The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects

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THE ADAMSON LECTURE FOR 1913 WITH AN APPENDIX

BY

MANCHESTER AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1913

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Sherratt & Hughes Publishers to the Victoria University of Manchester 34 Cross Street, Manchester. 33 Soho Square, London, W.

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The Distinction between Mind and its Objects

What I desire to consider with you to-night may fairly be described as a new situation in the philosophical world. And I may begin by saying that it is satisfactory that there should be a new situation. It is a testimony to the inexhaustibleness of reality, and, what is really the same thing, to the fecundity of the human mind. And in the next place, I shall attempt to shew that the nature of the new appearance constitutes a real advance. There is, indeed, always, I believe, a double interpretation possible in face of new attitudes of mind. The novelty may be satisfactory in itself, or it may be satisfactory because of its suggestions. I shall touch upon such a problem of interpretation this evening.

But the first and principal matter to which I wish to call your attention is that we have before us in twentieth century philosophy something which, whether unsatisfactory or not, is definitely new. Of course I do not mean that it is wholly without precedent. You can find much that has led up to it; but I do not think it has before been propounded and defended consciously and on its merits.

What is it, then, that I am speaking of? and how is it connected with the subject of this lecture?

What I am speaking of is twentieth century Realism; and the point of novelty about it,—on the whole, though not in every case, and throughout—is its contrast of principle with Materialism. Or, speaking in terms of our subject, the novelty is this; that the realism in question, though it gives much less to Mind than Idealism, gives much more to Reality than Materialism. Whether the position will prove untenable is a question to be discussed. But that the position, if tenable, would go far to rearrange the whole battlefield of, say, Idealism and Materialism, is, I think, indisputable.

We all know pretty well what is meant by Materialism. Its popular aspect is summed up in a phrase of James Hinton, which I quote from memory, and shall recur to below. "What a world is that which science pronounces real; dark, cold, and shaking like a jelly." Of course there is a sheer confusion in the statement; but perhaps it embodies popular materialism none the worse for that. The idea is, in general, that such characters as shape and motion are self-existent properties of things, while colour and sound for instance are effects produced in our minds through our sense-organs, and bear no resemblance to anything in the real external objects. Now I do not say that this theory need necessarily give us a narrow view of the world; but it very naturally did so, and I believe always will do so. The reason is, that it makes us think all the things we live with and care about most, faces, voices, music, light, taste, smell—all these things are, if not illusions, yet in a sort of way on a lower level of truth and reality than things like atoms and gravitation. You can explain this result away; but man will always honour the self-existent, and you cannot really destroy the worship of matter as long as you hold this doctrine.

In terms of our subject, this theory treats some objects of mind, the sensation of colour, and so on—as mental in nature, or, roughly speaking, as products or bits of mind; while other objects of mind, like perceived shapes or resistance, it treats as self-existent realities. And when this is believed, the products or bits of mind will always be disparaged by comparison with what we suppose to exist in its own right. And then, on such a doctrine, what are you going to do with such realities as universals—general facts? They don't seem to fit well into space; while, as bits of mind, they seem impotent.

Then, of course, comes the return match—what is known as subjective idealism. Someone points out that, as objects of mind, space, and motion, and so forth, are just on the same level with sound and colour; if, there , the latter set are to be called products of mind, or bits of mind, so ought the others to be. Then you may conclude to subjective idealism, in which all objects of mind without distinction are absorbed into mind, become either minds or bits of mind, or products or states of mind.

We are told that beneath any such view as this there is the mistake of confusing acts of mind with its objects—seeing with colour; and that may be true. All the same, such a view gives you one enormous gain for general culture and general philosophy. It puts the common qualities we love—what practically make up the world we live in—colour, sound, and the rest—on the same level of reality and claim to existence as the shape and motion of atoms or the facts of gravitation. The humanising effect of this belief, and the reality it enables you to assign to beauty, for instance, is an unspeakable gain for life and for philosophy. And, I believe, although the fallacy above-mentioned is operative—yet I believe there is a sound underlying motive in subjective idealism, a recognition of the necessity that the most interesting things should have at least as much reality as anything else, and that mind should not be cut off from its objects, which constitute nature and the world. We shall return to this point.

But now, in contrast with the two familiar positions which I have briefly mentioned as Materialism and Subjective Idealism, we find ourselves confronted with twentieth century Realism. It is a novelty in two principal characteristics: one a characteristic of its advocates, the other of its doctrine. The point as regards the theorists themselves is that no one can say their views are due to ignorance or incapacity. Many former realists, and especially materialists, have displayed a quite uncritical attitude; partly owing to their historical position, partly to other limitations. But the realists of to-day, most certainly at any rate the realist about whom I am going to speak, are learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. What Professor Alexander—for he is to be our guide—does not know about metaphysics, logic, and psychology is, I take it, not worth knowing. One may modestly differ from such a man; but to treat his views as due to philosophical inexperience, is simply not to be done. And then secondly, about the doctrines themselves. Although a realism, and even a physical realism, they contrast sharply with what is meant by Materialism. If they are meant to be called materialist, which I do not know that they are, it is the conception of matter that has widened, and not the nature of reality that has been cut down to fit an abstract matter. The theory aims at totality, at a fair and complete recognition of the world as we know and love it. It does justice to the sensations of sense, and to the secondary qualities. And at least the doctrine which I am to discuss to-night has no faith in a prerogative reality of spatial properties.

For this reason, because it is so new, and in its aim is so complete, and because it issues from so high a philosophical source, and because that source must here be of paramount interest, I propose to take the liberty of restating before you, as simply as I can, the doctrine of physical realism, which has become familiar to the English world in the last few years as promulgated from the University of Manchester.

For this doctrine comes, so to speak, on the top of the two doctrines we have already alluded to. Say that Materialism logically wins the first game—I am not speaking in historical order—I think that Subjective Idealism must so far be held to have won the return match. But the temper which demands a self-existent non-mental reality may be held to open the game again with twentieth century Realism, a very different thing from Materialism; and whether an existing or a future philosophy, whatever it may be called, can once more win the return match against the realistic side, or—dropping the metaphor—absorb its tenets into a completer view—is just what remains to be seen. I proceed to describe in its broad characteristic features a realist doctrine of the twentieth century, which is promulgated from this University. We have briefly referred to a conception in which, so to speak, the universe is mental—is mind or states of mind—through and through, and we now turn to this realism because it is prima facie the completest conceivable counter stroke to any such affirmation, and because, through its very completeness, it suggests a meeting of extremes which the commoner doctrines, resting on a more half-hearted demarcation of the psychical and physical provinces, inevitably exclude. Yet other twentieth century realisms, though less—may I say it?—less paradoxically thorough-going, may be seen, in the light of that which is here discussed, to corroborate its fundamental lessons.

As I understand the thesis, in order to grasp the distinction between mind and its objects, we must start from the simple case of any two bodies being together in space, like a table and the floor. This is the fundamental relation at the root of knowledge and perception as of all the order of the world. And, in fact, unconscious objects, so far as in this relation, I think the theory would say, do in principle know each other, though as they possess no conscious selves their knowledge is at a vanishing point. But among these existents which are so together, there are some which are minds, that is, bodies which have acquired the capacity of consciousness. When these are together with other existent things, within the range of reaction through the senses, the conscious thing is aware of being together with the other thing, in the various degrees of sensation, perception, and thought or knowledge. This is nothing more than the amplification or development through consciousness of the fundamental fact which consists in two existents being together in space. My mind is here, in my body; the table is there. My mind is mental; the table, its object, is external or physical, even down to its colour as I have sensation of it. This is the essential experience of cognition and sense-perception; and this is all there is about it.

What is here the line between my mind and its object? How much belongs to my mind and how much to the table?

To grasp the realist's answer we must insist on a distinction which all twentieth century thinkers acknowledge, though not all admit the same degree of distinctness between its terms. I speak, of course, of the distinction between the act and the object—between the act of seeing and the colour which I see; between the act of perceiving and the present thing which I perceive; between the act of thinking and the thing, it may be, absent, of which I think. Opinions differ as to the assignment of these objects, especially such an object or content as seems directly present in sensation, to the mind on the one hand, or to the external or physical reality on the other. But the realist whom we are following makes no compromise. Acts, and acts only, belong to mind. Objects, all objects, including what are called contents, are external, and with few exceptions, physical. Blue, for instance, is a physical existent. It is an aspect of physical reality, and is there in space, over against our mind. No doubt, if we had no suitable retina and optic nerve, we should be unable to see it. But that, so to speak, would be merely our loss. It would no more affect the existence of blue than my missing the train affects the existence of the train.

Mind, then, it follows, is cut down to the narrowest limit. It is nothing but a system of efforts in various directions, efforts which carry with them feelings of relative success and ill-success which amount to pleasure and pain. Consciousness is nothing but effort with its felt direction to our object, and the affections which attend such effort and direction. The object is always non-mental. The direction and effort are such as you feel in any desire or voluntary progression—you realise what it is like if you are stopped short of the object. Breaking off in a sentence gives a good case of this feeling.

Knowledge, then, and thought, so far as it is what we think of, are non-mental, or physical. They are simply the existent things, or parts of them, so far as we apprehend them; never, of course, completely apprehended, but so far as our powers go, apprehended as they really are. Colour, sound, taste are not mental facts. They are physical realities to each of which there is a corresponding mental act, to see, to hear, and so forth. But act and object, even act and the nearer object which some would call content, are not to be identified. Your mind does not in any way make nature. It does not make the object of sense or perception, or construct the object of thought. You are here; the object is there. It stirs your mind in a certain way; and your mind reacts and apprehends, and finds the object as it is, according to the degree in which your powers of apprehension are developed. If you are colourblind, that is your affair. There is then a defect in your organ of apprehension; but that does not interfere with the physical reality, which we know from better equipped observers. This doctrine of the; open door, as I may call it, or of the window with degrees of transparence, through which reality comes to you as it is, though with varying completeness, is very powerful in twentieth century realism, and is at times connected, strangely enough, with some extreme doctrines of other worlds.

It follows—and this is largely the point of the doctrine—that the physical reality which is the object of mind is the thing, or part of the thing, which you suppose yourself to apprehend. I mean, it is in no sense part of your own body or mind. Your organs let it in, but they do not, in principle, modify it, except in degree. [The question of error can, I think, be dealt with from this position, in agreement with the best thinkers, at least if we read "real" for "physical." Error is always about a reality.] Your mind, then, is not, as Spinoza called it, the idea of your body, and of other things only through that. You open your eyes, and are aware of a tree before you. This is a fact just like that of a table being on the floor. Only in this case one of the existents is a mind. The other is, just as the mind is aware of it, an external physical reality.

And, as I understand the argument, the tree itself is made up of objects corresponding to your mental acts; of what you "sense," of what you perceive, of what you think—that is, of flashes or fulgurations of its qualities, of qualities themselves, something more permanent than the flashes, and of a universal nature or real law governing the combination and action of its qualities. We have of course to resist being led away by the sound of this doctrine, to impute to the realist an extreme idealism. When you read that a physical thing, a material substance, 'is made up of sensa, percepta, and thoughts' you have hard work to remember that for the author all these are the objects of the mental acts, not the acts themselves, and are therefore physical realities, and in no way bits of mind.

Hence arise two further peculiarities, one, if not both, of which characterise most twentieth century realism, and save it in a great measure from the defects of the older eclectic or demarcating realisms, in a word, dualistic realisms, which necessarily leaned toward materialism. I do not say that the new Realism is not itself in a sense dualistic.

First, the doctrine of the open door, as I have made bold to call it, destroys the superstition that spatial properties are distinguished by being self-existent, while sensations of the special senses, and these only, are dependent upon mind. Its attitude is indeed the reverse of that to which this destruction is usually ascribed. It does not say that primary qualities, like secondary, are mind-dependent; but that secondary, like primary, are mind-independent. But for the immediate purpose of destroying the distinc either of the thorough-going views will serve. It is only the eclectic view that is bound to beget superstition. Thus a complete physical realism, even if it claims to be materialism, is largely free from the vice inherent in the older doctrine of that name, that it discredits as unreal the most precious elements of the world. For our modern realist, whether right or wrong, the world is genuinely as it seems to be—bright, warm, responsive; not as even James Hinton said that science shows it to be—"dark, cold, and shaking like a jelly." An extraordinary confusion, to presuppose the operation of the sense-organs in observing the consequences of their own supposed absence! The terrible and sinister prejudice of materialism which here finds expression is, as we said, emphatically and necessarily repudiated by the doctrine before us. We are warned of this in definite language. "To such a conception," as that now promulgated, Professor Alexander observes, "we oppose our habitual notion of material things as being somehow arrangements or motions of whatever constituents we regard as ultimate. But it cannot be too often repeated, for those who are likely to forget the lesson, that extension and motion or material substance are in themselves on the same immediate footing as colours and smells; that they, too, are made up of sensa and percepta and thoughts, and exhibit the same problem of presenting these features in their combination."

I must observe, however, at this point, that while materialistic prejudice is thus thoroughly repudiated as regards the secondary qualities of things, I cannot see how the tertiary qualities, say, for example, those which we call æsthetic, can have justice done them on this principle. Can they escape being regarded as distinctively psychical and so far of inferior reality, so long as even feeling is reserved as something belonging to mind? This remark anticipates our later argument, to the effect that thorough and solid as this new realism attempts to be, it proves that in the end there is no realism that can be completely solid and thorough; that is to say, that can sweep all characters of things, which are on the same level of objectivity, into the mass of non-mental reality. A thing may be charming quite as really and truly as it is red; but its charm according to realism, and even according to the realism before us, must be a mind-dependent attribute (for to be charmed is a mental act), while its redness is physical and mind-independent.

However, on the whole the tendency of realism to-day is away from eclecticism and towards a complete acceptance of external things, in all their concrete richness of existence, as reality independent of mind. And so far we are dealing with a new attitude, with a physical realism which has in the main stripped off the character of materialism.

And secondly—and here I think all twentieth century realism goes together—universals are admitted to be real, though by no means mental. Our particular realist even calls them physical facts. Any way, they are held to exist or subsist independently of mind or knowledge. The nature of a thing, in respect of which it is an object of our thought, the general law of action and construction which dominates it, is spoken of as a universal and as corresponding to our concept. A material object, we are told by other modern realists, consists, apart from mind or knowledge, in a connection of universals. A physical realism of this kind takes us I imagine into a new country, which Reid perhaps visited, but did not explore or subdue. Call us idealists or what you will, we who follow the watchword "Das Wahre ist das Ganze" might prima facie find in it much of what we demand; and what no eclecticism of the materialist type can by any possibility afford us. If (per impossibile, as I still must hold) all that is precious and substantial could truly be fused and focussed in an admitted real, I at least should not be greatly troubled at being ordered to call it physical. Call these things physical or what you will, if they are the most real of realities, then nominalism has gone by the board, and the realism of the modernist is joining hands with the realism of the schoolman. There appears to be indeed a twentieth century realism which cuts down physical reality to the imperceptibles of science—something scarcely belonging even to the world of primary qualities; but this is a half-theory of the Lockeian type, though it pushes abstraction one stage further than his. Our realist's doctrine of the physical world gives us a far fuller picture of the reality which is in principle the same for all and accessible to all. And moreover, as I said, all the modern realists, I think, agree in recognising the reality—whether as existence or as subsistence—of universals.

The interest of the theory we have been contemplating has lain for me in noting what I take to be the inevitable results of reducing the place of the mind in the actual world to its narrowest conceivable limits. This result is, as I view it, that on the one hand the great body, or the corpse as I should call it, of so-called physical reality, has been cut off and set over against the living nature of mind—which is reduced, as we saw, to a scheme of directions of effort addressed to objects outside them. But on the other hand, just because this is done so thoroughly, it by inherent necessity shows signs of life, and begins to exhibit within itself a vitality, primarily logical, but, for this reason, ultimately and in essence involving continuity with a psychical system.

(i.) First, a word as to the analogy of the two spatial things, on which the whole position is founded. One cannot be too careful at the beginning; and I shall make an observation which may be held trivial and hypercritical, but which, I am inclined to think, will lead us in the end to quite a different attitude towards the whole relation of mind and its objects.

The remark is merely this; that mind is never confronted by one object only. The facts are not described by saying that we start with a pair of objects facing each other, of which one may be a body having a mind. The relation is not that of a mind on one side and a tree on the other. If there is a mind on one side there is at least a complex of objects on the other.

But for my own experience even this does not seem true. "On one side," and "on another side" are incorrect expressions. Speaking of fact as I find it, I should compare my consciousness to an atmosphere, not to a thing at all. Its nature is to include. The nature of its objects is to be included. When I came into this hall, out of the smaller room in which we met, the circumference of my mind seemed to expand. The limits of my consciousness became, at any rate, not narrower than the walls of this chamber. From the beginning, then, the analogy of two objects confronting one another seems to me inapplicable. I never seem to think in the form, "my mind is here, and the tree is there." Mind takes itself ab initio as a world, not as an object in a world. I think "the tree is there, in the panorama," and the panorama is essential to my mind, though my mind has more before it, e.g., thoughts of other places, and of incidents at other times. I am describing facts. I am not making any argument that the existence of the objects is in my mind or is mind-dependent. I am merely stating what I am directly aware of. In describing my awareness there is always an "and" or a "before"—or "behind" or "beside"—some conjunction or preposition. It is never just one object aware of one other.

The kind of observation this suggests to me is that ab initio one kind of thing is a whole, and another is a fragment. A mind is a whole, that is in its nature and intent; an object is a fragment. This fact forebodes a difficulty in assessing the reality of objects apart from mind, and so in drawing a line between them. For what is real must surely be a whole, whatever else may be its character. We shall see reason to return to this point.

(ii.) In the theory before us, sense-presentations count as non-mental or even as physical.

The distinction between act and object, or, as some take it, between act, content, and object, is here the governing consideration. It has been held to remove the principal reason for thinking that sense-presentations are something mental. I believe the word mental to be misleading, as I shall explain later on. But I desire to suggest that though it may be well to distinguish clearly between seeing and the object seen, yet it is not a mere failure to make this distinction which causes some of us to believe that the object seen has a character continuous with our mental life. Merely referring to the controversy between Manchester and St. Andrews, which I incline to think has established this point so far as sense-presentation is concerned, I endeavour to describe a more general argument which strongly appeals to me.

When I am told that I must not confuse an idea as a mental act with an idea as a content of sense or an object of thought, I think I understand what is meant. When I am told that the content of sense or object of thought may therefore be something quite non-mental or even physical, I am, to speak plainly, inclined to feel myself the victim of sophistry. It seems obvious at first sight that a blue is as psychical as a pain or an inferential transition. And though you may argue at length that it is nothing but an external object, I feel all the time that I am being defrauded. You have put the vital character of a certain experience into what you call an act, and I admit that it is specially observable in connection with a certain function. But now you tell me that the main thing in the object, what I value in it and what I want it for, is removed and abolished by the distinction, and the experience as such is left for dead.

Now it is a good point on my side to say that objects of the kind in question cease to be, with the minds which entertain them or even with the cessation of those minds' attention. And it seems obvious to me that this is so. But the doctrine of the open door denies the fact; and in any case, this fact would only be an external proof and not an analysis of the essence, and prima facie would not apply to the objects of thought.

I will try to state an argument going deeper into the merits, as I see it, and will support my statement by two applications of it.

The assertion that an object or content has or has not a mental character, ought, it seems to me, if it has any value, to be supported by positive analysis, and not merely by extraneous proof. Whether a certain object is continuous with the nature of mind is no question of mere origin or concomitant variation; it is a question of what sort of thing the object is, and what sort of thing mind is, and whether or no the one is connected with the other by inherent character.

Now if I try to escape the sort of negative sorites or gradual withdrawal of characters by which the so-called "mental" character of presentations seem to me to be fraudulently attacked, what comes to me as something not to be reasoned away is in a word the life of mind; or, if we prefer the old technical language, its explicit unity. Well, it may be said, but a bar of iron has unity, and you will not say that this is a character inherently connecting it with your consciousness. No, I should not say that is so, directly and with reference to my single consciousness. But then in the case of the bar of iron I can say—or if I cannot, a physicist can—what else is meant by this unity, in what relations it lies, and on what characters it depends. And it is, we then see, not an explicit unity; not one which states itself. But now come to a content of sense. What I see when I look at a blue thing has unity, and life. Its parts that is, though varied, confirm, support and determine one another by explicit "compresence." It pulsates with feeling, a common tone, which involves the presence of a whole all at once, reinforcing and modifying every part by the simultaneous effects of all. What does a unity of this kind consist in? Identity of ethereal wave-lengths? Not at all. That may be presupposed, but it will not do the work by itself. Blue is a peculiar "effect"; effect, I mean, in the artistic sense of the word; and wave-lengths, received say on a photographic plate, are not the peculiar effect which we call blue, even if as a physical cause they were to produce it qua physical effect. How do the elements of the effect hold together? What makes the blue reinforce or modify the blue? There is no push or pull between them. They work on each other through their identity and difference; or, to avoid disputes, here irrelevant, through their likeness and unlikeness. What sort of medium does such a unity involve? Surely, that of consciousness and no other. Blue, then, while it retains the characters of blue, must have in it the life of mind. I do not call it "mental," for I am not sure what that means. But I will call it logical. This argument, I am convinced, might be much better stated, but it at least makes an attempt to express a central consideration which I have uneasily felt to be entirely omitted throughout all the recent realistic controversies. I will press it further by two applications. First, we saw that the realist of to-day asserts the reality—even the physical reality—of universals. The modern treatment of Plato's Ideas, in this connection, is extraordinarily interesting, but not perhaps as new as it might appear. Now a universal is a working connection within particulars. Again we might use the phrase which to me appears so apt, and say it is the life of the particulars. It is, indeed, at bottom, of the nature of a conation. Now the objects of sensitive and perceptive acts are charged with such working connections, which are expressly and precisely connections of content and of nothing else in the world. No possible handling of contents ab extra by a mind made up of pure conations and directions will get out of them the determinate and peculiar result which their inherent nisus to the whole brings out, as, for instance, in any case of relative suggestion. I find myself indeed comparing our twentieth cen realism with the erroneous side of Kant's synthetic unity.