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SECTION XI The Intuitive and Empirical Phases of Moral Knowledge 1. The Image as Reconstructive, as not Simply Duplicating Past Experience Lecture XXVIII. March 13, 1901 I PUT THE heading in that way in order to state at the outset that I do not consider the two theories [the intuitive and the empirical] mutually exclusive. On the contrary, there is a certain intuitive aspect of moral knowledge and there is a certain empirical element or factor in it. In outline (however difficult it might be to work it out in outline) the matter seems to me very simple. The projection of the image or the projection which results in the image is essentially intuitive in character in the legitimate sense of that term. The very nature of that forward movement of the mind means that it is not a mere duplication or mechanical combination or anything that has been in past conscious experience. The a posteriori gives what is consciously worked out. The a priori refers to what is ahead, and the very fact that it is prospective, forward, ideal, the statement of an end to be reached, indicates that it transcends the actual facts ofpast experience. Ofcourse, on the other hand the forward movement or the image in its origin is not independent of past experience . It does not have a different source from what we might call the given or external elements in our experience have. That might seem like taking away on one hand what was given with the other, but it is not possible to have the new element, the a priori element which transcends what is given in experience, and not have it grow out of past experience. It is a transformation of that past experi236 Psychology of Ethics 237 ence. In so far as it is a transformation, a change ofquality and significance , it is a priori. So far as it is a transformation ofhabits it involves, necessarily, organic connection with the empirical element. The specific psychological analysis would, of course, go back to that matter ofthe image. I should like to recall what was said earlier in the course about the memory image and the image as projected.l You will recall that the outcome of the discussion was that the image does not mean the mere evoking a former experience over again in a kind of evanescent, dematerialized form. Even if the image were a ghost or a sort of psychical shade of the previous experience, it certainly would involve transformation at certain points. A ghost is not the same as the actual living substance. On that theory we would still have to decide what was the meaning ofthe change from the complete, vital experience over into this desensualized copy of the self, how it comes about and what the use of it is anyway, after it is there. I think perhaps the point on psychology where people go astray there is that they first identify perception with the image and then conceive the images as being stored up in the brain or mind or memory. You pull the proper string and one ofthese original images dances out again. It has worn down somewhat in the process, but it is either the original one or something just like it. As I tried to point out at the time, the original experience is a good deal more than an image, something qualitatively different. It involves motor responses and emotional content. It is only by a process ofabstraction that we isolate certain phases, qualities or values in that original experience and set them aside as an image. It is not quite correct (and a complete psychological analysis) to identify the original experience even with the percept. The percept as percept involves further reflection on the given experience with reference to setting aside certain qualities or phases of that experience. 1. In the omitted question session for January 25, Dewey said that there would not be an image except as there had been some experience, and in that sense it goes back to the past. But it is not recalling anything which has been in the past before but it is the reinstatement of the previous experience from a certain point of view; that point of view being its adaptability to securing another experience. Memory is a more complex fact. You get memory when you get the image consciously with reference to the whole stream of experience. Speaking generically, in the image there may be...

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