But this line of objection proves too much, for, made consistent with
itself, it really amounts to a denial that the very judgment of
sense-perception, to which it appeals so confidently as a criterion, has
objective import. The first division of this study was intended to show
that every object in the experience of each individual is for the
individual a unique construction of his own, determined in form and in
details by individual interests and purposes, and therefore different
from that object in the experience of any other individual which in
social intercourse passes current as the same. The real object is for me
the object which functions in my experience, presenting problematic
aspects for solution, and lending itself more or less serviceably to my
purposes; and this object is, we hold, not the object as socially
current, but the complete object which, as complete in its determination
with reference to my unique purposes, cannot possibly have social
currency. The objection as stated cuts away the very ground on which it
rests, since the shortcoming which it finds in the judgment of ethical
or economic value is present in the particular judgment of
sense-perception also. The object about which I can assure myself by an
immediate appeal to other persons is the object in its bare "conceptual"
aspects--the object as a dictionary might define it, the commodity as it
might be described in a trade catalogue, or the ethical act as defined
by the criminal code or in the treatise of a moral philosopher. It is an
object consisting of a central core or fixed deposit of meaning, which
renders it significant in a certain general way to a number of persons,
or even to all men, but which is not yet adequately known by me from the
standpoint of my present forming purpose. In virtue of these conceptual
characters it is adaptable to my purpose, which is as yet general and
indeterminate; but in the nature of the case it cannot yet be known to
me as applicable to my prospective concrete purpose, as this shall come
to be through judgment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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