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
For those who accept the foregoing general diagnosis the prescription is
obvious. The present task of logical theory is the restoration of the
continuity of the act and agent of knowing with other acts and agents.
But this is not to be done by merely furnishing the act of knowing with
a body and a nervous system. If the nervous system be regarded as only
an onlooking, beholding nervous system, if no connection be made between
the logical operations of a nervous system and its other operations a
nervous system has no logical advantage over a purely psychical mind.
It was to be expected that this movement toward restoration of
continuity made in the name of "instrumental" or "experimental" logic
would be regarded, alike, by the logics of rationalism and empiricism,
of idealism and of realism, as an attempt to rob intelligence of its own
unique and proper character; to reduce it to a merely "psychological"
and "existential" affair; to leave no place for genuine intellectual
interest and activity; and to make science a series of more or less
respectable adventures. The counter thesis is, that this restoration is
truly a restoration--not a despoliation of the character and rights of
intelligence; that only such a restoration can preserve the unique
function of intelligence, can prevent it from becoming merely
"existential," and can provide a distinct place for intellectual and
scientific interest and activity. It does not, however, promise to
remove the stigma of "adventure" from science. Every experiment is an
adventure; and it is precisely the experimental character of scientific
logic that distinguishes it from scholasticism, medieval or modern.
II
First it is clear that a reform of logic based upon the restoration of
knowing to its connections with other acts will begin with a chapter
containing an account of these other operations and the general
character of this connection.[13] Logical theory has been truncated. It
has tried to begin and end in the middle, with the result that it has
ended in the air. Logic presents the curious anachronism of a science
which attempts to deal with its subject-matter apart from what it comes
from and what comes from it.
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