f we suppose
the beholding mind to be equipped with a faculty of reason in the form
of the principle of "contradiction." For this throws no light on the
origin and meaning of ambiguity. And if we seek to make all perceptions
as such ambiguous and contradictory, in order to make room for, and
justify, the operations of reason, other difficulties at once beset us.
When we attempt to remove this specific ambiguity of perceptive conduct
we shall be forced, before we are through, to appeal back to perception,
which we have condemned as inherently contradictory, both for data and
for verification.

However, the insistence that perception must be ambiguous to, or for,
something beyond itself is well grounded. And this was recognized in the
statement that it is equivocal as a stimulus in conduct. There need be
no mystery as to how such equivocation arises. That there is such a
thing as a conduct at all means that there are certain beings who have
acquired definite ways of responding to one another. It is important to
observe that these forms of interaction--instinct and habit, perception,
memory, etc.--are not to be located in either of the interacting beings
but are functions of both. The conception of these operations as the
private functions of an organism is the forerunner of the
epistemological predicament. It results in a conception of knowing as
wholly the act of a knower apart from the known. This is the beginning
of epistemology.

But to whatever extent interacting beings have acquired definite and
specific ways of behavior toward one another it is equally plain--the
theory of external relations notwithstanding--that in this process of
interaction these ways of behavior, of stimulus and response, undergo
modification. If the world consisted of two interacting beings, it is
conceivable that the modifications of behavior might occur in such close
continuity of relation to each of the interacting beings that the
adjustment would be very continuous, and there might be little or no
ambiguity and conflict. But in a world where any two interacting beings
have innumerable interactions with innumerable other beings and in all
these interactions modifications are effected, it is to be expected that
changes in the behavior of each or both will occur, so marked that they
are bound to result in breaks in the continuity of stimulus and
response--even to the point of tragedy. However, the tragedy is seldom
so great that the ambigui