Neo-realism began to flourish in this country after 1900, its rise being nearly contemporary with the spread of pragmatism. Many neo-realists, indeed, consider themselves followers of James. Dewey views the new realism, along with pragmatism and 'naturalistic idealism,' as "part and parcel of a general movement of intellectual reconstruction."[249] The neo-realists, like the pragmatists, have been active in the field of controversy, and the pages of the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods are filled with exchanges between the representatives of the two schools, in the form of notes, articles, discussions, agreements, and disclaimers. Dewey has more sympathy for realism than for idealism. He finds among the writers of this school, however, a tendency toward the epistemological interpretation of thought which he so strongly opposes. An excellent statement of his estimate of realism is furnished by his "Brief Studies in Realism," published in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, in 1911.[250]

In beginning these studies Dewey observes that certain idealistic writers (not named) have been employing in support of their idealism certain facts which have an obvious physical nature and explanation. Such illusions as that of the bent stick in the water, the converging railway tracks, and the double image that occurs when the eye-ball is pressed, have, as the realists have well proved, a physical explanation which is entirely adequate. Why is it that the idealists remain unimpressed by this demonstration? There is a certain element in the realistic explanation which undoubtedly explains the reluctance of the idealists to be convinced. "Many realists, in offering the type of explanation adduced above, have treated the cases of seen light, doubled imagery, as perception in a way that ascribes to perception an inherent cognitive status. They have treated the perceptions as cases of knowledge, instead of as simply natural events...."[251]

Dewey draws a distinction, at this point, between naÏve and presentative realism, employing, by way of illustration, the 'star' illusion, which turns upon the peculiar fact that a star may be seen upon the earth long after it has ceased to exist. The naÏve realist remains in the sphere of natural explanation. He accounts for the star illusion in physical terms. The astronomical star and the perceived star are two physical events within a continuous physical order or process. But the presentative realist maintains that, since the two stars are numerically separate, the astronomical star must be the 'real' star, while the perceived star is merely mental; the real star exists in independence of a knowing subject, while the perceived star is related to a mind. The naÏve realist has no need of the hypothesis of a knower, since he can furnish an adequate physical account of the numerical duplicity of the star. Dewey favors the naÏve standpoint, and affirms that presentative realism is tainted by an epistemological subjectivism. "Once depart," he says, "from this thorough naÏvetÉ, and substitute for it the psychological theory that perception is a cognitive presentation of an object to a mind, and the first step is taken on the road which ends in an idealistic system."[252]

The presentative realist, Dewey continues, finds himself possessed of two kinds of knowledge, when he comes to take account of inference; for inference is "in the field as an obvious and undisputed case of knowledge." There is the knowledge of perception by a knower, and the inferential knowledge which passes beyond perception. All reality, consequently, is related, directly or indirectly, to the knowing subject, and idealism is triumphant. But the real difficulty of the realist's position is that, if perception is a mode of knowing, it stands in unfavorable contrast with knowledge by inference. How can the inferred reality of the star be established, considering the subjectivity of all perception?

Dewey is alert to the dangers which result from subjectivism, but does not distinguish, as carefully as he might, between knowledge as inference, and knowledge as perceptual awareness. Thus, while it might be granted that the subjective mind is a vicious abstraction, it does not follow that Dewey's particular interpretation of the function of inference is correct. And, although the "unwinking, unremitting eye" of the subjective knower might make experience merely a mental affair, there is no reason to believe that the operation of inference in perception would lead to the same result, for inference and awareness are quite distinct, in historical meaning and function. It is, in fact, a mere accident that inference and awareness (in the subjective sense) should both be called knowledge.

In opposition to presentative realism, Dewey offers his 'naturalistic' interpretation of knowledge.[253] He finds that the function of inference, "although embodying the logical relation, is itself a natural and specifically detectable process among natural things—it is not a non-natural or epistemological relation, that is, a relation to a mind or knower not in the natural series...."[254] As has been observed, Dewey is safe in maintaining that inference is not an operation performed by a subjective knower, but it does not follow from this that his interpretation of inference is correct. In fact, a discussion of inference is irrelevant to the matters which Dewey is here considering.

In the second part of the essay, the discussion passes into a keen and rather clever recital of the difficulties that result from taking the knowledge relation to be 'ubiquitous.'[255] Since this relation is a constant factor in experience, it would seem as if it might be eliminated from philosophical calculations. The realist would be glad to eliminate it, but the idealist is not so willing; for, "since the point at issue is precisely the statement of the most universally defining trait of existence as existence, the invitation deliberately to disregard the most universal trait is nothing more or less than an invitation to philosophic suicide."[256] It is, Dewey says, as if two philosophers should set out to ascertain the relation which holds between an organism as 'eater' and the environment as 'food,' and one should find the essential thing to be the food, the other the eating. The 'foodists' would represent the realists, the 'eaterists' the idealists. No advance, he believes, can be made on this basis.

In opposition to the epistemologists, Dewey would consider the knowledge relation not ubiquitous, but specific and occasional. As man bears other relations to his environment than that of eater, so is he also something more than a knower. "If the one who is knower is, in relation to objects, something else and more than their knower, and if objects are, in relation to the one who knows them, something else and other than things in a knowledge relation, there is somewhat to define and discuss...."[2] Dewey proposes to advance certain facts to support his contention that knowing is "a relation to things which depends upon other and more primary connections between a self and things; a relation which grows out of these more fundamental connections and which operates in their interests at specifiable crises."[257]

This brings the discussion back to familiar ground again, and nothing is added to his previous statements of the functional conception of knowledge. While the realist (explicitly or implicitly) conceives the knowledge relation as obtaining between a subject knower and the external world, Dewey interprets the knowledge relation in terms of organism and environment. The 'ubiquity' of the knowledge relation is disposed of, as has been seen, by conceiving knowledge from an entirely different standpoint; by reducing all knowledge to inference, and abolishing the knowing subject. Dewey is plainly under the impression that the only alternative to the ubiquitous knower is his naturalistic, biological interpretation of the processes of inference.

In support of his naturalistic logic, Dewey argues as follows: (1) All perception involves reference to an organism. "We might about as well talk of the production of a specimen case of water as a presentation of water to hydrogen as talk in the way we are only too accustomed to talk about perceptions and the organism."[258] (2) Awareness is only a single phase of experience. We 'know' only a small part of the causes which affect us as agents. "This means, of course, that things, the things that come to be known, are primarily not objects of awareness, but causes of weal and woe, things to get and things to avoid, means and obstacles, tools and results."[259] (3) Knowing is only a special phase of the behaver-enjoyer-sufferer situation, but very important as having to do with means for the practical and scientific control of the environment.

In the final analysis, it will be seen that Dewey refutes the realist by substituting inference for what the realist calls 'consciousness,' and settling the issue by this triumph in the field of dialectics, rather than by an appeal to the facts. Nowhere does Dewey do justice to those concrete situations which, to the realist, seem to necessitate a definition of consciousness as awareness. His attitude toward the realists may be summed up in the statement that he finds in most realistic systems the fault to which his logical theory is especially opposed: the tendency to define the problem of logic as that of the relation of thought at large to reality at large, and to distinguish the content of mind from the content of the world on an existential rather than on a functional basis.

One of Dewey's more recent studies, "The Logic of Judgments of Practise,"[260] seems to add something positive to his interpretation of knowledge. A practical judgment, Dewey explains at the outset of this study, is differentiated from others, not by having a separate organ and source, but by having a specific sort of subject-matter. It is concerned with things to be done or situations demanding action. "He had better consult a physician," and "It would be well for you to invest in these bonds," are examples of the practical judgment.

These propositions, as will be seen, are not cast in what the logician calls logical form, with regular terms and copula. When put in that form, they seem to lose the direct reference to action which, Dewey says, differentiates them from the 'descriptive' judgment of the form S is P.[261] This apparently trivial matter is really important. Although every statement embodies judgment, some statements do not reflect the ground upon which they are asserted. In this condition they may be viewed as opinions, suggestions, or guesses, looking towards judgment rather than reflecting its results. True judgment is occupied with reasons, proofs, and grounds, and does not concern itself with action as action. Only when taken as the expression of an individual's attitude, do Dewey's practical judgments (or assertions) possess the direct reference to action which he selects as their chief characteristic. The statement, "You ought to invest in these bonds," does, indeed, suggest a specific action, but in so doing it loses its character as a judgment. Put in more logical form, "You are one of those who should invest in these bonds," the proposition is more clearly the expression of a judgment, and leads back to its premises. Attention turns from specific action as such to action as a typical or universal fact. In short, Dewey's practical judgment is not a true judgment; it will be seen that it is studied, not as a logical, but as a psychological phenomenon.

In pursuance of his psychological method, Dewey discovers several interesting facts about judgments of practice.(1) These judgments imply an incomplete situation,—concretely and specifically incomplete; they express a need. (2) The judgment is itself a factor in assisting toward the completion of the situation, since it directs an action necessary to the fulfilment of the need. (3) The subject-matter of the judgment expresses the fact that one outcome is to be preferred to another. The element of preference is peculiar to the practical judgment, for it is not found in merely descriptive judgments, or those 'confined to the given.' (4) A practical judgment implies both means and end, the act that completes, and the completeness. It is in this respect 'binary.' (5) The judgment of what is to be done demands an accurate statement of the course of action to be pursued and the means to be employed, and these are to be determined relatively to the end in view. (6) It finally appears that what is true of the practical judgment may be true of all judgments of fact; it may be held that "all judgments of fact have reference to a determination of courses of action to be tried and the discovery of means for their attempted realization."[262]

This ingenious reading of functionalism out of the practical judgment is, after all, merely a drawing forth of the psychological implications previously placed in it. That judgment is an instrument for completing a situation; that it is linked up with action through desire and preference; that it seeks to determine the means for effecting a practical outcome,—these typically instrumental notions are of one piece with the system of belief that led Dewey to hit upon the practical judgment as the embodiment of a direction to action. It is important to distinguish between the logical and the psychological aspects of these propositions. Action as psychological is one thing; as the subject-matter of judgment, it is another. In coming to a decision as to how to act, the agent sets his proposed action over against himself, and considers it in its universal and typical character. His motor tendencies, his feelings, his desires factor in the situation psychologically considered; but they do not enter judgment as psychological facts, but rather, if at all, as data which have a significance beyond their mere particularity. Dewey remains at the psychological standpoint, giving no attention to the genuinely logical aspects of his 'judgments of practice.'

From the study of the practical judgment, Dewey passes on to a consideration of judgments of value, proposing to maintain that "value judgments are a species of practical judgments."[263] There will be a distinct gain for moral and economic theory, he believes, in treating value as concerned with acts necessary to complete a given need-situation. There is no obvious reason why Dewey should pass to the pragmatic theory of value through the medium of the practical judgment, since it could be directly considered on its own account. At any rate, the discussion of value judgments which follows must stand on its own merits; it has no vital relation to what precedes.

It is, as usual, the psychological characteristics of the value judgment that attract Dewey's attention. Any process of judgment, according to his analysis, deals with a specific subject-matter, not from the standpoint of any objective quality it may possess, but with reference to its functional capacity. "Relative, or comparative, durability, cheapness, suitability, style, esthetic attractiveness [e. g., in a suit of clothes] constitute value traits. They are traits of objects not per se, but as entering into a possible and foreseen completing of the situation. Their value is their force in precisely this function."[264]

Attention should not be distracted from this interpretation of value, Dewey warns, through confusing the value sought with the price or market value of the goods. Price values, like the qualities and patterns of the goods, are data which must be considered in making the judgment, but they are not the values which the judgment seeks. The value to be determined is here, is specific, and must be established by reference to the specific or psychological situation as it presents itself.

It is true, as Dewey says, that in judgment a value is being established which has not been determined previously. But it must be insisted that this value is not estimated by reference to the specific situation in its limited aspects. The weight of the past bears against the moment; the act of judgment bases itself upon knowledge objective and substantial; the test of the value of the thing is its place and function, not in the here and now, but in the whole system of experience. Dewey has excluded the reference of the thing to objective, organized reality, by specifying that its value shall be decided upon with reference to a specific situation. This limitation of the judgment situation is imposed upon it from without, and from a special point of view,—that of functional psychology. Every object and every situation has its quality of uniqueness and particularity; but the judgment, as judgment, is not concerned with this aspect of things. Judgment seizes upon the generic aspect of objects; this kind of a suit of clothes is the kind that is appropriate to this type of situation. The movement of judgment is objective and universal, not subjective and psychological.

Dewey finds one alternative especially opposed to his 'specific' judgment of value; that is, the proposition that evaluation involves a comparison of the present object with some fixed standard. When the fixed standard is investigated, it is found to depend on something else, and this on something else again in an infinite regress. Finally, the Summum Bonum, as the absolute end term of such a regressus, turns out to be a fiction. Dewey is quite right in maintaining that value is not something eternally fixed. This does not, however, remove the possibility of 'real' value, as opposed to mere expediency.

Value as established, Dewey continues, must be taken into consideration in making a value judgment. At the same time, it will not do to accept the established value from mere force of habit. Ultimately, he finds, all genuine valuation implies a degree of revaluation. "To many," he observes, "it will appear to be a survival of an idealistic epistemology,"[265] presumably because it implies a real change in reality, as opposed to a fixed and rigid order of external reality. But practical judgments, Dewey says, as having reference to proposed acts, necessarily look toward some proposed change which the act is to effect. It is not in an epistemological, but in a practical sense, that judgment involves a change in values.

The outcome of the discussion so far, Dewey believes, is to show, first of all, that "the passage of a proposition into action is not a miracle, but the realization of its own character—its own meaning as logical,"[266] and, in the second place, to suggest that all judgments, not merely practical ones, may have their import in reference to some difference to be brought about through action.

In the third part of the essay, Dewey's discussion leads him back to sense perceptions as forms of practical judgment. There is no doubt, in his mind, that many perceptions do have an import for action. Not merely sign-posts, and familiar symbols of the kind, but many perceptions lacking this obvious reference, have a significance for conduct. It must not, of course, be supposed that all perception, at any one time, has cognitive properties; for some of the perceptions have esthetic, and other non-cognitive properties. Only certain elements of a situation have the function of cognition.

Dewey goes on to say that care must be taken in the use made of these sign-functions in connection with inference. "There is a great difference between saying that the perception of a shape affords an indication of how to act and saying that the perception of shape is itself an inference."[267] No judgment, Dewey seems to imply, is involved in responding to the motor cue furnished by a familiar object. Again, the common idea that present perception consists of sensations as immediate, plus inferred images, implies that every perception involves inference. But the merging of sensations and images in perception can be explained naturally, by the fusion of nervous processes, and no supplementary (transcendental) act of mind is needed to explain the integrity of experience.

The tendency to take perception as the object of knowledge, Dewey continues, instead of as simply cognitive, a term in knowledge, is due to two chief causes. The first is that in practical judgments the pointing of the thing towards action is so universal a trait as to be overlooked, and the second is that signs, because of their importance, become objects of study on their own account, and in this condition cease to function directly as cognitive. Dewey means, apparently, that because the cognitive aspect of things is never attended to except when they are 'known,' or treated as objects of judgment, there is a tendency to suppose that they always have the character that pertains to them as 'known' things.

Again, Dewey says, perception may be translated as the effect of a cause that produced it. But the cause does not ordinarily appear in experience, and the perceptions, as effects, remain isolated from the system of things. Truth and error then become matters of the relation of the perception to its cause. The difficulties attendant upon this view can be avoided by taking sense perceptions as terms in practical judgments. Here the 'other term' which is sought is the action proposed by the perception. "To borrow an illustration of Professor Woodbridge's: A certain sound indicates to the mother that her baby needs attention. If there is error it is not because the sound ought to mean so many vibrations of the air, while as matter of fact it doesn't even suggest air vibrations, but because there is wrong inference as to the act to be performed."[268] The idea is tested, not by its correspondence with some formal reality, but by its ability to lead up to the experience to which it points.

From the consideration of error as cognitive, Dewey passes on to consider its status as primitive sense data. He draws a distinction between sensation as psychological and as logical. Ordinary sensation, just as it comes, is often too confused to serve as a basis for inference. "It has often been pointed out that sense qualities being just what they are, it is illegitimate to introduce such notions as obscurity or confusion into them: a slightly illuminated color is just as irretrievably what it is, as clearly itself, as an object in the broad glare of noon-day."[269] But when a confused object is made a datum for inference, its confusion is just the thing to be got rid of. It is broken up by analysis into simple elements, and the psychologist's sensations are logical products, not psychological facts. "Locke writes a mythology of the history of knowledge, starting from clear and distinct meanings, each simple, well-defined, sharply and unambiguously just what it is on its face, without concealments and complications, and proceeds by 'natural' compoundings up to the store of complex ideas, and the perception of simple relations of agreement among ideas: a perception always certain if the ideas are simple, and always controllable in the case of the complex ideas if we consider the simple ideas and connections by which they are reached. Thus he established the habit of taking logical discriminations as historical or psychological primitives—as 'sources' of beliefs and knowledge instead of as checks upon inference."[270] This way of treating perception found its way into psychology and into empirical logic. The acceptance of the doctrine that all sense involves knowledge, Dewey believes, leads to an epistemological logic; but all perception must involve thought if the 'given' is the simple sensation.

There is nothing especially new in this critique of sensationalism. Historically, sensationalism had been displaced by idealism, and the idea that reality is a construct of ideas held together by logical relations was given up long before functionalism arrived on the scene. But if inference, or rationality, is not present in all experience as the combiner of simple into complex ideas, it may be present in some other form, even more vital. Dewey, however, does not consider such possibilities.

Finally, in an article of slightly earlier date than the studies which have just been considered, Dewey returns to a consideration of metaphysics, and the possibility of a metaphysical standpoint in philosophy. This article, entitled "The Subject-Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry,"[271] deserves careful notice.

The comments of a number of mechanistic biologists on vitalism furnish the point of departure for Dewey's discussion. These scientists hold that, if the organism is considered simply as a part of external nature, as an existing system, it can be satisfactorily analyzed by the methods of physico-chemical science. But if the question of ultimate origins is raised, if it be asked why nature exhibits certain innate potentialities for producing life, science can give no answer. These questions belong to metaphysics, and vitalistic or biocentric conceptions may be valid in the metaphysical sphere.

This raises the question of the nature of metaphysical inquiry. Dewey says that the ultimate traits or tendencies which give rise to life need not necessarily be considered ultimate in a temporal sense. On the contrary, they may be viewed as permanent, 'irreducible traits,' which are ultimate in the sense of being always present in reality. The inquiry and search for these ultimate traits is what constitutes valid metaphysics. "They are found equally and indifferently whether a subject-matter in question be dated 1915 or ten million years B. C. Accordingly, they would seem to deserve the name of ultimate, or irreducible, traits. As such they may be made the object of a kind of inquiry differing from that which deals with the genesis of a particular group of existences, a kind of inquiry to which the name metaphysical may be given."[272]

The irreducible traits which Dewey finds are, in the physical sciences, plurality, interaction, and change. "These traits have to be begged or taken in any case," for wherever and whenever we take the world, we must explain it as "a plurality of diverse interacting and changing existences."[273] The evolutionary sciences add another trait; that is, evolution, or development in a direction. "For evolution appears to be just one of the irreducible traits. In other words, it is a fact to be reckoned with in considering the traits of diversity, interaction, and change which have been enumerated as among the traits taken for granted in all scientific subject-matter."[274]

The doctrine that plurality, interaction, change, and evolution are permanent traits of reality gains in clearness when contrasted with the opposed theories which involve creation, absolute origins, or temporal ultimates. The term 'ultimate origins' may be taken in a merely relative sense which is valid. The French language has an origin in the Latin tongues, which is an ultimate origin for French, but this is not an absolutely ultimate origin, since the Latin tongues, in their turn, have origins. It is, for instance, meaningless to inquire into the ultimate origin of the world as a whole; and it is equally futile to trace any part of the world back to an absolute origin. "That scientific inquiry does not itself deal with any question of ultimate origins, except in the purely relative sense already indicated, is, of course, recognized. But it also seems to follow from what has been said that scientific inquiry does not generate, or leave over, such a question for some other discipline, such as metaphysics, to deal with."[275]

Theories like that of Laplace, for instance, trace the world back to an origin in some undifferentiated universe; or, in Spencer's terms, some state of homogeneity. From this original state the world is said to evolve. But the undifferentiated mass lacks the plurality, interaction, and change which are presupposed in all scientific explanation. These traits must be present before development can occur. "To get change we have to assume other structures which interact with it, existences not covered by the formula."[276] In short, although Dewey only implies this, all scientific explanation presupposes a system of interacting parts; nothing can be explained by reference to an undifferentiated world which lacks such traits.

Dewey is particularly interested in the origin of mind or intelligence. In dealing with mind, he says, we must begin with the present, and in the present we find that the world has an organization, "in spots," of the kind we call intelligence. This existing intelligence cannot be explained by any theory which reduces it to something inferior. The "attempt to give an account of any occurrence involves the genuine and irreducible existence of the thing dealt with."[277] Mind cannot be explained by being explained away, nor can it be explained as a development out of an original source in which the potentiality, or direction of change towards mind, was lacking.

The evolution of things, Dewey says, is a real fact, and is to be reckoned with. Moreover, if everything that exists changes, then the evolution of life and mind surely have a bearing on the nature of physico-chemical things. They must have in them the trait of direction of change towards life and mind. "To say, accordingly, that the existence of vital, intellectual, and social organization makes impossible a purely mechanistic metaphysics is to say something which the situation calls for."[278] In other words, the world, metaphysically considered, must have evolution, as well as the physico-chemical traits. "Without a doctrine of evolution we might be able to say, not that matter caused life, but that matter under certain conditions of highly complicated and intensified interaction is living. With the doctrine of evolution, we can add to this statement that the interactions and changes of matter are themselves of a kind to bring about that complex and intensified interaction which is life."[279] Dewey holds that evolution rests upon the reality of time: "time itself, or genuine change in a specific direction, is itself one of the ultimate traits of the world irrespective of date."[280]

This article presents on the whole a distinct advance over the position taken in the earlier essay, "Some Implications of Anti-Intellectualism," which was reviewed in the last chapter. Dewey is not now, to be sure, instituting a wholesale inquiry into the nature of being, but he betrays an interest in the general, as opposed to the specific traits of reality. He inquires into the real nature of the world, and believes that he discovers its ultimate traits. This essay, of course, is incomplete, and consequently indefinite in certain important respects. It may be said, nevertheless, to give an accurate view of the metaphysical back-ground against which all of Dewey's theories are projected. His metaphysics, as would be expected, are evolutionary throughout, and evolution is conceived, where he is at all definite, in biological terms.