The moral self is an ideal construct based upon these fixed conditions of life--conditions so fixed that the spiritual furtherance or deterioration likely to result from certain modes of conduct involving and affecting them can be estimated directly and with relative ease by the "ethical" method of judgment. Implied in such a construct is, of course, a reference to certain relatively permanent social and also physical conditions. In so far as society and physical nature, and for that matter the individual's own nature, are _variable_, these are the subjects of "scientific" or "factual" judgments incidental to the determination of problems by the "economic" method--problems, that is, for which no _general_ answer, through reference to a more or less definite and stable working concept of the self, can be given. Thus our knowledge of the physical universe is largely, if not chiefly, incidental to and conditioned by our economic experience. Again, our economic judgments are in every case determinative of the self in situations in which, as presented by (perhaps even momentarily) variable conditions, physical, social, or personal, the ethical method is inapplicable. In a socialistic state, in which economic conditions might be more stable than in our present one, many problems in consumption which now are economic in one sense would be ethical because admitting of solution by reference to the type of self presupposed in the established state program of production and distribution. Even now it is not easy to specify an economic situation the solution of which is absolutely indifferent ethically. There is a possibility of intemperance even in so "æsthetic" an indulgence as Turkish rugs.
[112] Accordingly there can be no distinction of ends, some as ethical, others as economic, but from an ethical standpoint indifferent, and yet others as amenable neither to ethical nor to economic judgment. The type of situation and the corresponding mode of judgment employed determines whether an end shall be for the time being ethical, economic, or of neither sort conspicuously.
[113] The right of Prudence to rank among the virtues cannot, on our present view, be questioned. Economic judgment, though it must be valuation of means, is essentially choice of ends--and, as would appear, choice of a sort peculiarly difficult by reason of the usually slight intrinsic relation between the ends involved and also by reason of the absence of effective points of view for comparison. Culture, as Emerson remarks, "sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants." And again, "The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy...[The true prudence] takes the laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good" (Essay on _Prudence_).
[114] Here again we purposely use inaccurate language. Strictly, the ends here spoken of as competing are such, we must say, only because they are as yet in a measure indeterminate, wanting in "clearness," and are not yet understood in their true economic character; likewise the means are wanting in that final shade or degree of physical and mechanical determinateness which they are presently to possess as means to a finally determinate economic end. Thus economic judgment, by which is to be understood determination of an end of action by the economic method and in accordance with economic principles, involves in general physical re-determination of the means. The means which at the outset of the present economic judgment-process appear as physically available indifferently for either of the tentative ends under consideration are only in a general way the same means for knowledge as they will be when the economic problem has been solved. They are, so far as now determinate, the outcome of former physical judgment-processes incidental to the definition of economic ends in former situations like the present.
[115] In our discussion of this preliminary question there is no attempt to furnish what might be called an _analysis_ of the consciousness of objectivity. This has been undertaken by various psychologists in recent well-known contributions to the subject. For our purpose it is necessary only to specify the intellectual and practical attitude out of which the consciousness of objectivity arises; not the sensory "elements" or factors involved in its production as an experience.
[116] So, on the other hand, our vague organic sensations are possibly more instructive as they are, _for their own purpose_, than they would be if more sharply discriminated and complexly referred.
For convenience we here meet the view under consideration with its own terminology; we by no means wish to be understood as indorsing this terminology as psychologically correct. The sense-quality of which we read in "structural psychology" is, we hold, not a structural unit at all, but in fact a highly abstract development out of that unorganized whole of sensory experience in which reflective attention begins. There is, for example, no such thing as the simple unanalyzable sense-quality "red" in consciousness until judgment has proceeded far enough to have constructed a definite and measured experience which may be symbolized as "object-before-me-possessing-the-attribute-red." In place of the original sensory total-experience we now have a more or less developed perceptual (_i. e._, judgmental) total-experience. It is an instance of the "psychological fallacy" to interpret what are really elements of _meaning_ in a perceived object constructed in judgment (for this is the true nature of the "simple idea of sensation" or "sense-element") as so many bits of psychical material which were isolated from each other at the outset, and have been externally joined together in their present combination.
[117] The phrase is Külpe's and is used in his sense of consciousness taken as a whole, as, for example, attentive, apperceptive, volitional, rather than in the sense made familiar by Spencer and others.
[118] The foregoing discussion is in many ways similar to Brentano's upon the same subject. In discussing his first class of modes of consciousness, the _Vorstellungen_, he says: "We find no contrasts between presentations excepting those of the objects to which the presentations refer. Only in so far as warm and cold, light and dark, a high note and a low, form contrasts can we speak of the corresponding presentations as contrasted; and, in general, there is in any other sense than this no contrast within the entire range of these conscious This may stand as against any attempt to find contrast between abstract sense-qualities taken apart from their objective reference. What is, however, the ground of distinction between the presented objects?
Apparently this must be answered in the last resort as above. In this sense we should need finally to interpret "sensuous" and "material" in terms of objectivity as above defined, rather than the reverse. They are cases in or specifications of the determination of adequate stimuli.
[119] In this connection reference may be made to the well-known disturbing effect of the forced introduction of attention to details into established sensori-motor co-ordinations, such as "typewriting," playing upon the piano, and the like.
and PROFESSOR MCGILVARY'S recent paper on "Moral Obligation," _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI, especially pp. 349 f.
[121] Manifestly, as indicated just above, this accepted value of the object implies fuller physical knowledge of the object than was possessed at the outset of the economic judgment. See above, p. 234, [124] It is not so much the case that the object, on the one side, excites in the agent's consciousness, on the other, the "sensations of resistance" which have played such a part in recent controversy on the subject, as that (1) the object in certain of its promptings is "resisting" certain other of its promptings, or that (2) certain "positive" activities of the agent are being inhibited by certain "negative" activities, thereby giving rise to the "emotion of resistance." That "positive" and "negative" are here used in a teleological way will be apparent. It is surely misleading to speak of "_sensations_ of resistance" even in deprecatory quotation marks, except as "sensation" is used in its everyday meaning, viz., experience of strongly sensory quality.
[125] The general theory of emotion which is here presupposed, and indeed is fundamental to the entire discussion, may be found in PROFESSOR DEWEY'S papers on "The Theory of Emotion," _Psychological [126] Such is, in fact, the teaching of the various forms of ethical intuitionism, and we find it not merely implied, but explicitly affirmed, in a work in many respects so remote from intuitionism in its standpoint as GREEN'S _Prolegomena to Ethics_. See pp. 178-81, and especially pp. 355-9.
[127] Sermon II.
[128] Not to imply of course that psychologically or logically the distinction of conditions and means is other than a convenient superficial one.
[129] Manifestly we have here been approaching from a new direction the "Recognition coefficient" of reality described above. See p. 266.
[130] This, if it were intended as an account of the genesis of psychology as a science and of the psychological interest on the part of the individual, would doubtless be most inadequate. We have, for one thing, made no mention of the part which error and resulting practical failure play in stimulating an interest in the _judgmental_ processes of observation and the like, and in technique of the control of these.
Here, as well as in the processes of _execution_ of our purposes, must be found many of the roots of psychology as a science. Moreover, no explanation has been offered above for the appropriation by the "energetic" self of these phenomena of interruption and retardation of its energy as being, in fact, its own, or within itself. The problem would appear to be psychological, and so without our province, and we gladly pass it by.
[131] We can, of course, undertake no minute analysis of the psychological mechanism or concatenation of the process here sketched in barest outline. Our present purpose is wholly that of description.
Slight as our account of the process of transition is, we give it space only because it seems necessary to do so in order to make intelligible the accounts yet to be given of the conscious valuation processes for which the movement here described prepares the way.
It will be observed that we assume above that the purpose is _successful as planned_ and _by succeeding_ brings about the undesirable results.
Failure in execution of the purpose as such could only, in the manner already outlined, prompt a more adequate investigation of the _factual conditions_.
[132] The case is not essentially altered in logical character if for the Levitical law be substituted the general principles of the new dispensation read off details by an authoritative church or by "private judgment."
[133] A remark may be added here by way of caution. The presented self, we have said, attenuates to a mere maxim or tacit presumption in favor of a certain type of logical procedure in dealing with the situation. It must be remembered that the presented self, like all other presentation, is and comes to be for the sake of its function in experience, and so is practical from the start. The process sketched above is therefore not from bare presented content as such to a methodological presumption, which, as methodological and not contentual, is qualitatively different from what preceded it.
[134] _Recognized_ authority is, of course, not the same thing by any means as authority unrecognized because absolutely dominant.
[135] We may be pardoned for supplying from the history of ethics no illustrations of this slight sketch.
[136] In fact, as suggested above, the _Prolegomena to Ethics_ is in many respects essentially intuitional in spirit, though its intuitionism is of a modern discreetly attenuated sort.
[137] This would appear to be the logical value of functional psychology as a science of mental process.
[138] We have already given a slight sketch of the historical process here characterized in the barest logical terms.
[139] Further consideration of the problem of factual judgment must be deferred to Part V.
[140] The relation of the empirical self to the "energetic" and to standards will come in for statement in Part V in the connection just referred to.
[141] It might be possible to construct a "logic" of these various types of working moral standard in such a way as to show that in each type there is implied the one next higher morphologically, and ultimately the highest--that is, some sort of concept of the "energetic" self.
[142] It matters not at all whether, in ethics or metaphysics, our universal be abstract or on the other hand "concrete," like Green's conception of the self, or a "Hegelian" Absolute. Its logical use in the determination of particulars must be essentially the same in either case.
[143] In this connection reference may be made to MR. TAYLOR'S recent work, _The Problem of Conduct_. Mr. Taylor reduces the moral life to terms of an ultimate conflict between the ideals of egoism and social justice, holding that the conflict is in theory irreconcilable. With this negative attitude toward current standards in ethical theory one may well be in accord without accepting Mr. Taylor's further contention that a theory of ethics is therefore impossible. Because the "ethics of subsumption" is demonstrably futile it by no means follows that a method of ethics cannot be developed along the lines of modern scientific logic which shall be as valid as the procedure of the investigator in the sciences. Mr. Taylor's _logic_ is virtually the same as that of the ethical theories which he criticises; because an ethical _ideal_ is impossible, a theory of ethics is impossible also. One is reminded of MR. BRADLEY'S criticism of knowledge in the closing chapters of the _Logic_ as an interesting parallel.
[144] MR. BOSANQUET'S discussion of the place of the principle of teleology in analogical inference will be found suggestive in this connection (_Logic_, Vol. II, chap. iii).
[146] We use the expression "energy-_equivalent_" because the "excess" gained by the self through the past adjustment is not of importance at just this point. The essential significance of the means now is not that they "cost" less than they promised to bring in in energy, but that _because they required sacrifice the self will now lose unless they are allowed to fulfil the promise_. They are the logical equivalent of the established modes of consumption from the standpoint of conservation of the energies of the self, not the mathematical equivalent.
It would be desirable, if there were space, to present a brief account of the psychological basis of the concepts of energy and energy-equivalence which here come into play, but this must be omitted.
[147] Putting it negatively, the renunciation of the new end involves a "greater" sacrifice than all the sacrifices which adherence to the present system of consumption can compensate.
[148] Green, as is well known, allows that any formulation of the ideal self must be incomplete, but holds that it is not for this reason useless. But this is to assume that development in the ideal is never to be radically reconstructive, that the ideal is to expand and fill out along established and unchangeable lines of growth so that all increase shall be in the nature of accretion. The self as a system is fixed and all individual moral growth is in the nature of approximation to this absolute ideal. This would appear to be essentially identical in a logical sense with Mr. Spencer's hypothesis of social evolution as a process of gradual approach to a condition of perfect adaptation of society and the individual to each other in an environment to which society is perfectly adapted--a condition in which "perfectly evolved" individuals shall live in a state of blessedness in conformity to the requirements of "absolute ethics." For a criticism of this latter type of view see MR. TAYLOR'S above-mentioned work (chap. v, _passim_).
[149] For GREEN'S cautious defense of conscientiousness as a moral attitude see the _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book IV, chap. i; and for a statement of the present point of view as bearing upon Green's difficulty, see DEWEY, _The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus_, p. 37 _ad [150] Along the line thus inadequately suggested might be found an answer to certain criticisms of the attempt to dispense with a metaphysical idea of the self. Such criticisms usually urge that without reference to a metaphysical ideal no meaning attaches to such conceptions as "adjustment," "expansion," "furtherance," and the like as predicated of the moral acts of an agent in their effect upon the "energetic" self. Anything that one may do, it is said, is expansive of the self, if it be something new, except as we judge it by a metaphysical ideal of a rightly expanded self. For an excellent statement of this general line of criticism see STRATTON, "A Psychological Test of Virtue," _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol.
XI, p. 200.
[151] The polemic of certain recent writers (as, for example, EHRENFELS in his _System der Werttheorie_) against the objectivity of judgments of value appears to rest upon an uncritical acceptance of the time-honored distinction between "primary" and "secondary" qualities as equivalent to the logical distinction of subjective and objective. Thus EHRENFELS confutes "das Vorurteil von der objectiven Bedeutung des Wertbegriffes" by explaining it as due to a misleading usage of speech expressive of "an impulse, deep-rooted in the human understanding, to objectify its presentations" and then goes on to say "We do not desire things because we recognize the presence in them of a mysterious impalpable essence of Value but we ascribe value to them because we desire them." (_Op. cit._, Bd. I, p. 2.) This may serve to illustrate the easy possibility of confusing the logical and psychological points of view, as likewise does EHRENFELS's formal definition of value. (Bd. I., p. 65.)
[152] The essential dependence of factual judgment upon the rise of economic and ethical conflict is implied in the widely current doctrine of the teleological character of knowledge. It is indeed nowadays something like a commonplace to say in one sense or another that knowledge is relative to ends, but it is not always recognized by those who hold this view that an end never appears as such in consciousness alone. The end that guides in the construction of factual knowledge is an end in ethical or economic conflict with some other likewise indeterminate end in the manner above discussed.
[153] See above, pp. 282, 283.
[155] It would appear that the principle of the conservation of energy is valid only in the physical sphere; but the logical significance of this limitation cannot be here discussed.
[156] That the assumption mentioned is the essential basis of the twin theories of associationism in psychology and hedonism in ethics is shown by DR. WARNER FITE in his article, "The Associational Conception of Experience," _Philosophical Review_, Vol. IX, pp. 283 ff. _Cf._ MR.
BRADLEY's remarks on the logic of hedonism in his _Principles of Logic_, pp. 244-9.
[157] The "energetic" self is apparently MR. BRADLEY'S fourth "meaning of self," the self as monad--"something moving parallel with the life of a man, or, rather, something not moving, but literally _standing_ in relation to his successive variety" (_Appearance and Reality_ [1st ed.]
p. 86, in chap. ix, "The Meanings of the Self"). Mr. Bradley's difficulty appears to come from his desiring a psychological content for what is essentially a logical conception--a confusion (if we may be permitted the remark) which runs through the entire chapter to which we refer and is responsible for the undeniable and hopeless incoherency of the various meanings of the self, as Mr. Bradley therein expounds them.
"If the monad stands aloof," says Mr. Bradley, "either with no character at all or a private character apart, then it may be a fine thing in itself, but it is a mere mockery to call it the self of a man" (p. 87).
Surely this is to misconstrue and then find fault with that very character of essential _logical_ apartness from any possibility of determination in point of descriptive psychological content which constitutes the whole value of the "energetic" self as a logical conception stimulative of the valuation-process and so inevitably of factual judgment. See pp. 258, 259, above. The reader may find for himself in Mr. Bradley's enumeration of meanings our concept of the empirical self. But surely the "energetic" and empirical selves would appear on our showing to have no necessary conflict with each other.
[158] In the first of these inseparable aspects valuation is determinative of Rightness and Wrongness; in the second it presents the object as Good or Bad. See p. 259, above.
[159] See, for example, WIESER, _Natural Value_ (Eng. trans.), p. 17.
[160] See pp. 307-12 above.
[161] The illustration, as also the general principle which it here is used to illustrate, was suggested some years since by Professor G. H.
Mead in a lecture course on the "History of Psychology," which the writer had the advantage of attending.
[162] The conservative function of valuation may be further illustrated by reference to the well-known principle of marginal utility of which we have already made mention (p. 307 above), and which has played so great a part in modern economic theory. The value of the unit quantity of a stock of any commodity is, according to this principle, measured by the least important single use in the schedule of uses to which the stock as a whole is to be applied. Manifestly, then, adherence to this valuation placed upon the unit quantity is in so far conservative of the whole schedule and the marginal value is a "short-hand" symbol expressive of the value of the whole complex purpose presented in the schedule.
Moreover, the increase of marginal value concurrently with diminution of the stock through consumption, loss, or reapplication is not indicative so much of a change of purpose as of determination to adhere to so much of the original program of consumption as may still be possible of attainment with the depleted supply of the commodity.
[163] Thus except on this condition we should deny the propriety of speaking of the value of a friend or of a memento or sacred relic. The purpose of accurate definition of the function of such objects as these in the attainment of one's ends is foreign to the proper attitude of loving, prizing, or venerating them. We may ethically value the _act_ of sacrifice for a friend or of solicitous care of the memento, but the object of our sacrifice or solicitude has simply the direct or immediate "qualitative" emotional character appropriate to the kinds of activity to which it is the adequate stimulus.
[165] _Cf._ PROFESSOR J. R. ANGELL's article, "Relations of Structural and Functional Psychology to Philosophy," _Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago_, Vol. III, pp. 10-12; also _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XII, No. 3. _Cf._ also MR. SCHILLER's essay on "Axioms as Postulates" in _Personal Idealism_.
[166] From this point on this paper is an expansion of some paragraphs, pp. 11-13, in an article on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality," printed from Vol. III of the First Series of the _Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago_.
[167] P. 22.
[168] Pp. 22, 23; italics mine.
[169] P. 25.
[170] P. 26.
[172] Pp. 22, 23; italics mine.
[173] P. 307.
[174] P. 327.
[177] P. 35.
[178] This warns us that in the phrase, "a plan of action," the term "action" must be more inclusive than it is in much current discussion.
It must not be limited to gymnastic performance. It must apply to any sort of activity planned for, and which, when it arrives, fulfils the plan. This, I take it, is the import of the paragraph at the top of p. 7 of PROFESSOR JAMES's _Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results_.
[179] P. 270.
[180] Pp. 270, 271.
[181] P. 276.
[182] P. 277.
[183] Pp. 280, 281.
[184] See p. 256.
[187] It is worth noting in passing that here the universal appears to be located in finite experience, while the ground of the particular is in the absolute.
[188] P. 282.
[190] P. 283.
[191] P. 332.
[192] P. 339.
[193] This ghost of subjectivism haunts the entire part of the essay in which the final fulfilment of finite ideas is found in "a certain absolute system of ideas."
[195] P. 337.
[196] P. 286.
[197] P. 307.
[198] P. 297.
[199] This reduction of the purposive to the representative function carries with it an interesting implication concerning the whole character and relationship of thought and will. From beginning to end, on almost every page, Mr. Royce insists upon the idea as an expression of will. At the outset we read: "When we try to define the idea in itself, as a conscious fact, our best means is to lay stress upon the sort of will or active meaning which any idea involves for the mind that forms the idea" (p. 22). Again: "The idea is a will seeking its own determination. It is nothing else" (p. 332)--and so on throughout the lectures. And we have already seen how consistently this is worked out in the analysis of concrete acts, such as singing, etc. But now, as related to the absolute system, the will, as embodied in the idea, is to find its final determination in approximating the certain absolute system of ideas. This would seem to make will but little more than the mere form of representation itself. The idea is a will, but in its relation to truth its will is "to correspond even in its vagueness to its own final and completely individual expression."
[200] P. 339.
[201] P. 338.
[202] P. 335.
[203] _Cf._ MR. GORE'S paper, above.
necessity of the submission of the "new experience" to the test of its ability to utilize habit. Interpreted broadly, habit might here mean the whole mechanical side, including organism _and_ environment, and so include Mr. Baldwin's second or "extra-organic" test.
[205] P. 19.
[206] Pp. 17, 18.
[207] See, above, PROFESSOR DEWEY'S Study III, pp. 49 ff.
[208] P. 55.
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