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THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE GENERAL
PROBLEM OF LOGICAL THEORY
No one doubts that thought, at least reflective, as distinct from what is sometimes called constitutive, thought, is derivative and secondary. It comes after something and out of something, and for the sake of something. No one doubts that the thinking of everyday practical life and of science is of this reflective type. We think about; we reflect over. If we ask what it is which is primary and radical to thought; if we ask what is the final objective for the sake of which thought intervenes; if we ask in what sense we are to understand thought as a derived procedure, we are plunging ourselves into the very heart of the logical problem: the relation of thought to its empirical antecedents and to its consequent, truth, and the relation of truth to reality.
Yet from the naïve point of view no difficulty attaches to these questions. The antecedents of thought are our universe of life and love; of appreciation and struggle. We think about anything and everything: snow on the ground; the alternating clanks and thuds that rise from below; the relation of the Monroe Doctrine to the embroglio in Venezuela; the relation of art to industry; the poetic quality of a painting by Botticelli; the battle of Marathon; the economic interpretation of history; the proper definition of cause; the best method of reducing expenses; whether and how to renew the ties of a broken friendship; the interpretation of an equation in hydrodynamics; etc.
Through the madness of this miscellaneous citation there appears so much of method: anything—event, act, value, ideal, person, or place—may be an object of thought. Reflection busies itself alike with physical nature, the record of social achievement, and the endeavors of social aspiration. It is with reference to such affairs that thought is derivative; it is with reference to them that it intervenes or mediates. Taking some part of the universe of action, of affection, of social construction, under its special charge, and having busied itself therewith sufficiently to meet the special difficulty presented, thought releases that topic and enters upon further more direct experience.
Sticking for a moment to this naïve standpoint, we recognize a certain rhythm of direct practice and derived theory; of primary construction and of secondary criticism; of living appreciation and of abstract description; of active endeavor and of pale reflection. We find that every more direct primary attitude passes upon occasion into its secondary deliberative and discursive counterpart. We find that when the latter has done its work it passes away and passes on. From the naïve standpoint such rhythm is taken as a matter of course. There is no attempt to state either the nature of the occasion which demands the thinking attitude, nor to formulate a theory of the standard by which is judged its success. No general theory is propounded as to the exact relationship between thinking and what antecedes and succeeds it. Much less do we ask how empirical circumstances can generate rationality of thought; nor how it is possible for reflection to lay claim to power of determining truth and thereby of constructing further reality.
If we were to ask the thinking of naïve life to present, with a minimum of theoretical elaboration, its conception of its own practice, we should get an answer running not unlike this: Thinking is a kind of activity which we perform at specific need, just as at other need we engage in other sorts of activity: as converse with a friend; draw a plan for a house; take a walk; eat a dinner; purchase a suit of clothes; etc., etc. In general, its material is anything in the wide universe which seems to be relevant to this need—anything which may serve as a resource in defining the difficulty or in suggesting modes of dealing effectively with it. The measure of its success, the standard of its validity, is precisely the degree in which the thinking actually disposes of the difficulty and allows us to proceed with more direct modes of experiencing, that are forthwith possessed of more assured and deepened value.
If we inquire why the naïve attitude does not go on to elaborate these implications of its own practice into a systematic theory, the answer, on its own basis, is obvious. Thought arises in response to its own occasion. And this occasion is so exacting that there is time, as there is need, only to do the thinking which is needed in that occasion—not to reflect upon the thinking itself. Reflection follows so naturally upon its appropriate cue, its issue is so obvious, so practical, the entire relationship is so organic, that once grant the position that thought arises in reaction to specific demand, and there is not the particular type of thinking called logical theory because there is not the practical demand for reflection of that sort. Our attention is taken up with particular questions and specific answers. What we have to reckon with is not the problem of, How can I think überhaupt? but, How shall I think right here and now? Not what is the test of thought at large, but what validates and confirms this thought?
In conformity with this view, it follows that a generic account of our thinking behavior, the generic account termed logical theory, arises at historic periods in which the situation has lost the organic character above described. The general theory of reflection, as over against its concrete exercise, appears when occasions for reflection are so overwhelming and so mutually conflicting that specific adequate response in thought is blocked. Again, it shows itself when practical affairs are so multifarious, complicated, and remote from control that thinking is held off from successful passage into them.
Anyhow (sticking to the naïve standpoint), it is true that the stimulus to that particular form of reflective thinking termed logical theory is found when circumstances require the act of thinking and nevertheless impede clear and coherent thinking in detail; or when they occasion thought and then prevent the results of thinking from exercising directive influence upon the immediate concerns of life. Under these conditions we get such questions as the following: What is the relation of rational thought to crude or unreflective experience? What is the relation of thought to reality? What is the barrier which prevents reason from complete penetration into the world of truth? What is it that makes us live alternately in a concrete world of experience in which thought as such finds not satisfaction, and in a world of ordered thought which is yet only abstract and ideal?
It is not my intention here to pursue the line of historical inquiry thus suggested. Indeed, the point would not be mentioned did it not serve to fix attention upon the nature of the logical problem.
It is in dealing with this latter type of questions that logical theory has taken a turn which separates it widely from the theoretical implications of practical deliberation and of scientific research. The two latter, however much they differ from each other in detail, agree in a fundamental principle. They both assume that every reflective problem and operation arises with reference to some specific situation, and has to subserve a specific purpose dependent upon its own occasion. They assume and observe distinct limits—limits from which and to which. There is the limit of origin in the needs of the particular situation which evokes reflection. There is the limit of terminus in successful dealing with the particular problem presented—or in retiring, baffled, to take up some other question. The query that at once faces us regarding the nature of logical theory is whether reflection upon reflection shall recognize these limits, endeavoring to formulate them more exactly and to define their relationships to each other more adequately; or shall it abolish limits, do away with the matter of specific conditions and specific aims of thought, and discuss thought and its relation to empirical antecedents and rational consequents (truth) at large?
At first blush, it might seem as if the very nature of logical theory as generalization of the reflective process must of necessity disregard the matter of particular conditions and particular results as irrelevant. How, the implication runs, could reflection become generalized save by elimination of details as irrelevant? Such a conception in fixing the central problem of logic fixes once for all its future career and material. The essential business of logic is henceforth to discuss the relation of thought as such to reality as such. It may, indeed, involve much psychological material, particularly in the discussion of the processes which antecede thinking and which call it out. It may involve much discussion of the concrete methods of investigation and verification employed in the various sciences. It may busily concern