John Dewey
Essays in Experimental Logic
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4057664636218
Table of Contents
II THE RELATIONSHIP OF THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER
III THE ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING
VI SOME STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT
VII THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF IDEAS
VIII THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS
IX NAÏVE REALISM VS. PRESENTATIVE REALISM [58]
X EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM: THE ALLEGED UBIQUITY OF THE KNOWLEDGE RELATION
XI THE EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM
XII WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS BY PRACTICAL
XIV THE LOGIC OF JUDGMENTS OF PRACTICE
I
1. An intermediary stage for knowledge (that is, for knowledge comprising reflection and having a distinctively intellectual quality) implies a prior stage of a different kind, a kind variously characterized in the essays as social, affectional, technological, aesthetic, etc. It may most easily be described from a negative point of view: it is a type of experience which cannot be called a knowledge experience without doing violence to the term "knowledge" and to experience. It may contain knowledge resulting from prior inquiries; it may include thinking within itself; but not so that they dominate the situation and give it its peculiar flavor. Positively, anyone recognizes the difference between an experience of quenching thirst where the perception of water is a mere incident, and an experience of water where knowledge of what water is, is the controlling interest; or between the enjoyment of social converse among friends and a study deliberately made of the character of one of the participants; between aesthetic appreciation of a picture and an examination of it by a connoisseur to establish the artist, or by a dealer who has a commercial interest in determining its probable selling value. The distinction between the two types of experience is evident to anyone who will take the trouble to recall what he does most of the time when not engaged in meditation or inquiry.
But since one does not think about knowledge except when he is thinking, except, that is, when the intellectual or cognitional interest is dominant, the professional philosopher is only too prone to think of all experiences as if they were of the type he is specially engaged in, and hence unconsciously or intentionally to project its traits into experiences to which they are alien. Unless he takes the simple precaution of holding before his mind contrasting experiences like those just mentioned, he generally forms a habit of supposing that no qualities or things at all are present in experience except as objects of