The Essential John Dewey: 20+ Books in One Edition. Джон Дьюи
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action and therefore comes to consciousness as a problem. For example, take one of the judgments Bosanquet uses. "This is bread." We have first to inquire when such a judgment actually occurs in the living process of thought. A man does not make such a judgment in the course of his thinking unless there is some instigation to do so. Perhaps he is in doubt as to whether the white object he perceives is bread or cake. He wants some bread, but does not want cake. A closer inspection convinces him that it is bread, and the finished judgment is formulated in the proposition: "This is bread." What is the test of the reality of the bread, and the truth of the judgment? Evidently the act based on it. He eats the bread. If it tastes like bread and affects him like bread, then the bread was real and the judgment true. If, on the other hand, it does not taste like bread, or if it makes him violently ill, then the "bread" was not real and the judgment was false. In either case, the "this"—the experience to be interpreted—is unquestioned. The man does not question the fact that he has a perception of a white object. So much is taken for granted and is unquestioned within that judgment. But there is another part of the experience which is questioned, and which remains tentative up to the conclusion of the act of judgment; that is the doubt as to whether the perceived white object is bread or something else. Every live judgment, every judgment as it normally occurs in the vital process of thought, must have these phases. It is only when a judgment is taken out of its context and reduced to a mere memorandum of past judgments that it fails to reveal such parts. The man may, of course, go farther back. He may wonder whether this is really white or not. But he falls back then on something else which he takes unquestioningly—a "this" experience of some sort or other.
So far we have considered the practical criterion of reality merely as the one which is actually operative in everyday life, and as the one suggested by our biological theory of the functions of living organisms. It also offers a suggestion for the modified view of the nature of reality for which we are in search. Our previous discussion brought out incidentally a contradiction in the traditional theory of the nature of reality which it will be worth while to consider further. In dealing with the subject of the judgment, reality seemed to be made synonymous with fact. In this sense fact, or the real, was set off against the ideal. Knowledge was viewed as the correspondence between real and ideal. When we came to deal with the ideal itself—with the predicate of the judgment—there appeared in it an element of fact or reality which proved a serious stumbling-block for the theory. As image in my mind, the idea is just as real as the so-called facts; but this sort of reality according to the theory in question is neither the reality about which we are judging nor a real quality of it. Both Bradley and Bosanquet are forced to admit that the judgment ignores it, and is in so far by nature inadequate to its appointed task of knowing reality.
The suggestion which the situation offers for a new theory is that the view of reality has been too narrow. Reality must evidently be a broad enough term to cover both fact and idea. If so, the reality must be nothing more nor less than the total process of experience with its continual opposition of fact and idea, and their continual resolution through activity. That which previous theory has been calling the real is not the total reality, but merely one aspect of it. The problem of relation of fact and idea is thus the problem of the relation of one form of reality to another, and so a determinate soluble one, not a merely metaphysical or general one. Granting this, does it still remain true that reality in the narrower sense, reality as fact, can be regarded as a different order of existence from the ideal, and set over against the thought-process? Evidently not. Fact and idea become merely two aspects of a total reality. The way in which fact and idea are distinguished has already been suggested by the practical and biological criterion of fact, or reality in the narrower sense. From this point of view, fact is not a different order of existence from idea, but is merely a part of the total process of experience which functions in a given way. It is merely that part of experience which is taken as given, and which serves as a stimulus to action. Thus the essential nature of fact, or reality in the popular sense, falls not at all on the side of its content, but on the side of its function. Similarly the ideal is merely that part of the total experience which is taken as tentative. There is no problem as to how either of them is related to reality. In this relationship they are reality. That which previous theories had been calling the whole of reality now appears as merely one aspect of it—the fact aspect—artificially isolated from the rest.
When we translate this view of the nature of reality into terms of a theory of the judgment, we find that we can agree with Bosanquet in his definition of a judgment. It is an act, and an act which refers an ideal content to reality. The judgment must be an act, because it is essentially an adaptation—a reaction toward a given situation. The subject of the judgment is that part of the content of experience which represents the situation to be reacted to. It is that which is taken for granted as given in each case. Now this is, as we have seen, reality—in the narrower sense of that term. What Bosanquet has been calling reality now appears merely as the subject of the judgment taken out of its normal function and considered as an isolated thing. It is an artificial abstraction. It is accordingly true, as Bosanquet insists, that the subject of the judgment must always be reality—both in his sense of the term and in ours. This reality is not real, however, by virtue of its independence from the judgment, but by virtue of its function within the judgment. His fundamental problem with reference to the subject of the judgment is disposed of from this point of view. The subject is wholly within the judgment, not in any sense outside of it; but it is at the same time true that the subject of the judgment is reality. The fact that the subjects of all judgments—even those of the most elementary type—bear evident marks of the work done by thought upon them, ceases to be a problem. The subject is essentially a thing constituted by the doubt-inquiry process, and functioning within it. The necessity for an intermediate real world as it is to me between the real world and the knowing process disappears, because the real world as it is to me is the only real world of which the judgment can take account. There is no longer any divorce between the content of the subject and its existence. Reality in his sense of the term—reality as fact—does not fall on the side of existence in distinction from content, but on the side of function in distinction from content.
The predicate of the judgment is that part of the total experience which is taken as doubtful, or tentative. As we have seen, every act of adaptation involves a definite situation to be reacted to (subject) and an indefinite or tentative material with which to react (predicate). We have pointed out that a situation which demands a judgment never appears in consciousness as mere questioned or questionable situation.52 There is always present, as soon as the doubt arises, some sort of tentative solution. This is the predicate or idea. Just as the fact, or real in the narrower sense, is that which is taken as given in the situation, so the ideal is that which is taken as tentative. Its ideality does not consist in its reference to another order of existence, the objective world of meanings, but in its function within the judgment, the estimate of the whole situation as leading up to the adequate act. Just as we no longer have any need for the mediation of the real world as known to me between subject and reality, so we no longer need the objective world of meanings to bridge the chasm between the predicate and reality. The difficulty of understanding how ideas can be used to build up facts disappears when we regard fact and idea, not as different orders of existence, but as contents marking different phases of a total function.
Ideas, as Bosanquet represented them, proved to be extremely unsatisfactory tools to use in building up a knowledge of reality. In the first place, their value as instruments of thought depends upon their universality. We have already reviewed Bosanquet's difficulties in attempting to explain the universality of ideas. The universality of an idea cannot reside in its mere existence as image. Its existence is purely particular. Its universality must reside in its reference to something outside of itself. But no explanation of how the particular existence—image—could refer to another and fuller content of a different order of existence could be discovered. The fact of reference remained an ultimate mystery. From the new point of view the image gains its universality through its organizing function. It represents an organized habit which may be brought to bear upon the present situation, and which serves, by directing action, to organize and unify experience as a whole. It is only as function that the concept of reference can be made intelligible.
Of course, considered as content, the idea is just as particular from this point of view as from