Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic AttitudeDewey, John
Philosophy
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
Dewey, John
Philosophy; Pragmatism
Again it will be urged that this alleged non-logical conduct, in so far
as it involves perception, memory, and anticipation, is already
cognitive and logical; or if the act of knowing is to be entirely
excluded from logic, then, in so far as what is left involves objective
"terms and relations," it, also, is already logical. And it may be
thought strange that a logic based upon the restoration of continuity
between the act of knowing and other acts should here be insisting on
distinction and separation. The point is fundamental; and must be
disposed of before we go on. First, we must observe that the unity
secured by making all conscious conduct logical turns out, on
examination, to be more nominal than real. As we have already seen, this
attempt at a complete logicizing of all conduct is forced at once to
introduce the distinction of "explicit" and "implicit," of "conscious
and unconscious" or "subconscious" logic. Some cynics have found that
this suggests dividing triangles into explicit and implicit triangles,
or into triangles and sub-triangles.
Doubtless the attempt to make all perceptions, memories, and
anticipations, and even instincts and habits, into implicit or
subconscious inference is an awkward effort to restore the continuity of
logical and non-logical conduct. Its awkwardness consists in attempting
to secure this continuity by the method of subsumptive identity, instead
of finding it in a transitive continuity of function;--instead of seeing
that perception, memory, and anticipation _become_ logical processes
when they are employed in a process of inquiry, whose purpose is to
relieve the difficulties into which these operations in their function
as direct stimuli have fallen. Logical conduct is constituted by the
cooeperation of these processes for the improvement of their further
operation. To regard perception, memory, and imagination as implicit
forms or as sub-species of logical operation is much like conceiving the
movements of our fingers and arms as implicit or imperfect species of
painting, or swimming.
Moreover, this doctrine of universal logicism teaches that when that
which is perfect is come, imperfection shall be done away. This should
mean that when painting becomes completely "explicit" and perfect,
fingers and hands shall disappear. Perfect painting will be the pure
essence of painting. And this interpretation is not strained; for this
logic expressly teaches that in the perfected real system all temporal
elements are unessential to logical operations. They are, of course,
_psychologically_ necessary for finite beings, who can never have
perfectly logical experiences. But, from the standpoint of a completely
logicized experience, all finite, temporal processes are accidents, not
essentials, of logical operations.
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