This change in the conception of the character of the ideas, with no
corresponding change in the conception of reality, marks the divorce of
thought and reality and the rise of the epistemological problem. Let us
recall that in Plato the relation between the higher and ultimate
reality, as constituted by the complete and "Eternal Ideas," and the
lower reality of perception, is that of archetype and ectype.
Perceptions attempt to imitate and copy the ideas. Now, when the ideas
are found to be changing, and when further the interpenetration of
perception and conception is discovered, reality as fixed and complete
must be located elsewhere. And just as in the old system it was the
business of perception to imitate the "Eternal Ideas," so here it is
still assumed that thought is to imitate the reality wherever now it is
to be located. And as regards the matter of location, the old conception
is not abandoned. The elder Plato is mighty yet. Reality must still be a
completed system of fixed and eternal "things in themselves,"
"relations," or "noumena" of some sort which _our_ ideas, now
constituted by both perception and conceptional processes, are still to
"imitate," "copy," "reflect," "represent," or at least "symbolize" in
some fashion.
From this point on, then, thought has two functions: one, to help
experience meet and reorganize into itself the results of its own past
activity; the other, to reflect or represent in some sense the absolute
system of reality. For a very long time the latter has continued to
constitute the logical problem, the former being relegated to the realm
of psychology.
But this discovery of the reconstructive function of the idea and its
assignment to the jurisdiction of psychology did not leave logic where
it was before, nor did it lighten its task. Logic could not shut its
eyes to this "psychological" character of the idea.[165] Indeed, logic
had to take the idea as psychology described it, then do the best it
could with it for its purpose.
The embarrassment of logic by this reconstructive character of the idea
even Aristotle discovered to some extent in the relation of the Platonic
perceptions to the eternal ideas. He found great difficulty in getting a
flowing stream of consciousness to imitate or even symbolize an
eternally fixed and completed reality. And since we have discovered, in
addition, that the idea is so palpably a reconstructive activity, the
difficulties have not diminished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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