A devoted colleague often asks me: “But what is your philosophy? Are you a monist, dualist, rationalist, idealist, a Kantian? Do you believe Plato was right? Do you think there is free will ?” He is amused by my answer that I do not know what any of those questions mean, that at least I am sufficiently uncertain to avoid venturing an answer. He smiles knowingly and says: “You won't tell.”

To one not philosophically inclined, idealism seems a rather fantastic doctrine—one quite obviously false. The great Dr. Johnson thought he could adequately refute it by kicking his toe against a stone. In one form or another, however, it has existed wherever men have thought deeply on the fundamental nature of mind and of the external world. One cannot go far in a study of the sources of knowledge without becoming aware that the only immediate evidence of external objects lies in our sense impressions. The mind has no way of putting itself in contact with things external to itself except through the five senses. Up to this point there is fairly general unanimity. The difficulty lies in correctly interpreting this fact.

Most discussions of Dewey's Logic evade what I take to be its main characteristic. This is its crass display of our intellectual activity as a going process—as living inquiry—literally, biologically, as life. It is the blunt, forthright treatment of even our most formal logical procedures as events occurring within that new world of knowledge that Darwin opened up and that Peirce sketched in his fallibilism, his pragmaticism, and his late-life efforts to attain a functional logic. Lacking are the trailing clouds of logical and philosophical glory; present is only the bare body of inquiry.

The following analysis has been undertaken mainly for the purpose of presenting a sample of a method which, as the writer holds, would, if widely and consistently applied, tend considerably to reduce the number and the significance of epistemological problems. The presuppositions characteristic of this method might be summarized in these five statements:

1. 1) You cannot make discoveries by changing the meaning of terms.

2. 2) There is wisdom in common sense since it represents the accumulated experience of the race.

3. 3) It cannot be impossible to work out common sense into a consistent terminology.

4. 4) It is when we lack the patience to do this that epistemological problems seem to arise.

5. 5) But when such a terminology is worked out, it will prove rather disappointing since it will just express, in a somewhat clarified form, what all the world has always been aware of.

The theme of this paper is that positivism, whether old or new, is a version of the doctrine of Protagoras, that man is the measure of things. Certain limitations of the human mind are mistaken for characteristics of the universe. I am not primarily concerned with the particular views of actual positivists, but with a general alternative of thought. If no one is in all respects a positivist in the sense criticized in this article, it is certainly true that there are many who would not accept what I suggest is the only satisfactory alternative to positivism; so that existent positivisms will, if my reasoning is correct, consist in more or less arbitrary compromises between the unmitigated form, and the real overcoming, of that anthropomorphic narrowness which all positivism (and some forms of so-called realism and naturalism) involves.

The writer of this paper is not an expert on probability from either the mathematical or the philosophical side, but a theoretical physicist forced by the exigencies of work in his own field to make his peace with the concept of probability. The present contribution is a sequel to remarks on two different types of probability in a recent paper on the relation between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics.

Psychoanalysis is the name of a practical psychology, which seeks to make intelligible the aberrant phenomena in the stream of human experience which often are coincident with suffering and ineffectuality. In addition, it has another distinguishing characteristic in that it seeks to create a teachable method for the systematic treatment of these disturbances in adaptation. The application of scientific method to a psychology with these objectives created problems which are unique. These problems stem from the nature of the subject matter with which it deals and the particular objectives of the scientific maneuvers. Its subject matter constitutes material which no other psychology has seen fit to deal with and the objective, namely, therapy, is one which imposes upon this scientific discipline a social responsibility.

My interest is to examine the nature of mind in relation to value, for I suspect that the neglect by the psychologist of the true status of value has deterred his work in two respects: first, that it has prevented a genuine theory of mind's being arrived at, and secondly that it has prevented him in his clinical work from achieving for the individual the fuller expression of mind or self that makes for satisfaction or happiness.

The aim of this contribution is to trace the transformation of the meanings of certain terms as the order of the logics in which they appear is raised. By “order of the logic” we simply refer to the number of truth-values characterizing the logic, so that if the number of truth values shows symptoms of traveling to infinity we may speak of the goal as a logic of infinite order.

It is well known that, in classical theory, Liouville's theorem shows that if an ensemble of systems is distributed over a small element of volume in phase space, the ensemble fills a region of equal volume at all later instants of time. In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is associated with the products of the errors in conjugate coordinates and momenta, and such products can be interpreted in terms of volume elements in phase space. Comparison of these two facts leads to the assertion in the interesting volume on “Statistical Mechanics” recently published by J. E. and M. G. Mayer that “The Liouville theorem is essential for the complete understanding of the uncertainty principle.

One of the most essential characteristics of living material—indeed, according to many, its most essential characteristic—is the fact that it is irritable. A living cell responds to sudden environmental changes (which we call stimuli), and typically a cell of a given sort responds in a definite and particular way no matter what the nature of the stimulation. Thus when a muscle cell is exposed to sudden heat, to sudden cold, to a sharp mechanical impact, to ultraviolet radiation, or to an electric current, it shortens. Similarly, a nerve fiber responds in its own characteristic way, and this response is independent of the nature of the stimulation. In general, mechanical impacts, ultraviolet radiation, electric shocks, and certain types of chemical substances are stimulating agents for many diverse types of protoplasm and they serve to arouse it to activity. The response of protoplasm to stimulation may be prevented by anesthetics. These are substances (or agents) which nullify the effect of a stimulus without killing or seriously injuring the protoplasm. The remarkable fact is that there are general anesthetics, substances which in much the same concentration can prevent protoplasmic activity in widely different protoplasmic systems. Many fat solvents, such as ether, are general anesthetics. Magnesium salts also behave as anesthetics for many different types of cells.