," "psychological," and "subjective."[21]
All other logics have indeed realized this subjective character of the
_act_ of knowing, but have neither dared completely to discard it nor
been able sufficiently to counteract its effects even with such agencies
as the objective universal to prevent it from infecting logic with its
subjectivity. Because logic has tolerated and attempted to compromise
with this subjective act of knowing, say these reformers, it has been
forced constantly into epistemology and has become a hybrid science. Had
logic possessed the courage long ago to throw overboard this subjective
Jonah it would have been spared the storms of epistemology and the reefs
of metaphysics.

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