The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

Excerpt from The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge

And whatever our concepts or meanings may be, there is a truth about them just as absolute and just as definite and certain as in the case of mathematics. In other fields we so seldom try to think in the abstract, or by pure logic, that we do not notice this. But obviously it is just as true. Wherever there is any set of interrelated concepts, there, quite apart from all questions of application or the things we use them of, we have generated a whole complex array of orderly relations or patterns of meaning. And there must be a truth about these — a purely logical truth, in abstracto, and a truth which is certain apart from experience — even though this is only a part of the truth which we want to discover, and the rest of it is of a quite different sort which depends upon experience. Ordinarily we do not separate out this a'priori truth, because ordinarily we do not distinguish the purely logical significance of concepts from the application of words to sensible things. In fact it is only the mathematician who is likely to do this at all. But I should like to indicate that this separation is always possible and that it is important for the understanding of knowledge. To this end, let me use the term 'concept' for this element of purely logical meaning. We can then discriminate the conceptual element in thought as the element which two minds must have in common — not merely may have or do have but absolutely must have in common — when they understand each other. I suppose it is a frequent assumption that we are able to apprehend one another's meanings because our images and sensations are alike. But a little thought will Show that this assumption is very dubious.

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