Wendell T. Bush

“ Now that cognitive experience which for itself is rational and full of insight, yet which a later judgment of the same mind, or a judgment of another mind, characterizes as whimsical, is what the criticizing mind can not get hold of and make its own. It remains the private experience of another, a mental state, a state of consciousness. ”

“ The question whether consciousness exists is simply the question whether these cognitive relations exist, and the suggestions of Professor Woodbridge toward a definition of consciousness really seem to me to have in view a definition of knowledge. ”

“ Now this flies in the face of normal experience, but it is perfectly logical, granting the premises. The argument proceeds: different selves can not come together in any way or have any common objects. Two selves, therefore, can not occupy the same universe. And if we are to claim to live together at all in the same universe, this universe must be the total consciousness of one self, which integrates and absorbs all our various individual selves. My world and your world are the same because we are of it, and it is the consciousness of one self. ”

“ Naturally it is of particular interest to see whether consequences for idealism are likely to follow the new attitude toward consciousness.
And first, it does not seem to me that we should regard consciousness as a bad word. We can continue to use it to mean what we have really always meant by it, namely, what is essentially private to one observer. That there is a great mass of experience which is essentially private and is thus contrasted with what is public, is the basis of the familiar distinction between the inner and the outer world. ”

“ The word consciousness is so wrapped up with idealistic implications that it seems to me most desirable to get rid of the phrase 'objects exist in consciousness.' Consciousness is subjective, individual and private, and if we intend to give an accurate description of the empirical situation, it is wise to cease using phrases that have us ensnared before we know it in a metaphysical tradition. To come back to the chair, the actual test whether my visual object be chair or hallucination would be to find out whether you too see what I do. ”

“ The experience that is 'definitely recognized as my experience' and presents a 'for-me relation,' and is best illustrated by the case of a dream, is so manifestly characterized by its essential privacy and limitation to one observer, that Dr. Perry's excellent account can lose nothing by accepting privacy as the characteristic property of consciousness rather than idiosyncrasy and error, and idiosyncrasy appears naturally as privacy as soon as other minds are taken into account. And error, in science, is the fact of rejection by other observers. ”

“ Professor Woodbridge expresses greater confidence in saying what consciousness is not than in saying what it is. It is not ' a kind of receptacle' into which things can get. It is not, as the idealist , the stuff and matter of all reality. But we can say that things exist in consciousness and express an intelligible and consistent meaning. When things exist in consciousness a new 'type of connection' is established between them. ”

“ So long as we keep within the limits of the experience of one mind, this seems to me a very adequate account of the matter, but the judgments with which scientists as such are concerned are judgments in which they have a common interest, and in which validity means the support of corroborative agreement. In the case of the single mind, the earlier judgment loses validity as soon as it loses verification by subsequent judgments. The individual who can not obtain the assent of other observers finds his judgment classified as idiosyncrasy. ”

“ If the privacy of consciousness nowhere comes into play that identical chair can be your object and my object, by which we mean that you, I and the chair are all objects in one situation.
But if the above reasoning is sound, how fares it with the logic of idealism?
When the argument for idealism can be stated in so many ways it may seem futile perhaps to pick out one. The one I give is not the same as that quoted by Dr. Perry. ”

“ We instinctively feel that consciousness is an inner thing rather than an outer one, and if now the tendencies pointed out by Professor James, and his own declarations mean that consciousness as a metaphysical concept is on the point of being dropped, and that with it goes the last bit of animism, does it not seem an unexpected verification of an important part of the theory of Avenarius? ”

“ It begins by explaining that specific sense-qualities exist only by virtue of the functional activity of the perceiving subject, and that it is impossible to describe or conceive an object in other terms than those of consciousness, and that consequently to assume the existence of an object having other attributes is to assume nothing. ”

“ Of course, in view of the fact that the article expresses a greater confidence in its negations than in its positive affirmations, I do not wish to interpret these with undue assurance, but the meaning, I take it, is that when consciousness occurs real objects become known, and the only difference it makes to the objects is that they are related in ways to which they themselves are indifferent, but which constitute knowledge. ”

“ It is easy to understand, however, why we say 'I see the chair' and think we have a feeling of doing something. Owing to acts of mine, the content is constantly changing, I am continually doing things in order that particular contents may exist, as when I travel and take great pains to see all the picture-galleries, or all the Gothic architecture, that I can. ”

“ It may strengthen this conviction to reflect that the idea of consciousness is probably, as Professor James says, 'the faint rumor left behind by the disappearing soul upon the air of philosophy.' We speak of states of consciousness ”

“ It seems to me a very misleading analysis which does not take into account the necessity of verification by other minds, at least, if we mean to be empirical, and if we are discussing that type of judgment which is a judgment in science. ”