Now a belief, provided it is sufficiently simple, may exist without being expressed in words. It would be difficult, without using words, to believe that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter is approximately 3.14159, or that Caesar, when he decided to cross the Rubicon, sealed the fate of the Roman republican constitution. But in simple cases unverbalized beliefs are common. Suppose, for instance, in descending a staircase, you make a mistake as to when you have got to the bottom: you take a step suitable for level ground, and come down with a bump. The result is a violent shock of surprise. You would naturally say, “I thought I was at the bottom,” but in fact you were not thinking about the stairs, or you would not have made the mistake. Your muscles were adjusted in a way suitable to the bottom, when in fact you were not yet there. It was your body rather than your mind that made the mistake–at least that would be a natural way to express what happened. But in fact the distinction between mind and body is a dubious one. It will be better to speak of an “organism,” leaving the division of its activities between the mind and the body undetermined. One can say, then: your organism was adjusted in a manner which would have been
-821-
suitable if you had been at the bottom, but in fact was not suitable. This failure of adjustment constituted error, and one may say that you were entertaining a false belief.
The test of error in the above illustration is surprise. I think this is true generally of beliefs that can be tested. A false belief is one which, in suitable circumstances, will cause the person entertaining it to experience surprise, while a true belief will not have this effect. But although surprise is a good criterion when it is applicable, it does not give the meaning of the words “true” and “false,” and is not always applicable. Suppose you are walking in a thunderstorm, and you say to yourself, “I am not at all likely to be struck by lightning.” The next moment you are struck, but you experience no surprise, because you are dead. If one day the sun explodes, as Sir James Jeans seems to expect, we shall all perish instantly, and therefore not be surprised, but unless we expect the catastrophe we shall all have been mistaken. Such illustrations suggest objectivity in truth and falsehood: what is true (or false) is a state of the organism, but it is true (or false), in general, in virtue of occurrences outside the organism. Sometimes experimental tests are possible to determine truth and falsehood, but sometimes they are not; when they are not, the alternative nevertheless remains, and is significant.
I will not further develop my view of truth and falsehood, but will proceed to the examination of Dewey’s doctrine.
Dewey does not aim at judgements that shall be absolutely “true,” or condemn their contradictories as absolutely “false.” In his opinion there is a process called “inquiry,” which is one form of mutual adjustment between an organism and its environment. If I wished, from my point of view, to go as far as possible towards agreeing with Dewey, I should begin by an analysis of “meaning” or “significance.” Suppose for example you are at the Zoo, and you hear a voice through a megaphone saying, “A lion has just escaped.” You will, in that case, act as you would if you saw the lion–that is to say, you will get away as quickly as possible. The sentence “a lion has escaped” means a certain occurrence, in the sense that it promotes the same behaviour as the occurrence would if you saw it. Broadly: a sentence S “means” an event E if it promotes behaviour which E would have promoted. If there has in fact been no such occurrence, the sentence is false. Just the same applies to a belief which is not expressed in words. One may
-822-
say: a belief is a state of an organism promoting behaviour such as a certain occurrence would promote if sensibly present; the occurrence which would promote this behaviour is the “significance” of the belief. This statement is unduly simplified, but it may serve to indicate the theory I am advocating. So far, I do not think that Dewey and I would disagree very much. But with his further developments I find myself in very definite disagreement.
Dewey makes inquiry the essence of logic, not truth or knowledge. He defines inquiry as follows: “Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.” He adds that “inquiry is concerned with objective transformations of objective subject-matter.” This definition is plainly inadequate. Take for instance the dealings of a drill-sergeant with a crowd of recruits, or of a bricklayer with a heap of bricks; these exactly fulfil Dewey’s definition of “inquiry.” Since he clearly would not include them, there must be an element in his notion of “inquiry” which he has forgotten to mention in his definition. What this element is, I shall attempt to determine in a moment. But let us first consider what emerges from the definition as it stands.
It is clear that “inquiry,” as conceived by Dewey, is part of the general process of attempting to make the world more organic. “Unified wholes” are to be the outcome of inquiries. Dewey’s love of what is organic is due partly to biology, partly to the lingering influence of Hegel. Unless on the basis of an unconscious Hegelian metaphysic, I do not see why inquiry should be expected to result in “unified wholes.” If I am given a pack of cards in disorder, and asked to inquire into their sequence, I shall, if I follow Dewey’s prescription, first arrange them in order, and then say that this was the order resulting from inquiry. There will be, it is true, an “objective transformation of objective subject-matter” while I am arranging the cards, but the definition allows for this. If, at the end, I am told: “We wanted to know the sequence of the cards when they were given to you, not after you had re-arranged them,” I shall, if I am a disciple of Dewey, reply: “Your ideas are altogether too static. I am a dynamic person, and when I inquire into any subject-matter I first alter it in such a way as to make the inquiry easy.” The notion that such a procedure
-823-
is legitimate can only be justified by a Hegelian distinction of appearance and reality: the appearance may be confused and fragmentary, but the reality is always orderly and organic. Therefore when I arrange the cards I am only revealing their true eternal nature. But this part of the doctrine is never made explicit. The metaphysic of organism underlies Dewey’s theories, but I do not know how far he is aware of this fact.
Let us now try to find the supplement to Dewey’s definition which is required in order to distinguish inquiry from other kinds of organizing activity, such as those of the drill-sergeant and the bricklayer. Formerly it would have been said that inquiry is distinguished by its purpose, which is to ascertain some truth. But for Dewey “truth” is to be defined in terms of “inquiry,” not vice versa; he quotes with approval Peirce’s definition: “Truth” is “the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate.” This leaves us completely in the dark as to what the investigators are doing, for we cannot, without circularity, say that they are endeavoring to ascertain the truth.
I think Dr. Dewey’s theory might be stated as follows. The relations of an organism to its environment are sometimes satisfactory to the organism, sometimes unsatisfactory. When they are unsatisfactory, the situation may be improved by mutual adjustment. When the alterations by means of which the situation is improved are mainly on the side of the organism–they are never wholly on either side-the process involved is called “inquiry.” For example: during a battle you are mainly concerned to alter the environment, i.e., the enemy; but during the preceding period of reconnaissance you are mainly concerned to adapt your own forces to his dispositions. This earlier period is one of “inquiry.”
The difficulty of this theory, to my mind, lies in the severing of the relation between a belief and the fact or facts which would commonly be said to “verify” it. Let us continue to consider the example of a general planning a battle. His reconnaissance planes report to him certain enemy preparations, and he, in consequence, makes certain counter-preparations. Common sense would say that the reports upon which he acts are “true” if, in fact, the enemy have made the moves which they are said to have made, and that, in that
