324 LOGIC 



to put the question in its most general form, accept as an adequate 

 account of the logical process a theory which is bound up with some 

 other specific department of human knowledge? It seems to me that 

 we cannot. Here we must be epistemologists and metaphysicians, 

 or give up the problem entirely. This by no means involves the 

 attempt to conceive pure thought set over against pure reality the 

 kind of epistemology and metaphysics justly ridiculed by the prag- 

 matist for knowledge, as already stated, is given to us in concrete 

 instances. How knowledge in general is possible is, therefore, as use- 

 less and meaningless a question as how reality in general is possible. 

 The knowledge is given as a fact of life, and what we have to deter- 

 mine is not its non-logical antecedents or its practical consequences, 

 but its constitution as knowledge and its validity. It may be admitted 

 that the question of validity is settled pragmatically. No knowledge 

 is true unless it yields results which can be verified, unless it can issue 

 in increased control of experience. But I insist again that that fact 

 is not sufficient for an account of what knowledge claims to be. It 

 claims to issue in control because it is true in independence of the 

 control. And it is just this assurance that is needed to distinguish 

 knowledge from what is not knowledge. It is the necessity of exhibit- 

 ing this assurance which makes it impossible to subordinate logical 

 problems, and forces us at last to questions of epistemology and 

 metaphysics. 



As I am interested here primarily in determining the field of logic, 

 it is somewhat outside my province to consider the details of logical 

 theory. Yet the point just raised is of so much importance in con- 

 nection with the main question that I venture the following general 

 considerations. This is, perhaps, the more necessary because the 

 pragmatic doctrine finds in the concession made regarding the test 

 of validity one of its strongest defenses. 



Of course a judgment is not true simply because it is a judgment. 

 It may be false. The only way to settle its validity is to discover 

 whether experience actually provides what the judgment promises, 

 that is, whether the conclusions drawn from it really enable us to 

 control experience. No mere speculation will yield the desired result, 

 no matter with how much formal validity the conclusions may be 

 drawn. That merely formal validity is not the essential thing, I 

 have pointed out in discussing the relation of logic to mathematics. 

 The test of truth is pragmatic. It is apparent, therefore, that the 

 formal validity does not determine the actual validity. What is 

 this but the statement that the process of judgment is not itself the 

 determining factor in its real validity? It is, in short, only valid 

 judgments that can really give us control of experience. The impli- 

 cations taken up in the judgment must, therefore, be real implica- 

 tions which, as such, have nothing to do with the judging process, 



