Lecture V

Pragmatism and Common Sense

In the last lecture we turned ourselves from the usual way of talking of the universe’s oneness as a principle, sublime in all its blankness, towards a study of the special kinds of union which the universe enfolds.  We found many of these to coexist with kinds of separation equally real.  “How far am I verified?” is the question which each kind of union and each kind of separation asks us here, so as good pragmatists we have to turn our face towards experience, towards ‘facts.’

Absolute oneness remains, but only as an hypothesis, and that hypothesis is reduced nowadays to that of an omniscient knower who sees all things without exception as forming one single systematic fact.  But the knower in question may still be conceived either as an Absolute or as an Ultimate; and over against the hypothesis of him in either form the counter-hypothesis that the widest field of knowledge that ever was or will be still contains some ignorance, may be legitimately held.  Some bits of information always may escape.

This is the hypothesis of noetic pluralism, which monists consider so absurd.  Since we are bound to treat it as respectfully as noetic monism, until the facts shall have tipped the beam, we find that our pragmatism, tho originally nothing but a method, has forced us to be friendly to the pluralistic view.  It may be that some parts of the world are connected so loosely with some other parts as to be strung along by nothing but the copula and.  They might even come and go without those other parts suffering any internal change.  This pluralistic view, of a world of additive constitution, is one that pragmatism is unable to rule out from serious consideration.  But this view leads one to the farther hypothesis that the actual world, instead of being complete ‘eternally,’ as the monists assure us, may be eternally incomplete, and at all times subject to addition or liable to loss.

It is at any rate incomplete in one respect, and flagrantly so.  The very fact that we debate this question shows that our knowledge is incomplete at present and subject to addition.  In respect of the knowledge it contains the world does genuinely change and grow.  Some general remarks on the way in which our knowledge completes itself—­ when it does complete itself—­will lead us very conveniently into our subject for this lecture, which is ‘Common Sense.’

To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots.  The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge never grows all over:  some old knowledge always remains what it was.  Your knowledge of pragmatism, let us suppose, is growing now.  Later, its growth may involve considerable modification of opinions which you previously held to be true.  But such modifications are apt to be gradual.  To take the nearest possible example, consider these lectures of mine.  What you first gain from them is probably a small amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points of view.  But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you ‘line up’ your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instil, and modify to some slight degree their mass.