International Congress of Arts and Science Part 36

Having determined the metaphysical point of view, the next question of vital importance is that of its _principle_. And we may cut matters short here by saying at once that the principle we are seeking is that of _sufficient reason_, and we may say that a reason will be sufficient when it adequately expresses the world-view or concept under which an investigation is being prosecuted. Let us suppose that this world-view is that of simple mathematics, the principle of sufficient reason here will be that of _quant.i.tative equivalence_ of parts; or, from the standpoint of the whole, that of _infinite divisibility_. Whereas, if we take the world of the ultra-mathematical science, which is determined by the notion of _phenomena depending on underlying ground_, we will find that the sufficient reason in this sphere takes the form of _adequate cause or condition_. The determining condition or causes of any physical phenomenon supply, from that point of view, the _ratio sufficiens_ of its existence. We have seen that the sufficiency of a reason in the above cases has been determined in view of that notion which defines the kind of world the investigation is dealing with. Let us apply this insight to the problem of the principle of metaphysics, and we will soon conclude that no reason can be metaphysically sufficient that does not satisfy the requirements of a world conceived under the notion of _inception_ and _realization_; or, more specifically, _idea_ and _reality_. In short, the _reason_ of metaphysics will refuse to regard its world as a mechanism that is devoid of thought and intention; that lacks, in short, the motives of internal determination and movement, and will in all cases insist that an explanation or interpretation can be metaphysically adequate only when its ultimate reference is to an idea that is in the process of _purposive_ fulfillment. Such an explanation we call _teleological_ or _rational_, rather than merely mechanical, and such a principle is alone adequate to embody the _ratio sufficiens_ of metaphysics.

Having determined the point of view and principle of metaphysics, the question of metaphysical _method_ will be divested of some of its greatest difficulties. It will be clear to any one who reflects that the very first problem in regard to the method of metaphysics will be that of its starting-point and the kind of results it is to look for. And little can be accomplished here until it has been settled that consciousness is to have the primacy, and that its prerogative is to supply both standpoint and principle of the investigation. We have gone a long way toward mastering our method when we have settled these points: (1) that the metaphysical world is a world of consciousness; (2) that the conscious form of effort rather than the mechanical is the species of activity or movement with which we have to deal; and, (3) that the world it is seeking to interpret is ultimately one of _idea_ and _reality_ in which the processes take the _purposive_ form. In view of this, the important steps of method (and we use the term method here in the most fundamental sense) will be (1) the question of the _form_ of metaphysical activity or agency as contrasted with that of the physical sciences. This may be brought out in the contrast of the two terms _finality_ and _mere efficiency_, in which by mere efficiency is meant an agency that is presumed to be thoughtless and purposeless, and consequently without _foresight_. All this is embodied in the term _force_ or physical energy, and less explicitly in that of _natural causation_. Contrasted with this, _finality_ is a term that involves the forward impulse of _idea_, _prevision_, and _purpose_. Anything that is capable of any sort of _foretaste_ has in it a principle of prevision, selection, choice, and purpose. The impulse that motives and runs it, that also stands out as the _end_ of its fulfillment, is a foretaste, an _Ahnung_, an antic.i.p.ation, and the whole process or movement, as well as every part of it, will take on this character. (2) The second question of method will be that of the nature of this category of which _finality_ is the form. What is its content, pure idea or pure will, or a synthesis that includes both? We have here the three alternatives of _pure rationalism_, _voluntarism_, and a doctrine hard to characterize in a single word; that rests on a _synthesis_ of the norms of both rationalism and voluntarism. Without debating these alternatives, I propose here briefly to characterize the _synthetic_ concept as supplying what I conceive to be the most satisfactory doctrine. The principle of _pure rationalism_ is one of insight but is lacking in practical energy, whereas, that of _voluntarism_ supplies practical energy, but is lacking in insight. Pure voluntarism is _blind_, while pure rationalism is _powerless_. But the synthesis of _idea_ and _will_, provided we go a step further (as I think we must) and presuppose also a germ of _feeling_ as _interest_, supplies both _insight_ and _energy_.

So that the spring out of which our world is to arise may be described as either the _idea informed with purposive energy_, or _purpose or will informed and guided by the idea_. It makes no difference which form of conception we use. In either case if we include feeling as interest we are able to conceive movements originating in some species of apprehension, taking the dynamic form of purpose, and motived and selected, so to speak, by interest; and in describing such activity we are simply describing these normal movements of consciousness with which our experience makes us most familiar. (3) The third question of method involves the relation or correlation of the metaphysical interpretation with that of the natural or physical science. Two points are fundamental here. In the first place, it must be borne in mind that it is the same world with which the plain man, the man of science, and the metaphysician are concerned. We cannot part.i.tion off the external world to the plain man, the atoms and ethers to the man of science, leaving the metaphysician in exclusive and solitary possession of the world of consciousness. It is the same world for all. The metaphysician cannot s.h.i.+ft the physical world, with its oceans and icebergs, its vast planetary systems and milky ways, on to the shoulders of the physicist.

This is the metaphysician's own recalcitrant world, which will doubtless task all his resources to explain. In the _second_ place, though it is the same world that is clamoring for interpretation, it is a world that pa.s.ses through successive transformations, in order to adapt itself to progressive modes of interpretation. The plain man is called to pa.s.s through a species of Copernican revolution that subordinates the phenomenon to its ground, before he can become a man of science. In turn, the man of science must go through the Copernican process, and learn to subordinate his atoms and ethers to consciousness before he can become a metaphysician. And it is this transformation that marks one of the most fundamental steps in the method of metaphysics. The world must experience this transformation, and it must become habitual to the thinker to subordinate the physical to the mental before the metaphysical point of view can be other than foreign to him. If, then, it be the same content with which the sciences and metaphysics are called on to deal, it is clear that we have on our hands another problem on the answer to which the fate of metaphysics vitally depends; the question of the _correlation_ of its method with that of the sciences so that it may stand vindicated as the final interpretation of things.

III

QUESTION OF THE CORRELATION OF METAPHYSICS WITH THE SCIENCES

We have reached two conclusions that are vital here: (1) that the metaphysical way of looking at the world involves a transformation of the world of physical science; (2) that it is the same world that lies open to both science and metaphysics. Out of this arises the problem of the _correlation_ of the two views; the two interpretations of the world. If science be right in conceiving the world under such categories as quant.i.ty and natural causation; if science be right in seeking a mechanical explanation of phenomena (that is, one that excludes prevision, purpose, and aim); and if metaphysics be right in refusing to accept this explanation as final and in insisting that the principle of ultimate interpretation is teleological, that it falls under the categories of prevision, purpose, and aim; then it is clear that the problem of correlation is on our hands. In dealing with this problem, it will be convenient to separate it into two questions: (1) that of the fact; (2) that of its rationale. The fact of the correlation is a thing of common experience. We have but to consider the way in which this Congress of Science has been brought about in order to have an exhibition of the method of correlation. Originating first in the sphere of thought and purpose, the design has been actualized through the operation of mechanical agencies which it has somehow contributed to liberate. On the scale of individual experience we have the cla.s.sic instance of the arm moving through s.p.a.ce in obedience to a hidden will.

There can be no question as to the fact and the great difficulty of metaphysics does not arise in the task of generalizing the fact and conceiving the world as a system of thought-purposes working out into forms of the actual through mechanical agencies. This generalization somehow lies at the foundation of all metaphysical faith, and, this being the case, the real task here, aside from the profounder question of the _rationale_, is that of exhibiting the actual points of correlation; those points in the various stages of the sciences from physics to ethics and religion, at which the last category or result of science is found to hold as its immediate implication some first term of the more ultimate construction of metaphysics. The working out of this task is of the utmost importance, inasmuch as it makes clear to both the man of science and the metaphysician the intrinsic necessity of the correlation. It is a task a.n.a.logous to the Kantian deduction of the categories.

IV

QUESTIONS OF THE ULTIMATE NATURE OF REALITY

We come, then, to the question of the rationale of this correlation, and it is clear here that we are dealing with a phase of the problem of the ultimate nature of reality. For the question of the correlation now is how it is possible that our thoughts should affect things so that they move in response; how mind influences body or the reverse, how, when we will, the arm moves through s.p.a.ce. And without going into details of discussion here, let us say at once, that whatever the situation may be for any science,--and it may be that some form of _dualism_ is a necessary presupposition of science,--for metaphysics it is clear that no dualism of substances or orders can be regarded as final. The life of metaphysics depends on finding the one for the many; the one that when found will also ground the many. If, then, the phenomenon of _mind and body_ presents the appearance of a correspondence of two different and, so far as can be determined, mutually exclusive agencies, the problem of metaphysics is the reduction of these agencies to one species. Here we come upon the issue between materialism and immaterialism. But inasmuch as the notion of metaphysics itself seems to exclude materialism, the vital alternative is that of immaterialism. Again, if psycho-physics presents as its basal category a _parallelism_ between two orders of phenomena, psychic and physical, it is the business of metaphysics to seek the explanation of this dualism in some more ultimate and unitary conception. Now, since the very notion of metaphysics again excludes the physical alternative from the category of finality, we are left with the psychic term as the one that, by virtue of the fact that it embodies a form of _conscious_ activity, promises to be most fruitful for metaphysics. From one point of view, then, we have reduced our world to immaterialism; from another, to some form or a.n.a.logue of the psychic.

Now it is not necessary here to carry the inquiry further in this direction. For what metaphysics is interested in, specially, is the fact that the world must be reduced to one kind of being and one type of agency. If this be done, it is clear that the dualism of _body and mind_ and the _parallel orders_ of psycho-physics cannot be regarded as final, but must take their places as phenomena that are relative and reducible to a more fundamental unity. The metaphysician will say that the arm moves through s.p.a.ce in response to the will, and that everywhere the correlation between mechanical and teleological agency takes place because in the last a.n.a.lysis _there is only one type of agency_; an agency that finds its initiative in interest, thought, purpose, design, and thus works out its results in the fields of s.p.a.ce and mechanical activities.

Furthermore, on the question to which these considerations lead up; that of the ultimate interpretation we are to put on the reality of the world, the issue is not so indeterminate as it might seem from some points of view. Taking it that the very notion of metaphysics excludes the material and the physical as ultimate types of the real, we are left with the notions of the immaterial and the psychic; and while the former is indefinite, it is a fact that in the psychic and especially in the form of it which man realizes in his own experience, he finds an intelligible type and the only one that is available to him for the definition of the immaterial. He has his choice, then, either to regard the world as _absolutely opaque_, showing nothing but its phenomenal dress which ceases to have any meaning; or to apply to the world's inner nature the intelligible types and a.n.a.logies of his own form of being.

That this is the alternative that is embodied in the existence of metaphysics is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the metaphysical interpretation embodies itself in the categories of _reason_, _design_, _purpose_, and _aim_. Whatever difficulties we may encounter, then, in the _use_ and application of the _psychic a.n.a.logy_ in determining the nature of the real, it is clear that its employment is inevitable and indispensable. Let us, then, employ the term _rational_ to that characterization of the nature of things which to metaphysics is thus inevitable and indispensable. The world must in the last a.n.a.lysis be _rational_ in its const.i.tution, and its agencies and forms of being must be construed as _rational_ in their type.

And here we come upon the last question in this field, that of the _ultimate being of the world_. We have already concluded that the _real_ is in the last a.n.a.lysis rational. But we have not answered the question whether there shall be one rational or many. Now it has become clear that with metaphysics _unity_ is a cardinal interest; that, therefore, the world must be _one_ in _thought_, _purpose_, _aim_. And it is on this insight that the metaphysical doctrine of the _absolute_ rests.

There must be _one_ being whose thought and purpose are all-inclusive, in order that the world may be one and that it may have meaning as a whole. But the world presents itself as a plurality of finite _existents_ which our metaphysics requires us to reduce in the last a.n.a.lysis to the psychic type. What of this plurality of psychic existents? It is on this basis that metaphysics constructs its doctrine of _individuality_. Allowing for lat.i.tude of opinion here, the trend of metaphysical reflection sets strongly toward a doctrine of reality that grounds the world in an Absolute whose all-comprehending thought and purpose utters or realizes itself in the plurality of finite individuals that const.i.tutes the world; the degree of reality that shall be ascribed to the plurality of individuals being a point in debate, giving rise to the contemporary form of the issue between idealism and realism.

Allowing for minor differences, however, there is among metaphysicians a fair degree of a.s.sent to the doctrine that in order to be completely rational the world of individual plurality must be regarded as implying an _Absolute_, which, whether it is to be conceived as an individual or not, is the author and bearer of the thought and design of the world as a whole.

V

QUESTIONS OF METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE AND ULTIMATE CRITERIA OF TRUTH

We have only time to speak very briefly, in conclusion, of two vital problems in metaphysics: (1) that of the nature and limits of metaphysical knowledge; (2) that of the ultimate criteria of truth. In regard to the question of knowledge, we may either _identify thought with reality_, or we may regard thought as _wholly inadequate to represent the real_; in one case we will be _gnostic_, in the other _agnostic_. Now whatever may be urged in favor of the gnostic alternative, it remains true that _our_ thought, in order to follow along intelligible lines, must be guided by the categories and a.n.a.logies of our own experience. This fixes a limit, so that the thought of man is never in a position to grasp the real completely. Again, whatever may be urged in behalf of the agnostic alternative, it is to be borne in mind that our experience does supply us with intelligible types and categories; and that under the impulse of the _infinite_ and _absolute_, or the transcendent, to which our thought responds (to put it no stronger), a dialectical activity arises; on the one hand, the application of the experience-a.n.a.logies to determine the real; on the other, the incessant removal of limits by the impulse of transcendence (as we may call it). Thus arises a _movement of approximation_ which while it never completely compa.s.ses its goal, yet proceeds along intelligent lines; const.i.tutes the mind's effort to know; and results in an _approximating series of intelligible and relatively adequate conceptions_. Metaphysically, we are ever approximating to ultimate knowledge; though it can never be said that we have attained it. The type of metaphysical knowledge cannot be characterized, therefore, as either gnostic or agnostic.

As to the question of ultimate _criteria_, it is clear that we are here touching one of the living issues of our present-day thought. Shall the judgment of truth, on which cert.i.tude must found, exclude practical considerations of value, or shall the consideration of value have weight in the balance of cert.i.tude? On this issue we have at the opposite extremes (1) the _pure rationalist_ who insists on the rigid exclusion from the epistemological scale of every consideration except that of pure logic. The truth of a thing, he urges, is always a purely logical consideration. On the other hand, we have (2) the _pure pragmatist_, who insists on the "_will to believe_" as a legitimate datum or factor in the determination of cert.i.tude. The pragmatic platform has two planks: (1) the _ontological_--we select our world that we call real at the behest of our interests; (2) the _ethical_--in such a world practical interest has the right of way in determining what we are to accept as true as well as what we are to choose as good. It is my purpose in thus outlining the extremes of doctrine to close with a suggestion or two toward less ultra-conclusions. It is a sufficient criticism on the _pure rationalist's_ position to point out the fact that his separation of practical and theoretic interests is a pure fiction that is never realized anywhere. The motives of science and the motives of practice are so blended that interest in the conclusion always enters as a factor in the process. A conclusion reached by the pure rationalist's method would be one that would only interest the pure rationalist in so far as he could divest himself of all motives except the bare love of fact for its own sake. The _pure pragmatist_ is, I think, still more vulnerable.

He must, to start with, be a pure subjective idealist, otherwise he would find his world at many points recalcitrant to his ontology.

Furthermore, the mere _will to believe_ is arbitrary and involves the suppression of reason. In order that the will to believe may work _real_ conviction, the point believed must at least amount to a postulate of the practical reason; it must become somehow evident that the refusal to believe would create a situation that would be theoretically unsound or irrational; as, for instance, if we a.s.sume that the immortality of the soul is a _real postulate_ of practical reason, it must be so because the negative of it would involve the irrationality of our world; and therefore a degree of theoretic imperfection or confusion. Personally I believe the lines here converge in such a way that the ideal of truth will always be found to have practical value; and _conversely_, as to practical ideals, that a sound practical postulate will have weight in the theoretic scales. And it is doubtless true, as Professor Royce urges in his presidential address on _The Eternal and The Practical_, that all judgments must find their final warrant at the Court of the Eternal where, so far as we can see, the theoretical and practical coalesce into one.

At the close of the work of this Section and upon the invitation of Dr.

Armstrong, a number of distinguished members in attendance joined freely in the discussion, to the great pleasure of the many specialists who were present. Among those partic.i.p.ating were Professor Boltzmann of Vienna, Professor Hoeffding of Copenhagen, Professor Calkins of Wellesley, and Professor French of the University of Nebraska, to whom replies were made by the princ.i.p.al speakers, Messrs. Taylor and Ormond.

SHORT PAPERS

A short paper was contributed to the work of the Section by Professor W.

P. Montague of Columbia University, on the "Physical Reality of Secondary Qualities." The speaker said that from the beginning of modern philosophy there has existed a strong tendency among all schools of thought--monists of the idealistic or materialistic types, as well as outspoken dualists--to treat the distinction between primary and secondary qualities as coincident, so far as it goes, with the distinction between physical and psychical. Colors, sounds, odors, etc., are regarded as purely subjective or mental in their nature, and as having no true members.h.i.+p in the physical order; while correlatively all special forms and relations have been in their turn extruded from the field of the psychical. Let it be noted that introspection offers little or nothing in support of this view. There is nothing, for example, about the color red that would make it appear more distinctively psychical or subjective than a figure or a motion. The perception of a square or a triangle is not a square or triangular perception; but neither is the perception of red or blue a red or blue perception. Now with the affective or emotional contents of experience the case is quite different.

A feeling of pain is a painful feeling, a consciousness of anger is an angry consciousness. Pains are more and less painful, according as we are more and less aware of them. With feelings and volitions _esse_ is indeed _percipi_. Colors and other secondary qualities, however, do not seem thus to increase or diminish in their reality concomitantly with our perceptions of them. Red is red, neither more nor less, regardless of the amount to which we attend to it. And yet it remains true that, notwithstanding this seeming objectivity, the secondary qualities have long been contrasted with the primary, and cla.s.sed along with the affective and volitional states as purely subjective facts. It has always seemed curious that a view so important as this in its consequences, and so radically at variance, not only with Pre-Cartesian philosophy, but also with our instinctive beliefs, should have won its way to the position of an accepted dogma; and the purpose of this paper was first to examine the grounds upon which this belief rests, and second to show that the problem of the independent reality of the physical world and the problem of the relation of physical and psychical appear in a clearer and more hopeful light when disentangled from the quite different problem of the relation of primary and secondary qualities.

There were two reasons why the older or Pre-Cartesian view of this question should give place to the modern doctrine. First, because of the rediscovery of the idea of mechanism, without which predictive science had been virtually impossible. The second reason for reducing the secondary qualities to a merely subjective status lay in the fact that they are much more dependent than the primary qualities upon the bodily organism of the one who perceives them. In closing Professor Montague said:--

"I wish in closing to point out two consequences of the view which I have been opposing. First, the present paradoxical status of the eternal world; second, the equally paradoxical status of the relation of that world to the world of mind. Berkeley was the first thinker clearly to perceive the unsubstantial nature of a world made up solely of primary qualities. Indeed, in the last a.n.a.lysis, a world of primary qualities, and nothing else, is a world of relations without terms, a geometrical fiction, the objective (or, for that matter, the subjective) existence of which the idealist would be right in denying. In Biology we have abandoned obscurantist methods, and no longer attribute the distinctive vital functions of growth and reproduction to a vital force or vital substance, but solely to the peculiar configuration of the material elements of a cell. Why may we not in psychology with equal propriety attribute the distinctively psychical functions of subjectivity or consciousness, not to the action of a hyper-psychical soul-substance, nor to the presence of a transcendental ego, but simply to that peculiar configuration of sensory elements which const.i.tutes a what we call psychosis?"

SECTION B--PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

SECTION B

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

(_Hall 1, September 21, 3 p. m._)

CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR THOMAS C. HALL, Union Theological Seminary, N. Y.

SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER, University of Berlin.

PROFESSOR ERNST TROELTSCH, University of Heidelberg.

SECRETARY: DR. W. P. MONTAGUE, Columbia University.

THE RELATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TO THE OTHER SCIENCES

BY PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER

[D. Otto Pfleiderer, Professor of Theology, University of Berlin since 1875. b. September 1, 1839, Stetten, Wurtemberg. Grad. Tubingen, 1857-61. Post-grad. _ibid._ 1864-68. City Professor, Heilbronn, 1868-69; Superintendent, Jena, 1869-70; Professor of Theology, Jena, 1870-75. Author of _Religion and its Essential Characteristics_; _Religious Philosophy upon Historical Foundation_; and many other works and papers on Theology.]

In order to answer this question, we need to consider a preliminary question, namely, whether religion can be regarded as the object of scientific knowledge in the same manner as other processes of the intellectual life of the race, such as law, history, and art. It is well known that this question has not always received an affirmative answer, and indeed it can never be answered in the affirmative so long as the position is maintained that the only religion is that of the Christian Church, whose doctrines and teachings rest upon an immediate divine revelation, and that these must be accepted by men in blind belief.

Under the position of an authoritative ecclesiastical faith there can indeed exist a theoretical consideration of the doctrines of faith, as it was the case with the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages, which with great earnestness sought to harmonize faith and knowledge; nevertheless, no one of the present day would give to the scholastic theology the name of science with the modern meaning of the term science. The scholastic theology used great formal acuteness and skill in the work of defining and defending ecclesiastical traditions, still there was lacking that which for us is the essential condition of scientific knowledge, the free examination of tradition according to the laws of human thought and the a.n.a.logy of the general experience of humanity. The great hindrance to the progress of the knowledge of religion was the accepted position that the truth of the ecclesiastical doctrines was beyond human reason and outside of human examination, since their truth rested upon an immediate divine revelation. Whether this supernatural authority was ascribed to the Church or the Bible makes very little difference, for in either case the a.s.sumption of such an authority is a hindrance to the free examination of that which claims to be the divine revealed truth.

But is this a.s.sumption really justifiable in the nature of the case? Do the doctrines of the Church rest upon a supernatural divine revelation?

So soon as this question was really earnestly considered, and the thinking mind could not always avoid the consideration, then there was revealed the inadequacy of the a.s.sumption. Two ways of examination led to a common critical result, the philosophical a.n.a.lysis of the religious consciousness and the historical comparison of various religions. The first to enter upon these ways and at the same time to become the founder of the modern science of religion was the keen Scotch thinker David Hume. Truly the thought of Hume was still a one-sided, disorganizing skepticism; even as his theory of knowledge disturbed the truth of all our previous commonsense opinions and conceptions, so also his philosophy of religion sought to demonstrate that all religion cannot be proved and is full of doubt, and that the origin of religion was neither to be found in divine revelation nor in the reason of man, but in the pa.s.sions of the heart and in the illusions of imagination. As unsatisfactory as this result was, nevertheless it gave an important advance to the rational study of religion in two directions, in that of religion being an experience of the inner life of the soul and in that of religion being a fact of human history.

Kant added the positive criticism of reason to the negative skepticism of Hume; that is, Kant showed that the human intellect moved independently in the formation of theoretical and practical judgments, and that the various materials of thought, desire, and feelings were regulated by the intellect according to innate original ideas of the true and good and beautiful. Thus as a natural result there came the conception that the doctrines of belief arose not as complete truths, given by divine revelation, but, like every other form of conscious knowledge, these came to us through the activity of our own mind, and that therefore these doctrines cannot be regarded as of absolute authority for all time, but that we are to seek to understand their origin in historical and psychical motives. So far as one looked at the ceremonial forms of positive religion, these motives indeed were found according to Kant in irrational conceptions, but as far as the essence of religion was concerned they were rather found to be rooted in the moral nature of man. This is the consciousness of obligation of the practical reason or of the conscience, which raises man to a faith in the moral government of the world, in immortality and G.o.d. With the reduction of religion from all external forms, doctrines, and ceremonies and the finding of the real essence of religion in the human mind and spirit, the way was opened to a knowledge of religion free from all external authority. Those philosophers who came after Kant followed essentially this course, though here and there they may separate in their opinions according to their thought of the psychological function of religion. When Kant had emphasized the close connection between religion and the moral obligation, then came Schleiermacher, who emphasized the feeling of our dependence upon the Eternal, and who sought to find the explanation of all religious thoughts and conceptions in the many relations of the feeling to religious experience. Hegel on the other hand sought the truth of religion in the thought of the absolute spirit as found in the finite spirit. Thus Hegel made religion a sort of popular philosophy.