Essays in Experimental Logic

IX

NAÏVE REALISM VS. PRESENTATIVE REALISM[58]

I

In spite of the elucidations of contemporary realists, a number of idealists continue to adduce in behalf of idealism certain facts having an obvious physical nature and explanation. The visible convergence of the railway tracks, for example, is cited as evidence that what is seen is a mental "content." Yet this convergence follows from the physical properties of light and a lens, and is physically demonstrated in a camera. Is the photograph, then, to be conceived as a psychical somewhat? That the time of the visibility of a light does not coincide with the time at which a distant body emitted the light is employed to support a similar idealistic conclusion, in spite of the fact that the exact difference in time may be deduced from a physical property of light—its rate. The dislocation in space of the light seen and the astronomical star is used as evidence of the mental nature of the former, though the exact angular difference is a matter of simple computation from purely physical data. The doubling of images of, say, the finger when the eyeball is pressed, is frequently proffered as a clincher. Yet it is a simple matter to take any body that reflects light, and by a suitable arrangement of lenses to produce not only two but many images, projected into space. If the fact that under definite physical conditions (misplacement of lenses), a finger yields two images proves the psychical character of the latter, then the fact that under certain conditions a sounding body yields one or more echoes is, by parity of reasoning, proof that the echo is made of mental stuff.[59]

If, once more, the differences in form and color of a table to different observers, occupying different physical positions, is proof that what each sees is a psychical, private, isolated somewhat, then the fact that one and the same physical body has different effects upon, or relations with, different physical media is proof of the mental nature of these effects. Take a lump of wax and subject it to the same heat, located at different positions; now the wax is solid, now liquid—it might even be gaseous. How "psychical" these phenomena! It almost seems as if the transformation of the physical into the mental in the cases cited exemplifies an interesting psychological phenomenon. In each case the beginning is with a real and physical existence. Taking "the real object," the astronomical star, on the basis of its physical reality, the idealist concludes to a psychical object, radically different! Taking the single object, the finger, from the premise of its real singleness, he concludes to a double mental content, which then takes the place of the original single thing! Taking one-and-the-same-object, the table, presenting its different surfaces and reflections of light to different real organisms, he eliminates the one-table-in-its-different-relations in behalf of a multiplicity of totally separate psychical tables! The logic reminds us of the story of the countryman who, after gazing at the giraffe, remarked, "There ain't no such animal." It almost seems, I repeat, as if this self-contradiction in the argument creates in some minds the impression that the object—not the argument—is undergoing the extraordinary reversal of form.

However this may be, the problem indicated in the foregoing cases is simply the good old problem of the many in one, or, less cryptically, the problem of the maintenance of a continuity of process throughout differences. I do not pretend that this situation, though the most familiar thing in life, is wholly without difficulties. But its difficulty is not one of epistemology, that is, of the relation of known to a knower; to take it as such, and then to use it as proof of the psychical nature of a final term, is also to prove that the trail the rocket stick leaves behind is psychical, or that the flower which comes in a continuity of process from a seed is mental.

II

Contemporary realists have so frequently and clearly expounded the physical explanation of such cases as have been cited that one is at a loss as to why idealists go on repeating the cases without even alluding to the realistic explanation. One is moved to wonder whether this neglect is just one of those circumstances which persistently dog philosophical discussions, or whether something in the realistic position gives ground (from at least an ad hominem point of view) for the neglect. There is a reason for adopting the latter alternative. Many realists, in offering the type of explanation adduced above, have treated the cases of seen light, doubled imagery, as perception in a way that ascribes to perception an inherent cognitive status. They have treated the perceptions as cases of knowledge, instead of as simply natural events having, in themselves (apart from a use that may be made of them), no more knowledge status or worth than, say, a shower or a fever. What I intend to show is that if "perceptions" are regarded as cases of knowledge, the gate is opened to the idealistic interpretation. The physical explanation holds of them as long as they are regarded simply as natural events—a doctrine I shall call naïve realism; it does not hold of them considered as cases of knowledge—the view I call presentative realism.

The idealists attribute to the realists the doctrine that "the perceived object is the real object." Please note the wording; it assumes that there is the real object, something which stands in a contrasting relation with objects not real or else less real. Since it is easily demonstrable that there is a numerical duplicity between the astronomical star and its effect of visible light, between the single finger and the doubled images, the latter evidently, when the former is dubbed "the" real object, stands in disparaging contrast to its reality. If it is a case of knowledge, the knowledge refers to the star; and yet not the star, but something more or less unreal (that is, if the star be "the" real object), is known.

Consider how simply the matter stands in what I have called naïve realism. The astronomical star is a real object, but not "the" real object; the visible light is another real object, found, when knowledge supervenes, to be an occurrence standing in a process continuous with the star. Since the seen light is an event within a continuous process, there is no point of view from which its "reality" contrasts with that of the star.

But suppose that the realist accepts the traditionary psychology according to which every event in the way of a perception is also a case of knowing something. Is the way out now so simple? In the case of the doubled fingers or the seen light, the thing known in perception contrasts with the physical source and cause of the knowledge. There is a numerical duplicity. Moreover the thing known by perception is by this hypothesis in relation to a knower, while the physical cause is not. Is not the most plausible account of the difference between the physical cause of the perceptive knowledge and what the latter presents precisely this latter difference—namely, presentation to a knower? If perception is a case of knowing, it must be a case of knowing the star; but since the "real" star is not known in the perception, the knowledge relation must somehow have changed the "object" into a "content." Thus when the realist conceives the perceptual occurrence as an intrinsic case of knowledge or of presentation to a mind or knower, he lets the nose of the idealist camel into the tent. He has then no great cause for surprise when the camel comes in—and devours the tent.

Perhaps it will seem as if in this last paragraph I had gone back on what I said earlier regarding the physical explanation of the difference between the visible light and the astronomical star. On the contrary, my point is that this explanation, though wholly adequate as long as we conceive the perception to be itself simply a natural event, is not at all available when we conceive it to be an attempt at knowing its cause. In the former case, we are dealing with a relation between natural events. In the latter case, we are dealing with the difference between an object as a cause of knowledge and an object as known, and hence in relation to mind. By the "method of difference" the sole explanation of the difference between the two objects is then the absence or presence of relation to a knower.

In the case of the seen light,[60] reference to the velocity of light is quite adequate to account for its time and space differences from the star. But viewed as a case of what is known (on the supposition that perception is knowing), reference to it only increases the contrast between the real object and the object known in perception. For, being just as much a part of the object that causes the perception as is the star itself, it (the velocity of light) ought logically to be part of what is known in the perception, while it is not. Since the velocity of light is a constituent element in the star, it should be known in the perception; since it is not so known, reference to it only increases the discrepancy between the object of the perception—the seen light—and the real, astronomical star. The same is true of any physical condition that might be referred to: The very things that, from the standpoint of perception as a natural event, are conditions that account for its happening are, from the standpoint of perception as a case of knowledge, part of the object which, if knowledge is to be valid, ought to be known, but is not.

In this fact we have, perhaps, the ground of the idealist's disregard of the oft-proffered physical explanation of the difference between the perceptual event and the (so-called) real object. And it is quite possible that some realists who read these lines will feel that in my last paragraphs I have been making a covert argument for idealism. Not so, I repeat; they are an argument for a truly naïve realism. The presentative realist, in his appeal to "common-sense" and the "plain man," first sophisticates the umpire and then appeals. He stops a good way short of a genuine naïveté. The plain man, for a surety, does not regard noises heard, lights seen, etc., as mental existences; but neither does he regard them as things known. That they are just things is good enough for him. That they are in relation to mind, or in relation to mind as their "knower," no more occurs to him than that they are mental. By this I mean much more than that the formulae of epistemology are foreign to him; I mean that his attitude to these things as things involves their not being in relation to him as a mind or a knower. He is in the attitude of a liker or hater, a doer or an appreciator. When he takes the attitude of a knower he begins to inquire. Once depart from thorough naïveté, and substitute for it the psychological theory that perception is a cognitive presentation to a mind of a causal object, and the first step is taken on the road which ends in an idealistic system.

III

For simplicity's sake, I have written as if my main problem were to show how, in the face of a supposed difficulty, a strictly realistic theory of the perceptual event may be maintained. But my interest is primarily in the facts, and in the theory only because of the facts it formulates. The significance of the facts of the case may, perhaps, be indicated by a consideration which has thus far been ignored. In regarding a perception as a case of knowledge, the presentative realist does more than shove into it a relation to mind which then, naturally and inevitably, becomes the explanation of any differences that exist between its subject-matter and some causal object with which it contrasts. In many cases—very important cases, too, in the physical sciences—the contrasting "real object" becomes known by a logical process, by inference—as the contemporary position of the star is determined by calculations from data, not by perception. This, then, is the situation of the presentative realist: If perception is knowledge of its cause, it stands in unfavorable contrast with another indirect mode of knowledge; its object is less valid than the object of inference. I do not adduce these considerations as showing that the case is hopeless for the presentative realist;[61] I am willing to concede he can find a satisfactory way out. But the difficulty exists; and in existing it calls emphatic attention to a case which is certainly and indisputably a case of knowledge—namely, propositions arrived at through inference, judgments as logical assertions.

With relation to the unquestionable case of knowledge, the logical or inferential case, perceptions occupy a unique status, one which readily accounts for their being regarded as cases of knowledge, although in themselves they are natural events. (1) They are the sole ultimate data, the sole media, of inference to all natural objects and processes. While we do not, in any intelligible or verifiable sense, know them, we know all things that we do know with or by them. They furnish the only ultimate evidence of the existence and nature of the objects which we infer, and they are the sole ultimate checks and tests of the inferences. The visible light is a necessary part of the evidence on the basis of which we infer the existence, place, and structure of the astronomical star, and some other perception is the verifying check on the value of the inference. Because of this characteristic use of perceptions, the perceptions themselves acquire, by "second intention," a knowledge status. They become objects of minute, accurate, and experimental scrutiny. Since the body of propositions that forms natural science hangs upon them, for scientific purposes their nature as evidence, as signs, entirely overshadows their natural status, that of being simply natural events. The scientific man, as scientific, cares for perceptions not in themselves, but as they throw light upon the nature of some object reached by evidence. And since every such inference tries to terminate in a further perception (as its test of validity), the value of inferential knowing depends on perception. (2) Independently of science, daily life uses perceptions as signs of other perceptions. When a perception of a certain kind frequently recurs and is constantly used as evidence of some other impending perceptual event, the function of habit (a natural function, be it noted, not a psychical or epistemological function) often brings it about that the perception loses its original quality in acquiring a sign-value. Language is, of course, the typical case. Noises, in themselves mere natural events, through habitual use as signs of other natural events become integrated with what they mean. What they stand for is telescoped, as it were, into what they are. This happens also with other natural events, colors, tastes, etc. Thus, for practical purposes, many perceptual events are cases of knowledge; that is, they have been used as such so often that the habit of so using them is established or automatic.

In this brief reference to facts that are perfectly familiar, I have tried to suggest three points of crucial importance for a naïve realism: first, that inferential or evidential knowledge (that involving logical relation) is in the field as an obvious and undisputed case of knowledge; second, that this function, although embodying the logical relation, is itself a natural and specifically detectable process among natural things—it is not a non-natural or epistemological relation; third, that the use, practical and scientific, of perceptual events in the evidential or inferential function is such as to make them become objects of inquiry and limits of knowledge, and to such a degree that this acquired characteristic quite overshadows, in many cases, their primary nature.

If we add to what has been said the fact that, like every natural function, the inferential function turns out better in some cases and worse in others, we get a naturalistic or naïvely realistic conception of the "problem of knowledge": Control of the conditions of inference—the only type of knowledge detectable in direct existence—so as to guide it toward better conclusions.

IV

I do not flatter myself that I will receive much gratitude from realists for attempting to rescue them from that error of fact which exposes their doctrine to an idealistic interpretation. The superstition, growing up in a false physics and physiology and perpetuated by psychology, that sensations-perceptions are cases of knowledge, is too ingrained. But—crede experto—let them try the experiment of conceiving perceptions as pure natural events, not as cases of awareness or apprehension, and they will be surprised to see how little they miss—save the burden of carrying traditionary problems. Meantime, while philosophic argument, such as this, will do little to change the state of belief regarding perceptions, the development of biology and the refinement of physiology will, in due season, do the work.

In concluding my article, I ought to refer, in order to guard against misapprehension, to a reply that the presentative realist might make to my objection. He might say that while the seen light is a case of knowledge or presentative awareness, it is not a case of knowledge of the star, but simply of the seen light, just as it is. In this case the appeal to the physical explanations of the difference of the seen light from its objective source is quite legitimate. At first sight, such a position seems innocent and tenable. Even if innocent, it would, however, be ungrounded, since there is no evidence of the existence of a knower, and of its relation to the seen light. But further consideration will reveal that there is a most fundamental objection. If the notion of perception as a case of adequate knowledge of its own object-matter be accepted, the knowledge relation is absolutely ubiquitous; it is an all-inclusive net. The "ego-centric predicament" is inevitable. This result of making perception a case of knowing will now occupy us.

X

EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM: THE ALLEGED UBIQUITY OF THE KNOWLEDGE RELATION

I have pointed out that if perception be treated as a case of knowledge, knowledge of every form and kind must be treated as a case of a presentation to a knower. The alleged discipline of epistemology is then inevitable. In common usage, the term "knowledge" tends to be employed eulogistically; its meaning approaches the connotation of the term "science." More loosely, it is used, of course, to designate all beliefs and propositions that are held with assurance, especially with the implication that the assurance is reasonable, or grounded. In its practical sense, it is used as the equivalent of "knowing how," of skill or ability involving such acquaintance with things and persons as enables one to anticipate how they behave under certain conditions and to take steps accordingly. Such usages of the term are all differential; they all involve definite contrasts—with ungrounded conviction, or with doubt and mere guesswork, or with the inexpertness that accompanies lack of familiarity. In its epistemological use, the term "knowledge" has a blanket value which is absolutely unknown in common life. It covers any and every "presentation" of any and every thing to a knower, to an "awarer," if I may coin a word for the sake of avoiding some of the pitfalls of the term "consciousness." And, I repeat, this indiscriminate use of the term "knowledge," so foreign to science and daily life, is absolutely unavoidable if perception be regarded as, in itself, a mode of knowledge. And then—and only then—the problem of "the possibility, nature, and extent of knowledge in general" is also inevitable. I hope I shall not be regarded as offensively pragmatic if I suggest that this undesirable consequence is a good reason for not accepting the premise from which it follows, unless that premise be absolutely forced upon us.

At all events, upon the supposition of the ubiquity of the knowledge relation in respect to a self, presentative realism is compelled to accept the genuineness of the epistemological problem, and thus to convert itself into an epistemological realism, getting one more step away from both naïve and naturalistic realism. The problem is especially acute for a presentative realism because idealism has made precisely this ubiquity of relationship its axiom, its short-cut. One sample is as good as a thousand. Says Bain: "There is no possible knowledge of a world except in relation to our minds. Knowledge means a state of mind; the notion of material things is a mental fact. We are incapable even of discussing the existence of an independent material world; the very act is a contradiction. We can speak only of a world presented to our own minds."

On the supposition of the ubiquity of the relation, realism and idealism exhaust the alternatives; if the ubiquity of the relation is a myth, both doctrines are unreal, because there is no problem of which they are the solution. My first step in indicating the unreality of both "solutions" is formal. I shall try to show that if the knowledge relation of things to a self is the exhaustive and inclusive relation, there is no intelligible point at issue between idealism and realism; the differences between them are either verbal or else due to a failure on the part of one or the other to stick to their common premise.

I

To my mind, Professor Perry rendered philosophic discussion a real service when he coined the phrase "ego-centric predicament." The phrase designated something which, whether or no it be real in itself, is very real in current discussion, and designating it rendered it more accessible to examination. In terming the alleged uniform complicity of a knower a predicament, it is intended, I take it, to suggest, among other things, that we have here a difficulty with which all schools of thought alike must reckon, so that it is a difficulty that cannot be used as an argument in behalf of one school and against another. If the relation be ubiquitous, it affects alike every view, every theory, every object experienced; it is no respecter of persons, no respecter of doctrines. Since it cannot make any difference to any particular object, to any particular logical assertion, or to any particular theory, it does not support an idealistic as against a realistic theory. Being a universal common denominator of all theories, it cancels out of all of them alike. It leaves the issue one of subject-matter, to be decided on the basis of that subject-matter, not on the basis of an unescapable attendant consideration that the subject-matter must be known in order to be discussed. In short, the moral is quite literally, "Forget it," or "Cut it out."

But the idealist may be imagined to reply somewhat as follows: "If the ubiquity were of any kind other than precisely the kind it is, the advice to disregard it as a mere attendant circumstance of discussion would be relevant. Thus, for example, we disregard gravitation when we are considering a particular chemical reaction; there is no ground for supposing that it affects a reaction in any way that modifies it as a chemical reaction. And if the 'ego-centric' relation were cited when the point at issue is something about one group of facts in distinction from another group, it ought certainly to be canceled from any statement about them. But since the point at issue is precisely the most universally defining trait of existence as known, the invitation deliberately to disregard the most universal trait is nothing more or less than an invitation to philosophic suicide."

If the idealist I have imagined as making the foregoing retort were up in recent realistic literature, he might add the following argument ad hominem: "You, my realistic opponent, say that the doctrine of the external relation of terms expresses a ubiquitous mark of every genuine proposition or relational complex, and that this ubiquity is a strong presumption in favor of realism. Why so uneven, so partial, in your attitude toward ubiquitous relations? Is it perchance that you were so uneasy at our possession of a ubiquitous relation that gives a short cut to idealism that you felt you must also have a short cut to realism?"

If I terminate the controversy at this point, it is not because I think the realist is unable to "come back." On the contrary, I stop here because I believe (for reasons that will come out shortly) that both realist and idealist, having the same primary assumption, can come back at each other indefinitely. Consequently, I wish to employ the existence of this tu quoque controversy to raise the question: Under what conditions is the relation of knower to known an intelligible question? And I wish to show that it is not intelligible, if the knowledge relation be ubiquitous and homogeneous.

The controversy back and forth is in fact a warning of each side by the other not to depart from their common premise. If the idealist begins to argue (as he constantly does) as if the relation to "mind" or to "consciousness" made some difference of a specific sort, like that between error and fact, or between sound perception and hallucination, he may be reminded that, since this relation is uniform, it substantiates and nullifies all things alike. And the realist is quite within the common premise when he points out that every special fact must be admitted for what it is specifically known to be; no idealistic doctrine can turn the edge of the fact that knowledge has evolved historically out of a state in which there was no mind, or of the fact that knowledge is even now dependent on the brain, provided that specific evidence shows these to be facts. The realist, on the other hand, must admit that, after all, the entire body of known facts, or of science, including such facts as the above, is held fast and tight in the net of relation to a mind or consciousness. In specific cases this relation may be ignored, but the exact ground for such an ignoring is precisely that the relation is not a specific fact, but a uniform relation of facts. And to call it an external relation makes no practical difference if it is universal and uniform. So the idealist might reply.

Imagine a situation like the following: The sole relation an organism bears to things is that of eater; the sole relation the environment bears to the organism is that of food, that is, things-to-eat. This relation, then, is exhaustive. It defines, or identifies, each term in relation to the other. But this means that there are not, as respects organism and environment, two terms at all. Eater-of-food and food-being-eaten are two names for one and the same situation. Could there be imagined a greater absurdity than to set to work to discuss the relation of eater to food, of organism to the environment, or to argue as to whether one modifies the other or not? Given the premise, the statements in such a discussion could have only a verbal difference from one another.

Suppose, however, the discussion has somehow got under way. Sides have been taken; the philosophical world is divided into two great camps, "foodists" and "eaterists." The eaterists (idealists) contend that no object exists except in relation to eating; hence that everything is constituted a thing by its relation to eating. Special sciences exist indeed which discuss the nature of various sorts of things in relation to one another, and hence in legitimate abstraction from the fact that they are all foods. But the discussion of their nature an sich depends upon "eatology," which deals primarily with the problem of the possibility, nature, and extent (or limits) of eating food in general, and thereby determines what food in general, überhaupt, is and means.

Nay, replies the foodist (realist). Since the eating relation is uniform, it is negligible. All propositions which have any intelligible meaning are about objects just as they are, and in the relations they bear to one another. Foods pass in and out of the relation to eater with no change in their own traits. Moreover, the position of the eaterists is self-contradictory. How can a thing be eaten unless it is, in and of itself, a food? To suppose that a food is constituted by eating is to presuppose that eating eats eating, and so on in infinite regress. In short, to be an eater is to be an eater of food; take away the independent existence of foods, and you deny the existence and the possibility of an eater.

I respectfully submit that there is no terminus to such a discussion. For either both sides are saying the same thing in different words, or else both of them depart from their common premise, and unwittingly smuggle in some relations between the organism and environment other than that of food-eater. If to be an eater means that an organism which is more and other than an eater is doing something distinctive, because contrasting with its other functions, in eating then, and then only, is there an issue. In this latter case, the thing which is food may, of course, be proved to be something besides food, because of some different relation to the organism than that of eating. But if both stick consistently to their common premise, we get the following trivial situation. The idealist says: "Every philosophy purports to be knowledge, knowledge of objects; all knowledge implies relation to mind; therefore every object with which philosophy deals is object-in-relation-to-mind." The realist says: "To be a mind is to be a knower; to be a knower is to be a knower-of-objects. Without the objects to be known, mind, the knower, is and means nothing."

The difficulties attending the discussion of epistemology are in no way attendant upon the special subject-matter of "epistemology." They are found wherever any reciprocal relation is taken to define, exclusively and exhaustively, all the connections between any pair of things. If there are two things that stand solely as buyer and seller to each other, or as husband and wife, then that relation is "unique," and undefinable; to discuss the relation of the relation to the terms of which it is the relation, is an obvious absurdity; to assert that the relation does not modify the "seller," the "wife," or the "object known," is to discuss the relation of the relation just as much as to assert the opposite. The only reason, I think, why anyone has ever supposed the case of knower-known to differ from any case of an alleged exhaustive and exclusive correlation is that while the knower is only one—just knower—the objects known are obviously many, and sustain many relations to one another which vary independently of their relation to the knower. This is the undoubted fact at the bottom of epistemological realism. But the idealist is entitled to reply that the objects in their variable relations to one another nevertheless fall within a relation to a knower, as long as that relation is regarded by both as exhaustive or ubiquitous.

II

Nevertheless, I do not conceive that the realistic assertion and the idealistic assertion in this dilemma stand on the same level, or have the same value. The fact that objects vary in relation to one another independently of their relation to the "knower" is a fact, and a fact recognized by all schools. The idealistic assertion rests simply upon the presupposition of the ubiquity of the knowledge relation, and consequently has only an ad hominem force, that is a force as against epistemological realists—against those who admit that the sole and exhaustive relation of the "self" or "ego" to objects is that of knower of them.[62] The relation of buyer and seller is a discussable relation; for buyer does not exhaust one party and seller does not exhaust the other. Each is a man or a woman, a consumer or a producer or a middleman, a green-grocer or a dry-goods merchant, a taxpayer or a voter, and so on indefinitely. Nor is it true that such additional relations are borne merely to other things; the buyer-sellers are more than and other than buyer-seller to each other. They may be fellow-clubmen, belong to opposite political parties, dislike each other's looks, and be second cousins. Hence the buyer-seller relation stands in intelligent connection and contrast with other relations, so that it can be discriminated, defined, analyzed. Moreover, there are specific differences in the buying-selling relation. Because it is not ubiquitous, it is not homogeneous. If wealthy and a householder, the one who buys is a different buyer—i.e., buys differently—than if poor and a boarder. Consequently, the seller sells differently, has more or less goods left to sell, more or less income to expend on other things, and so on indefinitely. Moreover, in order to be a buyer the man has to have been other things; i.e., he is not a buyer per se, but becomes a buyer because he is an eater, wears clothes, is married, etc.

It is also quite clear that the organism is something else than an eater, or something in relation to food alone. I will not again call the roll of perfectly familiar facts; I will lessen my appeal to the reader's patience by confining my reiteration to one point. Even in relation to the things that are food, the organism is something more than their eater. He is their acquirer, their pursuer, their cultivator, their beholder, taster, etc.; he becomes their eater only because he is so many other things, and his becoming an eater is a natural episode in the natural unfolding of these other things.

Precisely the same sort of assertions may be made about the knower-known relation. If the one who is knower is something else and more than the knower of objects, and if objects are, in relation to the one who knows them, something else and other than things in a knowledge relation, there is somewhat to define and discuss; otherwise we are raising, as we have already seen, the quite foolish question as to what is the relation of a relation to itself, or the equally foolish question of whether being a thing modifies the thing that it is. And, moreover, epistemological realism and idealism both say the same thing: realism that a thing does not modify itself, idealism that, since the thing is what it is, it stands in the relation that it does stand in.

There are many facts which, prima facie, support the claim that knowing is a connection of things which depends upon other and more primary connections between a self and things; a connection which grows out of these more fundamental connections and which operates in their interests at specifiable crises. I will not repeat what is so generally admitted and so little taken into account, that knowing is, biologically, a differentiation of organic behavior, but will cite some facts that are even more obvious and even more neglected.

1. If we take a case of perception, we find upon analysis that, so far as a self or organism is concerned in it at all, the self is, so to say, inside of it rather than outside of it. It would be much more correct to say that a self is contained in a perception than that a perception is presented to a self. That is to say, the organism is involved in the occurrence of the perception in the same sort of way that hydrogen is involved in the happening—producing—of water. We might about as well talk of the production of a specimen of water as a presentation of water to hydrogen as talk in the way we are only too accustomed to talk about perceptions and the organism. When we consider a perception as a case of "apperception," the same thing holds good. Habits enter into the constitution of the situation; they are in and of it, not, so far as it is concerned, something outside of it. Here, if you please, is a unique relation of self and things, but it is unique not in being wholly incomparable to all natural relations among events, but in the sense of being distinctive or just the relation that it is.

2. Taking the many cases where the self may be said, in an intelligible sense, to lie outside a thing and hence to have dealings with it, we find that they are extensively and primarily cases where the self is agent-patient, doer, sufferer, and enjoyer. This means, of course, that things, the things that later come to be known, are primarily not objects of awareness, but causes of weal and woe, things to get and things to avoid, means and obstacles, tools and results. To a naïve spectator, the ordinary assumption that a thing is "in" experience only when it is an object of awareness (or even only when a perception), is nothing less than extraordinary. The self experiences whatever it undergoes, and there is no fact about life more assured or more tragic than that what we are aware of is determined by things that we are undergoing but of which we are not conscious and which we cannot be conscious of under the particular conditions.

3. So far as the question of the relation of the self to known objects is concerned, knowing is but one special case of the agent-patient, of the behaver-enjoyer-sufferer situation. It is, however, the case constantly increasing in relative importance. The connections of the self with things by way of weal or woe are progressively found to depend upon the connections established in knowing things; on the other hand, the progress, the advance, of science is found to depend more and more upon the courage and patience of the agent in making the widening and buttressing of knowledge a business.

It is impossible to overstate the significance, the reality, of the relation of self as knower to things when it is thought of as a moral relation, a deliberate and responsible undertaking of a self. Ultimately the modern insistence upon the self in reference to knowledge (in contrast with the classic Greek view) will be found to reside precisely here.

My purpose in citing the foregoing facts is not to prove a positive point, viz., that there are many relations of self and things, of which knowing is but one differentiated case. It concerns something less obvious: viz., showing what is meant by saying that the problems at issue concern matters of fact, and are not matters to be decided by assumption, definition, and deduction. I mean also to suggest what kind of matters of fact would naturally be adduced as evidential in such a discussion. Negatively put, my point is that the whole question of the relation of knower to known is radically misconceived in what passes as epistemology, because of an underlying unexamined assumption, an assumption which, moreover, when examined, makes the controversy verbal or absurd. Positively put, my point is that since, prima facie, plenty of connections other than the knower-known one exist between self and things, there is a context in which the "problem" of their relation concerns matters of fact capable of empirical determination by matter-of-fact inquiry. The point about a difference being made (or rather making) in things when known is precisely of this sort.

III

That question is not, save upon the assumption of the ubiquity of the knowledge relation, the absurd question of whether knowledge makes any difference to things already known or to things as knowledge-objects, as facts or truths. Until the epistemological realists have seriously considered the main propositions of the pragmatic realists, viz., that knowing is something that happens to things in the natural course of their career, not the sudden introduction of a "unique" non-natural type of relation—that to a mind or consciousness—they are hardly in a position to discuss the second and derived pragmatic proposition that, in this natural continuity, things in becoming known undergo a specific and detectable qualitative change.

I had occasion earlier to remark that if one identifies "knowledge" with situations involving the function of inference, the problem of knowledge means the art of guiding this function most effectively. That statement holds when we take knowledge as a relation of the things in the knowledge situation. If we are once convinced of the artificiality of the notion that the knowledge relation is ubiquitous, there will be an existential problem as to the self and knowledge; but it will be a radically different problem from that discussed in epistemology. The relation of knowing to existence will be recognized to form the subject-matter of no problem, because involving an ungrounded and even absurd preconception. But the problem of the relation of an existence in the way of knowing to other existences—or events—with which it forms a continuous process will then be seen to be a natural problem to be attacked by natural methods.

XI

THE EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM

There are many ways of stating the problem of the existence of an external world. I shall make that of Mr. Bertrand Russell the basis of my examinations, as it is set forth in his recent book Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. I do this both because his statement is one recently made in a book of commanding importance, and because it seems to me to be a more careful statement than most of those in vogue. If my point can be made out for his statement, it will apply, a fortiori, to other statements. Even if there be those to whom this does not seem to be the case, it will be admitted that my analysis must begin somewhere. I cannot take the space to repeat the analysis in application to differing modes of statement with a view to showing that the method employed will yield like results in all cases. But I take the liberty of throwing the burden upon the reader and asking him to show cause why it does not so apply.

After rejecting certain familiar formulations of the question because they employ the not easily definable notions of the self and independence, Mr. Russell makes the following formulation: Can we "know that objects of sense ... exist at times when we are not perceiving them?" (op. cit., p. 75). Or, in another mode of statement: "Can the existence of anything other than our own[63] hard data be inferred from the existence of those data?" (pp. 73 and 83).

I shall try to show that identification of the "data of sense" as the sort of term which will generate the problem involves an affirmative answer to the question—that it must have been answered in the affirmative before the question can be asked. And this, I take it, is to say that it is not a question at all. A point of departure may be found in the following passage: "I think it must be admitted as probable that the immediate objects of sense depend for their existence upon physiological conditions in ourselves, and that, for example, the colored surfaces which we see cease to exist when we shut our eyes" (p. 64). I have not quoted the passage for the sake of gaining an easy victory by pointing out that this statement involves the existence of physiological conditions. For Mr. Russell himself affirms that fact. As he points out, such arguments assume precisely the "common sense world of stable objects" professedly put in doubt (p. 85). My purpose is to ask what justification there is for calling immediate data "objects of sense." Statements of this type always call color visual, sound auditory, and so on. If it were merely a matter of making certain admissions for the sake of being able to play a certain game, there would be no objection. But if we are concerned with a matter of serious analysis, one is bound to ask, Whence come these adjectives? That color is visual in the sense of being an object of vision is certainly admitted in the common-sense world, but this is the world we have left. That color is visual is a proposition about color and it is a proposition which color itself does not utter. Visible or visual color is already a "synthetic" proposition, not a term nor an analysis of a single term. That color is seen, or is visible, I do not call in question; but I insist that fact already assumes an answer to the question which Mr. Russell has put. It presupposes existence beyond the color itself. To call the color a "sensory" object involves another assumption of the same kind but even more complex—involving, that is, even more existence beyond the color.

I see no reply to this statement except to urge that the terms "visual" and "sensory" as applied to the object are pieces of verbal supererogation having no force in the statement. This supposititious answer brings the matter to a focus. Is it possible to institute even a preliminary disparaging contrast between immediate objects and a world external to them unless the term "sensory" has a definite effect upon the meaning assigned to immediate data or objects? Before taking up this question I shall, however, call attention to another implication of the passage quoted. It appears to be implied that existence of color and "being seen" are equivalent terms. At all events, in similar arguments the identification is frequently made. But by description all that is required for the existence of color is certain physiological conditions. They may be present and color exist and yet not be seen. Things constantly act upon the optical apparatus in a way which fulfils the conditions of the existence of color without color being seen. This statement does not involve any dubious psychology about an act of attention. I only mean that the argument implies over and above the existence of color something called seeing or perceiving—noting is perhaps a convenient neutral term. And this clearly involves an assumption of something beyond the existence of the datum—and this datum is by definition an external world. Without this assumption the term "immediate" could not be introduced. Is the object immediate or is it the object of an immediate noting? If the latter, then the hard datum already stands in connection with something beyond itself.

And this brings us to a further point. The sense objects are repeatedly spoken of as "known." For example: "It is obvious that since the senses give knowledge of the latter kind [believed on their own account, without the support of any outside evidence] the immediate facts perceived by sight or touch or hearing do not need to be proved by argument but are completely self-evident" (p. 68). Again, they are spoken of as "facts of sense"[64] (p. 70), and as facts going along, for knowledge, with the laws of logic (p. 72). I do not know what belief or knowledge means here: nor do I understand what is meant by a fact being evidence for itself.[65] But obviously Mr. Russell knows, and knows their application to the sense object. And here is a further assumption of what, by definition, is a world external to the datum. Again, we have assumed in getting a question stated just what is professedly called into question. And the assumption is not made the less simple in that Mr. Russell has defined belief as a case of a triadic relation, and said that without the recognition of the three-term relation the difference between perception and belief is inexplicable (p. 50).

We come to the question passed over. Can such terms as "visual," "sensory," be neglected without modifying the force of the question—that is, without affecting the implications which give it the force of a problem? Can we "know that objects of sense, or very similar objects, exist at times when we are not perceiving them? Secondly, if this cannot be known, can we know that other objects, inferable from objects of sense but not necessarily resembling them, exist either when we are perceiving the objects of sense or at any other time" (p. 75)?

I think a little reflection will make it clear that without the limitation of the term "perceiving" by the term "sense" no problem as to existence at other times can possibly arise. For neither (a) reference to time nor (b) limitation to a particular time is given either in the fact of existence of color or of perceiving color. Mr. Russell, for example, makes allusion to "a patch of color which is momentarily seen" (p. 76). This is the sort of thing that may pass without challenge in the common-sense world, but hardly in an analysis which professes to call that world in question. Mr. Russell makes the allusion in connection with discriminating between sensation as signifying "the mental event of our being aware" and the sensation as object of which we are aware—the sense object. He can hardly be guilty, then, in the immediate context, of proceeding to identify the momentariness of the event with the momentariness of the object. There must be some grounds for assuming the temporal quality of the object—and that "immediateness" belongs to it in any other way than as an object of immediate seeing. What are these grounds?

How is it, moreover, that even the act of being aware is describable as "momentary"? I know of no way of so identifying it except by discovering that it is delimited in a time continuum. And if this be the case, it is surely superfluous to bother about inference to "other times." They are assumed in stating the question—which thus turns out again to be no question. It may be only a trivial matter that Mr. Russell speaks of "that patch of color which is momentarily seen when we look at the table" (p. 76, italics mine). I would not attach undue importance to such phrases. But the frequency with which they present themselves in discussions of this type suggests the question whether as matter of fact "the patch of color" is not determined by reference to an object—the table—and not vice versa. As we shall see later, there is good ground for thinking that Mr. Russell is really engaged, not in bringing into question the existence of an object beyond the datum, but in redefining the nature of an object, and that the reference to the patch of color as something more primitive than the table is really relevant to this reconstruction of traditional metaphysics. In other words, it is relevant to defining an object as a constant correlation of variations in qualities, instead of defining it as a substance in which attributes inhere—or a subject of predicates.

a) If anything is an eternal essence, it is surely such a thing as color taken by itself, as by definition it must be taken in the statement of the question by Mr. Russell. Anything more simple, timeless, and absolute than a red can hardly be thought of. One might question the eternal character of the received statement of, say, the law of gravitation on the ground that it is so complex that it may depend upon conditions not yet discovered and the discovery of which would involve an alteration in the statement. If 2 plus 2 equal 4 be taken as an isolated statement, it might be conceived to depend upon hidden conditions and to be alterable with them. But by conception we are dealing in the case of the colored surface with an ultimate, simple datum. It can have no implications beyond itself, no concealed dependencies. How then can its existence, even if its perception be but momentary, raise a question of "other times" at all?

b) Suppose a perceived blue surface to be replaced by a perceived red surface—and it will be conceded that the change, or replacement, is also perceived. There is still no ground for a belief in the temporally limited duration of either the red or the blue surface. Anything that leads to this conclusion would lead to the conclusion that the number two ceases when we turn to think of an atom. There is no way then of escaping the conclusion that the adjective "sense" in the term "sense object" is not taken innocently. It is taken as qualifying (for the purposes of statement of the problem) the nature of the object. Aside from reference to the momentariness of the mental event—a reference which is expressly ruled out—there is no way of introducing delimited temporal existence into the object save by reference to one and the same object which is perceived at different times to have different qualities. If the same object—however object be defined—is perceived to be of one color at one time and of another color at another time, then as a matter of course the color-datum of either the earlier or later time is identified as of transitory duration. But equally, of course, there is no question of inference to "other times." Other times have already been used to describe, define, and delimit this (brief) time. A moderate amount of unbiased reflection will, I am confident, convince anyone that apart from a reference to the same existence perduring through different times while changing in some respect, no temporal delimitation of the existence of such a thing as sound or color can be made. Even Plato never doubted the eternal nature of red; he only argued from the fact that a thing is red at one time and blue at another to the unstable, and hence phenomenal, character of the thing. Or, put in a different way, we can know that a red is a momentary or transitory existence only if we know of other things which determine its beginning and cessation.

Mr. Russell gives a specific illustration of what he takes to be the correct way of stating the question in an account of what, in the common-sense universe of discourse, would be termed walking around a table. If we exclude considerations to which we have (apart from assuming just the things which are doubtful) no right, the datum turns out to be something to be stated as follows: "What is really known[66] is a correlation of muscular and other bodily sensations with changes in visual sensations" (p. 77). By "sensations" must be meant sensible objects, not mental events. This statement repeats the point already dealt with: "muscular," "visual," and "other bodily" are all terms which are indispensable and which also assume the very thing professedly brought into question: the external world as that was defined. "Really known" assumes both noting and belief, with whatever complex implications they may involve—implications which, for all that appears to the contrary, may be indefinitely complex, and which, by Mr. Russell's own statement, involve relationship to at least two other terms besides the datum. But in addition there appears the new term "correlation." I cannot avoid the conclusion that this term involves an explicit acknowledgment of the external world.

Note, in the first place, that the correlation in question is not simple: it is threefold, being a correlation of correlations. The "changes in visual sensations" (objects) must be correlated in a temporal continuum; the "muscular and other bodily sensations" (objects) must also constitute a connected series. One set of changes belongs to the serial class "visual"; the other set to the serial class "muscular." And these two classes sustain a point-to-point correspondence to each other—they are correlated.

I am not raising the old question of how such complex correlations can be said to be either "given" or "known" in sense, though it is worth a passing notice that it was on account of this sort of phenomenon that Kant postulated his threefold intellectual synthesis of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition in conception; and that it is upon the basis of necessity for such correlations that the rationalists have always criticized sensationalist empiricism. Personally I agree that temporal and spatial qualities are quite as much given in experience as are particulars—in fact, as I have been trying to show, particulars can be identified as particulars only in a relational complex. My point is rather (i) that any such given is already precisely what is meant by the "world"; and (ii) that such a highly specified correlation as Mr. Russell here sets forth is in no case a psychological, or historical, primitive, but is a logical primitive arrived at by an analysis of an empirical complex.

(i) The statement involves the assumption of two temporal "spreads" which, moreover, are determinately specified as to their constituent elements and as to their order. And these sustain to each other a correlation, element to element. The elements, moreover, are all specifically qualitative and some of them, at least, are spatial. How this differs from the external world of common-sense I am totally unable to see. It may not be a very big external world, but having begged a small external world, I do not see why one should be too squeamish about extending it over the edges. The reply, I suppose, is that this complex defined and ordered object is by conception the object of a single perception, so that the question remains as to the possibility of inferring from it to something beyond.[67] But the reply only throws us back upon the point previously made. A particular or single event of perceptual awareness can be determined as to its ingredients and structure only in a continuum of objects. That is, the series of changes in color and shape can be determined as just such and such an ordered series of specific elements, with a determinate beginning and end, only in respect to a temporal continuum of things anteceding and succeeding. Moreover, the determination involves an analysis which disentangles qualities and shapes from contemporaneously given objects which are irrelevant. In a word, Mr. Russell's object already extends beyond itself; it already belongs to a larger world.

(ii) A sensible object which can be described as a correlation of an ordered series of shapes and colors with an ordered series of muscular and other bodily objects presents a definition of an object, not a psychological datum. What is stated is the definition of an object, of any object in the world. Barring ambiguities[68] in the terms "muscular" and "bodily," it seems to be an excellent definition. But good definition or poor, it states what a datum is known to be as an object in a known system; viz., definite correlations of specified and ordered elements. As a definition, it is general. It is not made from the standpoint of any particular percipient. It says: If there be any percipient at a specified position in a space continuum, then the object may be perceived as such and such. And this implies that a percipient at any other position in the space continuum can deduce from the known system of correlations just what the series of shapes and colors will be from another position. For, as we have seen, the correlation of the series of changes of shape assumes a spatial continuum; hence one perspective projection may be correlated with that of any position in the continuum.

I have no direct concern with Mr. Russell's solution of his problem. But if the prior analysis is correct, one may anticipate in advance that it will consist simply in making explicit the assumptions which have tacitly been made in stating the problem—subject to the conditions involved in failure to recognize that they have been made. And I think an analytic reading of the solution will bear out the following statement. His various "peculiar," "private" points of view and their perspectives are nothing but names for the positions and projectional perspectives of the ordinary space of the public worlds. Their correlation by likeness is nothing but the explicit recognition that they are all defined and located, from the start, in one common spatial continuum. One quotation must suffice. "If two men are sitting in a room, two somewhat similar worlds are perceived by them; if a third man enters and sits between them, a third world, intermediate between the two others, begins to be perceived" (pp. 87-88). Pray what is this room and what defines the position (standpoint and perspective) of the two men and the standpoint "intermediate" between them? If the room and all the positions and perspectives which they determine are only within, say, Mr. Russell's private world, that private world is interestingly complex, but it gives only the original problem over again, not a "solution" of it. It is a long way from likenesses within a private world to likenesses between private worlds. And if the worlds are all private, pray who judges their likeness or unlikeness? This sort of thing makes one conclude that Mr. Russell's actual procedure is the reverse of his professed one. He really starts with one room as a spatial continuum within which different positions and projections are determined, and which are readily correlated with one another just because they are projections from positions within one and the same space-room. Having employed this, he, then, can assign different positions to different percipients and institute a comparison between what each perceives and pass upon the extent of the likeness which exists between them.

What is the bearing of this account upon the "empirical datum"? Just this: The correlation of correlative series of changes which defines the object of sense perception is in no sense an original historic or psychologic datum. It signifies the result of an analysis of the usual crude empirical data, and an analysis which is made possible only by a very complex knowledge of the world. It marks not a primitive psychologic datum but an outcome, a limit, of analysis of a vast amount of empirical objects. The definition of an object as a correlation of various subcorrelations of changes represents a great advance—so it seems to me—over the definition of an object as a number of adjectives stuck into a substantive; but it represents an improved definition made possible by the advance of scientific knowledge about the common-sense world. It is a definition not only wholly independent of the context in which Mr. Russell arrives at it, but is one which (once more and finally) assumes extensive and accurate knowledge of just the world professedly called into question.

II

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.