The principle of synthetic unity in Berkeley and Kant ...

Preface

This little volume was prepared as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan. By the advice of Dr. John Dewey I have undertaken to interpret the Metaphysical Notes of Berkeley's Commonplace Book, and as far as possible discover the Principle of Unity which occasionally manifests itself in Berkeley's works and which formed a basis for a " Treatise on the Will" which Berkeley contemplated but never produced.

I wish to express my indebtedness to Dr. Dewey for his assistance in the selection of collateral reading and for his suggestions in the development of the thesis. No literature could be secured bearing upon the interpretation of the Notes, hence the Notes have been classified and such as bear upon the theme under discussion have been used. Often the phraseology has been preserved but where that could not be done the thought has been expressed in phraseology as nearly Berkeleian as the author could select so as to preserve the unity that runs through the Notes.

This principle of unity found in Berkely has been compared and contrasted with the Unity of Kant.

s. M. D.

Contents

Page

Introduction i

I. The Will as Seen in Berkeley's Commonplace Book

I. The Commonplace Book. 3

a. Source of authority 3

b. Basis for a broader philosophy 4

c. The period in which Berkeley lived .5

i'. The new question. ....... 6

d. Berkeley's hope in establishing the principle. ... 6

i'. Berkeley not satisfied with his philosophy. . . 7 2 The Will Defined.

a. The abstract of the Will 7

b. The concrete of the Will. 8

c. The Will a pure activity 9

i'. Berkeley's approach to the modern idea. . . 9

d. The difficulties in treating the Will 10

3. The Will and the Understanding 11

4. What Wills and how? 11

5. Connection with the Divine Will 12

II. Will, a Synthetic Element or Activity

I. The Process of Knowledge.

a. What Berkeley attempts 14

b. The source of knowledge 16

i'. Sensations. 16

2'. Thoughts 17

c. Objects of conscious experience 18

i'. First element 18

2 Second element. 18

VI

3'. Elements discussed

a\ Perception.

i". Kant's schematism foreshadowed. 2". Imagination not a synthetic element 3". Substantiality in the Material World 4". Permanence necessary to perception.

F. Conception

i". Berkeley's dualism.

The "Will's function in knowledge. a. Berkeley influenced by Descartes.

d. Will — The source of the modes of knowledge c. How Will becomes a synthetic activity. <i. Will in a disjunctive judgment. .

e. Will the underlying unity. . . . . /. Berkeley compared with Bowne. .

Bodies exist without the mind

a. No experience without existing bodies. />. Existence of bodies not a fancy.

c. Three theories for the existence of the Universe,

l'. Abstractly objective

2'. Abstractly subjective.

3'. Dynamic inter-relation.

4'. To which does Berkeley belong ?

d. Berkeley's later philosophy.

Knowledge and Reason.

a. Transition to Reason. .....

b. Reason — "Nature immersed in matter."

c. Morris on Berkeley. .....

d. Berkeley's Reason like that of Kant. .

III. Kant's Transcendental Ego

Pag-e 21

27 28 30 30

45 45 46

I. The Transcendental Ego defined 47

a. Not a concept. , . 47

b. Terms applied to it 47

c. The starting place of metaphysics 48 vn

Page

d. Descartes' cogtto ergo sum. . . . . . . 49

e. Kant's criticism 51

/. The Transcendental and the Empirical Ego. ... 52

g. The relation of the Transcendental Ego to the Noumenon. 53

2. The function of the Transcendental Self in knowledge. . . 56

a. Robert Adamson's conament. 56

d. Concreteness implied in Kant's analytic thought . . 57

c. The Ego not a power of theoretical cognition. ... 58

d. Necessity founded on transcendental conditions. . . 59 £. Thought and the manifold united 60

3. Summary.

a. Sources of confusion 62

l>. Categories as tools. . 63

c. Something given to thought. 64

J. Kant's treatment of thought and the manifold. . . 65

IV. Points of Resemblance and Difference Compared AND Contrasted

1. Defects Considered.

a. Berkeley entitled to more credit than received. . . 67

d. Chief point of failure. 67

c. Berkeley failed to use the dialectic 68

d. Kant's advance on Berkeley. 69

e. Defects in Kant's system 70

2. Similarities pointed out 71

a. Specific likenesses. ........ 72

6. Synthetic activity in experience ...... 74

c. Difference that of induction and deduction. • • • 75

3. Differences pointed out. 77

a. Their dualism 78

l>. Summary. 79

4. Conclusion. 79

Bibliography. 81

THE PRINCIPLE OF SYNTHETIC UNITY IN BERKELEY AND KANT.

Every student of modern philosophy gives to Kant the credit of formulating and developing a synthetic principle in knowledge, which prior to Kant had received little or no attention. There is no doubt the credit is properly placed ; the very nature of philosophy is to have a system ; philosophy is a system ; but before there is a development there must be a movement of thought through various stages. These stages, according to advanced modern logic, are three in number and are represented by three forms of judgment, viz., the categorical, the hypothetical and the disjunctive. The first of these judgments is the statement of a fact ; the second, the statement of a fact under certain limitations and conditions ; the third, the statement of a fact with all the conditions overcome and realized. It may be said that through the movement of thought in modern philosophy, Berkeley's forecast of the Will is the categorical judgment concerning the synthetic principle or activity in knowledge, that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the h^^pothetical judgment, and Hegel's Philosophy is the disjunctive judgment.

The work of this paper is to discover, if possible, whether such a relation exists, i. e., to compare, as synthetic activities in knowledge, the active principle of Will as seen in Berkeley's Commonplace Book with the Transcendental Ego of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The author will, therefore, in the development of Berkeley's principle of Will, reserve the right to use Kantian phraseology where it seems best and where it precisely expresses the Berkelean thought.

The subject will be treated under the following heads ;

I. The Will as seen in Berkeley's Commonplace Book.

II. The Will a Synthetic Activity in Knowledge.

III. Kant's use of the Transcendental Unity of Apper-

ception.

IV. Points of Resemblance and Difference Compared

and Contrasted.

I.

THE WILL AS SEEN IN BERKELEY S COMMONPLACE

BOOK.

In developing the philosophy of the Commonplace Book, a brief reference to the sources of material will be necessary to show the character of the philosophical study of Berkeley in preparing for the production of the works he has left to us. The Commonplace Book was published for the first time in 187 1, edited by Alexander Campbell Fraser, of the University of Edinburgh. It consists of an unclassified collection of metaphysical thoughts expressed almost entirely in single sentences, which represent the suggestions of the author's mind as he read many philosophical works and pondered over the subjects he contemplated developing. Some of these subjects he did develop, while others lie hidden in the thoughts of the Commonplace Book. It is the object of this investigation to trace out some of those hidden lines of thought, and, if possible, to discover Berkeley's theory of the human will and the part it plays, as a unifying activity, in a system of knowledge.

The references named in the Commonplace Book are so numerous and comprehensive that it relieves the student of much laborious effort to find the sources of study which enabled Berkeley to form his conceptions. He makes frequent reference to the leading mathematicians of the day, and his frequent and specific references to Locke show him to have been thoroughly master of Locke's philosophical position on every phase of the Human Understanding. He also makes many and familiar references to Descartes, Malebranche, Hobbes, Spinoza, Newton, and others. He was also familiar with Aristotle and Plato.

A basis is laid in the Commonplace Book for a broader foundation of philosophical research and development than is found in the Principles. The mere matter of solving the problem which arose from the misconception of the material universe was not all that Berkeley meant to do. He anticipated the period of critical philosophy which was to follow and proposed to lay a metaphysical basis for the purpose of robbing his critics of all opportunity of taking a deep hold on him. He meant to leave no weak place of attack from which his critics might succeed in dethroning him or in driving him from the position which he so manfully maintained. In order to accomplish this, he deemed "A Treatise on the Human Will" necessary and proceeded to lay the foundation for the same. This treatise of the will would have proved too narrow for his ontological investigation ; so he proposed to look into the mind and its faculties in a broader sense, and has laid the fundamental principles for this broader metaphysical development in the Commonplace Book. It is my purpose in this discussion to show what was Berkeley's conception of the Will as proposed in the contemplated treatise and to show, as far as possible, how he meant to apply the will in his ultimate theory of knowledge. To reach the conclusion desired in the premises laid down, a summing up of the philosophical tendencies of Berkeley's time will be necessary to the introduction of this discussion.

Berkeley lived in a period when philosophers were analyzing Matter from every possible point of view, and with varied success were attempting to explain its existence. The "Abstractly Objective Theory" was prevalent. A "thing" must exist into which, as it were, the qualities, primary and secondary, were stuck ; but when these qualities were pulled out of the "thing" nothing was left, at least nothing that was knowable. This gave rise to material scepticism, and Berkeley realized that this scepticism of matter was leading to scepticism of reality of every sort. The failure of Locke, Malebranche, Descartes, and others to explain and define matter gave rise to the idea that matter might be even a cause* of consciousness ; and one philosopher^ went so far as to explain the existence of the mind by the body, or to show that the body was a sufficient cause for the explanation of the existence of the mind. Other philosophers^ advocated theories not less objectionable to Berkeley. These theories must be refuted and something more rational and more satisfactory substituted for them. The mere overthrowing of a

^ Locke. " Hobbes. » Spinoza and Leibnitz.

theory without substituting something more rational for it, does not lessen the tendencies to scepticism ; it only makes them greater. Foreseeing this, Berkeley aimed to introduce a new theory and then to defend his theory against all assaults from either contemporaries or successors. The first thing was to get the new question of the reality of matter before the minds of philosophers ; to this end he struggled long and hard, and we may say during his life, almost in vain. It was with this lever that Berkeley moved modern thought. He changed the whole channel of inquiry about matter, as well as the current of thought concerning it. How was this change made and by what argument was the theory sustained? The theory was that matter was a result of mental operations ; that matter only existed in the mind, or rather that matter could not exist without the mind.

Could Berkeley but establish this important doctrine and at the same time prove the existence of spiritual substance, and thus with an unassumed premise explain cause and effect, the mists of scepticism would vanish. There would no longer be left any room for doubt; there would no longer be any philosophical problem for the materialists and idealists to quibble over. The conclusion would be final. To this end Berkeley produced his "Principles of Human Knowledge." Nearly all the fundamental thoughts of the Principles are found in the Commonplace Book, but no argument. By tracing the argument through the Principles and comparing it with the philosophical reasonings of the Siris, we notice a marked change in the psychology.^ There are indications also that Berkeley was not thoroughly satisfied with the metaphysical aspect of his Principles. This may be the key to the explanation why he never developed the metaphysical principles laid down in his Commonplace Book. Indeed, I think we shall discover before we have finished that there were certain points concerning the will and other faculties of the mind that he could not define to his own satisfaction and at the same time defend the doctrines set forth in his philosophy as handed down to us.

Could Berkeley have carried his point there would have been nothing left for him to do but to establish the doctrines of the divinity as he understood them and thus have utterly demolished the "minute philosophers."

Having said so much by way of explanation, let us examine Berkeley's position with respect to the human will.

Berkeley's new idea of matter made it necessary for him to put a new interpretation upon the functions of the will. The soul, properly speaking, is the will, and as such is distinct from idea ; that is, it cannot be classed with phenomena, and hence remains a mere abstraction, and as an abstraction is absolutely unknowable; not unknowable in the sense that it is an unthinkable "thing" or essence, but unknowable in the sense that there can be no idea formed of it, it would at once become an idea itself which from the very nature of

* Siris Sec. 303.

spirit or, of spirit-substance is absurd and a contradiction of terms. We are imposed upon by the words will, determine, agent, free, can, etc. To Berkeley words meant something, and the meaningless use to which many philosophers have put the above words has led us into many errors ; will is not an idea and indeed cannot be, and when it is made synonymous with words which do represent ideas, it leads us into conflicting judgments and inflicts upon us impositions which are in no way excusable.

Let us, therefore, emphasize the fact that this unknown substratum, this abstract something, which underlies all volition and all ideas, is something whereof we know not, neither indeed is there any other being which has or can have an idea of it, for just as soon as it becomes reducible to the mere possibility of being known in the sense of an idea it ceases to be a will at all and we contradict ourselves by calling it so. Berkeley, therefore, emphasizes the fact that "The Spirit — the active thing — that which is Soul and God — is the Will alone. The ideas are effects — impotent things."

The concrete of the will and the understanding taken together may be called the mind, not the person. The definition of person is entirely omitted, but the idea implied that should we make the concrete of the will and understanding equal to person we introduce a second volitionating being or power into the world ; but this is contradictory to the acknowledged conception of but one volitionating being, viz. God.

The will, says Berkeley, is '■'■ftirus actus, or rather pure spirit, not imaginable, not sensible, not intelligible, in nowise the object of the understanding, and in nowise perceivable ;" its properties are immortality and incorruptibility, and its substance is to act, to cause, to will, to operate. Its substance is not knowable. It is seen from what precedes that it is soul, is God, and yet dependent upon God, i. e., that God is the only being in whom is vested the power of originating volitions, but that there is a synthetic unity of the human and divine wills which renders them absolutely inseparable. The moment the human will becomes a unity in itself and entirely disconnected from , the divine will, it becomes a thing of which an idea can be formed and therefore an idea, and thus ceases to be a will at all ; yet as it is, it is a will, in as much as it has the power of placing if not of absolutely originating volitions.

Berkeley was not satisfied with the scholastique term, "pure act" for the will, but substituted pure spirit, or active being from which I interpret him as approaching nearer to the Leibnitzian idea that will is not mere activity in general but that it is activity toward some definite end.^ He again approaches the idea of modern philosophy in his attempt to give the concrete of the will. In his reasoning he approaches that point where his conclusions would lead him to say that the will psychologically speaking is the per-

* Leibnitz's Essay on Human Understanding. By John Dewey.

lO

son; this was Berkeley's thought yet he did not say it, for the simple reason that he was not absolutely sure of his premises, and he was careful to guard his statements lest a Hume should come after him. More recent philosophers have said it. "The will is the man, psychologically speaking."^ It is interesting, however, to see how nearly Berkeley approached this idea and then shrank from expressing himself lest he could not defend his doctrine.

The difficulties in treating the will are not a few says Berkeley, and the great causes of perplexity and darkness arise from the fact that we imagine the will to be an object of thought ; we think we may perceive it, contemplate it, turn it this way and that, view it, and examine it as we would any object or any of our ideas, whereas in truth it is no idea, neither is there nor can there be any idea of it. If you say the will, or rather the volition, is a "thing," there is an ambiguity arises in the use of the word "thing" as applied to will and to idea. We may conclude therefore that the will is an active force, spiritual, forming in some way a union with the divine will, so that the volitionating of the divine will is so imparted to the human will that we may be said ourselves to volitionate. That the will is not ■purus actus in the abstract sense, but that it is spirit acting with some end in view, the realization of which would have been an absolute self-consciousness,

^ Psychology, By John Dewey, P. 417.

II or such a consciousness of the ego within us, that from that consciousness we should be able to establish beyond all doubt the existence of spirit substance.

The Understanding and the Will : — The understanding taken as a faculty says Berkeley, is not really distinct from the will ; however, the will and the understanding may very well be thought to be two distinct activities. There is but little doubt that the separation of will and understanding vv^as a matter of which Berkeley was not sure, neither indeed was he able to form a unity of the two which made no distinction between them. Every student of Berkeley is thoroughly acquainted with his conception of the word idea ; the difference between idea and volition is apparent ; the difference between will and understanding is relatively the difference between volition and idea, i. e., what the will is to volition, the understanding is to idea, or on the other hand, as volition is the realization of will so idea is the realization of understanding ; it follows, therefore, that will and understanding are inseparable, both abstract ideas, the existence of one necessitating the existence of the other, and that will is the cause of idea, and idea the realization of understanding.

What Wills and How?

If you ask what thing it is that wills I must inquire what you mean by "thing," if you mean idea or anything like an idea, then I answer it is no "thing" at all that wills ; however extravagant this may seem nevertheless it is true, and it is that fundamental truth on which the foregoing argument is based. Willing is coexistent with self-consciousness and we can no more keep from willing than we can keep from existing ; while we exist we must therefore will ; the acquiescing in the present state is a process of willing. That which wills is an active power, spirit, and there is no other active power that can possibly be conceived of but the will. Here the conclusion to which Berkeley is tending is already manifesting itself; he says there is no active power but the will, therefore if matter exists at all it does not affect us ; whether or not Berkelej^ is able, metaphysically, to prove the doctrine of his Principles, he proposes to show that it forms no basis whatever for the prevalent scepticism with respect to those realities which are of prime importance in attaining the highest end of man's existence.

(i) The connection of the human with the divine will.

To show this connection is to answer the question how the will wills, and it is this connection which determines the difference between cause and occasion. Occasion arises from a power that is without us, and is acting independent of us ; and of those things which happen from without, we are not the cause, but there is another cause for them i. e., there is a being which wills these perceptions in us. Therefore, there is a duality existing, a human and a divine will, and the human is not reducible to a mere machine to serve the purpose of the divine.

The properties of all things are in God, i. e., there is in the Deity understanding as well as will. He is no blind agent ; in truth a blind agent is a contradiction. In this lies the substance of Berkeley's philosophy, whatever may be ascribed to the faculties of man belong to the faculties of God or to the attributes of God ; on the other hand, and set over against this is man as a volitionating being ; separate man from the Deity and he becomes a blind agent ; make him a machine through which the Deity operates and he ceases to be an agent at all. The conclusion is then that the human will is an activity within itself capable of volitionating and yet dependent upon and inseparable from the Divine will. They are two things uniting and adhering, as it were, in one substratum, viz., spirit substance, (pure reality) which is thinkable but not reducible to an idea.

II.

WILL, A SYNTHETIC ELEMENT OR ACTIVITY.

Our investigation thus far has been to detect, if possible, Berkeley's conception of the Will, but he goes further than the mere attempt to gain a notion of what the will is, he plans to bring the will into his philosophy in the ultimate answer to his questions what are existence, reality, externality, causality and reason. As Kant's philosophy is an attempt to answer the questions, how are mathematics, physics and metaphysics possible? and in his answers to establish a system of metaphysics, so Berkeley's proposed philosophy was an attempt not only to define the meaning of the words existence, reality, externality, causality and reason but to show that these things were possible and what was the essence of them. Could Berkeley succeed in this then he could or would have solved the whole philosophic problem ; there would no longer be any excuse for scepticism or dogmatism. To this end he produced his philosophical works which form the nucleus out of which has grown the most of our modern philosophic thought. The unity, however, which is necessary to a complete knowledge of the physical and spiritual worlds he never realized ; the science of metaphysics he never formulated. Of this fact Berkeley was fully conscious, but was no more satisfied to leave the problem there than modern philosophers have been to accept his doctrines as conclusive. It was for the completion of a science of metaphysics, to reach a unity in knowledge, that Berkeley proposed to produce a treatise on the will,' and the second part of this paper is to show that Berkeley meant to make the will fundamental in knowledge and metaphysics.

A complete answer to the above questions was to Berkeley a complete unity in knowledge of all things both physical and metaphysical.

To reach Berkeley's contemplated conclusion it will be necessary to examine the part played by experience in this perfect knowledge, or to find out if possible what experience really is.

All our knowledge, says Berkeley, is about ideas ; he here uses the word ideas^ as closely allied to, if not a synonym for experience. He says "our simple ideas are so many simple thoughts or perceptions."^ All ideas are either from without or from within. If from without, they are sense ideas or sensations ; if from within, they are operations of the mind, products of thought. Kant would call them categories. Knowledge is about ideas but knowledge is not ideas ; knowledge is experience and has in it two factors, perception and thought. So called ideas are not ideas unless they can be reduced to things perceivable, and not mere

» Berkeley's Works Vol. i, P. \%\.

* The Commonplace Book (found in the Liie and Letters of George Berkeley with Writings Hitherto Unpublished) P. 489.

i6

activities ; neither can there be ideas without perception actual or presupposed;^ neither can a perception be perceived without a thing (an activity) to perceive it. 2 It follows that knowledge about ideas when taken from these two sources within and without, reduces practically to experience ; at least knowledge cannot be without the two factors perception and thought.

There is no knowledge except from these sources, i. e., except it be made up of the two elements perception and thought. This is clear for Berkeley says, if it were not for the senses, that the mind could have no knowledge ; no thought at all.^ And the whole tenor of his philosophy is to show that sensations alone are not knowledge, but only things about which we have knowledge. The two factors which enter into our knowledge make it possible for us to have an experience without which we could not have knowledge at all.

Neither sensations nor thought alone can give us experience,* for if we attempt to set off the operations of the mind to themselves and set them over against the conditions of perception and, excluding the latter, attempt to draw experience out of the former, we can succeed only by reducing the fundamental activities or modes of the understanding to ideas, but the moment they become ideas, they cease to be activities ; they are mere "things" and we are found in a hopeless contra-

^ The Cornmonplace Book, PP. 423 and 433. '^ " " " " 498 " 438.

* Introduction to Selections, P. XXVII.

diction of terms. If we keep, within the operations of the mind's activity, in our search for the possibility of experience, we can have no ideas of this activity and hence experience is impossible. On the other hand, if we attempt to draw experience out of sensations alone we rob ourselves of the power of self-identity. ^ The essence of mind, the ego which is substantial would at once be excluded. Sense-ideas or phenomena are at once dependent upon the mind and symbolical of the intuitions of the mind.^ To draw experience from sensations alone excludes this mind essence and leaves experience to the work of a blind agent which is no less contradictory than our former proposition of drawing experience out of our mental operations. There are then in all knowledge two elements and these are the same as Kant calls a priori and a posteriori.

Men are confused in their attempts to solve the problem of knowledge, because they look to other sources than the understanding for knowledge, and there is no knowledge without the understanding. ^ Still another source of confusion arises out of the fact that words which signify the operations of the mind are taken from sensible ideas. The remedy for this is in studying the understanding* and in finding out its relations to the problem of knowledge.

We must pause for a moment to inquire, what are ob-

» Berkeley's Works, Vol. i, PP. 32S-329.

2 " " " I, P. 230 and The Principles, Sec. 142.

'Commonplace Book, P. 432. '• P. 435- jects of knowledge and how do they exist? The objects of conscious experience are alleged, in section one of the "Principles of Human Knowledge," to be "(a') sense-given or external phenomena, (b') internal phenomena, (c) phenomena which may be representative or misrepresentative of both these. "^ These sense-given or external phenomena which are necessary to a conscious experience are objects existing just as really as any object exists to the most radical advocate of the school of realism ; for without their actual existence neither experience nor knowledge could be possible. "Sensible things, — trees, houses, mountains, the whole choir of heaven and the furniture of earth — to the individual percipient — consist at once of actually presented and of merely represented sensations. "^ The first element leaves the individual without choice and the object presented without universality. The individual opens his eyes and beholds an object which he calls a tree ; the object is presented to him with sufficient coherence to produce a sensation out of which he forms a perception, and a judgment, an idea, but the tree is particularized so far as the individual is concerned. However it exists and has its coherence in the divine mind and the mere experience arising from its observance or its presentation is not a matter of choice with the observer. The second element involves contingency or arbitration on the part of the divine mind, and so far univer-