The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
Accepting at any rate for our present purpose this distinction, we
have as coördinate realities the object-in-consciousness and the
consciousness-of-the-object. And these two are only different aspects of
the one great reality, the reality of experience. Of these two aspects
neither is more real than the other. The object-in-consciousness is every
bit as real as the consciousness-of-the-object; the orange as real as our
perception thereof. Both are intensely and vitally real; but—here I am in
opposition to Dr. Stoney—_neither is autic_. I can find no warranty for
such autic existence in direct experience or the so-called deliverance of
consciousness. Nor am I aware of any process of reasoning by which it can
be demonstrated.
But, it may be said, is it not in accordance with scientific method to
make an assumption and then see how far such assumption is justified by
the results it enables us to reach? Assuredly such procedure is allowable
and often fruitful. It is not on such grounds, however, that Dr. Stoney,
if I rightly understand him, bases his doctrine of the psychical nature
of _auta_. Let us, nevertheless, pay a moment’s attention to this
assumption and the correlative assumption of analytic materialism.
Consciousness and matter-in-motion (or bare motion perhaps) are the
ultimate elements reached by the psychologist on the one hand and the
physicist on the other. Neither, if he knows his business, pretends by
this analysis to have reached autic existence. But it is open to each
to make an assumption. The materialist says: I assume that motion is
the true autic existence, of which, under appropriate conditions, human
consciousness is merely a psychical aspect. The psychist says: I assume
that consciousness is the true autic existence, of which motion is
merely the phenomenal aspect. I confess that if I were forced to choose
one of these two, (which fortunately I am not,) I should elect to throw
in my lot with the materialists. For if justification by results is
to be the criterion, I hold that the results the materialists have to
show far outweigh any results which the analytic psychists can produce.
But the fact of the matter is that in neither case do the results flow
from the autic assumption. All the results are equally valid for the
student who holds fast to the relativity of object-in-consciousness
to consciousness-of-the-object. Since therefore the assumption is
valueless so far as practical results are concerned, and since it is
somewhat repugnant to sound reason to assume that either term of a given
relationship is the same out of relationship as it is in relation to its
fellow, I contend, as against both materialist and psychist, that it
fails to make good its claim to acceptance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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