[Reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology1 and Scientific Methods, vol. II, No. 5, March 2, 1905. Also reprinted, with slight changes in The Meaning of Truth, pp. 121–135. The author’s corrections have been adopted for the present text. ED.]
HUMANISM is a ferment2 that has ‘come to stay.’83 It is not a single hypothesis of theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic3 perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight. Some writers are strongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though their own vision may have undergone much change. The result is no small confusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part against the radical4 ones, as if they wished to count upon the other side.84
83 [Written apropos5 of the appearance of three articles in Mind, N.S., vol. XIV, No. 53, January, 1905: “‘Absolute’ and ‘Relative’ Truth,” H.H.Joachim; “Professor James on ‘Humanism and Truth,’” H.W.B.Joseph; “Applied6 Axioms,” A. Sidgwick. Of these articles the second and third “continue the humanistic (or pragmatistic) controversy7,” the first “deeply connects with it.” ED.]
84 Professor Baldwin, for example. His address ‘On Selective Thinking’ (Psychological Review, [vol. V], 1898, reprinted in his volume, Development and Evolution) seems to me an unusually well-written pragmatic manifesto9. Nevertheless in ‘The Limits of Pragmatism’ (ibid., [vol. XI], 1904), he (much less clearly) joins in the attack.
If humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change in some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their foreground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not keep just the same.85 If such pervasive10 consequences be involved in humanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers may take, first in defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or steering11 its progress, will be thrown away.
85 The ethical12 changes, it seems to me, are beautifully made evident in Professor Dewey’s series of articles, which will never get the attention they deserve till they are printed in a book. I mean: ‘The Significance of Emotions,’ Psychological Review, vol. II, [1895], p. 13; ‘The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,’ ibid., vol. III [1896], p. 357; ‘Psychology and Social Practice,’ ibid., vol. VII, [1900], p. 105; ‘Interpretation of Savage13 Mind,’ ibid., vol. IX, [1902], p.217; ‘Green’s Theory of the Moral Motive,’ Philosophical14 Review, vol. I, [1892], p. 593; ‘Self-realization as the Moral Ideal,’ ibid., vol. II, [1893], p. 652; ‘The Psychology of Effort,’ ibid., vol. VI, [1897], p.43; ‘The Evolutionary15 Method as Applied to Morality,’ ibid., vol XI, [1902], pp. 107, 353; ‘Evolution and Ethics,’ Monist, vol. VIII, [1898], p.321; to mention only a few.
It suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most systematic16 advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary programs only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic problems has not been traced except by adversaries17 who, scenting18 heresies19 in advance, have showered blows on doctrines20 — subjectivism and scepticism, for example — that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their still greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed21 the humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word ‘truth.’ It is always good in debate to know your adversary22’s point of view authentically23. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the word ‘truth’ signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have to guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much at beating of the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps, and it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage which things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each side of its central point of view.
Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure of what’s what and who is who. Anyone can contribute such a definition, and, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own provisional definition of humanism86 now and here, others may improve it, some adversary may be led to define his own creed24 more sharply by the contrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general opinion may result.
86 [The author employs the term ‘humanism’ either as a synonym25 for ‘radical empiricism’ (cf. e.g, above, p. 156); or as that general philosophy of life of which ‘radical empiricism’ is the theoretical ground (cf. below, p. 194). For other discussions of ‘humanism,’ cf. below, essay XI, and The Meaning of)Truth, essay III. ED.]
I
The essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is to have seen that though one part of our experience may lean upon another part to make it what it is in any one of several aspects in which it may be considered, experience as a whole is self-containing and leans on nothing.
Since this formula also expresses the main contention26 of transcendental idealism, it needs abundant explication to make it unambiguous. It seems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying theism and pantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything would depend on the exegesis28; and if the formula ever became canonical29, it would certainly develop both right-wing and left-wing interpreters. I myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there be a God, he is no absolute all-experiencer, but simply the experiencer of widest actual conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for me a religion susceptible30 of reasoned defence, though I am well aware how many minds there are to whom it can appeal religiously only when it has been monistically translated. Ethically31 the pluralistic form of it takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of — it being essentially32 a social philosophy, a philosophy of ‘co’, in which conjunctions do the work. But my primary reason for advocating it is its matchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the standing33 ‘problems’ that monism engenders34 (‘problem of evil,’ ‘problem of freedom,’ and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and paradoxes35 as well.
It gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by refusing to entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all. It gets rid of any need for an absolute of the Bradleyan type (avowedly sterile36 for intellectual purposes) by insisting that the conjunctive relations found within experience are faultlessly real. It gets rid of the need of an absolute of the Roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic treatment of the problem of knowledge [a treatment of which I have already given a version in two very inadequate37 articles].87 As the views of knowledge, reality and truth imputed39 to humanism have been those so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore to bring the view which I impute38 to humanism in these respects into focus as briefly40 as I can.
87 [Omitted from reprint in Meaning of Truth. The articles referred to are ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ and ‘A World of Pure Experience,’ reprinted above.]
II
If the central humanistic thesis, printed above in italics, be accepted, it will follow that, if there be any such thing at all as knowing, the knower and the object known must both be portions of experience. One part of experience must, therefore, either
(1) Know another part of experience — in other words, parts must, as Professor Woodbridge says,88 represent one another instead of representing realities outside of ‘consciousness’ — this case is that of conceptual knowledge; or else
(2) They must simply exist as so many ultimate thats or facts of being, in the first instance; an then, as a secondary complication, and without doubling up its entitative41 singleness, any one and the same that must figure alternately as a thing known and as a knowledge of the thing, by reason of two divergent kinds of context into which, in the general course of experience, it gets woven.89
88 In Science, November 4, 1904, p. 599.
89 This statement is probably excessively obscure to any who has not read my two articles, ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ and ‘A World of Pure Experience.’
This second case is that of sense-perception. There is a stage of thought that goes beyond common sense, and of it I shall say more presently; but the common-sense stage is a perfectly42 definite halting-place of thought, primarily for the purposes of action; and, so long as we remain on the common-sense stage of thought, object and subject fuse in the fact of ‘presentation’ or sense-perception — the pen and hand which I now see writing, for example, are the physical realities which those words designate. In this case there is no self-transcendency implied in the knowing. Humanism, here, is only a more comminuted Identitasphilosophie.90
90 [Cf. above, p. 134; and below, p.202.]
In case (1), on the contrary, the representative experience does transcend27 itself in knowing the other experience that is its object. No one can talk of the knowledge of the one by the other without seeing them as numerically distinct entities43, of which the one lies beyond the other and away from it, along some direction and with some interval44, that can be definitely named. But, if the talker be a humanist, he must also see this distance-interval concretely and pragmatically, and confess it to consist of other intervening experiences — of possible ones, at all events, if not of actual. To call my present idea of my dog, for example, cognitive45 of the real dog means that, as the actual tissue of experience is constituted, the idea is capable of leading into a chain of other experiences on my part that go from next to next and terminate at last in vivid sense-perceptions of a jumping, barking, hairy body. Those are the real dog, the dog’s full presence, for my common sense. If the supposed talker is a profound philosopher, although they may not be the real dog for him, they mean the real dog, are practical substitutes for the real dog, as the representation was a practical substitute for them, that real dog being a lot of atoms, say, or of mind-stuff, that lie where the sense-perceptions lie in his experience as well as in my own.
III
The philosopher here stands for the stage of thought that goes beyond the stage of common sense; and the difference is simply that he ‘interpolates’ and ‘extrapolates,’ where common sense does not. For common sense, two men see the same identical real dog. Philosophy, noting actual differences in their perceptions, points out the duality of these latter, and interpolates something between them as a more real terminus — first, organs, viscera, etc.; next, cells; then, ultimate atoms; lastly, mind-stuff perhaps. The original sense-termini of the two men, instead of coalescing46 with each other and with the real dog-object, as at first supposed, are thus help by philosophers to be separated by invisible realities with which at most, they are conterminous.
Abolish, now, one of the percipients, and the interpolation changes into ‘extrapolation.’ The sense-terminus of the remaining percipient is regarded by the philosopher as not quite reaching reality. He has only carried the procession of experiences, the philosopher thinks, to a definite, because practical, halting-place somewhere on the way towards an absolute truth that lies beyond.
The humanist sees all the time, however, that there is no absolute transcendency even about the more absolute realities thus conjectured47 or believed in. The viscera and cells are only possible percepts following upon that of the outer body. The atoms again, though we may never attain48 to human means of perceiving them, are still defined perceptually. The mind-stuff itself is conceived as a kind of experience; and it is possible to frame the hypothesis (such hypotheses can by no logic8 be excluded from philosophy) of two knowers of a piece of mind-stuff and the mind-stuff itself becoming ‘confluent’ at the moment at which our imperfect knowing might pass into knowing of a completed type. Even so do you and I habitually49 represent our two perceptions and the real dog as confluent, though only provisionally, and for the common-sense stage of thought. If my pen be inwardly made of mind-stuff, there is no confluence50 now between that mind-stuff and my visual perception of the pen. But conceivably there might come to be such confluence; for, in the case of my hand, the visual sensations and the inward feelings of the hand, its mind-stuff, so to speak, are even now as confluent as any two things can be.
There is, thus, no breach51 in humanistic epistemology. Whether knowledge be taken as ideally perfected, or only as true enough to pass muster52 for practice, it is hung on one continuous scheme. Reality, howsoever remote, is always defined as a terminus within the general possibilities of experience; and what knows it is defined as an experience that ‘represents’ it, in the sense of being substitutable for it in our thinking because it leads to the same associates, or in the sense of ‘point to it’ through a chain of other experiences that either intervene or may intervene.
Absolute reality here bears the same relation to sensation as sensation bears to conception or imagination. Both are provisional or final termini, sensation being only the terminus at which the practical man habitually stops, while the philosopher projects a ‘beyond’ in the shape of more absolute reality. These termini, for the practical and the philosophical stages of thought respectively, are self-supporting. They are not ‘true’ of anything lese, they simply are, are real. They ‘lean on nothing,’ as my italicized formula said. Rather does the whole fabric53 of experience lean on them, just as the whole fabric of the solar system, including many relative positions, leans, for its absolute position in space, on any one of its constituent54 stars. Here, again, one gets a new Identitatsphilosophie in pluralistic form.91
91 [Cf. above, pp. 134, 197.]
IV
If I have succeeded in making this at all clear (though I fear that brevity and abstractness between them may have made me fail), the reader will see that the ‘truth’ of our mental operations must always ben an intra-experiential affair. A conception is reckoned true by common sense when it can be made to lead to a sensation. The sensation, which for common sense is not so much ‘true’ as ‘real,’ is held to be provisionally true by the philosopher just in so far as it covers (abuts at, or occupies the place of) a still more absolutely real experience, in the possibility of which to come remoter experient the philosopher finds reason to believe.
Meanwhile what actually does count for true to any individual trower, whether he be philosopher or common man, is always a result of his apperceptions. If a novel experience, conceptual or sensible, contradict too emphatically our preexistent system of beliefs, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is treated as false. Only when the older and the newer experiences are congruous enough to mutually apperceive and modify each other, does what we treat as an advance in truth result. [Having written of this point in an article in reply to Mr. Joseph’s criticism of my humanism, I will say no more about truth here, but refer the reader to that review.92] In no case, however, need truth consist in a relation between our experiences and something archetypal or trans-experiential. Should we ever reach absolutely terminal experiences, experiences in which we all agreed, which were superseded55 by no revised continuations, these would not be true, they would be real, they would simply be, and be indeed the angles, corners, and linchpins of all reality, on which the truth of everything else would be stayed. Only such other thins as led to these by satisfactory conjunctions would be ‘true.’ Satisfactory connection of some sort with such termini is all that the word ‘truth’ means. On the common-sense stage of thought sense-presentations serve as such termini. our ideas and concepts and scientific theories pass for true only so far as they harmoniously56 lead back to the world of sense.
92 [Omitted from reprint in Meaning of Truth. The review referred to is reprinted below, pp. 244–265, under the title “Humanism and Truth Once More.” ED.]
I hope that many humanists will endorse57 this attempt of mine to trace the more essential features of that way of viewing things. I feel almost certain that Messrs. Dewey and Schiller will do so. If the attackers will also take some slight account of it, it may be that discussion will be a little less wide of the mark than it has hitherto been.
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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ferment
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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radical
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apropos
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| adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于 | |
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applied
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controversy
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logic
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manifesto
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pervasive
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steering
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ethical
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savage
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philosophical
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evolutionary
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systematic
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adversaries
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scenting
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heresies
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doctrines
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perplexed
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adversary
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authentically
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creed
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synonym
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contention
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transcend
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exegesis
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canonical
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susceptible
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ethically
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essentially
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standing
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engenders
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paradoxes
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sterile
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inadequate
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impute
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imputed
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briefly
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entitative
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perfectly
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interval
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cognitive
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coalescing
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conjectured
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attain
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habitually
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confluence
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breach
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muster
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fabric
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constituent
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superseded
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harmoniously
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endorse
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