Название | Fichte's Science of Knowledge |
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Автор произведения | Charles Carroll Everett |
Жанр | Документальная литература |
Серия | |
Издательство | Документальная литература |
Год выпуска | 0 |
isbn | 4064066436254 |
In this discussion, his purpose is negative rather than positive—to maintain that the knowledge of such existences is not intuitive, rather than that it can be supported by absolute proof; yet he appears to assume that we have here a case of real and convincing induction. This reasoning he compares to that by which Newton proved that the force which keeps the planets in their place is identical with that by which an apple falls to the ground.
When we examine the argument, however, we find that it is evidently not at all a case of induction, but one of analogy. We reason from what accompanies the changes in one set of phenomena, to that which must accompany the resembling changes in innumerable other groups of phenomena. It is precisely as when we reason from the fact that this world is inhabited, to the belief that other worlds are inhabited.
It differs in another respect from the reasoning of Newton above referred to. In that, the force proved to exist was completely defined in the terms of its effect. A relation was shown to prevail wherever solid bodies exist. One might, have begun with the motion of the moon, and reasoned to that of the apple, as well as the reverse. In the case before us, these conditions do not exist. In this, an element is found to exist between the cause and effect, which is something more than a mean between the two. It is a complicated process, having relations of its own; and is so distinct from the terms which it unites, that Huxley and others can claim that it could be dropped out without affecting the result.
Analogy, however, when it is perfect, may produce a conviction as strong as can be produced by induction; and the resemblance in this case may, at first sight, seem so very perfect as to make the reasoning that is based upon it wholly convincing. There is, however, one great point of weakness which vitiates the whole argument. In the case from which we reason, it is the changes in our own consciousness that manifest themselves to our consciousness. We have a complete circle. Nothing is present that involves elements which are, in any strict sense, outside of our own minds. The result to which the argument leads, on the contrary, is the belief in something wholly outside our own mind; namely, the belief in lines of consciousness wholly foreign to our own. When we recognize, on the one side, the solitariness of the fact from which we reason, and, on the other, the vast number of the facts to which we apply our reasoning; and when we consider further the great flaw that has been shown to exist in the argument itself, we cannot attach much value to it.
We need not, however, spend much time in these a priori considerations. We have a practical test of the argument, that shows how little confidence can be placed in it. In dreams, the position is precisely that upon which the argument is based; but we know that in dreams the argument is wholly deceptive. We assume that the changing groups of phenomena represent personalities like our own. When we wake, we pronounce this to be a delusion. If the analogy deceives us at one time, it may at another. If the mind at one time may give an apparently distinct life to creations of its own, why may it not at another? I know that it will be said that dreams are fictitious reproductions of what has really presented itself to our waking consciousness. This, however, is simply to assume the whole question. So far as the argument is concerned, we might as well reason the other way; namely, that the experiences of our waking moments are the reproductions of the realities presented to our dreams.
A stronger way of putting the argument would be to base it neither upon induction nor upon analogy, but upon the fact that the assumption of personalities outside ourselves is a hypothesis that has always worked well. It has really met the facts of the case. This argument is not conclusive, as may be seen from the old astronomical theories of cycles and epicycles. The hypothesis worked well, but it introduced cumbersome elements which were needed to help it out. Might it not be said that the assumption of myriads of things outside ourselves introduces a machinery far more complicated than that beneath which the astronomical hypothesis gave way; while the opposing theory, which makes all these forms that fill our consciousness, the creation of our consciousness itself, has the advantage of extreme simplicity. The test from dreams, however, disposes of the form of the argument which is based upon the successful working of a hypothesis, as it did of the other.
It is not improbable that the facts recognized by the arguments thus considered may represent the method by which we really arrived at the belief of existences outside our own mind. It might even be applied to things as well as to persons. The consciousness that accompanies the group of phenomena representing what we call our own body, shows that this group has something behind it or connected with it; and something similar to this we ascribe to all similar groups. In all these cases, this something is consciousness. We may abstract, however, from the consciousness, and leave only a vague somewhat; and may thus reach the thought of unconscious things outside our own mind. Schopenhauer did something of this kind. He properly called the reasoning analogy.[9] He found within himself, deeper than consciousness, the will. This he assumed to be the reality of our nature; and behind all groups of phenomena he put either a conscious or an unconscious will. Though this may represent more or less correctly the process which the mind has actually followed, the examination above given shows that as reasoning it is wholly unsound.
All that remains, then, would seem to be to say with Herbert Spencer, that the belief in a reality outside ourselves is something absolute and final; that it can neither be proved nor disproved;[10] for either proof or disproof would involve the idea of something which we believe more strongly than we do the fact of external existence, whereas this latter belief is stronger than any other. The phenomena of dreams would not disturb this position, for we have to do with no fact except that of belief. We cannot help believing in our dreams while they last; we cannot help believing in our waking experiences while they last. All this, however, even though it should prove to be the final statement of the case, is extremely unsatisfactory from a philosophical point of view. We may indeed question, with some show of reason at least, the absolute certainty of the assumption that the belief in outward existence is so immovably fixed in the mind. We must recognize the fact that there are two kinds of belief, each real in its way: the one is an intellectual assent to a proposition which is supported by irresistible arguments; the other is that belief which we can make real to ourselves, of which we have, in the common phrase, a realizing sense. An example of the former, or purely intellectual, belief, is the assurance with which we accept the truth that sound and color are purely subjective experiences. We know that the tree is not green and that the rose is not red, in the only sense in which the terms green and red have any meaning to us; but of this we have no realizing sense—indeed, we cannot make; it real to us. We know, too, that the earth is round, and that it circles about the sun; this belief also, is, to most men, purely intellectual; it does not represent anything that is real to them. So it may not be impossible that one might, in the same intellectual way, prove to himself the non-existence of beings outside of himself, while he holds this belief in the same unreal way in which we hold the belief in the colorlessness and soundlessness of the external world.
However this may be, the position itself is one that offers a challenge to philosophic thought. This external reality is a crude fact which demands solution. It is not, like the existence of ourselves, absolutely given in consciousness. It is simply assumed by consciousness. The matter is not merely one of theoretical interest. We are moulded, we are told, by our environment. Now, here we have a real environment which hems us in on every side; which we assume; but of which we can confessedly know absolutely nothing. Now, if we could reach to any knowledge of this, if we could even have any plausible theory about it, if we could put our belief in it into any such