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Virtue Is Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Horace S. Fries
Horace S. Fries*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.
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Extract

The “determination to catch the world's multiplicity and variety in a single net appears to be an incurable bias of the learned mind.” The extremes to which a philosopher will go to make his net hold water should be nothing short of absurd to the literal minded who neglect “the climate of opinion” which shapes the very logic of the systems or who fail to sympathize with the deep underlying human needs which call forth the great philosophies. Most thinkers in this anthropological day make their bow to the fact of cultural conditioning and to the fact of personal and social surds in the thought of the past. We make our bow, and then proceed to forget that we are human individuals living in an historical period with its own unique strains and symphonies and discords: if only today's system can be shown to be scientific, it must then be beyond dispute.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 1941 , pp. 89 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1941

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References

1 M. C. Otto, Natural Laws and Human Hopes, Henry Holt and Co., 1926, p. 6.

2 Boyd Bode, Democracy As A Way of Life, The Macmillan Co., 1937, p. vi. "While agreement among the activities and their consequences that are brought about in the wider (technically non-scientific) public stands upon a different plane [the plane of “common sense,” I take it), nevertheless such agreement is an integral part of a complete test of physical conclusions wherever their public bearings are relevant. The point involved comes out clearly when the social consequences of scientific conclusions invoke intensification of social conflicts. For these conflicts provide presumptive evidence of the insufficiency, or partiality, and incompleteness of conclusions as they stand.” Dewey, Logic, Henry Holt and Co., 1938, p. 490. See p. 488. Mr. Dewey might be clearer on this point, at least more outspoken. See Horace S. Fries, “Physics, a Vicious Abstraction,” Philosophy of Science, 6 (July, 1939), 301-8. This paper and the present one are supplementary.

3 Dewey, Freedom and Culture, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1939, p. 141-142.

4 The attempt to “unify” the sciences by non-experimental procedures does not appear offhand to be particularly scientific.

5 See Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 412.

6 As I recall, this line is from Mr. Whitehead, used here for a purpose which he might well consider perverse. In any case it is a fundamental idea in his philosophy (sec Process and Reality, Part V), although his interpretation is anything but humanistic. He seems to recognize an element of faith in his idea of the consequent nature of God which is absent, he claims, from his metaphysical considerations (See H. S. Fries, “The Functions of Whitehead's God,” Monist, XLVI, Jan. 1936, pp. 25-26ff). And he does not exclude “intuition” from his ultimate and general notions of “production of novelty” and “concrete togetherness.” “The sole appeal is to intuition” (Process and Reality, The Macmillan Co., 1929, p. 32). But, of course, he is not content with a “merely” humanistic interpretation of the categories of intuition and understanding.

7 Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 205-6, 226 respectively in Modern Library edition.

8 Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, (Modern Library) p. 267.

9 See Dewey, “What Pragmatism Means by Practical,” Essays in Experimental Logic, Univ. of Chi. Press, 1916, pp. 327-28.

10 "Social phenomena cannot be understood except as there is prior understanding of physical conditions and the laws of their interactions. Social phenomena cannot be attacked, qua social, directly. Inquiry into them, with respect both to data that are significant and to their relations or proper ordering, is conditioned upon extensive prior knowledge of physical phenomena and their laws. ... Only recently has there been sufficient understanding of physical relations (including the biological under this caption) to provide the necessary intellectual instrumentalities for effective intellectual attack upon social phenomena.” Dewey, Logic, Henry Holt and Co., 1938, p. 492. This is not part of an argument against the division of labor in science. But it does mean a fundamental change of direction and a fundamental change of our idea about the relations between the social and other sciences. See pp. 490, 491.

11 See the humanistic analysis of the three great spiritual needs for God, Freedom, and Immortality in M. C. Otto, Natural Laws and Human Hopes, Henry Holt and Co., 1916.

12 "In proportion as democracy is used, like the mantle of charity, to cover every variety of sin, the whole concept loses its significance, and eventually the reference to democracy will become nothing more than a gesture of respect for the dead.” Boyd Bode, Democracy As A Way of Life, The Macmillan Co., 1937, p. 34.

13 Horace S. Fries, “Method in Social Philosophy,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 3 (July 1938), p. 328.

14 See James's two important essays: “Remarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence” and “The Sentiment of Rationality” in Collected Essays and Reviews. A different version of the latter appears in The Will to Believe.