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Adventures in Philosophy |
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by Augustus De Morgan
The word idea, as here used does not enter in that vague sense in which it is generally used, as if it were an opinion that might be right or wrong. It is that which the object gives to the mind, or the state of the mind produced by the object. Thus the idea of a horse is the horse in the mind: and we know no other horse. We admit that there is an external object, a horse, which may give a horse in the mind to twenty different persons: but no one of these twenty knows the object; each one only knows his idea. There is an object, because each of the twenty persons receives an idea without communicating with the others: so that there is something external to give it them. But when they talk about it, under the name of a horse, they talk about their ideas. They all refer to the object, as being the thing they are talking about, until the moment they begin to differ: and then they begin to speak, not of external horses, but of impressions on their minds; at least this is the case with those who know what knowledge is; the positive and the unthinking part of them still talk of the horse. And the latter have a great advantage over the former with those who are like themselves. Why then do we introduce the term object at all, since all our knowledge lies in ideas? For the same reason as we introduce the term matter into natural philosophy, when all we know is form, size, color, weight, etc., no one of which is matter, nor even all together. It is convenient to have a word for that external source from which sensible ideas are produced: and it is just as convenient to have a word for the external source, material or not, from which any idea is produced. Again, why do we speak of our power of considering things ideally or objectively, when as we can know nothing but ideas, we can have no right to speak of any thing else? The answer is that, just as in other things, when we speak of an object, we speak of the idea of an object. We learn to speak of the external world, because there are others like ourselves who evidently draw ideas from the same sources as ourselves: hence we come to have the idea of those sources, the idea of external objects, as we call them. But we do not know those sources; we know only our ideas of them. We can even use the terms ideal and objective in what may appear a metaphorical sense. When we speak of ourselves in the manner of this chapter, we put ourselves, as it were, in the position of spectators of our own minds: we speak and think of our minds objectively. And it must be remembered that by the word object, we do not mean material object only. The mind of another, any one of its thoughts or feelings, any relation of minds to one another, a treaty of peace, a battle, a discussion upon a controverted question, the right of conveying a freehold, -- are all objects, independently of the persons or things engaged in them. They are things external to our minds, of which we have ideas. An object communicates an idea: but it does not follow that every idea is communicated by an object. The mind can create ideas in various ways; or at least can derive, by combinations which are not found in external existence, new collections of ideas. We have a perfectly distinct idea of unicorn, or a flying dragon: when we say there are no such things, we speak objectively only: ideally, they have as much existence as a horse or a sheep; to a herald, more. Add to this, that the mind can separate ideas into parts, in such manner that the parts alone are not ideas of any existing separate material objects, any more than the letters of a word are constituent parts of the meaning of the whole. Hence we get what are called qualities and relations. A ball may be hard and round, or may have hardness and roundness: but we cannot say that hardness and roundness are separate external material objects, though they are objects the ideas of which necessarily accompany our perception of certain objects. These ideas are called abstract as being removed or abstracted from the complex idea which gives them: the abstraction is made by comparison or observation of resemblances. If a person had never seen any thing round except an apple, he would perhaps never think of roundness as a distinct object of thought. When he saw another round body, which was evidently not an apple, he would immediately, by perception of the resemblance, acquire a separate idea of the thing in which they resemble one another.
Excerpted from Formal Logic, by Augustus De Morgan |
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