No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
I shall be concerned in this paper with the consideration of panpsychism and of materialism in new forms as alternatives. Extended reference will be made to C. S. Peirce's view of perception as realistic in intention and yet not quite clear as to its mechanism and how it attains objective import. I shall say little about Whitehead as a representative of panpsychism as I have just finished a detailed criticism of his epistemological framework. I shall, however, make comments on William James's radical empiricism as tied in with his view of perception as direct and immediate—roughly speaking, the alternative to Locke's representation of “unperceived things”—and bring in my own theory of sensations as guiding perceiving. Russell's neutral monism, connected historically with James's radical empiricism, will be touched on here in connection with his rejection of materialism. Phenomenalism and materialism exclude each other. Materialism, as an ontology, requires a realistic epistemology. I shall also make some comments on Dewey's biological experientialism. One can often best explain a perspective by means of contrasts.
1 The critical paper will come out in the Revue Internationale de Philosophie in a Whitehead centenary number. My argument against Whitehead is that sensa are not terminal in perceiving but of the nature of guides and evidence for a referential act. This undercuts his whole notion of “vacuous entities” which derives from Bradley's stress on sentiency as ultimate.
2 P. Wiener, Evolution and the Founders of Pragmatism, p. 31.
3 See my article, “‘True’ as Contextually Implying Correspondence,” The Journal of Philosophy, August 27, 1959.
4 See my article, “Levels of Causality: The Emergence of Guidance and Reason in Nature.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, September, 1959.
5 Sir Russell Brain in a letter to me recognizing the importance of the sensori-motor approach.
6 E. D. Adrain, The Physical Background of Perception, Oxford University Press, 1947; Sir Russell Brain, Mind, Perception and Science, Blackwell, 1951; C. Judson Herrick, The Evolution of Human Nature, University of Texas Press, 1956. Herrick and I talked over these matters frequently. He was a critical realist. Philosophers will find the little book, The Physical Basis of Mind, Blackwell, 1950, interesting not only as containing good summaries by distinguished neurologists but as having statements by Ayer and Ryle. Both are opposed to Cartesian dualism. Ayer points out that we have two sets of observations correlated. Conceptually, he falls back on the positivistic framework of classifying and interpreting our experiences. He admits that it may be difficult to translate statements about people's so-called mental processes into statements about their observable behavior. Now this is just what the neurologists are refusing—and I think rightly—to do. Ryle takes his point of departure from the person as a whole. Quite right. Language so expresses perceiving, thinking, hoping, etc. But this kind of monism, which rejects two substances and two theatres, has still to do justice to such factors as sensations, images and concepts. 1 suspect that Ryle is beginning to have second thoughts. Just to eliminate them was too easy; it was what I call “sweeping them under the carpet.” One must sharpen one's epistemology and enlarge one's ontology; or what is philosophy of science for?
7 I began my acquaintance with the “Chicago School” with the famous Decennial Publication in 1903. The formula for a logic of inquiry was there worked out. There was no clear epistemology. Dewey met this problem later after he went to Columbia. I, myself, went to the summer school at Chicago in 1906. I had talks with graduate students and read some of Dewey's lecture notes that were still passing around. I had a class in functional psychology with Angeli. Later I met A.W. Moore whom I still regard as one of the keenest minds of the school. His famous remark to the effect that the “situation” is the pragmatist's absolute reflects the shift from Bradley and Royce. I had only formal acquaintance with Mead and Tufts. The former I associated with social psychology somewhat like Cooley's at Michigan under whom I took a minor for my Ph. D. in 1909. Tufts I thought of as primarily an ethicist. The spirit of the whole movement was naturalistic and in line with science. I have no doubt that this perspective affected me. My dissatisfaction concerned itself with epistemology, the mind-body problem, and the ontology of evolution.
8 All of these quotations are from his “Reply....” in the Schlipp volume.
9 U. T. Place, “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?”, British Journal of Psychology, 1956. Smart, “Sensations and Brain Processes,” Philosophical Review, April, 1959. Feigl, “The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’,” in Vol. 2 of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Smart refers to this with approval. W. Sellars, “The Concept of Emergence,” (with P. E. Meehl); “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” in Vol. I of Minnesota Studies. See also “Aristotelian Philosophies of Mind” in Philosophy for the Future, ed. R. W. Sellars, McGill and Farber.
Just for the record, I call attention to the paper of mine, “Is Consciousness Physical?”, Journal of Philosophy, 1922. I was told at the time that I was going too far. It is interesting to have Place and Smart revive the idea.
10 Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, Bk. I, Ch. I, Sec. 4, “Critique of Materialism.”
11 Cf Critical Realism, 1916, Ch. IX, “Is Consciousness Alien to the Physical ?” Also, Woodbridge Rily, American Philosophy, p. 377 f.
12 See Marvin Farber's new book, Naturalism and Subjectivism, Thomas.
13 Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior, The Hixon Symposium, passim Whatmough's Language is to the point. Sir Russell Brain makes many interesting observations in his contribution to The Physical Basis of Mind, showing the growth of electrical patterns for words.