qu'elles _sont_ avec des qualites propres; d'autre part, qu'elles sont
rapportees a d'autres parties et _sues_--l'opinion regnante la constate
et l'explique par un dualisme fondamental de constitution appartenant a
chaque morceau d'experience en propre. Dans cette feuille de papier il
n'y a pas seulement, dit-on, le contenu, blancheur, minceur, etc., mais
il y a ce second fait de la conscience de cette blancheur et de cette
minceur. Cette fonction d'etre "rapporte," de faire partie de la trame
entiere d'une experience plus comprehensive, on l'erige en fait
ontologique, et on loge ce fait dans l'interieur meme du papier, en
l'accouplant a sa blancheur et a sa minceur. Ce n'est pas un rapport
extrinseque qu'on suppose, c'est une moitie du phenomene meme.
Je crois qu'en somme on se represente la realite comme constituee de la
facon dont sont faites les "couleurs" qui nous servent a la peinture. Il
y a d'abord des matieres colorantes qui repondent au contenu, et il y a
un vehicule, huile ou colle, qui les tient en suspension et qui repond a
la conscience. C'est un dualisme complet, ou, en employant certains
procedes, on peut separer chaque element de l'autre par voie de
soustraction. C'est ainsi qu'on nous assure qu'en faisant un grand
effort d'abstraction introspective, nous pouvons saisir notre
conscience sur le vif, comme une activite spirituelle pure, en
negligeant a peu pres completement les matieres qu'a un moment donne
elle eclaire.
Maintenant je vous demande si on ne pourrait pas tout aussi bien
renverser absolument cette maniere de voir. Supposons, en effet, que la
realite premiere soit de nature neutre, et appelons-la par quelque nom
encore ambigu, comme _phenomene_, _donne_, _Vorfindung_. Moi-meme j'en
parle volontiers au pluriel, et je lui donne le nom d'_experiences
pures_. Ce sera un monisme, si vous voulez, mais un monisme tout a fait
rudimentaire et absolument oppose au soi-disant monisme bilateral du
positivisme scientifique ou spinoziste.
Ces experiences pures existent et se succedent, entrent dans des
rapports infiniment varies les unes avec les autres, rapports qui sont
eux-memes des parties essentielles de la trame des experiences. Il y a
"Conscience" de ces rapports au meme titre qu'il y a "Conscience" de
leurs termes. Il en resulte que des _groupes_ d'experiences se font
remarquer et distinguer, et qu'une seule et meme experience, vu la
grande variete de ses rapports, peut jouer un role dans plusieurs
groupes a la fois. C'est ainsi que dans un certain contexte de voisins,
elle serait classee comme un phenomene physique, tandis que dans un
autre entourage elle figurerait comme un fait de conscience, a peu pres
comme une meme particule d'encre peut appartenir simultanement a deux
lignes, l'une verticale, l'autre horizontale, pourvu qu'elle soit situee
a leur intersection.
Prenons, pour fixer nos idees, l'experience que nous avons a ce moment
du local ou nous sommes, de ces murailles, de cette table, de ces
chaises, de cet espace. Dans cette experience pleine, concrete et
indivise, telle qu'elle est la, donnee, le monde physique objectif et le
monde interieur et personnel de chacun de nous se rencontrent et se
fusionnent comme des lignes se fusionnent a leur intersection. Comme
chose physique, cette salle a des rapports avec tout le reste du
batiment, batiment que nous autres nous ne connaissons et ne connaitrons
pas. Elle doit son existence a toute une histoire de financiers,
d'architectes, d'ouvriers. Elle pese sur le sol; elle durera
indefiniment dans le temps; si le feu y eclatait, les chaises et la
table qu'elle contient seraient vite reduites en cendres.
Comme experience personnelle, au contraire, comme chose "rapportee,"
connue, consciente, cette salle a de tout autres tenants et
aboutissants. Ses antecedents ne sont pas des ouvriers, ce sont nos
pensees respectives de tout a l'heure. Bientot elle ne figurera que
comme un fait fugitif dans nos biographies, associe a d'agreables
souvenirs. Comme experience psychique, elle n'a aucun poids, son
ameublement n'est pas combustible. Elle n'exerce de force physique que
sur nos seuls cerveaux, et beaucoup d'entre nous nient encore cette
influence; tandis que la salle physique est en rapport d'influence
physique avec tout le reste du monde.
Et pourtant c'est de la meme salle absolument qu'il s'agit dans les deux
cas. Tant que nous ne faisons pas de physique speculative, tant que
nous nous placons dans le sens commun, c'est la salle vue et sentie qui
est bien la salle physique. De quoi parlons-nous donc si ce n'est de
_cela_, de cette meme partie de la nature materielle que tous nos
esprits, a ce meme moment, embrassent, qui entre telle quelle dans
l'experience actuelle et intime de chacun de nous, et que notre souvenir
regardera toujours comme une partie integrante de notre histoire. C'est
absolument une meme etoffe qui figure simultanement, selon le contexte
que l'on considere, comme fait materiel et physique, ou comme fait de
conscience intime.
Je crois donc qu'on ne saurait traiter conscience et matiere comme etant
d'essence disparate. On n'obtient ni l'une ni l'autre par soustraction,
en negligeant chaque fois l'autre moitie d'une experience de composition
double. Les experiences sont au contraire primitivement de nature plutot
simple. Elles _deviennent_ conscientes dans leur entier, elles
_deviennent_ physiques dans leur entier; et c'est _par voie d'addition_
que ce resultat se realise. Pour autant que des experiences se
prolongent dans le temps, entrent dans des rapports d'influence
physique, se brisant, se chauffant, s'eclairant, etc., mutuellement,
nous en faisons un groupe a part que nous appelons le monde physique.
Pour autant, au contraire, qu'elles sont fugitives, inertes
physiquement, que leur succession ne suit pas d'ordre determine, mais
semble plutot obeir a des caprices emotifs, nous en faisons un autre
groupe que nous appelons le monde psychique. C'est en entrant a present
dans un grand nombre de ces groupes psychiques que cette salle devient
maintenant chose consciente, chose rapportee, chose sue. En faisant
desormais partie de nos biographies respectives, elle ne sera pas suivie
de cette sotte et monotone repetition d'elle-meme dans le temps qui
caracterise son existence physique. Elle sera suivie, au contraire, par
d'autres experiences qui seront discontinues avec elle, ou qui auront ce
genre tout particulier de continuite que nous appelons souvenir. Demain,
elle aura eu sa place dans chacun de nos passes; mais les presents
divers auxquels tous ces passes seront lies demain seront bien
differents du present dont cette salle jouira demain comme entite
physique.
Les deux genres de groupes sont formes d'experiences, mais les rapports
des experiences entre elles different d'un groupe a l'autre. C'est donc
par addition d'autres phenomenes qu'un phenomene donne devient conscient
ou connu, ce n'est pas par un dedoublement d'essence interieure. La
connaissance des choses leur _survient_, elle ne leur est pas immanente.
Ce n'est le fait ni d'un moi transcendental, ni d'une _Bewusstheit_ ou
acte de conscience qui les animerait chacune. _Elles se connaissent
l'une l'autre_, ou plutot il y en a qui connaissent les autres; et le
rapport que nous nommons connaissance n'est lui-meme, dans beaucoup de
cas, qu'une suite d'experiences intermediaires parfaitement susceptibles
d'etre decrites en termes concrets. Il n'est nullement le mystere
transcendant ou se sont complus tant de philosophes.
Mais ceci nous menerait beaucoup trop loin. Je ne puis entrer ici dans
tous les replis de la theorie de la connaissance, ou de ce que, vous
autres Italiens, vous appelez la gnoseologie. Je dois me contenter de
ces remarques ecourtees, ou simples suggestions, qui sont, je le crains,
encore bien obscures faute des developpements necessaires.
Permettez donc que je me resume--trop sommairement, et en style
dogmatique--dans les six theses suivantes:
* * * * *
_1^o La Conscience, telle qu'on l'entend ordinairement, n'existe pas,
pas plus que la Matiere, a laquelle Berkeley a donne le coup de grace;_
_2^o Ce qui existe et forme la part de verite que le mot de "Conscience"
recouvre, c'est la susceptibilite que possedent les parties de
l'experience d'etre rapportees ou connues;_
_3^o Cette susceptibilite s'explique par le fait que certaines
experiences peuvent mener les unes aux autres par des experiences
intermediaires nettement caracterisees, de telle sorte que les unes se
trouvent jouer le role de choses connues, les autres celui de sujets
connaissants;_
_4^o On peut parfaitement definir ces deux roles sans sortir de la
trame de l'experience meme, et sans invoquer rien de transcendant;_
_5^o Les attributions sujet et objet, represente et representatif, chose
et pensee, signifient donc une distinction pratique qui est de la
derniere importance, mais qui est d'ordre_ FONCTIONNEL _seulement, et
nullement ontologique comme le dualisme classique se la represente;_
_6^o En fin de compte, les choses et les pensees ne sont point
foncierement heterogenes, mais elles sont faites d'une meme etoffe,
etoffe qu'on ne peut definir comme telle, mais seulement eprouver, et
que l'on peut nommer, si on veut, l'etoffe de l'experience en general._
FOOTNOTES:
[116] [A communication made (in French) at the Fifth International
Congress of Psychology, in Rome, April 30, 1905. It is reprinted from
the _Archives de Psychologie_, vol. V, No. 17, June, 1905.] Cette
communication est le resume, forcement tres condense, de vues que
l'auteur a exposees, au cours de ces derniers mois, en une serie
d'articles publies dans le _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods_, 1904 et 1905. [The series of articles referred to
is reprinted above. ED.]
[117] _The Sense of Beauty_, pp. 44 ff.
[118] _The Life of Reason_ [vol. I, "Reason in Common Sense," p. 142].
IX
IS RADICAL EMPIRICISM SOLIPSISTIC?[119]
If all the criticisms which the humanistic _Weltanschauung_ is receiving
were as _sachgemaess_ as Mr. Bode's,[120] the truth of the matter would
more rapidly clear up. Not only is it excellently well written, but it
brings its own point of view out clearly, and admits of a perfectly
straight reply.
The argument (unless I fail to catch it) can be expressed as follows:
If a series of experiences be supposed, no one of which is endowed
immediately with the self-transcendent function of reference to a
reality beyond itself, no motive will occur within the series for
supposing anything beyond it to exist. It will remain subjective, and
contentedly subjective, both as a whole and in its several parts.
Radical empiricism, trying, as it does, to account for objective
knowledge by means of such a series, egregiously fails. It can not
explain how the notion of a physical order, as distinguished from a
subjectively biographical order, of experiences, ever arose.
It pretends to explain the notion of a physical order, but does so by
playing fast and loose with the concept of objective reference. On the
one hand, it denies that such reference implies self-transcendency on
the part of any one experience; on the other hand, it claims that
experiences _point_. But, critically considered, there can be no
pointing unless self-transcendency be also allowed. The conjunctive
function of pointing, as I have assumed it, is, according to my critic,
vitiated by the fallacy of attaching a bilateral relation to a term _a
quo_, as if it could stick out substantively and maintain itself in
existence in advance of the term _ad quem_ which is equally required for
it to be a concretely experienced fact. If the relation be made
concrete, the term _ad quem_ is involved, which would mean (if I succeed
in apprehending Mr. Bode rightly) that this latter term, although not
empirically there, is yet _noetically_ there, in advance--in other words
it would mean that any experience that 'points' must already have
transcended itself, in the ordinary 'epistemological' sense of the word
transcend.
Something like this, if I understand Mr. Bode's text, is the upshot of
his state of mind. It is a reasonable sounding state of mind, but it is
exactly the state of mind which radical empiricism, by its doctrine of
the reality of conjunctive relations, seeks to dispel. I very much
fear--so difficult does mutual understanding seem in these exalted
regions--that my able critic has failed to understand that doctrine as
it is meant to be understood. I suspect that he performs on all these
conjunctive relations (of which the aforesaid 'pointing' is only one)
the usual rationalistic act of substitution--he takes them not as they
are given in their first intention, as parts constitutive of
experience's living flow, but only as they appear in retrospect, each
fixed as a determinate object of conception, static, therefore, and
contained within itself.
Against this rationalistic tendency to treat experience as chopped up
into discontinuous static objects, radical empiricism protests. It
insists on taking conjunctions at their 'face-value,' just as they come.
Consider, for example, such conjunctions as 'and,' 'with,' 'near,'
'_plus_,' 'towards.' While we live in such conjunctions our state is one
of _transition_ in the most literal sense. We are expectant of a 'more'
to come, and before the more _has_ come, the transition, nevertheless,
is directed _towards_ it. I fail otherwise to see how, if one kind of
more comes, there should be satisfaction and feeling of fulfilment; but
disappointment if the more comes in another shape. One more will
continue, another more will arrest or deflect the direction, in which
our experience is moving even now. We can not, it is true, _name_ our
different living 'ands' or 'withs' except by naming the different terms
towards which they are moving us, but we _live_ their specifications and
differences before those terms explicitly arrive. Thus, though the
various 'ands' are all bilateral relations, each requiring a term _ad
quem_ to define it when viewed in retrospect and articulately conceived,
yet in its living moment any one of them may be treated as if it 'stuck
out' from its term _a quo_ and pointed in a special direction, much as a
compass-needle (to use Mr. Bode's excellent simile) points at the pole,
even though it stirs not from its box.
In Professor Hoeffding's massive little article in _The Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_,[121] he quotes a saying
of Kierkegaard's to the effect that we live forwards, but we understand
backwards. Understanding backwards is, it must be confessed, a very
frequent weakness of philosophers, both of the rationalistic and of the
ordinary empiricist type. Radical empiricism alone insists on
understanding forwards also, and refuses to substitute static concepts
of the understanding for transitions in our moving life. A logic similar
to that which my critic seems to employ here should, it seems to me,
forbid him to say that our present is, while present, directed towards
our future, or that any physical movement can have direction until its
goal is actually reached.
At this point does it not seem as if the quarrel about
self-transcendency in knowledge might drop? Is it not a purely verbal
dispute? Call it self-transcendency or call it pointing, whichever you
like--it makes no difference so long as real transitions towards real
goals are admitted as things given _in_ experience, and among
experience's most indefeasible parts. Radical empiricism, unable to
close its eyes to the transitions caught _in actu_, accounts for the
self-transcendency or the pointing (whichever you may call it) as a
process that occurs within experience, as an empirically mediated thing
of which a perfectly definite description can be given. 'Epistemology,'
on the other hand, denies this; and pretends that the self-transcendency
is unmediated or, if mediated, then mediated in a super-empirical world.
To justify this pretension, epistemology has first to transform all our
conjunctions into static objects, and this, I submit, is an absolutely
arbitrary act. But in spite of Mr. Bode's mal-treatment of conjunctions,
as I understand them--and as I understand him--I believe that at bottom
we are fighting for nothing different, but are both defending the same
continuities of experience in different forms of words.
There are other criticisms in the article in question, but, as this
seems the most vital one, I will for the present, at any rate, leave
them untouched.
FOOTNOTES:
[119] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 9, April 27, 1905.]
[120] [B. H. Bode: "'Pure Experience' and the External World," _Journal
of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, vol. II, 1905, p.
128.]
[121] Vol. II, [1905], pp. 85-92.
X
MR. PITKIN'S REFUTATION OF 'RADICAL EMPIRICISM'[122]
Although Mr. Pitkin does not name me in his acute article on radical
empiricism,[123] [...] I fear that some readers, knowing me to have
applied that name to my own doctrine, may possibly consider themselves
to have been in at my death.
In point of fact my withers are entirely unwrung. I have, indeed,
said[124] that 'to be radical, an empiricism must not admit into its
constructions any element that is not directly experienced.' But in my
own radical empiricism this is only a _methodological postulate_, not a
conclusion supposed to flow from the intrinsic absurdity of
transempirical objects. I have never felt the slightest respect for the
idealistic arguments which Mr. Pitkin attacks and of which Ferrier made
such striking use; and I am perfectly willing to admit any number of
noumenal beings or events into philosophy if only their pragmatic value
can be shown.
Radical empiricism and pragmatism have so many misunderstandings to
suffer from, that it seems my duty not to let this one go any farther,
uncorrected.
* * * * *
Mr. Pitkin's 'reply' to me,[125] [...] perplexes me by the obscurity of
style which I find in almost all our younger philosophers. He asks me,
however, two direct questions which I understand, so I take the liberty
of answering.
First he asks: Do not experience and science show 'that countless things
are[126] experienced as that which they are not or are only partially?'
I reply: Yes, assuredly, as, for example, 'things' distorted by
refractive media, 'molecules,' or whatever else is taken to be more
ultimately real than the immediate content of the perceptive moment.
Secondly: "If experience is self-supporting[127] (in _any_ intelligible
sense) does this fact preclude the possibility of (a) something not
experienced and (b) action of experience upon a noumenon?"
My reply is: Assuredly not the possibility of either--how could it? Yet
in my opinion we should be wise not to _consider_ any thing or action of
that nature, and to restrict our universe of philosophic discourse to
what is experienced or, at least, experienceable.[128]
FOOTNOTES:
[122] [Reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods_, vol. III, No. 26, December 20, 1906; and _ibid._,
vol. IV, No. 4, February 14, 1907, where the original is entitled "A
Reply to Mr. Pitkin." ED.]
[123] [W. B. Pitkin: "A Problem of Evidence in Radical Empiricism,"
_ibid._, vol. III, No. 24, November 22, 1906. ED.]
[124] [Above, p. 42. ED.]
[125] ["In Reply to Professor James," _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology
and Scientific Methods_, vol. IV, No. 2, January 17, 1907. ED.]
[126] Mr. Pitkin inserts the clause: 'by reason of the very nature of
experience itself.' Not understanding just what reason is meant, I do
not include this clause in my answer.
[127] [See above, p. 193. ED.]
[128] [Elsewhere, in speaking of 'reality' as "conceptual or perceptual
experiences," the author says: "This is meant merely to exclude reality
of an 'unknowable' sort, of which no account in either perceptual or
conceptual terms can be given. It includes, of course, any amount of
empirical reality independent of the knower." _Meaning of Truth_, p.
100, note. ED.]
XI
HUMANISM AND TRUTH ONCE MORE.[129]
Mr. Joseph's criticism of my article 'Humanism and Truth'[130] is a
useful contribution to the general clearing up. He has seriously tried
to comprehend what the pragmatic movement may intelligibly mean; and if
he has failed, it is the fault neither of his patience nor of his
sincerity, but rather of stubborn tricks of thought which he could not
easily get rid of. Minute polemics, in which the parties try to rebut
every detail of each of the other's charges, are a useful exercise only
to the disputants. They can but breed confusion in a reader. I will
therefore ignore as much as possible the text of both our articles (mine
was inadequate enough) and treat once more the general objective
situation.
As I apprehend the movement towards humanism, it is based on no
particular discovery or principle that can be driven into one precise
formula which thereupon can be impaled upon a logical skewer. It is much
more like one of those secular changes that come upon public opinion
over-night, as it were, borne upon tides 'too full for sound or foam,'
that survive all the crudities and extravagances of their advocates,
that you can pin to no one absolutely essential statement, nor kill by
any one decisive stab.
Such have been the changes from aristocracy to democracy, from classic
to romantic taste, from theistic to pantheistic feeling, from static to
evolutionary ways of understanding life--changes of which we all have
been spectators. Scholasticism still opposes to such changes the method
of confutation by single decisive reasons, showing that the new view
involves self-contradiction, or traverses some fundamental principle.
This is like stopping a river by planting a stick in the middle of its
bed. Round your obstacle flows the water and 'gets there all the same.'
In reading Mr. Joseph, I am not a little reminded of those Catholic
writers who refute Darwinism by telling us that higher species can not
come from lower because _minus nequit gignere plus_, or that the notion
of transformation is absurd, for it implies that species tend to their
own destruction, and that would violate the principle that every reality
tends to persevere in its own shape. The point of view is too myopic,
too tight and close to take in the inductive argument. You can not
settle questions of fact by formal logic. I feel as if Mr. Joseph almost
pounced on my words singly, without giving the sentences time to get out
of my mouth.
The one condition of understanding humanism is to become
inductive-minded oneself, to drop rigorous definitions, and follow lines
of least resistance 'on the whole.' "In other words," Mr. Joseph may
probably say, "resolve your intellect into a kind of slush." "Even so,"
I make reply,--"if you will consent to use no politer word." For
humanism, conceiving the more 'true' as the more 'satisfactory' (Dewey's
term) has to renounce sincerely rectilinear arguments and ancient ideals
of rigor and finality. It is in just this temper of renunciation, so
different from that of pyrrhonistic scepticism, that the spirit of
humanism essentially consists. Satisfactoriness has to be measured by a
multitude of standards, of which some, for aught we know, may fail in
any given case; and what is 'more' satisfactory than any alternative in
sight, may to the end be a sum of _pluses_ and _minuses_, concerning
which we can only trust that by ulterior corrections and improvements a
maximum of the one and a minimum of the other may some day be
approached. It means a real change of heart, a break with absolutistic
hopes, when one takes up this view of the conditions of belief.
That humanism's critics have never imagined this attitude inwardly, is
shown by their invariable tactics. They do not get into it far enough to
see objectively and from without what their own opposite notion of
truth is. Mr. Joseph is possessed by some such notion; he thinks his
readers to be full of it, he obeys it, works from it, but never even
essays to tell us what it is. The nearest he comes to doing so is
where[131] he says it is the way "we ought to think," whether we be
psychologically compelled to or not.