Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic AttitudeDewey, John
Philosophy
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
Dewey, John
Philosophy; Pragmatism
Why, then, do we in fact take the much admired "inductive leap," in
seeming defiance of strict logic? Why do we close our eyes to logic,
turn our back upon logic, behave as if logic were not and had never
been? In point of fact, we do nothing of the sort. The "inductive leap"
is no leap away from logic, but the impulsion of logic's mainspring seen
only in its legitimate event. Because we have not taken care to see the
impulse coming, it surprises us and we are frightened. And we look about
for an illusive assurance in some "law of thought," or some
question-begging "universal premise" of Nature's "uniformity." We do not
see that we were already conditionally committed to the "leap" by our
initial interest. Getting our premises together is no hurried forging of
a chain to save us from our own madness in the nick of time. We are only
hoping to rid ourselves of an excess of conservative ballast. To reason
by analogy is not to repress or to dispense with the interest in the
radically novel, but to give methodical and intelligent expression to
that interest.
[47] Aristotle's _Nicomachaean Ethics_ (Welldon's transl.), Book VIII.
[48] Cf. Aristotle's _Politics_ (Jowett's trans.) III. 9. Sec.6 ff. and
elsewhere; _Nicom. Ethics_, I, Chap. III (end).
[49] Cf. Veblen: _op. cit._
[50] W. McDougall in his _Social Psychology_ (Ed. 1912, pp. 358 ff.)
recognizes "incomplete anticipation of the end of action" as a genuine
type of preliminary situation in human behavior, but appears to regard
this as in so far a levelling-down of man to the blindness of the
"brutes." But "incompleteness" is a highly ambiguous term and seems here
to beg the question. "Incompleteness" may be given an emphasis in which
it imports conjecture and hypothesis--almost anything, in fact, but
blindness. Rather do the brutes get levelled up to man by such facts as
those McDougall cites.
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