History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [464]
The test or error in the above illustration is surprise. I think this is true generally of beliefs that can be tested. A false belief is one which, in suitable circumstances, will cause the person entertaining it to experience surprise, while a true belief will not have this effect. But although surprise is a good criterion when it is applicable, it does not give the meaning of the words 'true' and 'false', and is not always applicable. Suppose you are walking in a thunderstorm, and you say to yourself, 'I am not at all likely to be struck by lightning'. The next moment you are struck, but you experience no surprise, because you are dead. If one day the sun explodes, as Sir James Jeans seems to expect, we shall all perish instantly, and therefore not be surprised, but unless we expect the catastrophe we shall all have been mistaken. Such illustrations suggest objectivity in truth and falsehood: what is true (or false) is a state of the organism, but it is true (or false), in general, in virtue of occurrences outside the organism. Sometimes experimental tests are possible to determine truth and falsehood, but sometimes they are not; when they are not, the alternative nevertheless remains, and is significant.
I will not further develop my view of truth and falsehood, but will proceed to the examination of Dewey's doctrine.
Dewey does not aim at judgments that shall be absolutely 'true', or condemn their contradictories as absolutely 'false'. In his opinion there is a process called 'inquiry', which is one form of mutual adjustment between an organism and its environment. If I wished, from my point of view, to go as far as possible towards agreeing with Dewey, I should begin by an analysis of 'meaning' or 'significance'. Suppose for example you are at the Zoo, and you hear a voice through a megaphone saying, 'A lion has just escaped.' You will, in that case, act as you would if you saw the lion—that is to say, you will get away as quickly as possible. The sentence 'a lion has escaped' means a certain occurrence, in the sense that it promotes the same behaviour as the occurrence would if you saw it. Broadly: a sentence S 'means' an event E if it promotes behaviour which E would have promoted. If there has in fact been no such occurrence, the sentence is false. Just the same applies to a belief which is not expressed in words. One may say: a belief is a state of an organism promoting behaviour such as a certain occurrence would promote if sensibly present; the occurrence which would promote this behaviour is the 'significance' of the belief. This statement is unduly simplified, but it may serve to indicate the theory I am advocating. So far, I do not think that Dewey and I would disagree very much. But with his further developments I find myself in very definite disagreement.
Dewey makes inquiry the essence of logic, not truth or knowledge. He defines inquiry as follows: 'Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.' He adds that 'inquiry is concerned with objective transformations of objective subject-matter'. This definition is plainly inadequate. Take for instance the dealings of a drill-sergeant with a crowd of recruits, or of a bricklayer with a heap of bricks; these exactly fulfil Dewey's definition of 'inquiry'. Since he clearly would not include them, there must be an element in his notion of 'inquiry' which he has forgotten to mention in his definition. What this element is, I shall attempt to determine in a moment. But let us first consider what emerges from the definition as it stands.
It is clear that 'inquiry', as conceived by Dewey, is part of the general process of attempting to make the world more organic. 'Unified wholes' are to be the outcome of inquiries. Dewey's love of what is organic is due partly to biology, partly to the lingering influence of Hegel.