From these questions concerning the physical world in itself, we were
led to others concerning the causation of our perceptions, which are
the data upon which our scientific knowledge of physics is based. We
saw that a long causal chain always intervenes between an external
event and the event in us which we regard as perception of the
external event. We cannot therefore suppose that the external event
is exactly what we see or hear; it can, at best, resemble the percept
only in certain structural respects. This fact has caused considerable
confusion in philosophy, partly because philosophers tried to think
better of perception than it deserves, partly because they failed to
have clear ideas on the subject of space. It is customary to treat
space as a characteristic of matter as opposed to mind, but this is
only true of _physical_ space. There is also _perceptual_ space,
which is that in which what we know immediately through the senses is
situated. This space cannot be identified with that of physics. From
the standpoint of physical space, all our percepts are in our heads;
but in perceptual space our percept of our hand is outside our percept
of our head. The failure to keep physical and perceptual space distinct
has been a source of great confusion in philosophy.
In Part III we resumed the study of man, but now as he appears to
himself, not only as he is known to an external observer. We decided,
contrary to the view of the behaviourists, that there are important
facts which cannot be known except when the observer and observed are
the same person. The datum in perception, we decided, is a private fact
which can only be known directly to the percipient; it is a datum for
physics and psychology equally, and must be regarded as both physical
and mental. We decided later that there are inductive grounds, giving
probability but not certainty, in favour of the view that perceptions
are causally connected with events which the percipient does not
experience, which may belong only to the physical world.
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