The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker — John Shaqi
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinkerLloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Philosophy
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker
Lloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Belief and doubt; Philosophy -- Introductions
and the balancing, tentative nature of all conscious life, we always
think, and think properly, of conscious creatures as having will, as
doing what they do purposely or from design. The new psychology,
however, to which we naturally turn, and which again has only formulated
what we can recognize from everyday experience, declares that the
purpose in conscious activity is not a developed, but an always
developing one. Purposive action is action that never finally knows, but
is ever finding out its real intent, purpose being identical with the
progressively discovered meaning of action. A volitionally, purposively
active being is always a seeker as well as a doer. Indeed, any doing
would itself be empty, or idle, if it were not a seeking, and so if it
were not subject to conditions of some uncertainty. In so many ways,
then, through the necessary inexactness of consciousness, through the
unstable equilibrium of all conscious activity, through the law and fact
of relativity, and through the tentative and provisional nature which
must always belong to purpose, we see how doubt must be a phase or
condition of all consciousness.
Illustrations are abundant. Thus, once more to take a somewhat minute
case, which is really more significant for being minute, with regard to
conscious activity being in a state of tension, visual sensations always
involve muscular sensations, and these are incident not only to
expressed, but also to possible, yet restrained, movements. The eyes may
have been [p.012] moved and the head turned, but in spite of the
impulses present in them the legs have not been used to bring the
observer nearer to the object seen, nor have the arms and hands been
raised to secure a contact with it, and perhaps a tracing of its lines,
although some stimulus for such contact and tracing must be always
present as a part of the actual or possible value of the experience. Or,
again, to adopt an illustration used for a different purpose by
Professor William James, so simple a process as the spelling of a word
is complicated with all sorts of diverting and unsettling impulses as
each letter is expressed. Let the word be _onomatopoetic_. Can I really
spell it correctly? And what a gauntlet of dangers I have to run. The
initial letter _o_ tempts, perhaps with childhood memories of the
alphabet, to _p-q-r-s-t_, etc., or to indefinite words or syllables,
actual from my past or possible to my future experience, such as _of,
off, opine, October, -ology, -ovy_, and so on, or, to suggest mere
possibilities, such as _ontic, oreate, ot_, or _ow_; and every
succeeding letter is equally a scene of combat, a place of dangers
met--safely met, let us hope, and triumphantly passed. Worthy the boy,
or the man, who reaches the end unhurt. And what a voyage of
uncertainties, what a course between hope and fear, confidence and
doubt, the spelling of words or the spelling of life as a whole always
is. One's whole vocabulary, real or possible, or one's whole repertory
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