Contemporary Philosophy, 295

Contemporary Philosophy, 295
Pittsburg State University
Spring 1947
Russ Hall 214
Dr. Pyle

 Bibliography

Borden Parker Bowne:

Personalism.

Theory of Thought and Knowledge.

Metaphysics.

Introduction to Psychological theory.

Philosophy of Theism.

Principles of Ethics, The

Theism.

Mary W. Calkins, Ethics.

—–, Persistence Problems in Philosophy.

John Dewey, Philosophy of Civilization, The.

—–, Reconstruction in Philosophy.

Arthur Eddington, Philosophy of Physical Science, The.

1. B. Pyle, Philosophy of Borden Parker Bowne.

—–, Behaviorism of J. B. Watson.

—–, Metaphysical Behaviorism.

Person as Concept in Psychology.

Edgar Arthur Singer, Mind as Behavior.

Assignments

1/31  Bowne: Personalism, Ch. 1

2/4                                 “       Ch. 2

2/10                                “       Ch. 3

2/17                                “       Ch. 4

2/24                                “       Ch. 5

2/26                                “       Ch. 6

2/28  Pyle: The Philosophy of Borden Parker Bowne.

3/7   James: Pragmatism.

3/19  Dewey: Philosophy and Civilization.

3/31  Dewey: Reconstruction in Philosophy.

4/16  Singer: Mind as Behavior.

4/16  Singer: Empirical Idealism.

4/23  Pyle: Metaphysical Behaviorism.

Borden Parker Bowne: Personalism.

Chapter 1

                     Common Sense, Science, and Philosophy

1. The necessity of having a good philosophy.

2. Three fundamental principles of Bowne:
3. Co-Existence of Persons.
4. Law of reason valid for all and binding upon all.
5. A world of common experience.

3. Intellectual inter-relationship between science and philosophy. Science describes, philosophy interprets.

Chapter 2

                           The Problem of Knowledge

1. Kant’s epistemology.
2. Experience is actively constructed by the mind within.
3. Antithetical to passive experience – Locke.
4. Bowne: “The principles of knowing are primarily immanent laws of mental activity (p. 57). Is a reconstruction with objective reference. Kantian halfway.

2. Fundamental distinction in knowing.
3. Distinction between the “me” and the “not-me.” Elaborated in the distinction between the “us” and the “not-us.”
4. Knowing implies being in the sense of a content that is the object of the knowing process. Knowledge reproduces this content.

3. What conditions knowledge (p. 61)?
4. The nature of the subject. It cannot be passive and inert.
5. The nature of the object. It must admit of rational construction.

4. The necessity of the subject.
5. An interaction between the “me” and the “not-me.”
6. The nature of this interaction.

(1) Negative: Is not direct between the object and the subject, i.e., the object cannot give us ready-made knowledge.

(2) Positive: “Mental reaction that we call knowledge cannot be looked upon only as an expression of our mental nature according to the principles immanent in itself.”

(a) Illustrated by the telegraph clicks and the operator’s mind.

(b) However, this is not Kantian idealism, because the mind constructs knowledge in reference to the content existing apart from the perceptive act, i.e., thinking has objective reference.  Hence, thinking is also conditioned by the nature of the object.

5. The nature of the object.
6. The object must be rational, harmonious with the laws of thought and forms of the mind, in order that the mind may take cognizance of objectivity. This does not necessitate empiricism, because mental activity is necessary to effect reconstruction in the objective reference, to bring knowledge.
7. The rationality of externality assumes a Supreme Intelligence.
8. Hence the object is in reference to Supreme and finite intelligence.
9. A distinction between Infinite and finite thought. The means to cognizance of the Infinite (Kantian noumenal). Also the means to any knowledge.  The material world is the meeting-place of Infinite Mind and finite mind in mutual reference.

6. The validity of knowledge.
7. The question is raised because of the doctrine that knowledge takes

place through our own constructs.

(1) This assumes a true apprehension of reality, which is not a perfectly clear notion.

(2) Since knowledge rises in the way it does, validity can only be determined insofar as knowledge satisfies our reason and fits into the system of experience so far as to harmonize with it.  Knowledge is valid because the finite mind constructs knowledge in accordance with the Infinite.  Thus finite knowledge is of the same quality, but no the same quantity.

1. The validity of personal knowledge.

(1) It is axiomatic, in the field of personal relations.

(2) It is axiomatic, in the field of experience.  The doubt as to validity exists only on abstract grounds.

1. Trust in knowledge is elaborated progressively. It is never elaborated fully. This is that which causes error.  We have truth, but only so far.

7. Consideration of the doubt as to the validity of the content of experience.
8. Appearance and reality illustrated by the analogy of the wave in the water.
9. Kantian epistemology limits knowledge to the phenomenal only. It is agnostic regarding the noumenal. Our categories are valid only for the phenomenal.  They are also subjective.
10. Criticism of Kantian relativity as regards the self.

(1)) Kant fails to consider the plurality of persons, which necessitates objectivity and does away with subjectivity and solipsism.

(2) The relation of many minds to one another in a system of phenomenalistic knowledge.

(a) As to in what sense other minds are phenomenal, Kant does not make clear.  If they are phenomenal, then they are subjective, and others doe not exist objectively as does my consciousness.  Hence, interpersonal communication does not exist.  But Kant does believe in interpersonal communication: hence, the inconsistency.

(b) Kant affirms the phenomenality of knowledge of the ego, but not of other minds.  There is no knowledge of the transcendental ego, but only of the empirical self.  But his ego distinction is invalid.  Cannot affirm a real knowledge of the self, i.e., the noumenal self.

(c) There is a logical contradiction, since if selves are phenomenal only, how can phenomena appear to phenomena, i.e., self to self?  A phenomena must appear to a subject.  It is impossible that a phenomenal self can view phenomena.  Hence, Kant’s doctrine of the phenomenality of the self is invalid.  We must posit the self as an active subject of mental life and knowing and expressing identity.

1. Criticism of Kantian relativity as regards externality.

(1) If everything is phenomenal, then an unknowable noumena is an impossibility.

(2) But phenomena mediate for us valid knowledge of the noumena.  This mediation is effected through the mental categories that apply to noumena as well as phenomena.  Only on this condition can noumena have content.

1. The way out of Kantian agnosicism.

(1) We must demonstrate the untenability of extra-mentalism, as existence apart and independent of thought and unamenable to it.

(2) “If we assume that the world of things originated in thought and expressed thought they would be homogenous with thought and there would be no a priori reason why we should not know them (pp. 92-93).  Hence, there is no gulf between thought and objects, the thought-world and the thing-world.  Hence, phenomenality must be considered in reference to intelligence and not absolutely (p. 94).

8. The nature of phenomenality.
9. It is not illusory.

1. It is not extra-mental, although it may have extra-human existence.
2. Phenomena and noumena are identical as to nature and quality. However, his identity does not hold for causality.

9. The cause of the phenomenal order.
10. An agent, not a substance, is necessary

b Can we know the causal agent?  It is possible that phenomenality (facts) ma indicate the causal agent.  There is some truth in relativity as regards reality, for instance.  The identity of reality and substance.

1. It is also established that the categories of the mind are valid only for experience. Kant’s mistake was made in limiting experience, not in this thesis of the limits of the categories. The self alone gives content to the concepts of being, identity, unity, and causality.
2. The thesis of the necessity of experience as regards the phenomenal may be called “transcendental empiricism.” It affirms the necessity of experience as regards the phenomenal order.

Chapter 3

                   The Phenomenality of the Physical World.

1. Introduction.
2. Results of spontaneous and reflective thought.

(1) Spontaneous thought posits that sense objects exist as substantial things in space and time.

(2) Reflective thought shows sense objects to be phenomenal, i.e., things that exist only for and through intelligence.

(a) Does not mean that they are illusory; are real in their own way.  Are phenomenally real, as distinguished from ontologically real.

(b) Necessity of a consciousness of a non-successive being, in order to unite into permanency and content this existing successively in time and space.

2. Kinds of permanency.
3. Fixity of meaning and permanency.

(1) Is logical, or formal, consistency necessary to thought?  This abiding conception must be involved in change, if the true nature of a thing is to be expressed.

(2) This law is the law of identity.  Everything must admit of being conceived in such a way as to be an abiding object, or have an abiding meaning for intelligence.

(3) This formal sameness is only for intelligence.  It does not exist in space and time, for there everything is flowing, changing.

(4) Since process in space and time become articulate for us, these to must exist in relation; hence, the necessity of Supreme Intelligence behind processes, making them bearers or expressions of Ideas.  To be grasped by thought, they must be the product of thought.  This analysis mediates and resolves the problem of nominalism and realism.

1. Permanence of the thinking subject.

(1) Criticism of Eleatic permanency.

Permanency cannot logically be inferred from a changing world.  The common sense view is that a back-lying core is permanent and  change regards only the activities or qualities of the thing.  This is impossible, because there can be no change in activity or quality if there is none in substance.

(2) In order to conceive of change the identity of the thinking subject is necessary.  Hence, the only identity is the unity of the conscious subject, a fixity of the thinking substance.  This solves the problem of identity and change, on a personal level.

(3) Since permanency of things is untenable, causality cannot inhere in the world of things, which have no substantiation.  It is found in mind, the basic energy of phenomenality.  The mind unites the processes and successions of phenomena into intelligible meaning.  There is no impersonal core of being.  Identity is mental, not substantive.

(4) Criticism of the Heraclitic view.  Flux is inconceivable apart from change.

3. Phenomenality of space and time. This indicates the phenomenality of the physical world.
4. Must distinguish between the ontological and phenomenological reality of space and time. The application of this distinction to these problems.
5. Proof of the phenomenality of space.

(1) The unity of space obtains because the personal experience of objects in which we relate them in a common homogeneous schema.

(2) Space is all-embracing because we cannot conceive of any object lying outside this schema.

(3) Infinity of space.  The synthesis admits of no exhaustion, but rather provides for indefinite repetition.

1. The phenomenality of time. The unity of eternity and time. Indicated by the oneness and inexhaustible character of synthesis.
2. Space and time exist only on the basis of the condition specified by the theory of personalism.

(1) Objective space entails indefinite division of space.

(2) Time as moving or static leads to certain difficulties.

(a) If time is static, then time as a whole exists and past and present must coexist.

(b) If time is flowing, then there is a timeless void into which time moves.

4. The dynamism of phenomenality. The order and relations pertaining to the phenomenal are not arbitrary. The successions are necessary.
5. Space.

(1) Percipient mind cannot be located in space.

(a). The subject establishes center, in distinction to mere successiveness.  This cannot be a mere point in space, as that eliminates the subject.

(b) Hence, the definition of location: “We are where we immediately act” in distinction to “We act where we are.”  Hence, presence is relative to our range of immediate action.

(c We are not in space as substance.  We are in space as limited by our dynamic range.  “It is this dynamic relation and limitation which underlies our spatial experience.”

1. Time.

(1) Time is a function of experience.  It is mental rather than objective.

(2) The present is a range of comprehending activity of the mind.  The immediacy of consciousness.

(3) We are in time in so far as our experience has temporal form.

(4) The non-temporality of God.

5. The ontological character of mechanics.

1. The mechanisms are devices of method and are not actual processes in reality. They do not give us essential dynamism.
2. The phenomenality of nature means that it changes, although always in reference to continuity. Continuity is always for the mind. Changes are relative to the same laws and purposes of the process.
3. The phenomenality of the world implies that other systems may be

conceived as possible.

Chapter 4

                      Mechanical or Volitional Causality

1. Introduction.
2. The world is deed, as well as thought. Hence, the concept of causality.
3. Definition of causality: dynamic, determination.
4. Denials of causality.

(1) Empricists: as Hume’s succession.

(2) Rationalists: The idea does not fit in their logical scheme.

(3) Compte and positivism.

2. Types of causality.
3. Scientific causality.

(1) The order of antecedent and consequent.

(2) In the final analysis does concern itself with primal cause.

1. Metaphysical or dynamic causality. Form and location.

(1) Form.  Inadequacy of impersonal potentiality, as shown in the case of the temporal past, the present, the future, i.e., the future cannot be the product of the fast, in which it does not inhere, yet is in the past in the sense of being necessitated by it.  The paradox is solved only on the plane of potentiality as personal.

(2) Location.  Mechanical causality exists in the past, volitional causality looks toward the future, is teleological.  This teleological phase of causality explains evolution, “as guided by intelligence toward rational ends, not a mechanical evolution, in which the complex future rises out of the simple past.  This is impossible, for nothing can develop, i.e., nothing can beget that which it is not.

3. Mechanical causation for spontaneous thought is the Greek type.
4. Because of the belief of ontological space and time.
5. Complications thereof.

(1) If the effect immediately follows the cause, a series of causal events must coexist or be run off in the same instant.

(2) This view cannot account for the problem of permanency and change.

(3) The view implicates the notion of the infinite regress.

(4) In mechanical causality the effect must be in the cause, if it is produced by the cause. “But on the other hand, if the cause contains the effect, then the explanation is tautologous, because the explanation itself contains the very fact to be explained.”

(5) Mechanical causality provides for no change.

4. Freedom (which is necessarily involved in personal causality).
5. Freedom in the concrete: the power of self-direction.
6. The speculative significance of freedom. Its bearing on the problem of error.

(1) First, we posit the trustworthiness of our faculties and then admit that we do err.

(2) This is reconcilable on the grounds of willful misuse of our faculties.  Hence, freedom explains the problem of error.  There is no ontological necessity of error.  Necessity does not exist in personal experience.  Necessity, ontologically considered, leads to difficulty concerning actuality and potentiality.  The only answer is the freedom of Infinite Mind, who “posits events in a certain order and thus forever administers all that we mean by the system of law and founds all that we mean by necessity in things.”

1. Traditional misunderstands concerning the meaning of freedom.

(1) That freedom is mere lawlessness.  But freedom implicates uniformity.

(2) That freedom makes science impossible.

Chapter 5

                         The Failure of Impersonalism.

1. How impersonalism is reached.
2. Through naturalism. Scientific naturalism is valid, but philosophical naturalism (scientism) is not.
3. Through the fallacy of the abstract.

2. Naturalism.
3. Meaning.

(1) Scientific.  Has benefited the human race.

(2) Philosophical.  Leads to the fallacy of a natural ontology.

1. The fallacy of philosophical naturalism.

(1) It views the objective world as ontological.  The view cannot explain causality.

(2) Erroneously regards space and time, matter, force, motion as exclusive constituents of nature (objective ontology).

1. Reason for philosophical naturalism.

(1) The objects of experience are abstracted from all relation to the intellect.

(2) Only one aspect of experience is considered, namely extension and motion.

1. Two types of explanation.

(1) By classification.  This is but superficial.

(2) By causality.  Naturalism is an inadequate explanation of causality.  Causality can be explained only as change in things, and not as change among things.  There is a higher dynamism.

1. Difficulties that beset naturalism.

(1) It has no dynamic causality.

(2) It is illogical as viewing complexity arising from simplicity.

(a) As regards the theory of evolution, it is not ontological causality, but a description of the order and sequence of development.

(b) Sufficient cause is personal.

1. c) Quantitative differences cannot explain qualitative differences.

(d) The order of evolution presupposes law and Infinite Mind.

(e) Mechanism does not allow for new departures.

(f) The aspect of teleology in evolution requires Infinite              Mind.

1. Regarding the transformation of species.

(1) There are two questions.

(a) Can existing organic forms be genetically traced to a common origin (science)?

(b) What are the individual things themselves (philosophy)?

(2) The nominalism of the doctrine of descent.  But there is no development out of the prior.  Instead there is a power ordering the development.

3. Idealistic impersonalism.
4. Origin. The epistemological view that abstract ideas are ontological.
5. Bowne demonstrates that ideas arise because of personal experience. The experiential nature of the categories.
6. Difficulties concerning impersonal idealism.

(1) Where do the ideas exist?

(2) What is the ground of grouping and movement of these ideas?  If they are purely logical, then they are eternal and static.  The universe then is eternal, which view is erroneous.  On this view the ideas contain unreason.  Only personalism can overcome these difficulties.

4. Objections to personalism.
5. Confounding the Person with the physical organism. This would made personalism untenable. Since personality cannot the thus conceived, the objection vanishes.
6. The view that personality is the outcome of impersonal principles. An erroneous view. This is a fallacy of modern psychology of personality.
7. That the doctrine of personalism is an anthromorphism.

5. Impersonalism is a double failure.

a There is no foundation for its basal conceptions.

1. It gives no insight into the problems of experience. It is tautologous and involves an infinite regress.

Chapter 6

                              The Personal World

1. The invisibility of human life.
2. We ourselves are invisible.
3. The significance of life’s experience found only in the invisible.

(1) Religion.

(2) Literature.

(3) Government.

1. “A world of persons with a Supreme Person at the head” is the central fact of personalism.

2. The relation of finite spirits to the Absolute Spirit.
3. A quantitative conception. Many minds are made out of the One. This results pantheism.
4. The infinite existence of finite spirits.

3. A consideration of human life.
4. “We have thoughts and feelings and relations which are inalienably our own.”
5. We are not independent and self-sufficient in any absolute sense.
6. The difficulties of pantheism.

(1) The problem of knowledge.

(2) The problem of error and evil.

(3) The divine unity and identity disappears.

4. Mutual relations necessitated by religion and morality.

1. In order to have religion, love, etc., mutual otherness must exist. This is a condition for religious relations. “There would be no religion in a world of self-sufficient beings.”
2. Religion “is deep-rooted in humanity itself.”

5. The direction of the normal development of religion.
6. The object worshiped must satisfy the intellect. Thus, we regard this object as perfect personality, the Supreme Person.
7. Religious development must also affirm a Supreme Righteousness. This is an ethical demand. Religion and ethics must be united.
8. Religious development must affirm Supreme Goodness and ethical love.
9. Religious development must affirm a worthy thought of man.

(1) This involves bringing man to the highest estate.

(2) This involves the idea of eternity.

6. The application of personalism to our concrete problems.

* * * *

1. B. Pyle, Philosophy of Borden Parker Bowne.

                  Ch. 5: Causality: Mechanical or Volitional.

1. Two considerations of science.
2. The older scientific explanation of the universe in terms of matter, motion, and force. This prepared the way to atheism.
3. The newer atomic theory lends itself to theism.

2. The sphere of science.
3. First, we must distinguish between phenomenal reality and ontological reality.
4. Science pertains to the phenomenal, but not to the ontological. It does not identify ontological causation. Science is descriptive.  The concept of scientific causation does not necessarily eliminate the reference to God.

3. Evolution.
4. The inadequacy of impersonalism.

(1) The concept does not concern, or determine, the ultimate cause.

(2) Simplicity cannot beget complexity.  The effect must be contained in the cause.  Hence, the effect cannot be greater than its cause.  If evolution is explained on the impersonal plane, the cause must contain the effect, and this is no development.

(3) The inadequacy of the concept of potentiality.

(a) How can the potential become actual?

(b) To say that the potential becomes actual is the same as saying that the actual is actual, in which case there is no development at all.

(4) We must differentiate between causal order and order of antecedent and consequent.  Hence, the impersonal scheme of antecedent and sequence does not necessarily mean that the order is causal.

1. The inadequacy of Darwin’s natural selection and survival of the fittest.

(1) We must first define the term “natural selection.”

(2) How can nature be selective?  Selection must be through the activity of intelligence.  This activity negates impersonalism; it is, in reality, synonymous with Infinite Mind.

(3) The doctrine is negative only, and leads to no conclusion.  “It tells why they died , not why they lived.  It ignores the question of how the fit got here.”

(a) If by chance, there can be no causal ground.

(b) If by selection, then there is intelligent cause.

1. We may misunderstand Darwin.

(1) He says that natural selection is the fact; not the cause of the fact.  He implies an agency and does forbid the view that God is the causal agency.

(2) The species is not ontological, but only our way of classifying.  Hence, there can be no true formulation of something does not exist.  The transformation of species means only that God has creatively differentiated the species, and we have taken note of this.

4. The necessity of God. God is the creator and sustainer of the world.

* * * *

 

                              James: Pragmatism.

 

                                   Chapter 1

                           The Dilemma in Philosophy

1. Introduction.
2. The importance of a philosophy of the universe: it defines and determines our perspective.
3. We all have a philosophy of the universe.
4. The differences in that philosophy is a matter of temperament.

(1) Hence, any particular philosophy is a bias.

(2) There are two classes of philosophy.

(a) Empiricist.  “Lover of facts in all their crude variety.”

(b) Rationalist.  “Devoted to abstract and eternal principles.”

2. Rationalism and empiricism.
3. Characterization

(1) Intellectualism = Rationalism; Sensationalism = Empiricism.

(2) The two tendencies.

(a) The tender minded.

Rationalistic – (going by principles).

1) Intellectualist.

2) Idealistic.

3) Optimistic.

4) Religious.

5) Free will.

6) Monistic.

7) Dogmatical.

(b) The tough minded.  Empirical – (going by facts).

1) Sensationalist.

3) Materialist.

4) Pessimist.

5) Irreligious.

6) Fatalist.

7) skeptical.

(3) Regarding synthesis (Most of us want both facts and religion).

(a) The scientist deals with facts, posits a materialist universe.  Decries religion.

(b) The religious philosopher.

1) The radical wing.  Anglo Hegelian (Royce); pantheistic.

2) The mediating theism (Bowne).  The position is very abstract, although challenging to the intellect.  James says that we must have both: challenging to the intellect and has a connection with human life.  A combination of facts and values.  The contemporary dilemma is a separation of the two philosophies.

1. c) The unreality in rationalist systems. Abstract and lofty principles that eliminate everyday reality. A philosophy of refinement.

1) The view is illustrated by Leibniz position on the damned.  The ills of men and their damnation become inconsequential compared with the larger glory of the universe.  James rejects this position.

2) M. I. Swift on the optimism of idealism.  (a That evil and pain are necessary to a rich realization of the Absolute; (b But the explanation is not reality; reality is the suffering of men and as far as remedial measures to it cannot be said to contribute to a “perfection.”  c) Hence idealistic religion avoids the real issue and has no value.

3. Pragmatism as a mediating system.

1. An objection: Is not Idealism legitimate as an “escape mechanism” from cruel realities? Is not this the role of religion?

Chapter 2

                            What Pragmatism Means.

1. Pragmatism as a method. The criterion of reality is practical consequences.

2. History of the method.
3. Charles Pierce: How to Make Our Ideas Clear. Popular Science Monthly, January, 1878.
4. James, 1898.
5. Ostwald, at Leipzig.
6. The idea that differences as to theories be based on practical consequences. “In what respect would the world be different if this alternative or that were true.”

3. Its character and affinities.
4. It adopts an empiricist attitude
5. How it contrasts with rationalism and intellectualism.

(1) Does not have key words, as God, energy, etc.  Does not seek a solution to the metaphysical quest, as intellectualism does.

(2) Concepts have content by their results.  They have worth only in the stream of experience.  Theories are instruments of action, not answers.

1. Pragmatism is a “corridor theory.” Lies in the midst of our theories. Innumerable chambers open out of it.  An attitude of orientation.  “The attitude of looking away from first things, principle, categories, suppose necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.”
2. As a theory pragmatism is equivalent to humanism.

(1) Truth is not a divine necessity.

(2) “Ideas become truth in so far as they help us get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience (p. 58).

(3) Conflict may require a modification of the old to fit the new.

(4) The scope of pragmatism.

(a) It is a method.

(b) It is a genetic concept of truth.

4. Pragmatism as a theory of truth.
5. A discussion of older and newer theories of truth (p. 58).
6. The rise of new ideas.

(1) The part played by the older truths.  They are a controlling influence; it is necessary to be loyal to them.

(2) “A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual’s desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock.”

(3) Old truth grows by the addition of new truth.  The addition is made for subjective reasons.

(4) Old truths once were plastic and were then adopted because of their pragmatic value, and not for any authoritative reasons.

1. A discussion of the humanistic doctrine.
2. Rationalist criticism of humanism.

(1) It deals with facts only.

(2) Its utility is considered too commonplace.  The idealist loves the abstract instead of the concrete.

5. Pragmatism as mediator between empiricism and religion.
6. The bareness of transcendental idealism. This is due to its abstractness. It does not consider the concrete problems of reality.

Pragmatism is concerned with facts.  “His [God] menial services are needed in the dust of our human trials, even more than his dignity is needed in the Empyrean.”

1. However, pragmatism has no materialistic bias. Ideals are legitimate only as they are involved in our affairs. Religion may have some pragmatic value to a certain class of minds.  In so far, they are true.  Thus, the necessity of the pragmatic test of validity.
2. The true is the good in the way of belief. This solves the question as to how an idea that is good is also true, i.e., that is true because of its pragmatic value. “The true is whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.”

(1) This explains the rise of dogma as divine sanction.  It is true because I is good for us, and this goodness, rather than divine sanction, establishes the idea as true.  This observation shows the validity of pragmatism.

(2) But does not this lead to capriciousness?  Do not we need an Absolute to which we must anchor?  What, or who, is to determine what is good for us?  Thus, does the idea really have pragmatic value for us?  Is it, then, true?

(3) Now, if the idea of the Absolute has no pragmatic value, possibly because it clashes with truths that are held, it may be rejected as false.

1. Pragmatism will consider religion if it has value, and in this regard it widens the scope of religion. It does not adhere only to a rationalist logic or to empirical perception.

Chapter 3

             Some Metaphysical Proglems Pragmatically Considered.

1. The problem of substance.
2. The conventional distinction between substance and attribute.

(1) Substance is known by us only its attributes.  Pragmatism says that the attribute is the reality.

(2) Hence, the nominalist calls the concept of substance spurious.  Substance is but the cohesion of attributes.  That is all; there is no such thing as substance.

1. Scholasticism and the Eucharist. The tradition view is that there is a transubstantiation of substance. The concept cannot be taken literally; it has but a pragmatic value.
2. Berkley’s pragmatic treatment of material substance.

(1) He criticized the view of material substance.

(2) He posits a spiritual substance, God, who stirs up sensations in us.  Hence, the idea of substance has only a pragmatic value.  Also, the idea of God is pragmatic in its significance and import.

1. Locke’s view of personal identity.

(1) It does not inhere in a spiritual principle or entity.  It is sufficient to view it in pragmatic terms.

(2) Criticism: Does this pragmatic view explain the problem, which belongs to the metaphysical realm?  Perhaps it cannot be explained except on a metaphysical level.  If so, pragmatism fails, as to an ultimate and satisfactory solution.  It doesn’t explain the cause of this unity of experience.  Unified experience may not explain personal identity; personal identity may explain unified experience.  Only as we see the reason for unified experience can we adequately understand unified experience.

2. The problem of materialism.
3. Materialism views material force as ultimate.
4. Rationalist treatment of the problem of materialism.

(1) Idealism.  Matter is not ultimate; it is the function of Infinite Intellect.

(2) Spencer on the refinement of matter.

1. Pragmatic view of matter, i.e, what difference would it make if the world was run by matter or mind.

(a) It would make no difference to the past.  But this is begging the question.  The world has been run by one or the other, and we do not have sufficient knowledge to say that it would have made no difference if the one principle were involved instead of the other.  Saying tat it makes no difference how we deem it does not answer a metaphysical problem, because it fails to reach that realm.  It simply closes the question by saying that how we regard the question makes no difference as to the real facts involved.  But it still leaves the problem unresolved as to what is basal, matter or spirit.

(b) That is, the world is what it is, (if we end it, it has been what it has been), and to regard cause as spirit or matter does not altar the results and consequences.  Hence, pragmatically considered, the whole question is so much verbosity and is inconsequential and of no significance.  The results are the realities.

(c) But the significance of this pragmatic analysis falls back on whether or not, metaphysically, it would have made a difference if matter instead of spirit, or vice-versa, is the causal ultimate.  Consequences may have been different if the alternate were the case.  In this respect, pragmatism does not solve the problem.

(d) Materialism or theism as regards the future.

(1 If matter and its laws is found to lead our world ever nearer to perfection, it is, pragmatically, the real and the true.  But the question is, “Will it?”  The answer is “No.”  Everything that has involved is foretold by science to be tragedy and death (Balfour, The Foundations of Belief, p. 30.

(2 Hence, we object to materialism because of its ultimately negative content.

(3 Theism regards an ideal order that shall be ultimately saved.  Hence the superiority of the idea of theism.  “The need of an of an eternal order is one of the deepest needs of our breast” (Ibid., p. 106).  “Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope (Ibid., p. 107.

3. The problem of design.
4. Design per se is barren.

(1)The conventional argument is that design exists.  Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest is contradictory to the view of beneficent design and of a beneficent designer.

(2) Design as purposive is now considered as purpose in mechanism.

(3) Every particular, regardless of its character, would have to be an element in the design.  There is a difficulty here.

1. The pragmatic solution: what design means is that it is a promise and begets hope.

4. The problem of freewill.
5. Its relation to accountability.

(1) Freewill is novelty and is unrelated to the previous self.  Hence the self is not blameworthy.

(2) Determinism means inevitability.  Hence the self is not blameworthy.

1. Freewill is a cosmological theory.

(1) “The right to expect that in its deepest elements novelties in the world as well as in its surface phenomena, the future may not identically repeat and imitate the past” (Ibid., p. 119).

(2) Hence, the view is a theory of amelioration and promise: things in the future will be better.

(3) The pragmatic issue at stake is what do the alternatives provide.

                                   Chapter 4

                             The One and the Many

1. The aim of philosophy: it seeks totality, not unity.

2. Rationalistic fallacy about unity.

3. Unity pragmatically considered.
4. One time and space.
5. One subject of discourse.
6. The parts interact.
7. Unity and plurality coordinage.

4. The question of one origin. Causal unity.

5. Generic unity.

6. Teleological unity.

7. Aesthetic unity. One story.

8. One knower.

9. Value of pragmatic method. Saves from heated speculation and carries us forward in the stream of experience to discover what me may concerning any question.

10. Absolute monism. Illustrated by the vedanta philosophy of Hindustan.

11. Must reject dogmatism and follow the empirical findings.

Chapter 5

                         Pragmatism and Common Sense.

1. Our knowledge grows in spots.
2. New experience makes addition to our experience and the total body of our knowledge, which is modified to meet the demands of the new.
3. Earlier ways of thinking remain, connected with new experience. “Our fundamental ways of thinking about things are discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors, which have been able to preserve themselves throughout the experience of all subsequent time (Ibid., p. 170).

2. The commonsense concepts.
3. These are the categories of the mind.
4. The list: thing, the same or different, kinds, minds, bodies, one time, one space, subject and attribute, causal influences, the fancied, the real.
5. These came gradually into use. They did not come instantaneously, but gradually as experience developed.

3. Space and time. They are not objective, but rather artificial. The common man does not use these notions objectively, but rather lives in plural times and spaces.

4. Things. The same or different.

5. Kinds. These are necessary to logic and classification of phenomena of the universe.

6. Cause and law. The early concept of law.

7. Commonsense is one stage in mental evolution.
8. Provides a definite understanding of things that satisfies the purposes for which we think.
9. Commonsense categories may have been discovered by prehistoric genius and are not innate. They are built up by experience into the place they hold today.
10. The attempt to eternalize the commonsense categories.

8. The critical stages.
9. Science.

(1) Science tells us that commonsense things are not the real.  The real is atoms, etc., which are invisible to perception and are the ground of the visible of commonsense.

(2) The pragmatic value of critical science.

1. Philosophical.

(1) Critical philosophy does not have pragmatic value comparable to that of science.

1. The three stages. Each is better for its sphere of life, but they are not true to the others.

(1) Commonsense.

(2) Science.

(3) Philosophy.

9. Impossible to say which stage is more true.
10. It is hard to understand that truth is “the simple duplication by the mind of a ready-made and given reality.”
11. Conclusion.

(1) The categories may be invented hypotheses.

(2) Various types of thinking suggests that all theories are instrumental, mental modes of adaptation of reality, rather than disclosures of reality.

Chapter 6

                              Conception of Truth

1. What does “agreement with reality” mean?
2. Intellectualist view.

(1) The copy theory.

(2) As God thinks about reality, so should we.

1. Pragmatic concept.

(1) What is truth’s value in experiential terms.

(2) Hence, “True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify.  False ideas are those that we cannot’ (Ibid., p. 201).

1. Truth means verifiability. It is verified in the stream of experience. It looks to consequences.
2. Definition of verifiability.

(1) Dynamic consistency.

(2) Ability to guide us prosperously through experience.

(3) We require only verifiability.  While we may verify, it is not necessary in many situations.  “Indirectly or only potentially verifying processes may thus be true as well as full verification processes.”

2. Eternal truths. This refers to mental ideas and relations; once true, always true.

3. Consistency. Agreement of ideas (Locke).
4. The relation of mental objects, regarded as holding good for realities. The structure of our thinking necessitates consistency of mental relations. The mind is confronted both with sensible objects and ideal order.  Reality means concrete facts or abstract kinds of things and relations.
5. The realms of consistency.

(1) With language.

(2) With previous ideas or truths, i.e., the body of knowledge.

(3) Agreement turns out to be essentially an affair of leading.

4. Realist objections.
5. Truth is transcendent and absolute, static.
6. Pragmatism does not constitute truth, but rather evidences that is already true.

(1) Truth is like wealth and health: it can exist only in the stream of experience, In Rebus and not abstractly.

(2) The true is expedient thinking, like the good is expedient behaving.

(3) The past.  A statement may have been true in the past, but not so in the present.

(4) Truth grows.  It is not statice.  Involves a process of evaluation.

1. Reply to rationalism.

(1) Rationalist definitions.

(a) “Truth is the system of propositions which have an unconditional claim to be regarded as valid” (A. E. Taylor).

(b) Truth is a name for all those judgments which we find ourselves under obligation to make by a kind of imperative duty.

(2) Reply to rationalism.  The terms are trivial: for what is “duty” and claim,” except as defined in terms of pragmatism.

Chapter 7

                           Pragmatism and Humanism.

1. The nature of “The Truth.”
2. As absolute, eternal.
3. The objection that truth does not exist abstractly, as the law does not exist apart from experiential situations.

2. Schiller on Humanism. That reality is not ready-made, but made by the human mind.

3. The sorts of reality of which new truths must take account.
4. The flux of our sensations.
5. Relations that obtain between our sensations or between their copies on our minds.
6. Previous truth.

4. The human contribution to reality.
5. Absolutely independent reality is hard to find.
6. The human contribution is ubiquitous.

5. Pragmatism contrasted with rationalism.
6. Rationalism affirms a trans-empirical world.
7. Pragmatism affirms a world still in the making, by human activity, which awaits part of its complexion from the future.

Chapter 8

                           Pragmatism and Religion.

1. Utility of the Absolute. It is true if useful consequences eventuate, as religious history indicates.

2. Necessity vs. possibility, i.e., whether the salvation of the world is inevitable or possible. Rationalism posits necessity, as based on monism.
3. Possibility defined. It means that there are no “preventative conditions present, but that some of the conditions of the production of the possible thing actually are here.” Some of the conditions of the salvation of the world do exist.
4. Three views of the salvation of the world.

(1) Pessimism: the salvation of the world is impossible.

(2) Optimism: the salvation of the world is inevitable.

(3) Meliorism: mediating salvation is neither necessary nor impossible, but it is possible.

1. Pragmatism is melioristic. Because we create our world, it is not done by fiat of the Absolute. Hence, salvation is possible, contingent on us.

3. The “tender” and “tough” types of religion.
4. The tender. The demand for security occasions the resort to religious monism and relies on God for salvation. Does not rely on or trust the contingencies of life.
5. The tough. It is militant. It has no need for security, but will accept the contingencies of life.  It is moralistic and pluralistic.
6. Pragmatism is a mediating position. If reliance on God is effective in experience, to that extent it is true.

* * * *

 

                                  John Dewey

                          Philosophy and Civilization

 

                                   Chapter 2

                    The Development of American Pragmatism

1. Charles Sanders Peirce.
2. Kantian origin of pragmatism. Kant’s distinction between “pragmatic” and “practical.”

(1) Practical refers to the moral law, which Kant regards as a priori.

(2) Pragmatic applies to the rules of art and technique which are based on and are applicable to experience.

1. The rational purport of a concept lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life. This is set forth in his 1898 article, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.”
2. Errors in judging pragmatism.

(1) That it makes action the end of life.  But action is only intermediary: the means to applying a concept to existence, which is the essential idea of pragmatism.

(2) That it makes rational activity subordinate to ends of

interest and profit.

2. William James.
3. 1898, his address on “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results.”
4. James modified Peirce’s conception by viewing consequence as particular rather than universal, and by extending the pragmatic method to the notion of truth.
5. Illustrations of the pragmatic method.

(1) The way it dealt with theism and materialism.

(2) The way it dealt with the one and the many.

1. The nature of pragmatism. “It furnishes a criterion for determining the vital implications of beliefs which present themselves as alternatives in any theory.”
2. James recognized the role of development in the determination of our philosophy.
3. The Will to Believe.
4. Pragmatic meaning of truth. Truth is that which is verified by experience and shown to be consequential.

3. Pragmatism as the logical extension of empiricism.
4. It insists not upon antecedent but consequent phenomena. It brings “numinous” into experience. The “all” is phenomena.
5. This gives reason a constructive function.

4. Metaphysical implications of pragmatism.
5. The insistence upon consequence, and futurity, considers the universe to be still evolving in the process of evolution.
6. Hence, the plasticity of the universe, because consequences are formed that would otherwise not be. Reason intervenes in the application of concepts. Thus it is creative of a plastic universe.

5. Instrumentalism. This is a new element in pragmatism.
6. The function of reason is to take cognizance of the way in which present concepts may lead us to have more profitable ones in the future. Ideas are instruments in our progress. We are to reconstitute the present stage of things instead of merely knowing, as, for example, Neo Hegelianism does.  Hence, there is no hierarchy of judgments; each judgment has its own end.
7. Intellect is not absolute, but is rather a tool to assist us in making progress.

                                    * * * *

                                  John Dewey

                         Reconstruction in Philosophy

 

                                   Chapter 1

                      Changing Conceptions of Philosophy

 

1. The origin of philosophy.
2. Desire and imagination.
3. The imagined concepts become traditions and authoritative. The role of social influence.
4. At the same time scientific knowledge advances, which brings

incongruity between science and religion and philosophy.

2. The nature of classical philosophy.
3. Compensatory.
4. Dialectic and formal.
5. Concerned with ultimate reality.

3. Modern modifications of philosophy and thought.
4. Accepts the primacy of scientific knowledge.
5. Does not regard philosophy as a function in cognizance of the Absolute.
6. Philosophy has a social function.

(1) Its purpose is to improve the human race.  Thus it has a                  developmental and evolutionary role.

(2) Further, its purpose is to mediate between conflicting ideals and to clarify them.

(3) It deals with human concerns, rather than transcendental ones.

Chapter 2

              Historical Factors in Philosophical Reconstruction.

 

1. Roger Bacon.
2. He is a forerunner of a new age.
3. Main tenants of his philosophy.

(1) Knowledge is power.

(a) Pragmatic.  True knowledge gives power.

(b) Classification of knowledge.

(1 Dialectic.  The mark of ancient knowledge.

(2 Fantastic.  Astrology, etc.

(3 Contentious.

(a Its use as logic rendered it void and quarrelsome.

(b It is Aristotelian in method.  Bacon wanted discovery, not argument or persuasion.

1. c) The knowledge of discovery. Involves experimentation.

(2) Knowledge is dependent upon discovery and cooperative research.

(a) Cooperation eliminates error of the individual.

(b) Cooperation is necessary in order to gain power over nature.

(3) Knowledge must be tested in terms of the promotion of social progress.

(a) This is not backward looking or conservative; rather it is looking towards the future.

(b) It utilizes the principle of induction.

1. c) It is tested by its pragmatic consequences.

2. The social causes of intellectual revolution.
3. Industrial.

(1) The influence of travel, exploration, commerce, etc.  These opened up new avenues of thought.  Much of the older was dropped.

(2) When a new mental attitude coincides with new industry, a profound change takes place.

(3) Industrial needs beget scientific investigation and discovery.

(4) But at present industry has not alleviated many social ills.  Hence the task of philosophy: to direct industry to this end.

1. Political.

(1) The decline of feudalism and the rise of the city.

(2) The falsity of the contract theory of the state.  But it is significant in that it emphasized individuality, that the state exists for the people and not the people for the state.

1. Religious. The emergence of religious individualism, initiated by the Reformation.

(1) This aided individualism in other fields.

(2) The idea of the personality of every human being as an end in himself.  This is of the greatest significance.

3. The new idealism.
4. Causal factors.

(1) The transfer of interest from the eternal and universal to what is changing of specific content.

(2) The gradual decay of the authority of fixed institutions and class distinctions and relations, and the rise of the belief in the power of the individual mind to attain the truth that is needed for guidance.

(3) Great store is set upon the idea of progress.

(4) Progress is made by invention, science: power over nature.

1. Implications of the new idealism.

(1) Idealism is based on epistemology rather than on the metaphysics classical antiquity.

(2) Early modern philosophy faced a dilemma between materialism and mind.  So the two concepts were combined: mind is the cause of the material.

(3) Today we regard mind, as the original and final cause of things, but as the purposeful and energetic originator of these phases of nature and life.

                                   Chapter 3

                             The Scientific Factor

1. Ancient and modern science. It dealt with these concepts:
2. Ancient.

(1) A closed, finite world.

(2) Fixed species.

(3) A Static world.

1. Modern.

(1) An open, infinite world.

(2) Evolution.

(3) Dynamic.

2. The effect of ancient science upon conventional philosophy. A belief in Supreme Reason of the Absolute, imposing unalterable and fixed laws upon men, who must obey them. Should never depart from this authority.

3. Modern science and modern philosophy. Philosophy no longer deals with absolutes, fixed ends, static perfection, but with progress and development, never culminating into a state of perfection, but becoming further and more complete. We know this through experience, not through adherence to absolute law.

Chapter 4

                             Experience and Reason

1. Experience.
2. Conventional thesis.

(1) Experience is defined as the passive acceptance of the environment.

(2) This leads to a philosophy of acquiescence, stagnation, and hopelessness.

1. New thesis.

(1) Experience is active and may lay hold on the environment and modify it for the improvement of our condition.

(2) This leads to progress.

2. Reason.
3. The conventional thesis.

(1) that reason is laid from above upon experience.

(2) Hence, we are tied to and in bondage to the past.

1. The new thesis. Reason is experimental intelligence and becomes a factor in experience.  It is thus creative.

Chapter 5

                            The Ideal and the Real

1. The conventional thesis.
2. The ideal and the real are transcendentally abstract.
3. This brought an uncalled for optimism, which disregarded concrete evil. Evil was explained away.
4. It also brought on pessimism, because since the ideal world was static and absolute, this changing world could be nothing but discord, violence, and evil.
5. Hence, the superiority of contemplate knowledge to practical knowledge.

2. The new thesis.
3. Philosophy now disregards the static idea and posits change as reality.

1. Hence, the ideal is a dynamic changing philosophy and society.
2. The conventional dichotomy of world as ideal and superior and inferior and material is disregarded. Hence, the ideal is method and development, not fixed goals.

Chapter 6

                            Logical Reconstruction

1. Present confusion regarding logic. There is little agreement as to its matter, scope, and purpose.

2. Logic as regulative and normative.

3. The origin of thought. It arises out of conceptual conflicts; otherwise we would not think. We would be satisfied to let our environment carry us along, or we would resort to fantasy to resolve difficulties.

4. Because of this origin, logical thought leads to the projection of possible solutions, hypotheses, to be tested by impartial inquiry.

5. The deductive method. Its value: it leads to classification and organization. This is necessary in order to compass the field of knowledge.  Logic is a method, not a final end.  Hence, logic is pragmatic; this differs from the old scholasticism.  Logic is functional and experimental.

6. The nature of truth.
7. Truth is not a thing or correspondence with reality.
8. Truth is considered adverbially, as a dynamic function that clears up difficulties. It is positive consequences, pragmatic.

Chapter 7

                             Moral Reconstruction

1. The traditional theory of morals.
2. There is a supreme end, whether happiness, pleasure, wealth, holiness, etc., under which single concept all of life’s particulars could be consistently subsumed.
3. Its fallacy.

(1) It does not give moral knowledge in particular cases.  We are not informed in as regards special moral perplexities.

(2) We cannot exist abstractly, but must exist in special cases,

for example, justice is doing justly in special cases.

(3) It divides goods into instrumental and intrinsic.  This division teaches us to withdraw from instrumental-hence a deprivation-while those who busy themselves with instrumental ends are looked upon unfavorably.  Both ends must be united if life is to have real positive content.

2. The new morality.
3. The division is abolished, and the two concepts are united. Hence, life is reacher and fuller.
4. Natural science takes on moral worth.
5. Morals are considered as pragmatic and growing. They are means, not ends. Hence, they are adjusted in the interest of conditions that change in the interest of progress.

Chapter 8

                               Social Philosophy

1. Theories of society.
2. Individual.
3. Social.
4. Organic.

2. Defects of organic.
3. They are general notions, under which specific situations are brought.
4. Minimizes the significance of specific conflicts.

3. Defects of the individual view.
4. Regards the individual as given, overlooking the fact that the individual exists in relation to society.
5. Hence, there must be more than individualist considerations; social considerations are also essential to the realization of individuality.

* * * *

                           Singer: Mind as Behavior.

 

                                   Chapter 1

                         Mind as an Observable Object.

1. On the awareness of mental states and inference that others possess same.
2. Objectionable that everyone’s state is his own indisputably. The need of the social consideration in individual judgments.
3. Objection as to the validity of inference that others have like mental states.
4. Objection as to the validity of inference of other minds.

2. The pragmatic consideration regarding soul or non-soul.
3. A “soulless sweetheart” does not stand the pragmatic test.
4. But this concept will stand the test if we regard all that we mean by “soul” as behavior and expression. A soulless sweetheart thus behaving would be acceptable.

3. Consciousness is not something inferred from behavior. It is behavior.
4. Question: what aspects of behavior lead us to predicate consciousness?
5. Origins of the analogy argument.

(1) That experience begins with 1) consciousness and 2) data, and the mind builds up 3) the world.

(2) This view is rejected: minds are simply behavior.

(3) In the earlier philosophical analysis, the view is that complexity is a result of the addition of simple elements.  Thus, the soul or mind is viewed as an entity lying behind behavior.

(a) Illustrated by heat: it is not something added to the wood, but is caloric.  So the soul is not something added to the body, but is behavior.

Chapter 2

                          Consciousness and Behavior

1. Miller’s objection to behaviorism. He argues that we must posit consciousness, i.e., we must start with the immediate fact of consciousness and construct a world. There is no other way.

2. Singer, however, begins with a world. Experience and data then follow, which reconstruct the world.

1. Data has no significance except on being reflected.
2. On the meaning of consciousness. It is defined as behavior. The trait of behavior is called “consciousness.”  Individual differences in life, or behavior, are the ground of “consciousness.”  Only in this behaviorist and differential respect is “consciousness” valid.

3. Classification of behavior.
4. Sensibility.
5. Reaction,
6. Descriptive.

Chapter 3

                        On Mind as an Observable Object

1. Listed criticism of Singer’s behaviorism.
2. Miller. He affirms a mental state.
3. Ormund. He says that behaviorism implies no hereafter. He believes

in the immortality of the soul.

1. Miss Wasburn.

(1) What are we to do with the person who thinks, but exhibits no behavior for the very reason that he thinks?  The passive thinker.

(2) Wilson’s reply: the thinker is characterized by moving atoms in the thought process.  This is behavior.

(3) This may be answered in terms of the principle of dormant life.  We way that there is life, although dormant, because of our expectation that there will be thought in the future.  There is no need for a vital principle, or soul.

(4) The thinker cannot tell others what he is thinking about, because then his thought is in the past and lost.  There is no introspection.  We only know in the behaviorial process of thinking.

2. The problem of reconstructing the past.
3. By mechanics, e.g., Laplace.
4. By accumulation of data.

3. Is the movement of an atom a thought?
4. Yes, no. It is a thousand things beside. It is because of negative content that the soul has been added.
5. In this reference, thought is but a moving atom.
6. We must turn to the psychological to study behavior as mind.

                                   Chapter 4

                               The Pulse of Life

1. Life and mechanism.
2. The problem. How a world of mechanism is also the medium in which life has its being.
3. The concepts (in order to have consistency).

(1) a-teleological, mechanism per se.

(2) teleological.  The varieties of mechanism subserving the teleological are not important.  Their purposes obtain only in the realm of life.

2. Monadism. Life is freedom, and is hence impossible in a system mechanistic points.

3. Theory of the “pulse.”
4. It is a wave in a medium, made up of parts of that medium itself.

1. It is a wave-like form in the sea of mechanism, the purpose being self-preservation. Each pulse is a living entity.

4. The science of life.
5. Life is described in terms of purpose, not mechanism. Mechanism is only the science of life, not life itself.
6. Purpose.

(1) It is not wish or desire.

(2) The purpose of the act is the average common result.

5. Self-preservation described.
6. Consists of acts. The repetition of act is will, calculated to result from it, whose act is a means of securing its recurrence.
7. A complex, one act in order that all other acts may be repeated.

Chapter 5

                                On Sensibility

1. The concept of mind. Because of individual differences we bring in the concept of mind. Otherwise we need only the term life.  That is, different mental capacities account for the term mind.  Thus, mind is behavior. n plus 1 (skill) is mind.

2. Definition of sensibility.
3. It is behavior, not a feeling-tone.
4. It is the average behavior, not individualistic.

3. Definition of intensity.
4. lr, l of r, threshold – physical zero of stimulus.
5. Hence, the behavior (of the average of the group) is sensibility.

4. Passive or virtual behavior: expectation of action.

Chapter 9

                    Sensation and the Datum of Experience.

1. The classical consideration of sensation: the given immediately in experience, out of which sensations the world is constructed.

2. Singer’s analysis.
3. He rejects the classical view.
4. He posits that sensation is not an immediate datum of experience, but is the product of complexity and abstraction from an already existing complex order. There is no such thing as an immediate datum. It is the process of abstraction and reflection, not a simple given.
5. The simple datum is the ending point, not the starting point.

Chapter 10

                               Choice and Nature

1. Method. Knowledge is regarded as growing, never finding the “last word.” We view choice and nature, and their relation to each other, from this perspective.

2. Progress, determinism, and tolerance.
3. Determinism regards nature as objectively ordered and fixed. Hence, the spirit of intolerance.
4. To view science as progressive, indeterminate, allows for to

tolerance.

3. Tolerance and subjective choice (based on our subjective equipment).
4. Our subjective choices of scientific alternatives reduce the concept of scientific objectivity, evidencing that our decisions of science and scientific facts are subjectively determined.
5. Thus the creation of tolerance.

4. Science and objective choice (based on the objective order).
5. The exceptions and conditions regarding the objective order determine the alternatives of choice.
6. The possible error in observation gives rise to different theories. For example, as regarding the velocity of light in media of different density give rise to the corpuscular and undulatory theories of light.

5. The choices of science and their truth. We define nature as we do because we mould it by our own thinking.
6. This is evidenced in biological classification.
7. Evidenced also in Ptolemaic and Copernican theories.
8. Evidenced also in Newton’s law of gravitation. Exceptions exist; therefore, law is not an objective fact.

6. Nature, choice, and will. We regard the choice as true because it meets our need for maximum unity.

Chapter 11

                           On Mechanical Explanation

1. The definition of the mechanical ideal.
2. That phenomena are susceptible to mechanical explanation.
3. It is the hypothesis that mass, length, and time are the dimensions of natural science.
4. Illustrations:

(1) For chemistry the dimension is mass.

(2) For biology, psychology, sociology the dimension is vital force.

1. Reductionism: that all phenomenal processes are reducible to mechanical processes.

2. The possibility of the mechanical ideal.
3. Objections.

(1) Self-contradictory and meaningless.

(2) Essentially untrue to nature, i.e., not consistent with purpose in nature.

1. Replies

(1) Contradictions and insufficiencies in all definitions.  So why invalidate mechanism?

(2) Cell theory is vague on the concept of purpose.  Though it is not entirely mechanistic, since it assumes life.

Chapter 12

                                 Final Causes

1. Does mechanism invalidate final cause?

2. Definition of end.
3. Average effect of a class of causes.

(1) An average, not universal effect.

(2) Need no mechanical likeness between the causes producing the        same effect.

1. The cause in accomplishing an end produces also an infinite number of other results.

* * * *

Calkins: The Persistent Problems of Philosoph

                                  Chapter 10

                  Monistic Spiritualism: The System of Hegel

1. Ultimate reality is neither:
2. Undetermined.

(1) The argument that says it is based on the thesis that no predicate may be applied because of its limiting effect.

(2) Hegel’s answer to this objection.

(a) Pure being, as undetermined, is nothing.  It cannot be.

(b) Ultimate reality at least has the attribute of being thought about, and hence is determined and we can discover the ultimate nature of reality.

1. Unknowable.

(1) The argument: that even if reality has characteristics, it is beyond the range of knowledge (as in Kant’s ding an sich.

(2) Hegel’s reply to those who urge independent reality.

(a) This reality is in relation to the facts of human experience.

(b) Those who assume unknown force do so only to explain phenomena.  This is a tautology.  How can force be independent of phenomena?  It exists only if phenomena exist.  Hence, force is in relation to phenomena.  And reality is knowable.

2. Absolute reality is Absolute One.
3. Absolute reality is not a single, limited reality.

(1) Every limited reality is at least same (and perhaps like), and this implies other realities, by being like itself it is not like others.  Hence, implies other realities with their characteristics.  This makes it impossible for limited reality to be ultimate.  There are other realities.

(2) Every limited reality is dependent on others.  Hence, it cannot be independent and ultimate.  Ultimate reality must be conceived as the all that is.

1. Ultimate reality is not a composite of all particular realities. It is neither an aggregate or a system. Ultimate reality is no composite of temporal events.

(1) Ultimate reality is not an aggregate.  The supposedly unconnected plurality turns out to be a system of reals.

(2) Ultimate reality is not a composite and organically related system of related partial realities.  All is the one ultimate reality, an individual, not an aggregate.

3. Ultimate Reality is Spirit, or Person.
4. Ultimate Reality is not adequately conceived as mere life.

(1) Because it does not fully meet the question: “What, generically, is ultimate reality?  We have no definition of life.  Hence, none of ultimate reality, if it is life, can be distinguished from non-life.

(2) Because the life of the race would be a plurality and could not be ultimate reality, which must be one.

1. Ultimate reality is not adequately conceived as totality of particulars. Such a totality cannot constitute either the knowing or willing one.  This is Absolute Reason.  It is related to the world by developmental immanency.  The process is the Absolute.

* * * *

                                  On Calkins

1. Believes in monism.

2. How to relieve the Absolute from responsibility for evil, which individuals do (since we are the Absolute unfolding). The bad, when considered in the whole, is good. The Absolute and unfolding scheme as a whole is good.  Evil is only local; it does not occur in the Absolute.

3. Evil comes occurs in this process, by free will.

4. Royce says that there is no good apart from evil. Evil occurs only as we choose the good. Hence, evil has to exist if we have the good.

5. The Absolute Self is immortal, because it has the element of consciousness. The natural self is not conscious. Hence, it perishes.

6. The argument for immortality.
7. An imperfect being cannot by itself entertain the idea of God. The idea must come from another source, namely, God, the one perfect being.
8. Immortality is necessary to the achievement of the moral ought (Kant).

7. The relation of the Absolute to the finite. Finitude is the individuation of the Absolute.

* * * *

                                    Calkins

                         Twentieth Century Philosophy

                                  Chapter 11

 

1. The revolt of the pragmatists.
2. The revolt of the psychological pragmatists and the axiologists against intellectualism.

(1) The psychological pragmatists: The position emphasizes the emotional and volitional factors of experience, rather than the purely cognitive factors.

(2) Axiology: The position rejects the view that value is an attribute of the object.  Rather, the value of the object is “its capacity of becoming the object of feeling and desire.”  Hence, value is an element of consciousness, not something in the abstract.

1. The revolt of epistemological pragmatism against epistemological absolutism.

(1) The theory that there is no fixed truth already in existence, but that, on the contrary, truth is made in the course experience.

(2) Criticism of Spaulding: “The pragmatic theory of truth . . . that all truth is relative is advanced as one that is true absolutely and therefore . . . absolute truth is presupposed in pragmatism.”

2. The revolt of the realists against idealism.

1. Distinctive doctrines of contemporary realism.

(1) Their doctrine of objects: that all objects are non-mental.

(2) Their conception of mind.

(a) Monism: that mind has no distinctive nature of its own, rather it is materialistic or neutral.

(b) Dualism.

(3) Epistemology.

(a) They repudiate representationalism.  There is a direct relation between the knower and the known.

1. The arguments of contemporary realism.

(1) Idealism is incompatible with:

(a) Commonsense.

(b) Science (observation).

1. c) Epistemology (The distinction implied in all knowledge, that the knower is distinct from the object known.

(2) The unfounded assumption of idealism, that “no object is ever unknown,” is incorrect.

(3) The inconsistency of idealism regarding the existence of other selves.

(4) The refutation of two Berkleyian arguments for idealism.

(a) Primary and Secondary qualities are bound up together.

(b) His opposite qualities, or relativity argument.

1. The idealistic position.

(1) Reply to the three realist charges.

(a) Commonsense, or popular philosophy, is invalid as a basis for argument.

(b) Idealism has regard for science and its tendencies.

1. c) Provides for the distinction between the knowing subject and the object known. Both may be mental.

(2) Idealism assumes what it cannot validly infer.

1. Contemporary idealism.

(1) Personalistic.

(2) Concept of physical nature.

(a) Idealist: physical nature is a system of ideas.

(b) Personalist: There are interrelated selves, which is a different order of complexity.

(3) Idealistic conception of the human body:

(a) It is a complex of organic sensations.

(b) It is a public object.

(4) Personalist conception of natural law: predictable uniformity of sequence.

3. Revolt against metaphysical absolutism.
4. The universe is dynamic, not fixed.
5. Pluralism instead of monism.

4. Present position of personalist absolutism.
5. The concept of the Absolute Self.
6. Relation of the Absolute Self to the finite.

(1) Individuation.

(2) The Absolute Self experiences finite experiences.

(3) Finite selves are socially conscious.

(4) Finite selves are free.  Hence, the possibility of evil.

(5) Finite selves are immortal, due to the fact that they are experienced in the absolute consciousness.

* * * *

                               The New Realism.

1. Psychology.
2. The mental and the material are one experience.
3. Reaction against naive realism and subjectivism. The material and the mental are one.
4. Metaphysics. The unification of the material and mental in one experience reduces the ultimate to logical entity. Idealism refers to the mental ultimate; realism, to the material ultimate.  The influence of the Platonic Idea here.

* * * *

                                Pyle on Singer

                           Metaphysical Behaviorism

                                  The Techne

                               March, April 1928

 

1. Mind is not a distinct entity super-added, but is behavior, life organized on a higher level. There are not two entities, but only one entity.

2. The pulse of life: Purpose, self-preservation.

3. Mind is used as a term, because of the differences in life or behavior. The term life is a connotation, not a denotation.

4. The passive thinker. We infer that he can and will think. An expectation based on past experience.  However, Singer denies the validity of this inference, i.e., inferring that others have mental states.  Thought is behavior.  Hence, mind is an observable object.

5. Pyle’s criticism.
6. No unified thought. “As yes and no.” The thought passes into either subtle materialism or idealism.  Cannot be both.
7. The world is a vast machine, yet purposive.

(1) The world is a vast sea of atoms and yet is purposive.  Also, nature is in the making; “choice and nature.”

(2) But it is difficult, if not impossible, to unite purpose and mechanism.  Singer is not able to do so.

1. The question of virtual behavior.

6. Sensation is not the datum of experience.
7. The datum necessitates reflection.
8. The starting point is the complex world, upon which we reflect. The datum results from this reflection.

(1) There are two natures: raw nature as given and reflected nature (knowledge and science).

(2) But it is inconsistent to say that we begin with a world and yet we make the world.

7. Nature is the product of thought.
8. This position is idealist.
9. Criticism. What this means is that knowledge is not the apprehension of a given objectivity.
10. The position differs from Kant: there is no ding an sich.

* * * *

                              Watson: Behaviorism

                         Chapter 1: Problems and Scope

1. Limitations.

1. The mediaeval position denies that psychology is a science.
2. Not objective.

(1) Introspection is a bar to progress.

(2) It prohibits the understanding of proper behavior.  Thus, it is no aid to proper behavior.

2. Behaviorism.
3. This is the approach of natural science.
4. Seeks to find the principles underlying changes in behavior.

(1) Observe the response in order to predict the probable situation.

(2) Given the situation, to predict the probable response.

1. The control of human behavior.

3. The scientific procedure.
4. The role of stimulus and response in adjustment and behavior.
5. Classification of response.

(1) Explicit habit.

(2) Implicit habit (thinking, sub-vocal talking).

(3) Explicit hereditary.

(4) Explicit hereditary.

4. Relations.
5. Fields of psychology.
6. Physics.
7. Neurology.
8. Physiology.

Chapter 2

                                    Methods

1. Observation, with and without instrumental control.
2. Unaided observation.
3. Instrumentation and control of the subject.

2. The conditioned reflex methods.
3. Methods employed in obtaining conditioned secretion. Conditioned Salivary Reflex (Pavlov).
4. Methods employed in obtaining conditioned motor reflex.

3. The verbal report method (reporting the response).

4. Methods of testing.
5. Behavior tests.
6. Special ability.
7. Research and statistical work in tests.

Chapter 9

                                  On Thought

1. A verbal process.

2. Trial and error (learning).

3. Final word grouping (sentence or judgment) or direct bodily reaction.

* * * *

                         Pyle on Watson’s Behaviorism

                             Techne, May-June 1928

1. Singer (atomic movements); Watson (bodily reaction). Even a finger movement involves the entire body. Behavior of the entire organism; do not need introspection, since we can observe behavior.  This is significant, not introspection.  We can study the behavior of animals, and we can use this method in our study of adults.

2. The objective method of observation. We cannot observe consciousness, only objective behavior.

3. Personality. The biological organism is governed by stimulus and response.

4. Criticism.
5. If we are the victim of stimulus, then how are we able to predict and control behavior?
6. How about individual differences, if the stimulus is determinative of behavior.

5. The stimulus response concept eliminates consciousness.

6. Implicit behavior is thinking. Hence, thinking is behavior.
7. When the child begins to think, how does he get these sub-vocal movements? Stimulation by others is social stimulation.
8. By inhibition, the stimulation is transferred into vibrations. This is thought.
9. But the child shows evidence of thinking before he talks. Watson argues that movement may substitute for talking.

7. Physiology differs from psychology. Psychology studies the reaction of the total organism.

8. Regarding purpose: Behaviorism eliminates purpose, as occurring inwardly and lying behind behavior.

* * * *

                        Types of Continental Philosophy

Idealism.

1. Hegel’s absolute idealism. Royce in America.
2. Schiller’s voluntaristic idealism.
3. Lotze’a objective idealism.
4. Bowne’s personalism.

* * * *

                              Bowne, Personalism

                                   Chapter 1

                     Commonsense, Science, and Philosophy

1. Commonsense criticizes philosophy. But since we all have a philosophy, it is necessary to have the best one possible. Its importance: a way of looking at life, of the whole.

2. Fundamental principles of Bowne.
3. The co-existence of persons. This is evident, and cannot be denied.
4. The law of reason binding upon all. This is axiomatic.
5. The world of common experience. The objective world experienced together on common grounds.

3. Interrelationships between science and philosophy.
4. Science describes. It explains in terms of the order of sequences.
5. Philosophy interprets. It seeks to find the ultimate explanation. It does not contradict science, but complements science.  It considers the facts of science with respect to ultimate meaning.

4. The relation between the external world and the infinite and the finite mind. The objective world is the meeting place between the infinite and the finite.

5. The principle of identity. A thing is itself and not something else. A is A.

Chapter 5

                         The Failure of Impersonalism

1. How impersonalism is reached.
2. Perception of the impersonal.
3. Abstraction and reification.

2. Naturalism.
3. Philosophic naturalism. The interpretation of nature as materialistic.
4. Scientific naturalism. This is legitimate; it is descriptive and not explanatory.

3. Two kinds of explanation.
4. Classification. This does not disclose the inner nature of things.
5. Metaphysical. The search for final cause.

4. Two kinds f change.
5. Special. Change among things.
6. Metaphysical. Change in things.

5. Questions concerning transmutation.
6. Can existing things be genetically traced to earlier forms and a common origin?
7. What are individual things themselves and what is power producing them?

6. It is impossible to verify the leading tenets of naturalism.

* * * *

                                Review of Bowne

 

1. The nature of the world.
2. Ontological: Infinite Mind.
3. Phenomenological: the product of the Infinite Mind and finite minds.

2. Problems.
3. Psychological.
4. Epistemological.
5. Ontological.

3. The self.
4. The self as mental. It is not the body,
5. Hence, a personal identity.

* * * *

                           Singer, Mind as Beharior

                                   Chapter 1

1. Consciousness is not inferred from behavior; it is behavior.

2. The invalidity of the inference that others have minds. One’s mental state, being private possession, is no ground for the inference that others possess minds.

3. Our expectation of probable behavior of others is, illegitimately, the basis of inference that others possess minds.

4. Life is behavior.

* * * *

                               Final Examination

                                 May 21, 1947

1. Bowne: Personalism.

Personalism posits the ultimate reality as Absolute Mind, mentalism.  Reality is not materialistic, substantial, but mental.  Then finite minds exist.  Hence the world is essentially a personal world.  The phenomenal world is brought about as a result of the interaction of the absolute and finite in experience.  Experience and the world being the meeting place.  Matters as time and space are the forms which personal experience assumes and are not ontologically real.  It is by this distinction of reality that Bowne considers the problem of ultimate and apparent reality.  In a world of flux, it is necessary that there be a permanent transcendental self and finite selves which also are ontologically real, having once been set going by the Absolute.  Finite selves make up a social world, though not apart from God who is necessary to the moral order.  Evil is accounted for because of the margin of freedom given to finite selves, which margin of freedom is misused because self-determination is misdirected.

Objective idealism then posits an objective personal Absolute Mind, finite minds, the interaction of which, according to the nature of subjects and finite objects of creation, constitute, in the last analysis, the temporal world.  Hence, this position differs from subjective idealism or stark realism.  It is a mediating position.

2. Pragmatism: James and Dewey.

Pragmatism is the rejection of a transcendental Absolute, which we are to approximate in order to achieve truth.  Pragmatism is (1) a method in philosophy, and seeks to answer philosophical questions by viewing consequences.  Consequences are criteria of reality, not philosophical speculation per se.  For instance, if there are better consequences issuing from materialism, then it is true, or vice versa.

3. Metaphysical behaviorism: Singer and Watson.

Singer posits that mind is not inferred from behavior, but is behavior.  While not rejecting mind, he reduces it to behavior.  We use the term mind because there are individual differences in life.  The question of thought when there is no explicit behavior is taken care of by the “passive thinker,” or expectancy.  Watson brought this to its logical conclusion in psychological behavior, stimulus reflex and reflex arc.  This is mechanistic.

Singer, ontologically, is a kind of realist.  He begins by saying that reality is a sea of moving atoms, and life is a higher and more complex organization.  It is a pulse, or the order organized at a higher level.  (The sea at a certain pitch is the wave).  Hence there are not two divisions, but one reality, organized at a certain level.  Hence mind is moving atoms of certain organization.  This is essentially a mechanistic theory.

4. Absolute idealism: Hegel, Royce, Calkins.

The Absolute is considered as Absolute Reason.  It is not made of parts, for if so it would not be absolute.  The Absolute is a process, working to completion through the order which we experience, in which we are, not abstract from the Absolute but the Absolute this in process.  This process is carried on by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, the result being progress.  The state is the social culmination, the religious being the highest plane.  Now in this process the Absolute experiences all that is experienced (what we experience).  The relation to what we call the temporal is effected by the individuation of the Absolute, so that a certain “given” is effected (a kind of particular).  But it is not separate from the Absolute; it is the Absolute at this point.

Evil is accounted for because we are free wills and we have by our action and choice brought evil in.  But evil is a local consideration and when regarded from the perspective of the whole becomes of no consequence.  Royce said that evil is necessary to the good.

5. New realism.

As a psychological theory it mediates between idealism and realism by viewing experience as the point where the two meet.  Hence, it rejects conventional idealistic subjectivism and realism.  As a metaphysical thesis, it reduces the mental (ideal) and the material to a common denominator, logical entities.  Reality is logical entities, material and mental.  They are resultants dependent on the degree of organization.