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The Pragmatic Humanimi of F. C. S. Schiller
The Pragmatic Humanism of F. C. S. Schiller
by R E U B E N
ABEL
KING'S CROWN
PRESS
Columbia University New York 1955
COPYRIGHT 1 9 5 5 BY R E U B E N A B E L
KING'S
CROWN
PRESS
is an imprint established by Columbia University Press for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end, the publishers have used standardized formats incorporating every reasonable economy that does not interfere with legibility. The author has assumed complete responsibility for editorial style and for proofreading.
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TO Marion, Ricky, and Liz
Acknowledgements
I WISH TO STATE my gratitude—and, despite my language, this is no mere formality—to five men who have given me invaluable help: Horace M. Kallen, Alfred Schütz, Ernest Nagel, Kurt Riezler, and the late Felix Kaufmann. My thanks are also due the following publishers for permission to quote: Harcourt, Brace and Co. (Viscount Samuel, Essay in Physics); The Macmillan Co., St. Martin's Press, and Bell and Sons, Ltd. (various works of Schiller); and Bames and Noble, Inc. (Randall and Buchler, Philosophy: an Introduction). REUBEN ABEL
New School for Social Research New York, January, 1955
Contents I. Introduction Schiller's life. His opponents. His writings. The core of "Humanism." His place in the pragmatic movement. Comparison with James, Dewey, and others.
II. Logic and Psychology What is logic? Historical background. The problem of meaning: verbal or real? Relations to psychology. Conditioning of reasoning by psychological processes. Logic as reflection on actual thinking. Origin of thought. We cannot understand logical processes except psychologically. Abstractions of logic. Critics of Schiller's position.
III. Schiller's Critique of Formal Deductive
Logic
All actual knowing is by individual human beings for personal human purposes. Logical terms. Words and things. Definition in logic and in science. Judgments or propositions. The syllogism. Requirements: true premises, intrinsic formal necessity, novelty in the conclusion. Fatal weakness of the syllogism. Logic and metaphysics. Superiority of humanist logic.
IV. Axioms and the Laws of Thought Axioms conceived by Schiller as essentially postulates. Pragmatic Empiricism. The three traditional
laws of thought. Are they laws of thought or of things? Actually, says Schiller, they are postulated by men in order to control their experience. Example: The Identity postulate. Some postulates have become axioms, others have been discarded. Corroboration by history of science. V. Philosophy of Science Misconceptions by logic of problems of science. Use of hypothesis. Facts. Relativity of facts to hypothesis, to the human organism, to memory, to words. Origin and verification of hypothesis. Procedures of science. "Affirming the consequent." VI. The Problems of Inductive
Logic
Need for true premises. By observation? By intuition? Views of Aristotle. Views of Mill. Schiller's criticisms. Causation: traditional treatment and Schiller's interpretation as a postulate. Similarly, natural laws. Artificiality of the distinction between deduction and induction. VII. Evaluation of Schiller's Logic Strength of Schiller's use of the biological and psychological matrix. Validity of his critique of formal logic for its inconsistency and ambiguity, and its failure to serve human needs by abstracting from psychology, from matter, and from purpose. Schiller's failure to utilize the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. This causes him to regard mathematics as an empirical study. Eight arguments against this. Schiller fails to differentiate the act of thinking from the result of thought. Schiller's views on accuracy and rigor. Unfortunate conflict between Schiller and the symbolic logicians and logical empiricists; what they have in common.
Contents
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Weakness of Schiller's analysis of probability. The laws of thought as postulates. Schiller does not do justice to Aristotle. Strength and weakness of Schiller's analysis of meaning. Core of his contribution to logic. VIII. The Making of Truth Schiller's approach to the problem of truth, as a human valuation. A criterion of truth? His analysis and rejection of seven theories of truth. His concept of truth as a valuation placed on cognitive operations in action. Truth must be useful and must work. The area of "truth-claims." Criticism of, and problems in, the idea of "working." Appraisal of Schiller's ideas. "Useless truth." Past truth. Schiller's emphasis on the individual rather than the social. Limitations on the making of truth.
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IX. Metaphysics and Psychology: The Making of Reality Schiller's conception of metaphysics. Its partial, aesthetic, personal character. Influence of Protagoras. Opposition to Plato. Interest in evolution. Reality of novelty. Plasticity and incompleteness of reality. The making of reality. Two difficulties: past reality, man's limitations. Later modifications by Schiller: some reality is found, some is made. Hule as the primal indeterminacy. Difficulties with this conception. Schiller's addition of idealism to pragmatism. Appraisal of his position. Hylozoism. Laws of nature as the habits of things. Pluralism. Recent statement by Einstein as support of Schiller's metaphysics.
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X. Value Theory: Ethics and Religion Ethics for Schiller the same sort of inquiry as science. Advantages of the postulational approach to ethics. Religion and the right to postulate. Faith and knowledge. God is finite.
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Contents
XI. Freedom and Determinism
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Reality of freedom. Requires indeterminism to be valid. Methodological postulate of determinism versus ethical postulate of responsibility. Science does not object to a definition of freedom which presents calculable alternatives. We do not experience completely unrestricted freedom. Effective and invigorating conception of freedom. XII. Psychical Research
140
Psychical research on the outskirts of accepted science. Assumptions of this study. Problem of verification and evidence. Immortality as a psychological postillate. XIII. Social Philosophy
145
Schiller's passion for eugenics causes him to oppose democracy. His views on politics and history. XIV. Schiller's Contribution to Philosophy
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Notes
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Selected Bibliography
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Writings by Schiller: Books. Contributions to books by others. Prefaces and introductions. Articles in periodicals. Book reviews. Encyclopedia articles. Philosophic humor. Writings about Schiller: Books. Articles in periodicals. Reviews of Schiller's major writings. Index of Names
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The Pragmatic Humanism of F. C. S. Schiller
I.
Introduction
As RECENTLY AS 1928, Bertrand Russell remarked that "The three founders of pragmatism differ greatly inter se; we may distinguish James, Schiller, and Dewey as respectively its religious, literary, and scientific protagonists." 1 It is noteworthy that philosophic fame is as fleeting and insubstantial as any other fame, for Schiller is scarcely heard of today in America or in Great Britain. Only yesterday he was deemed the peer in importance of William James and John Dewey; today it is usually necessary to state explicitly that one refers to Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, the English philosopher, and not to Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller, the German poet. His books are out of print; the college courses in modem philosophy and logical theory scarcely mention his name. The fashions in philosophy have passed him by, but many of the questions he raised have not yet been answered. He was bom on August 16, 1864, in Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish side of the border. His schooling was at Rugby and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he won a scholarship and two "Firsts." He then taught German at Eton, and returned to Oxford for the M. A. degree. In 1893 he left Oxford to go to Cornell, where he was an instructor in logic and metaphysics (succeeding Frank Thilly), and did additional graduate work. He did not, however, receive the Ph.D. degree for which he was a candidate, and there are several versions as to just what occurred in his oral examination. More enduring than any academic honors, though, was
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Introduction
his first contact with William James, who was to prove a dominating influence in his life. At any rate, he was recalled to Oxford in 1897, to become an assistant tutor at Corpus Christi. Here he spent the major portion of his philosophic life. He subsequently was appointed tutor, senior tutor, and fellow, having received the D.Sc. degree in 1906. Other honors came to him: he was treasurer of the Mind Association, president (in 1921) of the Aristotelian Society, president of the Society for Psychical Research (succeeding Henri Bergson in 1914), and a Fellow of the British Academy (in 1926). In 1926 he began to spend part of each year at the University of Southern California, first as a visiting lecturer and later as professor. In 1935 he moved permanently to California, where he married Louise Strang of Denver, who was also on the faculty. He died on August 9,1937. H. V. Knox, a friend and associate of Schiller's at Oxford, has written me this personal recollection: He wrote with remarkable facility, making few corrections . . . his thoughts simply overflowed onto paper quite naturally . . . He was certainly one of the kindest and most generous persons I have met in my long life. He had a great sense of humour, which, with his encylopaedic knowledge—never obtrusively displayed—made him always a most delightful companion. He was very hospitable, and an admirable host . . . In his out-door activities, his chief pleasure was in the mountains; he spent most vacations, summer and winter, in Switzerland . . . The hallmark of Schiller's life was that he was constantly swimming against strong philosophical currents. British philosophy around the turn of the century was strongly influenced by a group which has been called the "AngloHegelians." They had all been powerfully swayed by the idealism, authoritarianism, and absolutism of Hegel, as well as by Plato and Aristotle, and had been relatively little affected by other trends, by scientific progress (such as the new empirical psychology), or by such native think-
Introduction
5
ers as John Stuart Mill. Chief among them were F. H. Bradley (who was Schiller's particular bete noire), Bernard Bosanquet, and T. H. Green. Indeed, Bradley's Ap-
pearance and Reality and Green's Prolegomena to Ethics may well be considered as comprising the philosophic Bible of Oxford at that time. In this atmosphere of absolutism, intellectualism, monism, and "pure" thought, Schiller was a decided rebel. His own views were anathema to the ruling clique. He believed that God was not omnipotent, but was striving to develop; that truth was not absolute, and a datum, but was growing, and an achievement; that thought was not "pure," but an individual, personal act. The controversy was violent. Every issue of Mind added fuel to the fire. Schiller had few allies, except Howard V. Knox and Alfred Sidgwick, who joined him in criticizing traditional logic, and R. R. Marett, the anthropologist, his closest friend at Oxford. Bradley's aloofness was empyreal. Even when he finally deigned to reply to Schiller's criticisms (it is open to doubt how much he understood them), he never mentioned Schiller by name. It may have been Bradley's antagonism which prevented Schiller from ever being elected to a professorship at Oxford, though he was a candidate. Schiller once confessed to Horace M. Kallen that mutual jealousies at Oxford were stronger even than selfinterest. However, Bertrand Russell wrote me, "I always thought that [Schiller] rather enjoyed being hated by the other Oxford philosophers." Earlier in Schiller's career, it was another type of philosophical fashion which he opposed. His first book, Riddles of the Sphinx, a philosophy based on evolution, was published anonymously in 1891; referring to Plato's myth of the Cave, he used the pseudonym "A Troglodyte." In the preface he said, "the anti-metaphysical surface current is still sufficiently violent, both in religion and in science, to render discretion the duty of all who do not covet the barren
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Introduction
honours of a useless martydom." The book actually scored a considerable success; it was issued in a second edition, with his name, in 1894, and reissued, somewhat revised, in 1910. In the later portion of Schiller's life, when his battles against absolutism were more generally supported, it was still another trend in philosophic thinking to which he ran counter. For, early in the century, it was symbolic logic and logical positivism which began to absorb the philosophical world. And, although Schiller had trenchant criticisms to make of the former and shared some opinions of the latter (e.g., that possible human experience must be the measure of the meaningfulness of any statement), his views were largely lost by the wayside. It was this bitter personal experience of opposition or neglect which provoked him to remark that the first ninety-nine times a new doctrine is stated, no one listens to it; the hundredth time, everyone says, we heard that long ago! He also suggested that as the reason why new ideas in philosophy or science are often camouflaged with a respectable pedigree: Copernicus in Aristarchus of Samos, Darwin in Anaximander, Einstein in Protagoras, and so forth. 2
Certain other interests of Schiller did not encourage cordiality toward him in academic quarters. Thus his concern with psychical research, though other "respectable" philosophers such as Kant, William James, and Henri Bergson shared it, was deemed odd. He was never "taken in" by it, as was Sir Oliver Lodge, for example, but he regarded it as on the very periphery of the domain of science, and therefore instructive as an example of the possible extension of scientific method. His interest in eugenics, though no one disagreed with him in theory, was likewise considered rather extreme, and at least on the borderline of properly philosophic pursuits. His novel religious views were used to his discredit by some of his opponents, although his
Introduction
7
philosophy, like that of James, can be used as a powerful support for religion. He also criticized certain educational practices, such as the Oxford examination system, and the requirement that Oxford fellows remain celibate for seven years. Schiller was a prolific and vigorous writer. In his active years, he was a constant contributor to Mind, to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, to the Hibbert Journal, to the Journal of Philosophy, to the Personalist, and to other technical and popular publications; he also contributed frequently to symposia and to publications in fields of his special interests, such as eugenics and psychical research. His major books in general philosophy are two collections of essays, Humanism (1903) and Studies in Humanism (1907). Some of these essays had previously appeared in periodicals; others were written specially for the books. Another collection of his essays was published as Must Philosophers Disagree? (1934), and a final collection was published posthumously as Our Human Truths (1939, selected by his widow, Louise Schiller). In the field of logic, Schiller's major works are Formal Logic (1912), which is an attack on the traditional interpretation, and Logic For Use (1929), which is a constructive re-interpretation. His early work, Riddles of the Sphinx, has been mentioned; it was unsuccessfully offered at Cornell for his Ph.D. thesis. In 1902 he contributed a long essay on "Axioms as Postulates" to a collection of essays, called Personal Idealism, by eight faculty members of Oxford, edited by Henry Sturt. In the field of scientific method he wrote, for Charles J. Singer's Studies in the History and Method of Science, essays on "Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof' (1917) and "Hypothesis" (1921). In addition, he wrote five other books on more popular topics and a study of the Protagoras speech in the Theaetetus, called Plato or Protagoras? 3 The core of Schiller's vision is the conviction that all
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Introduction
acts and thoughts are irreducibly the products of individual human beings and are therefore inescapably colored by the needs, desires, and purposes of men. What w e call knowledge, hence, is a growing and varying thing. It evolves, just as living things evolve, and for the same reason: human survival. The logic we use is not eternally fixed and absolute, but dynamic and changing. Man makes his truth, just as he makes his other values, beauty and goodness. Axioms are not God-given, but man-made; they are not a priori verities, but postulates or working hypotheses, whose truth grows or diminishes in our experience. If man is truly the measure of all things, as Schiller was fond of quoting from Protagoras, "non-anthropomorphic thought is sheer absurdity." 4 Our data are not "what is given," but "what is taken." There is genuine novelty in our expanding universe, and the future is wide open: there is literally no limit to what man can attain. Man's freedom is genuine, and his opportunities are endless. Mastery over nature, the conquest even of death itself—who can say that they are intrinsically impossible? The best definition of Schiller's humanism may be given in his own words: The philosophic attitude which, without wasting thought upon attempts to construct experience a priori, is content to take human experience as the clue to the world of human experience, content to take Man on his own merits, just as he is to start with, without insisting that he must first be disembowelled of his interests and have his individuality evaporated and translated into technical jargon, before he can be deemed deserving of scientific notice. To remember that Man is the measure of all things, i.e. of his whole experience-world, and that if our standard measure be proved false all our measurements are vitiated; to remember that Man is the maker of the sciences which subserve his human purposes; to remember that an ultimate philosophy which analyses us away is thereby mere-
Introduction
9
ly exhibiting its failure to achieve its purpose, that, and more that might be stated to the same effect, is the real root of Humanism, whence all its auxiliary doctrines spring.® Although Schiller lived most of his life in England, he was fairly close to the American pragmatists. Peirce, James, and Dewey were roughly his contemporaries. He admired James enormously, both as a philosopher and as a man, and he learned a good deal from him. With Dewey he seems to have had less contact, and somewhat less sympathy. Peirce made several comments on Schiller, both laudatory and critical, but, again, Schiller was less influenced by Peirce than by James. Schiller called his system at various times pragmatism, humanism, voluntarism, and personalism. These labels, he found, frequently implied both more and less than he intended, and his unique contribution is not described adequately by any of them. It is not always possible to discover the extent to which James, in particular, influenced Schiller (and vice versa), but the influence was undoubtedly strong. Schiller claimed to have arrived at his position independently; he wrote Leroux that he had not read a word of James before 1891, 6 when he was twentyseven. There was always a certain amount of disagreement between Schiller and James. Sometimes it was merely terminological (Schiller regarded pragmatism as a subdivision of humanism, whereas James would have reversed this relation). Bradley attempted, unsuccessfully, to drive a wedge between Schiller and James. 7 Peirce wrote: The brilliant and marvelous human thinker, Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, who extends to the philosophic world a cup of nectar stimulant in his beautiful Humanism, seems to occupy ground of his own, intermediate, as to this question [pragmatism] between those of James and mine.® Schiller . . . is a pragmatist, although he does not very well understand the nature of pragmatism.9
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Introduction
But James said: As I myself understand Dewey and Schiller, our views absolutely agree, in spite of our different modes of statement. 10
Schiller showed that a definition of pragmatism could be arrived at in various ways: through the definition of truth as logical value, through the statement that the truth of an assertion depends on its application or that the meaning of a rule lies in its use, or through the discovery that all meaning and knowing depend on purpose. (This last approach would be a protest against a rigid naturalism and against the divorce of logic from psychology.) Finally, pragmatism may be defined as "a conscious application to epistemology (or logic) of a teleological psychology, which implies, ultimately, a voluntaristic metaphysic." 11 In a letter to James, Schiller wrote: Personally, I cherish pragmatism chiefly as a method for the extraction of concrete results from refractory material: merely as a general point of view for judging the universe at large, it would seem to me as futile as other sorts of metaphysics. And I believe that methods are the really great things.12
The spirit in which this method is to be used, is what Schiller calls humanism: the term [humanism] is here used in a purely epistemological sense. It was adopted by me, with very little philosophic precedent, in the year 1902, to designate a point of view which emphasized the central position of man and of human enterprise in the theory of knowledge.13
The term "humanism" has of course had a wide and diverse usage. It denotes an episode in the history of classical literature, a theological movement, an educational theory, etc. It has also been used in philosophy in quite different senses.14 Some of these rather annoyed Schiller,15 who tended to use the term rather less, later in life, and to stress more specifically the terms "voluntarism" and "per-
Introduction
11
sonalism," which point to more particular elements in his doctrine. As between pragmatism and humanism, the chief difference is one of stress. Pragmatism emphasizes the special problems of knowing, more than humanism. Pragmatism insists on the purposive character of thinking, whereas humanism stresses in addition the personal character of thinking. In this sense, Poincaré, for example, may be called a pragmatist, but not a humanist. Thus, on the issue of realism, James is relatively objective, Schiller relatively subjective: According to Schiller all knowledge is pragmatic and provisional, including the knowledge of so-called facts. The object is always what it is, for a subject, and on the ground of the satisfaction afforded by so conceiving it. James, on the other hand, stresses the original and ineradicable aspect of objective givenness, without which the pragmatic operation would have no application or meaning; and which is itself known, independently of that operation, in immediate experience.18
Thus, although Schiller says pragmatism is "in reality only the application of Humanism to the theory of knowledge," 17 James speaks somewhere of Schiller's "butt-end foremost statement of the humanist position." 18 In more measured language, however, James also wrote: [Humanism] expresses the essence of the new way of thought, which is, that it is impossible to strip the human element out from even our most abstract theorizing. All our mental categories without exception have been evolved because of their fruitfulness for life, and owe their being to historic circumstances just as much as do the nouns and verbs and adjectives in which our languages clothe them.19
Schiller, James, and Dewey all denied that the everyday world consists of "mere appearance" or that the "true reality" is an eternal and unitary logical system. Schiller reacted mainly against Bradley's absolute idealism, James
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Introduction
against Royce's idealistic monism, and Dewey against Hegel and against Lotze's absolute idealism. James and Dewey both tended toward realism, while Schiller, with his emphasis on the personal, tended more to a voluntaristic idealism (which was not, however, anything like Schopenhauer's). Schiller would have disapproved of Dewey's naturalism, while Dewey, in his otherwise favorable review of Humanism, took care to express his "almost total dissent from the position taken in the essays entitled 'Activity and Substance' and 'Philosophy and the Scientific Investigation of a Future Life."' 2 0 Dewey considered that the "antecedents of humanism, via personal idealism, were distinctly an idealistic metaphysics." 2 1 But the spiritual ancestor of all pragmatists was Kant, with his theory of the function of the human knower in the constitution of reality. Dewey, like Schiller, took the process of knowing as central to reality, while James regarded metaphysics as distinct from epistemology, and projected at various times a treatise on the former subject. Schiller may be said to have pursued the subjective and individual aspects of James's psychology, while Dewey followed the objective and social aspects. In any event, it is clear that pragmatism or humanism is primarily a method rather than a body of dogma, and thus is consistent with various metaphysics. Schiller regarded H. G. Wells as a pragmatist, and also wrote that "Prof. Santayana's Life of Reason has exquisitely fused together a naturalistic metaphysic and a stoical ethic with a pragmatic theory of knowledge." 2 2 The attempt will be made in this study to present the philosophy of Schiller as an independent totality, showing its relations to the pragmatic movement, and its chronological development, only incidentally. Schiller's thoughts will be seen to be, on occasion, in contrast to those of other pragmatists; on the other hand, the similarity between many of his views and those of James in particular will be obvious.
Introduction
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Even where he was most affected by James, however, Schiller's individual "slant" usually made his contribution distinctive. We will begin with an examination in detail of Schiller's most important achievement: his theories on logic and its relation to science. These will first be sympathetically analyzed, and then (in Chapter VII) appraised and evaluated. The other areas of his thought will be treated separately in subsequent chapters.
II. Logic and Psychology IS T H E T E R M 'logic chopping" one of opprobrium? We have no such term as "mathematics-chopping" or "science-chopping." Why is it possible to say, "That may be logical, but it isn't true"? How can a plan conceivably be "all right in theory," yet never work? Why is there a pervasive feeling that logic has nothing to do with real life? It was the answers to queries such as these which Schiller undertook. What, actually, is logic? Its history and status have been beclouded by the general failure to realize that the term 'logic," from its development by Aristotle to the present day, means at least two different things: (1) a study of the relations of words, and (2) a study of the process of reasoning. These two studies may be contiguous, or complementary, or interdependent, or parallel; they are certainly not identical. We know that animals and babies can draw inferences without using words, and we have no scarcity of examples of the use of words without reasoning. Furthermore, there is the issue as to whether logic is a descriptive science, which relates how men actually reason, or a normative science, which lays down standards for correct reasoning. Why? The answer is to be found, at least in part, in the history of logic. It was Socrates who first startled and irritated his fellow men by discovering to them the implications of their incompletely apprehended beliefs. This experience of the uses and abuses of the process of reasoning led directly to WHY
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the formulation of the "science" of logic. The Sophists plunged into the business of "making the worse seem the better cause." There was as yet no legal profession in ancient Athens, and it became a commercial as well as an intellectual requisite for each Athenian to be able to argue convincingly. It was this need which Aristotle so conspicuously served: he reduced the art of reasoning to formal perfection. 1 In his Metaphysics, Aristotle distinguished four causes of being, that is, four senses in which any thing could be said to "be" at all: the formal, the material, the efficient, and the final. He carried over into his logic the distinction between the first two. Every statement, he said, must be about something, and it must also be in some form. If logicians could treat the matter of any possible statement as irrelevant, and study only its form, they would have a tool for criticizing all of knowledge. Logic could thus pronounce on the validity of all thought, and thereby be coextensive with all knowledge. This conception was universally held through the Middle Ages, and it is not without its adherents today. What concern, however, does logic have with the ways in which thinking is actually done or knowledge actually acquired? Schiller says, strictly speaking, none at all, for several reasons (which will be amplified below). Among them are the following: that the conclusion of every syllogism is contained in the premises (and therefore no new information is formally possible); that science actually advances by the formal fallacy of "affirming the consequent" of a hypothetical statement; that logic takes no account of the way in which the human mind functions; that logic abstracts from individuality, from context, from purpose, and from motive. In other words, logic is divorced from psychology and from the empirical sciences. Characteristic of this divorce, Schiller shows, is the fact
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that formal logic is nowhere concerned with the problem of meaning. In fact, "the abstraction from meaning was the essential trick of Formal Logic." 2 But surely the search for meanings, and endeavoring to ascribe meaning to other people and to things, may be described as one of the most characteristically human of our attributes. "Everything "has a meaning,' because everything is taken to have a meaning," 3 and this ascription of meaning is not merely a presupposition of epistemology but a necessity of life: it serves a biological function. Real meaning is to be found in a particular personal context, and is not identical with dictionary meaning, which is solely verbal. It is by the substitution of the latter for the former that logic parts company with psychology and dispenses with the actual uses of words and thoughts in the sciences. "Equipped with a knowledge of 'the' meaning of words, the logician can, unchallenged, substitute 'propositions' for judgments, 'validity' for truth, 'fallacy' for error, logical 'necessity' for intelligent purpose . . . " 4 Meanings can only be acquired by words in use. Since the meaning of words must in some way be both new and old, meanings must be plastic; their fixity is a fiction. All words may be used in different situations with different meanings, and therefore they are potentially ambiguous and actually dynamic. That dictionaries must be regularly revised is a truism. No form of words has any actual meaning until used, and then its meaning depends on the context involved and the intention of the user.8 Meaning is thus unavoidably personal, since context and intention are psychological facts. Meaning is "not merely a happening in the mind, but rather a reaction of the mind upon the course of events, and an attitude taken up towards potential objects of thought, which are transfigured when meaning is attributed to them." 8 Usually, the meaning experience is not identical with, and is greater than, its expression.7 We select what we think worth communicating. Thus a
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meaningless logic debars itself from understanding how we think.8 It is the science of psychology which studies and describes the mental processes. Of necessity, it studies individual minds, for that is the only kind of mind that exists. Everything that is known at all must be known by an individual human mind, or by a number of individual human minds. Knowledge, therefore, has a psychological aspect. All statements which purport to be true, all "truth claims" 9 in Schiller's terminology, are described by psychology and evaluated by logic. Psychology discusses the value and function of truth claims, logic determines how they are to be tested, sustained, criticized, harmonized, and utilized. Logic thus prescribes methods for the systematic evaluation of all knowing. If the universe were the sort of place in which all statements were true, or all statements were false, no such study as logic would be possible. But, obviously, some truth claims are false, some judgments are in conflict with others, errors occur, and some cognitive processes have more value than others. A normative science such as logic is therefore advantageous. The analysis of our reasoning shows that it is conditioned throughout by psychological processes. Schiller lists these as follows: 10 1. Interest: Thinking does not proceed unconsciously like digestion, or like gravitation. The mere stream of consciousness, or flux of mental images, is, of all mental processes, furthest from cognition: "As interest grows more disciplined and concentrated, thought becomes more vigorous and more definitely purposive." 11 2. Purpose: "Thinking occurs, not in vacuo nor in flashes, but in trains of thought, and . . . such trains are always purposive. That is, they are inspired by interest in some subject, started by some desire to know, and they aim at some end which seems desirable." 12
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3. Emotion: Thinking has an affective content, and is always accompanied by some emotion. 4. Satisfaction: "If a feeling of satisfaction did not occur in cognitive processes the attainment of truth would not be felt to have value." 13 The radically innovative character of Schiller's conception of logic may be expressed in the statement that it is reflection on actual thinking, not an exercise or calculus independent of the operation of the human brain in concrete situations. If logic is normative, the norms must be connected with and extracted from the actual course of thought. Reason may or may not give us a clue to the underlying structure of the universe; there is no ground to regard logic as a subdivision of ontology.14 If, through the machinations of some malign deity, the human mind is permanently and undiscoverably warped, we would have no way of finding this out, and logic would not thereby be absolved of its duty of observing how the mind actually functions.15 Schiller states: Thinking actually occurs only when an intelligent being capable of thought finds that he has to think; that is, finds himself in a situation where his habits and impulses no longer seem to suffice to guide his actions. He has then to stop to think . . . Thought arises, therefore, in a quandary, when he no longer seems to himself to know what to do, or is in doubt as to what he had better do. The primary purpose of his thinking is thus determined by its origin. It is, to get over his difficulty, to solve his problem, to leam what to do. Thinking is thus a definite stage in a process of knowing, and the knowing has for its origin the stoppage, and for its aim the guidance, of action. Logic will not attempt to lay down the law to thought before there has been any thinking which has been observed. Logical rules will rest on observation of psychical facts, and will not be prior to them as "laws" which can dictate to facts.16 It would be instructive to note, in passing, the similarities
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between Schiller's views as to the origin of thinking, and those of some of the other pragmatists. Thus Dewey says: Thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a forkedroad situation, a situation which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives . . . Demand for the solution of a perplexity is the steadying and guiding factor in the entire process of reflection . . . The problem fixes the end of thought and the end controls the process of thinking.17 And Kallen remarks: Thinking—worse luck!—came into being as response to discomfort, to pain, to uncertainty, to problems, such as could not exist in a world truly made for us.18 And even Santayana, who is certainly not close to pragmatism, asserts that any idea has its birth in some inner or outer maladjustment. 19 It is also interesting that this view of the origin of thought dates from Schiller's early, prepragmatist days. In his first book he wrote: The origin of science, philosophy, and religion was to be found in . . . the fact that the world is so constituted that we can not in thoughtless content acquiesce in what is given. The perplexity, with which thought starts on its road to knowledge, is forced upon it from without.20 Not only is thought conditioned by other psychological processes, but the most fundamental conceptions of logic describe processes which cannot rightly be understood except psychologically. Let us consider, for example, the concept of "certainty." We say that if all A is B, and all B is C, then it is logically certain that all A is C. How can this "logical certainty" be proved? Is it meaningful to refer to "objective" versus "subjective" certainty? Does not the one depend on the other? Basically, all logical demonstration presupposes or requires the three so-called "laws of thought." 21 Is it possible to eliminate from the logical concepts of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle, their
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psychological dimensions? Or let us take the concept of "necessity," or of "self-evidence." Is not the logical sense of these terms continuous with, and inseparable from, a feeling of psychological conviction? It is quite true that often we are psychologically convinced of things which are very far from logically certain (or even true); and it is also true, per contra, as in the case of the student learning the trigonometric identities, for example, or in the logical puzzles in which a single inescapable conclusion is artfully concealed amid a welter of statements, that we remain unconvinced at first by what is demonstrably certain logically. However, what meaning can be assigned to the term "certainty" which does not have a psychological aspect? The ideal of mathematical demonstration, which compels the assent of all intelligence, still requires the psychological fact of that assent. As Cohen and Nagel say, Our emotional dispositions make it very difficult for us to accept certain propositions, no matter how strong the evidence in their favor. And since all proof depends upon the acceptance of certain propositions as true, no proposition can be proved to be true to one who is sufficiently determined not to believe it. Hence the logical necessity revealed in implication, as in pure mathematics, is not a description of the way all people actually think, but indicates rather an impossibility of certain combinations of the objects asserted.22
But what does this "impossibility" mean, apart from human thought? Schiller felt that formal logic had failed to analyze its basic conceptions, such as "form," "validity," "necessity," and so forth. The words "it therefore follows": just what do they mean? Many "logical necessities" are not so felt at all. Let us think for a moment of such instances of "necessity" as Polonius' remark to Laertes: "to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not
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then be false to any man." 28 Or of the well-known parody of Plato, in which, from two such premises as, the whole is greater than any of its parts, and the part is less than the whole, it follows of necessity that philosophers should be kings. Or of the employee who tells his employer, "I have to live, you know," and receives the response, "I fail to see the necessity." Schiller believed that logicians had never explored the psychological dimensions of their concepts or of the fundamental logical operations, such as judging, meaning, inferring, identifying, etc.24 These operations could not come about by so-called "pure" thought, and inevitably have a psychological coloration.26 Schiller boldly took the law of identity itself, and showed its origin as a psychological postulate. 26 We shall examine this in Chapter IV. It was Plato, in the Theaetetus, who first made the claim, in a sense, that true knowledge concerned the ideas and not mere particulars. Greek philosophy saw a serious problem for the theory of knowledge in the fact that a man compared to an insect is tall and compared to a mountain is short. How could the same man be both tall and short? Furthermore, the notorious inadequacies of sense perceptions indicate that the senses can produce mere opinion, not true knowledge. Thus resulted the dualism, separated by an impassable chasm, of the Real and the Sensible, the Universal and the Particular, the Noumenal and the Phenomenal, true Knowledge and mere Opinion. Intellectualistic or formal logic has been poisoned by this epistemology. It makes two abstractions, which Schiller calls the etherealizing and the depersonalizing of truth. Etherealizing truth means that the verification and application of a statement are deemed to be irrelevant to the truth of the statement. Depersonalizing truth means the abstraction from the purpose and meaning of the maker of the assertion. The hold which these conceptions have had on philosophy is a powerful one. As Schiller says:
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It is such a time-honored custom with philosophers to believe that "universals" are loftier and more sacred than "particulars," that their formation is not to be inquired into, that their value is wholly independent of their application, that they would subsist in unsullied excellence and truth, even though they never were, nor could be, used. It will take, therefore, a generation or two for philosophers to convince themselves that the essential function of universals is to apply to particulars, that they are actually true only because, and when, they are used, that their abstraction, therefore, from time, place, and individuality is only superficial and illusory, and that in short they are instruments for the control and improvement of human experience.27 The relationship between logic and psychology is central to Schiller's thinking. Both he and his critics devoted considerable attention to it. To the charge that psychology was not really a science, Schiller retorted that "a science should be a method, not a dogma." 2 8 He listed (in one of a series of eight lectures at Oxford in 1923 given by various men on the relations between psychology and the sciences) no less than nine schools of psychology, as follows: faculty psychology, associationism, mechanism, introspectionism, experimental psychology, behaviorism, psychoanalysis, teleologism, and supernormal psychology or psychical research. 29 The list would of course be different today, but Schiller's point was a sound one: different approaches and theories do not militate against psychology being a science, and in testing hypotheses there is safety in numbers. Logic and psychology deal with the same subject matter: the cognitive operations of human beings. They view them differently, and with a different intent, but no conflict between them is necessary. "Nor is it evident that they must be defined in such a way that everything logical should have to be regarded as transcending psychology, everything psychological as a hindrance to logic, and everything human as irrelevant to both logic and psychology."80 Logic
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considers only the cognitive aspects of mind, but the entire personality of each thinker has an effect on the course of his thought: his mood, temperament, selection of premises, and selection of goals, so to draw the line between Logic and Psychology as to frustrate and paralyse them both, is merely to abuse the power we have to define our sciences in the most convenient way . . . Let us give psychological fact authority over verbal convention, and allow reasoners to appeal to it from the latter. Let us allow for the development of the meaning of words in the growth of knowledge. Let us study the normal ways of human thinking and knowing which the sciences and common life reveal, before we set up "norms" and "ideals'* in our Logic which demand the abnormal and the impossible.31
As we mentioned, this insistence on psychological factors in logic aroused a storm of criticism. The most obvious one is the fact that the interest, purpose, and desire which provoke thought are also a potent factor in error, in causing us to see what is not really there. Psychology can testify abundantly to the fact that our senses frequently deceive us in the direction we would like them to; and psychical research, one of Schiller's interests, has found it almost impossible to eliminate this factor. Alfred Sidgwick, a sympathetic critic, remarked in a review of Schiller's Humanism: We must be careful not to overlook the difference between admitting that we only judge at all under the stimulus of 'interest' and admitting that the 'interest' we have in finding a particular judgment true can by itself justify our acceptance of it. The fact that the former kind of interest is necessary to knowledge does not prevent the latter from being one of the commonest sources of error. 32
We may agree that the effect of the psychological factors is ambivalent: without them we would not think at all, but they must be constantly criticized and evaluated. This was phrased with a difference of emphasis, and
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rather tangentially, by another critic, Max Eastman, in a review of Schiller's Formal Logic: "Formal logic is not, as Mr. Schiller presents it, a denial of the pervasiveness of emotional purpose, but it is an affirmation of it, and a caution on account of it, and a system of standards for making that caution effective." 33 But as an example of one critic who quite misunderstood Schiller's point, there is J. D. Mabbott: If . . . the character of each inference is so completely determined by the question which prompts it, the desires which forward it, and the actions which result from it, that disregard of these means error, then there can certainly be no logic for use' and (except this single statement) no logic at all. 34
This statement ignores the fact that it is the role of logic to evaluate each inference precisely because these psychological factors determine it. Henry Barker wrote: The distinction between Logic and Psychology . . . is merely one of convenience. Logic deals more with the systematic thinking of science, psychology more with the simpler processes of ordinary thought. From this point of view the abstraction which Logic makes from the personality of the knower becomes at once explicable and harmless: it is the kind of abstraction which Pragmatism itself would dictate. 35
But it is not true that logic ignores "ordinary thought," whatever that is; its concern is with evaluating and criticizing all thinking. Hastings Rashdall, in a symposium with Schiller and Bernard Bosanquet on this subject at the Aristotelian Society,36 admitted the importance of context and purpose and the real role of feeling and willing in thinking. He thought, however, that it was a question of directing attention to one problem at a time, and that Schiller was confusing feeling with judging. Schiller explained that "cogni-
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tive values occur twice over, in Psychology as so many facts, in Logic as subjects for a critical evaluation." 37 Schiller would have enjoyed Bertrand Russell's dictum that mathematics is "the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." 38 For Schiller felt that formal logic without the insights of psychology is also a vain and empty calculus of indeterminate symbols. He summarized his position: Humanist logic . . . challenges all the earlier logics, and accuses them of a false and foolish intellectualism, which has ignored and abstracted from all the characteristic operations of real thinking, and substituted a whole system of fictitious notions of abstraction. These have severed logic from its natural setting in the human mind, estranged it from human psychology, and delivered it over, bound hand and foot, to artificial and artful conventions of language. Thus has logic been made into a wordgame—or rather into a series of such, since their conventions could be infinitely varied—which had no relation whatever to the acquiring and assuring of knowledge, nor any bearing on the progress of the sciences.39 W e shall now proceed to analyze his criticism of formal logic in more detail, suspending our own appraisal of Schiller's views until Chapter VII.
III. Schiller's Critique of Formal Deductive Logic OF T H E ATTENTION of the early pragmatists was directed to the problem of how and why we think, and thereby to an analysis of logic. Dewey, around the turn of the century, was evolving his "instrumentalism" at Chicago, and Schiller's early thoughts also concerned themselves with a reconstruction of logic. His first book, Riddles of the Sphinx, published when he was twenty-seven years old, did not deal with logic directly, but after that he began to write articles for various periodicals, in which his interest in logic came to the fore. Some of the articles are included in the two volumes of essays which present the core of his general philosophy: Humanism (1903) and Studies in Humanism (1907). It became clear to him that he wanted to write a more systematic and organized disquisition on logic alone, and in 1912 he published his Formal Logic, with the intriguing and revealing subtitle, A Scientific and Social Problem. This book was primarily an attack on traditional logic, and it aroused considerable interest and controversy. It also stirred the hope that Schiller would produce a constructive presentation of his new humanist or voluntarist logic. The war and other problems delayed this project, but it finally appeared in 1929 as Logic for Use: an Introduction to the Voluntarist Theory of Knowledge. The crux of Schiller's critique of traditional logic is the proposition that all actual knowing is in fact knowing by individual beings for personal human purposes. This fact is ignored by traditional logic, which abstracts from the MUCH
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material content and context of a statement and attempts to extract truth from forms as such. Schiller derives numerous consequences from this fatal abstraction. Once the assumption is made that the actual process of thought could be set aside as psychological and therefore irrelevant, logic abstracts from the meaning of the statement, as, when, where, and by whom, made. The logician considers only the forms, forgetting that a meaning can be conveyed in more than one form and that a form can convey more than one meaning. (Symbolic logic, for which Schiller entertained an Olympian scorn, is an attempt to correct this. The extent to which it arose as a remedy for the defects in traditional formal logic to which Schiller called attention, and its relative success, will be discussed in Chapter VII.) Distinctions of form tend to degenerate into distinctions of words, and to lose contact with real problems. Furthermore, it was found to be impossible to separate form and matter utterly, for the matter of an assertion determined the choice of the form used. Moreover, the logical form of a statement provides no method for determining its truth. "All dogs are quadrupeds" and "all dogs are bipeds" have the identical form. Because of its renunciation of the world of things and thinkers, Schiller felt that logic was literally non-sense, and gleefully quoted the logician Christine Ladd-Franklin: "Of course, nonsense propositions are far better for practising logic on than propositions that make sense."1 Logic differs from other nonsense, however, for Schiller, in that it is part of the university curriculum and is therefore examinable nonsense. In his more bitter moments of reflection on the monstrous wastefulness of the study of formal logic, Schiller would sardonically remark that it had one great use: to give employment to logic professors.2 Traditionally, formal logic is concerned with terms, propositions, and syllogisms. The term is a concept, acting
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as the subject or predicate of a categorical proposition. It may consist of more than one word, and has been defined as "the representative in language of some object of thought, real or imaginary, concrete or abstract."8 But no real act of thought can correspond to the term as such; we think in propositions (or judgments). Logic meets this objection by saying, "It is convenient to treat terms as if they could exist independently of the proposition, and possess meanings in themselves." * It is thus a scientific or methodological fiction, a concept to which Schiller gave searching examination.5 In practice, the meaning of the term becomes the meaning of the word or words, and "it is precisely the existence of dictionaries which suggests and facilitates the logical' treatment of 'terms.'"6 But is the dictionary meaning the only and controlling meaning? Are not new and revised editions of dictionaries continually being issued? Is the meaning of a word actually fixed and eternal? To ask these questions is to answer them. "Because a word is essentially an instrument for the conveying of meaning, it is always in a measure pliant. It acquires its meaning or its meanings (for in time it is sure to grow more than one, even for dictionary purposes) in the service of man, and must always be prepared to take on new shades of meaning in that service."7 For meaning is essentially something to be conveyed or communicated, not retained, and therefore it is the meaning-in-use in a particular context, and not the dictionary meaning, which is important. Formal logic can thus deal only with potential meaning, with meaning which is not actualized or realized unless and until the term has a context and a use. Thus all the traditional classifications of terms are found by Schiller to be purely verbal distinctions without any essential correlation with the nature of thinking in the real world. For example, the distinction between abstract and concrete terms is ambiguous and unscientific. The unique-
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•ess of a proper name lies in the fact that it is applied to a unique individual, and not in the name per se; in abstraction from its use, a proper name is not at all concrete or unique. When an "abstract" term is properly understood and is successful in conveying meaning, it is as concrete as any other term. In the sense in which all thinking is a process of abstraction, the only real difference between "abstract" and "concrete" terms lies in the extent to which perceptual experience has been analyzed. "Thus 'concrete* terms are devised for use upon the objects of perception as they present themselves, while 'abstract' terms involve a further analysis of these same objects." 8 Similarly, the distinction between common (or general), singular, and collective terms depends on our purpose; it does not mean that we are unaware of the difference between any two cats when we subsume them under the common term "cat," but only that these differences are irrelevant to the immediate purposes of the classification. The distinction between positive and negative terms, likewise, is really based on the mental attitudes of affirmation and denial, and language puzzles logic "with forms like 'atom' and 'individual,' which are no longer negative, and 'void' and 'absolute,' which are hardly positive, and 'infinity,' 'evil,' and 'error' which are debatable." 9 Actually, it is the universe of discourse involved (another name for "context") which gives relevance to the conception of positive and negative terms: the old question as to whether triangles are virtuous or not, is really an anticipation of the humanist requirement that application or use be the foundation of logic. Likewise, the distinction between relative and absolute terms, since nothing in the universe is really absolute but is related in some way to other things, depends on an individual human mind in an actual context. Finally, any formal classification of terms is relative to the purposes of the classifier and therefore to its human uses.10
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It was the early Greek thinkers who first fell into the fatal confusion of words and things. Since they generally did not know any language but their own, "problems of translation never forced them to realize the variability of verbal equivalents of things and ideas, and to separate the thing and their idea of it from their word for it." 1 1 (It is on this, by the way, that Schiller largely based the educational value of learning foreign languages.12) It may fairly be stated that Plato's entire theory of Ideas is based on the verbal implications of the word "is": That which can be predicated, i.e. stated intelligibly, alone is, and conversely whatever is can alone be stated intelligibly, while whatever changes both is and is not, and sofloundersunintelligibly between being and not-being . . . The real cannot change, as the sensible seems to do. . . . That which is is to be grasped by reason alone, and the changeless alone is real.13 Even today, logicians are concerned with the problem of "the existential import of the copula." Aristotle too regarded his Categories as an analysis of ultimate reality, of "kinds of being," and not of kinds of words. (Note the relation of Substance to nouns, of Quantity, Quality, and Relation to adjectives, of Place and Time to adverbs, of Activity and Passivity to verbs, and of Situation and State to certain peculiarities of Greek grammar.) It never occurred to Aristotle to question the adequacy of words to express thoughts, or of propositions to represent the meaning contained in human judgments. The gamut of criticism to which Aristotelian formal logic has been subjected ranges from Bridgman's challenge to the suitability of Aristotle's verbal precision for the needs and actual operations of science14, to the statement of Korzybski that there is no reason to assume a correlation between Aristotle's logic and either the structure of the universe or the workings of man's consciousness. This problem has of course faced many philosophers, tacitly or explicitly. Who can say, for example,
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the extent to which Kant's categories of quantity, quality, relation, and modality, are verbal rather than ontological? Other aspects of the difficulties into which logic falls by its abstraction from human meaning, Schiller points out, are illustrated by the problems involved in the denotation, connotation, extension, intension, and comprehension of terms; in the inability of logic to define the individual, which, as such, has no "essence"; in the distinction between essence, property, and accident (which in science represents a selection for a specific purpose); in the delineation of genus and species (which Darwin has shown to be only a subjective and ad hoc convenience); and in the doctrine of the predicables. All of these difficulties boil down to the divorce between logic and science. What logic has done is to explore and make explicit the meanings and relations of words. It can do nothing with the methods whereby knowledge is increased. Logic can prove that all bodies are in space, because it is the "essence" of all matter to be extended. But logic cannot derive any previously unknown properties of bodies which are not contained in its definition. Thus "the attempt of the Formal doctrine to become indisputable ended only in its becoming unmeaning." 18 The whole problem of definition illustrates the difficulties which formal logic has in understanding the knowing process. For Aristotle, definition was a "making known of the Essence" 18 and the demonstration therefrom of its essential properties. The definer has to state the Genus, or class to which the object belongs, and its Differentiae, or respects in which it is differentiated from other members of that Genus. Thus every object is presumed to have one and only one Essence, and one and only one possible definition. Definition could not go above the Summum Genus, or below the Infima Species (in which only individuals were contained). The individual as such is indefinable, because he has no essence; that is, no one of his attributes is more es-
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sential to his being than any other of his attributes. Two men or two tables may differ in size, weight, color, shape, etc., but these serve merely to describe, not define, them. Schiller's criticism of this traditional approach to the problem of definition is crucial.17 Formal Definition becomes utterly inapplicable to the procedures of actual knowing. For it postulates a knowledge of the 'essence' which is not in fact either possible or desirable. In no science are we ever able to begin with knowing what is important ('essential') to the being of our subject. This is precisely what we are trying to find out. Even if, therefore, it has an 'essence,' that essence cannot be formulated. Our initial definitions, therefore, cannot but be provisional, and as our knowledge grows they must be modified . . . we never finish at all. It is in flat contradiction with the method of science to assume a limit to its progress.18 Secondly, no definition can exhaust the attributes of the thing defined, and therefore more than one definition of the thing is possible. The essence is always selected from among the properties, and therefore may be selected in more than one way for more than one purpose. There is thus a certain more or less arbitrary selectiveness in the making of every definition. But this introduction of human purpose and convenience is fatal to the Aristotelian scheme. It is this relevance to specific human purpose which for Schiller should be the first requisite of a good definition. Definitions are needed to clarify what a subject under discussion means, and are always intended to bear on some problem: "the essences and definitions of things are necessarily plural, variable, and 'relative', and never 'absolute.' " 19 They must be adjusted to our needs. We do not bother to define the useless, trivial, or irrelevant. A glance at a dictionary will show that a single univocal exhaustive definition is a rarity: The flexible, corrigible, relative definition, . . . which is always
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for a purpose and for use, and never for show, is the sort which science needs and devises. Formal Logic declines to provide this sort of Definition, or to have anything to say to it. But this is to say that Formal Logic never descends to earth and has no concern with real definitions or real knowing.20 And the fear by logicians that "mere" description, which was for them the only alternative to formal definition, was rambling, unsystematic, and meaningless, does not hold: Descriptions are just as much relative to purposes as definitions. The purposive character of the human mind reveals itself also in this that it simply cannot describe at random. The purpose which animates a description may be trivial or unworthy, its presuppositions may be fantastic or false, but a mind never functions with the unintelligent indifference to values of a photographic plate.21 One might expect that, regardless of the inadequacies of formal logic in discussing terms, it might be on more solid ground in describing real processes of thought when it discusses judgments or propositions. Aristotle defined judgment as a "synthesis of concepts as though they were one." 22 He implied, that is, that terms or concepts are the more elementary acts of thought, out of which judgments are built. But we have previously seen that the human mind in its actual functioning does not think in isolated terms. A second definition of judgment refers to the fact that every judgment claims to be true, and that formally errors or lies are indistinguishable from true statements. A third definition, incompatible with the second, asserts that judgments differ from other products of mental activity in their capacity of being either true or false. This also stems from Aristotle. 23 A fourth definition of judgment is that it concerns reality and reveals its nature to us. But this, which should be the most fruitful attribute of judgment, Schiller says, is subject to at least three objections. In the first place, it is psychologically false in that w e do not usually intend
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to assert an eternal truth about the totality of reality, but only about a particular and very small part of the external world. Secondly, it could state only tautologies, since logically a statement about the whole of reality could assert only that it is the whole of reality. Thirdly, it is inherently self-contradictory, since it would have to include the meanings actually intended by human knowers. Thus: [The formal treatment of judgment] can neither extricate itself from contradiction nor assist our actual thinking . . . the real nature of judgment cannot be grasped without examining the meaning-attitude in its concrete connexions with the psychic processes which determine the course of judgments. But it is just this inquiry which Formal Logic has declared to lie beyond its purview. 24
When formal logic analyzes propositions, it is of course on safer grounds, since the inquiry has been safely restricted to the forms of words. Here the difficulties are trivial, such as the making explicit of the copula, or the extraction of the subject and predicate in such propositions as "It is raining." But the classification of judgments, which is really a classification of propositions, runs into trouble. Formal logic divides judgments into classes based on their differences in quantity, quality, relation, and modality. On the basis of quantity, judgments are distinguished into universal, particular, and singular, depending upon whether they are about the whole, a part, or a single case, of the subject of the judgment. But this is linguistically inadequate in that the term "some" ranges technically from "at least one" up to "all but one," and thus does not do justice either to the use of statistics or to the fact that "a few" and "most" are quite different ideas. Logically, too, universal propositions suffer from plurality of meanings. " 'All trespassers will be prosecuted' may be 'enumerative', 'truly universal', or "hypothetical." That is, it may mean (in extension) a threat against certain persons; it may enunciate (in intension)
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a general connexion between trespassing and liability to prosecution, or it may mean 'if caught trespassing, then prosecuted.'" 25 On the basis of quality, judgments are divided into affirmative and negative. But, since logic attempts to ignore the human aspect of thinking, and the negation occurs only within a limited and selected universe of discourse, how can negative judgments be given formal intelligibility? On the basis of relation, judgments are divided into categorical ("The wish is father to the thought"), hypothetical ("If wishes were horses, then beggars could ride"), and disjunctive ("All numbers are either odd or even"). But these classes are not clear or exclusive. Hypotheticals often seem to involve a positive assertion, and categoricals may be held in a sense to be hypothetical. Besides, it is the subjective human attitudes towards the objects of our thought which determine the nature of the statement we wish to make. Lastly, on the basis of modality, judgments are divided into assertoric ("It is true"), problematic ("It may be true"), and apodictic ("It must be true"). But this does not distinguish between the varying degrees of possibility and necessity (of "It may rain tomorrow" and "The sun may rise tomorrow"), and introduces what is usually a psychological rather than a formal criterion. There is no serious objection to conceiving all 'necessity' as 'subjective,' i.e., as a human addition to the 'facts.' . . . how can a fact be more than fact or less than fact, and how can our certainties or doubts affect its being? . . . Once, however, it is admitted that necessity and possibility may depend on human attitudes towards reality, it follows that they do not belong to a Formal Logic which systematically excludes such attitudes.29 It is in its attitude toward judgment that logic most fails to do justice to the realities of living men. We have previously discussed Schiller's views as to the origin and nature of thinking,27 in contrast to the traditional philoso-
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phic notion that a rational animal thinks naturally and constantly. Actually, instincts, impulses, habits, and reflexes take care of most of the ordinary requirements of living. Thinking occurs in a problematic situation, in which we inhibit a natural impulse to act at once. We stop to think, as Schiller points out. We analyze a situation. Judging is essentially tentative, provisional, and experimental. Any inquiry must be interested, and no situation would be inquired into if it did not in some way seem questionable. "No question, scientific or other, could conceivably arise unless it could somehow make a personal appeal to a mind that raises it. The theory of 'disinterested' knowing fails to explain how any knowledge is possible." 2 8 The inquiring mind is filled with wishes, hopes, fears, and commands, and is not indifferent to the forms in which judgment is expressed. Judgment comes at the end of deliberation, and is a decision which leads to action. The judgment selected always seems to be better for the purpose than the alternatives which the mind has considered; it is therefore a claim to a certain value. The fact that it is phrased decisively, and that it formally terminates the state of doubt, should not conceal the fact that the question may be reopened and that the judgment may be experimental. Since every judgment is an act of personal choice and responsibility, it is inevitably risky. When a judgment has finally been made, it results in changing the situation (i.e., the world) as well as in improving the maker of the judgment by augmenting his knowledge. (Note the resemblance to Dewey's views.) Thus Schiller's account of judgment has a vital bearing on what logic should be: Though in origin Judgment is only the final step in securing a better response to a vital predicament in which an intelligent and (potentially) reasoning creature finds itself involved, its logical significance far transcends the immediate need from which it springs. It becomes a vehicle for the growth of knowl-
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edge and the evolution of reality—that is, of the real we apprehend; and these logical functions tend to dwarf its primary use, at all events in the eyes of logicians. The immediate value of a judgment . . . is relative to its effect on the situation which engendered it, and bound up with its success in effecting a salutary change and a transformation desired. It humanises logic by puncturing the traditional pretence that it is an affair of pure reason apprehending impersonal truth with indisputable cogency. It reveals instead the experimental character of thought, the progressiveness of knowledge, and the plasticity and malleability of the real-as-known. [These features will help the student of logic] to grasp the natural continuity of Judgment and Inference, the gradual consolidation of proofs, the accumulation of probabilities, the growth of truth, the purposive manipulation of experience, and the futility of imagining that thought can avoid risks, achieve finality, and come to rest in absolute security.29 To summarize, then, Schiller points out that the fatal error of formal theories of logic is to abstract the judgment from the circumstances under which it was formed, and therefore to degrade the judgment into a proposition.30 When we remember that the meaning of terms is inherently personal and contextual, we realize that it is useless "to discuss the value (truth or falsity) of a judgment apart from the circumstances of its origin and the consequences to which it has actually led, or, in one phrase, apart from its use in a context. Without this its meaning cannot be determined, and we do not know what we are talking about." 81 Examples of the ambiguity of judgments when considered formally are easy to give. Schiller quotes Professor Cook Wilson on how the meaning of "Smith is a fast bowler" will vary according to whether it answers the question "Who is a fast bowler?" or "What sort of a bowler is Smith?" or "What is Smith?" or "Is Smith a fast bowler?" 32 Another example is:
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When I-first read in James's Pragmatism (p. 285) that "optimism is the doctrine that thinks the world's salvation necessary," I thought it should read "unnecessary," until I saw that "necessary" and "unnecessary" would convey the same meaning in this particular context.*3 It is Aristotle's logic which is usually taken as the archetype of formal logic. However, the "logical analysis of judgment" in anyone's hands is bound to come to failure if it discounts the personal intention and circumstances of the maker of the judgment. Thus Hegel's formula of judgment as identity in difference disregards the fact that identities are always made or postulated by us through conscious disregard of those differences which we take for the moment to be irrelevant to the purpose of the judgment. Nor is Plato's idea of distinguishing between knowledge (or true judgments, which cannot err) and opinion (which may err) of any help, since it merely repeats the problem in italics. The reference-to-reality theories of Bosanquet and Bradley are metaphysical and absolutistic, and do not do justice to the growth of knowledge or the selectiveness of human judging. The third section of formal logic, after the discussion of terms, and judgments or propositions, concerns the syllogism and the process of inference. Certain procedures of "immediate inference" such as the conversion, permutation, and contraposition of propositions, are purely formal manipulation of symbols, and no one today will contend that they represent actual thinking. It is the syllogism which is the apex of the structure of formal logic, and which is regarded as an absolutely certain form of valid thought. The syllogism is an arrangement of three propositions such that the third or Conclusion follows with logical necessity from the first, or Major Premise, and the second, or Minor Premise. The three propositions contain, in all, three terms, each occurring twice, so that the middle term, which does not
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appear in the Conclusion, makes possible an inference about the relation of the minor and major terms. There are various technical rules for the manipulation of the elements of the syllogism, and there are, all told, 8192 valid syllogisms,34 as worked out by Aristotle and the medieval logicians. This formal structure, Schiller points out, though a great achievement, simply does not do what it purports to do.35 For Aristotle, a syllogism is "a reasoning in which there results, ( 1 ) from certain premises posited, ( 2 ) of necessity and in virtue of their being such, ( 3 ) something other than those presuppositions."36 This definition embodies the three fundamental claims of the syllogism: the postulation of true premises, the demand for an intrinsic, self-contained, and formal necessity, and the requirement that there be something new in the conclusion. The need for true premises is one of which logic has always been aware, for of course from a false premise anything can follow. But where to get them? The logical postulate about true premisses is an assumption about the nature of scientific knowledge, which, though it long seemed plausible, can no longer be regarded as true. It assumes that the sciences are the handmaids of Logic, eager and able to do all the dirty work of research, and on its completion to hand over to the logician the material he requires for his purer contemplations. But . . . this conception of the ability and attitude of Science does not seem to accord with the facts. The sciences never seem to finish their operations in time for the logician to begin his. They never profess themselves convinced of the absolute truth of their results . . . they seem to object on principle to any assertion of finality. If, therefore, the logician demands absolutely certain truth, he will not get any science to guarantee it him, nor will he be listened to when he censures the sciences for not yielding him the impossible sort of truth he desires.37
If it is asserted that premises can be taken as certain be-
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cause they are themselves the conclusions of previous syllogisms, it is obvious that this merely pushes the difficulty back one step and, furthermore, that this actually doubles the difficulty, since two true premises are required for every conclusion. Aristotle thought that the answer to this infinite regress could be found in intuitive, self-evident propositions which no one could question. But he sensibly shirked the task of listing such propositions, and, in view of what we have discovered since then, it is apparent that such psychological intuitionism is no way out of the dilemma. The second requirement, of intrinsic formal necessity, also presents difficulties. In the first place, its necessity only exists after the syllogism is completed, and this ex post facto necessity tells us nothing about how the syllogism was made, why the premises were selected, etc.; in other words, nothing of the reasoning which fathered it. The necessity of a syllogistic structure after it has been compiled must be regarded as wholly distinct from, and irrelevant to, the question of what necessity was inherent in the thought which constructed it. And only the latter is relevant to the question whether the syllogism can compel assent. For if any disputant may go into its making, he can dispute its application, its relevance to this issue, and declare it an ignoratio elenchi, without impugning its formal completeness. He may, therefore, refuse to make this particular syllogism.38 There are no formal ways of deciding on the initial selection of the premises to any argument. The choice is free, and as wide as man's knowledge. Schiller's mordant and eloquent scorn for the pretensions of formal logic, when compared with the fruitful progress of science, is worth quoting at length: It is necessary' then to vindicate the Freedom of Thought against the 'Necessity' of Formal Logic, and to show the impotence of the latter to curb the former. With this demonstration an essential part of the Formal Syllogism is disposed of. Its
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formal cogency is of our making and our choosing, and need never involve any real compulsion. As for the necessity of logical connexion,' it is nothing but an illusion engendered by Formal Logic. While the process of thought is still active, the logician keeps out of the way, and has nothing to say to it; for his vulturine 'analysis' never ventures to attack a living thought. He appears upon the scene when the thinking is defunct and over. He then strips the carcase of its flesh and blood, that is, abstracts from the thought's relations to the interests and idiosyncrasies of those who thought it. He disarticulates it, and casts aside the sinews, the value and purpose of the reasoning, as 'merely psychological,' and joins together its bare bones, to wit the verbal forms of the 'propositions' it has used, with the artificial wiring he calls 'connecting logically,' and finally offers us the jerky contortions of this anatomical preparation in lieu of the graceful flow of the actual thought. In other words, logical analysis' first destroys the real connexions between thoughts, and then feigns false ones that suit the arbitrary abstractions of Formal Logic. What it 'analyses' cannot be real, and what is real it refuses to analyse, and for this double falsification it demands the approval of all rational intelligence! 39 No wonder Dewey called his review of Schiller's Formal Logic "A Trenchant Attack on Logic"! 40 But this is not all. Schiller, paying tribute to the work of Alfred Sidgwick, 41 goes on to point out that even as a form the syllogism is not incontestable, because of the inherent ambiguity of the middle term. As we have previously indicated, identity is never absolute, but is the assertion that, for the moment, we are resolved to treat as irrelevant any differences between two instances of a class. Otherwise, as was long ago pointed out by Antisthenes, all knowledge would be reduced to "S is S" rather than "S is P". But the syllogism argues that "the verbal identity of a term that occurs in two relations necessarily overrides any difference which may be entailed by the two relations, and guarantees
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the real identity of the object it denotes." 42 That is, logic asserts that M is M, even though one M is M-in-relation-toS and the other M is Af-in-relation-to-P. But the fallacy of quaternio terminorum is inherent formally in the structure of the syllogism. If the middle term in relation to a particular minor (which may be a very exceptional case) develops a different meaning to the middle in its relation to the major, the syllogism breaks in two. Moreover, it is impossible to foresee whether this will happen until the attempt is made to use the middle term; and when it does happen, 'material' knowledge of the case will always be needed to understand why the reasoning has gone astray. 43
And this material knowledge, this application, is precisely what formal logic professes to ignore. The third requirement of the syllogism, that there be novelty in the conclusion, presents further difficulties. The "new" information in the conclusion may be psychologically new, but logically it must be contained in the premises. Anyone who knows that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man, must logically know that Socrates is mortal. This may be new to the man who learned the two premises at different times, or never combined them, but in what sense is this logically new? This problem is very old, and has never been settled. The charge is that the valid syllogism is actually an illustration of the fallacy of begging the question, petitio principii. For the major premise of a syllogism may be interpreted in three ways; but in each of the three the conclusion is begged in one of the premises.44 The first interpretation takes "all men are mortal" in extension, i. e., as an assertion made after examining all individual men. But then the mortality of Socrates is part of the evidence for the major premise. The second interpretation makes the major premise a definition of "man." But then the question is begged in the minor premise, when Socrates is stated to be a (by definition
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mortal) man. T h e third interpretation takes the major premise in intension, i. e., as a connection of universals or statement of a law of nature. Thus "all men are mortal" would mean that mortality, by a law of nature, is an essential attribute of humanity. The minor premise would place the individual Socrates in the class of men. But classes are only conventional conveniences (science is certainly nominalistic): Because an individual belongs to a class for most purposes, [it is not true that] he can also have attributed to him all the qualities found in other members of this class.48 Our 'universal laws,' moral and scientific alike, may fail to fit the peculiarities of special cases . . . an unapplied universal principle and the special case which limits its application may well be true together—each in its proper sphere.46 Every particular is fully concrete; it may exemplify an indefinite number of universals in a variety of contexts, and yet these may all leave its individuality unexhausted and intact . . . Why should every case of any universal exhibit all the qualities of that universal? May there not be exceptional cases to which under the special circumstances the normal rule does not apply? And may not the case we are interested in proving be in some respects exceptional? How can we know a priori that when we try to prove Socrates mortal by means of his general conformity to the habits of the human kind, we have not hit upon a quality in which he happens to be exceptional? 47 The history of science is full of such "laws of nature" which have been shown to have exceptions, Consider "atoms are indivisible," or "all swans are white," or "hemophilia is transmitted only b y females to males." 48 In the selection of the essential qualities of a class, w e may always make a mistake, and in subdividing classes to allow for special cases, there is theoretically no end but the individual. So that w e are forced to the conclusion that under any interpretation of the syllogism, it is a petitio principii and does not contain any novelty in the conclusion.
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We cannot, therefore, base genuine and fruitful predictions on the present meanings of our words. For we cannot foresee what changes they may have to undergo. In a world which is plainly capable of novelty and change there is no absolute proof, no absolute certainty of inference, and no complete scientific answer to Hume's searching question. Or rather, our answer cannot be more than methodological. We assume faute de mieux that Nature is 'uniform,' because it is the simplest of the assumptions we can start with, and enough, initially, to guide inquiry; but, as we painfully discover the inaccuracy of our assumption, we gradually correct our formulas until they work sufficiently. Our whole procedure is essentially empirical, and the pretensions of the formal logician to foresee the future and to predict it without fail by 'analysing' the present meaning of our words is fantastic and absurd.49 Associated with this assertion that the syllogism is a petitio principii is Schiller's argument against such absolutist logicians as Hegel and Bradley, who conceived an interrelation between logic and metaphysics. Schiller condemned the philosophic fondness for systems which no exterior fact could upset.50 Plato's attempt to make all the Ideas depend rationally on the single principle of the Good led Schiller to analyze the concept of the System. No system can be all-inclusive, because every system is based on an organizing principle (teleological or causal? determined or indeterminate? pessimist or optimist?) and therefore on the selection of what is relevant. Thus every system is of necessity partial, and relative to a purpose or use. No system is true merely in virtue of its form: two systems may be equally coherent and comprehensive but differ greatly in value, or both may be true relative to different purposes. A "circular" system is closed, and therefore vicious; there is no formal difference between "fallacious" arguing in a circle and "valid" reasoning in a system; they differ only in animus, purpose, etc., that is, in psychological considerations. An absolute system would have to be final, whereas
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in fact systems are essentially tentative and experimental; in any event, it would be impossible to test the truth claim of an all-inclusive system.61 It is important to remember that the epistemological idea of a system is not the same as the ontological idea of a Universe. One might conclude from Schiller's analysis of formal logic that he regarded it as worthless nonsense. This is not true. He took pains to assert that the Syllogism still retains an important critical function. All arguments can be put in syllogistic form, with more or less manipulation. Now to put an argument in syllogistic form is to strip it bare for logical inspection. We can then see where its weak points must lie, and . . . learn where and for what the argument should be tested further. 52
But fundamentally, for Schiller, the belief that it is possible to regard "formal validity" as abstracted from use and material truth, and logic as separable from psychology, personality, and context, results inevitably in the fact that formal logic is not inwardly coherent, is unable to deal with actual thinking, and is devoid of real meaning. Furthermore, even if logic is understood only as a game, it is of no aid to mental training. Its educational value is vastly overrated.53 Its false ideals have bad practical effects (that the motion of thought should not be free but compulsory, that the ideal of formal perfection is static fixity, that proof should arrive at certainty, that truth, being absolute, has no regard for circumstances, and that the absolute system of immutable truth is one), particularly on science and religion. Its effects on mankind generally are "dogmatism, intolerance, pedantry and contentiousness, timidity of thought, and a cowardly avoidance of risks." 84 By contrast, the new humanist or voluntarist logic will be based, in principle, on a description of the concrete procedure of actual knowing . . . It openly rests on personal meaning,
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purposive thought, freedom of choice between alternatives, desires, postulates and interests, hazardous selection, probable reasoning, and unending verification . . . Voluntarist logic is systematic and coherent and normative, because it is useful . . . meaning, truth, and use are bound up together, and function together in our knowing.55 Thus did Schiller launch his new logic on the world.
IV. Axioms and the Laws of Thought IN 1902 there was published a collection of essays called Personal Idealism, to which Schiller contributed his "Axioms as Postulates." 1 This brought him a mild notoriety. G. E. Moore, for example, writing a survey of British philosophy for that year, singled it out for attack and did not hesitate to characterize it as "utterly worthless." 2 C. S. Peirce, on the other hand, called it "that most remarkable paper." 3 Let us examine Schiller's argument. There is general agreement that the world consists, for us, in human experience plus certain connecting principles or fundamental truths. The "self" which experiences is a philosophical ultimate that cannot be analyzed away and is never complete, since our knowledge of self grows with experience. The "world" is not a ready-made datum, but is a product of evolution, which Schiller envisages, in a quasiBergsonian manner, as a kind of trial or experiment. The world is partly indeterminate, flexible, and plastic; absolute determinacy is not so much a practical fact as an exhortation or program to continue to look for causes. The initial experimentation of human beings is random and vague; "its direction is ultimately determined not so much by its initial gropings as by the needs of life." 4 From this biological origin of our experimenting and reasoning, it follows that "the logical structures of our mental organization are the product of psychological functions," 6 and that "a 'logical necessity' therefore always rests upon, issues from, and is discovered by, a psychological need." 6 Schil-
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ler's basic antipathy to absolutism made him feel that experimentalism pervades the universe. Even Natural Selection "proceeds by experiment, and adapts means to ends, and learns from experience." 7 He refers to "the radically tentative tendency which runs through the whole cosmos." 8 He coins the word "trialectic" to distinguish his experimental process from Hegel's. (Schiller could never resist a pun.) There are limits, however, to experimentation. The medium which offers resistance to the experimenter is "matter," whatever that may be in itself; in other writings, 9 Schiller uses the Aristotelian term hulé for the indeterminate potentiality on which men can succeed in imposing form. The objective world, given independently of us, does not constrain us to recognize it, but it is a persisting factor in our experience which w e can neither isolate nor ignore; it develops in experience. The world is what is made of it. The extent of its plasticity can not be known a priori, but only by trying. "Thus it is a methodological necessity to assume that the world is wholly plastic, i. e., to act as though we believed this." 1 0 Even our so-called "facts" have a provisional character. Schiller expresses his pragmatic or radical empiricism as opposed both to the older empiricism and to apriorism, as follows: Axiomatic first principles, whereby we organise and hold together our knowledge, are neither the products of a passive experiencing [the old empiricism] nor yet ultimate and inexplicable laws or facts of our mental structure [apriorism].11 According to the former theory, the passive mind is moulded by an external world. But certain principles must be possessed by the mind (e. g., uniformity, order, regularity) before experience can confirm them; they are presupposed by experience. As against apriorism, Schiller asserts that it does not follow, because "necessary" truths are so pre-
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supposed, that they are therefore a priori: they may be postulates. If the a priori is not temporally earlier than the a posteriori, its superiority is merely honorific. That which we call the axioms of identity, substance, causality, unity of apperception, etc., are facts, but they are psychological facts and may be regarded historically and psychogenetically. The old empiricism does not understand the activity of the organism, and apriorism does not understand its oneness. Axioms arise out of the activity of the whole man, out of all his needs and desires. "By conceiving the axioms as essentially postulates, made with an ultimately practical end, we bridge the gap that has been artifically constructed between the functions of our nature." 12 At this point we should consider the traditional "laws of thought." These are the following: 1. The law of identity asserts that "A is A", or that "every proposition is identical with itself." 2. The law of contradiction asserts that "A is not non-A", or that "A cannot both be A and not be A". 3. The law of excluded middle asserts that "everything must either be A or not be A." Schiller asks: In what sense are these formulas Laws? Are they laws of thought or of things, or of both, and if so, of which primarily? In what sense and to what extent are they consistent with the principles of Formal Logic? In what sense and to what extent is there truth in their general idea? What precisely is the meaning claimed by each of them, and to what objections is it open? How far and in what sense are they severally true? 13 Now it is clear that in actual thinking and speaking we do contradict ourselves, and we do use words in varying senses. So the laws of thought are not natural laws in the sense of observed uniformities. Even granting that our contradictions are "psychological," it "should be as impos-
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sible, e. g., to contradict oneself as to fail to gravitate."14 Are they then canons or prescriptions as to how men ought to think? But then on what does this obligation to regulate our thinking rest? No one deliberately violates them, but "ought" implies "need not." For Aristotle, they are not so much logical rules as examples of the absolutely axiomatic principles from which any demonstration must start.15 Aristotle recognizes that these laws must in operation have, at least tacitly, such qualifying clauses as "in the same respect" or "at the same time." But, says Schiller: Once the contentions are withdrawn that A is absolutely and eternally and without reservation A, and that if a thing has once been called A it must forever remain A and cannot change in any respect, a critic of the Laws of Thought has merely to insist that the two cases of A are not identical in all respects and to assert that their differences are relevant to the point at issue. The Laws of Thought are thereby put completely out of action, and he can, unhindered by them, assert one thing in the one case and another thing in the other, merely telling his opponent that he has erroneously taken them to be 'the same.' 16
We have previously seen that meanings are in fact never rigid and require a context.17 The problem, furthermore, which Aristotle fails to solve by ignoring "material" knowledge and by insisting on the meaning of words, is really one of the relevance of the difference between two cases to the point at issue.18 Aristotle does not account for "the fact that the question really raised is whether the same 'name' is properly applicable to the two 'cases', and whether we are right in taking them as both 'cases' under the law."19 Can the laws of thought really be principles of being, which all objective reality must follow? The fact that all things change would seem to rule that out. One has but to think of Zeno's paradoxes in this connection. But if they are not laws of things, why do things behave as if they were? If things do not actually remain identical, why can
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we fruitfully treat them as if they did? If they are laws in any sense, can they be proved, or must not any attempted proof assume them? If identity is to be treated as exclusive of possible change, can it in any sense apply to thoughts or to things, or only to the dictionary meaning of words? Can the law of contradiction or the law of excluded middle apply to things which change insensibly? Schiller's answer to this problem is to point once again to the failure of logic to take into account the purposive, volitional nature of our thinking and the biological setting of the thinking process. Identity, contradiction, and excluded middle are not found by us either in thought or in things; they are, in a legitimate sense, made by us.20 It is from experience that we find that certain objects of thought can be treated as equivalent in different contexts.21 We may make mistakes, of course, and it is this ever-present possibility which makes the law of identity a principle of thought and not a tautology. We find in the world neither the absolute fixity of things which Aristotle and Plato required, nor such chaotic fluidity as to make it impossible to act purposively. We find that "it is the business of thought to operate on reality and to transform the flux in our eyes by drawing our attention to its relatively permanent features, by selecting which we may control it." 22 In short, our laws of thought and our axioms are actually postulates.23 The postulate is a device whereby we try to harmonize our experience. It is experimental, tentative, and not always successful. It has its origin in our practical needs, and not all our postulates necessarily form a coherent system inter se. The "will to believe" of William James may be loosely translated into the "right to postulate" of Schiller.24 Schiller audaciously selects the identity principle itself as an example for detailed study. He shows that we assume sentient consciousness as an undefined psychic fact; we find it characterized by continuity, coherence, conativeness, and
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purposiveness, and by a felt self-identity. This suggests to us "the recognition of the same in the recurrence of the like."28 We never experience absolute identity, in either the organic or inorganic worlds (cf. Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles), but we need it for practical life, and so we postulate it. Recognition produces cognition, which produces the identity postulate; this is a training in abstraction. Nature never quite conforms to the postulated ideal of abstract identity, since all things are in a state of process or becoming; but man says, there shall be identity! Thus does Schiller answer Heraclitus. Schiller believes we make our other postulates in the same purposive way. Thus the unsatisfactory character of our experience leads us to differentiate between Subject and Object, and to postulate the external world.28 If everything happened exactly as we wished, what would be the definition of the Self? Causation and sufficient reason emerge from the fact that the changeless needs no cause, and that we would find the absolutely satisfactory self-evident. (William James once remarked that we have a problem of evil, but no problem of good.) The uniformity of nature is for us a practical and methodological necessity.27 On Space and Time, Schiller said, "certain psychological data have been made the basis of conceptual constructions by a course of methodological postulation."28 Practical life forces us to correlate our visual and tactile images into a single perceptual "real" space. (Cf. the interesting recent experiments of Adelbert Ames and Hadley Cantril, which set the visual and tactile images at variance.) The space of the geometries is a conceptual construction which enables us to calculate the behavior of bodies in "real" space. It does not coincide with real space, and may be opposed to it; it is valid as far as it is useful, but is never real.29 The nonEuclidean geometries, similarly, are ideal interpretations, which may or may not be valid (i. e., useful). Schiller had
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a curious prejudice against the non-Euclidean geometries, which he did not understand very well (confusing them with four-dimensional geometries); he thought they were too complex, too difficult to apply. However, he realized that "all geometrical spaces are grounded on the same experience of physical space, which they interpret differently . . . by means of the various postulates which define them." 30 Since the activity of postulation is constant and dynamic, it follows that some postulates have been so thoroughly corroborated by experience that they have become unquestioned axioms, whereas others have become less useful and are therefore no longer regarded as "valid" axioms. Typical of the latter is the "axiom" of substance: compare its status today with that which it enjoyed some centimes ago. Another "axiom" which in our own times has been found invalid (i. e., useless), is the scientific conception of the ether. On the other hand, evolution, once a wild hypothesis, has become a methodological axiom, because of the wide extent to which it can render our experience congruous. Similarly, Schiller feels, the postulate of teleology is useful and therefore to some extent valid: if the world is knowable at all, we must postulate that it can be interpreted ex analogia hominis. Nature includes human nature, which is teleological to the extent that it is rational. All postulates and scientific methods are pervaded by human purpose, and teleology, as a method for understanding reality, may yield valuable results. Finally, God and immortality may likewise prove useful postulates.31 Schiller was not unaware of some of the implications of relativity; he pointed out that Einstein reinforces Protagoras' dictum that man is the measure of all things.32 The general relativity theory is a striking example of the postulative nature of science, for in the assertion that there is in the universe no privileged point of observation, there is
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implicit the assertion that any viewpoint or postulate system is as "valid" as any other if its utility for purposes of prediction and control, and its fertility for practical results, are as great. Copernicus' postulate replaced Ptolemy's, and was in turn succeeded by Einstein's: which is "valid"? Relativity is a postulate which seems to have become an axiom. Schiller concludes his "Axioms as Postulates" by showing the conformity between his account of scientific postulation and his theories of the nature of logic: the "ideals of the normative science must be developed out of the facts of the descriptive science . . . [The] logical account of postulation is an idealised version of the course of actual postulating." 33 He is aware of the incompleteness of the method of origins, and the danger of the genetic fallacy, but complete explanation is unattainable while knowledge is still growing. But, pure thought which is not tested by action and correlated with experience, means nothing, and in the end turns out to be mere pseudo-thought. Genuine thinking must issue from and guide action, must remain immanent in the life in which it moves and has its being. Action, conversely, . . . needs thought and elaborates it.34 Schiller's account of the nature of our axioms was, as has been stated, received in some quarters with considerable hostility, yet it stood the pragmatic test; some thirty years later, he was able to ask again, more formally, for an explanation of the law of identity in Aristotelian logic.35 Is this law an observed uniformity, as in the empirical sciences, or a precept or canon for ensuring successful operations, or a command, or a combination of all three or any two? Or is it a mere tautology? or a guarantee of transition from one case to another? But such an assumption would make error impossible. Or does the law state the irrelevance of the differences between Ai and A2? But this Aristotle cannot state formally, since it depends on experience. In other
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words, identity as a postulate remains for Schiller the most satisfactory formulation. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that William James felt that Schiller did not quite succeed with his example of identity in "Axioms as Postulates." 3 6 Schiller stuck to his guns, however, and one can cite numerous instances of scientific "axioms" which have been discarded because they no longer proved useful guides to experience: that no chemical element can be transmuted into another, that the atom is indivisible, that space and time are absolute, that light is a wave, that the sum total of mass in the universe is constant, and so forth. What is the status of present-day assertions that the sum total of matter and energy in the universe is constant? Or that the speed of light is constant? Schiller wrote: The strange romance of the atom, which began as a bit of metaphysical dogmatism, which had a long career as a methodological assumption, and seemed just about to be reduced to a methodological fiction when it was shown to be a real fact in nature, should serve as a signal warning against the rash presumption that what is assumed because it is convenient cannot be really true. 37
We shall evaluate Schiller's formulations in Chapter VII, and revert to this topic in Chapter VIII.
V. Philosophy of Science of the traditional logic for its failure to concern itself with the actual augmentation of knowledge produced a philosophy of science which otherwise hostile critics found admirable. Sidney Hook, for example, singled out for praise "the worth of his writings on the nature of hypothesis," 1 and R. F. Alfred Hoemlé, though repelled by "the undeniable extravagance of statement" 2 in "Axioms as Postulates," was in accord with Schiller's characterization of thinking as essentially experimental. In an essay on "Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof," 3 Schiller pointed out that logic has treated scientific discoveries as illustrations of a preconceived ideal of proof and has either misunderstood or failed to recognize the problems of science.4 The problems which have been misconceived are: 1. The value of classification (as revealed, e.g., by Darwin). 2. The function of definition. 3. The scientific importance of analogy. 4. The scientific role of hypothesis. 5. The scientific use of fiction. 6. The incomplete dependence of scientific results on the "principles" by which they were obtained. 7. The formulation of scientific "law" and its relation to S C H I L L E R ' S CRITIQUE
u
»
cases. 8. The exact nature of causal analysis and imputation. The problems of science which have not been recognized
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by logic are: 9. The determination of what is relevant and what may or must be excluded from an inquiry. 10. The methods and justification of selection. 11. The experimental nature of all thinking and the consequent unavoidability of risk. 12. The necessity of so conceiving truth and error that they may be discriminated. 13. The need for inquiring into the meaning and conditions of the communication of knowledge. The core of Schiller's plea for the substitution of a valuable logic for a "valid" logic is that it relieves the syllogistic form of the charge of petitio by taking the premisses as hypotheses to be tested. It transforms the retrogressive search for indisputable premisses into the unending progress of scientific verification. It baffles the assaults of ambiguity by admitting the risk of ambiguity in the abstract but requiring the ambiguity to be shown in each case. It puts verbalism in its place, and relieves Logic of a vast mass of pseudoproblems by refusing to accept propositions instead of judgments as authentic examples of thought. And, finally, it brings out forcibly how much more vital to reasoning are novelty and progress than proof and assurance.5 The procedure of science, according to Schiller, is a series of guesses, dodges, experiments, and hypotheses; "it has not the faintest resemblance to the majestic march from inevitable premisses to a predestined conclusion which so fascinates us in the theory of proof." 6 It starts with a problem, with a question put to a part of Nature. This question may always have more than one answer, all of which must be examined. (By our postulate of determinism, we deny that any question is in theory unanswerable.) Since the human mind is finite, it is impossible to assemble all the facts, or to examine all the alternative explanations. Nor can we assume, when we have an adequate explanation, that we have
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discovered the cause. (Compare Dewey's conception of science as an endlessly self-correcting process.) Persistence and an open mind are requisites for scientific progress. The logician has traditionally said to the scientist, first assemble your facts! But the concept of "fact" is a highly sophisticated and ambiguous one. Everyone seems to be in favor of facts, but it is noteworthy that not everyone seems to agree on just what they are in a particular context. In the widest sense, "fact" includes everything experienced, including errors, illusions, and hallucinations. "Fact" is certainly independent of us, ultimately, since it is found, and not made. But the "finding" of facts is not a haphazard or random adventuring, nor is the "fact" so "found" the same thing as the "fact" which science uses. It may be questioned to what extent "facts" exist in isolation at all. For "as immediately experienced, [primary reality] is a meaningless chaos, merely the raw material of a cosmos, the stuff out of which real fact is made." 7 Facts at the outset of inquiry "are always problematic, always provisional, and always suffer transformation more or less as our knowledge grows." 8 For the data out of which science builds are actually sumpta. They are selected out of a mass, because of motives which are dictated by the interests of each science, and in accordance with a hypothesis as to how they shall be used.9 This hypothesis or theory may be implicit or explicit, but the "facts" of the scientist are the result of a process of selection, segregation, and evaluation. They are not absolute, but relative to the state and condition of the science, to the methods and instruments whereby they are discerned, to the condition under which they are observed, and to the aims and bias of the scientist.10 Schiller says: The 'real fact' has to be made like the 'real truth' in a process of inquiry . . . the real fact has to be laboriously discriminated from dangerous imitations . . . 'Truth' and 'fact', therefore, can never be arrived at, in any scientifically important sense, with-
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out a process of critical examination, selection, and rejection, which evolves and authenticates them both together.11 Dewey, in his review of Humanism, called special attention to this view of Schiller's: The contention of the humanist is precisely the unreality of the separation from each other of describable facts and normative values . . . The factual continuity of biological function and psychological operation with logical norm is one of the most significant things to be noted and described.12 Many years later, in his own magnum opus, Dewey wrote: The orders of fact, which present themselves in consequence of the experimental observations the ideas call out and direct, are trial facts. They are provisional. They are "facts" if they are observed by sound organs and techniques. But they are not on that account the facts of the case.13 To show the relativity of fact to hypothesis, Schiller asks a number of pertinent questions. 14 What is the color of blood? If the blood is that of a mammal, rather than a caterpillar, and seen by an eye with normal color vision, and in daylight, it is red. Does the sun attract all bodies in the solar system? Yes, unless they are so small that light pressure is greater than gravitational attraction. Are we in motion or at rest? Was Columbus the first European to discover America? Is matter indestructible? W h o started the (first) World War? Is "witchcraft" a fact? T o these questions we may add some Schiller did not think of: Is "pain" a fact to the Christian Scientist? Is "evil" a fact to certain theologians? Is "purpose" a fact to certain naturalist philosophers? Is "psychogenic causation of disease" a fact to certain physicians? Is extra-sensory perception a fact? Now, if facts are to a considerable extent made, i.e., willed, why are there any unpleasant facts? This presents no great difficulty to Schiller. For man is not omnipotent, and there is a limit to the malleability of the universe. That w e call a fact "unpleasant" means we decide to accept it for
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the time being, but we hope and plan eventually to make it unreal. It is a pragmatic incentive to action, to the transformation of the "given" which is the function of science. (Bergson has said, "Science is an adaptation of reality to the needs of practice.") The "unpleasantness" of certain facts does not militate against the relativity of facts to hypotheses. Nor are facts relative only to laws or hypotheses. They are also relative, Schiller shows, to our own senses and organic apparatus. Vibrations of air between 32 and 40,000 per second are musical tones; outside of that range, they are quite different "facts." Other vibrations between two determinate limits are seen by the eye as colors, but there are infra-red rays not seen by the eye but perceived by the skin as heat, and ultra-violet rays which produce chemical effects. Our sensory recognition of vibrations is discontinuous, and this fact is biological. Nor does the use of instruments alter this problem. For they too have a limit to their exactness, both practical and theoretical (consider the implications of the Heisenberg principle), and require the human observer in the last analysis. And why is it that actually no two observations or experiments ever agree exactly? "The vaunted regularity of nature is in a sense always faked. It is a regularity not in the crude facts of observation but in an artificial extract from them."19 The whole concept of "exactness" is one which has been insufficiently explored.16 Besides the relativity of facts to hypotheses and to the human organism, the human memory is as indispensable a presupposition of "fact" as is sense-perception. It is almost impossible to conceive what a "fact" would be for us if we had no background of memory to rely upon. And memory should be selective: a certain capacity for forgetting, as well as a certain capacity for retaining, are necessary postulates of effective knowing.17 This ability to bring pre-
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vious knowledge to bear on a new situation has been called by Bertrand Russell "mnemic causation." It is the reason why every scientific fact has a historical aspect. Data are never completely depersonalized. Ideally objective knowledge is nowhere to be found. (Cf. Arthur F. Bentley, "In appraising 'fact', we must take into acount its involvement in procedures called "knowing' and "being known'.") 18 There is lastly the relativity of facts to words. Because of the personal character of meaning, and the plurality of meanings of every word, a language which would attempt to set up a one-to-one correspondence between words and things would face insuperable obstacles. It would be a radical cure for vagueness, but it would consist solely of nonce-words or hapax legomena, and would be completely unwieldy. Furthermore, in any new research, the existing terminology usually proves inadequate; in any progressive science, the words grow (cf. "species," "element," etc.). It is the hypothesis which makes the fact what it is, but it is not the fact which makes the hypothesis what it is. The hypothesis is in essence a free play with the possibilities, an exercise of the creative imagination, a "hunch," an intuition. A scientific hypothesis is never completely proved; in fact, in the long run, every scientific hypothesis seems to have been disproved. Its value lies in the ability to transform what is merely given into what makes sense for us. The recognition of mental activity enormously simplifies the problem of Hypothesis. It is unnecessary to discuss either the question of principle, whether hypotheses are permissible, or questions of detail as to what hypotheses are 'valid' and how a 'good' one may be distinguished from a 'bad' one. If every 'fact' rests on selection and involves an experimental analysis of the given, and if every 'law' is provisional and in need of confirmation, it follows that there is something hypothetical about every act of thought, and that the distinctions between fact, interpretation, theory, hypothesis, and guess are plastic and fluid, and
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that the same condition of a scientific inquiry may be differently judged by different observers. And if the truth-claim of every judgment needs to be verified, it is superfluous to insist that unverifiable hypotheses are of no use to science, and so 'invalid.' A hypothesis (in the narrower sense) is imagined to represent reality, while a fiction is a creation of unrestricted imagination. But in fact each transforms itself into the other on the slightest provocation. It is vain to prohibit the play of mental activity with the given, and unwise to restrict its freedom . . . Whatever, therefore, the psychological genesis of any hypothesis, its logical value lies in its verification by its working.19
Schiller wrote an essay on "Hypothesis" 20 in which he forcefully showed the interrelationship between fact and hypothesis: The difference between fact and fiction is not that in the former the mind is somehow coming in contact with an extramental independent real, while in the latter the intellectus sihi permissus runs riot and is creating freely out of nothing; we are in both cases manipulating mental contents, not, that is, 'the real' facts, but facts-as-they-seem-to-us in the apprehension of the imperfect knowledge of a limited intelligence—nor yet mere fictions, but fictions-suggested-by-the-real we suppose ourselves to be encountering, and believed to be applicable and relevant to that. When such a scientific fiction turns out to be very relevant, what more natural and proper than that it should be raised to the rank of 'fact'? 21 The real guarantee of a good hypothesis does not consist in its conformity with abstract rules, formulated in advance of the investigation; the hypothesis is made good by being progressively knocked into shape in the process of its verification by the facts it has to account for. Hence it is not really requisite that a hypothesis should be correct, complete, or even probable, to start with; if it is plastic and corrigible, it will gradually assume a more and more valuable shape. The one essential it must have is that it must suggest a convenient method of exploring the subject it concerns; provided it does this, it may permit itself the
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use of the most patent fictions, and may leave aside, as 'difficulties' to be dealt with later, the incoherences which its incompleteness involves.22 And, in another passage, The mental attitude which entertains hypotheses . . . and can take 'fact' as hypothetical and possibly unreal, means an intellectual revolt against mere givenness. It has become critical of appearances, and has partially freed itself from the oppression of brute fact. It meets reality with an active response, and does not merely submit to whatever comes along. It feels free to anticipate reality by its guesses, to question it, to experiment, to distrust and doubt appearances, to rearrange the world, at least in thought, to play with it, and with itself. For Hypothesis is a sort of game with reality, akin to fancy, make-believe, fiction, and poetry.23 The making of hypotheses, then, need not be regulated in any way. Such latitude in the formation of hypotheses was objected to by C. S. Peirce, who wrote, "I hold it to be very evil and harmful procedure to introduce into scientific investigation an unfounded hypothesis, without any definite prospect of its hastening our discovery of the truth. Now such a hypothesis Mr. Schiller's rule seems to me . . . to be." 24 But Peirce was not consistent in his criticism, since elsewhere he wrote: "The abductive suggestion [hypothesis ] comes to us like a flash. It is an act of insight." 28 And Peirce does not quite see that Schiller is not telling the scientist how to form hypotheses, but describing the actual procedure he follows. Peirce, by the way, was in general, greatly impressed by Schiller's work, referring to it as "brilliant and seductive humanistic logic." The scientific hypothesis, then, may emerge from the merest guess or false analogy. Vemer's Law, in philology, is supposed to have orginated in a dream. But the value of the hypothesis accrues only after it is verified. Inquiry demands abundant hypotheses, but they must, to be fruitful, admit
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of some manner of testing. Philosophy and theology entertain numerous hypotheses which offer no possible test in human experience, and so are, strictly speaking, meaningless. (Schiller's offer of God and immortality as hypotheses was based on his expectation that they could in some way be verified.) Science has also not been without unverifiable hypotheses: e. g., the ether as the medium for light waves. It would be interesting to examine psychoanalysis to see the extent to which its hypotheses permit verification. Einstein is reported currently to be searching for a possible method of verification of his latest hypothetical formulation. One can learn more about the process of hypothesis-making and of scientific method in general from the newer sciences than from those which are well established; that is, more may be observed from psychology or economics than from mechanics or geology. In the former, the "facts" are still in doubt, hypotheses are not yet verified. One may profitably regard Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Einstein as the great hypothesismakers. The proving of hypotheses is usually a highly competitive affair, the scientific problem usually being which hypothesis is most useful in explaining and predicting. We have today two completely contradictory hypotheses of the nature of light: a wave for certain purposes, a stream of photons for others. There is no reason why this should not continue indefinitely. To say that such a situation is intolerable and cannot go on is merely to assert the intention of continuing to work on the problem forever. This is the meaning of our postulate that truth must be consistent. But we have no cosmic guarantee that reality will ultimately allow itself to be grasped completely by human minds at all. Einstein has remarked that the most incomprehensible aspect of the universe is that it is comprehensible. For Schiller, all truths must remain "relative to the evidence on which they rest, to the verifications which have confirmed them, and to the
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alternatives to which they were preferred." 28 Observation and experimentation are the two great tools of the scientist, valuable only when guided by a hypothesis. The random observer who does not know what to look for will usually not see what is going on. (When Aristotle said that all knowledge arises out of some previous knowledge, was he tacitly confessing the inability of logic to understand the process of knowing?) Only when we can vary the conditions at will, and change only one at a time, can we confidendy experiment. In geology and astronomy, for example, what is an experiment? And there are limits to the "decisiveness" of an experiment: our evidence is never complete in a changing world, and no experiment can be crucial enough to permit us to ignore new empirical evidence. Other processes of science, subsidiary to the empirical testing of a hypothetical interpretation of selected subject matter, are abstraction, classification, idealization, and fiction. Abstraction is a form of selection. We never see all there is in an object, and we assume a standard of relevance and irrelevance. In classification of a thing with others in a class or kind, we declare irrelevant its place, time, and individuality, and fabricate "universals." (The fundamental laws of the physical sciences today, as well as the social sciences, are statistical, and they do not purport to describe the individual.) 27 It was Darwin who showed scientists that their classifications had no eternal validity but were practical devices for rendering their experience more fruitful. 28 Idealization and fiction are varieties of abstraction. A city street is a Euclidean straight line only if its three-dimensionality and crookedness are abstracted from: this is an idealization if you approve, a fiction if you do not. Science is full of fictions which are highly useful and often methodologically indispensable. Consider the following: economic man, normal health, the average citizen, a com-
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plete vacuum, an elastic body, a frictionless surface, a nonconductor, a perfect gas or fluid. The objects of mathematics for Schiller are equally abstractions, fictions, or ideals.29 In concluding, it may be noted that one other way in which logic has failed to comprehend scientific procedure is in its claim that affirming the consequent of a hypothetical statement is a fallacy. Thus, "If it rains today, I will wear a hat. But I am wearing a hat. Therefore it is raining today." The fallacy is logically clear and indisputable. However, it is the logical groundwork for the verification of hypotheses. Thus, "If this chemical is an acid, it will turn litmus paper red. But it does turn the litmus paper red. Therefore it is an acid." The scientist commits this "fallacy" daily. It is another example of the disparity between actual scientific practice and formal logic. What is involved is the distinction between a sentence which states ' I f — , t h e n — " and one which states, "If and only if — , then—." In the latter case, the relationship between the two clauses has in a sense been reversed. Schiller makes this point,30 but he does not discuss it as fully as might be desired. Russell and other critics have argued it too.
VI. The Problems of Inductive Logic SCHILLER'S T R E A T M E N T of the problems of inductive logic parallels his discussion of the failures of deductive logic. Induction takes form as a method of arriving at true premises and in the consideration of how the logician is to handle and appraise "facts." The logician is thus thrown upon experience. Schiller states that formal logic assumes that its proofs, in order to be certain, must start from premises which are themselves certain. This, as we have seen, is of course the opposite of what the scientist actually does, which is to test whether experience or experiment will confirm a hypothesis. Logic, seeking ultimate certainty, starts upon an infinite regress; Science, on the other hand, looks forward to an infinite progress toward ever more verifiable conclusions. For Aristotle, demonstration went back until it reached self-evident axioms, of which every science had a supply. (He neglected, however, with great sagacity, to specify them.) They were known by nous, or the highest intuitive reason, a special infallible faculty of gods and men. But the difficulties with this are obvious. All sorts of things have been declared intuitively certain, and some intuitions have proven false—in every science. Does not the layman "intuitively know" that every mathematical curve has a tangent? Intuitions as such are neutral: they may be true and they may be false. Moreover, to invoke intuition is to appeal to psychology. Formal logic should find this appeal inconsistent with its own nature.
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The usual way of arriving at general statements is by observing enough facts. If all the facts could be observed, we would have perfect induction, a formally complete enumeration. But this is a practical impossibility and can therefore scarcely be the foundation for certain premises. Moreover, as previously shown, the concepts of "fact" and "law" are considerably more subtle than traditional logic supposed. And, to be formally complete, an enumeration must include not merely all the present instances, but all past instances, and all future instances. Otherwise, how can certainty ensue? Thus logic cannot justify either intuition or observation as methods for securing general propositions. Once again, logic has abstracted from the activity of the whole man in a concrete situation. (Peirce did not like Schiller's emphasis on knowing as an activity of the whole man: "I know very well that science is not the whole of .life, but I believe in the division of labor among intellectual agencies. J"1 We reason from facts, but we do not need to know all the facts in order to reason. And, it is true that we use universal premises, but not that they are certain when we begin to use them. Nor is it true that in order to acquire truth we must begin by possessing it. It is not true, lastly, that the premises must prove the conclusion; it is quite possible that the truth of the conclusion may establish the premises.2 Aristotle uses the term "induction" in four senses: the reasoning from particulars to universals; the adducing of examples of a rule; the exhaustive enumeration of the species of a genus; and the intuitive perception of a universal in a case. But the first two senses are not regarded by Aristotle as formally valid, the third presents an unrealizable procedure, and the fourth contains the difficulties we have just noted. In the actual procedures of knowing, the psychological process of perceiving the proper selection of
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relevant cases or verifiable hypotheses is of the greatest importance, but it is precisely this which cannot be stated formally. Though Aristotle is aware of the problem of selecting a proper middle term to join a subject and predicate, he discusses it very little. The revolutionary quality of Bacon's contribution lay in his awareness of the necessity of utilizing human experience, but his proposed methods did not produce a great theoretical advance. The five experimental methods of John Stuart Mill were another, and superior, attempt, to introduce and establish the logical relevance of man's knowledge of facts. These methods (agreement, difference, agreement and difference jointly, residues, and concomitant variation) all presuppose a definite state of scientific inquiry. Furthermore, they all presuppose an axiom of Causation, or law of the Uniformity of Nature. This Mill considers an induction from experience which has been fully proved by the uncontradicted experience of men for ages. Schiller makes a number of criticisms of Mill's methods. In the first place, the state of things presupposed does not exist in the beginnings of any science. No science starts with a clear knowledge of its proper field of operation, with its 'facts' sorted out into 'antecedents' and 'consequents' and 'circumstances' and 'instances' in the manner Mill's Methods suppose. It is confronted with a continuous flow of happenings, where nothing is distinct.3 That is, Mill's inductive technique would begin to apply only after much of the scientific work has been accomplished. Secondly, upon any literal interpretation the demands of the Methods can never be complied with. We never find two cases which have 'no circumstance in common but one,' so that we can apply the Method of Agreement, or differing in nothing but the presence of one circumstance, so that we can apply the Method of Difference.4
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Furthermore, the methods have made no mention of the scientific observer, whose personality and existence are abstracted from. As has been shown, and as can be observed about us, this is an error. If the observer understands and intends what he is observing, it cannot be said that the experiment makes no difference to him and that he is the same at the end as he was in the beginning. Lastly, how can instances be discovered in the same universe which have nothing in common save the 'absence' of a circumstance? Will not any two 'instances' have innumerable absences in common? And what is to guarantee the relevance of the two sets of circumstances to each other? 5
Actually, it is the entire concept of relevance which is of the essence of the scientific method, and which it is impossible to state formally, since it implies relativity of, and appropriateness to, a purpose. Is this not the reason why the logic of science has always discussed past and consummated scientific achievements and is rather baffled by what the scientist does when he is actually working on an unsolved problem? Morris R. Cohen has remarked, "The Canons of Induction teach us how to discover the cause of typhoid or some other disease of which the cause is already known; they are silent about the cause of cancer and the methods by which it is to be investigated." 6 It is for this reason that Schiller argues for a consideration of all the risks, perplexities, hesitations, errors, and failures which beset the exploration of an actual problem . . . Our examples should be chosen from live questions still in dispute, in which the principles to use are still hypotheses, in which the postulates have not yet grown axiomatic, in which the 'facts' are still suspect and largely spurious.7
It is the notion of universal causation, or determinism, or uniformity of nature, which has been the great stumbling
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block for any theory of induction. Hume asked the pertinent and embarrassing question, why should the future resemble the past? And since that time, philosophers have struggled with it.8 Kant was aware of the active role of human thought in establishing causation, but not in an altogether satisfactory way. The necessary connection between events was for him a rule or category of the mind imposed a priori on the matter of sensation which was given to it. He did not realize that "in order to bring his a priori forms to bear on experience there was need of a process of selection, and that the Causal problem both for science and for common sense is always how to assign particular events to particular causes." 9 If the causal principle is required to be based on universal application and an assumed unity of all reality, it simply does not accord with the way in which it is actually used in the process of knowing. Causal analysis is actually partial; it is a selection of the relevant. "No significant judgment ever aims at anything so impossible and selfdefeating as stating the whole of reality." 10 Schiller was quite sarcastic about the "Unity" which the monists and absolutists assert.11 There is no real problem of connecting facts: facts are man-made, i.e., discriminated and singled out of the flux of experience for specific purposes. 12 Thus it is clear that for Schiller our conception of causation "can neither be a generalization from experience, nor a selfevident intuitive truth, but is clearly a postulate we have devised to operate upon the flow of happenings." 13 Experience could not possibly prove the principle of causation to us, because any proof would necessarily assume its existence. Mill's doubt as to whether the law of causation would hold "in distant parts of the stellar regions" 14 is the kind of thing the apriorists pointed to in attacking the universality of what could be extracted from experience. But in claiming that causation is a fundamental requirement
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of the structure of our thought, we not only close the door on further inquiry into the problem, but also fail to answer the question as to whether and how far the course of nature conforms to the structure of mind. Causation, then, is most fruitfully treated as a postulate. Like the other "axioms" and laws of nature, it is a selection from experience suggested by it; it can be made as necessary and as universal as nature allows, or as we can succeed in making it. Hume's question is answered by Schiller's statement that we act as if the future will resemble the past; we do so consciously and deliberately because to be alive is to run risks, and the cosmos offers us no guarantees. Schiller is thus close to the great tradition of British empiricism. The role of mental activity in ascribing the causal principle to nature is lineally descended from Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, but is given by Schiller a more deliberate and voluntaristic interpretation.13 (Here undoubtedly Schiller was influenced by James.) Schiller's postulation is also broader in scope, for it does not commit us to any particular type of causation, e.g. mechanical, teleological, etc. Causation as a postulate has the additional advantage that from a belief in a universal "law of causation" no specific laws of nature can be produced or inferred. What we call "laws of nature" have for Schiller fundamentally the same character. They are formulas which enable us to analyze, to predict, and to control the course of events. They represent a process of selection from the flux of experience, and, as such, have to be made by men. Until there are "facts" selected for attention, there is nothing for a "law" to connect. "But the flow of reality is unique, and never repeats itself. Hence a 'fact' that can recur identifiably, and a 'law' that can be exemplified in a plurality of 'cases' are interdependent artefacts." 18 Observed uniformities of experience, by definition, have to be observed. Our selections are experimental and improvable, and must be
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verified, i.e., tested by their consequences. The scientist must decide what portions of the unique course of nature may be regarded as irrelevant, and he must devise a "law" that will be adequate to the control of the "facts." A law, in short, is not an absolute self-evident and selfdependent certainty to be imposed on reality by main force; it is a flexible formula for application to cases, and gets its real meaning from the cases to which it has been successfully applied. 17 The impossibility of 'breaking' a Law of Nature proves nothing but our determination to uphold a phraseology we have found convenient.18
Thus, essentially, the distinction between induction and deduction is formal and artificial rather than genuine. "Law" and "case" are interacting concepts referring to experience, and requiring verification in experience, whether they are formally "deductions" or "inductions."
VII. Evaluation of Schiller's Logic ON AUGUST 19, 1912, Schiller wrote, "[Formal Logic] is a knockout for intellectualism, and I consider it the best thing I have written, and will no doubt be seen to be this in time. Meanwhile the enemy are taking it badly, with that mixture of dishonesty and stupidity that forms their chief intellectual equipment." 1 Schiller's treatment of logic is no doubt his most significant achievement. His works in that field appeared at a time when the interests of most logicians were being turned towards symbolic logic, logical positivism, multi-valued logics, and other "modern" logics, and so his views were bypassed, great though their interest was. Schiller's approach is strongest in its positive and forthright attempt to understand how men actually acquire knowledge. It is thus grounded in a biological and psychological matrix which ensures its fruitfulness for use. His philosophy of science, with its emphasis on specific problems and how to solve them, is not merely a verifiable account of how knowledge is acquired, but a philosophical and moral incentive to continued endeavor. His understanding of the postulational activity of man-as-scientist as well as man-as-layman, and his emphasis on the ceaseless verification of scientific propositions, are among his most enduring contributions. So, too, is his conception of the importance of relevance as a purposive program. Schiller hoped to effect a revolution in logical theory comparable to the revolution of Darwin in biological theory.
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He called for an applied logic which should have the same relation to pure logic that applied mathematics has to pure mathematics, or surveying to geometry. He rejected logic as a word game and as a subdivision of metaphysics. He felt that human utility should be the paramount criterion, and that logic should concern itself with the genuine task of aiding man's thinking. We can certainly join in Schiller's condemnation of logic as a mere propaedeutic exercise, or of its claims to have analyzed actual thinking, or of the idealistic claim that only the whole truth can be wholly true, or of the intuitionist claim that it is possible by "intuition" to tell a true statement from a false one.2 Schiller's critique of formal logic does two things: he attacks it on its own grounds for its inconsistency and its ambiguity; and he says it fails to serve human needs. On the first count, he made explicit and undeniable a series of doubts which have haunted logic even from the days of Aristotle. The equivocation of "terms," the ambiguity of the middle term in a syllogism, the fallacy of petitio principii in which formal syllogistic reasoning is inevitably involved—these problems will never again permit us to regard formal logic with the reverence it once inspired. It does not live up to its own requirements. (It would be interesting to compare with Schiller's puncturing of the seamless web of logic, the proof by Bertrand Russell [in his theory of types] of the limitations of any propositional system, and the famous theorem of Kurt Godel showing the inconsistency or inadequacy of some of the traditional ideas of classical mathematics.) On the second count, Schiller criticizes logic (even if its formal consistency were to be conceded) 3 for three fatal abstractions: from psychology, or the actualities of personal thinking; from matter, or context, or actual meaning; and from truth, or utility, or purpose. Schiller does not of course oppose functional abstraction which is indeed an indispens-
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able aspect of any scientific thinking. 4 But these three particular abstractions destroy the meaningfulness and utility of logic. Dewey wrote: At the crucial point each formal distinction is saved from complete meaninglessness only by an unacknowledged and surreptitious appeal to some matter of context, need, aim, and use. Why not, then, frankly recognize the indispensableness of such volitional and emotional factors, and instead of pretending to a logic that excludes them, build up a logic that corresponds to human intellectual endeavor and achievement.5 When Thales long ago said that everything was water, he set a philosophic standard for overstatement which has been faithfully followed to this day. The Achilles' heel in Schiller's critique is that he said more than he could prove. Carried away by the essential soundness of his attack on the pretensions of formal logic, he overstated it. Specifically, what he failed to appreciate is the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and the distinction between the act of thinking and the result of thought. In discussing the problem of analytic and synthetic propositions, Schiller quotes Kant's views: Kant called a judgment analytic, when the predicate only explicates the meaning of the subject, and is really contained in it; synthetic, when it adds to its meaning something not known to belong to it. Thus, according to Kant, tiodies are extended' is analytic, because the meaning of 'body' is precisely 'extended substance,' and the judgment is only an analysis of the conception of body. 'Bodies are heavy,' on the other hand, is synthetic, because gravitation is not part of the definition of body.6 But Schiller finds this distinction objectionable and quite worthless for the analysis of actual thinking, because, he says, it makes analytic judgments tautologies which convey no novelty, and therefore no one should bother to utter them; it rests on the meaningless conception of logical identity as "A is A"; since there are alternative ways to define
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things, it renders it arbitrary what judgments are analytic ( "in point of fact gravitation is a better criterion of materiality than extension");7 and it makes the distinction between analytic and synthetic relative to the state of one's knowledge.8 Now these objections can all be answered. It may be admitted that the distinction is by no means as precise and unclouded as may be desired. In particular, recent controversy has cast some doubt on the validity of the distinction.9 We may, however, for present purposes (and it is sound Schillerism to propose definitions for specific purposes ) adopt the unsophisticated definition that a synthetic statement has meaning only in terms of matter of fact, whereas an analytic statement has meaning independently of matter of fact (roughly, the Leibnizian distinction between vérités de fait and vérités de raison). An analytic statement, as has been charged, may still be considered as relative to the language or symbolism in which it is stated, and even to its typographical position on a line or page; and these are matters of fact. However, these considerations should not affect the essence of the distinction, which is that, in theory, an analytic statement, since it is concerned only with the relations of meanings, cannot be verified or falsified by any conceivable human experience, whereas a synthetic statement, regardless of its "certainty," may always, in theory, be upset by experience. A typical analytic statement is, "two plus two equals four." 10 If the meaning of the words "two," "plus," "equals," and "four" is made clear, it is impossible for this statement not to be valid. Synthetic statements are the material of science, and their degree of certainty may approach any assignable limit, with the qualification that they are always subject to verification in experience, i.e., may conceivably be falsified. Thus "man is a featherless biped" and "the speed of light is constant" are synthetic statements.
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Kant's choice of "bodies are extended" as an analytic statement accorded with eighteenth-century science. It would, however, be questionable today. Both extension and gravitation as essential attributes of matter are, particularly in the light of modern physics, more subtle and precarious concepts than had been suspected. In any event, Kant's statement is subject to the test of verification by experience. The reason one bothers to utter analytic statements is precisely for the enunciation of psychological novelties. That "the square on the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides," is an analytic statement, since it is the consequent of a statement whose antecedents are the Euclidean axioms and definitions of "point," "line," and "plane," but it certainly conveys new and startling information to the schoolboy. The distinction between analytic and synthetic may be psychologically and temporally relative to the state of our knowledge. (Cf. Socrates' discussion with the servant boy in Plato's Meno.) But, regardless of the state of development of geometry, the Pythagorean theorem would be an analytic statement. That there are alternative axioms and definitions possible in the theoretic construction of a hypothetical postulate system such as pure mathematics, does not mitigate the accuracy of the statement that within the system, however constructed, the clarification or explication of the meanings contained in its concepts would produce analytic statements. The conception of logical identity that underlies this is a presupposition for all thinking. This distinction between analytic and synthetic statements does not cast doubt on Schiller's comments on the relations between logic and psychology. For thinking is thinking, regardless of whether the subject matter of the thought is an analytic or a synthetic statement. The explication of meanings has a psychological component. However, Schiller's analysis would have been more stringent
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and convincing if h e h a d p o i n t e d out that t h e interest, purpose, and e m o t i o n w h i c h condition our thinking occur in different w a y s in connection w i t h these t w o t y p e s of statement. T h e f e e l i n g of certainty w h i c h attaches to an analytic statement is different f r o m that w h i c h attaches to a synthetic statement, b u t it is a f e e l i n g nonetheless, and is not fully comprehensible apart f r o m certain reservations as to the nature and possible limitations of t h e h u m a n t h o u g h t process. ( T h e l a t e F e l i x K a u f m a n n used t o remark on the misgiving w i t h w h i c h w e w o u l d r e c e i v e t h e n e w s of the reversal of our m o s t t h o r o u g h l y established scientific laws, compared to t h e f e r v o r w i t h w h i c h w e w o u l d d e s p a t c h to an asylum anyone w h o maintained that, d u e to a cosmic catastrophe, t w o plus t w o n o w e q u a l e d five!) H o w e v e r , t h e f a i l u r e t o m a k e this distinction does result in Schiller's inability to understand t h e nature of mathematics. Schiller regards m a t h e m a t i c s as an empirical study, along w i t h physics a n d economics. H e believes that it originates in t h e same t y p e of need, functions for the same t y p e of p u r p o s e , and is s u b j e c t to t h e same t y p e of verification b y experience. T h u s , It is a mistake . . . to regard mathematical conceptions as ideal in a way the conceptions of other sciences are not. For though mathematical conceptions are creations of our intelligence in the sense of being conceptual ideals which the perceptual world could never realize—there are no circles or triangles in nature—so are other scientific conceptions . . . A perfectly elastic body is just as ideal as a perfectly round one. The difference is in degree rather than in kind, and in the degree and amount of independence of the empirical facts to which the conceptions appear to attain. 1 1 Mathematical conceptions are not, as is often supposed, free creations of intelligence. They were suggested by definite aspects of experience. . . the 'self-evident' principles of Euclidean geometry and common arithmetic are . . . the assumptions which have established themselves either by permitting of the
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most convenient application to our world, or by their simplicity —which is another form of convenience.12 If experience ceased to present us with things whose behavior could be predicted by our mathematical assumptions, which could be counted as units, and treated as having figures conformable to the postulates of Euclidean space, our mathematics would become useless and irrelevant to reality, and it would gradually seem meaningless to call them true. 13 Not even in mathematics is it true that the meanings of conceptions remain unaffected by the progress of the science.14 It is not true that the laws even of arithmetic are immutable, and that '2 2 = 4' means the same thing to the savage . . . and to the mathematician.15 The existence of pure mathematics does not mean that the nature of mathematical abstractions can be grasped apart from their use.16 The most that can be claimed for a proposition is that it is true in general, but this does not guarantee its truth in every application: even '2 2 = 4' will fail us if we are rash enough to apply it to the behaviour of drops of water or of mercury; and if in reliance on the properties of the Euclidean straight line we go straight on on the surface of the earth, we shall presendy find ourselves returning to our starting point.17 Mathematical definitions and postulates admit of many alternatives; the choice between them is determined by the purpose to which they are to minister.18 The fundamental principles of mathematics are assimilated to hypotheses which have been verified, and differ from other hypotheses only in their antiquity and in the amount of verification they have received.18 There is as little reason to doubt that mathematics is a human invention as chess.20 . . . 2 -j- 2 are not 4 from all eternity: to make 4 they must be counted as such.21 In a world which was a perfect continuum there would be nothing to count . . . Nor could [arithmetic] be used in a world in which all things were so disparate that it conduced to no purpose to count them. 22
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But sometimes he described mathematics differently: That the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles cannot be an event: it is part of an ideal system which claims to have abstracted from time-relations once and for all.23 What, however, is ordinarily called mathematical novelty is only psychological. It would not exist for a mind that could grasp the whole meaning and consequences of its assumptions at the time when it makes them. When we have defined the unit, and conceived the operation of adding, we have, implicitly and in logic, committed ourselves to all the truths of Number . . . all the moves of a game . . . are determined in principle.24 Enough has been quoted to show that Schiller blurred or misunderstood the essential difference between pure mathematics and the systems of empirical knowledge. His statements are inconsistent and unclear, because he thought it necessary to his philosophy that there be no essential difference between them. But his arguments for that position do not succeed in getting to the crux of the issue. In the first place, it is true that pure mathematics, like chess, is a human creation. But that is committing a kind of genetic fallacy. Regardless of its origin, mathematics (like chess) is a structure of definitions, relations, and operations which has nothing to do with the real world. That it was created by men does not alter its ideal and abstract character. No matter what manner of beings made arithmetic, and no matter what kinds of problems they faced, a formally correct proposition of arithmetic would be implied in the meanings of the initial assumptions of arithmetic. Secondly, mathematics would be a body of analytic statements regardless of the land of world we live in. If we were isolated single-celled animals floating through a watery continuum, in which there was no such thing as "distinctness" or "countability," or if the objects of the world retained no identity or recognizable continuity, pure mathematics would still be an analysis of meanings.
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In the third place, the ideal abstractions of empirical science, such as the "perfect fluid" or the "perfectly elastic body" or the "economic man," are ambiguous: to the extent to which they can be used in propositions which are verifiable by experience, such propositions are synthetic; to the extent to which they can be used in propositions which merely make clear their intention (as Kant's "bodies are extended"), such propositions are analytic, and (subject to the dispute on synonymy) comparable to the propositions of mathematics. The analytic is different in kind, and not in degree, from the synthetic in its independence of empirical verification. Fourthly, the creations of the mathematical intelligence have frequently no discoverable application to the world of our sensory experience. The geometries of Gauss, Riemann, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky had no practical application when they were developed; nor do today many aspects of modern topology, number theory, and other branches of pure mathematics. Thus the argument from possible utility is of no avail. That the geometry of Lobachevsky and Bolyai was found useful in twentieth-century physics is of no relevance, nor is the hope that "the day may well come when physicists will take advantage of the wide generality and enormous variety provided by the concepts of modern geometry." 25 Fifthly, the fact that mathematical conceptions change with the progress of knowledge and speculation is testimony not to their empirical character but to quite the reverse: the expanding and ever subtler creative powers of man's intelligence. In the sixth place, if our experience were to change radically, many portions of our mathematics might be quite without applicability, as indeed some are today, or quite "meaningless" (in Schiller's sense), as e.g. the «-dimensional geometries are today, but in no conceivable way
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could they be rendered invalid or untrue. The structural laws of our arithmetic are immutable, because they are not subject to empirical confirmation; it is our understanding of them which varies. Thus whether " '2 -f- 2 = 4' means the same thing to the savage . . . and to the mathematician" is irrelevant to the nature of mathematics. In the seventh place, as has been indicated, the nature of mathematical abstractions can be grasped apart from their use. Whether two drops of mercury added to two other drops will form four drops or one drop is an empirical problem subject to scientific investigation; it has nothing to do with the explication of the meaning of the terms "two," "four," etc. 26 Similarly, the problem of tracing a straight line with a ruler on the earth's surface has no connection with the problem of explicating the meaning of "straight line" in pure geometry. 27 In the eighth place, mathematical postulates and definitions do admit of choice, but this again is testimony to their creation or selection for theoretical utility and to their abstract and, at bottom, aesthetic character. In sum, despite the empirical origin and instrumental function of arithmetic and geometry to which Schiller called attention, pure mathematics is a hypothetical analysis of implications, not a natural science. 28 As in the example of chess, whether anyone ever invented the game or not, given a set of original definitions and operations, any move in the game is an analysis of those original meanings. We can do no better than repeat Einstein's famous dictum: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." 29 In addition to Schiller's failure to distinguish properly between analytic and synthetic statements, is his failure to differentiate clearly between the act of thinking and the result of thought. To be sure, Schiller's account of how the scientist reasons, and how knowledge grows, is excellent.
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He is quite right in indicating that formal logic ignores this task. James remarked, "[Schiller] seeks only to tell us how truths are attained, not what the content of those truths, when attained, shall be." 8 0 But Schiller failed to separate properly the problem of the attainment of truth from the problem of the analysis of the outcome. These problems are certainly not identical.31 Just as it is indispensable to distinguish between statements which are verifiable in experience and statements which are not so verifiable, so it is also indispensable to distinguish between a study of the process of thinking (psychology) and a study of the validity of the resulting thought (logic). Furthermore, Schiller did not satisfactorily and completely explain the relations between logic and psychology. As Husserl remarked, logic cannot be founded on psychology, since psychology as a body of science presupposes logic. Schiller's comments on the vital necessity for analyzing the reasoning process are very much in order, as are also his indications of the psychological dimension of the operations of logic, but the independent status of logic as a system of implications is not fully clarified by him. Felix Kaufmann has indicated that the methodology of the sciences is quite a different thing from deductive logic,32 and the existence of the former does not affect the independence of the latter. Schiller felt that the two had to be merged, or rather that logic had to be altered to accommodate methodology and psychology. Thus his views are not in accordance with most modern theories of the nature of logic. Schiller's conception of accuracy follows from his views on mathematics: Absolute accuracy is not possible, if only because no human instrument and no human sense can measure it. But neither is it needed: what is needed is accuracy sufficient for the purpose in hand. If one wishes to measure the height of a mountain in
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millimeters, or to evaluate *- to 10,000 places of decimals for any rational purpose, it follows that such excessive accuracy is not only needless but also wrong.33 In-so-far . . . as exactness depends on definitions, mathematics can be exact . . . But there appear to be limits to the exactness thus attainable . . . things must be found to which the definition, when made, must apply; and . . . the definition has to be maintained against the growth of knowledge.34 Our criticism follows from what has been said: the accuracy required of any synthetic proposition is dependent on purpose. The accuracy of time measurement is quite a different thing for astronomers and laymen, and, like all facts, is dependent upon human senses and instruments, as shown earlier. But the accuracy of a conception of pure mathematics is entirely a matter of its definition, regardless of whether or not things are found to which it applies and regardless of any possible human experience. Bridgman has pointed out that all of our empirical physical concepts, such as length or time, must, to be intelligible, be "synonymous with the corresponding set of operations." 35 Accuracy, therefore, of physical concepts, becomes a function of operations; but this has nothing to do with the accuracy of the concepts of pure mathematics. The value of n, for example, or of any other transcendental number, is perfectly fixed, regardless of the fact that it cannot be expressed completely or accurately in the symbolism of our ordinary number system. The accuracy of analytic statements must be distinguished from the accuracy of synthetic statements, and it is only to the latter that Schiller's comments should apply. Schiller's comments about rigor, however, are clearly correct. Rigor is relative to the standards and requirements of the science and the subject matter, and cannot be given an absolute definition. We may merely consider the following set of arguments, listed in "ascending order" of rigor,
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to see that in each case the subject matter is the determinant: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Darwin's Origin of Species, Euclid's Elements, Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. Rigor is therefore a function of subject matter. Schiller's attitude toward symbolic logic and logical positivism was, in our opinion, unfortunate: Formal Logic gets on much firmer ground when it claims to be a good game for intellectually-minded men, or at all events for Formal logicians. For from this point of view most of the objections to it fall to the ground. It will no longer matter that it has severed all connexion with real knowing, that its ideals are impossible and its objects fictitious, non-existent, and unmeaning . . . such games surely are legitimate . . . It is not every one who has a head for chess or bridge . . . Symbols are not meanings, but only forms for them . . . Symbolic Logic, therefore, is still Formal, and makes a game of the same kind as Formal Logic, played with symbols instead of words . . . It is in fact essentially an attempt to cure what is formally the main defect . . . of Formal Logic, viz. that its terms are so loose and 'ambiguous.' 36 What Schiller failed to realize was that he agreed with much that symbolic logic has done, and that what motivated the symbolic logic movement, from the first efforts of Boole, was precisely the awareness of the inconsistencies and ambiguities of formal logic which Schiller also made manifest. Peirce once wrote, "The woof and warp of all thought and research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols; so that it is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely, for it is the essence of it." 37 Symbols can be made more precise than words and can be manipulated with less ambiguity. Their superiority to words can be likened to the superiority of algebra over arithmetic in solving certain types of problems. Schiller, however, was more concerned with the fact (which is undeniable) that no form can ever
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be rendered valid as such, and that symbolic logic is the quintessence of meaningless form.®8 The ideal of symbolism is, inter alia, the use of fixed terms, absolutely precise and incapable of change. Yet Schiller pointed out that any symbol is subject to the danger of acquiring a plurality of senses, and that meanings change and develop. Furthermore, he denied the possibility of "pinning down for all eternity the meaning of every idea by an exact 'analysis.'" He succeeded in eliciting from Carnap an admission that no finality could ever be claimed for any analysis,39 and from Russell that a "language freed from 'vagueness' would be . . . almost wholly unintelligible." 40 Yet Schiller should have realized that symbolic logic is in a sense as much of a reaction to the deficiencies of traditional formal logic (although in another direction), as his own logic is.41 He should have agreed wholeheartedly with Carnap's statement: He who wishes to investigate the questions of the logic of science must, therefore, renounce the proud claims of a philosophy that sits enthroned above the special sciences, and must realize that he is working in exactly the same field as the scientific specialist, only with a somewhat different emphasis: his attention is directed more to the logical, formal, syntactical connections.42 Similarly with the wider movement known as logical positivism or logical empiricism: Schiller would have agreed and should have agreed with its fundamental claim (that a proposition has no meaning when it can not, at least theoretically, be verified or falsified in experience). It was, again, a reaction similar to Schiller's against the metaphysical, absolutist, and intellectualist claims of the logics of Hegel and Bradley. Schiller felt, however, that logical positivism seems to combine a pragmatist theory of meaning with an intellectualist conception of truth and a mathematical method of exposition . . . declines to concern herself with the processes by
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which human knowledge is actually advanced . . . nor has she yet drawn the very necessary distinction between the potential truth of a prepositional function (or so-called 'proposition') and the actual truth of a purposive judgment.43 He criticized the logical positivists for their failure to go from a theory of meaning to a theory of truth, since meaning is never isolated but contextual, purposive, and valuable. 44 Nor would he possibly go along with some of the later developments of logical positivism, such as physicalism in psychology. 45 In his discussion of probability, Schiller was again misled by his failure to discriminate analytic from synthetic statements. He criticized formal logic for its failure to say anything significant about the probability of such assertions as "the sun will rise tomorrow," since it cannot be made formally valid. As one of the proposals for establishing a "Logic For Use," he discussed the need for a "criterion of truth": Let us, therefore, cease to assume that a 'criterion' must be absolute and admit as a 'criterion' any test that will in any way, or to any extent, help us to sift the true from the false. We need, then, no longer demand of it that it should be inherently infallible, or should instantly yield truth absolute: it may now reckon with probabilities and progressively verify the truthvalues which it apprehends. Thus if we can find a test which will eliminate half the sources of error every time it is applied, and which may be applied as often as we choose, it is evident that it will steadily increase the value of our beliefs. Now it is 'truth' of this sort, never 'absolute' but always progressive and indefinitely verifiable, that the investigations of the sciences yield . . . Why, then, should not logic leam this lesson from the sciences, and be content to accept 'criteria' which operate in this way? 48 Schiller was conversant with the mathematical theory of probability, which can treat only problems capable of
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quantitative expression and is therefore no universal guide to practical problems. 47 But he misunderstood the nature of this probability: Mathematical probability admits of an infinity of degrees. Absolute truth (or error), therefore, becomes an ideal which is never reached; in effect the notion becomes otiose . . . I succeeded in extracting from Professor Hans Reichenbach an admission to this effect . . . it is high time [C. W. Morris] ceased to take it for granted that probability and demonstration are compatible.48 Schiller failed to realize that pure probability propositions are susceptible of formal statement, and can be demonstrated as thoroughly as any other propositions in pure mathematics. Even granted the contemporary variety of interpretations of probability, the statement "the probability of tossing a double six with normal dice is 1 in 36" is demonstrable from the premise "the probability of any one surface of a normal die is 1 in 6." 49 Schiller's assertion, then, that the logic of probability is not formally valid, s0 is based on a misunderstanding of probability. Schiller's treatment of the laws of thought as postulates was a bold and ingenious formulation. Here, too, we must remark that the laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle are not only analytical (in the sense that they are not verifiable in the real world but are analyses of meaning), but that they are actually presupposed in any reasoning whatever. Their historical origin may well have been as Schiller described, but it is difficult to conceive of any thinking which does not employ them. To call them postulates, in the sense in which the conservation of energy is a postulate, does not do justice to the complexity of the problems involved. Schiller has here committed the genetic fallacy. Nor does Schiller do full justice to Aristotle. It must be remembered that Aristotle's Organon is not a single unified work, but a compilation of individual treatises composed at
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different times, and not fully self-consistent. "Formal Logic" as we now understand it is not strictly speaking the creation of Aristotle alone, but of the Stoics and medieval thinkers building upon the Aristotelian foundation. Aristotle, like Plato and the Sophists, was interested in the art of persuasion; the search for the appropriate premises whereby to prove a desirable conclusion was for him an important part of the task. The premises can become a sort of explanation of the conclusion. Furthermore, Aristotle's views on the problem of the novelty contained in the conclusion of a syllogism are not fully elaborated by Schiller; Aristotle distinguishes between the "dialectical" and the "apodictic" syllogism. As a recent writer has said, "Aristotle's Topics would be entirely different if Aristotle had worked it out after he had finished his Analytics . . . logic was originally conceived as a science of what happens, not when we are thinking for ourselves, but when we are thinking and trying to convince one another." 61 Thus Aristotle's intention was not so radically different from Schiller's own. We come now to an evaluation of Schiller's theory of meaning. We have seen that meaning must be understood in terms of its context, application, use, and purpose, and that the "meaning-in-use" is what the assertor is trying to express; it need not be the same as the dictionary meaning. Logic has substituted verbal meaning for real meaning: Real meaning, which is the only meaning that has importance for life and science . . . always arises in a particular situation, and it is always personal: i.e. it is what men mean when they use words to express and convey their meaning. 52
Since any meaning worth conveying is to some degree new and to some degree old, meanings must be plastic, and every word can express more than one meaning. (This is one of the difficulties which symbolic logic tried to solve.) In all cases we have really the same problem—that of so utilising
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the meanings words have, or can be made to take on, as to convey the personal meaning one desires to impart . . . alike in origin and importance, personal meaning is primary and verbal meaning secondary . . . no form of words has any actual meaning until it is used . . . It is a question of fact which depends on the context . . . and on the intention of their user.83 But this is an overdoing of personalism. (Cf. C. W. Morris, "The phobia of the formal is the reverse side of the obsession with the personal.") 8 4 If meanings are exclusively personal, the problem of communication becomes insoluble. There must be some intersubjectivity of meaning, some social dimension of knowledge, or else the ascription of meaning, as a process, loses much of its usefulness. If a word is an instrument for the conveying of meaning, as Schiller says, how and to whom is it to be conveyed, if it is entirely personal? James wrote to Schiller, "I simply assume the social situation, and I am sorry that . . . you balk at it so much." 55 It is curious that the awareness of the social matrix is so weak in Schiller, considering how strong it is in such other pragmatists as Peirce, James, Dewey, Kallen, and Mead. Shortly after Schiller died, a memorial to him was read by Dewey at a meeting of the Conference on Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences. He said;59 In his Preface to the more negative and critical work, Formal Logic, Schiller expressed the hope that that work might be provisional, and succeed in superseding the need for its existence. The extent to which it has been superseded in fact upon one side is a measure of the success of his work, while upon the other side the way in which it has been superseded is probably a measure of his failure to accomplish what he hoped to accomplish. Schiller, because of his experience as a teacher of logic at Oxford, felt acutely that logic has remained in the curriculum as a literary subject, and hence 'exempted logicians from the salutary study of scientific knowing.' That remark could hardly be made about the present status of logical theory. On the other
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hand, the general temper of our day is marked by a revulsion against earlier mentalism and subjectivism. The persistence of that strain in Schiller accounts, I think, for the fact that while logic has greatly changed, it has not changed precisely in the direction he hoped for. In reply to one of his critics, Schiller once wrote, "a consistent empiricism must discard wholly the notions that 'consistency' is ultimately a matter of words and that 'generalisation' has meaning apart from application." 67 This may well be the core of his permanent contribution to logic, and we can agree with Kallen's statement; "The significance of the analyses and interpretations of . . . the procedures of modem logic by Canning Schiller is still in the making.." 5 8
VIII. The Making of Truth BERTRAND
RUSSELL
ONCE
SAID,
with his usual acidulous
felicity, Dr. Schiller is fond of attacking the view that truth must correspond with reality; we may conciliate him by agreeing that his truth, at any rate, need not correspond with reality. But we shall have to add that reality is to us more interesting than such truth.1 Schiller's views as to the nature and meaning of truth, views which more or less closely paralleled those of the other pragmatists and were influenced by them, are essential to his position.2 Truth for Schiller is primarily an issue of action. Since the sciences have a practical origin, the truth of a scientific assertion is a function of its power to predict. "Truth" and "falsity," therefore, are logical values, and the normative science of logic should apply these values to scientific truthclaims. Values vary almost as much as tastes, and agreement upon them can never be assumed, but must always be achieved. Since thinking, truth-seeking, and knowing are personal proceedings, valuation too will be a human assumption of attitudes towards certain objects. "Once the teleological 'good' is recognized it is easy to see that the 'true' is the 'good' of knowing, and the 'false' its 'bad': the one means success, the other 'failure' in a cognitive undertaking." 3 But Schiller, as we shall see, was far from agreeing with James's statement: "The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief." *
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In appraising truth values critically, we find that some are incompatible with others. We discern that some are only "truth-claims," still attendant on being verified in experience, while others are "fully verified" truths. How much verification a truth-claim needs is not determinate. No degree of verification will ever establish a truth-claim as an absolute truth. (Cf. Dewey's view of science as a neverending process of self-correction.) Truth is relative to the evidence, and to the purpose of the investigator. We do not bother to state a man's age in seconds, nor the diameter of the earth in inches. Philosophers have long debated the existence of a single infallible criterion of truth. But any asserted criterion would either have to embody its own credentials in a claim to be intuitively self-evident, or it would have to appeal in its turn to a more general criterion, not less self-evident. The former case would involve confusing psychological with logical self-evidence, and the dubieties inherent in the concept of self-evidence. As a criterion of truth, it implies an instant and final discrimination between truth and falsity, independently of experience. But there is no reason why we need an infallible single criterion which will instantly yield absolute truth. It is sufficient if a criterion is construed as a continuous process of experience, which gradually sifts the truer from the less true. Schiller requires that a theory of truth look to something more than the merely formal and verbal, that it enable us to discriminate the true from the false, and that it apply to the actualities of human knowing. Hence, he rejects seven theories of truth: 1. That truth is a property of judgments and propositions. This, he says, offers no way to distinguish a true statement from a false; 5 propositions "should not be called universally true or false; their truth-or-falsity is entirely contingent on their use." 6
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2. That truth is apprehension of reality; that true judgments refer to real objects and are cognitive of real facts. Schiller holds that this theory confuses logic with ontology. Our judging and truth-seeking are directed not solely to the metaphysically real, but also to appearances, fictions, myths, illusions, ghosts, etc. 3. That truth is a necessity of thought, that which we are constrained logically to believe; this is the outcome of Greek dialectics, in which the conclusion of a syllogism followed necessarily from the premises. But "that we cannot help thinking a thing is not surely a proof of its truth; primarily it is only a psychic fact about the mind that feels necessitated or compelled." 7 The variety of what human beings feel compelled to believe is obvious, and we have no assurance that such compulsion is verifiable in the course of events; "we believe our truth not because it claims to be necessary,' but because we find it works." 8 4. That there are ultimate truths which are self-evident and perceived by intuition (Aristotle's Nous). Schiller points out, " 'intuition' (like 'necessity') is primarily a psychic fact to be considered psychologically before logic should attempt to exploit it. And, psychologically, intuitions are a very mixed lot." 9 5. That truth is a "correspondence" or conformity of thought with reality. Can "thought" and "reality" be gotten apart at all?10 In the sense in which a "correspondence" is alleged to hold between various contents of the field of knowledge, or between sense perceptions, Schiller holds this theory unobjectionable, since it is the way in which we habitually test truth-claims. However, in the sense in which this theory refers to a transcendent reality, or a Ding-ansich, we pass fallaciously from epistemology to metaphysics "So long as 'correspondences,' 'agreements,' and 'copyings' are taken pragmatically as relations which work within human experience they will describe one side of truth." 11
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The ambiguity of the terms "transcendent," "independent," and "reality" militates against the correspondence theory of truth, whether expressed in metaphysical realism or absolute idealism. For Schiller, any notion of reality which is absolute and not relative to our modes of apprehending it, is pernicious because it is completely excluded from our knowing it. "An existent beyond human knowledge, which does nothing to explain that knowledge, is invalid, alike whether it is called an 'independent' reality or an 'absolute' truth . . . this fundamental difficulty in absolutism and realism is the same. In both cases our knowing has to be related to something which transcends it and claims to be 'independent' of it and unaffected by it, through the very process of our knowing: and the 'correspondence'—notion is merely a verbal cover for this crux." 12 And, "so long as human knowledge is not absolute, so long as it can not even seriously claim to be so, absolute truth is irrelevant to human knowledge, and it is gratuitous to assume its existence." 13 6. That truth is conformity with independent ideas or with independent reality or fact. But this theory is really a version of the correspondence theory, with the added difficulties, in Plato's case,14 of the problem of the "participation" or "imitation" of the ideas, and the erroneous assumption of the independence of "facts." If we call a truth "independent," we mean that it is not "tied to the act of apprehension . . . which generated" it. 15 But "in this tenable sense the 'independence' (as before the 'correspondence') still falls within experience and is not 'transcendent' . . . we no more started with a knowledge of what truths were 'independent' than we knew what truth-claims were true and what appearances indicated real objects." 18 7. That the sciences individually form coherent systems, and that if they could all be made to cohere together, absolute truth would result. But coherence as a test of truth is subject to certain difficulties. It is formal, in that all beliefs
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(e.g., astrology and p h r e n o l o g y ) m a y b e coherent. O u r actual sciences are f a r from static, perfect, closed systems: n e w truths ( e . g., Galileo, C o p e r n i c u s ) usually upset t h e coherence of the old systems. T h e coherence theory is una b l e to d e c i d e b e t w e e n e q u a l l y coherent systems w h i c h provide alternative interpretations of t h e data. T h e assertion that no isolated truths can b e more than partially true is at variance logically w i t h t h e assertion that there are individ u a l truths w h i c h cohere. F i n a l l y , it implies that w e c a n k n o w nothing as true until w e k n o w the W h o l e Truth. Schiller's o w n "humanist" a c c o u n t of truth is based on the f o l l o w i n g requirements: It must not be merely formal, i.e. it must distinguish between the true and the false and suggest an applicable way of testing claims to truth. It must concern itself with human truth and its attainment by us, and must not put us off with 'criteria' that are inapplicable and 'ideals' that are unrealisable. Terms like 'independent,' 'transcendent,' and 'absolute' . . . should not be understood in any sense that would rule out the essential relation to man that renders truth valuable and worth winning. We must take nothing for granted . . . all claims to truth and reality . . . are to be taken as in principle, subject to inquiry, criticism, and revision. W e must scrupulously keep in touch with actual human thinking, and must not repudiate or disavow it for the greater glory of some factitious logical or metaphysical 'ideal' . . . w e must be psychological . . . w e must not abstract from the personal side of knowing . . . nor ignore the purposive nature of its processes. 17 'True' and 'false,' then, are definable in terms of the purpose of the inquiry. Whatever is found to thwart or defeat this purpose is called 'false,' whatever is taken to forward it and to lead it to a satisfactory and successful conclusion is voted 'true.' 18 It is the sciences, as a progressive h u m a n activity, w h i c h
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most clearly exemplify this analysis of truth. For science is the most characteristic and quintessential example of the results of the efforts of homo sapiens, of man as knower. The respective sciences came into being by the conscious attempts of men to solve the problems which the world poses to them, attempts which produce "the limitation of subjects, the selection of standpoints, and the specialisation of methods." 19 That which renders these activities effective and yields the deepest insight, is the purposive intelligence which infuses and shapes them; "for what we want to know in the science will determine the questions we put, and their bearing on the questions put will determine the standing of the answers we attain. If we can take the answers as relevant to our questions and conducive to our ends, they will yield 'truth'; if we cannot, 'falsehood.'" 20 'True" and "false" for Schiller, therefore, are valuations, expressions of human approval or disapproval given to purposive cognitive operations. They are valuations in the same way that "good" and "evil" and "beautiful" and "ugly" are. " Truth' is simply the good or end aimed at in knowing." 21 Every statement is an answer to a question; every inquiry begins with a question (cf. Dewey); if the answer advances the purposes and goals of the asker, as, when, where, and how he conceives them, it is deemed to be true. This is why every truth is personal and particular, and relative to the frame of reference which gave it birth, to the amount of verification it has received, and to the state of knowledge and uses of the individual. This is why formal logic, which abstracts from these factors, can not yield useful truths. This is why truth is dynamic and progressive, not eternal or absolute, but the best solution so far to problems.22 It is the psychological satisfaction of a cognitive purpose. Most significantly, truth works and is useful. This last aspect of truth gave Schiller the most trouble. "Truth is that manipulation of [objects] which turns out
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upon trial to be useful, primarily for any human end, but ultimately for that perfect harmony of our whole life which forms our final aspiration" 23—this is one of Schiller's broadest statements of the usefulness of truth. Other statements are as follows: In all actual knowing the question whether an assertion is 'true' or 'false' is decided . . . by its consequences, by its bearing on the interest which prompted the assertion, by its relation to the purpose which put the question . . . a 'truth' is what is useful in building up a science; a 'falsehood' what is useless or noxious for the same purpose. A 'science,' similarly, is 'good' if it can be used to harmonise our life . . . 24 Nothing can attain truth except through its use and in virtue of its value.25 The pragmatic test to see which of alternative hypotheses works best is to see which one conduces "to the development of the science on the recognized lines, and the proper judges of what 'working' counts are the experts who cultivate each science." 26 Schiller devoted much time and energy to explaining this concept of usefulness and working. Needless to say, it was misunderstood. When James wrote, "ideas . . . become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience," 27 he was similarly misunderstood. What particularly irked Schiller was the simple conversion of "the truth is useful" to "the useful is true." Obviously, many things are useful without being true. "Truth" is not equivalent to or identical with "usefulness," nor with "what works." It must be admitted, nay, emphasised, that to say that all truth must work and be useful is not, strictly, to define it at all. It is to insist on a very important and vital requirement which has been unfortunately overlooked; but it has not the form of a definition.28
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To make "truth" and "usefulness" convertible terms would be to ignore the vital distinction between verified truth and mere truth-claim, which also works to some extent, and is useful to some extent. In fact, Schiller mapped out the entire area of truth-claim, which includes the following: 1. Postulates: "To postulate means to be willing (or anxious) to believe something 'desirable if true,' and to try to establish its truth. Postulation differs from mere credulity or 'animal faith' in its willingness to learn from experience." 29 2. Axioms: "An 'axiom' should be conceived as a fully verified postulate which serves as a principle for a fully established science. When a postulate reaches this stage . . . it is no longer a merely human demand upon nature . . . but rests securely on the solid mass of scientific fact it has been instrumental in eliciting." 30 3. Methodological assumptions: "Any principle, hypothesis, or suggestion that promises to serve as a guide, and to be of use in analysing the flux." 31 Thus the principle of determinism may be regarded as a methodological assumption. (It is interesting to note that Professor Chang TungSun, a modern Chinese philosopher, has proposed Schiller's methodological assumptions as a substitute for Kant's categories.) 32 If such an assumption is discovered to have limits to its working or usefulness, it becomes a 4. Methodological fiction, such as the use by the cartographer of Euclidean geometry in making his maps, or the fiction of political scientists that in a democracy every citizen votes for what is best for the country.33 5. Fiction: myths and works of imagination and art. 6. Jokes may also be truth-claims, depending on their context and the intention of the joker. 7. Lies, as opposed to errors (a distinction not known to formal logic), are deliberate untruths. War propaganda, for example, may serve a useful purpose.
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Thus, obviously, to say that all truths are useful, is very far from saying that whatever is useful is true.34 And truth cannot be defined as that which works, since all these truth-claims "work" in one way or another. What, then, exactly, does Schiller mean by the "working" of truths? This is a problem which he was never able to solve satisfactorily, and his critics sometimes irritated him.35 One writer on pragmatism, for example, said, "since its usefulness proves it true, its trueness consists in its being useful." 36 G. E. Moore declared that Schiller "confuses the view that the useful is true, with the view that the willed is so." 37 But to will something without being able to verify it does not make it true. Moore asks whether "useful" means "having good results" or "causing the race which holds them, to survive."38 Is every characteristic of a surviving species helpful to its survival? Is utility, or survival, identical with truth, or merely a criterion of it, and if so, how? Russell pointed out that "working" in science means prediction and agreement with the observed facts: it has nothing to do with our desires or our needs. He stated that truth is not the same thing as furthering our purposes, and that beliefs found to be useful will continue to be thought true, but often our grounds for persisting in a belief are unreasonable. "The essential novelty of pragmatism is that it admits, as a ground of belief, any kind of satisfaction to be derived from entertaining the belief, not merely the theoretic satisfaction which is sought by science." 39 Peirce, likewise, thought that both Schiller and James could have been clearer on what they meant by "satisfactory." He wrote, "Schiller informs us that he and James have made up their minds that the true is simply the satisfactory. No doubt; but to say 'satisfactory' is not to complete any predicate whatever. Satisfactory to what end?" 40 Lovejoy, in his classic essay on the varieties of pragmatism,41 found in it eight different theories of knowledge (i. e. of the criterion for the
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validity of a judgment), three different theories of meaning, and an epistemologically functionless theory concerning the "nature of truth." C. W. Morris pointed out that pragmatism gave "no detailed account of the relation of mental processes to the demands of action." 42 Randall and Buchler make the following criticisms of Schiller's views of the usefulness of truth: Does Schiller mean that the true is the 'useful' in the sense of being applicable technologically, or of affording some practical social satisfaction? If so, then to say that Sophroniscus was the father of Socrates, or that the amoeba reproduces by binary fission, would not be to speak truth, for neither of these truths affords such utility or satisfaction . . . Is a belief 'useful' in the negative sense that it causes us no intellectual inconvenience to accept it, or that there is no particular reason why it should not be accepted, or that it fits in well with what we already regard as true? . . . Is a belief 'useful' in that it is in some sense simpler than an alternative belief, or that it facilitates mental labor? . . . Does the fact that the bulk of society prefers a given belief mean that it is true? . . . To hold that social acceptance is the criterion of truth is to base the criterion of truth on historical accidents.43 These approaches remind one of the difficulties faced by James. In two of his letters, he wrote, Inborn rationalists and inborn pragmatists will never convert each other. We shall always look on them as spectral and they on us as trashy—irredeemably both!44 When an idea 'works' successfully among all the other ideas which relate to the object of which it is our mental substitute, associating and comparing itself with them harmoniously, the workings are wholly inside of the intellectual world, and the idea's value purely intellectual, for the time, at least. This is my doctrine and Schiller's, but it seems very hard to express it so as to get it understood! 45 Dewey's views on this difficult subject were expressed in a letter to James in 1907:
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My own views are much more naturalistic, and a reaction against not merely intellectualistic and monistic idealism but against all idealisms, except, of course, in the sense of ethical ideals. Now, I seem to myself to be nearer you than I am to Schiller on this point, yet I am not sure. On the other hand, Schiller in his later writings seems to emphasize that the good consequence which is the test of an idea, is good not so much in its own nature as in meeting the claims of the idea, whatever the idea is. And here I seem to be nearer him than you. 46 Schiller in his later years was candid enough to admit that his ideas of "working" could not be given precision. What precisely is meant by this vague term? Does any sort of working, however alien to the ordinary type of cognitive operation, suffice to constitute a 'truth'? If a powerful State or Church sets itself to persecute an opinion, say about evolution, and succeeds in suppressing it by force, does it render it 'false' by killing all who believe it? It is regrettable that no sharp-cut answers can be given to such questions. It cannot be denied that persecution has often been successful, and that the cause of truth has had many martyrs. Also the question of the relations of truth to survival-value is perhaps the most difficult of all the questions which can be raised about truth. On the one hand, it is clear that opinions which are directly lethal in their effects on those who hold them cannot be held 'true.' If they do not perish altogether with those who hold them, they can survive only as 'false.' It is also clear that opinions which have a high survival-value will be extensively believed to be 'true,' and that therefore their survivalvalue must form an important factor in our current 'truths.' But it will not be possible to explain all 'truth' as reflecting merely the survival-value of beliefs. It is better, therefore, to conceive 'working' as a wide genus with a number of species, some of which have not yet been fully determined and are still in dispute. There may long continue to be disputes about what workings are relevant to what truth-claims, but the general logical requirements will remain the same in all cases.
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On the whole, then, we must be content to leave unsolved the general question of how, in the abstract, the relevance of the consequences to the truth-claim they are said to verify is to be determined.47 Schiller was thus honest enough to confess to the difficulties inherent in the concept of the "usefulness" or "working" of truth. In his favor, it may be said that the only way by which human beings can distinguish truth from error, is by verification of its consequences in experience. Any criterion of truth which refers to a realm prior to or outside of experience, is self-defeating. 48 This seems inescapable, and should have been Schiller's trump card against his critics. Of the seven theories of truth which have been traditionally held, none can answer the simple question: how do you know whether a statement is true? The correspondence theory does answer the question, but its answer is in effect the same as Schiller's, viz., that it works. Schiller always vigorously asserted that the usefulness of a lie, or of any of the other forms of truth-claims, does not make it the truth. His emphasis on the area of possible human experience as the matrix for truth and falsity is the core of his theory; and, in this generalized statement, it is undoubtedly valid. The concept of the "working" of truth has the additional advantage that it is always a matter of degree; 49 a hypothesis can never be said to be irreversibly proved. Truth may range, as the theorists of probability say, between 0 and 1. A hypothesis is always more or less true, compared with its competitors. "The more extensively, conveniently, and economically a hypothesis works, the more value has it, i.e., the more likely is it to be called 'true', and to be supposed true absolutely." 6 0 The distinction between theory and practice is rendered irrelevant to this field. One other important aspect of Schiller's theory that w e
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make our truths is that it disposes of any notion of the "independence" or "transcendence" of truth. For truth to be "independent" means that the connection between "being true" and "being known" is contingent.51 This Schiller would deny, and so would most of modern philosophy. The idea that there is truth to which we can never attain in theory, which can never be verified within possible human experience, is one which is literally valueless, useless, and meaningless to human beings. Its psychological origin is an alltoo-human desire to compensate ideally for the inadequacies of experience. The concept of "useless" truth is one to which Schiller gave some attention. Along with Dewey, he was criticized for denying the importance of idle curiosity and the "useless" activities of the pure mathematicians. Since these activities are divorced from concrete and practical problems, it was alleged that the pragmatists did not do justice to them. But what Schiller said was: All I have ever criticized is the philosophic habit of taking 'pure' mathematics, in abstraction from 'applied,' as if it were the whole story . . . to cherish animosity towards pure mathematics is about as impossible as to show disrespect towards the equator.52 And again, [Truth] is always good as such: what is called a 'useless' truth is either no truth at all or one temporarily off duty or out of use, because not relevant to the actual emergency, and so not called out for active service . . . The question of its usefulness, therefore, is already settled when an assertion is judged to be 'really true.' 5 3 Here again, the difficulty would have been obviated had Schiller realized and utilized the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. It is only the latter to which the concept of verifiability and usefulness is relevant. However, when Schiller spoke of usefulness "for that perfect harmony of our whole life which forms our final aspira-
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tion," 5 4 it was clear that no human activity within that orbit could be denied usefulness. Schiller did not hesitate to meet squarely certain problems inherent in the idea of truth as verifiable and working. One such problem is the question of past truths. G. E. Moore, for example, objected to the assertion that a time index must be applied to the truth of a statement, and charged that Schiller failed to distinguish the truth of a statement from the belief in it.5B Here we may observe the lingering prejudice in favor of an absolute and independent truth. Taylor asked, "did the doctrine of the earth's motion become true when enunciated by the Pythagoreans, false again when men forgot the Pythagorean astronomy, and true a second time on the publication of the book of Copernicus?" 5 6 James too was badgered by questions about the irrevocability and independence of the past, and about what becomes of "the truth" when men change their opinions about the external world or the past. But the answer is not too difficult. We have no reason to assume that the procedure by which truth is now being made differs from earlier ones, or that truth is created ex nihilo: All beliefs about the past have a present value . . . derived from past testing . . . all history must be such that the acknowledged present facts can be derived from it. Every historical truth continues to have consequences which may be used to test it . . . for our knowledge the past is no more rigid than the future . . . though the truth is about the past, its verification, like that of any other truth, is by its future consequences.57 The Pythagorean, Ptolemaic and Copemican systems represent stages in a progressive approximation to an adequate account of celestial motions . . . each of them was valued as 'true' while it seemed adequate, and re-valued as 'false' when it was improved on. In some cases there ensues upon the discovery [of truth] a transvaluation of our former values, which are now re-valued as
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'false,' while the new 'truth' is antedated as having been true all along. . . . the whole distinction remains within the human evaluation of truth, and affords no occasion for attributing to 'truth' any real independence of human cognition . . . it is a mere error of abstraction to think that because a 'truth' may be judged 'independent' after human manipulation, it is so per se, irrespectively of the procedure to which it owes its 'independent' existence.88 But it cannot be denied that the doctrine of the making of truth by men does not operate without some restraints, which apply more forcibly in Schiller's doctrine of the making of reality.59 Schiller confesses his inability to account for the making of all facts, especially those concerning the past, and his theory is not essentially weakened by this admission. What is important is how we act on our present information about the past, "with a view to the future." 80 "A truth has not merely to be asserted " says Loewenberg, "but also to be enacted."61 Schiller was a thoroughgoing personalist, and, as we saw in our analysis of his logic, this personalism weakened his concept of meaning by not doing justice to the problem of the communication of meanings.62 The entire emphasis in Schiller is on the individual, whereas in Dewey the context or matrix of scientific inquiry is primarily social. "Overemphasis on the personal element in experience at the expense of the environmental was . . . [Schiller's] besetting idiosyncrasy," wrote Max Otto.63 Not that Schiller ever denied the intersubjectivity of truth. He wrote, "man is a social being, and truth indubitably is to a large extent a social product . . . Truth, then, to be really safe, has to be more than an individual valuation; it has to win social recognition . . . social usefulness is an ultimate determinant of 'truth.'" 64 And, elsewhere, "the social nature of Knowing is so obviously a commonplace, to be taken for granted by any pragmatist.' 65 However, Schiller nowhere discusses
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the relation between the intersubjective and the subjective, or how the social truth grows out of personal truths, although he characterizes objectivity as a difficult social achievement, rather than a self-evident given fact. 66 Furthermore, absolute intersubjectivity or universality, even in scientific inquiry, is unlikely; the human personality is an ultimate for Schiller. Here again we may see the result of Schiller's confusion of the activity of thinking (which is irreducibly personal) with the outcome of that activity (which is intersubjectively verifiable and comprehensible). Schiller's doctrine of the making of truth must be qualified in certain other respects. For one thing, one cannot help suspecting the lurking of the genetic fallacy in his thinking. That is, the categories of "origin" and "validity" are not expressly differentiated. Schiller clarified the nature of human belief,67 but did not work out fully a critical theory of evidence.68 And, while he insisted on the fundamental importance of relevance as a requirement of any thinking, he did not make sufficiently explicit how the standard of relevance is to be selected. However, to ask for precision in setting up such a standard is to ask for a petitio principii or for the impossible.69 And Schiller did not clarify fully the limitations on man's power to make truth and to make facts.70 His statement that truth must work is an admission that every truth-claim must satisfy external requirements, but many of his critics found this an inadequate characterization of the bounds imposed by the external world on man's truth-making. Thus Russell wrote: Granted that, as pragmatists point out, truth is a matter of degree, and is a property of purely human occurrences, namely beliefs, it still does not follow that the degree of truth possessed by a belief depends upon purely human conditions. In increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs, we are approximating to an
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ideal, and the ideal is determined by Fact, which is only within our control to a certain very limited extent.71 And Stout too went part of the way with Schiller: The individual makes truth inasmuch as truth is throughout relative to his aims and interests and varies as these vary. In so far as an assumption is actually found serviceable for any purpose pursued by any mind in any phase of its development, the assumption is to that extent true. For other minds or the same mind at another time entertaining other purposes, the assumption may prove more or less unserviceable and to that extent it is false.72 But he added a reservation: When once we start with a certain purpose and a certain guiding assumption, the result is determined for us and not by us. We do not ourselves decide but only find by trial whether or not the guiding assumption will lead to successful control of our experience. To this extent, . . . truth is something which is imposed on us and which we desire and require to be imposed on us.73 W e may conclude this chapter on the making of truth by quoting one of Russell's epigrams—one which unfortunately is not true—"The pragmatist theory of truth is to be condemned on the ground that it does not 'work.'" 7 4 For the great and incontestable virtue of Schiller's views on the nature of truth is that they do work, and that no other theory of truth can satisfactorily answer the simple question, how within human experience can you distinguish truth from error?
IX. Metaphysics and Psychology: The Making of Reality metaphysics is not a science, nor a superscience, but the coordinator and harmonizer of the individual sciences. Metaphysics has no special subject matter; the philosopher "should not conceive of himself as a specialist, but rather as a liaison officer between the sciences and as a mediator between them and the natural demands of human life." 1 As knowledge grows, scientific specialization increases, and it is the function of philosophy to preserve the grand synoptic vision, the bird's-eye view. Despite the underlying unity of scientific method, there is disputed territory between the sciences, and there are peripheral areas. As new sciences are created and mature, they declare themselves independent of their parents. It is the business of philosophy to coordinate and interpret the results of the individual sciences into a coherent and intelligible picture. "The cosmic jig-saw puzzle has been cut up, Humpty Dumpty has been effectively dismembered, and just because it is a special science, no science can presume to put him together again." 2 Philosophy, or more precisely here metaphysics, is not the "queen of the sciences." It is not a higher sort of knowledge; it has no superiority over the sciences; it has no "independence." It is an ultimate synthesis of particular sciences. "If we assign to metaphysics the task of drawing the conclusions from all knowledge, . . . because the sciences are so independent of each other, metaphysics must be granted extensive rights of reinterpretation, in order that a final synthesis may be feasible." 3 F O R SCHILLER,
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Just as there cannot be an end to scientific discoveries in our finite lives, neither can there be, according to Schiller, a final metaphysics. As truth progresses, so does metaphysics. In addition, just as truth is subject to endless verification, so is metaphysics by nature provisional and tentative. However, science originates in practical necessity, and has as its criterion practical utility, whereas metaphysics is not immediately practical, but ethical, or quasi-ethical, in character,4 or perhaps aesthetic: "'Systems' of philosophy . . . [are] works of art that bear the impress of a unique and individual soul" ;5 "every . . . metaphysic is a poem." 6 Not only must metaphysics include personality as part of the data in its synthesis, but also it cannot be severed from each philosopher's own knowledge, desires, visions, and reactions. Metaphysical systems are relative to individual data. Since human beings create them, they involve idiosyncrasies of personality and temperament.7 "The differences between rival metaphysics are never merely 'theoretic'8 . . . a philosophic system is an unique and personal achievement." 9 No metaphysical unanimity can ever be attained, since it is the personality of the metaphysicist that provides the principle which evaluates the data of science and "arranges them in a system that brings the world nearer to his heart's desire." 10 (This approach is notably similar to that of some other pragmatists. James said that the history of philosophy is the history of the clash of human temperaments, and Kallen has said, "The philosophic system becomes . . . a pure lyric expression of the appetites of human nature." 11 . . . "Beside the philosopher . . . your poet is a worm in a puddle." 12 ) The individual human personality is one of the ontological ultimates for Schiller, a fundamental principle of unity or order. It cannot be analyzed into simpler components, nor "explained away." It is the realest thing we know. Not that Schiller was a solipsist: this was an accusation rather
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which he leveled at Bradley and the absolute idealists. 13 He stood foursquare on the statement of Protagoras:14 Man is the measure of all things; of those that are, that they are; of those that are not, that they are not. But this is not to deny the objectivity of truth: Protagoras meant "men" as well as "man." To say that 'man is the measure of all things' necessarily conducts to subjectivism and to scepticism is simply not true . . . The question, 'if man is the measure, then how do we manage to measure?' was not raised. What was raised was the unfair, untrue, and uninstructive cry, 'then knowledge becomes impossible!' The levity with which this outcry rises to the lips of a priori metaphysicians is as extraordinary as the vitreousness of the abodes which ultimately house their own convictions . . , 15 Schiller's admiration for Protagoras was balanced only by his antagonism to Plato: Plato's anti-empirical bias renders him profoundly anti-scientific . . . his influence has always, openly or subtly, counteracted and thwarted the scientific impulse . . . wherever there is hypostasisation and idolatry of concepts, and wherever these interpose between the mind and things, wherever they lead to disparagement of immediate experience, wherever the stubborn rigidity of prejudice refuses to adapt itself to the changes of reality, wherever the delusive answers of an a priori dialectic leave unanswered questions of inductive research, wherever words lure and delude, stupefy and paralyse, there Truth is sacrificed to Plato.10 Schiller's earliest major work, Riddles of the Sphinx, published in 1891 and submitted as a Ph.D. thesis, was a youthful attempt to write a comprehensive metaphysics, to show that we can not do without philosophy, to destroy the agnosticism of Spencer and Kant, to demonstrate the invalidity of scepticism and pessimism, and to construct a positive philosophy based on evolution. In later years, he was slightly embarrassed by the exuberance of his early effort; 17 he hardly ever referred to his pre-pragmatic work.
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However, certain themes first enunciated in Riddles of the Sphinx continued to be important in his thinking. One of these is the pervasiveness of evolution. We have noted its effect on his logic and philosophy of science. He regards it as a special case of the historical method, which assumes the reality of history, and therefore of time.18 Evolution, as interpreted by Spencer, adds the assertion that its dimension is from the simple to the complex. Schiller wrestled in his early work with certain problems of physics and chemistry, some of which have since fortunately been solved.19 He also argued from the necessity of a non-phenomenal cause of evolution to a transcendent Deity.20 This interest in evolution was a persisting factor in Schiller's thought. For one thing, the development of the world in Time gave him the assurance that the time-process is an ultimate datum.21 Secondly, it provided, through an analysis of the philosophical presuppositions of Darwinism, an argument for teleology.22 For Darwin explains adaptation by variation and natural selection, but he does not, and cannot, explain the causes of variation. Natural selection as such does not assure progress, nor exclude degeneration. Indefinite and random variation is thus a methodological postulate, and it would be arbitrary to take it as an absolute principle. Darwinism does not deny the possibility of purposive adaptation. While neither teleology nor mechanism can be "proved" by any set of facts, as long as the facts indicate any order or disorder, the decision requires "[an act] of choice; it eminently calls for the exercise of our 'will to believe'; it rests, like all the ultimate assumptions of our knowledge, upon an act of faith." 23 Evolutionism, in the third place, affords an argument against absolutism, since it opposes the assumption that experience necessarily forms a "whole" statically and eternally. Furthermore, can any rigid Absolute act selectively, or purposively? 24
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The most important effect of evolutionism on Schiller was that it supplied scientific support for his belief in the reality of biological novelty, and the legitimacy of human progress. Darwinism is to be taken as showing us how we ought to act in order to survive and progress. In a critique of Nietzsche, Schiller wrote, "progress everywhere depends on the few who are capable of creating novelties." 25 Darwinian novelty is not unintelligible, nor does it subvert the cosmic order. It is never completely new; that is, it presents no problem of assimilation to the existing state of affairs. Actually, it is a fiction to treat the world as if things ever happened twice.26 And Schiller denies that the notion of "emergence" is an explanation of novelty.27 He was scornful of the human and philosophic antipathy to novelty: "the unprogressiveness of philosophy, which its typical votaries are wont to mistake for an assurance of its eternal truth." 28 He insisted on the methodological principle that there must be some way of coping with the new. "Ever since the Eleatics, . . . [philosophers] have argued that novelty could not be truly real. Being was one and the same, now and forevermore, and if facts defied this dogma so much the worse for the facts!" 29 The reality of novelty has two vital consequences for Schiller: it justifies our faith in freedom, and in the possibility of changing human nature. In part, this also accounted for Schiller's antipathy to the rigidity of formal logic. The belief in novelty leads directly to Schiller's most distinctive contribution to metaphysics: his emphasis on the plasticity and incompleteness of reality, and the making of reality by men. This also follows logically from the doctrine of the making of truth:30 It is generally recognised . . . that a solution of the ontological question—W/wi is Reality?—is not possible until it has been decided how Reality can come within our ken. Before there can be a real for us at all, the Real must be knotvable, and the notion
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of an unknowable reality is useless, because it abolishes itself. The true formulation therefore of the ultimate question of metaphysics must become—W/uzt can I know as real? And thus the effect of what Kant called the Copemican revolution in philosophy is that ontology, the theory of Reality, comes to be conditioned by epistemology, the theory of our knowledge.81 James, however, had cut the Gordian knot of objective reality by assuming it: Schiller's doctrine and mine are identical, only our expositions follow different directions. He starts from the subjective pole of the chain, the individual with his beliefs, as the more concrete and immediately given phenomenon . . . I begin with the abstract notion of an objective reality. Schiller, remaining with the fallible individual, and treating only of reality-for-him, seems to many of his readers to ignore reality-in-itself altogether. But that is because he seeks only to tell us how truths are attained, not what the contents of those truths, when attained, shall be. 32 Schiller says, following Berkeley, "We know the Real as it is when we know it; we know nothing whatever about what it is apart from that process." 3 3 And since our knowing is purposive and creative, it is our interests which impose the conditions under which Reality can be revealed to us. Truth grows for us by our activity; Reality grows along with it. This joint process is "never one of bringing the mind into relation with a fundamentally alien reality, but always one of improving and extending an already existing system which we know." 3 4 We have seen that facts are selected, and, in a legitimate sense, made by us; "reality" follows suit. 33 "Reality" is not absolute or formal, nor is it purely psychological (anything which is experienced ); it is pragmatic, it is what w e evaluate as important. 36 "The world as it now appears to us may be regarded as the reflexion of our interests in life." 37 The belief in "the reality of the external world" is not an original datum of experi-
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ence, but is the result of the kind of selection by which we reduce the chaos about us to order. We believe in a real world which preceded our existence because we conceive it as having been "made" to a large extent before we took part in the process.38 Peirce's views are strikingly similar: If all things are continuous, the universe must be undergoing a continuous growth from non-existence to existence. There is no difficulty in conceiving existence as a matter of degree. The reality of things consists in their persistent forcing themselves upon our recognition. If a thing has no such persistence, it is a mere dream. Reality, then, is persistence, is regularity. In the original chaos, where there was no regularity, there was no existence.39 The idea of an absolute and unalterable Reality, supersensible and more "valid" than immediate experience, is unverifiable, and therefore unmeaningful and stultifying. It disparages by implication the worth of human activity and the role of human enterprise. And to the physicist, "reality" is quite plastic arid malleable. What is an electron, really? Now there are two obvious difficulties with Schiller's theory that men make reality. One of these may be referred to as the limitation in time, the other as the limitation in power. Men are born into a world which obviously preceded them in existence. So far as the individual knower is concerned, we may argue that earlier generations made the world for him, though, as we have seen, Schiller was reluctant to accept this substitution of the category of the social for that of the personal. Moreover, we have evidence that this planet was in existence before any life existed. Bertrand Russell wrote: Dr. Schiller says that the external world was first discovered by a low marine animal he calls 'Grumps,' who swallowed a bit of rock that disagreed with him, and argued that he would not have given himself such a pain, and therefore there must be an
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external world. One is tempted to think that, at the time when Professor Dewey wrote, many people in the newer countries had not yet made the disagreeable experience which Grumps made. Meanwhile, whatever accusation pragmatists may bring, I shall continue to protest that it was not I who made the world.40 As for the other limitation, in what sense can it be said that men "make" e.g., the solar system, or their own mortality? That is, is it meaningful to equate "make" with "select"? May we, even as a methodological postulate, or statement of intent, assume the complete plasticity of reality? 41 As Bosanquet remarked, importunity does not necessarily prevail with the universe: it is not like asking a man for a loan of £5.*2 Schiller's later writings somewhat reluctantly modified his original theory of the making of reality. He accepted, as pragmatic, the distinction between "finding" and "making" the real, although he reiterated the meaninglessness of the "real-as-it-is-in-itself" and stressed the fact that real knowledge is power over reality. But the "finding" of reality does not exclude the "making" of reality, since "the most real object w e acknowledge had first to be made an object of thought by our selection." 43 The reasons for attributing reality to anything, whether w e antedate it or not, are also pragmatic: the value of reality "is attributed to objects because, and so far as, and so long as, they yield satisfactory methods for handling our experience." 44 The making of truth, and of reality, can never be merely passive mirroring, but "the Pragmatic Method . . . has definitely postulated an initial basis of fact as the condition of its getting to work at all." 43 Schiller distinguishes a subjective from an objective making of reality, an epistemological from a metaphysical making. 40 He approves a "belief in an 'independent' reality, because . . . w e do not seem to alter 'reality', but only our beliefs about it . . . the new truth (or reality) . . . may always be antedated, and con-
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ceived as having existed independently of the claim which it refutes. But it cannot be said to be similarly independent of the process which has established it." 47 But he is loath to drop his point, and goes on, "in our dealings with the more kindred and responsive beings in the world our attitude towards them may be an essential factor in their behavior towards us. If so, we shall have sufficient ground for the belief that our manipulations may really 'make,' and not merely 'find' reality." 48 The hypothetical truth and reality which Schiller admits are not made, the indeterminate, formless "matter," the original chaos, is by definition unknown to us. For it Schiller revives the Greek term "hule." 49 Something must be taken for granted in all explanation, as Aristotle had indicated, and the world as it is right now is the presupposition for any question we ask about it now. And the "world" temporally prior to human intervention, and physically beyond man's power of perception or manipulation, is hule. It is never clear whether Schiller regards this limitation or matrix of human activity as ontological or as epistemological. Is it an objectively real chaos, or is it a set of boundaries to our knowledge, i.e., power? Perhaps these are unfair questions, in view of the generations of philosophers since Aristotle who have wrestled with the problem of the "formless." Hule may be regarded as the raw material of the cosmos, as indeterminate but determinable potency. Since hule, like the Ding an sich, is never experienced, and can by definition never be experienced, it is an ever-receding horizon. If reality is experience, we may assume that there are aspects or portions of the universe condemned to be forever unreal, i.e., unknown to us.50 However, the implication of an "infinite regress" is unwarranted: hule may be inferred from our human situation just as other minds are inferred by us: "Hule is the fundamental variable about, before, around, within us . . . Mr. Gilford may call it
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spirit if he likes, or matter, or roly-poly. The name doesn't matter. The indeterminateness does." 81 And James wrote: I am sure that not one of us has any clear idea of what the ultimate pre-human fact, which we encounter and which works, through all our stratified predicates, upon us—the hide as you call it—really is or signifies.52 And at another time: Isn't the hule which you speak of as the primal bearer of all our humanized predicates, conceived by you epistemologically as an independent that which the whats qualify, and which (in the ultimate) may be decided to be of any nature whatsoever? 53 The problem of hule is never completely clarified by Schiller. Granted that ontology is for him conditioned by psychology (as logic is also), we remain with the difficulties about hule: is it fundamentally material, or mental? And how can it, if it is unknowable, produce or condition human experience? And, as in the problem of the making of truth, is it basically individual, or social? Does Schiller really come to grips with the problem of the nature of reality? Is his metaphysics an essential advance on Kant, except (of course these are vital exceptions) in its basis as a critique of science rather than as a critique of reason, and in its stress on the importance of human activity? Has Schiller successfully drawn a line between "reality" and our knowledge of it? Can such a line be drawn at all? And lastly, how genuine (i.e., theoretically soluble in terms of possible human experience) is the problem of the relation of human experience to a beyond, or a hule? 54 What Schiller has done is to add a dimension of idealism to his pragmatism. Kallen has thus characterized it: "Humanism is thus 'personal idealism,' pragmatism given an ego-centric or subjectivistic bias." 55 Schiller's emphasis on the creativity of human actions is a brilliant insight. His protest against the static, perfect, unimprovable world of
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the Absolutists, and against the Naturalist world in which human enterprise and purpose are trivial or nugatory, is a vigorous example of the way in which philosophy can better human life. The idea of the plasticity of reality is an incentive to scientific activity which could scarcely be improved upon: it is the type of methodological postulate which is programmatic rather than compensatory.58 His vision of truth and reality as goals to be achieved by human effort, rather than as immutable absolutes which filter down to a passive recipient, is an inspiring one. The relentless compulsion of the external world upon human aims is and should be questioned. In the words of Leroux, Schiller's philosophy is "cet évolutionisme spiritualiste et pluraliste par où s'était affirmée dès la première heure sa foi dans la satisfaction graduelle de toutes les aspirations de l'homme." 17 However, it was not necessary to blur the distinction between the discovery and the making of reality. Faith may move mountains, but it does not follow that the nature of things is completely neutral. We have a wide area for improving the world, and reality is at least partially malleable, but why do we require complete plasticity? Our knowledge of facts or what facts we find or whether we find facts at all does admittedly depend on us and on our judgment and skill. But it does not follow that facts themselves depend on us and on our judgment and skill. The premise that we discover facts . . . does not yield the conclusion that facts are existentially dependent on us—that there were no facts before human beings appeared in the universe.38 It is not correct to call Schiller's humanism "an ontological romanticism," as Lamprecht did,59 since this ignores the positive and scientific aspects of his metaphysics, but James's characterization of Schiller's universe as "re-anthropomorphised," 60 is accurate. It would have been better and more consistent for Schiller to have described man's
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activity as a remoulding or partial alteration of an alien existing reality, rather than as a making of reality. Peirce, too, thought Schiller should have defined reality more carefully. 61 This would not derogate from the centrality of man's achievements and aspiration in the universe, and would not overstate man's powers. It would make Schiller's idealism less purely personal and quasi-Kantian, and more in keeping with the methods of the empirical sciences which he otherwise followed. In Dewey's words, all our knowing is a mode of action in which the known reality gains more specifically determined character—this is an Idealism which is experimental, not merely epistemological . . . and which . . . alone makes possible a metaphysic which in truth and not merely in word acknowledges Evolution.62 Such an idealism would be, and is, the postulate of science; it is quite a different thing from the reference to an unattainable goal of classical epistemological idealism. It remains to consider several other facets of Schiller's metaphysics. First is his panpsychism or hylozoism."3 Just as his theory of knowledge led to his humanism, since human knowing plays an important role in the progressive organization, or reorganization, of the universe, so does humanism lead to hylozoism. There is no "mere" knowing. It is all bound up with doing, with its application. Knowing as such is inevitably an alteration of reality. It alters the knower himself, certainly, and to the extent that the knowledge is about other persons, it, like love, compels a certain response and alters them. Awareness of our recognition is shown "by our fellow-men and by such animals as are developed enough to take note of us, and to have their actions disturbed and altered by our knowing, or even by the thought that we may know them and are observing them." 84 Because we can operate variously, and thereby elicit variable responses from "the real,"
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we can say that inanimate objects also are responsive to each other, and modify their behaviour accordingly. A stone is not indifferent to other stones. On the contrary, it is attracted by every material body in the physical world. By our bodies among the rest. Of course, we are only recognised on our physical side, as bodies like the stone, and not in our whole nature. But the stone responds, after its fashion, to our manipulation. Treat them differently, and they behave differently: that is as true of stones as of men. 65 Nature can not be indifferent to us and to our doings. It may be hostile . . . it may be unsuspectedly friendly . . it must respond in varying ways to our various efforts.66
This type of panpsychism or hylozoism is again, in our opinion, an unnecessary overstatement, an unwarranted argument by analogy from sentient to insentient beings. Humanism need not and should not require that the rest of the universe behave the way men do. But the hylozoist assumption may be regarded as a manifestation of the right to postulate, to create methodological fictions which will render our experience more harmonious or intelligible. If knowledge is action, hylozoism may be considered as an extension of Newton's third law of motion, to the effect that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; or as the application to inorganic matter of the stimulus-response pattern of psychology. We also must remember the Heisenberg principle in modern physics, and the effects on the intra-atomic structure caused by man's "looking" at it (i.e., "knowing" it) as an interaction of man and nature. This hylozoism leads Schiller to regard the laws of nature as essentially a statement of the habits of things. "Objectively . . . 'law' means nothing but habit 6 7 . . . It is the rule of Habit that makes the whole world kin . . . It is thus because things have habits that we can understand them, predict them, and exploit them." 6 8 But habits change; the world process is dynamic. The immutability of the laws of
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nature has not been proved, but only postulated. 89 Even such "axioms" as the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter have been doubted: "they were in truth nothing more than methodological principles." 70 Schiller regarded the Periodic Law in chemistry and the discovery of radioactivity as evidences of the evolution of the laws of nature. But of course these are not changes in the laws of nature or in the habits of things. They are restatements, in more adequate terminology, of the way things invariably behave, and presumably have always behaved. However, radioactivity does involve an irreversible temporal dimension, and therefore points to a beginning of the world (and of time?) So do contemporary cosmological speculation and physics.71 There is no theoretical objection to conceiving the "laws of nature" as evolving, i.e., to insisting on the search for a still more fundamental way to describe the "habits of things." It is worth noting that Peirce also believed that the laws of nature are progressive tendencies toward uniformity: The only possible way of accounting for die laws of nature and for uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution . . . I make use of chance chiefly to make room for a principle of generalization, or tendency to form habits, which I hold has produced all regularities . . . What we call matter is not completely dead, but is merely mind hide-bound with habits.72 Kallen also has said, "necessity is but chance repeating itself as habit." 73 Schiller's conception of the laws of nature as really the habits of things, led him ( in an essay published in 1907 ) to a remarkably prophetic aperçu-. In observing the inorganic we are dealing with the world's constituents in very large numbers . . . The least speck visible under the microscope is composed of atoms by the million. Consequently the regularity we observe may very well be that of an average. If, then, a single atom here or there displayed its extra-
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ordinary intelligence or original perverseness by refusing to do as the rest, how pray should it ever be detected by us? 74 One other aspect of Schiller's metaphysics to be mentioned is his pluralism. This follows, of course, from his personalism and the right to postulate, and it shows the influence of James. At the apex of reality, for Schiller, there is not an Absolute, but a number of finite beings, each of intrinsic value. The end of the world process is a perfect society of perfected individuals,75 just as "the 'Creation of the World' would mean essentially the great event of the 'dissociation' of the original 'One' into a 'Many.'" 7 6 The constituents of the world can have purposes, but it is meaningless to speak of a purpose of the world as a whole: purpose in terms of what? The unity of the universe can therefore serve only as an ultimate ideal. This is the weakness of monism and of the ontological argument: to call something a universe does not make it one. In order to save the reality of purpose, Schiller was compelled to deny monism and emphasize his pluralism. When it was pointed out to him that he advocated the right to postulate in order to render experience more harmonious and intelligible, he replied, forgetting the Golden Rule, that this was "uncritical humanism which confuses desire with fact." 77 For Schiller, pluralism is not a dogma but a criticism: "For reasons of methodological convenience we shall always aim at the greatest amount of unification, and shall therefore postulate unifying principles wherever we can, and be biassed in their favour." 78 But monism remained for him an illusory postulate. The permanent contribution of Schiller to metaphysics may be stated in one of his sentences: "That we make additions to our data out of our own resources, is the achievement of . . . humanism." 79 That this is a valid and fruitful insight into the procedure of knowing and the problem of
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being a human being, is strikingly bome out by some recent remarks of Albert Einstein, worth quoting in extenso:80 In fact, however, the "real" is in no way immediately given to us. Given to us are merely the data of our consciousness: and among these data only those form the material of science which allow of univocal linguistic expression. There is only one way from the data of consciousness to "reality," to wit, the way of conscious or unconscious intellectual construction, which proceeds completely free and arbitrarily. In fact, however, positing the "real" which exists independently of my sensations is the result of intellectual construction. We happen to put more trust in these constructions than in the interpretations which we are making with references to our sensations. Thence arises our confidence in statements like this: "There were trees long before there was a creature able to perceive them." W e are free to choose which elements we wish to apply in the construction of physical reality. The justification of our choice lies exclusively in our success. For example, Euclidean geometry, considered as a mathematical system, is a mere play with empty concepts (straight lines, planes, points, etc., are mere "fancies"). If, however, one adds that the straight line be replaced by a rigid rod, geometry is transformed into a physical theory. A theorem, like that of Pythagoras, then gains a reference to reality. But now I hear you saying: "All right, but the real world exists independent of the fact whether we have a theory about it or not." Such a statement has, in my opinion, no other meaning than the following: "I believe that there exists a satisfactory theory based on the assumption of fictitious objects extended in spacetime and their regular relations." Such a belief is deeply ingrained in us because it is practically indispensable as a basis of pre-scientific thought. Science accepts this belief, but transforms it radically, leaving it open in principle of what kind these elements are. The conviction of the non-existence of a "stationary ether,"
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which followed from the special theory of relativity, was only the last step in this transition from the concept of "mass" to that of "field" as an elementary concept in physics, i.e. as an irreducible conceptual element in the logical construction of "reality." Therefore I think, it is not justified to regard mass as something "real," the field, however, as merely a "fancy."
X. Value Theory: Ethics and Religion is naturally personalistic and pragmatic. He defined "Value" for the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics1 as follows: " a personal attitude, of welcome or the reverse, towards an object of interest." Just as there is no such thing as pure fact, there is no such thing as pure value: both are caught up in and judged by the human predicament. Values alter, grow, and diminish, varying with the changing personality. The act of valuation is personal and irreducible.2 The pragmatic method in ethics is inquiry regarding the actual use of traditional ethical principles and appraisal of them through application.3 Thus the categorical imperative of Kant cannot really be applied to specific problems of human action; it tells you to do your duty, but not what your duty is.4 Ethics for Schiller is an inquiry of the same sort as science.5 An ethical postulate is as rational as a scientific postulate. It affirms "the significance of the ideal of Goodness, of our ethical valuation of things." 9 There is nothing emotional about it. If we postulate that the world is knowable, and that truth can be attained, why can we not similarly postulate regarding goodness, beauty, and happiness? 7 Since the world is, at least to some extent, knowable and controllable by men, it pro tanto satisfies our emotional desire for knowledge: is there any theoretical reason why it should not satisfy other desires? We put them forth as postulates, subject to verification by experience, and inasSCHILLER'S THEORY OF VALUE
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much as "the world" for us is ultimately human experience, we assert that that experience will ultimately be harmonious, coherent, and valuable.8 We make the assumption that the world is intelligible, and the more we trust that assumption the more we learn. Why should not the assumption of a moral cosmos be made and confirmed in the same way? Schiller asserts that the scientific order is so much stronger than the moral order because of "the different amounts of experience behind the two assumptions. Historically man was a knowing being long before he was an ethical being." 9 Now this answer is not very convincing, but it is undeniable that postulation in ethics is a much more satisfactory procedure than the hoary attempts to regulate conduct by formal codes. Moral principles for Schiller (as for Dewey, whom he resembles here) are not a priori presuppositions of right conduct; they are its results. "They arise from moral experience and embody its lessons. Just as scientific laws are formulas drawn from events in order to predict events, so moral laws are formulas extracted from right actions to facilitate more moral actions." 10 Like scientific postulates, they are applied tentatively to new situations, to see how they will work; the more they work, the stronger they become. Unlike the precepts of formal codes, they are always capable of growth and decline. They can be adapted to changing situations. Schiller draws a parallel here to jurisprudence: the English common law has never been codified, but is based on the assumption that right decisions have been made in the past, and that from them the judge extracts principles which will properly apply to new analogous cases.11 However, to state such principles in ethics is another and more difficult matter. This Schiller never attempted. He thought it sufficient to indicate a consistent and fruitful procedure.
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An example of Schiller's method is his essay on "The Place of Pessimism in Philosophy."12 Pessimism is shown to be an attitude of denial towards judgments of value, whether of happiness, goodness, beauty, or truth. Since "fact" and "value" are alike human creations, any system of either may be verified in experience and found adequate, inadequate, or inapplicable. Ultimately, all modes of valuation stand or fall together, and pessimism is an ultimate alternative. The issue between optimism and pessimism, like that between, e.g., determinism and indeterminism, can never be settled by an appeal to the "facts." Nor can either of these pairs of attitudes be resolved into something simpler or more ultimate. They are postulates presented to experience, and they are essentially acts of will. Thus, since ethics is the final basis of metaphysics,13 and the summum bonum is the value of life as a whole, Schiller's right to postulate (like James's will to believe), the right to decide between alternative views on emotional and practical grounds, is important whenever the evidence is undecisive. Schiller wrote a little volume on Problems of Belief14 in which he explored this borderland between logic and psychology. Belief is here shown to be "an ultimate and characteristic fact of human nature . . . a spiritual attitude of welcome which we assume towards what we take to be a 'truth' . . . it is plainly an affair of our whole nature, and not mere 'intellect'." 15 There are implicit beliefs (Santayana's "animal faith"?), debatable beliefs, scientific beliefs, half-beliefs (as in immortality), dishonest beliefs (as in authoritarian statecraft, priestcraft, and pedantry), superstitions (half-beliefs infected with dishonesty), make-believe, and fiction (including hypothesis-making). Most of our beliefs, then, could not sustain rational examination.16 They are primarily acts of will; i. e., the will to believe and the will to disbelieve are indubitable empirical facts. But this volitional factor indicates that beliefs are aids or ob-
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stacles to living and must be examined in their biological setting. Beliefs are not wholly forced on us by an external necessity. They must be tested by action or they are only half-beliefs, and the "conviction that what the world needs is not the true but the good-to-believe, is productive of vast quantities of dishonest belief." 17 Beliefs which cannot ever be tested by action are meaningless. Since there is freedom of choice about many beliefs, and since our acts to some extent contribute to the shaping of the world, truth cannot be reduced exclusively to survival-value, but it is survivalvalue which keeps our truths ultimately related to the needs of life.18 One of the major areas in which the will to believe operates is that of religion. It was here also that Schiller received some of his bitterest criticism. Sidney Hook, for example, confessed: "Schiller's offer of pragmatism to the theologians as the best device for saving their religion scandalized me as such a piece of philosophical prostitution that I was blinded to the worth of his writings on the nature of hypothesis." 19 But Schiller's treatment of religion is entirely consistent with his views on logic, science, and metaphysics. He showed that an act of faith underlies the use of reason at all; in fact "rationality itself is the supremest postulate of faith." 20 And the methods employed by science and religion are similar: they both rest on experience and attempt to interpret it, and both proceed by postulation. But they differ in their verification: Schiller does not make clear how it is possible in human experience to verify the postulates of religion. However, he insists in theory on the necessity for this verification: "All the religions are about equally efficient, and pretty well agreed about what is wrong with Life; but they have not succeeded in controlling it . . . Life is so intractable, so unamenable to scientific method." 21 If, as we have seen, knowledge is for Schiller a personal
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activity, faith is also, a fortiori, intensely personal; furthermore, the problem of communication or intersubjectivity is less important. Thus " 'faith' has ceased to be an adversary of and a substitute for 'reason,' and become an essential ingredient in its constitution. Reason, therefore, is incapacitated from systematically contesting the validity of faith." 22 As Schiller defines religion, it could almost be a definition of science: "The soul's aspiration towards an ideal wherewith to rectify and transfigure the actual." 23 It is also remarkably close to Dewey's definition of religion.24 In religion, as in science, our methods are postulational. At the outset, postulates are by definition unproved, and adhering to them implies a belief in a verification to come, i. e., implies faith. Of course, "faith" is a much misused term. It has been variously defined as (by Bertrand Russell, once, orally) "pretending to know what you really don't know," and "believing something when you know it's not true." Schiller's definition of faith is unobjectionable: The mental attitude which, for purposes of action, is willing to take upon trust valuable and desirable beliefs, before they have been proved 'true,' but in the hope that this attitude may promote their verification.25 It shows that faith is neither identical with nor opposite to knowledge; the two are concerned with values and involve risks.26 Faith is primarily an attitude of will, and Schiller has at all times pointed to the decisive role of human volition. The will to believe, or the "right to postulate" applies where "either of two incompatible views can claim when adopted, that it is confirmed by subsequent experience." 27 We must never forget the crucial words, verification and confirmation. We have already noted28 the difficulties involved in the notion of the "working" of truths. In the case of the "working" of religious beliefs, the verification is vaguer. Schiller's definition of religion is so broad as to
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make it as comprehensive as esthetics or teleology; and there can be no denying, even if there can be no "proving," the psychological and emotional satisfactions inhering therein. If the notion of a beneficent deity tends to make our experience more consistent and harmonious, then the postulate of religion "works." (The influence of James here is, of course, obvious and enormous.) The determinist who postulates a causal connection between events has no more "evidence" for his belief than the religionist has for his. Each assumption in its way supports human purposes and interests. But the experiences of religion are psychic, introspective, and spiritual: those of science are external, sensible, and material. These data constitute evidence of very different kinds, but each is relevant in its own way to its own hypothesis. A philosophy which reckons seriously with the metaphysical possibility of pluralism and with the psychological ultimacy of personal experience, will think twice before it assumes without further ado that the present universe of physics is all the being there is, and that the human soul is inextricably entangled in it and cannot conceivably rise above it. 2 9
It goes without saying that Schiller, like James,30 was unconcerned with the "non-functional" or excrescent appendages of the religious impulse; also, that he was opposed to dogma, creed, and theology.31 The truest religion, he felt, is "that which issues in and fosters the best life." 3 2 It was for this reason that William Caldwell, an otherwise unsympathetic critic, said; "The mystical, religious man will find in Schiller a treatment of philosophy as the justification of an essentially spiritual philosophy of life," 33 and Sidney Hook called Schiller's pragmatism "personal and consolatory." 34 God for Schiller is one of the ultimate personalities or egos in the universe. He is, like the God of Renouvier, Mill, and James, not omnipotent, but finite. God is not equiva-
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lent to Nature, since Schiller is a pluralist in metaphysics. Nature contains Evil, which is the element that resists God and obstructs evolution. (The influence of Schiller on Bergson has been insufficiently noted.) God is the guider of the world-process, which is never viewed in naturalistic terms. He is a pervasive moral principle which is not infinite, but is struggling to develop itself.35 An omnipotent God would be indistinguishable from the total course of events, and so would not make any difference to men; i.e., the hypothesis would not be worth believing. Nor would such a God be able to act purposefully, or be comprehensible (i.e., useful) to men.36 That world in which our actions can make a difference to the outcome, and whose God needs our support, is morally superior for men; it presents us with a challenge and an incentive. Men can by their efforts achieve a good which is not in any sense made certain by an all-powerful deity.37 Thus the "problem of evil" for Schiller is no problem at all: it "is plainly manufactured by the clash in our desires, and the logical contradiction is psychologically unfelt, because the conflicting desires are not felt simultaneously."38 A limited deity avoids this problem: "Neither reason nor revelation compels us to frustrate the belief in God's goodness by that in his infinity."39 On the subject of prayer, Schiller's belief in the pragmatic unity of theory and practice led him to say, consistently, "For any theory to work, it must be believed in, i.e., believed to be true . . . unless [the practice of prayer] engenders a real belief, it will become inefficacious." 40
XI. Freedom and Determinism aspects of Schiller's philosophy is his attack on the problem of freedom. That this is a genuine problem in a world of scientific determinism is attested to by all that has been written on it, and by the fact that it has never been satisfactorily solved. Schiller treated the problem briefly in an appendix on "Free Will and Necessity" to his early work Riddles of the Sphinx; but this pre-pragmatic and metaphysical effort (in the derogatory sense) he did not make use of again. His chief thinking on the subject is contained in an essay, "Freedom," 1 in which he shows the influence, to some extent, of William James' essay on T h e Dilemma of Determinism." 2 Schiller is, in a sense, logically committed to the reality of freedom because of his assumption that human action makes a genuine difference to the system of truth and to the world of reality. These statements would be meaningless unless men could function in an area in which they enjoyed genuine freedom of choice, and in which men were not the completely determined results of a rigidly constituted order of necessity. The whole conception of an evolving and incomplete reality is that of a determinable indétermination.
O N E O F T H E MOST SIGNIFICANT
To face the problem honestly, freedom must inevitably involve some indeterminism. There is no blinking the requirement of genuine alternatives: many efforts have been made to re-interpret freedom as a species of determinism
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(called "soft" determinism by James), but none of these has been successful. We are empirically presented with what seems like a freedom of choice, and there is no a priori reason to doubt the validity of this freedom or to fear that such freedom is dangerous to determinism or to science. Schiller's solution of the problem is to point out that it lies in the intersection of two of our great and guiding postulates. This is an outstanding illustration of the way in which postulation proceeds. The scientific postulate of determinism "demands that all events shall be conceived as fully determined by their antecedents, in order that they may be certainly calculable once these are known." 3 The ethical postulate of responsibility "demands that our actions shall be so conceived that the fulfillment of duty is possible in spite of all temptations, in order that man shall be responsible and an agent in the full sense of the term." 4 That these postulates conflict, is obvious: responsibility and freedom require contingency and indeterminism. Now determinism is an indispensable postulate of science. But it is a methodological postulate, not a principle of metaphysics. It does not in itself tell us how to predict any event; in fact it tells us nothing about the real world. What it does is to assume that, if only we knew enough, we should be able to predict everything (cf. Laplace's hypothesis). It is not a law of science: it is an insistence that such laws can and should be found. For example, astronomers were completely upset recently5 by the fact that one of the binary stars (31 Cygni) was taking much longer for its eclipse than had been expected. But no one regarded this as an example of cosmological indeterminism: the postulate of determinism was in no wise weakened. The reaction of astronomers to this unprecedented phenomenon was to say there must be a cause, and we can and will find it. Determinism therefore involves no ontological status; its significance is primarily moral. However haphazardly things
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might seem to behave, we "should always prefer to ascribe to our ignorance of the law what might really be due to inherent lawlessness." 6 Determinism as a dogma or ontological principle has had to be seriously qualified in our generation. As Schiller pointed out: (1) There exist physical events which are unpredictable in principle. (2) The assumption that laws of nature are exact and universal formulas was discredited. Their status was reduced to that of statistical regularities or expectations, exemplified by large numbers, but not necessarily applying to the individual case. (3) The assumption that the observer's manipulations in observing his object make no difference to it was refuted for the science of physics. (4) Consequently the assumption that physics has no need to take into account the observer's personality and his 'personal equation,' was disproved.7
But all these things, which had proved shocking to many philosophers, are actually an exemplification of many of Schiller's views. For the utility and function of determinism are those of a methodological postulate, and its metaphysical status is an irrelevant and useless concern. Heisenberg's Principle upsets not the logical role of determinism, but a metaphysical inference unnecessarily drawn from it. The discovery that the operations of the physicist alter the object examined, entailed no surprise: Schiller had long before declared that knowing as such is the active alteration of reality.8 In the social sciences, the difficulty of separating the observer from the observed is even more pronounced. 9 And the attempt by intellectualist formalism to abstract from purpose and person was criticized by Schiller from the very first. Determinism as a methodological postulate retains its vast utility and validity as a sine qua non of science, and science would oppose the introduction of any contingency into its calculations which would make prediction impossible. But it does not follow that science should object to a defini-
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Hon of freedom which would present calculable alternatives. Likewise, the postulate of freedom is a sine qua non for ethics or morals. If all human actions are determined, the words "good," "honorable," and so forth, become meaningless. But complete indeterminism is not required. 10 And our empirical consciousness does not seem to show us an absolutely unrestricted freedom, but rather a fairly limited number of choices. Furthermore, the habits, circumstances, background, and character of the "free man" exert a powerful influence in narrowing the area of choice. We are all theoretically free to commit murder or incest, but the incidence of these crimes indicates that social and psychological pressures effectively reduce that freedom. The habitual drunkard or drug addict is theoretically free to abandon his practices, but actually that "freedom" is circumscribed, almost to the vanishing point, by his habits and character. (Compare Spinoza's view that the emotions are limitations on freedom.) Freedom of choice, Schiller shows, is thus never absolute, and is almost always conditioned by motivations. Indeterminate choice is not equivalent to choice without motive. There is a difference between having no reason to act in one way or another, and having compelling reasons to act in contrary ways. This amount of indeterminism does not upset the structure of science. Alternative modes of conduct are, at least partially, calculable. Continuity of character is a limitation on complete freedom. But this is not equivalent to saying that, since character and habits affect choice, choice is therefore not free. It is a commonplace that people frequently do things on impulse, or without reason, or "unexpected of them." Moreover, character is not a fixed entity, but a growing, evolving, changing concept. Is it ever completely formed? And besides, there exist situations in which the motives to contrary actions balance each other. A choice can frequently be shown to have, in retrospect,
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rational connections with the antecedent circumstances. But this does not imply that another choice in the same circumstances would not also have, in retrospect, such rational connections. Alternative courses may be equally free, yet they need not be haphazard. Determinists have argued that if the course of events were not completely and rigidly determined, it must be indeterminable. This, Schiller shows, is not necessary. The two postulates do not clash.11 There is a certain amount of indeterminism in the world which is determinable in alternative ways. The choice between these is a real freedom which does not involve the dire consequences of either complete determinism or complete indeterminism. Scientific calculability and moral freedom are not in conflict. Determinism as a scientific postulate is not endangered; as an ontological dogma, like all other statements of metaphysics, one may freely take it or leave it. "As we cannot vindicate our freedom unless we are determined to be free, so we cannot compel those to be free who are free to be determined, and prefer to think it so." 1 2 And, as a kind of pragmatic cream of the jest, Schiller points out that in their practical behaviour, determinists, indeterminists, and ordinary citizens behave exactly alike. As far as they are interested in predicting the course of events, they assume that, if they try hard enough, the course of events is calculable and that our ignorance is greater than any indeterminability in things. As far as they believe that a man is and should be responsible for his actions, they assume that he has a real freedom of choice. Both behave in effect as if both men and things possessed a certain malleability and plasticity, as if reality were incomplete. Schiller's analysis of the problem of freedom is consistent with his religious views: God is not omnipotent, and the indeterminism which is manifested by human beings is an
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evidence of the finitude of God's powers, as well as the opportunity for men to work with God. Schiller became aware later in life of the revolution in the physical sciences which was entailed by the realization that, in its description of the ultimate constituents of matter, the laws of physics do not and cannot describe the individual sub-atomic particle, but only the averages; i.e., that these laws are statistical in nature.13 Social "laws" are of course also of this character. Schiller does not sufficiently explore this interesting additional possibility of reconciling freedom and determinism: that the individual, which for him is an ultimate, is free, and that the rigidities of determinism apply, if at all, only to the society or group or organization. Philosophy, for the pragmatists, has a function, just as any other human activity has. Schiller refers in various places to the tonic and invigorating effect contained in his emphasis on the role of men in remoulding the universe. Nowhere is this more convincing than in his demonstration of the reality of human freedom.
XII. Psychical Research in psychical research stemmed from two sources: his desire to examine the methods of science at its periphery, and his postulate of immortality. Psychical research, a modern phenomenon, is likely to strike us as a fad, a cult, a benighted superstition, or a wild vagary. But there is no intrinsic reason for this impression. No aspect of human experience should be regarded as beyond the scope of scientific method. In fact, history attests to the progressive extension of that method to areas of experience which were at one time regarded as in the same domain with psychical phenomena. Examples of this are Freud's early researches into dreams and myths, Rhine's experiments with extrasensory perception, and the primitive attempts to transmute the elements. Yesterday's weird fantasy is today's accepted scientific subject matter. It is, by the way, curious and rather regrettable that Schiller did not take any interest in the budding discipline of psychoanalysis, which might have furnished him with a more successful and productive example of the invasion by scientific method of a province hitherto beyond the pale. The presuppositions of scientific procedure and the methods of postulation were indeed given exciting exemplification in this new science. But Schiller had an odd blind spot about it. At one time he wrote, "Healthy moral feeling . . . revolts against scientific casuistry [and] swept away Jesuit casuistry in a flood of moral indignation. Would that some one would deal similarly with the filth which is now being
SCHILLER'S LIFE-LONG INTEREST
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disseminated under the guise of 'psychoanalysis'!" 1 In 1914 Schiller was president of the Society for Psychical Research, a position also held previously by Henri Bergson and William James. In his youth at Oxford, he was a member of the Phantasmological Society, which undertook to investigate and record experiences with haunted houses, and so forth. He participated in a symposium at Clark University, organized by Carl Murchison, on "The Case For and Against Psychical Belief," and wrote various papers on the subject. 2 Schiller regarded psychical research as existing on the outskirts of accepted science. Successful answers to the questions that prompted that research would test and extend the procedures of science. The evidence for any new science is never perfect; as the science grows, it is cumulative. In psychical research, there is no single piece of evidence which is convincing, but "collectively, the evidence is so copious and persists so uniformly through the ages that no candid mind will deny that a case for scientific investigation is made out." 3 He quotes approvingly Kant's statement, "I do not dare wholly to deny all truth to the various ghost stories, but with the curious reservation that I doubt each of them singly, but have some belief in them all taken together." 4 The fact that the evidence is cumulative rather than isolated, and historical rather than contemporary, is after all characteristic of many branches of science. Schiller speaks of "the slow growth of probabilities which increase the weight of one hypothesis, consolidate its superiority over its competitors, and finally lead to its overwhelming acceptance." 5 But the danger in this conception of evidence is that the value of the sum total of a series of inconclusive cases may not be greater than the value of each case. The study of psychical phenomena involves two basic assumptions: that the phenomena are "knowable and
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rational in the sense of being amenable to determinable laws, . . . [and] that we must proceed to the unknown from what is known to us." 9 If a future life is completely discontinuous with this life, or genuinely supernatural in character, there could be no evidence for it at all. We must postulate a certain continuity of the human psychological constitution, not severed by the dissociation between this world and the next. The problem boils down, then, to one of verification and evidence, and "the progressive sciences are growing more and more willing to examine any hypothesis, however shocking to our inherited prejudices, provided that it admits of experimental verification, and submits properly accredited evidence . . . [the] first canon of psychical research, viz. that nothing is incredible if the evidence for it is good enough." 7 But when is evidence good enough? All sciences have their sources of potential error; psychical research has some additional ones peculiar to its subject matter. The emotional bias of its investigators, both for it and against it, is enormous. The biologist who assisted nature by reenforcing with paint the spots which he was certain were hereditarily transmitted, exemplifies the dangers of such intense bias. The danger of deception by charlatans exists in all sciences, but here se//-deception is an additional and everpresent possibility. Experimental control is lacking (as it is, e.g., in astronomy), but there is no reason to believe that it is impossible. Hypotheses are inconsistent and even contradictory; but so are the wave and particle theories of the nature of light. The "facts" are so completely alien to our present modes of thought that the wildest guess may prove heuristically satisfactory. We must conclude that Schiller was properly aware of the status of psychical research and of the pitfalls involved in treating it scientifically. He did not delude himself into ascribing to it a status which is scientifically unwarrantable.
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But he did argue for the maintenance of the open mind to phenomena presently inexplicable, and no one can say he was wrong in so doing. Coupled with his interest in psychical research as a scientific problem was Schiller's belief in immortality as a psychological postulate. He was always surprised at the extent to which people refused to think about the matter at all. He persuaded Richard Hodgson, secretary of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research, to send out a questionnaire on the subject, and some 3,000 answers were received and analyzed. They ranged widely in their opinions, as might have been anticipated, but it is curious how many viewed the possibility of a future life of any sort with horror, and how many, in view of the theoretically possible importance of the matter, would not give it any consideration at all. Schiller calls the belief in immortality a typical "half-belief 8 He was himself much impressed by William James' remarks9 on extra-marginal, but somehow conscious, thought and feelings; by Frederic Myers's conception of the subliminal self;10 and by Morton Prince's "The Dissociation of a Personality." 11 He felt that ghost stories are what we want them to be: they are not intended to be investigated and verified, but to give us an emotional thrill. He also regarded immortality as a rational postulate of ethics, in that it affirms the validity, transcending individual and social mortality, of the moral judgments we make,12 and the appropriateness of the assumption that the cosmos may be fundamentally ethical, i.e., that there is a cosmos. Schiller also argued from the existence of dreams to a possible proof of idealism and a future life. 13 These arguments, however, proceed entirely by analogy and are quite weak. Much of his speculation about the significance of dreams has been since vitiated by the Freudian interpretations. It is amusing today to read, "Nor can I imagine
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what justified me once in dreaming that I was a beautiful woman well over eight feet high! I remember it felt most uncomfortable." 14 Schiller was a bachelor until the age of seventy-one.
XIII. Social Philosophy was nothing less than fantastic. It was based on a consuming interest in eugenics, to which he devoted considerable attention, and on the alleged inability of the democracies to practice eugenics. It is worthy of comment that the chief American pragmatists have been convinced political and economic democrats, whereas Schiller's beliefs were quite the reverse. SCHILLER'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
Schiller wrote two books 1 and numerous popular articles on eugenics. He called them "the by-product of a busy academic life," although he felt keenly about their theme. His theory was that civilization is counteracting the natural process of the survival of the fit: "Sociological development has superseded physiological as the foundation of social progress, and . . . this on the whole has been a gain; but it has incidentally brought into being the phenomenon of social contra-selection and the elimination of the fit." 2 The offspring of the lower classes he regarded as less intelligent and less fit than upper class children; our society subsidizes the former, and taxes the middle classes out of existence. The ideal eugenical state would work through and encourage superior individuals; it would revise social status to bring social position into accord with present values (professional men are underpaid in their youth, and their fertility suffers thereby). The eugenical state "is not wedded to any special form of government; it means only that we should not commit the folly . . . of trying to eradicate the best;" 3 its "infallibility" will not doom it,
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since it will incorporate trial and error guarantees. The eugenical state does not require a prior definition of the social goal or good: there is as wide a consensus on the good qualities of men as there is on the good-tasting foods. And "it is morally beneficial to every man to acknowledge superiority, and likewise conducive to the stability of society." 4 Schiller's eugenical faith leads him to say, "We can hardly err by imposing too many structural restraints on the license of the amorphous hordes that throng our modern cities."5 It leads him to urge the reform of the House of Lords in England so that it can take its rightful place as a hereditary ruling aristocracy, since legislative excellence is "inherent in the stock, in the germ plasm" 6 (sic!). It leads him to this incredible description of Italian fascism: "An attempt by human society to direct its own development, to supersede mere survival-values by ethical values of equal or greater survival value and to substitute for natural selection a selection of what is judged to be the best in order to grow a super-man." 7 Therefore, "Nothing short of a Mussolini could reform the House of Commons, and take away its baubles." 8 He opposed the Fascists and Communists in theory, but he praised Oswald Mosley,® and he wrote: "The more intelligent [democrats] would abandon democracy when they saw that it was unalterably opposed to human progress . . . it is by no means difficult to overthrow democracies, and . . . quite minute minorities can institute dictatorships, if resolute and favorably situated." 10 Some of his ideas on economic reform, such as on the elimination of the business cycle, are almost equally hair-raising.11 Schiller also wrote two short books12 and several articles on practical politics and governmental problems. His point of view is antidemocratic; not in the manner of such sophisticated critics of democracy as Michels, Pareto, and
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Burnham, but rather in the belief that democracy can be equated with demagoguery, bureaucracy, and plutocracy. "Democracy is becoming more and more of a sham, and belief in it more and more dishonest." 13 In a lecture in 1934, he said: "A dictatorship is not unthinkable in England and indeed might prove her salvation." 14 Schiller was not, however, attracted by the Spenglerian views of history. He pointed out that Spengler's laws of society are themselves a recurrence of older ideas of the cyclical nature of history. He showed that history, like any other science, requires selection of its subject matter, in accordance with some guiding principle, and that, again like any other science, its purpose is to predict the future by understanding the past. 15 His views on history, thus, are consistent with the rest of his philosophy. But his social and political views impress a reader of his other books as a wild and irrational vagary that has no connection, either logical or psychological, with the humanist core of his work. A metaphysics which regards the person as the ultimate reality certainly conforms more closely to democracy than to any other political philosophy. One might speculate as to the motives which induced him to regard eugenics as the savior of society, and brought him so completely apart from James, Dewey, and the pragmatist movement in general. His program of social reform is certainly more consonant with the views of quite other philosophic movements. But such speculation is properly outside the domain of philosophy.
XIV. Schiller's Contribution to Philosophy Schiller's permanent contribution to philosophy is his emphasis on the creativity of human beings. Schiller's humanism, like the philosophies of Peirce, James, and Dewey, clarifies the function of the human intelligence in harmonizing human experience and in remaking the world more nearly in accordance with human values and aspirations. In the field of logic, Schiller pointed out the importance of the analysis of the actualities of human knowing. A mathematical logic which studies the process of implication is for Schiller not as relevant to human needs as a psychological logic for use. Human purposes, which are necessarily personal, are and should be the be-all and end-all of philosophy. The processes of science, and thinking itself, are ultimately determined by the needs of life in a world that was not made for us. The most characteristic creative human activity is the postulate, the device whereby men attempt to render their experience more congruous. That this is not a foolproof procedure is consonant with the risky nature of living in general. Human mental activity is inescapably grounded in a biological and psychological matrix, and it can be usefully apprehended only in that context. Schiller's philosophy thus serves as a constant incentive to the advancement of human knowledge and the improvement of the human condition.
T H E CORE OF
In the field of epistemology, Schiller's analysis of truth as a logical value, which accrues to statements in human experience, is a generalized expression of the viewpoint of pragmatism. It stresses the necessity of ceaseless verification
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and testing, and the ineradicable relevance to truth of human activity. Similarly with Schiller's metaphysics: it is based on the fact of evolution. Thus it supports his distinctive assertion of the plasticity of reality and the ability of men to remake, and to some extent, create, their world. Human creativity is not illusory; the universe is not a fixed and static datum. Men can add to their data out of their own resources. The consistency of Schiller's fundamental approach is further shown by his application of the process of postulation to value theory. In ethics and religion, our activity is entirely parallel with our activity in science. Again, the stress is on man's creative powers and the need for verification in experience. Another aspect of the fruitfulness of Schiller's method is his analysis of freedom as the intersection of the scientific postulate of determinism and the ethical postulate of responsibility. We may conclude with some of Schiller's own words which summarize the essence of his contribution to thought: On a very minute scale, but in a very real sense, our preferences and our acts are contributing to the shaping of the world, and sharing in the unceasing process of creation, which did not come to an end 5,928 years ago, but is continuously manifested in the all-pervasive creativeness which engenders . . . novelties in every region of the universe. If Humanism, then is right, human agency is not the illusion it is so tempting to make it. Truth may be, like the other values, like our moral and aesthetic ideals, a real contribution to reality, which the real might not possess unless we had made it. So at the core of being there is always found a human valuejudgment, which approves the reality it acknowledges. It forms the axis on which our life revolves . . . and its intention is prophetic. It is justified, or falsified, by the consequences it entails. For, as Plato's famous dictum warns us, the responsibility is the chooser's, and no God relieves us of the blamel 1
Notes NOTES TO CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION
1. Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (New York, 1928), p. 61. 2. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx (London, 1891), p. xi. 3. See Bibliography for a detailed list of Schiller's writings. 4. Schiller, Humanism (London, 1903), p. xvii. 5. Ibid., p. xix. 6. Emanuel Leroux, Le Pragmatisme Américain et Anglais (Paris, 1932), p. 119n. 7. Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston, 1935), II, 497. 8. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Charles Hartshome and Paul Weiss, eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35), V, para. 466. 9. Ibid., para. 13. 10. William James, The Meaning of Truth (New York, 1909), p. 169. 11. Schiller, Studies in Humanism (2d ed.; London, 1912), p. 12. See also chap. i. 12. Schiller to James, September 26, 1902; quoted in Perry, Thought and Character, II, 496. 13. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree? and other essays in popular philosophy (London, 1934), p. 308, n. 1. 14. E.g., J. S. Mackenzie, Lectures on Humanism (London, 1907), and R. B. (Viscount) Haldane, Philosophy of Humanism (London, 1922). 15. See Schiller, "Humanisms and Humanism," in Our Human Truths (New York, 1939). 16. Perry, Thought and Character, II, 510. 17. Schiller, Humanism, p. xxi.
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18. Quoted in Bertrand Russell, "Transatlantic Truth," Albany Review, II (January, 1908), 393. 19. William James, review of Schiller's Humanism, in The Nation, LXXVIII (1904), 175; reprinted in Collected Essays and Reviews, Ralph Barton Perry, ed. (New York, 1920), pp. 450-51. 20. John Dewey, review of Schiller's Humanism, in Psychological Bulletin, I (September 15, 1904), 335. 21. Quoted in Perry, Thought and Character, II, 528. 22. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 20, n. NOTES TO C H A P T E R I I : LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY
1. It is interesting to note that, despite Schiller's opposition to formal logic, he regarded it as one of the nine great philosophical discoveries of all time. In an essay on "William James and the Making of Pragmatism" (in Must Philosophers Disagree?) he listed them as follows: 1. The Absolute or One of Monism: the Hindus and Parmenides 2. Pure Spirit: Plato 3. Universals: Plato 4. Formal Logic: Aristotle 5. The Self: Descartes 6. Epistemology, or the Critical Problem: Locke, Kant 7. The Problem of Value: the post-Kantians 8. Darwinian evolution 9 Pragmatism: James, Peirce. 2. Schiller, Logic for Use (London, 1929), p. 50. 3. Ibid., p. 51. 4. Ibid., p. 54. 5. Lewis Carroll put it as follows: "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.' "'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' "'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be the
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master—that's all.'" 6. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 65 7. Cf. Horace M. Kallen: "A pattern of posture and vocalization wherein the thinker's spoken or unspoken pitch, accent, tempo, tonality, often are more important as instruments of communication than the verbal form itself' ("Reason as Fact and as Fetich," Journal of Philosophy, XXIX [October 13, 1932, no. 21], p. 561). 8. Schiller also felt that it was essentially this failure to understand the function and role of meaning which resulted in the Platonic and Aristotelian problems of the immanence or transcendence of universals, and the "participation" of particular things in the Ideas. He also thought, with many other philosophers, that the controversy between nominalism and realism was in substance an inability to understand the distinction between meanings and words. See, e.g., Formal Logic (London, 1912), chap. vii. 9. See chap, viii of this book. 10. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, chap. iii. 11. Ibid., p. 81. 12. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 295. 13. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 83. 14. Cf. Ernest Nagel, "Logic without Ontology," chap, x in Y. H. Krikorian, ed., Naturalism and the Human Spirit (New York, 1944). 15. Schiller, "Can Logic Abstract from Psychology?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1905-06), pp. 224-70. 16. Schiller, Logic for Use, pp. 3-4. 17. John Dewey, How We Think (New York, 1910), pp. 11-12. 18. Horace M. Kallen, "Value and Existence in Philosophy, Art, and Religion," in Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude (New York, 1917), p. 409. 19. George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense (New York, 1917). 20. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 10. 21. See chap, iv of this book. 22. Morris R. Cohen and Ernest Nagel, An Introduction to
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Logic and Scientific Method (New York, 1934), p. 19. 23. Hamlet, Act I, scene 3, line 78. 24. See "The Value of Formal Logic," Mind, XLI (January, 1932, no. 161), 53. 25. Cf. the parallel views of Horace M. Kallen: "As an actual component of the events of reasoning [logical technique] can no more be cut off from the residual psychological processes with which it interfuses than can the movements of the limbs from the activities of the brain and the endocrine system" ("Reason as Fact and as Fetich," Journal of Philosophy, XXIX [October 27, 1932, no. 22], p. 595). 26. Schiller, "Axioms as Postulates," in Henry Sturt, ed., Personal Idealism (London, 1902). 27. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, pp. 112-13. 28. Schiller, "Psychology and Logic," in William Brown, ed., Psychology and the Sciences (London, 1924), p. 55. 29. Ibid. 30. Schiller, "Why Humanism," in J. H. Muirhead, ed., Contemporary British Philosophy (London, 1924), p. 390. 31. Schiller, "Psychology and Logic," pp. 66, 70. 32. Mind, XIII (April, 1904, no. 50), 265. 33. Journal of Philosophy, IX (August 15, 1912, no. 17), 466. 34. Philosophy, V (April, 1930, no. 18), 281. 35. Philosophical Review, XVII (June, 1908, no. 3), 332. 36. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, VI (1905-6), 224-70. 37. Ibid., 267. 38. Russell, "Mathematics and the Metaphysicians," in Mysticism and Logic (London, 1917), p. 75. 39. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 283. NOTES T O C H A P T E R I I I : C R I T I Q U E O F F O R M A L D E D U C T I V E LOGIC
1. 2. 3. York, 4.
Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 5. Ibid., p. 4. Adam Leroy Jones, Logic, Inductive and Deductive (New 1928), p. 66. Schiller, Formal Logic (London, 1912), p. 15.
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5. In "Axioms as Postulates'* and Problems of Belief, which we will discuss in chaps, iv and vi of this book. 6. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 16. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., p. 23. 9. Ibid., p. 29. 10. Ibid., chap. ii. 11. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 9. 12. "The Pragmatic Value of a Liberal Education," a lecture delivered at the University of Liverpool, May 20, 1927. 13. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 10. 14. P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics (New York, 1938). 15. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 61. 16. Posterior Analytics, ii. 3. 17. See Schiller, Formal Logic, chap. vi. 18. Ibid., p. 67. 19. Ibid., p. 70. 20. Ibid., p. 72. 21. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 34. 22. De Interpretatione, i. 23. Ibid. 24. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 102. 25. Ibid., p. 136. 26. Ibid., p. 148. 27. See p. 18 of this book. 28. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 201. 29. Ibid., pp. 206-7. 30. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, chaps, iv and v. 31. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 211. 32. Statement and Inference, sections 56-59, quoted in Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 212. 33. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 212. 34. Christine Ladd-Franklin and Edward V. Huntington, Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. XVII (New York, 1924), p. 608. 35. In Formal Logic, chaps, xii, xv, xvi; Logic for Use, chap, xiv; Our Human Truths, pp. 283-347; and various magazine articles.
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36. Prior Analytics, I, xxiv. 37. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 192. 38. Ibid., p. 195. 39. Ibid., p. 198. 40. Independent, LXXIII (July 5, 1912, no. 3321), 203. 41. Especially to The Use of Words in Reasoning. 42. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 273. 43. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 301; see also Formal Logic, p. 200. 44. See Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 274; Formal Logic, p. 204; and "Are All Men Mortal?" in Our Human Truths. 45. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 206. 46. Schiller, Logic for Use, pp. 278-79. 47. Schiller, Our Human Truths, pp. 330-31. 48. For Schiller's views on the nature of such "axioms" of science, see chap, iv of this book. 49. Schiller, Our Human Truths, pp. 336-37. 50. In "On Arguing in a Circle," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XXI (1920-21), 211. 51. Schiller, Logic for Use, chap. xv. 52. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 222; see also chap, ii, n. 1, of this book. 53. Schiller, Formal Logic, chaps, xxiv, xxv. 54. Ibid., p. 406. 55. Schiller, Logic for Use, pp. 440-41. NOTES TO CHAPTER I V : AXIOMS AND T H E LAWS OF THOUCHT
1. London, 1902. For Schiller's essay see pp. 47-133. 2. In "Philosophy of the United Kingdom for 1902," Archiv für Systematische Philosophie, X (1904, no. 2), 259. 3. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Charles Hartshome and Paul Weiss, eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35), V, para. 414. 4. Schiller, "Axioms as Postulates," in Henry Sturt, ed., Personal Idealism (London, 1902), p. 57. 5. Ibid., p. 57.
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6. Ibid., p. 57 n. 7. Ibid., p. 58. 8. Ibid. This anthropomorphism or pathetic fallacy is characteristic of Schiller's metaphysics. See also chap ix of this book. 9. Humanism, Studies in Humanism, and Must Philosophers Disagree? 10. Schiller, "Axioms as Postulates," p. 61. Schiller was later much intrigued by Vaihinger's Philosophie des AIs Ob, which he reviewed for Mind (XXI [January, 1912, no. 81], 93) and for the Quarterly Review (CCXVIII [January, 1913, no. 434], 148). 11. Schiller, "Axioms as Postulates," p. 64. 12. Ibid., p. 86. 13. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 111. 14. Ibid., p. 112. 15. In Metaphysics, Book Lambda, chaps, iii-viii. 16. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 115. 17. See chap, ii of this book. 18. Schiller refers approvingly to the work of Alfred Sidgwick on this point, especially The Application of Logic. 19. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 116. 20. It is interesting to note that Henri Bergson, in his introduction to the French translation of James's Pragmatism, makes this remark: "On pourrait, ce me semble, résumer tout l'essentiel de la conception pragmatiste de la vérité dans une formule telle que celle-ci: Tandis que pour les autres doctrines une vérité nouvelle est une découverte, pour le pragmatisme c'est une invention." (Paris, 1911, p. 11.) But this statement is neither completely accurate nor sufficiently subtle. 21. Cf. Horace M. Kallen: "experience knows no identities; it knows only identifications" (in "Reason as Fact and as Fetich," Journal of Philosophy, XXIX, 598). 22. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 133. 23. There are of course axiom systems other than the obvious ones of logic and mathematics. Thus theology and jurisprudence
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are, more or less explicitly, systems of theorems derived from a set of underived axioms. Schiller did not discuss these, but what he has to say about the postulation of axioms applies to them a fortiori. 24. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 339. 25. Schiller, "Axioms as Postulates," p. 98. 26. See Russell's comment, quoted on p. 116 of this book. 27. This was of course not a new thought with Schiller, and it has been enunciated elsewhere. 28. Schiller, Axioms as Postulates," p. 112. 29. Cf. Bergson's distinction between "the space of our geometry and the spatiality of things" (Creative Evolution). 30. Schiller, Humanism, p. 90. 31. For Schiller's conception of Freedom as a postulate, see chap, xi of this book. 32. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, chap. xii. 33. Schiller, "Axioms as Postulates," p. 124. 34. Ibid., p. 128. 35. In "Value of Formal Logic," Mind, XLI (January, 1932, no. 161), 53. 36. In a letter to Schiller, dated November 27, 1902, and quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, II (Boston, 1935), 497. 37. Schiller, "The Logic of Science," Science Progress, VIII (January, 1914, no. 31), 401. NOTES TO CHAPTER V: PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
1. Hook, "Experimental Naturalism," in Horace M. Kallen and Sidney Hook, eds., American Philosophy Today and Tomorrow (New York, 1935), p. 214. 2. Review of Schiller's Formal Logic, in Mind, XXII (January, 1913, no. 85), 102. 3. Schiller, "Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof," in Charles J. Singer, ed., Studies in the History and Method of Science, I (Oxford, 1917), 235-89. 4. "The splendid aloofness of the logical ideal was purchased
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by a total repudiation of actual science" (ibid., 288). 5. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 322. 6. Schiller, "Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof," in Charles J. Singer, ed., op. cit., 258. 7. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 187. See also Problems of Belief, chap. ix. 8. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 364. 9. Schiller, "Data, Datives, and Ablatives," in Our Human Truths, p. 319. 10. Schiller, Logic for Use, chap. xvii. 11. Schiller, "The Tribulations of Truth," Albany Review, II (March, 1908), 630. Reprinted in Must Philosophers Disagree? 12. Psychological Bulletin, I (September 15, 1904, no. 10), 337. 13. John Dewey, Logic: the Theory of Inquiry (New York, 1938), p. 114. 14. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 366. 15. Ibid., p. 371. 16. Schiller read a paper on "How Is Exactness Possible?" at the Eighth Congress of Philosophy at Prague in 1934. This was printed in the Proceedings, Vol. VIII, p. 123, and reprinted in Our Human Truths, p. 338. 17. "The art of forgetting is but the inner aspect of the art of remembering" (T. H. Pear, Remembering and Forgetting [New York, 1922], p. 13). 18. Bentley, Behavior, Knowledge, Fact (Bloomington, Ind., 1935), p. 135. 19. Schiller, Formal Logic, pp. 339-41. 20. In Charles J. Singer, ed., Studies in the History and Method of Science, II (Oxford, 1921), 414-46. 21. Ibid., 417-18. 22. Ibid., 423. 23. Ibid., 429-30. 24. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Charles Hartshome and Paul Weiss, eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35), V, para. 489. 25. Ibid., para. 181 (3).
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26. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 401. 27. Cf. Felix Kaufmann, Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York, 1944), chap. x. 28. Cf. John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy (New York, 1910). 29. Schiller, Logic for Use, chap, xviii, sees. 12, 13, 14. 30. In Formal Logic, p. 346, and Musi Philosophers Disagree?, chap. iv. NOTES TO CHAPTER VI: P R O B L E M S O F INDUCTIVE
LOGIC
1. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35), V, para. 537. 2. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 242. 3. Ibid., p. 266. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., p. 267. 6. Journal of Philosophy, XV (1918), 673. 7. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 362. 8. Schiller, "Humism and Humanism," Mind, XVIII (January, 1909, no. 69), 125. Reprinted in Our Human Truths as chap. vi. 9. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 277. 10. Ibid., p. 282. 11. Ibid., p. 282 n. 12. See chap, v of this book. 13. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 287. 14. John Stuart Mill, Logic (London, 1879), III, 21, sec. 4. 15. Cf. John W. Yolton, "F. C. S. Schiller's Pragmatism and British Empiricism," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XI (September, 1950, no. 1), 40. 16. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 317. 17. Ibid., p. 320. 18. Ibid., p. 328. Cf. Felix Kaufmann's distinction between theoretical laws (rules of procedure) and empirical laws, based on whether the statement is considered as falsifiable by an observational test. (Methodology of the Social Sciences [New York, 1944], p. 86.)
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NOTES TO CHAPTER VH: EVALUATION O F SCHILLER'S LOGIC
1. "A Group of F. C. S. Schiller Letters," Personalis, XXX (October, 1949, no. 4 ) , 385. 2. See R. F. A. Hoernle, review of Schiller's Formal Logic, in Mind, XXII (January 1913, no. 85), 102. 3. Several critics felt that the two counts of Schiller's indictment contradicted each other. Thus Rex Knight (in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XXXI [1930-31], 87) asked how something which was meaningless could also be ambiguous. And A. Wolf (in a symposium with Schiller on the "Value of Logic," ibid., XIV [1913-14], 181) accused Schiller of arguing in this fashion: some kind of abstracting is always necessary, but Formal Logic is to be blamed for abstracting, and then condemned for not being consistently formal. Both these criticisms miss the point. Schiller is saying that, granted its own premises of formal completeness and consistency, logic cannot free itself from ambiguity; and to grant its premises is to admit that logic shall have no concern with human utility, verifiability, or meaning. 4. See Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 407; Formal Logic, p. 317; Our Human Truths, p. 95; Humanism, p.102; Studies in Humanism, p. 174. 5. John Dewey, review of Schiller's Formal Logic in Independent, LXXIII (July 25, 1912, no. 3321), 203. 6. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 149. 7. Ibid. 8. See also Schiller, Problems of Belief (London, 1924), p. 115.
9. See, for example, W. V. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," Philosophical Review, LX (1951), 20; Moreland Perkins and Irving Singer, "Analyticity," Journal of Philosophy, XLVIII (August 2, 1951, no. 16), 485; Emest Nagel, "Russell's Philosophy of Science," in Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston, 111., 1946); and Morton White, "The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism," in John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom, Sidney Hook, ed. (New York, 1950). It is also interesting that Dewey in his Logic:
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the Theory of Inquiry (New York, 1938) does not employ this distinction. One of the problems involved is ascertaining the precise meaning of the term "synonym." The recent literature is well summarized in Alan Gewirth, "The Distinction between Analytic and Synthetic Truths," Journal of Philosophy, L (July 2, 1953, no. 14), 397. See also Albert Hofstadter, "The Myth of the Whole: A Consideration of Quine's View of Knowledge," Journal of Philosophy, LI (July 8, 1954, No. 14), 397. 10. Kant, of course, thought that " 7 - ( - 5 = 1 2 " was a synthetic rather than an analytic statement. However, Schiller refers explicitly to this view of Kant's only casually (in Logic for Use, p. 433) and does not realize that the human operation of counting logically presupposes the number system. 11. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 58. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., p. 59. 14. Ibid., p. 68. 15. Ibid., p. 323. 16. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 61. 17. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 108. 18. Ibid., p. 358. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., p. 429. 21. Ibid., p. 434. 22. Ibid., p. 438. 23. Ibid., p. 420. 24. Ibid., pp. 428-29. 25. Karl Menger, "The Theory of Relativity and Geometry," in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Paul Arthur Schilpp ed. (Evanston, 111., 1949), p. 471. 26. "All modem mathematicians agree with Plato and Aristotle that mathematics deals exclusively with hypothetical states of things, and asserts no matter of fact whatever" (Charles S [anders] Peirce, "The Logic of Mathematics in Relation to Education," in Collected Papers, Charles Hartshome and Paul Weiss, eds. [Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35], IV, para. 232). See also C. I. Lewis: "It has been demonstrated, with a degree of
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precision and finality seldom attained, that the certitude of mathematics results from its purely analytic character and its independence of any necessary connection with empirical fact. Its first premises are . . . definitions and postulates which exhibit abstract concepts more or less arbitrarily chosen for the purposes of the system in question. Intrinsic connection with experience is tenuous or lacking." (Mind and the World-Order [New York, 1929], pp. vii-viii.) 27. See Bertrand Russell, "It was formerly supposed that Geometry was the study of the nature of the space in which we live, and . . . that Geometry should really be regarded as belonging to applied mathematics. But it has gradually appeared, by the increases of non-Euclidean systems, that Geometry throws no more light upon the nature of space than Arithmetic throws upon the population of the United States. Geometry is a whole collection of deductive sciences based on a corresponding collection of sets of axioms . . . The geometer takes any set of axioms that seem interesting, and deduces their consequences." ("Mathematics and the Metaphysicians," in Mysticism and Logic [London, 1917] pp. 92-93.) 28. See Charles W. Morris, "Prof. Schiller and Pragmatism," Personalist, XVII (July, 1936, no. 3), 294. 29. Einstein, Geometry and Experience (Berlin 1921), p. 3. 30. See William James, review of Marcel Hubert's Le Pragmatisme, in Journal of Philosophy, V (December 3, 1908, no. 25), 694. 31. See Paul Weiss, review of Schiller's Logic for Use, in New Republic LXII (March 26, 1930), 161. 32. Kaufmann, Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York, 1944), passim. 33. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 109. 34. Schiller, Our Human Truths, pp. 339-40; reprinted from a paper read at the Eighth Congress of Philosophy at Prague, 1934. 35. P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics (New York, 1938) p. 5. 36. Schiller, Formal Logic, pp. 388-91.
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37. Peirce, Collected. Papers, II, para. 220. 38. Schiller, "The Value of Formal Logic," Mind, XLI (January, 1932, no. 161), 53. 39. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 64 40. Ibid., p. 343. 41. We cannot resist juxtaposing two quotations: Schiller wrote in 1912, "Symbolic Logic . . . is too new and too difficult to have settled down to any teachable traditional form. It is not therefore as yet examinable, like Formal Logic, which, though it is strictly nonsense, has the advantage that it is eminently examinable nonsense, which (with care) can be taught even to the Oxford Passman . . ." (Formal Logic, p. 390). In 1946 Hans Reichenbach wrote: "The knowledge of Russell's symbolism is today a necessary condition to pass any academic examination in Logic" ("Bertrand Russell's Logic," in Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, p. 52). 42. Rudolf Camap, The Logical Syntax of Language (New York, 1937), p. 332. 43. Schiller, "Multi-Valued Logics," in Our Human Truths, pp. 304-9. 44. Schiller, "Comments on C. W. Morris," Personalist, XVII (July, 1936, no. 3), 300. 45. See Kaufmann, Methodology, chap. xii. 46. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 114. 47. Ibid., p. 334. 48. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 64. 49. Cf. Emest Nagel, "Principles of the Theory of Probability," International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, no. 6 (Chicago, 1939), 52; and Kaufmann, Methodology, chap, vii. 50. Schiller, "The Value of Formal Logic," Mind, XLI (January, 1932, no. 161), 53. 51. Ernst Kapp, Greek Foundations of Traditional Logic (New York, 1942), pp. 7, 19. 52. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 53. 53. Ibid., pp. 61-62. 54. C. W. Morris, review of Schiller's Must Philosophers Disagree?, in Personalist, XVI (October, 1935, no. 4), 390.
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55. James to Schiller, December 4, 1909; quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston, 1935), II, 510. 56. These remarks were made in November, 1937, at the New School for Social Research and have not been published; quoted in Stephen Spender White, "A Comparison of the Philosophies of F. C. S. Schiller and John Dewey" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1938), p. 66. 57. Schiller, "Reply to Max Eastman," Journal of Philosophy, IX, (December 5, 1912, no. 25), 687. 58. Horace M. Kallen, American Philosophy Today and Tomorrow (New York, 1935), p. 267. NOTES TO CHAPTER V I I I : T H E MAKING OF T R U T H
1. Russell, "Transatlantic Truth," Albany Review, II (January, 1908), 404. 2. This chapter is based upon Logic for Use, chap, vi-ix; Humanism, chap, iii; Studies in Humanism, chaps, i, iv, v, vii, and viii; Must Philosophers Disagree?, chap, xiv; Our Human Truths, chap, iv; Problems of Belief; "Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof' and "Hypothesis" in Charles Joseph Singer, ed., Studies in the History and Method of Science. 3. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 103. 4. William James, Pragmatism (New York, 1907), p. 76. 5. "The Two Logics," chap, iv in Must Philosophers Disagree? 6. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 118. 7. Ibid., p. 121. 8. Ibid., p. 123. 9. Ibid., p. 128. 10. See Schiller, Humanism, p. 46. 11. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 131. 12. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 122. 13. Ibid., p. 208. 14. Schiller frequently was vehement against Plato because of the way he allegedly misrepresents the views of Protagoras (whom Schiller regards as the precursor of Humanism) and
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because of the deleterious effect which Plato's theory of Ideas had on the growth of science. In Plato or Protagoras (Oxford and London, 1908), he wrote: "Protagoras' vision of a Truth that did not shun commerce with man was truer than Plato's dream of an Eternal Order that transcends all human understanding" (p. 29). And, "[the Theaetetus] contains no tenable account of knowledge . . . it contains a sweeping repudiation of the senses and the feelings as contributories to the growth of knowledge. It contains a renunciation by Platonic logic of the duty of explaining the individual . . . the frankest and sublimest confession of failure which adorns the annals of intellectualistic literature" (pp. 5-6). 15. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 136. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., pp. 145-46. 18. Ibid., p. 147. 19. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 152. 20. Ibid. 21. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 148. 22. Schiler, "Truth-Seekers and Sooth-Sayers," in Our Human Truths. 23. Schiller, Humanism, p. 61. 24. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 154. 25. Schiller, "The Tribulations of Truth," Albany Review, II (March, 1908), 633; reprinted as chap, xiv of Must Philosophers Disagree? 26. Schiller, "Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof," in Singer, ed., Studies in the History and Method of Science, I, 262. 27. James, Pragmatism, p. 58. 28. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 157; see also "Useless Knowledge," chap, iv of Humanism. 29. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 161. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., p. 162. 32. Wing-tsit Chan, "Philosophies of China," in Dagobert Runes, ed., Twentieth Century Philosophy (New York, 1947), p. 553. 33. Schiller read Hans Vaihingens Philosophy of As I f ,
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and commented on it favorably. His own notions of methodological fictions were arrived at independently, however, and he rarely refers to Vaihinger. 34. Thus to call Schiller's view "an ethical theory of truth," as William Savery does ("The Significance of Dewey's Philosophy" in P. A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of John Dewey [New York, 1951], p. 493), does not quite do it justice. And Schiller would never go so far as e.g., Lecomte du Noüy in Human Destiny ([New York, 1947] p. 135): "Nothing which makes us happy is unreal." For this is fideism rather than pragmatism or humanism; it is the mere expression of a desire, and is divorced from verifiability. Compare Schiller's views on the untenability of monism, chap, ix of this book. 35. As in a running controversy with Susan Stebbing in Mind in 1912. 36. James Bissett Pratt, What is Pragmatism? (New York, 1909), p. 89. 37. G. E. Moore, "Philosophy of the United Kingdom for 1902," Archiv für Systematische Philosophie, X (1904, no. 2), 259. 38. Ibid. 39. Bertrand Russell, "Pragmatism," Edinburgh Review, LXIX (April, 1909), 377. See also his chapter on William James in History of Western Philosophy (New York, 1945). 40. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Charles Hartshome and Paul Weiss, eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35), V, para. 552. 41. A. O. Lovejoy, "Thirteen Pragmatisms," Journal of Philosophy, V (January 2, 1908, no. 1), 1; V (January 16, 1908, no. 2), 29. 42. C. W. Morris, Six Theories of Truth (Chicago, 1932), p. 290. 43. John Herman Randall, Jr., and Justus Buchler, Philosophy. An Introduction (New York, 1942), pp. 138-40. 44. James to Schiller, April 19, 1907, in Henry James, ed., Letters of William James (Boston, 1920), II, 271. 45. James to François Pillon, May 25, 1910, ibid., 337. 46. Dewey to James, November 28, 1907, quoted in Ralph
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Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston, 1935), II, 528-29. 47. Schiller, Logic for Use, pp. 169, 170, 174. See also "Belief and Survival-Value" and "Truth and Survival-Value" in Problems of Belief (London, 1924). 48. Cf. H. V. Knox, Pragmatism (London, 1930). 49. G. E. Moore objected to Schiller's failure to tell us how much effort is required to make a statement true (in "Philosophy . . . for 1902," Arch. Syst., X, 259). 50. Schiller, "Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof," in Singer, ed., Studies in the History and Method of Science, I, 267. 51. Schiller, "Rationalistic Conception of Truth," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, IX (1908-09), 85. 52. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 61. 53. Schiller, "Tribulations of Truth," Albany Review, II, 629. 54. See p. 99 of this book. 55. Moore, "Philosophy . . . for 1902," Arch. Syst., X, 259. 56. A. E. Taylor, "Truth and Practice," Philosophical Review, XIV (1905), 268. 57. Schiller, Logic for Use, pp. 424, 425. 58. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 157. This might be called "truth emeritus." 59. See chap, ix of this book. 60. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 198. 61. Jacob Loewenberg, The Problem of Truth (University of California Publications in Philosophy), p. 216; quoted in Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 422. 62. See p. 91 of this book. 63. M. C. Otto, review of Schiller's Our Human Truths, in Journal of Philosophy, XXXVII (November 21, 1940, no. 24), 657. 64. Schiller, Humanism, pp. 58, 59. 65. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 59. 66. Schiller, "Must Pragmatists Disagree?" in Our Human Truths. 67. His Problems of Belief is an exhaustive and original survey. 68. See Sterling P. Lamprecht's review of Schiller's Problems
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of Belief, in Journal of Phüosphy, XXII (May 27, 1925, no. 10), 272. 69. Cf. contemporary difficulties in asking for precision in the concept of "synonym." 70. See chap, ix of this book. 71. Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (New York, 1928), p. 64. 72. G. F. Stout, review of Studies in Humanism, in Mind, XVI (October, 1907, no. 64), 578. 73. Ibid., 583. 74. Bertrand Russell, "Transatlantic Truth," Albany Review, II (January, 1908), 410. NOTES TO CHAPTER I X : M E T A P H Y S I C S AND PSYCHOLOGY: T H E MAKING OF R E A L I T Y
1. Schiller, "Humanisms and Humanism," in Our Human Truths, p. 66. 2. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 8. 3. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 452; see also Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 163. 4. Schiller, "The Ethical Basis of Metaphysics," in Humanism, pp. 1-17; see also p. 105. 5. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 19. 6. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 453. 7. Schiller, "The Relativity of Metaphysics," in Our Human Truths. 8. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 180. 9. Schiller, Humanism, p. xxii. 10. Schiller, "Why Humanism?" in J. H. Muirhead, ed., Contemporary British Philosophy: Personal Statements (London 1924), p. 409. 11. H. M. Kallen, "Value and Existence in Philosophy, Art, and Religion," in Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude (New York, 1917), p. 456. 12. Kallen, "The Lyric Philosopher," Journal of Philosophy, VII (October 27, 1910, no. 22), 593. 13. Schiller, "Is 'Absolute Idealism' Solipsistic?", Journal of
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Philosophy, February 15, 1906; reprinted as chap, x of Studies in Humanism. 14. See "From Plato to Protagoras," in Studies in Humanism, chap, ii, and "Plato or Protagoras?," Mind, XVII (October, 1908, no. 68), 518. 15. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 39. 16. Ibid., pp. 42-43. 17. "After perpetrating as pretty a metaphysic as most, in the pre-pragmatic era ..."(. Studies in Humanism, p. 19n.). 18. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, chap. vii. 19. Such as the anticipation of isotopes (p. 188) and the inexplicability of the genesis and dissolution of atoms. Certain problems of infinite space-time (see chap, ix) have also since been clarified by Einstein. 20. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, pp. 202 et seq. 21. Schiller, Humanism, p. 108. 22. Schiller, "Darwinism and Design," Contemporary Review, June, 1897; reprinted in Humanism as chap. viii. 23. Schiller, Humanism, p. 153. 24. Schiller, "Empiricism and the Absolute," in Studies in Humanism, chap. ix. 25. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 119. 26. Schiller, "Creation, Emergence, Novelty," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1930-31); reprinted in Must Philosophers Disagree? as chap. xvi. 27. Cf. Reuben Abel, "The Theory of Emergence," Philosophy of Science, VI (January, 1939, no. 1), 14: "The emergent evolutionists have idealized their confession of ignorance into the metaphysical principle of the . . . incomprehensibility of change." 28. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 221. 29. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 327. 30. See chap, viii of this book. 31. Schiller, Humanism, p. 9. 32. William James, The Meaning of Truth (New York, 1927), pp. 242-43. 33. Schiller, Humanism, p. 11 n. 34. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, pp. 185-86.
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35. See chap, v of this book. 36. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 343; Humanism, chap. xi. 37. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 200. 38. We must remember that the title of the volume in which Schiller's "Axioms as Postulates'* appeared was Personal Idealism. 39. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35), I, para. 362. 40. Russell, "Professor Dewey's 'Essays in Experimental Logic,'" Journal of Philosophy, XVI (1919), 26; quoted in Ernest Nagel, "Russell's Philosophy of Science," in P. A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (Evanston, 111., 1946), p. 347. 41. See Schiller, "Why Humanism?" 42. Bernard Bosanquet, "Can Logic Abstract from Psychology?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, VI (1905-06), 224. 43. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 449. 44. Ibid. 45. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 428 46. Ibid., p. 429. 47. Ibid., p. 430. 48. Ibid., p. 431. 49. In Riddles of the Sphinx, Schiller was much intrigued by a theory of Crookes, a British chemist, concerning the evolution of the elements out of a primitive prothyle (sic). See pp. 184 et seq.
50. See A. R. Gifford, "The Pragmatic HULE of Mr. Schiller," Journal of Philosophy, V (February 13, 1908, no. 4), 99. 51. Horace M. Kallen, "The Pragmatic Notion of HULE," ibid., V (May 21, 1908, no. 11), 293. 52. James to Schiller, August 9, 1904, quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, Thought and Character of William James (Boston, 1935), II, 503-4. 53. James to Schiller, January 4, 1908, quoted ibid., 509. 54. Cf. Arthur Kenyon Rogers, English and American Philosophy Since 1800 (New York, 1928). 55. Horace M. Kallen, "Pragmatism and its 'Principles,'"
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Journal of Philosophy, VIII (November 9, 1911, no. 23), 630. 56. Cf. Horace M. Kallen on the nature of ideals in "Value and Existence in Philosophy, Art, and Religion," in Creative Intelligence, p. 456. 57. Emanuel Leroux, Le Pragmatisme Américain et Anglais (Paris, 1923), p. 139. 58. Rex Knight, "Mr. Schiller v. Non-Pragmatist Logic," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XXXI (1930-31), 101. 59. Sterling P. Lamprecht, review of Schiller, Problems of Belief, in Journal of Philosophy, XXII (May 27, 1925, no. 10), 275. 60. William James, review of Henry Sturt, ed., Personal Idealism, in Mind, XII (January, 1903, no. 45), 93. 61. Peirce, Collected Papers, V, para. 533. 62. John Dewey, review of Schiller's Humanism, in Psychological Bulletin, I (September 15, 1904, no. 10), 339. 63. This term is not used by Schiller, but its applicability was acknowledged by him to Russell ("Pragmatism," Edinburgh Review, LXIX [April, 1909], 365). 64. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 440. 65. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 447. 66. Schiller, Humanism, p. 13. 67. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 409. 68. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 331. See also Humanism, pp. 125-27; Studies in Humanism, chap. xix. 69. Schiller, Formal Logic, p. 334. 70. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 329. 71. "A physicist's version of Genesis, based on recent advances in man's knowledge of the atom and the cosmos, which provides the most detailed backward glimpse in space and time on the manner in which our universe was evolved, was presented . . . The new hypothesis on the evolution of our expanding universe . . . by Drs. Ralph A. Alpher, Robert C. Herman, and George Gamow . . . provides a new cosmic timetable for the formation of the ninety-two elements of which the material universe is composed . . . accounts also for the formation of the stars and galaxies . . . [The expanding universe] began its evolution to the present state about three billion years ago."
173
Notes to Chapter IX
(From a report on the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at Columbia University, New York Times, January 30, 1949.) The age is now given as five billion years. "Changing laws of nature have been suggested by Dirac. A strong case for them has recently been made in a fascinating and well-documented conjecture of Pascual Jordan, who presents evidence for a decline in the force of gravitation and for an increase in the total mass of the universe through spontaneous generation of stars . . . " (Henry Margenau, The Nature of Physical Reality: A Philosophy of Modern Physics [New York, 1950], p. 408). 72. Justus Buchler, ed., The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings (London, 1940), pp. 318, 337, 350. 73. Horace M. Kallen, "Reason as Fact and as Fetich," Journal of Philosophy, XXIX (October 27, 1932, no. 22), p. 590. 74. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 415. 75. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, passim. 76. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 271. 77. Schiller, "Why Pluralism?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, IX (1908-09), p. 198. 78. Ibid., p. 196. 79. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 126. 80. From a letter to Viscount Samuel, quoted in the latter's Essay in Physics, (Oxford, 1951), pp. 136-45. NOTES TO CHAPTER X :
VALUE T H E O R Y :
ETHICS AND RELIGION
1. James Hastings, ed. (New York, 1918). 2. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, chap. xvii. 3. Schiller, Humanism, p. xiv. 4. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 198; Problems of Belief, p. 137. 5. Peirce also felt that the self-control exercised in reasoning paralleled the self-control involved in ethics. (Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, eds. [Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35], V, para. 533.) 6. Schiller, Humanism, p. 259. 7. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, pp. 447-48.
174
Notes to Chapter X
8. Schiller, Humanism, pp. 260-61. 9. Ibid., p. 263. 10. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 200. 11. Ibid., p. 201. 12. In International Journal of Ethics, October, 1897; reprinted as chap, ix of Humanism. 13. See chap, ix of this book. 14. In the "Library of Philosophy and Religion" (London, 1924). 15. Schiller, Problems of Belief, pp. 13-14. 16. Ibid., p. 95. 17. Ibid., p. 78; see also ibid., chap. ix. 18. Ibid., chaps, xi, xii. 19. Hook, "Experimental Naturalism," in American Philosophy Today and Tomorrow, Horace M. Kallen and Sidney Hook, eds. (New York, 1935), p. 214. 20. Schiller, Humanism, p. xiv. 21. Schiller, "Science and Life," Hibbert Journal, XIX (October, 1920, no. 1), 101. In this essay Schiller warned that tampering with the structure of the atom might destroy the world. 22. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 353. 23. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 312. 24. See John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven, Conn., 1934). 25. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 357. 26. Cf. H. Heath Bawden, Principles of Pragmatism (Boston, 1910), p. 16: "Faith underlies the hypothesis of scientific method as truly as it does the act of obedience in religion . . . in the sense . . . of a legitimate speculation, where most of the factors are uncertain . . . why should it not be legitimate to take the risk of there being a God or a future life?" 27. Schiller, "Why Humanism?," in J. H. Muirhead, ed., Contemporary British Philosophy: Personal Statements (London, 1924), p. 407. 28. See p. 103 of this book. 29. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree? p. 286. 30. See William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1928), passim.
Notes to Chapter X
175
31. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 368. See also, "religion is not primarily a matter of theology but of religious experience, and nowhere reducible to a rigid chain of incontrovertible syllogisms" ("Infallibility and Toleration," Hihhert Journal, VII [October, 1908, no. 1], 85). 32. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 369. 33. Caldwell, Pragmatism and Idealism (London, 1913), pp. 17-18. 34. Hook, Metaphysics of Pragmatism (Chicago, 1927), p. 9. 35. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, chap. x, sees. 24-30. 36. Schiller, "Man's Limitation or God's?," Hibbert Journal, October, 1933; reprinted as chap, xxii of Must Philosophers Disagree? 37. Schiller, "Omnipotence," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XVIII (1917-18), 247. 38. Schiller, Problems of Belief, p. 104. 39. Schiller, "Axioms as Postulates," in Henry Sturt, ed., Personal Idealism (London, 1902), p. 131. Cf. the analogous solution of John Stuart Mill in Three Essays on Religion (New York, 1874). 40. Address to the Pan-Anglican Church Congress in 1908; quoted in Edwin Emery Slosson, Six Major Prophets (Boston, 1917), pp. 230-31. Cf. also Miguel de Unamuno: "To believe in God is to desire His existence, and, what is more, to act as though He existed." NOTES TO C H A P T E R X I : F R E E D O M AND D E T E R M I N I S M
1. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, chap, xviii. 2. In The Will to Believe, (London, 1897). 3. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 394. 4. Ibid. 5. In October of 1951. 6. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 398; cf. also "Choice," Hibbert Journal, VII (July, 1909, no. 4), 802. 7. Schiller, "How Far Does Science Need Determinism?," Our Human Truths, p. 169; reprinted from a paper written for the 1937 Congress of Philosophy at Paris.
176
Notes to Chapter XI
8. See chap, ix of this book. 9. Schiller wrote an amusing account of the paradoxes of prophecy when no one believes the prophet ("Cassandra's Apologia," chap, xv of Must Philosophers Disagree?). 10. Schiller believed that the moralist is perfectly willing to accept a determinism for good. 11. Cf. Ellen Bliss Talbot, "Humanism and Freedom," Journal of Philosophy, VI (March 18, 1909, no. 6), 155: "I think it would be a mistake to suppose that there is no middle ground between the doctrine of 'real alternatives' and the doctrine of the unchangeableness of reality." 12. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 406. Cf. James, Will to Believe, p. 146: "Our first act of freedom, if we are free, ought in all inward propriety be to affirm that we are free." 13. Schiller, "The Metaphysics of Change," Personalist, 1932; reprinted as chap, xviii of Must Philosophers Disagree? NOTES TO CHAPTER X I I : PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
1. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 198. 2. E.g., "Some Logical Aspects of Psychical Research," in Carl Murchison, ed., The Case For and Against Psychical Belief (Worcester, Mass., 1927); "Philosophy, Science, and Psychical Research," Iiis presidential address to the Society for Psychical Research (June, 1914), reprinted as chap, xiv of Must Philosophers Disagree?; "Philosophy and the Scientific Investigation of a Future Life," Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, February, 1900, reprinted as chap, xv of Humanism; "The Progress of Psychical Research," Fortnightly Review, January, 1905, reprinted as chap, xvii of Studies in Humanism; "Psychology and Psychical Research," Monist, XL (July, 1930, no. 3), 439. 3. Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 402. 4. In "Die Träume eines Geistersehers," quoted in Schiller, Logic for Use, p. 402. 5. Schiller, "Some Logical Aspects of Psychical Research," p. 220. 6. Schiller, Humanism, p. 273. 7. Schiller, "Some Logical Aspects of Psychical Research," p. 2 1 9 .
177
Notes to Chapter XII
8. Schiller, Problems of Belief, chap. v. 9. In James, Varieties of Religious Experience. 10. In Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (London, 1903). 11. See Schiller, Studies in Humanism, chap. xi. 12. See Schiller, "The Ethical Significance of Immortality," New World, September, 1897; reprinted as chap, xiv of Humanism. 13. See Schiller, "Dreams and Idealism," Hibbert Journal, October, 1904; reprinted as chap, xx of Studies in Humanism. See also Our Human Truths, pp. 186-88. 14. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 477. NOTES TO CHAPTER X I I I :
SOCIAL
PHILOSOPHY
1. Eugenics and Politics (London and Boston, 1926), and Social Decay and Eugenical Reform (London, 1932). 2. Schiller, Eugenics and Politics, p. 13. 3. Ibid., p. 127. 4. Ibid., p. 126. 5. Schiller, Social Decay, p. 42. 6. Ibid., p. 54. 7. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 280. 8. Schiller, Social Decay, p. 48. 9. Schiller, Must Philosophers Disagree?, p. 107; Our Human Truths, p. 281. 10. Schiller, Social Decay, p. 111. 11. Ibid., chap. vii. 12. Tantalus, or the Future of Man, (New York, 1924), and The Future of the British Empire—after ten years (London, 1936; originally published as Cassandra [London, 1926]). 13. Schiller, Problems of Belief, p. 81. 14. Schiller, Our Human Truths, p. 278. 15. In Introduction to E. H. Goddard and P. A. Gibbons, Civilisation or Civilisations: An Essay in the Spenglerian Philosophy of History (London, 1926). NOTE TO CHAPTER X I V : S C H I L L E R S CONTRIBUTION T O PHILOSOPHY
1. Schiller, Problems of Belief, pp. 189, 191, 192.
Selected Bibliography I N T H E Y E A R S in which Schiller and his ideas were a cause célèbre, the magazine articles flew thick and fast. Schiller was himself a vigorous and prolific polemicist (he disregarded William James's advice to let some of the criticisms go unnoticed). Usually he left no stone unturned or unflung in chiding his adversaries or correcting misinterpretations of his writings. Thus it is virtually impossible to list all the magazine articles and book reviews by and about Schiller. Brief or trivial comments, writings in periodicals of little importance, or those which add nothing to what had already been published, have therefore been omitted in this bibliography. The following are typical: Schiller's obituary of William James in the Manchester Guardian, brief book reviews in the Personalist, informal articles by and about Schiller in the Occult Review, the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, the Quarterly Review, the Fortnightly Review, Leonardo, Eugenics Review, and some articles on nonphilosophical topics. Also omitted are some articles about Schiller in the Personalist. Books and other sources quoted or referred to only incidentally in the text are not repeated here. The listings are chronological within each subhead, with the exception of the books and articles about Schiller and the books reviewed by Schiller, which are listed alphabetically by author. The following abbreviations are used for the tides of periodicals: J. Phil. Journal of Philosophy Phil. R. Philosophical Review Hib. J. Hibbert Journal R. Phil. Revue Philosophique R. Meta. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale Pr. Ar. Soc. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
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180 Arch. Psy. Int. J. Eth. R. de Phä. Psy. Rull. Arch. Syst. Pers. Indep. Phil. Pr. Psy. Res. Quar. R. Eug. R. Pr. Rrit. Ac. Phil. Phen. Alb. R.
Archives de Psychologie International Journal of Ethics Revue de Philosophie Psychological Rulletin Archiv für Systematische Philosophie Personalist Independent Philosophy Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Quarterly Review Eugenics Review Proceedings of the British Academy Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Albany Review
All references to Mind are to the New Series. WRITINGS B Y S C H I L L E R
Books Riddles of the Sphinx: a Study in the Philosophy of Evolution. London: Swan, Sonnenschein, 1891; New York: Macmillan, 1891. 2d ed., 1894 (quotations in the text are from this edition ). New and revised edition, with the new subtitle, a Study in the Philosophy of Humanism. London: Macmillan, 1910. The first edition was published under the pseudonym, "A Troglodyte." Humanism: Philosophical Essays. London and New York: Macmillan, 1903 (quotations are from this edition). 2d ed., 1912. Studies in Humanism. London and New York: Macmillan, 1907 (quotations are from this edition). 2d ed., 1912. Plato or Protagoras? being a critical examination of the Protagoras speech in the Theaetetus, with some remarks upon error. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1908; London: Simpkins, Marshall, 1908. Formal Logic: a Scientific and Social Problem. London: Macmillan, 1912. Problems of Belief. ("Library of Philosophy and Religion" series.) London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924.
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Tantalus, or the Future of Man. ("Today and Tomorrow" series.) London: Kegan Paul, 1924; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924. Eugenics and Politics. London: Constable, 1926; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1926. The Pragmatic Value of a Liberal Education. A lecture delivered in the Library of the Department of Education at the University of Liverpool, May 20, 1927. Pamphlet. Logic For Use: an Introduction to the Voluntarist Theory of Knowledge. London: G. Bell, 1929; New York, 1930. Social Decay and Eugenical Reform. London: Constable, 1932. Must Philosophers Disagree? and other essays in popular philosophy. London: Macmillan, 1934. The Future of the British Empire—after Ten Years. ('Today and Tomorrow" series.) London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1936. Originally published as Cassandra, or the Future of the British Empire. London: Kegan Paul, 1926. Our Human Truths. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939 (posthumous). Foreword by Louise S. Schiller. Contributions to Books by Others "Axioms as Postulates." In Personal Idealism: Philosophical essays by eight members of the University of Oxford, pp. 47133. Ed. Henry Sturt. London: Macmillan, 1902. "Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof." In Studies in the History and Methods of Science, I, 235-89. Ed. Charles Joseph Singer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917. "Hypothesis." In Studies in the History and Method of Science, II, 414-46. Ed. Charles Joseph Singer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921. "Psychology and Logic." In Psychology and the Sciences, pp. 53-70. Ed. William Brown. London: A. and C. Black, 1924. (One of a series of eight lectures given at Oxford in 1923.) "Why Humanism?" In Contemporary British Philosophy: Personal Statements, pp. 385-410. Ed. J. H. Muirhead ("Library of Philosophy" series). London: George Allen and Unwin, 1924. "Some Logical Aspects of Psychical Research." In The Case for
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and against Psychical Belief, pp. 215-26. Ed. Carl Murchison. Worcester, Mass.: Clark University Press, 1927; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927. "Must Philosophers Disagree?" In College of the Pacific Publications in Philosophy, I, 94-117. Ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp. Stockton, Cal.: College of the Pacific, 1932. "William James, the Maker of Pragmatism." In College of the Pacific Publications in Philosophy, III, 101-9. Ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp. Stockton, Cal.: College of the Pacific, 1934. Prefaces and Introductions Preface to D. L. Murray, Pragmatism. ("Philosophies, Ancient and Modern" series.) New York: Dodge Pub. Co., 1912. Introduction to Harold P. Cooke, Maurice the Philosopher, a Dialogue, or, Happiness, Love, and the Good. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1912. Introduction to E. H. Goddard and P. A. Gibbons, Civilisation or Civilisations-, an Essay in the Spenglerian Philosophy of History. London: Constable, 1926. Articles in Periodicals "Reality and 'Idealism.'" Phil. R., I (Sept., 1892), 535; II (Mar., 1893) 202. "Lotze's Monism." Phil. R., V (May, 1896), 225; VI (Jan., 1897), 62. "Prof. Henry Jones on 'Reflective Thought and Religion.'" Hib. J., I (Apr., 1903), 576. "Desire for a Future Life." Indep., LVII (Sept. 15, 1904), 601. "In Defence of Humanism." Mind, XIII (Oct., 1904), 525. "Can Logic Abstract From Psychology?" (symposium with Bernard Bosanquet and Hastings Rashdall). Pr. Ar. Soc., VI (1905-06), 224. "Thought and Immediacy." /. Phil., Ill (Apr. 26, 1906), 234. "Pragmatism and Pseudo-Pragmatism." Mind, XV (July, 1906), 374. "Madness of the Absolute" (reply to W. C. Gore). ]. Phil., IV (Jan. 2,1907), 18.
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"A Pragmatic Babe in the Wood" (reply to J. E. Russell). ]. Phil., IV (Jan. 17, 1907), 42. "Psychology and Knowledge" (reply to H. A. Prichard). Mind, XVI (Apr., 1907), 244. "Pragmatic Cure of Doubt" (reply to J. E. Russell). J. Phil., IV (Apr. 25, 1907), 235. "Mr. Bradley's Theory of Truth." Mind, XVI (July, 1907), 401. "Pragmatism versus Skepticism." J. Phil., IV (Aug. 29, 1907), 482. "Ultima Ratio." J. Phil., IV (Aug. 29, 1907), 490. "British Exponents of Pragmatism." Hib. ]., VI (July, 1908), 903. "Is Mr. Bradley Becoming a Pragmatist?" Mind, XVII (July, 1908), 370. "Plato or Protagoras?" Mind, XVII (Oct., 1908), 518. "Infallibility and Toleration." Hib. ]., VII (Oct., 1908), 76; VII (Apr., 1909), 670. "Rationalistic Conception of Truth" (translation of address at the Third International Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg). Pr. AT. SOC., IX (1908-09), 85. "Why Pluralism?" (symposium with J. H. Muirhead and A. E. Taylor). Pr. Ar. Soc., IX (1908-09), 183. "Humanism and Intuitionism." Mind, XVIII (Jan., 1909), 125. "Logic or Psychology." Mind, XVIII (July, 1909), 400. "Choice." Hib. J., VII (July, 1909), 802. "Humanism, Intuitionism, and Objective Reality." Mind, XVIII (Oct., 1909), 570. "Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?" Pr. Ar. Soc., X (1909-10), 191. "Present Phase of 'Idealist' Philosophy." Mind, XIX (Jan., 1910), 30. "Absolutism in extremis?" Mind, XIX (Oct., 1910), 533. "Error." Pr. Ar. Soc., XI (1910-11), 144. "Humanism of Protagoras." Mind, XX (Apr., 1911), 181. "Relevance." Mind, XXI (Apr., 1912), 153. "Logic versus Life." lndep., LXXIII (Aug. 5, 1912), 375. "Working of Truths.'" Mind, XXI (Oct., 1912), 532.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica. 14th ed., Vol. XVIII. "Pragmatism." Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Ed. James Hastings. New York: Scribner's, 1918. "Automatism," "Humanism," "Pragmatism," "Spiritism," "Spiritualism," "Telepathy," and "Value." Philosophic
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"Mind! A Unique Review of Ancient and Modem Philosophy." Mind, Christmas issue. London: Williams and Norgate, 1901. A collection of parodies and satires, most or all of them probably written by Schiller, though unsigned. WETTINGS ABOUT S C H I L L E R
Books Note.—There exists no full-length book about Schiller exclusively. The books noted here concern Schiller in part and specifically. No attempt has been made to record the many works on pragmatism in general, or on British or American philosophy in general, unless some particular reference to Schiller is involved. Bawden, H. Heath. The Principles of Pragmatism: a philosophical interpretation of experience. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1910. Bloch, Werner. Der Pragmatismus von James und Schiller, nebst Exkursen über Weltanschauungen und über die Hypothese. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1913. Caldwell, William. Pragmatism and Idealism. London: A. & C. Black, 1913.
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Index of Names Absolutism, 48, 96 Ames, Adelbert, 52 Analytics (Aristotle), 90 Analytic statement, 77-79, 85, 105, 162n; in mathematics, 81-83; see also Synthetic statement Appearance and Reality (Bradley), 5 Aristotle, 14, 31, 65, 67; Categories, 30; laws of thought, 50, 89; induction, 68 Aristotelian Society, 24
Determinism, 7, 57, 70, 13436, 138, 149 Dewey, John, 3, 9, 11, 26, 148; comparisons with Schiller, 12, 36, 58, 94, 98, 128, 131; quoted, 19, 59, 76, 91, 102, 121 du Noüy, Lecomte, 167n
Eastman, Max, 24 Einstein, Albert, 53, 64, 170n; quoted, 125-26 Elements (Euclid), 86 Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 127 Bacon, Francis, 69 Epistemology, 10, 12, 16, 21, Barker, Henry, 24 95, 118, 148 Bentley, Arthur F., 61 Bergson, Henri, 4, 47, 60, 133, Euclidean geometries, 52-53, 65, 79, 80, 100 141; quoted, 157n Bosanquet, Bernard, 5, 24, 117 Eugenics, 6, 7, 145-46, 147 Bradley, F. H„ 5, 44, 87 Freud, Sigmund, 140 Bridgman, P. W., 85 Buchler, Justus, 102 Gödel, Kurt, 75 Green, T. H., 5 Caldwell, William, 132 Cantril, Hadley, 52 Hegel, G. W. F., 4, 12, 44, 87 Carnap, Rudolf, 87 Heisenberg principle, 60, 122, Carrol), Lewis, 152n 136 Causation, 70-72 Hodgson, Richard, 143 Certainty, 19 HoemlS, R. F. Alfred, 56 Chang, Tung-Sun, 100 Hook, Sidney, 56, 132; quotCohen, Morris R., 70 ed, 130 Hule, 48, 118-19 Darwin, Charles, 31, 74, 113- Hume, David, 71 14; on classification, 56, 65 Husserl, Edmund, 84 Hylozoism, 121-23 Definition, 31, 34
Index
206 James, William, 3, 4, 9, 51, 52, 55, 91, 93, 106, 141, 143, 148; influence on Schiller, 9-13, 72, 124, 132, 134, 179; quoted, 10, 11, 84, 99, 102, 111, 115, 119. Judgment in formal logic, 3436; Schiller's account of, 3638 Kallen,
Horace
M.,
5,
Morris, C. W., 102; quoted, 91 Mosley, Oswald, 146 Murchison, Carl, 141 Myers, Frederic, 143 Naturalism, 10 Necessity, 20-21 Newton, Isaac, 122 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 114
119, Organon (Aristotle), 89
123; quoted, 19, 92, 111 Kant, Immanuel, 12, 31, 71, 76, 78, 119, 162n; quoted, 141 Kaufmann, Felix, 79, 84 Knox, Howard V., 5; quoted, 4 Korzybski, Alfred, 30
Origin of Species 86 Otto, Max, 107
(Darwin),
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 9, 47, 148; quoted, 9, 63, 68, 86, 101, 116, 123, 162n Personalism, 10, 107 Pessimism, 129 Plato, 30, 44, 112 Ladd-Franklin, Christine, 27 Pluralism, 124 Lamprecht, Sterling, 120 Poincaré, Henri, 11 Leibniz, G. W., 52, 77 Prince, Morton, 143 Leroux, Emanuel, 9; quoted, Principia Mathematica (Rus120 sell and Whitehead), 86 Lewis, C. I., 162n Probability, 88-89 Life of Reason (Santayana), Prolegomena to Ethics (Green), 12 5 Lodge, Sir Oliver, 6 Protagoras, 112 Loewenberg, Jacob, 107 Psychical research, 6, 7 Logic, history of, 14; Aristotelian, 15, 30, 54 Randall, John Herman, Jr., 102 Logical positivism, 6, 86-88 Rashdall, Hastings, 24 Lotze, R. H., 12 Reichenbach, Hans, 164n Lovejoy, A. O., 101 Relativity, 59-61, 70 Rhine, J. B., 140 Mabbott, J. D., 24 Rigor, 85, 86 Marett, R. R„ 5 Royce, Josiah, 12 Meaning, 16-17, 28 Russell, Bertrand, 5, 25, 61, Metaphysics (Aristotle), 15 66, 75, 87; quoted, 3, 93, Mill, John Stuart, 5, 71; Schil101, 108, 109, 116, 131, ler's criticism of, 69 163n Monism, 124 Moore, G. E., 47, 106, 168n; Santayana, George, 19 Savery, William, 167n quoted, 101
Index Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich, 3 Schiller, Louise (Strang), 4, 7 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 12 Sidgwick, Alfred, 5; quoted, 23 Spencer, Herbert, 112, 113 Spengler, Oswald, 147 Spinoza, Baruch, 137 Socrates, 14 Sophists, 15, 90 Stoics, 90 Stout, G. F., 109 Syllogism, 15, 38-45 Symbolic logic, 6, 27, 86
207 Synthetic statement, 77-79, 83, 85, 105, 152n; see also Analytic statement Taylor, A. E., 106 Theaetetus (Plato), 21 Thilly, Frank, 3 Topics (Aristotle), 90 Vemer's Law, 63 Voluntarism, 10 Wealth of Nations Smith), 86 Wells, H. G., 12
(Adam