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Some Important Issues in Philosophy |
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A Critique of the Realistic Position by Celestine N. Bittle, O.F.M.Cap.
The Data Concerning the Non-Ego World Unquestionably, much of our knowledge of the external world, which we ordinarily consider directly given in sense-perception, is acquired through a very complicated process of perception, intellectual abstraction, and mental inference. We are not brute animals, but intellectual beings; we not only perceive, but think. Consequently, it is not always easy to distinguish what is due to direct sense-perception from that which is the result of our interpreting judgment. Nevertheless, the primary facts are plain and simple. The very data which reveal to us our body as real and intra-Ego, reveal to us concretely at the same time and in the same way that bodies exist which are extra-subjective and extra-Ego; they possess the feature of externality and otherness. The sense of touch is fundamental in this respect. When I move my hand over parts of my body, I perceive that my hand is distinct from these parts. At the same time, however, I also perceive that the parts touched are not foreign to my being but belong to it as well as my hand does; they are all parts and members of the same organic, structural whole. But when my hand touches a book, a desk, an apple, a building, a tree, a human body (other than my own), it is immediately clear to me that these things do not belong to my being; they are "other," extra-Ego, external, something totally different from my self. All the objects which I contact while moving through space are thus perceived to possess this characteristic of "otherness." I can move my own bodily members from place to place, but I observe a definite resistance exerted against my body by many things. I cannot walk through them, neither can I surmount them nor push them aside; they are unyielding objects which block my path, so that I am obliged to walk around them. I thus experience objects with triple dimensions, with solidity, with weight, with impenetrability, with permanence and stability. Besides this passive resistance to my body, I also experience the active influence of other bodies upon my own. Fire burns it, water wets it, a stone bruises it, dirt soils it, a heavy object breaks and crushes it. These things are not perceived by me to belong to my organism as a part of my being and self; on the contrary, just because my organism is clearly intuited as consisting of definite members occupying definite limits of space, I concretely perceive at the same time that these "other" objects are external to me, having a real existence for themselves independent of my own. The sense of sight also reveals "externality" and "otherness," when taken in conjunction with the sense of touch and assisted by conscious experience. I soon learn to interpret the visual picture according to the more immediate perceptions of touch. My right hand touches my left arm; and my visual image coincides so completely with my tactual experience, that I thereby discover that the "thing touching" is my right hand, while the "thing touched" is my left arm. A number of such experiments helps me to "identify" visually the various parts of my body with accuracy and security. Once this identification is an established fact, my sight unerringly distinguishes between my own body and objects external to my body. A blind man clearly perceives the "otherness" and "externality" of objects outside his bodily frame, but a person with sight possesses the added perception of the more far-reaching and more clearly defined visual image. When touch and sight are united in perception, the result provides an overwhelming amount of data which reveal an evidently real and existing material world of "external" objects. I thus learn that my body occupies a relatively small amount of space, while the world is a tremendously large place filled with innumerable objects, large and small, at rest and in motion, permanent and changing, endowed with characteristics which are partly the same and partly very different from those of my own body. The Existence of the Non-Ego World In establishing the reality and existence of this external, non-Ego world so vividly presented in our perception, the procedure is practically the same as in proving the reality and existence of our extra-mental body. If our own extended body must be admitted as real, there can be hardly less reason to admit the extra-Ego world as real; for, after all, our own body is also a part of the world at large, possessing the same general characteristics and features as those possessed by "external" bodies. Whatever theoretical difficulties idealists may find in the perception of an external world by an unextended mind, it is obvious that their theory does not harmonize with the exigencies of practical life as lived by everybody, including these theorists themselves. The things of this workaday world are simply too real to be argued out of existence in this fashion. If our body is real, the world is real. No mother can ever consider her child and her pains to be the same, mere "felt-experiences." No soldier in the ghastly turmoil of war, with his leg ripped to shreds by a shell, can be made to believe that the bullets and shells he faced and the men and guns he fought were only "conscious states." When the farmer plows his field, and the laborer digs his ditch, and the ironworker rigs his beams, and the engineer runs his train -- in short, when man lives his routine life in his daily occupations, he cannot but be a thoroughgoing realist concerning the world of material objects around him. All humanity cannot be wrong, and a few idealist philosophers right, in their view regarding the reality and existence of the external, physical world. If idealist theories cannot agree with this "realism of the savage," as demanded by practical living, then so much the worse for these theories: there must be something radically wrong with them. Plain realism is in accord with the findings of the empirical sciences. Astronomy, physics, geology, anthropology, zoology, botany. chemistry, bacteriology, therapeutics -- in fact, all the natural sciences have sense and meaning only on the supposition that nature is a real world of existing, extended, material objects. The laws of nature which scientists formulate have application, not to mental states and subjective phenomena, but to the physical objects in a mind-independent existence. Their observations and experiments in no way impugn the realistic conception of the universe; if anything, they confirm it, even when age-old beliefs are proved to be naive and erroneous. The reason why our mind is naturally convinced of the reality of the external world as we perceive it to be, lies in the fact that we are intuitively aware that we do not produce our impressions and perceptions of the external objects: we are passive, in the sense that our consciousness testifies that the impressions and perceptions are produced in us from outside. We cannot produce them at will, nor can we change them at our convenience. But, if the objects, as we perceive them, were only internal modifications of our consciousness, without a reality of their own, why this persistence, this regularity, this permanent order, this compulsion? Many of our perceptions are painful, unpleasant, nauseous, embarrassing, nerve-racking; though we fain would rid ourselves of them, we cannot. The reason is plain: these impressions are made by objects which are real and over which we have no control. We are forced to perceive them, if our senses are within the sphere of their influence. There is one thing in which idealists are egregiously inconsistent: they all admit, tacitly or explicitly, the existence of other minds. And how could they deny the existence of "other minds," when they appeal to them, reason with them, argue with them, quote them, and wrangle with them, all in an effort to convince them of the truth of idealism? But how do they know of the existence and thoughts of these "other minds"? Our experience is witness to the fact that we have direct and immediate knowledge of no other mind but our own. Our knowledge, then, of "other minds" can only be indirect and mediate. Then how? Through the medium of language and speech. Language may be expressed in spoken or written words, or by means of signs; but language in some form is necessary. Idealists agree that extra-Ego reality either does not exist at all or, if it does, it is an unknown and unknowable quantity, because the mind of man is restricted in its knowledge to its own subjective conscious states. Were this the case, our mind could not know anything about "other minds," for the simple reason that they are not only extra-mental but extra-Ego with regard to ourselves. The fact of language, however, proves conclusively that "other minds" are not the unknown and unknowable beings which the idealists would have us believe. That this "other mind" is an existent entity distinct from myself is clear from the fact that the ideas which I thus receive in the course of this thought-communication from the "other mind" are often entirely new to me and are given to me "from without." I am aware beyond the possibility of doubt that these ideas are not my own, are not the product of my own thinking. In many instances these ideas are so foreign to my way of thinking and so antagonistic to my own ideas, that a conflict arises between the two sets of ideas and a controversy or argument ensues between "my mind" and the "other mind." How could this happen, if "my mind" and the "other mind" were identical in being? Hence, the fact of language and speech proves conclusively that both "my mind" and "other minds" exist and that they are distinct and non-identical. If my knowledge cannot go beyond my own conscious states, if I cannot transcend the boundary of my own knowing mind, and if all extra-Ego reality is unknown and unknowable to me, so that I cannot refer these "extraneous" ideas to "other minds," then I myself must be the originator of all these ideas. Consider the consequences of such a theory:
The idealist postulate demands this conclusion. This, however, is ridiculous on the face of it. No one in his sane mind would seriously assert that he alone is the author of all these different, contradictory systems of thought. If they are the result of my own thinking, why the differences and contradictions between them? And why the difficulty in understanding some of these systems, if I am their author? Can anyone seriously doubt that these philosophies originate in "other minds" and that I merely assimilate their ideas from them? The whole argumentation can be formulated in the following dilemma. The knowledge which we naturally and spontaneously ascribe to "other minds" either originates from them or from our mind. If the former, realism is established, because we possess we a true and valid knowledge of extra-mental and extra-Ego reality. If the latter, then we cannot explain why we are not conscious of the process, why so much of this knowledge is foreign to our consciousness, why so many of these ideas and systems are contradictory to our own, and why we are compelled to "learn" the different languages. In the former case, idealism is refuted and realism proved; in the latter case, there is a contradiction and an illusion in our mental equipment, and universal skepticism must follow. All the evidence points to the former of the two alternatives as being true. The Perception of the Non-Ego World Though our conviction in the reality and existence of the external, physical world is thus established as a fact, we still have to face the question: How can our Ego perceive something which is completely non-Ego? What is the epistemological bridge between the unextended mind and the extended, external world? The difficulty seems more formidable than it actually is. Once the reality of our own body is proved and admitted, the difficulty vanishes to a great extent. Our body is the "epistemological bridge" between our mind and the world. Our mind does not contact the physical universe directly, but through and in our body. It is not necessary to prove that we can perceive all reality of the material world. If we can show that physical, external reality can be contacted and perceived in some phase of its being, it suffices to prove that external reality exists outside our Ego and can be perceived. Then realism is rationally justified. And this can be shown to be a fact. Our body is an extended being, occupying space and place in three dimensions. United with the mind into a single organic principle of perceptive action, it forms a sense-conscious being. Our Ego thus feels itself to be a living, sense-conscious, extended, corporeal substance; this has been shown previously. As such, then, we should be capable of perceiving extended bodies, whether it be our own body or "other bodies." If we can perceive our body as our own, then any body, different from our own and in contact with it, should be perceived as different, and as "other." Such actually is the case. I walk along the street, and I feel my body moving; my intramuscular sense tells me that I am taking steps and that each stride covers a certain distance. If I come face to face with a wall or building, my progress is stopped; I find a barrier which effectively hinders me from continuing in motion. No matter how strenuously I push against this barrier, I cannot push it over and proceed on my way. I perceive here the same impenetrability and resistance that I experience in my own body, when I stop the progress of a moving object, like a rolling ball, with my hand or foot. Consequently, just as I know that my body is real in resisting the ball, I know that the resisting wall or building is as real as my body; the situation, though reversed, is actually the same in both instances. When I walk alongside a building, holding my hand against it as I walk, I perceive that the building is stationary, while I am moving; but when I stand still beside a train, and feel the train passing along under my outstretched hand, I know that I am stationary and the train is moving. I thus perceive that the building and train are similar to my own body and must be just as real, but are extra-Ego and "other." Thus my body becomes a standard of measurement with which I can gauge the size and distances of things in relation to me. The reason "why" and "how" I can perceive them lies in their objective commensurateness and corporality, which is like that of my own body. It is, then, through direct contact with my body and through the sense of touch that I can become immediately and intuitively aware of "other" bodies in their reality and existence. I perceive my own body as "identical with self," while I feel these others as "non-identical with self." The perception and the felt-experience is the same in both cases. If my body is perceived to be real, the "other" bodies must also be real; the former guarantees the latter. In this fashion my body acts as the "epistemological bridge" between the mind and the world: though an extra-mental thing, my body is organically united with the mind and is related psychically to it; as an extended thing, it is of the same nature as the extended objects in the material world and is related to them. This unique position of the body as an extra-mental, extended being within the unity of the Ego enables it to bring the extra-mental, extended objects of the external world into cognitive union with the mind, so that the mind and world meet each other in the human body: there, on this epistemological bridge, is their mutual point of contact. The "extended" but "vitalized" body, being a psycho-physical substance, is the natural link between the world of mind and the world of matter, making a perception of the latter within the former both a possibility and a fact. Considering the facts as manifested in the data of our consciousness, we are compelled to conclude that realism, and not idealism, correctly interprets sense-perception with regard to our body and the non-Ego world. The spontaneous conviction and the commonsense view of humanity is seen to be vindicated as substantially valid and true. We have now obtained two truths of tremendous epistemological value:
We now have a reflex, philosophical certitude
regarding them: idealism cannot explain the fact,
while realism
does.
Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book...
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