Mary Whiton Calkins

“ And yet we are called upon to eliminate from our philosophy an ever-present fact, the ego, because just this, its ubiquity, prevents our studying it by a logical method invented as an aid in the investigation of inconstant phenomena. Thus, to sum up our reply to this criticism: idealism can not be contradictory to the fundamental laws of logic, for these are laws of mental self-consistency. ”

“ I believe, in a word, that solipsism is a sharp horn of the pluralistic idealist’s dilemma. To the monistic idealist, on the other hand, it presents no unavoidable difficulty. For the monistic idealist’s position is, in brief, the following: In being conscious of myself I know myself as limited, thwarted, circumscribed. But one can not know oneself as bounded without knowing the existence of a boundary; and to be aware of a boundary as boundary one must be aware of a something beyond. That is to say, in the experience of my narrow, single self, I experience also a somewhat-beyond-myself. ”

“ For the idealist does hold as fundamental just this doctrine which the realist attributes to him, that is to say, he believes that objects, as known, are mental. But he does not regard this belief as an assumption. He holds, on the contrary, that a close examination of the objects of logic, of mathematics, and of the physical sciences discloses their ideal character. ”

“ It should be pointed out that the realist has no right to the implication that in rejecting idealism and adopting a physical form of realism he finds ready-to-hand a compact system of ultimate physical doctrine. On the contrary, the physicists of one group, headed by Pearson and Mach, are frankly idealistic, reduce facts of science to contents of the mind, describe physical realities as made up of sense impressions, and define scientific law as “mental shorthand.” ”

“ The idealist accepts this statement, but insists that the fundamental principles of logic, to which only it applies, can not by any chance be essentially opposed to idealism, since logic is no more nor less than a systematic formulation of the laws of consistent thinking. Thus the idealist finds, in the assertion just quoted, an implicit opposition to materialism and no argument whatever against idealism of any type. ”

“ But it is high time to come to closer issue with our antagonists. Their most fundamental criticisms have yet to be stated. They argue that idealism is based on unjustified assumptions, of which the first is the assumption that an object, because known, is therefore mental in nature. “The realistic position is curtly stated by Holt: [16] “The entities (objects, facts, et caet.) under study in logic, mathematics, and the physical sciences are not mental in any usual or proper meaning of the word ‘mental.’ The being and nature of these entities are in no sense conditioned by their being known.” ”

“ We turn finally to the conception of the universe as a complex of different sorts of energy. Here, too, we find the physicists at odds among themselves. Energy is usually defined as capacity for work. Narrowly scrutinized, this statement means simply that energy is conceived as the further undefined cause of phenomena; and energy is thus reduced to a relation, causality, already claimed by the idealist as ideal. Many of those who conceive of reality as energy, seem, however, to mean by energy force. ”

“ It is urged by contemporary realists, as by those of Berkeley’s day, that the distinction actually made by idealists between subject and object, percept and image, is possible only on the supposition that non-mental reality exists. [10] The idealist admits that he makes this distinction. He, like other men, recognizes a difference between present and external, and merely imagined, objects, But he distinguishes the two kinds of things, not as extramental and mental, but as objects respectively of his shared and of his unshared consciousness, or as objects of one self and of many selves. ”

“ In a word, it is more than negligible, it is necessarily left out of account by men with only ordinary human endowment. Such an extra-mental reality is indeed unknowable, since it is by nature unknown. ”

“ But the idealist rests his case not on reasoning of this sort, but on the results of direct observation coupled with the inability of any observer to make an unchallengeable assertion about sense qualities save in the terms of idealism. To be more explicit: the idealist demands that his opponent describe any immediately perceived sense object in such wise that his description can not be disputed. The realist describes an object as, let us say, yellow, rough, and cold. ”

“ In answer to this charge that idealism does not agree with “common sense” it may first be pointed out that final judgment on a technical system can not be passed on the basis of its agreement with popular beliefs. It would go hard with the scientists were ultimate physical theories thus rated; and constructive realism, as will later be argued, would fare no better. [4] But the idealist need not content himself with this protest. There is much to favor the view that primitive philosophizing is rather spiritistic than materialistic. ”

“ Objects of logic and of mathematics differ from every-day “physical objects” in that they consist exclusively in relations. The idealist discovers by examination of objects—he does not (as the realist accuses) assume—that both sense qualities and relations are mental. The following paragraphs will amplify this brief account from the idealist’s standpoint of the known object.
The idealistic view of sense qualities must first be considered. It is of utmost importance to state clearly that the contemporary idealist abandons some of the traditional arguments for his doctrine. ”

“ For the hypothesized realities of the physical scientists are one and all reducible to the negligible unknown or else to a complex of sensible quality and relation. “Descend, then,” says the idealist to the realist, “from hypothesis to fact. Do not talk about vortex-ring, and electron, and ether, and energy, until you have first discussed the terms to which these reduce: the sensible qualities and complexes—extensity, resistance, motion—and the relations—cause, multiplicity, oneness, and the rest. ”

“ The second of the alleged assumptions of idealism is to be refuted. All that precedes has concerned objects-as-known. The realist now insists that the idealist has in any case no right to assert the non-existence of unknown objects. To quote Professor Montague: The intuitional argument of the idealists “consists of a confused identification of a truism and an absurdity. The truism: We can only know that objects exist when they are known. The absurdity: We know that objects can only exist when they are known. ”

“ All children personify the stubborn walls and doors with which they come in contact; and the facts of magic, of fetichism, and of nature-worship indicate that realities which every day dualistic philosophy conceives as non-ideal were regarded by primitive men as spiritual beings. ”

“ This reminder that no realist may find refuge from the tempest of conflicting metaphysical views in a sanctuary of fixed and satisfying physical doctrine, is, however, preliminary only to the opposition of idealist to realist. The idealist, in fact, maintains that so-called physical reality, however conceived, reduces to sensible quality, to relation, or to a combination of the two ”

“ Quality and relation, he has already argued, are ideal; and neither the every-day man, the scientist, nor the philosopher is concerned with that whose nature it is to be unknown. This idealistic teaching should be restated in its application to specific realistic conceptions. ”

“ A third argument, precisely parallel with those now under discussion, claims for logic an axiomatic value, and argues against idealism as violating sundry rules of logic or as unconformable to certain logical procedures. ”

“ In either case the conception of ether includes that of motion-and motion is succession of positions, that is, a complex of spatial quality and temporal relation. In the whole conception there is, for the scientist, much difficulty in meeting the rival requirements of the groups of facts which ether is hypothesized to explain ”