The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919Whitehead, Alfred North
Philosophy
The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
Whitehead, Alfred North
Knowledge, Theory of; Nature; Science -- Philosophy
I now turn to perceptual objects. When we look at the coat, we do not in
general say, There is a patch of Cambridge blue; what naturally occurs
to us is, There is a coat. Also the judgment that what we have seen is
a garment of man's attire is a detail. What we perceive is an object
other than a mere sense-object. It is not a mere patch of colour, but
something more; and it is that something more which we judge to be a
coat. I will use the word 'coat' as the name for that crude object which
is more than a patch of colour, and without any allusion to the
judgments as to its usefulness as an article of attire either in the
past or the future. The coat which is perceived--in this sense of the
word 'coat'--is what I call a perceptual object. We have to investigate
the general character of these perceptual objects.
It is a law of nature that in general the situation of a sense-object is
not only the situation of that sense-object for one definite percipient
event, but is the situation of a variety of sense-objects for a variety
of percipient events. For example, for any one percipient event, the
situation of a sense-object of sight is apt also to be the situations of
sense-objects of sight, of touch, of smell, and of sound. Furthermore
this concurrence in the situations of sense-objects has led to the
body--_i.e._ the percipient event--so adapting itself that the
perception of one sense-object in a certain situation leads to a
subconscious sense-awareness of other sense-objects in the same
situation. This interplay is especially the case between touch and
sight. There is a certain correlation between the ingressions of
sense-objects of touch and sense-objects of sight into nature, and in a
slighter degree between the ingressions of other pairs of sense-objects.
I call this sort of correlation the 'conveyance' of one sense-object by
another. When you see the blue flannel coat you subconsciously feel
yourself wearing it or otherwise touching it. If you are a smoker, you
may also subconsciously be aware of the faint aroma of tobacco. The
peculiar fact, posited by this sense-awareness of the concurrence of
subconscious sense-objects along with one or more dominating
sense-objects in the same situation, is the sense-awareness of the
perceptual object. The perceptual object is not primarily the issue of a
judgment. It is a factor of nature directly posited in sense-awareness.
The element of judgment comes in when we proceed to classify the
particular perceptual object. For example, we say, That is flannel, and
we think of the properties of flannel and the uses of athletes' coats.
But that all takes place after we have got hold of the perceptual
object. Anticipatory judgments affect the perceptual object perceived by
focussing and diverting attention.
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