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03 Part 1 - Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered - Pragmatism - William James · Logic Library

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Lecture three, Some metaphysical problems pragmatically considered. I am now to make the
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pragmatic method more familiar by giving you some illustrations of its application to particular problems.
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I will begin with what is driest, and the first thing I shall
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take will be the problem of substance. Every one uses the old distinction between
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substance and attribute, hrined as it is in the very structure of human language,
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in the difference between grammatical subject and predicate. Here is a bit of
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blackboard crayon its modes attributes, properties, accidents, or affections. Use which
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term you will are whiteness, friability, cylindrical shape, insolubility in water,
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et cetera, et cetera. But the bearer of these attributes is so much
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shock, which thereupon is called the substance in which they Inhere, So the
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attributes of this day skin here in the substance wood, those of my coat
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in the substance wool, and so forth, chalk, wood and wool show
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again, in spite of their differences common properties, and in so far forth
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they are themselves counted as modes of a still more primal substance matter. The
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attributes of which are space, occupancy, and impenetrability. Similarly, our thoughts
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and feelings are affections or properties of our several souls, which are substances,
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but again not wholly in their own right, for they are modes of the
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still deeper substance Spirit. Now it is very early seen that all we know
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of the chalk is the whiteness, friability, et cetera. All we know
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of the wood is the combustibility and free brastructure. A group of attributes is
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what each substance here is known, as they form its sole cash value.
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For our actual experience, the substance is, in every case revealed through them.
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If we were cut off from them, we should never suspect its existence.
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And if God could keep sending them to us in an unchanged order,
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miraculously annihilating at a certain moment the substance that supported them, we never could
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detect the moment, for our experiences themselves would be unaltered. Nominalists accordingly adopt
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the opinion that substance is a spurious idea due to our inveterate human trick of
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turning names into things. Phenomena coming groups, the shark group, the wood
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group, et cetera, and each group gets its name the name we then
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treat us in a way supporting the group of phenomena. The low thermometer today,
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for instance, is supposed to come from something called the climate. Climate
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is really only the name for a certain group of days, but it is
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treated as if it lay behind the day, And in general we place the
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name as if it were a being behind the facts it is the name of.
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But the phenomenal properties of things, nominalists say surely do not really inhere
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in names, And if not in names, then they do not inhere in
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anything. They adhere, or cohere rather with each other. And the notion
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of a substance inaccessible to us, which we think accounts for such cohesion by
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supporting it as cement might support pieces of mosaic, must be abandoned. The
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fact of the bare cohesion itself is all that the notion of the substance signifies.
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Behind that fact is nothing. Scholasticism has taken the notion of substance from
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common sense and made it very technical and articulate. Few things would seem to
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have fewer pragmatic consequences for us than substances cut off as we are from every
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contact with them. Yet in one case Scholasticism has proved the importance of the
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substance idea by treating it pragmatically. I refer to certain disputes about the mystery
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of the Eucharist. Substance here would appear to have momentous pragmatic value. Since
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the accidents of the wafer don't change in the Lord's Supper, and yet it
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has become the very body of Christ. It must be that the change is
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in the substance solely. The bread substance must have been withdrawn and the divine
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substance substituted miraculously, without altering the immediate sensible properties. But though these don't
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alter, a tremendous difference has been made no lesser one than this, that
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we who take the second now feed upon the very substance of Divinity. The
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substance notion breaks into life, then with tremendous effect. If once you alowe
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that substances can separate from their accidents and exchange these latter. This is the
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only pragmatic application of the substance idea with which I am acquainted, and it
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is obvious that it will only be treated seriously by those who already believe in
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the real presence on independent grounds. Material substance was criticized by Berkeley with such
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telling effect that his name has reverberated through all subsequent philosophy. Berkeley's treatment of
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the notion of matter is so well known as to need hardly more than I
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mentioned. So far from denying the external world which we know, Berkeley corroborated
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it. It was the scholastic notion of a material substance unapproachable bias behind them
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the external world deeper and more real than it, and needed to support it,
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which Berkeley maintained to be the most effective of all reducers of the external
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world. To unreality abolish that substance. He said, believe that God,
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whom you can understand and approach, sends you the sensible world directly, and
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you confirm the latter and back it up by his divine authority. Berkeley's criticism
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of matter was consequently absolutely pragmatistic. Matter is known as our sensations of color,
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figure, hardness, and the like. They are the cash value of
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the term. The difference matter makes to us by truly being is that we
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then get such sensations. By not being, is that we lack them.
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These sensations, then are its sole meaning. Berkeley doesn't deny matter, then
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he simply tells us what it consists of. It is a true name for
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just so much in the way of sensations. Locke and later Hume applied a
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similarly pragmatic criticism to the notion of spiritual substance. I will only mention Locke's
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treatment of our personal identity. He immediately reduces this notion to its pragmatic value
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in terms of experience. It means, he says, so much consciousness,
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namely the fact that at one moment of life we remember other moments and feel
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them all as part of one and the same personal history. Rationalism had explained
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this practical continuity in our life by the unity of our soul's substance. But
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Locke says, suppose that God should take away the consciousness, should we be
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any the better for having still the sole principle? Suppose He annexed the same
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consciousness to different souls. Should we, as we realize ourselves, be any
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the worse for that fact. In Locke's days, the soul was chiefly a
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thing to be rewarded or punished. See how Locke Discussing it from this point
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of view, keeps the question pragmatic. Suppose he says one to think of
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himself to be the same soul that once was Nestor or Thirsitis. Can he
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think their actions his own any more than the actions of any other man that
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ever existed. But let him once find himself conscious of any of the actions
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of Nestor. He then finds himself the same person with Nestor. In this
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personal identity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment. It
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may be reasonable to think no one shall be made to answer for what he
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knows nothing of, but shall receive his doom his consciousness accusing or excusing.
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Supposing a man punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof
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he could be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there
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between that punishment and being created miserable. Our personal identity then consists, for
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Locke solely in pragmatically definable particulars. Whether apart from these verifiable facts it also
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inheres in a spiritual principle is a merely curious speculation. Locke compromises that he
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was passively tolerated the belief in a substantial soul behind our consciousness. But his
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successor, Hume, and most empirically psychologists after him, have denied the soul
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save as the name for verifiable cohesions in our inner life. They redescend into
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the stream of experience with it and cash it into so much small change value
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in the way of ideas and their peculiar connections with each other. As I
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said of Berkeley's matter, the soul is good or true for just so much,
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but no more. The mention of the material substance naturally suggests the doctrine
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of materialism, But philosophical materialism is not necessarily knit up with belief in the
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matter as a metaphysical principle. One may deny matter in that sense as strongly
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as Berkeley did. One may be a phenomenalist like Huxley, and yet one
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may still be a materialist in the wider sense of explaining higher phenomena by lower
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ones and leaving the destinies of the world at the mercy of its blinder parts
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and forces. It is in this wider sense of the word that materialism is
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opposed to spiritualism or theism. The laws of physical nature are what run things
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materialism says the highest production of human genius might be ciphered by one who had
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complete acquaintance with the facts out of their physiological conditions. Regardless whether nature be
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there only for our minds, as idealists contend or not, our minds in
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any case would have to record the kind of nature it is and write it
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down as operating through blind laws of physics. This is the complexion of present
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day materialism, which may better be called naturalism. Over against it stands theism,
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or what in a wide sense may be termed spiritualism. Spiritualism says that
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mind not only witnesses and records things, but also runs and operates them,
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the world being thus guided not by its lower but by its higher element.
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Treated as it often is, the question becomes little more than a conflict between
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esthetic preferences. Matter is gross, core crass, muddy. Spirit is pure,
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elevated noble, and since it is more consonant with the dignity of the
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universe, to give the primacy in it to what appears superior, Spirit must
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be affirmed as the ruling principle to treat abstract principles as finalities before which our
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intellects may come to rest in a state of admiring contemplation is the great rationalist
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failing. Spiritualism, as often held, may be simply a state of admiration
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for one kind and of dislike for another kind of abstraction. I remember a
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worthy spiritualist professor who always referred to materialism as the mud philosophy, and deemed
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it thereby refuted to such spiritualism as this. There is an easy answer,
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and Missus Spencer makes it effectively in some well written pages at the end of
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the first volume of his Psychology, he shows us that matter, so infinitely
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subtle and performing motions as inconceivably quick and fine as those which modern science postulates
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in her explanations, has no trace of grossness left. He shows that the
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conception of spirit, as we immortals he here to have framed it, is
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itself too gross to cover the exquisite tenuity of nature's facts. Both terms,
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he says, are but symbols pointing to that one unknoble reality in which their
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oppositions cease to an abstract objection, an abstract rejoinder suffices. And so far
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as one's opposition to materialism springs from one's disdain of matter, as something crass.
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Missus Spencer cuts the ground from under one. Matter is indeed infinitely and
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incredibly refined to anyone who has ever looked on the face of a dead chain
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child, or parent. The mere fact that matter could have taken for a
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time that precious form, or to make matter sacred. Ever after, it
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makes no difference what the principle of life may be, material or immaterial.
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Matter at any rate corporates, lends itself to all life's purposes. That beloved
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incarnation was among matters possibilities. But now, instead of resting in principles after
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this stagnant intellectualist fashion, let us apply the pragmatic method to the question what
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do we mean by matter? What practical difference can it make now that the
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world should be run by matter or by spirit? I think we find that
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the problem takes with this a rather different character. And first of all,
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I call your attention to a curious fact. It makes not a single jot
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of difference so far as the pause of the world goes, whether we deem
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it to have been the work of matter, or whether we think a divine
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spirit pos its author imagine in fact, the entire contents of the world to
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be once for all, irrevocably given. Imagine it to end this very moment
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and to have no future. And then let a theist and a materialist apply
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their rivel explanations to its history. The theist shows how a god made it.
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The materialist shows, and we will suppose with equal success, how it
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resulted from blind physical forces. Then let the pragmatist be asked to choose between
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their theories. How can he apply his test if the world is already completed?
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Concepts for him are things to come back into experience with, things to
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make us look for differences. But by hypothesis there is to be no more
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experiences, and no possible differences can now be looked. For both theorists have
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shown all their consequences, and by the hypothesis we are adopting these are identical.
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The pragmatist must consequently say that the two theories, in spite of their
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different sounding names, mean exactly the same thing, and that the dispute is
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purely verbal. I am opposing, of course, that the theorists have been
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equally successful in their explanations of what is Fujas consider the case sincerely and say,
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what would be the worth of a God. If he were there,
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with his work accomplished a rid his world run down, he would be worth
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no more than just that world was worth to that amount of result, with
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its mixed merits and defects his creative power could attain, but go no farther.
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And since there is to be no future, since the whole value and
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means of the world has been already paid in and actualized in the feelings that
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went with it in the passing, and now go with it in the ending.
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Since it draws no supplemental significance, such as our real world draws from
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its function of preparing something yet to come, why then, by it we
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take God's measure as it were. He is the being who could, once
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for all do that, and for that much we are thankful to him,
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but for nothing more. But now, on the contrary hypothesis, namely that
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the bits of matter, following their laws could make that world and do no
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less, should we not be just as thankful to them? Wherein should we
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suffer loss than if we dropped God as an hypothesis and made the matter alone
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responsible. Where would any special deadness or crastness come in? And how experience
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being what is once for all, would God's presence in it make it any
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more live, richer? Candidly, it is impossible to give any answer to
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this question. The actually experienced world is supposed to be the same in its
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details on either hypothesis, the same for our praise or blame. As Browning
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says, it stands there indefeasibly a gift which can't be taken back. Calling
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matter the cause of it retracts no single one of the items that are made
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it up, nor does calling God the cause augment them. They are the
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God or the atoms, respectively, of just that and no other world.
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The God if there has been doing just what atoms could do, appearing in
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the character of atoms, so to speak, and earning such gratitude as is
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due to atoms, and no more. If his presence lends no different turn
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or issue to the performance, it surely can lend it no increase of dignity,
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nor would in dignity come to it were he absent, and did the
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atoms remain the only actors on the stage. When a play is once over
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and the curtained down, you really make it no better by claiming an illustrious
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genius for its author, Just as you make it no worse by calling him
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a common hack. Thus, if no future detail of experience or conduct is
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to be deduced from our hypothesis, the debate between materialism and theism becomes quite
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idle and insignificant. Matter and God, in that event, mean exactly the
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same thing the power, namely, neither more nor less that could make just
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this completed world. And the wise man is he who, in such a
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case would turn his back on such a supe iragatory discussion. Accordingly, most
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men instinctively and positivists and scientists deliberately do turn their backs on philosophical disputes from
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which nothing in the line definite future consequences can be seen to follow. The
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verbal and empty character of philosophy is surely a reproach with which we are but
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too familiar. If pragmatism be true, it is a perfectly sound reproach unless
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the theories under fire can be shown to have alternative practical outcomes, however delicate
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and distant these may be. The common man and the scientists say they discover
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no such outcomes, And if the metaphysician can discern none either, the others
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certainly are in the right of it as against him. His science is then
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but pompous trifling, and the endowment of a professorship for such a being would
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be silly. Accordingly, in every genuine metaphysical debate, some practical issue,
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however conjectural and remote, is involved. To realize this, revert with me
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to our question and place ourselves this time in the world we live in,
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in the world that has a future that is yet uncompleted. Whilst we speak
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in this unfinished world, the alternative of materialism or theism is intensely practical,
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and it is worthwhile for us to spend some minutes over our hour in seeing
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that it is so. How indeed, does the program differ for us,
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according as we consider that the facts of experience up to date are purposeless configurations
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of blind atoms moving accordingly to eternal laws, or that, on the other
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hand, they are due to the providence of God. As far as the
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past fact go, indeed, there is no difference. Those facts are in
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are backed or captured, and the good that's in them is gained be the
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atoms or be the God their cause. There are, accordingly, many materialists
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about us today who, ignoring altogether the future and tactical aspects of the question
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seek to eliminate the odium attaching to the word materialism, and even to eliminate
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the word itself by showing that if matter could give birth to all these gains,
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why then matter, functionally considered is just as divine an entity as God.
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In fact, coalicious with God is what you mean by God? Seize
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these persons advices to use either of these terms, whether outgrown opposition, use
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a term free of the clerical connotations on the one hand, of the suggestion
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of grossness, coarseness, ignobility, on the other talk of the primal mystery
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of the unknowable energy of the one and only power, instead of saying either
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God or matter. This is the course to which Missus Spencer urges us.
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And if philosophy were purely retrospective, he would thereby proclaim himself an excit pragmatist.
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But philosophy is prospective also, and after finding what the world has been
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and done and yielded, still asks the further question, what does the world
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promise? Give us a matter that promises success, that is bound by its
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laws to lead our world even nearer to perfection? And any rational man will
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worship that matter as readily as mister Spencer worships his own so called unknowable power.
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It not only has made for righteousness up to date, but it will
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make for righteousness forever, as that is all we need, doing practically all
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that a God can do. It is equivalent to God. Its function is
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a God's function, and is exerted in a world in which a God would
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now be superfluous. From such a world, a God would never lawfully be
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missed. Cosmic emotion would here be the right name for religion. But is
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the matter by which mister Spencer's process of cosmic evolution is carried on any such
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principle of never ending perfection as this indeed, it is not for the future
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end of every cosmically evolved thing or system of things is foretold by science to
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be death and tragedy. And mister Spencer, in confining himself to the esthetic
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and ignoring the practical side of the controversy, has really contributed nothing serious to
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its relief. But apply now our principle of practical results, and see what
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a vital significance the question of materialism or theism immediately acquires. End of Lecture
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three, Part one