Preconception

“ We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. ”

“ Suppose, as the result of introspection, you arrive at a belief which you express in the words: “I am now believing that mind is different from matter”. What do you know, apart from inferences, in such a case? First of all, you must cut out the word “I”: the person who believes is an inference, not part of what you know immediately. In the second place, you must be careful about the word “believing”: I am not now concerned with what this word should mean in logic or theory of knowledge; I am concerned with what it can mean when used to describe a direct experience. ”

“ A pre-concept, therefore, is that kind of higher recept which is not to be met with in any brute; but which occurs in the human being after surpassing the brute and before attaining self-consciousness. Be it observed that in thus coining the words higher recepts or pre-concepts, I am not in any way prejudicing the case of my opponents; I am merely marking off a certain territory of ideation which has now for the first time been indicated. ”

“ The term conception, we have seen, applies not only to those combinations of ideas, which we call the ideas of external objects, but to those combinations which the mind makes for its own purposes.
It thus appears, that the word CONCEPTION is a generical name, like CONSCIOUSNESS; but less comprehensive. We call ourselves conscious, when we have any sensation, or any idea. We say that we conceive, only when we have some complex idea. It remains to be inquired, whether by saying we conceive, or have a conception, we mean any thing whatsoever beside having an idea. ”

“ Now, this is admitted by all my opponents who understand the psychology of the subject. Moreover, they allow that if once this chasm of predication were bridged, there would be no further chasm to cross. For it is universally acknowledged that, from the simplest judgment which it is possible to make—and, therefore, from the simplest proposition which it is possible to construct—human intelligence displays an otherwise uninterrupted ascent through all the grades of excellence which it afterwards presents. Here, therefore, we had carefully to consider the psychology of predication. ”

“ But, as the problem we are about to be engaged with has much in common with these speculations, and as its solution has been retarded by the assumption of various false facts which have invariably been permitted to mingle with them, we must, in a few words, strike at the root of these spurious facts, and, employing a more accurate observation, we will then bring forward, purified from all irrelevant admixture, that great question of psychology—how, or in what circumstances, does Consciousness come into operation? ”

“ Whatever view we adopt of the psychological nature of Belief, it is necessary to distinguish between the mere suggestion, to the mind of a certain order among sensations or ideas such as takes place when we think of the alphabet, or the numeration table and the indication that this order is an actual fact, which is occurring, or which has occurred once or oftener, or which, in certain definite circumstances, always occurs; which are the things indicated as true by an affirmative predication, and as false by a negative one. ”

“ The observation and description of the facts of consciousness, then, is based directly on the fact that experience, as the psychologist deals with it, possesses a focus and margin. Nature as conceived by the physical sciences presents no such distinction. The facts are what they are, and their character as focal or marginal, as clear or obscure, depends altogether upon their relation to an intelligence. Or we may say that if the facts of experience were always focal and never marginal, it would never occur to us to speak of consciousness as we do at present. ”

“ How can a distinction that is actual independently of the mind's analysis of the reality be other than real? Is not predication a work of the mind? And must not the conditions on which reality verifies the predication be determined by the mind? ”

“ Now, all foresight of phaenomena, and power over them, depend on knowledge of their sequences, and not upon any notion we may have formed respecting their origin or inmost nature. We foresee a fact or event by means of facts which are signs of it, because experience has shown them to be its antecedents. We bring about any fact, other than our own muscular contractions, by means of some fact which experience has shown to be followed by it. ”

“ From this, it necessarily follows, that between none of our ideas is the association more intimate and intense, than between antecedent and consequent, in the order of events. Whenever we perceive an event, the mind instantly flies to its antecedent. I hear words in the street; event: some one, of course, is making them; antecedent. My house is broken, and my goods are gone; event: a thief has taken them; antecedent. This is that remarkable case of association, in which the combination is inseparable; a case of so much importance in explaining some of the more mysterious phenomena of thought. ”

“ In other words, in so far as their statement of facts is true, they take up a wrong question, inasmuch as they explain to us the origin of our sensations when they ought to be explaining to us the origin of our consciousness of sensations, or the notion of self which accompanies them. Or, again, supposing that they take up the right question; then their statement of facts is false, inasmuch as their assumption that our consciousness of sensation falls under the law of causality is totally unfounded, and may be disproved by an appeal to a stricter and more accurate observation. ”

“ In other words, it must be admitted that long before a human mind is sufficiently developed to perceive relations as related, or to state a truth as true, it is able to perceive relations and to state a truth: the logic of recepts is here concerned with those higher receptual judgments which I have called pre-conceptual, and is able to express such judgments in verbal signs without the intervention of true (i.e. introspective) self-consciousness. ”

“ The metaphysician, fully admitting the distinction we have been insisting on, may say, "but this discrimination is itself a mere analysis of mind. The 'state' of which the being is conscious is mind; and the fact of consciousness, with the being to whom it belongs, is also mind. ”

“ On the other hand, a traditional doctrine, which has won for itself no small hearing in psychology, regards the volitional, or active, side of our consciousness, not merely as a fact in itself, but as a cause of other facts, both physical and mental. From this point of view, the distinction between intellect and will acquires a fresh importance, and declines to be reduced to that mere distinction of aspects which we have emphasized in the foregoing account. ”

“ In the time to come it will be necessary to support your statements in order to demonstrate that your perceptive faculties are now in a normal condition. Are you sure that your conceptions of these results are justified by normal perception? May you not be in an exalted state of mind that hinders clear perception, and compels you to imagine and accept as fact that which does not exist? ”

“ In any case the psychological distinction between a brute and a man consists in the latter being able to mean a proposition; and the kind of mental act which this involves is technically termed a “judgment.” Predication, or the making of a proposition—whether by gesture, tone, speech, or writing,—is nothing more nor less than the expression of a judgment; and a judgment is nothing more nor less than the apprehension of whatever meaning it may be that a proposition serves to set forth. ”

“ But the consciousness is not conclusive as to the conformity of the perception with the existing fact, nor as to any inference which I may draw from the sensation. One may have as full and decided perception of what is not, as of what is; and the liability to erroneous inferences from our sensations is a matter of daily experience. ”

“ He points out how readily, owing to the ambiguous term “consciousness,” “we confound experience with knowledge”; but holds that experience is the wider term. “Knowledge must fall within experience, and experience extend beyond knowledge. Thus I am not left to infer my own being from my knowing.... Objective reality is immediately ‘given,’ or immediately ‘there,’ not inferred.” But the subjective reality is not immediately given, immediately there. ”

“ In other words in sense-perception and conception we have already, as in self-conscious thought, the necessary distinction between the perceiving, conceiving and thinking Ego and the object of perception, conception, and thought. ”

“ In other words, whatever forms part of presentation, will, or emotion, must in some sense and to some degree possess reality and be a part of the material of which reality, as a systematic whole, is composed; whatever does not include, as part of its nature, this indissoluble relation to immediate feeling, and therefore does not enter into the presentation, will, and emotion of which psychical life is composed, is not real. The real is experience, and nothing but experience, and experience consists of “psychical matter of fact.” ”

“ The perception is not, however, something distinct from consciousness, but is consciousness. The error above noticed arises from the conception of consciousness as a sort of place, another space into which we cannot get objects from external space; the conception is a crude one, yet it often enters into psychological speculation. The perceived, that is the external, does, as a matter of fact, affect our will. ”

“ The conceptual logic supposes that conception always precedes judgment; but the truth is that sensory judgment begins and inferential judgment ends by preceding conception. The supposed triple order—conception, judgment, reasoning—is defective and false. The real order is sensation and sensory judgment, conception, memory and memorial judgment, experience and experiential judgment, inference, inferential judgment, inferential conception. ”

“ For if the alleged cases of self-development be examined it will be found, I believe, that the new truth affirms in every case a relation between the original subject of conception and some new subject conceived later on. These new subjects of conception arise in various ways. Every one of our conceptions is of something which our attention originally tore out of the continuum of felt experience, and provisionally isolated so as to make of it an individual topic of discourse. ”

“ It has been shown that there is a faculty of the mind, by which judgments and concepts of kind are produced, which has been called sensation. It is now proposed to demonstrate that there is a faculty of the mind by which judgments and concepts of form are produced which will be called perception. ”

“ For it everywhere proves the growth of predication to have been the same in the race as we have found it to be in the individual. Therefore, as in the latter case, so in the former, I now ask—Will any opponent venture to affirm that pre-conceptual ideation is indicative of judgment? Or, which is the same thing, will he venture to deny that there is an all-important distinction between predication as receptual and predication as conceptual? ”

“ We now avail ourselves of the assistance of this antagonism,—which has thus been established as fact by experience,—in order to displace the false fact generally, we might say universally, assumed in our current metaphysics, namely, that consciousness, or the fact and notion denoted by the word "I," comes into manifestation at the bidding, and under the influence, of the objects which induce the sensations accompanying it. ”

“ Thus it appears upon the whole, that every kind of opinion or judgment, which amounts not to knowledge, is deriv'd entirely from the force and vivacity of the perception, and that these qualities constitute in the mind, what we call the belief of the existence of any object. ”

“ Whether we consider a single object, or several; whether we dwell on these objects, or run from them to others; and in whatever form or order we survey them, the act of the mind exceeds not a simple conception; and the only remarkable difference, which occurs on this occasion, is, when we join belief to the conception, and are persuaded of the truth of what we conceive. ”

“ Sense-deceptions, faulty observation, distraction, exaggeration, illusion, fallacy, and error are not idle abstract fancies of the psychologist, but stern realities; and their existence emphasizes the need in the determination of truth and the maintenance of a sound rationality, of a calm, unprejudiced judgment, of an experienced and balanced intelligence, of a discerning sense for nice distinctions, of an appreciation of the circumstances under which it is peculiarly human to err. ”

“ We commonly call our observations Facts, when we apply, without effort or consciousness, conceptions perfectly familiar to us: while we speak of Theories, when we have previously contemplated the Facts and the connecting Conception separately, and have made the connexion by a conscious mental act. The real difference is a difference of relation; as the same proposition in a demonstration is the premiss of one syllogism and the conclusion in another;—as the same person is a father and a son. ”

“ But nearly the whole of every man’s life (savage or philosopher) passes in an attitude of unquestioning belief in the evidence of his senses; and it is thence that belief extends to ideas on a presumption of their representing reality. We know that a perception may be fallible, but perceptions and the comparison of perceptions in the long run overrule everything [80] else; and experimental methods consist in taking precautions against the errors of perception, and in bringing every hypothesis to the test of perception. ”