ception regards Reality as a kind of vast flux or blur, upon which the mind operates, carving out physical objects by means of concepts intellectually formed, according to its own special interests. Thus we carve out chairs and tables, because it is useful to us in life to do so, but that does not mean that reality is in itself like an agglomeration of static chairs and tables. But if Reality is quite formless to begin with, it is difficult to see why we should carve out one object more than another, why a chair in fact and not a hyæna. There must, in fact, be some distinguishing mark in Reality; Reality must be individuated in some rudimentary form to begin with, and it is the business of mind to make the rudimentary articulations of Reality distinct, and to carve out definite objects in place of the blurred distinctions which it finds. Most psychologists would, I think, agree to this view, maintaining that Reality carries with it its own distinctions, from which mind creates the world as we know it. But if this is so it is important to reflect that we know in perception not the distinctions of the real, but the elaborated physical object which must necessarily have passed through the framework of our concepts. We have once again, knowing mind, (A), objects known as constructed by means of mental concepts, (B); (B); and rudimentary distinction in Reality (C.) But as (C) is never known, how can we know that it is responsible for the mental construction (B), which is supposed to represent it, and so on as before? Any theory in fact, which admits the possibility of there being three separate entities in perception, appears to cut the mind off finally and utterly from all direct knowledge of Reality. It must remain an assumption that what is known by the mind has any connection with or likeness to Reality, and the logical outcome of any theory involving a tertium quid, be it Monist, Pragmatist, or Atomist, appears to be subjective Idealism. Is it possible to construct a reasonable theory with two entities only ? IV. In considering what alternatives to Representationalism are offered by the New Realism it will be convenient to begin by stating briefly the view of perception which appears to me to present the fewest difficulties, before passing on to the other alternative views which have been advanced by Realists. The view which I advocate is one which resembles very closely the theory of perception put forward by Professor Dawes Hicks, which is in turn founded in the main upon the writings of Meinong. "That there cannot be an act of knowing without something to know; or more generally, that 44 there cannot be an act of judging even an act of apprehending at all, without something to judge, something to apprehend is,” says Meinong, one of the most self-evident propositions yielded by a quite elementary consideration of these processes." It seems to me self-evident. Whether it is so or not, it is the fundamental axiom which lies at the basis of the Realist position, and will be assumed to be true until it can be proved to be false. Now the one point of agreement among all the theories of perception we have considered lay in the view that all sensations were primarily caused by the excitation of the nervous system by certain stimuli. This is an unimpeachable statement and, in the light of psychological research, can be agreed to. The point, however, to be emphasised, is that this excitation is a matter of machinery only. It constitutes the method by which we become aware of stimuli. It is not the stimuli of which we become aware, nor has it anything to do with them. It seems an incredible confusion, and yet it is true that a vast number of philosophers have persistently confused the method of knowing a thing, with the thing which is known. If you put a penny in an automatic chocolate machine, the penny acts as a stimulus which excites certain machinery inside the machine, the result being a chocolate. But nobody would dream of confusing the penny with the excitation of machinery, and the question of the excitation of the machinery is irrelevant when we come to consider what is the primary cause of the production of the chocolate. Similarly when we are enquiring about the primary cause and content of the act of perception, and we wish to ascertain what is, in fact, known, all questions of "wave motions, retinal changes, nerve currents, cerebral disturbances," and we may add, mental affections, become totally irrelevant. The problem of sense perception is in fact a problem of the nature of the original stimulus, it is not a problem of the nature of the method by which that stimulus is conveyed to the brain. The latter is a matter for physiologists. The words, "primary cause and content of the act of perception " used above may appear misleading. What, it may be asked, is the entity which is at once the cause and the content of awareness. The words are used deliberately because the physical object possesses a twofold relation to the act of perceiving. It stimulates the act, and forms its content. What, in fact, happens in perception, on Meinong's view, is briefly as follows: (A) A physical object, when placed in a certain juxtaposition to any one of the sensory organs produces a stimulation of those organs or excitation of the nervous system. (B) This excitation is conveyed by purely neural processes to the mind, and passes into consciousness. (C) This consciousness, as Meinong puts it, is "directed upon something," the something being the physical object from which the stimulation proceeded. The physical object is therefore at once the cause of the awareness as in (A) and its object as in (C). Now this act of awareness (C) is lived through, in the sense that it is a fact in the mental history of the percipient. Acts of awareness, however, exhibit qualitative differences; that is to say the act of awareness of red is different from the act of awareness of green. This does not mean, as Professor Dawes Hicks points out, that the awareness of red is a complex made up of awareness red, but nevertheless as a mental act it is qualitatively different from any other mental act, such as the awareness of green. 44 is an This mental content awareness of red indivisible whole, and is such that in Professor Dawes Hicks' words, "it can never be the object of the act of which it is the content," the object of the act being a red physical entity. Now it is important to notice that in this process of becoming aware of physical objects, mind exhibits two characteristics. 1. It discriminates and selects from the presented environment. 2. It goes out beyond it and adds to it. As regards (1) the process of discrimination accounts for the different way in which the same object appears to different perceivers. |