Experiences, as understood in the vulgar sense, there are none
whatever. Our perceptions are purely token-values out of which
experiences may be derived in the same way that practical results may
be derived out of a sum of algebraical token-values by cancelling out
one against the other. Here must be borne in mind what was treated
of in our sixth Essay. With the perception “green” I get no positive
content of knowledge, but merely the fact “not-red, not-yellow,
not-blue,” and so forth.
At this point we are confronted by the so-called epistemological
problem, to the which, therefore, we now must devote some little
attention.
The question which forms the subject-matter of this problem is this:
How is it possible from bare perceptions, mere sense-impressions, ever
to arrive at conscious ideas, concepts, experiences?
This problem is associated above all with the name of Kant.
Starting with the idea that the sense-impressions received from
without, contain no element out of which experience, _i.e._ an inner
connection of individual impressions, could ever be developed, he
taught that in the subject there was contained a business capital, so
to speak, which, given _a priori_ to all experience, upon the occasion
of the activity of the organs of sense, came to fruition. This business
capital he called the given _a priori_ faculty of cognition.
The practical significance of this teaching lies not so much in itself
as in the fact that in contrast to it the position of the natural
sciences is formulated all the more clearly and distinctly: the passage
from bare perceptions to experience is of a purely empirical nature.
The erroneous features in such ideas find some support in certain
misunderstood physiological and pathological facts.
Physiology teaches that the human infant does not “see” but only
“looks,” _i.e._ he is the percipient of impressions from without in
virtue of the existence of sense organs, but he attaches no meaning
to these impressions. It is the same with the grown-up person after
certain lesions of the cerebral cortex, in animals from which the brain
has been artificially removed, and so forth. From this the conclusion
is drawn that bare perceptions may be transmuted into experiences and
that the condition of experience can again sink back into a condition
of bare perception.
Such ideas are supported by the teachings of many philosophers who
make the young living being to enter the world as a _tabula rasa_, so
to speak--as an empty pot which only now is to be filled with material
from this world.
All such ideas of the existence of bare perceptions, apart from
any content of experience, are based upon a misuse of the word
“perception.” The infant has no “perceptions.” He “experiences” under
the circumstances and antecedent conditions proper to himself. It is
only we, the adult, who, looking back, can speak of the existence
of bare perceptions at this stage, somewhat as, looking back, we
can record of Cæsar’s Commentaries: “Written in the year so and so
before Christ.” Wherever there are perceptions, a certain content of
experience also is always present, were it only this, that with respect
to any definite perception one has no experience at all! To separate
perception from experience and then pose the question: “How can pure
perceptions pass into experience?” is the same as to separate shell
from kernel and then ask, “How can the kernel ever get into the shell?”
The truth is this: The kernel cannot get into the shell at all; both
alike are the outcome of a single process of growth. And in the
selfsame way experience cannot get into the perceptions at all; both
alike are the outcome of a single process of growth. We learn to
experience as the flame learns to burn, the flower to blow. We can do
nothing save “conceive,” lay hold of the outer world. Experiences, as
imagined in vulgar thought, there are not. Such would be “concepts,”
and where there are “concepts” there must be “things conceived.” Where
these are, there must be identities. Where there are identities, there
can be no processes. Where there are no processes, there can be no
actuality.
All that we call experience is, so to speak, of the nature of a
parallax. Otherwise put: All our knowledge is only the expression
of our ignorance. I can say of anything that I know it, only as set
off against the total mass of all that I do not know. An _actual_
experience would require that I should be able to prognosticate
something with _unconditioned_ exactitude.