CHAPTER IX THE PRAGMATIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE The General §1. Ir is characteristic of pragmatism that it does not readily lend itself to summary definition. It can neither be identified with a fixed habit of mind, as naturalism can be identified with the scientific habit of mind, nor can it be reduced to a single cardinal principle, as can idealism. We are as yet too much in the midst of it to discern its general contour; indeed it is not so much a systematic doctrine as a criticism and a method. Nevertheless, it is not impossible, I think, to give a preliminary characterization of it that shall be roughly true, and shall serve as a guide to the study of its diverse aspects. Pragmatism means, in the broadest sense, the acceptance of the categories of life as fundamental. It is the bio-centric philosophy. And it must be added at once that the pragmatist means by 'life,' not the imaginary or ideal life of any hypothetical being, not the "eternal" life or the "absolute" life; but the temporal, operative life of animals and men, the life of instinct and desire, of adaptation and environment, of civilization and progress. Although the pragmatic movement is new, pragmatism is, as James acknowledges, "an old way of thinking." It is dangerous, however, to identify contemporary pragmatism too closely with any of the earlier doctrines that resemble it. Thus the whole 'experimentalist' tendency in English science and philosophy may be said to have anticipated the pragmatist theory that truth is achieved by the trying of hypotheses. And Hume suggested at the close of his Treatise that we must be satisfied in the end with a belief that is suited to action. But these antici1 Cf. above, p. 139. pations of pragmatism are largely accidental, and more negative than constructive. On the other hand, Kant, and the Fichtean idealists after him, maintained "the primacy of the practical reason." Pragmatism is doubtless related to this and other traditional forms of voluntarism. But from the idealistic form of voluntarism, at least, pragmatism is sharply distinguished by its naturalistic and empirical leanings. Pragmatism does, it is true, depart from naturalism in so far as this assigns the fundamental place to the mechanical categories. Pragmatism would insist on the priority of biology to physics; or at least upon the right of biology, together with the moral and social sciences, to regard the teleological method as independently valid. For if it can be argued that the processes of life may be described as quantities of mechanical force or energy, it can equally well be argued that energy and force themselves are instruments which serve the uses of life. But while pragmatism is opposed to a fundamental or universal mechanism, it has much in common with naturalism. It may even in a sense be called 'naturalistic.' For it identifies reality with "this world," with the sort of thing that is going on here and now; and regards perception as the most reliable means of knowledge.1 The polemic of pragmatism is mainly directed, not against naturalism, but against idealism; and not against the cardinal or subjectivistic principle in idealism, but against idealism as the contemporary form of absolutism. The perfect antithesis to pragmatism is Spinoza, and it is the perpetuation of Spinozism in objective and absolute idealism that is the real object of the pragmatist attack. Absolutism is other-worldly, contrary to appearances; pragmatism mundane, empirical. Absolutism is mathematical and dialectical in method, establishing ultimate truths with demonstrable certainty; pragmatism is suspicious of all short-cut arguments, and holds philosophy to be no 1 See below, pp. 363-366. exception to the rule that all hypotheses are answerable to experience. Absolutism is monistic, deterministic, quietistic; pragmatism is pluralistic, indeterministic, melioristic. That which absolutism holds to be most significant, namely, the logical unity of the world, is for pragmatism a negligible abstraction. That which for absolutism is mere appearance the world of space and time, the interaction of man and nature, and of man and man, is for pragmatism the quintessence of reality. The one is the philosophy of eternity, the other the philosophy of time. The Pragmatist § 2. Pragmatism like all contemporary philosophies is first of all a theory of knowledge. It is in the application of the vitalistic or bio-centric method to Conception of knowledge that all pragmatists are agreed. We may hope to discover here a body of common pragmatic doctrine from which the various pragmatisms diverge. the Theory of Knowledge The pragmatist has a characteristic way of setting the problem. In the first place, he means by knowledge a process, and not merely a product. The term knowledge is often used to mean what is known, in other words, completed knowledge, or science; and epistemology has been taken to mean the analysis of such completed knowledge with a view to discovering its universal principles or its underlying ground. With pragmatists, however, knowledge means knowing: a complex event, involving an individual knower, a something to be known, certain means of knowing it, and then, finally, the cognitive achievement or failure. Critics of pragmatism have attempted to dismiss this method of studying knowledge by calling it 'psychological,' rather than 'logical.' It is certainly not exclusively logical, because it takes into account the circumstances and agencies of knowledge, and not merely its grounds. But, on the other hand, it is not psychological in any limited or disparaging sense, because it seeks to This is on the whole the idealistic conception of 'the categories.' Cf. above, pp. 139–142. |