and it is precisely the experimental character of scientific logic that distinguishes it from scholasticism, medieval or modern.
II
First it is clear that a reform of logic based upon the restoration of knowing to its connections with other acts will begin with a chapter containing an account of these other operations and the general character of this connection.13 Logical theory has been truncated. It has tried to begin and end in the middle, with the result that it has ended in the air. Logic presents the curious anachronism of a science which attempts to deal with its subject-matter apart from what it comes from and what comes from it.
The objection that such a chapter on the conditions and genesis of the operations of knowing belongs to psychology, only shows how firmly fixed is the discontinuity we are trying to escape. As we have seen, the original motive for leaving this account of genesis to psychology was that the act of knowing was supposed to originate in a purely psychical mind. Such an origin was of course embarrassing to logic, which aimed to be scientific. The old opposition between origin and validity was due to the kind of origin assumed and the kind of validity necessitated by the origin. One may well be excused for evading the question of how ideas, originated in a purely psychical mind, can, in Kant's phrase, "have objective validity," by throwing out the question of origin altogether. Whatever difficulties remain for validity after this expulsion could not be greater than those of the task of combining the objective validity of ideas with their subjective origin.
The whole of this chapter on the connection between logical and non-logical operations cannot be written here. But its central point would be that these other acts with which the act of knowing must have continuity are just the operations of our unreflective conduct. Note that it is "unreflective," not "unconscious," nor yet merely "instinctive" conduct. It is our perceptive, remembering, imagining, desiring, loving, hating conduct. Note also that we do not say "psychical" or "physical," nor "psycho-physical" conduct. These terms stand for certain distinctions in logical conduct,14 and we are here concerned with the character of non-logical conduct which is to be distinguished from, and yet kept in closest continuity with, logical conduct.
If, here, the metaphysical logician should ask: "Are you not in this assumption of a world of reflective and unreflective conduct and affection, and of a world of beings in interaction, begging a whole system of metaphysics?" the reply is that if it is a metaphysics bad for logic, it will keep turning up in the course of logical theory as a constant source of trouble. On the other hand, if logic encounters grave difficulties when it attempts to get on without it, its assumption, for the purposes of logic, has all the justification possible.
Again it will be urged that this alleged non-logical conduct, in so far as it involves perception, memory, and anticipation, is already cognitive and logical; or if the act of knowing is to be entirely excluded from logic, then, in so far as what is left involves objective "terms and relations," it, also, is already logical. And it may be thought strange that a logic based upon the restoration of continuity between the act of knowing and other acts should here be insisting on distinction and separation. The point is fundamental; and must be disposed of before we go on. First, we must observe that the unity secured by making all conscious conduct logical turns out, on examination, to be more nominal than real. As we have already seen, this attempt at a complete logicizing of all conduct is forced at once to introduce the distinction of "explicit" and "implicit," of "conscious and unconscious" or "subconscious" logic. Some cynics have found that this suggests dividing triangles into explicit and implicit triangles, or into triangles and sub-triangles.
Doubtless the attempt to make all perceptions, memories, and anticipations, and even instincts and habits, into implicit or subconscious inference is an awkward effort to restore the continuity of logical and non-logical conduct. Its awkwardness consists in attempting to secure this continuity by the method of subsumptive identity, instead of finding it in a transitive continuity of function;—instead of seeing that perception, memory, and anticipation become logical processes when they are employed in a process of inquiry, whose purpose is to relieve the difficulties into which these operations in their function as direct stimuli have fallen. Logical conduct is constituted by the coöperation of these processes for the improvement of their further operation. To regard perception, memory, and imagination as implicit forms or as sub-species of logical operation is much like conceiving the movements of our fingers and arms as implicit or imperfect species of painting, or swimming.
Moreover, this doctrine of universal logicism teaches that when that which is perfect is come, imperfection shall be done away. This should mean that when painting becomes completely "explicit" and perfect, fingers and hands shall disappear. Perfect painting will be the pure essence of painting. And this interpretation is not strained; for this logic expressly teaches that in the perfected real system all temporal elements are unessential to logical operations. They are, of course, psychologically necessary for finite beings, who can never have perfectly logical experiences. But, from the standpoint of a completely logicized experience, all finite, temporal processes are accidents, not essentials, of logical operations.
The fact that the processes of perception, memory, and anticipation are transformed in their logical operation into sensations and universals, terms, and relations, and, as such, become the subject-matter of logical theory, does not mean that they have lost their mediating character, and have become merely objects of logical contemplation at large. Sensations or sense-data, and ideas, terms and relations, are the subject-matter of logical theory for the reason that they sometimes succeed and sometimes fail in their logical operations. And it is the business of logical theory to diagnose the conditions of this success and failure. If, in writing, my pen becomes defective and is made an object of inquiry, it does not therefore lose all its character as a pen and become merely an object at large. It is as an instrument of writing that it is investigated. So, sense-data, universals, terms, and relations as subject-matter of logic are investigated in their character as mediators of the ambiguities and conflicts, of non-logical experience.
If the operations of habit, instinct, perceptions, memory, and anticipation become logical, when, instead of operating as direct stimuli, they are employed in a process of inquiry, we must next ask: (1) under what conditions do they pass over into this process of inquiry? (2) what modifications of operation do they undergo, what new forms do they take, and what new results do they produce in their logical operations?
If the act of inquiry be not superimposed, it must arise out of some specific condition in the course of non-logical conduct. Once more, if the alarm be sounded at this proposal to find the origin of logical in non-logical operations it must be summarily answered by asking if the one who raises the cry finds it impossible to imagine that one who is not hungry, or angry, or patriotic, or wise may become so. Non-logical conduct is not the abstract formal contradictory of logical conduct any more than present satiety or foolishness is the contradictory of later hunger or wisdom, or than anger at one person contradicts cordiality to another, or to the same person, later. The old bogie of the logical irrelevance of origin was due to the inability to conceive continuity except in the form of identity in which there was no place for the notion of growth.
The conditions under which non-logical conduct becomes logical are familiar to those who have followed the doctrines of experimental logic as expounded in the discussions of the past few years. The transformation begins at the point where non-logical processes instead of operating as direct unambiguous stimuli and response become ambiguous with consequent inhibition of conduct. But again this does not mean that at this juncture the non-logical processes quit the field and give place to a totally new faculty and process called reason. They stay on the job. But there is a change in the job, which now is to get rid of this ambiguity. This modification of the task requires, of course, corresponding modification and adaptation of these operations. They take on the form of sensations and universals, terms and relations, data and hypotheses. This modification of function and form constitutes "reason" or, better, reasoning.
Here
