Mr. Bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to philosophy, and
if one turns to the current literature of the subject--his own writings
included--one easily gathers what he means. The opponents cannot even
understand one another. Mr. Bradley says to Mr. Ward: "I do not care
what your oracle is, and your preposterous psychology may here be gospel
if you please; ... but if the revelation does contain a meaning, I will
commit myself to this: either the oracle is so confused that its
signification is not discoverable, or, upon the other hand, if it can be
pinned down to any definite statement, then that statement will be
false."[87] Mr. Ward in turn says of Mr. Bradley: "I cannot even imagine
the state of mind to which his description applies.... [It] reads like
an unintentional travesty of Herbartian psychology by one who has tried
to improve upon it without being at the pains to master it."[88]
Münsterberg excludes a view opposed to his own by saying that with any
one who holds it a _Verständigung_ with him is "_grundsätzlich
ausgeschlossen_"; and Royce, in a review of Stout,[89] hauls him over
the coals at great length for defending 'efficacy' in a way which I, for
one, never gathered from reading him, and which I have heard Stout
himself say was quite foreign to the intention of his text.
In these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and
different points of view are talked of _durcheinander_.
(1) There is a psychological question: "Have we perceptions of activity?
and if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have them?"
(2) There is a metaphysical question: "Is there a _fact_ of activity?
and if so, what idea must we frame of it? What is it like? and what
does it do, if it does anything?" And finally there is a logical
question:
(3) "Whence do we _know_ activity? By our own feelings of it solely? or
by some other source of information?" Throughout page after page of the
literature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and
mere description of the surface-show of experience is proferred as if it
implicitly answered every one of them. No one of the disputants,
moreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view would
carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's experience
it would make if his adversary's were triumphant.
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