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TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OFHUMAN JUDGMENT

TOWARD A

GENERAL THEORY OF

HUMAN JUDGMENT

By Justus Buchler

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

1951COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1951 BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK

PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN, CANADA, AND INDIA BY

GEOFFREY CUMBERLEOE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON, TORONTO, AND BOMBAY

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHERIDA FROST BUCHLER

PREFACE


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I MIGHT HAVE DESCRIBED this essay as a metaphysics ofutterance, were it not for the mischievous associationsof the former term and the narrowness of the provincesuggested by the latter. For me the present title is ofequivalent import, and it is probably less offensive ifmore prosaic. These pages attempt to lay a conceptualfoundation for the understanding of such phenomena assymbolism and language, meaning and representation,communication and method. Every theory aims, in thelast analysis, to exhibit a structure among data ordi-narily regarded as disparate : by the use of a relativelysmall number of categories a scheme is devised whichrequires to be self-consistent and consistent with otherschemes that have come to be thought part of the fabricof knowledge. The burden that a philosophic theory inparticular bears is likely to be great; for beyond theseprimal requirements it dedicates itself to the difficultunion of a high level of generality with interpretativejustice. In the case of such a theory the circumstancesof verification are usually very complex, and the accep-tability of the result depends ultimately, perhaps, upon

the presence of a sense of philosophic satisfaction in thereader, who is both spectator and participant.

The present approach uses as expedient the notionof utterance or judgment: the principal problem is todefine the generic conditions and properties of the hu-

PREFACE Vlll

man product. By a product I understand anything atall (any instance of making, doing, or saying) that

issues from human life or human relationship, and Iconceive of every product as a judgment in the sensewhich the sequel describes. The terms and notionshere employed are in large measure implicitly definedby contexts subsequent to those in which they are intro-duced. Even so, they remain in need of amplification.I am aware that in what follows many more questionsare raised than are answered. I have kept this bookbrief in the expectation that the structure may emergethe more fully. The obligation to elaborate I hope tosatisfy through future studies.

J.B.

NEW YORKMARCH, 1951

CONTENTS


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I PROCEPTION 3

II COMMUNICATION 29

III COMPULSION 58

IV CONVENTION 90

V PERSPECTIVE 113

VI VALIDATION 140

NOTES AND

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 171

INDEX 173

TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OFHUMAN JUDGMENT

I. PROCEPTION

To ASK whether the human individual is best under-stood as a multiplicity or as a unity is unprofitable, notbecause the answer is impossible but because the answeris obvious. The humanity of the individual implies aplurality of functions, and the individuality of the manimplies a focus of movement and of utterance. Thenotion of the integral individual, as a frame of referenceby which specific acts and patterns can be better under-

stood, is not new but has rather found a renascence offavor in philosophy, psychology, and medicine. Yet anidea with so acceptable a ring has remained singularlyundeveloped so far as philosophic generalization is con-cerned. The tools of interpretation continue to be suchconcepts as "self," "character," "organism," and "per-sonality." These concepts, each of which in its own wayand in its varied contexts enables us to understand andcategorize many phenomena, are not to be depreciated.It is not their serviceability that is to be questioned buttheir metaphysical adequacy, their comprehensiveness.They are especially deficient as vehicles of a philosophyof communication, method, and reason; and although

it is not within the province of this book primarily toestablish this contention, perhaps the succeeding chap-ters can serve as indirect evidence.

If the view that individuality implies unity has anymeaning at all, it means that the individual functions

4 PROCEPTION


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in a unitary way, that each activity or each mode ofactivity is a phase of a single process. The expression"functions in a unitary way" is circumlocutory and lessthan illuminating; yet there seem to be no availablecategories by which it is possible to do better, even thusin a mere allusion to the rudimentary human process.Is this process, for instance, adequately designated bythe terms "experience" and "experiencing"? In thesedays it is no longer necessary to detail the numerousambiguities that such terms breed. Even when, by agreat and vigorous stroke, their narrowing mentalisticovertones are expelled, questionable philosophic associa-tions linger or enter insidiously. And even when theterms are limited arbitrarily, to signify, for example, theinteraction of the individual with an environment, we aretold little about the status and meaning of individuality.Equally and perhaps more evidently unsatisfactory arethe terms "behavior" and "behaving," which are toonarrow and excessively physiological or psychological inimport. Paradoxically, "experiencing" is not broadenough to include all forms of behavior, and "behav-ing" is not broad enough to include all phases of ex-perience.

The interplay of the human individual's activitiesand dimensions, their unitary direction, constitutes aprocess which I shall call proception. The term is de-signed to suggest a moving union of seeking and receiv-ing, of forward propulsion and patient absorption. Pro-ception is the composite, directed activity of the indi-vidual. Any instance of his functioning, any event inhis history enters into the proceptive direction. Re-

PROGEPTION 5

ciprocally, and perhaps more significantly, the way thatan individual will act at any time, and the way in whichhis intellectual and moral character will be modified,depends on his proceptive direction. Proception is theprocess in which a man's whole self is summed up orrepresented. On this idea that the whole individual isthe cumulative representative of the moving individualI should like to lay the major stress. To say that thehuman animal is a proceiving animal is to state themost general or pervasive attribute of his being, and atthe same time the most distinctive attribute. The theoryof the distinctive human activities, such as imagination

and creation, should become more intelligible whenthese are seen as properties of the proceiver rather thanas properties of the thinker or feeler. It could be saidthat these are functions of the man and not of the mind,if this impoverished form of expression could manageto convey the suggestion of directed, integral move-ment. It is the proceiver, then, not a physiological orintellectual capacity of the proceiver, that wonders,asserts, interrogates. These are proceptive functions.Traveling, hearing, and eating are certainly relevant to


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proception, but they are not generic in the sense thatthey can characterize the proceptive direction. So faras the nature of the individual influences the natureof the individual's world, it can be said that thehearing apparatus determines what is heard, but thatthe proceptive direction determines the quality of con-science and the image of gods, the demand for har-monious satisfaction and the tolerance of possibilities,the hunger of eros and of reason and of art.

O PROCEPTION

The content of the summed-up-self-in-process, the in-dividual's world, is the preceptive domain. The procep-tive domain of an individual is a part of the world andthe whole of a self uniquely represented. By nature manproceives he moves as an accumulating whole. Whatchanges within a man, and varies from man to man, isthe specific character of the proceptive domain. Withinthe process of proception the character of the procep-tive domain may alter in kind and in degree, and in anindefinite number of ways. The proceptive domain de-

fines the relative largeness and scope of the self. Howmuch of heaven and earth is part of the individual de-termines how much he is part of them. The proceptiveprocess is the ongoing representation of the humanaspect of the human animal. Spinoza, and Aristotle be-fore him, held that the divine in a man is a function ofhis rational largeness. Rationality in its most funda-mental sense is a property of the proceptive process; aproperty predicable of the proceptive domain but notof every proceptive domain.

An object or situation falls within the proceptivedomain if it is present to the individual in the sense of

being available for his potentialities. I mean to use thephrase "present to" in a temporal as well as in a struc-tural sense though certainly not in the sense of beingconfined to the so-called immediate present for it ishis gross present possession and present direction thatdefine or determine the individual. Of all the facts andsituations that may be said to relate to an individual,some modify, some promote or reinforce, and some areirrelevant to his proceptive direction. An object or situ-

PROCEPTION 7

ation is present to an individual, is part of his procep-tive domain and when it is we shall call it a proceptif it actually either modifies or reinforces his proceptivedirection. Some objects or facts, like the depth of acrater on the moon, may be irrelevant to the characterof proception and hence fall outside the proceptive do-main. To be a procept is not necessarily to be noticed,felt, or attended to in awareness. An occupationalroutine is as much a procept as a pain ; past moral train-


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ing as much as a momentary sense of obligation. Butfar-off diplomatic intrigue may for a given individualnot be a procept. Ontologically, it stands in some rela-tion to him, but it may not actually modify or reinforcehis proceptive direction. An active disease, the circula-tion of the blood, or the structure of the basic organsmay all be procepts, influencing the character of the in-dividual as proceiver. A fly alighting on a sleeve is notlikely to be a procept; but a fly observed is a procept,for it reinforces the habits of expectation and theirlimits. An idea or belief accepted or entertained by anindividual is a procept : idea-accepted-by-X is a naturalcomplex characterizing an individual as proceiver.

The law of gravitation and the rotation of the earthsustain a man's life and make possible the very fact ofhis proceiving; but they cannot be said to affect hisproceptive direction. For in the very same sense, andindifferently, they affect every possible proceptive di-rection, and they sustain death as well as life. Not everyfact that is simply related to an individual is a procept.The shape of the oesophagus may be proceptively negli-gible though somatically distinctive. A procept is any-

8 PROCEPTION

thing that is a property of the individual, that happensto him, that affects or characterizes him in any way atall, so long as it relates to him as a proceiver (as anidentifiable and cumulative individual) and not as amere entity in the cosmic maelstrom.

What particularly does or does not fall within a pro-ceptive domain is theoretically determinable, not bysimple inspection but by a difficult process of abstrac-

tion. I mean to affirm the precarious tenure of the selfin the world and the indefinite boundaries of the self,not to contrast an inner and outer life or an inner andouter world. Procepts are not just objects or situationsor natural complexes (though they are at least that),nor are they just "data" (though they are at least that,in a broad and non-psychologistic sense of the term) ;they are natural complexes in-active-relation-to a pro-ceiver. The concepts of preceptive domain and procep-tive direction make it possible to express the unity ofthe individual by emphasizing his continuity with him-self, and the fluidity of the individual by emphasizinghis continuity with the world.

Within the proceptive domain three perspectives maybe distinguished. The gross proceptive domain com-prises all that belongs to the individual's living make-up, the segment of nature within which he functions,the past that is actually or potentially alive for him, thesum of his suppositions, guiding principles, commit-ments, and peculiarities. The gross domain is the class ofall his interrelated procepts. The floating proceptive do-main represents the summed-up self or proceiver with-


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in a given situation. The limits of a given situation or

PROCEPTION 9

enterprise are in the last analysis assignable by stipula-tion. Sometimes they may be defined by means of theformulation of a problem. But not every situation is aproblematic situation. A situation for an individual isthe concatenated set of interests, occupations, or prob-lems that he would declare it to be if he were made arti-culate by a daemonic or Socratic gadfly. This does notimply that he cannot be in a situation which he is un-aware of, or that he may not be in various situationsthat simultaneously apply to him. An individual is in asmany situations as there are viewpoints from which hisproceptive direction can be described. The floatingdomain varies with each situation, or may be said to bethe situation compositely determined by the indefiniteclass of overlapping situations. Finally, the imminentproceptive domain comprises all that is present to thatis, available for the proceiver at a given moment; it isthe gross domain represented in minimal cross section.

(I use the term "imminent" rather than "immediate"because I wish to suggest the cross section of a processrather than merely of an existent whole; and becausethe term "immediate" carries certain epistemologicalimplications which, as I shall explain later, I wish toavoid.) The imminent domain is not an "essence in-tuited" or an "image of self" that a man carries aboutin his head ; it is the world of the self in abstraction fromthe self's past and future. It is the directly available up-shot of the whole of the individual's proception. It iswhat an ideal biography would reveal his self to beat a given moment if his life were arrested at that mo-ment. I should like to emphasize that "procept" and

IO PROCEPTION

"present to" have been so defined as to render non-sensical such statements as "Procept A is more trulypresent than procept B," or "Procepts in the imminentdomain are more truly present than precepts in thefloating domain," or "This procept is present to theimminent domain but not to the floating or gross do-mains."

I have called the three domains perspectival distinc-tions. Perspectives are no less "real" or identifiable thanindividuals. To subdivide the preceptive domain per-spectivally is important if only as a new recognition ofthe old truth that the notion of unity goes hand in handwith the notions of plurality and diversity. From thedefinition of "proception" it is seen to be a metaphysicalfact that there is one preceptive direction for what weordinarily call and wish to call an "individual." But thequalitative complexity inherent in this direction may


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be expressed as greater or less in proportion as the float-ing domain makes it possible to understand or general-ize about the gross domain. The less reliable the immi-nent domain is as a sample of the floating domain, orthe floating domain as a sample of the gross domain,the more complex (in the sense of qualitatively plural)the preceptive direction. "Complexity" is a term whichis morally neutral and systematically ambiguous.

Now in the expression "the individual proceives" theverb is used intransitively: "proceives" has properly nonamable entity as object. A man imagines his next pur-chase or the topic of a discussion; he remembers a hur-ricane or a nightmare ; he perceives the dawn or the hos-tility of his neighbor. But he proceives nothing less than

PROCEPTION 1 1

his world, and nothing in particular. He functions in auniversally available world individually appropriated.In whatever specific way he acts or functions, he pro-ceives. The soul may not always think, but the man al-

ways proceives. A procept is not "designated"; it is nota "referent"; it is not an "object" of proception in thesense that the latter is the intending act. It is not some-thing that has a fixed prior integrity or pre-ordainedorganization. A procept is whatever natural complexcan be identified or discriminated in the life process ofthe individual. An object can be the same object forany number of individuals; a procept, by definition, isthat object as uniquely modified by relation to a givenindividual.

Modern philosophy has asked certain kinds of ques-tions and has made certain kinds of distinction which

on the surface may appear germane to the concept ofproception. It has asked how data enter experience,what the given is, whether percepts are simple or com-plex, whether ideas, essences, or sensa mediate betweenthe individual and the world, and whether experiencescreens us off from nature. Hovering behind these ques-tions and their conditioned answers is a vacillation be-tween the conception of experience as the given andexperience as the funded. This distinction stems mainlyfrom an empiricist tradition much concerned with dataand presentations. From another tradition, going backat least to St. Augustine, there stems the preoccupa-tion with the given of internal experience apprehended

by internal observation. Experience is equated with acontinuous life of total awareness; but along with this,

12 PROCEPTION

as a kind of analogue to funded experience, has comethe beloved fund of a priori insights and judgments.Recent conceptions of experience in terms of shock or


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proceptive process can theoretically be described andexplained in terms of the conditions under which itdid so and in terms of the indefinite number of ramifi-cations which it has. These ramifications and potentialrelations are as much "part" of the procept as are ele-

14 PROGEPTION

ments in its qualitative constitution. The relational sta-tus of procepts makes it impossible to conceive of themas entitative lumps geometrically divisible.

Must the "given/ 5 then, be denied? To the individ-ual, however the concept of individuality be developed,there is unquestionably something "given" in somesense at all times. There is no reason why the notionof the given should not be usefully generalized. Thetraditional error in philosophies of the given is narrow-ness even arbitrary narrowness in the conception ofwhat it is that is given. For the fundamental preceptivemovement of the individual anything that contributesto, anything that influences the formation of the "self"

or its habituation, is a "datum." From this point ofview, every procept is given. Nothing is more or lessgiven : bronchitis and cruel disposition no less than redpatches seen and clanging bells heard. If the given isthe available, then it is identical with the proceptivedomain. A plausible identification seems to suggest it-self of the given with the imminent proceptive do-main. But a number of distinctions and qualificationswould need to be made at the outset. First, we haveagreed that such a procept as the persistent action ofthe social heritage is as much given as a momentarysensation, and we ought not to lapse into the confusionof the traditional type of distinction ; both procepts are

available, and if either of the two can be said to be"available" in a dubious sense it is the sensation, whichis both elusive and refractory. Second, we must not con-fuse the imminent domain with a "realm of immedi-acy." The imminent domain is not the "foreground"

PROCEPTION 15

and the gross domain the "background" of proception.The one is a reflection of the other at a given moment.What is "available" in the one is available in the other,

but the context is narrower. The role which a proceptplays in the gross domain may not be determinablefrom the perspective of that same procept in the immi-nent domain. The given, then, is equally given, whetherit be regarded as a whole or as arrested at a proceptivepoint.

Is the complex of my domestic, economic, and socialstatus a result of inferential reconstruction, or a result of"construction," whereas the color of the page before me


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is "given"? The former is far more fundamental in mylife, and more pervasive and compelling in my totalawareness. In the proceptive domain of the mystic, the"evidence of things unseen" is as much given as that ofthings seen, and far more vividly enjoyed. Groundlesspresumption in the mystic occurs only when to theseprocepts which like all procepts are natural com-plexes in a unique relation a special cognitive signifi-cance is attached, and when from them a cognitive leapis made. The evidence of things unseen is here not evi-dence at all but proceptive presence, subject to furtherinterpretation.

The proceptive domain is not something that "me-diates" or "intervenes" between the individual and theworld. The traditional question whether an individualcan "get outside" or "reach beyond" or "transcend"his experience, or whether he is "shut off" or "envel-oped" by appearances, may not be futile in terms ofthe traditional conceptual framework but it certainly is

1 6 PROCEPTION

irrelevant to the present approach. In one sense a manis indeed enveloped in experience that may properlybe called his own; it is not that all experience is a partof him but that his experience is a part of him, and hecan no more get "outside" it than he can become anoth-er individual or become liberated from all perspective.The concepts we have introduced eliminate the ambi-guities that nourish the "problem." To ask whether theindividual can "intend" or "mean" or "refer to" any-thing outside his preceptive domain is as pointless as toask whether he can escape from his preceptive domain :whether he can cease to be himself. This is not to deny

that there is a sense in which the individual can be saidto transcend himself, for instance, in his identificationwith a community. This identification is itself a pro-cept, and the preceptive domain has simply been modi-fied, however great the cultural or moral implicationinvolved; "transcendence" here suggests the relativedegree of novelty by which the individual's directionhas been altered, or the relative extent of the reversalin direction which has taken place. If an individualcannot utterly cease to be himself, his proceptive direc-tion can be profoundly altered. So that, if he must beregarded as insulated by his proceptive domain, thiscan mean in the last analysis only that he is not om-

niscient or omnivorous. The individuality of the indi-vidual, his finitude, is his limitation to the dominantperspective in his life. Proception is the basic relation-ship in which a man stands to the world. (There couldbe little meaning in speaking of the basic relationshipin which the world stands to him.) A segment of the

PROCEPTION 1 7


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world is perforce the matter of his proception; his pro-ception is a fact of the world.

There are two fundamental and correlative dimen-sions in the preceptive direction : manipulation and as-similation. Manipulation is not to be identified withadjustment; it is by far the broader term, and muchin human activity that can be seen as manipulationcould not without strain and even absurdity be calledadjustment. On the latter notion recent thinking haslaid considerable and even exaggerated emphasis, sothat, for instance, it has been said of an activity likeimagination that "the conscious adjustment of the newand the old is imagination." 1 There is a great and un-derstandable attractiveness in the view which wouldfind adjustment, accommodation, and adaptation theprincipal human dimensions. It is strengthened by theindubitable continuity of man with lower biologicalforms, and it gives the appearance of being strengthenedby a corollary that can easily spring from this con-sideration, namely, that man is essentially a problem-solving animal. Unquestionably, the greater part of aman's life is passed under the relentless pressure to con-

quer, and he never can escape the general problem ofstabilization, whether temperamental or environmental.Whether problem-solving and adjustment are synony-mous is in itself very much open to question. In anycase, neither concept is adequate for the analysis ofproception.

In the process of imagination we may explore thenew without consciously comparing it with the old,and we may compare the new and the old without

1 8 PROCEPTIONconsciously seeking to adjust the one to the other. Ex-ploration and comparison, which are manipulative,may at least without contradiction be called non-adjus-tive. And in imagination the new may also be acceptedfor what it is, independently of manipulation. Its struc-tural, qualitative being may enter the preceptive do-main in non-instrumental awareness and be accepted,whether pleasurably or painfully, voluntarily or in-voluntarily. But the assimilative dimension of man doesnot necessarily entail awareness. Habituation, forinstance, is a process of endurance as well as of forma-

tion. We assimilate not just sensible qualities, but ad-vancing age, changing modes of thought, and the ethi-cal temper of society. In a very real sense we may speakof manipulation and assimilation as essential attributesof proception. The most rudimentary facts of humanexistence are the gross effort of perseverance and thegross acceptance of a world.

In the manipulative dimension of his being, the in-dividual is the actor, the agent, as in the assimilative


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he is the spectator, sufferer, patient; and he is bothactor and spectator literally and inevitably. Suppose aman struggling to escape from a house on fire. Animalsagacity, panic, and practical inference are juxtaposedin a situation big with adjustive manipulation. Yet theentire situation is an enduring contemplative pattern,in each moment of which there is represented an in-dependent contemplative pattern. A door appearsthrough the smoke. It is a sign of possible passage. Butit also is what it is, that sign and no other, makingpossible the adaptive inference of escape by impressing

PROCEPTION ig

its qualitative integrity upon attention. The instantan-eous spectacle of the door is accepted qua spectacle,and in so far, disinterestedly. In the natural and justi-fiable contrast between theory and experiment, theformer, when regarded in a broad sense as an attributeof imagination, has been identified with the specta-torial aspect of understanding, the latter with the man-ipulative. Certain pragmatists, of course, have recog-

nized the manipulative character of theory. It is equallyessential to recognize in experiment the factor of con-templative acceptance. Each moment or stage ofexperimental activity offers itself inevitably for assimi-lation, as does the whole of the formally envisioned andmanipulated enterprise.

In justifying the co-dimensionality and irreducibilityof assimilation we must avoid the suggestion that itboils down ultimately to a succession of moments eachdumbly intuitive. For like manipulation, assimilationoccurs in physiological striving as well as in abstractimagination, and in social movement as well as mental.

Every situation is pervaded with a spectatorial aspect.The spectatorial has been too often identified with thevisual, the intellectually as well as the optically visual.Whether it be attached to an overpowering emotionalstate or to a dispassionate parade of associations, to kin-aesthetic inertia or to a selection of prospects and possi-bilities; whether it characterize an individual of greator small capacity, the spectatorial bent resides neu-trally, as it were, within the preceptive direction. Thesolver of a problem is also the acceptor of what it in-volves, an acceptance imposed by the pressure of the

2O PROCEPTION

world of which he is part and sustained by him withthe elemental patience requisite for life. The man inthe fire, wholly preoccupied within a situation of po-tential disaster, does not just glimpse the pattern ofthis door and that column of smoke; one dimension ofhis being is doomed by nature to bear witness to thebeing of the whole.


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I have ascribed assimilation to physiological strivingas well as to imagination. How, it may be asked, canthe physiological man be a spectator? The questionassumes an analysis of the individual in terms of acollection of activities to only one or another of whichthe spectatorial function is attributed. In one influen-tial tradition, still very much alive, the mind is thepassive spectator, the body the active manipulator; andthus biologistic theories of experience might under-standably frown on the very idea of a spectator. But theindividual as spectator is the individual actor, one andthe same proceiver. Assimilation is not intellectual ac-quiescence or intuitive ratification. Not by sensing orby knowing does the individual become the spectator,but by responding to the sheer presence of his procepts."Bearing witness" is perhaps excessively metaphorical.Assimilation is proceptive toleration.

But the proceiver is not simply "both" a manipula-tor and an assimilator, in the sense, for instance, thathe is "both" a walker and an eater. In manipulatinghe is also assimilating; in assimilating, he is also manip-ulating. Thus in the simple act of seeing there is a

maneuvering of eye and position, and correlativelythere is an acceptance of a framework within which

PROCEPTION 2 1

eye and object are located as well as of the propertiesenvisioned. The activities of respiration and circulationinvolve manipulation and assimilation. To be sure, itis not the lungs and the blood vessels which do themanipulating and assimilating, at least in the sense ofwhich I am speaking. It is the proceiver, in the per-

petuation of his metabolic functions and in the inev-itable selection of his environmental situations. Likeproception itself, the dimensions of proception do notadmit of any contrary except death. The individualmay not accept in the moral sense of the term, butproceptively he assimilates all things as they are, thatis, as they are to him. Although the two dimensionsare ontologically inseparable, it may be advantageous toemphasize or to abstract one or another within a givenperspective of analysis. This would mean that one orthe other dimension is primary in a given respect. Thuswe might try to understand the activity of art by em-phasizing in it the aim of deliberative assimilation, and

the activity of science by emphasizing in it the questfor the power of manipulation. With this it would notbe incompatible to emphasize, in some other perspec-tive, the manipulative element in art and the assimila-tive element in science.

The concept of a proceptive direction must avoidtwo misconceptions. One is that the movement of theproceiver as proceiver implies teleological ordering bysome master plan of nature or of deity. Such an impli-


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cation is no more justifiably inferable from the factsof proception than from the other facts of nature ; theargument of Hume's Dialogues applies indifferently.

22 PROCEPTION

The second misconception is that every manifestationof proceptive activity involves a means-end relation-ship, or that a specific purpose inheres in each situation.I have already suggested that assimilation can be non-instrumental and is so for the most part. But there isan even deeper-lying basis of the non-instrumental inman. All of proception is characterized by a strain ofineradicable randomness, which might almost be re-garded as a third proceptive dimension. Eyes functionand see nothing in particular, bodies struggle but withno antagonist. A residuum of irrelevancy, of superfluityand waste of life is an ingredient in the human process.The individual, besides reconciling himself to and as-similating the world, abides with himself and theworld in aimless passivity. Sheer drift is ubiquitous andundramatic, but it often translates itself into one or

another form of sensibility.The idea of a proceptive direction may perplex thosewho, finding it useful, nevertheless feel common par-lance to be correct in saying that some individuals "lackdirection." The term, it must be confessed, lends itselfeasily to misinterpretation. It seems to carry the flavorof a harmonious, coordinated purposiveness in the lifeof the individual. If used in this sense, phenomena likethe dispersion and division of personality would makeit a matter of specific factual inquiry to determinewhether or not "direction" is present in a given indi-vidual. But proceptive direction has nothing to do

with direction in this sense. The latter is predicable ofcertain individuals, the former of any individual. Pro-ceptive direction concerns the potential course and out-

PROCEPTION 23

come of what at any moment is the net integral effectof an individual's history. Conflict, psychosis, and phys-ical disintegration, before they destroy, add up tosomething.

In an adequate theory of human utterance, the con-cept of proception would not eliminate the concept ofexperience. No amount of legislation will expel theterm "experience" from common discourse or philo-sophic speculation, and perhaps this is just as well. Thegenerality, as well as the vagueness, of the term answersand stems from the ever-present need for a way of des-ignating a number of metaphysically discriminable sit-uations that are somehow felt to be related : the effectupon individuals of factors in nature that do not seem


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to be identified or identifiable with them; the qualita-tive characters of this effect ; the relative persistence ofthis effect in the make-up of individuals ; and the inter-individual fabric that seems at once to transcend thelimits of an individual and yet to be available to that in-dividual. Various philosophic traditions have magnifiedor exaggerated one and another aspect of this complex,and the result has of course been the erection of incom-patible metaphysical structures. The concept of pro-ception facilitates a juster theory of experience bysupplying the means for interpreting it in multidimen-sional terms.

When experience is interpreted in terms of felt im-mediacy, certain inevitable philosophic problems andpresuppositions crop up, some of which are suggestiveand important, but some of which, on the other hand,are stultifying and futile. Now, uninterpreted feeling is

24 PROCEPTION

a property that can belong to any phase of proception.

It is no more a property of the imminent than of thefloating proceptive domain. Among the procepts thatdominate the elemental routine of animal living, sen-sory qualities appear to occupy a prominent place.From this fact it is a short and tempting step to thegeneralization that the "immediate" is what is some-how "closer" to the individual, to the "conscious sub-ject." The next step that recommends itself is to askthe question whether that which is closer is somehowcognitively more authoritative or reliable or funda-mental. But the theory of proception requires a verydifferent approach to the issue of "closeness" than doesthe pseudospatial notion of immediate experience. The

threefold subdivision of the proceptive domain mayappear, instead, to follow equally misleading temporallines. But that they follow such lines is only partly, andnot essentially, the case. We have spoken of the immi-nent domain as the proceiver at a given moment, or asthe ultimate cross section of the gross domain. The dis-tinction is, however, primarily in contextual or situa-tional terms. The gross domain is the ramified orderwithin which any situation of the individual is discern-ible; the floating domain comprehends any such situa-tion; and the imminent domain comprehends theminimal context of any such situation or better, anyminimal context of any situation. The minimal situa-

tion happens also to be the temporal minimum for pro-ception. No perspective within the gross domain ismore or less "close" to the proceiver. Nor is the pro-ceiver ever more or less close to "nature," for proception

PROGEPTION 25

itself is one natural process among an indefinite number


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of natural processes. The distinction which breeds thisentire problem as its corollary difficulty the distinc-tion between the immediate and the mediate in ex-perience is a treacherous and deceptive one. Itsuggests that the world un judged or merely felt andthe world judged or interpreted are of disparate onto-logical status. (There is, indeed, a sense in which thereare two worlds that are not the "same": there is adistinction between the world-unproceived and theworld-proceived ; but this means simply that the worldcan be proceived or can remain unproceived. ) Thebetter distinction would be between the objective rela-tion which issues in inarticulate feeling and the objec-tive relation which issues in judgment. Such a distinc-tion is consistent with the different and more generaldistinction between objects and procepts, for a proceptis an object or other natural complex in effective rela-tion (in the sense defined) to a proceiver.

When experience is regarded as environmental"transaction" (Dewey) it successfully avoids the no-tion of a field of consciousness, but it lends itself, atthe other extreme, to an emphasis upon the primacy ofmanipulation. It stands in need of a distinction between

"felt immediacy" and proceptive assimilation. Fromthe present standpoint, experience in this sense is moreadequately conceived as the proceptive process. Just asit is important not to confuse assimilation with meresensation, so it is important to construe manipulationnot reductively in biologistic terms but as characteriz-ing even the most abstract of intellectual operations.

26 PROGEPTION

Experience would then be the directed, cumulative in-

terplay of assimilation and manipulation. The "data"of experience would be the events and objects, the na-tural complexes which, in relation to each individual,determine an indefinite class of procepts. Each man'sprocepts would constitute the "content" of his experi-ence; the order or structure of his experience wouldbe the preceptive domain; and the process or move-ment of his experience would be the preceptive direc-tion. We have already suggested that in terms of theconcept of proception the term "experience" would notneed to be used at all. But in any event, experience isto be defined in terms of proception, not proception interms of experience. This applies not only to refined

philosophic uses of the term but to such well-establisheduses as are indicated by the phrases "the experience ofthe race" and "the appeal to experience." The firstphrase has many possible translations: in one of itssenses it refers to a class of situations available to anyindividual's proception; in another it refers to an ac-cumulated body of judgments characteristic of anyindividual's proception. The second phrase, as incorpor-ated, for instance, in the statement "Science appeals toexperience," is in one sense absurd. There is no one


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who does not "appeal" to experience in the sense de-fined above ; for no one is there a world other than theworld he proceives. What is ordinarily intended by theusage is the appeal to certain formalized or semifor-malized techniques of manipulation. This is clear whenthe term "observation" is used instead of "experience."Sometimes, however, a distinction is intended between

PROCEPTION 27

"private" (or "internal") and "public" experience, andthe "appeal" is said to be to the latter.

The distinction between public and private experi-ence is not a distinction, antecedently determinable,between two intrinsically different types of procepts,or between two separate and irreconcilable "realms."Any natural complex may become a procept for one ormore individuals, and may be designated by a commonsymbol. In so far as this complex is or has been de-scribed or otherwise identified in common, it is public;in so far as it has not been described or otherwise iden-

tified in common, it is private. Thus a natural complexbecomes, for certain individuals, a procept designatedby a common name "toothache." To the extent thatcommunication effects a common description, the "ex-perience" is public; to the extent that it does not, theexperience is private. This distinction applies to anynatural complex whatever. The reason why a rainfall isheld to be an intrinsically public experience is that weconventionally ignore the existence of those responsesto rainfall which do not issue in the conventional identi-fications or descriptions. Some experiences, even in sofar as they are private, are ordinarily deemed universalbecause, like "toothache," they are subjects of common

symbolization. Other experiences are neither coopera-tively described nor conventionally classified; such ex-periences would be as yet neither public nor universal.

We are not justified by any evidence in speaking ofsome procepts as not being natural complexes. For thiswould mean that there is a realm of procepts whichhave no conceivable or describable basis or source of

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occurrence and which nevertheless modify or sustaina proceptive direction. The "purely private" in thissense of the term has been an obscurantist notion notonly in psychology and theology but in the methodologyof human experience. At bottom it is an invocation ofthe miraculous, whether it takes the form of divineillumination, ineffable truth, an impenetrable subcon-scious, or causally unaccountable sense-data. A dis-tinction between public and private does not affect theinterpretation of experience as, in the most funda-


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mental sense, an interplay of manipulation and assim-ilation. Reverie, anguish, or toothache, in so far as theyare private, are forms of assimilation in part dependentupon prior or present forms of manipulation the man-ipulation, for instance, of my own body, of symbols inmy thinking, of physical objects, or of other personsand their affairs. Nature is always the subject matter;experience is nature proceived.

II. COMMUNICATION

PROGEPTION AND COMMUNICATION, though distinguish-able, presuppose each other. Without communicationproception would be little more than protoplasmic en-durance. Communication, on the other hand, requiresindividual direction, unless we assume a society of an-gelic forms which communicate by eternal inspectionof their common essence. The entrance of an individualinto the world is the advent of a process of assimilation :nature and history begin to communicate their burden

to him; he begins by accepting a world in which hisprocepts include no utterances by him, and in whichthe manipulative side of his being is random. Whatevercommunication may be, it is at least a process of trans-mission. Older writers could speak of one object ascommunicating motion to another. We incline now tothink of communication in terms of mutuality, possiblybecause a eulogistic note has crept into the concept. Inone sense, whatever becomes a procept for the individ-ual is communicated to him by nature or by art. Theocean communicates its vastness; history and the historyof one's time communicate in the sense that they trans-mit symbols for proceptive assimilation. To the histor-

ian the past not only communicates but communicatesdirectly; it not only affects but dominates his procep-tive direction. The historian, the scientist generallyspeaking, interrogates nature (to use Kant's great meta-

3

toward a general theory of human judgment

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