On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of KnowledgeFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of Knowledge
Fullerton, George Stuart
Knowledge, Theory of
It may be objected that _a consciousness of duality_ and _a
consciousness of similarity_ are only possible on the ground that
I mention, but that duality and similarity themselves may really
obtain when no difference between two is perceptible. But a moment's
reflection will make it plain that one who speaks thus is simply
supplying in himself the elements that he is supposing absent in the
case of another. If he uses the words "duality" and "similarity," and
they really mean anything to him, they imply all that I have said. He
cannot represent to himself two things at all without distinguishing
them from each other, and he can not distinguish them from each other
unless they differ in some way. If, then, he speak of two things as
being two and yet completely indistinguishable, he is, taken literally,
talking nonsense. He may, of course, mean the misleading phrase to be
understood as indicating something not actually expressed by the words.
He may mean to point out that, under certain circumstances, in which he
has an experience which he calls a recognition of two objects as two
and as similar, he has reason to think another mind has an experience
partly like and partly unlike his own--like in as much as it contains
what corresponds to that which is _common_ to the two objects he has
in mind; unlike in as much as it contains nothing which corresponds to
the elements which make it possible for him to recognize two objects.
It is this that is in his mind when he speaks of thinking of two
objects as really two and yet indistinguishable to this man or that.
If, however, the expression "two things may be indistinguishable" is
used to indicate this experience, it should be carefully borne in mind
that the proposition must not be taken literally, for the good reason
that the subject and predicate are not in the one consciousness. The
"two objects" are in the mind of Smith, and the "indistinguishable"
element in the mind of Jones. When we speak of two men as seeing the
same thing, I have shown that we are using the word same in a looser
sense which should never be confounded with the stricter sense.
Strictly speaking, then, the "two things" are never indistinguishable,
but that which corresponds to the two things in a consciousness from
which all recognition of duality is absent. That one man may have a
consciousness of duality while another man has not, and that these two
experiences may be related as the experiences of different minds are
related when we say they are experiencing the same thing, no one would
care to dispute. Should a man say that he can think of himself as
unable to distinguish two things which are nevertheless two, the case,
would not be materially different. The man cannot, of course, think of
_the two things_ as indistinguishable, but he may think of two things
and connect with this thought the thought of himself as having an
experience in which there is no consciousness of duality.
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