Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/320

 306 JOHN DEWEY: ledge of the critical or scientific type. We have things which claim to mean other experiences ; in which the trait of meaning other objects is not discovered ab extra, and after the event, but is part of the thing itself. This trait of the thing is as realistic, as specific, as any other of its traits. It is, therefore, as open to inspection and determination as to its nature, as is any other trait. Moreover, since it is upon this trait that assurance (as distinct from accident) of fulfil- ment depends, an especial interest, an absorbing interest, attaches to its determination. Hence the scientific type of knowledge and its growing domination over other sorts. We employ meanings in all intentional constructions of experience in all anticipations, whether artistic, utilitarian or technological, social or moral. The success of the an- ticipation is found to depend upon the character of the meaning. Hence the stress upon a right determination of these meanings. Since they are the instruments upon which fulfilment depends so far as that is controlled or other than accidental, they become themselves objects of surpassing interest. For all persons at some times, and for one class of persons (scientists) at almost all times, the determination of the meanings employed in the control of fulfilments (of acting upon meanings) is central. The experimental or prag- matic theory of knowledge explains the dominating impor- tance of science ; it does not depreciate it or explain it away. Possibly pragmatic writers are to blame for the tendency of their critics to assume that the practice they have in mind is utilitarian in some narrow sense, referring to some pre- conceived and inferior use though I cannot recall any evi- dence for this admission. But what the pragmatic theory has in mind is precisely the fact that all the affairs of life which need regulation all values of all types depend upon utilisations of meanings. Action is not to be limited to any- thing less than the carrying out of ideas, than the execution whether strenuous or easeful, of meanings. Hence the sur- passing importance which comes to attach to the careful, impartial construction of the meanings, and their constant survey and resurvey with reference to their value as evi- denced by experiences of fulfilment and deviation. That truth means truths, that is, specific verifications, combinations of meanings and outcomes reflectively viewed, is one may say the central point of the experimental theory. Truth, in general or in the abstract, is a just name for an experienced relation among the things of experience : that sort of relation in which intents are retrospectively viewed from the standpoint of the fulfilment which they secure