Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - The Idealist to the Realist (The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 1911-08-17).pdf/2

450 doors with which they come in contact; and the facts of magic, of fetichism, and of nature-worship indicate that realities which every day dualistic philosophy conceives as non-ideal were regarded by primitive men as spiritual beings. In other words, the argument from instinctive belief, were it admitted, would not tell unambiguously for the non-idealists.

With even greater vigor, since the days of Berkeley, it has been urged that idealism is opposed to the results of scientific investigation. Woodbridge speaks of “the contrast which the content of natural science presents to idealistic philosophy,” and Pitkin claims for realism that “it is logically demanded by all the observations and hypotheses of the natural sciences including psychology.” I shall, however, postpone a consideration of these claims to the second part of this paper, where I shall seek to show that all actual scientific constructions may be, and should be, idealistically conceived.

A third argument, precisely parallel with those now under discussion, claims for logic an axiomatic value, and argues against idealism as violating sundry rules of logic or as unconformable to certain logical procedures. A large part of the “Program and Platform”recently published by “six realists” is taken up with this argument from the incompatibility of idealism with logic. Thus Professor Marvin says: “There are certain principles of logic which are logically prior to all … metaphysical systems.” The idealist accepts this statement, but insists that the fundamental principles of logic, to which only it applies, can not by any chance be essentially opposed to idealism, since logic is no more nor less than a systematic formulation of the laws of consistent thinking. Thus the idealist finds, in the assertion just quoted, an implicit opposition to materialism and no argument whatever against idealism of any type. The alleged oppositions of logic to idealism consist, in fact, in the selection of some empirical and subsidiary logical principle and in the demonstration of its incompatibility with idealism. Perry’s ”ego-centrie predicament” is the cleverest and most unblushing instance which I know. Admitting that the is a peculiarly ubiquitous fact which “can not be eliminated from one’s field of study,” he insists that this “mere fact” must not be allowed to weigh in our calculations, since it can not be investigated by the “method of agreement and difference.” This is a startling instance