Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Charles Carroll Everett

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Название Fichte's Science of Knowledge
Автор произведения Charles Carroll Everett
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namely, that of conscious personalities like our own.[8] It is true that the evidence of an extra mentem subject-object can be conceived more easily than that of a mere object. We can use words in regard to it that have a positive meaning. It is, however, as impossible to prove the existence of the one as that of the other. The argument of Mill is substantially as follows: In our consciousness we find certain groups of sensations, each of which remains substantially the same, subject only to slight variations. One of these groups we learn to regard as representing ourself. We call it our body. This is subjected to some change, and responds to this by other changes. In our own case, between the antecedent and the consequent is a mean term; namely, consciousness. It is indeed a series of terms; namely, feeling, thought, will. Other groups closely resemble this. We notice like antecedents and like consequents. We assume that the mean term also exists.

      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.

      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