PROBLEMS EMPHASIZED BY PR A GMATISM 397 



man who begins with the hypothesis itself in mind? Certainly the 

 usual taste and purpose of the student of any more exact science is not 

 sufficiently expressed by saying that he looks merely for such "work- 

 ings" as may happen to be suggested to his mind. He is looking for 

 what must he true if the hypothesis is true. He is making use of those 

 mental processes whose nature is sometimes discussed in text-books of 

 deductive logic. But when we are dealing merely with the world of 

 common sense, ideas that have been suggested or propositions that have 

 been uttered, frequently arouse in our minds expectations which are not 

 directly called for by the logical meaning of the propositions, but which 

 through various processes of association or various reminders of past 

 experience are more or less casually aroused. Such resulting expecta- 

 tions may be said in a given mind to follow from the utterance of the 

 proposition that arouses them. But they are not logical consequences 

 of the proposition in the sense which the student of the more exact 

 sciences has in mind. 



Again, when the student of an exact science has made his deduc- 

 tions and proceeds to verify them, he may find his hypothesis confirmed 

 or refuted by the results of experience. In this case his hypothesis may 

 be said to " work," but what sort of working is in question in the more 

 exact sciences? I answer, in any more exact science the confirmations 

 or refutations which experience is able to furnish to the hypothesis 

 whose logical consequences are to be tested, are required to be so exact 

 that we can define them in definite affirmations and denials. The very 

 essence of precise confirmation or refutation is that if it is as successful 

 as the requirements of an exact science demand, we are able to say 

 as the result of our process of confirmation, " So and so, thus and thus 

 defined, happens or does not happen, is found or is not found." Or 

 again, we sometimes say of the failing hypothesis, "It is contradicted 

 by the facts." Somewhat different however is the situation in the 

 world of common sense, where one's expectation may often be met or 

 disappointed with very various degrees of definiteness. In the world 

 of common sense a man may say, " This more or less meets my expecta- 

 tions." In the world of an exact science the investigator is interested in 

 seeing within what precise limits a definite experienced measurement 

 agrees with the prediction. Precision, in other words, characterizes the 

 confirmations or refutations which experience furnishes in the more 

 advanced sciences. And the concept of precision has characters which 

 are studied in text-books of logic, although, as I admit, in most text- 

 books of logic the concept of precision is very inadequately studied. 



In consequence of all this the student of logic is likely to object 

 to the ordinary formulation of pragmatism, (1) that pragmatism seems 

 not to be interested in the distinction between merely arousing an 

 expectation, and deducing a consequence; (2) that it takes compara- 



