[Reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology1 and Scientific Methods, vol II,, No. 11, May 25, 1905.]
COMMON sense and popular philosophy are as dualistic as it is possible to be. Thoughts, we all naturally think, are made of one kind of substance, and things of another. Consciousness, flowing inside us in the forms of conception or judgement, or concentrating itself in the shape of passion or emotion, can be directly felt as the spiritual activity which it is, and known in contrast with the space-filling, objective ‘content’ which it envelops3 and accompanies. In opposition4 to this dualistic philosophy, I tried, in [the first essay] to show that thoughts and things are absolutely homogeneous as to their material, and that their opposition is only one of relation and of function. There is no thought-stuff different from thing-stuff, I said; but the same identical piece of ‘pure experience’ (which was the name I gave to the materia prima of everything) can stand alternately for a ‘fact of consciousness’ or for a physical reality, according as it is taken in one context or in another. For the right understanding of what follows, I shall have to presuppose that the reader will have read that [essay].55
55 It will be still better if he shall have also read the [essay] entitled ‘A World of Pure Experience,’ which follows [the first] and develops its ideas still farther.
The commonest objection which the doctrine6 there laid down runs up against is drawn7 from the existence of our ‘affections.’ In our pleasures and pains, our loves and fears and angers, in the beauty, comicality, importance or preciousness of certain objects and situations, we have, I am told by many critics, a great realm of experience intuitively recognized as spiritual, made, and felt to be made, of consciousness exclusively, and different in nature from the space-filling kind of being which is enjoyed by physical objects. In Section VII, of [the first essay], I treated of this class of experiences inadequately8, because I had to be brief. I now return to the subject, because I believe that, so far from invalidating my general thesis, these phenomena9, when properly analyzed10, afford it powerful support.
The central point of the pure-experience theory is that ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ are names for two groups into which we sort experiences according to the way in which they act upon their neighbors. Any one ‘content,’ such as hard, let us say, can be assigned to either group. In the outer group it is ‘strong,’ it acts ‘energetically’ and aggressively. Here whatever is hard interferes11 with the space its neighbors occupy. It dents12 them; is impenetrable by them; and we call the hardness then a physical hardness. In the mind, on the contrary, the hard thing is nowhere in particular, it dents nothing, it suffuses13 through its mental neighbors, as it were, and interpenetrates them. Taken in this group we call both it and them ‘ideas’ or ‘sensations’; and the basis of the two groups respectively is the different type of interrelation, the mutual14 impenetrability, on the one hand, and the lack of physical interference and interaction, on the other.
That what in itself is one and the same entity15 should be able to function thus differently in different contexts is a natural consequence of the extremely complex reticulations in which our experiences come. To her offspring a tigress is tender, but cruel to every other living thing — both cruel and tender, therefore, at once. A mass in movement resists every force that operates contrariwise to its own direction, but to forces that pursue the same direction, or come in at right angles, it is absolutely inert16. It is thus both energetic and inert; and the same is true (if you vary the associates properly) of every other piece of experience. It is only towards certain specific groups of associates that the physical energies as we call them, of a content are put forth17. In another group it may be quite inert.
It is possible to imagine a universe of experiences in which the only alternative between neighbors would be either physical interaction or complete inertness18. In such a world the mental or the physical status of any piece of experience would be unequivocal. When active, it would figure in the physical, and when inactive, in the mental group.
But the universe we live in is more chaotic19 than this, and there is room in it for the hybrid20 or ambiguous group of our affectional experiences, of our emotions and appreciative21 perceptions. In the paragraphs that follow I shall try to show:
(1) That the popular notion that these experiences are intuitively given as purely22 inner facts is hasty and erroneous; and
(2) That their ambiguity23 illustrates24 beautifully my central thesis that subjectivity25 and objectivity are affairs not of what an experience is aboriginally made of, but of its classification. Classifications depend on our temporary purposes. For certain purposes it is convenient to take things in one set of relations, for other purposes in another set. In the two cases their contexts are apt to be different. In the case of our affectional experiences we have no permanent and steadfast26 purpose that obliges us to be consistent, so we find it easy to let them float ambiguously, sometimes classing them with our feelings, sometimes with more physical realities, according to caprice or to the convenience of the moment. Thus would these experiences, so far from being an obstacle to the pure experience philosophy, serve as an excellent corroboration27 of its truth.
First of all, then, it is a mistake to say, with the objectors whom I began by citing, that anger, love and fear are affections purely of the mind. That, to a great extent at any rate, they are simultaneously28 affections of the body is proved by the whole literature of the James–Lange theory of emotion.56 All our pains, moreover, are local, and we are always free to speak of them in objective as well as in subjective29 terms. We can say that we are aware of a painful place, filling a certain bigness in our organism, or we can say that we are inwardly in a ‘state’ of pain. All our adjectives of worth are similarly ambiguous — I instanced some of the ambiguities30 [in the first essay].57 Is the preciousness of a diamond a quality of the gem2? or is it a feeling in our mind? Practically we treat it as both or as either, according to the temporary direction of our thought. ‘Beauty,’ says Professor Santayana, ‘is pleasure objectified’; and in Sections 10 and 11 of his work, The Sense of Beauty, he treats in a masterly way of this equivocal realm. The various pleasures we receive from an object may count as ‘feelings’ when we take them singly, but when they combine in a total richness, we call the result the ‘beauty’ of the object, and treat it as an outer attribute which our mind perceives. We discover beauty just as we discover the physical properties of things. Training is needed to make us expert in either line. Single sensations also may be ambiguous. Shall we say an ‘agreeable degree of heat,’ or an ‘agreeable feeling’ occasioned by the degree of heat? Either will do; and language would lose most of its esthetic31 and rhetorical value were we forbidden to project words primarily connoting our affections upon the objects by which the affections are aroused. The man is really hateful; the action really mean; the situation really tragic32 — all in themselves and quite apart from our opinion. We even go so far as to talk of a weary road, a giddy height, a jocund33 morning or a sullen34 sky; and the term ‘indefinite’ while usually applied35 only to our apprehensions36, functions as a fundamental physical qualification of things in Spencer’s ‘law of evolution,’ and doubtless passes with most readers for all right.
56 [Cf. The Principles of Psychology, vol. II, ch. XXV; and “The Physical Basis of Emotion,” The Psychological Review, vol. I, 1894, p. 516.]
57 [See above, pp. 34, 35.]
Psychologists, studying our perceptions of movement, have unearthed38 experiences in which movement is felt in general but not ascribed correctly to the body that really moves. Thus in optical vertigo39, caused by unconscious movements of our eyes, both we and the external universe appear to be in a whirl. When clouds float by the moon, it is as if both clouds and moon and we ourselves shared in the motion. In the extraordinary case of amnesia40 of the Rev37. Mr. Hanna, published by Sidis and Goodhart in their important work on Multiple Personality, we read that when the patient first recovered consciousness and “noticed an attendant walk across the room, he identified the movement with that of his own. He did not yet discriminate41 between his own movements and those outside himself.”58 Such experiences point to a primitive42 stage of perception in which discriminations afterwards needful have not yet been made. A piece of experience of a determinate sort is there, but there at first as a ‘pure’ fact. Motion originally simply is; only later is it confined to this thing or to that. Something like this is true of every experience, however complex, at the moment of its actual presence. Let the reader arrest himself in the act of reading this article now. Now this is a pure experience, a phenomenon, or datum43, a mere44 that or content of fact. ‘Reading’ simply is, is there; and whether there for some one’s consciousness, or there for physical nature, is a question not yet put. At the moment, it is there for neither; later we shall probably judge it to have been there for both.
58 Page 102.
With the affectional experiences which we are considering, the relatively45 ‘pure’ condition lasts. In practical life no urgent need has yet arisen for deciding whether to treat them as rigorously mental or as rigorously physical facts. So they remain equivocal; and, as the world goes, their equivocality is one of their great conveniences.
The shifting place of ‘secondary qualities’ in the history of philosophy59 is another excellent proof of the fact that ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ are not coefficients with which experiences come to us aboriginally stamped, but are rather results of a later classification performed by us for particular needs. The common-sense stage of thought is a perfectly46 definite practical halting-place, the place where we ourselves can proceed to act unhesitatingly. On this stage of thought things act on each other as well as on us by means of their secondary qualities. Sound, as such, goes through the air and can be intercepted47. The heat of the fire passes over, as such, into the water which it sets a-boiling. It is the very light of the arc-lamp which displaces the darkness of the midnight street, etc. By engendering48 and translocating just these qualities, actively49 efficacious as they seem to be, we ourselves succeed in altering nature so as to suit us; and until more purely intellectual, as distinguished50 from practical, needs had arisen, no one ever thought of calling these qualities subjective. When, however, Galileo, Descartes, and others found it best for philosophic51 purposes to class sound, heat, and light along with pain and pleasure as purely mental phenomena, they could do so with impunity52.60
59 [Cf. Janet and Seailles: History of the Problems of Philosophy, trans. by Monahan, part I, ch. III.]
60 [Cf. Descartes: Meditation53 II; Principles of Philosophy, part I, XLVIII.]
Even the primary qualities are undergoing the same fate. Hardness and softness are effects on us of atomic interactions, and the atoms themselves are neither hard nor soft, nor solid nor liquid. Size and shape are deemed subjective by Kantians; time itself is subjective according to many philosophers;61 and even the activity and causal efficacy which lingered in physics long after secondary qualities were banished54 are now treated as illusory projections55 outwards56 of phenomena of our own consciousness. There are no activities or effects in nature, for the most intellectual contemporary school of physical speculation57. Nature exhibits only changes, which habitually58 coincide with one another so that their habits are describable in simple ‘laws.’62
61 [Cf. A.E. Taylor: Elements of Metaphysics, bk. III, ch. IV.]
62 [Cf. K. Pearson: Grammar of Science, ch. III.]
There is no original spirituality or materiality of being, intuitively discerned, then; but only a translocation of experiences from one world to another; a grouping of them with one set or another of associates for definitely practical or intellectual ends.
I will say nothing here of the persistent59 ambiguity of relations. They are undeniable parts of pure experience; yet, while common sense and what I call radical60 empiricism stand for their being objective, both rationalism and the usual empiricism claim that they are exclusively the ‘work of the mind’ — the finite mind or the absolute mind, as the case may be.
Turn now to those affective phenomena which more directly concern us.
We soon learn to separate the ways in which things appeal to our interests and emotions from the ways in which they act upon one another. It does not work to assume that physical objects are going to act outwardly by their sympathetic or antipathetic qualities. The beauty of a thing or its value is no force that can be plotted in a polygon61 of compositions, nor does its ‘use’ or ‘significance’ affect in the minutest degree its vicissitudes62 or destiny at the hands of physical nature. Chemical ‘affinities’ are a purely verbal metaphor63; and, as I just said, even such things as forces, tensions, and activities can at a pinch be regarded as anthropomorphic projections. So far, then, as the physical world means the collection of contents that determine in each other certain regular changes, the whole collection of our appreciative attributes has to be treated as falling outside of it. If we mean by physical nature whatever lies beyond the surface of our bodies, these attributes are inert throughout the whole extent of physical nature.
Why then do men leave them as ambiguous as they do, and not class them decisively as purely spiritual?
The reason would seem to be that, although they are inert as regards the rest of physical nature, they are not inert as regards that part of physical nature which our own skin covers. It is those very appreciative attributes of things, their dangerousness, beauty, rarity, utility, etc., that primarily appeal to our attention. In our commerce with nature these attributes are what give emphasis to objects; and for an object to be emphatic64, whatever spiritual fact it may mean, means also that it produces immediate65 bodily effects upon us, alterations66 of tone and tension, of heart-beat and breathing, of vascular67 and visceral action. The ‘interesting’ aspects of thins are thus not wholly inert physically68, though they be active only in these small corners of physical nature which our bodies occupy. That, however, is enough to save them from being classed as absolutely non-objective.
The attempt, if any one should make it, to sort experience into two absolutely discrete69 groups, with nothing but inertness in one of them and nothing but activities in the other, would thus receive one check. It would receive another as soon as we examined the more distinctively70 mental group; for though in that group it be true that things do not act on one another by their physical properties do not dent5 each other or set fire to each other, they yet act on each other in the most energetic way by those very characters which are so inert extracorporeally. It is by the interest and importance that experiences have for us, by the emotions they excite, and the purposes they subserve, by their affective values, in short, that their consecution in our several conscious streams, as ‘thoughts’ of ours, is mainly ruled. Desire introduces them; interest holds them; fitness fixes their order and connection. I need only refer for this aspect of our mental life, to Wundt’s article ‘Ueber psychische Causalitat,’ which begins Volume X. of his Philosophische Studien.63
63 It is enough for my present purpose if the appreciative characters but seem to act thus. Believers in an activity an sich, other than our mental experiences of activity, will find some farther reflections on the subject in my address on ‘The Experience of Activity.’ [The next essay. Cf. especially, p. 169. ED.]
It thus appears that the ambiguous or amphibious status which we find our epithets71 of value occupying is the most natural thing in the world. It would, however, be an unnatural72 status if the popular opinion which I cited at the outset were correct. If ‘physical’ and ‘mental’ meant two different kinds of intrinsic nature, immediately, intuitively, and infallibly discernible, and each fixed73 forever in whatever bit of experience it qualified74, one does not see how there could ever have arisen any room for doubt or ambiguity. But if, on the contrary, these words are words of sorting, ambiguity is natural. For then, as soon as the relations of a thing are sufficiently75 various it can be sorted variously. Take a mass of carrion76, for example, and the ‘disgustingness’ which for us is a part of the experience. The sun caresses77 it, and the zephyr78 wooes it as if it were a bed of roses. So the disgustingness fails to operate within the realm of suns and breezes, — it does not function as a physical quality. But the carrion ‘turns our stomach’ by what seems a direct operation — it does function physically, therefore, in that limited part of physics. We can treat it as physical or as non-physical according as we take it in the narrower or in the wider context, and conversely, of course, we must treat it as non-mental or as mental.
Our body itself is the palmary instance of the ambiguous. Sometimes I treat my body purely as a part of outer nature. Sometimes, again, I think of it as ‘mine,’ I sort it with the ‘me,’ and then certain local changes and determinations in it pass for spiritual happenings. Its breathing is my ‘thinking,’ its sensorial adjustments are my ‘attention,’ its kinesthetic alterations are my ‘efforts,’ its visceral perturbations are my ‘emotions.’ The obstinate79 controversies80 that have arisen over such statements as these (which sound so paradoxical, and which can yet be made so seriously) prove how hard it is to decide by bare introspection what it is in experiences that shall make them either spiritual or material. It surely can be nothing intrinsic in the individual experience. It is their way of behaving towards each other, their system of relations, their functions; and all these things vary with the context in which we find it opportune81 to consider them.
I think I may conclude, then (and I hope that my readers are now ready to conclude with me), that the pretended spirituality of our emotions and of our attributes of value, so far from proving an objection to the philosophy of pure experience, does, when rightly discussed and accounted for, serve as one of its best corroborations.
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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gem
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| n.宝石，珠宝；受爱戴的人 [同]jewel | |
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envelops
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的第三人称单数 ) | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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dent
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| n.凹痕，凹坑；初步进展 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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inadequately
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| ad.不够地；不够好地 | |
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phenomena
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analyzed
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| v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
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interferes
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| vi. 妨碍，冲突，干涉 | |
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dents
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| n.花边边饰；凹痕( dent的名词复数 )；凹部；减少；削弱v.使产生凹痕( dent的第三人称单数 )；损害；伤害；挫伤（信心、名誉等） | |
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suffuses
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| v.（指颜色、水气等）弥漫于，布满( suffuse的第三人称单数 ) | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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inert
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| adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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inertness
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| n.不活泼，没有生气；惰性；惯量 | |
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chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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hybrid
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appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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ambiguity
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| n.模棱两可；意义不明确 | |
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illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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subjectivity
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| n.主观性（主观主义） | |
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steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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corroboration
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| n.进一步的证实，进一步的证据 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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ambiguities
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| n.歧义( ambiguity的名词复数 )；意义不明确；模棱两可的意思；模棱两可的话 | |
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esthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的；悦目的，雅致的 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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jocund
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| adj.快乐的，高兴的 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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rev
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unearthed
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| 出土的（考古） | |
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vertigo
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| n.眩晕 | |
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amnesia
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| n.健忘症，健忘 | |
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discriminate
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| v.区别，辨别，区分；有区别地对待 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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datum
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| n.资料；数据；已知数 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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intercepted
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| 拦截( intercept的过去式和过去分词 )； 截住； 截击； 拦阻 | |
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engendering
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的现在分词 ) | |
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actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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projections
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| 预测( projection的名词复数 )； 投影； 投掷； 突起物 | |
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outwards
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| adj.外面的，公开的，向外的；adv.向外；n.外形 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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polygon
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| n.多边形；多角形 | |
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vicissitudes
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| n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废 | |
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metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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alterations
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| n.改动( alteration的名词复数 )；更改；变化；改变 | |
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vascular
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| adj.血管的，脉管的 | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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discrete
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| adj.个别的，分离的，不连续的 | |
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distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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epithets
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| n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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carrion
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| n.腐肉 | |
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caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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zephyr
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| n.和风，微风 | |
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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controversies
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| 争论 | |
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opportune
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| adj.合适的，适当的 | |
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