This point of agreement between conceptualism and empiricism, this
placing of imagery and sense-experience on a common level, serves to
bring into relief fundamental differences between the two schools of
thought; fundamental, because they have to do with the nature of reality
itself. The conceptualist in his zealous endeavor to distinguish between
imagery and logical meaning has come perilously near driving imagery
into the arms of reality. It is the opportunity of empiricism to make
them one. How can conceptualism prevent the union? Has it not disarmed
itself? The act of judgment, which includes within itself logical
meaning as predicate, refers to a reality beyond the act. Both imagery
and reality, then, lie outside of the act of judgment! What alliance, or
_mésalliance_, may they not form, one with the other?
The difficulties we have noted thus far in the discussion are due to a
large extent, I believe, to incomplete psychological analysis of
logical machinery. The empiricist has not carried the psychology of
logic as far as the conceptualist, although the latter might be the
loudest to disclaim the honor. I will not try to prove this statement,
but simply give it as a reason why, in the interest of brevity, I shall
pass with little comment over the psychological shortcomings and
contributions of empirical logic, and devote what space remains to the
psychology implicitly worked out by conceptual logic, and to its
possible development, with special reference, of course, to the problem
of the logical function of imagery.
The logical distinction, which practically amounts to a separation
between imagery and meaning, is the counterpart of the psychological
distinction between stimulus and response, between the two poles of
sensori-motor activity, where the stimulus is defined in consciousness
in the form of imagery, in the form of sense-qualities centrally
excited, and where the response is directed and controlled _via_ this
imagery, so as to function in bringing some end, project, purpose, or
ideal, nearer to realization, some problem nearer to solution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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