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Some Important Issues in Philosophy |
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by Celestine N. Bittle, O.F.M.Cap. A Study
and Critique
Table of
Contents: We are going to make a critical inquiry into the validity of the various classes of spontaneous convictions of man furnished by the different sources of our knowledge. Skepticism with its universal doubt is a practical impossibility and a philosophic absurdity; certitude, as a consequence, is and must be attainable. The three primary truths are self-evident and undeniable certainties; and they form the rational starting point from which our investigation can legitimately proceed. These three primary truths are:
We will now examine the truth-value of the sources of our knowledge. By the sources of knowledge we understand the means or media through which we arrive at truth and certitude. These are the cognitive operations and faculties of man, in as much as it is through them that the knowing subject is brought into contact with objects and through them that these objects become known to the subject. Knowledge essentially involves three factors -- the subject which knows, the object which becomes known, and the cognitive process or act which makes the object known to the subject; the object must act upon the subject, the subject must react to the object by means of a mental assimilation, and this mental assimilation takes place in the process or act of knowledge. There are two main sources of knowledge from which our spontaneous convictions flow: experience and intellection. Experience is the source of our knowledge of concrete, individual, contingent facts. It is twofold:
Consciousness is internal experience, while sense-perception is external experience. Intellection comprises three operations:
Intellection is the source of our intellectual knowledge of necessary and universal truths. Taken individually and separately, these are the sources of our knowledge which we have to submit to a critical analysis: consciousness, sense-perception, ideas, judgments, and inferences. Since human knowledge beings in the child with external experience or sense-perception, it would seem that sense-perception should be the first source to be examined for its truth-value. We must remember, however, that it is not the validity of the child's knowledge which is at stake, but the validity of knowledge in general as we find it in our adult mind. Now, a thing can only become known to us, and knowledge can only become knowledge for us, in so far as we are conscious of its presence in our mind. No one denies that our spontaneous convictions are at least subjective facts of our consciousness; they are the acknowledged data of the whole problem. It will be best then, to begin our inquiry by investigating the truth-value of consciousness itself as a primary source of our knowledge. A number of important terms have become current in the modern philosophy of knowledge, and great confusion has arisen from the the fact that the exact meaning of these terms has not always been recognized and kept distinct in the discussion. They are: Ego and non-Ego, self and non-self, mental and extra-mental. Whatever may be their ultimate validity, they have a definite signification, and we should be clear beforehand just what their signification implies. When speaking about the universe in connection with human knowledge, it has become common usage to say that the universe consists of the "Ego" and the "non-Ego," the "self" and "non-self," the "mental" and "extra-mental." This division and designation is taken from the standpoint of man's consciousness. Ego is Latin, and it is identical with the English terms "I," "myself," and "self"; non-Ego is identical in meaning with "non-self." By "Ego" or "self" we understand man in his whole person, consisting of body and mind together as a unit; and by "non-Ego" or "non-self" we understand the whole world which is distinct from man's body and mind and outside his person, as something "other-than-self." By mental we mean anything that belongs and pertains to man's mind, and in this discussion "mind" is taken in the sense of the "conscious knowing subject" which is the seat and source of all cognitive and affective states in man; and by extra-mental we mean everything found outside, or not pertaining to, the mind. Whether an objective reality corresponds to these terms, is something which will have to be decided later; at present we are concerned only with the meaning which is attached to these words, so that we can discuss the problem of knowledge intelligently. The mutual relationship existing between these sets of terms can be seen from the following diagram:  The most conspicuous thing noticeable in these terms is that "Ego" and "extra-mental" are overlapping terms, while "non-Ego" and "mental" are mutually exclusive. The "body" of man (if there be a "body") is considered as an integral part of his person or Ego, together with the mind; but the "world" (the material world as distinct from man's body, if there be such a "world") is outside man's person or Ego entirely. At the same time, this "body" is distinct from man's mind, and it is, therefore, not mental but "extra-mental." The body (provided it exists) is thus seen to be a part of the "Ego" and also "extra-mental"; as such it is the connecting link between the "mind" and the material "world" at large, occupying a middle position between these two extremes. With these terms and ideas fixed and clear, we are now ready to turn our attention to the problem of consciousness and its truth-value. The only scientific way to proceed is to examine critically the facts of consciousness and then draw our conclusions concerning the validity of consciousness as a source of true and certain knowledge. Just what is "consciousness"? It is the intuitive "awareness" by which we recognize something as cognitively present in the mind. Now, there is nothing more certain than that we have a "conscious" mind. Here are the evident facts. Our mind is aware or conscious of the various acts of external sense-perception. I open my eyes and am aware that I see things: my desk, my books, the building outside, an auto turning the corner, the sun shining in the sky. I listen and am aware that I hear sounds: the heavy chugging of the motor of a truck, the conversation of two men passing my window, the scratching of my pen over the paper. I taste the pungent flavor of the piece of candy I am dissolving in my mouth, and I am aware of this sensation. I smell the fragrant odor of the tobacco I have been smoking, and I am aware of this perception. I experience the sensation of touch, and I am aware that I feel things: the hardness and smoothness of the wood of my desk, the pressure exerted by my fingers upon the pen as I write, the coldness of the air as it blows through my open window. All these sensations, as perceptive acts, have become mentally present to my mind, and I am conscious that they affect me while they are present; if I were not "conscious" of them, I could not be aware that I am at this moment seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. Again, I am conscious of the presence in my being of certain internal sense-states. I am aware that I feel hunger and thirst, that I have a slight headache, that I am rather fatigued just now, that I experience pleasure in leaning back in my chair and relaxing for a while, that I feel depressed in my nerves. I am also aware that my imagination is evoking images within me of the stroll I intend taking to the library, and of the books I contemplate reading, and of the luncheon I expect to have, and of the persons I plan to meet. And I am aware, too, that my memory is recalling the celebration I attended some time ago and the many friends I met on that occasion after years of separation. All these sense processes and states are not only present in me, but I experience and feel and am aware of their presence: I am conscious of them as actual happenings while they last. I possess a direct and immediate awareness of them as concrete, individual facts. But I am also conscious of a higher order of acts and functions in my being -- those of intellection and volition. As I proceed in my work, I am conscious of forming many ideas, of combining them into manifold judgments and propositions, of linking them together into a variety of inferences and arguments, proofs, and refutations; I am thus conscious that I think, judge, reason. Furthermore, I am conscious that I desire to finish a certain portion of my task, and that I decide to continue until I have reached the goal which I have previously set out to attain, and that I make a distinct effort to overcome the obstacles which make the attainment of this goal a difficult procedure; I am conscious of appetition. Going a step farther in the introspective analysis of my consciousness, I realize that I possess a reflective power which enables me to obtain reflex knowledge of my conscious states and acts. I not only know, but I know that I know; I not only have knowledge, but I have a knowledge of my knowledge; I not only am conscious, but I am conscious of my consciousness. But most important of all: in these various perceptive acts and states of consciousness I am conscious of my self, my Ego, as the one in whom they take place and who is the subject affected by their presence. By means of this reflex act of self-consciousness I become aware that I, the thinking and conscious subject, apprehend myself concretely in these acts and states; for self-consciousness is the knowledge which the mind has of its acts as its own. When I survey these perceptive acts of my consciousness, I notice that they possess an objective reference; that is to say, whenever I "perceive," I always perceive an "object" distinct from the act of perception itself. Thus, when I "see," I am not only aware of the act of "sight" as such, but I am also aware that I see, for instance, "a green house"; when I press my hand upon my knee, I am not only aware of the act of "touching" itself, but I am also aware of my "hand" and my "knee" as the objects which I fee. And it is my spontaneous conviction that these objects, at least in many instances, are objectively real, distinct from their "mental presence" as "objects of the mind" in cognition; in other words, I am convinced that they are real things which I perceive. Is this spontaneous conviction warranted? Have these objects an "objective existence" aside from their "mental existence" in the act of perception? Am I justified in passing from the "mental order" to the "objective order"? Does my consciousness tell me anything at all about real, extra-mental things? If so, what? Is my consciousness a reliable source of true and valid knowledge? These important questions will now have to be answered, and the answer will be the first step in the philosophic justification of human knowledge. The Truth-Value of Consciousness Consciousness is a valid source of truth in the domain of knowledge. Nothing is more intimate and more fundamental to me than my consciousness. All knowledge of whatever kind is rooted ultimately in my consciousness, because I cannot "know" anything unless I am "aware" of it. Every single act of sense-perception and intellection becomes an act of "knowledge" for me only in so far as it conveys some information about an object to me, the subject; I thereby become a knowing subject. But I will be a "knowing" subject only when I am conscious of the mental presence of the object within my perception and my thinking. If I were unconscious of its presence, I would be totally ignorant of it even as a "mental object" and I could know absolutely nothing about it. Knowledge must simple be "conscious" knowledge, in order to be "knowledge" at all. Consciousness, therefore, is the indispensable condition of all knowledge, whether sensory or intellectual, so that, so far as I am concerned, knowledge in any form is utterly impossible without it. Consequently, if any knowledge can be true and certain and if any source of knowledge can be reliable at all, it can only be so under the condition that my consciousness is reliable and essentially free from error. If my consciousness is not essentially free from error, I cannot trust any other source of knowledge, because no other source is so intimate and evident to me as my consciousness and because every other source presupposes the trustworthiness of consciousness as the basis of its own. The matter is quite plain and simple. I see, hear, taste, smell, touch; I form ideas, make judgments, produce inferences of deduction and induction. But all these cognitive acts are the means whereby I collect and construct my knowledge, and since without them I can have no knowledge at all, it is obvious that the truth and certainty of these sources of knowledge will depend entirely upon the trustworthiness of my consciousness. The reliability of sense and reason, therefore, presupposes the reliability of my consciousness; as sources of knowledge they stand and fall with my consciousness. If my consciousness is not essentially free from error, then every part and parcel of knowledge, whether common or scientific or philosophic, will of necessity always remain doubtful in its validity. But that would mean the bankruptcy of all science and philosophy and the suicide of my reason. There would then be no use in proceeding any further in my inquiry, because my investigation would be doomed beforehand to futility. The inevitable result of such a view would be universal skepticism. But universal skepticism, as has been repeatedly shown, is a practical impossibility and a philosophic absurdity. If I wish, therefore, to avoid the intellectual death of universal skepticism, I must perforce accept the trustworthiness of my consciousness as capable of giving me true and certain knowledge. This is the only reasonable course for me to pursue, because my consciousness is the last court of appeal before the tribunal of reason, and its verdict is final: if there is any truth at all, the testimony of my consciousness must be true. My consciousness, therefore, is essentially free from error in the acts and facts of which it gives me direct and immediate awareness. Moreover, if I were to doubt the reliability of my own consciousness as a source of true and certain knowledge, I would, by my very doubt, assert its reliability. To have a reasonable doubt, I must have reasons to doubt; otherwise I would act in an irrational fashion. But how can these reasons be valid unless I am certain of their validity? And how can I be certain of their validity, except by an act of consciousness vouching for their presence in my mind? And how can my consciousness vouch for their presence and validity, if it were unreliable? Therefore, even a valid doubt presupposes the reliability of my consciousness, and thereby its reliability is established. There are a number of things, to which my consciousness testifies as certain facts and truths, which I cannot possibly doubt, if I am in my right mind. I am certain, for instance, beyond the shadow of a doubt that I exist, that I think, that I perceive, that I reason; I am doing these things at this very moment as I write, so how can I doubt them? It would be sheer nonsense on my part to doubt or deny that I see, touch, hear, taste, smell, imagine, remember, think, judge, reason, considering these acts merely as subjective facts present in my mind. They are present as modifications of my being, and no amount of theorizing can argue them out of existence. If they were not present in my mind, and if my consciousness were not reliable in testifying to their existence, how could I know about their presence and think about them? I am directly and immediately aware of their existence within my Ego; and this evidence is so clear and irresistible, that I can doubt or deny this testimony of my consciousness only under penalty of renouncing my reason. True, I cannot demonstrate the trustworthiness of my consciousness, and that would mean a begging of the question; but such a demonstration is not needed, because all that is required is to show by introspection and analysis that I cannot doubt or deny its reliability without falling into the folly of universal skepticism. And that is clear to me from the above. My consciousness, therefore, is a valid source of truth in its own domain of knowledge, provided its data are self-evident. Truths Revealed by Consciousness We must distinguish clearly between the data of consciousness and the interpretation of these data. The data are the internal, subjective, intra-mental acts of perception and intellection, emotion and volition, which pass before my consciousness and of whose presence I become aware by the fact that they are there. My consciousness does not pass any judgment upon them but merely notices and registers their presence; and in this "noticing" and "registering" it cannot err, because it perceives these internal states by an act of immediate experience due to the evidence of its own direct intuition. It it my intellect which passes judgment upon the data of consciousness and interprets them; and here error is possible, since my intellect may misinterpret the data and draw false conclusions from them. But when my intellect does nothing more than state explicitly what is implicitly contained in the data of consciousness, then my consciousness will also be aware that the interpretation is as true and certain as the data themselves, provided the data are intuitively evident and not vague and indistinct. What truths, then, does my consciousness reveal? By introspection I discover that every act of knowledge involves three factors -- act of perception, object, and subject. Directly and primarily, it is the "act of perception" which is noticed and registered by my consciousness. Since, however, my consciousness is aware of this act of perception in its concrete reality, it also notices in this act the perceiving subject and the perceived object as concrete parts of the concrete whole. Thus, when a sensation of "hunger" arises in my consciousness, I am aware of the "hunger" which is felt and of "myself" as the one who "feels" the ":hunger." The three factors form a concrete whole, and I am concomitantly aware at the same time of the act of perception, the object, and the subject. I express this in the evident judgment: "I (subject) feel (perception) hunger (object)" From this triple standpoint my consciousness reveals to me a number of important truths. From the standpoint of the act of knowledge, my consciousness gives indubitable evidence that there is a great difference in the character of my acts. "Hearing" is not the same as "seeing" or "tasting," nor are these perceptions the same as "touching" or "smelling"; they affect my Ego in different ways. Similarly, the experiences I undergo in the operations of the central sense, imagination, instinct, and memory are unlike each other and differ from the perceptions just mentioned. And all these acts are registered in consciousness as radically different from intellectual ideas, judgments, and inferences. I also perceive within me affective and appetitive states and acts, such as joy, grief, anger, desire, volition; they are nonperceptive states and acts, and the difference between them and the perceptive states is even greater than the differences existing between the perceptive states as such. Consciousness, of course, does not group these various acts and states into classes; nor does it specify in any way whether they are material or spiritual in nature; it merely "registers" their existence and their differences in a concrete manner. It is the intellect which classifies them by interpreting the data revealed by consciousness. If an error is made in this interpretation, this is due to a faulty analysis on the part of the intellect. Consciousness itself can never be mistaken in its clear testimony of the presence of an act or state within the mind. From the standpoint of the object of knowledge my consciousness is concretely aware of the object of perception at the same time that it is aware of the act of perception. I cannot "perceive" without perceiving "something," and object; and I thus become aware of colors, sounds, flavors, odors, tactile objects of sensation (hot and cold, harness and softness, muscular and motor feelings), ideas, judgments, and inferences, as the objects of the various operations of my sense and intellect. I can no more deny their presence and existence within my consciousness than I can deny the presence and existence of the perceptive acts themselves, because act and object form one concrete whole. At the same time I am aware of their concrete difference: sounds are not colors; muscular feelings are not flavors; odors are not heat or cold; and all these sense-objects are not ideas or judgments or inferences. Then again, I am intuitively conscious of extendedness in one of the other of my perceptions. Color-perception always reveals colored surfaces, not merely color alone for itself. There is a side-by-sideness of spatial parts in all color-objects, and extendedness in at least two dimensions -- length and width. I never see "green" alone; but I see a "green lawn," a "green sea," "green leaves," a "green house." I never see "blue" alone; but I see a "blue sky," "blue violets." I never see "red" alone; but I see "red roses," "red sunsets." And so with the other colors: they are always extended and surfaced. Moreover, these extended surfaces are consciously perceived as having concrete shapes, and these shapes are recorded as having a concrete difference among themselves. I am intuitively aware of squares, triangles, disks, ellipses, and every kind of irregular figure in these colored surfaces. For instance, what I call an "orange" is not merely "yellow," but a "round" yellow object; the "house" I see is a "square" brown object; the "rose" I am looking at is an "irregularly shaped" red object. These various configurations of shape are given directly with the color-object as an "extended colored surface," and my consciousness makes me immediately aware of them in the act of color-perception. In some form, therefore, extension must exist, otherwise it could not be a datum of my consciousness. Similar to sight, but in a somewhat different manner, touch reveals extension. The sensation of side-by-sideness of spatial parts is even more immediately and intimately a datum of my consciousness in touch than it is in the sight of colored surfaces, because there is a direct contact in touch which is missing in the act of sight. When I pass my hand over a book, I feel the spatial extendedness of the book, and this contact-experience gives to the sensation a value which cannot be denied. Sight reveal a two-dimensional extension, but touch reveal dimensions in three directions. When I handle a book, a pen, a bottle, an apple, or when I grasp my left wrist with my right hand, or when I feel my head with both hands, I am concretely conscious of solidity, voluminousness, triple dimension. Besides this, my consciousness reveals the difference of a total "otherness," when I touch my arm or head or thigh, and when I touch a book or a table or a fruit. The former are perceived to be a part of my being, while the latter are foreign to myself and "outside" my being. This will become clearer, when we analyze the "subject" of the act of knowledge. From the standpoint of the subject of knowledge, my consciousness reveals a number of most interesting and vital truths. Primarily, I am aware of the acts of sense-perception and intellection which are present within me as concrete states of knowledge; but just as these acts manifest the object perceived, so they also reveal the perceiving subject, and this subject is my self, my Ego. Nothing is clearer to my consciousness than the fact that I myself am the active and passive subject of all internal states and modifications which I recognize as coming and going on within me. All perceptive acts and affective states I concretely observe to be my own; they belong to me and modify me. Analyzing the data of my consciousness, I perceive with intuitive evidence that it is I who hear, see, touch, taste, and smell; it is I who imagine and remember; it is I who think, judge, and reason; it is I who am hungry and thirsty, sad and glad, peaceful and angry, healthy and sick, in pleasure and in pain; it is I who decide and will, strive and reject. It is my selfsame Ego which is active throughout, whether in the domain of sense or in the domain of intellect, and my Ego is one, single individual; there is no duality or multiplicity here, notwithstanding the radical difference between the acts and states themselves. Even my consciousness is only a modification of my self or Ego, because I am conscious of myself as conscious in the same way that I am conscious of myself as seeing, hearing, thinking, and willing; I express both facts in an identical manner, namely, "I hear a sound" and "I am conscious of myself." The Ego is not consciousness; it is the possessor of consciousness. The Ego is not experience; it is the experient. And so, too, the Ego is not memory; it is the bearer of memory. The act of remembering is a present act, but it always has a reference to past persons or events. I perceive with evidence that I, the Ego, who am conscious at this very moment, am the self-identical Ego who have had the "past" experiences recorded by my memory. I am writing at this instant; but I am also conscious through my memory that I was writing ten minutes ago, that I took a walk half an hour ago, that I consulted a physician this morning. Notwithstanding the fact that I was in a state of complete unconsciousness during my sleep last night, I am aware that "I" am the self-identical "Ego" who existed, worked, ate, wrote, perceived, and reasoned yesterday, a week before, a month ago, and through all the years down to my youth and childhood. These events belonged to me before; and my Ego preserved its self-identity, while they came and passed on. How could I remember them as "mine," as having happened to "me," if my Ego were not a permanently existing reality in whom they occurred? My Ego is clearly perceived to be the abiding subject of these transitory states. It is the duty of psychology to pass judgment on the nature of the Ego, but the data of my conscious states show plainly that my Ego is distinct from the conscious states themselves; the latter are only modifications of the permanent Ego, existing in and by and through my Ego as their agent-patient subject. So much is evident to me from an analysis of the data of memory. Of what does my Ego consist, so far as I am informed by my consciousness? Since the Ego is the "thinking subject," whatever is "mental" belongs to it; the mind, therefore, is an integral part of the Ego. But some of my perceptions also show that my Ego is an extended reality. When I grasp a book or a pen, I am aware that these objects are extended and that they are "other-than-self"; however, when I grasp my arm or my head or my ankle, I am aware that they are extended and that they differ among themselves, but also that they "identical-with-self." In other words, they are perceived to be integral parts of my Ego, they belong to my being and my person; they are "my head," "my eyes," "my ears," "my hands," "my chest," "my arms," "my legs," "my toes." Hence, if I stub the toes against a stone, I say: "My foot hurts," and "I feel a pain in my foot." Since these objects are clearly perceived by touch and sight to be extended, and since my consciousness testifies that they belong to me as integral parts of my Ego, it is obvious that my Ego is extended with and through them. These parts, however, taken together, form what we call the "body," and this body is clearly perceived to be distinct from the "thinking subject" or mind; the body is "extra-mental." My Ego, therefore, according to the indisputable evidence of my consciousness, consists of something "mental" and "extra-mental," of mind and body. It is, then, untrue to say that the Ego consists of purely mental states; it also consists of an extra-mental body which has various extended parts side by side; and both mind and body form a unit, the one and undivided whole which is my Ego. Such are the facts of consciousness regarding the act, object, and subject of knowledge. And it is from such evident, undeniable facts that my intellect forms such ideas as "being, existence, sense-perception, intellection, appetition, extension and space, mind and body, mental and extra-mental, Ego and non-Ego." They are not mere fancies and figments, but valid ideas, possessing objective reality, derived by the intellect from the critically observed and analyzed data of my consciousness; and, as we see, they are not the results of a blind instinct, but the conscious products of an intellectual insight based on the intuitive evidence of immediate experience which cannot be doubted or denied without falling into complete skepticism. Any "immediate judgments" then, which my intellect forms as interpretations of these facts by means of such ideas, must be as true, valid, and certain as these facts themselves, because my consciousness testifies that in such instances my intellect is merely stating explicitly that which is contained implicitly in the data as mentally present. Such immediate judgments are:
These immediate judgments are now no longer simply spontaneous convictions but scientific, reflex, philosophic truths and certainties, the result of a critical analysis of my conscious mind in its revealed data. It will be obvious that these ideas and truths are basic to the problem of knowledge and must be considered as partly solving the problem. Consciousness, then, is a valid source of true and certain knowledge concerning those acts and facts of which it has immediate cognition. This validity is based on the indubitable evidence of primary experience. To doubt the essential freedom from error on the part of consciousness is to to destroy the validity of any and all other knowledge, because such knowledge has its ultimate foundation in the intuitive character of the knowledge of consciousness.
Companion Essay: Extra-Mental and Extra-Ego Reality Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book...
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