I have come to the point of transition to the other part of my paper.
A formal analysis is necessarily dialectical in character. As an
empiricist I share in the dissatisfaction which even the most correct
dialectical discussion is likely to arouse when brought to bear on
matters of fact. I do not doubt that readers will feel that some
_fact_ of an important character in Mr. Russell's statement has been
left untouched by the previous analysis--even upon the supposition
that the criticisms are just. Particularly will it be felt, I think,
that psychology affords to his statement of the problem a support of
fact not affected by any logical treatment. For this reason I append a
summary statement as to the facts which are misconstrued by any
statement which makes the existence of the world problematic.
I do not believe a psychologist would go as far as to admit that a
definite correlation of elements as specific and ordered as that of
Mr. Russell's statement is a primitive psychological datum. Many would
doubtless hold that patches of colored extensity, sounds, kinaesthetic
qualities, etc., are psychologically much more primitive than, say, a
table, to say nothing of a group of objects in space or a series of
events in time; they would say, accordingly, that there is a real
problem as to how we infer or construct the latter on the basis of the
former. At the same time I do not believe that they would deny that
their own knowledge of the existence and nature of the ultimate and
irreducible qualities of sense is the product of a long, careful, and
elaborate analysis to which the sciences of physiology, anatomy, and
controlled processes of experimental observation have contributed. The
ordinary method of reconciling these two seemingly inconsistent
positions is to assume that the original sensible data of experience,
as they occurred in infancy, have been overlaid by all kinds of
associations and inferential constructions so that it is now a work of
intellectual art to recover them in their innocent purity.
Now I might urge that as matter of fact the reconstruction of the
experience of infancy is itself an inference from present experience
of an objective world, and hence cannot be employed to make a problem
out of the knowledge of the existence of that world. But such a retort
involves just the dialectic excursus which I am here anxious to avoid.
I am on matter-of-fact ground when I point out that the assumption
that even infancy begins with such highly discriminated particulars as
those enumerated is not only highly dubious but has been challenged by
eminent psychologists. According to Mr. James, for example, the
original datum is large but confused, and specific sensible qualities
represent the result of discriminations. In this case, the elementary
data, instead of being primitive empirical data, are the last terms,
the limits, of the discriminations we have been able to make. That
knowledge grows from a confusedly experienced external world to a
world experienced as ordered and specified would then be the teaching
of psychological science, but at no point would the mind be confronted
with the problem of inferring a world. Into the arguments in behalf of
such a psychology of original experience I shall not go, beyond
pointing out the extreme improbability (in view of what is known about
instincts and about the nervous system) that the starting-point is a
quality corresponding to the functioning of a single sense organ, much
less of a single neuronic unit of a sense organ. If one adds, as a
hypothesis, that even the most rudimentary conscious experience
contains within itself the element of suggestion or expectation, it
will be granted that the object of conscious experience even with an
infant is homogeneous with the world of the adult. One may be
unwilling to concede the hypothesis. But no one can deny that
inference from one thing to another is itself an empirical event, and
that just as soon as such inference occurs, even in the simplest form
of anticipation and prevision, a world exists like in kind to that of
the adult.
I cannot think that it is a trivial coincidence that psychological
analysis of sense perception came into existence along with that
method of experimentally controlled observation which marks the
beginning of modern science. Modern science did not begin with
discovery of any new kind of inference. It began with the recognition
of the need of different data if inference is to proceed safely. It
was contended that starting with the ordinary--or customary--objects
of perception hopelessly compromised in advance the work of inference
and classification. Hence the demand for an experimental resolution of
the common-sense objects in order to get data less ambiguous, more
minute, and more extensive. Increasing knowledge of the structure of
the nervous system fell in with increased knowledge of other objects
to make possible a discrimination of specific qualities in all their
diversity; it brought to light that habits, individual and social
(through influence on the formation of individual habits), were large
factors in determining the accepted or current system of objects. It
was brought to light, in other words, that factors of chance, habit,
and other non-rational factors were greater influences than
intellectual inquiry in determining what men currently believed about
the world. What psychological analysis contributed was, then, not
primitive historic data out of which a world had somehow to be
extracted, but an analysis of the world which had been previously
thought of and believed in, into data making possible better
inferences and beliefs about the world. Analysis of the influences
customarily determining belief and inference was a powerful force in
the movement to improve knowledge of the world.
This statement of matters of fact bears out, it will be observed, the
conclusions of the dialectical analysis. That brought out the fact
that the ultimate and elementary data of sense perception are
identified and described as limiting elements in a complex world. What
is now added is that such an identification of elements marks a
significant addition to the resources of the technique of inquiry
devoted to improving knowledge of the world. When these data are
isolated from their logical status and office, they are inevitably
treated as self-sufficient, and they leave upon our hands the
insoluble, because self-contradictory, problem of deriving from them
the world of common-sense and science. Taken for what they really are,
they are elements detected _in_ the world and serving to guide and
check our inferences about it. They are never self-inclosed
particulars; they are always--even as crudely given--connected with
other things in experience. But analysis gets them in the form where
they are keys to much more significant relations. In short, the
particulars of perception, taken as complete and independent, make
nonsense. Taken as objects discriminated for the purposes of
improving, reorganizing, and testing knowledge of the world they are
invaluable assets. The material fallacy lying behind the formal
fallacy which the first part of this paper noted is the failure to
recognize that what is doubtful is not the existence of the world but
the validity of certain customary yet inferential beliefs about things
in it. It is not the common-sense _world_ which is doubtful, or which
is inferential, but _common-sense_ as a complex of beliefs about
specific things and relations _in_ the world. Hence never in any
actual procedure of inquiry do we throw the existence of the world
into doubt, nor can we do so without self-contradiction. We doubt some
received piece of "knowledge" about some specific thing of that world,
and then set to work, as best we can, to rectify it. The contribution
of psychological science to determining unambiguous data and
eliminating the irrelevant influences of passion and habit which
control the inferences of common-sense is an important aid in the
technique of such rectifications.