Latest / Logic Library / 04 Part 2 - The One and the Many - Pragmatism - William James

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04 Part 2 - The One and the Many - Pragmatism - William James · Logic Library

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The great monistic denk Mittal for a hundred years past has been the notion of
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the one nowhere the many exist only as objects for his thought, exist in
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his dreams, as it were, and as he knows them. They have
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one purpose, form one system, tell one tale. For him. This
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notion of an all enveloping noetic unity in things is the sublimest achievement of intellectualist
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philosophy. Those who believe in the absolute, as the all Knower is termed,
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usually say that they do so for coursive reasons which clear thinkers cannot evade.
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The absolute has far reaching practical consequences, some of which I drew attention
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in my second lecture. Many kinds of difference important to us would surely follow
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from its being true. I cannot here enter into all the logical proofs of
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such a being's existence farther than to say that none of them seem to me
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sound. I must therefore treat the notion of an all knower simply as an
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hypothesis, exactly on a par logically with the plurallest notion that there is no
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point of view, no focus of information extant from which the entire content of
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the universe is visible at once. God's consciousness, says Professor Royce, would
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note, the conception of God New York, eighteen hundred ninety seven, page
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two hundred ninety two, forms in its wholeness, one luminously transparent conscious moment.
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This is the type of nuetic unity on which rationalism insists. Empiricism,
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on the other hand, is satisfied with the type of nuetic unity that is
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humanly familiar. Everything gets known by some knower along with something else. But
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the knowers may in the end be irreducibly many, and the greatest knower of
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them all may yet not know the whole of everything, or even know what
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he does know. At one single stroke, he may be liable to forget.
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Whichever type obtained, the world would still be a universe enuetically. Its
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parts would be conjoined by knowledge. But in the one case the knowledge would
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be absolutely unified. In the other it would be strung along and overlapped the
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notion of one instantaneous or eternal knower. Either adjective here means the same thing
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is, as I said, the great intellectualist achievement of our time. It
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has practically driven out that conception of substance which earlier philosophers set such store by
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and by which so much unifying work used to be done. Universal substance,
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which alone has being in and from itself, and of which all the particulars
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of experience are but forms to which it gives support. Substance has succumbed to
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the pragmatic criticisms of the English school. It appears now only as another name
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for the fact that phenomena, as they come are actually grouped and given incoherent
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forms, the very forms in which we finite knowwher's experience or think them together.
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These forms of conjunction are as much parts of the tissue of experience as
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are the terms which they connect. And it is a great pragmatic achievement for
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recent idealism to have made the world hang together in these directly representable ways,
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instead of drawing its unity from the inherence of its parts, whatever that may
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mean in an unimaginable principle behind the scenes. The world is one, therefore,
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just so far as we experience it, to be concatenated one by as
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many definite conjunctions as appear, but then also not one by just as many
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definite disjunctions as we find the oneness and the manness of it thus obtain in
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respects which can be separately named. It is neither a universe pure and simple,
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nor a multiverse pure and simple, and its various manners of being one
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suggests for their accurate assertment so many distinct programs of scientific work. Thus,
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the pragmatic question what is the oneness, known as what practical difference will it
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make, saves us from all feverish excitement over it as a principle of sublimity,
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and carries us forward into the stream of experience with a cool head.
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The stream may indeed reveal far more connection and union than we now suspect,
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But we are not entitled on pragmatic principles to claim absolute oneness in any respect.
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In a day, it is so difficult to see definitely what absolute oneness
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can mean that probably the majority of you are satisfied with the sober attitude which
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we have breached. Nevertheless, there are possibly some radically monistic souls among you
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who are not content to leave the one and the many on a par union
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of various grades, union of diverse types, union that stops at non conductors,
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union that merely goes from next to next, and means in many cases
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outer nextness only, and not a more internal bond union of concatenation. In
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short, all that sort of things seem to you a half way stage of
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thought. The oneness of things superior to their manyness, you think, must
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also be more deeply true, must be the more real aspect of the world.
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The pragmatic view you are sure gives us a universe imperfectly rational. The
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real universe must form an unconditional unit of being, something consolidated with its parts
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co implicated through and through. Only then could we consider our state completely rational.
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There is no doubt whatever that this ultra monistic way of thinking means a
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great deal to many minds. One life, one truth, one love,
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one principle, one good, one God. I quote from a Christian science
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leftlet, which the day's male brings into my hands. Beyond doubt, such
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a confession of faith has pragmatically an emotional value, and beyond doubt, the
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word one contributes to the value quite as much as the other words. But
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if we try to realize intellectually what we can possibly mean by such a glut
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of one, we are thrown right back upon our pragmatistic determinations. Again,
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it means either the mere name one the universe of discourse, or it means
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the sum total of all the ascertainable particular conjunctions and concatenations. Or finally,
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it means some one vehicle of conjunction treated as all inclusive, like one origin,
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one purpose, or one nowhere. In point of fact, it always
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means one know where. To those who take it intellectually today, the one
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nowhere involves, they think, the other forms of conjunction. His world must
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have all its parts co implicated in the one logical, esthetical teleological unit picture,
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which is his eternal dream. The character of the absolute Knower's picture is,
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however, so imp possible for us to represent clearly that we may fairly
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suppose that the authority which absolute monism undoubtedly possesses and probably always will possess over
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some persons, draws its strength far less from intellectual than from mystical grounds.
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To interpret absolute monism worthily be a mystic. Mystical states of mind in every
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degree are shown by history, usually though not always, to make for the
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monistic view. This is no proper occasion to enter upon the general subject of
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mysticism. But I will quote one mystical pronouncement to show just what I mean.
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The paragon of all monistic systems is the Vedanta philosophy of Hindustan, and
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the paragon of Vedantist missionaries was the late Swami Vivekandanda, who visited our shores
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some years ago. The method of Vedantism is the mystical method. Do not
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reason, but after going through a certain discipline, you see, and having
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seen, you can report the truth. Vivi Candanda thus reports the truth in
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one of his lectures. Here where is any more misery for him who sees
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this oneness in the universe, this oneness of life, oneness of everything.
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This separation between man and man, man and woman, man and child,
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nation from nation, Earth, from moon, moon from sun, this separation
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between atom and atom is the cause really of all the misery. And the
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Vedanta says this separation does not exist, it is not real, It is
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merely apparent on the surface. In the heart of things, there is unity.
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Still, if you go inside, you find that unity between man and
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man, women and children, races and races, high and low, rich
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and poor, The gods and men all are one, and animals too,
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if you go deep enough. And he who has attained to that has no
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more delusion. Where is any more delusion for him? What can delude him?
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Who knows the reality of everything, the secret of everything? Where is
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there any more misery for him? What does he desire? He has traced
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the reality of everything unto the Lord, that center, that unity of everything,
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and that is eternal bliss, eternal knowledge, eternal existence. Neither death
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nor disease, nor sorrow, nor misery nor discontent is there in the center
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the reality. There is no one to be mourned for, no one to
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be sorry for. He has penetrated everything, the pure one, the formless,
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the bodiless, the stainless, He the knower, he the great poet,
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the self existent, He who is giving to everyone what he deserves.
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Observe how radical the character of the monism here is. Separation is not simply
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overcome by the one. It is denied to exist. There is no many.
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We are not parts of the one. It has no parts. And
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since in a sense we undeniably are, it must be that each of us
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is the one, indivisibly and totally, an absolute one, and I that
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one. Surely we have here a religion, which emotionally considered has a high
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pragmatic value. It imparts a perfect sumptuousity of security. As our Swami says
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in another place, when man has seen himself as one with the infinite being
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of the universe, when all separateness has ceased, when all men, all
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women, all angels, all gods, all animals, all plants, the
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whole universe has been melted into that oneness, then all fear disappears. Whom
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to fear? Can I hurt myself? Can I kill myself? Can I
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injure myself? Do you fear yourself? Then will all sorrow disappear? What
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can cause me sorrow? I am the one existence of the universe. Then
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all jealousies will disappear, of whom to be jealous of myself? Then all
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bad feelings disappear? Against whom Will I have this bad feeling against myself?
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There is none in the universe but me. Kill out this differentiation, Kill
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out this superstition that there are many, He who in this world of many
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sees that one, He who who in this mass of insentiency sees that one
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sentient being, He who in this world of shadow, catches that reality unto
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him belongs eternal peace unto none else, unto none else. We all have
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some ear for this monistic music. It elevates and reassures we all have at
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least the germ of mysticism in us. And when our idealists recite their arguments
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for the absolute, saying that the slightest union admitted anywhere charies logically absolute oneness
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with it, and that the slightest separation admitted anywhere logically carries disunion remediless and
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complete, I cannot help suspecting that the palpable weak places in the intellectual reasonings
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they use are protected from their own criticism by a mystical feeling that logic or
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no logic, absolute oneness must, somehow, at any cost, be true.
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Oneness overcomes moral separateness at any rate. In the passion of love.
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We have the mystic germ of what might mean a total union of all sentient
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life. This mystical germ wakes up in us on hearing the monistic utterances acknowledges
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their authority and assigns to intellectual considerations a secondary place. I will dwell no
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longer on these religious and moral aspects of the question. In this lecture,
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when I come to my final lecture, there will be something more to say.
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Leave them out of consideration for the moment. The authority which mystical insights
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may be conjectured eventually to possess, treat the problem of the one and the
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many in a purely intellectual way. And we see clearly enough where pragmatism stands.
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With her criterion of the practical differences that theories make, we see that
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she must equally abjure absolute monism and absolute pluralism. The world is one just
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so far as its parts hang together by any definite connection. It is many
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just so far as any definite connection fails to obtain. And finally, it
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is growing more and more unified by those systems of connection, at least which
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human energy keeps framing. As time goes on, it is possible to imagine
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alternative universes to the one we know, in which the most various grades and
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types of union should be embodied. Thus the lowest grade of universe would be
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a world of mere widness, of which the parts were only strung together by
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the conjunction. And such a universe is even now the collection of our several
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inner lives, the spaces and times of our imagination. The objects and events
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of your day dreams are not only more or less incoherent inter say, but
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are wholly out of definite relation with the similar contents of any one else's mind.
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Our various reveries, now as we sit here, compenetrate each other idly,
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without influencing or interfering. They coexist, but in no order and in
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no receptacle, being the nearest approach to an absolute many that we can conceive.
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We cannot even imagine any reason why they should be known altogether, and
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we can imagine even less if they were known together, how they could be
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known as one systematic whole. But add our sensations and bodily actions, and
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the union mounts to a much higher grade. Our audita at visa and our
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acts fall into those receptacles of time and space in which each event finds its
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date and place. They form things, and are of kinds too, and
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can be classed. Yet we can imagine a world of things and of kinds
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in which the cautial interactions with which we are so familiar should not exist.
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Everything there might be inert towards everything else and refuse to propagate its influence.
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Or gross mechanical influences might pause, but no chemical action. Such worlds would
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be far less unified than ours. Again, there might be complete physical chemical
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interaction, but no minds or minds, but altogether private ones with no social
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life, or social life limited to acquaintance, but no love or love,
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but no customs or institutions that should systematize it. No one of these grades
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of universe would be absolutely irrational or disintegrated inferior, though it might appear when
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looked at from the higher grades. For instance, if our minds should ever
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become telepathetically connected so that we knew immediately, or should, under certain conditions,
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know immediately each what the other was thinking, the world we now live
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in would appear to the thinkers in that world to have been of an efferior
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grade. With the whole of past eternity open for our conjectures to range in,
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it may be lawful to wonder whether the various kinds of union now realized
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in the universe that we inhabit may not possibly have been successively evolved after the
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fashion in which we now see human systems evolving in consequence of human needs.
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If such an hypothesis were legitimate, total oneness would appear at the end of
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things rather than at their origin. In other words, the notion of the
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absolute would have to be replaced by that of the ultimate. The two notions
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would have the same content, the maximally unified content of fact, namely,
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but their time relations would be positively reversed. Footnote compare on the Ultimate mister
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Schilder's essay Activity and Substance in his book entitled Humanism, page two hundred and
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four. After discussing the unity of the universe in this pragmatic way, you
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ought to see why I said in my second lecture, borrowing the word from
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my friend G. Pappini, that pragmatism tends to unstiffen all our theories.
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The world's oneness has generally been affirmed abstractly only, and as if anyone who
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question it must be an idiot. The temper of monist has been so vehement
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as almost at times to be convulsive, and this way of holding a doctrine
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does not easily go with reasonable discussion and the drawing of distinctions. The theory
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of the absolute, in particular, has had to be an article of faith,
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affirmed dogmatically and exclusively. The one and all first in order of being,
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and of knowing logically necessary itself, and uniting all lesser things in the
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bonds of mutual necessity. How could it allow of any mitigation of its inner
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rigidity. The slightest suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of independence of any
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one of its parts from the control of totality, would ruin it absolute unity
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brooks no degrees. As well, might you claim absolute purity for a glass
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of water because it contains but a single little cholera germ. The independence,
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however infinitesimal, of a part, however small, would be to the absolute
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as fatal as a cholera germ. Pluralism of the while the hand has no
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need of this dogmatic, rigoristic temper. Provided you grant some separation among things,
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some tremor of independence, some free play of parts of one another,
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some real novelty or chance, however minute, she is amply satisfied and will
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allow you any amount, however great, of real union. How much a
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union there may be, is a question that she thinks can only be decided
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empirically. The amount may be enormous, colossal, but absolute monism is shattered
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if along with all the union there has to be granted the slightest modicum,
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the most incipient nascency, or the most residual trace of a separation that is
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not overcome. Pragmatism, pending the final empirical as attainment of just what the
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balance of union and this union among things may be, must obviously range yourself
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upon the pluralistic side. Some day, she admits, even total union with
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one knower, one origin, and a universe consolidated in every conceivable way,
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may turn out to be the most acceptable of all hypotheses. Meanwhile, the
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opposite hypothesis of a world imperfectly unified still and perhaps always to remain so,
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must be sincerely entertained. This latter hypothesis is pluralism's doctrine. Since absolute monism
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forbids its being even considered seriously, branding it as irrational from the start,
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it is clear that pragmatism must turn its back on absolute monism and follow pluralism's
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more empirical path. This leaves us with the common sense world in which we
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find things partly joined and partly disjoined. Things then, and their conjunctions,
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What do such words mean? Pragmatically handled In my next Lecture I will apply
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the pragmatic method to the stage of philosophizing known as common sense. End of
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Lecture four.