Wendell T. Bush

“ We are seeking an experience with the fidential-character, the character of 'Heimhaftiakeit,' as Avenarius called it, and, in fact, the presence of ultimate problems is often testified to in language that breathes an acute tone of 'Heimweh.' The search for truth is indeed the search for a satisfied will, but the truth which we find may remain the truth for ten minutes or for a lifetime. ”

“ Spinoza gives the impression even more strongly of being a man in whose experience God is an established and simply unquestionable reality. He could probably no more have doubted the existence of God than the 'plain man' doubts the existence of the outer world. ”

“ This 'possibility of sensation' is the classic entrance to the idealism which claims to explain experience in a really profound and consistent way. What, it is asked, is an object of experience while it is mere possibility of sensation? What kind of a positive fact is Calcutta while it is waiting to be perceived? It appears to be taken for granted that it is all the time a 'possibility' of experience, but that if it is really anything at all, it must be something more. ”

“ See such definitions of philosophy as that given by Wundt, in which philosophy is expected to follow behind the special sciences, collecting, organizing and criticizing their results. And if the existential predicate as applied to the working concept comes to be regarded by scientists as an evidence of medieval simplicity, it will be but natural, the prestige of science being what it is, and growing ever greater, that this new epistemology should be adopted by the more critical students of philosophy. More and more the search for reality behind appearance would seem like a monkish dream. ”

“ But science, too, seeks to deproblematize a situation by means of a concept, only science does not attach the existential predicate. Just in this matter of the existential judgment, metaphysics goes beyond science. Science does not deny that there is an ultimate truth, but she does not claim to have found it. She is very likely to say that it can not be found. Science has a system of concepts of which the necessary consequences are images of the actual effects and expressions of the ultimate ground of things. ”

“ And supposing that the concepts of science, the atom, the molecule, the ether, etc., are recognized and claimed as nothing but conceptual instruments for extending our acquaintance with nature, and the idea of the atom or of the ether as an image of 'reality' is remembered as a notion surprisingly naive, is it not altogether likely that minds of the purely intellectual type, which devote themselves to problems about an ultimate reality, may feel disposed to regard their concepts as science regards hers? ”

“ In fact, it seems as though in one universe there were room for only one self. This is really, it seems to me, the clinching argument for idealism, and it is one that the critics of that doctrine, and those who prove to us the actual transcendent existence of the world, hardly notice. These philosophers take all their illustrations from a one-object-one-subject relation, whereas the case of realism can not be proved without making clear the one-object-two-subjects relation. ”

“ But most important of all is it that the fellow being remain a transcendent object. Yet how, then, can there be one and the same outer world for us both? It would seem as though his outer world must exist in a different space from mine and in a different time. ”

“ Yet every philosophy undertakes to be valid, and expects to secure some measure of validity whether it meet with approval or not.
Science aims at universally verifiable descriptions of phenomena. The question whether the description is a valid one is equivalent to the question whether the description fulfills the scientific purpose, whether it is universally verifiable. Metaphysics, on the other hand, asks the question, What is reality? What is the ultimate ground of phenomena? What is the ultimate cause of experience? The question. Does reality consist of matter with a molecular structure? ”

“ Every metaphysic is an attempt to explain experience. It seeks not to describe phenomena, but to get behind phenomena to some ultimate ground, and the experience to be explained presents as its most characteristic feature the cognition of apparently transcendent objects. This character, which comes out most frankly in the naive realism which I have called the natural view of the world, appears to determine metaphysics more than any other character of experience. ”

“ The relation between science and metaphysics as above described is strikingly like that situation in the Middle Ages which brought forth the doctrine of the twofold truth. This doctrine was first stated in the interest of religion, but its effect was to liberate scientific speculation, and to protect religion so well that theology occupied, more and more, a position of dignified but somewhat lonesome aloofness. If now we are told that a proposition can be true in science and false in metaphysics, and vice versa, one really can not be blamed for detecting in the 'fringe' a feeling of prophecy. ”

“ The philosophy of Spinoza is as clearly an adjustment to the emotional values of his world as were the deeds of Saint Francis. Even Kant, who nearly always displays the ideal philosophical temper, lets one see that his course is determined by his valuation of moral character. ”

“ The primitive realism which is such a sturdy growth within us causes us to try to mean something very different by truth, error and validity. But when we get these facts into our experience, what we have is experience, with the fidential character. ”

“ I ask above for the motives which makes metaphysics insist upon the existential judgment, and I have indicated certain emotional needs which demand this satisfaction. Actually, however, the existential judgment is so characteristic of metaphysics because until very recently it was equally characteristic of science, and the motives which are driving it out of science have not yet made themselves felt in philosophy. This critical attitude in science has not yet become very general, but we can not doubt that it will become rapidly authoritative. ”

“ If I seize some object, a book, with both hands, the book which I grasp with my right hand is the same book as the one I grasp with my left. There is for the experience of grasping simply the one experienced object, because the touch-sensations of both hands, and the visual elements in the total perception are all brought together in one experience. ”

“ Explanations of experience are, therefore, coming more to be determined by the other chief factor in the natural view of the world, namely, the fellow being. Reality must be so understood as to be an adequate ground for the social aspect of experience. From the side of this interest, the dramatic aspects of human experience and human history are cared for. Moral and esthetic experience, the problem of evil, personality, are important headings. ”

“ It seems hardly possible that the concept of God should appear in modern philosophical literature with the complete fidential character which it appears to have had with Descartes and Spinoza. But that does not mean that we have learned to question the existence of a ground of things back of phenomena. Philosophy still regards the visible and tangible world as a secondary quality of endless variety. ”

“ But the material outer world is probably able to take care of itself even without the help of the fellow being; our reality- functions see to it that the world remains, even in idealism, a transcendent object, so far as any one finite mind is concerned. ”

“ This motive is contributed by the outer world character of experience. Another important motive there is in the fellow being, not so much in the external aspect he presents by appearing in the outer world, as by his being a fellow. As such, he is the condition of all our ethical attitudes, and of everything that gives the deeper value and significance to life. His presence lays a significant demand upon the outer world. External objects must be the same objects for him and for me. That is made the test of their reality as external objects. ”

“ And as for the few who might make this reply in all sincerity, some of these would save the transcendent character of Calcutta by declaring it to be an object in an eternal experience, and the others would, I am sure, feel that something was wrong, and that the transcendent character should be gotten back somehow. The 'dualistic discontent' makes itself felt when we undertake to define the world as a series of dissolving views. ”

“ There is no test of truth other than the removal of the problematic character from the content about which a true judgment is desired,— and the possession of truth, as a case of experience, can be in no wise distinguished from the possession of a deproblematized content. If this content happen to break out into a problem again, then the temporary peace and satisfaction of the will must be pronounced an error. ”

“ Metaphysically, idealism is opposed most ordinarily to materialism; in the widest sense it is the opposite of what may be called the mechanical and atheistic view of the universe, whatever special form that may take. Is self-conscious thought with its ideal ends,—the True, the Beautiful, the Good,—the self-realizing End that works in changes and makes it evolution? ”

“ In cases of alternating personality, in what intelligible empirical sense is the world of one of these selves the same world as that of the other self? The illustration of grasping the book shows that any external object can be kept one by defining it as the object within one experience. ”

“ Of course the actual fate of philosophical systems depends upon the degree to which they can win the other type of validity, by commending themselves to students of philosophical problems. Every philosophy seeks this type of validity and is fortunate to the degree that it secures it, but the validity it aims at is of another type, although practically this validity may have to submit to the same test as the other one. ”

“ The question as to the molecular constitution of reality is a question which seeks not acquaintance with phenomena, but a knowledge of something underlying phenomena, and expressing itself through phenomena. The question as to the validity of a metaphysical judgment is a question whether the judgment fulfills the metaphysical purpose or not, and this purpose is not universal verifiability, but a true report about the ultimate ground and cause of experience. ”

“ In the former case metaphysics becomes a natural science, in the latter case it is difficult to see that metaphysics remains anything at all. For that which is removed from all possible observation is no longer accepted without question as existing, and this concept of reality is itself a working hypothesis used, it may be said, to make phenomena intelligible, by which is meant, however, to make them dramatically interesting. ”

“ When we read the pages of certain philosophers of the past we can not doubt that to thera some objects were assured experienced facts, which to-day have to be proved by elaborate dialectical methods. Thus Descartes appeals to his idea of God as to the idea of something that could not possibly be doubted in any moment of sanity. ”

“ Metaphysics, as we saw, is the response to interests of rather different types. It undertakes to satisfy certain emotional needs of a religious or semireligious character, and it ministers to the purely intellectual and esthetic delight in noble ideal constructions. To the former of these two classes of interest, the existential judgment must always be indispensable. It is not evident why it should be indispensable to the latter. The latter type of mind is ever admitted to be the more scientific of the two. ”

“ For the example of science in such ways is authoritative. Metaphysics has become very eager to be 'scientific,' in all possible ways, and there is no reason to suppose that the methods of science will be less alluring than formerly. ”

“ The realistic bias so characteristic of our human nature demands permanence and stability. Moreover, one might feel obliged to be consistent and thoroughgoing, and then our fellows would dissolve away together with the views to which they belong, and against this we set a subborn face. ”

“ Calcutta would still be real under these circumstances, for it would remain 'a permanent possibility of sensation.' If the inhabitants return or come to life again, they will perceive Calcutta, and Calcutta was there all the time waiting to be perceived. ”