Elements of metaphysicsTaylor, A. E. (Alfred Edward)
Philosophy
Elements of metaphysics
Taylor, A. E. (Alfred Edward)
Metaphysics
(2) This will be made clearer by a consideration of the psychological
principle invoked by the subjectivist. What the subjectivist means when
he says that in perception I am aware only of the states, or subjective
modifications, of my own consciousness, is that the object of which each
perceptive state is aware is simply itself as a perceptive state; the
perception perceives itself and nothing else. _E.g._, when I say I see
red, what I am really aware of is that I am in a state of perceiving
red; when I say I hear a noise, what I am aware of is that I am in a
state of hearing a noise, and so universally. Now this is so far from
being a truth, that it is absolutely and demonstrably false. We may, in
fact, definitely lay it down that the one thing of which no one, except
the introspective psychologist, is ever aware is his own perceptive
state in the act of perceiving, and that, even in the case of the
psychologist who sets himself purposely to study his own states, no
perceptive state ever perceives itself. What I am aware of when I look
at a red surface is not “myself-as-perceiving-red,” but the splash
of red colour itself. When I see a man, I do not perceive
“myself-as-seeing-a-man,” but I perceive the other man. So when I
take a resolution to act in a certain way or realise that I
am in a certain mood, what I am directly aware of is not
“myself-as-forming-the-resolution” or “myself-as-in-the-mood,” but the
resolution or the mood. Even when, as an introspective psychologist, I
sit down to study the formation of resolutions or the peculiarities of
emotional moods by reflection on my own experience, the state in which I
study the formation of a resolution or the nature of a mood is not
itself the state of resolving or of experiencing the mood in question.
We cannot too strongly insist that, if by “self-consciousness” is meant
a cognitive state which is its own object, _there is no such thing, and
it is a psychological impossibility that there should be any such thing,
as self-consciousness. No cognitive state ever has itself for its own
object. Every cognitive state has for its object something other than
itself._[51]
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