作者：Murray, D. L. (David Leslie)
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Pragmatism试读：
PREFACE
Mr. Murray's youthful modesty insists that his study of Pragmatism needs a sponsor; this is not at all my own opinion, but I may take the opportunity of pointing out how singularly qualified he is to give a good account of it.
In the first place he is young, and youth is an almost indispensable qualification for the appreciation of novelty; for the mind works more and more stiffly as it grows older, and becomes less and less capable of absorbing what is new. Hence, if our 'great authorities' lived for ever, they would become complete Struldbrugs. This is the justification of death from the standpoint of social progress. And as there is no subject in which Struldbruggery is more rampant than in philosophy, a youthful and nimble mind is here particularly needed. It has given Mr. Murray an eye also to the varieties of Pragmatism and to their connections.
Secondly, Mr. Murray has (like myself) enjoyed the advantage of a severely intellectualistic training in the classical philosophy of Oxford University, and in its premier college, Balliol. The aim of this training is to instil into the best minds the country produces an adamantine conviction that philosophy has made no progress since Aristotle. It costs about £50,000 a year, but on the whole it is singularly successful. Its effect upon capable minds possessed of common sense is to produce that contempt for pure intellect which distinguishes the British nation from all others, and ensures the practical success of administrators selected by an examination so gloriously irrelevant to their future duties that, since the lamentable demise of the Chinese system, it may boast to be the most antiquated in the world. In minds, however, which are more prone to theorizing, but at the same time clear-headed, this training produces a keenness of insight into the defects of intellectualism and a perception of the intellectual necessity of Pragmatism which can probably be reached in no other way. Mr. Murray, therefore, is quite right in emphasizing, above all, the services of Pragmatism as a rigorously critical theory of knowledge, and in refuting the amiable delusion of many pedants that Pragmatism is merely an emotional revolt against the rigors of Logic. It is essentially a reform of Logic, which protests against a Logic that has become so formal as to abstract from meaning altogether.
Thirdly, an elementary introduction to Pragmatism was greatly needed, less because the subject is inherently difficult than because it has become so deeply involved in philosophic controversy. Intrinsically it should be as easy to make philosophy intelligible as any other subject. The exposition of a truth is difficult only to those who have not understood it, or do not desire to reveal it. But British philosophy had long become almost as open as German to the (German) gibe that 'philosophy is nothing but the systematic misuse of a terminology invented expressly for this purpose,' and Pragmatism, too, could obtain a hearing only by showing that it could parley with its foes in the technical language of Kant and Hegel.
Hence it had no leisure to compose a fitting introduction to itself for students of philosophy. William James's Pragmatism, great as it is as a work of genius, brilliant as it is as a contribution to literature, was intended mainly for the man in the street. It is so lacking in the familiar philosophic catchwords that it may be doubted whether any professor has quite understood it. And moreover, it was written some years ago, and no longer covers tho whole ground. The other writings of the pragmatists have all been too controversial and technical.
The critics of Pragmatism have produced only caricatures so gross as to be unrecognizable, and so obscure as to be unintelligible. Mr. Murray's little book alone may claim to be (within its limits) a complete survey of the field, simply worded, and yet not unmindful of due technicality. It is also up to date, though in dealing with so progressive a subject it is impossible to say how long it is destined to remain so.
F.C.S. SCHILLER.CHAPTER ITHE GENESIS OF PRAGMATISM
There is a curious impression to-day in the world of thought that Pragmatism is the most audacious of philosophic novelties, the most anarchical transvaluation of all respectable traditions. Sometimes it is pictured as an insurgence of emotion against logic, sometimes as an assault of theology upon the integrity of Pure Reason. One day it is described as the reckless theorizing of dilettanti whose knowledge of philosophy is too superficial to require refutation, the next as a transatlantic importation of the debasing slang of the Wild West. Abroad it is frequently denounced as an outbreak of the sordid commercialism of the Anglo-Saxon mind.
All these ideas are mistaken. Pragmatism is neither a revolt against philosophy nor a revolution in philosophy, except in so far as it is an important evolution of philosophy. It is a collective name for the most modern solution of puzzles which have impeded philosophical progress from time immemorial, and it has arisen naturally in the course of philosophical reflection. It answers the big problems which are as familiar to the scientist and the theologian as to the metaphysician and epistemologist, and which are both intelligible and interesting to common sense.
The following questions stand out: (1) Can the possibility of knowledge be maintained against Hume and other sceptics? Certainly, if it can be shown that 'The New Psychology' has antiquated the analysis of mind which Hume assumed and 'British Associationism' respectfully continued to uphold. (2) Seeing that inclination and volition indisputably play a part in the acceptance of all beliefs, scientific and religious, what is the logical significance of this fact? This yields the problem 'The Will to Believe,' and more generally of 'the place of Will in cognition.' (3) Is there no criterion by which the divergent claims of rival creeds and philosophies—to be possessed of unconditional truth—can be scientifically tested? The sceptic's sneer, that the shifting systems of philosophy illustrate only the changing fashions of a great illusion about man's capacity for truth, plunges dogmatism into a 'Dilemma,' from which it can emerge only by finding a way of discriminating a 'truth' from an 'error,' and so solving the 'problem of Truth and Error.' The weird verbalism of the traditional Logic suggests a problem which strikes deeper even than the question, 'What do you mean by truth?' viz.: 'Do you mean anything?' and so the 'problem of Meaning' is propounded by the failure of Formal Logic. Is Logic not concerned at all with meaning, is it only juggling with empty forms of words? Lastly, if from all this there springs up a conviction of 'The Bankruptcy of Intellectualism,' the question suggests itself whether the relation between abstract thinking and concrete experience, between 'Thought' and 'Life,' has been rightly grasped. Is life worth living only for the sake of philosophic contemplation, or is thinking only worth doing to aid us in the struggle for life? Are 'theory' and 'practice' two separate kingdoms with rigid frontiers, strictly guarded, or does it appear that theories which cannot be applied have, in the end, neither worth, nor truth, nor even meaning?
It is plain from this catalogue of inquiries that Pragmatism makes no abrupt breach in tradition. It is not the pétroleuse of philosophy. It does not wipe out the history of speculation in order to announce a millennium of new ideas; it claims, on the contrary, to be the culmination and dénoûment of that history. It cannot rightly be represented as trying either to sell new lamps for old, or to jerry-build a new metaphysical system on the ruins of all previous achievements. Its real task is singularly modest. It aims merely at instructing system-builders in the elementary laws which condition the stability of such structures and conduce to their conservation.
It is therefore a grave mistake to regard it as a parochial eccentricity, as a specific Americanism. Nor is it the product of the misplaced ingenuity of individual paradox-mongers. It has come into being by the convergence of distinct lines of thought pursued in different countries by different thinkers.
1. One of the most interesting of these has originated in the scientific world. The immense growth of scientific knowledge during the last century was bound to react on human conceptions of scientific procedure. The enormous number of new facts brought to light by manipulating hypotheses could not but modify our view of scientific law. Laws no longer seem to scientists the immutable foundations of an eternal order, but are inevitably treated as man-made formulae for grouping and predicting the events which verify them. The labours of physicists like Mach, Duhem, and Ostwald, point to alternative formulations of new hypotheses for the best established laws. The physics of Newton are no longer final, and the notion of 'energy' is a dangerous rival to the older conception of 'matter.' It is, of course, indifferent to the philosopher whether the new physics are successful in superseding the old or not. What it concerns him to note is that dogmatic confidence in the finality of scientific laws has given place to a belief that our "laws" are only working formulae for scientific purposes, and that no science can truly boast of having read off the mind of the Deity. As Sir J.J. Thomson neatly puts it, a scientific theory, for the enlightened modern scientist, is a 'policy and not a creed.' Science has become content to be only 'a conceptual shorthand,' provided that its message be humanly intelligible. It no longer claims truth because abstractly and absolutely it 'corresponds with Nature,' but because it yields a convenient means of mastering the flux of events.
Even mathematics, long the pattern of absolute knowledge, has not escaped the stigma of relativity. 'Metageometries' have been invented by Riemann and Lobatschewski as rivals to the assumptions of Euclid, and the brilliant writings of Poincaré have explained the human devices on which mathematical concepts rest. Euclidean geometry is reduced to a useful interpretation of the data of experience; it is not theoretically the only one. Its superior validity is dependent upon its use when applied to the physical world. Even mathematics, therefore, lend themselves to the philosophic inference drawn by Henri Bergson and others, that all conceptual systems of the human mind have a merely conditional truth, depending on the circumstances of their application.
2. Another fountain-head of Pragmatic philosophy has been Darwinism. Indeed, the Pragmatic is the only philosophizing which has completely assimilated Evolution. The insight into the real fluidity of natural species ought long ago to have toned down the artificial rigidity of logical classifications. To know reality man can no longer rest in a 'timeless' contemplation of a static system; he must expand his thoughts so as to cope with a perpetually changing process. Since the world changes, his 'truths' must change to fit it. He is faced with the necessity of a continuous reconstruction of beliefs. This influence of Darwin has inspired the logical theories of Professor Dewey and the 'Chicago School' of Pragmatists. Thought in their writings is essentially the instrument of this readjustment. Its function is to effect the necessary changes in beliefs as economically and usefully as possible. It is an evolving process which keeps pace with the evolution of reality and the changing situations of mortal life.
3. It is not, however, entirely the reaction of science upon philosophy which has given birth to Pragmatism. Philosophy itself has been rent by internal convulsions. These have been emphasized in the work of Dr. F.C.S. Schiller, who has shown that already in the days of Plato the distinction between 'truth' and 'error' was baffling philosophy, that Plato's Theaetetus has failed to establish it, and that the famous dictum of Protagoras, 'Man is the measure of all things,' distinctly foreshadows the 'Pragmatic,' or, as he calls it, the 'Humanist,' solution of the difficulty.
Elsewhere Dr. Schiller has commented on the controversies raised by Hume's criticism of dogmatism. He has shown that Kant failed to answer Hume because he accepted Hume's psychology, and that no a priori philosophers have since been able to devise any consistent and tenable doctrine. The idealistic theories of the 'Absolute' reveal their futility by their want of application to the genuine problems of life, and by the theoretic agnosticism from which they cannot escape. Hence the need for a new Theory of Knowledge and a thorough reform of Logic.
4. At this point he joins forces with Mr. Alfred Sidgwick, who has long been urging a radical criticism of the procedures of Formal Logic, and shown the gulf between them and the processes of concrete thought. Sidgwick has demonstrated that the belief in formal truth renders Logic merely verbal, and that the actual meaning of assertions completely escapes it.
5. The most sensational approach to Pragmatism, however, is that from the side of religion. The Pragmatic method of deciding religious problems, which asserts the legitimacy of a 'Faith' that precedes knowledge, has always been, more or less consciously, practised by the religious. It is brilliantly advocated in the Thoughts of Pascal, and clearly and forcibly defended in that most remarkable essay in unprofessional philosophy, Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent. This line of reasoning, however, is most familiarly associated with the name of William James; he first illustrated the Pragmatic Method by a famous paper (for a theological audience) on The Will to Believe, and founded the psychological study of religious experience in his Gifford Lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience.
6. This brings us to the last, and historically the most fertile, of the sources of Pragmatism, Psychology. The publication in 1890 of James's great Principles of Psychology opened a new era in the history of that science. More than that, it was destined in the long run to work a transformation in philosophy as a whole, by introducing into it those biological and voluntaristic principles to which he afterwards applied the generic name of Pragmatism, or philosophy of action. We must pass, then, to consider the New Psychology of William James.CHAPTER IITHE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
Until the year 1890, when James's Principles were published, the [A]psychology of Hume reigned absolutely in philosophy. All empiricists accepted it enthusiastically, as the sum of philosophic wisdom; all apriorists submitted to it, even in supplementing and modifying it by 'transcendental' and metaphysical additions; in either case it remained uncontested as psychology, and, by propounding an utterly erroneous analysis of the mind and its experience, entangled philosophy in inextricable difficulties.
Hume had, as philosophers commonly do, set out from the practically sufficient analysis of experience which all find ready-made in language. He accepted, therefore, from common sense the belief that physical reality is composed of a multitude of separate existences that act on one another, and tried to conceive mental life strictly on the same analogy. His theory of experience, therefore, closely parallels the atomistic theory of matter. Just as the physicist explains bodies as collections of discrete particles, so Hume reduced all the contents of the mind to a number of elementary sensations. Whether the mind was reflecting on its own internal ideas, or whether it was undergoing impressions which it supposed to come from an external source, all that was really happening was a succession of detached sensations. It seemed to Hume indisputable that every distinct perception (or 'impression') was a distinct existence, and that all 'ideas' were equally distinct, though fainter, copies of impressions. Beyond impressions and ideas it was unnecessary to look. Thus to look at a chessboard was to have a number of sensations of black and white arranged in a certain order, to listen to a piece of music was to experience a succession of loud and soft auditory sensations, to handle a stone was to receive a group of sensations of touch. To suppose that anything beyond these sensory units was ever really experienced was futile fiction. Experience was a mosaic, of which the stones were the detached sensations, and their washed-out copies, the ideas.
If this analysis of the mind were correct—and its correctness was not disputed for more than a hundred years, for were not the sensations admitted to be the ultimate analysis of all that was perceived?—the common-sense belief that knowledge revealed a world outside the thinker was, of course, erroneous. For common sense could hardly treat 'things' as merely 'sensations' artificially grouped together in space, each 'thing' being a complex of a number of sensations having relation to similar complexes. It held rather that the successive appearances of things were related in time, in such a way that they could be supposed to reveal a single object able to endure in spite of surface changes, and to manifest the identity of its sensory 'qualities.' Similarly, the succession of ideas within the mind was for it supported by the inward unity of the soul within which they arose. Moreover, Hume's analysis made havoc of all idea, of 'causation.' If every sensation was a separate being, how was it to be connected with any other in any regular or necessary connection? Two events related as 'cause' and 'effect' must be a myth.
These subversive consequences of his theory Hume did not conceal, though he did not push his mental 'atomism' to its logical extreme. When he defined material objects as 'coloured points disposed in a certain order,' he was in fact admitting space as a relating factor; when he spoke of the succession of impressions and ideas in experience, he was tacitly assuming that what was apprehended was not a bare succession of sensations, but also the fact that they were succeeding one another, and so allowing a sense of temporal relation. But further than this he refused to go. The idea of a continuous self was fantastic. There was nothing beneath the ideas to connect them. The notion of causal connection was equally chimerical. Each sensation was distinct and existed in its own right. It could therefore occur alone. There was nothing to link together the distinct impressions. Hence necessary connection in events could not be more than a fiction of the mind based on expectation of customary sequences; how the mind he had described as non-existent could form an expectation or observe a sequence was calmly left a mystery.
Hume, then, seemed to leave to his successors in philosophy a task of synthesis. He had tumbled the soul off her high watch-tower, but how to combine her shattered fragments again into a working unity he declined to say. He saw the sceptical implications of his analysis, but professed himself unable to suggest a remedy.
He had, however, made the embarrassments of the theory of knowledge sufficiently clear for Kant, his most important successor, to hit upon the most obvious palliative, and in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant set himself to patch up Hume's analysis. Experience as it came through the channels of sense, he admitted Hume had analysed correctly; it was 'a manifold,' a whirl of separate sensations. But these per se could not yield knowledge. They must be made to cohere, and the way to do this he had found. The mind on to which they fell was equipped with a complicated apparatus of faculties which could organize the chaotic manifold of sense and turn it into the connected world which common sense and science recognize. First it views the data of sense in the light of its own 'pure intuitions,' and, lo! they are seen to be in Space and Time; then it solidifies them with its own 'categories,' which turn them into 'substances' and 'causes' and endow them with all the attributes required to sustain that status; finally it refers them all to a Transcendental Ego, which is not, indeed, a soul, but sufficiently like one to provide something that can admire the creative synthesis of 'mind as such.'
Had Hume lived to read Kant's Critique, he would probably have jeered at the vain complications of Kant's transcendental machinery, and made it clear that between the primary manifold of sensation and the first constructions of the intellect there still yawns a gulf which Kant's laboured explanations nowhere bridge.
Why does the chaotic 'matter' of sensations submit itself so tamely to the forming of the mind? How can the a priori necessities of thought, which are the 'presuppositions' of the complexities Kant loved, operate upon so alien a stuff as the sensations are assumed to be? And, after all, was not Kant a bit premature in proclaiming the finality of his analysis and of his refutation of empiricism for all time? The searching question, Why should the future resemble the past? had received no answer, and so might not the mind itself, with all its categories, be susceptible to change? Was it certain that the miracle whereby the data presented to our faculties conformed to them would be a standing one? Had not Kant himself as good as admitted that our faculties might distort reality instead of making it intelligible?
The truth is that at this point Kant is open to a charge against which the assumptions he shared with Hume admit of no defence.
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