External object

“ The original perception of an object of sight, is more complete, lively, and distinct, than that of any other external sense: and for that reason, an idea or secondary{384} perception of a visible object, is more distinct and lively than that of any other object. ”

“ But yet a little consideration will show us that an activity of the mind, and an activity according to certain Ideas, is requisite in all our knowledge of external objects. We see objects, of various solid forms, and at various distances from us. ”

“ Our knowledge of external objects is founded upon experience, which furnishes facts; the comparison of these facts establishes relations, from which the belief that like causes will produce like effects leads to general laws. ”

“ If the above definition is accepted, all our data for knowledge of the external world must be of the nature of percepts. The belief in external objects is a learned reaction acquired in the first months of life, and it is the duty of the philosopher to treat it as an inference whose validity must be tested. ”

“ The one fuses or crystallizes external objects and circumstances in the medium of human feeling and passion; the other is concerned with the relations of objects and circumstances among themselves, including in them all the facts of human consciousness, and with the discovery and classification of these relations. ”

“ First, we suppose external objects to resemble internal perceptions. I have already shown, that the relation of cause and effect can never afford us any just conclusion from the existence or qualities of our perceptions to the existence of external continued objects: and I shall farther add, that even though they could afford such a conclusion, we should never have any reason to infer that our objects resemble our perceptions. ”

“ Even those attributes of an object which might seem with greatest propriety to be called states of the object itself, its sensible qualities, its colour, hardness, shape, and the like, are in reality (as no one has pointed out more clearly than Brown himself) phenomena of causation, in which the substance is distinctly the agent, or producing cause, the patient being our own organs, and those of other sentient beings. ”

“ We refer objects to different points of space, and regard them as outside of, and distinct from, each other: to say that the instinct by which we so regard them is a condition of the subject and of sensible experience is to establish a sterile fact. The difficulty is in knowing why we have this instinct; why the representation of an extension is in our soul; and why this subjective extension in a simple being should be presented to our perception as the image of something external and really extended. ”

“ In both doctrines it is assumed that the phenomenon which takes place in us when we see or touch an object, and which we regard as an effect of that object, or rather of its presence to our organs, must of necessity resemble very closely the outward object itself. ”

“ According to the view that I am suggesting, a physical object or piece of matter is the collection of all those correlated particulars which would be regarded by common sense as its effects or appearances in different places. On the other hand, all the happenings in a given place represent what common sense would regard as the appearances of a number of different objects as viewed from that place. All the happenings in one place may be regarded as the view of the world from that place. I shall call the view of the world from a given place a "perspective." ”

“ That part of my objects which belongs to me alone is their psychical side; that which belongs to all of us and is the object of ever new experience is the physical object. As a physicist, in the widest sense of the word, I have to ignore the objects in so far as they are my ideas and have to consider the stones and the stars, the inorganic and the organic objects, as they are outside of me, material for every one. ”

“ The qualities of a body, we have said, are the attributes grounded on the sensations which the presence of that particular body to our organs excites in our minds. But when we ascribe to any object the kind of attribute called a Relation, the foundation of the attribute must be something in which other objects are concerned besides itself and the percipient. ”

“ We are trying, in advance of a finished conception of the Being of the object, to define the essential relation that makes an object the object of that particular idea. And as the idea, precisely so far as it intends truth at all, is through and through a selection, a choosing of an object, I ask what reason you can have to say that the object is the object of the idea, unless you observe somehow that the idea chooses for itself this object. ”

“ These objects are what we actually see in sensations of sight, what we actually hear in sensations of sound, and so on; and they lead us to suppose or infer physical objects—that is, objects that do not depend upon our experience for their existence, but whose existence is the cause of our having the experience. The process by which we infer the nature of the external world from our felt experience is logical. It includes perceiving, conceiving, thinking or reasoning. ”

“ In other words, looked at from one point of view, such a consciousness regards the wide expanse of reality according to that association of cause and effect, object and means, and all other categories of the mode of reflection which deals with finite conditions and the objective world generally, that is, the limited categories of science or the understanding. ”

“ All our sensational or presentative material is given in certain relations or connections, including the relation of coexistence, or coinherence in a substance, of the several qualities of a thing. Thus the several parts of an extended body stand in certain spatial relations one to another, one part being situated to the right of the other, and the object as a whole being above and behind another object, and so forth. ”

“ These examples show that the property of being the situation of a sense-object for a given percipient event is in some respects a trivial property of an event. Yet, in other respects, it is very important; namely, it is important for the consciousness associated with the percipient event. The situations of sense-objects form the whole basis of our knowledge of nature, and the whole structure of natural knowledge is founded on the analysis of their relations. ”

“ I attempted to show that what we call a material object is not itself a substance, but is a system of particulars analogous in their nature to sensations, and in fact often including actual sensations among their number. In this way the stuff of which physical objects are composed is brought into relation with the stuff of which part, at least, of our mental life is composed. ”

“ Thus scientific objects are the concrete causal characters, though we arrive ‘at them by a route of apprehension which is a process of abstraction. In the same way, what, in the form of a sense-object, is concrete for our awareness, is abstract in its character of a complex of relations between scientific objects. ”

“ If you agree that the perceptual object is not an idea within me, but that percept and thing, as indistinguishably one, are really experienced there, outside, you ought not to believe that the merely thought-of object is hid away inside of the thinking subject. The object of which I think, and of whose existence I take cognizance without letting it now work upon my senses, occupies its definite place in the outer world as much as does the object which I directly see. ”

“ Hence, the external world is but an assemblage of causes, corresponding to our sensations real and possible. Now, in the analysis of Will, the personal force or the activity was a cause; and as the other force or matter is also a source of causes," so nature is sister to man—animated, active, and alive, like him."—p. ”

“ A physical object is the apparent character of its situation. Physical objects are found to be ‘material’ objects.
61.6 Science now intervenes with the express purpose of exhibiting our perceptions as our awareness of the characters of events and of relations between characters of events. All perceptions are included in the scope of this aim of science, namely, including abnormally perceived sense-objects and delusive perceptual objects. ”

“ Let us therefore set an object clearly before us, let us sever it in thought so far as is possible from all other objects, and we shall at once be able to determine what properties and relations are essential and what are not essential to it. ”

“ IS THE MATERIAL WORLD A MECHANISM?—So far we have concerned ourselves with certain leading problems touching the external world and the mind,—problems which seem to present themselves unavoidably to those who enter upon the path of reflection. ”

“ We may consider two natures in the external world, the one real, the other phenomenal; the first is particular and absolute, the second is relative to the being which perceives the phenomenon; by the first the world is, by the second it appears. ”

“ Every idea is either an image or a symbol—it has therefore objective397 reference, a material aspect. Every object is a synthesis of feelings—it has therefore subjective reference, a material aspect. Thus while all the evidence points to the identity of Object and Subject, there is ample evidence for the logical necessity of their ideal separation as Aspects. This I have explained as a case of the general principle which determines all distinctions—namely, the diversity in the modes of production of the products, which—subjectively—is diversity in the modes of apprehending them. ”

“ When the mind strips a material object of all its visible, sensible properties—on which its mechanical, physical and chemical changes depend—there still remains as an object of thought a something formed of parts outside parts in three dimensions of space. ”

“ But if we suppose centres of real, that is to say of spontaneous, activity, the rays which reach it, and which interest that activity, instead of passing through those centres, will appear to be reflected and thus to indicate the outlines of the object which emits them. ”

“ The features of any object that we contemplate may with intelligent judgment be divided into two classes, according as they are inherently essential, or else merely contributory, to the existence of that object as an individual entity. ”

“ If we consider the impressions of sense as the mere materials of our experience, such materials may be accumulated in any quantity and in any order. But if we suppose that this matter has a certain form given it, in the act of being accepted by the mind, we can understand how it is that these materials are subject to inevitable rules;—how nothing can be perceived exempt from the relations which belong to such a form. ”

“ Upon the whole, it appears, that our philosophers have imposed upon themselves, and upon us, in pretending to deduce from sensation the first origin of our notions of external existences, of space, motion, and extension, and all the primary qualities of body, that is, the qualities whereof we have the most clear and distinct conception. ”

“ The object of the sensuous instinct, expressed in a universal conception, is named Life in the widest acceptation; a conception that expresses all material existence and all that is immediately present in the senses. The object of the formal instinct, expressed in a universal conception, is called shape or form, as well in an exact as in an inexact acceptation; a conception that embraces all formal qualities of things and all relations of the same to the thinking powers. ”

“ When any object is presented to us, it immediately conveys to the mind a lively idea of that object which is usually found to attend it; and this determination of the mind forms the necessary connexion of these objects. ”

“ If you alter an object in your world, put out a candle, for example, when I am present, my candle ipso facto goes out. It is only as altering my objects that I guess you to exist. If your objects do not coalesce with my objects, if they be not identically where mine are, they must be proved to be positively somewhere else. ”

“ The ‘causal components’ of a physical object are the scientific objects which occupy parts of the situation of the physical object, and whose total assemblage is what constitutes the qualities which are the apparent character which is the physical object apparent in the situation. ”

“ Knowledge of external events, as we have seen, consists of a certain sensitivity to their presence, but not in having in or before our minds anything similar to them, except in certain abstract structural respects. Is knowledge of our own minds equally abstract and indirect? ”

“ Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here Elements many, common to many worlds, Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word From one another differs both in sense And ring of sound—so much the elements Can bring about by change of order alone. But those which are the primal germs of things Have power to work more combinations still, Whence divers things can be produced in turn. ”

“ The ‘finding of resemblances and differences among objects that often occur to us’ implies that each object is distinguished as one and abiding from manifold occurrences, in the way of related feelings, in which it is presented to us, and that these accordingly are regarded as representing permanent relations or qualities of the object. ”

“ When once this arbitrary abstraction of some one part or aspect of the stream of events from its context has been made, we are compelled to recognise the existence of the context from which we have abstracted by saying that any effect may enter into or form part of a variety of different larger effects, according to the nature of the context in which it occurs. ”

“ But what is to prevent us from classifying the substance of mind, when the fundamental idea of its substance is that it is something which resembles no other substance, but constitutes a class or description of being that stands entirely by itself, and in which, for a knowledge of its properties we distinguish its properties from those of any other substance? ”