PROBLEMS EMPHASIZED BY PR A QMAT1SM 395 



comparison with experience. Pragmatism consists in the assertion that 

 all propositions should be tested as the hypotheses of science are tested. 



These two points of view are, of course, very closely connected. 

 Students of the physical sciences often take little account of the psy- 

 chology of their own processes. But the processes of science obviously 

 have their psychology, and this psychology conforms in its types to 

 those laws of mental activity which have interested psychologists ever 

 since the apperceptive process was formulated by Herbart, — yes, ever 

 since the doctrine of association was so widely applied by the English 

 psychologists, and still more since the modern so-called "functional" 

 psychology has connected the apperceptive processes and the associative 

 linkages with the physical processes whereby an organism is adjusted 

 to its environment. The psychology of the apperceptive process, and 

 the work of the scientific finding and testing of hypotheses, have a close 

 relation, and since common sense also is interested in successful verifica- 

 tions, although this interest is less precise than is the interest of the 

 student of the more exact sciences of observation in the criteria to which 

 they submit their more careful tests, — common sense and science and 

 psychology join in contributing their various shares to the modern 

 general theory of truth. 



But now to come to the matter to which I wish especially to attract 

 your attention. Since pragmatism is thus especially interested in the 

 psychology of the thinking process, it has emphasized this psychological 

 problem in recent literature. A general psychology of thought, on a 

 pragmatic basis, has been worked out by Professor Pillsbury. The 

 psychological text-books of the Chicago school, and in particular the 

 contributions of Professor Dewey, have familiarized us with other 

 accounts of the psychology of thought. The psychological problems 

 to which attention is thus especially attracted may be, of course, studied 

 apart from their relations to the theory of truth. These problems are 

 threefold. (1) There are the problems regarding the processes whereby 

 Irypotheses are invented, or, in common-sense terms, the processes 

 whereby people get their ideas; (2) there are problems regarding the 

 processes whereby ideas, once in hand, are made sufficiently clear 

 to be a proper subject for testing; and (3) a psychological problem 

 arises as to what happens when an idea is tested. To all these problems 

 the pragmatists as psychologists have contributed. I wish to illustrate 

 in the course of my discussion a certain dissatisfaction which I feel 

 with the present state of some of their contributions to these purely 

 psychological issues, when viewed apart from the other issues of the 

 pragmatist philosophy. 



Yet I admit that when you hear, me you will say that my psycho- 

 logical dissatisfactions are due to certain philosophical dissatisfactions, 

 and that the pragmatist psychology appears to me inadequate partly 



