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Chapter 3. The Significance of Tension and the Coordinating Function of the Copula
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[Chapter 3. The Significance of Tension and the Coordinating Function of the Copula] 50. There are two ways of going at the problem. One is to simply take it and try to solve it. This never gives satisfactory results in philosophy. The fact that it is a problem shows a contradiction and it can only be solved by supposing some [new?)3 element. The point is to get back of the problem and find the source of it. The problem then disappears. Here as everywhere the question is, how does this problem arise? 51. We have isolated the intellectual judgment from its place in experience as a whole. It has been isolated both on the side of its origin and on the side of its purpose. We have not asked what it evolves from nor what its function, purpose, is. The judgment is the logical unit, but this logical unit has itself only historical , not essential, unity. That is, it has the unity of being a certain phase of the development of conscious experience, but has no absolute unity. The problem has arisen because we have taken the historical unity as an absolutely inherent totality. It is like studying a bridge without taking into consideration the banks upon which it rests. The bridge in the air would be a contradiction. 52. The judgment represents the phases of the evaluation of experience. It is the process by which one value is changed for another value. Its meaning is not complete in itself, but is found in the value to which it leads up. 53. Neither does the judgment originate of itself from strictly logical considerations , but from the defect or break-down of some previous value. "Caesar crosses the Rubicon:' The real significance ofthis is found neither in the subject nor predicate, but in the total idea of Caesar who made the advance to destroy the old decaying Republic. We get the complete image, the value ofwhat results, in your mind.4 "Mill wrote a Logic:' Ifyou did not know this before, you either enlarge Mill or Logic in your mind, according as [to how] you place emphasis . If [you are] studying logic, the value of Logic is enlarged. 54. The significance of judgment is in the process of judgment, not in its completion. When judgment is completed there is no judgment, but a certain value. As long as we are making out the judgment or familiarizing ourselves with it, the two elements of subject and predicate stand out as separate, but afterwards the value is a single idea in the mind. This value is the true copula, e.g., a new element in the air, [a] theory ofevolution. A new larger fact is substituted for the old subject and predicate of the judgment. 44 Lectures on the Logic ofEthics 45 55. What is this value which is thus substituted for the old value? Is the value simply a subject or predicate for further judgments? That is one meaning ofthe new value. 56. Is that the only value judgment has? Ifwe have only a new and larger subject or predicate for the judgment, what is the result? Ifjudgment has intrinsic value, what is the nature ofthis inherent worth? How are we to express it? Symbolization is the setting before the mind ofthe method ofgetting an experience of the judgment. Realization is the actual concrete experience. The contradiction which the rationalist and idealist fall into is caused by the failure to see that judgment is not completed until realized. The realization is the copula which has absorbed into itself both subject and predicate. 57. A lot of scientific formulae are but predicates. A judgment has two typical stages of development: one of symbols, of methods; the other the carrying out of method, the realization. Until there is the realization there is a contradiction . What is the force in education except the attempt to substitute a vital personal experiencing for a more scholastic abstract? The movement ofscience itself, the fact that it is experimental, and the whole logic of the process of unification , are based upon this. In unification we construct a new experience, the way to which has been pointed out by the hypothesis, and which must be a realization. 58. From this standpoint, what is the significance of subject, predicate, and copula? For example, "Sugar is sweet." Carried back to the stage of symbolization , what does the fact side stand for? What does the idea stand for? What does a noun...