The organisation of thought, educational and scientificWhitehead, Alfred North
Philosophy
The organisation of thought, educational and scientific
Whitehead, Alfred North
Education
For example, after leaving the orange, in five minutes we return.
A new first crude thought-object of perception presents itself to
us, indistinguishable from the half-minute orange we previously
experienced; it is in the same fruit-basket. We aggregate the two
presentations of an orange into the same orange. By such aggregations
we obtain "second crude thought-objects of perception." But however far
we can proceed with aggregation of this type, the orange is more than
that. For example, what do we mean when we say, The orange is in the
cupboard, if Tom has not eaten it?
The world of present fact is more than a stream of sense-presentation.
We find ourselves with emotions, volitions, imaginations, conceptions,
and judgments. No factor which enters into consciousness is by itself
or even can exist in isolation. We are analysing certain relations
between sense-presentation and other factors of consciousness.
Hitherto we have taken into account merely the factors of concept and
judgment. Imagination is necessary to complete the orange, namely,
the imagination of hypothetical sense-presentations. It is beside
the point to argue whether we ought to have such imaginations, or to
discuss what are the metaphysical truths concerning reality to which
they correspond. We are here only concerned with the fact that such
imaginations exist and essentially enter into the formation of the
concepts of the thought-objects of perception which are the first
data of science. We conceive the orange as a permanent collection of
sense-presentations existing as if they were an actual element in our
consciousness, which they are not. The orange is thus conceived as
in the cupboard with its shape, odour, colour, and other qualities.
Namely, we imagine hypothetical possibilities of sense-presentation,
and conceive their want of actuality in our consciousness as immaterial
to their existence in fact. The fact which is essential for science is
our conception; its meaning in regard to the metaphysics of reality is
of no scientific importance, so far as physical science is concerned.
The orange completed in this way is the thought-object of perception.
It must be remembered that the judgments and concepts arising in the
formation of thought-objects of perception are in the main instinctive
judgments, and instinctive concepts, and are not concepts and judgments
consciously sought for and consciously criticised before adoption.
Their adoption is facilitated by and interwoven with the expectation of
the future in which the hypothetical passes into the actual, and also
with the further judgment of the existence of other consciousnesses,
so that much that is hypothetical to one consciousness is judged to be
actual to others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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