As a special class of scientific inquirers develops, terms that were
originally _by-products_ of reflection become primary objects for the
intellectual class. The "troubles" which occasion reflection are then
_intellectual_ troubles, discrepancies within some current scheme of
propositions and terms. The situation which undergoes reorganization
and increase of comprised significance is that of the subject-matter
of specialized investigation. Nevertheless the same general method
recurs within it, and the resulting objects--the terms and
propositions--are for all, except those who produce them, instruments,
not terminal objects. The objection to analytic realism as a
metaphysics of existence is not so much an undue formalism as its
affront to the commonsense-world of action, appreciation, and
affection. The affront, due to hypostatizing terms into objects, is as
great as that of idealism. A naïve realism withstands both affronts.
My interest, however, is not to animadvert upon analytic realism. It
is to show how the main tenets of instrumental logic stand in relation
to considerations which, although ignored by the idealism which was
current when the theory received its first formulation, demand
attention: the objective status of data and terms with respect to
states of mind or acts of awareness. I have tried to show that the
theory, without mutilation or torturing, makes provision for these
considerations. They are not objections to it; they are considerations
which are involved in it. There are questions at issue, but they
concern not matters of logic but matters of fact. They are questions
of the _existential_ setting of certain logical distinctions and
relations. As to the comparative merits of the two schemes, I have
nothing to say beyond what has been said, save that the tendency of
the analytic realism is inevitably to treat a difference between the
logic of inquiry and of dialectic as if it were itself a matter to be
settled by the logic of dialectic. I confess to some fear that a
philosophy which fails to identify science with terms and propositions
about things which are not terms and propositions, will first
exaggerate and then misconstrue the function of dialectics, and land
philosophy in a formalism like unto the scholasticism from which the
older empiricism with all its defects emancipated those who took it to
heart.
VII
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