Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/619

KNOWLEDGE. 559 KNOWLEDGE. like statements holj good of like facts. Even if it should be louiid that like statements are true of the second e.xperience, the previous statement is not vcritied unless it contained more than a description of the previous experience as an iso- lated fact. This surplusage of content in a state- ment beyond bare description of an isolated fact is technically called its universality. This universality of judgments that give expres- sion lo knowlodgc furnishes a prol)lcni to the inves- tigator. What justifies it? 'arious answers have been given. iSonie philosophers say that nothing can justify it; some say that it is practically justified by repeated tests; others say that the procedure bears its own warrant; still others say that the universalization is justified only if there is in experience an element which is the product of the mind's creative activity; for only what the mind makes, say they, can the mind predict. These four answers represent the four logical schools of particularism, empiricism, dogmatism, and transcendental idealism. Particularism is untenable for the reason that it is self contra- dictory. It makes a universal statement denying the validity of universal statements. If it at- tempts to escape the charge by modifying its position in such a way as to make an exception of its own principle, it falls into dogmatism. Its creed would then run: "'All universal statements except this one are unwarranted." This is dog- matic ; for a general statement is here nuide with- out any reasons given, and no reasons can be given so long as general statements are barred. The trouble with empiricism, or the doctrine that universal judgments can he attested by re- peated experience of their truth, is that it starts with an unjustified assumption — viz. that all statements are at first of particularistic validity. Now, out of a, combination of ten trviths, each of particularistic import, it would seem that all we could legitimately get would l)e merely a com- bination of ten particularistic truths. If a thou- sand sheep are by experience known to be white, well — then they are white: but what about the thousand and first? To this an empiricist of Hume's type makes answer that we get into the habit of expecting sheep to be white, and that the generalization of the whiteness of sheep is only a statement of the past particular experiences, plus the fact of an expectation which we Inive, based on a habit we have formed of asscxdating whiteness with sheep. If the habit has never been broken, we are told, the expectation may become so irresistible that at last it becomes inconceivable thiit the expectation should not he fulfilled. Thus arises the imiversality of judgments. But in reply it must be said that the whole point of our question is missed What is to he made out is not how. as a matter of psychological history, men come to make universal juilgments, but whether (hey have a right to make them. In other words, the fact that the judgment is made, however psychologically inevitable it is, is no justification of the judgment as a statement of fact. But this Humian empiricism sufTers from still another defect. It can explain the origin of an irresistible expe<'lation only on the assump- tion that under certain conditions expectations ari.se. But this is to assume the validity of at least one universal judgment — viz. the one ex- pressing ihe psychological law of the origin of expectation. And if this universal judgment could be successfully used for explaining the ori- gin of all univer.sal judgments, still the question remains: What justifies this one universal judg- ment? This question empiricism, as defined above, has never answered, and it cannot be seen how it could possibly answer it. At first sight transcendental idealism seems to avoid all these difficulties that beset rival theories. It starts with the apparent fact that there arc two sorts of judgments we can make, one sort conditional and the other unconditional. We cannot, for ex- ample, predict even eclipses with certainty, he- cause we are not absolutely sure that before the eclipse can occur some unknown cause may not destroy either sun, moon, or earth, or all of them. But there are judginent.s, it is alleged, which are unconditionally true — e.g. that two and two make four, and that every event has a cau.se. This alleged difl'erence between two sorts of judgments has led the transcendentalist to assume a corresponding difference between the elements constituting experience. E.xperience, says he, is a comple-x product, constituted by the superinduc- tion of certain principles of perception and thought upon the materials furnished by sense. These principles are invariable ways we have of perceiving and thinking objects. Because these ways are ways of consciousness and not ways of the object, consciousness can predict them, we are told, with certainty ; and not only so, but it can also predict those elements in experience which are the effects of these operations of conscioiis- ness. But those elehients in experience which are due to the influence exerted by other things upon consciousness are unpredictable, while every-thing lying outside of the limits of experience, every ultimate reality, in other words, is unknowable. Upon examination this view is seen to be as dis- appointing as any of its rivals. This presupposi- tion that the elements which mind contributes to experience are predictable is surely not self- evident, for it is clearly seen to depend on the assumption of unehangeableness in the way mind acts. Why should consciousness be any more certain of the way in which it is going to act than of the way in which something else is going to act? As a matter of fact, we are all quite mutable agents, and no one of us finds it nearly as easy to say how he is going to act to-morrow as to say how some objects in external nature are going to act. In reply to all this it may be said that there are. however. .<»»»■ things we do that are unchangeable, and in so far as future experience is detennined by these our uniform modes of action, it is predictable. This reply would be satisfactory if we were sure of our imiform principles of action. Where does the knowledge of the immutability of these ways of perceiving and thinking come from? Is it an a iniori truth that we have these immutable forms of perception and these categories? Xo, not even Kant took such ground. He merely argued that if we had not these constitutive principles of perception and thought, we could not form a priori synthetic judgments. (See A Priori, and Analytic .Ti dgmexts.) This dic- tum contained in the preceding sentence is the foundation-stone of transcendental idealism. But what justifies this principle' .An imwarranted subjectivism, i.e. the theory that the only things we can know are mental st:ites and mental pro- cesses, or at least the theory that the only laws of action we can be sure of are the laws of mental action, underlies this dictum. If it be true that