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CLASSICAL ESSAY |
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by Alfred North Whitehead The discussion of the problem, constituted by the connection between causation and perception, has been conducted by the various schools of thought derived from Hume and Kant under the misapprehension generated by an inversion of the true constitution of experience. The inversion was explicit in the writings of Hume and of Kant: for both of them presentational immediacy was the primary fact of perception, and any apprehension of causation was, somehow or other, to be elicited from this primary fact. ... Owing to its long dominance, it has been usual to assume as an obvious fact the primacy of presentational immediacy. We open our eyes and our other sense-organs; we then survey the contemporary world decorated with sights, and sounds, and tastes; and, then, by the sole aid of this information about the contemporary world, thus decorated, we draw what conclusions we can as to the actual world. No philosopher really holds that this the sole source of information: Hume and his followers appeal vaguely to 'memory' and to 'practice,' in order to supplement their direct information; and Kant wrote other 'Critiques' in order to supplement his Critique of Pure Reason. But the general procedure of modern philosophical 'criticism' is to tie down opponents strictly to the front door of presentational immediacy as the sole source of information, while one's philosophy makes its escape by a back door veiled under the ordinary usages of language. If this 'Humian' doctrine be true, certain conclusions as to 'behavior' ought to follow -- conclusions which, in the most striking way, are not verified. It is almost indecent to draw the attention of philosophers to the minor transactions of daily life, away from the classic sources of philosophic knowledge; but, after all, it is the empiricists who began this appeal to Caesar. According to Hume, our behaviour presupposing causation is due to the repetition of associated presentational experiences. Thus the vivid presentment of the antecedent percepts should vividly generate the behaviour, in action or thought, towards the associated consequent. The clear, distinct, overwhelming perception of the one is the overwhelming reason for the subjective transition to the other. For behaviour, interpretable as implying causation, is on this theory the subjective response to presentational immediacy. According to Hume this subjective response is the beginning and the end of all that there is to be said about causation. In Hume's theory the response is response to presentational immediacy, and to nothing else. Also the situation elicited in response is nothing but an immediate presentation, or the memory of one. Let us apply this explanation to reflect action: in the dark, the electric light is suddenly turned on and the man's eyes blink. There is a simple physiological explanation of this trifling incident. But this physiological explanation is couched wholly in terms of causal efficacy: it is the conjectural record of the travel of a spasm of excitement along nerves to some nodal centre, and of the return spasm of contraction back to the eyelids. the correct technical phraseology would not alter the fact that the explanation does not involve any appeal to presentational immediacy. ... At the most there is a tacit supposition as to what a physiologist, who in fact was not there, might have seen if he had been there, and if he could have vivisected the man without affecting these occurrences, and if he could have observed with a microscope which also in fact was absent. Thus the physiological explanation remains from the point of view of Hume's philosophy, a tissue of irrelevancies. It presupposes a side of the universe about which, on Hume's theory, we must remain in blank ignorance. Let us now dismiss physiology and turn to the private experience of the blinking man. The sequence of percepts, in the mode of presentational immediacy, are flash of light, feeling of eye-closure, instant of darkness. The three are practically simultaneous; though the flash maintains its priority over the other two, and these two latter percepts are indistinguishable as to priority. According to the philosophy of organism, the man also experiences another percept in the mode of causal efficacy. He feels that the experiences of the eye in the matter of the flash are causal of the blink. The man himself will have no doubt of it. In fact, it is the feeling of causality which enables the man to distinguish the priority of the flash; and the inversion of the argument, whereby the temporal sequence 'flash to blink' is made the premise for the 'causality' belief, has its origin in pure theory. The man will explain his experience by saying, 'The flash made me blink'; and if his statement be doubted, he will reply, 'I know it, because I felt it.' The philosophy of organism accepts the man's statement, that the flash made him blink. But Hume intervenes with another explanation. He first points out that in the mode of presentational immediacy there is no percept of the flash making the man blink. In this mode there are merely the two percepts -- the flash and the blink -- combining the two latter of the three percepts under the one term 'blink.' Hume refuses to admit the man's protestation, that the compulsion to blink is just what he did feel. The refusal is based on the dogma, that all percepts are in the mode of presentational immediacy -- a dogma not to be upset by a mere appeal to direct experience. Besides Hume has another interpretation of the man's experience: what the man really felt was his habit of blinking after flashes. The word 'association' explains it all, according to Hume. But how can a 'habit' be felt, when a 'cause' cannot be felt? Is there any presentational immediacy in the feeling of a 'habit'? Hume by a sleight of hand confuses a 'habit of feeling blinks after flashes' with a 'feeling of the habit of feeling blinks after flashes.' We have here a perfect example of the practice of applying the test of presentational immediacy to procure the critical rejection of some doctrines, and of allowing other doctrines to slip out by a back door, so as to evade the test. The notion of causation arose because mankind lives amid experiences in the mode of causal efficacy. We will keep to the appeal to ordinary experience, and consider another situation, which Hume's philosophy is ill equipped to explain. The 'causal feeling' according to that doctrine arises from the long association of well-marked presentations of sensa, one precedent to the other. It would seem therefore that inhibitions of sensa, given in presentational immediacy, should be accompanied by a corresponding absence of 'causal feeling'; for the explanation of how there is 'causal feeling' presupposes the well-marked familiar sensa, in presentational immediacy. Unfortunately the contrary is the case. An inhibition of familiar sensa is very apt to leave us a prey to vague terrors respecting a circumambient world of causal operations. In the dark there are vague presences, doubtfully feared; in the silence, the irresistible causal efficacy of nature presses itself upon us; in the vagueness of the low hum of insects in an August woodland, the inflow into ourselves of feelings from enveloping nature overwhelms us; in the dim consciousness of half-sleep, the presentations of sense fade away, and we are left with the vague feeling of influences from vague things around us. It is quite untrue that the feelings of various types of influences are dependent upon the familiarity of well-marked sensa in immediate presentment. Every way of omitting the sensa still leaves us a prey to vague feelings of influence. such feelings, divorced from immediate sensa, are pleasant, or unpleasant, according to the mood; but they are always vague as to spatial and temporal definition, though their explicit dominance in experience may be heightened in the absence of sensa. Further, our experiences of our various bodily parts are primarily perceptions of them as reasons for 'projected' sensa: the hand is the reason for the projected touch-sensum, the eye is the reason for the projected sight-sensum. Our bodily experience is primarily an experience of the dependence of presentational immediacy upon causal efficacy. Hume's doctrine inverts this relationship by making causal efficacy, as an experience, dependent upon presentational immediacy. This doctrine, whatever be its merits, is not based upon any appeal to experience.
Excerpted from Process and Reality, by Alfred North Whitehead (1929) |
Process
and Reality,
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