At first blush, it might seem as if the very nature of logical theory
as generalization of the reflective process must of necessity
disregard the matter of particular conditions and particular results
as irrelevant. How, the implication runs, could reflection become
generalized save by elimination of details as irrelevant? Such a
conception in fixing the central problem of logic fixes once for all
its future career and material. The essential business of logic is
henceforth to discuss the relation of thought as such to reality as
such. It may, indeed, involve much psychological material,
particularly in the discussion of the processes which antecede
thinking and which call it out. It may involve much discussion of the
concrete methods of investigation and verification employed in the
various sciences. It may busily concern itself with the
differentiation of various types and forms of thought--different modes
of conceiving, various conformations of judgment, various types of
inferential reasoning. But it concerns itself with any and all of
these three fields, not on their own account or as ultimate, but as
subsidiary to the main problem: the relation of thought as such, or at
large, to reality as such, or at large. Some of the detailed
considerations referred to may throw light upon the terms under which
thought transacts its business with reality; upon, say, certain
peculiar limitations it has to submit to as best it may. Other
considerations throw light upon the ways in which thought gets at
reality. Still other considerations throw light upon the forms which
thought assumes in attacking and apprehending reality. But in the end
all this is incidental. In the end the one problem holds: How do the
specifications of thought as such hold good of reality as such? In
fine, logic is supposed to grow out of the epistemological inquiry and
to lead up to its solution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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