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ESSAYS IN RADICAL EMPIRICISM
by
WILLIAM JAMES
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| By William James |
| |
| THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A STUDY IN |
| HUMAN NATURE. Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. |
| 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, |
| Green & Co. 1902. |
| |
| PRAGMATISM: A NEW NAME FOR SOME OLD WAYS OF THINKING: |
| POPULAR LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY. 8vo. New York, |
| London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1907. |
| |
| THE MEANING OF TRUTH: A SEQUEL TO "PRAGMATISM." 8vo. |
| New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. |
| 1909. |
| |
| A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE: HIBBERT LECTURES ON THE |
| PRESENT SITUATION IN PHILOSOPHY. 8vo. New York, London, |
| Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1909. |
| |
| SOME PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY: A BEGINNING OF AN INTRODUCTION |
| TO PHILOSOPHY. 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, |
| and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1911. |
| |
| ESSAYS IN RADICAL EMPIRICISM. 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, |
| and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1912. |
| |
| THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS IN POPULAR |
| PHILOSOPHY. 12mo. New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: |
| Longmans, Green & Co. 1897. |
| |
| MEMORIES AND STUDIES. 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, and |
| Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1911. |
| |
| THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 2 vols., 8vo. New York: |
| Henry Holt & Co. London: Macmillan & Co. 1890. |
| |
| PSYCHOLOGY: BRIEFER COURSE. 12mo. New York: Henry Holt |
| & Co. London: Macmillan & Co. 1892. |
| |
| TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND TO STUDENTS |
| ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS. 12mo. New York: Henry Holt |
| & Co. London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1899. |
| |
| HUMAN IMMORTALITY: TWO SUPPOSED OBJECTIONS TO THE |
| DOCTRINE. 16mo. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. London: Archibald |
| Constable & Co. 1898. |
| |
| THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES. Edited, with an |
| Introduction, by William James. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. Boston: |
| Houghton Mifflin Co. 1885. |
| |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
ESSAYS IN RADICAL EMPIRICISM
by
WILLIAM JAMES
[Illustration]
Longmans, Green, and Co
Fourth Avenue & 30th Street, New York
London, Bombay and Calcutta
1912
Copyright, 1912, by Henry James Jr.
All Rights Reserved
EDITOR'S PREFACE
The present volume is an attempt to carry out a plan which William James
is known to have formed several years before his death. In 1907 he
collected reprints in an envelope which he inscribed with the title
'Essays in Radical Empiricism'; and he also had duplicate sets of these
reprints bound, under the same title, and deposited for the use of
students in the general Harvard Library, and in the Philosophical
Library in Emerson Hall.
Two years later Professor James published _The Meaning of Truth_ and _A
Pluralistic Universe_, and inserted in these volumes several of the
articles which he had intended to use in the 'Essays in Radical
Empiricism.' Whether he would nevertheless have carried out his original
plan, had he lived, cannot be certainly known. Several facts, however,
stand out very clearly. In the first place, the articles included in the
original plan but omitted from his later volumes are indispensable to
the understanding of his other writings. To these articles he repeatedly
alludes. Thus, in _The Meaning of Truth_ (p. 127), he says: "This
statement is probably excessively obscure to any one who has not read my
two articles 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure
Experience.'" Other allusions have been indicated in the present text.
In the second place, the articles originally brought together as 'Essays
in Radical Empiricism' form a connected whole. Not only were most of
them written consecutively within a period of two years, but they
contain numerous cross-references. In the third place, Professor James
regarded 'radical empiricism' as an _independent_ doctrine. This he
asserted expressly: "Let me say that there is no logical connexion
between pragmatism, as I understand it, and a doctrine which I have
recently set forth as 'radical empiricism.' The latter stands on its own
feet. One may entirely reject it and still be a pragmatist."
(_Pragmatism_, 1907, Preface, p. ix.) Finally, Professor James came
toward the end of his life to regard 'radical empiricism' as more
fundamental and more important than 'pragmatism.' In the Preface to _The
Meaning of Truth_ (1909), the author gives the following explanation of
his desire to continue, and if possible conclude, the controversy over
pragmatism: "I am interested in another doctrine in philosophy to which
I give the name of radical empiricism, and it seems to me that the
establishment of the pragmatist theory of truth is a step of first-rate
importance in making radical empiricism prevail" (p. xii).
In preparing the present volume, the editor has therefore been governed
by two motives. On the one hand, he has sought to preserve and make
accessible certain important articles not to be found in Professor
James's other books. This is true of Essays I, II, IV, V, VIII, IX, X,
XI, and XII. On the other hand, he has sought to bring together in one
volume a set of essays treating systematically of one independent,
coherent, and fundamental doctrine. To this end it has seemed best to
include three essays (III, VI, and VII), which, although included in the
original plan, were afterwards reprinted elsewhere; and one essay, XII,
not included in the original plan. Essays III, VI, and VII are
indispensable to the consecutiveness of the series, and are so
interwoven with the rest that it is necessary that the student should
have them at hand for ready consultation. Essay XII throws an important
light on the author's general 'empiricism,' and forms an important link
between 'radical empiricism' and the author's other doctrines.
In short, the present volume is designed not as a collection but rather
as a treatise. It is intended that another volume shall be issued which
shall contain papers having biographical or historical importance which
have not yet been reprinted in book form. The present volume is intended
not only for students of Professor James's philosophy, but for students
of metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. It sets forth systematically
and within brief compass the doctrine of 'radical empiricism.'
A word more may be in order concerning the general meaning of this
doctrine. In the Preface to the _Will to Believe_ (1898), Professor
James gives the name "_radical empiricism_" to his "philosophic
attitude," and adds the following explanation: "I say 'empiricism,'
because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions
concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the
course of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats the
doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the
halfway empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or
agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm
monism as something with which all experience has got to square" (pp.
vii-viii). An 'empiricism' of this description is a "philosophic
attitude" or temper of mind rather than a doctrine, and characterizes
all of Professor James's writings. It is set forth in Essay XII of the
present volume.
In a narrower sense, 'empiricism' is the method of resorting to
_particular experiences_ for the solution of philosophical problems.
Rationalists are the men of principles, empiricists the men of facts.
(_Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 35; cf. also, _ibid._, p. 44; and
_Pragmatism_, pp. 9, 51.) Or, "since principles are universals, and
facts are particulars, perhaps the best way of characterizing the two
tendencies is to say that rationalist thinking proceeds most willingly
by going from wholes to parts, while empiricist thinking proceeds by
going from parts to wholes." (_Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 35; cf.
also _ibid._, p. 98; and _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 7.) Again,
empiricism "remands us to sensation." (_Op. cit._, p. 264.) The
"empiricist view" insists that, "as reality is created temporally day by
day, concepts ... can never fitly supersede perception.... The deeper
features of reality are found only in perceptual experience." (_Some
Problems of Philosophy_, pp. 100, 97.) Empiricism in this sense is as
yet characteristic of Professor James's philosophy _as a whole_. It is
not the distinctive and independent doctrine set forth in the present
book.
The only summary of 'radical empiricism' in this last and narrowest
sense appears in the Preface to _The Meaning of Truth_ (pp. xii-xiii);
and it must be reprinted here as the key to the text that follows.[1]
"Radical empiricism consists (1) first of a postulate, (2) next of a
statement of fact, (3) and finally of a generalized conclusion."
(1) "The postulate is that _the only things that shall be debatable
among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from
experience_. (Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum,
but they form no part of the material for philosophic debate.)" This is
"the principle of pure experience" as "a methodical postulate." (Cf.
below, pp. 159, 241.) This postulate corresponds to the notion which the
author repeatedly attributes to Shadworth Hodgson, the notion "that
realities are only what they are 'known as.'" (_Pragmatism_, p. 50;
_Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 443; _The Meaning of Truth_, pp.
43, 118.) In this sense 'radical empiricism' and pragmatism are closely
allied. Indeed, if pragmatism be defined as the assertion that "the
meaning of any proposition can always be brought down to some particular
consequence in our future practical experience, ... the point lying in
the fact that the experience must be particular rather than in the fact
that it must be active" (_Meaning of Truth_, p. 210); then pragmatism
and the above postulate come to the same thing. The present book,
however, consists not so much in the assertion of this postulate as in
the _use_ of it. And the method is successful in special applications by
virtue of a certain "statement of fact" concerning relations.
(2) "The statement of fact is that _the relations between things,
conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct
particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things
themselves_." (Cf. also _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 280; _The Will to
Believe_, p. 278.) This is the central doctrine of the present book. It
distinguishes 'radical empiricism' from the "ordinary empiricism" of
Hume, J. S. Mill, etc., with which it is otherwise allied. (Cf. below,
pp. 42-44.) It provides an empirical and relational version of
'activity,' and so distinguishes the author's voluntarism from a view
with which it is easily confused--the view which upholds a pure or
transcendent activity. (Cf. below, Essay VI.) It makes it possible to
escape the vicious disjunctions that have thus far baffled philosophy:
such disjunctions as those between consciousness and physical nature,
between thought and its object, between one mind and another, and
between one 'thing' and another. These disjunctions need not be
'overcome' by calling in any "extraneous trans-empirical connective
support" (_Meaning of Truth_, Preface, p. xiii); they may now be
_avoided_ by regarding the dualities in question as only _differences of
empirical relationship among common empirical terms_. The pragmatistic
account of 'meaning' and 'truth,' shows only how a vicious disjunction
between 'idea' and 'object' may thus be avoided. The present volume not
only presents pragmatism in this light; but adds similar accounts of the
other dualities mentioned above.
Thus while pragmatism and radical empiricism do not differ essentially
when regarded as _methods_, they are independent when regarded as
doctrines. For it would be possible to hold the pragmatistic theory of
'meaning' and 'truth,' without basing it on any fundamental theory of
relations, and without extending such a theory of relations to residual
philosophical problems; without, in short, holding either to the above
'statement of fact,' or to the following 'generalized conclusion.'
(3) "The generalized conclusion is that therefore _the parts of
experience hold together from next to next by relations that are
themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs,
in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but
possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure_."
When thus generalized, 'radical empiricism' is not only a theory of
knowledge comprising pragmatism as a special chapter, but a metaphysic
as well. It excludes "the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality" (Cf.
below, p. 195). It is the author's most rigorous statement of his theory
that reality is an "experience-continuum." (_Meaning of Truth_, p. 152;
_A Pluralistic Universe_, Lect. V, VII.) It is that positive and
constructive 'empiricism' of which Professor James said: "Let empiricism
once become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange
misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I believe
that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be ready to
begin." (_Op. cit._, p. 314; cf. _ibid._, Lect. VIII, _passim_; and _The
Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 515-527.)
The editor desires to acknowledge his obligations to the periodicals
from which these essays have been reprinted, and to the many friends of
Professor James who have rendered valuable advice and assistance in the
preparation of the present volume.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS.
January 8, 1912.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The use of numerals and italics is introduced by the editor.
CONTENTS
I. DOES 'CONSCIOUSNESS' EXIST? 1
II. A WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE 39
III. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 92
IV. HOW TWO MINDS CAN KNOW ONE THING 123
V. THE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD
OF PURE EXPERIENCE 137
VI. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 155
VII. THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM 190
VIII. LA NOTION DE CONSCIENCE 206
IX. IS RADICAL EMPIRICISM SOLIPSISTIC? 234
X. MR. PITKIN'S REFUTATION OF 'RADICAL EMPIRICISM' 241
XI. HUMANISM AND TRUTH ONCE MORE 244
XII. ABSOLUTISM AND EMPIRICISM 266
INDEX 281
I
DOES 'CONSCIOUSNESS' EXIST?[2]
'Thoughts' and 'things' are names for two sorts of object, which common
sense will always find contrasted and will always practically oppose to
each other. Philosophy, reflecting on the contrast, has varied in the
past in her explanations of it, and may be expected to vary in the
future. At first, 'spirit and matter,' 'soul and body,' stood for a pair
of equipollent substances quite on a par in weight and interest. But one
day Kant undermined the soul and brought in the transcendental ego, and
ever since then the bipolar relation has been very much off its balance.
The transcendental ego seems nowadays in rationalist quarters to stand
for everything, in empiricist quarters for almost nothing. In the hands
of such writers as Schuppe, Rehmke, Natorp, Muensterberg--at any rate in
his earlier writings, Schubert-Soldern and others, the spiritual
principle attenuates itself to a thoroughly ghostly condition, being
only a name for the fact that the 'content' of experience _is known_. It
loses personal form and activity--these passing over to the content--and
becomes a bare _Bewusstheit_ or _Bewusstsein ueberhaupt_, of which in its
own right absolutely nothing can be said.
I believe that 'consciousness,' when once it has evaporated to this
estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing altogether.
It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first
principles. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the
faint rumor left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of
philosophy. During the past year, I have read a number of articles whose
authors seemed just on the point of abandoning the notion of
consciousness,[3] and substituting for it that of an absolute experience
not due to two factors. But they were not quite radical enough, not
quite daring enough in their negations. For twenty years past I have
mistrusted 'consciousness' as an entity; for seven or eight years past I
have suggested its non-existence to my students, and tried to give them
its pragmatic equivalent in realities of experience. It seems to me that
the hour is ripe for it to be openly and universally discarded.
To deny plumply that 'consciousness' exists seems so absurd on the face
of it--for undeniably 'thoughts' do exist--that I fear some readers will
follow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only
to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most
emphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I mean, no
aboriginal stuff or quality of being,[4] contrasted with that of which
material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made;
but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for
the performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That
function is _knowing_. 'Consciousness' is supposed necessary to explain
the fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known. Whoever
blots out the notion of consciousness from his list of first principles
must still provide in some way for that function's being carried on.
I
My thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there is only
one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything
is composed, and if we call that stuff 'pure experience,' then knowing
can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one
another into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation
itself is a part of pure experience; one of its 'terms' becomes the
subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower,[5] the other becomes the
object known. This will need much explanation before it can be
understood. The best way to get it understood is to contrast it with the
alternative view; and for that we may take the recentest alternative,
that in which the evaporation of the definite soul-substance has
proceeded as far as it can go without being yet complete. If neo-Kantism
has expelled earlier forms of dualism, we shall have expelled all forms
if we are able to expel neo-Kantism in its turn.
For the thinkers I call neo-Kantian, the word consciousness to-day does
no more than signalize the fact that experience is indefeasibly
dualistic in structure. It means that not subject, not object, but
object-plus-subject is the minimum that can actually be. The
subject-object distinction meanwhile is entirely different from that
between mind and matter, from that between body and soul. Souls were
detachable, had separate destinies; things could happen to them. To
consciousness as such nothing can happen, for, timeless itself, it is
only a witness of happenings in time, in which it plays no part. It is,
in a word, but the logical correlative of 'content' in an Experience of
which the peculiarity is that _fact comes to light_ in it, that
_awareness of content_ takes place. Consciousness as such is entirely
impersonal--'self' and its activities belong to the content. To say that
I am self-conscious, or conscious of putting forth volition, means only
that certain contents, for which 'self' and 'effort of will' are the
names, are not without witness as they occur.
Thus, for these belated drinkers at the Kantian spring, we should have
to admit consciousness as an 'epistemological' necessity, even if we had
no direct evidence of its being there.
But in addition to this, we are supposed by almost every one to have an
immediate consciousness of consciousness itself. When the world of outer
fact ceases to be materially present, and we merely recall it in memory,
or fancy it, the consciousness is believed to stand out and to be felt
as a kind of impalpable inner flowing, which, once known in this sort of
experience, may equally be detected in presentations of the outer world.
"The moment we try to fix our attention upon consciousness and to see
_what_, distinctly, it is," says a recent writer, "it seems to vanish.
It seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When we try to
introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue; the other
element is as if it were diaphanous. Yet it _can_ be distinguished, if
we look attentively enough, and know that there is something to look
for."[6] "Consciousness" (Bewusstheit), says another philosopher, "is
inexplicable and hardly describable, yet all conscious experiences have
this in common that what we call their content has this peculiar
reference to a centre for which 'self' is the name, in virtue of which
reference alone the content is subjectively given, or appears ... While
in this way consciousness, or reference to a self, is the only thing
which distinguishes a conscious content from any sort of being that
might be there with no one conscious of it, yet this only ground of the
distinction defies all closer explanations. The existence of
consciousness, although it is the fundamental fact of psychology, can
indeed be laid down as certain, can be brought out by analysis, but can
neither be defined nor deduced from anything but itself."[7]
'Can be brought out by analysis,' this author says. This supposes that
the consciousness is one element, moment, factor--call it what you
like--of an experience of essentially dualistic inner constitution, from
which, if you abstract the content, the consciousness will remain
revealed to its own eye. Experience, at this rate, would be much like a
paint of which the world pictures were made. Paint has a dual
constitution, involving, as it does, a menstruum[8] (oil, size or what
not) and a mass of content in the form of pigment suspended therein. We
can get the pure menstruum by letting the pigment settle, and the pure
pigment by pouring off the size or oil. We operate here by physical
subtraction; and the usual view is, that by mental subtraction we can
separate the two factors of experience in an analogous way--not
isolating them entirely, but distinguishing them enough to know that
they are two.
II
Now my contention is exactly the reverse of this. _Experience, I
believe, has no such inner duplicity; and the separation of it into
consciousness and content comes, not by way of subtraction, but by way
of addition_--the addition, to a given concrete piece of it, of other
sets of experiences, in connection with which severally its use or
function may be of two different kinds. The paint will also serve here
as an illustration. In a pot in a paint-shop, along with other paints,
it serves in its entirety as so much saleable matter. Spread on a
canvas, with other paints around it, it represents, on the contrary, a
feature in a picture and performs a spiritual function. Just so, I
maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one
context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of
'consciousness'; while in a different context the same undivided bit of
experience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective 'content.'
In a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a
thing. And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have
every right to speak of it as subjective and objective both at once. The
dualism connoted by such double-barrelled terms as 'experience,'
'phenomenon,' 'datum,' '_Vorfindung_'--terms which, in philosophy at any
rate, tend more and more to replace the single-barrelled terms of
'thought' and 'thing'--that dualism, I say, is still preserved in this
account, but reinterpreted, so that, instead of being mysterious and
elusive, it becomes verifiable and concrete. It is an affair of
relations, it falls outside, not inside, the single experience
considered, and can always be particularized and defined.
The entering wedge for this more concrete way of understanding the
dualism was fashioned by Locke when he made the word 'idea' stand
indifferently for thing and thought, and by Berkeley when he said that
what common sense means by realities is exactly what the philosopher
means by ideas. Neither Locke nor Berkeley thought his truth out into
perfect clearness, but it seems to me that the conception I am defending
does little more than consistently carry out the 'pragmatic' method
which they were the first to use.
If the reader will take his own experiences, he will see what I mean.
Let him begin with a perceptual experience, the 'presentation,' so
called, of a physical object, his actual field of vision, the room he
sits in, with the book he is reading as its centre; and let him for the
present treat this complex object in the common-sense way as being
'really' what it seems to be, namely, a collection of physical things
cut out from an environing world of other physical things with which
these physical things have actual or potential relations. Now at the
same time it is just _those self-same things_ which his mind, as we say,
perceives; and the whole philosophy of perception from Democritus's time
downwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is
evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer
space and in a person's mind. 'Representative' theories of perception
avoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the
reader's sense of life, which knows no intervening mental image but
seems to see the room and the book immediately just as they physically
exist.
The puzzle of how the one identical room can be in two places is at
bottom just the puzzle of how one identical point can be on two lines.
It can, if it be situated at their intersection; and similarly, if the
'pure experience' of the room were a place of intersection of two
processes, which connected it with different groups of associates
respectively, it could be counted twice over, as belonging to either
group, and spoken of loosely as existing in two places, although it
would remain all the time a numerically single thing.
Well, the experience is a member of diverse processes that can be
followed away from it along entirely different lines. The one
self-identical thing has so many relations to the rest of experience
that you can take it in disparate systems of association, and treat it
as belonging with opposite contexts.[9] In one of these contexts it is
your 'field of consciousness'; in another it is 'the room in which you
sit,' and it enters both contexts in its wholeness, giving no pretext
for being said to attach itself to consciousness by one of its parts or
aspects, and to outer reality by another. What are the two processes,
now, into which the room-experience simultaneously enters in this way?
One of them is the reader's personal biography, the other is the history
of the house of which the room is part. The presentation, the
experience, the _that_ in short (for until we have decided _what_ it is
it must be a mere _that_) is the last term of a train of sensations,
emotions, decisions, movements, classifications, expectations, etc.,
ending in the present, and the first term of a series of similar 'inner'
operations extending into the future, on the reader's part. On the other
hand, the very same _that_ is the _terminus ad quem_ of a lot of
previous physical operations, carpentering, papering, furnishing,
warming, etc., and the _terminus a quo_ of a lot of future ones, in
which it will be concerned when undergoing the destiny of a physical
room. The physical and the mental operations form curiously incompatible
groups. As a room, the experience has occupied that spot and had that
environment for thirty years. As your field of consciousness it may
never have existed until now. As a room, attention will go on to
discover endless new details in it. As your mental state merely, few new
ones will emerge under attention's eye. As a room, it will take an
earthquake, or a gang of men, and in any case a certain amount of time,
to destroy it. As your subjective state, the closing of your eyes, or
any instantaneous play of your fancy will suffice. In the real world,
fire will consume it. In your mind, you can let fire play over it
without effect. As an outer object, you must pay so much a month to
inhabit it. As an inner content, you may occupy it for any length of
time rent-free. If, in short, you follow it in the mental direction,
taking it along with events of personal biography solely, all sorts of
things are true of it which are false, and false of it which are true if
you treat it as a real thing experienced, follow it in the physical
direction, and relate it to associates in the outer world.
III
So far, all seems plain sailing, but my thesis will probably grow less
plausible to the reader when I pass from percepts to concepts, or from
the case of things presented to that of things remote. I believe,
nevertheless, that here also the same law holds good. If we take
conceptual manifolds, or memories, or fancies, they also are in their
first intention mere bits of pure experience, and, as such, are single
_thats_ which act in one context as objects, and in another context
figure as mental states. By taking them in their first intention, I mean
ignoring their relation to possible perceptual experiences with which
they may be connected, which they may lead to and terminate in, and
which then they may be supposed to 'represent.' Taking them in this way
first, we confine the problem to a world merely 'thought-of' and not
directly felt or seen.[10] This world, just like the world of percepts,
comes to us at first as a chaos of experiences, but lines of order soon
get traced. We find that any bit of it which we may cut out as an
example is connected with distinct groups of associates, just as our
perceptual experiences are, that these associates link themselves with
it by different relations,[11] and that one forms the inner history of a
person, while the other acts as an impersonal 'objective' world, either
spatial and temporal, or else merely logical or mathematical, or
otherwise 'ideal.'
The first obstacle on the part of the reader to seeing that these
non-perceptual experiences have objectivity as well as subjectivity will
probably be due to the intrusion into his mind of _percepts_, that third
group of associates with which the non-perceptual experiences have
relations, and which, as a whole, they 'represent,' standing to them as
thoughts to things. This important function of the non-perceptual
experiences complicates the question and confuses it; for, so used are
we to treat percepts as the sole genuine realities that, unless we keep
them out of the discussion, we tend altogether to overlook the
objectivity that lies in non-perceptual experiences by themselves. We
treat them, 'knowing' percepts as they do, as through and through
subjective, and say that they are wholly constituted of the stuff called
consciousness, using this term now for a kind of entity, after the
fashion which I am seeking to refute.[12]
Abstracting, then, from percepts altogether, what I maintain is, that
any single non-perceptual experience tends to get counted twice over,
just as a perceptual experience does, figuring in one context as an
object or field of objects, in another as a state of mind: and all this
without the least internal self-diremption on its own part into
consciousness and content. It is all consciousness in one taking; and,
in the other, all content.
I find this objectivity of non-perceptual experiences, this complete
parallelism in point of reality between the presently felt and the
remotely thought, so well set forth in a page of Muensterberg's
_Grundzuege_, that I will quote it as it stands.
"I may only think of my objects," says Professor Muensterberg; "yet, in
my living thought they stand before me exactly as perceived objects
would do, no matter how different the two ways of apprehending them may
be in their genesis. The book here lying on the table before me, and the
book in the next room of which I think and which I mean to get, are both
in the same sense given realities for me, realities which I acknowledge
and of which I take account. If you agree that the perceptual object is
not an idea within me, but that percept and thing, as indistinguishably
one, are really experienced _there, outside_, you ought not to believe
that the merely thought-of object is hid away inside of the thinking
subject. The object of which I think, and of whose existence I take
cognizance without letting it now work upon my senses, occupies its
definite place in the outer world as much as does the object which I
directly see."
"What is true of the here and the there, is also true of the now and the
then. I know of the thing which is present and perceived, but I know
also of the thing which yesterday was but is no more, and which I only
remember. Both can determine my present conduct, both are parts of the
reality of which I keep account. It is true that of much of the past I
am uncertain, just as I am uncertain of much of what is present if it be
but dimly perceived. But the interval of time does not in principle
alter my relation to the object, does not transform it from an object
known into a mental state.... The things in the room here which I
survey, and those in my distant home of which I think, the things of
this minute and those of my long-vanished boyhood, influence and decide
me alike, with a reality which my experience of them directly feels.
They both make up my real world, they make it directly, they do not have
first to be introduced to me and mediated by ideas which now and here
arise within me.... This not-me character of my recollections and
expectations does not imply that the external objects of which I am
aware in those experiences should necessarily be there also for others.
The objects of dreamers and hallucinated persons are wholly without
general validity. But even were they centaurs and golden mountains, they
still would be 'off there,' in fairy land, and not 'inside' of
ourselves."[13]
This certainly is the immediate, primary, naif, or practical way of
taking our thought-of world. Were there no perceptual world to serve as
its 'reductive,' in Taine's sense, by being 'stronger' and more
genuinely 'outer' (so that the whole merely thought-of world seems weak
and inner in comparison), our world of thought would be the only world,
and would enjoy complete reality in our belief. This actually happens in
our dreams, and in our day-dreams so long as percepts do not interrupt
them.
And yet, just as the seen room (to go back to our late example) is
_also_ a field of consciousness, so the conceived or recollected room is
_also_ a state of mind; and the doubling-up of the experience has in
both cases similar grounds.
The room thought-of, namely, has many thought-of couplings with many
thought-of things. Some of these couplings are inconstant, others are
stable. In the reader's personal history the room occupies a single
date--he saw it only once perhaps, a year ago. Of the house's history,
on the other hand, it forms a permanent ingredient. Some couplings
have the curious stubbornness, to borrow Royce's term, of fact; others
show the fluidity of fancy--we let them come and go as we please.
Grouped with the rest of its house, with the name of its town, of its
owner, builder, value, decorative plan, the room maintains a definite
foothold, to which, if we try to loosen it, it tends to return, and to
reassert itself with force.[14] With these associates, in a word, it
coheres, while to other houses, other towns, other owners, etc., it
shows no tendency to cohere at all. The two collections, first of its
cohesive, and, second, of its loose associates, inevitably come to be
contrasted. We call the first collection the system of external
realities, in the midst of which the room, as 'real,' exists; the
other we call the stream of our internal thinking, in which, as a
'mental image,' it for a moment floats.[15] The room thus again gets
counted twice over. It plays two different roles, being _Gedanke_ and
_Gedachtes_, the thought-of-an-object, and the object-thought-of, both
in one; and all this without paradox or mystery, just as the same
material thing may be both low and high, or small and great, or bad
and good, because of its relations to opposite parts of an environing
world.
As 'subjective' we say that the experience represents; as 'objective'
it is represented. What represents and what is represented is here
numerically the same; but we must remember that no dualism of being
represented and representing resides in the experience _per se_. In its
pure state, or when isolated, there is no self-splitting of it into
consciousness and what the consciousness is 'of.' Its subjectivity and
objectivity are functional attributes solely, realized only when the
experience is 'taken,' _i.e._, talked-of, twice, considered along with
its two differing contexts respectively, by a new retrospective
experience, of which that whole past complication now forms the fresh
content.
The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure'
experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject
as yet. For the time being, it is plain, unqualified actuality, or
existence, a simple _that_. In this _naif_ immediacy it is of course
_valid_; it is _there_, we _act_ upon it; and the doubling of it in
retrospection into a state of mind and a reality intended thereby, is
just one of the acts. The 'state of mind,' first treated explicitly as
such in retrospection, will stand corrected or confirmed, and the
retrospective experience in its turn will get a similar treatment; but
the immediate experience in its passing is always 'truth,'[16] practical
truth, _something to act on_, at its own movement. If the world were
then and there to go out like a candle, it would remain truth absolute
and objective, for it would be 'the last word,' would have no critic,
and no one would ever oppose the thought in it to the reality
intended.[17]
I think I may now claim to have made my thesis clear. Consciousness
connotes a kind of external relation, and does not denote a special
stuff or way of being. _The peculiarity of our experiences, that they
not only are, but are known, which their 'conscious' quality is invoked
to explain, is better explained by their relations--these relations
themselves being experiences--to one another._
IV
Were I now to go on to treat of the knowing of perceptual by conceptual
experiences, it would again prove to be an affair of external relations.
One experience would be the knower, the other the reality known; and I
could perfectly well define, without the notion of 'consciousness,' what
the knowing actually and practically amounts to--leading-towards,
namely, and terminating-in percepts, through a series of transitional
experiences which the world supplies. But I will not treat of this,
space being insufficient.[18] I will rather consider a few objections
that are sure to be urged against the entire theory as it stands.
V
First of all, this will be asked: "If experience has not 'conscious'
existence, if it be not partly made of 'consciousness,' of what then is
it made? Matter we know, and thought we know, and conscious content we
know, but neutral and simple 'pure experience' is something we know not
at all. Say _what_ it consists of--for it must consist of something--or
be willing to give it up!"
To this challenge the reply is easy. Although for fluency's sake I
myself spoke early in this article of a stuff of pure experience, I have
now to say that there is no _general_ stuff of which experience at large
is made. There are as many stuffs as there are 'natures' in the things
experienced. If you ask what any one bit of pure experience is made of,
the answer is always the same: "It is made of _that_, of just what
appears, of space, of intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness, or
what not." Shadworth Hodgson's analysis here leaves nothing to be
desired.[19] Experience is only a collective name for all these sensible
natures, and save for time and space (and, if you like, for 'being')
there appears no universal element of which all things are made.
VI
The next objection is more formidable, in fact it sounds quite crushing
when one hears it first.
"If it be the self-same piece of pure experience, taken twice over, that
serves now as thought and now as thing"--so the objection runs--"how
comes it that its attributes should differ so fundamentally in the two
takings. As thing, the experience is extended; as thought, it occupies
no space or place. As thing, it is red, hard, heavy; but who ever heard
of a red, hard or heavy thought? Yet even now you said that an
experience is made of just what appears, and what appears is just such
adjectives. How can the one experience in its thing-function be made of
them, consist of them, carry them as its own attributes, while in its
thought-function it disowns them and attributes them elsewhere. There is
a self-contradiction here from which the radical dualism of thought and
thing is the only truth that can save us. Only if the thought is one
kind of being can the adjectives exist in it 'intentionally' (to use the
scholastic term); only if the thing is another kind, can they exist in
it constitutively and energetically. No simple subject can take the same
adjectives and at one time be qualified by it, and at another time be
merely 'of' it, as of something only meant or known."
The solution insisted on by this objector, like many other common-sense
solutions, grows the less satisfactory the more one turns it in one's
mind. To begin with, _are_ thought and thing as heterogeneous as is
commonly said?
No one denies that they have some categories in common. Their relations
to time are identical. Both, moreover, may have parts (for psychologists
in general treat thoughts as having them); and both may be complex or
simple. Both are of kinds, can be compared, added and subtracted and
arranged in serial orders. All sorts of adjectives qualify our thoughts
which appear incompatible with consciousness, being as such a bare
diaphaneity. For instance, they are natural and easy, or laborious. They
are beautiful, happy, intense, interesting, wise, idiotic, focal,
marginal, insipid, confused, vague, precise, rational, casual, general,
particular, and many things besides. Moreover, the chapters on
'Perception' in the psychology-books are full of facts that make for the
essential homogeneity of thought with thing. How, if 'subject' and
'object' were separated 'by the whole diameter of being,' and had no
attributes in common, could it be so hard to tell, in a presented and
recognized material object, what part comes in through the sense-organs
and what part comes 'out of one's own head'? Sensations and
apperceptive ideas fuse here so intimately that you can no more tell
where one begins and the other ends, than you can tell, in those cunning
circular panoramas that have lately been exhibited, where the real
foreground and the painted canvas join together.[20]
Descartes for the first time defined thought as the absolutely
unextended, and later philosophers have accepted the description as
correct. But what possible meaning has it to say that, when we think of
a foot-rule or a square yard, extension is not attributable to our
thought? Of every extended object the _adequate_ mental picture must
have all the extension of the object itself. The difference between
objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context
solely. In the mind the various extents maintain no necessarily stubborn
order relatively to each other, while in the physical world they bound
each other stably, and, added together, make the great enveloping Unit
which we believe in and call real Space. As 'outer,' they carry
themselves adversely, so to speak, to one another, exclude one another
and maintain their distances; while, as 'inner,' their order is loose,
and they form a _durcheinander_ in which unity is lost.[21] But to argue
from this that inner experience is absolutely inextensive seems to me
little short of absurd. The two worlds differ, not by the presence or
absence of extension, but by the relations of the extensions which in
both worlds exist.
Does not this case of extension now put us on the track of truth in the
case of other qualities? It does; and I am surprised that the facts
should not have been noticed long ago. Why, for example, do we call a
fire hot, and water wet, and yet refuse to say that our mental state,
when it is 'of' these objects, is either wet or hot? 'Intentionally,' at
any rate, and when the mental state is a vivid image, hotness and
wetness are in it just as much as they are in the physical experience.
The reason is this, that, as the general chaos of all our experiences
gets sifted, we find that there are some fires that will always burn
sticks and always warm our bodies, and that there are some waters that
will always put out fires; while there are other fires and waters that
will not act at all. The general group of experiences that _act_, that
do not only possess their natures intrinsically, but wear them
adjectively and energetically, turning them against one another, comes
inevitably to be contrasted with the group whose members, having
identically the same natures, fail to manifest them in the 'energetic'
way.[22] I make for myself now an experience of blazing fire; I place it
near my body; but it does not warm me in the least. I lay a stick upon
it, and the stick either burns or remains green, as I please. I call up
water, and pour it on the fire, and absolutely no difference ensues. I
account for all such facts by calling this whole train of experiences
unreal, a mental train. Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks;
mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out
even a mental fire. Mental knives may be sharp, but they won't cut real
wood. Mental triangles are pointed, but their points won't wound. With
'real' objects, on the contrary, consequences always accrue; and thus
the real experiences get sifted from the mental ones, the things from
our thoughts of them, fanciful or true, and precipitated together as the
stable part of the whole experience-chaos, under the name of the
physical world. Of this our perceptual experiences are the nucleus, they
being the originally strong experiences. We add a lot of conceptual
experiences to them, making these strong also in imagination, and
building out the remoter parts of the physical world by their means; and
around this core of reality the world of laxly connected fancies and
mere rhapsodical objects floats like a bank of clouds. In the clouds,
all sorts of rules are violated which in the core are kept. Extensions
there can be indefinitely located; motion there obeys no Newton's laws.
VII
There is a peculiar class of experiences to which, whether we take them
as subjective or as objective, we _assign_ their several natures as
attributes, because in both contexts they affect their associates
actively, though in neither quite as 'strongly' or as sharply as things
affect one another by their physical energies. I refer here to
_appreciations_, which form an ambiguous sphere of being, belonging with
emotion on the one hand, and having objective 'value' on the other, yet
seeming not quite inner nor quite outer, as if a diremption had begun
but had not made itself complete.[23]