[4] “Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology,” article “Pragmatism.”

[5] Published in 1897 and 1898.

[6] For references to later developments of pragmatism, see the note on page 312.

V. THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES

CHAPTER XVI

LOGIC

65.  INTRODUCTORY:  THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES.—­I have said in the first chapter of this book (section 6) that there is quite a group of sciences that are regarded as belonging peculiarly to the province of the teacher of philosophy to-day.  Having, in the chapters preceding, given some account of the nature of reflective thought, of the problems touching the world and the mind which present themselves to those who reflect, and of some types of philosophical theory which have their origin in such reflection, I turn to a brief consideration of the philosophical sciences.

Among these I included logic, psychology, ethics, and aesthetics, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy.  I did not include epistemology or “the theory of knowledge” as a separate discipline, and my reasons for this will appear in Chapter XIX.  I remarked that, to complete the list, we should have to add the philosophy of religion and an investigation into the principles and methods of the sciences generally.

Why, it was asked, should this group of disciplines be regarded as the field of the philosopher, when others are excluded?  The answer to this question which finds the explanation of the fact to lie in a mere historical accident was declared unsatisfactory, and it was maintained that the philosophical sciences are those in which we find ourselves carried back to the problems of reflective thought.

With a view to showing the truth of this opinion, I shall take up one by one the philosophical sciences.  Of the history of philosophy I shall not speak in this part of the work, but shall treat of it in Chapter XXIII.

66.  THE TRADITIONAL LOGIC.—­Most of us begin our acquaintance with logic in the study of some such elementary manual as Jevons’ “Lessons in Logic.”

In such books we are shown how terms represent things and classes of things or their attributes, and how we unite them into propositions or statements.  It is indicated at length what statements may be made on a basis of certain other statements and what may not; and emphasis is laid upon the dangers which arise out of a misunderstanding of the language in which we are forced to express our thoughts.  Finally, there are described for us the experimental methods by which the workers in the sciences have attained to the general information about the world which has become our heritage.

Such books are useful.  It is surely no small profit for a student to gain the habit of scrutinizing the steps by which he has come into the possession of a certain bit of information, and to have a quick eye for loose and inconsistent reasonings.