On the Ethics of Naturalism

by W. R. Sorley

Now it seems to me that the real confusion here is between the point of view of experience, and the point of view of reflection on experience, and that it is not the "post-Kantians" who confuse the two points of view. The "post-Kantians"—by whom Professor James means T. H. Green and the writers commonly associated with him—habitually occupy the latter standpoint. |though not itself a part of experience,| They do not hold that "all knowledge is also self-knowledge," in the sense that "an awareness of self accompanies most [or all] of our thinking." When we have this empirical "awareness of self," our object is the more or less distinct contents of perception, &c., which make up the empirical ego. But this knowledge of the empirical ego, equally with knowledge of external nature, |logically implied by experience.| implies logically the action of self-consciousness. When we reflect upon experience, one constant element is seen to be implied in it—the reference to a subject of knowledge and feeling. Certainly "post-Kantians" do not imagine—as Professor James seems himself to imagine and to think they do—that a feeling feels itself, or an object knows itself. "Green-after-red-and-other-than-it" is for them, as for him, if not "an absolutely complete object of thought," yet relatively complete. It may be apprehended alone as a part of experience. But reflection on experience shows that it, like any other object of thought, depends upon a knowing subject. The "post-Kantians" do not assert that knowing an object involves for the individual knower actual consciousness of what his knowledge implies, any more than they would say that the "plain man" is already a metaphysician. But they hold that reflection on experience shows that self-reference, or reference to a subject, is a logical condition of there being experience at all. So far from confusing the two standpoints, they require carefully to emphasise their difference, lest the actual content of a state of consciousness in the individual man be held to be equivalent to the grounds or conditions of that state of consciousness.

The reason why there is even an apparent plausibility in the attempt to get at a natural development of self-consciousness, is that the reference to self is, from the outset, implicitly, but logically, assumed in tracing the sequence of events which forms the subject-matter of the theory of evolution, while the course of development does nothing more than render its implication explicit. Self-consciousness is not something that exists apart from the world of known and knowable objects, any more than it is itself a special department of this world of objects distinguishable from, and determined by, its surroundings. It is, on the contrary, the supreme condition of the world of objects having any existence whatever. It is only through objects being brought into relation with the identical and permanent subject of knowledge, that there is unity in nature, or, in other words, that there is a known world of nature or experience at all. The evolution of mind or self-consciousness out of experience is, therefore, not merely to be rejected as a problem too intricate for psychological analysis. It is a mistake to think that it is a possible problem at all; for it attempts to make experience account for and originate the principles on which its own possibility depends.

(b) made clear in the attempt to trace morality from reflex action.

But it is the second change in point of view which needs special emphasis here—the change from the point of view of science to that of morality. Taken in its bare form, this is perhaps little more than a confusion of thought. The fact of things being of a certain constitution, and of their progress tending in a certain direction, cannot of itself supply a law for the exercise of our activity. But the view is associated with a theory of the nature of human action which seeks to bring it into the strict line of natural development. Just as empirical psychology attempted to treat self-consciousness as a stage in the evolution of experience or knowledge, so the empirical theory of morality, aided by the doctrine of evolution, tries to show how the action which is called moral has been developed out of purely physical or reflex action. But this theory of the development of moral action is really open to the same objection as that which was urged against the theory which evolves self-consciousness from the unconscious. The objection to the latter was, that experience, itself constituted by consciousness, is made to produce the condition of its own possibility; and a similar confusion is involved in attempting to develop moral action out of merely physical or reflex action. The only case of true psychical or conscious action is that in which there is a conscious determination of end and means; and action of this kind implies the same relation to self-consciousness as that by which knowledge is constituted. The relation is, however, manifested in a different way: it is not an apprehension of the manifold of impression into the unity of consciousness, but the externalisation of self-consciousness in realising a conceived end or idea. Now, in so far as physical and psychical facts are phenomena of experience—and they have no other existence, at least none that can have any intelligible meaning given to it—they presuppose self-consciousness; for it is only in relation to it that experience is possible. That is to say, their existence logically implies a reference to a subject whose active externalising manifestation is the determination of means and end which constitutes moral (as distinguished from merely natural) action. So far, therefore, from our being able to trace the development of moral action from the simpler phenomena of natural action, we find that these, in their most rudimentary form, by virtue of their being phenomena of experience, imply and receive their reality from the self-consciousness which is the differentiating quality both of knowledge and of moral action.

5. The unity of self-consciousness:

From this it follows that, although, empirically, the change from the point of view of science to that of morality is a transition to a different order of facts, yet the passage may be possible transcendentally through self-consciousness. |(a) as making possible the transition from knowledge to morality;| For in self-consciousness we reach the element of identity between knowledge and action. It is, therefore, of importance to understand the nature of this self-conscious activity in relation to knowledge and to action. If the fundamental characteristic of knowledge is the bringing into relation to consciousness, then all conscious action has this characteristic; for it determines self towards some particular line of activity—that is to say, towards an object or end which is thereby related to consciousness. Action therefore, we may say, is knowledge. And in the same way, on the other hand, since the relating to consciousness which constitutes knowledge can only be regarded as originated by the subject, it follows, conversely, that knowledge is action.[285] "We act," says Spinoza, "only in so far as we know or understand." Action is but one aspect or manifestation of that which, in another aspect or manifestation, is knowledge. But the aspect of self-consciousness we call knowledge and that we call action are different from one another. In the former the relating to consciousness in the definite forms of thought and perception is the prominent thing. In the latter it is the realising energy of the self-conscious subject. The ordinary distinction between knowledge and action is therefore correct, if not pushed to the extent of making an absolute separation between them: in the former we idealise the real, in the latter we realise the ideal. But they are at one in this, that both involve self-conscious activity.

(b) as determining the character of the ethical end,

The self-consciousness which in one relation is knowledge, in another action, is thus the fundamental fact of human nature; and on it, therefore, the ethical end must be based, if that end can be disclosed by the nature of man, and is to express what is most fundamental in his nature. Now, as knowledge finds its completion when all things are connected with one another and the subject in a definite system of relations, the end of completed self-conscious activity cannot be different. In their final perfection, as in their fundamental nature, the two are at one. As Kant puts it,[286] the speculative and the practical reason are reconciled in the notion of end. However virtue may differ from knowledge in the processes of ordinary experience, the distinction only belongs to their finite realisation. An intuitive understanding, or understanding which, in knowing, creates the objects of knowledge, is the highest conception of reason. Yet the very notion of a finite self implies that neither such knowledge nor such activity belongs to it. In knowledge and action, as properties of the ultimate self-consciousness, human beings only participate. It is only by means of the laborious methods of observation and inference that they approach the intuition of all things as a unity in which perfect knowledge consists; and, in the same way, it is only by the gradual volitional adaptation of means to end that they are able, in some measure, to contribute to the realisation of self-consciousness in the world.

as self-realisation,

An end can only be made our own when conceived as necessary for realising or completing our idea of self. Conscious volition only follows a conceived want, or recognition that the self as imagined—the ideal self—is not realised in the actual self. The action is towards a fuller working out of the idea of self; and the end may therefore, in all cases of conscious action, be said to be self-realisation, though the nature of this end differs according to each man's conception of self. This may be expressed, as Green expresses it, by saying that "self-satisfaction is the form of every object willed; but ... it is on the specific difference of the objects willed under the general form of self-satisfaction that the quality of the will must depend."[287] It appears to me, however, that this statement requires to be guarded by an explanation. The self-satisfaction sought must not be looked upon as a feeling,—for if it is, it can only be interpreted psychologically as pleasure—but as simply conscious self-realisation. And this self-realisation is the objective consciousness of an attained end, which is accompanied by, but is not the same as, the feeling of pleasure. Self-realisation is the end, not the pleasurable feeling which follows it; self-satisfaction, not the "pleasure of self-satisfaction." In this way, the common experience "that the objects with which we seek to satisfy ourselves do not turn out capable of satisfying us,"[288] might be expressed by saying that the method adopted for the realisation of self is often found in its result to lead to incomplete, or even to illusory, self-realisation.