POLITICS OF WONDERLAND
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5. The one serious problem Merian touches on concerns the sense
in
which we are to understand the phrase "class truths". Unfortunately,
he jumbles everything together. By transposing remarks written in crit–
icism of obscurantists who rely on private intuitions to "prove" state·
ments about the natural world, to contexts in which conflicting values
are involved, he produces a misleading impression of my views.
His own remarks reveal an elementary confusion between two things:
(l) the "acceptance" of qualified investigators, guided by scientific
method, which determines the
validity
of a proposition, and (2) the
"acceptance" by the community of a valid proposition. To say that a
proposition is valid is to say that
in principle
it can secure the universal
agreement of all who abide by scientific method. The fact that
certain
vested interests in the community refuse to follow the lead of scientific
method does not make the proposition to which it leads less valid; it
does not make it a "class truth" or a "racial truth".
If
a scientist pro–
claims that the evidence he observes through his telescope establishes a
oertain truth about the heavens, the man whose cosmogony it destroys,
may, like certain contemporaries of Galileo, refuse to look through it;
he may refuse to participate in the process of inquiry. But if true, the
proposition is universally true. Similarly, if Marx's economic predic–
tions are true, they are universally true even
if
tho~e
whose future it
reads darkly passionately oppose it. They are not "class truths" even
if they are used ·to further class interests.
The crucial question is whether the same kind of analysis can be
made for judgments of value or policy. (Short of a treatise I must
state my position dogmatically). As far as the adequacy of means
to a given end, obviously. But how about the validity of ends? Are
they all on the same footing?
If
one believes there are ultimate or
final ends above criticism, one may speak of personal or class "truths"
but the meaning of "truth" is radically different from (l) above. My
own belief is that an empirical analysis of the ends affirmed in a con–
crete, historical situation will show that the judgment "this is an ultimate
end" is not strictly true but always instrumental to other ends rooted
in certain interests; that the judgment can be tested by its bearing on
other ends and by the consequences of the means necessary to achieve
it; that these further ends involved can in turn be evaluated as well
as
the interests and needs out of which they spring; that the method
of evaluation, "intelligence" in Dewey's phrase, conforms to the same
general .pattern of inquiry that holds in determining other truths; and
that if we take our problems one at a time, no infinite regress is entailed.
The conclusions of "intelligence", here as elsewhere,
if
valid, are
universally valid. But they may not be universally accepted, it may he
necessary to fight for them, because of inability or refusal of certain
groups to employ the method of intelligence about ends or values. This
refusal corresponds to the unwillingness of an obscurantist to look
through a telescope or perform a scientific experiment.
The position I have briefly sketched may be wrong but it shows
how grotesquely inaccurate is Merian's claim that
I
rule out the relevance
of scientific method to "differences of values"; and how absurd it is
to interpret Dewey's view as counterposing "intelligence" to "force,"
