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KNOWLEDGE

Posted on 2019-01-14 | Edited on 2019-03-01 | In Psychology

Knowledge, being a primitive fact of consciousness, cannot, strictly speaking,
be defined; but the direct and spontaneous consciousness of knowing may be made
clearer by pointing out its essential and distinctive characteristics. It will
be useful first to consider briefly the current uses of the verb “to know”. To
say that I know a certain man may mean simply that I have met him, and recognize
him when I meet him again. This implies the permanence of a mental image
enabling me to discern this man from all others. Sometimes, also, more than the
mere familiarity with external features is implied. To know a man may mean to
know his character, his inner and deeper qualities, and hence to expect him to
act in a certain way under certain circumstances. The man who asserts that he
knows an occurrence to be a fact means that he is so certain of it as to have no
doubt concerning its reality. A pupil knows his lesson when he has mastered it
and is able to recite it, and this, as the case may be, requires either mere
retention in memory, or also, in addition to this retention, the intellectual
work of understanding. A science is known when its principles, methods, and
conclusions are understood, and the various facts and laws referring to it
co-ordinated and explained. These various meanings may be reduced to two
classes, one referring chiefly to sense-knowledge and to the recognition of
particular experiences, the other referring chiefly to the understanding of
general laws and principles. This distinction is expressed in many languages by
the use of two different verbs—by gnônai and eidénai, in Greek; by cognoscere
and scire, in Latin, and by their derivatives in the Romance languages; in
German by kennen and wissen.

Knowledge is essentially the consciousness of an object, i.e. of any thing,
fact, or principle belonging to the physical, mental, or metaphysical order,
that may in any manner be reached by cognitive faculties. An event, a material
substance, a man, a geometrical theorem, a mental process, the immortality of
the soul, the existence and nature of God, may be so many objects of knowledge.
Thus knowledge implies the antithesis of a knowing subject and a known object.
It always possesses an objective character and any process that may be conceived
as merely subjective is not a cognitive process. Any attempt to reduce the
object to a purely subjective experience could result only in destroying the
fact itself of knowledge, which implies the object, or not-self, as clearly as
it does the subject, or self.

Knowledge supposes a judgment, explicit or implicit. Apprehension, that is, the
mental conception of a simple present object, is generally numbered among the
cognitive processes, yet, of itself, it is not in the strict sense knowledge,
but only its starting-point. Properly speaking, we know only when we compare,
identify, discriminate, connect; and these processes, equivalent to judgments,
are found implicitly even in ordinary sense-perception. A few judgments are
reached immediately, but by far the greater number require patient
investigation. The mind is not merely passive in knowing, not a mirror or
sensitized plate, in which objects picture themselves; it is also active in
looking for conditions and causes, and in building up science out of the
materials which it receives from experience. Thus observation and thought are
two essential factors in knowledge.

Truth and certitude are conditions of knowledge. A man may mistake error for
truth and give his unreserved assent to a false statement. He may then be under
the irresistible illusion that he knows, and subjectively the process is the
same as that of knowledge; but an essential condition is lacking, namely,
conformity of thought with reality, so that there we have only the appearance of
knowledge. On the other hand, as long as any serious doubt remains in his mind,
a man cannot say that he knows. “I think so” is far from meaning “I know it is
so”; knowledge is not mere opinion or probable assent. The distinction between
knowledge and belief is more difficult to draw, owing chiefly to the vague
meaning of the latter term. Sometimes belief refers to assent without certitude,
and denotes the attitude of the mind especially in regard to matters that are
not governed by strict and uniform laws like those of the physical world, but
depend on many complex factors and circumstances, as happens in human affairs. I
know that water will freeze when it reaches a certain temperature; I believe
that a man is fit for a certain office, or that the reforms endorsed by one
political party will be more beneficial than those advocated by another.
Sometimes, also, both belief and knowledge imply certitude, and denote states of
mental assurance of the truth. But in belief the evidence is more obscure and
indistinct than in knowledge, either because the grounds on which the assent
rests are not so clear, or because the evidence is not personal, but based on
the testimony of witnesses, or again because, in addition to the objective
evidence which draws the assent, there are subjective conditions that predispose
to it. Belief seems to depend on a great many influences, emotions, interests,
surroundings, etc., besides the convincing reasons for which assent is given to
truth. Faith is based on the testimony of someone else–God or man according as
we speak of Divine or of human faith. If the authority on which it rests has all
the required guarantees, faith gives the certitude of the fact, the knowledge
that it is true; but, of itself, it does not give the intrinsic evidence why it
is so.

It is impossible that all the knowledge a man has acquired should be at once
present in consciousness. The greater part, in fact all of it with the exception
of the few thoughts actually present in the mind, is stored up in the form of
latent dispositions which enable the mind to recall it when wanted. Hence we may
distinguish actual from habitual knowledge. The latter extends to whatever is
preserved in memory and is capable of being recalled at will. This capacity of
being recalled may require several experiences; a science is not always known
after it has been mastered once, for even then it may be forgotten. By habitual
knowledge is meant knowledge in readiness to come back to consciousness, and it
is clear that it may have different degrees of perfection.

The distinction between knowledge as recognition and knowledge as understanding
has already been noted. In the same connection may be mentioned the distinction
between particular knowledge, or knowledge of facts and individuals, and general
knowledge, or knowledge of laws and classes. The former deals with the concrete,
the latter with the abstract.

According to the process by which it is acquired, knowledge is intuitive and
immediate or discursive and mediate. The former comes from the direct sense
perception, or the direct mental intuition of the truth of a proposition, based
as it were on its own merits. The latter consists in the recognition of the
truth of a proposition by seeing its connection with another already known to be
true. The self-evident proposition is of such a nature as to be immediately
clear to the mind. No one who understands the terms can fail to know that two
and two are four, or that the whole is greater than any one of its parts. But
most human knowledge is acquired progressively. Inductive knowledge starts from
self-evident facts, and rises to laws and causes. Deductive knowledge proceeds
from general self-evident propositions in order to discover their particular
application. In both cases the process may be long, difficult, and complex. One
may have to be satisfied with negative conception and analogical evidence, and,
as a result, knowledge will be less clear, less certain, and more liable to
error.

The question of knowledge belongs to various sciences, each of which takes a
different point of view. Psychology considers knowledge as a mental fact whose
elements, conditions, laws and growth are to be determined. It endeavours to
discover the behaviour of the mind in knowing, and the development of the
cognitive process out of its elements. It supplies the other sciences with the
data on which they must work. Among these data are found certain laws of thought
which the mind must observe in order to avoid contradiction and to reach
consistent knowledge. Formal logic also takes the subjective point of view; it
deals with these laws of thought, and neglecting the objective side of knowledge
(that is, its materials), studies only the formal elements necessary to
consistency and valid proof. At the other extreme, science, physical or
metaphysical, postulating the validity of knowledge, or at least leaving this
problem out of consideration, studies only the different objects of knowledge,
their nature and properties. As to the crucial questions, the validity of
knowledge, its limitations, and the relations between the knowing subject and
the known object, these belong to the province of epistemology.

Knowledge is essentially objective. Such names as the “given” or the “content”
of knowledge may be substituted for that of “object”, but the plain fact remains
that we know something external, which is not formed by, but offered to, the
mind. This must not, however, cause us to overlook another fact equally evident.
Different minds will frequently take different views of the same object.
Moreover, even in the same mind, knowledge undergoes great changes in the course
of time; judgments are constantly modified, enlarged or narrowed down, in
accordance with newly discovered facts and ascertained truths. Sense-perception
is influenced by past processes, associations, contrasts, etc. In rational
knowledge a great diversity of assents is produced by personal dispositions,
innate or acquired. In a word, knowledge clearly depends on the mind. Hence the
assertion that it is made by the mind alone, that it is conditioned exclusively
by the nature of the thinking subject, and that the object of knowledge is in no
way outside of the knowing mind. To use Berkeley’s words, to be is to be known
(esse est percipi). The fact of the dependence of knowledge upon subjective
conditions however, is far from sufficient to justify this conclusion. Men agree
on many propositions, both of the empirical and of the rational order; they
differ not so much on objects of knowledge as on objects of opinion, not so much
on what they really know as on what they think they know. For two men with
normal eyes, the vision of an object, as far as we can ascertain, is sensibly
the same. For two men with normal minds, the proposition that the sum of the
angles in a triangle equals two right angles has the same meaning, and, both for
several minds and for the same mind at different times, the knowledge of that
proposition is identical. Owing to associations and differences in mental
attitudes, the fringe of consciousness will vary and somewhat modify the total
mental state, but the focus of consciousness, knowledge itself, will be
essentially the same. St. Thomas will not be accused of idealism, and yet he
makes the nature of the mind an essential factor in the act of knowledge:

Cognition is brought about by the presence of the known object in the knowing
mind. But the object is in the knower after the fashion of the knower. Hence,
for any knower, knowledge is after the fashion of his own nature (Summa theol.,
I, Q. xii, a. 4).

What is this presence of the object in the subject? Not a physical presence; not
even in the form of a picture, a duplicate, or a copy. It cannot be defined by
any comparison with the physical world; it is sui generis, a cognitive likeness,
a species intentionalis.

When knowledge, either of concrete realities or of abstract propositions, is
said to consist in the presence of an object in the mind, we cannot mean by this
object something external in its absolute existence and isolated from the mind,
for we cannot think outside of our own thought, and the mind cannot know what is
not somehow present in the mind. But this is no sufficient ground for accepting
extreme idealism and looking upon knowledge as purely subjective. If the object
of an assent or experience cannot be absolute reality, it does not follow that
to an assent or experience there is no corresponding reality; and the fact that
an object is reached through the conception of it does not justify the
conclusion that the mental conception is the whole of the object’s reality. To
say that knowledge is a conscious process is true, but it is only a part of the
truth. And from this to infer, with Locke, that, since we can be conscious only
of what takes place within ourselves, knowledge is only “conversant with ideas”,
is to take an exclusively psychological view of the fact which asserts itself
primarily as establishing a relation between a mind and an external reality.
Knowledge becomes conversant with ideas by a subsequent process, namely by the
reflection of the mind upon its own activity. The subjectivist has his eyes wide
open to the difficulty of explaining the transition from external reality to the
mind, a difficulty which, after all, is but the mystery of consciousness itself.
He keeps them obstinately closed to the utter impossibility of explaining the
building up by the mind of an external reality out of mere conscious processes.
Notwithstanding all theorizing to the contrary, the facts impose themselves that
in knowing the mind is not merely active, but also passive; that it must
conform, not simply to its own laws but to external reality as well; that it
does not create facts and laws but discovers them; and that the right of truth
to recognition persists even when it is actually ignored or violated. The mind,
it is true, contributes its share to the knowing process, but, to use the
metaphor of St. Augustine, the generation of knowledge requires another cause:
“Whatever object we know is a co-factor in the generation of the knowledge of
it. For knowledge is begotten both by the knowing subject and the known object”
(De Trinitate, IX, xii). Hence it may be maintained that there are realities
distinct from ideas without falling into the absurdity of maintaining that they
are known in their absolute existence, that is apart from their relations to the
knowing mind. Knowledge is essentially the vital union of both.

It has been said above that knowledge requires experience and thought. The
attempt to explain knowledge by experience alone proved a failure, and the
favour which Associationism found at first was short-lived. Recent criticism of
the sciences has accentuated the fact, which already occupied a central place in
scholastic philosophy, that knowledge, even of the physical and mental worlds,
implies factors transcending experience. Empiricism fails completely in its
endeavour to explain and justify universal knowledge, the knowledge of uniform
laws under which facts are brought to unity. Without rational additions, the
perception of what is or has been can never give the knowledge of what will
certainly and necessarily be. True as this is of the natural sciences, it is
still more evident in abstract and rational sciences like mathematics. Hence we
are led back to the old Aristotelean and Scholastic view, that all knowledge
begins with concrete experience, but requires other factors, not given in
experience, in order to reach its perfection. It needs reason interpreting the
data of observation, abstracting the contents of experience from the conditions
which individualize them in space and time, removing, as it were, the outer
envelope of the concrete, and going to the core of reality. Thus knowledge is
not, as in Kantian criticism, a synthesis of two elements, one external, the
other depending only on the nature of the mind; not the filling up of empty
shells—a priori mental forms or categories—with the unknown and unknowable
reality. Even abstract knowledge reveals reality, although its object cannot
exist outside of the mind without conditions of which the mind in the act of
knowing divests it.

Knowledge is necessarily proportioned or relative to the capacity of the mind
and the manifestations of the object. Not all men have the same keenness of
vision or hearing, or the same intellectual aptitudes. Nor is the same reality
equally bright from all angles from which it may be viewed. Moreover, better
eyes than human might perceive rays beyond the red and the violet of the
spectrum; higher intellects might unravel many mysteries of nature, know more
and better, with greater facility, certainty, and clearness. The fact that we do
not know everything, and that all our knowledge is inadequate, does not
invalidate the knowledge which we possess, any more than the horizon which
bounds our view prevents us from perceiving more or less distinctly the various
objects within its limits. Reality manifests itself to the mind in different
ways and with varying degrees of clearness. Some objects are bright in
themselves and are perceived immediately. Others are known indirectly by
throwing on them light borrowed elsewhere, by showing by way of causality,
similarity, analogy their connection with what we already know. This is
essentially the condition of scientific progress, to find connections between
various objects, to proceed from the known to the unknown. As we recede from the
self-evident, the path may become more difficult, and the progress slower. But,
with the Agnostic, to assign clearly defined boundaries to our cognitive powers
is unjustifiable, for we pass gradually from one object to another without
break, and there is no sharp limit between science and metaphysics. The same
instruments, principles, and methods that are recognized in the various sciences
will carry us higher and higher, even to the Absolute, the First Cause, the
Source of all reality. Induction will lead us from the effect to the cause, from
the imperfect to the perfect, from the contingent to the necessary, from the
dependent to the self-existent, from the finite to the infinite.

And this same process by which we know God’s existence cannot fail to manifest
something—however little—of His nature and perfections. That we know Him
imperfectly, by way chiefly of negation and analogy, does not deprive this
knowledge of all value. We can know God only so far as He manifests Himself
through His works which dimly mirror His perfections, and so far as our finite
mind will allow. Such knowledge will necessarily remain infinitely far from
being comprehension, but it is only by a misleading confusion of terms that
Spencer identifies the unknowable with the incomprehensible, and denies the
possibility of any knowledge of the Absolute because we can have no
absolute-knowledge. Seeing “through a glass” and “in a dark manner” is far from
the vision “face to face” of which our limited mind is incapable without a
special light from God Himself. Yet it is knowledge of Him who is the source
both of the world’s intelligibility and truth, and of the mind’s intelligence.




SCIENCE

Posted on 2019-01-08 | Edited on 2019-03-01 | In Science

The object of scientific research is practically indefinite in extent and can
never be exhausted by the human mind. In this field there is more freedom than
has ever been claimed. Compared to its field, the progress of science appears
small, so much so, that the greatest progress seems to consist in the knowledge
of how little we know. This was the conclusion arrived at by Socrates, Newton,
Humboldt, and so many others. The very instruments teach this lesson: the deeper
the microscope descends into the secrets of nature and the higher the telescopic
power reaches into the heavens, the vaster appears the ocean of undiscovered
truths. This ought to be kept in mind, when the progress of science is loudly
proclaimed. There has never been a general progress of all sciences; it was
always progress in some branches, often at the cost of others. In our own days
natural, medical, and historical sciences advance rapidly in comparison with
past ages; at the same time the philosophical sciences fall just as rapidly
behind the early ages. The science of law owes its foundation to the ancient
world. Some of the theological sciences reached their height in the early part
of the Middle Ages, others towards the beginning of the seventeenth century.

By teaching is here understood every diffusion of knowledge, by word or print,
in school or museum, in public or private. Progress and the freedom necessary
for it are as much to be desired in teaching as in research. There is a
doctrinal freedom, a pedagogical freedom, and a professional freedom. Doctrinal
freedom regards the doctrine itself which is taught; pedagogical freedom, the
manner in which science is diffused among scholars or the general public;
professional freedom, the persons who do the teaching. Science claims freedom of
teaching in all these respects.

It has to be seen whether there are limitations to research and teaching and
what these limitations are. All things in this world may be considered from a
triple point of view: from the logical, the physical, and the ethical. Applied
to science we discover limitations in all three.

Logically science is limited by truth, which belongs to its very essence.
Knowledge of things cannot be had from their causes, unless the knowledge be
true. False knowledge cannot be derived from the causes of things; it has its
origin in some spurious source. Should science ever have to choose between truth
and freedom (a choice not at all imaginary), it must under all circumstances
decide for truth, under penalty of self-annihilation. As long as the case is
thus put theoretically, there is no difference of opinion. Yet in practice, it
is almost hopeless to reconcile conflicting sentiments. When, in 1901, a vacant
chair at the University of Strasburg was to be filled by a Catholic historian,
Mommsen published a protest, in which he exclaimed: “A sense of degradation is
pervading German university circles”. On that occasion he coined the shibboleth
“voraussetzungslos”, and claimed that scientific research must be “without
presuppositions”. The same cry was raised by Harnack (1908) when he demanded
“unbounded freedom for research and knowledge”. The demand was formulated a
little more precisely by the congress of academicians in Jena (1908). Their
claim for science was “freedom from every view foreign to scientific methods”.

In the latter formula the claim has a legitimate meaning, viz., that
unscientific views should not influence the results of science. In the meaning
of Mommsen and Harnack, however, the claim is illogical in a double sense.
First, there can be no “science without presuppositions”. Every scientist must
accept certain truths dictated by sound reason, among others, the truth of his
own existence and of a world outside of himself; next, that he can recognize the
external world through the senses, that a reasoning power is given to him for
understanding the impressions received, and a will power free from physical
constraint. As a philosopher, he reflects upon these truths and explains them on
scientific methods, but will never prove all of them without involving himself
in vicious circles. Whatever science he chooses he has to build it upon the
natural or philosophical presuppositions on which his life as man rests. The
fact is that every positive science borrows from philosophy a number of
established principles.

So much for the general premises. They alone would show how illogical is the
claim for “science without presuppositions”. But this is not all. Each science
has its own particular presuppositions or axioms, distinct from its own
conclusions, just as every building has its foundation, distinct from its walls
and roof. Nay, the various branches of any special science have all their own
proper presuppositions. Euclid’s geometry is built upon three kinds of
presuppositions. He calls them definitions, postulates, and common notions. The
latter were called axioms by Proclus. To show the difference between hypothesis
and result no better example could be chosen than Euclid’s fifth postulate of
the first book. The postulate says: “When two straight lines are intersected by
a third so as to make the inner adjacent angles on one side less than two right
angles, the two lines, indefinitely prolonged, will intersect on the side of
those lesser angles.” By a mistake of Proclus (fifth century) the postulate was
changed into a proposition. Innumerable attempts at proving the supposed
proposition were made, until the error was recognized, only a century ago. The
fifth postulate, or axiom of parallels as it is often called, proved to be a
real hypothesis, distinct from all the other presuppositions. Non-euclidian
geometries have been constructed by a simple change of the fifth postulate. All
this shows that there is no geometry without presuppositions. And similarly,
there is no algebra without presuppositions. Law starts from the existence of
families and from their natural tendency towards association for common welfare.
Medicine takes the human body as a living organism, subject to derangement, and
the existence of remedies, before it constructs its science. History supposes
human testimony to be, under certain conditions, a reliable source of knowledge,
before it begins its researches. Linguistic sciences, likewise, take it or
granted that human languages are not constructed arbitrarily but evolved
logically from a variety of circumstances. Theology takes from philosophy a
number of truths, such as the existence of God, the possibility of miracles, and
others. In fact, one science borrows its presuppositions from the results of
other sciences, a division of labour which is necessitated by the limitations of
everything human. Hence, the cry for “science without presuppositions” is doubly
illogical, unless by presupposition is meant an hypothesis that can be proved to
be false or foreign to the particular science in question. The freedom of
science therefore has its limitations from the point of view of logic.

From the physical point of view science requires material means. Buildings,
endowments, and libraries are necessary to all branches of science, in research
as well as in teaching. Medical and natural sciences require extraordinary
means, such as laboratories, museums, and instruments. Material requirements
have always imposed limitations upon scientific research and teaching. On the
other hand, the appeals of science for freedom from the burden have been
generously answered. Between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries about
forty universities were founded in Europe, partly by private initiative, partly
by princes or popes, in most cases by the combined efforts of both together with
the members of the university. Among the self-originating universities may be
mentioned Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. With the help of princes,
universities were erected at Palencia, Naples, Salamanca, Seville, and Siena. Of
the universities founded by popes we mention only Rome, Pisa, Ferrara, Toulouse,
Valladolid, Heidelberg, Cologne, and Erfurt. Most of the old universities, like
Coimbra, Florence, Prague, Vienna, Cracow, Alcalá, Upsala, Louvain, Leipzig,
Rostock, Tübingen, and many others, owe their origin to the combined efforts of
princes and popes. The foundations consisted mainly of charters giving civil
rights and authorizing scientific degrees, in most cases also of material
contributions and endowments. To many of the professors’ chairs, ecclesiastical
benefices were applied by the popes without other obligation than that of
teaching science. Naturally the founders retained a certain authority and
influence over the schools. On the whole, the old universities enjoyed
everywhere the same freedom which they have in England up to this day. After the
Reformation the governments of continental Europe made the universities of their
own territories State institutions, paying the professors as Government
employees, sometimes prescribing textbooks, methods of teaching, and even
doctrines. Although in the nineteenth century, governments were obliged to relax
their supervision, they still keep the monopoly of establishing universities and
of appointing the professors. Their influence on the progress of science is
unmistakable; how far this may benefit science, need not be decided in this
place. With the growing influence of the State that of the Church has been
diminished, in most universities to total extinction. In the few European
universities in which the faculty of Catholic theology is still allowed to
exist, the supervision of the Church over her own science is almost reduced to a
mere veto. The necessity of exempting the professors from the oath against the
Modernistic heresy is an illustration of the case. Owing to the freedom of
teaching in the United States of America there are, besides the public
universities of the different states, a number of institutions founded by
private endowment. In the face of the strong aid which anti-Christian and
atheistic tendencies receive through the influence of universities, private
endowments of schools that maintain the truth of Revelation cannot be too much
recommended.

The limitations of science from the ethical point of view are twofold. The
direct action of science on ethics is readily understood; the reaction of ethics
upon science is just as certain. And both action and reaction create limitations
for science. The activity of man is guided by two spiritual faculties,
understanding and will. From the understanding it derives light, from the will
firmness. Naturally the understanding precedes the will and hence the influence
of science upon ethics. This influence becomes an important factor in the
welfare of the human race for the reason that it is not confined to the
scientist in his own researches, but reaches the masses through the various
forms of teaching by word and writing. If one is to judge aright in this matter,
two general principles must be kept in view. First, ethics is more important for
mankind than science. Those who believe in revelation, know that the
Commandments are the criteria by which men will be judged (Matthew 25:35-46);
and those who see only as far as the light of natural reason enables them to
see, know from history that the happiness of peoples and nations consists rather
in moral rectitude than in scientific progress. The conclusion is that if there
should ever be a conflict between science and ethics, ethics should prevail.
Now, there can be no such conflict except in two cases: when scientific research
leads into error, and when the teaching of science, even if true, is applied
against sound educational maxims. To see that these exceptions are not
imaginary, one need only glance at the points of contact between science and
faith, under A. All of them indicate actual conflicts. Unpedagogical teaching is
sadly illustrated by the recent movement in Germany towards premature and even
public instruction on sexual relations, which provoked a reaction on the part of
the civil authorities.

So much about the direct action of science on ethics. The case ought not to be
reversible, in other words, ethics should not influence science, except in the
way of stimulating research and teaching. However, not only individuals but
whole schools of scientists have been subject to that human frailty expressed in
the adage: Stat pro rations voluntas. As Cicero expresses it: “Man judges much
more frequently influenced by hatred or love or cupidity . . or some mental
agitation, than by the truth, or a command, or the law” (De oratore, II, xlii).
If Cicero is correct, then the freedom of knowledge, so highly praised and so
loudly demanded, is perverted by men in a double sense. First, they carry the
freedom of the will into the judgment. Love, hatred, desires, are passions or
acts of the will, while judgments are formed by the understanding, a faculty
entirely devoid of free choice. Secondly, they deprive the understanding of the
necessary indifference and equilibrium, and force it to one side, whether the
side of truth or that of falsehood. If the men of science, who clamour for
freedom, belong to the class described by Cicero, then their idea of freedom is
entirely confused and perverted. It may be answered that Cicero’s statement
applied to daily affairs rather than to the pursuits of science. This is
perfectly true as far as exact sciences are concerned, and it is probably true
also in regard to the formal object of every science. Yet when we consider the
very first postulates that the sciences take from philosophy, we come very near
to daily life. Men of science hear of Christ and know of the magna carta of His
kingdom, proclaimed on the mountain (Luke 6). It cuts very sharply into daily
life. It could be discarded, if that same Christ had not claimed all power in
heaven and on earth, and if He had not prophesied His second coming, to judge
the living and the dead.

Here it is that Cicero’s love and hatred come in. It is quite safe to say: there
is no place in the civilized world where Christ is not loved and hated. Those
who are willing to take the steep and narrow path towards His kingdom accept the
testimonies to His Divine mission with impartiality; others who prefer an easier
and broader way of life try to persuade themselves that the claims of Christ are
unfounded. For, besides those who either reject His claims through inherited or
acquired prejudices, or treat them with indifference, a large number of men try
to strengthen their anti-Christian position by scientific forms. Knowing that
Christ’s Divinity can be proved from the miracles to which He appealed as
testimonies of His Father, they formulate the axiom: “Miracles are impossible”.
Seeing, however, the inconsistency of the formula as long as there is a Maker of
the world, they are driven to the next postulate: “There is no Creator”. Seeing
again, that the existence of the Creator can be proved from the existence of the
world, and convincingly so by a number of arguments, they require new axioms.
First they treat the origin of matter as too remote for its cause to be
ascertained, and plead that: “Matter is eternal”. For a similar reason the
origin of life is explained by the arbitrary postulate of “spontaneous
generation” . Then the wisdom and order displayed in the starry heavens and in
the flora and fauna of the earth must be disposed of. To say in plain words “All
order in the world is causal” would be offensive to common sense. The axiom is
then vested in more scientific language, thus: “From eternity the world has
passed through an infinite number of forms, and only the fittest was able to
survive”.

The substructure of anti-Christian science has still one weak point: the human
soul is not from eternity and its spiritual faculties point to a spiritual
maker. The fabrication of axioms, once begun, has to be concluded: “The human
soul is not essentially different from the vital principle of the animal”. This
conclusion recommends itself as especially strong against what the will dreads:
the animal is not immortal, and hence neither is the human soul; consequently
whatever judgment may follow, it will have no effect. The end of the fabrication
is bitter. Man is a highly developed orang-outang. There is still one
stumbling-block in the Sacred Scriptures, old and new. The Old Testament
narrates the creation of man, his fall, the promise of a Redeemer; it contains
prophecies of a Messias which seem to be fulfilled in Christ and His Church. The
New Testament proves the fulfilment of the promises, and presents a superhuman
Being, who offered His life for the expiation of sin and attested His Divinity
by His own Resurrection; it gives the constitution and early history of His
Church, and promises her existence to the consummation of the world. This could
not be allowed to stand in the face of anti-Christian science. A few postulates
more or less will do no harm to science as it stands. The Hebrew literature is
put on a par with that of Persia or China, the history of Paradise is relegated
to the realm of legends, the authenticity of the books is denied, contradictions
in the contents are pointed out, and the obvious sense is distorted. The axioms
used for the annihilation of the Sacred Scriptures have the advantage of
plausibility over those used against the Creator. They are draped in a mass of
erudition taken from the linguistic and the historical sciences.

But we have not seen all of them yet. The greatest obstacle to anti-Christian
science is the Church, which claims Divine origin, authority to teach infallible
truth, maintains the inspiration of Scripture, and is confident of her own
existence to the end of the world. With her, science cannot play as With
philosophy or literature. She is a living institution wielding her sceptre over
all the peoples of the world. She has all the weapons of science at her
disposal, and members devoted to her, heart and soul. To grant to her equal
rights on scientific grounds would be disastrous to the “science without
presuppositions”. The mere creating of new axioms would not seem to be efficient
against a living organization. The axioms have to be proclaimed loudly, and kept
alive, and finally enforced by organized opposition, even in some cases by
government power. Books and journals and lecture halls announce the one text,
sung in every key, the great axiom: that the Church is essentially unscientific
as resting on unwarranted presuppositions, and that her scientists can never be
true men of science. Mommsen’s cry of degradation on the appointment of a
Catholic historian in Strasburg (1901) re-echoed loudly from most German
universities. And yet, there was question of only a fifth Catholic among
seventy-two professors; and this at a university in Alsace-Lorraine, a territory
almost entirely Catholic. Similar proportions prevail in most universities. All
the axioms of anti-Christian science mentioned above are entirely arbitrary and
false. Not one of them can be supported by solid reasons; on the contrary, every
one of them has been proved to be false. Thus anti-Christian science has
surrounded itself by a number of boundary stakes driven into scientific ground,
and has thus limited its own freedom of progress; the “science without
presuppositions” is entangled in its own axioms, for no other reason than its
aversion to Christ. On the other hand, the scientist who accepts the teaching of
Christ need not fall back on a single arbitrary postulate. If he is a
philosopher, he starts from the premises dictated by reason. In the world around
him he recognizes the natural revelation of a Creator, and by logical deductions
concludes from the contingency of things created to the Being Un-created. The
same reasoning makes him understand the spirituality and immortality of the
soul. From both results combined he concludes further to moral obligations and
the existence of a natural law. Thus prepared he can start into any scientific
research without the necessity of erecting boundary stakes for the purpose of
justifying his prejudices. If he wants to go further and put his faith upon a
scientific basis, he may take the books, called the Sacred Scriptures, as a
starting-point, apply methodical criticism to their authenticity, and find them
just as reliable as any other historical record. Their contents, prophecies, and
miracles convince him of the Divinity of Christ, and from the testimony of
Christ he accepts the entire supernatural Revelation. He has constructed the
science of his faith without any other than scientific premises. Thus the
science of the Christian is the only one that gives freedom of research and
progress; its boundaries are none but the pale of truth. Anti-Christian science,
on the contrary, is the slave of its own preconceived ethics.

The demand for unlimited freedom in science is unreasonable and unjust, because
it leads to licence and rebellion.

There is no unlimited freedom in the world, and liberty over-stepping its
boundaries always leads to evil. Man himself is neither absolutely free, nor
would he desire unbounded freedom. Freedom is not the greatest boon nor the
final end of man; it is given to him as a means to reach his end. Within his own
mind, man feels bound to truth. Around himself, he sees all nature bound to laws
and even dreads disturbances in their regular course. In all his activity he
gets along best by remaining within the laws set for him. Those judgments are
the best which are formed in accordance with the rules of logic. Those machines
and instruments are the finest which are allowed the smallest amount of freedom.
Social intercourse is easiest within the rules of propriety. Widening these
boundaries does not lead to higher perfection. Opinions are free only where
certainty cannot be reached; scientific theories are free as long as they rest
on probabilities. The freest of all in their thinking are the ignorant. In
short, the more freedom of opinion, the less science. Similarly, a railway train
with freedom in more than one line is disastrous, a ship not under the control
of the helm is doomed. A nation that depreciates its code of law, that relaxes
the administration of justice, that sets aside the strict rules of propriety,
that does not protect its own industry, that gives no guarantee for personal and
public property and safety is on the decline. Unlimited freedom leads to
barbarism, and its nearest approach is found in the wilds of Australia.

The cry of anti-Christian science is for license. The boundaries enumerated in
the preceding paragraph circumscribe the logical, the physical, and the ethical
realm of man. Whenever he steps outside, he falls into error, into misfortune,
into licence. Now, to which realm does science belong? Aristotle’s definition
fixes it in the logical realm. And what becomes of the freedom of science?
Within man, the logical realm is the intellectual faculty, and without, it is
the realm of truth. Yet neither is free. Man’s freedom is in the will not in the
understanding. Truth is eternal and absolute. It follows that the cry for
unbounded freedom of science has no place in the logical realm; evidently, it is
not meant for the physical; so it must belong to the ethical realm; it is not a
cry for truth, it is a cry with a purpose. What the purpose is can be inferred
from what has been said under II. It may be summed up in the statement that it
is rebellion against both supernatural and natural revelation. The former
position is the primary but could not consistently be held without the latter.
Rebellion is not too strong a word. If God pleases to reveal Himself in any way
whatever, man is obliged to accept the revelation, and no arbitrary axiom will
dispense him from the duty. Against natural revelation Paulsen and Wundt appeal
to the postulate of “closed natural causality”, meaning by “closed” the
exclusion of the Creator. Supernatural revelation was styled by Kant “a dogmatic
constraint”, which, he says, may have an educational value for minors by filling
them with pious fears. Wundt follows him by calling Catholicism the religion of
constraint, and Paulsen praises Kant as “the redeemer from unbearable stress”.
All these expressions rest on the supposition that in science there is no place
for a Creator, no place for a Redeemer. Many attempts have been made to put the
axiom on a scientific basis; but it remains an assumed premise, an “unwavering
conviction”, as Harnack calls it.

That the expressions “license” and “rebellion” are just is clear from the
consequences of anti-Christian science.

Anti-Christian science leads to Atheism. When science repudiates the claim of
Christ as Son of God, it necessarily repudiates the Father who sent Him, and the
Holy Ghost who proceeds from both. The logical inference does not find favour
with the partisans of that science. When in 1892 the school laws were being
discussed in the German Reichstag, Chancellor Caprivi had the courage to say:
“The point in question is Christianity or Atheism . . . the essential in man is
his relation to God.” The outcry on the “liberal” side of the House showed that
the chancellor had touched a sore point. Since the repudiation of the Creator is
clearly an abuse of freedom and an infringement of the natural law, science has,
by all means, to save appearances by scientifically sounding words. First it
calls the two great divisions of spirits Monism and Dualism. German scientists
have even formed the “Monists’ Union” claiming that there is no real distinction
between the world and God. When their system emphasizes the world it is
Materialism; when it accentuates the Divinity it is Pantheism. Monism is only a
gentler name for both. The plain word “atheism” seems to be too offensive.
English Naturalists replaced it long ago by better-sounding words, like Deism
and Agnosticism. Toland, Tindal, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, of the eighteenth
century, took satisfaction in removing the Deity so far away from the world that
he could have no influence on it. Yet “Deity” still had too religious an odour
and implied a gross inconsistency. To Huxley and other scientists of the
nineteenth century the well-sounding name “agnosticism” appeared more dignified.
In the face of natural law, however, which binds man to know and to serve his
Creator, pleading ignorance of God is as much a rebellion against Him as
shutting Him out of the world.

All these and other tactful terms and phases cover the same crude Atheism and
stand, without exception, confessedly; on a collection of arbitrary postulates.
Dualism, on the contrary, has no need of postulates, except those dictated by
common sense. Sound reason beholds in creation, as in a mirror, its Maker, and
is thus able to refer natural phenomena to their ultimate cause. While science
requires the knowledge of intermediate causes only, the knowledge of things by
their ultimate cause raises science to its highest degree, or wisdom, as St.
Thomas Aquinas calls it. This is why logical coherence and consistency are
always and exclusively found in the dualistic doctrine. It is vain to hope that
the abyss between the logical philosophy of Dualists and the “unwavering
convictions” of Monists may be bridged over by discussions. This was well
illustrated when Father Wasmann lectured in Berlin (1907) on the theory of
Evolution and was opposed by Plate and ten other speakers. The result of the
discussion was that each, Plate and Wasmann, put his respective views in print,
the one his axioms and the other his philosophy, and that, moreover, Plate
denied that Wasmann was entitled to be considered a scientist on account of what
he called Wasmann’s Christian presuppositions.

After the exclusion of God, there is need of an idol; the necessity lies in
human nature. All the nations of old had their idols, even the Israelites, when
at times they rebelled against the Prophets. The shape of the idols varies with
progress. The savages made them of wood, the civilized pagans of silver and
gold, and our own reading age makes them of philosophical systems. Kant did not
draw the last consequences from his “autonomy of reason”; it was done by Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel. This Idealism developed into Subjectivism in the widest
sense of the word, viz., into the complete emancipation of the human mind and
will from God. The idol is the human Ego. The consequences are that truth and
justice lose their eternal character and become relative concepts; man changes
with the ages, and with him his own creations; what he calls true and right in
one century, may become false and wrong in another. In regard to truth we have
the explicit statement of Paulsen, that “there is no philosophy eternally
valid”. Relative to justice, Hartmann defines Kant’s autonomy in the following
words: “It means neither more nor less than this, that in moral matters I am the
highest tribunal without appeal.” Religion, which forms the principal part of
justice, becomes likewise a matter of subjective inclination. Harnack calls
submission to the doctrine of others treason against personal religion; and
Nietzsche defends his idol by calling Christianity the immortal shame of
mankind. The axiom is pronounced in more dignified form by Pfleiderer (1907).
“In the science of history”, he says, “the appearance on earth of a superhuman
being cannot be considered”. Perhaps in the most general way it is formulated by
Paulsen (1908): “Switching off the supernatural from the natural and historical
world”. Yet, all these subjective axioms are only more or less scientific forms
of the plain Straussian postulate (1835): “We are no longer Christians”.

Here we are confronted by two facts that need earnest consideration. On the one
hand, the Government universities of nearly all countries in Europe and many
American universities exclude all relation to God and practically favour the
atheistic postulate just mentioned; and on the other hand, these are the very
postulates summed up by Pius X under the name of “modernism”. Hence the general
outcry of the State universities against the Encyclical “Pascendi” of 1907. To
begin with the first, the licence of subjective truth is the very hotbed of
anarchistic theories and the rebellion against the teaching of Christ will end
with the moral conditions of Greek and Roman paganism. As we are not concerned
here with the relation between science and the State, it must suffice to show
how the alarm is beginning to sound. It seems to be a matter of course, and yet
it sounds unusual, when Count Apponyi as minister of education and worship in
Hungary, on the occasion of an academic promotion, recommends to teachers of
science a moral and earnest conscientiousness. More remarkable is the warning of
Virchow at the meeting of scientists at Munich (1877) against teaching personal
views and speculations as established truths, and in particular, against
replacing the dogmas of the Church by a religion of evolution.

The moral state of a youth growing up under such teaching could be anticipated
in general from the history of paganism. It was reserved to our anti-Christian
age, however, to justify immorality with an appearance of science. The assertion
has been made and circulated in journals and meetings, that a pure and moral
life is detrimental from the point of view of medicine. The medical faculty of
the University of Christiania found it necessary to declare the assertion
entirely false, and to state positively that “we know of no harm or weakness
owing to chastity”. The same protest was expressed by Dr. Raoult in the words:
“There is no such thing as pathology of continency”; and by Dr. Vidal in the
statement, that the commandments of God are legitimate from the standpoint of
medicine, and that their observance is not only possible but advantageous.
Warnings like these may be called forth by anticipated effects; but we hear
others that prove the effects already existing. Such was the unanimous vote of
the International Conference for the protection of Health and Morals held at
Brussels (September, 1902): “Young men have to be taught that the virtues of
chastity and continency are not only not hurtful but most commendable from a
purely medical and hygienic point of view”. The effects in educational
institutions must have been appalling before scientific authorities dared to
lift the veil by public warnings. They were given by Dr. Fleury (1899) in regard
to French colleges, and were repeated by Dr. Fournier (1905) and Dr. Francotte
(1907). Even louder are the warnings of Paulsen, Förster, and especially
Obermedicinalrat Dr. Gruber regarding the German gymnasia and universities. Dr.
Desplats insists that in order to stay the current which is carrying the French
along towards irremediable decadence, it is necessary to react against the
doctrinal and practical neo-paganism. No wonder that the licentious doctrines
have found their way from books into journals and passed from the educated to
the illiterate. Sosnosky, a literary authority, compares the present moral
epidemic to that of pagan Rome and of the French Revolution, and protests, from
a merely natural point of view, against the hypocrisy of covering crude
animalism with the cloak of art and science (see Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 3, 21
January, 1911).

What the State either will not or dare not do, the Church does always, by
keeping men mindful of the object or end of their existence and this last end is
not science. The catechism points it out under three heads: the knowledge of
God; the observance of His commandments; and the use of His grace. Knowledge of
nature is intended by God as a subordinate means to this end. And for that very
reason there can never be a conflict between science and our final destiny. The
Church does not teach natural sciences, but she helps to make their principles
tributary to wisdom, first by warning against error and then by pointing to the
ultimate cause of all things. When science raises the cry against the guiding
office of the Church, it is comparable to a system of navigation without any
directions outside the ship itself and the surrounding waves. The formal object
of each particular science is certainly different from faith just as the
steering of a vessel is different from the knowledge of the stars; but the
exclusion of all guiding lights beyond the billows of scientific opinions and
hypotheses is entirely arbitrary, unwise, and disastrous.




CONSCIOUSNESS

Posted on 2018-12-31 | Edited on 2019-03-01 | In Psychology

Consciousness cannot, strictly speaking, be defined. In its widest sense it
includes all our sensations, thoughts, feelings, and volitions–in fact the sum
total of our mental life. We indicate the meaning of the term best by
contrasting conscious life with the unconscious state of a swoon, or of deep,
dreamless sleep. We are said to be conscious of mental states when we are alive
to them, or are aware of them in any degree. The term self-conscious is employed
to denote the higher or more reflective form of knowledge, in which we formally
recognize our states as our own. Consciousness in the wide sense has come to be
recognized in modern times as the subject-matter of a special science,
psychology; or, more definitely, phenomenal or empirical psychology. The
investigation of the facts of consciousness, viewed as phenomena of the human
mind, their observation, description, and analysis, their classification, the
study of the conditions of their growth and development, the laws exhibited in
their manifestation, and, in general, the explanation of the more complex mental
operations and products by their reduction to more elementary states and
processes, is held to be the business of the scientific psychologist at the
present day.

The scientific or systematic study of the phenomena of consciousness is modern.
Particular mental operations, however, attracted the attention of acute thinkers
from ancient times. Some of the phenomena connected with volition, such as
motive, intention, choice, and the like, owing to their ethical importance, were
elaborately investigated and described by early Christian moralists; whilst some
of our cognitive operations were a subject of interest to the earliest Greek
philosophers in their speculations on the problem of human knowledge. The common
character, however, of all branches of philosophy in the ancient world, was
objective, an inquiry into the nature of being and becoming in general, and of
certain forms of being in particular. Even when epistemological questions,
investigations into the nature of knowing, were undertaken, as e.g. by the
School of Democritus, there seems to have been very little effort made to test
the theories by careful comparison with the actual experience of our
consciousness. Accordingly, crude hypotheses received a considerable amount of
support. The great difference between ancient and modern methods of
investigating the human mind will be best seen by comparing Aristotle’s “De
Anima” and any modern treatise such as William James’ “Principles of
Psychology.” Although there is plenty of evidence of inductive inquiry in the
Greek philosopher’s book, it is mainly of an objective character; and whilst
there are incidentally acute observations on the operations of the senses and
the constitution of some mental states, the bulk of the treatise is either
physiological or metaphysical. On the other hand the aim of the modern inquirer
throughout is the diligent study by introspection of different forms of
consciousness, and the explanation of all complex forms of consciousness by
resolving them into their simplest elements. The Schoolmen, in the main,
followed the lines of the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle. There is a
striking uniformity in the tractate “De Anima” in the hands of each successive
writer throughout the whole of the Middle Ages. The object and conditions of the
operations of the cognitive and appetitive faculties of the soul, the
constitution of species, the character of the distinction between the soul and
its faculties, the connexion of soul and body, the inner nature of the soul, its
origin and destiny are discussed in each treatise from the twelfth to the
sixteenth century; whilst the method of argument throughout rests rather on an
ontological analysis of our concepts of the various phenomena than on
painstaking introspective study of the character of our mental activities
themselves.

However, as time went on, the importance of certain problems of Christian
theology, not so vividly realized by the ancients, compelled a more searching
observation of consciousness and helped on the subjective movement. Free will,
responsibility, intention, consent, repentance, and conscience acquired a
significance unknown to the old pagan world. This procured an increasingly
copious treatment of these subjects from the moral theologians. The difficulties
surrounding the relations between sensuous and intellectual knowledge evoked
more systematic treatment in successive controversies. Certain questions in
ascetical and mystical theology also necessitated more direct appeal to strictly
psychological investigation among the later Schoolmen. Still, it must be
admitted that the careful inductive observation and analysis of our
consciousness, so characteristic of modern psychological literature, occupies a
relatively small space in the classical De animâ of the medieval schools. The
nature of our mental states and processes is usually assumed to be so obvious
that detailed description is needless, and the main part of the writer’s energy
is devoted to metaphysical argument. Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human
Understanding” (1690) and the writings of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), both of
which combine with confused and superficial metaphysics much acute observation
and genuinely scientific attempts at analysis of various mental states,
inaugurated the systematic inductive study of the phenomena of the mind which
has grown into the modern science of consciousness, the empirical or phenomenal
psychology of the present day. In Great Britain the idealism of Berkeley, which
resolved the seemingly independent material world into a series of ideas
awakened by God in the mind, and the scepticism of Hume, which professed to
carry the analysis still farther, dissolving the mind itself into a cluster of
states of consciousness, focused philosophical speculation more and more on the
analytic study of mental phenomena, and gave rise to the Associationist School.
This came at last virtually to identify all philosophy with psychology. Reid and
Stewart, the ablest representatives of the Scotch School, whilst opposing Hume’s
teaching with a better psychology, still strengthened by their method the same
tendency. Meantime, on the Continent, Descartes’ system of methodic doubt, which
would reduce all philosophical assumptions to his ultimate cogito, ergo sum,
furthered the subjective movement of speculation from another side, for it
planted the seed of the sundry modern philosophies of consciousness, destined to
be evolved along various lines by Fichte, Schelling, and Hartmann.

Such being in outline the history of modern speculation in regard to human
consciousness, the question of primary interest here is: Viewed from the
standpoint of Catholic theological and philosophical teaching, what estimate is
to be formed of this modern psychological method, and of the modern science of
the phenomena of consciousness? It seems to the present writer that the method
of careful industrious observation of the activities of the mind, the accurate
description and classification of the various forms of consciousness, and the
effort to analyse complex mental products into their simplest elements, and to
trace the laws of the growth and development of our several faculties,
constitute a sound rational procedure which is as deserving of commendation as
the employment of sound scientific method in any other branch of knowledge.
Further, since the only natural means of acquiring information respecting the
inner nature of the soul is by the investigation of its activities, the
scientific study of the facts of consciousness is a necessary preliminary at the
present day to any satisfactory metaphysics of the soul. Assuredly no philosophy
of the human soul which ignores the results of scientific observation and
experiment applied to the phenomena of consciousness can today claim assent to
its teaching with much hope of success. On the other hand, most English-speaking
psychologists since the time of Locke, partly through excessive devotion to the
study of these phenomena, partly through contempt for metaphysics, seem to have
fallen into the error of forgetting that the main ground for interest in the
study of our mental activities lies in the hope that we may draw from them
inferences as to the inner constitution of the being, subject, or agent from
which these activities proceed. This error has made the science of
consciousness, in the hands of many writers, a “psychology without a soul”. This
is, of course, no necessary consequence of the method. With respect to the
relation between the study of consciousness and philosophy in general, Catholic
thinkers would, for the most part, hold that a diligent investigation of the
various forms of our cognitive consciousness must be undertaken as one of the
first steps in philosophy; that one’s own conscious existence must be the
ultimate fact in every philosophical system; and that the veracity of our
cognitive faculties, when carefully scrutinized, must be the ultimate postulate
in every sound theory of cognition. But the prospect of constructing a general
philosophy of consciousness on idealistic lines that will harmonize with sundry
theological doctrines which the Church has stamped with her authority, does not
seem promising. At the same time, although much of our dogmatic theology has
been formulated in the technical language of the Aristotelean physics and
metaphysics, and though it would be, to say the least, extremely difficult to
disentangle the Divinely revealed religious element from the human and imperfect
vehicle by which it is communicated, yet it is most important to remember that
the conceptions of Aristotelean metaphysics are no more part of Divine
Revelation than are the hypotheses of Aristotelean physics; and that the
technical language with its philosophical associations and implications in which
many of our theological doctrines are clothed, is a human instrument, subject to
alteration and correction.

The term psychophysics is employed to denote a branch of experimental psychology
which seeks to establish quantitative laws describing the general relations of
intensity exhibited in various kinds of conscious states under certain
conditions. Elaborate experiments and ingenious instruments have been devised by
Weber, Fechner, Wundt, and others for the purpose of measuring the strength of
the stimulus needed to awaken the sensations of the several senses, the quantity
of variation in the stimulus required to produce a consciously distinguishable
sensation, and so to discover a minimum increment or unit of consciousness: also
to measure the exact duration of particular conscious processes, the
“reaction-time” or interval between the stimulation of a sense-organ and the
performance of a responsive movement, and similar facts. These results have been
stated in certain approximate laws. The best established of these is the
Weber-Fechner generalization, which enunciates the general fact that the
stimulus of a sensation must be increased in geometrical progression in order
that the intensity of the resulting sensation be augmented in arithmetical
progression. The law is true, however, only of certain kinds of sensation and
within limits. Whilst these attempts to reach quantitative measurement–
characteristic of the exact sciences–in the study of consciousness have not been
directly very fruitful in new results, they have nevertheless been indirectly
valuable in stimulating the pursuit of greater accuracy and precision in all
methods of observing and registering the phenomena of consciousness.

A most important form of consciousness from both a philosophical and a
psychological point of view is self-consciousness. By this is understood the
mind’s consciousness of its operations as its own. Out of this cognition
combined with memory of the past emerges the knowledge of our own abiding
personality. We not only have conscious states like the lower animals, but we
can reflect upon these states, recognize them as our own, and at the same time
distinguish them from the permanent self of which they are the transitory
modifications. Viewed as the form of consciousness by which we study our own
states, this inner activity is called introspection. It is the chief instrument
employed in the building up of the science of psychology, and it is one of the
many differentiae which separate the human from the animal mind. It has
sometimes been spoken of as an “internal sense”, the proper object of which is
the phenomena of consciousness, as that of the external senses is the phenomena
of physical nature. Introspection is, however, merely the function of the
intellect applied to the observation of our own mental life. The peculiar
reflective activity exhibited in all forms of self-consciousness has led modern
psychologists who defend the spirituality of the soul, increasingly to insist on
this operation of the human mind as a main argument against materialism. The
cruder form of materialism advocated in the nineteenth century by Broussais,
Vogt, Moleschott, and at times by Huxley, which maintained that thought is
merely a “product”, “secretion”, or “function” of the brain, is shown to be
untenable by a brief consideration of any form of consciousness. All
“secretions” and “products” of material agents of which we have experience, are
substances which occupy space, are observable by the external senses, and
continue to exist when unobserved. But all states of consciousness are
non-spatial; they cannot be observed by the senses, and they exist only as we
are conscious of them–their esse is percipi. Similarly “functions” of material
agents are, in the last resort, resolvable into movements of portions of matter.
But states of consciousness are not movements any more than they are
“secretions” of matter. The contention, however, that all states of
consciousness, though not “secretions” or “products” of matter, are yet forms of
activity which have their ultimate source in the brain and are intrinsically and
absolutely dependent on the latter is not disposed of by this reasoning.

To meet this objection, attention is directed to the form of intellectual
activity exhibited in reflective self-consciousness. In this process there is
recognition of complete identity between the knowing agent and the object which
is known; the ego is at once subject and object. This feature of our mental life
has been adduced in evidence of the immateriality of the soul by former writers,
but under the title of an argument from the unity of consciousness it has been
stated in perhaps its most effective form by Lotze. The phrase “continuity of
consciousness” has been employed to designate the apparent connectedness which
characterizes our inner experience, and the term “stream” of consciousness has
been popularized by Professor James as an apt designation of our conscious life
as a whole. Strictly speaking, this continuity does not pertain to the “states”
or phenomena of consciousness. One obviously large class of interruptions is to
be found in the nightly suspension of consciousness during sleep. The connecting
continuity is really in the underlying subject of consciousness. It is only
through the reality of a permanent, abiding principle or being which endures the
same whilst the transitory states come and go that the past experience can be
linked with the present, and the apparent unity and continuity of our inner life
be preserved. The effort to explain the seeming continuity of our mental
existence has, in the form of the problem of personal identity, proved a
hopeless crux to all schools of philosophy which decline to admit the reality of
some permanent principle such as the human soul is conceived to be in the
Scholastic philosophy. John Stuart Mill, adhering to the principles of Hume, was
driven to the conclusion that the human mind is merely “a series of states of
consciousness aware of itself as a series”. This has been rightly termed by
James “the definite bankruptcy” of the Associationist theory of the human mind.
James’ own account of the ego as “a stream of consciousness” in which “each
passing thought” is the only “thinker” is not much more satisfactory.

In processes of self-conscious activity the relative prominence of the self and
the states varies much. When the mind is keenly interested in some external
event, e.g. a race, the notice of self may be diminished almost to zero. On the
other hand, in efforts of difficult self-restraint and deliberate reflection,
the consciousness of the ego reaches its highest level. Besides this experience
of the varying degrees of the obtrusiveness of the self, we are all conscious at
times of trains of thought taking place automatically within us, which seem to
possess a certain independence of the main current of our mental life. Whilst
going through some familiar intellectual operation with more or less attention,
our mind may at the same time be occupied in working out a second series of
thoughts connected and coherent in themselves, yet quite separate from the other
process in which our intellect is engaged. These secondary “split-off” processes
of thought may, in certain rare cases, develop into very distinct, consistent,
and protracted streams of consciousness; and they may occasionally become so
complete in themselves and so isolated from the main current of our mental life,
as to possess at least a superficial appearance of being the outcome of a
separate personality. We have here the phenomenon of the so-called “double ego”.
Sometimes the sections or fragments of one fairly consistent stream of
consciousness alternate in succession with the sections of another current, and
we have the alleged “mutations of the ego”, in which two or more distinct
personalities seem to occupy the same body in turn. Sometimes the second stream
of thought appears to run on concomitantly with the main current of conscious
experience, though so shut off as only to manifest its existence occasionally.
These parallel currents of mental life have been adduced by some writers in
support of an hypothesis of concomitant “multiple personalities”. The
psychological literature dealing with these phenomena is very large. Here it
suffices to observe in passing that all these phenomena belong to morbid mental
life, that their nature and origin are admittedly extremely obscure, and that
the cases in which the ego or subject of one stream of consciousness has
absolutely no knowledge or memory of the experiences of the other, are extremely
few and very doubtful. The careful and industrious observations, however, which
are being collected in this field of mental pathology are valuable for many
purposes; and even if they have not so far thrown much light on the problem of
the inner nature of the soul, at all events they stimulate effort towards an
important knowledge of the nervous conditions of mental processes, and they
ought ultimately to prove fruitful for the study of mental disease.

Reverie, dreams, and somnambulistic experiences are forms of consciousness
mediating between normal life and the eccentric species of mentality we have
just been discussing. One particular form of abnormal consciousness which has
attracted much attention is that exhibited in hypnotism. The type of
consciousness presented here is in many respects similar to that of
somnambulism. The main feature in which it differs is that the hypnotic state is
artificially induced and that the subject of this state remains in a condition
of rapport or special relation with the hypnotizer of such a kind that he is
singularly susceptible to the suggestions of the latter. One feature of the
hypnotic state in common with some types of somnambulism and certain forms of
the “split-off” streams of consciousness consists in the fact that experiences
which occurred in a previous section of the particular abnormal state, though
quite forgotten during the succeeding normal consciousness, may be remembered
during a return of the abnormal state. These and some other kindred facts have
given rise to much speculation as to the nature of mental life below the
“threshold” or “margin” of consciousness. Certain writers have adopted the
hypothesis of a “subliminal”, in addition to our ordinary “supraliminal”,
consciousness, and ascribe a somewhat mystic character to this former. Some
assume a universal, pantheistic, subliminal consciousness continuous with the
subliminal consciousness of the individual. Of this universal mind they maintain
that each particular mind is but a part. The question, indeed, as to the
existence and nature of unconscious mental operations in individual minds has
been in one shape or another the subject of controversy from the time of
Leibniz. That during our normal conscious existence obscure, subconscious mental
processes, at best but faintly recognizable, do take place, is indisputable.
That latent activities of the soul which are strictly unconscious, can be truly
mental or intellectual operations is the point in debate. Whatever conclusions
be adopted with respect to those various problems, the discussion of them has
established beyond doubt the fact that our normal consciousness of everyday life
is profoundly affected by subconscious processes of the soul which themselves
escape our notice.


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John Doe

Philosophy, psychology, and history

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