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
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