Data and Meanings

Essays in Experimental Logic, by John Dewey is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Chapter IV: Data and Meanings

IV. DATA AND MEANINGS

We have reached the point of conflict in the matters of an experience. It is in this conflict and because of it that the matters, or significant quales, stand out as matters. As long as the sun revolves about earth without question, this "content" is not in any way abstracted. Its distinction from the form or mode of experience as its matter is the work of reflection. The same conflict makes other experiences assume discriminated objectification; they, too, cease to be ways of living, and become distinct objects of observation and consideration. The movements of planets, eclipses, etc., are cases in point. The maintenance of a unified experience has become a problem, an end, for it is no longer secure. But this involves such restatement of the conflicting elements as will enable them to take a place somewhere in the world of the   It is not eliminated, but receives a new reference or meaning. Thus the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is not one between meaning as such and datum as such. It is a specification that emerges, correspondently, in both datum and ideatum. That which is left behind in the evolution of accepted meaning is still characterized as real, but real now in relation only to a way of experiencing—to a peculiarity of the organism. That which is moved toward is regarded as real in a cosmic or extra-organic sense.1. The data of thought.—When we turn to Lotze, we find that he makes a clear distinction between the presented material of thought, its datum, and the typical characteristic modes of thinking in virtue of which the datum gets organization or system. It is All this is given, presented, to our ideational activities. Even the universal, the common color which runs through the various qualities of blue, green, white, etc., is not a product of thought, but something which thought finds already in existence. It conditions comparison and reciprocal distinction. Particularly all mathematical determinations, whether of counting (number), degree (more or less), and quantity (greatness and smallness), come back to  He has different functions in mind. In one case, the material must be characterized as evoking, as incentive, as stimulus—from this point of view the peculiar feature of spatial and temporal arrangement in contrast with  but is an occurrence occurring at a certain period in the control and use of stimuli.2. Forms of thinking data.—As sensory datum is material set for work of thought, so the ideational forms with which thought does its work are apt and prompt to meet the needs of the material. The "accessory" notion of ground of coherence turns out, in truth, not to be a formal, or external, addition to the data, but a requalification of them. Thought is accessory as accomplice, not as addendum. "Thought" is to eliminate mere coincidence, and to assert grounded coherence. Lotze makes it clear that he does not at bottom conceive of "thought" as an activity "in itself" imposing a  Now judgment logically terminates in disjunction. It gives a universal which may determine In this account by Lotze of the operations of the forms of thought, there is clearly put before us the picture of a continuous correlative determination of datum on one side and of idea or meaning on the other, till experience is again integral, data being thoroughly defined and connected, and ideas being the relevant meanings of subject-matter. That we have here in outline a description of what actually occurs there can be no doubt. But there is as little doubt that the description is thoroughly inconsistent with Lotze's supposition that the material or data of thought is precisely the same as the antecedent of thought; or that ideas, conceptions, are purely mental somewhats extraneously brought to bear, as the sole essential characteristics of thought, upon a material provided ready-made. It means but one thing: The maintenance of unity and wholeness in experience through conflicting contents occurs by means of a strictly correspondent setting apart of facts to be accurately described and properly related, and meanings to be adequately construed and properly referred. The datum is given in the thought-situation, and to further qualification of ideas or meanings. But even in this As we have seen, the essential nature of conception, judgment, and inference is dependent upon peculiarities of the propounded material, they being forms dependent for their significance upon the stage of organization in which they begin.From this only one conclusion is possible. If thought's nature is dependent upon its actual conditions and circumstances, the primary logical problem is to study thought-in-its-conditioning; it is to detect the crisis within which thought and its subject-matter present themselves in their mutual distinction and cross-reference. But Lotze is so thoroughly committed to a ready-made antecedent of some sort, that this genetic consideration is of no account to him. The historic method is a mere matter of psychology, and has no logical worth (I, 2). We must presuppose a psychological mechanism and psychological material, but logic is concerned not with origin or history, but with authority, worth, value (I, 10). Again: "Logic is not concerned with the manner in which the elements utilized by thought come into 

Lotze, in truth, represents a halting-stage in the evolution of logical theory. He is too far along to be contented with the reiteration of the purely formal distinctions of a merely formal thought-by-itself. He recognizes that thought as formal is the form of some matter, and has its worth only as organizing that matter to meet the ideal demands of reason; and that "reason" is in truth only an adequate systematization of the matter or content. Consequently he has to open the door to admit "psychical processes" which furnish this material. Having let in the material, he is bound to shut the door again in the face of the processes from which the material proceeded—to dismiss them as impertinent intruders. 

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