International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1: Philosophy and Metaphysics
Philosophy
International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1: Philosophy and Metaphysics
Conference proceedings; Medicine -- Congresses; Science and the humanities -- Congresses; Technology -- Congresses
that the _Naturphilosophie_ of the early nineteenth century speedily
fell into a disrepute fully merited by its ignorant presumption. As
regards the physical sciences, the metaphysician has indeed by this time
probably learned his lesson. We are not likely to-day to repeat the
mistake of supposing that it is for us as metaphysicians to dictate what
shall be the physicist's or chemist's definition of matter or mass or
elementary substance or energy, or how he shall formulate the laws of
motion or of chemical composition. Here, at any rate, we can see that
the metaphysician's work is done when his analysis has made it clear
that we are dealing with no self-evident truths such as the laws of
number, but with inductive, and therefore problematic and provisional
results of empirical assumptions as to the course of facts, assumptions
made not because of their inherent necessity, but because of their
practical utility for the special task of calculation. It is only when
such empirical assumptions are treated as self-evident axioms, in fact
when mechanical science gives itself out as a mechanistic philosophy,
that the metaphysician obtains a right to speak, and then only for the
purpose of showing by analysis that the presence of the empirical
postulates which is characteristic of the natural sciences of itself
excludes their erection into a philosophy of first principles.
What is important in this connection is that we should recognize quite
clearly that psychology stands in this respect on precisely the same
logical footing as physics or chemistry. It is tempting to suppose that
in psychology, at any rate, we are dealing throughout with absolute
certainties, realities which "consciousness" apprehends just as they are
without any of that artificial selection and construction which, as we
are beginning to see, is imposed upon the study of physical nature by
the limitations of our purpose of submitting the course of events to
calculation and manipulation. And it is a natural consequence of this
point of view to infer that since psychology deals directly with
realities, it must be taken as the foundation of the metaphysical
constructions which aim at understanding the general character of the
real as such. The consequence, indeed, disappears at once if the views
maintained in this address as to the intimate relation of metaphysics
and logic, and the radical expulsion from logic of all discussion of
mental processes as such, be admitted. But it is still important to note
that the premises from which the conclusion in question was drawn are
themselves false. We must never allow ourselves to forget that, as the
ever-increasing domination of psychology by the highly artificial
methods of observation and experiment introduced by Fechner and Wundt is
daily making more apparent, psychology itself, like physics, deals not
directly with the concrete realities of individual experience, but with
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