Philosophy of knowledge: an inquiry into the nature limits, and validity of human cognitive faculty

Front matter

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Preface

'TH^HIS book is an Essay in the interests of some of the -*- most profound and difficult of the problems which can engage the reflective thinking of man. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the nature, limits, and guaranty of knowledge afford subjects of inquiry which exceed all others in the demand they make for deep and earnest reflection. If one were at liberty to construct a Theory of Reality which should be simply a logically consistent and symmetrical affair, satisfactory to the ideals of the architect but without regard to foundations of fact or questions of the right to occupy the ground in this way, the task would seem comparatively light. But in this day, and in the face of history, such a liberty cannot be intelligently claimed ; much less can it be successfully exercised. Facts must be considered, and questions of right cannot be thrust aside or overlooked. For the former part of one's philosophical basis, the particular sciences are now responsible ; for the latter part — the search after guide and guaranty — a particular form of philosophical discipline, sometimes called epistemology, is invoked. It is this form of philosophy which this book undertakes. Its author asks that the intrinsic character of its problems, and all the perplexities it entails, should be constantly remembered by the reader.

I should probably have found my self-imposed task somewhat less troublesome if I had more predecessors among vin PREFACE

modern writers on philosophy in English. But, so far as I am aware, there are none from whom any help is to be derived. 1 In Germany a considerable number of books, with the title UrJcenntnisslehre, or some similar title, have recently appeared ; and German works on Logic and systematic Philosophy have generally the merit of dealing in a more thorough way with the epistemological problem, wherever they touch its sensitive points, than is customary in England or this country. Now and then a French writer, too, has afforded a hint, or suggestion, of which I have availed myself. So far as these helps have been consciously received, they have been acknowledged in the few references of the text. But I think it fair to ask that this book should be regarded as, much more exclusively than often occurs, the outcome of its author's own reflections over the difficult questions it essays to answer. It asks and should receive the treatment due to a pioneer work.

At the same time it is also true that no other questions, practical or philosophical, are being more anxiously considered or are more influential over life and conduct than those which merge themselves in the epistemological problem. While this problem is reflected upon, largely in an unguided and illogical way, by multitudes of minds, the authorities, who ought also to be guides in reflective thinking, have been of late accustomed to reiterate the cry of " Back to Kant ! " As a student for years of the critical philosophy, I have not been unmindful of the demand to place myself in the line of its development of the epistemological inquiry. I have had the method and the conclusions of the great master in criticism before me, from the beginning to the end of my work. Yet

1 An exception cannot be made in the case of Mr. Hobhouse's elaborate work, " The Theory of Knowledge," since it is confessedly a treatise in Logic rather than Epistemology, as I conceive of epistemological problems and method.

PREFACE ix

the positions to which my independent investigations have forced me are chiefly critical of, and antagonistic to, the positions of the Critique of Pure Reason.

If I may claim any peculiar merit for the method followed in discussing the problem of knowledge, it is perhaps chiefly this : I have striven constantly to make epistemology vital, — a thing of moment, because indissolubly and most intimately connected with the ethical and religious life of the age. I have no wish to conceal, therefore, the quite unusual interest which I take in the success of this book ; I sincerely hope that it may be a guide and help to not a few of those minds to whom I have dedicated it.

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.

Yale University, Mav, 1897.

CHAPTER I The Problem PAGE

The Anthropological View — Standpoint of Psychology — Appeal to Reason — Kant's Position in History — Relation to Metaphysics — Freedom from Assumption— The Primary Datum — The Dilemma stated — Sources of an Answer— The Implicates necessary — The Method to be pursued — Practical Benefits expected 1

Chapter II

Purpose of the Sketch — The View of Plato — The Doctrine of Aristotle — Post-Aristotelian Schools — Origen's Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge — Augustine's Merits in Epistemology — The Middle Ages 30

CHAPTER HI

History of Opinion {continued)

The Position of Descartes — Pioneer Work of Locke — Views of Berkeley

— Scepticism of Hume — Position of Leibnitz — Kant's Critical "Work ; His Problem and Conclusions — Kant's Ethical Interests — Hegel and

Schopenhauer 57

CHAPTER VI Knowledge as Feeling and Willing

The Psychology of Feeling — Emotional Factors in Cognition — Influence on intellectual Development — Impulsive Emotions — Ethical and JEsthetical Feeling — Feelings regulative of Logical Processes — So-called " integrating " Emotions — Place of Will in Cognition 160

Chapter VII

Distinction of Subject and Object — Position of Formal Logic — Office of Self-Consciousness — Implicates of Reality — Identity of Self as implied — Distinction of Things and Self — Diremptive Work of Intellect — The Function of Analogy — Epistemology of Perception — and of Science . .193

Chapter VIII

Meaning of Terms — Standards of Measurement of Cognition — Relation of Knowledge to Life — Nature of Opinion — Possibility of Knowledge in Dreams — Distinctions Relative — Essentials of Cognition — Limits not Presuppositions — Kinds of Limits — Limits of Perception — and of Science — Kinds of Knowledge — Case of Mathematics — Immediate and Mediate Knowledge . 228

Chapter IX

Experience and Cognition — Fundamental Principles of all Knowledge — Views of Logic — Meaning of Identity — The Principle as applied to Reality 268

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER X Sufficient Reason"

PAGE

Nature of Reasoning —Development of Reasoning — Application to Reality

— Kant's inadequate View — Causation and External Nature Origin of

the Principle — Use of Cognitive Judgments — Difficulties of Syllogism

— Concerned in Self-Knowledge — Assumptions involved — Goal of Endeavor — The Grounds of Natural Science — Einal Purpose implied . .283

Chapter XI

Meaning of Experience — The misleading Figures of Speech — Experience necessarily Transcendent — Conditions of Experience — and its Laws . 322

Chapter XII

The Question stated — Modes of Implication possible — Necessity of Completeness of View — Being of Self implied — and of Not-Self — Influence of ethical and sesthetical Considerations — System of Ontology involved — The principal Categories guaranteed 337

Chapter XIII

Attitudes of Mind toward Truth — Unity of Experience — Sources and Value of Scepticism — Limits of Scepticism — Doubts in Perception and in Science — Necessity for Agnosticism — Limits of Agnosticism — Knowledge positive 367

CHAPTER XIV Alleged " Antinomies " J *

Effect of the Antinomy — Meaning of the Term — Denial of the Doctrine

Antinomies — Claims of Kant examined — Mr. Bradley's Views critic Ar nest — Application of the Categories to Reality lOIlistic xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER XV Truth and Error PAGE

Nature of the Distinction — Error as non-Truth — Error and Wrong-doing — Truth dependent on Judgment — and on the Meaning of Judgment — Nature of Mathematical Truth — The Truth of Perception — Truth and Error in Science — Foundations of Scientific Knowledge — Sources of Error — True Cognition of Self — Criterion of Truth — Belief and Reality 424

Chapter XVI

Cognition and Action — The Teleology of Perception — and of Conception — Final Purpose among the Sciences — Knowledge as End in Itself — ' Knowledge as Part of Life — Final Purpose in Reality 472

CHAPTER XVII Ethical and ^Esthetical " Momenta " of Knowledge

Character and Cognition — Influence of Feeling on Judgment — Attribution of Ideals to Nature — Benevolence of Law — Limits of the Ethical " Momenta " — Characteristics of JEsthetical Consciousness — Beauty in Reality — The Epistemological Postulate . . 500

PAGE

Conceptions of Number applied to Reality — Unity and Duality of Body and Mind — Unity of the Self — Defects of extreme Dualism — The Truth and the Limitations of Monism 574

CHAPTER XXI Knowlege and the Absolute

Final Position of Agnosticism — Explication of Terms — Danger from abstract Conceptions — Unchanging Laws of Cognition — Presence of the Absolute in Consciousness — The comprehensive View of Epistemology . 591

INDEX , 611

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PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE

Chapter I

THE struggles of the mind of man to come to a satisfactory understanding with itself are among the most interesting exhibitions of his greatness. This is true from whichever of several points of view we regard the phenomena. For suppose that — disregarding for the moment the more distinctively metaphysical considerations — we appro" oh the subject in the light of the biological and anthrorJto ghoul sciences. The surpassingly strange spectacle of anh" are which is not content with the occupations prompts which restless and almost unceasing practical curiosity, nor £ hyposimply to learn how it may possess and use the instrier the of its own temporary well-being, is certainly most atgnition, to a reflective mind. During certain periods ake, we introexistence the human animal exhibits a sols problem cannot the truth of its own being; it becomes cropological point of validity of its knowledge of the being : things. But why should not man be sat research to determere living, a fairly uninterrupted succekince would have states of feeling, and to let the painful expert-mentioned trouble the flow of the stream of consciousness fade n ce, if in the dreamlike illusoriness of an animal's memory ?

Like the other higher animals, man is consciously earnest and absorbed in the pursuit of various forms of eudaemonistic good. But unlike all the other animals, so far as we are able to get behind the barriers interposed between us and their psychical states, man comes to regard this very conception of " truth " as something in itself good. Then he turns upon his own reason with a complaint which is frequently bitter, or with a self-accusation of impotence which may become savage, in the demand that it should furnish him with a more complete authentication for the good which bears this peculiar form. Moreover, the truth, as he conceives of it, is in his thought correlated with what he calls " reality. " Indeed, what he means by that kind of truth, which he needs to possess in order fully to satisfy the demands of reason, is not definable without an implicate of reality. But why, again, as merely the highest form of animal life, should man alone among all the species not be satisfied with appearances, if only they be of a pleasant character? Why should he insist on dissecting his puppets to dete- ne whether they have the anatomy of actual living or not ; why be so eager to disturb the interest in the z appearance by exposing too cruelly the actual mech- )f the strings ? We can discover no wholly adequate — no very convincing partial answer — which modern has afforded to inquiries such as these. And yet ' ?. of this kind are undoubted facts in the complex

'same phenomena to be approached from h and historical points of view. Here it

of u mied that the unsatisfied need for valid-

Reality

in conscious attitudes, the various presence, the trains of associated ideas, and the incepts, as well as the varied and ceaseless efforts jd men make to satisfy this need, have always been most important factors to aid in the evolution of the race. All merely anthropological theories of evolution, however, appear unable to account for the existence of this need ; and we believe that they not only are now, but will always remain, quite outside of such a task. The right claimed by the majority of the students of modern science, distinctly to aim at keeping clear of all metaphysics and so-called " theories of knowledge," may be conceded. And indeed, if there could be knowledge that is not something much more than this majority will admit it to be, science itself would consist of a succession of presentations of sense, associated ideas, and thoughts, about the truth of which no one would ever even raise a question. From the merely logical and formal point of view, the peculiar kind of syllogism which belongs to science, as such, may fitly be called the hypothetical syllogism. Its form is as follows : If A is B, then is D ; but whether or not A really is, and whether, admitting that both it and B really are, they are actually related as belonging to the same species, or as reciprocal influences in determining the same result, — with this, science need not concern itself. Only now, such science could scarcely be called knowledge ; much less, truth. For, as we undertake to show in detail later on, the words " knowledge " and " truth " are significant of mental processes and mental positions which can neither be attained nor stated by the use of the hypothetical syllogism merely. But the moment we consider the evolution of science itself as a growth in actual cognition, whether on the part of the individual or of the race, we introduce the epistemological problem ; and this problem cannot even be considered from the merely anthropological point of view.

It would furnish a most curious bit of research to determine what the development of physical science would have been, if only its students had really held the above-mentioned conception of it. Would it now continue to advance, if investigators and the people generally attached to its conclusions only the significance and validity which belong to dreams ? However we might incline to answer this question, one thing is sure. " Science," thus conceived of, would suffer a mighty and pathetic fall from its place of dignity in the present estimate of mankind. Theories of evolution as applied to the human race, stand in respect to this instinctive metaphysical faith, less in the relation of satisfactory explanatory causes than of partial effects. They are themselves mental phenomena, for the understanding of which we must resort to a study of the constitution of reason itself.

The conclusion which has just been drawn from a brief survey of the merely biological and anthropological aspects of our problem may be summarized as follows. What mankind calls its knowledge, or science, of Self and of Things, is assumed to be something more than mere self-referring, psychical occurrences,— mere presentations of sense, associated ideas, and subjectively connected thoughts. It is assumed to be the truth, either already attained or capable of being reached and verified. And by " truth " men generally understand a form of mental representation which has its correlate in reality, in the actual being and matter-of-fact performances of things. Yet doubt is constantly arising as to the meaning and as to the validity of this universal assumption. The doubt is productive of restless endeavor, as well as of sadness, increased doubt, and even of indifference and disgust, when the assumption itself is made the subject of inquiry. It is somehow thus that the problem of knowledge has progressively defined and emphasized itself as an influential factor in the development of the reflective thinking of man. The problem is by no means new, as the history of this thinking conclusively shows.

It is to the increasingly keen and searching analysis of mental processes, to the science of psychology, and to the critical examination of reason — first undertaken in a thorough and methodical way by Kant — that we must resort for the more definite, technically exact statement of our problem. Now psychology, as its very nature and lcgitimate mission compel it, considers all cognitions, whether of the ordinary or of the so-called scientific variety, as merely mental (or subjective) phenomena. For it, all beings are resolvable into states of consciousness. Its definition is, " The science of states of consciousness, as such." And as its means for analyzing the content of consciousness become improved and are more faithfully and skilfully applied, and as the laws of the combination and succession of the different states of consciousness are brought to light, the entire domain of knowledge is made the subject of its investigations. All cognitions, all sciences, undoubtedly are states of consciousness ; from the psychological point of view, they are simply this. The one psychological assumption, from which no escape is possible, the assumption which is presuppositionless and absolutely undeniable, is this : My cognition is a process in my consciousness. But this assumption is as true for you, and for him (for "the other," whoever he may be), as it is for me. It is as true, when the object of cognition is a thing, a stone or a star or a microbe, as when the object of cognition is definitively recognized as my own state, whether in the form of a toothache or a thought about God. The ultimate psychic fact is simply : " I know."

Further, all the researches of modern psychology tend to show that in those mysterious beginnings of psychic life, which are forever hidden from direct observation and from ■recognitive memory, ideation and object existed as in a common root of consciousness. One may speak of these beginnings as the "original unity of our perceptive life," as the original "unity of apperception," or as one please. Nothing more impresses students of Kant than his elaborate architectonic in exhibition of the complicated nature of that mental edifice, ascribed in part to imagination and in part to intellect, which the unity of apperception constructs. But those who dissent from the Kantian method and its conclusions, and will hear nothing of "psychic synthesis," even as a conscious and self-active energy, are compelled either to resort to the hypothesis of sensations that somehow get together or put themselves together ; or else they have altogether to abandon the problem of psychic unity of any kind.

What all are aware of, however, whether psychologists or not, and independently of learned or thoughtless talk about "synthesis" and "apperception," is a most startling experience of an opposite kind. It has already been said that the one indisputable fact upon which epistemological doctrine must build is the "I know" of every man's consciousness. This fact, when repeated and generalized, becomes the foundation of the most presuppositionless of all psychological truths, — " all cognition is a process in consciousness. " But on the very first experience of this fact, and in connection with all experiences of this truth, knowledge appears no longer as a one-sided affair. It appears rather as an affair of Subject and Object ; and, in the greater number of its most impressive instances, it becomes an affair implying a fundamental and unalterable distinction between Self and Things.

The general fact of cognition requires restatement, then, in the following way. It is still, undoubtedly, a state of consciousness ; or rather, it is a conscious process. It is also a state of my consciousness, a conscious process which — including, as it must, its object-thing — I attribute to myself as subject, and call my own. But this object, which is my object-consciousness, my state objectively described, is cognized as not-me, as " out of " me. Objectivity, in the sense of imws-subjectivity, the really existent out of my conscious state, is, then, as will be shown in detail elsewhere, the implicate of every truly cognitive act of mine. The inquiries, how this can be, and what is implied as to a reality that is trans-subjective, constitute the problem of the philosophy of knowledge. The descriptive science of psychology, in its study of the plain man's consciousness, shows beyond all doubt that knowledge, even as admitted fact and state of consciousness, cannot be faithfully described, on the basis of a full and satisfactory analysis, without recognition of this implicate of what is not a present fact and state of consciousness. Thus much, at the very least, must be insisted upon. For the time being let those think, who so think can, that knowledge is explicable without recognition of the reality both of the object and of the subject, as a self-active and self-conscious synthesis, a unifying life-force.

It appears, then, that the subjective and the formal lies, in the process of cognition, actually inseparable as an experience from the trans-subjective and the real. The two exist, as it were, side by side and in a living unity; and yet the two are not incapable of being distinguished both by immediate introspection and by reflective thinking. For cognition is a modification of consciousness that is dependent, in part, for its existence and for its particular form, upon reality outside of consciousness (upon not-my-consciousness). On the one hand, it cannot be, or even be conceived of, other than as a modification of consciousness. It must be explained as dependent, both for its existence and for its form, upon the fact and the laws of the cognizing subject. On the other hand, its existence implies, and its form requires for explanation, some other being than that which is present in the modified consciousness. As to the further analysis and explanation, the import, and the validating of the import, of all this, the philosophical theory of knowledge inquires.

The problem of knowledge is not, however, grasped in its entirety and handled in a manner to promise a solution which is either theoretically satisfying or practically helpful, until it is seen that both problem and solution lie embedded, so to speak, in the very heart of reason itself. It was the distinctive merit of Kant, as has already been implied, to make this truth clear as it had never been made clear before. Since his day, the theory of knowledge (Epistemology or Noetics, sometimes so called) has been one of the most active and fruitful branches of philosophical discipline. Indeed, some have gone so far as to make the formation of a theory of knowledge coincident with the entire function of philosophy. That which calls itself knowledge of the universe "we call self-knowledge," says Kuno Fischer. 1 We cannot agree to this restriction in the definition of the sphere of philosophy. And how widely the method we shall follow, and the results at which we shall arrive, differ from the method and conclusions of the immortal thinker of Konigsberg, should appear at the end rather than at the beginning of our task. But when Kant asserted, "Human reason has this peculiar fate, that, with reference to one species of its cognition, it is always burdened with questions which it cannot cast aside; for they are given to it by the very nature of reason itself, but they cannot be answered because they transcend the powers of reason," 2 he indicated beyond question for all time the sources of the epistemological problem.

The history of reflective thinking, and indeed of the literature which either embodies, or is tinged by, the results of reflective thinking, has during the last century shown that Kant did not fully realize the success which he claimed for his critical philosophy. By following "the secure process of science," in his "elaboration of the cognitions which belong to the concern of reason," he expected, on the one hand, forever "to deprive speculative reason of its pretensions to transcendent insights," and, on the other hand, "to furnish the needed preliminary preparation in furtherance of

1 " Philosophic ist die Wissenschaft und Kritik der Erkenntniss," says Riehl, — Der Philosophische Kriticismus, iii. p. 15.

2 Opening sentence of the Preface to the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

THE PROBLEM y

a fundamental metaphysics in scientific form. " 1 But, strange to say, Kant's destructive effort was followed in history by the erection of systems of metaphysics which made, above all others since man began to think, the most enormous "pretensions to transcendent insights;" while his positive intent has left behind few traces of accepted metaphysical science. It is the sceptical and agnostic conclusions as to the cognitions of reason which so-called neo-Kantians accept. The determination and defence of the subjective origin and the objective reference of the "categories," and the rationalized faith of Kant in the postulates of the practical reason are accepted, when accepted at all, by quite other schools of thinkers than those commonly called by his name.

It is not the chief interest at present, however, to define epistemological truth with reference to the author of the modern critical doctrine of knowledge. It is rather the purpose to point out that the origin, nature, and importance of that problem which knowledge, with its essential objective implicates, offers to the knowing subject, have in some sort been settled once for all by the critical work of Kant. The human mind, by virtue of its necessary and constitutional way of functioning in all its cognitive acts, contains at once the proposal and the answer, if answer there be, to the problem. Neither the biological and anthropological, nor even the distinctively psychological study of the nature and growth of man's mind will avail fully to explicate or to answer the epistemological inquiry. The rather is this, fundamentally considered, a philosophical problem. And it is inextricably intermingled with the prob]em of the Nature of Reality, as this conception of reality is applied both to the mind of man and to the object of his knowledge.

It will appear as an opinion for which we shall constantly

1 Preface to the second edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

contend that the problem of knowledge cannot be properly stated, much less satisfactorily discussed, without unceasing reference to the conclusions of a scientific psychology. The reference must even be a deference. The point of starting must be psychological. Epistemological discussion must begin by understanding analytically the actual, concrete content of consciousness. But the consciousness which enfolds the problem, and which must be analyzed, and so far as possible understood in order to the best mastery of the problem, is a developed human consciousness. It is the consciousness of a being who has already become apperceptive and self-conscious. It is not, therefore, an animal consciousness; nor is it an inchoate and beginning human consciousness. The study of the psychological origin and growth of knowledge is, indeed, a valuable contribution toward apprehending and solving the philosophical problem which gives rise to a theory of knowledge. But inasmuch as this problem is given in processes of cognition whose essential characteristic is that the knowing subject already distinguishes the forms of his cognition from the forms of existence implicate in cognition, and either naively identifies the two or raises the sceptical question about their identification, psychological study is not in itself a sufficient indication or instrument for its solution. The more distinctively epistemological problem now emerges; the critical inquiry is raised as to whether, and how far, the forms of cognition coincide with the forms of existence.

The fundamental problem of the philosophy of knowledge is, then, an inquiry into the relations between certain states of consciousness and what we conceive of as "the really existent. " 1 But at this point a reflective study of human knowledge reveals the fact that its problem is already inextricably interwoven with the ontological problem, — the metaphysical inquiry, in the more restricted meaning of the

1 Compare Hartmann, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnisstheorie, p. v.

much-abused word "metaphysics." 1 For suppose that the two spheres be distinguished as follows: Epistemology, or the philosophy of knowledge, deals with the concept of the True; and Metaphysics, or the philosophy of being, deals with the concept of the Real. We find ourselves, however, quite unable to form any concept, or even to hold in consciousness the most shadowy mental picture, of what men affirm, with genuine conviction, to be true, without implicating the for-us-real in this concept, this mental image. On the other hand, no meaning can be given to the word "real " without stating a judgment as to what is considered true. Yet the two words are by no means precisely identical. For the more correct usage speaks of presentations of sense, of images of recognitive memory, and of certified thoughts about things, as true; and they are thus distinguished from images of fancy or from unverifiable thoughts. But men speak of minds and things as real — meaning thus to imply a sort of existence which belongs neither to the true nor to the false mental representations.

We have already (in the Preface) stated that we intend to discuss separately the epistemological and the ontological problems. About the order and the method of these two discussions something will be said later on. The connection of the two — intimate and inextricable as it is — is emphasized at this point in order to show that the impulse to the quest, which it is proposed in subsequent chapters to follow, is indeed set fast in the very heart of human reason. To explicate the problem of knowledge, it is necessary to search to its depths the mind of man. To solve it completely would be to comprehend and expose all the profoundest mysteries of his mind. And not only this : it would be, as Kant held, to prepare the way for a systematic and defensible exposition of the inmost nature of Reality, so far

1 Note the phrase of Riehl, — die metaphysischen Erkenntnissprobleme. See Der Philosophische Kriticismus, Vorwort to Part ii.