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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY |
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by Josephus Flavius Cook
There is a great fact known to us more certainly than the existence of matter: it is the unity of consciousness. I know that I exist, and that I am One. Hermann Lotze's supreme argument against materialism is the unity of consciousness. I know that I am I, and not you; and I know this to my very finger-tips. That finger is part of my organism, not of yours. To the last extremity of every nerve, I know that I am One. The unity of consciousness is a fact known to us by much better evidence than the exitence of matter. I am a natural realist in philosophy, if I may use a technical term: I believe in the existence of both matter and mind. There are two things in the universe; but I know the existence of mind better than I know the existence of matter. Sometimes in dreams we fall down precipices and awake, and find that the gnarled savage rocks had no existence. But we touched them; we felt them; we were bruised by them. Who knows but that some day we may awake, and find that all matter is merely a dream? Even if we do that, it will yet remain true that I am I. There is more support for idealism than for materialism; but there is no sufficient support for either. If we are to reverce all, and not merely a fraction, of the list of axiomatic or self-evident truths, if we are not to play fast and loose with the intuitions which are the eternal tests of verity, we shall believe in the existence of both matter and mind. Hermann Lotze holds that the unity of sonsciousness is a fact absolutely incontrovertible and absolutely inexplicable on the theory that our bodies are woven by a complex of physical arrangements and physical forces, having no coordinating presiding power over them all. I know that there is a coordinating presiding power somewhere in me. I am I. I am One. Whence the sense of a unity of consciousness, if we are made up according to Spencer's idea, or Huxley's, of infinitely multiplex molecular mechanisms? We have the idea of a presiding power that makes each man one individuality from top to toe. How do we get it? It must have a sufficient cause. To this hour, no man has explained the unity of consciousness in consistency with the mechanical theory of life.
Excerpted from Biology, by Josephus Flavius Cook |
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