Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/96

 V. DISCUSSION. "ILLUSORY PSYCHOLOGY." By Professor JOHN DEWEY. The fact that so acute and experienced a philosophical thinker as Mr. Shadworth Hodgson has misapprehended the bearing of the articles by me in MIND Nos. 43, 42, must be my excuse for again troubling the readers with reference to the matters discussed there. Mr. Hodgson seems to think that it was the object of one to explain the nature of the individual and the universal con- sciousness, and of the other to give some definite directions regarding the application of method to philosophy and psychology. Thus apprehending them, he quite naturally complains of the " blanks " in the argument ; and, if I may judge from the tone of his remarks, thinks, indeed, that there is not so much an argument as an assumption, while my lack of logic is to him lamentable. May I be allowed to state that I had no such ends in view, and that what seems to Mr. Hodgson a lack of logic on my part seems to me a misunderstanding of logical bearing on his part ? The logical purpose of the first article was as follows : Granted the general truth of that way of looking at philosophical questions which is specifically English (and which, following the usual cus- tom, I called psychological), (1) to determine whether some im- portant factor has not been overlooked ; (2) to show that it is involved in this standpoint that all questions must be decided from their place in conscious experience ; (3) to show that this general statement applies to particular questions, like the nature of subject and object, universal and individual ; and (4) to show that this in turn implies that the psychological standpoint is one which transcends and underlies the distinction of subject and object, &c. Now it was open to Mr. Hodgson, or anyone else, to reply that I misinterpreted the standpoint of British philosophy ; or that, while its standpoint was correctly stated, it involved no such implications as I thought it did ; or that while it did involve such implications, this fact is, at bottom, only a reductio ad absurdum of the standpoint. But objections like those of Mr. Hodgson, with all due deference, seem to me a huge ignoratio elenclii. And his misunderstanding of the logical bearing of the whole has influenced his treatment of details. Mr. Hodgson's aver- sion to some expressions is so acute that he seems hardly to have asked himself in what connexion these phrases are used. If he will re-read certain pages of the article referred to, I think he will see that the terms ' postulate ' and ' presupposition,' whose use seems to him to involve a contradiction on my part, are used