Part 17 (1/2)

[20] _The New Realism_, pp. 40-41.

[21] Cf. Montague, pp. 256-57; also Russell, _The Problems of_ _Philosophy_, pp. 27-65-66, _et pa.s.sim_; and Holt's _Concept of Consciousness_, pp. 14ff., discussed below.

[22] Cf. Angell, ”Relations of Psychology to Philosophy,” _Decennial Publications of University of Chicago_, Vol. III; also Castro, ”The Respective Standpoints of Psychology and Logic,” _Philosophic Studies, University of Chicago_, No. 4.

[23] I am here following, in the main, Professor Holt because he alone appears to have had the courage to develop the full consequences of the premises of a.n.a.lytic logic.

[24] _The Concept of Consciousness_, pp. 14-15.

[25] It is interesting to compare this onlooking act with the account of consciousness further on. As ”psychological” this act of onlooking must be an act of consciousness. But consciousness is a cross-section or a projection of things made by their interaction with a nervous system.

Here consciousness is a function of all the interacting factors. It is in the play. It _is_ the play. It is not in a spectator's box. How can consciousness be a function of all the things put into the cross-section and yet be a mere beholder of the process? Moreover, what is it that makes any particular, spectacle, or cross-section ”logical”? If it be said all are ”logical” what significance has the term?

[26] Cf. Russell's _Scientific Methods in Philosophy_, p. 59.

[27] Holt, _op. cit._, pp. 128-30.

[28] In fact, Newton, in all probability, had the Cartesian pure notions in mind.

[29] Holt, _op. cit._, p. 118 (italics mine). Cf. also Perry's _Present Philosophical Tendencies_, pp. 108 and 311.

[30] The character of elements and the nature of simplicity have been discussed in the preceding section.

[31] _Ibid._, p. 275.

[32] _Ibid._, p. 275.

[33] This lack of continuity between the cognitive function of the nervous system and its other functions accounts for the strange paradox in the logic of neo-realism of an act of knowing which is ”subjective”

and yet is the act of so palpably an objective affair as a nervous system. The explanation is that the essence of all deprecated subjectivity is, as before pointed out, functional isolation. That this sort of subjectivity should be identified with the ”psychical” is not strange, since a living organism is very difficult to isolate, while the term ”psychical,” in its metaphysical sense, seems to stand for little else than just this complete isolation. Having once appealed to the nervous system it seems incredible that the physiological continuity of its functions with each other and with its environment should not have suggested the logical corollary. Only the force of the prepossession of mathematical atomism in a.n.a.lytic logic can account for its failure to do so.

[34] But it would be better to use the term ”logically-practical”

instead of ”subjective” with the psychical implications of that term.

[35] An a.n.a.lysis which has been many times carried out has made it clear that scientific data never do more than approximate the laws and ent.i.ties upon which our science rests. It is equally evident that the forms of these laws and ent.i.ties themselves s.h.i.+ft in the reconstructions of incessant research, or where they seem most secure could consistently be changed, or at least could be fundamentally different were our psychological structure or even our conventions of thought different. I need only refer to the _Science et Hypothese_ of Poincare and the _Problems of Science_ of Enriques. The positivist who undertakes to carry the structure of the world back to the data of observation, and the uniformities appearing in the accepted hypotheses of growing sciences cannot maintain that we ever succeed in isolating data which must remain the same in the kaleidoscope of our research science; nor are we better served if we retreat to the ultimate elements of points and instants which our pure mathematics a.s.sumes and implicitly defines, and in connection with which it has worked out the modern theory of the number and continuous series, its statements of continuity and infinity.

[36] In other words, science a.s.sumes that every error is _ex post facto_ explicable as a function of the real conditions under which it really arose. Hence, ”consciousness,” set over against Reality, was not its condition.

[37] C. Judson Herrick, ”Some Reflections on the Origin and Significance of the Cerebral Cortex,” _Journal of Animal Behavior_, Vol. III, pp.

228-233.

[38] _Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 256.

[39] H. C. Warren, _Psychological Review_, Vol. XXI, Page 93.

[40] _Principles of Psychology_, I, p. 241, note.

[41] _Ibid._, p. 258.

[42] _Psychology. Briefer Course._ P. 468.

[43] Angell, _Psychology_, p. 65.

[44] _Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 251.

[45] Thorstein Veblen: _The Instinct of Workmans.h.i.+p_, p. 316.