21
[Notes on Consciousness]
| c. 1890 | Houghton Library |
Utterly incredible that consciousness is a property of a particular mechanical contrivance or chemical combination.
The doctrine of “ultimate facts,” altogether illogical.
So that the only thing left is to say it is diffused throughout the universe.
But in that case of what nature is the unity of consciousness? And why cannot this continuous consciousness be in immediate connection?
First let us see what we can make out by considering the nature of conscious nerve matter. It has the general properties of nerve matter. Two states a calm and an excited. In the excited state protoplasm generally has a tendency to contract; but this is little seen in nerve matter. Excited state brought on by any disturbance. Propagated through the whole mass. Growth. This is stimulated by exercise which is perhaps necessary to it. Excessively complex & unstable chemical constitution. Great & endless variety of kind which growth keeps up & conserves. Takes habit.
Any way you can look upon these facts, the excited state (which is the conscious state) is a state of derangement, disturbance, disorder.
Shall we say then that perfect order and law is dead, and that disorder and irregularity is everywhere conscious?
Quality of feeling.
Shall we say a gas has feeling? Perhaps so but this is not a disorder propagating & spreading itself. It is not coordinated. Feeling is a small thing in itself.
Now this question arises. If a lot of balls in disorderly movement are conscious, where does that consciousness reside? What are the limits of its unity?
The Monist Metaphysical Project
22
The Architecture of Theories
[Initial Version]
| July-August 1890 | Houghton Library |
Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have been advanced at different times of the world’s history, perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidentally occurred to their authors. An idea which has been found interesting and fruitful has been adopted, developed, and forced to yield explanations of all sorts of phenomena. The English have been particularly given to this way of philosophizing; witness, Hobbes, Hartley, Berkeley, James Mill. Nor has it been by any means useless labour; it shows us what the true nature and value of the ideas developed are, and in that way affords serviceable materials for philosophy. Just as if a man, being seized with the conviction that paper was a good material to make things of, were to go to work to build a papier mâché house, with roof of roofing-paper, foundations of pasteboard, windows of paraffined paper, chimneys, bath tubs, locks, etc., all of different forms of paper, his experiment would probably afford valuable lessons to builders, while it would certainly make a detestable house, so those one-idea’d philosophies are exceedingly interesting and instructive, and yet are quite unsound.
The remaining systems of philosophy have been of the nature of reforms, sometimes amounting to radical revolutions, suggested by certain difficulties which have been found to beset systems previously in vogue; and such ought certainly to be in large part the motive of any new theory. This is like partially rebuilding a house. The faults that have been committed are, first, that the dilapidations have generally not been sufficiently thorough going, and second, that not sufficient pains have been taken to bring the additions into deep harmony with the really sound parts of the old structure.
When a man is about to build a house, what a power of thinking he has to do, before he can safely break ground! With what pains he has to excogitate the precise wants that are to be supplied! What a study to ascertain the most available and suitable materials, to determine the mode of construction to which those materials are best adapted, and to answer a hundred such questions! Now without riding the metaphor too far, I think we may safely say that the studies preliminary to the construction of a great theory should be at least as deliberate and thorough as those that are preliminary to the building of a dwelling-house.
That systems ought to be constructed architectonically has been preached since Kant; but I do not think the full import of the maxim has by any means been apprehended. What I would recommend is that every person who wishes to form an opinion concerning fundamental problems, should first of all make a complete survey of human knowledge, should take note of all the valuable ideas in each branch of science, should observe in just what respect each has been successful and where it has failed, in order that in the light of the thorough acquaintance so attained of the available materials for a philosophical theory and of the nature and strength of each, he may proceed to the study of what the problem of philosophy consists in, and of the proper way of solving it. I must not be understood as endeavoring to state fully all that these preparatory studies should embrace; on the contrary, I purposely slur over some points in order to give emphasis to my special recommendation of today, namely, to make a systematic study of the conceptions out of which a philosophical theory may be built, in order to ascertain what place each conception may fitly occupy in such a theory and to what uses it is adapted.
I would begin, for example, with inquiring what are the governing conceptions of modern logic,—I do not mean the aimless gabble of Bradley and his opponent Bosanquet,—but the logic of those who keep real scientific, and especially mathematical, reasoning steadily in view, at close range. It is no new thing to attach high philosophical importance to the conceptions of logic. The categories of Aristotle, as well as those of Kant, were derived from the logical analysis of propositions. But what would be new would be to use the conceptions so obtained to form the framework of the philosophical theory.
Three peculiar concepts of great generality, I may well call them category-concepts, run through logic from beginning to end. This appears most clearly in the best development of logic; but were I to undertake to make it clear in that way, it might be thought that my judgment as to the doctrine of logic had been warped by my prepossession in regard to those three conceptions. I will therefore consider logic as it is presented in Aldrich’s Rudiments (1690), a book taught for a century and a half at Oxford, which is as guiltless of any fanciful thinking,—or, for the matter of that, of any independent thinking at all,—as academical treatise ever could be. I will begin at the beginning of this work, and will mention every logical division it contains until I dare task the reader’s patience no further. The conceptions I expect to find are: 1st, the idea of existing or acting independently, without reference to anything else; 2nd, the idea of action and reaction between two things; 3rd, the idea of mediation, or of one thing bringing others into connection. But the conceptions are here stated in a rather too concrete and special form, so as to be readily intelligible. We must not expect precisely these ideas, but ideas resembling them; for ideas which resemble one another contain a common idea.
§1. Aldrich begins by dividing the logical operations of the mind into (1) simple apprehension, (2) judgment, and (3) reasoning. Simple apprehension is conceiving an idea independently of others. Judgment is recognizing two ideas to be bound together in a fact. Reasoning is thought which brings two ideas into connection.
Simple apprehension is incomplex or complex. Here we have the first two concepts, of independent position, and of connectedness.
Judgment is affirmative or negative. An affirmative judgment is one which is made independently of any other; a negative judgment is one which revolts against another possible judgment. Again the first two concepts.
§2.