320 LOGIC 



can be brought under the categories of evolution, why not thinking 

 also? In answer to that question we have the theory that thinking 

 is an adaptation, judgment is instrumental. But I would not leave 

 the impression that this is true of pragmatism alone, or that it has 

 been developed only through pragmatic tendencies. It is naturally 

 the result also of the extension of biological philosophy. In the 

 biological conception of logic, we have, then, an interesting coinci- 

 dence in the results of tendencies differing widely in their genesis. 



It would be hazardous to deny, without any qualifications, the 

 importance of genetic considerations. Indeed, the fact that evolution 

 in the hands of a thinker like Huxley, for instance, should make con- 

 sciousness and thinking apparently useless epiphenomena in a devel- 

 oping world, has seemed like a most contradictory evolutionary 

 philosophy. It was difficult to make consciousness a real function in 

 development so long as it was regarded as only cognitive in character. 

 Evolutionary philosophy, coupled with physics, had built up a sort of 

 closed system with which consciousness could not interfere, but which 

 it could know, and know with all the assurance of a traditional logic. 

 'If, however, we were to be consistent evolutionists, we could not abide 

 by such a remarkable result. The whole process of thinking must be 

 brought within evolution, so that knowledge, even the knowledge of 

 the evolutionary hypothesis itself, must appear as an instance of 

 adaptation. In order to do this, however, consciousness must not be 

 conceived as only cognitive. Judgment, the core of logical processes, 

 must be regarded as an instrument and as a mode of adaptation. 



The desire for completeness and consistency in an evolutionary 

 philosophy is not the only thing which makes the denial of genetic 

 considerations hazardous. Strictly biological considerations furnish 

 reasons of equal weight for caution. For instance, one will hardly 

 deny that the whole sensory apparatus is a striking instance of 

 adaptation. Our perceptions of the world would thus appear to be 

 determined by this adaptation, to be instances of adjustment. They 

 might conceivably have been different, and in the case of many other 

 creatures, the perceptions of the world are undoubtedly different. 

 All our logical processes, referring ultimately as they do to our per- 

 ceptions, would thus appear finally to depend on the adaptation 

 exhibited in the development of our sensory apparatus. So-called 

 laws of thought would seem to be but abstract statements or formu- 

 lations of the results of this adjustment. It would be absurd to sup- 

 pose that a man thinks in a sense radically different from that in 

 which he digests, or a flower blossoms, or that two and two are four 

 in a sense radically different from that in which a flower has a given 

 number of petals. Thinking, like digesting and blossoming, is an 

 effect, a product, possibly a structure. 



I am not at all interested in denying the force of these considera- 



