Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays Part 7

If, then, when we say that something is in the mind we mean that it has a certain recognisable intrinsic characteristic such as belongs to thoughts and desires, it must be maintained on grounds of immediate inspection that objects of sense are not in any mind.

A different meaning of "in the mind" is, however, to be inferred from the arguments advanced by those who regard sensible objects as being in the mind. The arguments used are, in the main, such as would prove the causal dependence of objects of sense upon the percipient. Now the notion of causal dependence is very obscure and difficult, much more so in fact than is generally realised by philosophers. I shall return to this point in a moment. For the present, however, accepting the notion of causal dependence without criticism, I wish to urge that the dependence in question is rather upon our bodies than upon our minds. The visual appearance of an object is altered if we shut one eye, or squint, or look previously at something dazzling; but all these are bodily acts, and the alterations which they effect are to be explained by physiology and optics, not by psychology.[27] They are in fact of exactly the same kind as the alterations effected by spectacles or a microscope. They belong therefore to the theory of the physical world, and can have no bearing upon the question whether what we see is causally dependent upon the mind. What they do tend to prove, and what I for my part have no wish to deny, is that what we see is causally dependent upon our body and is not, as crude common sense would suppose, something which would exist equally if our eyes and nerves and brain were absent, any more than the visual appearance presented by an object seen through a microscope would remain if the microscope were removed. So long as it is supposed that the physical world is composed of stable and more or less permanent const.i.tuents, the fact that what we see is changed by changes in our body appears to afford reason for regarding what we see as not an ultimate const.i.tuent of matter. But if it is recognised that the ultimate const.i.tuents of matter are as circ.u.mscribed in duration as in spatial extent, the whole of this difficulty vanishes.

There remains, however, another difficulty, connected with s.p.a.ce. When we look at the sun we wish to know something about the sun itself, which is ninety-three million miles away; but what we see is dependent upon our eyes, and it is difficult to suppose that our eyes can affect what happens at a distance of ninety-three million miles. Physics tells us that certain electromagnetic waves start from the sun, and reach our eyes after about eight minutes. They there produce disturbances in the rods and cones, thence in the optic nerve, thence in the brain. At the end of this purely physical series, by some odd miracle, comes the experience which we call "seeing the sun," and it is such experiences which form the whole and sole reason for our belief in the optic nerve, the rods and cones, the ninety-three million miles, the electromagnetic waves, and the sun itself. It is this curious oppositeness of direction between the order of causation as affirmed by physics, and the order of evidence as revealed by theory of knowledge, that causes the most serious perplexities in regard to the nature of physical reality. Anything that invalidates our seeing, as a source of knowledge concerning physical reality, invalidates also the whole of physics and physiology. And yet, starting from a common-sense acceptance of our seeing, physics has been led step by step to the construction of the causal chain in which our seeing is the last link, and the immediate object which we see cannot be regarded as that initial cause which we believe to be ninety-three million miles away, and which we are inclined to regard as the "real" sun.

I have stated this difficulty as forcibly as I can, because I believe that it can only be answered by a radical a.n.a.lysis and reconstruction of all the conceptions upon whose employment it depends.

s.p.a.ce, time, matter and cause, are the chief of these conceptions. Let us begin with the conception of cause.

Causal dependence, as I observed a moment ago, is a conception which it is very dangerous to accept at its face value. There exists a notion that in regard to any event there is something which may be called _the_ cause of that event--some one definite occurrence, without which the event would have been impossible and with which it becomes necessary. An event is supposed to be dependent upon its cause in some way which in it is not dependent upon other things. Thus men will urge that the mind is dependent upon the brain, or, with equal plausibility, that the brain is dependent upon the mind. It seems not improbable that if we had sufficient knowledge we could infer the state of a man's mind from the state of his brain, or the state of his brain from the state of his mind. So long as the usual conception of causal dependence is retained, this state of affairs can be used by the materialist to urge that the state of our brain causes our thoughts, and by the idealist to urge that our thoughts cause the state of our brain. Either contention is equally valid or equally invalid. The fact seems to be that there are many correlations of the sort which may be called causal, and that, for example, either a physical or a mental event can be predicted, theoretically, either from a sufficient number of physical antecedents or from a sufficient number of mental antecedents. To speak of _the_ cause of an event is therefore misleading. Any set of antecedents from which the event can theoretically be inferred by means of correlations might be called a cause of the event. But to speak of _the_ cause is to imply a uniqueness which does not exist.

The relevance of this to the experience which we call "seeing the sun"

is obvious. The fact that there exists a chain of antecedents which makes our seeing dependent upon the eyes and nerves and brain does not even tend to show that there is not another chain of antecedents in which the eyes and nerves and brain as physical things are ignored. If we are to escape from the dilemma which seemed to arise out of the physiological causation of what we see when we say we see the sun, we must find, at least in theory, a way of stating causal laws for the physical world, in which the units are not material things, such as the eyes and nerves and brain, but momentary particulars of the same sort as our momentary visual object when we look at the sun. The sun itself and the eyes and nerves and brain must be regarded as a.s.semblages of momentary particulars. Instead of supposing, as we naturally do when we start from an uncritical acceptance of the apparent dicta of physics, that _matter_ is what is "really real" in the physical world, and that the immediate objects of sense are mere phantasms, we must regard matter as a logical construction, of which the const.i.tuents will be just such evanescent particulars as may, when an observer happens to be present, become data of sense to that observer. What physics regards as the sun of eight minutes ago will be a whole a.s.semblage of particulars, existing at different times, spreading out from a centre with the velocity of light, and containing among their number all those visual data which are seen by people who are now looking at the sun. Thus the sun of eight minutes ago is a cla.s.s of particulars, and what I see when I now look at the sun is one member of this cla.s.s. The various particulars const.i.tuting this cla.s.s will be correlated with each other by a certain continuity and certain intrinsic laws of variation as we pa.s.s outwards from the centre, together with certain modifications correlated extrinsically with other particulars which are not members of this cla.s.s. It is these extrinsic modifications which represent the sort of facts that, in our former account, appeared as the influence of the eyes and nerves in modifying the appearance of the sun.[28]

The _prima facie_ difficulties in the way of this view are chiefly derived from an unduly conventional theory of s.p.a.ce. It might seem at first sight as if we had packed the world much fuller than it could possibly hold. At every place between us and the sun, we said, there is to be a particular which is to be a member of the sun as it was a few minutes ago. There will also, of course, have to be a particular which is a member of any planet or fixed star that may happen to be visible from that place. At the place where I am, there will be particulars which will be members severally of all the "things" I am now said to be perceiving. Thus throughout the world, everywhere, there will be an enormous number of particulars coexisting in the same place. But these troubles result from contenting ourselves too readily with the merely three-dimensional s.p.a.ce to which schoolmasters have accustomed us. The s.p.a.ce of the real world is a s.p.a.ce of six dimensions, and as soon as we realise this we see that there is plenty of room for all the particulars for which we want to find positions.

In order to realise this we have only to return for a moment from the polished s.p.a.ce of physics to the rough and untidy s.p.a.ce of our immediate sensible experience. The s.p.a.ce of one man's sensible objects is a three-dimensional s.p.a.ce. It does not appear probable that two men ever both perceive at the same time any one sensible object; when they are said to see the same thing or hear the same noise, there will always be some difference, however slight, between the actual shapes seen or the actual sounds heard. If this is so, and if, as is generally a.s.sumed, position in s.p.a.ce is purely relative, it follows that the s.p.a.ce of one man's objects and the s.p.a.ce of another man's objects have no place in common, that they are in fact different s.p.a.ces, and not merely different parts of one s.p.a.ce. I mean by this that such immediate spatial relations as are perceived to hold between the different parts of the sensible s.p.a.ce perceived by one man, do not hold between parts of sensible s.p.a.ces perceived by different men. There are therefore a mult.i.tude of three-dimensional s.p.a.ces in the world: there are all those perceived by observers, and presumably also those which are not perceived, merely because no observer is suitably situated for perceiving them.

But although these s.p.a.ces do not have to one another the same kind of spatial relations as obtain between the parts of one of them, it is nevertheless possible to arrange these s.p.a.ces themselves in a three-dimensional order. This is done by means of the correlated particulars which we regard as members (or aspects) of one physical thing. When a number of people are said to see the same object, those who would be said to be near to the object see a particular occupying a larger part of their field of vision than is occupied by the corresponding particular seen by people who would be said to be farther from the thing. By means of such considerations it is possible, in ways which need not now be further specified, to arrange all the different s.p.a.ces in a three-dimensional series. Since each of the s.p.a.ces is itself three-dimensional, the whole world of particulars is thus arranged in a six-dimensional s.p.a.ce, that is to say, six co-ordinates will be required to a.s.sign completely the position of any given particular, namely, three to a.s.sign its position in its own s.p.a.ce and three more to a.s.sign the position of its s.p.a.ce among the other s.p.a.ces.

There are two ways of cla.s.sifying particulars: we may take together all those that belong to a given "perspective," or all those that are, as common sense would say, different "aspects" of the same "thing."

For example, if I am (as is said) seeing the sun, what I see belongs to two a.s.semblages: (1) the a.s.semblage of all my present objects of sense, which is what I call a "perspective"; (2) the a.s.semblage of all the different particulars which would be called aspects of the sun of eight minutes ago--this a.s.semblage is what I define as _being_ the sun of eight minutes ago. Thus "perspectives" and "things" are merely two different ways of cla.s.sifying particulars. It is to be observed that there is no _a priori_ necessity for particulars to be susceptible of this double cla.s.sification. There may be what might be called "wild" particulars, not having the usual relations by which the cla.s.sification is effected; perhaps dreams and hallucinations are composed of particulars which are "wild" in this sense.

The exact definition of what is meant by a perspective is not quite easy. So long as we confine ourselves to visible objects or to objects of touch we might define the perspective of a given particular as "all particulars which have a simple (direct) spatial relation to the given particular." Between two patches of colour which I see now, there is a direct spatial relation which I equally see. But between patches of colour seen by different men there is only an indirect constructed spatial relation by means of the placing of "things" in physical s.p.a.ce (which is the same as the s.p.a.ce composed of perspectives). Those particulars which have direct spatial relations to a given particular will belong to the same perspective. But if, for example, the sounds which I hear are to belong to the same perspective with the patches of colour which I see, there must be particulars which have no direct spatial relation and yet belong to the same perspective. We cannot define a perspective as all the data of one percipient at one time, because we wish to allow the possibility of perspectives which are not perceived by any one. There will be need, therefore, in defining a perspective, of some principle derived neither from psychology nor from s.p.a.ce.

Such a principle may be obtained from the consideration of _time_.

The one all-embracing time, like the one all-embracing s.p.a.ce, is a construction; there is no _direct_ time-relation between particulars belonging to my perspective and particulars belonging to another man's. On the other hand, any two particulars of which I am aware are either simultaneous or successive, and their simultaneity or successiveness is sometimes itself a datum to me. We may therefore define the perspective to which a given particular belongs as "all particulars simultaneous with the given particular," where "simultaneous" is to be understood as a direct simple relation, not the derivative constructed relation of physics. It may be observed that the introduction of "local time" suggested by the principle of relativity has effected, for purely scientific reasons, much the same multiplication of times as we have just been advocating.

The sum-total of all the particulars that are (directly) either simultaneous with or before or after a given particular may be defined as the "biography" to which that particular belongs. It will be observed that, just as a perspective need not be actually perceived by any one, so a biography need not be actually lived by any one. Those biographies that are lived by no one are called "official."

The definition of a "thing" is effected by means of continuity and of correlations which have a certain differential independence of other "things." That is to say, given a particular in one perspective, there will usually in a neighbouring perspective be a very similar particular, differing from the given particular, to the first order of small quant.i.ties, according to a law involving only the difference of position of the two perspectives in perspective s.p.a.ce, and not any of the other "things" in the universe. It is this continuity and differential independence in the law of change as we pa.s.s from one perspective to another that defines the cla.s.s of particulars which is to be called "one thing."

Broadly speaking, we may say that the physicist finds it convenient to cla.s.sify particulars into "things," while the psychologist finds it convenient to cla.s.sify them into "perspectives" and "biographies,"

since one perspective _may_ const.i.tute the momentary data of one percipient, and one biography _may_ const.i.tute the whole of the data of one percipient throughout his life.

We may now sum up our discussion. Our object has been to discover as far as possible the nature of the ultimate const.i.tuents of the physical world. When I speak of the "physical world," I mean, to begin with, the world dealt with by physics. It is obvious that physics is an empirical science, giving us a certain amount of knowledge and based upon evidence obtained through the senses. But partly through the development of physics itself, partly through arguments derived from physiology, psychology or metaphysics, it has come to be thought that the immediate data of sense could not themselves form part of the ultimate const.i.tuents of the physical world, but were in some sense "mental," "in the mind," or "subjective." The grounds for this view, in so far as they depend upon physics, can only be adequately dealt with by rather elaborate constructions depending upon symbolic logic, showing that out of such materials as are provided by the senses it is possible to construct cla.s.ses and series having the properties which physics a.s.signs to matter. Since this argument is difficult and technical, I have not embarked upon it in this article. But in so far as the view that sense-data are "mental" rests upon physiology, psychology, or metaphysics, I have tried to show that it rests upon confusions and prejudices--prejudices in favour of permanence in the ultimate const.i.tuents of matter, and confusions derived from unduly simple notions as to s.p.a.ce, from the causal correlation of sense-data with sense-organs, and from failure to distinguish between sense-data and sensations. If what we have said on these subjects is valid, the existence of sense-data is logically independent of the existence of mind, and is causally dependent upon the _body_ of the percipient rather than upon his mind. The causal dependence upon the body of the percipient, we found, is a more complicated matter than it appears to be, and, like all causal dependence, is apt to give rise to erroneous beliefs through misconceptions as to the nature of causal correlation.

If we have been right in our contentions, sense-data are merely those among the ultimate const.i.tuents of the physical world, of which we happen to be immediately aware; they themselves are purely physical, and all that is mental in connection with them is our awareness of them, which is irrelevant to their nature and to their place in physics.

Unduly simple notions as to s.p.a.ce have been a great stumbling-block to realists. When two men look at the same table, it is supposed that what the one sees and what the other sees are in the same place. Since the shape and colour are not quite the same for the two men, this raises a difficulty, hastily solved, or rather covered up, by declaring what each sees to be purely "subjective"--though it would puzzle those who use this glib word to say what they mean by it. The truth seems to be that s.p.a.ce--and time also--is much more complicated than it would appear to be from the finished structure of physics, and that the one all-embracing three-dimensional s.p.a.ce is a logical construction, obtained by means of correlations from a crude s.p.a.ce of six dimensions. The particulars occupying this six-dimensional s.p.a.ce, cla.s.sified in one way, form "things," from which with certain further manipulations we can obtain what physics can regard as matter; cla.s.sified in another way, they form "perspectives" and "biographies,"

which may, if a suitable percipient happens to exist, form respectively the sense-data of a momentary or of a total experience.

It is only when physical "things" have been dissected into series of cla.s.ses of particulars, as we have done, that the conflict between the point of view of physics and the point of view of psychology can be overcome. This conflict, if what has been said is not mistaken, flows from different methods of cla.s.sification, and vanishes as soon as its source is discovered.

In favour of the theory which I have briefly outlined, I do not claim that it is _certainly_ true. Apart from the likelihood of mistakes, much of it is avowedly hypothetical. What I do claim for the theory is that it _may_ be true, and that this is more than can be said for any other theory except the closely a.n.a.logous theory of Leibniz. The difficulties besetting realism, the confusions obstructing any philosophical account of physics, the dilemma resulting from discrediting sense-data, which yet remain the sole source of our knowledge of the outer world--all these are avoided by the theory which I advocate. This does not prove the theory to be true, since probably many other theories might be invented which would have the same merits. But it does prove that the theory has a better chance of being true than any of its present compet.i.tors, and it suggests that what can be known with certainty is likely to be discoverable by taking our theory as a starting-point, and gradually freeing it from all such a.s.sumptions as seem irrelevant, unnecessary, or unfounded. On these grounds, I recommend it to attention as a hypothesis and a basis for further work, though not as itself a finished or adequate solution of the problem with which it deals.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] An address delivered to the Philosophical Society of Manchester in February, 1915. Reprinted from _The Monist_, July, 1915.

[24] Cf. especially Samuel Alexander, "The Basis of Realism," _British Academy_, Vol. VI.

[25] "Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?" _Proc.

Arist. Soc._, 1909-10, pp. 191-218.

[26] First dialogue between Hylas and Philonous, _Works_ (Fraser's edition 1901). I. p. 384.

[27] This point has been well urged by the American realists.

[28] Cf. T.P. Nunn, "Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?" _Proc. Arist. Soc._, 1909-1910.

VIII

THE RELATION OF SENSE-DATA TO PHYSICS

I. THE PROBLEM STATED

Physics is said to be an empirical science, based upon observation and experiment.

It is supposed to be verifiable, i.e. capable of calculating beforehand results subsequently confirmed by observation and experiment.

What can we learn by observation and experiment?

Nothing, so far as physics is concerned, except immediate data of sense: certain patches of colour, sounds, tastes, smells, etc., with certain spatio-temporal relations.

The supposed contents of the physical world are _prima facie_ very different from these: molecules have no colour, atoms make no noise, electrons have no taste, and corpuscles do not even smell.

If such objects are to be verified, it must be solely through their relation to sense-data: they must have some kind of correlation with sense-data, and must be verifiable through their correlation _alone_.

But how is the correlation itself ascertained? A correlation can only be ascertained empirically by the correlated objects being constantly _found_ together. But in our case, only one term of the correlation, namely, the sensible term, is ever _found_: the other term seems essentially incapable of being found. Therefore, it would seem, the correlation with objects of sense, by which physics was to be verified, is itself utterly and for ever unverifiable.

There are two ways of avoiding this result.

(1) We may say that we know some principle _a priori_, without the need of empirical verification, e.g. that our sense-data have _causes_ other than themselves, and that something can be known about these causes by inference from their effects. This way has been often adopted by philosophers. It may be necessary to adopt this way to some extent, but in so far as it is adopted physics ceases to be empirical or based upon experiment and observation alone. Therefore this way is to be avoided as much as possible.

(2) We may succeed in actually defining the objects of physics as functions of sense-data. Just in so far as physics leads to expectations, this _must_ be possible, since we can only _expect_ what can be experienced. And in so far as the physical state of affairs is inferred from sense-data, it must be capable of expression as a function of sense-data. The problem of accomplishing this expression leads to much interesting logico-mathematical work.

In physics as commonly set forth, sense-data appear as functions of physical objects: when such-and-such waves impinge upon the eye, we see such-and-such colours, and so on. But the waves are in fact inferred from the colours, not vice versa. Physics cannot be regarded as validly based upon empirical data until the waves have been expressed as functions of the colours and other sense-data.

Thus if physics is to be verifiable we are faced with the following problem: Physics exhibits sense-data as functions of physical objects, but verification is only possible if physical objects can be exhibited as functions of sense-data. We have therefore to solve the equations giving sense-data in terms of physical objects, so as to make them instead give physical objects in terms of sense-data.

II. CHARACTERISTICS OF SENSE-DATA

When I speak of a "sense-datum," I do not mean the whole of what is given in sense at one time. I mean rather such a part of the whole as might be singled out by attention: particular patches of colour, particular noises, and so on. There is some difficulty in deciding what is to be considered _one_ sense-datum: often attention causes divisions to appear where, so far as can be discovered, there were no divisions before. An observed complex fact, such as that this patch of red is to the left of that patch of blue, is also to be regarded as a datum from our present point of view: epistemologically, it does not differ greatly from a simple sense-datum as regards its function in giving knowledge. Its _logical_ structure is very different, however, from that of sense: _sense_ gives acquaintance with particulars, and is thus a two-term relation in which the object can be _named_ but not _a.s.serted_, and is inherently incapable of truth or falsehood, whereas the observation of a complex fact, which may be suitably called perception, is not a two-term relation, but involves the propositional form on the object-side, and gives knowledge of a truth, not mere acquaintance with a particular. This logical difference, important as it is, is not very relevant to our present problem; and it will be convenient to regard data of perception as included among sense-data for the purposes of this paper. It is to be observed that the particulars which are const.i.tuents of a datum of perception are always sense-data in the strict sense.

Concerning sense-data, we know that they are there while they are data, and this is the epistemological basis of all our knowledge of external particulars. (The meaning of the word "external" of course raises problems which will concern us later.) We do not know, except by means of more or less precarious inferences, whether the objects which are at one time sense-data continue to exist at times when they are not data. Sense-data at the times when they are data are all that we directly and primitively know of the external world; hence in epistemology the fact that they are _data_ is all-important. But the fact that they are all that we directly know gives, of course, no presumption that they are all that there is. If we could construct an impersonal metaphysic, independent of the accidents of our knowledge and ignorance, the privileged position of the actual data would probably disappear, and they would probably appear as a rather haphazard selection from a ma.s.s of objects more or less like them. In saying this, I a.s.sume only that it is probable that there are particulars with which we are not acquainted. Thus the special importance of sense-data is in relation to epistemology, not to metaphysics. In this respect, physics is to be reckoned as metaphysics: it is impersonal, and nominally pays no special attention to sense-data. It is only when we ask how physics can be _known_ that the importance of sense-data re-emerges.