The Approach to Philosophy

by Ralph Barton Perry

If the objects are "born with" the senses, it follows that they are born with and appertain to the individual perceiver.

"Either show, if you can, that our sensations are not relative and individual, or, if you admit that they are individual, prove that this does not involve the consequence that the appearance becomes, or, if you like to say, is to the individual only."[270:4]

The same motif is thus rendered by Walter Pater in the Conclusion of his "Renaissance":

"At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action. But when reflexion begins to act upon those objects they are dissipated under its influence; the cohesive force seems suspended like a trick of magic; each object is loosed into a group of impressions—color, odor, texture—in the mind of the observer. . . . Experience, already reduced to a swarm of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without. Every one of these impressions is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world."

The Protagorean generalization is due to the reflection that all experience is some individual experience, that no subject of discourse escapes the imputation of belonging to some individual's private history. The individual must start with his own experiences and ideas, and he can never get beyond them, for he cannot see outside his own vision, or even think outside his own mind. The scepticism of this theory is explicit, and the formulas of Protagoras—the famous "Man is the measure of all things," and the more exact formula, "The truth is what appears to each man at each time"[271:5]—have been the articles of scepticism throughout the history of thought.

Phenomenalism and Spiritualism.

§ [127]. There is, therefore, nothing really surprising in the reception accorded the "new philosophy" of Bishop Berkeley. A sceptical relativism is the earliest phase of subjectivism, and its avoidance at once becomes the most urgent problem of any philosophy which proposes to proceed forth from this principle. And this problem Berkeley meets with great adroitness and a wise recognition of difficulties. But his sanguine temperament and speculative interest impel him to what he regards as the extension of his first principle, the reintroduction of the conception of substance under the form of spirit, and of the objective order of nature under the form of the mind of God. In short, there are two motives at work in him, side by side: the epistemological motive, restricting reality to perceptions and thoughts, and the metaphysical-religious motive, leading him eventually to the definition of reality in terms of perceiving and thinking spirits. And from the time of Berkeley these two principles, phenomenalism and spiritualism, have remained as distinct and alternating phases of subjectivism. The former is its critical and dialectical conception, the latter its constructive and practical conception.

Phenomenalism as Maintained by Berkeley. The Problem Inherited from Descartes and Locke.

§ [128]. As phenomenalism has its classic statement and proof in the writings of Berkeley, we shall do well to return to these. The fact that this philosopher wished to be regarded as the prophet of common-sense has already been mentioned. This purpose reveals itself explicitly in the series of "Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous." The form in which Berkeley here advances his thesis is further determined by the manner in which the lines were drawn in his day of thought. The world of enlightened public opinion was then threefold, consisting of God, physical nature, and the soul. In the early years of the seventeenth century Descartes had sharply distinguished between the two substances—mind, with its attribute of thought; and body, with its attribute of extension—and divided the finite world between them. God was regarded as the infinite and sustaining cause of both. Stated in the terms of epistemology, the object of clear thinking is the physical cosmos, the subject of clear thinking the immortal soul. The realm of perception, wherein the mind is subjected to the body, embarrasses the Cartesian system, and has no clear title to any place in it. And without attaching cognitive importance to this realm, the system is utterly dogmatic in its epistemology.[273:6] For what one substance thinks, must be assumed to be somehow true of another quite independent substance without any medium of communication. Now between Descartes and Berkeley appeared the sober and questioning "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," by John Locke. This is an interesting combination (they cannot be said to blend) of traditional metaphysics and revolutionary epistemology. The universe still consists of God, the immortal thinking soul, and a corporeal nature, the object of its thought. But, except for certain proofs of God and self, knowledge is entirely reduced to the perceptual type, to sensations, or ideas directly imparted to the mind by the objects themselves. To escape dogmatism it is maintained that the real is what is observed to be present. But Locke thinks the qualities so discovered belong in part to the perceiver and in part to the substance outside the mind. Color is a case of the former, a "secondary quality"; and extension a case of the latter, a "primary quality." And evidently the above empirical test of knowledge is not equally well met in these two cases. When I see a red object I know that red exists, for it is observed to be present, and I make no claim for it beyond the present. But when I note that the red object is square, I am supposed to know a property that will continue to exist in the object after I have closed my eyes or turned to something else. Here my claim exceeds my observation, and the empirical principle adopted at the outset would seem to be violated. Berkeley develops his philosophy from this criticism. His refutation of material substance is intended as a full acceptance of the implications of the new empirical epistemology. Knowledge is to be all of the perceptual type, where what is known is directly presented; and, in conformity with this principle, being is to be restricted to the content of the living pulses of experience.