The Study of Philosophy: An Outline

Preface

3

The Study of Philosophy has been prepared for the use of my students. It is hoped that it will also serve the needs of others whose general view of life is in a formative stage. It presupposes on the part of the reader an elmentary knowledge of psychology, and, in addition, such a preparation in the other sciences as is commonly possessed by students who have completed their course in high school.

W. H. Chamberlin.

University of Utah, August, 1919.

The Study of Philosophy

Section 1

As long as an instrument fits into what we are doing, or works well, there is commonly no interest in examining it. So with living itself. Until our lives are confronted with difficulties, and run defectively, there is no need and no motive for reflecting upon life, or upon the conditions under which its satisfactory going-on depends. But when an interest in such reflection is awakened, especially when such reflection is concerned with the most general aspects and conditions of life, there is generated the study of philosophy, the study of life and its environment, of life as a part of the world-whole.

In approaching the study of the world-whole the parts of the world and the relationship of these parts to one another are more or less vaguely conceived; the world seems to be but an aggregate of the ordinary objects of perception, and the relations of these objects or parts to one another are as lacking in clearness as are the parts of a piano, an automobile, or of any other instrument to one who is approaching the study of one of them for the first time.

Clear ideas of one of these wholes or of any of its parts are gained only as we deal with them mentally or overtly and observe how they affect one another. In the degree in which these ideas or meanings are thus cleared up, especially as it is observed how things work under definite conditions imposed by those who are studying them, and as these ideas are so organized as to serve as a means for grouping them in effective relations to one another, that system of ideas becomes a science. Just so, as convenient parts of the world-whole are discovered and their meanings become understood and organized, there is developed the science of philosophy.

The sole motive for thus forming ideas and sciences is more satisfactory life through a better adjustment to or control of the various things we set about to study. The coming into clearness of any object whatever, the awareness of which enters into experience, is dependent upon our interests.

And so the awareness of any object, when that awareness is considered apart from its conditioning interest is abstract. It is no more a reality independent of an interest, than is the flavor of an apple independent of an apple. The concreter reality is the interest, and the awareness of objects generated by the interest is a quality of the interest.

But the awareness of any object is not only dependent upon an interest. It is at the same time dependent upon a second reality, a reality which is the objective support of both the awareness and its conditioning interest. Thus, with reference to this still concreter reality, the awareness of objects is doubly abstract, depending both upon our subjective interests and upon an objective reality, a reality which supports both these subjective interests and the awareness of objects which depend upon them. With either the subjective interest or the objective support lacking, the awareness of any object would not exist; it is at one and the same time a quality or aspect of both.

Most of the sciences deal with objects without needing for their purposes to investigate either the subjective or the objective conditions of our awareness of objects. It is sufficient that the objects exist and that uniformities in their ways of appearing can be discovered. In describing objects, then, awareness or cognitive aspects of them are commonly emphasized and there is a strong tendency to regard them as the most fundamental, the concretest realities, realities upon which both interests and objective support are dependent qualities. The true order of dependence is thus-reversed. The physchological sciences consider carefully our interests, the subjective support of our awareness of objects, and do not commonly investigate the nature of the reality which supports our experience of objects.

Philosophy, the science of the world-whole, can, for its purpose of understanding our lives and their conditioning environment, or the concreter whole of which they are a part, ignore neither, it must be the concretest science of all; although one in persisting in this effort to view things concretely must constantly oppose strong customary tendencies, both in himself as he thinks and in others, to regard abstract or dependent aspects of life as the truly concrete because they are simple, easily reacted to, and, as a matter of historic development, came first to be understood and obvious.

In view of the fact that our interests are aspects of this concretest reality, aspects to which the awareness of objects is subordinate, and in view of the further fact that our interests are correlated with or confluent with the objective support of our experience of things to form this concretest reality, the suggestion becomes strong that a study of interests may be a happy ap , or a key, to the appreciation of the nature of the parts of the world-whole. We begin, therefore, our study of the world-whole, by a study of interests.

REFERENCES

Dewey, How We Think, ch. 9. Colvin and Bagley, Human Behavior, chapters 1 and 13.

Section 2

The interests that constitute the lives of each one of us are realities or active processes which manifest themselves either “in mind” as ideas or overtly in acts. They may also be described as efforts through these ideas or acts to fit into or adjust to our environment.

Interests may also be described as dynamic realities. They have this character of power because of habits through the correlation of which the interests are able to realize themselves in these ideas and acts. One, for example, may have an interest in speaking to a friend, an interest whose realization is possible because he has formed habits of pronouncing words, and other habits which result in an arrangement of these words in a definite, orderly way.

Or one who has learned by long exercise certain other habits, and who has formed habits of correlating these habits in a definite way may have a genuine interest in playing a musical composition for a friend; and, moreover, he has the power to execute or realize this interest.

In the exercise of any interest, we may commonly discover two other important aspects besides this aspect of active power. The one is that of a feeling of value or of lack of value in the ideas or acts in which the process manifests itself, the other is that of a cognition or awareness stimulated and supported by certain features in the conditioning enironment, an awareness which functions in directing such efforts so that they will issue in ideas and acts that realize the interest. In hoeing, for example, an interest in getting a crop manifests itself in ideas and acts whose value is felt in furthering that interest and in ideas and acts which at the same time are directed by a vague awareness of the weeds which tends to retard that interest. Or, derived from such an interest, there may arise other interests which may result in examining the weeds themselves, and then other feelings and other awarenesses will arise as these acts of observing objects fulfill or inhibit these derived interests.

REFERENCES.

Judd, Psychology, chapters 6, 7, 8, 9. Ames, Psychology of Religious Experience, chapters 16, 17.

Section 3

Interests, together, of course, with each of their aspects, are growing realities. A child with an interest in plants may for the first time approach a rose to grasp it. In grasping it carelessly as it has been accustomed to grasp flowers, it experiences pain sensations. The awareness of pain sensations is henceforth an element in the meaning or awareness of a new kind of plant, the thorny rose. Correlated with this change and growth of the awareness aspect of a general interest in plants, now become more specific, is a modified manner of action and valueing, greater caution is henceforth exercised in seizing the modified object, the thorny rose.

In the above example the growth of an interest was almost accidental. But very often the growth is a matter of design, proceeding tentatively and through a thought process. The interest in expressing itself in idea or in action proves inadequate or dissatisfying. Along with this feeling of need or dissatisfaction there arise efforts at reforming, the old interest, now disintegrating or in need of amendment. What the reformed and adequate interest will be is not known or valued. The effort to achieve it is therefore a matter of faith or hope and not of knowledge.

While in this state of putting forth efforts through a faith in the possibility of new values about to be discovered and seized or achieved, other interests from the same mind appear as suggestions. As such suggestions they are tentatively incorporated, mentally or overtly, in the halting interest, and after testing are either repelled as failing to create a satisfactory union, or, if a suggestion issues in a satisfactory result, it is attracted to the interest struggling to live on successfully, and held to it. When, finally, the old interest is modified so as to become adequate in adjusting to the new situation, the new or more specific interest, integrated out of the old and inadequate interest, and a suggestion coming from the same mind, may now live on to manifest itself in ideas and acts again and again in similar situations.

From the nature of a growing interest it may now be seen that each advance made may also be called a process of creation. Each one, according to his faith and eagerness and experience, adopts through his own preference alternative suggestions into the reintegrating interest. The resulting interest is a new reality. When it is achieved it may also be referred to as a case of new knowledge and new value born into the world. Because some one was able to be dissatisfied with an old and inadequate interest and to will that it should die, it is able to live again in a new and better interest.

REFERENCES.

Judd, Psychology, chapters, 11, 12. Dewey, How We Think, chapters 1, 8, 9.

Section 4

The growth of a disintegrating interest may issue not only through the appearance of suggestions coming from the mind in which the difficulty arises, but also, by the appearance of suggestions from other minds with whose interests his own interests are in a process of interaction. For example when one converses with a friend, the interest which that friend is trying to express is experienced by one as in immediate interaction with his own interests, the interests being satisfied or fulfiled in the act of listening. In this case the reality to which the interest being engaged in by the listener is adjusting and realizing itself is the meaning or interest of the person who is speaking. One is, if aware at all of another's meaning, aware of it as immediately as he is of the existence of a suggestion coming from his own mind or life, to aid in integrating an interest which is able thereafter to express or fulfil his own life. It is also true that that which conditions the growth of the new and socialized interest, which one through this immediate relationship to others comes to live, is like that which conditions the growth of interests or knowledge and values from other interests existing in his own life. There must be an interest in his own life and the need its failure to work satisfactorily establishes of the suggested or supporting interests. One’s interest being blocked and it being necessary to reorganize it or form an interest that can fulfil or create itself under the circumstances, certain subjective interests appear as suggestions one after another from his own life or from the lives of others and are either drawn, attracted to, or incorporated in the growing interest, or, if they further inhibit the forming interest, they disappear or are repelled by it.

All of our interests are found in this way to be socialized processes. One, for example, who grows up in ysmpathetic association with a farmer comes to have an interest in a sunflower through which he perceives and values it as a mere weed to be destroyed as a hamperer of his interest in growing a crop. One who grows up with one possessed of esthetic interests comes to perceive and to enjoy the sunflower as an object of beauty and one to be conserved. One who grows up for a time with a botanist comes to see and to ideate the sunflower as an object that fulfils certain intellectual interests. And, in fact, co-operation with others is a condition, of the existence and growth of any perceptual or ideational interest whatever. Just as one cannot form a new idea or plan of action without the aid of other interests in his own life, by a process analogous to that of self-fertilization, so one cannot grow into new and stable interests without the stimulus and co-operation of the interests that constitute the lives of others and through a process as of cross-fertilization.

In this socialized growing of interests the field is indefinitely enlarged from which support or correction for the growing interests may be gained, and there is indefinitely increased the probability of successful adjustment and so of living in interests of increasing stability, power, complexity, and richness. All that survive of the interests of the past survive because they have successfully served the needs, in the way just described, of the succesively arriving generations of men. The interest of an architect living at the present time began to grow in other men as far back in the distant past as the time when men first began to be interested in building. The ideas, percepts, acts of the men of one age promote the growth of the building interests in the men of that generation as the leaves of each season of growth nourish the stem that puts them forth, then, like the leaves, they disappear, but the interests they nourish survive as they are assimilated by and become the interests of each new generation, and the powers, forces, or factors of advancing civilization.

REFERENCES.

1. Merz, Religion and Science, Part I. 2. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order, chapter l. 3. Ellwood, Introduction to Social Psychology, chapter 3.

Section 5

In the development or integration of any new interest whatever, these primary or relatively abiding interests will be discovered to hold in correlation a number of subsidary or secondary interests. These secondary interests also grow one after another in a more or less regular order, an order determined by the order in wsich a feeling of need in the supporting interests is felt. In a machine, for example, each part may become the centre of such a derived interest, especially those parts that happen to work poorly and the need of understanding which is pressing. As each of these secondary interests develops, like the primary interest it tends to develop a system of tertiary interests, and so on. The whole process is like that seen objectively in the growth of a tree which tends to produce each season a whorl of branches, each of which in turn produces dependent whorls, and so on.

As each interest develops consciousness passes back and forth, backward to a prior stage of development, and forward to a stage that is to be, but what it is to be is not yet clear. Alternating suggestions of what is to be arise, depending on the past experience and the powers of the individual to reproduce them. There is an eager awaiting of an outcome. Finally the most satisfying suggestion to appear is chosen by the one creating the new reality, with its power, knowledge, and value. This mode of growth is illustrated subjectively by what goes on in the life of one engaging in dramatic composition. In writing a drama the leading interest is one developed in a chief character. This is sustained and developed through the correlating with it of interests in the various lesser persons of the drama. Now one person appears, and then another, until all have appeared repeatedly and in cooperation express a leading interest. But every growing interest illustrates the same process of the growth of a relatively permanent or abiding interest composed of or supported by interests each of which changes in a more or less regular order, and each of which as it changes attending to the past and showing an interest in an outcome, new life about to be.

REFERENCES.

1. Dewey, How We Think, pp. 193-5

Section 6

The awareness and the value aspects of an interest are intense in but one of these newly forming interests at a time, but the dynamic aspect must be considered as the abiding core of the growing reality and the condition upon which the appearance of the awareness and value aspects constantly depends. The interest whose active core is lacking these ephemeral aspects may be called an automatized interest. Since awareness and feeling of value appear in connection with but one of these growing interests at a time, the number of automatized interests in a person’s life in proportion to those which are new must be very great. As one lives, a vast and increasing number of these is ever becoming involved in the expression of each new interest. For example, in expressing a simple thought to a friend, one is not commonly conscious, save feebly at least, of the words, syllables, and elementary sounds he is using, and upon the power to utter which his expression of his thought or interest is so dependent. Thus awareness and feeling of value do not appear in any great intensity in relation to by far the greater part of one’s life, even the ever-increasing store of dynamic habits that make possible the realizing or creating in one’s self of any new life whatever, and the execution of the same either in idea or in overt act. One has many tendencies to action or attitudes where one uses one, or acts once. Because of their omnipresence the attitudes may and do escape attention and the awareness and feeling aspect may seem the obvious and the understood and so the concrete reality. But when seen in a true perspective, the dynamic or energy character of life is immeasurably more concrete than its ephemeral awareness and feeling aspects, or what is most apt to be limited or recognized in any effort to define these aspects.

As an interest in growing becomes satisfying and its value as a means to life becomes appreciated, it may often be reenacted or lived for the pleasure or practical value such re-living gives. In such cases the regular order in which the subsidiary interests grow is repeated and becomes cyclic. Each stage in the growth appears one after another in a cycle as in a poem or song, or even in all economical and customary responses to the environment. The chief determiner of this cyclic nature of the movement of life may now be seen to be the concreter realm of automatized interests or attitudes, the energy aspect of life. Upon what man has been satisfied to go on here clearly hangs the vivid sensory and the vivid feeling aspects of life. Until the presence and nature of this energy aspect of life becomes understood as the relatively independent or important aspect of life, and the habit formed of seeing the awareness, and the feeling aspects of life as very subordinate to or dependent upon this aspect, and so what is commonly regarded as the obvious, the understood, or the concrete is corrected, our lives cannot be understood.

REFERENCES.

1. Varisco, The Great Problems, pp. 76-85; Palmer, The Nature of Goodness, chapters 3 and 8.

Section 7

When the dynamic or energetic core of an interest is accompanied by a clear awareness aspect, as when an interest is being lived either in ideas, as when an interest in eating an apple is being mentally engaged in, or when it is being realized in acts, as when one is actually engaged in eating an apple, the awareness aspect can also be analysed into subordinate aspects. It can be analysed into a sensory aspect, an aspect composed of visual sensations, in the example just given the apple is red or green, pressure sensations, the apple is hard or soft, and other sensations, it has its characteristic flavor, smell, etc. There are also experienced sensations due to the action of the muscles, the arm, the hand, and the mouth. Its analysis also reveals space forms of the arrangement of these sensations, the apple is round, has an inside and an outside and a center. Its analysis also reveals time forms of arrangement of these sensations, kinesthetic sensations arise as one grasps the apple and before one experiences its flavor, or they arise as one chews the apple and at the same time as one enjoys its taste and smell. Then also the exercise of certain habits with their associated group of sensations conditions the exercise of other habits with their group of sensations; the sensations connected with chewing are said to condition the appearance of the sensations of taste and smell which constitute the flavor of the apple. This conditioning relationship is also called the causal relationship or form. And finally in such an awareness aspect there can be discovered changes going on. There are motions among the groups of sensations. Viewed in this abstract way these sensations, forms, and motions are determined, inert, lifeless realities, but they are determined by the dynamic or energetic core of an interest, the habits of grasping and chewing which have been slowly formed and correlated. But the abstract sensations, forms and motions, together with the habits that determine them, are elements of the nature of the person who lives the interest. Man has in himself, by virtue of this nature, the wonderful power both to determine and to be aware of sensations, of their space, time and causal forms, and of their motions. Though abstract, these awarenesses of senations, forms, and motions, are elements of man’s nature, and man also determines them or has the power through which they live in him. In other words man has the power to determine the determined content of the awareness aspect of his interests, a content so determined that he, by developing an interest in knowing the order of the appearance of the elments in this content, can discover that order, and thus become able to predict the appearance of these elements. The careful study of this order is in fact the work to which many psychologists tend to limit themselves.

These abstract and inert realities are more concretely viewed when seen in their dependence upon the dynamic or energetic core of the interest which determines them and of which they are but aspects. They are more concretely viewed when they are seen themselves as entering into the determining process, although it is advantageous for some purposes to regard these ab elements as themselves the truly concrete, the understood, the obvious, the unquestioned, the inert or established reality from which one starts his investigation of the world. But they are still more concretely viewed when they are seen to be also dependent upon an objective reality of which they are a determined aspect. For example, when in the thought process a suggestion from one’s own subconscious interests appears in support of a forming plan of action, or idea, the various sensory elements, their movements, and the spatial, temporal and causal forms of the awareness aspect of the new interest, are clearly supported by or dependent upon both the new interest and the interest called a suggestion. Another subjective interest, the suggestion, is here the objective support of the new subjective interest, of its value aspect, and of its awareness aspect with its sensory, and its time, space, causal and movement elements. Without this other interest, the new interest and all of its aspects would not be experienced in any actual case. That is, man has in himself the wonderful power to support in one of his own interests its value and awareness aspects, and the sensory, space, time causal and movement elements of the latter aspect.

That another interest can be the objective support of the value and awareness aspects of an interest can be more easily seen when the interest called a suggestion is an interest of another persona In conversing with another, the other’s interests or meanings are in immediate interaction with our own interests. When a need arises in us because our own ideas need amendment, they may be supported or checked by the ideas or suggestions of a friend. In cases of such interaction of interests the awareness aspects of our growing interests are clearly dependent upon or objectively supported by the interest of another. At least that other person is an essential factor, in the example given, of such objective support. Without him those particular interests with their aspects would not arise in the mind.

Section 8

In cases of communication like the one just considered we are often compelled by the failure to grasp another’s meaning into the analysis of his interests into dynamic realities and the awarenesses in another which they condition or support. For while, as a friend expresses himself, we are usually absorbed in his meaning and are but dimly aware of his speech, we may and do at times become interested in the latter, a mere accompaniment or aspect determined in us by his effort to express his meaning. We may become distinctly conscious of sound and other sensations, with their changing spatial, temporal, and causal relationships, and which the interests and efforts of another support in us. In case of complete inability to take in the meaning of another, as when we hear the speech of a foreigner, our interests would be commonly reduced to interests in such abstract aspects of their objective support. But the other person, the foreigner, would easily be recognized as a cooperating factor in the concrete whole.

Now when another speaks to us, while he is an essential factor in the objective support of the particular set of awarenesses to which he gives rise in us, we can clearly recognize other essential factors in the objective support of the experience. Vocal cords, the ear, the body, the air, and in general nature, are all essential cooperating factors in the full. concrete reality. We cannot understand our lives as parts of the world-whole until we consider these cooperating factors. All easily recognize the presence in our experience of the awareness of nature. "All recognize the existence of energies supporting in us this awareness of nature. A chief problem of philosophy is in regard to the fuller nature of these supporting energies.

We have already seen how an interest in our own mind or an interest in the life of another can support our other interests together with their awareness aspects. We have also noticed how other interests have two quite separate effects. They support an interest in the process of communication or mutual understanding, and then they support, unintentionally, a different type of interests, interests in the sensory forms of experience. These sensory forms are known to be supported by an energy which is the dynamic core of the interests of others. In nature however, these sensory forms, or material objects, are commonly thought of as supported by an impersonal energy.

From the fact, however, that material forms such as sound objects are known to be supported by the interests of other persons, interests which are at least as links of support confluent with and cooperating with these so-called impersonal energies, and from the further fact that all of the realities commonly accepted as concrete, understood, obvious, unquestioned, such as matter, time, space, forces, and energy, are, so far as we are aware of them, but abstract aspects of our interests, we may thoughtfully and confidently adopt the suggestion that the material forms and the energies of physical nature are, when more fully and concretely considered, but abstract aspects of the interests of a spiritual or personal reality whose interests, besides supporting our experience of nature and providing the energies in coopera with which we live, are full of knowledge and the appreciation of such values as are achieved by its efforts. It is a spiritual reality that embraces the material forms of nature and their energies as elements into which its life can be analysed, and a reality which, being composed of psychological realities or interests like those in man, is ever growing through a process of dying to live, and is ever creating by faith, by thought, and by ever renewed efforts, new life, new knowledge, and new values. As in every thought process, we now proceed to test or prove this suggestion. We trust that by it we may be able to more fully understand our lives as parts of the great world-whole.

REFERENCES.

Morgan, The Interpretation of Nature. Rogers, the Religious Conception of the World, pp. 93-120.

Section 9

According to this suggestion our experience of nature is an aspect of life supported by the interests of a spiritual reality like man. Like man it supports a large number of interests whose awareness aspects can be analysed into sensory forms and relationships whose support is a dynamism or energy, like the energetic aspect or core of man’s interests. Such a dynamism is of course an unsensed, an invisible, intangible, and an unpicturable aspect of experience for it is the support of our experience of these. In efforts to describe this aspect of reality, especially when he has in view the most general aspect of our experience of nature, namely, physical nature, the physicist must use some term like activity, as when Oersted says that “matter is not an inanimate existence, but an expression of activity.” The word energy is oftener ,used, as when Tunzelmann in his Electrical Theory says: “All the phenomena of the material universe may therefore be considered as arising solely from changes in energy distribution. That is to say, energy is the sole phenomenal basis of matter.”