The Metaphysics of Pragmatism

Sidney Hook

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839745713
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Considered by some the most controversial American philosopher of contemporary times, SIDNEY HOOK (1902-1989) was infamous for the wild swing in his political thought over the course of his career, starting out as a young Marxist before the Great Depression and ending up a vehement anti-Communist in his later years. The Metaphysics of Pragmatism-Hook's first work, originally published in 1927-is something of a malicious joke on the philosopher's part, one he readily acknowledges in his introduction, a bringing together of one discipline, that of metaphysics, with the one generally regarded as its polar opposite, that of pragmatism, for the purposes of rescuing the second. Though not a political work at all—except, possibly, one of academic politics—this is nevertheless a fascinating introduction to this notorious figure. In its expression of the author's "passionate moral interest in the creative power... of human thinking, " it may, perhaps, begin to lend some understanding to the shifts in his own thinking that characterized his work.—Print ed.

CHAPTER ONE: THE METAPHYSICS OF THE INSTRUMENT

I

IN the frontispiece to one of Blake’s prophetic poems, a colored print shows The Ancient of Days leaning from his supernal eminence and circumscribing with huge compasses the boundaries of the earth.{14} Whatever else of frenzied fancy this picture may symbolize, it illustrates a profound metaphysical meaning. For it may be given to a primal divinity to create subject matter with the very instruments which can only be intelligibly used or applied within that subject matter and which logically presuppose it. But man in his workaday practices—if not in his holiday wisdom—must content himself with guiding instruments which mark out and define distinctions in a universe of existence or discourse whose confines, if not irrevocably given, are at least tentatively assumed. The golden compasses in Blake’s picture already presupposes the existence of the world, otherwise their efficacy in intelligent construction would be a sheer impossibility. Not even by poetic license can the world be created through a deft masonry of its derivative effects. This then is the first lesson—one suggested and enforced by the pots and pans of domestic economy as by the winged vagaries of a mystic poet. If a tool is a transformative agency it can neither beget nor devour the existences it modifies; and if mind is instrumental and efficient in a world scarred with stria of shifting things and events, it cannot have created that world.

II

The most general aspect of an instrument is its function as a sign; and like any general sign it possesses three distinct and fundamental references.

(a) It is an instrument in reference to some thought or intuition responsible for its construction and existence as a tool,—to some plan or mental blue-print which directs its exercise and measures and interprets its effects. Before it is set to work as a simple mechanical device or as part of a more complicated contrivance, a piece of wood or stone is a dull, uninformed thing significant only as an object to be noted and avoided.

(b) It is an instrument for some aggregate of entities or domain of relations in which it is to be applied. The instrument and the field of its use and activity, or literally speaking, its inquiry, are given together. To the technically initiated this teleological reference to a scientific existential stratum in which it operates, is borne on the face of every implement for which hand or mind reaches out. Genuine instruments are recognized as genuine questions because we know what kind of an answer in terms of things accomplished or possible of accomplishment, would be an answer to them. And just as a question is declared relevant when its presuppositions coincide with what is explicitly or implicitly taken for granted, so an instrument is regarded as relevant when its operating principle conforms to independently existing structural characters.

(c) It is an instrument in respect and because of its form, arrangement or structure. Its cut and stamp condition the extent and degree of its efficacy in securing a natural leverage in the loam or rock of subject matter. The more pronounced outlines of its configuration bestow individuality of type while its more minute reticular profile confer singularity or relative uniqueness in the type. Thus a key, to exemplify the three references of an instrument, (a) exists for the purpose of rendering or denying access to certain spaces, powers and prospectively enjoyed things; (b), is efficient only insofar as there are locks and mechanisms which function in a determinate way; (c) and because we live in a world of different houses and purposes, is teethed in a distinctive pattern, so that fumbling at a door in the dark we may distinguish it by sight or touch from another.

These references generate a number of relations highly interesting for philosophical analysis. They show that nature instrumentalized is nature, so to speak, grown or brought to self-consciousness. If metaphysics then be regarded as an account of the generic traits of nature, if the categories which are the basic terms and elements of all scientific explanation and therefore themselves defy explanation, call rather for metaphysical analysis and description, then a ‘theory of the instrument’, whether the instrument be regarded as a scientific contrivance or a fundamental category, is not only relevant but highly essential to an understanding of the world we live in. For it not only reveals the more familiar surface features of existence but attests and certifies, if we follow its lead as a guiding principle, to the presence of other principles of organization or logical articulation with which the stuff of experience is thickly veined. That it does not find, however, the natural constitution of things locked fast in a complete and closed system is evidenced first, by its very existence—eloquent witness of disconnection and indeterminateness, second, by its concrete failures—proof positive that the cosmic dish is spiced with chance.

Approaching and analyzing the instrument{15} as naively as we can, we shall find that even a cursory examination of its special cast and stuff is not altogether uninstructive. In addition to the quite general deduction that instruments indicate, lay open and close up various discontinuities in some situations, and predict, discover and construct systematic order and continuity in still other situations, more specific conclusions may be gathered concerning the segments and areas of existence thus recovered or revealed. This is true not only in the obvious sense that instruments enable us to dig deeper than we can reach or fly higher than we can see but more so in that the struggle and mode of activity of the instrument tell us something of the compulsive characters of the subject matter in which it is applied and in which it functions. Confront a man with a collection of screws and saws, chisels and levers, picks and scalpels. He does not need to be an expert to keep their uses clear and in the main to infer correctly the different spheres of those uses. He can pick out what will cut wood without splitting it, and what will scrape bone without cutting it. True, we may employ a nail-puller to extract a row of teeth as well as a row of nails but the anatomical similarity of a tooth imbedded in the gum and a nail held fast in a board can be laid down in advance by running our finger over the type of the instrument. A closer glance at two instruments of the same type used for different purposes will generally show mechanical differences. Without dragging in purpose completely at this point, we may say that mechanical refinements are the earmarks of the discovery of existential niceties just as the sensitive eye and glass of the botanist can see more than the untutored eye of the rustic without impugning what the rustic does see. Instruments give us a clew to the material conditions of their efficacy and these conditions are as unavoidable and objective as the means we adopt to fulfill or modify them. There is no need to multiply illustrations. The razor-edged knife that slices leather and the dull blade that cuts the pages of a book tell the story. Interchange them in use and the blunt book cutter will sooner find itself with a keen edge, acted upon by the leather, rather than succeed in acting on it; while the hair-fine edge will cut pages indeed but in a manner to make every booklover cry out at the mutilation.

That each material has its own idiom determining alike the generic character of what it can be made to represent as well as the kind of instruments which can be used upon it, is so evident in fine and industrial art that we may miss its import.{16} Among the primitives, the use of rigid fibre as a working material not only compelled different types of patterns and designs than those woven with delicate threads but compelled the use of different instruments as well. The repetition of certain designs in Arapaho bead work can be traced to the limitations of the material involved. The peculiar designs on the Maori canoe wrought with special appliances can be accounted for by the nature of the wood employed. The use of stone not only imposes rigidity in architectural designs but demands a method of construction different from the curved surface effects of brick. The skillful tailor turning from creton to shadow lace will change his needle as well as his stitch, and so on.

More apparent to a naive view will the instrument appear as revelatory of human purposes. And from this standpoint the inference from instrumental form to the features of the experienced situation taken as a whole, presents no formidable difficulties. The difference between the primitive stone hammer and the modern steam hammer has no essential counterpart in what they crush but rather in the difference of the degree of environmental control which their structures indicate. Our organized purposes, especially in their historic embodiments and deposits, must reveal to a certain extent the nature of the world. Not only in the formal sense that the world is such as to make those purposes possible of conception and realization, but in addition that our purposes are such as to make the world bare its characters and patiently admit of access and exploration.

Perhaps this empirical excursion has been a bit too prolonged. The point was to show that even in the world of ordinary social intercourse, particular instruments are taken not only as signs of instrumental function but as clues to subject matter as well. Bearing more overtly, however, upon the theme of this analysis will be a consideration of what the instrument ueberhaupt—the instrument as a category—implies for the realities and common subject matter of scientist and statesman, psychologist and man of affairs.

III

An instrument is a monument to a felt lack in existence. But it is more. It is a promise of its eventual check and elimination. It imports therefore an attempt to stabilize and fasten for future purposes the probable direction and intent of natural forces and define for physical reference the reliable substantive aspects of natural events. It proceeds to fuse intermittencies and dispersions in subject matter by disclosing and suggesting certain fixities and continuities. Its successful operation is conditioned by the presence of certain inconvertible properties, persistent runs and irrepressible qualia which exist in their own right. The instrument is responsive to the potential meanings of things in their social effects. No matter how ultimate is its triumph in building highways over land and sea, it cannot thereby wipe out the order which it originally discovered—an order which as human beings, safely cradled in momentary security, we refer to as the fearful dissymetries of primal creation. A bridge spans a gulf or chasm without obliterating it; a lighthouse illumines the darkness without finally dispelling its dangers. Granted that the basic stuff and pervasive features of the world cannot be changed except by law or chance in the course of natural growth, admitted that nature cannot be transformed save by natural means, this only emphasizes the fact that natural means become meanings, glaring or recondite, when mind appears on the scene, and as meanings afford motor power and direction to those changes and transformations we are able to influence. Because the subject matter furnishes both the occasions and limits of its application, the instrument is free to function. Put differently, we may say that any subject matter may have a determinate order independent of god, man, instrumentation or demiurgic force. But when instruments are applied to that order it becomes a significant order. And although ‘significance’ is not the same as ‘order’ it can only be found in order.

Since without instruments there can be no objectified meanings, in a sense different from aimless desire and revery, it follows that the existence of certain structural lineaments which condition the possibility and presence of instruments, condition therefore the possibility and presence of the range of meanings. Where instruments are inapplicable or useless there meanings can never be found. In a world of chaos and irresolvable ambiguities, instruments would be impossible—we could neither understand nor control; in a world of immutabilities and sclerotic characters, instruments would be unnecessary—we could understand but not control. Every tool, appliance or artifice recites a lesson on the nature of the world,—its cross-grained patterns of law and chance, its cosmic humors, its prevailing qualities of the episodic and recurrent. When instruments run smoothly, it is in virtue of ordered recurrences and sequences in what appears agglomerate or fluid; when they buckle and strike a snag then something new arrests our attention, be it no more than the dim perception of the limits of a tried method or a realization of the beginnings of a new problem. Hence, even if all application is risk and life itself a gamble, the existence of mechanical agencies proves that the cards of the universe are not stacked against us, that the game is on for a genuine stake and that there are some exciting hands to be played out before everything becomes extinct in a common doom.

The instrument is prima facie evidence of latencies and potentialities in the concrete contexts to which it is relevant. The recognition of these potentialities whether they be in the form of expressed insights or unavowed acknowledgments betrayed in our conduct and practices, is prelusive and anterior to the existence of the instrument itself, especially of that aspect which is called its formal design. The quickening and developing of these potentialities mark the fulfillment of its purpose. If subject matter is instinct with form in the given situation, the instrument makes these forms intelligible and significant not only by sloughing off the extraneous stuff concealing the precise contours, not only by serving as an index or sign of the human perspective which motived the selection and emphases of these forms, but by enabling these potential forms to perform their definite functions and activities which, metaphysically speaking, define them as forms. Concretions in existence become, so to speak, animated presences because of a way of acting. The instrument, therefore, does not breathe life or a career into a bit of matter but gives it a chance to attain the organized life and activity of a career. There is a sound metaphysical intuition in the myths of primitive peoples in which the soul or spirit or career of a thing is expressed as the mode of its functioning. From this viewpoint a career is never finished as long as potentialities remain unawakened. The career of an instrument consists in making available, extending and liberalizing the careers of other things.

If the instrument has a life work, then in the same metonymous sense it has also a faith. For, as intimated above, the application of instruments beyond the immediate range of their use is attended with varying degrees of hazard. No two excavations face exactly similar difficulties, no two construction problems are exactly identical. It is a blessing then that manufacturers of tools and implements have not closely studied and taken to heart the writings of most modern logicians on induction, for when logic is divorced from existence, inductive inference if not meaningless, as at best an unjustifiable guess. But the faith of the instrument maker is not only restricted to confident trust in the power of his instrument to fathom unknown waters, to light upon nascent possibilities and unravel the matted tangle of things in critical conjunctures. It extends to the belief that in addition to effecting changes in the specific juxtapositions for which they were forged, instruments may successfully be applied to new subject matters and new problems whose kinship with the old have been unsuspected or overlooked. Often the idle application of old keys to new locks or new keys to old locks is followed by a yielding click. The history of invention is replete with illustrations. There is an inspiring moral as well as the color of poetry and romance in the history of the ship, intended originally to navigate familiar waters, venturing into strange seas, finding new continents and oceans, becoming an Argonaut in search of new vistas and treasures for the hungry eyes of men. The instrument out of the hands of its maker is launched upon a veritable voyage of discovery.

The instrument marks a point at which human interest intersects the natural continuity of the historical process, converting the even flow and existent brutality of natural ends into multiply-implicative foci of rational enterprise. Endings that are natural and casual become ends that are practical and informed. Historical continuities are not thereby disrupted but differentiated and selected. They remain the structural supports in which particularities are embedded, and furnish the relations in terms of which those particulars are defined. But the instrument is the sole key to the incidence of the selection—a selection which although nesting in continuities has never been hatched by them.

The statement that the instrument presup...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENT
• AN INTRODUCTORY WORD-BY JOHN DEWEY
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE: THE METAPHYSICS OF THE INSTRUMENT
• CHAPTER TWO-THINKING AS INSTRUMENTAL
• CHAPTER THREE-THE METAPHYSICS OF “LEADING PRINCIPLES”
• CHAPTER FOUR-CATEGORIAL ANALYSIS
• CHAPTER FIVE-OF HUMAN FREEDOM