The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Arthur F. Bentley
The Human Skin: Philosophy’s Last Line of
Defense
Philosophy of
Science, 8 (1
Jan. 1941, 1-19.
HUMAN skin is the one authentic criterion of the
universe which philosophers recognize when they appraise knowledge under their
professional rubric, epistemology. By and large - except for a few of the great Critics and
Sceptics - they view knowledge as a capacity, attribute, possession, or other
mysterious inner quality of a “knower”; they view this knower as residing in or
at a “body”; they view the body as cut off from the rest of the universe by a
“skin”; all of which holds for philosophizing physicists and physiologists even
as for the professionals of the arcanum itself. If this assertion seems crude, one may
recall that there are times when a bit of crudity is a fair physic for an
inflamed subtlety. In the case
before us the factual crudity lies in the use of “skin” for a criterion, not in
our calling attention to the fact. The “skin” that is so used is, indeed,
that of ancient anatomical schematism, unaffected by the transformation of
understanding which modern physiological research has brought about. Yet if philosophers cease thus crudely to
employ it, all their issues of epistemology will vanish, and the very type of
attack they make on cognition will be discredited; whereupon the task of
determining the status of knowledge itself will pass from their hands
to
1
those of the scientists who have taken over so many
regions of philosophical arrogation in the past. This is what I propose here to
show.
Assuredly skin is a proper subject for examination in
connection with the processes of knowledge, and assuredly matter-of-fact
observation and report is appropriate to it. If there is a “knower” and if there is a
“known,” if one of these lies apart from the other and if there is a process of
“knowing” which involves both, then skin lies somewhere along the line of march,
and must be taken into account.
The philosopher will enter demurrer. He will deny on principle that knowing
can ever come to be dealt with by matter-of-fact techniques that concern
themselves with the status of skins inside the course of the knowledges
themselves. He will assert that it
is necessary to get behind the process in some highly specialized way to gain a
vantage point for its appraisal, and that such an undertaking is his
professional prerogative, its sacred maintenance his obligation. Symbolic logic, that curious mixture of
skill and superstition, is today claiming to occupy such a vantage point. One of its flanks (the right flank it
should doubtless be called, since it is the flank in which the superstition far
outweighs the skill) even boasts its putative capacity to unify - God save the
mark - all science. “Getting
behind” is, of course, a necessity in all research; it is also a characteristic
of all behavior, including as
The philosopher, having no open truck with skin, leaps
from essence to essence - from the essential knower to the essentially known.
He leaps with never so much as the
twitch of an eye-lash to mark that he glimpses anything of significance lying in
between. Yet it is simple to show
that skin - and indeed skin in its primitive anatomical character - dominates
every position the philosopher occupies and every decision he makes. Stripping off the subtle philosophical
veilings let us get down to the naked evidence.
1. H. S. Jennings, Behavior of the Lower
Organisms (1906) pp. 296 ff.
2
“Inner” and “outer” are ever present distinctions,
however camouflaged, in philosophical procedure as well as in conventional
speech-forms and in the traditional terminology of psychology. What holds “inner” and “outer” apart?
The answer must come not by way of
transcendental build-up but by indications of pertinent fact. Bluntly the separator is skin; no other
appears. Trace the varieties of
description historically, beginning with the early days of “soul.” Apart from minor flights of fancy, “soul”
reports itself as inhabitant of body, so long as mortal coil endures. Body has skin for boundary, and skin thus
fences off the mortal residence. Skin in its way even operates as that
which demarcates those bits of the universe destined to sing in the hereafter,
and those destined to singe. Soul
is tempted by world, flesh, and devil, and skin is what keeps world and flesh
apart, yielding also, it is said, many satisfactions to devil. The later “actors” of psychology are all
modelled on soul, down even to the last of the Freudian sub-mentalities and of
the physiological substitutes, the difference being mainly in the degree of
attenuation. Psyches, minds,
personalities, all belong in this class; skin is what holds them “in.” Singly or in groups they are made to fill
the intradermal region, whenever behaviors rather than physiological processes
form the subject of discussion. The
greater their attenuation the more stridently they are apt to assert themselves
as “real,” but also the more absurd becomes the account that is given of them.
Take the “internal environment” of
current professional gossip. An
organism has an “external” environment. This lies outside its skin. Inside the skin we find, if we look
closely and talk bluntly, the organism itself. If there is an “internal” environment,
then, where is it? And what is it environment to? Its professional exploiters seem never to
ask. Claude Bernard meant by
internal environment the blood as environing the bodily organs. This is sound physiology. Later physiologists have followed with
valuable studies of the environing status of certain parts of the body to other
parts. This also is sound
physiology. But the psychologist’s
case is sharply different. In his
use “internal environment” seems to require something akin to the aura of an
Annie Besant
3
for its focal reference (P, v. 48). [2] Leibniz made what was probably the most powerful effort in all philosophy to face the issues of “inner” and “outer” and get rid of the domination of skin. His monads were to “mirror” the world without actual contact. They are thus “windowless” in the sense that no path is traceable across their boundaries. They are skin-impounded but not skin-traversable. The private difficulties a monad would have with its privacy have been amusingly traced by Malisoff. [3] Modern science stresses paths. Leibniz destroyed paths to preserve innerness. Nevertheless Leibniz rates high today: the integrity of his attack brings illumination to every inquirer above the level of the “internal environment.” Those who hold the “inner” apart from nature may take him as they find him, while others gain ample incentive to trace the paths of nature across all knowledge. [4
The above presentation of the basis of the
“philosophical” technique must be left for the moment with this sketch. It is a technique of the past surviving
into the present. We shall later
summarize its ruinous defects. Turn
now to the techniques of the present - those we call “scientific” - and to the
forecast they give of the future.
They are in sharp contrast. They gather their facts where they may,
and make a bouquet of actuals instead
2. Citations from some of my recent papers will be
made in the text by the use of the letter “J” for the Journal of Philosophy,
and “P” for the Psychological Review. These papers are:
Sights-Seen as Materials of Knowledge, 7.
Phil., 36, 1939, pp. 169-181.
Situational Treatments of Behavior, Ibid., pp.
309-323.
Postulation for Behavioral Inquiry, Ibid.,
pp.405-413.
Observable Behaviors, Psychol. Rev., 47, 1940, pp.
230-253.
The Behavioral Superfice, Ibid., 48, No. I,
1941.
3. “What is a Monad?” Phil. Sci., 7, 1940, pp.
1-6.
4. The generalization of the “inner” into a
comprehensive or “absolute” form is a more recent program of philosophical
escape. Trailing its initial
“innerness” with it to the end, it remains a program rather than an achievement,
critically of high importance, constructively of none. Its justification has rested in its
importance as complement to the Newtonian absolutes, space and time. When these last disintegrated in modern
physics this justification disappeared. When science ceases to have a base that
is all “outer” then a complementary “pure inner” is no longer needed; then
scientific techniques become available for direct application to cognitions,
once we discover how to develop and use them.
4
of one of stylized artificials. They look closely at skin as interior
connective tissue of the events in progress. The old pretense of skin to dominate
everything vanishes instanter. It
is like having been scared of a ghost, and getting over being scared when you
catch the cat. Skin now enters for
what it is worth in the process and for nothing more.
Knowings are forms of human behavior (P, v. 48). By “behaviors” let us understand that
special class of biological adjustments and adaptations which remains for
inquiry after both the slow evolutions and the technically physiological
processes have secured their separate study. The word “behavioral” will thus cover the
same field as “psychological,” provided, that we take our data as they
are biologically presented without presumptuous recasting into either
psychic or mechanistic forms. Only
because of the many hidden implications of “psyche” in current uses of
“psychological” is the term “behavior” here preferred.
The reader may already be commenting that physiology has
long since reduced skin to its proper place in behavioral process. This comment he might support on the
results of research into stimulations and reactions. He is wrong. Almost all of our present physiology, so
far as its results are applied to knowledge behaviors, is in the same position
with respect to skin as are the defective philosophies; its reports about
behaviors are skin-dominated. A
display of this situation is a needed preliminary to further
examination.
Physiological psychologists sometimes talk of
physiological facts and psychological facts as the same; sometimes they talk of
them as fellow-travelers; always they insist that when physiology has advanced
far enough it will produce both physiological and psychological descriptions in
one breath. The discouraging truth
is, however, that up to date physiology has not itself made one single
psychological report directly in its own terms (P, v. 47, p. 238). Even in the simplest
physical-physiological stimulation train, the meanings of the words “stimulus”
and “reaction” change sharply when shifted from physiological to psychological
application. We certainly agree
that physiological knowledge is the background of psychological just as physical
is the back-
5
ground of physiological
[5] likewise that tropisms and sensitivities are transitional at their proper stage of inquiry just as viruses are at theirs. But this in no way justifies current theorizing which proclaims physiological-psychological identity on the basis of a pun backed by faith, without positive advance towards organization in simple, direct, steady, scientific report.This may best be displayed if we join some of Pavlov’s results with some of Dewey’s and bring them together into contrast with the current physiological-psychological attitude. The labors of these two investigators admirably complement each other. Back of them stand Darwin and Peirce who put the problem of knowledge “on location” for inquiry. The Pavlov to consider is not the presumed mechanist of academic degradation, any more than the Dewey is the figure in whose name so many educational tradesmen have perpetrated misdemeanors and crimes. The Dewey is he of the Logic
[6] and of the fifty years of coordinated inquiry that have gone into it, just as the Pavlov is the technician of his own laboratory and none other.Some forty-five years ago when the correlation of
psychological with physiological states first became general Dewey noted [7] that the “reflex arc concept” of then current discussion had been adopted
by psychologists as a convenient figure of speech to enable them to organize
their rapidly growing masses of factual detail, and that its service to them was
pictorial. This was unquestionably
correct report on what was then taking place. He regarded it as progress but as not
enough progress. His
5. The view of science here taken is substantially that
of the “levels of description” used by Malisoff in his presentation of
“Emergence without Mystery” (Phil. Sci., 6, 1939, pp. 17-18).
Such a view introduces a new
dimension of freedom for scientific advance. The older science accepted as “reals”
what were little more than remnants of primitive guesswork. The newer science becomes able to express
itself frankly on the level of its own skills. In slight illustration, a generation ago
physics and chemistry were differentiated in terms of “fact”; today in terms of
objective and technique. In the
case of physiology and psychology the current differentiation is still in terms
of “reals,” mitigated only by a credal consolidation. The view advocated in the text makes
technical achievement the test. The
sciences then appear not as reflections of “realms of reality,” but as “realms
of inquiry” in their own right. See
also my Behavior, Knowledge, Fact (3935) pp.275ff.
6 Logic, The Theory of Inquiry,
7. “The Reflex-Arc Concept in Psychology,” Psychol.
Rev., 5 (1896), pp. 357-370.
6
objection was that too much of the old was still retained in the figure of speech - that the old was still “not sufficiently displaced.” This very objection remains valid today. Dewey proceeded to show that what the psychologists called “stimulus” and what they called “reaction” were, when isolated, not immediate data but truncated part-statements, while conversely the definite immediate data were functional in the sense that both stimulations and reactions had to be combined in description as phases of common event, if the description was to make sense and be safely usable. Manifestly there is no attribution here of intradermal localization to psychological fact. [8]
Only in very recent years
[9] has psychology
begun to produce a series of constructions following out the lines of Dewey’s
observation (J, pp. 311-321; P, v. 47, pp. 239-243). However from a very different quarter
has come a development in thorough accord with it, if we are to judge not by
casual verbalisms of the moment, but by long-range trends of research. This is Pavlov’s work with perceptive
activity, primarily in the case of the salivating dog. [10] In the pursuit of his conditioned
reflexes Pavlov arrived at a manner of description in terms of signs and signals
which was
8. If any one is surprised at seeing Dewey, “the
philosopher,” listed on the side of science in the matter of cognition, his late
address “Nature in Experience,” (Phil. Rev., 49, 1940, pp.
244-258), may be consulted. He has
asserted again and again his naturalistic approach. Thus in 1908 (7. Phil., Psychol.,
& Sci. Meth., V, 375) he wrote that the uncritical psychology
which regards “intellectual operations… as having an existence per se…
and… as distinct from the things which
figure in inference-drawing” makes “the theory of knowledge, not logic… but
epistemology.” He has, of course,
used the “personal” phrasing in much of his writing. This is convenient, and often necessary
when addressing certain large groups of hearers. Not his mere use of a word, however, but
his own statement of his intent in using it, must be taken as governing his
theoretical approach.
9. Thus J. R. Kantor, Principles of Psychology,
2 vol., 1924, 1926; A Survey of the Science of Psychology,
1933. K. Lewin, Principles
of Topological Psychology, 1936. J. F. Brown, Psychology and the Social
Order, 1937. Frequent
phrasings in the earlier writings of Wertheimer and Koffka remind one of Dewey;
and the most successful work of the Gestalt psychologists - that with
colors - permits a very complete statement in this manner, even though the
habitual Gestalt dualisms of sense and form, of outer and inner, and of
physiological and psychological, cause serious deterioration in most other
branches of their inquiries.
10. Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the
Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex, 1927. Lectures on
Conditioned Reflexes, 1928.
7
radically opposed to the old “psychic” description and just as radically to all physiological camouflages of the psychic. Psychic terms were barred in the laboratory as clumsy disturbers of the communicational peace. He regarded himself neither as a psychologist nor as a “physiological psychologist,” but strictly and exclusively as a physiologist. The difference is sharp
. [11] As a physiologist he declared that he was expanding physiology into new territory. He divided physiology into two branches, a narrower or lower dealing with the integration of the work of all parts of the organism, and a broader or higher exploring the connection and equilibration of the organism and external conditions. [12] This latter branch he stressed in terms of the activity of the cerebral cortex. This stress covers one phase of the full activity: the intradermal phase. The full physiology can not be developed exclusively there nor kept permanently in close confinement. Pavlov’s own laboratory procedure does not hold it there. The cerebral activity, as he saw it, was not assigned to the cortex as a power or capacity; his frequent researches into localization were of the legitimately factual type, and were not efforts at physiological-psychic identification. What he studied was a process directly involving phenomena outside the skin along with phenomena inside, so that the region in which the physiological event took place - its locus - was literally wider than any region enclosed by a skin. This characterization is not developed out of statements Pavlov himself made in commenting on his own work; indeed various expressions he used at one time or another in the course of his long career conflict with it. It is a proper statement, nevertheless, of his actual procedure, of its lines of expansion, and of safe forecast for its future (J, pp. 311-314; P, v. 47, pp. 240-241; P, v. 48). The very diffi-11. One may perhaps say that the psychologist follows
psyche, the physiological psychologist follows flesh-bound psyche, and the
physiologist in Pavlov’s sense expands inquiry to full organic activity. The difference between the last two, so
far as behaviors are concerned, is like that between duplication of phrase and
straight research, or between rubber stamp and test tube.
12 “A Brief
Outline of the Higher Nervous Activity,” Psychologies of 1930, chap. ii,
p. 207.
8
culties Pavlov had with the words “external” and
“internal” [13] support this view if we remind ourselves that he was
not a word-spinner but a fact-finder, for whom even a fumbling approximation to
well-stated fact rated higher than the last word in verbal
sanctification.
In exhibiting the manner in which Dewey on the one side
and Pavlov on the other disregard skin as critical boundary and join thus in
marked contrast to the conventional physiological-psychological attitude, we are
already well on our way towards a consideration of the modern approach to
inquiry which succeeds the traditional. The modern setting is this: For special
purposes biology may study an organism “as if alone.” Nevertheless biology knows no “organism
alone” as fact. The words “organism
alone” when used positively make no sense at all. The facts for biology are
“organisms-in-environment”- ”organisms-on-earth,” if one wants it pictorially
phrased. [14] Inquiries
into behavior are primarily biological, but they differ from other branches of
biological inquiry in that they find greatly increased intricacy in the ways in
which the organisms are involved in the environments, and the environments in
the organisms. Moreover in
comparison with the slow adaptations that are the rule in biological evolution,
behavioral adaptations are lightning flashes. But even lightning flashes are no longer
seen as coming from the hand of Jove; they are instead readjustments of
distribution. The more this comes
to be understood in its full evolu-
13. At times he treated the sub-cortical centers as the
animal proper, with cerebrum environmental to it; again the cerebrum was Connection between inner-sub-cortical and
outer-environmental; other expressions seem to make “the rest” of the body
environment to the cerebrum. His
hemispheres “analyze” for internal as well as for external: “Some of the most
delicate elements and moments of skeleto-muscular activity become stimuli.”
Excitation may “originate” in
cortex and be “initial stimulus.” Pavlov’s manner of handling difficulties
of this kind scientifically may profitably be compared with works in which
similar difficulties appear, but in which essential existential statement is
sought. Burrow’s ¶The Biology of
Human Conflict, 1937, developed out of Freudian antecedents, will well serve
for this purpose.
14. From the biological point of view, and in terms of
the organism as a whole, this functional status of stimulus with respect to
organism is well brought out by Kurt Goldstein, The Organism, (1934;
Eng. trans. 1939). He does not,
however, expand his statement in terms of the full situation of
organism-environment.
9
tional setting, the more intimately will the fusion of
organic and environmental participations in behaviors be manifest, even though
this is in the sharpest contrast with the primitive view which continues to
insist on “spirit” severance.
Let us return now to a consideration of the basic
technique of the philosopher with his “inner knowers” and his “outer knowns”
kept apart by an etherialization of an anatomical skin. We have already said that it is a
technique of the past surviving into the present, and that it has ruinous
defects. Examination of it
shows:
a) that despite its luxurious flowering in the form of
philosophical systems and creeds, it has never produced any generally acceptable
organized knowledge of knowings;
b) that the inner “knower” it employs is a force,
capacity, faculty, actor, or power belonging to that type of “forces” which
competent sciences expel (P, v. 47, pp. 235-237) - physics today wholly, biology
to sufficient extent so that the outcome is already clear;
c) that no such force or actor has ever been observed
directly, it being a phenomenon of ascription rather than of
description;
d) that terminological clarification fails whenever
inners and outers must be closely examined as cases of fact (P, v.
48);
e) that even ecology has difficulty at the line of skin
in seeking precise formulations for organism and environment (P, v.
48);
f) that closer descriptions are very greatly needed here
as in all cases in which vehemence of belief is found in direct proportion to
extent of ignorance;
g) that once we have abandoned attributions to isolated
inners of the sub-scientific type, we can attain no description that makes sense
at all for actual human behaviors - lovings, hatings, buyings, votings,
fightings, helpings, talkings, schemings - without observing and describing the
behavioral activity as itself positively and directly transdermal (P, v.
48).
The assertions in the preceding paragraph are “factual”
in the sense that, giving sufficient detachment of purpose, any inquirer can
make independent verifications. The
appraisal of their bearing upon inquiry into knowledge is not so easy, running
as
10
it does far beyond the usual ranges of detachment. To proceed to it we must not only assume
the natural evolution of organisms in terrestrial environments, but we must do
this completely, making it cover not only the structure but all of the
behaviors of organisms, and we must do it honestly and sincerely, weeding
out every reservation and every exemption that we may secretly make (P, v.47, p
250-251; v. 48).
Under a thorough-going assumption of evolution we may
expect:
i) that “forces” of types that disappear from the
advanced sciences will in the course of time disappear from the less
advanced;
2) that radical reconstructions such as occur in the
advanced sciences when incoherences of expression have been found insoluble will
under similar conditions occur also in the less advanced;
3) that behaviors should be investigated where
they are - that is, where observation of them can be made - without limitation
to spots where grammatical convenience guesses them to be;
4) that knowledge processes are included with other
behaviors, and can no longer claim special privilege as a unique type of “thing”
or “event” in the world.
On this basis the procedures called “philosophical” are
no longer sacredly untouchable but permit direct factual examination, so that
their deficiencies can be appraised in their full gravity, and inferences as to
needed reconstructions can be drawn. In simple illustration of the type of
change that may be involved, consider our grandfathers who in their innocence
quite commonly believed in innate depravity and in the personal devil. The grandsons, leastwise those of a
scientific bent, have quit that simple view. But these same grandsons for the most
part still believe in a solipsistic intellect and in a regnant truth which, if
they are good, they may some day look upon face to face. The data we have marshalled serve,
however, to indicate that the sweet odors of mentality are at one with the
sulphurous fumes of the devil, and the isolated “I” of the single organism is no
more to be assumed to have personal dealings with eternal
truth
11
than with eternal evil or with any other of the
personally guaranteed eternities the world has now
discarded.
The philosopher faces a dilemma resting in the fact that
the Newtonian space and time go hand in hand with the skin-encompassed knower,
this latter being just a receptacle for the overflow of phenomena the former can
not contain (P, v. 7, p. 236). If
the philosopher sticks to the knower in its old space and time, the only way he
can get his knower to achieve its knowing in regions beyond the skin is through
some form of magic, and the only path of escape he has ever found from the
primitive magics is by way of verbal subtleties which are themselves just magics
of an upper caste. If on the other
hand the philosopher discards the Newtonian scheme under the influence of modern
physics, and if he discards the magic knower under the influence of modern
cultural studies, then he will find his phenomena of inquiry developing a phase
space - a system of their own - for their formulation, and his whole
inquiry will pass beyond the range of official philosophical technique and fall
fully within that of freely advancing science.
What, now, under the newer approach, will be the status
of knower and known, of knowing and of knowledges, in terms of direct
observation and description? Where,
in short, will one find the facts, if one looks for them? The answer can not take the Newtonian
form of “in the third pintpot on the second shelf of the cupboard,” or “in the
upper right hand corner of such and such a section of a cortex.” The kindergarten class must wait a little
longer before it can be told.
The first step towards considering a “where” under the
new approach will be by comparison with the kind of “where” that was offered
under the old. Under the old
approach Cartesian coordinates could indeed be applied to the skin of the
organism. The result was not
localization, but a pseudo- or quasi-localization. The “knower” and the “known” entered as
“existences,” whether frankly or in subtle shadings. With soul weakened into psyche, and with
psyche yielding to body as its “stand-in,” “knowing” could in a way be viewed as
physiological process within the skin. This supplied a confused pretense of
definite-
12
ness to three of the four terms, viz., to knower,
known, and knowing. But what kind
of definiteness could then be given to the fourth term, “knowledge”! Knowledge, substantively viewed, was left
to bear the brunt of the inquiry: Was it inside the skin, or out? Was it flesh, or spirit? Was it fact, or thought, or
word?
To the direct question as to where knowledge is
located, nobody under the old procedure has ever given a coherent answer. Even to put such a question and press it
steadily is regarded as ill-mannered. Such possibilities as “in the head,” “in
the mind,” “in the brain,” “on the library shelf,” “in the absolute,” or just
“out there” in the facts are all sad answers; you can not stick to any one of
them for three sentences without being in trouble. A knower with nothing it knows, or a
known without a knower to know it, is absurd, not in subtlety alone, but as an
affair of the simplest verbal integrity; yet the discussions result in demanding
one, or the other, or both, or neither - you can take your
choice.
The issue does not appear in its full absurdity so long
as one potters around with generalities. When one gets down to the specific
instance and demands the location of an item of knowledge - and this
question the newer approach is compelled to ask, if it is to consider the matter
at all - then the absurdity becomes violent. The word “concept” is everywhere found in
recent discussions about science to designate such an “item” of knowledge. Its old scholastic implications have long
since disappeared, and we may properly demand of the modern user of the word:
Where can you show us a sample of these concepts you talk so much about?
We get no answer whatever in any
modern sense. Plenty of material is
available for examination if we wish it: thus, Bridgman’s Logic of Modern
Physics, Dewey’s Logic, almost any paper in Philosophy of Science,
and many of the reports in technical journals such as the Psychological
Review. My own inquiry
indicates that in perhaps half the cases of its use the word “concept” may be
omitted and no reader ever be aware of the difference, while in nine-tenths of
the remaining cases simple rephrasing will just as completely get rid of it.
An occasional instance remains in
which the word suggests a slight
13
hesitancy in assertion, perhaps about the equivalent of the citation marks often used to hold a doubtful word up for inspection and sometimes this takes the firmer form of a “planning.” But at its best it is a mere schematic term. So far as any “existence” of its own in the way current uses imply is concerned it is abracadabra. If any one who is not a psychist, and not merely wearing a verbal parade uniform, but who is seriously intent on precise statement in terms of the opposition of knower and known will indicate to me where a concept can be found as a fact, I shall be very gratefu1
. [15]The modern approach does not involve this confusion at
all. It gets rid of it at a single
stroke. Instead of starting with
knowers and knowns which it proclaims as basic without pretending to “know” what
they are, it starts with knower-known-knowing-knowledge complex to investigate.
It does not talk generalities about
system; it investigates system as fact. To be investigated as fact system must be
present somewhere. It must be
terrestrial. Location must be
assignable, for knower, for known, for knowing, and for knowledge, in definite
terrestrial spaces and times. These
spaces and times are biological. To
call behaviors biological without giving them literal terrestrial location is
delusion. Biological regions are
regions of organic-environmental differentiation on earth, with organism and
environment entering not as eternal verities or achieved basic knowledges but as
themselves subjects of progressing inquiry. Note the sharp difference between this
and the philosophical approach which makes knowledge be concerned with something
it calls “relation,” where “relation” is a primitive form of place-less naming
for phenomena one senses as present but which one is unable to trace down as
facts in space and time. “Knowledge” itself in this philosophical
process comes to appear as a sort of relation between relations, possessing
placelessness, and in a
15. I think I shall not be violating any confidence if I
say that Professor Bridgman once checked a portion of his own unpublished
manuscript in which the word “concept” appeared fifty-three times, and found
that without any sense of loss he could omit it in all but four cases; in two of
these four, the casual word “notion” did service, leaving only two resistant
cases out of the fifty-three. Professor Dewey has written me that he
has made sufficient examination to convince him that “the word is useless at
least four-fifths of the time - my own writings
included.”
14
comparably discreditable sense timelessness (and so
non-factuality) in a sort of second degree. Under the modern approach “relation”
disappears entirely from the reckoning, [16] and full event and process
is spread out for inquiry. Knowledge is now recognized not as a kind
of spaceless “being” but as phenomenon that is present there and there only
where knower-known activity is under way. “Knower” and “known” are now constrained
- despite their Neanderthal footings and their colloquial universality - to
submit at last to examination in system. “Knowing” and “knowledge” no longer
differ as though the former were a process and the latter its product, but show
themselves as manners of stress in description. In the biological regions in which
behaviors occur, organisms are central – “nuclear,” if one will. Knowing, knowledge, the knower, the known
are all forms of description of the biological region examined when it is in
action in a highly specialized way. They involve no limitation to any spot or
to any type of spot, nuclear or other, within the region, and no necessary
prescript as powers, capacities, qualities, or properties of any
spot.
In another paper (P, v. 48) dealing with the
localization of behaviors generally, I have used the name “behavioral superfice”
for the boundaries of any area in which organism-environment adjustments of the
behavioral type are in progress. Just as “skin” bounds the narrowly
physiological activity of the organism, not geometrically but functionally, so
“superfice” bounds the broadly physiological adjustments as we see these in
expansion from Pavlov’s view. In
the particular case of the Pavlov conditioning, superfice brings dog, food,
bell, and signalization all in one “system” of inquiry. Anatomically skin rates as spatial
determination; physiologically it involves durational ranges also. For behavioral demarcations within
superfice, and for knowledges
16. Dewey retains the word “relation” for
symbol-organization, matching it against “connection” for non-language
organization, and against “reference” to designate word-to-thing behaviors
(Logic, p. 55). His
is the only intelligible use of the word “relation” with which I am acquainted,
once the old spiritist scheme is superseded. Just as the word “relation” can be
rehabilitated, so also can the word “concept.” On Dewey’s basis “concept” may appear as
a forward looking possibility-realizing “idea,” or “rule,” or “habit” of
behavior; or alternatively it may show itself as a name for certain intricate
language behaviors.
15
above all else, the intimacy of durational-spatial
involvement heightens; otherwise activity, event, could not be depicted within
it.
In simple, casual, natural approach nothing interferes
with our accepting a “knowledge” as present within a superfice any more than a
living organism as present within a skin. The sole interference comes from
over-assertive “local” points of view. Not as an attempt at nature-faking but as
casual rhetoric we may say that from the local point of view of some
ill-educated gene the epidermis of its organism would seem a far-off fantasy,
absurd to insist upon. Chromosome,
cell, gland would doubtless - if they could blurt it out - be just as
solipsistically self-centered as is any human “self” enjoying power of assertive
speech. A bullet, incidentally,
like the captain in the civil war jingle, would be “worst of all,” as the
self-assertiveness went round. Since Darwin a certain modesty towards
the universe, which the bullet lacks, has become common among men, though not in
nearly high enough degree so long as the single man regards himself as aloof
from the universe in the skin-protected pretense that “he” is something
bullet-like “inside,” uniquely looking out. Superfice is just one way of exhibiting
the single man as literally component of his universe; the great argument in
favor of its use is that its technical position is in line with other technical
procedures of modern science.
A knowledge may be viewed as located “within” a superfice as simply as may electricity “within” a battery or an electron “within” an atom - much more simply in all probability after a little practice is had. The interference, the obstacle, is mostly in a pattern of speech - a “patter” - to the effect that “nothing but spirit can know” which curiously survives among many men long after they have agreed that “no spirit exists.” It is ultra-curious that our logicians today more than any others seem to regard this as logical. Of the three courses open when describing behaviors - to go magic, to go fleshly, or to go situationally
[17] systemic - the present approach deliberately selects the last.17. The word “situational,” in much the sense that I use
it (J, v. 47, p. 311), was suggested thirty years ago as an improvement on
“social” by Addison W. Moore in his book
[Pragmatism and Its Critics (p. viii, p. 230). He saw pragmatism as evolutionary and
non-solipsistic, and by illustrating upon the work of Royce and Baldwin he drove
home the point (p. 22:) that no mere special pleading in the name of “evolution”
or of the “social” would suffice, but that thorough basic development was
needed. He thus forecast the main
characteristics of the present paper, though his early death left his work
without further development.]
HHC: [bracketed] displayed
on page 17 of original.
16
When one adopts the superfice as one’s aid and examines
descriptions within it in supplement to descriptions within skin, one finds that
the position of anatomy with respect to physiology in narrowly organic inquiry
is matched by that of ecology to psychology in broader environmental
inquiry. Anatomy was once viewed as
a study of structure in contrast with physiology’s study of function, but it
stands now rather as offering a spatial abstraction preliminary to physiology’s
full durational-extensional study. Passing to regions within the superfice
where organisms and environments are seen in action together, ecology employs in
the main the static, structural, spatial approach, while psychology or, if one
prefers, the wider Pavlov physiology undertakes the full durational-functional
study. Psychology stands thus
towards ecology within a superfice as physiology stands towards anatomy within a
skin. Knowledge processes are the
most intricate which psychology has to investigate. Whether they are to be regarded as within
the domain of psychology proper or as running beyond it in much the way that the
psychological in general runs beyond the more narrowly physiological is
unimportant. What is important is
the opportunity we now have for their technical investigation by procedures
expanded directly from those of physics, physiology, and the less intricate
psychology, under the steady maintenance of directly durational-spatial
observation.
To assign knowledges and other behaviors to regions
within superfices is a step much like that which mathematicians took when they
introduced continuity. Mathematicians were restlessly exploring,
and the natural numbers did not suffice for all the realms they wanted to
explore. So they took on negatives,
infinites, irrationals, imaginaries, transcendentals - all sorts of queer
gentry. They felt like sinners, but
they went ahead and sinned - and thank God for that. Only very recently have
they
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been losing their sense of guilt through finally
becoming aware that after all the “naturals” are no sacred temple of “reality,”
and that it is only right and proper that every operator should have its day.
The superfice enters as hypothesis;
it enters to meet the needs of accumulating fact. The experience of the mathematicians
justifies us in trying anything not only once but often enough to satisfy
ourselves how it goes.
The only test of hypothesis is in the results that
frequent patient efforts secure. In
the present case two important forms of inquiry are under way that in the end
will yield tests.
The first of these is an advance towards a consistent
terminology of sign and symbol to cover all behavioral purposes, not in
supplement to, but as complete substitute for, the old psychological terminology
of faculty, quality, property, and power. Locke, Berkeley, and Reid started one
line of approach. Peirce got a firm
hold upon the most essential requirements, though the linguistic limitations of
his day blocked all his efforts at positive advance, Jennings secured a sound
initial expression in his study of the lower organisms. Pavlov and Dewey have made by far the
largest contributions. In recent
literature consider Hunter’s vicarious functioning, Brunswik’s cue-family,
Bühler’s attempt to apply signs to the behavioral study of language, and
Tolman’s various terminological applications of the word “sign.” Klüver,
18. Any Citations I might make to the work of the
psychologists mentioned would require so much in the way of qualification and
interpretation as to be impracticable here. The best guide I know of to the impending
development, although it barely mentions the word “sign,” and ends at the
problem-setting with which the present examination begins, is the paper by
Professor Fritz Heider, “Environmental Determinants in Psychological Theories”
(Psychol. Rev., 46, 1939,
pp. 383-410). If the
reader will take Heider’s terms “proximal” and “distal” for variations in the
focus of inquiry as he establishes them, without pigeon-holing them in terms of
conventional analogues, he will, I believe, find the discussion extremely
profitable.
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The second form of inquiry is that leading towards a
general theory of language as human behavior. Skeletonized linguistics, mechanistic
fragments, psychic oddities, Freudian trifles are scattered around, but all
together they do not add up to any coherent presentation of speech as a
functioning phase of human behaviors. A full situational development within the
region of a superfice is indicated as a simple and promising
procedure.
The development of this paper rests upon the work of
Charles Sanders Peirce, his pragmatism, his fallibilism, and his long search for
a living, as opposed to a static, 1ogic. [19] It rests not upon results he
immediately obtained but upon his vision and upon his endeavor; and upon these,
indeed, in the form which John Dewey has independently paralleled or definitely
advanced.
Of our coupled subject-matters, skin and philosophy,
most attention has been given, perhaps unwisely, to the latter. We may sum up with respect to skin. 1. Anatomically, as a
separator, skin dominates philosophy. 2. Physiologically studied, it displays
transition processes of organism-environment. 3. Sensation-perception
problems can be surveyed in close correlation with such physiological
inquiry; nevertheless, physiology has thus far yielded no continuous descriptive
development even of this region of the behavioral. 4. As for knowledge problems, when
the physiologist leaps to them at a single bound by way of the cortex, he
employs skin like the philosopher as a separator rather than as a connector.
5. Further appraisals of the
transitional status of skin in this region are essential. 6. In the mean time a type of
superfice-bounded area has been displayed within which “a knowledge” can be
located if it is to be viewed in skin-traversing rather than in skin-dismembered
form.
Under the old approach - the philosophical - the
pint-pot dreams of the ocean. Under
the new approach - the scientific - the pint-pot begins to get the measure of a
pint, and epistemology goes to join alchemy and astrology in the limbo of man’s
crude endeavors.
19. For Peirce’s non-mentalism, see
19