Analytic logic is the first attempt in the history of modern logical theory at a deliberate, sophisticated exclusion of the act of knowing from logic. Other logics, to be sure, have tried to neutralize the effects of its presence, but none has had the temerity to cast it bodily overboard. The experiment, therefore, is highly interesting.
We should note at the outset that in regarding the act of knowing as incurably "psychical" and "subjective" analytic logic accepts a fundamental premise of the logics of rationalism, empiricism, and idealism which it seeks to reform. It is true that it is the bold proposal of analytic logic to keep logic out of the pit of epistemology by excluding the act of knowing from logic. Nevertheless analytic logic still accepts the subjective character of this act; and if it excludes it from its logic it welcomes it in its psychology. This is a dangerous situation. Can the analytic logician prevent all osmosis between his logic and his psychology?[22] If not, and if the psychological act is subjective, woe then to his logic. Had the new logic begun with a bold challenge of the psychical character of the act of knowing, the prospect of a logic free from epistemology would have been much brighter.
With the desire to rid logic of the epistemological taint the "experimental logic" of the pragmatic movement has the strongest sympathy. But the proposal to effect this by the excision of the act of knowing appears to experimental logic to be a case of heroic but fatal surgery. _Prima facie_ a logic with no act of knowing presents an uncanny appearance. What sort of logical operations are possible in such a logic and of what kind of truth and falsity are they capable?
Before taking up these questions in detail it is worth while to note the character of the entities that "merely are" with which analytic logic proposes exclusively to deal. In their general form they are "terms" and "propositions," "sense-data" and universals. We are struck at once by the fact that these entities bear the names of logical operations. They are, to be sure, disguised as entities and have been baptised in a highly dilute solution of objectivity called "subsistence." But this does not conceal their origin, nor does it obscure the fact that if it is possible for any entities that "merely are" to have logical character those made from hypostatized processes of logical operations should be the most promising. They might be expected to retain some vestiges of logical character even after they have been torn from the process of inquiry and converted into "entities that merely are." Also it is not surprising that having stripped the act of knowing of its constituent operations analytic logic should feel that it can well dispense with the empty shell called "mind" and, as Professor Dewey says, "wish it on psychology." But if the analytic logician be also a philosopher and perchance a lover of his fellow-man, it is hard to see how he can have a good conscience over this disposition of the case.