Pragmatism Versus The Pragmatist (A.O. Lovejoy)

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PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

By ARTHUR
I

SHALL

0.

LOVE JOY

in this essay inquire into the logical relations of the

known

as pragmatism to the principal philosophical


in this volume.
Does pragmatism
under
consideration
problems

doctrine

imply the truth


it is

of realism, or of idealism, or of neither

If

any sense realistic, is it so in a monistic, or a dualistic,


some third sense ? Does it, expressly or by implication,

in

or in

affirm, or admit, or deny, the existence of


of
mental states," or
psychical entities
"

"

consciousness,"

"

"

These are the

questions to which answers are to be sought.

Pragmatism is not a thing of which one can safely draw the


from one s inner consciousness. It is, primarily, a
historic complex of opinions which have been or are held by
certain recent or contemporary writers, and of the arguments
by which those writers have supported their opinions. It is
not the product of a single logical motive or generating insight
though this is a proposition which will require proof, since
many pragmatists would probably deny it. We must, there
definition

begin our inquiry into the bearing of the pragmatist theory upon these problems by noting carefully what
pragmatists themselves have had to say upon them. And
since pragmatist writers are fairly many and rather various,
fore, at least

we

do well to devote our attention in the main to the


reasonings of one representative of the school. I shall, there
fore, in this paper, be concerned chiefly, though not quite
shall

35

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

36

Mr.
exclusively, with the writings of Professor John Dewey.
Dewey not only is the most eminent and influential of the living

spokesmen of the pragmatic doctrine, but he also has dealt


more directly and abundantly than any other with the particular
and his personal variant of the
issues that interest us here
;

doctrine contains certain elements, or at any rate certain


emphases, which are of especial significance in the present
connection.

not a purely expository treatment of the subject that


I shall attempt.
We may at least entertain as an hypothesis
to be tested the supposition that some of the theses of pragmaIt

is

are more
more genuinely

tist writers

are

closely related to their central conceptions,


"

pragmatic,"

than others

and we may

thus be able, in the course of the analysis, to arrive at a species


of rectified pragmatism which will at least have the interest
of internal simplicity and consistency.
Nor need
limit our efforts, either critical or reconstructive, to the

and value

we

detection

and elimination of inner incongruities or redundancies.

In great part the pragmatist proffers what purport to be, not


simple deductions from an antecedently defined dogma, but
"

independent
their

own

considerations,"

merits,

this book.

and bearing

critical appraisal of

the force and pertinency of

therefore necessary, as an indispensable


comprehensive discussion of such problems in the

those considerations

part of any

capable of being judged upon


directly upon the problems of

is

light of
It is

contemporary philosophy.
perhaps only fair to give notice to the reader in advance
that the quest to be undertaken will be neither simple nor
straightforward in its course. He will perhaps find it exasperatingly devious, hesitant, full of false starts, and of revisions
or reversals of results provisionally arrived at. I can only ask

him to

believe, or to observe for himself, that these peculiarities


of the analysis are not arbitrary, and attributable to the taste

but arise inevitably from the nature of the


questions asked, taken in conjunction with the nature of the
material available for answering them. A guide is not held

of the analyst,

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

37

responsible for the character of the country over which he


conducts the traveller.

PRAGMATISM, REALISM AND IDEALISM

at

Though a philosopher evades formal definitions always


the peril of confusion and misunderstanding, it nevertheless

seems hardly necessary in this case to begin with a definition


of pragmatism in general, irrespective of the specific aspects
of it here to be considered.
The customary formulas are
known
to
all
presumably
persons who are at all likely to read

and any attempt to review those formulas,


and to rid them of the ambiguities
in which they abound, would itself be a large undertaking. 1
Pragmatism began as a theory concerning the conditions under
which concepts and propositions may be said to possess
meaning, and concerning the nature of that in which all mean
From this there developed a theory of
ings must consist.
volume

this

to analyse their meanings,

knowledge, a theory of the meaning of truth, a theory of the


criterion of truth, a theory of the limits of legitimate philoso
phical discussion, and the rudiments of a metaphysical theory.

and not always


we were to examine and

All of these have been expressed in various,

obviously synonymous, terms and if


seek to unify all of these we should hardly get, in the space
here available, beyond the vestibule of our inquiry. We may,
then, proceed at once to the first question to be considered,
and interrogate the writings of Professor Dewey with a view
;

to

determining

and to idealism

how pragmatism

stands related to realism

as these have been elsewhere defined in this

book. 2

How large, the present writer has quite inadequately shown in a previous
The Thirteen Pragmatisms," Journal of Philosophy,
essay on the subject,
1

"

1908.
2

A similar question

be a

has been illuminatingly discussed by Professor

W.

P.

in a series of articles in the Journal of Philosophy


May a Realist
It is, however, as Mr. Montague s formulation of
Pragmatist ?
1909).

Montague

("

"

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

38

(1) Let me first cite what seem to be definite pronounce


ments by our chosen representative of pragmatism in favour

of

1
thorough -going realism.

What experience suggests about itself is a genuinely objective


world which enters into the actions and sufferings of men and
(C.I. 7).
undergoes modifications through their responses
According to pragmatism, ideas (judgments and reasonings
being included for convenience in this term) are attitudes of response
taken toward extra-ideal, extra-mental things
(D.P. 155).
Reflection must discover
it must find out
it must detect
it must inventory what is there.
All this, or else it will never
know what the matter is the human being will not find out what
struck him, and will have no idea where to seek for a remedy
"

"

"

"

"

"

(E.L. 23).

There are always some


facts which are misconstrued by any
statement which makes the existence of the world problematic
"

"

(E.L. 297).

One of the curiosities of orthodox empiricism is that its out


For in
standing problem is the existence of an external world.
accordance with the notion that experience is attached to a private
subject as its exclusive possession, a world like the one in which we
appear to live must be external to experience, instead of being
subject-matter. Ignorance which is fatal
disappointment
the need of adjusting means and ends to the course of nature, would
seem to be facts sufficiently characterizing empirical situations as
to render the existence of an external world indubitable
(G.I. 25).
its

"

matter only for myself, the presuppositions and


Speaking
tendencies of pragmatism are distinctly realistic not idealistic in
"

of the

makes evident, not quite the same question as is here raised, and it is not
dealt with by the same method, since no extensive review of pragmatist

it

discussions of the subject forms a part of Mr. Montague s plan of treatment.


So far as the same ground is covered, however, the conclusions of this paper
are substantially the same as those expressed by Mr. Montague though the

reasons for these conclusions are, in the main, different.


1
Writings of Professor Dewey here referred to will be cited by the following
abbreviations: D.P. = The Influence of Darwin upon Philosophy and Other
Essays in Contemporary Thought, 1910 ; E.L. Essays in Experimental Logic,
1916; C. I. = Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude, 1917.
In the last-named volume, only the opening essay,
The Need for a Recovery
of Philosophy," is by Professor Dewey.
"

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

39

connoted by the theory


knowledge as a
Pragmatism
an
are
fact,
representative of one
accomplished matter, things
another.
Ideas, sensations, mental states are, in their cognitive
significance, media of so adjusting things to one another that they
become representative of one another. When this is accomplished,
they drop out and things are present to the agent in the most
naively realistic fashion.
Pragmatism gives necessarily a

any sense

in

which idealism connotes or

of knowledge.

is

believes that in

thorough

machinery sensa
one which inevitably tends to take

reinterpretation of all the cognitive

tions, ideas, concepts,

etc.

these things in a

much more

than

(Journal of Philosophy,

is current"

Nor

On

literal

and physically
ii,

realistic fashion

324-326).

are these mere casual dicta unsupported

by argument.

Dewey devotes almost an entire essay


to what appears to be a dialectical demonstration of the
self -contradictory character of even a problematical idealism.
the contrary, Mr.

True, he describes his argument, at the outset, as


proof of quite another conclusion. He announces

were a
as a de

if it

it

monstration that the question of the existence of an external


world is one which cannot logically be asked that it is not a
"

And this might naturally be taken for a con


question at all."
tention as adverse to the realist as to the subjectivist. It
l

suggests that, since the question

"

is

And

must

also be meaningless.
this consequence seems to be
it

meaningless, any answer to


in another paper precisely

drawn from the same contention.

On the supposition of the ubiquity of the knowledge-relation,"

we

realism and idealism exhaust the alternatives


pragmatism holds] the ubiquity of the relation is a myth,
both doctrines are unreal, because there is no problem of which
2
From this one would gather that
they are the solution."
realism and idealism in all their forms stand equally condemned,
and that the pragmatist has discovered a third way of thinking,
radically different from either.
But when we inquire why (in the essay especially devoted

if

are told,

"

[as

"

The Existence

of the

World
2

as a Logical
E.L. 266.

Problem,"

E.L. 283.

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

40

"

to this topic) Mr. Dewey regards the


problem of the existence
as a
of the world
one, we discover that what
meaningless
"

"

"

he asserts is merely that the problem cannot be intelligibly


formulated without implying an affirmative answer. It is in a
statement of the question by Mr. Bertrand Russell that Mr.
Dewey s discussion takes its point of departure. And Mr.
question was quite unequivocally the question of
realism.
Can we know that objects of sense
physical
Can
exist at times when we are not perceiving them ?
Russell

"

"

"

the existence of anything other than our own hard data be


inferred from the existence of those data ?
What Mr.
"

Dewey undertakes

to

show

is

that each of Mr. Russell

of putting this inquiry includes terms which


l
plicit acknowledgment of an external world."

"

ways

involve an ex

Pointing out a
assumptions involved and necessarily involved
in the statement of the question, Mr. Dewey remarks
How this differs from the external world of common sense I
in any
am totally unable to see."
Never," he concludes,

whole

series of

"

"

"

actual procedure of inquiry do we throw the existence of the


world into doubt, nor can we do so without self-contradiction.

We

doubt some received piece

of

knowledge

about some

r
specific thing of that world, and then set to work as best w e
2
All that
can to verify it."
realist could ask for better.

No

urging against him is that his answer


mean
to the question is indubitable. 3 The problem is called
sense
that
in
its
the
sense
the
rather
peculiar
ingless
solution is certain and easy.

he finds his seeming

critic

"

"

(2)

of a

"

Yet what seem equally plain expressions


and temporalistic type
multipersonal
"

are also to be found in Mr.


of the

of idealism
of idealism

expositions of the bearing


this old controversy.
Nor can

Dewey

pragmatic logic upon


one
be surprised at this who
any

is

mindful of the historic

E.L. 291.
2
E.L. 302.
3
I do not think it needful at this point to examine in detail the arguments
of the essay on
The Existence of the World as a Logical Problem in behalf
"

of its unqualifiedly realistic conclusion.

"

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST


lineage of

pragmatism

(as traced

41

1
by William James), and
especially in James s early

remembers the part played in it


formulations of it by such a logical motive as the principle
of parsimony and by the general temper and method in
radical empiri
philosophy to which James gave the name of
"

cism"^, the principle that philosophy "must neither admit


into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced,

nor exclude from them any element that

is

directly experi

James again and again reiterates that pragmatism


can recognize no objects or relations that are
altogether
trans -experiential." 3 At times he intimates that the pragmatist does not dogmatically deny the abstract possibility of thingsenced."

"

the

"

absurdity of transBut he at any rate admits no possibility


empirical objects."
of knowing their existence, or of making any use of them even

in-themselves,

or assert

intrinsic

for logical or

explanatory purposes

so that, to all significant

and purposes, he excludes them from his universe


The reality of inter-temporal pointings within
altogether.
and
transcendence
experience,
consequently of a kind of
intents

"

"

"

"

an idea by its
or objective, he not only admits
object
but insists upon.
At every moment we can continue to
believe in an existing beyond
but
the beyond must, of
course, always in our philosophy be itself of an experiential
And James adds that if the pragmatist is to assign
nature."
any extra -perceptual reality whatever to the physical universe
if the
beyond is anything more than a future experience
of our own or a present one of our neighbour
it must be
"

of

"

"

"

"

"

"

"

"

conceived as

"an

experience for

itself

whose

relations to other

we

translate into the action of molecules, ether-waves,


things
or whatever else the physical symbols may be."
It is, in

by James that if the pragmatist is not a pure


Berkeleian idealist, he must at least be a panpsychist. 5

short, intimated

Essays in Radical Empiricism, 41-45.

Ibid. 42.

The Meaning

Essays in Radical Empiricism, 239.


Ibid. 88.
There is, however, in James the same strange conjunction of

of Truth, xvii.

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

42

This idealistic strain in the make-up of pragmatism is, as


said, abundantly manifest in Mr. Dewey s reasonings

have

Like knowledge, truth is an experienced relation of things,


has no meaning apart from such relation
(D.P. 95).
and
are
Sensationalistic empiricism
transcendentalism
both of these systems fall back on
both alike in error because
something which is denned in non-directly-experienced terms in
order to justify that which is directly experienced
(D.P. 227).
"

and

"

it

"

"

"

"

"

"

The presentative realist [erroneously] substitutes for irreducibility and unambiguity of logical function (use in inference)
physical and metaphysical isolation and elementariness
(E.L. 45).
The [pragmatic] empiricist doesn t have any non-empirical
realities," such as
atoms/ sensations,
things-in-themselves,
"

"

"

"

"

etc. (D.P. 230).


transcendental unities,
The belief in the metaphysical transcendence of the object of
knowledge seems to have its origin in an empirical transcendence
"

The thing meaning is one


specific and describable sort.
the thing meant is another thing, and is a thing presented
It is
as not given in the same way as the thing which means.
to
be
so
be
to
given [i.e.
something
subsequently experienced directly].
a very

of

thing

Error as well as truth

a necessary function of knowing.


of this transcendent (or beyond)

is

But the non-empirical account

relationship puts all the error in one place (our knowledge) and
all the truth in another (absolute consciousness or else a thing-in"

itself)

(D.P. 103).

Here, then,

we have the

the recognition of
realistic

with

typical pragmatic subjectivism


an inter-temporal, but the denial of a trans-

idealistic utterances that

we

find in

Cf. e.g., for

Dewey.

the

James, the following


Practically our minds meet in a world of objects which they share in
or all ?]
common, which would still be there, if one or several [Query
"The
of the minds were destroyed" (Essays in Radical Empiricism, 79).
greatest common-sense achievement, after the discovery of one Time and
one Space, is probably the concept of permanently existing things. How
ever a Berkeley, a Mill, or a Cornelius may criticize it, it works; and in
practical life we never think of going back upon it, or reading our incoming
Radical empiri
(Meaning of Truth, 63).
experience in any other terms
cism has more affinity with natural realism than with the views of Berkeley
or of Mill
(Essays in Radical Empiricism, 76).
realistic side in

"

"

"

"

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATLST

43

subjective, reference in either perception or reflective thought.

The interpretation suggested by these brief passages is con


firmed by an examination of the argument of an essay in
which our pragmatist explains at length the meaning of his
"

immediate

This doctrine, represented as an

empiricism."

essential part of pragmatism,


postulates that things are what
Hence
are
as.
they
experienced
if one wishes to describe anything
l
it
Such
to
tell
what
is
his
task
is
experienced as being."
truly,
"

a contrast, not between a Reality


an empiricism recognizes
and various approximations to, or phenomenal representations
of, Reality, but between different reals of experience."
Take,
says Mr. Dewey, the case of an experience of "an out-and-out
These are experienced as
illusion, say of Zollner s lines.
convergent
they are truly parallel. If things are what
they are experienced as being, how can the distinction be
The
drawn between illusion and the true state of the case ?
immediate empiricist replies that the distinction is at any rate
not one between a reality and a non-reality, nor even between
"

"

degrees of reality. The experience of the lines as divergent


in the most uncompromising fashion be called
real

must

"

"

the later experience into which the first develops is another


real related to the first in a particular experienced manner.

The question of truth is not as to whether Being or Non-Being,


Reality or mere Appearance, is experienced, but as to the worth of
a certain concretely experienced thing. It is because this thing
:<

afterwards adjudged false is a concrete that, that it develops into


a corrected experience (that is, experience of a corrected thing

we reform
full

we reform ourselves or a bad boy) whose


not a whit more real, but is true, or truer." 2

things just as

content

is

Similar passages might be cited from other members of


Thus we find in Professor A. W. Moore s con-

the school.
1

D.P. 228,
The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism."
D.P. 235. I am, I confess, unable to reconcile the language of this
The Greeks were wholly right in feeling
passage with that of the following
that the questions of good and ill, as far as they fall within human control, are
bound up with discrimination of the genuine from the spurious, of being
from what only pretends to be (C.I. 56-57).
"

"

"

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

44

tribution to Creative Intelligence


as a subjectivistic definition of
pragmatist, he observes, there

concerning the objectivity of


"

"

what can only be described


To the
itself.
objectivity
"

is

"no

ground

for

anxiety

hypotheses," for a hypothesis

objective in so far as it accomplishes the work whereunto


the removal of conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition
is called

is

it

in conduct

and

affection."

and the removal

them

These

conflicts, inhibitions, etc.,

be observed, phases of
experience of individual minds, or, if the pragmatist
dislikes that word, of individual organisms
so that every
of

are, it will

the

thing implied by
of

"objectivity"

is,

knowledge, to be found within

in the pragmatic theory


the limits of individual

experience.

When

one discovers in the utterances of a philosopher


such apparent contradictions as subsist between the two sets
of expressions cited above from Professor Dewey, one is bound
to examine the philosopher s text more closely to see if he
does not somewhere suggest a means of removing or softening
the contradiction if, for example, the appearance of it is not
due to some oddity in his use of terms. When we thus inter
rogate the writings of Mr. Dewey, we do, in fact, find certain
(3)

intimations of
positions.

means

We

of reconciling his two seemingly antithetic


note, for example as bearing upon the state

with extrament, already quoted, that ideas have to do


mental
in a
mental
things that Mr. Dewey defines
"

"

sense of his

"

"

own

We may, if we please, say that the smell of a rose, when


but this
involving conscious meaning or intention, is mental
term mental does not denote some separate type of existence
existence as a state of consciousness. It denotes only the fact
"

that the smell, a real


intellectual function.
.

and non-psychical fact, now exercises an


To be in the mind means to be in a

situation in which the function of intending

(D.P. 104).
1

C.I. 97.

is

directly concerned

"

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST


"

When

in a sense

a cry of

fire

we must,

call

tant to note what

is

suggests the advisability of flight, we may,


the suggestion mental/ But it is impor

meant by

this term.
;

recognize this distinctive status

we seem

Here, then,

Dewey

Fire,

and running, and

they are physical. But in their


may be called mental when we

getting burned are not mental


status of being suggested they

Mr.

45

"

(E.L. 50).

at

some

to get

first

asserts that there are

"

When

help.

extra-mental

things,"

and

that our ideas are conversant with them, he must, according


to the definition cited, be understood to mean only that there
are experienced things which do not (at a given moment)
other
of either
have the
distinctive status
suggesting
things or being suggested by them.

But does
its

this

not at the

the assertion realistic or idealistic in

The answer must be that


realistic

For the

sense.

make

this

import
seemingly
?

"

"

"

"

"

utterance of Mr.

extra-mental

"

permits us to take

Dewey

things,"

moment performing an

it

an

s in

idealistic

the things which are

intellectual

function,"

be intra-experiential things. It is one


obvious,
may,
of the favourite contentions of Mr. Dewey that a large part
it is

still

that to much the


in fact, non-cognitive
greater portion of sensory stimuli we react in a wholly non1
And it would be in keeping with his defini
cognitive way."
of

"

"

"

experience

"

tion of

is,

mental

"

to take

"

extra-mental

"

as

synonymous

the non-cognitive portion of experience." The defini


I
have said, permits us to take his meaning so it does
tion,
But if we do not
not, perhaps, strictly require us to do so.

with

"

so take

it,

we have done nothing

to reconcile Mr,

Dewey

"

declaration that pragmatism believes in


extra-ideal, extramental things
with the idealistic expressions which have
"

been quoted from him. Either, then, the one passage con
tradicts the others, or else a harmony is to be reached by
1

C,I. 49.
But, as a further illustration of the difficulties to be met
with in the attempt to construct a harmony of the pragmatic gospels, c/. the
following (which I shall have occasion to cite again below)
Experience is
full of inference.
There is apparently no conscious experience without
inference
reflection is native and constant
(ibid. 8).
"

"

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

46

construing the realistic -sounding passage, in the light of Mr.

Dewey

definition

of

"

mental,"

as

of

idealistic

import.

Meanwhile the conclusion and arguments of the essay on


remain unaffected by this
The Existence of the World
they still appear to be hopelessly at
harmonizing measure
immediate empiricism."
variance with Mr. Dewey s
There is, however, another suggestion offered for the
"

"

"

the seeming contradiction. It is hinted at in


a phrase cited in the preceding paragraph, but is more fully
developed elsewhere best perhaps in the following passage
alleviation of

That the pragmatist is (by his denial of transcendence)


landed in pure subjectivism or the reduction of every existence
to the purely mental, follows only if experience means only mental
The critic appears to hold the Humian doctrine that
states.
"

experience

is

It is then for

idealism,

or

made up of states of mind, of sensations and ideas.


him to decide how, on his basis, he escapes subjective
The pragmatist starts from a much
mentalism.

more commonplace notion of experience, that of the plain man who


never dreams that to experience a thing is first to destroy the thing
and then to substitute a mental state for it. More particularly,
the pragmatist has insisted that experience is a matter of functions
and habits, of active adjustments and readjustments, of co-ordina

To
activities, rather than of states of consciousness.
the pragmatist by reading into him exactly the notion
of experience that he denies and replaces ... is hardly
in

tions

and

criticize

"

tellectual

(D.P. 157).

Here we have an explanation which seems to swing our


interpretation of the pragmatist
realistic side
and, indeed, to

position wholly over to the


the neo-realistic side. He

appears in this passage as an adherent of what has been


(by an unhappy verbal coinage)
pan-objectivism
as one who denies the existence of states of consciousness
An experience such seems to be his present
altogether.
is not made up of a special kind of
thesis
experiential

named

"

"

"

"

stuff
it is simply a selected fragment of the world of
things,"
taken as they exist, without duplication. The question of
or
trans -subjective
transcendent
reality does not arise
"

"

"

"

"

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

47

in such a philosophy, for the simple reason that there is, for
it, no realm of subjective reality for things to be
beyond."
have come upon a feature of Mr. Dewey s philosophy
"

We

so significant, especially in relation to the purposes of this

volume, that

requires extended examination on its

it

To such examination the next section of


be devoted
pending it, we cannot reach a

account.
will

this

own

paper

conclusion

as to the bearing of this thesis upon our attempt to decide


where, in the last analysis, the pragmatist stands upon the
question at issue between the realist and the idealist. Yet,

meanwhile, one remark


last

cited.

is

already pertinent to the passage

To say that experience


no

is

made up simply

of

psychical character does


having
not amount to realism monistic or other unless it implies
that there also exist things which do not, at any given moment,
things

distinctively

which constitute
experi
and that any given thing which at one moment is in
"

figure in the selective groupings


ence,"

may at other moments


experience
exist while absent from that or any similar context.
But
the context called

this last

"

"

my

would amount to a very

definite assertion of

what

then, he means the


passage last cited to be taken in the only sense in which it
would serve the purpose for which it is obviously intended

Mr.

"

Dewey

calls

transempiricals."

If,

(namely, as a repudiation of
subjectivism
why does he
elsewhere ridicule the hypothesis of
?
transempiricals
"

"),

"

"

Taking the passage to mean what it clearly seems intended


to say, we have not found here any means of harmonizing
Mr. Dewey s realistic and idealistic utterances
we have
merely found an additional contradiction of his idealistic
;

utterances.

II

PRAGMATISM AND THE EXISTENCE OF MENTAL ENTITIES


I turn to consider at length, both for its
for its bearing

upon the matter already

own sake and

discussed, the prag-

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

48

s view upon the question, so much debated in recent


con
existences, of
psychic
philosophy, of the reality of
mental states," and of percepts and ideas
sciousness," of

matist

"

"

"

"

regarded as distinct, numerically and in their manner of being,


from the external objects of which they are supposed to afford

knowledge. The answer given to this question by any


philosophy will obviously depend primarily upon its concep
tion of the kind of situation in which knowledge consists.
The two opposing views upon this question may be named
immediatism and mediatism." According to the former,
whatever kind of entity be the object of knowledge, that
"

"

"

must be actually

object

experienced datum.

given,

must be

itself

the directly

According to the latter view

it

is

of

the essence of the cognitive process that it is mediate, the


object never being reached directly and, so to say, where
it lives, but always through some essence or entity dis
tinguishable

from

it,

though related to

it

in

special

and the monistic realist are thus


to both of them and this is the plausible
immediatists
consideration which makes the immediatist view a natural

Both the

manner.

idealist

"

"

seems unintelligible that


knowledge should be
if
the object supposedly known is never
but is always at the remote end of a com

phase of philosophic thought


anything deserving the name
possible

at

all,

"

itself

got

at,"

it

of

plicated process of causal action

and

of

"

substitution

"

or

representation.

We

have already seen one passage in which Mr. Dewey


appeared to pronounce in favour of immediatism, and specific
ally, as it seemed, of a monistic realism, on the ground that
does not consist of
mental states
which
experience
of
but
The
simply
things,"
things."
duplicate
passage is
"

"

"

"

"

"

The

of know
presentative theory
ledge, with its implication of the division of entities into the
two classes of psychical and physical," seems to arouse

typical of

many

others.

"

"

in the pragmatist even


Dewey repudiates as a

"

"

"

more than ordinary


"

detestation.

fundamental mis-statement

"

Mr.

of the

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST


"

facts

4,

the conception of experience as directly and primarily

and

inner

psychical."

There are many who hold that hallucinations, dreams, and


errors cannot be accounted for at all except on the theory that a
self (or
consciousness ) exercises a modifying influence upon the
"

real

The

object.

logical

assumption

that consciousness

is

is

outside of the real object, is something different in kind and therefore


has the power of changing reality into appearances, of introducing
relativities

of

into
real

things as they are in themselves in short,


things with subjectivity. Such writers seern

infecting
of the tact that this assumption
supernatural in the literal sense of the word

unaware

makes consciousness
and that, to say the

the conception can be accepted by one who accepts the


doctrine of biological continuity only after every other way of
2
dealing with the facts has been exhausted."

least,

To

the pragmatist, knowing or apprehending, or whatever


natural event
no change of a
is a
it is
an
of
an
into
into
object
reality
unreality,
something subjec
tive
it is no secret, illicit or epistemological transformation."

it

be called,

"

"

"

very conspicuous dislike for what he


seems
to be directed in reality against
epistemology
the dualistic doctrine only
for he makes it a part of his
characterisation of epistemology that it assumes
that the
organ or instrument of knowledge is not a natural object,
but some ready-made state of mind or consciousness, something
purely subjective, a peculiar kind of existence which lives,
moves, and has its being in a realm different from things to
be known." 3
Only the epistemological predicament leads

Indeed, Mr.

Dewey

"

"

calls

"

"

to

presentations

of things being regarded as cognitions of


4

things previously unrepresented."


Against the dualistic conception of knowledge the prag
matist argues, like the idealist and the monistic realist, that
it

is

a conception which, so far from rendering knowledge


makes it inconceivable that
the mind," shut
"

intelligible,

within the circle of


1

C.I. 18.

its
2

own ideas, should ever make the acquaintC.I. 35.

D.P.

98.

C.I. 51.

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

50

world at all.
Will not some one,"
external
ance of an
who believes that the knowing experience
asks Mr. Dewey,
mental thing, explain how, as a matter
is ab origine a strictly
of fact, it does get a specific extra-mental reference, capable
1
In truth,
the
of being tested, confirmed, or refuted ?
"

"

"

"

"

"

things that pass for epistemology all assume that knowledge


and
not a natural function or event, but a mystery
"

is

by the fact that the conditions back


of knowledge are so defined as to be incompatible with know
"

the mystery

is

increased

2
ledge."

the reader will perhaps say we have a position


and from
clearly enough defined and unequivocally asserted
it we may proceed confidently in the interpretation of the

Here, at last

other and more obscure parts of the pragmatist s doctrine.


Whatever else he may admit, he is emphatically opposed to
epistemological dualism. Knowledge for him is no affair of
truth
never means the
corre
representation," and
an
idea
with
existence
external
of
an
to
And
spondence
he wishes his fundamental immediatism to be taken in a
Of the two parts of the
realistic, not in an idealistic, sense.
"

"

"

"

it."

it is not, with Bishop Berkeley or his


that he eliminates from
objects without the mind
his universe, but rather the supposed mind over against the

traditional dualism,
like,

the

"

"

objects.

And yet it is easy to establish from Mr. Dewey s own text


the exact opposite to all this
to find him arguing in effect,
not only (as we have already seen) that a thorough-going
;

physical realism is inadmissible, but also that a monistic


realism is peculiarly untenable
that if one were to be a
realist (as the term has ordinarily been understood) one must
;

and dualistic theory of


knowledge. I shall show this first by an examination of two
of Mr. Dewey s most extensive and carefully reasoned passages
needs also accept a

on

"

"

presentative

this subject.
1.

The

literally presentative
1

D.P. 104.

character of at least one type


2

D.P.

97.

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

could hardly

of

knowledge namely, anticipatory knowledge


be more insisted upon than by Mr. Dewey.
experience which

"

is

cognitional
contemporaneously aware of

51

"

We

when we have one

have an
which
"

meaning something beyond


Both the meaning and the thing meant are elements
Both are present, but both are not
in the same situation.
in
same
the
way. In fact, one is present as not-presentpresent
We must not
in- the -same -way -in -which -the -other -is.

is

itself.

balk at a purely verbal difficulty. It suggests a verbal incon


But all ideal
sistency to speak of a thing present -as -absent.
contents, all aims (that is, things aimed at) are present in just
such fashion. Things can be presented as absent, just as they

In the
can be presented as hard or soft, black or white."
of
is
the
sense,
object
meaning
any
given
experimental
that
means
of
the
or
outside
cognitional thing
always beyond
"

i
it."

is an admirable phrasing of a
Here we have two ways in which data
are present at the moment of cognitive experience, and one
But this is precisely
of the ways is
presence-as-absent."
what epistemology has always meant by representation."

All this, so far as it goes,

dualistic epistemology.
"

"

"

And

if it is

in

"

any sense true that the

dualist has ever described

or as other than a

"

knowledge as a

"

natural
because
he
observes
that
a
s
only
thing presenceas-absent even the presentation of a future physical experi
ence, at a moment when it is not itself a physical experience
event,"

mystery,"

it is

D.P. 88, 103. While some of the phrases above cited clearly imply the
idea of representation, i.e. of an evocation of the represented object in
idea, Mr. Dewey tends to substitute for this the notion of mere suggestion
by association, as when smoke suggests fire and this prompts the act
of telephoning to the fire department.
There are really, in all cases of mean
three elements
the original sense-datum, or
which initiates
cue,"
ing,"
the process (e.g. the smell of smoke)
the imagery thereby aroused, through
full

"

"

"

"

"

"

which not-present qualia get actually, though more or

less

imperfectly,

and presented-as-absent and the external (e.g. future) things


which they represent. The first two of these seem to me to become often
blurred and confused with one another in pragmatist analysis of the knowledgeIndeed, the existence of images and concepts is a fact which
experience.
"presented,"

the pragmatist psychology

is

curiously prone to forget.

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

52

a distinctive and highly peculiar event, to which the rest

is

of nature seemingly presents

But Mr. Dewey


knowledge

is,

subject to

two

no analogue.

recognition of the reality of presentational


1
essay under examination,
which are not justified by his

in the important
restrictions,

argument.
(a) He apparently makes it a part of every anticipatory
or prospective
that it shall involve a reference
meaning
to an
to be set up with a view to its own fulfil
operation
"

"

"

"

ment. This amounts to an assertion that we never anticipate


without proposing to ourselves some course of action with
reference to the thing anticipated an assertion which I take
to be a false psychological generalization.
The original prag
matic formula of James recognized
as well as
passive
active
future experiences
which an object may involve,"
and in
as consistent with the pragmatist theory of meaning
this he did less violence than Mr. Dewey to facts which any
man, I take it, can verify for himself. To dream of some
windfall of fortune which one can do nothing and therefore
intends to do nothing to bring about, is surely a common
enough human experience. Even our forward-looking thoughts
"

"

"

"

"

at

may

(b)

moments be purely contemplative.


more significant error, and one, as

to show,
logic, is

which

Mr.

I think it possible
inconsistent with a true instrumentalist

is

Dewey

limitation of the

"

"

knowledge-experience
While, in this essay,
exclusively to forward-looking thoughts.
he actually describes all knowledge as representative, or

know

substitutional, he does so only because he identifies all

ledge with anticipation.

an-operation
1
2

That on

"

An

intention-to-be-fulfilled-through2

part of his very definition of knowledge.


The Experimental Theory of Knowledge," in D.P. 77-111.
is

An

experience is knowledge, if, in its quale, there is an experienced


and connection of two elements of the following sort one means
or intends the presence of the other in the same fashion in which itself is
already present, while the other is that which, while not present in the same
fashion, must become so present if the meaning or intention of its companion
"

distinction

"

or yoke-fellow is to be fulfilled through the operation it sets up


(D.P. 90).
It is to be borne in mind
and has been in the above discussion

that

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST


Now, no doubt, a philosopher must be given

53

license to

words as he will. It is not, however, as an arbitrary


verbal definition, but as a piece of descriptive psychology that
Mr. Dewey puts forward this formula. And as such it mani
define

It ignores the patent


festly tells only half the story, at best.
empirical fact that many of our meanings are retrospective
"

"

"

fact that such meanings


pragmatic
are indispensable in the planning of action. The scent of an
unseen rose may beget in me an anticipation of the experience
but it may, quite as naturally,
of finding and seeing the rose
an experience of childhood
of
reminiscence
me
a
in
beget
with which the same odour was associated. In the one case,
as in the other, the olfactory sensation does not, in itself,

and the

"

specifically

"

it merely serves as the cue which


anything
represent
evokes the representation of something else. In both cases
but in the
alike, the something else is present-as-absent
"

latter case it is

no part

of the

meaning of the experience that


shall ever itself
become, present
in the

the thing meant


fashion in which the other elements of the experience (whether
the memory-evoking odour or the memory-image) are now
"

present.

"

That there can be no such thing as truly

"

instru

or practically serviceable, cognition without such


genuine re-presentation of the past, I shall show at some
for the moment I am content
length elsewhere in this paper
mental,"

merely to cite Mr. Dewey s testimony (in another of his essays)


to the same effect.
Imaginative recovery of the bygone,"
"

he observes in Creative
successful invasion of the

We thus
one

moment

"

Intelligence,
future."

is

indispensable

to

see that inter-temporal cognition, the reference of


s experience to that of another moment
which

Mr. Dewey is not here defining knowledge in the


sense i.e.
eulogistic
He is stating, as observable facts, the generic
in the sense of valid judgment.
which is for itself, contemporaneously with its
marks of any experience
occurrence, a cognition, not something called knowledge by another and
"

"

"

from without.

What we want

knowledge, rightly or wrongly


1

C.I. 14.

is

just something

"

(Ibid. 76).

which takes

itself

as

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

54

mode

with which the pragmatist is especially


and
preoccupied is essentially mediate and representative
that the pragmatist himself, when he addresses himself to a
plain descriptive analysis of the knowledge-situation, especially
is

the

of cognition

in its practical functioning, is compelled to acknowledge that


it has this character. Whatever the prejudice against
present"

ative theories

"

which the pragmatist may share


least, cannot deny the occurrence
to
(not
speak now of re-presentative

in general

with the neo-realist, he, at


of

"

"

pre-presentative

"

")

Whatever

antipathy to epistemological dual


ism, from the dualism of anticipation (and of reminiscence)
he cannot escape.
2. In one of his Essays in Experimental Logic, Mr.
Dewey
deals directly with the question of the relative logical merits
cognitions.

"

naive

"

and

his

"

"

realism. 1

Here, as in many
other cases, he assumes toward the believer in representative
knowledge and in mental entities the kindly office of the
of

presentative

prophet Balaam. He has at the outset an alarming air of


having come to curse the camp of the dualists, but in the end
he remains to bless it. He begins with an apparent confuta
tion of certain arguments supposed to be used in proof of the
"

idealists
psychical character of perceptual data. Many
the word is here manifestly equivalent to
believers in the
existence of subjective or psychical entities as factors in
"

"

adduced in behalf
have, Mr. Dewey observes,
experience
of idealism certain facts having an obvious physical nature
"

and

"

explanation."

tracks, for example,

"

mental

The

visible

convergence of the railway

cited as evidence that

is

So with the whole

content."

what

series

is

seen

is

of natural

and the general fact of the relativity to the spectator


and colours of visible objects, etc. All of these
are taken as
proof that what one sees is a psychical, private,

illusions,

of the shapes

"

In reality, all these diversities of appear


ance of a given object are merely diverse physical effects
produced by its interaction with other physical things at
isolated somewhat."

E.L. 250-263.

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

55

The image of the railway tracks


different points in space.
the round
as convergent on a camera-plate as on the retina

is

table assumes a variety of elliptical shapes in a series of


mirrors placed at different positions as truly as in the
sensa
Shall we then classify
tions
.of diversely placed percipients.
"

"

cameras and mirrors as

and subject

now

the

to the

it

wax

"

same

is solid,

mental

"

"

Take a lump

of

wax

heat, located at different positions

now

liquid

How

psychical these phenomena


same-object, the table, presenting

it
"

might even be gaseous.


Taking one-and-the"

different surfaces

its

and

reflections of light to different real organisms, the idealist


eliminates the one-table-in-its-different-relations in behalf of a

multitude of totally separate psychical tables. The logic


reminds us of the countryman who, after gazing at the giraffe,
To use the diver
remarked, There ain t no such animal
!

the physical relations and consequences of things as


of
their
psychical nature is also to prove that the trail
proofs
the rocket stick leaves behind is psychical, or that the flower
sities in

"

which comes in a continuity

of

process

from a

seed

is

mental."

So far Mr. Dewey would seem to be pleasantly making


game of the dualist, to the amused applause of the neo-realist.
But the real point of the jest is quite other than it seems. In
the

first

place the argument from illusions, from the relativity


and the like has, so far as I can recall, never

of perceptions,

been used, by those who believe in


mental existences," to
the
conclusion
which
Mr.
support
Dewey represents them as
seeking to prove by it. They employ these facts to quite a
different purpose and to a purpose which they serve exceed
ingly well. That purpose is the disproof of monistic realism
"

i.e.

of

the

thesis

identical, qualitatively

which

is its

that the percept as actually given is


and numerically, with the specific object

cause and which

is

supposed to be cognized by

For the monistic realist does not say that


(or, rather, in) it.
the
real object directly given in perception
is, e.g., the
on
retina
he
it
is
the
remote
and
;
image
says
"

"

my

"

"

public

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

56

object to which

my

is reacting in its proper


He
is thereby involved in
manner.
and undeniably physical
the absurdity of maintaining that, though what is present in
my experience is an ellipse, and what is present in my neigh
bour s experience is a circle, nevertheless exactly the same
entity, without duplication or diversity, is my neighbour s

optical apparatus

percept and mine. It is needless to dwell here upon this


difficulty in monistic realism, since it is fully set forth else

where in

this book.

The point

is

that Mr.

Dewey

s ridicule

applies to a wholly imaginary use of these considerations, and


does naught to aid monistic realism to escape the force of the
dualist s real argument.

What

more, Mr. Dewey himself adopts the very same


directs it skilfully against the neo-realistic
and
argument,
he
For
goes on to insist that, in so far as perception
position.
is

taken as having a cognitive value, a


knowledge status," the
known
in
the
and
perception can never be
thing
percept
so
that
the
as
identical
idealistic (sc. dualistic)
regarded
"

is

"

of knowledge is justified.
The thesis of monistic
the perceived object is the real object
is in
conflict with the facts of the situation, and with its own
"

interpretation
realism that

"

"

assumptions.
assumes that there is the real object.
(But) since it
that
there
is a numerical duplicity between
demonstrable
easily
"

is

It

the astronomical star and


dently, when the former

its effect of visible light,


is

dubbed

the latter evi

real object, stands in


If it is a case of knowledge,
the

disparaging contrast with its reality.


and yet, not the star, but some
the knowledge refers to the star
less
unreal
if the star be
or
more
the real object)
is,
(that
thing
is known.
Moreover, the thing known by perception is by
;

this hypothesis in relation to a knower, while the physical cause is


not. Is not the most plausible account of the difference between the

physical cause of the perceptive knowledge and

what the

latter

namely, presentation to a
Thus, when the realist conceives the perceptual
occurrence as an intrinsic cause of knowledge to a mind or knower,
he lets the nose of the idealist camel into the tent. He has then
precisely

presents

knower

this

difference

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST


no great cause
the

tent."

for surprise

when the camel comes

in

57

and devours

on the
specifically to his earlier remarks
adds
now
Mr.
of
illusions, etc.,
Dewey
physical explicability

And, referring

This (physical) explanation, though wholly adequate as long


as we conceive the perception to be itself simply a natural
"

is

event,

not at

all

attempt at

available
its

when we conceive

it

to be

an

knowing
Whatever else he is, then, our pragmatist is not a monistic
realist.
For such a realist is after all epistemologically minded
cause."

he believes that our percepts make us acquainted with a real


world outside of our skins i.e. beyond the peripheral termini
of our sensory nerves.
And whoever believes this must,
according to Mr. Dewey s argument, admit the numerical
duality of the sensory data
assumed to introduce us.

and the objects to which they are

The pragmatist

himself, however, it is to be remarked,


to
professes
repudiate that belief. He escapes dualism so
the foregoing argument would seem to suggest by rejecting

the premise

which,

when

common

to both kinds of realists, the premise


accepted, gives the dualist the best of that family

We

seem once more the pragmatist is constantly


giving us these exciting moments to be on the point of finding
in pragmatism a tertium quid, a new insight which will enable
us to escape from both horns of the traditional dilemmas.
quarrel.

Once

"

realize that perceptions are not

but are simply


natural events
worries
are ended.
your speculative
"

"

cases of

knowledge,"

no more, no

You

and

less

recapture the

happy

The
genuine naivete, of the
plain man."
of
a surety, does not regard noises heard, lights
plain man,
but neither does he regard
seen, etc., as mental existences
them as things known. That they are just things is good
enough for him. By this I mean more than that the formulae
innocence, the

"

"

"

"

of epistemology are foreign to


1

him

E.L. 254-255.

mean

that his attitude

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

58

to these things as things involves their not being in relation


to him as a mind or a knower.
He is in the attitude of a

or hater, a doer or an appreciator." To the much


harassed neo-realist, otherwise hopeless of deliverance from
the dualistic logic, this avenue of escape is especially pressliker

Once depart from thorough naivete and


ingly commended.
substitute for it the psychological theory that perception is a
cognitive presentation to a mind of a causal object, and the
"

first

is

step

taken on the road which leads to an

idealistic

system."

Perhaps the hopeful reader now takes courage and exclaims,


He
Here, finally, is the heart of the pragmatist s mystery
is neither monistic nor dualistic realist
indeed, he is neither
realist nor idealist, in the usual senses of those terms.
By
the simple device of regarding perception as non-cognitive he
"

transcends these ancient antitheses, and reaches a higher point


of view from which the old controversies appear irrelevant.

The Rousseau
salvation from

of the
its

metaphysical world, he offers philosophy

and an end to

troubles

its

quarrels through
a return to the (intellectually) simple
Unhappily the reader will find this hope of speculative
One has
salvation speedily dashed by Mr. Dewey himself.
Naive and
but to read to the end of the same essay on
to discover the author of it undoing
Presentative Realism
all that he had seemed to do, by making evident the philo
perceptions are not
sophical irrelevancy of the thesis that
in
the
cases of knowledge."
For,
closing pages of the essay,
intention
that
second
it appears
perceptions acquire a
by
the visible light is a
knowledge status." For example,
necessary part of the evidence on the basis of which we infer
the existence, place, and structure of the astronomical star."
Thus, since the body of propositions that forms natural science
hangs upon perceptions, "for scientific purposes their nature as
life."

"

"

"

"

"

evidence, as signs, entirely overshadows their natural status,


For practical purposes
that of being simply natural events.
.

E.L. 258.

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

59

that is,
many perceptual events are cases of knowledge
they have been used as such so often that the habit of so
;

1
man, in short,
using them is established or automatic."
as soon as he
takes the attitude of knower
begins to
"

"

"

"

inquire

;
"

naivete

would seem, depart from thorough


almost as soon as we depart from our nativity.

and

"

all of us, it

Indeed, Mr. Dewey s qualification of his assertion of the noncognitive character of (human) perception amounts in some
cases to a denial of

"

it.

he writes, in a passage
taken free of the restric
There
full of inference.

Experience,"

already cited in another connection,


tions imposed by the older concept,

"

is

apparently no conscious experience without inference ; reflection


Some
And again, in another essay
is native and constant.
element of reflection may be required in any situation to
which the term experience is applicable in any sense which
contrasts with, say, the experience of an oyster or a growing
bean vine. Men experience illness ... it is quite possible
that what makes illness into a conscious experience is precisely
the intellectual elements which intervene a certain taking
of some things as representative of other things." 2
Mr.
in
such
cases
it
that
even
is
true,
Dewey hereupon adds,
the intellectual element is set in a context which is nonBut this, after what immediately precedes, can
cognitive."
mean
more than that the raw material of human
scarcely
cognition consists of bare sensory data which might by them
selves very well resemble the
experience of the oyster or
the growing bean vine." Qua conscious and qua human,
is

"

"

"

experience admittedly
least

is

if

not exclusively

made up

natively and constantly shot through with

of

at

reflection

irremediably addicted to the habit of taking present data


as disclosures of the existence and nature of things other
than themselves.

is

Thus

"

appears that the


which, a
thorough naivete
few pages back, we saw commended to the neo-realist as his
only means of escape from dualism, demands of that philosopher
"

it

E.L. 261-262.

E.L. 3-4.

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

60

a feat of a certain difficulty for one of his intellectual parts.


intellectually, as a little child shall

Not even by becoming,

he be saved no naivete less thorough than that of the oyster


or the bean vine will really serve him.
Meanwhile, we have
but to put together the two pragmatic theses which our
analysis, in this section of our inquiry, has disclosed, to deter
mine where the pragmatist himself stands or should stand,
if he would but adhere steadfastly to his own doctrines.
In
so far as our perceptual experience is taken as cognitive (we
have seen Mr. Dewey maintaining), it must be dualistically
the
for, if perception is a case of knowing,
interpreted
doctrine that the perceived object is the real object
cannot
be justified. But (as Mr. Dewey equally maintains) for the
purposes of reflection our perceptual experience must be taken
as cognitive.
and all
Percepts become cases of knowledge
;

"

"

distinctively human experience is reflective, using sensory


materials as signs and evidences of existences lying beyond
the immediate data. Thus the upshot of the argument as a

whole is a vindication of the general epistemological view which


I have called mediatism.
But (it may still be asked), even granting that if Mr.

Dewey

is

a representative pragmatist

the pragmatic theory

of the knowledge-relation is thus dualistic (though apparently

not in such a way as to prevent the pragmatist from now and


then asserting the contrary view), why should this dualism
be construed as justifying the belief in the existence of
or
mental
entities ?
The question might be
psychical
answered in an ad hominem way by quoting again Mr. Dewey s
remarks about the consequences of letting the nose of the
into the tent.
But it can better be
idealistic camel
answered by considering the implications of the type of
cognition of which the pragmatist is surest namely, intertemporal cognitions the representation at one moment of
"

"

"

"

"

"

the experience of another moment. In such cognitions, as


we have seen, the bit of experience which knows is existentially
(because temporally) distinct from the future or past bit of

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

61

experience that is the object of knowledge. There is a repre


sentation and a somewhat represented, and no possibility of
1
Of these two, at least the one
reducing them to identity.
which is the representation must, in a perfectly definite sense
or
and for plain reasons, be described as a
psychical
"

"

It is such, namely, in the sense that it


existent.
mental
that
room cannot be found for it in the
is not physical
physical order of nature as conceived by science. Just as
the objects of a hallucination cannot be assigned to the points
"

"

"

at which, to the victim of the hallucination,


to
so future or past experience or experi
exist,
they appear
enced objects, when now represented in imagination, cannot,

in

"

real space

as such, be assigned to

no mystery about the


and
psychical," as
"

any place

There

in present space.

is

mental
signification of the adjectives
I
here using them
they simply
"

"

am

designate anything which is an indubitable bit of experience,


but either cannot be described in physical terms or cannot be located
"

in the single, objective, or


self-contradictory

science

physical

absent

"

spatial system, free from


ivhich the objects dealt with by

public,"

attributes,

to

present- as
Anything which is
used in a temporal sense) is manifestly
"

belong.

(Avhen absent

is

thus psychical
for physical things, the entities of physical
are
never
science,
present in that way. A momentary cross;

section of the physical universe, as science conceives it, would


disclose merely a present.
This present, though apprehended
by us as the effect of yesterday and the preparation of

to-morrow, would show us nowhere the actual content of


yesterday and to-morrow nor would it show us the content
of our false memories or of our
hopes destined to disappoint
;

ment.

And, most evidently

of all, it

would nowhere exhibit

to us pastness or futurity as actual attributes of any of the


things that it contained. Yet of certain contents of our

experience those attributes are of the very essence.


ideal contents, all aims (that
1

The two have,

"

"

essentially

is,

things aimed at)

"

"

All

are, as

of course, a common character or essence, and are thus


one, without detriment to their existential duality.

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

62

Mr.

has remarked, present in just such fashion

Dewey

they have the paradoxical status

of presence-as-absent,

i.e.

which

unknown

to the categories of physical description.


The
pragmatist or instrumentalist is in no position to deny the
in the sense indicated, since
existence of entities
psychical
is

"

"

he

is

tents

aims
and
ideal con
reality of
in their true character as genuinely external to their

insistent
"

"

upon the

"

"

and fulfilments. The only way in which he can


from
escape
acknowledging two classes of existents, mental
as well as physical, lies in acknowledging that the one class
which actually exists is
He cannot (while recog
mental."
objectives

"

nizing the reality of inter-temporal cognitions) set up a real


physical world, and then find room in it for the ideal contents

which admittedly belong to such cognitions

but he can

reject the hypothesis of an independent physical world alto


gether, in which case he is left with nothing but mental
i.e.

is

sensibly experienced entities in his universe. That, then,


the alternative to which he is limited either idealism or

dualism, both in the psychophysical and the epistemoA conception of knowledge


logical sense of the latter term.
which should be at once realistic and monistic is barred to
else

him.

So much, at

least,

seems to be a conclusion which we

regard as definitely established. I do not mean that it


a conclusion which the pragmatist can be depended upon

may
is

to admit, or, at any rate, to refrain from contradicting on


I mean that it is a consequence which can be seen
occasion.
to be implied in his most indispensable premise namely, that
we have thoughts of the future as soon as it is also recognized

that

(as

Mr.

Dewey

contents which are


tents (as

these thoughts include


present-as-absent, and that such con
justly insists)

he does not appear to note) are necessarily non-

physical.

In this

last conclusion,

however, we have already gone

and have drawn inferences from


which he himself neglects or refuses to draw.
Throughout the remainder of this paper we shall be chiefly
beyond the pragmatist
his premises

s text,

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

63

occupied in rectifying and reconstructing the pragmatic doc


trine of knowledge, and in noting how such a rectified prag
matism bears upon the problems mentioned at the outset.

mean that we shall make up a new doctrine


own heads and name it pragmatism. We shall

This does not

out of our

in every case reason from principles actually held, and insisted


upon, by writers of this school. But we shall find that these

principles are incongruous with certain other principles, or at


any rate with certain modes of argument and certain specific

conclusions, which are put forward by the


shall discover a deep inner conflict in the

same

We

writers.

"

"

pragmatism

the pragmatists, an
from which the ambiguities and contradictions that

of

opposition of underlying logical motives,

we have

already noted in their utterances naturally enough arise.

we

This

one of the
adjustment
or
the
other
must
be
abandoned.
simply
opposing principles
And we shall find reasons for holding that one of these prin
ciples is not only sound in fact, but is also, in a quite definite
conflict,

sense, the

shall see, is incapable of

more profoundly and

"

distinctively

pragmatic."

Ill

PRAGMATISM AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAST

The pragmatist, as has been observed earlier in this paper,


manifests a curious aversion from admitting that we have know
true
ledge, and
knowledge, about the past. I
cited from Mr. Dewey a formal definition of
"

"

have already
knowledge
the term everything
"

which excludes from the denotation of


except judgments of anticipation.

What

"

are the reasons for

this strange disinclination to acknowledge the immense


import
ance of retrospection in the processes by which our practical

built up, and to recognize the possibility of


veridical retrospection ?
Three reasons seem distinguishable ;
the third of them is the one of chief significance for our
present

knowledge

purpose.

is

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

64

The

1.

following

The

first

reason

is

suggested in such passages as the

and done-with is

of import as affecting the future,


in short, because it is not wholly done
with. Anticipation is therefore more primary than recollection
the prospective than the
projection than summoning of the past
"

not on

finished

its

own account

Given a world

retrospective.

experience

bound

is

failure are the

like

that

we

live

to be prospective in import.

primary categories of

in,

... and

Success and

"

life

(C.I. 13).
isolate the past, dwelling upon it for its own sake, and
giving it the eulogistic name of knowledge, is to substitute the
reminiscence of old age for effective intelligence
(ibid. 14).

To

"

Here there appears to be a confusion between import and


importance, signification and significance. Doubtless what
makes the past important to us is chiefly its serviceableness
but this does
as a guide in our efforts to shape the future
not in the least imply that what we require to know, precisely
for the sake of that service, is not an actual past.
may,
;

We

and

need to
isolate the past
provisionally, not
own sake, but because only so we can get from it the

in fact do,

for its

"

"

material for processes of inference which, when completed,


enable us to construct the future in anticipation. The

may

outcome of these processes is usually a generalization about


the habits, or uniform sequences, of nature. These generaliza
tions or laws, when formulated as such, doubtless contain
an implicit reference to the future, but they also contain an
implicit reference to the past

and to discover them, we must

look the past straight in the face to see what it was,


without first assuming the generalization (and thereby the
future reference) which our retrospective inquiry may eventu
first

ally justify.

context

"

As Mr. Dewey himself has remarked in the same


Detached and impartial study of the past is the

only alternative to luck in assuring success to passion." Why,


the eulogistic name of knowledge,"
then, deny to such study
"

while permitting anticipation to claim that name ?


Why
deny to the fruits of such study, at its best, the name of

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

65

The only answer to these questions intimated in the


?
sentences thus far quoted is the wholly irrelevant one that

truth

retrospection is, not impossible or invalid, but, under certain


circumstances, useless and undesirable. What, in short, we
have here is a sort of moral appraisal masquerading as a logical
analysis.
2.

second reason

why

is

retrospection

the Cinderella of

the pragmatic
knowledge
apparently to be found
in the fact that the pragmatist desires to look
upon the goal
not "as a fixed, ready-made
and context of knowledge

theory of

is

"

"

which has organic connections with the


1
and
growth of the attempt to know
origin, purposes,
He finds it difficult to see how the data which serve in an
thing,"

but as one

"

it."

inference can be unaffected

by the

intent of the inference

and by the character of the particular situation in which the


need for inquiry and inference originates, how
the terms of
"

"

can be

"

"

there prior to analysis


as
2
But the past notoriously
"independent given ultimates."
fails to exhibit the characteristics which the pragmatist thus

the logical analysis

desiderates in the object of knowledge.


It is just blankly
external
to the
unmodifiable, irremediably
present
"

there,

concrete

situation,"

inaccessible to action either present or


"

It consists exclusively of
independent given
It is therefore a region of existence naturally

prospective.
ultimates."

uncongenial to a philosopher determined to look upon all the


contents of his universe as somehow
related to
organically
"

"

his purposes and as material for the exercise of his active


powers. Yet the proper inference from this uncongeniality
would not seem to be that the past is not an object of know

ledge, or that true

judgments about

rather that the universe

is

it

are impossible, but

not altogether such as the philosopher

has supposed.

The

principal reason, however, for the pragmatist s


unwillingness to classify retrospection as true knowledge is
plainly to be found in that subjectivistic strain in his thought
3.

D.P.

98.

E.L. 38-39.

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

66

which we have already seen examples. The status of my


past experience, from the point of view of a present judgment
of

or inquiry concerning it, is precisely the same as the status of


a contemporaneous but extra-subjective reality. Neither the
one nor the other can now or hereafter be directly experienced
of neither is the reality accessible to verification.
If, then,
;

is an experienced relation, true judgments about the by


are
as impossible as true judgments about such
transgone
as
objects
empirical
things-in-themselves, atoms," etc.

truth

"

"

"

for the past

term

qua past, a kind of


Just as Royce and other idealists have

of the relation is also,

"

transempirical."

argued with a good deal of dialectical force that, if the object


of my judgment is wholly alien to and independent of my
purpose or meaning, it is not clear how my judgment can be
known to mean that particular object, so Mr. Dewey argues with
respect to the past

"

Since the judgment is as a matter of fact subsequent to the


event, how can its truth consist in the kind of blank, wholesale
How can the present
relationship the intellectualist contends for ?

jump out of its present skin, dive into the past, and land
just the one event (that as past is gone for ever) which, by
I do not wonder the intellectualist
definition, constitutes its truth ?
belief

upon

has much to say about transcendence when he comes to dealing


with the truth of judgments about the past
but why does he not
tell us how we manage to know when one thought lands
straight
on the devoted head of something past and gone, while another
thought comes down on the wrong thing in the past ?
(D.P. 160.)
;

"

The
is

parallel with the traditional

"refutations

of

realism"

The past cannot be known because, since it


now inaccessible to us, we can never compare

complete.

ex hypothesi
with our idea of

it,

nor determine which of our ideas of

it

is
it

are

true and which false.

Mr.
the

Dewey
"

"

Pupil

is

not unaware of the obvious objection to this

in the philosophical catechism

from which I have

When
quoted points out that objection plainly enough.
I say it is true that it rained yesterday, surely the object of

last

"

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

67

judgment is something past, while pragmatism makes all


l
Teacher
The pragmatist
objects of judgment future."

my

"

"

of a judgment, he
content
the
with a distinguo
the reference of that
observes, must not be confused with
The content of any idea about yesterday s rain
content."
certainly involves past time, but the distinctive or character
istic aim of judgment is none the less to give this content a
future reference and function." Both the falsity and the
but will not
Pupil,"
irrelevancy of this distinction escape the
if
it
were
true
Even
(which it is
escape the critical reader.
"

"

replies

"

"

"

not) that, as a matter of descriptive psychology, every judgment


about the past contains, or is accompanied by, a reference to

the future, 2 nevertheless the judgment

The content which

past.
"

idea about yesterday

as-past.

Not only is

the judgment

"

rain

in

present-as-absent

"

is,

more

my

specifically, present-

past content, but the direction in which


It is yesterday that I
is backward.
"points"
it

and not to-morrow, and no

"mean,"

primarily about the

is

"

is

logical hocus-pocus

can

"

"

into the meaning


transubstantiate the meaning
yesterday
No future object of experience could fulfil
to-morrow."
"

that specific

incapable of

ally

in very truth, a meaning intrinsic


And yet
directly -experienced fulfilment.

meaning

it is,

a meaning without which our thought is unable to operate,


in the lack of which the intelligent framing of a
plan
of action
would be altogether impossible. Without ever

it is

and

"

"

actually experiencing the fulfilment of these meanings, we


nevertheless have an irresistible propensity to believe that

some

them are

"

meanings that they point


at something which truly was, and that the qualities which
of

in fact valid

"

belong to the given content when it is present-as-past also


belonged to the actually past content for which it presents
itself as standing.
We have even developed a technique

by means

of

which we believe ourselves able to distinguish

D.P. 161.

Even Mr. Dewey concedes that

of old age

"

which

is

there

pure retrospection.

is

such a thing as

"

the reminiscence

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

68

certain of these representations of the past as false


as true.

and others

But, of course, the pragmatist finds a difficulty in the


fact of the unverifiability of such beliefs.
By what right,

he asks, do we affirm the


in the sense of

"

truth

"

of a retrospective belief,

some

sort of present correspondence of present


data with past data, when in the same breath we admit that
the alleged correspondence cannot be
verified," since the two
"

terms of

it

can never be brought together for actual comparison

same experience (i.e. in the same moment of experience) ?


an idea about a past event is already
says Mr. Dewey,
true because of some mysterious static correspondence that
in the

"

"

If,"

possesses to that past event, how in the world can its truth
be proved by the future consequences of the idea ? x In
other words, only upon the assumption that the idea meant
the future in the first place, and that its supposed
truth
meant a particular kind of future experience, can the occurrence
of a particular kind of future experience conceivably serve as
it

"

"

"

evidence of the fulfilment of that meaning, as the mark of the


intellectualist
idea s truth. And yet, even for the
(a term
"

"

which here evidently signifies a believer in the possible truth


of retrospective judgments as such) all verification of such
judgments is present or future at any rate, subsequent to
the past content of the judgment. To suppose that we can
know what the past qua past was by ascertaining
actually
time what the then present is, seems to the
future
at some
pragmatist much like supposing that we can prove the other
side of the moon to be made of green cheese by showing that
grass is green and can be converted into cheese.
Here, no doubt, is the most effective and plausible part
"

"

of the pragmatist s dialectical reasoning against the possibility


Fantastic paradox
of strictly retrospective
knowledge."
"

though the negation of such knowledge, taken by itself, must


appear to common sense, it is now evident that the paradox
is embraced in the attempt to escape from a real difficulty,
1

D.P. 162

italics in

the original.

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST


or at

any rate from what

intelligibly

may

appear as a

69

difficulty,

Yet, that there is no escape here will


we remember that the essential thing

in the contrary view.

become apparent
about a
it is

if

Now

that is verified.
"

not when

occurs, but what


the matter to be verified is determined

verification, after

all, is

it

"

by the actual meaning of the particular antecedent judg


ment with which the verification is concerned. A judgment
is its own master in deciding what it means, though not in
and a process
deciding as to the fulfilment of its meanings
of verification must therefore verify what the original judgment
knew itself to mean, or else it is without pertinency to that
However singular may appear the fact that a
judgment.
;

judgment about the past should find the

locus of its verification

in the future, the singularity of the fact does not entitle us


to argue backward and declare that the judgment could not

have meant what it expressly presented itself as meaning


and what the verification actually presents itself as proving.

When
last

puddles as proof that it rained


night, the puddles are the means of proof, but not the
I point to this

thing proved.

me

morning

For verification-purposes their

sole

interest

not in themselves, but in what they permit me to


infer about last night s weather.
If some one shows that they
to

is

were made by the watering-cart, they become irrelevant to


the subject-matter of my inquiry though the same proposition
about the future,
there will be puddles in the street," is still
fulfilled by them.
It is tedious to reiterate considerations so
"

obvious

but they are considerations which

it is necessary to
the logic by which the
pragmatist seeks to persuade us of the truth of his paradox
;

recall, in

order to show

how

inverted

is

concerning retrospective knowledge.

What leads him into this paradox and, in so far as he is


consistent with his radical empiricism, into others involving
the same principle is his unwillingness to concede that a
belief

can ever be adequately validated indirectly,

the fulfilment of the belief

i.e.

without

actual experience,
the presentation as immediate data of the matters to which it
s

meaning

in

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

70

Yet

in rejecting indirect verification as such,


endeavouring to transcend one of the commonest and
unescapable limitations of human thought. And he
relates.

because he

this only

is

not pragmatist enough.

he

is

most
does

consistent

what Mr. Dewey, at least, in his most character


istic passages, seems to mean by the
pragmatic method
would require him to place himself resolutely at the point of
application of

"

"

view of the moment of practical reflection to stand, as it


were, inside that phase of experience in which the intelligent
agent is seeking means of coping with a practical problem
which has arisen. A truly
would first of
pragmatic logic
all be a faithful analysis of what is given and involved in that
situation
and such an analysis would include an enumeration
of the not-immediately-given things which it is needful for the
the things
effective agent, at that moment, to believe or assume
which, in fact, he habitually does assume if the process of
reflection is to be of any service to him in the framing of an
effective plan of action.
Within the limits of this deliberative
"

"

moment

the agent stands gazing out, as through windows,


a
whole
worldful of things lying beyond those limits
upon
he
will
never
act at all unless he accepts, instinctively or as
and
;

a conscious assumption, various beliefs whose


meanings
are not, and could not conceivably be, fulfilled, whose truth
is not and cannot be empirically verified, inside of that moment.
If he is to plan a course of action in the future, he must know
to some degree what the sequences and concomitances of things
have been in the past. But at the moment at which he
that
get at
practically needs this knowledge he cannot
past he must trust either his personal memory or the recorded
He also must assume that know
results of empirical science.
"

"

"

"

ledge about the past is equivalent, within limits, to prediction


about the future but this, as Hume rightly showed, is a belief
;

which

not

susceptible of

any empirical verification.


must assume that there
and he must believe that the
is to be a future for him to act in
future moment in which his present belief would find verification
is

The planner

itself

of action, furthermore,
;

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST


come.
point of view of the
will in fact

And this belief, be it noted, is, from the


moment of practical reflection, as destitute
"

"

verification

of strict

71

as a belief about the past, or about

the uniformity of natural processes in past

and

present.

The

practical judgment points two ways, forward and backward


and, in so far as it is practical, it has to do with the not-directlyverified as much when it points forward as when it points
;

backward. For the future moment when a given belief about


a happening shall have been verified will not be a moment of
practical deliberation with respect to that happening.
happening, as soon as the judgment that referred to

The
it

is

already a past thing, without


as material for a retrospective
importance
except
pragmatic
an
inference
from
which
reading forward into a new
judgment
"

"

future

may

is

verified,

empirically

be derived.
"

Thus,

all

strictly

"

pragmatic

verification

is

indirect

verification, based either upon instinctive assumptions or


upon inference from explicit postulates for only such verifica
;

tion

is

moment

attainable within the limits of the

moment

of practical

which the intelligent agent, looking


before and after, seeks to determine what present course of
action will give him the future experience that he desires.
The pragmatist or instrumentalist logician should be the last
man in the world to doubt that a given bit of direct experience
can contain cognitions and make
judgments about
reflection, the

in

"true"

for the only judg


things external to that direct experience
instrumental
are those which relate to the
;

ments that are

"

"

not-experienced, and knowledge is


practical
proleptic and transcendent of the given.
"

Let

me

now, at the cost

of

some

"

repetition,

only

if

make

it

is

clear

upon our main theme, by summing


in
somewhat
formal
fashion the results of the argument
up
of this section.
Epistemologically speaking, knowledge of the
if
is
actual,
past,
analogous to a knowledge of transempirical
the bearing of

all

this

must necessarily consist in a present factual


correspondence of an idea or representation with an object
realities

for it

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

72

pointed at
by that representation, which object, however,
never is and never can be directly experienced, and therefore
can never be directly compared with the idea of it. Observing
this analogy, the pragmatist, under the influence of the strain
"

"

of

"

radical empiricism

"

in his thought, excludes judgments


even
his definition of
knowledge

about the past from


sense and
when knowledge is not used in a
eulogistic
also maintains that no such judgment can properly be called
In this he is entirely consistent with the principle
true."
however paradoxical the conclusion,
of radical empiricism
But the arguments and
it truly follows from that premise.
distinctions by which the pragmatist seeks to justify or to
soften this paradox have been seen to be unsuccessful, and to
be especially out of keeping with certain features of Mr.
Dewey s own account of the pragmatic logic. The pragmatist,
therefore, must acknowledge that there can be cognitions of
past existents, and true judgments about those existents
"

"

"

"

"

that in the case of retrospection, as in that of anticipation,

not only can we experience things present-as-absent, but also


can meaningfully believe that the characters which as present
they bear are the same characters which they bear as absent.

from this conclusion about retrospective knowledge


that the pragmatist has no reason for denying in principle
The
the possibility of a knowledge of
transempiricals."
It follows

"

whole series of arguments which pragmatist writers have taken


over from the idealists to show that knowledge cannot consist
static
in a
correspondence of a representative datum with
"

"

is essentially foreign to the pragmatic


can
we
have meaningful and legitimate beliefs

a not-present reality

method.
about past

If

ence,

(or future) events now inaccessible to direct experi


we may conceivably hold meaningful and legitimate

about contemporaneous existents inaccessible to direct


Whether we have equally good reasons for, or
experience.
an equally irresistible propensity to, the latter belief, is another
We shall get a partial answer to that question in
question.
the next section, where we shall find the pragmatists agreeing

beliefs

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

73

with the greater part of mankind in the belief in at least one


sort of

contemporaneous existent essentially inaccessible to

the direct experience of the believer.

IV
PRAGMATISM AND KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER SELVES

We

have seen Mr. Dewey making use, in his idealisticsounding passages, and especially in his formulation of imme
diate empiricism,
of a distinction between
transcendent
"

"

"

"

"

or
non-empirical
objects (which pragmatism is in these
that which is directly
passages declared to repudiate) and
remains ambiguous
This
distinction,
however,
experienced."
"

we ask whose experience is referred to. Knowledge, it


presumably be agreed by the pragmatist, is a thing
achieved by and belonging primarily to individual persons

until
will

or

the

knowledge
experience is a private experience, however public be the
and non-cognitive experience
objects with which it deals
organisms.

Psychologically

considered,

would seem to be even more obviously multiple and

discrete.

"

When, then, the pragmatist repudiates


transempiricals,"
does he refer to entities which transcend my direct experience
(past, present, and future) or to those which transcend every
body

s direct

The

experience

latter

of course,

is,

what he

really intends.

Prag-

matists have always been admirably mindful of the fact that

man

is a social animal, and


one which philosophy cannot
to its problems, even to its
Mr. Dewey s philosophy has
action and
operation," but
"

action

and co-operation.

deny

would, in

of

my own

represented

this fact as

afford to regard as irrelevant


so-called theoretical problems.

aimed not only at a

logic of
also at a logic of social inter

The pragmatist,

fact, affirm

then,

would not

that in a knowledge-experience

i.e. may be
present-as-absent
the knowledge-experience, or the non-cognitive

there

may

experiences, of others.

be

have looked upon

"

"

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

74

Yet this admission of the reality of a knowledge of experi


ences never directly experienced by the organism which does
the knowing is incongruous with the logic of
immediate
"

Upon his empiricist principles, what the pragempiricism."


matist ought to mean by his rejection of all
transempiricals
is a denial of the possibility of knowing existents which tran
"

scend the experience of the knower.


pragmatist
of

what

of

the

is

"

For, once more, the

immediate empiricism purports to be an account

involved in a cognitive situation.


s dislike of the word

It

is,

in spite

"

pragmatist

epistemology,"

It is, indeed, open to


essentially an epistemological doctrine.
the pragmatist to add to this doctrine a metaphysical spiritual

he may, for example, as James suggested,


if he so desire
be a panpsychist. But it is not by a direct or a legitimate
inference from his radical empiricism that he will be led to
ism,

the metaphysical generalization that all existents are of a


psychic nature. On the contrary, such a generalization implies
a claim to a kind of knowledge which radical empiricism should
it implies that A s experience can
declare to be impossible
;

which he neither now nor at any time


experienced directly, and that he can make true judgments
which he can never directly verify. If Peter can know Paul,
though Paul is never merely an experience of Peter s, then
there is no reason, so far as the nature of knowing goes, why
or any other entities which
atoms
Peter should not know
are existentially other than his experience, or Paul s, or any
"

mean

"

realities

"

body
If

"

s.

Mr.

Dewey had

applied the logic of immediate empiricism

as consistently to the question of the knowledge of other minds


and their experiences as to the question of knowledge of the
past, we should have found him raising the same difficulties
He would have asked
in the one case as in the other.
:

"

Since Peter

judgment about Paul

is

as a matter of fact

external to Paul s existence, how can its truth consist in the


kind of blank wholesale relationship the intellectualist contends
for ?
How can Peter s belief jump out of his skin physical

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

75

or psychological and land upon just the one Other Self which,
It would have appeared
by definition, constitutes its truth ?
"

"

of a prag
immediate empiricist
mean was
matic type, that the only Paul that Peter could
a Paul existing wholly within Peter s experience, and existing

evident to a consistent

"

"

"

wholly as a means, or obstacle, to the future realization of


radical
Peter s plan of action. The really
empiricist would
have professed that an
automatic sweetheart
was good
have
followed
the
neo
for
him
or
he
would
-realist
enough
"

"

"

"

attempt to show that somehow, when Peter is thinking


of Paul, Peter and Paul become so far forth identical.
But,
in point of fact, Mr. Dewey has far too profound a sense of
the real nature of social experience to carry out his immediate
empiricism consistently. He knows well that such experience
in the

"

"

presupposes the genuine existential otherness of the social


fellow, and that distinctively social action begins only when
I look upon my neighbour, not merely as a means or obstacle

my own

ends, but as an end in himself.


Here again, then, we find the pragmatist committed to a
position which is, in its epistemological principle, both realistic
and dualistic.
to

V
SUMMARY

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF A CONSISTENT


PRAGMATISM

space permitted, it would now be in order to go on to


examine into the implications of a rectified and consistent
If

pragmatism with respect to a

specifically physical realism.

That, however, is a question which it is impossible to discuss


adequately within the limits of the space still remaining to

me. For the present occasion, then, I must be content with


the results, in relation to the questions set down at the
beginning, which have thus far been reached. And the most
significant

of

sentence.

those results
consistent

may now

be

summed up

pragmatism must recognize

in a

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

76
(a)

That

"

all

instrumental

"

knowledge

is,

or at least includes

knowledge, a representa
tion of not-present existents by present data ;
(b) That, pragmatically considered, knowledge is thus neces
sarily and constantly conversant with entities which

and

are

"

"

requires,

presentative

"

transcendent

"

of the knowing
which tran
and
with
entities
experience^
frequently
scend the total experience of the knower ;

(c)

existentially

That, if a real physical world having the characteristics


set forth by natural science is assumed, certain of the

and specifically the contents


and
retrospection, cannot be assigned
of anticipation
to that world, and must therefore be called "psychical

contents of experience,

"

(i.e.

(d)

experienced but not physical) entities

through such psychical


existences, and would be impossible without them.

That knowledge

is

mediated

VI
THE TRUE PRAGMATISM AND THE FALSE
be too sanguine to hope that this essay
some pragmatists to pragmatism, and
may
an
to
acceptance of the four propositions just given.
thereby
affords
but few examples of mature philosophers
History
the
converted by
reasonings of other philosophers. Yet such
a hope will possibly have a slightly greater chance of realiza
It would, perhaps,

serve to convert

down in more general terms


more connected manner the meaning and grounds of
true
that distinction between
pragmatism and its aberra
tion

and

if,

before concluding, I set

in a

"

"

tions which I have already suggested, especially in the discus


sion of the pragmatist s treatment of retrospective judgments.
I will therefore state first what I conceive to be the funda

mental and essential insight of pragmatism, at least of that


form of it which we owe chiefly to Professor Dewey and will
then show through what process this was distorted into its
;

own

implicit negation.

PRAGMATISM VEESUS THE PRAGMATIST

77

Pragmatism seeks to be a philosophy of man as agent, and


That
as reflective agent, in a physical and social environment.
man is, in fact, such an agent, arid is such specifically in his
cognitive capacity, it perceives to be the distinctive presupposi
and in this presupposition it finds
tion of human experience
a fixed point from which philosophical inquiry may set out
;

and a

by which the

criterion

be judged.

tenability of other philosophical


To deny this assumption, to

hypotheses may
maintain that consciousness, even when

we

"

call

planning,

is

only

it

takes the form that

a lyric cry in the midst of

as the pragmatist sees it, to contradict what


taken for granted in every reflective activity of

is,

deny what

is

business,"

implicitly

man

it is

necessarily assumed by every farmer, every


physician, every engineer, every statesman, and every social
makes a
reformer. That knowing is
functional," that it
and
virtue
of
those
which
does
so
characteristics
difference,"
by
x
on
distinctive
of
it
as
and
the
other
are
that,
knowing
hand, its character and method cannot be understood without
a consideration of its functional significance
these seem to
to

is

"

"

me

the deepest-lying premises of the philosophy of Mr.


and of some other pragmatists.

To have formulated the

starting-point

Dewey

and a guiding prin

ciple (I do not say the guiding principle) of philosophy in this


way is to have done a notable service to philosophical thought.
For this is in truth an essentially new way of approaching

old problems, especially the problem of knowledge


and, subject to certain qualifications, it is, in my opinion, a
sound and fruitful way. Only, as I cannot but think, the

many

pragmatists themselves have as a rule, at a rather early stage


1

is, for example, on the ground of the principle indicated that Mr.
eternalistic
sort of doctrine
repudiates absolute idealism and every
about the nature and function of thought.
A world already in its intrinsic
structure dominated by thought, is not a world in which, save by contra

It

"

Dewey

"

"

diction of premises, thought has anything to do. ... A doctrine which exalts
thought in name, while ignoring its efficacy in fact (that is, its use in bettering
life), is a doctrine which cannot be entertained or thought without serious
peril"

(C.I. 27-28).

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

78

of their reasonings,

and

less

One

wandered from that way into very

different

trustworthy paths.
of the earliest

and the most

serious of these aberra

tions consisted in the identification of the pragmatic principle


in its bearing upon the problem of knowledge with the
"

principle

radical

of

empiricism."

show the natural confusions


identification

took place

It

would be easy to

ideas through which this


but it is not necessary to our
of

present purpose. That the two principles, so far from being


identical with or inferrible from one another, are essentially
antipathetic, and lead to contrary conclusions on ulterior
questions, has been illustrated in the foregoing pages by
several specific examples.
truly pragmatic method applied

to the problem of knowledge would inquire how thought or


knowledge is to be construed when it is regarded as a factor
acting upon and interactive with a physical and social environ
ment. And the first step in the procedure would be to sharpen,
to

make

precise, the time-distinctions pertinent to this inquiry.

For the pragmatic method is necessarily a special form of


what I have elsewhere referred to as the
temporalistic
and to this aspect of pragmatism Mr. Dewey
method
on occasion has given clear expression.
A philosophical
discussion of the distinctions and relations which figure most
"

"

"

largely in logical theories depends upon a proper placing of


them in their temporal context and in default of such placing,
;

we

are prone to transfer the traits of the subject-matter of


one phase to that of another, with a confusing outcome." 2
This is a golden saying and, as I have said, it is a proper
;

consequence of the primary pragmatic insight.

To

define

1
Not the only one, nor perhaps the earliest of all. At least four other
latent or explicit logical motives distinct from the genuine pragmatic principle
and tending to pervert or to contradict it, are distinguishable in Mr. Dewey s

and several more in the writings of other pragmatists.


But a complete enumeration of these is not indispensable here.
2
E.L. 1. Cf. Mr. Dewey s comment on the great service rendered by
in calling attention to the fundamental importance of
William James
considerations of time for the problems of life and mind."

reasonings alone

"

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST


knowledge in terms

of the elements of the situation in

79

which

the reflective agent, or would-be agent, finds himself is to


focus the attention of the logician upon a situation in which
time-relations
"

Radical

and time-distinctions are


empiricism,"

of the essence.

is

however,

about

doctrine

knowledge which, when consistent, characteristically ignores


time and temporal distinctions. It is a philosophy of the

The moving spring of its dialectic is a feeling


that knowledge means immediacy, that an existent is strictly
instantaneous.
"

known

"

only in so far as it is given, present, actually possessed


If we apply the
of concrete experience.

in a definite bit

temper alistic precision to this assumption, we are


it as meaning that a thing is known at a
given moment of cognition only if it is both existent and
immediately experienced within the time-limits of that moment.
But to demand in this sense that philosophy shall
admit
into its constructions only what is directly experienced
is
to forbid philosophy to admit into its
construction
of the

demand

for

obliged to construe

"

"

"

"

knowledge -situation precisely the things that are observably


most characteristic of and indispensable to that situation,
qua functional and also qua social. For the moment of
practical deliberation is concerned chiefly with things external
to the direct experience of that moment.
What these things
are
we
in
have
seen
specifically
part
they consist of the
various sorts of content which must be
present-as-absent
;

"

"

such as representations of the future, of a past that truly


was, of experiences not-directly-experienced (i.e. the experi
ences of others) and they consist, further, of judgments, with
respect to these types of content, which must be assumed and
can never be directly verified (in the radical-empiricist sense
;

of verification) at the moment of their use.


What has befallen pragmatism, then, is that, under the
influence of
radical empiricism," the pragmatist philosophers
"

have

confounded
"

temporal
"

"

categories.
proper
in its temporal context

of the knowledge-situation
I may add, in its social context)

placing

(and

their

"

is

precisely

what they

ESSAYS IN CRITICAL REALISM

80

have neglected.

transfer to one phase of experience


Their primary concern, as I
phase."
"

They

the traits of another

have already remarked, should be with that particular moment


in which the reflective agent is, in fact, reflecting, i.e. seeking
by means of knowledge to deal with a practical exigency,
looking for the mode of action which can be depended upon
But the pragmatists
to bring about a desired future result.
have failed to segregate sharply, for the purposes of their
analysis, this moment, or phase, of practical inquiry and
forecast.
They have sometimes tended to read into it the
and they
traits of the moment of answer or fulfilment
have sometimes strangely confused its traits with those of
what is by definition a non-reflective and pre-cognitive phase
More singularly still, they have persistently
of experience.
blurred the contrast between the retrospective and prospective
reference of judgments, insisting that because a judgment about
the past can be verified only indirectly and in the future, it
therefore refers
only to the future. Most pregnant, perhaps,
of all these confusions, they have declared that truth must be
an experienced relation," without asking the essential ques
tions
experienced when and by whom ? For if they had
definitely raised these questions, they would have recognized
that this account of truth gets its seeming plausibility only
relation of which both terms are
if taken as meaning
time
and
in the same sense in the experience
the
same
at
given
;

"

"

"

of the

same

experiencer."

to such a definition

the least

"a

But a

"

truth

"

really corresponding

would speedily have been discovered to be

"

instrumental,"

the least

"

pragmatic,"

of all possible

Of these primary confusions of temporal distinc


possessions.
tions and points of view, most of the contradictions and
infirmities of logical purpose which we have earlier noted
in pragmatist reasoning are the results.

Thus the doctrine commonly put forward

as

"

"

pragmatism

be said to be a changeling, substituted almost in the


I have here had the privilege of proclaiming the
cradle.
I
rightful heir and of pointing out the marks of identity.

may

PRAGMATISM VERSUS THE PRAGMATIST

81

invite all loyal retainers to return to their true allegiance.


If
will
need
be
do
I
find
that
there
so, they will,
think,
they

and, over the issues which have been here considered, can
be
no quarrel between their house and that of critical
realism.

CRITICAL REALISM AND THE POSSIBILITY

OF KNOWLEDGE

AND THE POSSIBILITY


OF KNOWLEDGE

CRITICAL REALISM

By JAMES BISSETT PRATT


IT

is

the contention of the writers of this book that the view

here presented
and natural.

common

is

not only rational but also essentially obvious


identical with the position of

Though not

sense (so far as

common

sense can be said to

main

any definite position in so abstruse a field), it has grown


directly out of common-sense views and is more nearly in

tain

harmony with them than

any other epistemological theory.


moreover, pre-eminently an empirical view, and it
is,
harmonizes as does no other with the facts of both normal
and abnormal experience. This being the case, the fortunate
is

It

who is innocent of the intricacies of the philosophic


mind may well ask why so obvious a position should require

reader

an entire volume

in its defence.

writers of this book naturally feel


considerable sympathy. In fact, the question seems so natural
and justifiable that this entire essay will be devoted to an

With such a query the

For the answer to this question does not


it.
but
the
surface,
(like the answer to so many other
upon
must
be
sought, in part at least, in history.
questions)
of
dualistic
sort
view of mind and its objects has been
Some
of
human thinking. It was maintained,
the
dawn
common since

attempt to answer
lie

almost as a matter of course, by Plato and Aristotle and the


majority of their successors. In the early years of what is
known as the period of modern philosophy, however, it received
85

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