Jacques Maritain Center :
Theories of Knowledge / by Leslie J. Walker, S.J.§ 1. Cognition is an act of the mind, one of the three primary functions into which modern psychology divides all psychical activity. But it is more than this; it implies a relatio ad extra, a reference to something other than itself, a something we call an object in contradistinction from the subject, which is the mind itself that knows. To discover the nature of this relation is the aim of a theory of knowledge. Hence its problem is three-fold. We have to analyse psychologically the nature and function of those mental activities by which knowledge is acquired and to discuss the influence which they have upon one another; we have to enquire into the conditions of knowledge, to ask what precisely is to be understood by subject and object, and how far knowledge is due to the activity of the one, how far to that of the other; and we have to examine the notions of validity, truth, objectivity, and to determine the criterion by which we may decide when these notions are applicable to an act of cognition, and when they are not. No one of these aspects of the problem can be left out if our treatment of the subject is to be adequate. A theory of knowledge which fails to define its position in regard to any one of them is incomplete. At the same time the scope of the theory of knowledge is so vast, the terms which an epistemologist uses are capable of so many different shades of meaning, the analysis of mental processes which he institutes have given apparently such divergent results, and the relations which he finds to exist between mind on the one hand and objective reality on the other admit of so many different interpretations, that some division of the subject must perforce be made; and the obvious division is that which I have indicated above. Accordingly, we shall discuss first the psychology of cognition; secondly, its meta physical conditions; and, lastly, its epistemological value, i.e., the objectivity and validity of cognitive acts and the criteria by which we distinguish the true from the false.
§ 2. Various solutions of the problem of knowledge have been offered at different times as philosophy has developed; but just as that problem is threefold, so curiously enough there are three solutions, each of them characteristic of a distinctive line in modern philosophic thought, which especially claim the attention of the philosopher of to-day. Were I writing a history of the theory of knowledge, it should be possible, I think, to show that modern theories are but developments of older views; but this is not my present purpose. Suffice it to say, that in discussing modern attitudes in respect to theory of knowledge, we are in reality discussing solutions of a bygone age stripped of their antique ornaments and peculiar old-fashioned dress, and decked, instead, in the rich and flowing robes with which the fashion of the day contrives to obscure the outlines of the form that is hid beneath. If it be true that "there is nothing new under the sun," it is also true in philosophy that there is nothing that grows old. Pragmatism, that strange mushroom growth which sprang up in a night and has spread itself on the morning breeze throughout the continents of Europe and America, does but revive the human standpoint of Protagoras and the perpetual evolution of Heraclitus' flux. The critical Apriorism of Kant, developing through Hegel and his off-spring, the Neo-Hegelians, has culminated in an Absolute Idealism which recalls at once the Platonic theory of a world eide and the doctrine of Parmenides that the universe is one, plurality and difference mere seeming, while at the same time imparting to both a dynamic impulse more consistent with our modern conception of organic life and growth. The third solution is that of the realist. Realism, if we may argue from outward expression to inward thought, dates back at least to the time when man first began to record his thoughts in writing. Finding at length systematic formulation in the philosophy of Aristotle, it became the central feature of the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Since the Renaissance and the Reformation, however, the influence of the Aristotelian scholastic has been restricted for the most part to seminaries, and to some few catholic universities, most of the great centres of learning preferring the Idealism of some thinker more modern and more daring in his speculations than either Aristotle or Aquinas. Realism is indeed characteristic of the Scottish School, and there are signs that a "new" Realism is gaining ground in the philosophic world at large; nevertheless, if we wish to study it as a system, we must study it either in Aristotle himself or in the philosophy of Modern Scholasticism which takes Aristotle as its base.
§ 3. Pragmatism, Absolutism and Scholastic Realism contain amongst them at least in germ the only possible solutions which can be given to the problem of knowledge. Psychologically, knowledge may be regarded either as a function of the intellect or as a function of the will; or else we may hold that, while both intellect and will co-operate, their functions are distinct. Metaphysically, the universe is either one or many, the origin of knowledge either subjective or objective, the distinction of subject and object either relative or absolute. And, epistemologically, truth is either theoretical or practical, and depends for its acceptance either upon its power to satisfy the intellect or upon its power to satisfy our practical needs and our will, or, it may be, upon both. Again, our present knowledge is either a mere moment in the process of evolution, capable of indefinite modification in the future; or there are some truths which are axiomatic and self-evident and thus form a foundation upon which a system of validated truth may be built. Each of these alternatives may be said to characterise one or other of the three Epistemologies we are about to consider. As, however, on the one hand a theory of knowledge should be considered as a whole and judged as a whole, while, on the other hand, owing to the vastness of the subject, we are forced to make arbitrary divisions, and to treat it part by part, it will be better perhaps for us to give a preliminary sketch of the general character and standpoint of each of these theories before proceeding to compare their positions in regard to psychology, metaphysics and the criteria and nature of truth.
§ 4. A theory of knowledge is implicitly a refutation of scepticism; and when any development in that theory takes place, it is usually preceded and conditioned by the sceptical tendencies of the day, from which it seeks an escape. Scepticism was especially repugnant to the mind of Kant, at once synthetical, critical and religious. He saw that it contained its own refutation, and refused to believe that "human reason lures us on by false hopes only to deceive us in the end." The prolific fruitfulness of philosophic minds in the age which preceded his own had led to many conflicting doctrines. Geulincx, Malebranche and Spinoza had drawn from Cartesian premises conclusions inconsistent with each other. Leibnitz had been succeeded by the semi-scholastic Wolff. Each philosopher attempted to solve the problem of Reality in a different way, and the Sceptic, watching this conflict of intellect with intellect, used the arguments of one side only to refute those of the other. Cartesianism, Occasionalism, the Vision en Dieu, Spinozism, the Monadology, and the School of Wolff were by him alike repudiated. To the Sceptic the confusion of dogmatic Rationalism signified the bankruptcy of reason. Kant, whose education in the School of Wolff pre-disposed him to take the Intellectualist side against the Sensationalism of Locke and Hume, admitted, while bemoaning, the controversies and differences which prevailed among Rationalists; but at the same time blamed the Sceptic for "ignoring points of agreement and finding only opposition, where they should have sought the pre-suppositions between which conflicting dogmas rest." "Scepticism," he says, "might have been a useful regress had it gone back over the ground traversed by the dogmatists to the point where their wanderings began."{1} But to deny the validity of reason could lead only to philosophic despair. The theories of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Spinoza were incompatible and their incompatibility demanded explanation, but it did not justify sceptical doubt. Their divergencies undoubtedly concealed much that was true. To declare with the Sceptic that metaphysical reasoning could lead to nought but inconsistency was to ignore the difference between what is complementary and what is contradictory. Divergence and conflict by no means justified such despair; for it might be possible, by re-examining the fundamental principles of all philosophy and all cognition, to find a common ground by means of which all differences might be reconciled or explained, and in this way to reestablish on a surer basis the metaphysical notions of God, of Immortality and of Freedom.
§ 5. Here, implicit even in the Introduction to Critique of Pure Reason, are two principles which characterise all Critical Philosophy the principle of Unity in difference, and the principle of the reconciliation of antitheses in a higher synthesis. Both principles in Kant are logical rather than metaphysical; and logically understood they form the basis of Hegel's famous Dialectic, as well as of more modern works such as the Logic of Professor Bosanquet and Dr Joachim's Nature of Truth. Truth, as 'Unity in Difference,' becomes a system, an organism, in which no judgment has meaning if taken by itself, but each is essentially relative, and can be understood only if taken in conjunction with others, while these again form together but a partial aspect of the whole. The Whole alone is self-evident, absolutely intelligible and consistent; and until we know it as it is, with all its differences, our knowledge will be imperfect and incomplete. Hence all truth is an approximation, subject to modifications which may transform it almost beyond recognition. Every theory in science or philosophy is a thesis which admits of an antithesis with which it can be completely reconciled only when the Whole is known. All knowledge is organic; but human knowledge is an organism which is but partially developed. It is ever evolving, ever getting modified, ever growing, yet never seeming to approach much nearer to the Ideal which alone can give it truth by making it perfect and complete.
§ 6. Though Kant in the Critique of Judgment speaks of the universe as an organic whole which, as Ground, determines the form and combination of the parts in systematic unity, the metaphysical import of the doctrine of Unity in difference and of its corollary -- or perhaps its presupposition -- the doctrine of Immanence was but imperfectly realised by its author. The conception of the universe as Unity of Ground amid structural difference is characteristic rather of the Fichtean and Hegelian development of Criticism, and constitutes the central feature of Absolute Idealism. But we must return to Kant in order to seek yet another principle which is even more characteristic of his own philosophy, and which has lived on after him as another distinguishing mark by which we may recognise the Critical philosopher.
Kant proposed to repel the attacks of scepticism and to re-establish the authority of reason by a new method. The rationalist had failed hitherto because he had based his reasoning upon principles and postulates which he had never examined. His philosophy was too objective. Absorbed in the work of construction, he forgot to enquire into the conditions which rendered his constructions possible. His method was essentially dogmatic, for he reasoned without first criticising the faculty of reason. Systems built upon such uncritical foundations inevitably resulted in inconsistency, for ignorant of the sphere within which their conceptions were valid, some gave to one principle universal application, while others denied it altogether, and substituted another in its stead. This fundamental error Kant proposed to remedy by enquiring critically into the presuppositions of knowledge itself, especially of metaphysical knowledge, by what he calls a "critical examination of the faculty of reason in general in so far as it seeks for knowledge that is independent of all experience."{2}
§ 7. It was what he understood to be the methods of science that suggested to Kant his new method of Critical Philosophy. Struck by the contrast between the insecurity of metaphysics and the harmonious results which had been attained in physics and mathematics since the days of Bacon, he asked himself why it was that metaphysics "had never been so fortunate as to hit upon the sure path of science, but had kept groping about, and groping, too, among the same ideas."{3}
The intellectual revolution by which at a bound mathematics and physics became what they are now, is =he says= so remarkable that we are called upon to ask what was the essential feature of the change that proved so advantageous to them, and to try at least to apply to metaphysics as far as possible a method that has been successful in other rational sciences.{4}
As a result of this enquiry, Kant found that in physics and mathematics reason forces nature to conform to a preconceived plan. The scientist forms his conceptions and his definitions a priori, and in the light of these he interprets nature, forcing its data to conform to his preconceived ideas. Nature is intelligible only by means of that which reason itself has put into Nature. The possibility of science depends upon a priori categories to which experience is compelled to conform. Generalising this principle, Kant postulated that in all knowledge the object conforms to the mind and not the mind to the object; and thereby he hoped to get rid of the contradictions of rational and dogmatic metaphysics.
In this purpose, as judged by the opinion of his successors, Kant failed; for he separated subject and object in such a way that they could never be brought together in knowledge. Yet the principle of a priori synthesis remains. For Critical Philosophy the mind, by its activity, does not merely acquire, but constitutes knowledge. Every man, as the late Dr. Caird puts it, "has within him the general plan for a self-consistent natural system,"{5} by means of which he arranges, synthesises, categorises and brings to unity the manifold of sense. The categories of Kant were no mere empty forms, but real syntheses; no mere receptacles into which matter is poured like molten lead into a mould, but active functionings of the mind. The 'combining' activity of the understanding converts the chaotic manifold of sense into the world of experience, and the mind, observing a sequence, by its own act makes it a causal connection. Even the 'Transcendental Unity of Apperception' is not merely the abstract presupposition of all knowledge, but implies at bottom the self-activity of the subject.
§ 8. But though Kant analysed the structure of the human mind and discovered the various forms of synthesis by which it combines and integrates the data of experience, he did not treat of the development of these categories, nor of their relations inter se. He endowed his categories with activity indeed, but not with life. It was Hegel who organised the categories and imparted to them dynamic force. It was Hegel who made them relative and declared that, apart from one another, they are nothing at all. Yet if pure affirmation is its its own negation, affirmative and negative as opposites are reconciled in a higher unity which expresses their correlativity as parts of a significant whole. And combining this idea with the Fichtean revolution which had abolished the noumenal thing-in-itself we are led to the notion of Reality as a rational and organic system, in which all differences are relative and presuppose identity of ground. Of this the final unity, the category of categories, for Hegel is self-consciousness which transcends even the fundamental difference of the self and the not-self and recognises that objective reality is posited by itself, in itself, and for itself, in order that it may realise and know itself. This is the final stage in the development of knowledge, absolute knowledge; but it exists merely as an Idea, a term toward which as mind we are ever approaching but which we never reach.
Thus Absolutism is Criticism self-realised. Finding that thought and being are one, from a Theory of Knowledge Criticism has grown into a Theory of Reality. The categories are no longer regarded as constitutive of a phenomenal, but of a real world; and that last condition of all knowledge -- the Transcendental Unity of Apperception -- is hypostatised, becoming the real Subject of an universal consciousness, an Absolute which is the Ground of all things, and yet is nothing in abstraction from that of which it is the Ground. A logical presupposition is henceforth transformed into an ontological principle. The unknown thing-in-itself -- that bug-bear of all philosophers -- is banished for ever. Thought and Reality are identified in the living knowledge of a concrete organic whole. Kant declared that he was concerned "not with objects, but with the way in which the knowledge of objects may be gained, so far as that is possible a priori." Criticism, for him, was "not a doctrine, but a criticism of pure reason, and its special value is entirely negative, because it does not enlarge our knowledge, but only casts light upon the nature of reason and enables us to keep it free from error." But Criticism, in examining its own presuppositions, discovered that the ultimate metaphysical conditions of knowledge, subject and object, are essentially relative, immanent and ultimately identical in the Ground of Knowledge itself. From a Method Criticism grew into a Theory of Knowledge, and from a Theory of Knowledge it has developed into a Metaphysic.
§ 9. " The essential feature of the method of Neo-Kantianism," says Professor Veitch, "is its analysis of knowing and its consequent determination of what is meant by being; and, indeed, of Being itself."{6} And though we may decline to designate as Kantian writers of such divergent views as Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Renouvier, Green, the brothers Caird, or Messrs. Wallace, McTaggart, Bradley, Joachim and Bosanquet, the fact remains that the fundamental principles of their philosophical positions are the same as those of Kant. All adopt the principles of Immanence and of identity of ground amid structural difference. All maintain, with Renouvier, that "the nature of mind is such that no knowledge can be acquired or expressed, and consequently no real existence conceived, except by means of relation and as a system of relations."{7} All acknowledge, with Mr. Bradley, that Reality cannot be vitiated by selfdiscrepancy, "and that since Reality is one, and must own and cannot he less than appearance,"{8} we must somehow reconcile discrepant appearances in higher syntheses. In this way knowledge is evolved, but its evolution for us is incomplete; and, therefore, as all allow, with Dr. Joachim, our knowledge is only an approximation and may have to undergo indefinite modification in every part before it attains to the Ideal of a significant and systematic Whole. Finally, all grant the a priori structure and the constructive activity of mind, in virtue of which, as Professor Bosanquet puts it, "intelligence creates and sustains our real world," so that "logical science is the analysis, not of individual real objects, but of the intellectual structure of reality."{9} These considerations justify us, I think, in classing those idealist philosophers who identify being and thought, and affirm the universe to be a rational and systematic whole, comprising a ground and its multiform differences, as members of one great school in which, amid much divergence and variety of opinion, the main principles of Criticism still survive. Absolutism or Objective Idealism -- if we may give the doctrines of this school a common name -- is thus a thesis in the organic development of philosophic thought; and according to Hegelian principles we should look for an antithesis: that antithesis is Pragmatism.
§ 10. In its origin there is a remarkable resemblance between Pragmatism and Absolutism. So manifold were the differentiations of Critical Philosophy, so vague and mystical many of its ideas, so non-human and difficult to grasp its interpretation of the Universe, that at length a protest was evolved, accompanied by a demand for greater clearness and greater simplicity of thought. This demand was first voiced by Mr. C.S. Peirce (1879) who suggested a new kind of Occam's razor by means of which we might distinguish useful from useless metaphysical notions. Only those notions which had 'practical bearings' on human life were worthy of discussion; the rest might be consigned to oblivion. Metaphysics, he says, "has hitherto been a piece of amusement for idle minds, a sort of game at chess; and the ratio essendi of Pragmatism is to make a clean sweep of most of the propositions of ontology, nearly all of which are senseless rubbish, where words are defined by words and so on without ever reaching any real concept."{10}
Mr, Peirce's ideas did not take root immediately; but after an interval of several years they reappeared in the writings of Professor James and Dr. Schiller, and, backed up by vigorous polemics from the pens of both these writers, have developed into that many-sided Theory of Knowledge which we now know under the name of Pragmatism. Professor James and Dr. Schiller both thought that Metaphysics once again needed to be "re-established on a surer basis" in order to defend it from the attacks of Scepticism. Dr. Schiller was convinced that "the vague and meaningless abstractions," "the gorgeous cloudland" and "the philosophic extravagance" of Absolutism
must have generated an unavowed but deep-rooted and widespread distrust of and disgust with the methods which have starved philosophy in the midst of plenty, and condemned it to sterility and decay in the very midst of the unparalleled progress of all other branches of knowledge.{11}
§ 11. As in the days of Kant, so now, one of the branches of knowledge in which progress is most rapid and most marked is that of Science. Accordingly we once more find the philosopher asking the scientist to teach him how to philosophise. The revolution in philosophy which Mr. Peirce inaugurated was significant. If metaphysical ideas are to be valued according to their practical bearings and if our conception of such bearings or effects is the whole of our conception of an object, then truth will be determined in part at least by purposes and needs, and our evaluations will depend largely upon the emotions and the will. The thesis which Professor James defends in his Will to Believe is precisely this, that our emotions not only do, but ought, in some cases at any rate, to act as determinants of choice in regard to rival theories. This is of the very essence of Pragmatism; but at the time when the Will to Believe was written Pragmatism was still in the embryonic stage. What it needed was a principle, more precise and more scientific than the practical maxim of Peirce, yet at the same time no less human, a principle which should sum up in a few words the universal characteristics of the act of cognition. Already in his pre-pragmatic Riddles Dr. Schiller had suggested that it might be possible to provide food for the starving philosopher, "simply by basing our Metaphysics on our Science," and eventually the required principle was found in the method of Science, which is now discovered to consist, not, as Kant said, in forcing nature to conform to a priori forms already existing in the mind, but in training hypotheses with a view to controlling nature and in verifying those hypotheses in experience by means of their practical results.
Pragmatism claims that this is the universal form which all cognition takes. "All mental life is purposive."{12} Cognition is due to the exigencies of human nature which awaken in us the desire to organise the crude material of experience and "transmute it into palatable, manageable, and liveable forms."{13} Hence Pragmatism is "a systematic protest against all ignoring of the purposive character of actual knowing,"{14} or "a thorough recognition that the purposive character of mental life generally must influence and pervade our most remotely cognitive activities."{15} In order to mould experience to suit our needs, we frame hypotheses or 'make guesses,' in which we postulate that whenever we perform any determinate action nature will respond in a certain way. We then experiment, that is, we carry into execution the proposed action and await results. If nature, as modified by our action, responds on all occasions in the way we desire, our postulate is validated and is so far true. If nature does not respond as we desire, we frame a new hypothesis and experiment again. Thus for the pragmatists 'experience' is experiment in the concrete. In the acquisition of knowledge we always begin with a hypothesis which we doubt and wish to verify. It presents a claim to truth, but is not yet 'true.' Action follows, and if its consequences harmonise with our preconceptions, our hypothesis is confirmed and validated.{16} Hence all truths are logical values. They are hypotheses trained so as to satisty our needs and verified in experience. They are worth something to us for they enable us to adapt ourselves to our environment, or rather to adapt that environment to the exigencies of our nature. That is true which, by its consequences, satisfies human needs. and the pragmatic criterion of truth, though it be expressed in many ways, is ultimately reducible to this power of consequences to satisfy our needs not indeed any particular need, but the needs of our whole nature and personality.
§ 12. This is Pragmatism, which, from an examination of "the actual ways in which discrimination between the true and the false is effected," professes to have discovered a general method of determining the nature of truth. Dr. Schiller, however, in his Axioms as Postulates extends the pragmatic doctrine of Postulation to the genesis of knowledge in the past history of the race. We seem to be given an external world, but this is an illusion; it has really been formed by the validated postulates of our ancestors, and in so far as it seems to be given to us in ready-made concepts and axioms, we are really living on our capital, inherited or acquired, not helping to carve or 'create' the cosmos, but enjoying the fruit of our labours or those of others.{17} This application of pragmatic principles to the genesis of knowledge in the race is known as Humanism. It is an extension and a generalisation of Mr. Peirce's maxim that the idea of a thing is the idea of its consequences for us. All truths, no matter whether they appear as axioms or as a priori concepts, are at bottom man-made truths, values determined by human needs. Humanism, says Professor James, "is the doctrine that, to an unascertainable extent, our truths are man-made products. Human nature shapes all our questions, human satisfaction lurks in all our answers, all our formulas have a human twist."{18}
§ 13 The terms 'Pragmatism ' and 'Humanism' are usually applied to the latest development of Anglo-American Philosophy; hut M. Blondel originally called his Philosophie de l'Action by the name of Pragmatism; while French writers such as MM. Le Roy, Wilbois, Milhaud, and German writers such as Mach, Avenarius, and Simmel, are frequently claimed as humanists, and even "the great Poincaré," says Professor James, "misses it only by the breadth of a hair."{19}
M. Blondel's philosophy, however, is hardly pragmatic. Still, inasmuch as his philosophic proof of great religious truths is based on the 'Ideals' which are revealed in purposive human action, there is a certain resemblance in their religious aspect between the two doctrines. The pragmatism of Le Roy, Mach and other French and German writers, on the other hand, is very similar to the Anglo-American production, though it appears to have originated quite independently of Professor James and Dr. Schiller. It began as a Critique of Science; and to Science it is still, for the most part, restricted. The Neo-Criticism of Renouvier marked a return to the point of view of the Practical Reason. In emphasising the antithesis between scientific categories and the postulate of Freedom, he gave preference to the latter and pronounced Science incapable of solving the problem of Reality except on the basis of Freedom. The French Philosophie de la Contingence takes a similarly restricted view of the applicability of scientific laws; but goes further, and to a large extent reverses the Kantian Revolution. Nature, in this theory, is not determined by any a priori forms, but is an independent and even a free agency. We try to reconstruct it mentally, but it refuses to conform exactly to the categories we force upon it. We seek to explain it by universal and necessary laws; but they are found to be inapplicable in many cases, for the simple reason that their necessity and their universality is due to our abstraction, and not to Nature itself, which is concrete and contingent. M. Boutroux, in his work entitled De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature, definitely introduces freedom into the hitherto sacred realm of Physical Science.{20} No physical law is absolutely exact, but only à peu près, because it expresses merely a quantitative relation between phenomena, whereas, in reality, over and above the phenomenon there is the substance; over and above quantity, quality; and over and above the law, the real cause. Real causes, moreover, though striving to attain a definite end, are in some degree free in respect of the means which they use. Consequently the future is contingent; natural laws are not necessary, and their universality is weakened by an element of chance.
§ 14. The connection between this Philosophie de la Contingence -- or as it is sometimes called 'The New Philosophy of France' -- and Anglo-American Pragmatism lies in this, that both protest against the view that in knowledge we copy reality. Science, they say, has no right to hypostatise her laws, for they are mere abstractions. Still less has she any right to regard them as constitutive, for they are merely methodological. From the time of Montaigne onwards Scepticism had withheld its destructive hand from the creations of the scientist, but now the Scientific Methods in which Kant had so firm a belief, are once more called in question. Science and Metaphysics are reduced to the same level of certainty or uncertainty. Both are constructions and must stand or fall together according as they behave under the rigorous test of practical consequences for man. Both work by means of hypotheses which can only as a rule be partially verified; and so are never certain, but only more or less probable, more or less convenient, workable, prolific, satisfactory. The 'true' is the expedient, the hypothesis that is useful and will work. But 'what will work to-day may not work to-morrow,' so that truth for the Pragmatist as for the Absolutist is never more than an approximation, provisionally true but subject to indefinite modification. "When we discover the place which is held by hypotheses in the Sciences," says M. Poincaré, "we ask our selves if all their constructions are well-founded, and we believe that a breath would destroy them."{21} Scientific laws, M. Le Roy declares, are merely symbols, convenient formulae, discours, which, the more systematic they become, the further are they removed from concrete reality. Similarly, Professor James asserts that scientific definitions are only 'man-made formulae,' which exist in verbal and conceptual quarters, and lead to useful, sensible termini, but which cannot be said to correspond with them.
§ 15. There is a growing tendency, too, in both French and Anglo- American Pragmatism to take a social view of Truth; and to regard it as satisfying the common needs of the race rather than those which are peculiar to the individual. Truth has what M. Milhaud calls a "normal objectivity." Or as M. Poincaré expresses it, "Nothing is objective but that which is true for all."{22} Professor James likewise affirms that "true ideas lead to consistency, stability, and flowing human intercourse, and lead away from eccentricity and isolation."{23} Even Dr. Schiller, who believes that our metaphysics must always have a personal tinge,{24} yet admits that the latter tends to disappear through the interaction of human minds, which gradually learn to impose the same, or at least very similar, forms on the plastic receptivity of matter.{25} Clearly, then, the 'new' Philosophy of France forms part of the pragmatic movement, though, like the German edition of Pragmatism, it is confined, for the most part, to the Philosophy of Science, and neglects that religious and emotional aspect of Pragmatism which is set forth in the Will to Believe and in The Ethical Basis oj Metaphysics with which Dr. Schiller introduces us to his work on Humanism.
§ 16. In Germany, Pragmatism has found a friend in Herr Simmel, who, in his Philosophie des Geldes, treats incidentally of the nature of truth. Herr Simmel regards truth as a value determined by our needs, of which economical values are only a particular case; but though his standpoint and the general form of his arguments is different from that usually adopted by Pragmatism, his claim to rank as a pragmatist can hardly be questioned. Professor Mach also is undoubtedly a pragmatist; and his Pragmatism is much more thorough-going even than that of the Philosophie de la Contingence, though, like the latter, it is chiefly concerned with Science. For Professor Mach, as for M. Poincané, the data of Science are sensations, and its aim is to organise, classify and systematise the latter by means of symbolic formulae. All cognition is governed by the principle of Thought-economy, which expresses a primary need of our nature and demands, among other things, that when experience fails to confirm our expectations, a minimum of modification must be introduced into the ideas by which it is symbolised, and that both ideas and must always be expressed in the simplest possible way.
Avenarius has given to the scientific theory of Energetics, of which Professors Mach and Ostwald are among the chief representatives, a philosophical setting in his Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (1890). His point of view is biological. Knowledge is only one form of a vital series -- pain, striving, satisfaction; and, as with Professor Mach, the principle of Thought-economy dominates all cognitive activities. As knowledge develops, the useless representations which characterise popular religions and realistic philosophies will be eliminated. True Philosophy must return to pure experience, in which all knowledge is descriptive, and in which quantitative rather than qualitative relations and laws prevail,
§ 17. Whether or not there is any metaphysic which can be called pragmatic may be disputed. Indeed, Professor James expressly declares that Pragmatism is compatible with any metaphysic, and the Corridor-Theory of the Italian pragmatist, Papini, seems to confirm this view. On the other hand, we are informed that the primary aim of Pragmatism is to re-establish metaphysics on a scientific basis; and Mr. Peirce's test of 'practical bearings 'was intended especially for the elimination of 'useless' metaphysical notions, a purpose to which both Professor James and Dr. Schiller are accustomed to apply it. Moreover, every theory of knowledge has to discuss the metaphysical conditions of knowledge, and so is forced, nolens volens, to take up some metaphysical attitude. Pragmatism, then, cannot help being to some extent metaphysical.
This is admitted by Professor James, who tells us that Pragmatism has at any rate 'metaphysical affinities;' and if we may judge by his own metaphysical writings, the tendency of Pragmatism is toward a Philosophy of Pure Experience, in which no trans-experiential agents of unification, substances, intellectual categories and powers, or selves, are needed.{26} Dr. Schiller, on the other hand, has defined Pragmatism in one place as "a conscious application to epistemology (or logic) of a teleological psychology which ultimately implies a voluntaristic metaphysic."{27} Now for avoluntaristic metaphysic, "actual realities are always relative to the ends of practical life, and human valuations exercise their sway over every region of our experience."{28} Hence, regarded from this aspect, Pragmatism would seem to tend toward Personal Idealism, since that practical life in regard to which reality is relative, and that active process of evaluation in which truth is said to consist, seems to imply a real personal agent. In any case, Pragmatism certainly has pronounced metaphysical affinities, and these we must discuss in their proper place, and shall then see how far the Philosophy of Pure Experience and Personal Idealism are presupposed by and how far they serve to complete Pragmatism itself.
§ 18. The term Realism, in its original signification, is applied to the doctrine that universals have, at any rate, some kind of objective existence and are not mere creations of the mind; but the term has acquired a wider signification and may now be applied to any philosophy which adopts the standpoint of common-sense, and attempts to interpret and systematise its beliefs without explaining them away. Now, the ordinary man believes in real objects, real houses, windows, doors, stones, trees, animals and men, which exist and act and thrive and are acted upon quite independently of himself. He does not confuse things with his own sensations, nor does he ever dream that it is he himself or his ancestors, or both, who have constructed and built up the world he sees about him by the action of their minds. He regards his own thoughts and feelings as somewhat flimsy and extremely transient acts or qualities which belong to himself, whereas the existence of real things is something quite different. Real things have their own qualities, colours, shapes, sizes, weights. Some of them move about, others remain still. Some of them grow, others do not. But all of them have properties by which we are able to distinguish one from another, to recognise them and to get to know them. The plain man knows something about himself, too. He, like the rest, is a 'thing,' but a thing which thinks and feels and wills, besides being able to move, to act and to be acted upon. He believes, also, that there are many other beings which have ideas, emotions, passions like to his own, to which they give expression in much the same way that he does. Finally, he usually believes also in a supreme Being, far more perfect than all the rest of the world put together -- a Being by whom all these things have been made, who watches over them, and by whom he and other human beings will be rewarded or punished according to their deserts.
Such, in brief, are the beliefs of common-sense, and with these as his data, the realist begins to philosophise. He does not assume the validity of all these beliefs as a datum. The validity of belief in the existence of God, for instance, has to be proved. Nevertheless that, in general, there are real things which have an existence and nature of their own, and are in this respect both independent of and external to himself, he regards as a self-evident truth, as he does also the possibility of knowing them. Or, to put the matter in another way, to the realist it is self-evident that knowledge is possible. Hence he infers that the faculties by means of which knowledge is acquired must, in general, be trustworthy, and their deliverances objectively valid. Now, one of the deliverances of our human faculties which is not only normal, but absolutely universal, and, one might almost say, instinctive, is that there does exist an objective real world; hence this also the realist accepts as a self-evident truth. Similarly, in regard to those other beliefs of common-sense, the belief in real substances, causes, activities, purposes, the aim of the realist is to explain without explaining away. Somehow such beliefs have arisen, and it is the business of the philosopher to account for them, to discuss their origin, to show how far they are valid, and, if invalid, to show how far they err, and how it comes about that what seems to be a natural and normal function of the human mind should lead us astray. In this enquiry the guiding principle realist is as follows. Hold fast to what you know, and do not doubt what you seem to have arrived at by an immediate judgment and a natural process of reasoning unless you are forced so to do. The beliefs of spontaneous common-sense may, in the end, turn out to be false; but do not begin by assuming them to be false. Rather accept them as true, and then see whether, on this basis, it is not possible to give a rational and consistent account of the universe -- an account which shall explain both the nature and the possibility of knowledge and truth, and which shall also provide us with useful criteria for distinguishing truth from error.
§ 19. The realist, then, begins to philosophise from the point of view of common-sense. Accordingly he understands by knowledge a psychical act or state in which somehow the nature of objective Reality is revealed to the human mind, and by truth the correspondence of knowledge with objective fact. We observe, perceive, apprehend, judge and reason correctly in so far as our observation, perception, concepts, judgments and conclusions have an objective counterpart to which they correspond. Truth is an adequatio. But there can be no question of truth, unless in perceiving, conceiving, and judging, our thoughts have objective reference. Sensations as such are neither true nor false, but only become so when integrated into percepts and referred to objective Reality. Objective reference however, is a function of the intellect, and as it is this which gives to our thoughts and ideas their claim to truth, truth is defined, not as an adequatio sensus, but as an adequatio intellectus et rei.
§ 20. How is this adequatio or correspondence possible? Common-sense believes that objects act upon the senses, and it is upon this assumption and upon the principle that every effect must resemble its cause, that the realist -- or at any rate the scholastic realist -- bases his explanation of correspondence. External and material objects affect our senses and thus directly or indirectly determine the content of thought; i.e., determine what we think as opposed to thought itself considered as a form of mental activity. The metaphysical conditions of knowledge in Realism, therefore, are on the part of the object (1) activity (omne ens agit secundum suam naturam) and (2) intelligibility (omne ens non solum est unum (individuum) et bonum (appetibile), sed etiam verum (intelligibile); while on the part of subject there is required both passivity (omnis cognitio fit secundum similitudinem cogniti et cognoscendis) and activity of a psychical and conscious order cognitum est in cognoscenti secundum modum cognoscentis). Further, owing to the fact that all intellectual activity is conditioned by that of the nervous system, which alone is directly affected by material objects, cognition is mediated by senseperception, and all knowledge is ultimately derived from sense-data. (Nihil est in intellectu nisi quod fuerit in sensu). This latter condition, however, does not exclude the possibility of our knowing objects other than those of which we have direct experience, as Kant maintained. On the contrary, we know many things of which we have had no direct experience; for just as from the existence of knowledge we may infer the existence of whatever is presupposed by knowledge as its condition, so from the fact that certain objects exist and are directly experienced, we may infer the existence of others as their conditions or causes.
§ 21. The ultimate criterion of truth? for Realism follows from its theory of the nature of truth. It is objective evidence; we give our assent only when we believe that the object and not any other cause has determined the content of our thoughts. Other criteria there are, of course, for contradiction, illicit inference, the influence of prejudice, preconceived ideas and illusions due to the abnormal state of the mind, must be excluded; but these are mostly negative, and in the end assent is given, or should be given, only when it is evident that the object about which we are thinking, and that alone, has determined the content of our thoughts.
§ 22. The theory of knowledge which I have briefly outlined above and to which I have given the name of Realism, is, in principle, the same as that of Aristotle and Aquinas, though neither of these philosophers wrote what we should call an Epistemology. There are other Realisms. Reid, Hamilton, and the Scottish school of Common-Sense base their Realism solely on Intuition, and consequently their treatment of the subject is far less systematic than that of Aristotle or the Scholastics. There is also a 'new' Realism which has found many exponents in England and America, notably Professor Bertrand Russell and Mr. Moore. The 'new' realists distinguish consciousness from the objects about which we are conscious not only in external sense-perception and ideal thought, but in all perception and in all thought. Hunger, pain and pleasure are not identical with the feeling or consciousness of hunger, of pain and of pleasure. Doubtless there is something to be said in favour of this opinion, though it may easily be misunderstood, and suggests the ultra-Realism of certain Mediaeval philosophers. In any case as yet the 'new' Realism is not sufficiently explicit on the larger question of metaphysics to admit of our taking it as an alternative to the more fully developed Pragmatism and Absolutism.
§ 23. Accordingly, when I speak of Realism in the course of this study, I shall refer to Realism as interpreted by Aristotle and the Scholastics, for this is the only systematic and fully developed Realism. Moreover, there has been of late, as Professor Case has pointed out, a marked tendency to return to the Aristotelian standpoint in philosophy, and it is the justification of this tendency which I wish to discuss. Materialism and Positivism, though still plausible to superficial minds, have proved themselves incapable of giving an interpretation of the Universe which can satisfy the philosopher. Absolutism, Pragmatism and Realism the only alternatives between which the philosopher can make a rational choice. Pragmatism is the antithesis of Absolutism, and at present is contending with the latter for supremacy in the philosophic world. Realism, in regard to these two extremes, occupies a via media, and it is as a via media that I wish here to present it. Aristotle has said that virtue lies in the mean; and we may say the same, perhaps, of philosophic truth. But by a via media I understand not an eclectic philosophy, nor yet a compromise, but rather what Hegelians would call a 'higher synthesis'. The true way in philosophy is that which, by a critical examination of the very foundation upon which philosophy is built, shall discover at what point precisely divergence has arisen, shall show how far the divergence on either side is due to exaggeration or to a onesided view, and hence shall be able to reconcile the two antitheses by distinguishing in them that which is true and well-founded, from that which is false.
§ 24. At the root of every philosophy, moreover, lies its Theory of Knowledge. Hence, no surer test of the strength of a philosophic position can be applied than an examination of the theory of knowledge upon which it is based. The conditions which that theory must satisfy are, as I have already indicated, three-fold. First of all, its psychological analyses of cognition must be exact; it must not generalise for theory's sake unless such generalisations are warranted by introspective fact. Secondly, metaphysical conditions must be assigned which show the possibility of knowledge and of truth, while yet retaining for these terms their full and real significance; for to mutilate the notion of truth in order to explain it is irrational, and to assign to knowledge a sense altogether foreign to that which is commonly accepted, is to explain, not knowledge, but something else for which it would have been better to coin a new term. And, in the third place, the validity of cognitive processes must be examined, and criteria of truth assigned by means of which to test their validity. How far Absolutism, Pragmatism and Realism satisfy these conditions remains to be seen; but in so far as either fails, it is incomplete, and must contain somewhere an element of error. A final judgment cannot be passed, however, until we have studied each theory in all its bearings, psychological, metaphysical, and epistemological, since each theory forms a whole, and as a whole it should be judged.
{1} Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Preface to Second Edition.
{2} loc. cit., p. xxxv.
{3} loc. cit., p. xiv.
{4} loc. cit., p. xvi.
{5} Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. i., p. 18.
{6} Knowing and Being, p. 12.
{7} Les dilemmes de la Méta physique, p. 11.
{8} Appearance and Reality, p. 105.
{9} Logic, vol. ii., p. 236.
{10} Monist, Apr. 1905, p. 171.
{11} Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 94.
{12} Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 10.
{13} Schiller, 'Axioms us Postulates ' in Personal Idealism, § 1.
{14} Studies in Humanism, p. 11.
{15} Schiller, Humanism, p. 8.
{16} Peirce, "What Pragmatism is," Monist, Apr. 1905, p. 173.
{17} 'Axioms as Postulates,' § 5.
{18} Pragmatism, p. 242.
{19} Mind, N.S. 52, p. 46.
{20} cf. Humanism, pp. 12 (note), 15, and Studies in Humanism pp. 411 et seq. 427.
{21} Pref to La Science et L'Hypothèse.
{22} La Valeur de la Science, p. 265.
{23} Pragmatism, p. 213.
{24} 'Axioms as Postulates,' § 1.
{25} Ibid. §§ 1 to 5, and cf. Studies in Humanism, pp. 16, 17 and 428.
{26} "A World of Pure Experience" (James), Journ. of Phil. Psy. and Sc. Methods, 1904, p. 534.
{27} Studies in Humanism, p. 12.
{28} Humanism, p. 8.