Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic AttitudeDewey, John
Philosophy
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
Dewey, John
Philosophy; Pragmatism
It is the conviction of a number who are at present attempting to rid
logic of these ancient disabilities that their common source is to be
found in a lack of continuity between the acts of intelligence (or to
avoid the dangers of hypostasis, intelligent acts) and other acts;
between logical conduct and other conduct. So wide, indeed, is this
breach, that often little remains of the act of knowing but the name. It
may still be called an act, but it has no describable instruments nor
technique of operation. It is an indefinable and often mystical
performance of which only the results can be stated. In recent logical
discussion this techniqueless act of knowing has been properly enough
transformed into an indefinable "external relation" in which an entity
called a knower stands to another entity called the known.
For many centuries this breach between the operations of intelligence
and other operations has been closed by various metaphysical devices
with the result that logic has been a hybrid science,--half logic, half
metaphysics and epistemology. So great has been the momentum of the
metaphysical tradition that long after we have begun to discover the
connection between logical and non-logical operations its methods remain
to plague us. Efforts to heal the breach without a direct appeal to
metaphysical agencies have been made by attempting a complete logicizing
of all operations. But besides requiring additional metaphysics to
effect it, the procedure is as fatal to continuity as is an impassable
disjunction. Continuity demands distinction as well as connection. It
requires the development, the _growth_ of old material and functions
into new forms.
Driven by the difficulties of this complete logicization, which are as
serious as those of isolation, logical theory was obliged to reinstate
some sort of distinction. This it did by resorting to the categories of
"explicit" and "implicit." All so-called non-logical operations were
regarded as "implicitly" logical. And, paradoxically, logical operations
had for their task the transformation of the implicit into the explicit.
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