Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude — A Reader’s Guide

A Shared Vocabulary of Contingency and Experiment

The essays share a distinctive lexicon that signals their pragmatic orientation. Words like 'contingency,' 'uncertainty,' 'experimental,' and 'self-directing' appear repeatedly, often in contexts that contrast conscious behavior with mechanical reflex. In one excerpt, the author writes that conscious behavior 'is essentially experimental' because uncertainty is not a flaw but an integral part of the process—'the uncertainty exists precisely because an effort is under way to clear up the uncertainty.' This recursive formulation is typical: the method of inquiry is itself the subject of inquiry.

Another recurring move is the use of biological or physical metaphors: 'the dam will break and the current rush through,' or 'paleontological specimens that foreshadow in their structure the advent of both fish and reptile.' These figures ground abstract arguments in concrete, observable processes. The reader should attend to how each essay adapts this shared vocabulary to its own field—whether the topic is the nature of the stimulus in psychology or the construction of values in ethics.

The Child-Candle Incident as a Microcosm

One excerpt uses a homely example—'the familiar child-candle incident'—to illustrate the core idea that stimulus and response are not successive stages but 'simultaneous functions or phases of the total process.' The incident is not described in full, but it serves as a touchstone: situations of uncertainty and expectancy 'emphasize both the anticipatory character of experience and the peculiar reconstruction of the stimulus.'

The author insists that such situations 'differ merely in degree, not in kind, from other experiences; their merit is that in them the distinctive character of conscious life is writ large.' This is a key methodological claim: the ordinary, even trivial, instance reveals the structure of all conscious behavior. The reader will find similar microcosms throughout the volume—a sentence being uttered, a word colored by its context, a momentary glance—each used to demonstrate that the present moment 'embodies a future that is contingent.'

Stimulus and Response as Correlated Functions

One of the most striking theoretical moves in the excerpts is the reconceptualization of stimulus and response. Rather than a linear chain, the author proposes that 'stimulus and response resist the temporal separation that we find in a purely reflex act; stimulus and response are bound together as correlated functions in a unitary, self-directing process, so that these twain are one flesh.' The biblical echo is notable, and it underscores the essay's ambition to replace a mechanical model with an organic one.

This redefinition has consequences for how the essays treat knowledge, action, and value. If the stimulus 'provides for its own successor,' then inquiry is not a passive reception of data but an active construction of the conditions for further inquiry. The reader should watch for how each contributor applies this functional, non-linear view to his own domain—whether in the logic of scientific method, the psychology of consciousness, or the economics of interest.

The Role of the Individual as Inventive Bearer of Mind

The prefatory note identifies 'a courageously inventive individual as the bearer of a creatively employed mind' as one of the points of agreement among the essays. This is not a celebration of genius but a specific philosophical claim: intelligence is not a faculty possessed by a passive subject but an activity performed by an organism in a problematic situation. The excerpts show this idea in action when they describe the response as 'of a generalized character, like the paleontological specimens that foreshadow in their structure the advent of both fish and reptile.'

The individual is not a detached spectator but an agent whose responses shape the future. The essays repeatedly emphasize that the future is 'genuine'—not merely unknown but open to determination by intelligent action. This is a direct challenge to deterministic or mechanistic philosophies. The reader will find this theme woven through the discussions of ethics (where values are constructed, not discovered), economics (where interest is a phase of activity), and art (where existence and value are intertwined).

These eight essays reward a reader willing to trace a single attitude across multiple disciplines. The shared vocabulary of contingency, experiment, and self-direction provides a thread, but each writer knots it differently. Because the volume is a cooperation, not a consensus, the reader may find productive tensions between, say, Dewey's recovery of philosophy and Kallen's treatment of value and existence. The best approach is to read the essays in order, noting how each field forces the pragmatic method to take a distinct shape—and how the method, in turn, reshapes the field.