Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic AttitudeDewey, John
Philosophy
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
Dewey, John
Philosophy; Pragmatism
The objection that such a chapter on the conditions and genesis of the
operations of knowing belongs to psychology, only shows how firmly fixed
is the discontinuity we are trying to escape. As we have seen, the
original motive for leaving this account of genesis to psychology was
that the act of knowing was supposed to originate in a purely psychical
mind. Such an origin was of course embarrassing to logic, which aimed
to be scientific. The old opposition between origin and validity was due
to the kind of origin assumed and the kind of validity necessitated by
the origin. One may well be excused for evading the question of how
ideas, originated in a purely psychical mind, can, in Kant's phrase,
"have objective validity," by throwing out the question of origin
altogether. Whatever difficulties remain for validity after this
expulsion could not be greater than those of the task of combining the
objective validity of ideas with their subjective origin.
The whole of this chapter on the connection between logical and
non-logical operations cannot be written here. But its central point
would be that these other acts with which the act of knowing must have
continuity are just the operations of our unreflective conduct. Note
that it is "unreflective," not "unconscious," nor yet merely
"instinctive" conduct. It is our perceptive, remembering, imagining,
desiring, loving, hating conduct. Note also that we do not say
"psychical" or "physical," nor "psycho-physical" conduct. These terms
stand for certain distinctions in logical conduct,[14] and we are here
concerned with the character of non-logical conduct which is to be
distinguished from, and yet kept in closest continuity with, logical
conduct.
If, here, the metaphysical logician should ask: "Are you not in this
assumption of a world of reflective and unreflective conduct and
affection, and of a world of beings in interaction, begging a whole
system of metaphysics?" the reply is that if it is a metaphysics bad
for logic, it will keep turning up in the course of logical theory as a
constant source of trouble. On the other hand, if logic encounters grave
difficulties when it attempts to get on without it, its assumption, for
the purposes of logic, has all the justification possible.
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