Essays in Experimental Logic — John Dewey
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Essays in Experimental Logic Author : John Dewey Release date : September 19, 2012 [eBook #40794] Most recently updated: October 23, 2024 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40794 Credits : Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, JoAnn Greenwood, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF S.A. PREFATORY NOTE In 1903 a volume was published by the University of Chicago Press, entitled Studies in Logical Theory , as a part of the "Decennial Publications" of the University. The volume contained contributions by Drs. Thompson (now Mrs. Woolley), McLennan, Ashley, Gore, Heidel, Stuart, and Moore, in addition to four essays by the present writer who was also general editor of the volume. The edition of the Studies being recently exhausted, the Director of the Press suggested that my own essays be reprinted, together with other studies of mine in the same field. The various contributors to the original volume cordially gave assent, and the present volume is the outcome. Chaps. ii-v, inclusive, represent (with editorial revisions, mostly omissions) the essays taken from the old volume. The first and introductory chapter has been especially written for the volume. The other essays are in part reprinted and in part rewritten, with additions, from various contributions to philosophical periodicals. I should like to point out that the essay on "Some Stages of Logical Thought" antedates the essays taken from the volume of Studies , having been published in 1900; the other essays have been written since then. I should also like to point out that the essays in their psychological phases are written from the standpoint of what is now termed a behavioristic psychology, though some of them antedate the use of that term as a descriptive epithet. J. D. Columbia University April 3, 1916 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE I. Introduction 1 II. The Relationship of Thought and Its Subject-Matter 75 III. The Antecedents and Stimuli of Thinking 103 IV. Data and Meanings 136 V. The Objects of Thought 157 VI. Some Stages of Logical Thought 183 VII. The Logical Character of Ideas 220 VIII. The Control of Ideas by Facts 230 IX. Naïve Realism vs. Presentative Realism 250 X. Epistemological Realism: The Alleged Ubiquity of the Knowledge Relation 264 XI. The Existence of the World as a Logical Problem 281 XII. What Pragmatism Means by Practical 303 XIII. An Added Note as to the "Practical" 330 XIV. The Logic of Judgments of Practice 335 Index 443 I INTRODUCTION The key to understanding the doctrine of the essays which are herewith reprinted lies in the passages regarding the temporal development of experience. Setting out from a conviction (more current at the time when the essays were written than it now is) that knowledge implies judgment (and hence, thinking) the essays try to show (1) that such terms as "thinking," "reflection," "judgment" denote inquiries or the results of inquiry, and (2) that inquiry occupies an intermediate and mediating place in the development of an experience. If this be granted, it follows at once that 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 that 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. I 1. An intermediary stage for knowledge (that is, for knowledge comprising reflection and having a distinctively intellectual quality) implies a prior stage of a different kind, a kind variously characterized in the essays as social, affectional, technological, aesthetic, etc. It may most easily be described from a negative point of view: it is a type of experience which cannot be called a knowledge experience without doing violence to the term "knowledge" and to experience. It may contain knowledge resulting from prior inquiries; it may include thinking within itself; but not so that they dominate the situation and give it its peculiar flavor. Positively, anyone recognizes the difference between an experience of quenching thirst where the perception of water is a mere incident, and an experience of water where knowledge of what water is, is the controlling interest; or between the enjoyment of social converse among friends and a study deliberately made of the character of one of the participants; between aesthetic appreciation of a picture and an examination of it by a connoisseur to establish the artist, or by a dealer who has a commercial interest in determining its probable selling value. The distinction between the two types of experience is evident to anyone who will take the trouble to recall what he does most of the time when not engaged in meditation or inquiry. But since one does not think about knowledge except when he is thinking , except, that is, when the intellectual or cognitional interest is dominant, the professional philosopher is only too prone to think of all experiences as if they were of the type he is specially engaged in, and hence unconsciously or intentionally to project its traits into experiences to which they are alien. Unless he takes the simple precaution of holding before his mind contrasting experiences like those just mentioned, he generally forms a habit of supposing that no qualities or things at all are present in experience except as objects of some kind of apprehension or awareness. Overlooking, and afterward denying, that things and qualities are present to most men most of the time as things and qualities in situations of prizing and aversion, of seeking and finding, of convers