Studies in American Philosophy PDF

Tulane Studies in Philosophy
Volume IV
STUDIES IN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

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DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-3169-0
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AN EsTIMATE oF DEWEY's ART AS EXPERIENCE:

Edward G. Ballard______________________________________________________________________________ 5
A RIGHT TO BELIEVE: Richard L. Barber______________________________________________ 19
VIENNESE PosiTIVISM IN THE UNITED STATEs:

J ames K. Feibleman_________________________________________________________________________ 31
SKINNER's "SciENTIFIC" ETHics OF SURVIVAL: Carl H. Hamburg__ 49
ROYCE AS LOGICIAN: Harold N. Lee___________________________________________________ 61
ARTAS IcoN; AN INTERPRETATION oF C. W. MoRRIS:

Louise Nisbet Roberts___________________________________________________________________ 75
TIME AND WHITEHEAD's Gon: Robert C. Whittemore_____________________ 83

AN ESTIMATE OF DEWEY'S ART AS EXPERIENCE
Edward G. Ballard
J OHN Dewey, like Thomas Mann, finds that modern civilization

has in a paradoxical fashion managed to exclude from the current
of its reallife one of its own most important products: namely, fine
art. The artist, often condemned to penury in an "artist Quarter",
and the museum, incarcerating his works at a safe distance from
the city, are symbols and symptoms of this exclusion. Thomas
Mann believes the cause of the artist's exile to lie in the com-
mercialism of the times. The artist has found it impossible to
accept the pecuniary standard of values; he lives and works in
flagrant rebellion against domination by the market place. Because
of this rebellion and because of the sometimes disturbing and even
iconoclastic nature of his products, he is punished by rejection
from society.
John Dewey would agree with this diagnosis up to this point,
I believe, but would add that a prior cause for the predicament of
art and artist lies in poorly conceived and overly abstract theories
of art. These theories elicit and reinforce the tendency to classify
art in a realm apart from ordinary activities and are reflected in
practice by our habit of removing works of art out of life and into
a museum. Further, this tendency is merely another example of
the general compartmentalization of all human activities. W e have
found strength in specialization, but we have also paid a price for
this power in the shape of specialized and unbalanced personalities
and in a consequent impoverishment of life. The skilled physicist
5
6 TULANE STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
who seldom leaves his laboratory to visit a museum and who thinks
of hirnself as anything but a fine artist too often pays the price in
the end by finding his work unsatisfying and burdensome, and he
looks forward to retiring to a life of inactive leisure,- which will
not satisfy him either. Dewey offers us, by way of remedy for
this pervasive ill of our time, a consideration of art which breaks
down compartmentalization and reintroduces art into daily life and
enables one to look intelligently for an aesthetic dimension in any
completed activity. Certainly, it seems to me, there is much in this
diagnosis that makes good sense and urges us, therefore, to consider
carefully the nature of the remedy which he provides. The first
step in this investigation will naturally be to decide exactly what
kind of remedy we are being offered.
It is scarcely deniable that Dewey believed hirnself to be
elaborating a sound and adequate theory of aesthetics, one which,
consequently, should be preferred to other theories. It is not at all
certain to my mind, however, that Art As Experience 1 can be said
without qualification to present an aesthetic theory. Possibly Dewey
has misused the term 'theory'; at least the question merits examina-
tion. Such an examination, whatever its outcome, will be no dero-
gation from his obviously valuable contribution. This examination
will consist in a review of some of the basic notions in his aesthetics
and a characterization of the pattern in which they are presented.
Then upon this basis an estimate will be ventured.
Tm: CONTENT OF DEWEy's .AESTHETICS
To begin with, it is worth noting that there are two ways of

approaching aesthetics. The first way, generally associated with
empiricism, is to study the data or the objects commonly accepted
as possessing aesthetic value and then to attempt to make general-
izations describing the nature of this value or quality. Dewey does
not choose this way. Evidently he regarded the common opinion
as weil as the opinions of accepted experts as being so prejudiced
and enmeshed in false theory that they could no Iongerbe trusted
to recognize aesthetic data. Such a conclusion would naturally
follow from his belief that the estrangement of art from life is a
pervasive characteristic of our times. He selects, instead, the second
manner of approaching aesthetics. He begins with a highly elab-
orated philosophy and develops certain aspects of it which he
designates as aesthetic. He then assumes that any experience which
1 John Dewey, At't as ~erience (New York, 1934). My consideraüon of Dewey's
writings will be confined to this book.
AN ESTIMATE OF DEWEY'S ART AS EXPERIENCE 7
exemplifies these aspects is correctly to be recognized as aesthetic.

Since the aspects from which he takes his departure are or can be
rather generally and pervasively present in experience, it is not
difficult for him to conclude that aesthetic quality is or ought to be
present much more widely and frequently than it seems actually
tobe.
I do not wish to criticize this method of approaching aesthetics.
No doubt there is much to recommend it. Indeed it seems obvious
that if an apt choice of the aspects of experience be made initially,
then much of importance can be said about this kind of experience.
Let us accept this mode of procedure and go onto the more pressing
question concerning the kind of theory thus produced. What is the
nature and function of Dewey's Art as Experience?
In order to determine this question it will be indispensable to
outline certain of the morefundamental tenets of Dewey's aesthetic
doctrine. Dewey holds that the aesthetic "is the clarified and
intensified development of traits that belong to every normally
complete experience." 2
If we look for a listing of these traits and a precise formula-
tion of their nature we shall look in vain- as Dewey is careful to
indicate. Perhaps the best way of getting at the kerne! of his doc-
trine will be to come to an understanding of the meaning of the
key terms in the phrase just quoted. These key terms I taketobe
'experience' and 'complete' and probably also the expression 'clari-
fied and intensified'. First in order we shall consider the meaning
of 'experience'.
'Experience' somteimes refers merely to the process of under-
going something. We cannot believe, however, that stones ex-
perience the weather which they undergo. Certainly Dewey does
not mean to say that every occurrence or event which is passively
undergone is thereby experienced. The term is reserved rather for
those happenings in which the participants are changed as a result
of the experience. More especially the term is reserved for those
happenings or processes in which the participants are altered for
the better. 'Experience' suggests activity, a striving for better
adjustment. The term is complex, in other words, and includes a
value dimension. A word frequently used in conjunction with this
one, and which appears to underline the value element, is 'enrich-
ment'. A genuine experience is always an enriching experience.
A good illustration of the use of this term is provided within a
2 Op. cit.
generalized biological context. Experience goes on within and

because of an environment and is characterized by a continuous
interchange between the subject undergoing the experience and
the world around and within it. The subject is active and recep-
tive- he does and undergoes- with relation to this environment.
In the course of this continuous process the subject may achieve
and maintain an equilibrium, or he may fall out of adjustment with
his surroundings. One aspect of the state of disequilibrium is the
well-recognized sense of emotional tension, the awareness of dis-
satisfaction, the feeling of a problern needing solution. When in
the course of changing circumstances one does fall into disequili-
brium of some kind, then is the moment wherein intelligence may
be called upon to meet the problern and invent the means for
achieving a new adjustment. Here, then, are three factors or aspects
of experience which serve in a general way to describe its course.
They are: (a) the change into a state of disequilibrium; (b) the
emotional response to this situation, which provokes (c) the use of
problern solving intelligence to achieve a more viable equilibrium.
Perhaps one may think of these factors as the conditions which
divide the experiential continuum. The most aesthetically signifi-
can step in this process is the actual restoration of equilibrium.
Dewey holds that a more accurate general description of the
disequilibrium resulting from environmental obstacles, the result-
ant emotional tension, and the intelligent problern solving activity
leading to a new equilibrium can scarcely be provded, for life
situations are so various, their characteristics so multifold, that a
greater specificity of description cannot but distort some of them.
States of disequilibrium, for example, run a gamut which moves
all the way from the faint sense of disease occasioned by a slightly
chilly room to a cosmic homesickness of which the poets write. He
does add to this description, however, a number of adjectives which
designate his meaning somewhat more clearly. An experience, he
says, is not merely practical activity, nor is it routine, stereotyped,
nor capricious, nor unintegrated, nor impatient, nor insignificant,
nor incomplete activity. More affirmatively, he points out that an
experience is dramatic and has about it an air of reality and iden-
tity. But when he tries to indicate more positively and more
specifically what this reality and consumatory quality is which sets
an experience apart from experience at large, he is reduced to
citing examples which everyone must have undergone and to in-
veighing against intellectualist and abstract theories which inevit-
ably distort such experience and prevent our recognizing and
evaluating it justly. Nevertheless, he holds that it is possible to

characterize one kind of equilibrium to the extent of rendering it
more intelligible and more consistently recognizable. This equili-
brium is the sine qua non of aesthetic experience. 3 The character
which this phase of experience must possess in order to be aesthetic
is called completeness or wholeness. Accordingly it is necessary
to understand Dewey's usage of this term. His explanation, it will
be seen, rounds out his account of experience and at the same time
constitutes the basis of his theory of aesthetics.
The many attempts, he holds, made heretofore in history to
define the sense of satisfactory completeness of an experience, its
peculiarity aesthetic phase, have all erred through being too ab-
stract. Same aestheticians have attempted to relate this feeling of
completeness to an awareness of the sensuous surface of the world.
But Dewey points out "The sensible surface is never merely a
surface." 4 Others have sought to find it in the psychic elements
projected by the perceiver onto the objects which are experienced,
but this psychic component too is merely one (abstracted) factor of
the total situation which is man and environment becoming mu-
tually adapted. No. The subject-object dichotomy, Dewey insists,
has been the parent of false theories here as elsewhere. To make
a better theory we must return to concrete events and become
aware of the process of mutual adaption ending in a "felt harmony'•
which joins perception, thought, action, valuation in one enriched
actual moment. Through this awareness we recognize that com-
pleteness of an experience which is identical with the enjoyment
of aesthetic value.
A protracted effort is made to describe this sense of complete-
ness without making use of abstractions and dichotomies. lt is said
not to be present in merely practical nor merely intellectual ac-
tivity, both of which cut off the flow of experience before it reaches
completion. N either is it present in mechanical, capricious, nor
compulsive activity, nor in quiescence. We may observe, on the
positive side, that completeness is sensed in an experience which
is whole-heartedly enjoyed and which is felt to possess proportion
and grace, one which is feit and anticipated to achieve emotional
unity and to express important significance. None of these phrases,
though, even when elaborated with skill, provides a fully satis-
3 It is difficult to decide whether Dewey uses the term 'aesthetic experience' to
refer to an entire rhythmic unit of experience, running through tension, emotional
response, and resolution or equilibrium, or whether it refers only to the finally
achieved state of equilibrium.
4 Op. cit., p. 29.
factory designation of completeness. Therefore, in order to com-

municate his meaning, Dewey has recourse again to referring to
experiences which everyone is assumed to have had. This tech-
nique, of ostensive definition, though, is none too satisfactory a
way of rendering one's meaning clear. Even if it were certainly
true that everyone had in fact had such a complete experience, a
reader may be in doubt about which of his experiences is the com-
plete one unless he is able to grasp its tell-tale character a little
more securely. Sensingthis difficulty, Dewey engages in another
effort to express the nature of this kind of experience in terms of
its form or rhythm.
This rhythm is, of course, the rhythm of life. It is the move-
ment definitory of experience itself, from tension to composure,
from bafflement by an environmental challenge to the calm enjoy-
ment of successful integration. When this rhythm goes on to its
culmination and is not stopped in mid-career by some practical
demand or routine recognition, then it is accompanied by a release
of tension and of pent energies which constitutes the quality of
enjoyment recognized as the typical aesthetic emotion. This rhythm
is alsotobe recognized as the real meaning of form in art, subject-
matter or substance being its material condition. The artist, or
appreciator, is especially sensitive to this rhythm and knows that
the only thing which art can express "is some aspect of the relation
of man and his environment, and that this subject-matter attains
its most perfect wedding with form when the basic rhythms that
characterize the interaction of the two are depended upon and
trusted with abandon." 5
Dewey employs a multitude of expressions descriptive of this
rhythm, all of them indicating a movement from a state of priva-
tion and disorganization to a state of comparative fullness and in-
tegration. He speaks of the excitement of doing and the calm of
fulfillment, of novelty and order, of resistance and equilibrium, of
stir and tranquility. The artist, caring intensely for moments of
unison and calm, must cultivate the tensions which are the initia-
tory phase of this basic rhythm. It is to be emphasized, though,
that mere rhythm, form alone, is an unreal abstraction. Only when
these rhythms meet with the 'energies' of the world do they con-
stitute aesthetic form. It is possible, certainly, to impose an ex-
traneous and forced unity upon materials, but this is not aesthetic
.
form. Aesthetic form is a relation of energies; it is constituted
5 Op. cit., p. 151.
through overcoming resistances, through cooperative interaction.6

One character of this relation of energies can be described by
reinterpretation of the old means-ends distinction. In the aesthetic
experience means are not utilized and then cast aside when the
proposed end is reached. Means, rather, are cumulative. They
are not discarded but are conserved in the end. Means and ends
interpenetrate. Every stroke of the artist's brush is part of the
final product of his art; Heifitz' conception of the whole concerto
is present incipiently in its first notes. Dewey's term expressing
this relation is 'funded'. Means are funded in the end; one's recol-
lection and associations are funded in appreciation. Evidently this
notion of funding is intended to be a dynamic replacement for
the abstract distinction between means and ends, just as the sub-
stance form distinction is expected to disappear in the notion of
rhythmic or patterned energies; aesthetic form or rhythm is the
"recurrence of relationships that sum up and carry forward." 1
A striking trait of Dewey's consideration of completeness, as
of his parallel discussion of experience, is his usage of metaphor.
His use of the word 'rhythm' might be thought to be metaphorical,
except that he specifies his reference to the broad sense of recur-
rence. But it is worthy of note that he chooses a word to convey
his thought which seems to be intended to evoke our recollections
of music or the dance and thus, as it were, to bring an aesthetic
product before the reader. More obviously metaphorical is the term
1energies'. I canthink of no literalsensein which a portrait could
be called a pattern of energies except the sense in which a physicist
or a ehernist might use the phrase. One may have a sense of energy
when he views the portrait sympathetically. But is this sense or
feeling an indication of the literal presence of energies in the
balances and tensions of the painting? Evidently not - unless we
are willing to grant that the physicist's use of the term is meta-
phorical. The common physical meaning of the ward is not iden-
tical with Dewey's use of it, but Dewey does not define the dif-
ference. Indeed, he inveighs against definitions as part of the
apparatus of abstraction and is content, instead, to convey his ideas
by suggestion, metaphor, and indirection, and in the end by osten-
sive definition.
The final phrase of our opening citation, 'clarification and in-
tensification', does not add much that is new to the structure de-
veloped so far. Evidently these terms serve to emphasize certain
6 Op. clt., p. 161.
7 Op. cit., p. 166.
aspects of completeness. 8 Intensification refers to the building up

of emotion through those means which increase "felt significance"
and strangeness. Clarification evidently refers to absence of irrele-
vant and sentimentalized response and to sincerity or the unity of
of what is done and the purpose in mind. A significant and genuine
experience will be qualified in this manner. For the further in-
terpretation of these qualifications, Dewey reverts again to his doc-
trine of completeness of experience, which is described as form
interpenetrating matter, and this in turn is said to be an organiza-
tion of energies which, finally, is a rhythm. Experience integrated
in this way must also be clarified and intensified; and it is best
known through actually undergoing it.
A PATTERN IN DEWEY'S WRITING
A fairly definite pattern seems repeatedly to emerge from the

chapters of Art as Experience. Dewey commonly begins a discus-
sion (and sometimes closes it) with a declaration of the futility of
past philosophic effort. This futility is ascribed to the compart-
mentalizing effect of most reflective thought. Then he attempts
to provide a set of interpenetrating concepts and a dynamic lan-
guage which will avoid this compartmentalization and thus bring
thought and speech into a more intimate relationship with ex-
perience. In making this attempt, though, he seems inevitably to
betray a sense of dissatisfaction with his achievement. This is
evidenced by his constant return over the same theme with varying
phraseology, by his constant recourse to metaphor and by his de-
pendence upon illustrations, which seem to be meant to evoke an
aesthetic response (and thus to provide an ostensive definition of
his topic). Finally, as if in despair at the difficulty of embodying
his meaning in the language common to philosophers and aestheti-
cians, he inveighs against intellectualism in all its forms. It will
be_appropriate to make a few remarks about each of the four parts
of this pattern.
The philosophers whom he warns against are those generally
regarded as the major figures in the classic heritage. Plato, Aris-
totle, Kant are particular targets. All are held guilty of taking
their philosophic distinctions too seriously and applying them too
directly to life. Plato divided the sensible from the intelligible
realm. Aristotle divided form from matter, essence from substance.
Kant divided perception and understanding from will and both
8 Op. cit., pp. 176-177.
from feeling. These distinctions, he believes, have become accepted

as natural rifts valid for life as well as for thought. The effect has
been to dichotomize experience into artificial and non-communi-
cating islands; and men, reflecting this philosophic ancestry, are
divided into unintegrated and specialized compartments from which
only a dynamic and experientially orientated philosophy can save
them. Judging, however, from the actual accounts with which
Dewey provides us of these destructively abstract philosophies, it
is difficult to believe that their authors or anyone else could have
I
taken such philosophies seriously. It will willingly be permitted,
I think, that an original and creative mind should misinterpret his
predecessors. The matter is of more than passing interest in rela-
tion to Dewey's philosophy because it is symptomatic of his opinion
and evaluation of abstract and theoretical ventures generally. 9 This
evaluation suggests that the true direction of Dewey's interests are
not theoretical at all.
Any other conclusion than this is very difficult to square with
Dewey's philosophic acumen. Taken at its face value any sweep-
ingly anti-intellectualistic and irrationalistic philosophy may be
expected to be at least partly self-destructive. The production of
a philosophy which, if true, would destroy the very techniques by
which it is elaborated and communicated cannot be regarded as an
act of wisdom. Similarly, the production of a philosophic view
which, if put widely into practice, would render nugatory essential
components and historical figures which made the very production
of that philosophy possible can scarcely be thought to be an act of
justice or even of enlightened self-interest. Doubtless Dewey would
agree with these rather obvious points but would hold that he in-
tended to condemn only what is useless or destructive in philosophy
and its history. It is nevertheless true that he expresses many
sweeping condemnations of intellectual and theoretical endeavors
generally, so that it is difficult at times to see precisely what func-
tion he expected his philosophy to perform but easy to recognize
the stumbling blocks which he placed in its way. Perhaps the
9 Consider, to take a single illustration, Dewey's presentation of Aristotle. He be-

lieves that Aristotle regarded form as shape imposed upon chaotic matter and fails
entirely to note the relativity of these two principles of the Aristotelian analysis (See
pp. 115-116, op. cit.). He interprets 'character', as this term is used in th~ Poetics, as it
was understood in the eighteenth century theory of genres, i.e., as referring to the
moral traits not of an individual but of a type (p. 284, op. cit.). Hence Aristotle is
said to compartmentalize the individual in the pigeon-holes of his theory. But Dewey
ignores the whole of Aristotle's Metaphysics with its recognition of the basic character
of the concrete individual, its elaborate analysis of first substances, and its doctrines
of individual nature and signate matter. The presumed error of compartmentalization
could have been placed in a juster light.
function of Dewey's aesthetic philosophy can better be discovered

by weighing and interpreting it rather than by accepting its author's
judgment literally.
It seems to be clear that Dewey's express purpose is two-fold.
He wishes to provide a set of concepts which will at one and the
same time avoid the old distinctions, which he holds to be distort-
ing, and which will also offer a positive explanation for aesthetic
experience. There is good reason for believing, though, that his
manner of executing this two-fold purpese produced a stumbling
block in the form of a dilemma. The negative and critical portion
of his purpose is never far from the surface. Lying behind almest
all of his technical terms there is a criticism and a rejection of some
time honered distinction. I have noted already that the means-end
distinction is criticized and denied in the term 'funded'. Also the
sense-reason and the matter-form distinctions are denied by the
phrase 'organization of energies' and other closely related expres-
sions. In Opposition to the object-perception dichotomy, he argues
"perception and its object are built up and completed in one and the
same continuing operation." 10 All these rejections seem to be sum-
marized in his denial of the usefulness of the subject-object dis-
tinction for analyzing aesthetic experience. 11 He holds that the two
are so fully integrated in such experience that each disappears.
I shall omit mention of many other denials of distinctions which
possess only minor importance.
It is not unexpected, after rejecting the distinctions which for
centuries have been found useful in the tasks of understanding and
communicating, that Dewey should encounter great difficulty in
imparting his ideas. His consciousness of this difficulty bred an
anxiety in him which is evidenced in many ways. It is evidenced
by his extraordinary richness of metaphor, simile, and illustration.
For it appears to be doubtful that he would have feit so great a
proportion of these literary adjuncts to philosophic communication
to be necessary o~ desirable had he been confident that his mean-
ing was clear. Occasionally he has recourse to something very like
an evocation of the very experience which he is discussing perhaps
just because he is really concerned with something partially in-
volved in an actual experience and only partially connected with
theory.
His anti-intellectualist sentiments, reiterated like the chanting
of a chorus, may be confirmatory not merely of Dewey's estimate
10 Op. cit., p. 117.
11 Op. cit., p. 249.
of theories in aesthetics but of his real purpose in this book. These

anti-intellectualist sentiments are expressed both in his repudiation
of such distinctions asthat between thought and feeling/ 2 to which
reference has already been made, and by his rejection of the in-
tellectual tradition in philosophy, but likewise in his attempt to
avoid the use of specific elements and techniques of theory-forma-
tion. He speaks, for example, of the futility of approaching a sub-
ject matter through fixed concepts.13 He pointsout that conception
distinguishes things that belang together. 14 He stigmatizes efforts
to classify certain aesthetic phenomena as 'cerebral reverie' ,15 and
refers elsewhere to the 'fallacy of definition'. All of this is quite
in line with his estimate of Universals as illusions and his enthusi-
astic affirmation of a nominalistic metaphysics. 16 How, in the face
of these rejections not only of past theory but, more significantly,
of the apparatus and techniques of theory cnnstruction, can one
ever expect to forge a new theory?
THE NATURE oF DEWEY's AEsTHETrcs
In sum, then, both the content of this aesthetics and the per-
vasive characteristics of its presentation suggest strongly that Dewey
was not interested in producing a theory in the strict sense of the
word. A formulated theory, I should suppose, is a body of logically
interrelated propositions which refer to concepts. These concepts
on one hand are related to more general but fairly well defined
categories, and on the other are analytic of their data. A theory is
explanatory of its data when it can be shown that each datum is a
special case of some general (hence abstract) proposition within the
theory. Evidently a theory achieves explanatory power only in
virtue of its generality and abstractness. To the extent that this
view of the nature of theory is defensible, it becomes difficult to
understand how one can profess hirnself concerned to produce a
theory and at the same time to derogate from the value of distinc-
tions, classification, definition, and other abstract concepts. Pos-
sibly, too, a theorist could be expected to possess a doctrine of
universals which would pronounce them to be something other than
illusory. In view of his anti-intellecualist bias, which I suggest
12 Op. cit., p. 119.

13 Op. cit., p. 130.
14 Op. cit., p. 160.
15 Op. cit., p. 223.
16 Op. cit., p. 215.
goes so far as to be anti-theoretical, it is hardly surpnsmg that

Dewey should manifest a noticeable uncertainty about the success
of his efforts to communicate his ideas.
We can not, however, dismiss Dewey's writing as the product
of an unskillful and misguided anti-intellectualism. On the con-
trary, there is excellent reason for agreeing that he was rightfully
exercised both over the evidences of compartmentalization so promi-
nent in all aspects of modern life and over the share which the
sharply defined concepts of theories must have in eliciting and
preserving this compartmentalization. This concern, though, is
scarcely novel. Plato pointed to the disparity which must always
hold between theory and experience. The Mediaeval doctrine of
negative theology constitutes one attempt to correct for this dis-
parity. Bacon's Idols of the Theater, James' "vicious intellectual-
ism", A. N. Whitehead's doctrine of the fallacy of misplaced con-
creteness designate explicit recognitions of the same problem. Some
theorists in all ages have tended to become hypnotized by their
abstractions and have sometimes preferred their neat formulations
to comparatively fuzzy experience. This preference marks a dimi-
nution of the sense of reality and must end in a compartmentaliza-
tion of life in the image of clear and distinct concepts. Certainly,
it has also ended in the production of much second rate philosophy.
Clearly, this tendency ought to be recognized and corrected.
If Dewey's method for correcting tendencies to reify abstrac-
tions consists in discarding all abstract theory, then he is in a
dilemma. If he is not to be theoretical, then he must fail to explain
the data which he wishes to explain. If he is tobe theoretical, then
he risks distorting the data and contributing to compartmentaliza-
tion. He chooses to move between these horns by constructing a
kind of theory which, as he hirnself suggests, is neither sensuous
(i.e. restricted to the mention of particulars) nor intellectualistic
(i.e. abstract). I suggest that it may be construed as a kind of
inter-theory, occupying a position midway between a frankly ab-
stract theory and experience itself and manifesting something of
the characteristics of both. Perhaps it could be described in the
same way that Aristotle described his ethical theory, as being a
practical science which is related to a pure science as the carpenter's
knowledge of the square is related to the geometer's. This inter-
theory steps down abstract and theoretical knowledge to the point
where it is immediately applicable to action, and thus it can correct
for the distortions which a direct application of sharp and clear
concepts to experience might produce. If theoretical aesthetics is

analogaus to an abstract and codified physics, then Dewey's book
is something like a laboratory manual.
Dewey's apparent repudiation of abstractions may be inter-
preted as an allopathic remedy for undigested theory. He can
scarcely be believed to intend to reject theory in toto. Rather his
constant reference to the interpenetration of conceptions, to the
fusion of feeling and thought, to the funding of experiences, all
point to an effort to blunt the artificially sharp outline of concepts.
But they are blunted in order to bring them into a juster relation-
ship with life. Dewey has taken as his realm the twilight zone
between theory and experience. Seen in this light, his work takes
on a proportion and an importance which it might otherwise seem
to lack. The peculiar melting of concept into concept, of term into
term, evident in his thought and his style- recalling the blurred
outlines of Romantic paintings- is seen to be not merely a nega-
tive protest against something called intellectualism but on the
contrary to perform a necessary mediating function in a !arger
context of which both theory and experience are parts.
If this is indeed a viable estimate of the character and function
of Dewey's aesthetics, then its importance will certainly be widely
admitted. One is at a lass, however, to interpret the vehemence of
his polemic against intellectual techniques and tradition. Perhaps,
as so often happens with a man who is very close to his work, he
had not clearly conceived the part which his writings would play.
Had he evaluated its function more accurately, he might have modi-
fied and rendered more just-and hence more effective-his polemic
against the excesses within the intellectual tradition. Surely prac-
tice without an adequate abstract theory is merely blind routine.
Likewise, as Dewey wishes to emphasize, it is certain that a man
who wishes to achieve anything like a full understanding of art
would find it necessary at some point to leave abstract theory be-
hind and to submit hirnself to the special kind of theoretico-
practical disciplines which his work offers.
The logical (scarcely the pedagogical) order which an art
critic's education might be thought to follow would begin with a
period of study devoted to aesthetic theory - assuming one could
be agreed upon. Then it would move through just such a discipline
as this which Dewey provides: a reflectively appreciative study
which would lead him to expect error in the precise application of
theory to data and which would reinforce his reliance upon his own
perception and taste. Then finally, this education would require

a lengthy study of concrete works. This is not to suggest that
Dewey's book is less important to the aesthetician than to the critic.
Just as it would recall to the critic the relation of art and the
appreciative understanding of art to the value and meaning of the
rest of life, so it would remind the aesthetician of the need and
peculiar difficulties of applying his concepts to actual experience.
It remains to be seen, though, whether a successful program of
training of this kind would break down museum walls and let art
into life.
A RIGHT TO BELIEVE
Richard L. Barher
THErespect
growing dissatisfaction experienced by William James with
to the title of his own most popular essay has been
adequately documented,l and has been made the occasion literally
of further speculative writing. 2 Of the titles which he later seemed
to prefer over his original choice of "The Will to Believe" he most
vigorously mentioned "The Right to Believe." 3
It is not my intention in the present essay to add to this docu-
mentation; nor shall I attempt by scholarly comment or analysis to
discover 'the reasons' for James' discontent, beyond such specula-
tions as presently prevail with regard to them. I do anticipate,
however, that the notion of a "right to believe" may prove itself to
be a subject worthy of careful investigation, undertaken from a
point of view that, while not necessarily Jamesian, is generally
empirieist and pluralistic, especially in its conceptions of worth
and value.
I conceive the best way of putting the question to be: "When
has one a right to believe?" or "Under what conditions has a sen-
1 Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of Willia.m James (Boston,
1935), Vol. II, pp. 240-249. Also James Mark Baldwin, Between Two WaTS" (Boston, 1926),
Vol. II, pp. 212-214, 217-218. Also Henry James, ed., The Letters of Willia.m James
(Boston, 1920), Vol. II, pp. 207-209 (to L. T. Hobhouse).
2 Ralph Barton Perry, "The Right to Believe," Ch. V, pp. 170-208 of In The Spf.7"it
of Willia.m James (New Haven, 1938). (Published for Indiana University, being the
Powell Lectures, 1937).
3 The Letters, II, 207.
19
20 TULANE STUDIES IN PBILOSOPHY
tient being a right to believe?" To press this question forcibly,

and at the same time limit the endeavor of my essay to precisely
the answering of this question, I will state in advance the meanings
intended by certain key terms.
II
By "belief" I understand the act of asserting, accepting or
assenting to a given proposition as true. Belief thus has a two-fold
genesis: first, it presupposes an awareness of a proposed content,
amounting to an understanding in some degree of what content is
being proposed ;and second, it requires a decision or act of will on
the part of the believer, affirming that this proposed content is true
(of reality). These two genetic aspects may be called cognitional
and volitional.
Belief also has a two-fold (although 'logically single') con-
sequential relation: first, it is a sufficient basis for any overt
action which may be undertaken by the believer with respect to
the proposed content as understood; and second, in the event that
such actions as the belief requires in this respect should prove to
some extent impossible, the belief is thereby made to the same
extent untenable. These may be called the implicative relation (of
belief with respect to consequent action), and the rejective relation
(of action with respect to belief) respectively.
It can be seen from the foregoing how much of my conception
of the meaning of belief is drawn from J ames' own psychological
and pragmatic theses, and how much is independent of any explicit
statements of his. While I think this latter portion not inconsider-
able, I do feel the main thrust of my argument to be compatible
with the spirit of his general position. That a belief is characterized
by these aspects and relations I would defend independently; al-
though this essay is not the ·place for such a defense on any major
scale, some further clarificatory remarks and questions are appro-
priate.
First, what could be meant by a belief without the cognitional
aspect- without any awareness or understanding of what it was
that was supposed to be believed? Admittedly such understanding
may vary greatly bothin degree and extent; but some understand-
ing, however vague, narrow or even erroneous, must there be if a
belief can be said to exist. Moreover, this apprehended and specific
content must be singled out and designated as the content of the
A RIGHT TO BELIEVE 21
given belief. Failing this, the formal statement expressing belief,

in language, betrays an abstract emptiness far exceeding that of the
formulas of even logic and mathematics. "X is Y" embodies little
enough content as a logical formula, but it does embody some; what
this is can be made more or less evident by logical analysis, show-
ing, for example, the differences between this formula and "X is
included in Y" with regard precisely to the content inextricably
bound up with such relatively abstract formulas. But what dizzy-
ing emptiness is discovered if we enquire into the meaning of "I
believe 'Xis Y'." Hereisa formula made by its prefix so abstract
and devoid of content as to defy my attempts, at any rate, to dis-
cover any. The reasons for this may become clearer when we
consider in detail the implicative relations of belief to action. For
the present it may be well to pass along, remembering an anony-
maus witticism describing a fideistic fool: "He believes fervently,
but not anything in particular."
If we should have, next, a content apprehended in some degree,
but lack the decision or act which affirms this content as true of
the real, is it not clear that such apprehended content is merely
what we conventionally call a proposition? The cognitional with-
out the volitional is not yet the believing because it has taken no
action with respect to the apprehended content. Belief is the suf-
ficient condition of overt and external action, but it is at the same
time action in its own right-the first action of a self-conscious
being, aware that it is aware, aware of the propositional nature of
its apprehended content, and then deciding that this content is to
be affirmed of reality. Belief is thus, as internal action, never
directly observable by another person, and not always so by the
believer, but it is for this no less a specific kind of action. And
without the volitional element described, no such internal act on
the apprehended and proposed content would be possible.
The attempt to clarify or describe briefly the two consequential
relations between belief and overt action is somewhat more for-
bidding. While the conception of these relations owes much to the
pragmatic theory of meaning and truth, it is not reducible without
residue to the status of a mere corollary of that theory. Let it
suffice for the present toremarkthat these two relations are under-
stood as being mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive with
respect to the universe of discourse of beliefs: "For every belief,
in each discernible particular, either the belief leads to a possible
action, or the impossible action hypothetically required leads to
the rejection of the belief, in that particular." Of course, if all

action required by a particular belief in every discernible respect,
were to prove impossible, the 'belief' as a whole would be rejected,
which is to say that it would no Ionger be believed. But this must
not be taken to mean that it never was a belief, for the temporal
or dynamic aspect of this matter can not be ignored or denied.
III
The intention of the other key term can be more briefly defined.
By a "Right"-e.g., to do a certain thing, or to act in a certain way-
I will understand the absence of an awareness of any incompatible
duty-i.e., to do a conflicting thing, or to act in any contrary way.
This 'definition' is deliberately negative, and deliberately made to
be as broad and comprehensive as possible; subsequent specifica-
tions can be made as needed, of, e.g., moral right, legal right, con-
scious right, and the like. ·
IV
But now, still short of answering the central question, even
though the intended meanings of the major conceptions have been
set forth, it will be necessary to remind ourselves of the theory of
values maintained or implied by James. The central text here, I
taketobe "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life," 4 especially
sections II and III. 6
In these sections James is concerned to discover, 6 " • • • what we
mean by the words 'obligation', 'good', and 'ill'." He deems this
question a metaphysical one; and of course he does not cast his
enquiry in the axiological mold which I prefer to employ. For
purposes of reference, his reasoned conclusions may here be epi-
tomized: originally, goods and evils have no existence in a merely
physical universe, but enter it only with the advent of sentience. 7
The feeling or consciousness that a thing is good is sufficient to its
being good, to the possessor of that consciousness. And, as sen-
tience is to goodness, 'claim' or demand' is to obligation. 8 To make
a claim, to demand, is to create de facto an obligation; that very
claim ought to be satisfied, and this becomes an ineradicable fact
of the moral universe inhabited by the claimant. Resolving these
4 The Will To Believe (New York, 1937), 184-215.
5 189-208.
Ibid.,
6 Ibid., 189.
7 Ibid., 190 ff.
8 Ibid., 194-5.
ideas, then, under what James calls the 'casuistic question', 9 it be-
comes possible to assert (1) that "the essence of good is simply to
satisfy demand .. ,"10 and (2) that our highest obligation is "to
satisfy at all times as many demands as we can." 11
Taking these paraphrases and quotations as adequate to found
an axiology which is at the sametime an ethic, I am now ready to
develop an answer to what I have called the central question of the
present essay. That this answer must have an ethical or axiological
frame of reference if it is to be true to the spirit of James, I hope
to have made evident by my observations so far. And that this
ethical framework will give me a basis for a general thesis, of which
the main contentions made in "The Will To Believe"12 are but par-
ticular specifications, I shall try to make clear in what follows.
Tobegin with, our rights are determined and circumscribed by
our duties, which are existentially prior. Even in the 'moral soli-
tude'18 contemplated by James, both rights and duties would exist,
because claims would exist, and with them, obligations giving rise
to all the rest. A sentient being has a de facto obligation to
satisfy every claim known to or felt by him; but as these (claims)
are usually embroiled in mutual conflict and opposition, he has an
aver-arehing duty to set upon that course of action which, as he
sees it, is best calculated to satisfy as many of them as possible.
This is his duty, and all else not in conflict with it is his right.
At this point in the argument, it becomes necessary to consider
and, I hope, allay a suspicion which might naturally arise. Does
the phrase above-"all elsenot in conflict with it"-describe a real
class of possible actions? In other words, will there be courses of
action, open and possible to the sentient being in question, which
are not in any way in conflict with the duty ascribed to him? To
this question I think we may answer with confidence that there
usuaUy will be. At any rate, in a 'pluralistic universe' there is no
evident a priori reason why there should not, in any particular
case, be any; and we have experience to assure us that in many
known instances there have been many such courses. Surely we
may always expect to find such, unless we would reject out-of-hand
all of the following considerations: the finitude and partiality of
sentient awareness of claims; the limited capacity of sentient beings
for clearly perceiving their single 'over-arching duty'; the internal
9 Ibid., 198 ff.
10 Ibid., 201; James' italics.
11 Ibid., 205; James' italics.
12 Ibid., 1-31.
13 Ibid., 190-192.
indeterminism of individual events; the seeming independence of

groups and sequences of events from other groups and sequences;
and the vast plurality of sentient beings, each with some wholly
internal and independent reaches of awareness.H The defense of
any of these conceptions, it seems to me, will if successful save the
argument for the real existence of rights, as defined above. And
if a case should be pressed in which no one of them seemed to be
defensible, then the worst we should have to say would be that
in that particular case no rights existed, but only duties. This
would be in some senses distressing, but it is surely far from
unthinkable.
Returning then to the main theme of my argument, if a sen-
tient being has a right to engage in any action not in conflict with
his duty as that is present to him at the moment of consideration,
we may apply this general formula to the specific kind of action
which is belief to determine the circumstances in which sentient
beings have a right to believe.
Remernhering that belief has been presented as having its ori-
gins in cognition and volition, and its consequences in overt action,
it will be clear that 'claims' can bear upon it from all of these
directions. Therefore to speak of the values, goods or claims perti-
nent to believing will in no way Iimit us to the consideration merely
of the consequences of belief, as is so often charged against J ames.
A possible or contemplated act of belief may be seen, as may any
act, as a focus of converging claims; every one of these claims
constitutes a de facto obligation upon the sentient being at the
focus, and they all participate in some aver-arehing composite whose
attainment and satisfaction can be seen to be the duty of the poten-
tial believer. Then when has he a right to believe? Directly
applying the formula, we may answer, "When the act of belief
would not conflict with the presented duty of the sentient being
whose capacity for belief and awareness of duty are here conjoined."
A right to believe a given proposition, then is defined clearly,
if negatively, as the absence of any duty not to believe the proposi-
tion in question. Obviously we must now seek to understand why
and how such a duty might exist, and when not.
14 See the following statement in "The Types of Thinking," Lecture. I in A PLuraL-
isttc Universe (New York, 1916), p. 34. "But whereas absolutism thinks that the said
substance becomes fully divine only in the form of totality, and is not its real self in
any form but the an-form, the pluralistic view which I prefer to adopt is willing to
believe that there may ultimately never be an all-form at all, that the substance of
reality may never get totally collected, that some of it may remain outside of the largest
combination of it ever made, and that a distributive form of reality, the each-form, is
logically as acceptable and empirically as probable as the all-form commonly acquiesced
in as so obviously the self-evident thing." I am speaking of actions, duties and rights
in this same spirit.
If we agree, following the empirical and plural theory of goods

and obligations, that everything which satisfies a claim or demand
is good, and that as many as possible ought to be satisfied, it will
follow that each of us has a duty, when faced with alternative
courses of action, to prosecute vigorously and effectively that course
which seems most likely to result in the greatest possible total of
satisfactions to all the claimants whom we can foresee to be con-
cerned with or affected by our actions. Calculate this how we will,
giving appropriate weights to such notions as future good and
present evil (i.e., future satisfaction and present frustration of
claims) and the like, I think we can not on this theory of value
account our duty to be any less rigorous than this. And I do not
at present see reasons for making it any more.
If this is acceptable, our next step is to articulate the meaning
of a prohibition-of a duty not to act in a given way . This would
be in force, I shouldthink, when the given way of actionwas known
to be in some specific sense contrary to, or in conflict with, a posi-
tive duty. In other words, if our duty were to perform action X,
aimed at the achievement of satisfactions (a,b,c,d,e), and if this
composite has been adjudged by us to be the greatest compossible
total, then we have a duty not to engage in an action such as Xy,
whose achievements would include only the satisfactions (a,b,c,d,-),
or perhaps even (a,b,q,d,e), where "q" was calculably less a satis-
faction than the "c" which it replaced. But what of an action, M,
which would achieve satisfactions (r,s,t), where M is in no way in
conflict with X, and (r,s,t) do not bear upon (a,b,c,d,e) or are per-
haps not even comparable or alternatively calculable? I should
say that a sentient being confronted with X, Xy, and M, has a duty
to do X, a duty not to do Xy, and a right to do M.
To understand how this structure applies to acts of belief, it
will be necessary to see clearly what claims and satisfactions are
relevant to or likely to be affected by such acts. Generally, these
claims seem most properly able tobe treated under the three cate-
gories I have established above, the cognitional, volitional, and
consequential.
V
The cognitional claims can best be divided into two headings,
the perceptual and the rational. Most of the direct data of our
senses call for and receive our credence; and at the same time a
faculty in us insists, at least, that our various beliefs must not
openly contradict themselves or one another, or, perhaps, goes so

far as to hope that they may be wholly integrated into a unified
theoretical system.
The claims of perception are not to be dealt with frivolously.
While it is true enough that "Seeing is believing" appeals without
modification only to the completely naive, it must nevertheless be
conceded that with suitable modification, usually easy enough to
achieve, the great bulk of our sensory awareness commands and
receives credence from most of us. It was this insight which sup-
ported most of British empiricism, and which gives Hume especially
his persuasive strength; but it is easy to overplay a strong hand,
and when 'empiricists' claim that all sense-data and only sense-
data deserve such credence, they exceed proper limits. For not
only do the other claims noted exist insistently, but even within
the realm of the perceptual we are prevented by conflicting claims
from simply believing all that is presented. I do not mean merely
that we are impeded or deterred by logical considerations and subtle
analyses; rather, some of our sensory awarenesses call upon us to
believe that other sensory awarenesses, directly and immediately,
are false; they include that falsity as an ineradicable part of their
own content. Give an observer two sensory experiences that could
be shown only by logical analysis to contradict one another; if he
admitted belief in the content of both, we could at warst call him
unthinking or irrational; and if he were a confident enough sen-
sationalist, our charge might not disturb him. But present him with
two perceptions, one of which includes within its content the repu-
diation of the other (e.g., the simultaneaus 'seeing' of the broken
stick and 'feeling' it tobe straight and whole, or almost any similar
simple and direct illusion), and if he proclaims belief in both of
these we should impute to him too little credence in his senses
rather than too much.
Some of our perceptions, then, can not claim our belief because
of conflicts; still others do not make any claim because of their
own weakness, confusion or general inadequacy. But of those which
do claim it, some must be denied assent for reasons lying outside
the perceptual field. One source of these is of course the inde-
pendent claims made by our reason. These are made to us, and
by us, as thinking beings, asking that each belief be consistent and
coherent within itself, and that all our beliefs join in some kind or
degree of over-arching unity, varying from the above-noted mini-
mum of 'non-contradictoriness' to a maximum of 'integration into
a set-theoretical system' which would leave no singlebelief separate
A RIGHT TO BELIEVE
or underivable. V ary though it does, this claim seems to appear

in every one of us in some degree. In some of us, it is weak enough
to be over-ridden by small perceptual, volitional or consequential
considerations. In others it achieves such stature as to overpower
the forces of sensation, will and consequence combined. Vast
though this problern is, and intriguing, it must here suffice to
note the existence of this sentiment and the making of its claims
upon our capacities for belief, with widely variant force. 15 And
finally, it may be remarked that these claims, like those of percep-
tion, may well be frustrated or ignored to some degree by any
believer, depending largely upon the forces of competing claims
and the resolution which he chooses to make.
VI
At first glance, to speak of "the claims of volition" upon belief
may seem redundant, especially to those who are sympathetic to
the present argument. But while it is true that all three of these
terms-claim, volition, belief---are very closely drawn tagether by
their areas of meaning, it is nevertheless important to discriminate
the moments in an act of belief. That there is a difference and an
independence of function between volition and belief is surely
obvious. We do not always and automatically believe what we
wish to believe, nor wish always to believe what we do; and here
again I think I am simply remarking that the claims made upon
belief from this direction must often go unsatisfied or be left un-
made, in the end, because our final action will usually be a com-
promise based on the resolution of forces exerted by all the claims
feit by the sentient believer. Volition is the source of only one
part of these claims; but it is a legitimate and valid source, and I
think it is for the refusal to recognize and admit in any degree
whatsoever this legitimacy that James justly excoriates Clifford
and those who second him in appealing to the exclusiveness of the
claims of 'the evidence' in determining belief.16
Of course, any extreme voluntarist who cares to do so can
translate the whole idea of 'response to claims' or 'resolution' into
some transcendent notion of Will, or Decision, or whatever he may
choose to name it. But giving this concept a volitional name hardly
makes the fact a volitional fact any more than, in Mr. Lincoln's
homely example, " ... calling a horse's tail a leg ... can make it
one." And if we were to insist upon calling the whole resultant
15 Cf. "The Sentiment of Ratlonality," in The WiU to BeUeve, esp. pp. 83-'16.
16 Ibid., pp. 8-11 et .JKUrim.
volitional, we should then have to find some new terminology for

the lower-order exercise of will, wishing and the like; for the total
clearly includes elements of the cognitional and consequential
aspects described, integrated with but other than the volitional on
this lower level.
Let it come to this, then-our will, articulated however it may
be, as wish, desire, intention, determination, hope or otherwise, does
make claims upon us as sentient believers. These claims are dif-
ferent in kind and separate in source from the claims of cognition.
Both kinds of claims have been defended as legitimate, or, indeed,
as actual; and beyond their actuality no further justification can
be demanded by an empirieist axiology. If a sentient being were,
as a believer, to engage in no further action-that is, even on the
hypothesis that belief had no consequences in our overt acts-we
would still correctly impute to him a duty, as believer, to satisfy
as many of the claims of both kinds as possible. His rights to
believe would then exist everywhere such duty, and its corollary
prohibitions, failed to bear upon him; but these rights would
already be bounded and determined by the duties established in the
name of the maximal satisfaction of two independent kinds of
claims. The third and last variety now constrains these boundaries
further.
VII
Beliefs issue in overt actions, wherever they can. Where they
can not for reasons of intrinsic or essential impossibilities resident
in the implied actions themselves, the beliefs are called upon to give
way before the reflective and rejective force of the itnpossibilities.
Thus in two ways our actions submit their claims upon us as sen-
tient believers. For, in addition to the rejective claims just noted,
where actions of a certain kind are called for and are not otherwise
forthcoming, we need beliefs adequate to sustain such actions. It
literally becomes a part of our duty, or one among our several
duties, to believe whatever it is necessary to believe in order that
we may do what we must or ought to do; just as truly as it is our
duty not to believe such propositions as would require us to attempt
the doing ofthat which ought not to or can not be done.
VIII
I hope that the preceding arguments have made clear my con-
ception of the main sources of the claims actually made upon the
sentient believer. We perceive, we think, we wish and intend, we
act out our intentions or are frustrated; and in the midst, literally,
of all this plurality of aspects and functions, we believe. The cata-
log is not exhaustive in its detail, by any means, but I think it is
representatively complete as given under the three generic head-
ings of cognition, volition and action. And if further thought should
discover another general source of claims upon belief, the over-all
argument need only be expanded to accommodate it. This much,
at least, it seems must be admitted. These claims, in their radical
plurality, do exist, are made, and can be found in experience. The
believer has a duty to satisfy as many of them as possible when he
accepts or endorses any proposition as true, or refuses to do so.
Any less concern on his part is dereliction. There is no room for
such failure in the arguments to be found above, nor in the stren-
uous position maintained by James. But there is room for more,
which is to say, for other beliefs. This area of 'more' or 'other' is
the area of our right to believe. Wherever a given belief can not
be shown to diminish or oppose the satisfaction of relevant claims,
nor to achieve within its domain of significance satisfactions cal-
culably inferior to those achievable by some other belief, then we
have a right to the given belief. The right exists in 'the silence of
duty', as indeed many have understood legal right to exist in the
silence of the law to any contrary effect. But the right to believe
is never so subject to chance and caprice as are man's rights under
law. For the world as we find it in experience is a vast hard com-
plex of sentient beings whose perceptions, reasonings, volitions and
actions bear constantly and complicatedly upon themselves and each
other. Every 'line of bearing' is the locus of a possible or actual
claim, and every claim is the creator of a de facto obligation, as weil
as a possible occasion of goodness. Thus our duties, as believers
alone, are tremendously complex and constraining. But within the
interstices of all the complexity and constraint, and outside it too,
there is yet much room for our rights as believers.
It was the defense of these rights, I am sure, which impelled
James to the writing of "The Will To Believe." The two central
examples which he developed in his essay can now clearly be placed
in the framework I have established. He was especially concerned
with our rights to believe in cases where either (1) the absence or
inconclusiveness of determining evidence seemed a permanent con-
dition, while the optionwas forced; or (2) a likelihood existed that
belief could play a vital role in its own verification, by helping to
realize its desired object.
In the former case, my account would simply be that the cogni-

tional claims were weak or largely unmade, so that the volitional
and consequential assumed their moment. In J ames' language,
"Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an
option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that
cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds. .."17
In the second case, the believer's " ... faith acts on powers above
him as a claim, and creates its own verüication."18 "And where
faith in a fact can help create the fact, .." 19 it would surely be folly
to withhold the faith if the fact were desired. This fits into my
structure as a case where the claims of action are paramount; voli-
tion and cognition are not wholly excluded of course, but do defer
their claims in large measure; volition has simply the resultant of
action as its content; and especially deferential is cognition, since
the only way of making the 'fact' available to it for apprehension
is for the believer to embrace the belief and engage in the implied
action. That these two cases stress the claims of volition and action
is surely not surprising, for it was James' concern to defend these
claims against the already existing prejudice in favor of the claims
of cognition; he was by no means insensitive to these latter, but
merely feit they had been more than adequately championed
already.
Thus, I believe James' deep and provocative insights may be
weil taken as the occasion of further fruitful speculation, and I
hope that the foregoing argument and analyses will have made
some contribution to the rounding-out and strengthening of his
general position. It is further to be hoped that that "divine dis-
content" which he identified so closely with the spirit of philosophic
enquiry at its best will impel others to pursue these speculations
to yet more satisfactory conclusions, which shall in their turn give
way before the restless curiosity and wonder of an enquiring mind.
17 "Will to Believe," p. 11. (Italiclzed fn original).
18 Ibid., p. 24.
19 Ibid., p. 25. (Italiclzed fn original).
VIENNESE POSITIVISM IN THE UNITED STATES
J ames K. Feibleman
T HE affirmative pursuit of truth is more profitable than the

negative elimination of error, for there is more of the former
than we could ever reach and more of the latter than we should
hope to avoid. Known truth is scarce, while accepted error is
plentiful; and to spend all available time in rejecting one set of
falsehoods would merely mean to hand on the tradition to the
promulgator of new ones. Hence refutation is a form of self-
indulgence even though the blows be struck in the interest of truth
and blocks on the road to inquiry have to be removed by someone.
Nietzsche's maxim, "where you cannot love, there should you-pass
by," is good, yet need not preclude all criticism if it be performed
in the spirit of condemning the sin rather than the sinner. Logical
positivism has a value and has made a contribution; but it is rather
the excess and the claim of absoluteness that is to be questioned
here.
A proper name for what is called 'logical positivism' would
have been 'scientific absolutism.' The original theses have been
shifted; some of the subjectivism of Carnap's Logische Aufbau has
been abandoned,t fo1· instance, while it is clear from Wittgenstein's
later work (and the work of the linguistic analysts who have been
influenced by it) that his first book did not mean to him what it
has to Reichenbach, Carnap, Feigl and Frank, to name but a few of
those who have brought logical positivism to the United States. It
1 It should never have been begun if, as Carnap thought, he was following Wittgen-
stein. See L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London, 1922), 4. 1121.
31
might be better now to call their enterprise Viennese positivism.

The influences of Moore and Frege, to which WUtgenstein had been
susceptible, were not extended to his followers, while the similari-
ties to be found in some of the work of Peirce is not an atmosphere
which they feel congenial. On the whole the Viennese positivists
have stood their ground firmly, nodding in the direction of science
and shaking their heads against metaphysics. And they have been
as certain in the one case as in the other.
The position of the positivists is both theoretical and practical.
Since the practical isamatter of exigency and importunateness we
had better deal with it first, and then, in the second part of the
essay, turn to more theoretical considerations.
I
The practical activities of the Viennese positivists are to an
alarming extent polemical; they areintolerant in the extreme, and
all-presumptive. The present-day campaign theses of the Viennese
positivists could be stripped down, perhaps, to three.
Theseare as follows:
(1) The only valid knowledge is scientific knowledge;
(2) The only valid interpretation of scienti:fic knowledge is
that affered by the Viennese positivists, and
(3) The interpretation of the positivists is logical meta-
science.
Let us examine these separately.
(1) The scientific claims advanced by the Viennese positivists
in the name of science exceed anything put forward by the scien-
tists, and indeed may be said to be opposed to what the scientists
themselves implicitly assert. It is the attitude of certainty-one
might say the German attitude 2-that is the most objectionable.
Certitude in science, it has been pointed out time and again, s is
alien to the spirit of science; if there is one thing that can be said
in general of the scientists it is that they are never absolutely sure
of their own position. Absoluteness of philosophical foundations
is more religious than scientific, and the Viennese positivists are
in some danger of making a religion of science. Scientists them-
2 The attitude is characteristically German though of course not exclusively Ger-
man.
3 As for instance by Peirce's fallibUism. and by Whitehead. Cf. CoUected Papers
,of Chartes Sanders Petrce (Cambridge, Mass., 1931-1935, Harvard Universlty Press)
1.7; 1.9; 5.451; 1.10; 6.181; 1.137; 6.603; 5.587. Whltehead, quoting Cromwell, Sclence and
the Modern Wortd (New York, 1926), Ch. I.
VIENNESE POSITIVISM IN THE UNITED STATES 33
selves are much concerned with art, often with religion, and in
general they may be said in no way to indicate that they regard
scientific knowledge as the only valid form which knowledge takes.
Such claims most leave to the self-appointed high priests of science,
the Viennese positivists. It is a case again of "we can take care of
our enemies, the Lord protect us from our friends."
On logical grounds it would be absurd to suppose that there is
any discipline which does not have presuppositions. The scientific
method in sofaras it is an orderly procedure takes certain proposi-
tions for granted, if only that there is such a thing as the scientific
method and that there is a world in which it can be applied with
significant results. But these are philosophical truths themselves
implying metaphysically significant assertions which can be denied
only if we are prepared to deny also the reliability of the method
which they support. If the Viennese positivists are to have their
way, then we shall have to deny the validity of such presupposi-
tions, and we shall have to throw ourselves upon the scientific
method by adopting either a program of blind faith or else one
which limits itself to piagmatic justification. And in both cases
we can kick away the ladder once we have climbed the wall. lt is
difficult to see how we shall need the Viennese positivists for these
programs. Science cex:tainly did exist before the Vienna Circle;
positivists did not invent 'it; and there were, too, those whose ap-
proval of science would ad:rp.it of no criticism: fanaticism is not
new, and not new, either, is the harm which it does to the cause
it would serve.
What the Viennese positivists claim, then, is that what the
scientists cannot producein the way of reliable knowledge cannot
be produced. The position is chiefly negative. lt does not assert
anything for the Viennese positivists themselves, only for the scien-
tists. What the Viennese positivists can do chiefly is to claim the
preeminence of science. But there are other forms of knowledge.
One example should suffice, and for this purpose we will choose
art. Can it be denied that art does give us knowledge, even though
it be knowledge of a different sort from that of science? Have we
learned nothing from Shakespeare, from Aeschylus, from Homer,
from Dostoyevsky, from Bach or Cezanne? The point is too obvious
to strain. Artistic knowledge does not conflict with scientific
knowledge; they do not explore the same areas, but both have
areas to explore.
The institution of science is not the first nor the only institu-
tion for which claims of preeminence and superiority have been
put forward. The story is an old one. It has happened that the
Church and the State, among others, have at one time and place
or another maintained authority over all other institutions. The
Church in the Middle Ages, and the state in periods of absolute
monarchy, have held themselves supreme. And now the same
assertion of absolute authority is advanced in the name of science,
only this time with a difference. The claims of other institutions
have been advanced from within, while the claim of science comes
from without; for the Viennese positivists themselves arenot scien-
tists. Perhaps by putting forward a claim for science the Viennese
positivists hope to identify themselves with it and share in its glory.
They could hardly have made a poorer case. The peculiarity of
science is that alone among institutions it has never claimed abso-
luteness or infallibility. Science is a late comer in the field of
inquiry; its success has been astounding-astounding for the very
reason that it has not regarded its own findings as final. The
modesty of its claims, the very thing which marks it off from other
institutions, is being abrogated in its name by the Viennese posi-
tivists. There is no reason to accept their argument, for they do
science an injustice in speaking for it, a disservice which it ill
deserves.
(2) The Viennese positivists are not scientists yet they pre-
sume to speak for science. One would think that on such a premise
they would have deserted philosophy altogether, including even
that philosophy which consists almost entirely in the approval of
science, for work in the scientific laboratory; but this they have
not done. Thus they have been placed in a position in which they
feel keenly their insecurity, and so they seek to bolster themselves
in several ways. The first is to make exaggerated claims for science,
as we have already noted. The second is to turn to attack philoso-
phy in the traditional sense. Taking off from Wittgenstein, 4 the
attack begun on metaphysics by, say Carnap, for instance,& is still
being carried on by lesser members of the troupe. Herbert Feigl
writes as late as last year, "My positivistic or logical empirieist
background, I must admit, may have made me somewhat allergic
to the term 'metaphysics'." 8 Quite apart from the popular and in
this case surprisingly vulgar misuse of the term "allergic", in its
intolerance it reminds one of nothing so much as the Nazipoet who
is reported to have said that whenever he heard the word "culture",
he reached for his Lueger.
4 See the Tractatus, 4.003.
5 See for instance R. Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Synta.:r (London, 1935, Kegan
Paul), Ch. I, Sec. 2; The Unity ot Sctence (London, 1934, Kegan Paul), p. 21 ff.
6 Phtlosophica1 Studies, Vol. V, No. 2 (February, 1954), p. 17.
Despite the bad manners of the Viennese positivists, is it not

possible that they are after all speaking somewhat more narrowly
than we have assumed? For the type of metaphysics they mean
when they attack metaphysics in general may well be the only type
they know, and this is the German metaphysics of the transcen-
dental and subjective variety. The battle between the Viennese
positivists and metaphysicians proves then tobe an interneeine war
between some absolutists in Vienna and one movement in Ger-
many; it does not concern the whole field of metaphysics, since
there exist great areasofit of which the positivists seem to remain
in ignorance. So!lle German metaphysicians are guilty as charged,
Hegeland Fichte, for instance; but can we allow them to stand for
the whole of the metaphysical enterprise?
It is difficult to estimate whether the Viennese positivists have
chosen to make transeendental and subjectivistic metaphysics stand
for the entire field of metaphysics because they are ignorant of
other types or because they wished to put the case for metaphysics
as weakly as possible. In either case they seem to be more against
what they are against than they are for what they are for. For the
attack on metaphysics by nominalists of one stripe or other has been
popular for some time, and it is conducted in other quarters also by
those who would rather run than read. And in the second way the
technique is time-hallowed, for to indulge in the form of argument
whereby you choose to make yourself appear big by making your
Opponent appear small is a familiar one though not favored by
those who seek the truth wherever it is tobe found.
There are other approaches which are more tentative and ex-
ploratory and less finalistic: the possibility of metaphysics as
programmatic inquiry. Do the Viennese positivists know, for in-
stance, of the kind of metaphysics advanced by Meinong, Husserl
and Hartmann in Germany, and by Peirce in this country and
Whitehead in England, as well as a host of others, a metaphysics
which endeavors to take empiricism into account? This seems un-
likely, and in conversations with some of the Viennese positivists
it is possible to gather that such a conception is beyond their ad-
mission. They are rejecting what they do not know, and condemn-
ing a field wholesale when they have become familiar with only
one part of it. It is the old-fashioned German metaphysics, and
this alone, which they are condemning. Occasionally there is a
suspicion that what they are opposing is not a subject-matter but
a word. It is 'metaphysics' they wish to get rid of and not specula-
tions concerning that to which metaphysics refers, for they under-

take some of the same speculations themselves though calling them
something eise, phenomenological analysis, say.
Speaking as a metaphysician, one is tempted to observe that
the insecurity of the Viennese positivists has cost them their phil-
osophic temper, and so it seems obvious that they are much more
concerned with what (they assert) we cannot do than with what
they can. They only make a profession of pointing with pride to
what the scientists do. The scientists do science, the positivists
only point with pride. We shall return to a discussion of this dis-
tinction. Here it is necessary to say that such intolerance not only
does not fit the philosophic temper, it is also hardly at home in a
democracy. Such German absolutism from Austria (and after all
it is not the worst case we know of in which German absolutism
has come from Austria) is boring from within in philosophy and
would threaten to undermine the whole philosophic enterprise.
There are actual cases of departments of philosophy in which meta-
physicians predominate, where a Viennese positivist has been hired
in order to make sure that contemporary schools are adequately
represented. Are there any cases where the Viennese positivists
having captured a department have hired a metaphysician for the
same reason?
The Viennese positivists assert that their interpretation of
science is the only valid one; but has not everybody claimed the
success of science? Getting on the bandwagen is after all not
exactly an exercise invented by the Viennese positivists. Every-
body seems to have spoken for science, and claimed its findings for
their own. Let us Iook at one other example.
The absurd claims of the Soviet Union that Russians invented
or discovered everything that was ever invented or discovered by
scientists is so weil known and so often repeated as to need no
documentation. It is startling to find such chauvinistic nationalism
in a country whose official philosophy is Marxism, the open enemy
of nationalism. The Russians (and of course especially the com-
munists) discovered the airplane, the theory of evolution, the atomic
bomb, and what not, if we are to believe them. What they do not
see, of course, is that by their very claims they have exposed a
fatal misunderstanding of the character of science, which belongs
to no one people or national state but is an human enterprise in
which thus far certainly Western European countries have excelled.
VIENNESE POSITIVIBM IN THE UNITED STATES
It is difficult not to be sorry for the poor scientists themselves

in all this, for they seem the only ones who are unwilling to claim
credit for their discoveries. They are more interested in practicing
the method than in making claims based on it, and the findings
are never allowed by them to stand in the way of further investi-
gations which may always and often do invalidate everything that
has gone before, including work which they themselves may have
done. The conception of science which is held by the positivists
happens to be a very narrow one. If allowed to have their way,
they would not encourage science but stop it. The kind of science
which consists in remaining so close to the data that hypotheses of
any general character are dismissed and similar findings discour-
aged is very much to their liking. But it is not the kind of science
which has been responsible for the rapid development of the
sciences; it would never have produced the work of Newton, of
Darwin, of Freud, of Einstein. N ow if the positivists do not under-
stand and approve of science in the proper way, then they have a
very poor case to make out for themselves indeed, since this is their
chief contention and principal area of operation.
The unfortunate thing, then, is that the Viennese positivists
may be right in their interpretation of science (we may not think
so, of course, but we cannot afford to violate our probity in mateh-
ing their intolerance) but even if they were this would not excuse
them from being too sure. They lay claim to a sort of absolute
truth andin doing so reveal a lack of humility. For the character-
istic of philosophy, as established by the Greeks and most violated
by the Germans, consists simply in not being sure and in substitut-
ing for certainty a tentative prohing and a persistent inquiry.
The Greeks, if we are to allow Plato and Aristotle to speak for
them, did not hold a philosophy but held to philosophy, and raised
more questions than they ever attempted to answer in any final
way.
(3) And what, after all, have the Viennese positivists ever
done? They seem to approve of all activity in logic and mathe-
matics, and in the empirical sciences; but approval alone is not a
contribution. Mathematics and the empirical sciences were doing
very well by themselves until the Viennese group happened to
misunderstand Wittgenstein and so felt called upon to defend math-
ematics and empirical science against philosophy, a defense they
hardly needed, but also to close the doors to inquiry in other direc-
tions, always, as Peirce pointed out, a bad thing to do. The in-
terpretation given to science by the Viennese positivists is not
science but interpretation, and interpretation of this sort can hardly

be given any name other than philosophy. As many critics have
pointed out, it is an interpretation of science which carries with it
its own presuppositions which are themselves metaphysical in char-
acter. There is, as everyone knows, no such thing as an official
philosophy of science; those who undertake to interpret science do
so, so to speak, at their own risk, and nobody is exactly in charge
of the field. Viennese positivists have as much right to advance
an interpretation as anyone eise, but also no more right. Science
itself cannot be adduced as a proof that the interpretation placed
upon it by the Viennese positivists is the correct one, any more
than any other interpretation can.
And what is the basis of the Viennese positivists' interpreta-
tion? Less than the usual logical reasons; for it has a sort of
mystique: it consists in the faith that when better knowledge is
built, science will build it. Apart from the harm done to science
by such a contention, since science must suffer in reputation from
any exaggeration of its claims, the faith that science must preempt
the field of valid knowledge is not anything more than a faith-that
is to say, it remains unsupported by reasons. And are we to believe
that this is philosophy, that faith in a going concern is more than
faith and gathers its rationale from the fact that what it approves
of is rational? Liking science does not make a man a scientist any
more than liking art makes him an artist.
The heart of the Viennese positivists' interpretation of science
is nothing peculiar, either. It consists chiefly, after the promulga-
tion of approval, of stripping away from science any relation of
validity to metaphysics. The argument of the Viennese positivists
seems to run somewhat as follows. All sense is what is referred to
by the sciences, and metaphysics is not a science, therefore meta-
physics is nonsense. Consequences are admitted but antecedents
never. Science is evidently a bolt from the blue and carries no
presuppositions. And the ignorance which we saw when we ex-
amined the poor knowledge of metaphysics which the Viennese
positivists possess, is equalled here only by their blindness in
refusing to admit that they do not wish to see. The attempt to
eliminate metaphysical presuppositions by fiat or by proclamation
is not one calculated to win the adherence of anyone trained to
require evidence for his beliefs. Science is an exploratory activity
and nothing so confining as the Viennesse positivists would have it.
The Viennese positivists would not have made good scientists; they
would have been timid and could not have called upon the requisite
imagination; they would not, like the scientists, have had the cour-
age to be wrang more often than they were right.
They do not make good philosophers of science, either, for they
have prohibited themselves from using the very tools requisite for
work in this field. The abstraction of the presuppositions of science,
the analysis of the logical techniques involved in its method, and
the interpretation of its findings, are all parts of science which will
not lend themselves to observation but instead require a back-
ground of metaphysics. Metaphysics drifts so to speak above the
empirical disciplines. There is no way in which an experimental
inquiry willever be able to prove or disprove the truth of its own
presuppositions. Yet it has them indubitably and no less so for the
unwillingness of its self-appointed apologists to own up to the fact.
From such quarreling, it is clear, science stands aloof. Same
scientists, it is true, accept the Viennese positivists' interpretation;
but it is also true that others have been completely won over by
the Marxist version. Science itself is neither, but consists in an
orderly activity designed to investigate nature, though even the
method which everyone recognizes as orderly has never been agreed
upon by those whose business it is to examine procedures. The
factisthat the field of the interpretation of science is itself a specu-
lative field; and until agreement in this field removes it from the
area of speculation, it must remain open and free. And those who
would shut the doors to such speculations must not be allowed to
do so. For just as the life of science consists in the practice of its
method, so the hope of inquiry into the meaning of that method
must consist in investigating what underlies it. The philosophy of
science is a speculative field, call it what you will; and so long as
we do not have acceptable answers, that long will metaphysicians
and Viennese positivists, and all others, for that matter, be free to
advance their interpretations and set forth their claims.
Greek philosophy owes its great success partly to the fact that
it was an independent study. Later, it became the handmaid of
religion, and now the Viennese positivists would make of it a hand-
maid of science. That there is and indeed ought to be not only a
philosophy of religion but also a philosophy of science, is legitimate.
But there is no reason to suppose that such apologetics exhaust the
entire enterprise of philosophy. It will always look for its justifi-
cation to its own independent inquiries. Toward this end, the
original source of Viennese positivism, Wittgenstein himself, has
pointed the way.
II
We turn now to more theoretical considerations. The technical
position of Viennese positivism may be set forth in the following
additional theses:
(1) Logic and mathematics are tautological;
(2) The analysis of language solves all metaphysical problems;
and
(3) Whatever is not fact is feeling.
Our task will be to examine each of these.
(1) The thesis advanced here is that while the Viennese
positivists claim Wittgenstein as their source, they do lip service
to his work without actually following it. They fell so much under
the spell of the Tractatus 7 that they failed to see what was in it.
They did see, however, what they thought was in it. For the fact
isthat Wittgenstein is not a Viennese positivist. He may have been
influenced by Hume but he acknowledged Frege. British meta-
physical realism, through the early Russen, G. E. Moore and others,
made its mark on his ideas and strongly influenced the Tractatus,
and British realism asserts the reality of two external worlds, those
of logic and of concrete existence. None of the founding fathers,
then, are positivists. What the Viennese positivists and their fol-
lowers are doing is to ta.ke a nominalistic and Comtean reading of
Wittgenstein. This is their privilege though it may mislead some
into thinking that they are only following and developing Wittgen-
stein.
Compare, let us say for example, Wittgenstein's rejection of
psychology8 and of Mauthner's criticism of language9 with Carnap's
Aufbau. Again, that Wittgenstein has an ontology has been noted. 10
Constructionism requires two real external wor lds, one of facts and
another of logic expressed through language. The tautology of
language constitutes a system of logic which is sufficiently inde-
pendent of the world from which it was originally constructed to
mirror it; 11 for this we need of course a non-trivial tautology, an
"infinitely fine network." 12 To know the two worlds does not
7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Phi!osophicus (London, 1922, Kegan

Paul).
8 Tractatus 5.5421; 6.423; 5.641.
9 Tractatus 4.0031. '
10 Gustav Bergman, The Metaphysics of Logtcat PositiviBm (New York, 1954, Lon.tr·
mans, Green), p. 51.
11 Tractatus, 5.511; 6.341.
1.2 Tractatus, 5.511.
require a subject in the old sense, only a "metaphysical subject," 13

a perspective on the worlds, which in this sensestandsoutside them.
The tautologies of language are the machinery whereby we are
enabled to watch the evaporation of traditional metaphysics. But
Wittgenstein was not endeavoring to get rid of all metaphysics,
only of all metaphysics other than his own, and in this, after all,
he has the sanctity of tradition from Aristotle on! For is that not
what every metaphysician has done? Tautology is not for Wittgen-
stein something by means of which metaphysics is got rid of; it is
rather the touchstone of the correct metaphysics. Transeendental
metaphysics must go, and in its place there stands a view of the
world which has been revealed by means of the proper under-
standing of logic.
The entire Tractatus is devoted to this achievement. A couple
of examples, however, ought to suffice. Language mirrors the
world, and it does so by means of logic. Tautology, then, is the
last-ditch consistency14 whereby the language derived by construc-
tion from the world can be said to have a world of its own. Meta-
physics never appears, either in the world of facts or in that of
logic; but it isthat by means of which there is a world of facts and
another of logic-that there are such worlds. The claim of tautol-
ogy is fierce and uncompromising; it is not only that which is shared
by all propositions which otherwise have nothing to share, it is the
propositions themselves. 15 Logic is the ghostly god whose presence
in and between all things which are touched by logic make real
every element of the two external worlds. It is how things are
and not itself a thing, not something apart.
Now cantrast these views with those of the Viennese positivists.
By a rather subtle subjectification of the elementary propositions
which refer to facts, Carnap in two books 16 has assumed that the
primitive sentences are referable to experience. In his followers we
have qualia (Goodman) 17 and the "principle of acquaintance." 18
The existential interpretation of symbolic logic19 goes the rest of
the way for them, offset only by the modal logic of Lewis and of
Lukasiewicz. Quine and Goodman wish to get rid of the existence
13 Tractatus, 5.641.
15 Tractatus, 6.1.
16 Der Logtsehe Aufbau der Welt (Berlin. 1928) and The Logical Syntax of Lan-
guage, trans. A. Smeaton (New York, 1937, Rarcourt Brace).
17 Nelson Goodman, The Structure of Appearance (Cambridge, 1951), p. 147 ff.
18 C. G. Hempel, "The Concept of Cognitive Significance," Proc. Am. Acad. of
Art and Sdences, Vol. 80 (1951). p. 61 ff.
19 See e.g. Hans Reichenbach, Symbolic Logic (New York, 1947, MacmUlanJ.
of classes, and logic carries Quine in particular along more rigorous

roads. But the constructionism of Wittgenstein is not the same as
the avowed nominalism of the American followers of the Viennese
school.
For nominalism it is, and the term is accepted; it is accepted
by Quine20 and it is accepted by Goodman. 21 If, as Quine says, "to
be assumed as an entity is, purely and simply, to be reckoned as
the value of a variable," 22 then what is the status of the variable?
It is, presumably, not an entity. In other words, if to be is to be
the value of a variable, then how is the variable to be? And if it
has no being, then what is the relation of its values to it, and, more-
over, how, andin what sense, are they its values?
It comes to something like this, that Wittgenstein by construct-
ing his system of logic from the elementary propositions which
refer to facts was building a real world of logic in the Frege tradi-
tion and not endeavoring to hold the reliable entities down to the
facts. The values of a variable are entities partly because of the
force of the variable; or, put the other way round, if the variable
is dependable, at least as an entity in logic, it is because its values
aregenuine entities.
The logicians and methodologists who are influenced by the
Viennese positivists would have a real world of existence to which
logic refers but not a real logic. The real world, and the only real
world (apart from that negligible part of it which can be described
in emotive language) is the world of existence, and this is referable
to private sense experience (the "protocol language"). And what,
then, has happened to the tautological world of logic as Wittgen-
stein has described it?
(2) When Wittgenstein advanced the thesis that the analysis
of language solves all metaphysical problems, he did not mean that
there were no metaphysical problems, only that language solved
them through the logic by which it is related to the world. Those
who have dealt in logic in one connection andin metaphysics (albeit
influenced by logic) in another, have never envisaged such a con-
ception of logic as Wittgenstein's. He simply wished to pare down
metaphysics to the poin.t to which logic was able to carry it. That
logic functions as ontology in Wittgenstein's system can hardly be
doubted. 23 Ontology returns as that which is expressed by the
20 Willard Van Orman Quine, From a Logicat Point of View (Cambridge, 1953,
Harvard University Press), Ch. I.
21 Op. cit., Ch. II.
22 Op. cit., p. 13.
23 Tractatus, 5.4711; 6.342; 6 . 13.
VIENNESE POSITIV15M IN THE UNITED STATES 43
logically perfect language. Opinions differ as to what Wittgen-

stein's metaphysics is. It is possible to hold that a position not too
far from nominalism is what he intended, 24 and that he accomplished
this by confining "the undefined descriptive signs of the ideal lan-
guage" to "proper names or first-order predicates, including rela-
tional ones." 25 There are, as weshall soon see, reasons for rejecting
this interpretation, though even by accepting it we are left with
the notion that Wittgenstein had a metaphysics of a sort.
Wittgenstein, then, rejects trancendental metaphysics only to
accept what, for want of a better term, we shall call logical meta-
physics. And what do his followers of the Viennese school in the
United States do? In a word, they reject the older type of meta-
physics without pretending to replace it. 26 The chief arguments
against metaphysics reduce to arguments against the reality of
classes. The rejection of metaphysics therefore must make the
following claims: that modal logic can be reduced to existential
logic; that the categories of being are unnecessary, since they are
not names for anything; and that linguistic analysis is exhaustive
of meaning. It would take too long to enter into these arguments
here; suffice to say for the present purposes that the burden of
proof rests on the claimants and that the case against metaphysics
in these regards has not yet been proved.
It is clear from the attitude of the Viennese positivists that they
are expressing their rejection of metaphysics in the emotive lan-
guage, and if this is the case then we must accord it as little stand-
ing in philosophy as they would allow to traditional metaphysics.
Two examples may suffice. The first is that which has already
been quoted in the first part of this essay: Feigl's infamous phrase
that he is "allergic to metaphysics." The second is an earlier and
generally accepted thesis that metaphysics is nonsense, a double-
edged proposition based on the Wittgensteinian contention that the
business of philosophy is to make propositions clear and not to
advance propositions,2 7 since most of them are senseless. 28
It would be difficult to show that Wittgenstein was a nominalist.
The argument would have to prove that he did not mean his con-
structions of propositions to be real, that is to say, reliable, on the
ground that if you build your complex propositions carefully enough
24 G. Bergman, op. cit., p. 51 ff.
25 Op. cit., p. 52.
26 Rudolf Carnap, Philosophy and LogicaZ Synta:r: (London, 1935, Kegan Paul),
p. 15 ff.
44 TULANE STUDIES IN PHil.OSOPHY
out of atomic facts they will owe their reality entirely to the atomic
facts, there being no real classes, an argument which there is no
reason to credit to Wittgenstein. The argument further would have
to contend that his later rejection of nominalism 29 was not seriously
meant. On the other hand, the Viennese positivists are divided into
two groups: those who hold a nominalistic position without wish-
ing to employ the name, on the grounds that since they are against
metaphysics they can get rid of it simply by refusing to employ
its terminology, as though spades would disappear if we stopped
calling a spade a spade; and those, like Quine and Goodman, who
unhesitatingly apply the naine of nominalism to their own position.
In the former case presuppositions are denied, while in the latter
case they are avowed; andin both cases, the breach with Wittgen-
stein is evident.
Hume got rid of the self not too long after Berkeley had got
rid of the knowable external world. His impressions and ideas,
which were all that he bequeathed to Kant, were differently in-
terpreted by Thomas Reid. The tradition of those who accepted
Reid's Wager, namely, that there is nothing to lose and possibly
something to gain by beginning in philosophy with faith in an
external world which is knowable, led through Cook Wilson to
Moore and Russell, and so on to Wittgenstein. British realism,
whether of the epistemological variety of G. Dawes Hicks, or of
the metaphysical variety of J ohn Laird, or of both, as in the case
of A. N. Whitehead, has remained very much alive. It influenced
Wittgenstein but evidently failed to touch his followers, the Vien-
nese positivists and their American disciples. Thus they have missed
much in metaphysics which is consistent with empiricism. In this
instance, too, then, they have claimed Wittgenstein as a source
without having followed him.
(3) The values can:not be expressed in language, according to
Wittgenstein, for "all propositions are of equal value." 80 He asserted
flatly that "there can be no ethical propositions,"31 hence "ethics
cannot be expressed." 32 Ethics is one with aesthetics and both must
lie outside the world disclosed by experience since "ethics is
transeendentaL " 33
The footprints of British realism are heavy here, though ad-
mittedly the position is not the same. That values are ineffable
had already been asserted by Moore, who had declared goodness
29 Philosophtccülnvestigations trans. Anseambe (Oxford, 1953, Blackwell), I, 383.
30 Tractatus, 6.4.
31 Tractatus, 6.42.
indefinable, 34 though he did set up an ethics after clarifying the

language and rejecting psychological interpretations. 35 Moore's
rejection of psychological interpretations of value, and especially
of ethics, closely parallels Wittgenstein's. Other British realists,
such as Laird36 and Whitehead, 37 hold to the complete objectivity
of values and so also to that of goodness. The metaphysically
realistic picture of values in general and of ethical values in par-
ticular drawn by these two philosophers would be consistent with
the declaration of Wittgenstein's that ethics is transcendental.
Now this is quite different from the Viennese positivists' asser-
tion about values. They say that the values can be expressed in
language and they would go on to distinguish between cognitive
meaning and emotive meaning.
Carnap, for instance, evidently supposed that nothing was
wrong except the grammatical form of value language, since "a
value statement is nothing else than a command in a misleading
grammatical form. It may have effects upon the actions of men,
and these effects may either be in accordance with our wishes or
not; but it is neither true nor false. It does not assert anything
and can neither be proved nor disproved." 38 Carnap's first state-
ment is of course inconsistent with his second and third. The
"misleading grammatical form" can easily be set right, in which
case we have translated from a command to a categorical proposi-
tion which is clearly true or false andin many cases can be proved
or disproved. 39
Among the values, the Viennese positivists and their followers
have chiefly singled out ethics for consideration. They say, for
instance, that propositions concerning ethical judgments arenothing
more than expressions of personal feeling. 40 As stated by one of
the first Viennese positivists to direct his attention to ethics, "the
moral valuations of modes of behavior and character are nothing
but the emotional reaction with which human society responds to
the pleasant and sorrowful consequences that, according to the
average experience, proceed from those modes of behavior and
34 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903, University Press), I, B, 6.

35 G. E. Moore, Philosophical Stu.dies (New York, 1922, Rarcourt Brace), Ch. X.
36 John Laird, The Idea of Value (Cambridge, 1929, University Press), Ch. VII.
37 A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York, 1940, Macmillan), p. 345.
38 Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Syntax, p. 24.
39 "It should be noted that the intelligibility of commands rests upon assumptions
that certain states of affairs prevail"-Morris R. Cohen and Ernest Nagel, An Introduc-
tion to Logic and Scientific Method (New York, 1934, Rarcourt Brace), p. 28.
40 See, for instance, Alfred J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York, 1946,
Dover), Ch. VI.
46 TULAl~E STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
characters." 41 Here, said Schlick, is a "fundamental ethical in-

sight."42 Action is always in the direction of the strongest impulse. 43
It is not a far remove from Schlick to the American moralists
who follow the Viennese positivists. For Stevenson "the central
problern of ethical analysis-one might almost say 'the' problem-
is one of showing in detail how beliefs and attitudes are related." 44
And an attitude is "a disposition to act in certain ways and to
experience certain feelings." 45 Ethics by these definitions is clearly
being turned over to the psychologists. There are no objective
ethical standards; moral conflicts are the results of differences in
belief and so are attitudinal conflicts. If we could by rational per-
suasion bring them together, then the conflicts would be resolved:
they would have the same beliefs and consequently the same atti-
tudes, and the fact that there was nothing corresponding to their
beliefs in the external world would presumably not mean that the
acts which followed the disposition to act-now happily similar-
would not be disappointed by the further fact that there was nothing
relevant to act on, nothing, that is, upon which action of a moral
nature could make itself felt.
How much in common do the American followers of the Vien-
nese positivists have with them? It is not too far a cry from Schlick's
emotional reactions to Stevenson's beliefs and attitudes. The
American version is simply a further step in abdication than the
Viennese. More difficult, however, would be the task of finding
either version in the few ethical comments of Wittgenstein. How
different it is indeed to say on the one hand that ethics cannot be
expressed in propositions and on the other that it can be expressed
quite adequately provided only that the propositions describe em-
pirical conditiom:; discovered and analyzed under psychological
headings. Wittgenstein begged the question, but the Viennese
positivists do not write as though they had found the question
begged; instead, they chose to bury the distinction between ethics
and morals-between the study of what the good ought to be and
what it is-very neatly, and proceeded to consider how certain
morals get themselves approved or disapproved, this being the only
necessity left to them under the theory they adopted, and a wry
distinction at best.
We may perhaps sum up the discussion of the positivistic ethics
41 Moritz Schlick, Problems of Ethics, trans. D. Rynin {New York, 1939, Prentice-
Hall). p. 78.
42 Loc. Cit.
43 Op. cit., p. 62.
44 c. L. Stevenson, Ethics a.nd La.nguage {New Haven, 1944, Yale University Press),
I, 4.
45 Op. cit., IV, 3.
VIENNESE POSITIVIBM IN THE UNITED STATES 47
by referring to a passage in Wittgenstein's first posthumaus book.

He said, we must remember, that ethics cannot be expressed in
language. The Viennese positivists and their American followers
insist that it can, and that it consists in emotive language, in the
expressions of emotional reactions, beliefs and attitudes. Now, it
happens that Wittgenstein later proposed that there is no problern
about the question of words referring to sensations. "Don't we talk
about sensations every day, and give them names?" 46 Thus if
Wittgenstein had thought that ethics could be reduced to sensations
he would not have said that the former could not be expressed in
language and that the latter could.
It would be wise at this point to hearken back to the first part
of this essay. We have noted earlier that the Viennese positivists
claim the prerogative of speaking for science-of writing, so to
speak, the official philosophy of science. They wish to be the
censors and outriders of science; they would make of science a
dogmatism, and an institution in the restrictive sense; they would
take over science, define its policies and say what it can and cannot
do; they would Iimit its freedom. But these are not scientific en-
terprises in the pure sense; they are only designed to age science
synthetically, to render the institution of science a prematurely
decrepit affair.
In this second part of the essay we have seen a similar situa-
tion at work. Science is the exclusive domain of the Viennese
positivists, and all philosophical enterprises either do not exist or
belang to the sciences; metaphysics, for instance, does not exist in
any meaningful way, and ethics belongs either to the science of
psychology (Stevenson and Schlick) or to the social sciences as
weil (Ayer). In ethics, then, as in the philosophy of science, the
Viennese positivists and their followers are involved in a nihilistic
destruction of all independent philosophical theory: there is no
good or bad, there is only approval or disapproval; there is no right
or wrang, there is only weak or strong belief. We shall not need
philosophy, we are told, when we have the physicists and the posi-
tivists. But why could we not argue against them on their own
grounds that we shall not need the positivists when we have the
physicists? The positivists would like to be the undertakers of
philosophy, and they work on the assumption that undertakers
never die. What will they do for an occupation once they have
carried out and buried the body of philosophy? They will perhaps
need to find something eise to erode.
48 Philosophkat Investtgations, I. 244.
SKINNER'S "SCIENTIFIC" ETHICS OF SURVIVAL
Carl H. Harnburg
IFeither
it be granted that not all philosophizing done in America is
distinctive or distinctively American, and also that not all
philosophically significant work is done by professional philoso-
phers, it may be legitimate to include among these "Studies in
American Philosophy" the following examination of an ethical
theory, proposed by an influential American psychologist. I shall
take my departure from B. F. Skinner's recent Science and Human
Behavior,I especially from his chapters on value and the survival
concept.
The following reflections are submitted in awareness of an un-
fortunate situation which currently finds both psychologists and
philosophers concerned with the search after criteria for assessing
human conduct, yet with each profession suspicious of the con-
tributions which it expects from the other. The objections fre-
quently entertained against psychologizing philosophers are only
matched by those entertained against philosophizing psychologists.
Yet, if the worst is said, it still remains true that much psychological
work, devoted to problems of mental health and "normalcy", makes
contact with moral issues. lt also is true that such contact has so far
not been fruitful to the point of encouraging psychologists or phil-
osophers to expect new illumination from each other.
1 (New York, 1953, Macmillan).

49
50 TULANE STUDIES IN PmLOSOPHY
Unless it be groundless, in principle, to look forward to psy-

chological findings that could be relevant for ethical theory or vice
versa, it would seem that the only eure for poor relations between
the two disciplines is better relations rather than none at all. At
any rate, it is on the assumption that more successful relations are
possible that I shall now comment upon what appears to be both
a most influential and also an unsuccessful attempt by one psy-
chologist to solve an ethical problem. The problern concerns noth-
ing less than the grounding of moral prescriptions in a descriptive
theory of human behavior.
II
I begin by stating briefly what I taketobe the gist of Skinner's
view on the issue and then argue against it: The ethical term
'ought', for Skinner, is adequately analyzed as a term predictive
of reinforcing consequences. Thus, to say "you ought. to take your
umbrella," reduces in his language to "you will be reinforced by
taking your umbrella." (This follows from three propositions,
namely "keeping dry is reinforcing to you," "your umbrella will
keep you dry" and "it is going to rain.") Philosophers have here-
tofore used somewhat different terminology. They have talked of
an instrumental, or hypothetical, imperative which "commands"
not an end but the selection of an appropriate means for the achieve-
ment of an end. Skinner, aware that there is also a categorical, a
more strict meaning to phrases where the term 'ought' occurs, speaks
also of an 'ethical ought', as, e.g., "You ought to love your neighbor."
But, as one may expect, this 'ought' is just as easily reduced to
Skinner's reinforcement-formula. It simply reads "The approval
of your fellowmen is positively reinforcing to you; Loving your
neighbor is approved by the group of which you are a member."
One feels like raising all sorts of questions at this point. For one
thing, in Skinner's language, the "ethical" ought is not really dis-
tinguishable from the first, or so-called "predictive" ought. All he
does is to subordinate the moral command (Love thy neighbor) as
a means to the achievement of another end, namely "seek approval."
The problern is thus thrown out in reinforcement-language only to
reappear as the possibility of asking again "Ought one to desire
approval above all, or above what, or under which conditions, or
whose approval against whose possible disapproval ?"
Instead of being finicky on this point, let me suggest what sort
of answer would be legitimate within Skinner's presuppositions.
Scientists presumably should stick to descriptions. As psycholo-
SKINNER'S "SCIENTIFIC" ETHICS OF BURVIVAL 51
gists, however, they are to deal with human beings, and there are
at least some psychologists who intend to make their descriptive
knowledge of what man is relevant for prescriptions as to what he
ought tobe or do. The meaning of "ought"-expressions, therefore,
becomes a cognitive issue. Skinner's proposal to integrate these
expressions with his reinforcement-theory of human behavior im-
plies the suggestion that such a so-called "moral" language becomes
theoretically more respectable if translated as a recommendation
of certain acts, useful as means, to reinforce behavior realizing
certain ends. As I suggested before, however, the problern re-
appears if the question is asked "which ends ought to be rein-
forced ?" It is at this point that the scientist feels decidedly un-
comfortable, expecting metaphysical "verbiage" rather than em-
pirically meaningful answers from the philosopher.
The question "what ends ought to be reinforced ?" appears to
allow of at least two interpretations. It may ask "what ends could
be rationally recommended as means for the attainment of further
reinforcing ends?" "Love thy neighbor" is a rational 'ought' be-
cause, by doing so, you will be certain of group-approval which, as
a matter of fact, is reinforcing to you. Or we may read the ques-
tion "what ends ought to be reinforced ?" as asking for final ends.
If love ought to be practiced in order to find oneself approved, why
strive for approval? If approval is a final end, can this be justified?
If not, what further ends are served by it-and what is the justifica-
tion of those ends? Histodes of religion and philosophy have so
far monopolized this type of inquiry. Currently both some philoso-
phers and most scientists have feit somewhat uncomfortable with
the traditional ethical alternatives. It is therefore with some in-
terest that one turns to the recasting of a problern of such perennial
and controversial nature by a distinguished psychologist. I shall
begin by restating as briefly as possible his basic contentions in
support of the thesis that it is the survival-value of behavior prac-
tices which is the ultimate criterion for moral "goodness."
(1) The division of behavior into "good" and "bad" is made
in the light of group-practices and customs.
(2) But manners and customs often spring from (personal or
social) circumstances which have little or no relation to the ulti-
mate effects upon the group.
(3) Why should the design of a culture, which is the system
of practices and customs, be left to accidents? Religious, philoso-
phical or social reformers have attempted to deliberately change
TULANE STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
"cultural design", thus making a practice of changing practice. In

Skinner's words: "The teachings of Christ were more clearly in
the nature of a new design."
(4) Deliberately proposed changes in cultural design are
recommended for the sake of their "consequences". At this point
Skinner makes contact with a problern of classical dimensions. Is
a deliberate, possibly scientific, re-designer of practices to be lim-
ited to predictions as to which designs will produce what conse-
quences in human behavior, or can he propese consequences or
results which ought to be produced? I have already shown how,
for Skinner, there is at least one sense in which statements contain-
ing the words 'ought' or 'should' have a place in scientific discourse,
namely wherever they can be translated into recommendations of
means towards further ends. But clearly the selection or advocacy
of a new cultural practice involves the proposal of remote or ulti-
mate consequences, such as happiness, freedom, knowledge, security,
etc., all of which do not appear to belong to the vocabulary of the
scientist.
(5) It is at this point that Skinner's survival-concept is to do
its explanatory work. He suggests that just as genetic character-
istics, which arise as mutations, are selected or discarded by their
consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded
through reinforcement. A distinct kind of selection applies to cul-
tural practices. A group adopts a given practice, a custom, a con-
trolling device which modifies the behavior of the members of the
group. The resulting behavior may affect the success of the group
in competition with other groups or with the non-social environ-
ment. Cultural practices which are advantageaus would tend to
be characteristic o.f the groups which survive and therefore per-
petuate those practices. Some cultural practices may therefore be
said to have survival value while others are lethal in the genetic
sense.
(6) A given culture is, in short, an experiment in behavior.
It is a particular set of conditions under which a large nurober of
people grow and live. These conditions generate the patterns or
aspects of behavior, the cultural character. This means that the
experimental test of a given culture is provided by competition be-
tween groups under conditions characteristic of a particular period.
(7) This test allows of basically two outcomes: survival or
non-survival. Since survival always presupposes competition, if
only with the natural environment, it does not appear to define a
SKINNER'S "SCIENTIFIC" ETIDCS OF SURVIVAL 53
"good culture design" in the absence of competition. The tempo-

rary survival of a culture is no proof of its goodness. All present
cultures obviously have survived. The principle of survival does
not permit us to argue that the status quo must be good because it
is here now, having survived.
(8) Another difficulty, recognized by Skinner, isthat survival
requirements are often in direct conflict with traditional values.
Perhaps the most common objection to survival (as a criterion of
norms) is essentially an aversive reaction to such practices as have
thus far in the history of mankind had survival value. (Aggression,
restriction of liberties, etc.)
(9) To say that consequences for survival test value-selections
is not identical with asserting that anyone actually chooses survival
as a criterion for the evaluation of given practices. Human behavior
does not depend upon the prior choice of any value. In Skinner's
language, when a man jumps out of the way of an approaching car,
we may say that he chooses life rather than probable death. But
he does not jump because he has so chosen. He jumps because
jumping is evoked by certain stimulating circumstances which are
reinforced by successful avoidance of impeding aversive conse-
quences. This means that only past advantages could have had
an effect upon his behavior. He was likely to jump because his
ancestors were selected from a large population just because they
elected to jump. "Those who could not learn to jump are probably
not represented by contemporary descendents."
(10) The "value" which the individual appears to have chosen
with respect to his own future is therefore nothing more than that
condition which operated selectively in creating and perpetuating
the behavior which now seems to exemplify such a choice. An in-
dividual does not choose to live or die; he behaves in ways which
work toward his survival or death. Behavior usually leads to sur-
vival because the behaving individual has been selected by survival
in the process of evolution.
(11) In the same sense, the making of a constructive sugges-
tion about a cultural practice does not involve the choice of a value.
A long biological and cultural history has produced an individual
who acts in a particular way with respect to cultural conditions.
Our problern is not to determine the value or goals which operate
in the behavior of the cultural designer; it is rather to examine the
complex conditions under which design occurs.
(12) Some changes in culture may be made because of con-

sequences which are roughly described as happiness, freedom,
knowledge, etc. Eventually the survival of the group acquires a
similar function. The fact that a given practice is related to sur-
vival becomes effective as a prior condition in cultural design.
(13) Survival arrives late among the so-called values because
the effect of a culture upon human behavior, andin turn upon the
perpetuation of the culture itself, can be demonstrated only when
a science of human behavior has been well developed.
(14) The practice of changing practice is accelerated by science
just because sciences provide an abundance of instances in which
the consequences of practices are shown.
(15) The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern
of the evolution of the species. The many different forms of culture
which arise correspond to the mutations of genetic theory. Some
forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and
others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accord-
ingly. When we engage in the deliberate design of a culture, we
are, as it were, generating mutations which may speed up "the
evolutionary process."
(16) One difficulty, a serious one, is that survival considera-
tions will not have a useful effect upon the behavior of the cultural
designer unless he can actually calculate survival value. And this
is not always possible. For instance: will "happier" children pro-
duced by deliberate human engineering, be more likely to survive
in the present or coming age? Will decrease of emotional tensions
or neurotics result in less creative work in some areas important
to group-survival?
(17) According to Skinner, happiness, e.g., just as such other
"ultimate values" as freedom, justice and knowledge, are them-
selves preferred only because of certain immediate consequences
which reinforce the individual who selects one practice over an-
other. But short-range consequences could be cancelled because
of long-range consequences. Just as the immediate advantage
gained through punishment is eventually matched by later dis-
advantages, the immediate consequences of a cultural practice may
be followed by others of a different sort. On Skinner's terms, a
scientific analysis may lead us to resist the more immediate bland-
ishments of freedom, justice, knowledge or happiness in considera-
tion of long-range consequences of survival.
SKINNER'S "SCIENTIFIC" ETHICS OF SURVIVAL 55
(18) What then is the contribution which a science of behavior

could make to the evaluation of cultural practices? It is its in-
sistence upon experimentation. Science helps to decide between
alternative courses of action by making past consequences effective
in determining future conduct. Science, being itself hypothetical,
does not eliminate guessing but, by narrowing the field of alterna-
tives, it helps us to guess more effectively.
III
So far Skinner. For the remainder, I shall suggest a few
thoughts which make an unqualified acceptance of his thesis rather
difficult. It may be best to start out with the admission that there
is some plausibility indeed in extending the reinforcement-principle
beyond the range of purely physical stimuli contexts. Rewards on
the individual level, prestige or status on social levels of behavior
could weil be said to reinforce some and discard other practices.
When on the biological level of abstraction, we employ the term
'stimulus', however, we define it through specification of factors
which are both relatively constant and independently variable, i.e.,
not under the control of the adjusting organism. Cultural condi-
tions, on the other hand, which are taken to determine, as stimuli,
certain traits on the individual and social levels of behavior, are
characteristically inconstant, selective and dependently variable
with the beliefs and practices entertained by, or imposed upon,
some or all of the members of a group. There are, therefore, some
outstanding differences between natural selection of the species
and cultural selection of practices by surviving groups. For one
thing, there isthelarge variety of ways in which the human species
manages to survive for some time. For another thing, there is con-
siderable ignorance, on the level of cultural change, of the criteria
which any modification of behavior must satisfy to be a mode of
survival. On the organic level, to be sure, such knowledge is also
absent. The non-surviving species, by definition, failed to realize
the criteria. The surviving species, on the other hand, survived not
by adopting survival as a principle or guide of effective variation,
but in having its random variations reinforced by environmental
factors. Where the concept of "survival-value" is called in on the
organic level, it is employed as part of an explanatory theory for
the interpreter of the origin or perpetuation of some species, and
surely not as a guiding concept for the organisms themselves which
are said to mutate at random, being rewarded or discarded by in-
dependently operating physical or chemical factors. It would seem,

in analogy, that on the culturallevel too, the estimates made of the
survival value of institutions and beliefs is possible only after the
fact, so to speak, and thus by the historian who attempts to explain
the rise and fall of civilizations in terms of the effectiveness or
inadequacies of such beliefs and customs at given historical periods.
At the same time, survival value cannot be assigned by the culture-
building societies themselves as a guide for deliberately instituting
culture-changes if only because continuous and non-anticipated
changes in the culture-environment modify perpetually the condi-
tions with respect to which given practices have survival value.
This means that practices having had survival value from times
Ti to Tii need not have survival value at time Tlli.
If the measure for what may survive is not to be taken from
what, as a matter of historical fact, did survive in the past, it is
just as impossible to determine what, in the total picture of societies
that did not survive, is responsible for their failure to survive. If
the elements in a non-surviving society be symbolized as a, b, c, d,
it is just as possible that an additional circumstance, say 'e', would
have sufficed to make for survival of a, b, c, d, as that either one of
these non-surviving traits was either not strongly enough or too
strongly represented by the non-surviving society. To learn sur-
vival value from past instances of non-surviving societies is there-
fore not as feasible as on the biological Ievel of explanation where
the comparative constancy of environmental conditions can be
specifically designated or at least weil enough designated to infer the
type of response that would have been effective for the survival of
an organism. In the case of non-surviving societies, however, the
external conditions for their decline or destruction are either not
known to them to an extent where such knowledge could motivate
a deliberate re-designing of cultural practices, or, even if known,
could such motivation be oriented by knowledge of the "correct"
way of meeting external changes. Worse still, we cannot even
say what a correct way of meeting historical changes would be like.
And this for at least two reasons: we do not know the range of
co-possible cultural alternatives that may have survival possibili-
ties, and we also do not know which of them would allow for such
changes as may be desirable to meet unanticipated external or in-
ternal conflicts by either minimizing their occurrence or maximizing
capacity to absorb them.
The difficulty of assessing the survival value of a cultural pat-
tern is considerable. We can be reasonably sure that every exist-
SKINNER'S "SCIENTIFIC" ETHICS OF SURVIVAL 57
ing culture practice, by its sheer existence, has survived and thus
becomes a candidate for having survival potential. This means
that, since there is a remarkable variety of such practices still in
existence, we have just as many candidates who, having survived,
can claim survival value. To be sure, what is true for existing, as
surviving, practices is not also true for past culture-practices many
of which have not survived. Skinner's thesis could therefore be
made in the form of a plea to get away from the errors of the past
and not to repeat such culture-designs as have proven "lethal." If
undertaken in this spirit, a study of the past, however, becomes
rather distressing. Past failures to survive include probably every
conceivable pattern of political, social and economic organization.
According to Toynbee, nearly an of his distinguishable civilizations
met with defeat and little hope is held out for the few remaining
survivors, an of whom operate with cultural designs and belief-
systems that singly or in combination have also been operative in
previous non-surviving or stagnant instances of cultural variety.
Civilizations, whether pacifistic or belligerent, agricultural or pas-
toral or industrial, whether atheistic, polytheistic or monotheistic,
the non-scientific Egyptians as wen as the rational Greeks or the
scientific Germans, an have become candidates for decline or de-
struction. Whatever eise the lesson of the past may be, it is
hardly intelligible as regards the issue of survival. Apparently,
history excepts no known type of culture-design from possible or
actual non-survival.
To recover from ·this pessimistic conclusion, one may wish to
chanenge the unexpressed premise of this entire argument. Why
assume, after all, that there are "invariable antecedents," common
and pervasive factors that make for non-survival in the first place?
History, after all, only offers a multitude of instances of nonsur-
vival, and the combination of causes which may apply to one or
some cases need not apply to an of them. It is probably as futile
to try to learn from the past any lessons about what factors gen-
erany precede nonsurvival, as it would be to find one common
cause or set of causes for entirely different types of headaches. It
is at this point that the historian may want to come to the rescue.
He may wish to point out that, in the end, it is not from the past
as such, but only from that particular segment of it which closely
corresponds to the situation at hand, that we may hope to learn,
if at all. However, since it is only the historians, and not history,
which ever repeats itself, no actual and present situation is ever
like any previous one, and to assert that one can infer what is
possible at one time from what has proven possible at an earlier

time, implies at least two major difficulties: in comparing two
historical situations one must know which are the relevant and
which are the irrelevant differences between them; one also can-
not hope for help from either reinforcement-theory or from history
when making such judgments of relevance. Judgments of rele-
vance with respect to those features which could be said to connect
two historical periods in such manner that the one can be informed
by the other are not themselves historical judgments about past
events; rather are they derived from theories entertained about
human behavior and groups.
The point of the remark just made is to remind us that just as
cultural changes are, if responses at all, then responses to stimuli
which are themselves cultural responses, so the lesson of the past
with regard to features which are credited with assuring survival
or non-survival respectively, cannot be read out of history. We
are thus left with the sobering realization that as we cannot learn
from nature more than we are prepared to ask of her, just so we
cannot learn from history any more than what our theories about
human nature and societies permit us to consider relevantly com-
parable. I therefore arrive at the following conclusions:
(1) We cannot derive survival-guaranteeing criteria from an
examination of past instances of non-survival.
(2) We cannot derive such criteria from an examination of
existing and thus of surviving civilizations either. Some presently
surviving cultures exhibit features which also made their appear-
ance in non-surviving cultures and they also lack other features
which some presently surviving cultures do possess.
(3) The concept of survival value is itself beset with ambigui-
ties which makes its employment for purposes of clarification most
questionable. Thus, without time-specification, survival is as in-
definite a concept as immortality. How old would a human being
have to be before we would be prepared to call him immortal
rather than excessively old? Analogously, could we infer from
the actual survival, say of Chinese culture for several thousand
years, that by virtue of having thus survived, it is also more likely
to have survival value than, say, the more recent Soviet culture?
(4) What exactly is the reference of Skinner·s survival con-
cept? Which is the unit of behavior to which it is to apply? As
Sorokin has made plausible, different life-spans attach to different
human forms of organization. Individual "practices" don't survive
SKINNER'S "SCIENTIFIC" ETHICS OF SUBVIVAL 59
nearly as long as family practices, and both are as nothing com-

pared to the duration of professional, tribal or national patterns
which themselves are eclipsed by the much Ionger life-spans of
religious practices, art, philosophy and, most of all, language. Sure-
ly, different considerations apply in assessing the possible survival
of these different units of behavior.
(5) Skinner's unit of reference, unless I am mistaken, concerns
nothing less than the survival of the human species as such. If so,
the tenor of his contentions seems to be that just as there is only
one science which holds universally true for all men, so there may
be only one scientifically correct way of behaving towards maxi-
mum survival. This thesis, while not illogical, is also not rational
at this stage of the game, and this for the following reasons. A
scientifically correct practice must be reversible, not dogmatic, but
open to change; a cultural design, to be scientific, cannot exclude
further experimentation along other lines of design for living. If,
however, survival experiments will continue to be conducted along
different cultural pathways, then the ethical question of whether
it is worthwhile rather than possible to survive within one pattern
rather than another one, makes its reappearance. This issue is not
preempted by survival considerations alone. If both designs A and
B are held to have survival possibilities, a choice between them
becomes at once necessary and impossible in terms of survival cal-
culations alone.
Finally, in Skinner's account, survival-value figures as the ulti-
mate test for human values and thus cannot itself be evaluated.
I have so far only called attention to the difficulty of figuring sur-
vival as a guide to designing "good" cultures. An equally formid-
able difficulty confronts anyone who were to advocate, on scien-
tific grounds, the thesis that species survival is either the highest
good or desirable. Skinner's unquestioned assumption that this is
the case is likely to be both provincial and symptomatic of a specifi-
cally Western mode of thinking which is so preoccupied with life
and living that it even conceives of "life eternal" as continuing after
death. Most Griental religions and some Western thinkers have
suggested "oblivion" as the final stage to be reached by the wise.
N ow the question whether life is "worth living" may strike most
Westemers as at best silly, deserving of no better answer than that
"it depends upon the liver." A more rational decision between
survival and oblivion, however, would have to be grounded in
different concepts of the nature of reality and of human nature
which is to fulfill itself in the former. Even if, in the end, we

are to take our choice with our Western intensification of, or rev-
erence for, "life", and, lacking evidence for brahman, atman or
nirvana, we were to cast our lot with species survival-positive pat-
terns of living, such survival-thinking could at best define only the
Iimits within which other considerations would have to determine
an ethically desirable choice among co-possible survival-designs.
ROYCE AS LOGICIAN
Harold N. Lee
J OSIAH Royce is universally recognized as one of the important

figures in the history of philosophic thought in the United States,
but he is usually remernbered primarily as a metaphysician. His
metaphysics was a variety of objective idealism, but it was touched
by a strain akin to personalism in that his individual was never
lost in the Absolute, not even when the Absolute became, toward
the end of his career, the Universal Community. He produced what
is probably the most elaborate system of objective idealism built
on a voluntaristic base that has been produced in the United States.
It was always religiously oriented, as even the most casual glance
at his list of titles will show; and the moraland social implications
of his thought were always close to the surface.
Although all this is true about Royce's philosophy, it is not the
whole story. The present essay contends that when it stands alone,
as if it were the whole story, it is misleading. Royce was deeply
interested in logic all his life,1 and the later phases of his philosophy
not only strongly reflect this interest, but can not be correctly un-
derstood apart from it. He called his own philosophy "Absolute
Pragmatism."2 I venture to suggest that the 'Absolute' in this
1 "I early cherished a strong interest in logic, and lang desired to get a fair
knowledge of mathematics." The Hope of the cJreat Community (New York, 1916),
p. 129.
2 See his essay entitled "The Principles of Logic" in Windelband and Ruge's
Encyclopaedia of the Phi!osophica! Sciences, Vol. I, Logic (London, 1913; no other
volumes published), pp. 67-135. This essay is reprinted in Royce's Logica! Essays, ed.
by D. S. Robinson (Dubuque, Iowa, 1951). In further citations in the present essay,
I shall refer to Robinson's collection as RLE.
61
appellation refers to the idealism, but that the 'Pragmatism' refers

to the logic; 8 and that thus, in the way that Royce looked at his own
philosophy, the logic was an essential ingredient.
Although Royce's logic is often overlooked by the historians of
American philosophy, some have noted it. D. S. Robinson has
recently published a collection of Royce's logical writings, 4 and in
doing so has rendered an invaluable service to those who would
understand Royce in his rightful place. Robinson hirnself slightly
overstates the case, I think, when he suggests that Royce's logical
writings are perhaps the greatest contribution to logic yet made
by an American philosopher. 5 Surely, Royce would have insisted
that this honor go to C. S. Peirce. My own estimate is that of all
the logicians in the United States previous to the present generation
(estimates of our contemporaries are not only invidious but pre-
mature), Royce stands second only to Peirce.
Of the few historians who note Royce's importance in logic,
most only note it and pass on. One of the exceptions is Townsend,
who, in his Philosophical Ideas in the United States, fully recognizes
the importance of the logic in the picture of Royce's philosophy;
yet even he says "An adequate exposition of Royce's logic is im-
possible here." 6 Within the scope of the present essay, it will hardly
be possible to do more than to make specific several instances which
illustrate the importance of Royce's logic, and to indicate where
and how these cases can be followed up. It is to be hoped that
someone will follow them up, and will give a complete and adequate
treatment of the logic.
A division within the general subject may be made; first, what
was Royce's knowledge of the advances that were being made
within logic in his day, and what contributions did he make to
further this advance; second, how did his competence in logic in-
fluence his thought in other fields. In both of these divisions, I
am using the term 'logic' in its technical sense, as Royce hirnself
would have insisted. To speak of his philosophy as being logical
because it is clearly and persuasively reasoned would be to use the
word in a loose sense. At best, this would be only applied logic.7
3 Needless to say that it was not the sort of pragmatism bunt upon a non-logical
or an anti-logical foundation. 'Pragmatic' to Royce, as to Peirce, referred to the
success with which we introduce order into our experience, or make our experience
an orderly whole; and he defined logic as the science of order.
4 Citation given in footnote 2, above.
5 See RLE, editor's preface, p. xiü.
6 H. G. Townsend, Philosophtca1 ldeas in the United States (Cincinnati, Ohio,
1934), p. 172.
7 See § 1 and § 2 in "The Principles of Logic" in Windelband and Ruge's Encyc1o-
paedta, pp. 67-69. RLE, p. 310.
ROYCE AS LOGICIAN 83
II
What can we say of Royce's knowledge of the advance of logic
in his time, and of his own contributions tothat advance? Hisfirst
published work was a textbook written when he was twenty-five
or twenty-six years old entitled A Primer of Logical Analysis For
the Use of Composition Students. This was published in San Fran-
cisco in 1881 while he was teaching English at the University of
California. This book is now extremely rare, and up to the time
of the present writing, I have not seen a copy of it. 8 That it dis-
plays interest and competence in contemporary advances in logic
is sufficiently evidenced, however, in the following excerpt from
a brief review of it published the year after it was published.
Dr. Royce has not been content to utilize only the traditional
scheme of logical forms . . . but has so_ught also to turn to the
practical account of his composition students the reformed schemes
of the new Symbolic Logic. It may be doubted that he has done
quite wisely in leading students into the newer field before giving
them the practical benefit of all that was to be gleaned upon the
old . . . On the other hand, it must be allowed that he has managed
in short compass to give a very clear presentation of the modes of
logical statement adopted by some of the modern reformers. 9
Royce's interest in the newer logic even at this early period of
his philosophical development is further evidenced by his references
to the names of those who were originating it. Anderson and Fisch
say that in the Primer of Logical Analysis he "commended the work
of Jevons and Venn." 10 In an excerpt from his diary written on
July 25, 1880, he refers to Venn and to C. S. Peirce. 11 His study of
logic was supplemented by studies of mathematics that were far
from an elementary level. In a letter to William James dated
January 8, 1880, he says "I have extended my study to mathematics,
reviewing parts of the calculus, and dabbling in modern geometry
and quaternions. . . . Boole's Logic and Venn's Logic of Chance
have come in for a share of attention. . . . Just lately I have been
reading Dühring's Geschichte der Grundprincipien der Mechanik.
And now I am projecting a little book on the Nature of Axioms." 12
In 1892, Royce wrote a review of the first volume of Erdmann's
Logic. 13 In it, he noted Erdmann's rejection of the logic of Sehröder
8 It is not listed in the catalogue of the Library of Congress.

9 Mind, Vol. VII (1882), pp. 311-312. The review is unsigned.
10 P. R. Anderson and M. H. Fisch, Phi!osophy in America (New York, 1939), p. 498.
11 See Fugitive Essays (Cambridge, Mass .. 1920), ed. by J. Loewenberg, p. 32.
12 R. B. Perry, The Thought and Character of Wi!!iam James (Boston, 1935), Vol.
I, p. 785.
13 This was published in the Philosophical Review, Vol. I (1892). It is reprinted
in RLE, pp. 285-290.
and Boole and extensional logic in general, and he adversely criti-

cized Erdmann's "neglect of the considerations that make the alge-
bra of logic so promising and important a region of exact inquiry." 14
His further remark, that Erdmann's "observations upon probability,
mathematical and non-mathematical, have appeared to the present
writer especially unsatisfactory" is of interest in the light of his
own treatment of logical probability published some twenty years
later in his "Principles of Logic." 15
Royce's technical contributions to logic are contained mainly
in three publications; first, his essay on "The Relation of the Prin-
ciples of Logic to the Foundations of Geometry" published in the
Transactions of the American Mathematical Society in 1905;16
second, his essay entitled "The Principles of Logic" in Windelband
and Ruge's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences;17 and third,
a paper entitled "An Extension of the Algebra of Logic" published
in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Method
(now called the Journal of Philosophy) in 1913.18
The first essay is a beautiful example of system construction
on a large scale. It is terse, clear and accurate, but highly technical
and abstract. Royce follows the lead of an English mathematician,
A. B. Kempe, · in constructing a system from undefined elements
related to each other by a triadic relation; but he improves on
Kempe's work in important and clearly specified ways. He calls
the system 'System l'. Properties of the fundamental relation are
expressed in basic assumptions, and the definitions and operations
of collections and subcollections of the elements are worked out.
From the whole system as thus displayed, choices of elements and
operations can be made that will give specific branches of mathe-
maUes and logic. For example, a determinate choice of elements
can be made such that they may be interpreted as points in space,
and the operations become geometrical operations. Thus, one choice
from System l gives geometry, Euclidean or non-Euclidean, of any
desired number of dimensions. 19 Another choice of elements can
be interpreted as the series of rational numbers, thus yielding the
algebra of quantity. 20 Another choice can be interpreted as classes,
and Boolean algebra can be obtained. 21 Theodore de Laguna, in a
14 RLE, p. 290.
15 Op. cit., § § 10-13 (RLE, pp. 325-334).
16 Vol. VI, pp. 353-415. Reprinted in RLE, pp. 379-441. (The citation to the volume
of the Transactions in RLE is in error.)
17 Op. cit. in footnote 2, above.
18 Vol. X, pp. 617-633. Reprinted in RLE, pp. 293-309.
19 RLE, p. 436f.
20 RLE, p. 438.
21 RLE, p. 427ff.
review of System ~. says "The details of this development are

worked out with absolute accuracy." 22
C. I. Lewis, in his contribution to the volume of essays in honor
of Royce's sixtieth birthday, points out that there are two ways of
elucidating the logical basis of mathematics; one, by the laborious
analysis of all the concepts and operations of mathematics, and
then their rigorous deduction from the terms of the analysis, such
as is performed in Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica;
and the other, by the construction of such a completely general
and abstract logical system that all the fields of mathematics can be
shown tobe special cases of it. 23 The latter is the method pursued
by Royce in System~. and Lewis feels that it has neither been fol-
lowed up nor even sufficiently understood. If this observation was
true in 1916, it is probably still true today.
Royce's essay entitled "The Principles of Logic" in Windelband
and Ruge's Encyclopaedia has been better understood and appre-
ciated than his System ~. C. D. Broad, in reviews of the Encyclo-
paedia, says "Much the most interesting contribution seems to me
to be Royce's ..." 24 And again, "The best contribution is un-
doubtedly Royce's." 25 H. G. Townsend calls it "perhaps his greatest
work." 26
The essay is divided into three sections, in the first of which,
a~ter introductory remarks about the nature of logic and the dif-
ference between pure and applied logic, is a treatment of the prin-
ciples of induction and probability. The second section presents
aspects of symbolic logic which show it to be pure logic considered
as the general science of order. The third section is a further dis-
cussion of order systems and the way that the knowledge of order
impinges on philosophy in general. It culminates in a brief descrip-
tion of System ~ and its application to his own philosophical views.
In this section, Royce expounds the view that he calls 'Absolute
Pragmatism'.
The exposition in this essay is clear, concise and thorough. It
avoids the cliches common to many of the discussions of the nature
of logic dating from the period in which it was written. It shows
a mastery of the literature of the field. There are references to
22 Journal of Philosophy (etc.), Vol. 111 (1906), p. 361.
23 "Types of Order and the System I:" in the Philosophical Review, Vol. XXV,
(1916), pp. 407-419. This issue of the Philosophical Review (Vol. XXV, pp. 229-522) was
also published as a book, Papers in Honor of Josiah Royce on His Sixtieth Birthday
(New York, 1916). A briefer exposition of Lewis' view of the method of Kempe and
Royce may be found in his Survey of Symbolic Logic (Berkeley, Calif., 1918), pp. 362-
367.
24 Mind, Vol. 23, N. S., (1914), p. 274.
25 International Journal of Ethics (now called Ethics), Vol. XXIV (1914). p. 474.
26 Phtlosophtcal Ideas in the United States, p. 164.
C. S. Peirce, to Peano, to Frege, to Couturat, to Dedekind and to

Russen. A thorough acquaintance with Russell's Principles of
Mathematics is shown, but there is no reference to Whitehead and
Russell's Principia Mathematica. 21 Royce was probably writing his
essay at the time when the first volume of the latter appeared. 28
The third of Royce's technical contributions to logic is entitled
"An Extension of the Algebra of Logic," published in the Journal
of Philosophy (etc.) in 1913.29 It is a highly technical and abstract
treatment of Boolean algebra, suggesting and working out details
for an extension of the algebra by defining and operating upon
ordered pairs of Boolean elements. He takes his point of departure
from one "group operation" of the algebra developed somewhat by
J evons, Sehröder and Whitehead. He extends this operation, and
develops functions which enable him to define ordered pairs. Then
he elucidates further operations upon these pairs. He remarks at
the beginning, "In this paper I shall deal wholly with formalities.
Yet, as I hope to show in future papers, very interesting philoso-
phical issues are bound up with the answer to the question which
Whitehead's comparison of the Boolean calculus to argon presents
to our notice." 30 Unfortunately, the promised papers did not appear.
Within three years, Royce had died, and I do not know whether
there are any beginnings of these papers among his unpublished
works. 31 As far as I know, the suggestions and extensions devel-
oped in this paper have never been followed up, but the theory of
ordered pairs has proved so fruitful in mathematics that it seems
its possibilities might well be explored in Boolean algebra.
One of the most interesting questions that arise in connection
with a consideration of Royce's technical work in logic is that of
his relation to C. S. Peirce. References to Peirce grow more fre-
quent in Royce's later writings, accompanied by friendly and
grateful acknowledgments of the influence of Peirce's thought. In
The Problem of Christianity, Royce makes this statement: "Mr.
27 Bertrand Russen, PrincipLes of Mathematics ( Cambridge Univ. Press, 1903).
A. N. Whitehead and B. Russen, Principia Mathematica, Vol. I (Cambridge Univ. Press,
1910).
28 "The Principles of Logic" was the first of Royce's writings that I ever read.
It was also among the first writings on symbolic logic that I ever read. Perhaps this
is one reason that I have always been disposed to reject as being one sided any interpre-
tation of Royce that leaves his logic out of account.
29 In consulting this article, one should note the list of typographical errors given
in the same volume of the Journat (Vol. X) at p. 672. The article is reprinted in RLE,
pp. 293-309 with the typographical errors corrected (an except one, which does not
interfere with any proofs).
30 RLE, p. 293.
31 "A Bibliography of the Unpublished Writings of .Josiah Royce" by .J. Loewen-
berg may be found in the PhiLosophicat Review, Vol. 26 (1917), pp. 578-582. The last
item listed in Sec. A is as fonows: "Studies in Symbolic Logic. A large collection of
notebooks, essays and sketches covering a wide period of important researches into
Logic."
Charles Peirce wrote to me, in a letter of kindly acknowledgment,

the words: 'But, when I read you, I do wish that you would study
logic. You need it so much.' " 32 Royce dates the incident "some
twelve years ago.'' That would make it about 1900, and perhaps
the book was the first volume of The World and the Individuaz.as
The argument in this first volume makes interesting uses of mathe-
matics, not only in the Supplementary Essay, which is almost alto-
gether an argument from the then relatively new mathematical
theory of infinite numbers, but also in the text where, as Morris R.
Cohen points out, "The realistic arguments as to the nature of
mathematics were first advanced by Royce in the two volumes of
The World and the Individual several years before the appearance
of Russell's Principles of Mathematics. 34 The book need not have
been The World and the Individual, it could have been The Con-
ception of Immortality 35 or even The Conception of God 36 except
that Royce was not the sole author of this volume.
The statement quoted above from The Problem of Christianity
was made as an illustration of Peirce's dissatisfaction with "recent
idealism" and as evidence that his doctrine of interpretation came
from his studies in logic. In spite of the context, however, some
have taken it to indicate a turning point in Royce's philosophy.
They hold that he took Peirce's advice and turned to a study of
logic about the beginning of the century. That this was the case
might be indicated by the fact that his first technical publication
in logic, "The Relation of the Principles of Logic to the Foundations
of Geometry," with its elaboration of the System l, appeared in
1905. Nevertheless, I think that the preponderance of evidence in-
dicates that there was no such turning point in Royce's thought or
activity. The most that can be said is that he intensified his study
of logic. As R. B. Perry expresses it in his article on Royce in the
Dictionary of American Biography, "After 1900, Royce's interests
developed in opposite but complementary directions- toward a
more technical and specialized treatment of logic, and toward a
more popular treatment of moral, social and religious problems."
But even in this statement, the year 1900 is probably too definite.
lt is not at all probable that Royce would have been able to
elaborate the System l in only a few years' work, especially as he
32 The Problem of Christianity (New York, 1913), Vol. II, p. 117.
33 The World and the Individual, First Series (London and New York, 1900).
34 See Cohen's essay entitled "Neo-Realism and the Philosophy of Royce," Philoso-
phical Review, Vol. XXV, pp. 378-382. Cohen's citation of The World and the Individual
ls to Vol. I. p. 256.
35 (Boston and New York ,1900.)
36 (New York, 1897.)
was quite busy along other lines in the five years preceding its
publication. During these years, he published four books and a
number of papers. 37 In addition, there is direct evidence that his
thought had been traveling in this direction for a long time. In a
letter to William James dated January 8, 1880, he says "What is
needed is, I think, this:-Some one must master the whole science
of geometry in its latest forms as well as in its long history. . . .
Then he must master all the uses that have been made of space-
science as an aid to other sciences, either directly or not directly
dependent on it, and so come to see the true connection of geometry
and logic . ..." 38 Two sentences further on, he says "Give me ten
years and nothing to hinder, and I will undertake that work my-
self." He did undertake it, but there were many things to hinder,
and it took twenty-five years.
G. H. Howison says that Royce studied logic under Peirce at
the J ohns Hopkins. 39 In this, Howison was surely wrong. Town-
send says that he was acquainted with Peirce (among others men-
tioned) at the Johns Hopkins, but gives no evidence. 40 Howison
was 81 years old when he wrote the paper referred to, and both he
and Royce died before the year was up. He writes as if he is speak-
ing from memory, and he had never met Royce in 1878.
Royce received his doctor's degree from the J ohns Hopkins in
June of 1878. He started teaching English at the University of
California in the fall immediately following. Peirce began lec-
turing at the Hopkins in the fall of 1879, a year later. Fisch and
Cope refer to a letter indicating that Peirce paid a short visit to
Baltimore in January, 1878.' 1 There is no indication that Royce met
him nor that there would have been any occasion for a meeting.
Royce's acquaintance with Peirce evidently grew gradually after
he had gone to Harvard. It is intriguing but useless to speculate
what a difference it would have made to the course of Royce's
philosophical development if Peirce had come to the Hopkins a
few years earlier or Royce a few years later, so that a strong in-
fluence could have been set up at that time.
37 The books were the two volumes of The World and the Individual, The Con-
ception of Immortality and The Outlines of Psychology (New York and London, 1903).
38 See R. B. Perry, The Thought and Character of Witliam James (Boston, 1935),
Vol. I, p. 784. My italics.
39 See Howison's essay "Josiah Royce: The Significance of His Work in Philoso-
phy," Philosophical Review, Vol. XXV (1916), p. 233.
40 Philosophical Ideas in the United States, p. 161.
41 M. H. Fisch and J. I. Cope in their essay entitled "Peirce at the Johns Hopkins
University" in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce (Cambridge, Mass.,
1952), Wiener and Young editors, p. 281. The Ietter was dated January 13, 1878.
III
The interconnections between Royce's logic and his metaphysics
are so numerous and so varied that I can give only a few cases as
illustrative. Perhaps one of the most characteristic but yet a very
specific example is to be found in the Supplementary Essay in
Valurne I of The World and the Individual. 42 Here, Royce attempts
to answer the argument presented by F. H. Bradley in Appearance
and Reality 43 that relatedness can not be a character of Reality
because it involves an infinite regression. He answers it by making
what he points out may be the first application to a special problern
of metaphysics of Dedekind's recent contributions to the theory of
the mathematical infinite. 44 He attempts to show that to dismiss
relatedness because it involves an infinite regression is to misunder-
stand what mathematics has discovered about the nature of infinite
numbers. Not only does an infinite regression not show any con-
tradiction, but in the concept of a 'self-representative system', the
appeal to infinity may be a necessary aspect of our thought. An
infinite nurober does not mean endlessness and therefore incom-
pleteness. Infinite numbers are positively defined. 45
Throughout the argument, Royce showsnot only full acquaint-
ance with the mathematicalliterature on the subject, but a mastery
of the contents of the Iiterature and ingenuity in their application
to the metaphysical problern at hand. Bradley answered Royce's
argument, 46 but what the answer amounts to when boiled down (of
course this is not the way that Bradley puts it) is that Royce's
argument must be rejected for the same sort of reasons as prompted
the rejection of the original concept of relatedness. He does not
meet Royce's challenge that it is the point of view from which this
original rejection is made that is shown by mathematical theory to
be mistaken.
Another illustration of Royce's use of logic in his metaphysics
lies in the last part of his "Principles of Logic" where he applies
System ~ to his voluntaristic idealism. If the elements of the
system are interpreted to represent acts of will, an application to
the world can be made. The algebra of logic can not accurately
represent the world of experience because the elements of the
logic are discrete and do not form a dense series. On the other
hand, the elements of System ~ not only give a basis for the algebra
42 (London and New York, 1900.)
43 (London and New York, 1893.)
44 The Wortd and the Indtvidu.at, Vol. I, p. 527.
45 Ibid., p. 476.
46 See F. H. Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reatity (Oxford, 1914), pp. 277-280.
of logic but they form a dense series. Action is continuous, thus

the series of acts performed in time is dense and can be adequately
represented by the elements of the system. Royce is quite aware
that this does not prove that the world is a series of acts, but it
does show that a strict logic and mathematics can be found to
apply to the world if it is so conceived.
E. G. Spaulding, in his essay entitled "Realistic Aspects of
Royce's Philosophy," 47 takes his point of departure from "The Prin-
ciples of Logic" and especially from the application to metaphysics
contained therein. Spaulding comes to the conclusion that the
view of mathematics and logic expressed in "The Principles" does
not bear out Royce's voluntaristic idealism but, on the other hand,
it indicates a metaphysical realism. Thus, Spaulding seems to feel
that Royce's application of mathematics and logic to his metaphysics
was just a mistake.
I do not think that it can be dismissed as easily as this. There
is no indication that Royce ever feit that his views of the nature of
mathematics and logic "proved" his metaphysics. He seemed to
feel, on the other hand, that whatever metaphysical view one holds
must be compatible with what is known about logic and mathe-
matics. Logic deals with order systems, so whatever order there is
in the world is subject to logical treatment. Order which is not
compatible with logic would involve a self contradiction. I do not
think that it is stretching the interpretation too far to say that in
the last part of the article setting up the System ~. and in Section
III of "The Principles of Logic," Royce is taking the attitude that
his metaphysical view is a hypothesis about the nature of things in
general, and that his conclusions concerning the nature of mathe-
matics and logic serve to aid in the verification of the hypothesis,
for they are what they ought to be if the metaphysical position is
true. The results of the logician's formulas or diagrams are de-
termined by the way that the formulas or diagrams are set up.
All that the logician or mathematician can do is to discover these
results. 48 But the reason that the results are what they are is that
he has set up his ideal constructions as he has set them up; and
within limits, he is master of his own conceptions, for they are acts
of will. Thus, the voluntaristic foundation of logical realism is main-
tained, and as Royce's idealism was of the voluntaristic variety, the
metaphysical hypothesis is strengthened by his interpretation of the
47 Philosophicat Jleview, Vol. XXV. pp. 365-377.
48 See The Wor!d and The Individual, Vol. I, p. 256. See also ''Kant's Doctrine of
the Basis of Mathematics" in the Journal of Phttosophy (etc.), Vol. n (1905), pp, 197-207;
especially at pp. 203, 205 and 206.
nature of mathematics and logic as the ideal results of acts of will.

The metaphysical hypothesis is not proved, but it is validated.
Royce had learned of the fallibility of knowledge and of the nature
of hypotheses from Peirce. 49
A third example of the influence of logic on Royce's meta-
physical systemlies in the doctrine of interpretation. This is funda-
mental to his later view of the Absolute as the Great Community.
The doctrine is expressed many places in Royce's later writings,
but perhaps the two best places to find it are in Lecture XI in the
second volume of The Problem of Christianity and in the article
"Mind" in Hasting's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. 50 Per-
ception and conception arenot the only kinds of knowledge. Neither
can account for our knowledge of other minds or even of our knowl-
edge of ourselves. Both are based on diadie relations, and there is
no third term that is common or can be common to different in-
stances of perception or conception. On the other hand, interpre-
tation involves a triadic relation in which there is a third term for
whom the symbol symbolizes. This is a person to whom, and marks
a community of interpretation. W e do not know minds either
directly or by analogy; the mind is a hypothesis of interpretation.
The necessary enlargement of the community of interpretation-
necessary to form the community of minds and common knowl-
edge-is the Universal or Great Community, which is Royce's later
Absolute.
Royce says that he adopted the doctrine of interpretation from
Peirce. lt is stated in terms which come from the application of
the notions of pure logic to Royce's metaphysical problem. The
logical origin of the doctrine is so obvious that he begs his hearers'
indulgence for stating it in so formal a fashion. 51 He also remarks,
"It is proper to say that Charles Peirce can not be held responsible
for the use that I shall here make of his opinions, or for any of the
conclusions that I base upon them." 52 Others might not apply the
logical doctrine as Royce does, but it is what determined the char-
acter of his later attempts to solve the metaphysical problem.
There are many other examples as good as the foregoing of
Royce's application of pure logic to the problems of metaphysics.
I can take further space to mention only a few. In his article
"Order" in Hasting's Encyclopedia, he shows how social and moral
49 See the article "Mind" in Hasting's Encyctopedia of Religion and Ethics, reprinted
in RLE, pp. 146-178. See especially RLE, p. 156.
50 Seefootnote 49, above.
51 The Problem of Christianity, Vol. II, p. 139.
52 Ibid., p. 116.
problems can be attacked from the standpoint of pure logic. 58 This

article is one of the last products of Royce's pen. 5 ~ Order is the
subject of the study of logic. In particular, he interprets his phil-
osophy of loyalty in terms of logic. Anyone who approaches his
doctrine of loyalty to loyalty without seeing it in the light of his
logical theories will inevitably get a superficial view of it.
The article on "Error and Truth" in the same Encyclopedia not
only depends on his views of logic, but is further relevant to the
discussion of pragmatism and his so-called "Absolute Pragmatism." 611
The correspondence theory of truth gives a theoretic basis for the
difference between truth and error, but it gives no criterion by
means of which to tell the difference. Pragmatism supplies a
criterion, but is not theoretically complete. Absolute idealism goes
further in relating the parts to the whole, but Hegel's method does
not explain the possibility of error. It must be modified both in
the direction of the empirical insights o:f pragmatism and in the
direction of the methods of modern logic. 66
The article "Axiom" in Hasting's Encyclopedia is a gem of logi-
cal analysis. 67 Its discussion ranges all the way from non-Euclidean
geometries and the logical investigation of modern mathematics
and science to Hegel's logic, yet never digresses from the subject
athand.
Whitehead, in the second chapter of Science and the Modern
World,58 pointsout that there have been three times in the history
of thought when philosophers have been strongly influenced by
mathematical ideas - the period from Pythagoras to Plato, the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the present time (we
remember that he wrote this thirty years ago). I should like to
point out that Royce was among the vanguard of the third period
that Whitehead notes. Morris R. Cohen says that he was unusual
among philosophers of his time in taking mathematics seriously.59
Anderson and Fisch say "The combination of mathematical logic
and metaphysics which he attempted to effect in his later career
was one of the characteristics which distinguished his philosophy
from other forms of idealism current at the time." 60 Royce hirnself
says in 1900, "The metaphysic of the future will take fresh account
53 RLE, pp. 204-231. See especially pp. 220ff.
54 See the editor's preface, RLE, p. xH.
55 RLE, pp. 98-124. See especia1ly pp. 122-124.
56 A similar theme 1s elaborated in Sections m, VI and vn of "The Problem of
Truth in the Light of Recent Discussion" in Willtam Ja.mes a.nd Other Essays (New York,
1912) . The paper referred to was written in 1908.
57 RLE, pp. 125-138.
58 (New York, 1925.)
59 See Cohen's essay cited in footnote 43 above, especla11y at p. 38.
60 Philosophy tn America. (New York, 1939), p. 498.
of mathematical research." 61 In 1904, he wrote an address for the

St. Louis Congress of the Arts and Science, to be delivered before
the Division of Normative Science, in which his theme is "to explain
what scientific interests seem to me to be in common to the work
of the philosophers and of the mathematicians." He goes on to say,
"The philosophers, in the near future, will become, I believe, more
and more mathematical." 62
I shall not further point out places where Royce applies his
logic to problems of metaphysics and general philosophy. Suffice
it to say that anyone who searches the later writings looking for
such applications will find his efforts weil rewarded, and will, I
think, come to the opinion that his metaphysics must not be taken
in abstraction from his logic, but on the other hand must be in-
terpreted through a knowledge of his logic. Whether the searcher
will agree with Royce's applications is another matter. I, for one,
do not agree with his idealistic interpretation, but I hold that one
can not intelligently judge the idealism without taking into account
the logical basis on which Royce thought he founded it.
IV
In closing, I want to make two observations. In 1914, his wife
Katherine Royce translated Federico Enrique's Problems of Science
from the Italian, and he wrote an Introductory Note for the English
edition. 63 Any person who is disposed tothink of Royce as a meta-
physician and to let it go at that without considering the other side
of his thought and the interplay between the two sides should read
this Introductory Note. It is difficult to conceive that a thinker
who should rightfully go down in history as only a romantic meta-
physician and absolute idealist motivated primarily by religious
interests should have written this note. It shows conclusively
Royce's competence in mathematics and logic and science, and the
degree to which his whole thought was influenced by these con-
siderations.
The second observation that I want to make is to pointout that
the sort of estimate given by Santayana in his chapter on Royce in
Character and Opinion in the United States64 depends wholly on his
lack of appreciation of the side of Royce's philosophy that I have
61 The World and the Individual, Vol. I, p. 527.
62 This arttele was published in the proceedings of the Congress, Val. I, pp. 151-168,
under the title "The Seiences of the Ideal." It is also published in Science, N. S. Val. XX
(1904), pp. 449-462. The quotations are from the citation in Science at p. 449. This article
seems to me to be an important logical writing to be added to those reprinted in RLE.
63 (Chicago, 1914.) Reprinted in RLE, pp. 254-259.
64 (New York, 1921.)
74 TULANE STUDIES IN PHll..OSOPHY
been trying tobring out. Unless one gives due emphasis to Royce's
logic and to the fact that he took mathematics seriously, he is apt
to emerge with a distorted picture such as Santayana draws.
Whether it is friendly or unfriendly will depend on whether he
feels kindly toward Royce's type of metaphysics, but in either case,
the picture will be but a caricature. It is true, as Santayana says,
that the idealism- taking refuge in the Absolute- is a part of
Royce's thought; as is the moralism, sometimes almost fierce and
sometimes romantic, as Santayana saw. And it is also true that
these aspects of Royce's thought produce problems- sometimes
paradoxes and obscurities; but it is also true that there is another
side, no matter how imperfectly it was welded into the whole.
Santayana obscurely saw this, for he points out that there was
something in Royce that "attached him first to Spinoza and later
to mathematicallogic." 65 But because Santayana did not {perhaps,
given his temperament and training, could not) digest this part of
Royce's thought, he emerged with a partial view that was unjust to
Royce's genius. Without due recognition and thorough assimila-
tion of Royce's place in the development of logic, and of the place
of logic in his whole philosophy, students will inevitably emerge
with a partial and distorted view of Royce's place in the history of
philosophic thought in the United States.
65 Op. cit., p. 112.
ART AS ICON; AN INTERPRETATION OF C. W. MORRIS
Louise Nisbet Roberts
"SIGNS, signs, signs! From sounds, sights, tastes, feels, odors.

From things, from persons, from oneself. Take them away
and we would be more humanly naked than if we walked the streets
without clothes." So writes C. W. Morris. 1 Man is the animal sym-
bolicum according to Cassirer, and Morris would agree. A realiza-
tion of the pervasiveness of signs within the human situation pro-
vides a subject for analysis and a point of departure into the con-
sideration of practically any aspect of human activity. The outlines
of semiosis, the science or theory of signs, are broad indeed. Accord-
ing to Susanne Langer, it is in the "fundamental notion of symboli-
zation" that we have "the keynote of all humanistic problems" and
Cassirer assures us that myth, art, language and science appear as
symbols. 2 It is not at all surprising that such an approach should
focus attention upon that which is essentially and characteristically
human, i.e., upon the subject of art. Nor is it surprising both that the
contributions of Morris toward the development of semiosis have
been extensive, and that his suggestions regarding art have been
particularly interesting.
The linguistic philosophy of art has been described as the
dominant view of our era. The semiotic interpretation is the
product of contemporary linguistic analysis. The "esthetic object"
has been said to function as a vehicle of communication. It has
1 Charles W. Morris, The Open Set! (New York, 1948), p. 55.
2 Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (New York, 1948), p. 19.
Ernst Cassirer, Langv.a.ge and Myth (New York, 1948), p. 8.
75
been regarded as an expressive object and as a sign or symbol of

esthetic experience. In line with this type of analysis, Morris has
attempted "to indicate the !arger outlines of a possible approach to
esthetics in terms of the theory of signs." 3 According to Morris,
the work of art is conceived as a sign which is, in all but the
simplest limiting case, itself a structure of signs.
There is a sense in which most philosophers of art may be
regarded as searchers for the will-of-the-wisp of definition. To in-
terpret art as a sign is to posit a genus. This classification, how-
ever, is only an initial step toward an adequate definition. A far
greater challenge lies in the establishment of an acceptable dif-
ferentia. Morris recognizes this challenge arid has attempted to
meet it. As he has presented it, the problern becomes that of
"stating the differentia of the esthetic sign; such differentia may
be found either in the kind of things which function as esthetic
signs or in the kind of objects which are designated, or (as will here
be suggested) in a combination of both." 4 Morris's suggestion is
that the esthetic sign is an icon, i.e., it is a sign which has properties
in common with that which it denotes, and that the designata of
esthetic signs are values or value properties. Since iconic signs
have properties in common with that which they denote, in the
esthetic sign (so interpreted) there is the direct apprehension of
value properties through the very presence ofthat which itself has
the value it designates. 5
Morris's attempt at definition may best be described as quix-
otic. Despite the formidably technical terminology in which his
theory is stated, it is not free from ambiguity. Furthermore, this
ambiguity may be attributed, in part at least, to an over-simplifica-
tion of the complexities involved in such an analysis and to a
failure to recognize some of the problems presented by a semiotic
interpretation. Many of these weaknesses have been indicated by
his critics and apparently Morris has acquiesced to their criticism.
In Signs, Language and Behavior he remarks that no sign is as
such "esthetic" and the attempt to isolate the fine arts by isolating
a special class of esthetic signs seems now in error. 6
In this connection, however, he does point out that "the com-
mon feature of the fine arts of various linguistic media would seem
3 Charles W. Morris, "Esthetics and the Theory of Signs,"' Journal of Uni;fied

Science (Erkenntnis), VIII (1939), p. 131.
4 Ibid, pp. 131-132.
5 Ibid, p. 136.
6 Charles W. Morris, Signs, Languages and Behavior (New York, 1946), p. 195.
ART AS ICON; AN INTERPRETATION OF C. W. MORRIS 77
to lie primarily in their valuative use of signs which signify goal-

objects, with the additional requirement that the way the signs are
employed must awaken a positive valuation of themselves as goal-
objects (that is, be at least part, and perhaps in the limiting case
the whole part of their valuative use) ." 7 Furthermore, it is sug-
gested that the icon has an important place in the fine arts "because
the valuative aim is more surely reached if an object can be pre-
sented for inspection which itself is prized and which iconically
embodies the very characterisitcs of a goal-object concerning which
the aim is to induce valuation." 8 It would appear, therefore, that
although Morris has abandoned his formal definition of esthetic
signs, the presence of icons and the presentation of values are most
important in his interpretation of the fine arts. The question re-
mains as to whether these concepts make any contribution to the
philosophy of art.
Before there can be a fair evaluation of the concept of icons
as related to art, one must attempt to remove at least some of the
confusions involved. What, if any, is the place of iconic signs in
the fine arts?
In order to consider this question, a distinction must be made
between the function of signs within a work of art and the function
of a work of art (which may itself be a complex of signs) as a sign.
The work of. art may be regarded as a sign per se, or it may be
analyzed into a complex of signs which bear a relation to each
other, and perhaps (via similarity) to external, even non-linguistic
entities. It can be argued that works of art may present iconic
signification on both levels. Morris has remarked that a piece of
music or an individual painting builds its material mainly into
iconic signs and these into a single compound icon, and can in this
way signify whatever can be iconically signified. 9 He fails, how-
ever, to make explicit the distinction between signs within a work
of art and the total work of art as a sign. This causes confusion
with respect to his theory of icons.
A further distinction which Morris has failed to clarify is that
which is to be made between the function of icons in the simple
sense of imitation or representation and their function in the pres-
entation of values. Often the use of icons in representational art is
obvious. The figure in the portrait is like Charles I and may be
7 Loc. cit.
8 Loc. cit.
9 Ibid, p. 193.
regarded as an iconic sign of the king. Morris has pointed out that
photographs, portraits, maps, road-markers and models are iconic
to a high degree. He does recognize the difference of degree of
iconic verisimilitude. But the presentation of values introduces
furthe.r considerations which are not accounted for in his analysis.
Obvious iconic verisimilitude has great practical value, but the
function of faithful representation in esthetic experience is negli-
gible. It is not the task of the fine arts to present the universe over
again. We might agree with Rebecca West that one of the damned
thing is ample. Within the fine arts emphasis is upon the valuative
use of signs and the intrinsic positive valuation of sign vehicles.
This demands a more sophisticated interpretation of icons and in-
troduces problems which have not been fuily explored by Morris.
On the basis of these distinctions, it can be argued that con-
fusions regarding the function of iconic signs in the arts may be
attributed to the richness of the notion and the variety of ways in
which it may be applied rather than to any ambiguity or sterility
in the concept. The work of art can be interpreted as an iconic
sign which may or may not contain iconic signs. The work of art
as a whole may or may not function as an icon in the simple repre-
sentational sense. But in the presentation of values the work of
art is essentially an icon.
It has been suggested by critics of semiotic theory that such
an interpretation of art cannot be reconciled with an interest theory
of value such as that held by Morris. 10 Difficulties do arise if the
expressions "work of art" or "esthetic object" are taken in a very
general sense so as to include situations involving natural as weil
as artificial objects. Morris does distinguish between what Dewey
cails a "work of art" and an "art product." In Morris's terminology
this is a distinction between the "esthetic sign" and the "esthetic
sign vehicle." According to Morris, the basis for this distinction is
that "the work of art in the strict sense (i.e., the esthetic sign) exists
only in a process of interpretation which may be cailed esthetic
perception; hence the formulation of the central problern of esthetics
can equaily weil be stated as the search for the differentia of
esthetic perception.U Apparently for Morris a work of art is any
object which may become an object of esthetic perception. But,
one may ask, are we to understand that any object of esthetic per-
ception is, therefore, a work of art? Apparently Mr. Morris would
10 See Allen Tate, Reason in Madness (New York, 1941), p. 41.

11 Morris, "Esthetics and the Theory of Si.gns," p. 132.
regard the two as identical since he states specifically that there is

a work of art "wherever something is the object of esthetic per-
ception-and there is nothing which in this sense and to some de-
gree cannot become a work of art." 12 This identification, however,
fails to allow for the human element in the creation of art products
which may be amorig those objects which function as objects of
esthetic perception. It thus omits the source of value communica-
tion in the arts. A recognition of this human element provides a
basis for communication which can be reconciled with an interest
theory of value.
In what sense is there a work of art wherever something is
the object of esthetic perception? Does this mean, for example,
that there is a work of art where there is an esthetic perception
of the sea? There may be "art" in the sense of skill involved in
the process of perceiving, but surely the process of perceiving is
not to be identified with the object of perception. There may be
art in the sense of skill involved in the process of perceiving in the
esthetic perception of a painting. But in this instance there is also
"art" in a very different sense. If we interpret 'art' as 'skill', there
is also art involved in the creation of the object perceived, i.e., the
physical art product or, in Morris's terms, the "sign vehicle." More-
over, the painting is not only an esthetic object, but also an object
of art. In the example of the esthetic perception of the sea, the
only conceivable object of art would be the experience, or the
process of perceiving. The sea is a natural object and can only be
called an object of art from perhaps a theological point of view.
In order to preserve this distinction, we may regard those ex-
periences as "experiences of art" which concern a particular kind
of artifact-an artifact being understood as an object or situation
which is produced through the mediation of some human agent.
It is the intervention of this human agent, the artist with his in-
terests, which produces a communication of value through the art
object. With the recognition of this factor, Morris's iconic theory
of art can be extended to include a theory of value communication
which involves both the artist and his patron.
An artificially constructed "esthetic sign vehicle," i.e., an object
of art in the above sense, is a product of human experience and an
object of human experience as weil. It is produced by means of
discrimination and selection on the part of the artist. The choices
12 Ibid, p. 139.
which the artist makes in the process of his work are governed by
his interests. They depend upon what he, the artist, values. Fur-
thermore, the "art product" is an object of interest to him. The
artist devotes his attention to the object itself and attempts to
organize his materials in such a manner as to gain some degree of
satisfaction from his product. His experience · of value which de-
termines the construct itself may be regarded as intrinsic and
predominately esthetic. His work is constructed from his ex-
perience of value and it is constructed in such a way as to provide
an experience of value. The resulting object of art is a sign vehicle
which communicates the esthetic values embodied within its con-
struction. These values need not be regarded as actual apart from
human experience, but in so far as they are actualized within
human experience, some degree of communication is taking place.
In sofaras the actualization of these values has properties in com-
mon with the experience of value determining its construction, the
object of art functions as an iconic sign. It is in this sense that a
work of art may be said to be essentially an icon. By means of the
common properties of value experiences, communication takes place
through the arts.
Although this analysis may be extended far beyond Morris's
iconic theory of art, it does not appear to be in conflict with his
interpretation. It seems tobe in accord with his statement that the
artist "is one who molds some medium so that it takes on the value
of some significant experience (an experience which may of course
arise in the process of molding the medium and need not antedate
this process). The work of art is a sign which designates the value
or value structure in question, but has the peculiarity, as an iconic
sign, that in spite of its generality of reference, the value it desig-
nates is embodied in the work itself, so that in perceiving a work
of art one perceives directly a value structure and need not be
concerned with other objects which the esthetic sign must denote
(technically, other denotata than the sign vehicle itself). In works
of art men and women have embodied their experience of value,
and these experiences are communicable to those who perceive the
molded medium. Art is the language for the communication of
values." 13 He further remarks: "Since the esthetic sign itself em-
bodies the values it designates, in esthetic discourse the perceptual
properties of the sign vehicles themselves become of great im-
portance, and the artist constantly experiments with special syn-
13 Charles W. Morris, "Science, Art, and Technology," Kenyon Review, I (Spring,
1939), in A Modem Book of Esthetics, ed. Melvin Rader (New York, 1952). p. 307.
tactical combinations of these signs to obtain desired value effects." 14

According to the above analysis, in the molding of his medium the
artist constructs a sign vehicle which is essentially an iconic sign
of esthetic values.
A signification of values embodied within the construction of
the esthetic sign vehicle does not imply conscious reference to any-
thing external to the experience of appreciation, the situation in-
volving the sign vehicle and the appreciator. 15 This can be an
experience of intrinsic value, an immediate esthetic apprehension.
In this very apprehension, however, communication may be estab-
lished. It is established in so far as there is an iconic relationship
between the experience of value in appreciation and the experience
of value in construction. The conscious awareness of all the factors
present in such a communication is a different matter. They may
be of intellectual or practical interest and can lead an appreciator
beyond his experience of appreciation to a consideration of the
artist and his experience. These considerations, however, are ex-
ternal to the esthetic communication itself.
Furthermore, it is not to be assumed that the communication
of esthetic value need be the conscious intent of an artist. Ex-
periences of esthetic value beyond those involved in his construc-
tion of the art object may be irrelevant to him. This in no way
affects the fact of communication. Nor can it be assumed that his
work is motivated by esthetic interest. His motivation may be
practical. This does not mean that he can dispense with the ex-
perience of esthetic value in the process of his work, however.
Finally, his judgment or evaluation of his experience of value can
be quite different from the evaluation given by an appreciator,
even by the artist as appreciator, although the two experiences may
be decidedly similar. Evaluations or judgments are made on the
basis of comparison and depend upon a standard of values. They
may differ in various incidences.
The esthetic communication characteristic of a work of art is
due to the function of the art product as an iconic sign of esthetic
value. This is a function of the work of art as a whole. It does
14 Ibid, p. 308.
15 Cf. Richard Rudner, "On Semiotic Aesthetics," The Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Cr!ticism, X (September, 1951), 67-77. Among Rudner's criticisms of a semiotic
esthetics is the argument that an interpretation of the work of art as a sign is in-
compatible with the belief that the work of art is "immediately consummatory" or is
"immediately experienced." This criticism has been answered by Edward Ballard, "In
Defense of Symbolic Aesthetics," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Cr!ticism, XII
(September, 1953). The "forms of feeling" referred to by Ballard might be interpreted
as an aspect of the value experience discussed above.
82 TULANE STUDIES IN PHn..OSOPHY
not require conscious reference to a subject outside of the work

of art itself, but focuses attention upon the formally organized
content of the work of art per se. This, however, is but one of the
ways (albeit the mostessential way) in which iconic signs function
in the arts. A work of art as a whole may be an iconic sign in a
simpler sense of imitation. The statue may be an iconic sign of a
woman. But this does not mean that the statue is merely the iconic
sign of a model. It is not the model over again. It is a product of
the selections of the artist and as such is indicative of his values-
not only those which he finds in his statue, but those which he
finds in his model as weil. The sta tue is an iconic sign vehicle of
the artist's valuations of his model whether she be real, or the
product of his imagination based upon his experience of women,
or a combination of reality and imagination.
Furthermore, a work of art, beside being an iconic sign, may
contain other iconic signs. A poem, for example, can function as
a whole as an iconic sign of esthetic value, yet some words within
the poem may function as mere conventional signs while others
may function as iconic signs as well via onomatopoeia. A syntac-
tical problern lies in the organization of signs within a work of art.
This is complicated by the fact that some of these signs may be
conventional, some may be both conventional and iconic, others
may be predominately iconic with little conventionalization. It is
further complicated by the relation between these signs and the
iconic function of the work of art as a whole.
It may be concluded that Morris's presentation offers a frame-
werk within which a more adequate theory of art (in respects that
have been pointed out) can be constructed. Although the notion
of art as icon may not provide a conclusive definition, it does eluci-
date some of the essential characteristics of art. It can be used as
a tool for the analysis of art. It must be recognized, however, that
art provides an extremely complex subject for analysis. Such
analysis demands instruments as sharply defined as possible and
requires all the skill of the latest philosophical techniques. Perhaps
through the semiotic approach we may reach an understanding
of at least some humanistic problems, including the problern "What
is art?"
TIME AND WHITEHEAD'S GOD
Robert C. Whittemore
ISInWhitehead's theory of Time compatible with his notion of God?

their preoccupation with those doctrines peculiar to their own
areas of interest, time-theorists and theologians alike have tended
to ignore this question. Critics of the theory of Time have had, for
the most part, little or nothing to say concerning the temporal (or
non-temporal) character of God. Interpreters of the doctrine of
God have, on the other hand, generally tended to accept without
criticism Whitehead's statement that "the everlasting nature of God,
.... in a senseisnon-temporal andin another sense is temporal."1
Compatibility has all too often been simply assumed. The problern
of Time and God has been passed over as being no problern at all.
There are, of course, good reasons for such an attitude on the
part of the commentators. Whitehead hirnself appears to have felt
no real problern here. His later works abound in implications and
assumptions of the temporality of God. 2 That his development of
the notion of the natures of God might conflict with this expression
of the nature of Time seems never to have occurred to him. Have
he and his commentators been justified in such complacency? I
would suggest that they have not. The assumption of the adequacy
of temporal distinctions in God prior to a thorough analysis of the
1 Adventures ot ldea.s (New York, The Macmlllan Co., 1933), p. 267.
2 Sclence and the Modem World (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1948), pp. 183-
185; P'l'ocess and Realitv (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1929), pp, 28, 43, 64, 112, 134·
135, 434, 527-529.
83
84 TULANE STUDIES IN PHU...OSOPHY
implications of His entitative character is an open invitation to cos-

mological confusion. The problern of Time and God is no less a
problern because no one has feit it to be such.
Examination of Whitehead's categoreal scheme with the purpose
of determining the ground for the ascription of temporal character
to God yields the conviction that the basis for such ascription is,
and can only be, the first category of existence, i.e., actual entities.
Only in this notion do the doctrines of Time and God appear to
coalesce. The assumption of the compatibility of these doctrines
always presupposes the intelligibility of the definition of God as an
actual entity. 8 That coalescence is possible solely in terms of 'actual
entities' becomes clear when we look to Whitehead's conception of
the nature of Time.
Time, he insists/ is nottobe thought of in the Newtonian sense
as a real flowing containing of facts. Rather is it always to be re-
garded as a character of the realization of the coming to be of every
act of experience. A duration, Whitehead teils us, 5 is a spatialized
epoch, is that which is required for the realization of any given event.
Realization, he adds, 6 is to be conceived of as the becoming of time
in the field of extension. Temporalization is realization, is atomic
succession. Time is sheer succession of epochal durations/ is a
character of the locus ofthat unison of becoming which is an actual
entity. 8 Apart from its realization as a character qualifying the
growth of entities, Time has no meaning whatever.
Conclusions of a similar nature with respect to God follow from
the mere inspection of His definition. Whitehead makes it abun-
dantly clear that God is always to be thought of as an actual entity. 9
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that He could be otherwise, given
Whitehead's categoreal scheme. More important, however, is White-
head's assertion that His existence "is not generically different from
that of other entities, except that He is 'primordial'."10 Whitehead
does not appear to have regarded this 'exception' as being of over-
3 "Actual entities-also termed 'actual occasions'-are the final real things of
which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything
more real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so is the most
trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But though there are gradations of
importance, and diversities of function, yet in the principles which actuality exemplifies
all are on the same level. The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual
entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent." Process and Reality,
pp. 27-28. Italics mine.
4 The Concept of Nature (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1920), p. 65.
5 Science and the Modern World, p. 183.
6 Ibid., p. 185
7 Ibid., p. 183.
8 Processand Reality, pp. 195-196.
9 Ibid., pp. 27-28, 46f, 70, 102, 116.
10 Ibid., p. 116. Italics mine.
TIME AND WHITEHEAD'S GOD 85
riding significance, yet in the final analysis it is, I think, decisive.

"Decisive", because any character (temporality included) ascribed to
God must be either a character peculiar to God considered in some
one of His natures, i.e., as primordial, consequent, or superjective, or
a character peculiar to God regarded as the unity of these three.
In other words, the relation of Time to God can be elicited in no
other way than through an analysis of the temporal or non-temporal
character proper to each nature of God, or to that unity of which
they areindividual aspects. If, following such analysis, Whitehead's
ascription of a temporal character to God should prove unfounded,
or if his very characterization of God as an actual entity should turn
out to be both literally and analogically unintelligible in terms of
God's component natures, considered separately or collectively, then
it would seem that the ground for the connexion of Time and God
is swept away; their assumed compatibility would appear instead
to be an instance of a basic metaphysical conflict.
II
"The non-temporal act of all-inclusive unfettered valuation is at
once a creature of creativity and a condition for creativity. It shares
this double character with all creatures. By reason of its character
as a creature, always in concrescence and never in the past, it
receives a reaction from the world; this reaction is its consequent
nature. It is here termed God. . . ." 11
In His primordial nature, God is, according to Whitehead, the
timeless source of all order, 11 the locus of timeless potentiality.l"
Such designations, taken in conjunction with the dieturn that the
mental pole of any actuality is always out of Time,' 3 surely justify
the conclusion that God, considered as primordial, is in no way
temporal. By definition, God is primordially the non-temporal
actual entity. 14 Insofar as this (primordial) nature alone is in-
volved, there exists no problern of the compatibility of the notions
of Time and God. Each is, for athe other, simply irrelevant.
However, to say this is not to say that any further considera-
tion of the temporal implications of God's primordial nature may be
dispensed with. God is still, by definition, an actual entity, albeit
non-temporal. What we have now to consider is whether or not
in view of that temporality intrinsically denominated of all other
11 Processand Reatity, p. 47. Italics mine.
12 Ibid., p. 64.
13 Ibid., p. 380.
14 Process and Reality, pp. 102, 134.
actual entities, the term 'non-temporal actual entity' has any gen-
uine cosmological significance. Is a non-temporal entity, properly
speaking, an entity at all? Analysis of the implications of 'primor-
diality' would seem to point to the conclusion that God qua pri-
mordial cannot intelligibly be so conceived.
For actual entities are alike-temporal; God is eternal. Actual
entities alike-arise, flourish, and perish; God endures as the ever-
lasting ground of Order. Actual entities alike-"never really are"; 15
God pre-eminently IS. Actual entities are, for Whitehead, deter-
minate elements of process, "drops of experience." 16 But in what
sense, literal or figurative, can God be said tobe either an element
of process or a "drop of experience?"
A temporal entity arises from settled objective facts, and may
properly be conceived as beginning with physical experience and
completing itself through conceptual experience, whose initial phase
is from God. 17 God, on the other hand, beginning with conceptual
experience (His envisagement of the complete realm of eternal
objects in graded relevance) completes Hirnself by the physical
experience derived from the temporal world. The modes of self-
creation as between God and all other entities are fundamentally
different.
Temporal actual entities alike are dipolar-and so is God. But
is this ground of resemblance sufficient to allow the definition of
God as an actual entity? If we have regard to the requirements
for the explanation of any entity whatever it would seem not. For
the explanation of any entity presupposes (1) reference to other
antecedent entities or, (2) the functioning of God as the impetus
to subjective aim. "A new creation has to arise from the actual
world as much as from pure potentiality: it arises from the total
universe and not solely from its more abstract elements."18 The
first requirement is necessary in order that the ontological prin-
ciple be conformed to. 19 The second requirement fulfills the pre-
supposition of an ordering force present in the universe preventing
relapse into chaos.
But God cannot be explained! He must violate the ontological
principle, for no reason can be given for God since He is the ground
15 Ibid., p. 126.
16 Ibld .• pp. 26, 65.
17 P7-ocess and Realtty, pp. 54, 524.
18 Ibid., p. 123.
19 Ibid., p. 28.
TIME AND WmTEHEAD'S GOD 87
of all reason, the ultimate irrationality. 20 "A reason is always a

reference to determinate actual entities", says Whitehead. 21 But
God (qua primordial) is not a determinate actual entity. He is
rather the ground for determination. 22 The term 'entity' (qua rela-
tive to reason) cannot be applied indiscriminately to temporal and
non-temporal alike.
Nor is the second of our above noted requirements pertinent
to God qua actual entity. As self-creator, God must be His own
subjective aim, and explanation in terms of the second requirement
is, in His case, simply the reference of God to Himself. He is His
own explanation, and to say this is simply to say in other words
what has already been said, i.e., that no reason can be given for
the ground of reason. Thus no explanation in the ordinary sense
of the term is possible in the case of the primordial nature of God.
God can be defined only if we have regard to the two requirements
for explanation, and these requirements are not applicable to Hirn.
Moreover, if we have regard to the description of God qua pri-
mordial as "deficient in actuality", even the semantic propriety of
terming Hirn an actual entity seems questionable.
W e have to conclude then that God qua primordial cannot be
intelligibly defined as an actual entity. 23 Any attempt to conceive
non-temporal entity after analogy with temporal entity is of no
avail. We cannot find a reason for God (as we can for all entities
properly so-called)that does not presuppose His operation as the
explanation for the reason. In the admission of God's inexplica-
bility lies the concession of His ultimate irrationality.
20 Science and the Modern World, p. 257. "God is the outcome of creativity," says
Whitehead (Process and Reality, p. 135), and adds, "God is the aboriginal instance of
creativity. The non-temporal act of all-inclusive unfettered valuation is at once a
creature of creativity and a condition for creativity" (Process and Reality, p. 344).
All this seems to imply that creativity is ontologically prior to God. Yet God, qua
primordial, is, by definition, non-temporal. Thus we appear compelled to say that what
is ontologically prior to the non-temporal should itself be either non-temporal or
a-temporal. Creativity must be conceived as temporal when taken as characterizing
actual occasions, and as non-temporal when taken as characterizing God in His pri-
mordial nature. This conclusion cannot be avoided by disjoining creativity from the
creatures, for apart from the creatures, creativity has no meaning. Creativity as
relative to the primordial nature of God is then at once temporal and non-temporal.
This is the "ultimate irrationality."
21 Processand Reality, p. 392.
22 Science and the Modern World, p. 256. It is true that what God is can be par-
tially determined by what God becomes as the result of the objectification in His
consequent nature of all flux past. But this is of no help in explaining the "how" of
the entitative character of His primordial nature. And we must keep in mind that
this primordial nature is for the most part the decisive one, for it is not until the final
pages of Process and Reality that any aspect other than the primordial receives any
detailed explanation at all. The God of Religion in the Making, Science and the
Modern World, and Process and Reality is, by and !arge, God in His primordial nature.
23 There is of course the possibility that Whitehead may not have intended to define
God qua primordial as an actual entity. Charles Hartshorne, whose conception of God
derives in !arge part from Whitehead, conceives God in His primordial (absolute) aspect
as abstract rather than concrete. In Hartshorne's work there is hardly a suggestion
that God in His abstract aspect is to be regarded entitatively. Whether such a view
is also to be found in Whitehead is by no means clear. At least it has not, to the best
of my knowledge, been anywhere stated by Whitehead that God qua primordial is not
an actual entity.
III
It will be said that all the above is in no way as decisive as it
is made out to be, that the problern posed becomes no problern at
all the moment we turn to consider the temporal implications of
the consequent nature of God. For if any nature is clearly tem-
poral it is this one.
The very definition of 'consequent nature' would seem to jus-
tify such a conclusion. The consequent nature of God is, we are
told, 24 "the physicaZ prehension by God of the actualities of the
evolving universe." Apply to this statement Whitehead's dieturn
that the physical is always temporal, 25 and you can hardly avoid
the implication that, at the very least, the content of God's con-
sequent nature is temporal.
Nonetheless, such argumentation does not, I would contend,
necessarily imply that the consequent nature of God, considered in
itself, is temporal. On the contrary. If we look more closely into
the matter we encounter a consequent nature of quite a different
character. It does not follow that because the content of God's
consequent nature is temporal the nature must itself also be tem-
poral. For God qua consequent is not so much the content as He
isthat which absorbs the content into Himself. Whitehead seems
to recognize this distinction when he defines the consequent nature
of God as "the fluent world become 'everlasting' by its objective
immortality in God." 26
It can, I think, scarcely be denied that there is here at least
an implicit suggestion that the temporal actual entities are in some
way transformed if not entirely divested of their temporality in the
process of achieving objective immortality by absorption into the
divine. Time, so we are told, is irreversible. "For," as Whitehead
notes, "the later occasion is the completion of the earlier occasion,
and therefore different from it." 27 But different in what way? If
that which is past differs from that which is present as the objec-
tively immortal differs from the temporally actual, can past and
present both be temporal in any universal sense of the term?
It will be maintained that all this is somewhat tentative, andin
itself offers no conclusive evidence to support our contention that
the consequent nature of God is, contrary to all accepted opinion,
non-temporal. The criticism is just. Had we nothing more than
24 Process and Realtty, p. 134. Itallcs mine.
25 Process and Reality, p. 380.
26 Ibid., p. 527.
Z1 "Time", Proceedings of the Sb:th International Congress of Philosophtl (London,
Longmans Green & Co., 1927), pp. 61-63.
the above to go on, it might well be said that we have not con-
clusively madeout our case. Fortunately, however, Whitehead has
given us a much more explicit statement of his view.
"Each actuality in the temporal world," he remarks, "has its recep-
tion into God's nature. The corresponding element in God's nature
is not temporal actuality, but is the transmutation ofthat temporal
actuality into a Living ever-present fact. An enduring personality
in the temporal world is a route of occasions in which the succes-
sors with some peculiar completeness sum up their predecessors.
The correlate fact in God's nature is an even more complete unity
of life in a chain of elements for which succession does not mean
loss of immediate unison. This element in God's nature inherits
from the temporal counterpart according to the same principle as
in the temporal world the future inherits from the past. Thus in
the sense in which the present occasion is the person now, and yet
with his own past, so the counterpart in God is that person in God." 28
God in His consequent nature prehends the physical world, but
this is not to say that, since what is prehended is temporal, the
prehension is itself temporal. God remembers the past and re-
members it as present, but this is not to say the memory of past
and present is itself (as present) temporal. On Whitehead's view
the temporality of each occasion presupposes its incompleteness. 29
Time is becoming and perpetual perishing, and it is only as entities
become that they are in Time and of Time. But can God be said to
be incomplete? In the sense that the future of this God prehended
universe augurs a future for God-perhaps. But considered as that
entity which qua consequent sums up and preserves within itself
all the values of creation to the present moment, God is surely
complete. Preservation of temporal process and immanence in
temporal process are two different things.
It will be objected that, nonetheless, God qua consequent is
God in the character of becoming, and that 'becoming' is, if any-
thing is, temporal. Yet is 'becoming' temporal? Strangely enough,
Whitehead does not appear to have regarded it so. "In every act
of becoming," he remarks, "there is the becoming of something with
temporal extension; but the act itself is not extensive." 30 The pur-
port of this statement becomes clearer when we have recourse to a
distinction Whitehead draws with regard to types of division. The
types recognized are "genetic" and "coordinate." "Genetic division
is division of the concrescence; coordinate division is division of the
28 Process and Reatity, pp. 531-532. Italics mine.
29 "Time requires incompleteness. A mere system of mutually prehensive occasions
is compatible with the concept of a static timeless world. Each occasion is temporal
because it is incomplete. Nor is there any system of occasions which is complete; there
is no one well-defined entity which is the actual world." (Op. cit., footnote 27 above,
pp.61-62).
30 Processand Reatity, p. 107.
concrete."81 In the genetic mode the prehensions are exhibited in

their genetic relationship to each other. The actual entity is seen
as a process. There is growth from phase to phase. But the genetic
passage from phase to phase is not in physical time. For as White-
head notes, physical time expresses some features of the growth,
but not growth of the features. 82 In other words, extensiveness be-
comes, but becoming is not extensive.83 Process becomes, but this
is not to say that becoming is process. The paradoxical implication
that process is not-in any temporal sense of the word-becoming,
that awareness of temporal content does not necessarily imply par-
ticipation in the temporal, provides the ground for the assertion
that no clear reason exists to justify the assumption that God in His
consequent nature is temporal. That God is with Time need not
be disputed; that God is in Time does not appear to be a conclusion
justified by the evidence at hand.
IV
The superjective nature of God is defined as "the character of
the pragmatic value of his specific satisfaction qualifying the trans-
cendent creativity in the various temporal instances." 84 Whether
or not such a definition allows room for the characterization of God
as temporalisrather hard to say. Personally, I find the definition
more appalling than informative. Such inferences as may be drawn
from it must be based almost wholly on the material proffered us
in the very last pages of Process and Reality. The superjective
nature of God, we learn there, is the reflection of His Iove for the
world. The actualities brought to perfection by their reception into
God are passed back as data into the flux of things. "What is done
in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality
in heaven passesback into the world." 85 "The kingdom of heaven
is with us today," remarks Whitehead, 86 and means by it that God
in His superjective nature is one with alltemporal creation. Surely
this is temporal as we are temporal, for Whitehead adds, "the per-
fected actuality passesback into the world, and qualifies this world
so that each temporal actuality includes it as an immediate fact of
relevant experience."37
31 Ibid .• p. 433.
32 Ibid., p. 433ff.
33 And, we should add, non-temporal, since Time as defined by Whitehead (see
The Concept of Nature, Principles of Natural Knowledge, and Process and Reality) 1s
-expressible only in durations, in definite slabs of nature.
34 Process and Realtty, p. 135.
35 Process and Reality, p. 532. Italics mine.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
Yet even in the face of such statements as these, doubt of God's

temporality may be expressed. When we recall the transformation
involved in the achievement of objective immortality by actual
entities; when also we remernher the dieturn that "extensiveness
becomes, but becoming is not extensive," we are inevitably led back
to our previous conclusion, i.e., that the operation of God in the
world is in itself no clear indication of His temporality. The "pass-
ing back" of a possibly detemporalized entitative value to that
world from whence it came is no clear indication that we are justi-
fied in assuming this doctrine of the superjective nature provides
an adequate and literal solution to the problern of the immanence
of God. At all events, the extreme sketchiness of the portrayal of
God qua superjective affered us by Whitehead should inhibit any
leaping to overhasty conclusions that here-at last-is the neces-
sary link between finite and infinite.
V
One final possibility remains. If God cannot be said to evince
temporality in any single aspect of His being, may this not be due
to the fact that temporality is a character not of aspects but of that
unity which underlies them? If each monadic creature is, as White-
head claims, "a mode of the process of 'feeling' the world, of housing
the world in one unit of complex feeling," 38 then may not the solu-
tion to the problern be that God qua temporal is to be thought of
as that creature39 whose time span overlaps all others, whose tem-
poral epoch is that within which all temporal epochs are encom-
passed? If such be so, then we might say that God as unity, related
to all, is temporally present in all.
The epochal theory of Time appears to allow for such a view. 40
Yet ü we take this tobe the correct solution new problems at once
arise. For how does this most inclusive temporal epoch (quantum)
differ from eternity (or a-temporality)? Is eternity then to be
thought of as the temporal character of an actual infinite? And
38 Process and Reality, p. 124.

39 "The non-temporal act of all-inclusive unfettered valuation is at once a creatu.re
of creativity and a condition for creativity."(Process and Reality, p. 47). Italics mine.
40 "The actual entity is the enjoyment of a certain quantum of physical time. But
the genetic process is not the temporal succession: such a view is exactly what is
denied by the epochal theory of time. Each phase in the genetic process presupposes
the entire quantum, and so does each feeling in each phase. The subjective unity
dominating the process forbids the division of that extensive quantum which originates
with the primary phase of the subjective aim. The problern dominating the concres-
cence is the actualization of the question of the quantum in solido. The quantum
is that Standpoint in the extensive continuum which is consonant with the sub-
jective aim in its original derivation from God. Here 'God' is that actuality in the
world, in virtue of which there is physical law." (Process and Reality, p. 434).
how, if temporality is the characteristic of God considered as the

unity of the universe, can we avoid ending in that pantheism (pan-
cosmism) which it is clearly not Whitehead's intention to advocate?
There are, I think, no easy answers to these questions. Short of
paradox there may be no answers to them at all. In any case we
are no more justified in uncritically assuming the temporality of
the unity that is God than we were in assuming the temporality of
any of His component natures.
VI
Is Whitehead's theory of Time compatible with his notion of
God? In the light of the foregoing, I suggest that it is not. In no
one of His natures, nor in His character as a Whole, can God be
held clearly temporal in any sense of the word permitted by White-
head's theory of Time. Moreover, it seems open to considerable
doubt that God is (in any literal or analogical sense of the term)
an actual entity at all, and if this is so then it is hard to see how,
given a view in which temporality is identified with actualities
and with actualities alone, God's temporality is to be accounted
for. We are, in Whitehead's words, faced finally with "this in-
credible fact-that what cannot be, yet is." 41
41 Process and Reatity, p. 531.
VOLUME I, 1952
TABLE OF CONTENTS
lNTRODUCTION OF THE TuLANE STUDIES: T.V. Smith_______________________ 5

REASON AND CoNVENTION: Edward G. Ballard ---------------------------------- 21
UNIVERSALITY AND MEANING: Richard L. Barber _______________________________ 43
PROPOSITIONS AND FACTS: James K. Feibleman __________________________________ 71
PHILOSOPHY-Mm-CENTURY: Carl H. Hamburg__________________________________ 87
A CRITICISM OF THE MARXIAN INTERPRETATION

oF HISTORY: Harold N. Lee_______________________________________________________ 95
FoRMALisM OF TERMINIST LOGIC IN THE FoURTEENTH

CENTURY: Louis N is bet-------------------------------------------------------------------107
This volume may be purchased for $2.00, plus postage,

From The Tulane University Bookstore,
New Orleans 18, La.
VOLUME II. 1953
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TRUTH AND lNSIGHT INTO VALuE: Edward G. Ballard....___, 5

EXPERIENCE, REASON AND FAITH: Richard L. Barber______ 25
ARISTOTLE AS FINITE ÜNTOLOGIST: J ames K. Feibleman____ 39
Tm: SEMIOTIC RANGE OF Pmr.osoPHY: Carl H. Hamburg______ 59
A:N EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
OF lNDucTioN: Harold N. Lee_____________________ 83
E\rERY PROPOSITION IS FALSE- A M!:DIEVAL
PARADOX: Louise Nisbet Roberts________________________ 95
DOGMA AND SUFFICIENT REASON IN THE CosMOLOGY
OF LEmmz: Robert Whittemore____________________l03

New Orleans 18, La.
VOLUME III. 1954
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FoREWORD_________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5
THE KANTIAN SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF MAN WITHIN
NATURE: Edward G. Ballard_________________________________________________________ ____ 7
Two LoGres OF MoDALITY: Richard L. Barber____________________________________ 41
KANT AND METAPHYsrcs: James K. Feibleman____________________________________ 55
KANT, CAssmER AND THE CoNCEPT OF SPACE: Carl H. Hamburg____ 89
THE RIGIDITY OF KANT's CATEGORIES: Harold N. Lee _______________________ 113
NoTEs ON THE JUDGMENT OF TAsTE: Louise Nisbet Roberts____________ 123
THE METAPHYSICS OF THE SEVEN FORMULATIONS
OF THE MoRAL ARGUMENT: Robert Whittemore____________________________ 133

New Orleans 18, La.

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STUDIES IN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

ISBN 978-90-247-0278-7 ISBN 978-94-017-3169-0 (eBook)

AN EsTIMATE oF DEWEY's ART AS EXPERIENCE:

A RIGHT TO BELIEVE: Richard L. Barber______________________________________________ 19

VIENNESE PosiTIVISM IN THE UNITED STATEs:

SKINNER's "SciENTIFIC" ETHics OF SURVIVAL: Carl H. Hamburg__ 49

ROYCE AS LOGICIAN: Harold N. Lee___________________________________________________ 61

ARTAS IcoN; AN INTERPRETATION oF C. W. MoRRIS:

TIME AND WHITEHEAD's Gon: Robert C. Whittemore_____________________ 83

J OHN Dewey, like Thomas Mann, finds that modern civilization

Tm: CONTENT OF DEWEy's .AESTHETICS

To begin with, it is worth noting that there are two ways of

exemplifies these aspects is correctly to be recognized as aesthetic.

generalized biological context. Experience goes on within and

evaluating it justly. Nevertheless, he holds that it is possible to

factory designation of completeness. Therefore, in order to com-

through overcoming resistances, through cooperative interaction.6

aspects of completeness. 8 Intensification refers to the building up

A PATTERN IN DEWEY'S WRITING

A fairly definite pattern seems repeatedly to emerge from the

from feeling. These distinctions, he believes, have become accepted

9 Consider, to take a single illustration, Dewey's presentation of Aristotle. He be-

function of Dewey's aesthetic philosophy can better be discovered

of theories in aesthetics but of his real purpose in this book. These

THE NATURE oF DEWEY's AEsTHETrcs

12 Op. cit., p. 119.

goes so far as to be anti-theoretical, it is hardly surpnsmg that

concepts to experience might produce. If theoretical aesthetics is

perception and taste. Then finally, this education would require

tient being a right to believe?" To press this question forcibly,

given belief. Failing this, the formal statement expressing belief,

the rejection of the belief, in that particular." Of course, if all

indeterminism of individual events; the seeming independence of

If we agree, following the empirical and plural theory of goods

openly contradict themselves or one another, or, perhaps, goes so

or underivable. V ary though it does, this claim seems to appear

volitional, we should then have to find some new terminology for

In the former case, my account would simply be that the cogni-

T HE affirmative pursuit of truth is more profitable than the

might be better now to call their enterprise Viennese positivism.

Despite the bad manners of the Viennese positivists, is it not

tions concerning that to which metaphysics refers, for they under-

It is difficult not to be sorry for the poor scientists themselves

science but interpretation, and interpretation of this sort can hardly

7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Phi!osophicus (London, 1922, Kegan

require a subject in the old sense, only a "metaphysical subject," 13

of classes, and logic carries Quine in particular along more rigorous

logically perfect language. Opinions differ as to what Wittgen-

indefinable, 34 though he did set up an ethics after clarifying the

34 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903, University Press), I, B, 6.

characters." 41 Here, said Schlick, is a "fundamental ethical in-

by referring to a passage in Wittgenstein's first posthumaus book.

1 (New York, 1953, Macmillan).

Unless it be groundless, in principle, to look forward to psy-

"cultural design", thus making a practice of changing practice. In

"good culture design" in the absence of competition. The tempo-

(12) Some changes in culture may be made because of con-

(18) What then is the contribution which a science of behavior

dependently operating physical or chemical factors. It would seem,

possible at one time from what has proven possible at an earlier

nearly as long as family practices, and both are as nothing com-

which is to fulfill itself in the former. Even if, in the end, we