recent perspectives on american pragmatism

Recent Perspectives on American PragmatismAuthor(s): Sandra B. RosenthalSource: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer, 1974), pp. 166-184Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40319711 .

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Recent Perspectives on American Pragmatism

Sandra B. Rosenthal

(Part Two)

The phenomenological and analytic perspectives on American pragmatism which are prominent in recent scholarship provide important conceptual tools for bringing to light key insights on pragmatism, as well as obstacles which stand in the way of grasping the uniqueness of pragmatism as a philosophic system.1 The following essay will attempt to show the insights and obstacles presented by these two perspectives on pragmatism in the areas of the a priori and of metaphysics.2 The ensuing essay can only hope to briefly indicate significant points of overlap and disagreement and to briefly sketch lines of connection within pragmatism itself concerning these points. Such brief sketches can in turn perhaps provide an impetus for further dialogue in the areas touched by the discussion.

The nature and function of the a priori in James' philosophy as it is developed through the phenomenological perspective of John Wild provides an ideal point of departure for discussing various interpretations brought to the problem of the a priori in pragmatic philosophy. Wild distinguishes two types of a priori in James' philosophy, one of which Wild labels a "testable a priori," the other an "existential a priori."3 Using the concept of the "testable a priori," Wild develops an insightful interpretation of James the phenomenologist. However, what he is at one and the same time developing is support for the position that James' interpretation of the a priori elements in experience "bore their fruit in Lewis' doctrine of the pragmatic a priori."4

Wild notes that in the last chapter of The Principles of Psychology, James sharply rejects the empiricist theory5 that all our basic concepts are passively received from experience and instead indicates that basic categories as well as novel scientific conceptions are not in any intelligible sense immediately derived from experience but rather fit "by good luck." As Wild notes, James holds that "the popular notion that 'Science' is forced on



Recen t Perspectives on A menean Pragmatism 167

the mind ab extra. . .is utterly absurd."6 Rather, it involves ideal constructions and systems of relations which are actively invented by mind. "James' phenomenological view"7 as developed by Wild deserves quotation at some length because of its remarkable convergence with the conceptual pragmatism of Lewis. Wild observes that:

Whether our new concepts come via abstractions. . .by the continuing of observable tendencies to their ideal limits, or by sheer invention, they are constantly arising as long as disciplined thinking is active. Once established, they enable us to discover ideal relations between them, and thus come to constitute an ideal system not copied from experience, but in so far as it can be verified, often clarifying and explaining empirical events and sequences.8

Again:

These timeless truths do not necessarily lay hold of reality, as the ancients thought, nor do they legislate a priori for all possible experience, as Kant believed. James' phenomenological view is different. "They stand waiting in the mind, forming a beautiful ideal network; and the most we can say is that we hope to discover realities over which the network may be flung so that ideal and real may coincide."'' This is a contingent necessity, for these systems of timeless meaning must be verified, if they are to become true. . . .Even after it has withstood all the tests at our disposal at a given time, we can never be sure that it will not be replaced by another of broader scope which will involve corrections and revisions, and which will, in turn, have to wait for further advances. For in the life-world all is temporal and incomplete.10

Even Wildshire's discussion of James from the point of transcendental rather than existential phenomenology brings James' view of the a priori into clear relation with the pragmatic a priori of Lewis. He observes that for James,

"Physical things appear perspectively," is necessarily true, because what we mean by the predicate is involved with what we mean by the subject. . .no conceivable future observation of experience



168 SANDRA B. ROSENTHAL

could prove it false, for if something did not appear perspectively it would not count as a physical object. Thus the truth is a priori and knowable a priori insofar as it is true independently of any future experience. We say further experience, since its truth is not independent of all experience: after all, its truth is a matter of what it means (essence), and essence a matter of how things appear in experience.11

Until the end of the above quotation, one may well begin to suspect that the pragmatic a priori of Lewis and the a priori of phenomenology are indistinguishable. Indeed, not only do the above phenomenological interpretations of James sound almost identical to Lewis' own characterizations of his pragmatic a priori, but this near identity is more completely made here than in explicit attempts to relate James and Lewis through their respective concepts of the a priori.12

However, toward the very end of the above quotation, one begins to get the feeling that the relation to conceptual pragmatism is rapidly diminishing. Such a glimmering is further supported when one turns to Wild's discussion of the "existential a priori" in James' philosophy. Wild observes that while, for James, pure perception is blind in comparison with perception clarified by conceptual analysis, yet "it is far from being totally blind, and is certainly not a mere manifold. It is a world in which an intentionally polarized perception knows itself, though hazily, together with objects, relations, and patterns of meaning, though dimly, in relation to what it can achieve with the aid of concepts."13 It is, according to Wild, an a priori factor in experience which is presupposed by and necessarily conditions everything else. Here, perhaps, is to be found the core of the difference between phenomenology and pragmatism, though this difference has itself been brought into focus through the phenomenological perspective in a way which, it will be seen shortly, counteracts in a helpful way excesses in another direction.

Wild notes that James' existential a priori concerns meanings that are vaguely known independently of language and conception.14 For the phenomenologist, meanings are experienced independent of conception, while for the pragmatist what is experienced is an "otherness" which is independent of



Recent Perspectives on American Pragmatism 169

meanings but which has been made meaningful through the conceptions or meanings by which it has been informed.10 Further, an intentionally polarized perception is not "given" in experience as its most fundamental level for the pragmatist, but rather it itself emerges via interpretation.16 Though these points mark a radical divergence between phenomenology and pragmatism, such an attempted assimilation has hit upon something crucial for an understanding of the a priori found in pragmatic philosophy. Indeed, both the "testable a priori" and the "existential a priori" as discussed by the phenomenological perspective shed light on the nature of meaning relations and on the nature of the relation between meanings and "what is there" within pragmatic philosophy. However, the clarifying light of the phenomenological perspective can best be further approached in a roundabout way by turning to the analytic perspective as it is brought to the problem of the a priori within pragmatism.

Ayer, in discussing a priori truths in James' philosophy, holds that James is in accord with the widely held position that the truth of necessary propositions is wholly dependent upon the conventions which govern the use of the signs by which they are expressed.17 Thayer, speaking of Lewis' notion of the a priori, observes that "Lewis' discussion of the a priori in knowing could be recast into an account of analyticity in languages."18 Thus, the a priori of James can be seen, again, to be similar to that of Lewis, but both are founded this time upon a linguistic conventionalism. ! 9

The weakness Ayer finds in James' position is that James indicates a necessity of the a priori to the constitution of the mind in that relations among ideal frameworks can coerce the mind.20 In showing that James may hold that our regulative principles are themselves conditioned by the experiences which they serve to organize, Ayer thinks he has handled the "problem" in James. Yet, the use of alternative systems, rather than one necessary system in a Kantian sense, still leaves remaining the question of the coercion within any particular system, a coercion which is based, it would seem, on something similar to Lewis' sense meanings and which provides a type of absoluteness which removes it from the conventionalism of an analyticity founded in language.21 It is just such a coercion which




reveals itself in Wild's analysis of James' "testable a priori." White, also from the perspective of analytic philosophy,

focuses on a slightly different but closely interrelated problem area in James' discussion of a priori knowledge. He holds that there is an ambiguity in James' position. James agrees with Hume and twentieth-century positivists in holding that there is a sharp distinction between the way in which we justify the a priori truths of logic and mathematics on the one hand and the a posteriori truths of physics on the other. Yet, there are places where James comes close to holding that physical theories and theories of mathematics are alike not only in being "spontaneous variations" but also in being "rational propositions."22 However, what White indicates as a real ambiguity in James may in fact be not a vacillation between positivistic empiricism and rationalism but rather a development toward a distinct "third alternative" which involves a unique synthesis of these differing aspects rather than a vacillation among them.

If James is indeed coming close to the position of Lewis, and if the phenomenological perspective is taken seriously, then there may at once be for James (as well as for Lewis) a sharp distinction between the analytic and the synthetic, yet no sharp distinction between the analyticity of mathematics and logic and the analytic that underlies all empirical knowledge, including the knowledge of science and common sense.23

White finds a related ambiguity in Dewey's writings. On the one hand, Dewey has an "impassioned polemic" against the quest for certainty, yet he elsewhere distinguishes between "existential" and "ideational" propositions, calling the latter "necessary" and concerned with "meanings." Further, though Dewey rejects all forms of rationalistic intuition and abandons the quest for certainty, he holds that laws of science are true by definition or analytic.24 Thus, Dewey, like James, is held to vacillate between rationalism and empiricism. As White notes elsewhere of Dewey, "It is hard to see how Dewey can view propositions about the interrelationships between meanings as experimentally verifiable. Once again we find a pragmatist speaking by implication of a kind of knowledge which is not experimental. . . ."25 White objects also that Dewey "appears to hypositize meanings," for he wants to hold that in definition conceptual meanings are



Recen t Perspectives on A menean Pragmatism 1 7 1

resolved into characters that are necessarily interrelated because they belong to a single conception.26 Once again it would seem that a pragmatist is working toward that same aspect of meaning which carries the a priori beyond the conventionalism of language and beyond the distinction between logic and knowledge about the world, and which founds the absoluteness of the analyticity of an a priori which coerces the mind within any system27 but which can be nonetheless exchanged for another system and which is linked to experience by the method of experimentation.28

Morris also takes interest in the role of the a priori in Dewey's philosophy, comparing Dewey's "operational a priori" directly to Lewis' "pragmatic a priori." He holds that the pragmatic orientation with its concern for methodology avoids the extremes of traditional rationalism and traditional empiricism. Further, it differs from Kant's attempted resolution of the conflicting traditions by replacing his doctrine of the synthetic a priori by the conception "of the operational (or pragmatic) a priori."29 Morris tends thus to see a new synthesis rather than a vacillation between two positions. In this assimilation, however, Lewis is drawn into an interpretation of Dewey's "functional" or "operational" approach to the a priori rather than Dewey to Lewis' "pragmatic" a priori. Yet, if the insights of the phenomenological perspective and the tensions brought to light by the analytic perspective are to be taken seriously, it would seem that it is the "absoluteness" of the analyticity of a priori knowledge underlying the functional aspects which may provide the most fruitful focal point for understanding the position toward which Dewey as well as James was groping. The pragmatic a priori cannot be assimilated to the a priori of the phenomenological perspective. Nor, however, can it be conflated to the conventionalism of the positivistic perspective or seen as a purely functional or methodological distinction, for there is an absoluteness of meaning relations underlying analyticity that cannot be handled in these latter alternatives. Analyticity for the pragmatist is about meaning relations. And, ultimately, it is the logic of meaning structures which makes the logic of experience as experimentation possible.30 However, though analyticity is about meaning relations, meanings are about experience, and




this brings us back to Wild and to further insights and obstacles of the phenomenological perspective.

For the pragmatist there is not a distinction between two types of a priori. The model of scientific knowledge provides the model for all knowledge. It has been indicated that the analyticity of a priori knowledge as distinguished from a posteriori knowledge within pragmatism may well be both an "absolute" distinction founded on meaning relations and an all-pervasive one which underlies factual knowledge as well as propositions of logic. The phenomenological perspective carries this "absoluteness" still further. There is also a type of unalterable absoluteness at the basis of meaning selection that the "existential a priori" of the phenomenological perspective has helped reveal yet has misplaced within the context of pragmatic philosophy. This point can perhaps best be correlated with pragmatism by turning first to critics of Lewis' position in this area.31

Beck observes that for Lewis certain fundamental principles such as the "if. . .then" of terminating judgments and the serial character of verificatory experience are "categorial in the sense of being illustrated in every possible experience." They are not categorial "by virtue of any definition of time or of the relation of real connection which experience might or might not illustrate." Beck notes that Lewis is "almost alone among analytical philosophers" in the importance he gives these fundamental principles. "To say that there are principles or concepts which must be applicable to every experience is to say something the pragmatic analysts are not in the habit of saying."32 Beck interprets this as a heritage from Kant of an a priori necessity which has not received due recognition by Lewis or his critics. Yet, when Beck points to Lewis' "elements of realism" which "hardly conform to the typical positivistic model of a relativistic theory of categories,"33 he comes quite close to an alternate interpretation presented by Lowe.34

Beck notes, concerning the above point, that Lewis' position tends toward "a perhaps metaphysical acknowledgement of the hard coerciveness of independent factuality."35 Such a statement points, within Lowe's interpretation, not to a Kantian a priori, but rather to the nature of the independently real as it functions




in Lewis' philosophy. As Lowe observes, "There is a familiar general meaning of 'real' which Lewis often uses and never forgets: that is real whose character is as it is regardless of whether and what anyone thinks about it. . .Lewis had kept this meaning of 'independent reality' in the background while he was analyzing knowledge. . . ."36 Yet, Lowe points out that this meaning of 'real' is there in Lewis' analysis of knowledge and carries through to the glimmerings of a metaphysics of experience, for "Lewis has never denied, he has more than once asserted, that our major modes of thought reflect the general nature of the independent given as well as human purposes."37

In one sense, then, Lewis rejects speculative metaphysics. Yet, the texture of experience indicates the texture of the independently real. And, it is the texture of the independently real, which provides the touchstone for the workability of our meaning structures and which enters into all experience at its most basic level,38 that Lewis' own halting metaphysics attempts to explore.39 This, however, leads directly to the problem of the nature and content of pragmatic metaphysics, for Lowe's interpretation of that "unalterable level" leads not to a Kantian a priori or to an existential a priori, but rather to that which is totally independent of mind's activity. It is here that pragmatism parts company most completely with phenomenology and analytic philosophy, though these perspectives help to illuminate the point of departure.

Bernstein notes that the newer generation of analytic philosophers have rejected much reductive analysis and are rather concerned with identifying, classifying, and describing the most general features of our conceptual structure. Thus, they are engaged in "descriptive metaphysics," the description of the most basic concepts used in thinking about the world.40 Metaphysics, then, is description of basic features of conceptual structure for this type of analytic philosopher, if it is anything. For the phenomenologist, metaphysics concerns a fundamental description of the phenomenal facts, but these phenomenal facts are meanings; or, in Wild's terminology, metaphysics is description of the fundamental features of the existential a priori.

However, the complexities of experience and its content




discussed elsewhere,41 and the coercion of a hard unalterable "thereness" distinct from the absoluteness of the coercions of meaning relations, indicate that metaphysics for the pragmatist is leading in another direction. And, once again, the most useful place to begin is with what is probably the most extremely phenomenological approach to an American pragmatist found in the literature - Wilshire's analysis of James1 Principles. Wilshire holds that "Much traditional Jamesian scholarship is faulty: Far too much emphasis has been placed on his later popular philosophy of pragmatism and his occasional pieces in oracular metaphysics, and not enough on his early theory of meaning and on his systematic metaphysics which emerges directly from his conception in the Principles of the world of practical realities as a founding level of meaning."42 Again, he notes that James "will be metaphysical in the sense that he will engage in a fundamental description of the phenomenal facts." He will not be metaphysical in the sense of engaging in a "transphenomenal explanation of these phenomenal facts." Thus, holds Wilshire, James is "on his way to his own metaphysics of radical empiricism."43

Wilshire, then, distinguishes two types of metaphysics in James' writings, one oracular, one a description of phenomenal facts. It is the seeming arbitrariness of the first of these which gives rise to the positivist interpretation which views James as subscribing to an anti-intellectualistic positivism which accepts ontological or metaphysical beliefs to the degree to which they satisfy tis and which follows the positivist view that ontological questions call for pragmatic decisions about the convenience of certain conceptual frameworks.44

Wilshire has pointed to something vital for an analysis of pragmatism as a systematic philosophic position when he indicates that there is a more important metaphysics which is rooted in the immediacy of experience.45 However, such a "metaphysics of experience" for the pragmatist is not an analysis of meaning structures or of an existential a priori. Rather, it is not about meanings at all, but about that brutely "there" independent reality which enters into the texture of experience and with which we interact via the mode of meaning constitution or meaning bestowal. Thus, what metaphysics in this sense




attempts to explore is the implications of the "felt" level of experience which underlies and makes possible a meaningful world of experience. 4H Such a metaphysics is not arrived at by the method of descriptive phenomenology alone, but rather once again the method of descriptive phenomenology must be placed within the context of the pragmatic methodology of experimentalism.47 Metaphysics is a speculative hypothesis which offers an "explanation" of lived experience by providing a "speculative description" of the features of that process48 which presents itself in the immediacy of organism-environment interaction, which is "open to" certain meanings, and which is known49 only through such meanings. The pragmatist as metaphysician, then, is led ultimately to an explanatory hypothesis which accounts for the texture of the independently real which enters into all experience, a speculative analysis of what that independent reality must be like to give rise to the felt level of experience and to "answer to" the meanings by which the independently real is known.'50 Thus, critics of Lewis can point to a type of metaphysics of experience distinct from his analytically oriented view that metaphysics is an analysis of meaning structures, while phenomenological critics of James can point to a type of metaphysics of experience distinct from his "oracular metaphysics."51

Once again, a threefold distinction is found running through pragmatism, this time the distinction among types of metaphysics.52 There is an element of the analytic view that metaphysics is conceptual analysis, that metaphysics concerns the analysis of the meaning structures brought to experience.53 There is a type of "oracular" metaphysics which comes closer to traditional speculative metaphysics54 but which must be placed within the pragmatic methodology of experimentalism if its significance is to be grasped. And, finally, and most important for an understanding of pragmatism as a philosophic system, there is a metaphysics which attempts to "get at" the features of that independently real which enters into all experience but can be separated out only by philosophic idealization of, or abstraction from, lived experience.55

It is perhaps significant to note that though Peirce is the pragamatist who claims explicitly and systematically to be




engaged in a type of phenomenology, Peirce is virtually ignored by the phenomenological perspective in favor of James and Dewey.56 The reason would seem to lie in the fact that Peirce's description of the "phaneron" is not a description of "thick" or lived experience of a world of objectivities, but rather is an attempt to work back, as closely as possible within experience, to the level of what is "there" in the immediate interaction of organism and environment. His phenomenology, then, is an attempt to undercut a world of meanings,57 and to use the "felt level" of appearances as an inroad to the categories of a metaphysical explanation.58 Such a metaphysics, since it is an idealization of, or philosophic abstraction from, felt experience, is not an observational discipline or a description of what is observed, but rather is an explanation or hypothetical formulation which goes beyond immediate experience, but which is verified by the immediacy of lived experience.59 Indeed, given the pragmatic understanding of the nature of scientific method as experimental method, one must go beyond description of what is observed to an explanatory hypothesis of what is observed if the methodology of science is to be adhered to.60

If there is indeed a pragmatic interpretation of the nature of experience as experimental,61 then one would expect that the pervasive features of such experience, as developed by Peirce in his "phenomenology" and carried into his categories of metaphysics, would provide the characteristic pervasive features of a metaphysics of pragmatism. This would in fact seem to be the case. As Morris has so aptly observed, the pragmatists under consideration, "whatever their terminology, ascribed to the cosmos the characteristics signified in the three Peircean categories."62 What Peirce finds at the "felt level" of experience cannot, of course, be equated with feeling as Firstness. Rather, what Peirce's phenomenology indicates is that qualitative immediacy, brute interaction,63 and lawfulness or continuity are three pervasive features of all experience. Here, then, in the immediacy of lived experience at its most primitive level, is to be found the basis for that "would-'be" or real continuity which gives meaning to the pragmatic assertion of a metaphysical realism as opposed to nominalism.64 In brief, the "would-be" of a metaphysics of pragmatism is meaningful because it is rooted in



R ecen t Per spec tives on A merican Pragma tism ill

lived experience.65 And, the pervasive features of lived experience are rooted in the pervasive features of what is independently there to be experienced.

In a comparion of James with Whitehead concerning a "real feeling of causality," Eisendrath observes that "Such 'feelings',. . .do not enclose us within consciousness but rather throw us out into that universe from which the perceiver himself arises as a being."66 A somewhat similar point, with more general implications, has been concisely and insightfully stated in the observation that "Experience for James is not only given; it also reveals."67 This is indeed the crucial key for interpreting the status of all three of the pervasive features of experience for all of the pragmatists under discussion, while in contrast, traditional empiricists "could not return the data, immediate ideas, and impressions, or sense data and sensibilia, to a world that is there, a solid world, or, as C. I. Lewis says, a 'thick world'."68 The pragmatist does not have the problem of "returning the data" to a world that is there, because the data are not cut off from the world that is there to begin with. The most pervasive features of experience are at one and the same time the most pervasive features of that independent reality which presents itself in all experience and which, when interpreted,69 becomes the thick world of things, which includes as well the appearances of things by which we verify our interpretations.70

Thus, though we can mean anything we so choose to mean, if our meanings are to work they must take account of or fit onto71 the real modes of interacting and real regularities which are there independently of our conceptualizations. And, the most pervasive features of experience, which are there in every experience, must become "part of the internal structure of any and every concept if conceptual structure in general is to be relevant to the grasping of the independently real.72 But, this brings us full circle back to that elusive coerciveness at the basis of meaning selection which cannot itself be selected or not at will, but rather must be acknowledged by any selected conceptual system. Furthermore, though analyticity within a selected conceptual system is about meaning relations, meanings are about experience. And, relatedness to possible experience is built into the very structure of meaning relations by that same




conceptual element which coerces the mind within any system.73 It is this coerciveness in each of its aspects which the

phenomenological perspective on American pragmatism has helped to point out, but has mislocated within the context of the pragmatic system.74 Though the analytic perspective has gone too far in the other direction, and in fact virtually ignores this coerciveness in each of its aspects, such a perspective has helped point out the nature of the subtle mislocations made by the phenomenological perspective.

Pragmatism, in attempting to unite meanings freely created with the coercive "thereness" to which such meanings are applied and which makes the very structure of meaning possible, does at times put too much emphasis on the meanings freely brought; at times too much emphasis on a speculative examination of what is there to coerce. By focusing on radically diverse points of over-emphasis, the analytic and phenomenological perspectives on American pragmatism can, in an indirect way, help illuminate the unique but delicate philosophic net which pragmatism has woven and by which it hopes to grasp the full systematic import of the nature of experience as experimental.

It is perhaps symptomatic of the status given to pragmatism within the philosophic community in the not too distant past that Thayer thought it necessary "in these days when pragmatism is unfashionable," to justify his putting it "in the company of the great philosophies of the past."75 As he goes on to observe, in offering such a justification:

In matters of intelligence and art, fashions are less to be trusted than feared. Few virtues and many vices may be fashionable. One difference between good and bad philosophic thought is that the former has a way of enduring in pertinance and effect despite fashions, while the latter, if not fashionable, is nothing. Pragmatism, I think, has achieved permanence and has a future, though as a suggestive body of ideas rather than as a school of thought.76

The present writer takes issue with Thayer only concerning the last phrase. Pragmatism, as a school of thought, has just begun to assert its worth. And, ironically, it is the diversity of




perspectives present in the recent study of American pragmatism which is helping to reveal its strength as a distinct philosophic system.

Loyola University, Neiv Orleans

NOTES

'This point was developed in some detail in Part I. As in Part I, the pragmatists under consideration are Peirce, James, Dewey, Lewis, and Mead.

2Though the discussion of these areas can stand alone, it is built upon, and relates to, points covered in Part I.

3John Wild, The Radical Empiricism of William James (New York: Doubleday 8c Co!, 1969), pp. 227-229; 49-53; 233-234. (Characterizations of the nature and orientation of a work to which reference is made will not be given if the work was used also in Part I. Such characterizations can be found in the appropriate footnotes of Part I.)

4 Lillian rauchen, James, Lewis and the rragmatic A rrion, transactions oj the Charles Pence Society, VII (1971), pp. 134-146.

"'The type of empiricism which James rejected, as opposed to the empiricism he embraced and which is in many respects similar to the "empiricism" of phenomenology is discussed in Part I.

«Wild, p. 226 (p. 667 in The Principles of Psychology). 'Wild, p. T2H. *lbi(L, p. 227. 9 P. 664 in The Principles of Psychology.

I0Wild, p. 228. 11 Bruce Wilshire, William James and Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), pp. 160-61. 12Pancheri, "James, Lewis and the Pragmatic A Priori." (It can be expected that

an explicitly recognized comparison between James and Lewis will be more cautious and tentative than a presentation which is not intended as such a comparison but rather as an explication of one particular position.) 13Wild, pp. 49-50. I4The pragmatic use of the term 'conception is much broader than its use by

the phenomenologist. However, this point need not be pursued, since the clarification of this terminological difference would not remove the difference under discussion. 15This statement can be clarified by turning to the various meanings and

functions of experience and content discussed in Part I. HJIt is because Wild sees such a "polarized perception" as the most

fundamental level that he interprets James as "retrogressing" in his use of "pure experience." Wild denies the systematic use of a level of experience more fundamental than that of the polarized perception under discussion here. (See Part I.) 17A. J. Ayer, The Origins of Pragmatism (San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper & Co., 1968), p. 195.




18H. S. Thayer, Meaning and Action (New York: The Bobbs- Merrill Co., 1968), pp. 230-23 1 . (This is one of the relatively few places in which Thayer assimilates a basic tenent of pragmatism to the view of another position.) 19This type of linguistic interpretation is evidenced much more frequently in

scholarship on Lewis than on lames. 20Ayer, pp. 197-198. 21 For Lewis, it is sense meanings which coerce the mind within analytic

systems, and it is sense meanings which link the abstract and the concrete within experience in a way which tends closer to the phenomenological than to the linguistic perspective. 22Morton White, Science and Sentiment in America (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1972), pp. 176-180 (see especially p. 177). 23This is a "pragmatic" use of the insights of the phenomenological

perspective, not a statement of the phenomenological position. 24White, Science and Sentiment in America, pp. 284-285. 25Morton White, Pragmatism and the American Mind (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1973), pp. 108-109. It is not here being held that there are no inadequacies in Dewey's discussion of the issue, but rather that the inadequacies may indicate not a radical conflict or vacillation among positions but rather a halting tendency toward a position similar to Lewis and found by scholars of pragmatism and phenomenology alike to be lurking in the writings of James, particularly in the Principles. [The intimate interrelationship between James and Dewey in relation to phenomenology is discussed at some length by D. C. Mathur, Naturalistic Philosophies of Experience (St. Louis, Missouri: Warren H. Green, 1971). See, also, Part I, for a discussion of the nature of the Principles as a link between James and Dewey.] 26White, Pragmatism and the American Mind, p. 151. (The tendency to interpret

pragmatists as hypositizing meanings is discussed in Part I.) 27White denies the adequacy of the distinction between the analytic and the

synthetic. Those most inclined to attack the analytic-synthetic distinction also refuse recognition to the status of sense meanings as providing an absoluteness of meaning relations which holds within logic and which underlies the very possibility of experience of a world of objects. James Hullett, "A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori Re- viewed," Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society, IX (1973), pp. 127-154, perhaps represents the most recent attempt to show the inadequacy of the analytic-synthetic distinction in Lewis' philosophy. 28Thus experimental method remains the sole method for gaining knowledge

about the world. 29Charles Morris, The Pragmatic Movement in American Philosophy (New York:

George Braziller, 1970), p. 53; p. 78, Ftn. 13; p. 77. 30It was noted in Part I that the phenomenological tools of analysis are

remarkably well suited for making crucial distinctions in analyzing meaning structures within pragmatic philosophy. 31 Lewis, more than any other of the leading American pragmatists, is linked to linguistic conventionalism by his critics. Thus, an "absoluteness" that is shown to hold within his position can be found, perhaps, to an even larger degree, in the writings of the other pragmatists. 32Lewis White Beck, "The Kantianism of Lewis," The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis,

ed. Paul A. Schilpp (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1968), pp. 283-284. ™Ibid,, p. 274. ""Victor Lowe, Lewis Conception of Philosophy, The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis,

pp. 23-59.



Recen t Perspec tives on Am erican Pragma tism 181

35Beck, p. 274. (Beck, in his discussion, integrates this point into his own consistent development of what he considers to be Lewis' Kantianism.) 36Lowe, p. 39 and 42. (The marked similarity between this sense of 'real' and

one sense of 'real' found in Peirce's Dhilosoohv can be readilv noted.) 37Lowe, p. 48. 38These two functions of the independently real correspond to the two levels

of "felt" experience discussed in Part I. 39See especially C. I. Lewis, "Realism or Phenomenalism," Collected Papers of C.

I. Lewis, ed. J. Goheen and J. Mothershead, Jr. (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1970). 40Richard Bernstein, Praxis and Action (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 1971), p. 257. 4 'See Part 1. 42Wilshire, p. 19. 4*Ibid., p. 57. 44Ayer, p. 54. 45The path from Ayer to Wilshire is filled by many intervening positions. For

example White, in objecting to the sheer conventionalism of Ayer, notes his hope that Ayer "will be persuaded that there is no radical methodological distinction between the way in which our ontological beliefs work and the way in which our scientific beliefs work." (White, Pragmatism and the American Mind, p. 1 17). James Robert Meyers, "Meaning and Metaphysics in James," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XXXI (1971), pp. 369-380, has focused in on James' metaphysics from the direction of what Wilshire would call his oracular metaphysics, though Meyers is discussing James' metaphysics as a whole and brings in aspects of what Wilshire would want to call James' metaphysics of experience as well. Wilshire's distinction between two types of metaphysics evidenced in James' writings does seem to provide an added clarity for such discussions, though the distinction cannot be taken as an absolute one. 46This "felt" level as the basis for metaphysical hypotheses is the philosophic

idealization discussed in Part I, a type of content with which phenomenology is not concerned and which thus does not provide the pathway to its own type of metaphysics. 47This point is discussed in some detail in Part I. 48Pragmatism as a type of process philosophy is becoming more and more

accepted in the liteature. A brief discussion of pragmatism and phenomenology in relation to process is given in Part I. 49 According to the present use of the phenomenological perspective, both

"objects" and "appearances" as aspects of lived experience function within the meaning level. (See Part I.) 50David Miller, in George Herbert Mead: Self, Language and the World (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1973) has several good discussions which clarify the notion of "answering to." As he indicates in what is the most concise statement of the relation, "This structuring is not a discovery of a structure, but it is the creation of a structure to which the world that is there answers," p. 107. 5 'The distinction between James' "oracular metaphysics" and his "metaphysics of experience" is not based, according to the present interpretation, on a distinction in types of methodology, but rather the latter is more firmly rooted in the unalterable immediacy of lived experience. 52The three-fold distinction among types of experience and its content was

developed in Part I. The present three-fold distinction is not intended as a parallel to the previous set of distinctions.




53This aspect oí Lewis' metaphysics is also discussed at some length by Lowe, as well as by other critics of Lewis. 54Peirce's cosmology, according to some interpretations of it, would fall into

this division. (For example, Bernstein holds that Peirce's cosmological speculations "strike the modern reader as an oddity." p. 198.) "i5The second type can best be seen, perhaps, as a further, more speculative

development of the third type, which is thus dependent upon a previous development of the third type. The first type can readily be seen as complimentary to the other two. •™Morris notes, in relating pragmatism to current Luropean philosophy, that

there is an explicit place for phenomenology in Peirce's writings. However, phenomenologists have shown little, if any, interest in Peirce's "phenomenology." (Morris makes no attempt to develop such a connection, but rather indicates briefly possible lines of connection among various contemporary movements.) Pp. 147-149. "What is "there" in the conscious apprehension of the "phaneron" is not

totally uninterpreted, but rather indicates the level of "seeming" or "appearing" as it occurs in experience. (Though Peirce calls his phenomenology a science of what seems, precisely as it seems, "seeming" statements involve a type of interpretation. Part I discusses this point in some detail.) 58The intimate interrelation between Peirce's phenomenological and ontological

categories is gaining recognition in contemporary literature. As Greenlee notes, since "what is present to the mind is not necessarily mental, there is so far no disparity between the categories as ontological and as phenomenollgical." Douglas Greenlee, "Peirce's Hypostatic and Factorial Categories," Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society, IV (1968), pp. 51-52. (The distinction made by Greenlee which is discussed above is not the distinction indicated by the title of his article.) 39 As Gary Shapiro has noted, "On this scientific conception of philosophy, we may adopt and employ our central categories in a spirit of fallibilism, as the scientist adopts and employs a hypothesis; we are never absolutely certain that we have arrived at the correct categories but we may have reason to believe that our version is tolerably adequate." "Habit and Meaning in Peirce's Pragmatism," Transactions of the Charles Pence Society, IX (1973), p. 38. Thus, metaphysical investigation, as a type of cognitive activity, reflects the dynamics of the pragmatic a priori which is operative in all cognitive activity. fi0Morris holds that philosophy for Peirce is an observational science (p. lib).

Observation has its role within scientific methodology but is surely not exhaustive of its methodology. (This is analogous to the view developed in Part I that phenomenological method has a function within, but is not exhaustive of, an understanding of experience as experimental.) White holds that because Peirce's pragmatism led him to certain metaphysical conclusions, "his pragmatism is not as clear, as sunny, and as empirical as some of his more positivistic admirers may wish to think." Science and Sentiment in America, p. 165). As indicated in Part I, pragmatic empiricism is not positivistic empiricism. However, this is not because pragmatic empiricism is less empirical, but rather because it is more radically empirical. 61This point is developed in Part I. 6~Morris, p. 118. Morris discusses Peirce, James, Dewey and Mead, omitting

Lewis. However, Lewis' own brief discussions of metaphysical issues indicate these same pervasive features. (See especially Lewis' "Realism or Phenomenalism," pp. 335-347.) It is precisely these pervasive features which



Recent Perspectives on A merican Pragmatism 1 83

Lowe and Beck attempt to integrate into Lewis' philosophy through their diverse interpretations. B3Bernstein sees Peirce's emphasis on Setondness as a link between pragmatism

and existentialism, p. 182. However, he recognizes explicitly the big "difference of mood, emphasis, and concern," p. 313. W4James, more than any other of the pragmatists under discussion, is usually

interpreted as a nominalist. However, in the sense in which Peirce's category of Thirdness is opposed to nominalism, James is not a nominalist. (Morris has a brief but good discussion of this point. See pp. 118-119.) The "realism" of a metaphysics of pragmatism is a realism adapted to fit into

the framework of a process philosophy. White rejects the possibility that the "would-be" is a mode of process when he says that Peirce's pragmatism "led to a version of the scholastic doctrine of essential truth." Science and Sentiment in America, p. 163. It is becoming more and more recognized, however, that even Peirce's "Scholastic Realism," when given detailed examination, turns out to be a "nrocess realism." fi5A full understanding of the way in which the "would-be" of a pragmatic "process realism" is experienced would require an analysis of the role of felt habit or disposition to respond as it operates as the unifying factor within the internal structure of conceptual relationship. Such an examination lies well beyond the scope of this paper. However, it was indicated in Part I that the tools of the phenomenological perspective are well suited to the task of such an analysis. It is precisely the experience of the "would-be" which is denied by Ayer when

he asserts that Peirce's realism is no different from the positivistic view that general principles are useful devices for the arrangement of fact since "in his own pragmatic terms, there is nothing to choose" between the two views, p. 54. White makes a similar point in his assertion that Peirce failed to apply his pragmatic maxim "to his own realistic metaphysics," Pragmatism and the American Mind, p. 101. 66Craig R. Eisendrath, The Unifying Movement: The Psychological Philosophy of

William James and Alfred North Whitehead (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 84. (This work presents many discussions of the relation between James and Whitehead which provide a good counteraction to the interpretations of James as tending toward a subjectivism.) b7 Andrew J. Reck, Introduction to William James (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 50. (The introductory essay to the texts selected for inclusion in this book provides, once again, a good counteraction to tendencies to interpret James as a subjectivist, but from an entirely different framework than that presented by Eisendrath.) 68Miller, r* 89. 69This 'when' is a logical, not a temporal, 'when'. There is no uninterpreted

conscious experience. (See Part I for a more detailed discussion of this point.) 70The experience of the appearance of an object is not an uninterpreted

experience. (This point is developed in some detail in Part I.) 7 'The concept of "fitting" is developed in a way which is useful within the present context by Harold N. Lee in "A Fitting Theory of Truth," Tulane Studies in Philosophy, XIV (1965), pp. 93-1 10. 72If conceptual structure involves habit or continuity as a way of behaving

which governs specific reactions to qualitative presentations, then the pervasive features of experience have indeed been incorporated into the very structure of the concept.




73 It was indicated above that Lewis' sense meanings seem to be operative at least in a vague way in the functioning of concepts for all of the pragmatists discussed. 74These two aspects relate, of course, to what Wild has called the testable a

priori and the existential a priori as discussed above. 75IX-X (Preface). 76Ibid.



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