Note 62 — X EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM: THE ALLEGED UBIQUITY OF THE KNOWLEDGE RELATION

Professor Perry says (The New Realism, p. 115): "Professor Dewey is mistaken in supposing that realism assumes 'the ubiquity of the knowledge-relation.' Realism does not argue from the 'ego-centric predicament,' i.e., from the bare presence of the knowledge-relation in all cases of knowledge." If the text has not made my point clear, it is probably too much to expect that a footnote will do so. But I have not accused the realist of arguing from the ego-centric predicament. I have said that if any realist holds that the sole and exclusive relation of the one who is knower to things is that of being their knower, then the realist cannot escape the impact of the predicament. But if the one who knows things also stands in other connections with them, then it is possible to make an intelligible contrast between things as known and things as loved or hated or appreciated, or seen or heard or whatever. The argument, it should be noted, stands in connection with that of the last section as to whether hearing a sound and seeing a color are of themselves (apart from the use made of them in inference) cases of knowledge. It is significant that Perry holds (New Realism, p. 150) that "sensing" is per se a case of knowing. Hence it must be in relation to a knower; it must fall within the "predicament," for "it makes the mind aware of a characteristic of the environment." That it is used (or may be used) to make us aware of some characteristic of the environment, I of course hold. To say that it is an awareness by the mind of a characteristic of the environment is at once to involve a philosopher immediately in the discussion of whether red qualities, or only certain vibrations, are "really" characteristics of the environment. Then, when the authority of physics is invoked in behalf of the latter proposition, the epistemologist (however realistic in his intention) is forced to consider color as a misapprehension of the environment, a case of error or illusion, while the idealist triumphantly flourishes it as a case of the transformative or constitutive efficacy of "mind" in knowing. But if the color is simply a natural event, and if "mind" does not enter except when color is made the basis of inference to some characteristic of the environment, then there is no predicament; and there is no problem of error save as a false inference is made. Moreover, since errors in inference are an undoubted fact, the principle that entities are not to be multiplied beyond need gives a prima facie superiority to any theory which connects all error with inference till adequate evidence to the contrary is produced.