Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude — John Shaqi
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic AttitudeDewey, John
Philosophy
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
Dewey, John
Philosophy; Pragmatism
In reply let it be said,--once more and finally,--there is no assertion
or implication about _the_ real object or _the_ real world or _the_
reality. Such an assumption goes with that epistemological universe of
discourse which has to be abandoned in an empirical universe of
discourse. The change is of _a_ real object. An incident of the world
operating as a physiologically direct stimulus is assuredly a reality.
Responded to, it produces specific consequences in virtue of the
response. Water is not drunk unless somebody drinks it; it does not
quench thirst unless a thirsty person drinks it--and so on. Consequences
occur whether one is aware of them or not; they are integral facts in
experience. But let one of these consequences be anticipated and let it,
as anticipated, become an indispensable element in the stimulus, and
then there is a known object. It is not that knowing _produces_ a
change, but that it _is_ a change of the specific kind described. A
serial process, the successive portions of which are as such incapable
of simultaneous occurrence, is telescoped and condensed into an object,
a unified inter-reference of contemporaneous properties, most of which
express potentialities rather than completed data.
Because of this change, an _object_ possesses truth or error (which the
physical occurrence as such never has); it is classifiable as fact or
fantasy; it is of a sort or kind, expresses an essence or nature,
possesses implications, etc., etc. That is to say, it is marked by
specifiable _logical_ traits not found in physical occurrences as such.
Because objective idealisms have seized upon these traits as
constituting the very essence of Reality is no reason for proclaiming
that they are ready-made features of physical happenings, and hence for
maintaining that knowing is nothing but an appearance of things on a
stage for which "consciousness" supplies the footlights. For only the
epistemological predicament leads to "presentations" being regarded as
cognitions of things which were previously unpresented. In any empirical
situation of everyday life or of science, knowledge signifies something
stated or inferred of another thing. Visible water is not a more less
erroneous presentation of H_{2}O, but H_{2}O is a knowledge about the
thing we see, drink, wash with, sail on, and use for power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account