CHAPTER III 



THE DEVELOPING CONCEPT AND ITS FUNCTIONS 

 I. THE CONCEPT OF THE OBJECT 



It has been pointed out that pragmatists, explicitly or by impli- 

 cation, have recognized two aspects of meaning; on the one hand, 

 the reference to conduct, the value of the idea, or what we have 

 called its import] and, on the other hand, its content, consisting 

 of its relations to certain other ideas and represented roughly 

 by the terms genus and differentia. But, while they have done 

 so much, they have not concerned themselves to bring out the 

 very intimate relationship which the two aspects bear to each 

 other. Had pragmatist writers faced this problem, they might 

 have averted much of the criticism urged against them, and at 

 the same time have opened the way to a very fruitful develop- 

 ment of their theory. 



That a very intimate relationship exists will readily appear 

 upon consideration of a very simple case of the learning-process. 

 We are fully aware that there is a certain danger in this pro- 

 cedure the same danger that is always incurred in the attempt 

 to explain later and more complex features of an organism through 

 reference to a simple and primitive type. On the one hand, 

 there is the tendency to interpret the later type in terms far too 

 simple to do it justice; and, on the other hand, there is the ten- 

 dency, equally strong, to falsify the earlier type by reading into 

 it characteristics w r hich properly belong only to later stages of 

 development. And yet these tendencies are not, we believe, so 

 unavoidable, that we should forego the great advantage to be 

 gained from the schematic clearness that is thus made possible. 



Let us assume as the starting point of the process that an 

 accustomed stimulus A is regularly met by the response B with 

 satisfactory consequences. We assume the conscious experience 



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