Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/620

* KNOWLEDGE. 660 KNOWLEDGE. only logical laws, and time and space as percep- tual loiiiis, can be known to be invariable, then of course it would follow that only such objects of experience as arc determined by logical laws, and by temporal and spatial forms, can be pre- dicted; and not only so, but only such usjiects of these objects as are directly due to the opera- tion of these perceptual forms and logical laws tould properly be subjects of universal judg- ment. The whole question therefore turns upon the validity of the assumption that we can know only those forms and laws which are of a sub- jective origin. Kant nowhere justifies such an assumjilion. He merely makes it, and then pro- ceeds to call the philosophical results that follow from it a Copernican revolution. Before agreeing to accept such results, it would be well to look critically at the assumption from ■which they are deduced. Is it true that the only laws we can know directly are laws of perceptual and intellectual processes? On the contrary, it can l)e successfully maintained that we do not conu' to know the characteristic Icaturcs of space and time, as forms of perception, or the uniformi- ties of thought-fvmctions. until we have come to know many more 'objective' laws. Not only so, but the evidence upon which our knowledge of logical laws rests is exactly of the same kind as that upon which our knowledge of the laws of nature rests, viz. experience. ,Tust as our only reason for saying that fire burns is that we have experienced the fact we thus ex- press; so when we say that our thought always refers attributes to substance or that our thought demands for every event a cause, our only justi- fication for our statement is the fact that we observe as a matter of experience that we always do think attributes as belonging to substances, or events as conditioned by causes. In short, logic is an inductive science resting upon ex|)erience (see Lo(iic), and an idealism which rests upon logic as Kantian idealism does cannot justify a hard and fast distinction in respect of knowable- ness between laws of external nature and laws of thought; it cannot do this simply because both kinds of laws are discovered in exactly the same way. Therefore, it is as unwarrantable to argue that, in so far as external nature has any laws, these laws must be the product of thought, as it would be to argue that in so far as thought has any laws, these laws must be the ])roduct of external nature. Of the two kinds of laws, neither need be said to rest on the other unless experience shows that either is dependent on the other. It is only a begging of *he question in the interests of subjectivism to say that we know tlunight-laws direet;ly and physical laws only in so far as they are thought-products. If experi- ence cannot justify a universal judgment, then our logical laws are merely statements that, in the past and present particular acts of thought, we have acted thus and so; they are not statements of how w-e act in nil thinking. If. on the other hand, the experience of the uniformity of our intellectual operations in the past and in the present justifies us in generalizing this limited uniformity into statements valid of nil thinking, not only past and present, but future, then the experience of the uniformity of physical processes justifies us in generalizing these processes into natural laws, universally valid. In other words, one cannot legitimati7.e scientific induction by reducing the objects of scientific investigation into products of invariable thought-processes; for the assertion of the invariability of thouglit-processcs is itself justifiable only as the result of a scien- tific induction. It should have become clear by this time that a justification of generalization in the sense of an attempt to render it acceptable by subsuming it under some more valid principle is hopeless; and also that any repudiation of the validity of generalization itself rests either upon some dog- matic and unjustifiable assumption, or )ipon the tacit presupposition of the validity of generaliza- tion. What then are we to doV The obvious answer is that we must accept generalization as a fact, and then see whether there is any reason why we should not generalize. The fact is, that in so far as I think, I am making universal judg- ments, or making judgments that can be vali- dated only b^- universal judgments. The reason for any act whatever, or for any particular judgment, is always in the last resort a universal judgment. Tliis universal judgment, however, is not logically self-sup])orling. It gets its justification in the particular experiences we have. In other words, although universal judg- ments are the only reasons we can give for par- ticular judgments which are not themselves ex- pressions of actual experiences, yet the only justification we ever get for these universal judg- ments is found in the actual particular experi- ences we have. Even such an 'axiomatic" judg- ment as the celebrated "Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other" can be justifiably accepted only if it is recognized as correctly ex- pressing our experiences with regard to eqinil things. In our adult years, it is of course not necessary that we should recall these specific ex- periences. In most cases this axiomatic judgment is psychologically nothing but a succession of word-images, or some combination of such images with a feeling-tone of familiarity. But when we are not satisfied with this psychic content, but ask ourselves whether it is really true that things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, we begin to call up ideas of things equal to the same thing, or we get perceptions of things equal to the same thing, and compare them with each other. If we finally satisfy ourselves of the truth of the 'axiom,' it is only as a result of a new induction from these data, presented in idea or perception. What is true of this axiom is true of every other 'general' proposition. Every universal judg- ment is either a judgment whose truth is envis- aged in some particular ideational or perceptional or ideational-perceptional complex, or it is a mere process of word-images with a 'familiar' feeling. In the former case the particular complex, idea- tional or otherwise, serves as a point of depar- ture for the generalization, which is the recogni- tion of interest in this particular (>nly liecause of its 'vicarious' character, i.e. not so much be- cause in this particular case the judgment holds good, but because this particular case is recog- nized as only one of a class, in all the mem- bers of which the same judgment holds good. Psychology seems to have quite well estab- lished the fact that this recognition of vicari- ousness is based upon a cert,iin distinctive 'feel- ing* element in consciousness, which some call the feeling of vicariousness. But whatever may he the analytic psychology of the judgmental pro- cess, the fact is that not only do we pronounce