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The Limits of Freedom in Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Cecil H. Miller
Cecil H. Miller*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo
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Extract

This paper is a study in restraint on freedom of speculation. In view of the subtlety of the subject it has seemed advisable to begin the report with a list of the presuppositions initiating and determining the study. These are as follows:

1). That freedom of speculation is a prerequisite to sound mental health, in individuals as well as in large-scale social units.

2). That, consequently, individual and institutional faculties are alike deficient if and insofar as they prevent or abridge such freedom.

3). That the same factors operating in one aspect to restrain the influence of promulgated theories operate in another aspect to inhibit the free conception and hamper the expression of speculation not so promulgated.

4). That as it is the purpose of individual philosophizing to surround with coherent speculation or theory subjects of primarily individual interest, it is the purpose of institutional philosophizing similarly to invest with theory subjects of common social interest.

5). That speculation in general, whether individual or institutional, is free when the prevalent tendency is for subjects of comparable interest to be accorded comparable quantities of speculation; and that when and insofar as this tendency does not prevail speculation is to that extent not free but restrained.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 1942 , pp. 19 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1942

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References

1 Wm. James, Principles of Psychology, Henry Holt and Company (New York, 1890), vol. 2, p. 299.

2 Wm. James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays, Longmans Green & Company (N. Y., London and Bombay, 1897), pp. 118-20.

3 Wm. James, Some Problems in Philosophy, Longmans Green & Co. (New York, 1911), p. 71.

4 Ibid., p. 72.

5 Wm. James, The Meaning of Truth, Longmans Green & Co. (N. Y., 1909), p. 101.

6 Wm. James, Pragmatism, Longmans Green & Company (New York, 1907), p. 396.

7 Essays in Radical Empiricism, Longmans Green & Company (New York, 1912), p. 272.

8 Ibid., p. 11.

9 Jacques Rueff, From the Physical to the Social Sciences, The Johns Hopkins Press (Baltimore, 1929), p. 32.

10 Ibid., p. 31.

11 Dewitt H. Parker, The Metaphysics of Historical Knowledge, University of Calif. Publications (Berkeley 1914), vol. ii.

12 Carl J. Becker, The Heavently City of the 18th-Century Philosophen, Yale University Press (New Haven, 1932), p. 17.

13 Frederick J. Teggart, Theory of History, Yale University Press (New Haven, 1925), pp. 52-68.

14 J. B. Bury, “The Place of Modern History in the Perspective of Knowledge”, Congress of Arts and Science, St. Louis, 1904, vol. 2 (Boston, 1906), p. 143. From Teggart, as cited, p. 49.

15 Evidence of the efficiency of the mythos here described may be seen in the juxtaposition, in the reference cited, of the statement that history has taken over theology's functions, with the conventional cliche that “history is nothing but history, the notation of what has occurred, just as it happened”. Ordinarily these statements would be felt to conflict with one another.

16 J. Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, Henry Holt and Co. (New York, 1910), pp. 247-9. My italics.