gets at
reality. Still other considerations throw light upon the forms which
thought assumes in attacking and apprehending reality. But in the end
all this is incidental. In the end the one problem holds: How do the
specifications of thought as such hold good of reality as such? In fine,
logic is supposed to grow out of the epistemological inquiry and to lead
up to its solution.

From this point of view various aspects of logical theory are well
stated by an author whom later on we shall consider in some detail.
Lotze[1] refers to "universal forms and principles of thought which hold
good everywhere both in judging of reality and in weighing possibility,
_irrespective of any difference in the objects_." This defines the
business of _pure_ logic. This is clearly the question of thought as
such--of thought at large or in general. Then we have the question "of
how far the most complete structure of thought... can claim to be an
adequate account of that which we seem compelled to assume as the object
and occasion of our ideas." This is clearly the question of the relation
of thought at large to reality at large. It is epistemology. Then comes
"applied logic," having to do with the actual employment of concrete
forms of thought with reference to investigation of specific topics and
subjects. This "applied" logic would, if the standpoint of practical
deliberation and of scientific research were adopted, be the sole
genuine logic. But the existence of thought _in itself_ having been
agreed upon, we have in this "applied" logic only an incidental inquiry
of how the particular resistances and oppositions which "pure" thought
meets from particular matters may best be discounted. It is concerned
with methods of investigation which obviate defects in the relationship
of thought at large to reality at large, as these present themselves
under the limitations of human experience. It deals merely with
hindrances, and with devices for overcoming them; it is directed by
considerations of utility. When we reflect that this field includes the
entire procedure of practical deliberation and of concrete scientific
research, we begin to realize something of the significance of the
theory of logic which regards the limitations of specific origination
and specific outcome as irrelevant to its main problem, which assumes an
activity of thought "pure" or "in itself," that is, "irrespective of any
difference in its objects."

This suggests, by contrast, the opposite mode of stating the problem of
logical theory. Generalization of the nature of the reflective process
certainly involves elimination of much of the specific