An Introduction to Philosophy by George Stuart Fullerton (best free novels .txt) 📕

It is argued by some that, if this is a true view of things, we must embrace the conclusion that the mind cannot be active at all, that it can accomplish nothing. We must look upon the mind as an "epiphenomenon," a useless decoration; and must regard man as "a physical automaton with parallel psychical states."

Such abuse of one's fellow-man seems unchristian, and it is wholly uncalled for on any hypothesis. Our first answer to it is that it seems to be sufficiently refuted by the experiences of common life. We have abundant evidence that men's minds do count for something. I conclude that I want a coat, and I order one of my tailor; he believes that I will pay for it, he wants the money, and he makes the coat; his man desires to earn his wages and he delivers it. If I had not wanted the coat, if the tailor had not wanted my money, if the man had not wanted to earn his wages, the end would not have been attained. No philosopher has the right to deny these facts.

Ah! but, it may be answered, these three "wants" are not supposed to be the causes of the motions in matter which result in my appearing well-dressed on Sunday. They are only concomitant phenomena.

To this I reply: What of that? We must not forget what is meant by such concomitance (section 39). We are dealing with a fixed and necessary relation, not with an accidental one. If these "wants" had been lacking, there would have been no coat. So my second answer to the objector is, that, on the hypothesis of the parallelist, the relations between mental phenomena and physical phenomena are just as dependable as that relation between physical phenomena which we call that of cause and effect. Moreover, since activity and causality are not the same thing, there is no ground for asserting that the mind cannot be active, merely because it is not material and, hence, cannot be, strictly speaking, a cause of motions in matter.

The plain man is entirely in the right in thinking that minds are active. The truth is that nothing can be active except as it has a mind. The relation of purpose and end is the one we have in view when we speak of the activity of minds.

It is, thus, highly unjust to a man to tell him that he is "a physical automaton with parallel psychical states," and that he is wound up by putting food into his mouth. He who hears this may be excused if he feels it his duty to emit steam, walk with a jerk, and repudiate all responsibility for his actions. Creatures that think, form plans, and act, are not what we call automata. It is an abuse of language to call them such, and it misleads us into looking upon them as we have no right to look upon them. If men really were automata in the proper sense of the word, we could not look upon them as wise or unwise, good or bad; in short, the whole world of moral distinctions would vanish.

Perhaps, in spite of all that has been said in this and in the preceding section, some will feel a certain repugnance to being assigned a place in a world as orderly as our world is in this chapter conceived to be—a world in which every phenomenon, whether physical or mental, has its definite place, and all are subject to law. But I suppose our content or discontent will not be independent of our conception of what sort of a world we conceive ourselves to be inhabiting.

If we conclude that we are in a world in which God is revealed, if the orderliness of it is but another name for Divine Providence, we can scarcely feel the same as we would if we discovered in the world nothing of the Divine. I have in the last few pages been discussing the doctrine of purposes and ends, teleology, but I have said nothing of the significance of that doctrine for Theism. The reader can easily see that it lies at the very foundation of our belief in God. The only arguments for theism that have had much weight with mankind have been those which have maintained there are revealed in the world generally evidences of a plan and purpose at least analogous to what we discover when we scrutinize the actions of our fellow-man. Such arguments are not at the mercy of either interactionist or parallelist. On either hypothesis they stand unshaken.

With this brief survey of some of the most interesting problems that confront the philosopher, I must content myself here. Now let us turn and see how some of the fundamental problems treated in previous chapters have been approached by men belonging to certain well-recognized schools of thought.

And since it is peculiarly true in philosophy that, to understand the present, one must know something of the past, we shall begin by taking a look at the historical background of the types of philosophical doctrine to which reference is constantly made in the books and journals of the day.

[1] Ostwald, "Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie," s. 396. Leipzig, 1902.

48. THE DOCTRINE OF REPRESENTATIVE PERCEPTION.—We have seen in Chapter II that it seems to the plain man abundantly evident that he really is surrounded by material things and that he directly perceives such things. This has always been the opinion of the plain man and it seems probable that it always will be. It is only when he begins to reflect upon things and upon his knowledge of them that it occurs to him to call it in question.

Very early in the history of speculative thought it occurred to men, however, to ask how it is that we know things, and whether we are sure we do know them. The problems of reflection started into life, and various solutions were suggested. To tell over the whole list would take us far afield, and we need not, for the purpose we have in view, go back farther than Descartes, with whom philosophy took a relatively new start, and may be said to have become, in spirit and method, at least, modern.

I have said (section 31) that Descartes (1596-1650) was fairly well acquainted with the functioning of the nervous system, and has much to say of the messages which pass along the nerves to the brain. The same sort of reasoning that leads the modern psychologist to maintain that we know only so much of the external world as is reflected in our sensations led him to maintain that the mind is directly aware of the ideas through which an external world is represented, but can know the world itself only indirectly and through these ideas.

Descartes was put to sore straits to prove the existence of an external world, when he had once thus placed it at one remove from us. If we accept his doctrine, we seem to be shut up within the circle of our ideas, and can find no door that will lead us to a world outside. The question will keep coming back: How do we know that, corresponding to our ideas, there are material things, if we have never perceived, in any single instance, a material thing? And the doubt here suggested may be reinforced by the reflection that the very expression "a material thing" ought to be meaningless to a man who, having never had experience of one, is compelled to represent it by the aid of something so different from it as ideas are supposed to be. Can material things really be to such a creature anything more than some complex of ideas?

The difficulties presented by any philosophical doctrine are not always evident at once. Descartes made no scruple of accepting the existence of an external world, and his example has been followed by a very large number of those who agree with his initial assumption that the mind knows immediately only its own ideas.

Preëminent among such we must regard John Locke, the English philosopher (1632-1704), whose classic work, "An Essay concerning Human Understanding," should not be wholly unknown to any one who pretends to an interest in the English literature.

Admirably does Locke represent the position of what very many have regarded as the prudent and sensible man,—the man who recognizes that ideas are not external things, and that things must be known through ideas, and yet holds on to the existence of a material world which we assuredly know.

He recognizes, it is true, that some one may find a possible opening for the expression of a doubt, but he regards the doubt as gratuitous; "I think nobody can, in earnest, be so skeptical as to be uncertain of the existence of those things which he sees and feels." As we have seen (section 12), he meets the doubt with a jest.

Nevertheless, those who read with attention Locke's admirably clear pages must notice that he does not succeed in really setting to rest the doubt that has suggested itself. It becomes clear that Locke felt so sure of the existence of the external world because he now and then slipped into the inconsistent doctrine that he perceived it immediately, and not merely through his ideas. Are those things "which he sees and feels" external things? Does he see and feel them directly, or must he infer from his ideas that he sees and feels them? If the latter, why may one not still doubt? Evidently the appeal is to a direct experience of material things, and Locke has forgotten that he must be a Lockian.

"I have often remarked, in many instances," writes Descartes, "that there is a great difference between an object and its idea." How could the man possibly have remarked this, when he had never in his life perceived the object corresponding to any idea, but had been altogether shut up to ideas? "Thus I see, whilst I write this," says Locke,[1] "I can change the appearance of the paper, and by designing the letters tell beforehand what new idea it shall exhibit the very next moment, by barely drawing my pen over it, which will neither appear (let me fancy as much as I will), if my hand stands still, or though I move my pen, if my eyes be shut; nor, when those characters are once made on the paper, can I choose afterward but see them as they are; that is, have the ideas of such letters as I have made. Whence it is manifest, that they are not barely the sport and play of my own imagination, when I find that the characters that were made at the pleasure of my own thought do not obey them; nor yet cease to be, whenever I shall fancy it; but continue to affect the senses constantly and regularly, according to the figures I made them."

Locke is as bad as Descartes. Evidently he regards himself as able to turn to the external world and perceive the relation that things hold to ideas. Such an inconsistency may escape the writer who has been guilty of it, but it is not likely to escape the notice of all those who come after him. Some one is sure to draw the consequences of a doctrine more rigorously, and to come to conclusions, it may be, very unpalatable to the man who propounded the doctrine in the first instance.

The type of doctrine represented by Descartes and Locke is that of Representative Perception. It holds that we know real external things only through their mental representatives. It has also been called Hypothetical Realism, because it accepts the existence of a real world, but bases our knowledge of it upon an inference from our sensations or ideas.

49. THE STEP TO IDEALISM.—The admirable clearness with which Locke writes makes it the easier for his reader to detect the untenability of his position. He uses simple language, and he never takes refuge in vague and ambiguous phrases. When he tells us that the mind is wholly shut up to its ideas, and then later assumes that it is not shut up to its ideas, but can perceive external things, we see plainly that there must be a blunder somewhere.