[115] In our discussion of this preliminary question there is no attempt to furnish what might be called an analysis of the consciousness of objectivity. This has been undertaken by various psychologists in recent well-known contributions to the subject. For our purpose it is necessary only to specify the intellectual and practical attitude out of which the consciousness of objectivity arises; not the sensory "elements" or factors involved in its production as an experience.
[116] So, on the other hand, our vague organic sensations are possibly more instructive as they are, for their own purpose, than they would be if more sharply discriminated and complexly referred.
For convenience we here meet the view under consideration with its own terminology; we by no means wish to be understood as indorsing this terminology as psychologically correct. The sense-quality of which we read in "structural psychology" is, we hold, not a structural unit at all, but in fact a highly abstract development out of that unorganized whole of sensory experience in which reflective attention begins. There is, for example, no such thing as the simple unanalyzable sense-quality "red" in consciousness until judgment has proceeded far enough to have constructed a definite and measured experience which may be symbolized as "object-before-me-possessing-the-attribute-red." In place of the original sensory total-experience we now have a more or less developed perceptual (i. e., judgmental) total-experience. It is an instance of the "psychological fallacy" to interpret what are really elements of meaning in a perceived object constructed in judgment (for this is the true nature of the "simple idea of sensation" or "sense-element") as so many bits of psychical material which were isolated from each other at the outset, and have been externally joined together in their present combination.
[117] The phrase is Külpe's and is used in his sense of consciousness taken as a whole, as, for example, attentive, apperceptive, volitional, rather than in the sense made familiar by Spencer and others.
[118] The foregoing discussion is in many ways similar to Brentano's upon the same subject. In discussing his first class of modes of consciousness, the Vorstellungen, he says: "We find no contrasts between presentations excepting those of the objects to which the presentations refer. Only in so far as warm and cold, light and dark, a high note and a low, form contrasts can we speak of the corresponding presentations as contrasted; and, in general, there is in any other sense than this no contrast within the entire range of these conscious processes" (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, Bd. I, p. 29). This may stand as against any attempt to find contrast between abstract sense-qualities taken apart from their objective reference. What is, however, the ground of distinction between the presented objects? Apparently this must be answered in the last resort as above. In this sense we should need finally to interpret "sensuous" and "material" in terms of objectivity as above defined, rather than the reverse. They are cases in or specifications of the determination of adequate stimuli.
[119] In this connection reference may be made to the well-known disturbing effect of the forced introduction of attention to details into established sensori-motor co-ordinations, such as "typewriting," playing upon the piano, and the like.
[120] Cf. Professor Baldwin's Social and Ethical Interpretations, and Professor McGilvary's recent paper on "Moral Obligation," Philosophical Review, Vol. XI, especially pp. 349 f.
[121] Manifestly, as indicated just above, this accepted value of the object implies fuller physical knowledge of the object than was possessed at the outset of the economic judgment. See above, p. 234, note; p. 246, note 3; and p. 271, below.
[122] Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 5.
[123] See p. 253 above.