Part 21

One does not so easily escape medieval Realism as one thinks. Either every experienced thing has its own determinateness, its own unsubstitutable, unredeemable reality, or else “generals” are separate existences after all.

Excepting, of course, some negative ones. One could say that certain views are certainly not true, because, by hypothesis, they refer to nonentities, i.e., non-empiricals. But even here the empiricist must go slowly. From his own standpoint, even the most professedly transcendental statements are, after all, real as experiences, and hence negotiate some transaction with facts. For this reason, he cannot, in theory, reject them in toto, but has to show concretely how they arose and how they are to be corrected. In a word, his logical relationship to statements that profess to relate to things-in-themselves, unknowables, inexperienced substances, etc., is precisely that of the psychologist to the Zöllner lines.

Delivered as a public address before the Philosophic Union of the University of California, with the title “Psychology and Philosophic Method,” May, 1899, and published in the University Chronicle for August, 1899. Reprinted, with slight verbal changes, mostly excisions.

This is a fact not without its bearings upon the question of the nature and value of introspection. The objection that introspection “alters” the reality and hence is untrustworthy, most writers dispose of by saying that, after all, it need not alter the reality so very much--not beyond repair--and that, moreover, memory assists in restoring the ruins. It would be simpler to admit the fact: that the purpose of introspection is precisely to effect the right sort of alteration. If introspection should give us the original experience again, we should just be living through the experience over again in direct fashion; as psychologists we should not be forwarded one bit. Reflection upon this obvious proposition may bring to light various other matters worthy of note.

Thus to divorce “structure psychology” from “function psychology” is to leave us without possibility of scientific comprehension of function, while it deprives us of all standard of reference in selecting, observing, and explaining the structure.

The following answer may fairly be anticipated: “This is true of the operations cited, but only because complex processes have been selected. Such a term as ‘knowing’ does of course express a function involving a system of intricate references. But, for that very reason, we go back to the sensation which is the genuine type of the ‘state of consciousness’ as such, pure and unadulterate and unsophisticated.” The point is large for a footnote, but the following considerations are instructive: (1) The same psychologist will go on to inform us that sensations, as we experience them, are networks of reference--they are perceptual, and more or less conceptual even. From which it would appear that whatever else they are or are not, the sensations, for which self-inclosed existence is claimed, are not states of consciousness. And (2) we are told that these are reached by scientific abstraction in order to account for complex forms. From which it would appear that they are hypothecated as products of interpretation and for purposes of further interpretation. Only the delusion that the more complex forms are just aggregates (instead of being acts, like seeing, hoping, etc.) prevents recognition of the point in question--that the “state of consciousness” is an instrument of inquiry or methodological appliance.

On the other hand, if what we are trying to get at is just the course and procedure of experiencing, of course any consideration that helps distinguish and make comprehensible that process is thoroughly pertinent.

It may avoid misunderstanding if I anticipate here a subsequent remark: that my point is not in the least that “states of consciousness” require some “synthetic unity” or faculty of substantial mind to effect their association. Quite the contrary; for this theory also admits the “states of consciousness” as existences in themselves also. My contention is that the “state of consciousness” as such is always a methodological product, developed in the course and for the purposes of psychological analysis.

The “functions” are in truth ordinary everyday acts and attitudes: seeing, smelling, talking, listening, remembering, hoping, loving, fearing.

This is perhaps a suitable moment to allude to the absence, in this discussion, of reference to what is sometimes termed rational psychology--the assumption of a separate, substantialized ego, soul, or whatever, existing side by side with particular experiences and “states of consciousness,” acting upon them and acted upon by them. In ignoring this and confining myself to the “states of consciousness” theory and the “natural history” theory, I may appear not only to have unduly narrowed the concerns at issue, but to have weakened my own point, as this doctrine seems to offer a special vantage ground whence to defend the close relationship of psychology and philosophy. The “narrowing,” if such it be, will have to pass--from limits of time and other matters. But the other point I cannot concede. The independently existing soul restricts and degrades individuality, making of it a separate thing outside of the full flow of things, alien to things experienced and consequently in either mechanical or miraculous relations to them. It is vitiated by just the quality already objected to--that psychology has a separate piece of reality apportioned to it, instead of occupying itself with the manifestation and operation of any and all existences in reference to concrete action. From this point of view, the “states of consciousness” attitude is a much more hopeful and fruitful one. It ignores certain considerations, to be sure; and when it turns its ignoring into denial, it leaves us with curious hieroglyphics. But after all, there is a key; these symbols can be read; they may be translated into terms of the course of experience. When thus translated, selfhood, individuality, is neither wiped out nor set up as a miraculous and foreign entity; it is seen as the unity of reference and function involved in all things when fully experienced--the pivot about which they turn.

Delivered before the Philosophical Club of the University of Michigan, in the winter of 1897, and reprinted with slight change from a monograph in the “University of Chicago Contributions to Philosophy,” 1897.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Page 24: “transgression” was misprinted as “trangression”; changed here.

Page 39: “bewrayeth” was printed that way.

Page 158: “cor-respondence” was printed with the hyphen.