Studies in Logical Theory

Chapter 11

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There are, then, we conclude, cases in which physical determination of the means is by itself not a sufficient preparation for conduct--in which there are ethical and economic problems which delay the application of the physical means to the end to which they may be physically adapted. Indeed, so much as this may well appear as sufficiently obvious without extended ill.u.s.tration. Everyone knows that it is nearly always necessary, in undertaking any work in which material things are used as means, to count the cost; and everyone knows likewise that not every end that is in any way attractive and within one"s reach may without more ado be taken as an object of settled desire and effort.

It is indeed needless to elaborate these commonplaces in the sense in which they are commonly understood. However, such is not our present purpose. Our purpose is the more specific one of showing that the meaning of Objectivity must be widened so as to include (1) the "universe" of ends in their ethical aspect and (2) the economic aspect of the means of action, as well as (3) the physical aspect to which the character of Objectivity is commonly restricted. We shall maintain that these are parts or phases of a complete conception of Reality, and that of them, consequently, Objectivity must be predicated for every essential reason connoted by such characterization of the world of things "external" to the senses. It has been with this conclusion in mind, then, that we have sought to emphasize the frequent serious inadequacy, for practical purposes, of the merely physical determination of the means in one"s environment.

The principle thus suggested would imply that the ethical and economic stages in the one inclusive process of reflective attention should be regarded as involving, when they occur, the same logical function of judgment as is operative in the sphere of sense-perception and the sciences generally. Ethical and economic factors must on occasion be present at the final choice and shaping of one"s course of conduct, along with the physical determinations of environing means and conditions which one has made in sense-perception. There is, then, it would appear, at least a fair presumption, though not indeed an _a priori_ certainty, that these ethical and economic factors or conditions have, like the physical, taken form in a _judgment-process_ which will admit of profitable a.n.a.lysis in accordance with whatever general theory of judgment one may hold as valid elsewhere in the field of knowledge.

This presumption we shall seek to verify. Now, our interest in thus determining, first of all, the logical character of these processes will readily be understood from this, that, in the present view, these are the processes, and the only ones in our experience, which are properly to be regarded as processes of Valuation. We shall hold that Valuation, and so all consciousness of Value, properly so called, must be either ethical or economic; that the only conscious processes in which Values can come to definition are these processes of ethical and economic judgment. The present theory of Value is, then, essentially a logical one, in the sense of holding that Values are determined in and by a logical--that is, a judgmental--valuation-process and in its details is closely dependent upon the general conception of judgment of which the outlines have been sketched above. Accordingly, the exposition must proceed in the following general order: a.s.suming the conception of judgment which has been presented (which our discussion will in several ways further ill.u.s.trate and so tend to confirm), we shall seek to show that the determinations made in ethical and economic judgment are in the proper sense objective. This will involve, first of all, a statement of the conditions under which the ethical and economic judgments respectively arise--which statement will serve to distinguish the two types of judgment from each other. We shall then proceed to the special a.n.a.lysis of the ethical and economic forms from the standpoint of our general theory of judgment, thereby establishing in detail the judgmental character of these parts of the reflective process. This a.n.a.lysis will serve to introduce our interpretation of the consciousness of Value as a factor in the conduct and economy of life.

Let us then define the problem of the objective reference of the valuational judgments by stating, as distinctly as may be, the conditions by which ethical and economic deliberation, respectively, are prompted. A study of these conditions will make it easier to see in what way the judgments reached in dealing with them can be objective.

When will an end, presenting itself in consciousness in the manner indicated in our brief a.n.a.lysis of the judgment-process, become the center of attention, thereby checking the advance, through investigation of the possible means, to final overt action? This is the general statement of the problem of the typical ethical situation. Manifestly there will be no ethical deliberation if the imaged end at once turns the attention toward the environment of possible means, instead of first of all itself becoming the object instead of the director of attention; there will be no suspension of progress toward final action, excepting such as may later come through difficulty in the discovery and co-ordination of the means. However, there are cases in which the emergence of the end forthwith is followed by a check to the reflective process, and the agent shrinks from the end presented in imagination as being, let us say, one forbidden by authority or one repugnant to his own established standards. The end may in such a case disappear at once; very often it will insistently remain. On this latter supposition, the simplest possibility will be the development of a mere mechanical tension, a "pull and haul" between the end, or properly the impulses which it represents, and the agent"s habit of suppressing impulses of the cla.s.s to which the present one is, perhaps intuitively, recognized as belonging. The case is the common one of "temptation" on the one side and "principle" or "conscience" on the other, and so long as the two forces remain thus in hard-and-fast opposition to each other there can be no ethical deliberation or judgment in a proper sense. The standard or habit may gain the day by sheer mechanical excess of power, or the new impulse, the temptation, may prevail because its onset can break down the mechanical resistance.

Out of such a situation as this, however, genuine ethical deliberation may arise on condition that standard and "temptation" can lose something of their abstractness and their hard-and-fast opposition, and develop into terms of concrete meaning. The agent may come to see that the end is in some definite way of really vital interest and too important to be put aside without consideration. He may, of course, in this fall into gross self-sophistication, like the drunkard in the cla.s.sical instance who takes another gla.s.s to test his self-control and thereby gain a.s.surance, or he may act with wisdom and with full sincerity, like Dorothea Casaubon when she renounced the impossible task imposed by her departed husband. In the moral life one can ask or hope for complete exemption from the risk of self-deception with as little reason as in scientific research. But however this may be, our present interest is in the method, not in particular results of ethical reflection. Whether properly so in a particular case or not, the imaged end may come to seem at least plausibly defensible on grounds of principle which serve to sanction certain other modes of conduct to which a place is given in the accepted scheme of life; or the end may simply press for a relatively independent recognition on the very general ground that its emergence represents an enlargement and new development of the personality.[109] The end may thus cease to stand in the character of blind self-a.s.sertive impulse, and press its claim as a positive means of future moral growth, as bringing freedom from repressive and enfeebling restraints and as tending to the reinforcement of other already valued modes of conduct. On the other hand, the standard will cease to stand as mere resistance and negation, and may discover something of its hidden meaning as a product of long experience and slow growth, and as perhaps a vital part of the organization of one"s present life, not to be touched without grave risk.

Now, on whichever side the development may first commence, a like development must soon follow on the other, and it is the action and reaction of standard and prospective or problematic end upon each other that const.i.tutes the process of ethical deliberation or judgment. Just as in the typical judgment-process, as sketched above, so also here predicate and subject _develop each other_, when once they have given over their first antagonism and come to the att.i.tude of reasoning together. The predicate explains itself that the subject or new end may be searchingly and fairly tested; and under this scrutiny the subject develops its full meaning as a course of conduct, thereby prompting further a.n.a.lysis and reinterpretation of the standard. But this is not the place for detailed a.n.a.lysis of the process;[110] here we are concerned only to define the type of situation, and this we may now do in the following terms: The indispensable condition of ethical judgment is the presence in the agent"s mind of at least two rival interesting ends or systems of such ends. In the foregoing, the subject of the judgment is the new end that has arisen; the predicate or "standard" is the symbol for the old ends or values which in the tension of the judgment-process must be brought to more or less explicit enumeration--and, we must add, reconstruction also. Indeed, it is important, even at this stage of our discussion, to observe that Predicate and Standard are not equivalent in meaning. The predicate, or predicative side, of judgment is the imagery of control in the process, which, as we have seen, develops with the subject side; while the term "Standard" connotes the rigid fixity which belongs to the inhibiting concept or ideal in the stage before the judgment-process proper can begin. The ethical judgment-process is, in a word, just the process of reconstructing standards--as in its other and corresponding aspect it is the process of interpreting new ends. Those who oppose measures of social reform or new modes of conduct or belief on alleged grounds of "immorality" instinctively feel in doing so that the change may make its way more easily against a resistance that will candidly explain itself; and, on the other side of the social judgment-process, the more fanatical know how to turn to good advantage for their propaganda the bitterness or contempt of those who represent the established order. On both sides there are those who trust more in mechanical "pull and haul"

than in the intrinsic merits of their cause.

Thus it is by encountering some rival end or entire system of ends, as symbolized by an ideal, that a new end emerging out of impulse comes to stand for an agent, as the center of a problem of conduct, and so to occupy the center of attention. And it thereby becomes an Object, as we shall hold, which must be more fully defined in order that it may be _valued_, and accordingly be held to warrant a determinate att.i.tude toward itself on the agent"s part. We have now to define in the same general terms the typical economic situation.

In economic theory as in common thought it is not the contemplated act of applying certain means to the attainment of an end regarded as desirable that functions as the logical subject of valuation. The thing or object valued in the economic situation is one"s present wealth, whether material or immaterial, one"s services or labor--whatever one gives in exchange or otherwise sets apart for the attainment of a desired end or, proximately, to secure possession of the necessary and sufficient means to the attainment of a desired end. The object of attention in the valuing process is here not itself an end of action. In this respect the economic type of judgment is like the physical, for in both the object to be valued is a certain means which one is seeking to adapt to some more or less definitely imaged purpose; or a condition of which one wishes, likewise for some special purpose, to take advantage.

The ultimate goal of all judgment is the determination of a course of conduct looking toward an end, and our present problem may accordingly be stated in the following terms: Under what circ.u.mstances in the judgment-process does it become necessary to the definition and attainment of an end as yet vague and indeterminate that the requisite means, as in part already physically determined, should be further scrutinized in attention and determined from the economic point of view?

Or, in a word: What is the "jurisdiction" of the economic point of view?

For ordinary judgements of sense-perception the presence in consciousness of a single unquestioned end is the adequate occasion, as our a.n.a.lysis (a.s.suming its validity) has shown. For ethical judgment we have seen that the presence of conflicting ends is necessary; and we shall now hold that this condition is necessary, though not, without a certain qualification, adequate, for the economic type as well. If an imaged end can hold its place in consciousness without a rival, and the physical means of attaining it have been found and co-ordinated, then the use or consumption of the means must inevitably follow, without either ethical or economic judgement; for, to paraphrase the saying of Professor James, nothing but an end can displace or inhibit effort toward another end. The economic situation differs, then, from the ethical in this, that the end or system of ends entering into compet.i.tion with the one for the time being of chief and primary interest has been brought to consciousness through reference to those "physical" means which already have been determined as necessary to this latter end. The conflict of ends in the economic situation, that is to say, is not due to a direct and intrinsic incompatibility between them.

Where there manifestly is such incompatibility, judgment will be of the ethical type--as when building the house involves the foreclosure of a mortgage, and so, in working an injury to the holder of the site, may do violence to one"s ideal of friendship or of more special obligation; or when an impulse to intemperate self-indulgence is met by one"s ideal of social usefulness. In cases such as these one clearly sees, or can on reflection come to see, in what way an evil result to personal character will follow upon the imminent misdeed, and in what way suppression of the momentary impulse will conserve the entire approved and established way of life. Very often, however, the conflicting ends are related in no such mutually exclusive way. Each may be in itself permissible and compatible with the other, and, so far as any possible ethical discrimination can determine, there is no ground for choice between them. Thus it is only through the fact that both ends are dependent upon a limited supply of means that one would, for example, ever bring together and deliberately oppose in judgment the purpose of making additions to his library and the necessity of providing a store of fuel for the winter. Both ends in such a case are in themselves indeed permissible in a general way, but they may very well not both of them be economically possible, and hence, for the person in question and in the presence of the economic conditions which confront him, not, in the last a.n.a.lysis, both ethically possible. When there is a conflict between two ends that stand in close organic relation in the sense explained above, the problem is an ethical one; when the conflict is, in the sense explained, one of compet.i.tion between ends ethically permissible--not at variance, either one, that is, with other ends _directly_--for the whole or for a share of one"s supply of means, the problem is of the economic type.[111]

There are three typical cases in which economic judgment or valuation of the means is necessary, and the enumeration of these will make clear the relation between the ethical and the economic types of judgment: (1) First may be mentioned the case in which ethical deliberation has apparently reached its end in the formation of a plan of action which, so far as one can see, on ethical grounds is un.o.bjectionable. A definite "temptation" may have been overcome, or out of a more complex situation a satisfactory ethical compromise or readjustment may have been developed with much difficulty. Now, there are very often cases in which such a course of action still may not be entered on without further hesitation; for, if the plan be one requiring for its working out the use of material means, the fact of an existing limitation of one"s supply of means must bring hitherto unthought of ends into conflict with it. There are doubtless many situations in which one"s moral choice may be carried into practice without consideration of ways and means, as when one forgives an injury or holds his instinctive nature under discipline in the effort to attain an ascetic or a genuinely social ideal of character. But more often than the moral rigorist cares to see, questions of an economic nature must be raised after the ethical "evidence is all in"--questions which are probably more trying to a sensitive moral nature than those more dramatic situations in which the real perils of self-sophistication are vastly less, and the simpler, sharper definition of the issue makes possible a less difficult, though a more decisive and edifying, victory. (2) In the second place are those cases in which the end that has emerged is without conspicuous moral quality, because, although it may represent some worthy impulse, it has not been obliged to make its way to acceptance against the resistance of desires less worthy than itself. This is the ideal case of economic theory in which "moral distinctions are irrelevant," and the economic man is free, according to the myth, to perform his hedonistic calculations without thought of moral scruple. The end ethically acceptable in itself, like the enriching of one"s library, must, when the means are limited, divert a portion of the means from other uses, and will thus, _through reference to the indispensable means_, engage in conflict with other ends quite remotely, if in the agent"s knowledge at all, related with itself. (3) Finally we reach the limit of apparent freedom from ethical considerations in the operations of business inst.i.tutions, and perhaps especially in those of large business corporations. Apart from the routine operations of a business which involve no present exercise of the valuing judgment, there are constantly in such inst.i.tutions new projects which must be considered, and which commonly must involve revaluation of the means. In this revaluation the principle of greatest revenue is supposed to be the sole criterion, regardless of other personal or social points of view from which confessedly the measure might be considered. But such a supposition, however true to the facts of current business practice it may be, we must hold to be an abstraction when viewed from the standpoint of the social life at large, and hence no real exception to our general principle. The economic and the ethical situations differ, as types, only in the closeness of relation between the ends that are in conflict and in the manner in which the ends are first brought into conflict--not in respect of the intrinsic nature of the ends which are involved in them.[112] It is this difference which, as we shall see, explains why ethical valuation must be of ends, and economic valuation, on the other hand, of means.

We have yet to see _in what way_ valuation of the means of action can serve to resolve a difficulty of the type which has thus been designated as Economic. The question must be deferred until a more detailed a.n.a.lysis of the economic judgment-process can be undertaken. It is enough for our present purpose to note that the subject of valuation in this process _is_ the means, and to see that under the typical conditions which have been described some further determination of the means than the merely physical one of their factual availability for the competing ends is needed.[113] Physically and mechanically the means are available for each one of the ends or groups of ends in question; the pressing problem is to determine for which one of the ends, if any, or to what compromise or readjustment of certain of the ends or all of them, the means at hand are in an economic sense most properly available.[114]

From this preliminary discussion of the ethical and economic situations we must now pa.s.s to discuss the objectivity of the judgments by which the agent meets the difficulties which such situations as these present.

We shall seek to show that these judgments are constructive of an objective order of reality. It will be necessary in the first place to determine the psychological conditions of the more commonly recognized experience of Objectivity in the restricted sphere of sense-perception.

There might otherwise remain a certain antecedent presumption against the thesis which we wish to establish even after the direct argument had been presented.[115]

III

Common-sense and natural science certainly tend to identify the objectively real with the existent in s.p.a.ce and time. The physical universe is held to be palpably real in a way in which nothing not presented in sensuous terms can be. To most minds doubtless it is difficult to understand why Plato should have ascribed to the Ideas a higher degree of reality than that possessed by the particular objects of sense-perception, and still more difficult to understand his ascription of real existence to such Ideas as those of Beauty, Justice, and the Good. There is a certain apparent stability in a universe presented in "immediate" sense-perception--a universe with which we are in constant bodily intercourse--that seems not to belong to a mere order of relations which, if known in any sense, is not known to us through the senses. Moreover, knowledge of the physical world is felt to possess a higher degree of certainty than does any knowledge we can have of supposed economic or moral truth, or of economic or moral standards.

Of such knowledge one is disposed to say, as Mr. Spencer does of metaphysics, that at the best it presupposes a long and elaborate inferential process which, as long, is likely to be faulty; whereas physical truth is immediate or else, when inference is involved in it, easy to be tested by appeal to immediate facts. Physical reality is a reality that can be seen and handled and felt as offering resistance, and this is evidence of objectivity of a sort not to be found in other spheres of knowledge for which the like claim is made.

The force of these impressions (and it would not be difficult to find stronger statements in the history of scientific and ethical nominalism) diminishes if one tries to determine in what consists that objectivity which they uncritically a.s.sume as given in sense-perception. For one must recognize that not all our possible modes of sense-experience are equally concerned in the presentation of this perceived objective world.

Certain sensory "quales" are immediately referred to outward objects as belonging to them. Certain others are, in a way, "inward," either not more definitely localized at all or merely localized in the sense-organ which mediates them. Now, the reason for this difference cannot lie in the content of the various sense-qualities abstractly taken. A visual sensation, apart from the setting in which it occurs in common experience, can be no more objective in its reference--indeed, can have no more reference of any kind--than the least definite and instructive organic sensation. For the degree of distinctness with which one discriminates sense-qualities depends upon the number and importance of the interpretative a.s.sociations which it is important from time to time to "connect" with them; or, conversely, the sense-qualities are not _self_-discriminating in virtue of an intrinsic objective reference or meaning which each possesses and which drives it apart from all the rest. Indeed, an intrinsic meaning, if a sensation could possess one, would not only be superfluous in the development of knowledge, but, as likely to be mistaken for the acquired or functional meaning, even seriously confusing.[116]

Now, it must be granted that, if the "simple idea of sensation" is without objective reference, no a.s.sociation with it of similarly abstract sensations can supply the lack. A "movement" sensation, or a tactual, having in itself no such meaning, cannot merely by being "a.s.sociated" with a similarly meaningless visual sensation endow this latter with reference to an object. Objective reference is, in fact, not a sensuous thing; it is not a conscious "element," nor does it arise from any combination or fusion of such. It is neither _in_ the a.s.sociation of ideas as a const.i.tuent member, nor does it belong to the a.s.sociation considered as a sequence of psychical states. Instead, in our present view, it belongs to or arises out of the activity through which and with reference to which a.s.sociations are first of all established. It is an aspect or kind of reference or category under which any sense-quality or datum is apperceived when it is held apart from the stream of consciousness in order that it may receive new meaning as a stimulus; and a sensation functioning in such a "state of consciousness"[117] is a psychical phenomenon very different from the conscious element of "a.n.a.lytical" psychology. The extent to which it is true that the objective world of sense-perception is pre-eminently visual and tactual is then merely an evidence of the extent to which the exigencies of the life-process have required finer sense-discrimination for the sake of more refined reaction within these spheres as compared with others. Our conclusion, then, must be that the consciousness of objectivity is not as such sensuous, even as given in our perception of the material world. The world, as viewed from the standpoint of a particular, practical emergency, is an objective world, not in virtue of its having a "sensuous" or a "material" aspect as something existent _per se_, but because it is a world of stimuli in course of definition for the guidance of activity.[118]

It will be well to give further positive exposition of the meaning of the view thus stated. To return once more to our fundamental psychological conception, knowledge is essentially relevant to the solution of particular problems of more or less urgency and of various kinds and figures in the solution of such problems as the a.s.semblage of consciously recognized symbols or stimuli by which various actions are suggested. The object as known is therefore not the same as the object as apprehended in other possible modes of being conscious of it. The workman who is actually using his tool in shaping his material, or the warrior who is actually using his weapon in the thick of combat, is, if conscious of these objects at all (and doubtless he may be conscious of them at such times), not conscious of them _as objects_--as the one might be, for example, in adjusting the tool for a particular kind of use, and the other in giving a keen edge to his blade. Under these latter circ.u.mstances the tool or weapon is an _object_, and its observed condition, viewed in the light of a purpose of using the object in a certain way, is regarded as properly suggesting certain changes or improvements. And likewise will the tool or the weapon have an objective character in the agent"s apprehension in the moment of identifying and selecting it from among a number of others, or even in the act of reaching for it, especially if it is inconveniently placed. But in the act of freely using one"s objective means the category of the objective plays no part in consciousness, because at such times there is no judgment respecting the means--because there is no sufficient occasion for the isolation of certain conscious elements from the rest of the stream of conscious experience to be defined as stimuli to certain needed responses. Such isolation will not normally take place so long as the reactions suggested by the conscious contents involved in the experience are fully adequate to the situation. Objects are not normally held apart as such from the stream of consciousness in which they are presented and recognized as possessing qualities warranting certain modes of conduct, excepting as it has become necessary to the attainment of the agent"s purposes to modify or reconstruct his activity.[119]

Are things, then, apprehended as objective in virtue of the agent"s att.i.tude toward them, or is the agent"s att.i.tude in a typical case grounded upon an antecedent determination of the objectivity of the things in question? We must answer, in the first place, that there can be no such antecedent determination. We may, it is true, speak of believing, on the evidence of sight or touch, that a certain object is really present before us. But neither sight nor touch possesses in itself, as a particular sense-quality, any objective meaning. If touch is _par excellence_ the sense of the objective and the appeal to touch the test of objectivity, this can only be because touch is the sense most closely and intimately connected in our experience with action.

After any interval of hesitation and judgment, action begins with contact with and manipulation of the physical means which have been under investigation. Not only is touch the proximate stimulus and guide to manipulation, but all relevant knowledge which has been gained in any judgment-process, through the other senses, and especially through sight, must ultimately be reducible to terms of touch or other contact sense. The alleged tactual evidence of objectivity is, then, rather a confirmation than a difficulty for our present view. In short, we must dismiss as impossible the hypothesis that there can be a consciousness of objectivity which is not dependent upon and an expression of primary antecedent tendencies toward motor response to the presented stimulus.

It is our att.i.tude toward the prospective stimulus that mediates the consciousness of an object standing over against us.

So far, indeed, is it from being true that objectivity is a matter for special determination antecedently to action that by common testimony the conviction of objectivity comes to us quite irresistibly. The object forces itself upon us, as we say, and "whether we will or no" we must recognize its presence there before us and its independence of any choice of ours or of our knowledge. In the cautious manipulation of an instrument, in the laborious shaping of some refractory material, in the performance of any delicate or difficult task, one"s sense of the objectivity of the thing with which one works is as obtrusive as remorse or grief, and as little to be shaken off. We shall revert to this suggested a.n.a.logy at a later stage in our discussion.

We are now in a position to define more precisely the nature of the conditions in which the sense of objectivity emerges, and this will bring us to the point at which the objective import of our economic and ethical judgments can profitably be discussed. We have said that the world of the physical is objective, not in virtue of the sensuous terms in which it is presented, but because it is a world of stimuli for the guidance of human conduct. Under what circ.u.mstances, then, are we conscious of stimuli in their capacity of guides or incentives or grounds of conduct? And the answer must be that stimuli are interpreted as such, and so take on the character of objectivity, when their precise character as stimuli is still in doubt, and they must therefore receive further definition.

For example, a man pursued by a wild beast must find some means of escape or defense, and, seeing a tree which he may climb or a stone which he may hurl, will inspect these as well as may be with reference to their fitness for the intended purpose. It is at just such moments as these, then, that physical things become things for knowledge and take on their stubbornly objective character--that is to say, when they are essentially problematic. Now, in order that any physical thing may be thus problematic and so possess objective character for knowledge, it must (1) be in part understood, and so prompt certain more or less indiscriminate responses; and (2) be in part as yet not understood--in such wise that, while there are certain indefinite or unmeasured tendencies on the agent"s part to respond to the object--climb the tree or hurl the stone--there is also a certain failure of complete unity in the co-ordination of these activities, a certain contradiction between different suggestions of conduct which different observed qualities of the tree or stone may give, and so hesitation and arrest of final action. The pursued man views the tree suspiciously before trusting himself to its doubtful strength, or weighs well the stone and tests its rough edges before pausing to throw it. Thus, to state the matter negatively, there are two possible situations in which the sense of objectivity, if it emerge into consciousness at all, cannot long continue. An object---as, for example, some strange shrub or flower--which, in the case we are supposing, may attract the pursued wayfarer"s notice, may awaken no responses relevant to the emergency in which the agent finds himself; and it will therefore forthwith lapse from consciousness. Or, on the other hand, the object, as the tree or stone, may rightly or wrongly seem to the agent so completely satisfactory, or, rather, in effect may _be_ so, as instantly to prompt the action which otherwise would come, if at all, only after a period of more or less prolonged attention. In neither of these cases, then, is there a problematic object. In the one the thing in question is wholly apart from any present interest, and therefore lapses. In the other case the thing seen is comprehended on the instant with reference to its general use and merges immediately into the main stream of the agent"s consciousness without having been an object of express attention. In neither case, therefore, is there hesitation with reference to the thing in question--any conflict between inconsiderate positive responses prompted by certain features of the object and inhibitions due to recognition of its shortcomings. In a word, in neither case is there any judgment or possibility of judgment, and hence no sense of objectivity.

We can have consciousness of an object, in the strict sense of the term, only when some part or general aspect of the total situation confronting an agent excites or seems to warrant responses which must be held in check for further determination. In terms of consciousness, an object is always an object of attention--that is, an object which is under process of development and reconstruction with reference to an end.

An inhibited impulse to react in a more or less definite way to a stimulus is, then, the adequate condition of the emergence in consciousness of the sense of objectivity. So long as an activity is proceeding without check or interruption, and no conflict develops between motor responses prompted by different parts or aspects of the situation, the agent"s consciousness will not present the distinction of Objective and Subjective. The mode of being conscious which accompanies free and harmonious activity of this sort may be exemplified by such experiences as aesthetic appreciation, sensuous enjoyment, acquiescent absorption in pleasurable emotion, or even intellectual processes of the mechanical sort, such as easy computation or the solution of simple algebraic problems--processes in which no more serious difficulty is encountered than suffices to stimulate a moderate degree of interest.

If, however, reverting to the ill.u.s.tration, our present need for a stone calls for some property which the stone we have seized appears to lack, consciousness must pa.s.s over into the reflective or attentive phase. The stone will now figure as an _object_ possessing certain qualities which render it in a general way relevant to the emergency before us. A needed quality is missing, and this defect must hold in check all the imminent responses until discovery of the missing quality can set them free. In a word, the stone as known to us has a.s.sumed the station of subject in a judgment-process, and our effort is, if possible, to a.s.sign to it a new predicate relevant to our present situation. Psychologically speaking, the stone is an object, a stimulus to which we are endeavoring to find warrant for responding in some new or reconstructed way.

In this process we must a.s.sume, then, first of all, an interest on the agent"s part in the situation as a whole, which in the first place, in terms of the ill.u.s.tration, makes the pursued one note the tree or stone--which might otherwise have escaped his notice as completely as any pa.s.sing cloud or falling leaf--and suggests what particular qualities or adaptabilities should be looked for in it. Given this interest in "making something" out of the total situation as explaining the recognition of the stone and the impulse to seize and hurl it, we find the sense of the stone"s objectivity emerging just in the arrest of the undiscriminating impulse. The stone must have a certain meaning as a stimulus first of all, but it must be a meaning not yet quite defined and certain of acceptance. The stone will be an _object_ only if, and so long as, the undiscriminating impulses suggested by these elements of meaning are held in check in order that they may be ordered, supplemented, or made more definite. It is, then, the essence of the present contention that physical things are _objective_ in our experience in virtue of their recognized inadequacy as means or incentives of action--an inadequacy which, in turn, is felt as such in so far as we are seeking to use them as means or grounds of conduct, or to avail ourselves of them as conditions, in coping with the general situation from which our attention has abstracted them.

From this a.n.a.lysis of the conditions of the consciousness of objectivity we must now proceed to inquire whether in the typical ethical and economic situations, as they have been described, essentially these same conditions are present.

In the ethical situation, according to our statement, the subject of the judgment (the object of attention) is the new end which has just been presented in imagination, and we have now to see that the agent"s att.i.tude toward this end is for our present purpose essentially the same as toward a physical object which is under scrutiny. For just as the physical object is such for consciousness because it is partly relevant (whether in the way of furthering or of hindering) to the agent"s purpose, but as yet partly not understood from this point of view, so the imaged end may likewise be ambiguous. The agent"s moral purpose may be the (very likely mythical) primitive one of which we read in "a.s.sociational" discussions of the moral consciousness--that of avoiding punishment. It may be that of "imitative," sympathetic obedience to authority--a sentiment whose fundamental importance for ethical psychology has long remained without due recognition.[120] It may be loyalty to an ideal of conscience, or yet again a purpose of enlargement and development of personality. But on either supposition the compatibility of the end with the prevailing standard or principle of decision may be a matter of doubt and so call for judgment. The problem will, of course, be a problem in the full logical sense as involving judgment of the type described in our discussion of the ethical situation only when the att.i.tudes of obedience to authority and to fixed ideals have been outgrown; but, on the other hand, as might be shown, it is just the inevitable increasing use of judgment with reference to these formulations of the moral life which gradually undermines them and, by a kind of "internal dialectic" of the moral consciousness, brings the agent to recognition as well as to more perfect practice of a logical or deliberative method.

The end, then, is, in the typical ethical situation, an _object_ which one must determine by a.n.a.lysis and reconstruction as a means or condition of moral "integrity" and progress. It is, accordingly, in the second place, an object upon whose determination a definite activity of the agent is regarded by him as depending. Just as in the physical judgment-process the object is set off over against the self and regarded as a given thing which, when once completely defined, will prompt certain movements of the body, so here the contemplated act is an object which, when fully defined in all its relevant psychological and sociological bearings, will prompt a definite act of rejection or acceptance by the self. Now, it might be shown, as we believe, that the complete psychological and sociological definition of the course of conduct _is_ in truth the full explanation of the choice; there is no _separate_ reaction of the moral self to which the course of conduct is, as defined, an external stimulus. So also in the sphere of physical judgment complete definition pa.s.ses over into action--or the appreciative mode of consciousness which accompanies action--without breach of continuity. But within the judgment-process in all its forms there is in the agent"s apprehension this characteristic feature of apparent separation between the subject as an objective thing presently to be known and used or responded to, and the predicate as a response yet to be perfected in details, but at the right time, when one has proper warrant, to be set free. It is not our purpose here to speak of metaphysical interpretations or misinterpretations of this functional distinction; but only to argue from the presence of the distinction in the ethical type of judgment as in the physical as genuine an objectivity for the ethical type as can be ascribed to the other. The ethical judgment is objective in the sense that in it an object--an imaged mode of conduct taken as such--is presented for development to a degree of adequacy at which one can accept it or reject it as a mode of conduct. The ethical predicates Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, each pair representing a particular standpoint, as we shall later see, signify this accepting or rejecting movement of the self, this "act of will," of which, as an act in due time to be performed, the agent is more or less acutely conscious in the course of moral judgment.

In the economic situation also, as above described, there is present the requisite condition of the consciousness of objectivity. Here, as in the ethical situation, an object is presented which one must redetermine, and toward which one must presently act in a way likewise to be determined in detail in judgment. We shall defer until a later stage discussion of the reason why this subject of the economic judgment is the _means_ in the activity that is in progress. We are not yet ready to show that the means _must_ be the center of attention under the conditions which have been specified. Here we need only note the fact of common experience that economic judgment does center upon the means, and show that in this fact is given the objective status of the means in the judgment-process; for the economic problem is essentially that of withdrawing a portion, a "marginal increment," of the means from some use or set of uses to which they are at present set apart, and applying it to the new end that has come to seem, on ethical grounds at least, desirable; and we may regard this diversion as the essentially economic act which, in the agent"s apprehension during judgment, is contingent upon the determination of the means. The object as economic is accordingly the means, or a marginal portion of the means, which is to be thus diverted (or, so to speak, exposed to the likelihood of such diversion), and its determination must be of such a nature as to show the economic urgency, or at least the permissibility, of this diversion.

Into this determination, manifestly, the results of much auxiliary inquiry into physical properties of the means must enter--such properties, for example, as have to do with its technological fitness for its present use as compared with possible subst.i.tutes, and its adaptability for the new use proposed. Taking the word in the broad sense of _object of thought_, it is always an object in s.p.a.ce and time to which the economic judgment a.s.signs an economic value; and it is true here (just the same is true, _mutatis mutandis_, of the psychological and sociological determinations necessary to the fixation of ethical value) that the _economically motivated_ physical determination of the objective means from the standpoint of the emergency in hand is the full "causal" explanation of the economic act. It must, however, be carefully observed that this physical determination is in the typical case altogether incidental, from the agent"s standpoint, to the a.s.signment of an economic character or value to the means--a value which will at the close of the judgment come to conscious recognition. As we shall see, the process is directed throughout by reference to economic principles and standards, and what shall be an adequate determination in the case depends upon the precision with which these are formulated and the strenuousness with which they are applied. In a word, the economic judgment a.s.signs to the physical object, as known at the outset, a new non-physical character. Throughout the judgment-process this character is gaining in distinctness, and at the end it is accepted as the Value of the means, as warrant for the diversion of them to the new use which has been decided on.[121]

We have now to consider whether in the actual ethical and economic experience of men there is any direct evidence confirming the conclusions which our logical a.n.a.lysis of the respective situations would appear to require. Can any phases of the total experience of working out a satisfactory course of conduct in these typical emergencies be appealed to as actually showing at least some tacit recognition that these types of judgment present each one an order of reality or an aspect of the one reality?

In the first place, then, one must recognize that in the agent"s own apprehension a judgment of value has something more than a purely subjective meaning. It is never offered, by one who has taken the trouble to work it out more or less laboriously and then to express it in terms which are certainly objective, as a mere announcement of _de facto_ determination or a registration of arbitrary whim and caprice.

One no more means to announce a groundless choice or a choice based upon pleasure felt in contemplation of the imaged end than in his judgments concerning the physical universe he means to affirm coexistences and sequences, agreements and disagreements, of "ideas" as psychical happenings. That there is an ethical or economic truth to which one can appeal in doubtful cases is, indeed, the tacit a.s.sumption in all criticism of another"s deliberate conduct; the contrary a.s.sumption, that criticism is merely the opposition of one"s own private prejudice or desire to the equally private prejudice or desire of another, would render all criticism and mutual discussion of ethical problems meaningless and futile in the plain man"s apprehension as in the philosopher"s. For the plain man has a spontaneous confidence in his knowledge of the material world which makes him look askance at any alleged a.n.a.lysis of his sense-perceptions and scientific judgments into "a.s.sociations of ideas," and the same confidence, or something very like it, attaches to judgments of these other types. It may perhaps be easier (though the concession is a very doubtful one) to destroy a nave confidence in the objectivity of moral truth than a like confidence in scientific knowledge, but it must be remembered that the plain man"s sense of the urgency, at least of ethical problems, if not of economic, is commonly less acute than for the physical. In the plain man"s experience serious moral problems are infrequent--problems of the true type, that is, which cannot be disposed of as mere cases of temptation; one must have attained a considerable capacity for sympathy and a considerable knowledge of social relations before either the recognition of such problems or proper understanding of their significance is possible. Moral and economic crises are not vividly presented in sensuous imagery excepting in minds of developed intelligence, experience, and imaginative power; and the judgments reached in coping with them do not, as a rule, obviously call for nicely measured, calculated, and adjusted bodily movements. The immediate act of executing an important economic judgment may be a very commonplace performance, like the dictation of a letter, and an ethical decision may, however great its importance for future overt conduct, be expressed by no immediate visible movements of the body. But this possible difference of impressiveness between physical and other types of judgments is from our present standpoint unessential; and indeed, after all, it cannot be denied that there are persons whose sense of moral obligation is quite as distinct and influential, and even sensuously vivid, as their conviction of the real existence of an external world.

To the average man it certainly is clear that, as Dr. Martineau declares, "it is an inversion of moral truth to say ... that honour is higher than appet.i.te _because_ we feel it so; we feel it so because it _is_ so. This "_is_" we know to be not contingent on our apprehension, not to arise from our const.i.tution of faculty, but to be a reality irrespective of us in adaptation to which our nature is const.i.tuted, and for the recognition of which the faculty is given."[122] And the impressiveness, to most minds, of likening the sublimity of the moral law to the visible splendor of the starry heavens would seem to suggest that the apprehension of moral truth is a mode of consciousness, in form at least, so far akin to sense-perception as to be capable of ill.u.s.tration and even reinforcement from that type of experience.

At this point we must revert to a suggestion which presented itself above in another connection, but which at the time could not be further developed. This was, in a word, that there is often a feeling of _obtrusiveness_ in our appreciation of the objectivity of the things before us in ordinary sense-perception (or physical judgment) which is not unlike the felt insistence of remorse and grief.[123] This feeling is so conspicuous a feature of the state of consciousness in physical judgment as frequently to serve the plain man as his last and irrefragable evidence of the metaphysical independence of the material world, and it is indeed a feature whose explanation does throw much light upon the meaning of the consciousness of objectivity as a factor within experience. Now, there is another common feeling--or, as we do not scruple to call it, another emotion--which is perhaps quite as often appealed to in this way; though, as we believe, never in quite the same connection in any argument in which the two experiences are called upon to do service to the same end. Material objects, we are told, are _reliable_ and _stable_ as distinguished from the fleeting illusive images of a dream--they have a "solidity" in virtue of which one can "depend upon them," are "hard and fast" remaining faithfully where one deposits them for future use or, if they change and disappear, doing so in accordance with fixed laws which make the changes calculable in advance. The material realm is the realm of "solid fact" in which one can work with a.s.surance that causes will infallibly produce their right and proper effects, and to which one willingly returns from the dream-world in which his adversary, the "idealist," would hold him spellbound. We propose now briefly to consider these two modes of apprehension of external physical reality in the light of the general a.n.a.lysis of judgment given above--from which it will appear that they are, psychologically, emotional expressions of what have been set forth as the essential features of the judgment-situation, whether in its physical, ethical, or economic forms. From this we shall argue that there should actually be in the ethical and economic spheres similar, or essentially identical, "emotions of reality," and we shall then proceed to verify the hypothesis by pointing to those ethical and economic experiences which answer the description.

We have seen that the center of attention or subject in the judgment-process is as such problematic--in the sense that there are certain of its observed and recognized attributes which make it in some sense relevant and useful to the purpose in hand, while yet other of its attributes (or absences of certain attributes) suggest conflicting activities. The object which one sees is certainly a stone and of convenient size for hurling at the pursuing animal. The situation has been a.n.a.lyzed and found to demand a missile, and this demand has led to search for and recognition of a stone. The stone, however, may be of a color suggesting a soft and crumbling texture, or its form may appear from a distance to be such as to make it practically certain to miss the mark, however carefully it may be aimed and thrown. Until these points of difficulty have been ascertained, the stone is wanting still in certain essential determinations. So far as it has been certainly determined, it prompts to the response directly suggested by one"s general end of defense and escape, but there are these other indications which hold this response in check and which, if verified, will cause the stone to be let lie unused. Now, we have, in this situation of conflict or tension between opposed incitements given by the various discriminated characters of the object, the explanation of the aspect of obtrusiveness, of arbitrary resistance to and independence of one"s will, which for the time being seems the unmistakable mark or coefficient of the thing"s objectivity. For it is not the object as a whole that is obtrusive; indeed, clearly, there could be no obtrusiveness on the part of an "object as a whole," and in such a case there could also be no judgment. The obtrusion in the case before us is not a sense of the energy of a recalcitrant metaphysical object put forth upon a coerced and helpless human will, but simply a conscious interpretation of the inhibition of certain of the agent"s motor tendencies by certain others prompted by the object"s "suspicious" and as yet undetermined appearances or possible attributes. The object as amenable to use--those of its qualities which taken by themselves are unquestionable and clearly conducive to the agent"s purpose--needs no attention for the moment, let us say. The attention is rather upon the dubious and to all appearance unfavorable qualities, and these for the time being make up the sum and content of the agent"s knowledge of the object. On the other hand, the agent as an active self is identified with the end and with those modes of response to the object which promise to contribute directly to its realization. It is in this direction that his interest is set and he strains with all his powers of mind to move, and it is upon the self as identified with, and for the time being expressed in, the "effort of the agent"s will" that the object as resistant, refusing to be misconstrued, obtrudes. One _must_ see the object and _must_ acknowledge its apparent, or in the end its ascertained, unfitness. One is "coerced." The situation is one of conflict, and it is out of the conflict that the essentially emotional experience of "resistance" emerges.[124] The more special emotions of impatience, anger, or discouragement may in a given case not be present or may be suppressed, but the emotion of objectivity will still remain.[125]

On the same general principles the other of our two coefficients of reality may be explained. Let us a.s.sume that the stone in our ill.u.s.tration has at last been cleared of all ambiguity in its suggestion, having been taken as a missile, and that the man in flight now holds it ready awaiting the most favorable moment for hurling it at his pursuer. It will hardly be maintained that under these conditions the coefficient of the stone"s reality as an object consists in its obtrusiveness, in its resistance to or coercion of the self. The stone is now regarded as a fixed and determinate feature of the situation--a condition which can be counted on, whatever else may fail. Over against other still uncertain aspects of the situation (which are now in _their_ turn real because resistant, coercive, and obtrusive) stands the stone as a rea.s.suring fact upon and about which the agent can build up the whole plan of conduct which may, if all goes well, bring him safely out of his predicament. The stone has, so to speak, pa.s.sed over to the "end"

side of the situation, and although it may have to be rejected for some other means of defense, as the definition of the situation proceeds and the plan of action accordingly changes (as in some degree it probably must), nevertheless for the time being the imaged activities as stimulus to which the stone is now accepted are a fixed part of the plan and guide in further judgment of the means still undefined. The agent can hardly recur to the stone, when, after attending for a time to the bewildering perplexities of the situation, he pauses once more to take an inventory of his certain resources, without something of an emotional thrill of a.s.surance and encouragement. In this emotional appreciation of the "solidity" and "dependability" of the object the second of our coefficients of reality consists. This might be termed the Recognition, the other the Perception, coefficient. Cla.s.sifying them as emotions, because both are phenomena of tension in activity, we should group the Perception coefficient with emotions of the Contraction type, like grief and anger, and the Recognition coefficient with the Expansion emotions, like joy and triumph.

Now, in the foregoing interpretation no reference has been made to any conditions peculiar to the physical type of judgment-situation. The ground of explanation has been the feature of arrest of activity for the sake of reconstruction, and this, if our a.n.a.lyses have been correct, is the essence of the ethical and economic situations as well as of the physical. Can there then be found in these two spheres experiences of the same nature and emerging under the same general conditions as our Perception and Recognition coefficients of reality? If so, then our case for the objective significance and value of ethical and economic judgment is in so far strengthened. (1) In the first place, then, the object in its economic character is problematic, a.s.suming a desire on the agent"s part to apply it, as means, to some new or freshly interesting end, because it has already been, and accordingly now is, set apart for other uses and cannot thoughtlessly be withdrawn from them. Extended ill.u.s.tration is not needed to remind one that these established and hitherto unquestioned uses will haunt the economic conscience as obtrusively and inhibit the desired course of economic conduct with as much energy of resistance as in the other case will any of the contrary promptings of a physical object. Moreover, the Recognition coefficient may as easily be identified in this connection.

If one"s scruples gain the day, in such a case one has at least a sense of comforting a.s.surance in the conservatism of his choice and its accordance with the facts, however unreconciled in another way one may be to the deprivation that has thus seemed to be necessary. If, however, the new end in a measure makes good its case and the modes of expenditure which the "scruples" represented have been readjusted in accordance with it, then the means, no less than before the new interpretation had been placed upon them, will enjoy the status of Reality in the economic sense. They will be real now, however, not in the obtrusive way, as presenting aspects which inhibit the leading tendency in the judgment-process, but, instead, as means having a fixed and certain character in one"s economic life, which, after the hesitation and doubt just now superseded, one may safely count upon and will do well to keep in view henceforth. (2) In the second place, mere mention of the corresponding ethical experiences must suffice, since only extended ill.u.s.tration from literature and life would be fully adequate: on the one hand, the "still small voice" of Conscience or the authoritativeness of Duty, "stern daughter of the voice of G.o.d;" and, on the other, the restful a.s.surance with which, from the vantage-ground of a satisfying decision, one may look back in wonder at the possibility of so serious a temptation or in rejoicing over the new-won freedom from a burdensome and repressive prejudice.

This must for the present serve as positive exposition of our view as to the objective significance of the valuational types of judgment.

There are certain essential points which have as yet not been touched upon, and there are certain objections to the general view the consideration of which will serve further to explain it; but the discussion of these various matters will more conveniently follow the special a.n.a.lysis of the valuational judgments, to which we shall now proceed.

In the last a.n.a.lysis the ultimate motive of all reflective thought is the progressive determination of the ends of conduct. Physical judgment, or, in psychological terms, reflective attention to objects in the physical world, is at every turn directed and controlled by reference to a gradually developing purpose, so that the process may also be described as one of bringing to fulness of definition an at first vaguely conceived purpose through ascertainment and determination of the means at hand. The problematic situation in which reflection takes its rise inevitably develops in this two-sided way into consciousness of a definite end on the one side, and of the means or conditions of attaining it on the other.

It has been shown that there _may_ be involved in any finally satisfactory determination of a situation an explicit reflection upon and definition of the controlling end which is present and gives point and direction to the physical determination. But very often such is not the case. When a child sees a bright object at a distance and makes toward it, availing himself more or less skilfully of such a.s.sistance as intervening articles of furniture may afford, there is of course no consciousness on his part of any definite purpose as such, and this is to say that the child does not subject his conduct to criticism from the standpoint of the value or its ends. There is simply strong desire for the distant red ball, controlling all the child"s movements for the time being and prompting a more or less critical inspection of the intervening territory with reference to the easiest way of crossing it.

The purpose is implicitly accepted, not explicitly determined, as a preliminary to physical determination of the situation. If one may speak of a development of the purpose in such a case as this, one must say that the development into details comes through judgment of the environing conditions. To change the ill.u.s.tration in order not to commit ourselves to the ascription of too developed a faculty of judgment to the child, this is true likewise of any process of reflective attention in the mind of an adult in which a general purpose is accepted at the outset and is carried through to execution without reflection upon its ethical or economic character as a purpose. The specific purpose as executed is certainly not the same as the general purpose with which the reflective process took its rise. It is filled out with details, or may perhaps even be quite different in its general outlines. There has necessarily been development and perhaps even transformation, but our contention is that all this has been effected in and through a process of judgment in which the conditions of action, and not the purpose itself, have been the immedi

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