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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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Encounter With Thomas Hill Green, by George J. Irbe (con't)
Consciousness, Nature and Knowledge Green begins the Prolegomena by first of all proving that there is indeed something unique about man: his consciousness, which is not a product or component of the natural world. He poses the question: Can the knowledge of nature be itself a part or product of nature? and concludes that however fully we may admit that the nature which we know or may know is knowable only under strict physical laws, we are none the less in effect asserting the existence of something which, as the source of a connected experience, renders both the nature that we know and our knowledge of it possible, but is not itself physically conditioned.(#9) Phenomena are presented to a subject by its consciousness and become part of a connected system of the world of experience which becomes knowledge.(#10) Consciousness itself cannot be a part of that world because a consciousness of certain events cannot be anything that succeeds them. It must be equally present to all the events of which it is the consciousness. For this reason an intelligent experience, or experience as the source of knowledge, can neither be constituted by events of which it is the experience, nor be a product of them.(#16) What is real and objective is determined by the consciousness which presents its experiences to itself as relations. The consciousness modifies these relations as required by new experiences and combines them into a single and unalterable order of relations which we conceive to be the order of nature.(#13) The world for us is a single and eternal system of related elements. Our consciousness yields for us the understanding of the objective world; it is the principle of objectivity.(#14) Our knowledge of an order of nature is realized by our consciousness which combines events that we experience into a related series. Again, consciousness itself cannot be part of this series of events. It is not developed by a natural process out of other forms of natural existence.(#18) Therefore, our consciousness is not of natural origin. Through it we conceive of an order of nature, an objective world of fact from which illusion may be distinguished; it is our understanding of nature; it 'makes nature for us,' in that it enables us to conceive that there is such a thing.(#19) The first reference by Green to an 'eternal intelligence' is in connection with how we acquire knowledge. I assume that by using the pronouns 'our' and 'us' he is referring to our self-conscious soul as the instrument through which the eternal intelligence acts when he says that the growth of knowledge on our part is regarded not as a process in which facts or objects, in themselves unrelated to thought, by some incredible means gradually produce intelligible counterparts of themselves in thought. The true account of it is held to be that the concrete whole, which may be described indifferently as an eternal intelligence realized in the related facts of the world, or as a system of related facts rendered possible by such an intelligence, partially and gradually reproduces itself in us, communicating piece-meal, but in inseparable correlation, understanding and the facts understood, experience and the experienced world.(#36) The full individuality of man encompasses 1) being conscious of his feelings as manifold sensations, 2) being able to present these feelings to himself, 3) distinguishing himself from these feelings as a single self-conscious soul. Only as self-conscious are we aware of being in the presence of facts and thus capable of knowledge. In this sense our self-consciousness is our understanding.(#120) Green concludes his argument about the distinctiveness of man from the rest of nature by stating that nature implies that there is something other than itself, that something other being our self-distinguishing (i.e. feeling itself to be a separate entity from nature) consciousness. This consciousness determines the relations of phenomena, but it cannot itself be one of the objects so related. Similarly, this self-distinguishing consciousness is only capable of relating events to each other in time because it itself is timeless.(#52) Nature in its reality implies a principle which is not natural; it is not natural because it is neither included among the phenomena which through its presence form nature, nor is it part of a series of the phenomena, nor is itself formed by any of the relations between these phenomena. This principle is Green's spiritual self-distinguishing consciousness.(#54) There are also some similarities between Green's beliefs and mine. Green states that we begin life as an animal organism which gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness as it experiences and learns to understand the world.(#67) The system of related facts, which forms the objective world, reproduces itself in the soul. Our knowledge of any part of the system implies a union of the manifold in relation. The attainment of knowledge, then, is a reproduction of itself in the human soul, using the sentient life of the soul as its organ, by the consciousness for which the cosmos of related facts exists.(#71) Due to the constant succession of phenomena in the sentient life, which the eternal consciousness has perpetually to gather anew into the timeless unity of knowledge, the process of reproduction is without an end. There is, however, that element of identity between the first stage of intelligent experience, that is, between the simplest beginning of knowledge, and the eternal consciousness reproducing itself in it, which consists in the presentation of a many in one, in the apprehension of facts as related in a single system, in the conception of there being an order of things.(#72) The above statements convey a sense about the on-going filling up of the soul with knowledge which is comparable to my belief that the proto-soul learns as it matures. Aristotle believed that all living things have a soul and that man's soul has an intellectual component which is not present in the lower life forms; I believe that the level of consciousness of souls is also commensurate with the biological complexity of the different species of life forms. These beliefs are comparable to Green's, who states that the distinction between what they are in themselves and what they are in relation to other things does not apply to inorganic things but only to living organisms. The life of a living body is not, like the motion of a moving body, simply the joint result of its relations to other things. It modifies these relations, and modifies them through a nature not reducible to them, not constituted by their combination. Their bearing on it is different from what it would be if it did not live; the organism is something in itself other than what its relations make it. While it is related to other things according to mechanical and chemical laws, it has itself a nature which is not mechanical or chemical. But a living organism as such does not present its nature to itself in consciousness and does not distinguish itself from its relations. Man, however, does so distinguish himself.(#80) Man is self-distinguishing and as such he exerts a free activity which is not time-dependent. Human action is only explicable by the action of an eternal consciousness, which uses all the processes of brain and nerve and tissue, all the functions of life and sense, as its organs and reproduces itself through them.(#82) I was glad to discover that Green also thought that animals have a soul, but he questioned whether they possess self-consciousness, although he concedes that there are indications of its presence in 'beasts friendly to man.' He states: The question of the distinction between animals and plants, the question whether all 'animals' feel, whether any 'plants' do, is one of classification with which we are not here concerned. However such a question may be answered, it does not affect the importance of noticing the distinctive nature of the individuality which feeling constitutes. It is only indeed from experience of ourselves, not from observation of the animals, that we know what this individuality is; but according to all indications we are justified in ascribing it at any rate to all vertebrate animals. To say that they feel as men do, or that they are individual in the same sense as men, is misleading, because it is to ignore the distinctive character given to human feeling and human individuality by a self-consciousness which we have no reason to ascribe to the animals. But the assertion that they feel no less, and are no less individual, than ourselves seems to be within the mark.(#119) We cannot deny, at any rate of the beasts friendly to man, that in a certain sense they learn by experience; that the processes by which the trained or practiced animal seeks to obtain the pleasure or avoid the pain, of which the imagination excites its impulse, imply the association with the imagined pleasure or pain of the images of many sensations which have been found to be connected with that pleasure or pain. It is readily assumed that such habitual sequence of images amounts to an experience of facts like our own; to an apprehension of an objective world, of which the necessary correlative is consciousness of self.(#123) Rightly enough, Green points out the essential difference between the human and animal soul which becomes large indeed in the moral life of civilized and educated men. The conflicts of the moral life can be formidable forces which 'right reason' has to subdue or render contributory to some 'true good' of man; they are passions for which reason is in a certain sense itself the parent. The animal soul does not know such passions, because they are excited by the conditions of distinctively human society. They relate to objects which only the intercourse of self-conscious agents can bring into experience.(#126) |
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