Reality

Citation preview

REALITY

REALITY BY

PAUL WEISS 1/1

Professor of Philosophy Fellow of Jonathan Edwards College Yale University

NEW

YORK

PETER SMITH

1949

COPYRIGHT, 1939, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS REPRINTED, 1949, BY PERMISSION OF

PAUL WEISS

.... . .. .. -.. ..

..

.... .. .. ..

� ► ....

..

i..

TO EVELYN WHITEHEAD

45094

I

I

PREFACE

HAVE been considerably influenced by Aristotle and Kant, among the classical writers, and Peirce and Whitehead, among the moderns. They, together 'UJith my teachers, friends, colleagues and pup,ils have provided the intellectual stimulus for this book. I am grateful to my colleague, Professor Grace de Laguna, for criticizing a draft of the second part and to my friends, Mrs. lames H. Woods and Professor Otis H. Lee, for their detailed and searching comments on the entire work. The substance as well as the form of the book has been radical,ly modified in the light of the painstaking and penetrating criti­ cisms which I have received from my wife. I owe an incalcu­ lable debt to the inspired teaching and warm friendship of Morris R. Cohen, and to the civilizing contact and vitalizing conversations of Alfred North Whitehead, teacher and friend. Try as I may, I cannot adequately express what I owe to the faith and wisdom of her to whom the book is dedicated.

P.W. April 1938

CONTENTS Preface

Vll

BOOK I. Chapter Chapter Chapter

PAGE

KNO\VLEDGE AND IGNORANCE

I: ON METHOD

II:

3

17

THE REALITY OF THE PERCEI\"ED

III: THE NATURE, THE BASIC VAJ:UETIES_. AND THE Locus OF THE PERCEPTUAL ELEMENTS

Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

lV: SYNTHESIS

V:

FROM PERCEPTION TO INQUIRY

VI: THE BASIC RATION AL DISCIPLINES

VII:

LOGIC

Chapter VIII: TOWARDS ONTOLOGY

BOOK II.

Chapter Chapter

IV: DIVISIBLE UNITIES

Chapter.

Chapter Chapter Chapter

MULTIPLICITY THE INDIVIDUAL SPACE

V: PERSISTENCE VI: TIME VII: THE UNIT OF MOTION AND CHANGE

Chapter VIII: MELLONTOLOGICAL CAUSATION Chapter Chapter Chapter Index

IX: X: XI:

14 I

PLURALITY AND PROCESS

I: II: III:

Chapter

33 72 83 99 127

THE ORGANIC TowAR.ns A SPECULATIVE M1No THE VIRTUE OF ACTION

159 176 185 192 203 218 232

45 265 2 77 288 295 2

BOOK I KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE

•

CHAPTER I

N

ON METHOD

O man is so practical, so na1ve, so brutish or so dull but that he has a philosophy. And it is no less a philosophy because it is unacknowledged or ultimately untenable, and no less h£s philosophy because it is largely inherited or acquired, instead of being deliberately formulated. Most of it he absorbs unconsciously as he grows in mind and body, as self and as man. His thoughts, his sentiments, the pattern of his activities and the bent of his interests are moulded by his society and his generation, by his relatives and his neighbors, by his habitual practices and established taboos. The burden of tradition, pieced together with an occasional invention and tinged with an emphasis of his own, peers through his speech and his acts to mark him as one who prejudges himself and his world in terms of distinc­ tions and perspectives which define the meaning of a culture rather than the nature of things as they are. This traditionalized philosophy is in a constant but sluggish flux, caught in the pattern of changing mores; none can accept it without risk of ultimate error, though few, if any, transcend it entirely. Fortunately, below it lies another, more universal and sound, but less explicit. Though few, if any, entirely envisage it, it can be denied only verbally, since it is the very substance of mankind as alive and vital. It is a stabilized, natural, universal but unexpressed philosophy. Generic, unanalyzed and unindividualized, it embodies but an occasional demarcation and distinction, providing both an expression of the inward nature of man and a blurred schema­ tization of the world that is. It is this which is the source of

4

REALITY

the basic principles employed in the different disciplines, which provides morality with one of its ultimate sanctions and functions as mysticism's subjective pole. The man of common sense is aware of holding neither of these philosophies; nor do they interest him. At most he can be made to point to them, unreflectively and unmistakably; to the one in his speech and in his actions; to the other by his amusement or annoyance at a philosophy which he supposes abandons fact or morality for an arbitrary theory. And there is wisdom in his indifference, a wisdom which is automatically his because it is the reflex of the fact that he is an individual, radically other than every other being there may be. Every man necessarily overlays the aboriginal generic outlook with experienced truths and restricted ideals which reveal the meaning of experience and the nature of being, as flavored by the results of his unique encounters and the character of his private idiosyncrasies. He thus attains to an individual perspective under the restrictions imposed by a traditionalized philosophy which determines the very syntax of his thought. This individual outlook, however, never completely satisfies him-for it isolates him from his fellows-until it has been freed of its follies to become the philosophic perspective of a mature, common-sense man. The common-sense man, full-bodied and individual, speaks at once the language of society, mankind and self. If the three cohered and if the last could stretch to cover the second or even the first, man would have found no need to change from savage to citizen, from rational animal to scientist, saint, artist or philosopher. But though his perceptions are, for the most part, accurate, and though his ideals are basically sound, they do not cover the whole of fact, they conflict with one another and eventually come into conflict with themselves. Ideals are the very substance of men, but are only occasionally and vaguely expressed in ideas, and these do not embody their full meaning; realities are the very stuff of the universe, but only some are experienced and these are felt within in ways

ON METHOD

5

which blur their import. \Vithout self-criticism, it is inevitable that felt ideals should conflict with felt realities, and known truths confused with radiant fictions. The conceptualized ideals which mirror the character of men inevitably distort their knowledge of things; the feelings provoked by a man's perception of the real necessarily infect the felt and vital character of his ideals. Sometimes the transformations con­ stitute a gain, at other times a loss, but which it is, the plain man can only surmise. The lover's hope sometimes clouds and sometimes sharpens his vision; to see the object of his affection shatters and strengthens his resolution. But though his delusions are the worn jest of those who call themselves experienced and balanced, they differ only in detail from those possessed by the fancy-free as well. There are many ways of preserving the gains and restrict­ ing the losses which accrue through the mutual infection of knowledge and ideal as exhibited in the philosophic outlook of the individual. All of these ways are the outgrowth of a basic need to isolate and systematically to extend, enrich and accu­ rately integrate what all men truly know and feel. Each cor­ rects and restricts the occurrence of the errors of individual experience through the persistent use of a principle of action, a theory or a speculative scheme. None can escape the possi­ bility of pivoting about some unsuspected naive confusion, however, unless it cuts beneath the realm of specific detail and belief to rest with the dormant, generic perspective as vivified and clarified by the vital and inescapable distinctions which every experience exemplifies. That perspective is the socialized outlook stabilized and robbed of its prejudices, the individual's view broadened and purged of its idiosyncrasies, the generic scheme specialized and used in constant and valid ways. It is a tissue of those ubiquitous features of the world and knowledge which no one can reject without abandoning the very grounds for his rejection. It is a representation of a robust, spatial and temporal world, a domain of multiple beings, animate and inanimate, organic and inorganic, isolate

6

REALITY

and related, persistent and changing, striving and quiescent, dominating and dominated, a world where men know and err, believe and feel, act and speculate. Common sense, taken as the common basic faith of mature, active men, is the unyielding confidence that the rejection of such a world, blurred and unarticulated though it be in large part, is monstrous and futile. It is to that world that one must turn to justify, if possible, and to clarify, if true, the tacit dogmas of unreflecting men regarding the nature of objects when not under surveillance, the common attitudes towards fate, spirits and the morrow, and the traditional faith in God, the soul and the Iife hereafter. Should any philosopher substitute for it another, no matter how glorious and noble, he must be deemed a failure. Yet without an acknowledgment of some specific truth, open to every man's observation or evident to every man's reason or instinct, one cannot systematically explain and understand the nature of the world, despite the fact that in outline and principle it is a native component of every man's being, but must be content instead with random and happy suggestion. Out of the welter of the discordant and questionable data offered to every man at every moment, one must somehow isolate at least one im­ movable fulcral fact about which the whole can turn and to which one can resort for test and inspiration. \Vho, aware of the power of disciplined thought and the achievements of systematic and cooperative inquiry, can avoid turning to science for the answer? The history of philosophy provides almost overwhelming testimony to the fact that the more vigorous a philosophy, the more surely is it the unmistakable though distant echo of a scientific theory, swinging from the base of some accepted hypothesis, law or result. Plato had his Pythagoras, Aristotle his Eucloxus, Bruno his Copernicus, Descartes his Galileo, and Kant his Newton. Yet whatever is permanent in their work is precisely those aspects which they freed from the pattern of contemporary thought. The philosopher must rob

ON METHOD

7

empirical facts of their specificity to make them universal, must dislocate accepted truths from their settings in limited domains so as to understand the universe in its eternal char­ acter. He cannot rest content with any empirically dis­ covered truth, not only because such a truth, by the very char­ acter of its discovery, is but hypothetically expressed and open to denial, but also because it is too narrow for his purposes and rooted in something more obvious and true. If a philoso­ phy were but the reflex of current theories and results, the next new concept and discovery would shatter it into frag­ ments; and if it attempted to make use of the material, in its own way, it would necessarily transform it in a manner justi­ fied only by something lying outside the province of science itself. A permanent philosophy must be built on something below the level of scientific thought. There is a way of reading the history of philosophic thought so as to warrant the conclusion that a true base for philosophic speculation can never be found, but only arbitrar­ ily supposed or postulated. The past is, to be sure, cluttered with discarded systems, all claiming certainty and finality. It would seem that no matter how persuasive and popular the philosopher, his principles, methods and results are soon cast aside and new ones entertained. It is almost a byword that philosophies which are made for all time last but a moment, and that it is the sciences, though immersed in the present, which persist through the ages. But to this familiar saying must be added, for completeness, the correlative observation that Greek philosophy is still robust and healthy, and that scientific theories willingly and necessarily undergo more rapid transmutation at times than do the most ob­ viously faulty of philosophic doctrines. There is little point in pressing the comparison ; though actually related as abstract whole and concrete part, the methods and express intent of both are poles asunder, and what is weakness in one is strength in the other. The multiplicity of philosophic systems is a consequence of the fact that there are multiple

8

REALITY

points from which one can move in multiple ways and still adequately characterize this complex universe in which we live. Each philosophy, worthy of the name, has caught the scheme of things entire, but because the product of a man, finite and bewildered, it is somewhat out of focus. It cannot, unfortunately, be profitably patched up from within, for since in philosophy, method and result, the structure of the system and the meaning of its parts are inseparable, nothing less than a reexamination of the whole enterprise is necessary in order to make a correction significant and intelligible. The history of philosophy is a series of finite, unique achieve­ ments, each having the form of a novel scheme, begun from a new perspective. The main endeavor of each is to correct the bias of its predecessors, without sacrificing their insights. It is, in fact, vain to hope to write a philosophy ; philosophies are always rewritten. The philosopher is not concerned with discovering more empirical facts than those he already naively knows, but in providing a systematic account of the entire universe. It is not his object to determine whether bodies move at this rate or that, but what movement is and why bodies move at all. He cares nat a whit whether the infant cries for pleasure or from pain, but what it is to be a creature that cries and does as babies do; he does not ask what the antecedents and relations between particular things may be, but what it means to be a thing, to have antecedents and be related; he is not concerned with what mortals fear, but how it is that some­ thing which is not, nevertheless has power enough to disturb their even tenor. These are questions any man can pose, though few do ask them. No acuteness of observation' no refinement of instrument, no study of the special sciences can accelerate their resolution. They can be resolved only within the embrace of a speculative, coherent system, through the progressive analysis and elaboration of what everybody already knows.

ON METHOD

9

One must begin at the point where one actually begins. This is an identical proposition, and like all identical propo­ sitions, taken at their psychological value, is simply a for­ mula for concentrating attention. It means that it is basic and obvious, not recondite and derivative data which are to provide the system with its guide, its touchstone and excuse. A heavy book, a crying child, a shooting star, these alone yield almost stuff enough to build a philosophy. Such objects, and any others which may be equally familiar and obvious to both sage and simpleton, hold every question and answer in solution. But such objects are available for theoretical purposes only so far as they are known, remem­ bered, expected, supposed, etc. , and they can be apprehended in these ways only if someone exists to apprehend them. One who inquires into the nature of the real must thus presup­ pose that there are valid ways of knowing what he unques­ tionably knows. But, on the other hand, one who seeks to know what knowing is, must presuppose that knowing is a real act of a real being in a real universe. A theory of reality, an ontology, depends for its possibility on the validity of some form of knowledge, while a theory of knowledge, an epis­ temology, depen9-s for its possibility on the fact that there are realities to be known. A system which begins with one must assume what is validated in the other; but then it must begin afresh with that other, developing, clarifying and correcting it, to achieve a rounded system of two independently devel­ oped parts, which at once support and presuppose one another. A philosophy consisting only of epistemology is myopic, unable to distinguish between the existent and the non­ existent, and incapable of determining whether it character­ ized the activities of impossible, possible or actual beings in our or in an entirely different world. On the other hand, a philosophy consisting only of ontology is unconscious, unable to know whether what it said was significant or meaningless, necessary or gratuitous. If we begin with the former, we must eventually move to the latter to certify' the existence of

REALITY

those realities which had originally been acknowledged with surety, though understood but vaguely. And if we begin with the latter, we must eventually move to the former to certify the validity of those principles which had originally been acknowledged without question and uncritically used. A theory of knowledge assumes realities whose nature is made manifest, not there, but in ontology, while the basic assump­ tions of that ontology are themselves justified only in the theory of knowledge; an ontology begins with criteria which can be evaluated only in an epistemology, whose necessary assumptions require validation from the ontology. As ontol­ ogy and epistemology necessarily find their justification in one another, a comprehensive philosophic discourse necessarily commits a petitio principii, assuming in one branch what it dissects in the other. Ideally, all philosophic procedure is circular. That is its check against dogmatism and sterility. It avoids the capriciousness involved in beginning with empty or arbitrary propositions , precisely because it is so structural­ ized that the assumptions which it makes ultimately achieve their derivation. The ontology assumed in epistemology, and conversely, is fragmentary, elusive, na·i ve ; the results of a true ont ology and epistemology are compatible with one another, richer, clearer and also systematically validated. An epistemol­ ogy following on an adequate ontology and an ontology fol­ lowing on an adequate epistemology yield a system which is not so prone to end in contradiction or confusion, or in those unbridgeable dualisms of unknowable worlds and unactualiz­ able acts of knowing which decree a philosopher's demise. If the initial assumptions of one are incompatible with the con­ clusions of the other, they must both be rectified until they finally coalesce. We can measure the growth of our under­ standing of philosophic truth by the amount we progressively shorten the gap which there originally was between the ends of our philosophic circle. A philosophy must be systematic, developed within the pattern of confining principles. But though the ideals of

ON METHOD

11

consistency, precision and clarity are most readily approached in a system modelled on that of mathematics, philosophy cannot avail itself of mathematics as a guide. Mathematical systems, as is well known, start by using certain "undefined" and thus, in some sense, ultimate material, from which every­ thing else is derived by definition and deduction. The mathe­ matician does not claim that any thing in his system is obj ectively ultimate or that what he does not define has some private virtue denied to the others; nor does he care about explaining the nature of things, but only in developing the consequences of that which he originally assumed. The prim­ itive ideas which the mathematician employs have only a systemic ultimacy-the ultimacy of not being defined in that particular system. In another system, which he could have j ust as readily adopted, these ultimates could have been derived from a different set, themselves derivatives in the first s ystem. If one uses the notion of a point without defining it, and in terms of this and other undefined notions constructs a definition of a line, in another system of equal validity the procedure could be reversed and the line taken as an ultimate in terms of which the point was defined. No one of a set of such equally well integrated systems is superior in content, importance or truth to any other. The ultimates of mathe­ matics are relative to the system chosen; they are the unana­ lyzed, not the unanalyzable, the unquestioned not the indubi­ table, systemically simple, they may nevertheless actually be complex. The philosopher tempted to imitate the pattern of systems of mathematics must then acknowledge that his supposed ultimates were arbitrarily accepted and were possible derivatives from other supposed ul timates just as justifiably or unj ustifiably chosen. Could any philosopher succeed in so mimicking mathematics, he would have succeeded in mathematicizing philosophy out of existence. No such arbi­ trarily grounded system reveals whether it has any relevance to the actual world or not, and yet, only so far as it was relevant, would it be a philosophy rather than an exercise in

12

REALITY

imagination. Nor would it help much were the philosopher to fasten on some valid ontological or epistemological "first principle" and then, with his eye on Euclid, attempt a rigorous derivation of everything else. Firstly, such a procedure would caricature the pattern of living thought, mathematical or non-mathematical, for actual reasoning is spiral in nature, beginning as it does with a vaguely apprehended truth, mov­ ing back to justifying premisses and then forward to a con­ clusion somewhat analogous to that originally entertained. And secondly, it would compel one to forego one of the basic objectives of philosophic study, the constant effort to under­ stand the inward nature of the very realities which it acknowl­ edges, and which alone warrants and makes significant the. movement to something else. Logical rigor is but a secondary virtue in the philosopher, dependent for its value on an insight into the nature of the objects which have been chosen as the topics of discourse. A philosophy is a discontinuity of inference and ins ight, sudden movements and rests, defini­ tions and metaphors, much of its power and importance being often contained in the very portions which are least clear and precise. There is more justification, then, in following the lead of those who are episodic rather than systematic in their presentations, and offer a set of descriptions and a picture o f the world, in place of an integrated, argued account. But to eschew criticism, defense and explanation is to provide, at best, material to be used by those with less insight, instead of a philosophy which itsel f reveals where wisdom ends and prejudice begins. Flashes are sometimes illuminating, but sometimes they are blinding. A philosopher should make it possible for another to discover the errors that are inevitably caught within the subtleties of his thought, and must not therefore be content with a purely descriptive account which can begin at any place and end where it wishes, moving from one problem to another as the spirit inclines. Such a procedure allows him too much freedom, permitting him to escape,

ON METHOD

against his w ill, from the necessity of being accurate. A philosophy is more a cosmic sonnet than an epic in free verse. A philosophic system is at once descriptive and integrated, dogmatic and critical, discontinuous and circular, consistent and self-validating. The goal is a systematic account, so uni­ versal and complete that there is no feature but which can be seen to be a specialization of it. In the face of such a pro­ gram there is none but must feel that he is foredoomed to failure. But it makes little difference whether one falls short, so long as mankind does not fail eventually, having been helped in the achievement of this ideal by something, no matter how little, today uncovered. The individual must content himself w ith offering a rounded system, not because it is the certain incarnation of unfailing wisdom, but because it is only by presenting what pretends to be such a system that he can make it possible for another to go beyond. Though it is the ultimate answer which we all desire, it is only a better answer than that vouchsafed us in the past with which we each individually must be content. And if we cannot ourselves provide the better answer, there is satisfaction in having made it possihle, by exploiting domains hitherto neglected or, at the very worst, by having made our errors worth the refutation. Fortunately, there are ways of testing a philosophic system from w ithin and from without. The epistemology can be checked by turning to the ontology to see whether the sup­ posed acts of knowing are consonant with the knower being in the world and whether they permit him to know it, and the ontology can be tested by turning to the epistemology to see whether the world the former portrays can be known and whether it provides the content of knowledge. This will assure, however, only that the system is internally coherent, not that it is relevant to the world, or true. There can be many mutually exclusive systems, all self-consistent. We must

14

REALI T Y

look outside to see whether it is a philosophic system and not an exercise in fantasy. To be sure that one is speaking of this world and human knowledge, no assumption or derivation must be made which conflicts with what, apart from the system, one truly knows of reality and knowing. A philosophic circle must be one which begins by assuming some na·i vely acknowledged realities and forms of judgment, and ends with a theory of knowledge or being, compatible with those assumptions, for only by remaining true to the data from which it took its start can it be significant as well as consistent. But since every system necessarily goes beyond these data in its attempt to characterize the universe in indelible, universal terms, a further test is still required. Logic is an aid, but more important is that common-sense philosophic scheme which lies at the heart of every mature man's being, an ontology and an epistemology as already together, intermixed and undistinguished, permitting of the development of many circles, all equally valid. A refusal to acknowledge this base compels one to become one of that unhappy chorus which deduces, from what it dare not assert, assertions which it is not sure it ought to believe. The acknowledgment of our common-sense philosophic outlook ! however, must be consistent with its remaining outside the system for which it is to serve as a test. The conceptualization of it yields but another philosophy, not the test of one, and thus itself requires a sanction by something lived, not con­ sciously known. I t cannot, however, serve as a check for a system except so far as there is something which brings both together without depriving them of their respective natures as concrete and abstract, lived and conceived, felt and known. To discover what discrepancy there may be be­ tween them, it is necessary to turn to moral action. The test of a philosophy is the degree of correspondence an active moral li fe manifests as holding between the coherent con-

O N METHO D

15

sciously achieved scheme of things and the common-sense philosophic perspective it attempted to make clear. Moral action, fortunately, is more than a means to un­ cover theoretical error ; it is a means of rectifying the philoso­ phy so far as that philosophy fails to express the vital mean­ ing of the felt base, and is a means of enriching the felt so far as one's feeling fails to reflect what is known. And because a philosophy is general and the aboriginal base is vague, moral action, as at once rational, bodily and particular, not only brings them together and forces t hem gradually into correspondence, but necessarily adds meaning to both which they otherwise would not have. It is through moral action that the being of a man achieves clarity and definiteness, and what he knows, individuality and intensive depth. It is moral action which at once tests, rectifies and enriches whatever philosophy we may achieve. Moral action has its corresponding theory, ethics, which forms a subdivision of ontology and has its own special epistemological problems. The formal truth of that ethics i s to be determined by the way in which it coheres with the general philosophic system, and its actual value is dependent on the degree to which it makes possible the attainment of the state of being it describes as ideal. We need an ethics to know what we shall be when a philosophy has become, through action, the yery being of a man, the ethics offering, in an abstract form, some of that detailed content which action otherwise would have to provide. As an abstract scheme of philosophy increases in detail through the subsequent conquest of diverse fields of knowledge, and as an actiYe man becomes more and more identical with what he truly knows, action gradually loses its function to enrich, to become instead the means by which one remains what he is. The mind of a completely moral being is a complete system i n which part coheres with part and the whole corresponds with the body and the world, warranting the success of prag­ matic action and providing a locus for perfection. The object

RE A L I T Y

of philosophic inquiry is to become a philosopher in fact. In this work we shall be content to attempt but the first and indispensable step in the shape of a circle of the most gen­ eralized epistemology and ontology, striving to provide a place for every detail of specialized knowledge and individual action.

CHA P TER I I

THE REAL I T Y O F THE PERCEI VED

T

I . PHENOMENALISM

H E world we take for granted in a theory of knowl­ edge is at our elbow every day and every hour-an extended field, peopled "·ith particular, qualitative, changing objects, in movement and at rest, weighted with value and fraught with promise. It is a world where some things are important, others trivial ; some strange, others familiar ; some concrete and others insubstantial. But though we begin by embracing it wholeheartedly, a few, well placed questions may make us doubt whether we can hold to it at all. For sirnplicity' s sake, let us focus on a single object in it. The book before me is a familiar thing. I believe it to be at a distance, rectangular, solid, enduring, closed, red, heavy, interesting, printed in English and sold at the corner store­ as real and as rich as other objects encountered in the past. But did I not slowly but surely learn that these other objects were little more than domiciles of disillusionment, shaped by memory, dressed in hope and fringed with decorations of my own invention? And did I not later have to abandon much o f what I had claimed for them originally? My errors are habitual, my memory faulty and my hopes fantastical. Can I then be sure now that this closed book really is printed in English and sold at the corner store? Are these not assertions whose truth is guaranteed only through a private judgment, grounded on the evidence o f an untrustworthy memory and bolstered by a misleading attitude o f expectation ? I can, perhaps, attempt to open the book or go to the corner store to convince mysel f that it has been correctly described. But

REALI T Y

such an attempt at yerification merely drives the issue back a step, for to know that it is a book that I am opening or that it is sold at the corner store, I must, even while investigating, rely upon my memory and interpret what I observe in ways which are not beyond the cavil of doubt or the guilt of previous error. And even if I could thus confirm my beliefs, I should have already granted the point at issue and con­ fessed a lack of confidence in the contention that the book is now known to have the features listed. And if confidence is now shaken, how prevent it from being weakened further ? Since the book is beyond my reach, I cannot now be sure that it is heavy. And if I must doubt whether it really is heavy, must I not, for the same reasons, also doubt whether it really is a solid ? And if I have gone so far, can I be sure that it is a book, and not one of those papier mache imitations which people with pretensions and no library sometimes use to dis­ guise the fact that they do not read ? And if I am not sure of any of these, I certainly am not sure that this before me is something that is closed, in the sense that it ever was or could be opened, that it can endure through a time or exist in a real space apart from me. Can I then really be sure that what I know is anything more than a red shape ? Isn't this all that I observe ? Could I possibly observe anything more than what I sense--experienced colors and shapes, sounds and smells, etc. ? Do I not then go beyond the evidence and run the risk of error whenever I assert the reality of anything not ex­ pressible as a concatenation of immediately experienced con­ tent ? Most of the current answers to this last question fall on one side or the other of a great cleavage which separates two strong schools of philosophy. There are some, the phenom­ enalists, of whom the positivists form a subdivision, who contend that what is truly known must be compacted out of the stuff that is obtained through the use of the different sense organs. There are others, the naive and rational realists who maintain, on the contrary, that all such non-sensory

T H E REALI TY O F T H E PERCEI V E D

19

characters as price, endurance, etc. , are to be evaluated i n the same way as are such sensory characters as color, shape, etc. For them the real is either more than sensory or not sensory at all-a realist calling himself na"ive when he thinks there are other empirical characters as obtrusive and as ob­ jective as colors and shapes, and calling himself rational when he thinks all such traits are equally illusory, the real being made of more recondite material, more amenable to reason than anything acknowledgeable in experience. All three schools are agreed that reality can be known and known without error. The phenomenalists are willing to acknowledge the reality only of a sensed color and shape ; the na·i ve realists suppose that the obj ect we now confront is truly and directly known in perception as heavy, solid and interesting as well; while the rational realists hold that the real has no other traits than those manifest to an intellect completely freed from the intrusions of a sensi tive body. The na·i ve realists defend the validity of the reports of common experience; the rational realists defend the objectivity of mathematical and scientific truths, while the phenomenal ists seek for an ex­ planation of both in terms of somethin g less dubitable than the na·i ve results of gross experience and more sensuous than the rational objects of a mere intellect could possibly be. The phenomenalists are philosophers who, for philosophic reasons, disdain philosophic speculation; unbelievers who are born and live in the temple. Their ostensible objective is to rid mankind of those notions which no experience could ever test-an end which they attempt to attain, at a stroke, by hold­ ing that the real must be defined as some compound of directly sensed content. Hidden potencies, substantial forms, prime matters, unrealized possibilities, Lockean substances, Hegelian absolutes, transcendent things, souls and Gods are rooted out as beyond the ken of man and the possibility of being. But unfortunately, everything else is negated as well. S ince all that can be, is reducible, for them, to the sensory, their realities must consist of what is now had through the

20

REA L I T Y

use of the organs, or of collections and sequences of such sensory content. The object now before us can, they think, be said to be heavy, solid and interesting only if and so far as these various traits are, at best, groups of directly observ­ able sensory characters. That position disintegrates before one's eyes. Firstly, the sense organs themselves vanish_ into sensory content, and since, for the phenomenalist, the sensory is impotent and isolate, the organs must be incapable of con­ veying sensory content to us. An epistemology which can acknowledge only sensory content has an unmediated world afloat in the nowhere, possessed by nothing, given to no one, unknown and unknowable. Secondly, the fact that different traits are resident in or constitute a single object is not itself a fact of sensible observation. The different traits are ob­ served in different ways or at different times, and must there­ fore, according to the phenomenalists' principles, be distinct from and indifferent to one another. Either then the real has a non-sensory unitary nature, or the supposed unity of the different traits is specious, imposed from without, not known but assumed. In either case, the phenomenalists must deny that the senses enable one to know real objects possessed of multiple characters. Thirdly, the character of being observ­ able is not itself observable. There is nothing in the object as now open to the passive vision of the phenomenalists, were vision possible at all, which can reveal the object as capable of being tested for weight, solidity, etc. To acknowl­ edge an observable, not now observed, is to acknowledge a potentiality, and thus what is unobservable through the senses. We cannot provide a theory limiting ourselves to the phenom­ enal world without in that theory transcending that world and holding for true what no one can sense. And i f one goes so far, he cannot avoid going further, for, fourthly, each color, shape, sound, etc., is possessed of a potentiality of its own. A rectangle, for example, must, from a certain angle, look like a diamond. It is part of the meaning of "rectangle" that it should present a series of different shapes under di£-

THE REALITY O F THE P E R C EI V ED

21

ferent conditions, so that to know a rectangle i s to know non­ sensuous potentialities. If the ultimate units of fact and knowledge are merely momentary sensed contents without potencies, they are not identifiable with any object of ex­ perience, nor specifiable by any term of daily discourse. The initial material of knowledge is either more than what could be sensed, or it is ineffable. S ince the phenomenalists reject the first alternative, they must accept the second and hold that what cannot be experientially and articulately known alone is real. Some phenomenalists 1 howcveL do not identify the real with an ineffable, inchoate stuff, but with that stuff as united with an intelligible form. The foregoing account of the dis­ integration of phenomenalism they would describe as a some­ what truncated but valid analysis of the objects of common knowledge, an analysis which reveals that the only aspect of those objects that is presented or given to us is a sensory matter, without structure, form, law or intelligibility. Since they take the rea1 t o be inttl:igible, structuralized and subject to law, they conclude that there must be another factor, a principle of intelligibility or meaning which, together with the given matter, is constitutive of whatever there may be. These thinkers, whose views have been most persuasively ex­ pressed by C. I. Lewis, are somewhat removed from the other phenomenalists who take the real to be only sensory in na­ ture, but they are in agreement \vith them in affirming that the real must have a sensuous base and be capable of being met with in experience. Their position may be most compendi­ ously described as a simplified Kantianism. Though thei r forms of intelligibility are not as limited in number nor as universal in scope as those of Kant, and though they suppose, in contrast with him , that any form can always be supplanted by another, s ince it is more or less arbitrarily imposed on a foreign content, they agree with him in holding that the forms originate in the mind of man, have a status independent of the unformed matter, and that the two together constitute

22

REALI TY

the experienceable, knowable and real world. Yet, if what­ ever exists or is known is either a given matter, an imposed form or a combination of the two, how is it possible to dis­ tinguish the unintelligible stuff from the insubstantial prin­ ciples of intelligibility ? \Vhatever distinction there may be between them must, according to the theory, either be given, be an imposed form or a combination of the two. Yet the dis­ tinction between matter and form cannot be given, without at the same time, on phenomenalistic principles, being un­ intell igible. Nor can it be a form, without being empty of content, with no necessary relation to that on which it is ap­ plied. Nor finally, can it be both together without being an arbitrary product of an irrelevant form and a biind matter. The theory cannot thus be made intelligible, according to its own principles, without being defined as arbitrary and as with­ out those virtues which are attributable to its denial. Further, since all intelligibility, structure and law , by this theory, has its source in the mind of man, it must be due to him that the stars run in definite courses and that the history of the world takes the shape it does-an intriguing doctrine were it not for the fact that we are embroiled in situations beyond our control. No fiat of ours wi11 convert the book we now see into a CO\V ; we cannot carve out the world in accordance with our fancies. The most adamantine resolution to take the world according to one's whim, breaks before the insistent cry of a child. It is the real cry of a real infant that drives us on, not a formless somewhat which we arbitrarily interpret to be the cry of a babe. If it is we who provide the intelligible structure of the universe, it must be ourselves in our uncon­ scious moments and as possessed of powers and intentions which offer our conscious selves things we do not want and cannot alter. This is not a tenable point of view for a phe­ nomenalist, for he has already defined as unreal anything which is not experientially observable. It can be entertained onl y by one who, like Schopenhauer and Bergson, can some-

T H E REALI T Y O F T H E P E R C E I V E D

23

how creep underneath experience to find the riddle of the universe in something beyond all possible thought. This second variety of phenomenalism provides a possible beginning for a theory of perception but, unfortunately, con­ tradicts itself in rejecting the reality and priority of the very objects to which it must look to ground and warrant its dis­ tinctions and principles. 1 It is an epistemology which is forced to admit the truth of some other theory of knowledge, i.e. , one which can assert that epistemic ultimates are derivatives from perceptual objects, themselves more than arbitrary com­ binations of bare matters and private forms. A theory of knowledge must certify, not deny, the reality and objectivity of the data from ,vhich it derives its concepts and principles, and thus must hold that the perceived is no arbitrary product of a knower working on the unknown, capable of being dismissed by a shift in assumption. The perceived must be explained as a consequence of the use of components ob­ tained from itself--components which are not irrelevant to one another, nor adequately classified when divided into empty forms and blind matters. 2 . RATIONAL AND NAIVE REALISM

Perceived reality cannot consist only of sensory stuff. If it were merely sensed, it would be an inchoate unknowable, less than anything that could be understood; if it is known it must be freighted with meaning, something more than the content that coul d be presented to a sense organ. Reality as percep­ tual ly known must be intelligible, not because an irrelevant empty form is imposed on it, but because an intelligible form is in fact integral to it. 1 Lewis distinguishes between "pre-analytic" and "post-analyt ic" data, the former correspond ing, apparently, to the obj ects of daily experience before they have been analyzed by the philosopher. B ut as his post-analytic elements do not al low the acknowledgment of his obdurate, preformed pre-analyt ic obj ects. his system proh ibits the acceptance of the very data out of which it consciously arises.

24

REALITY

Hounded by the fact o f error which besets common sense with the pertinacity of original sin, the rational realists, in an attempt to purge our supposed knowledge o f all that can­ not withstand the scrutiny o f a dispassionate intellect, en­ deavor to approach the question from another side. A true knowledge o f the real, they contend, is knowledge that is certain, a knowledge beyond the reach of any scepticism or doubt. Since the world of daily experience is mediated through the use of deceptive, idiosyncratic sense organs and is dis­ torted bv the fantasies o f an unreliable memory and a mis­ leading �ttitude o f expectation, and since the intelligible is, for them, a sort of reified mathematical formula, open to the reason of an infallible mathematician turned philosopher, an object of experience which was at once sensory and intelligible would be, they think, a mixture of dream and reality, a kind of non-existent existent, somehow hovering bet,veen the true and the false. Inverting the phenomenalistic program, they therefore throw every sensory character into a passive kind of imagination which dallies only with unrealities, and iden­ ti fy the real as the unmistakable object of a clear reason. In the endeavor to substantiate the thesis that all knowledge de­ rived from any source but reason is unreliable, they subject all sources o f knowledge to a rigorous course o f doubting ; nothing ohtainable through any medium, that had even once been found to yield untrustworthy content, is to be admitted as possibly. real. But this course o f doubting, which is sup­ posed to sweep away every object except that known by a clear reason, and which ends by denying the reality o f every experienceable character whatsoever, not only incorporates, as Peirce remarked, an inadequate theory of philosophic method, but involves the affirmation of the very kind of facts it calls into question. If one examines the elementary interro­ gations with which we confronted our beliefs regarding the object before us, or better, i f one rereads the first few para­ graphs of Descartes' fi rst Meditation, it becomes strikingly mani fest that reasonable doubts regarding the reality of the

T H E REALITY O F THE P E RC E I V ED

25

objects of ordinary experience must be framed in terms of an unquestioned assurance of the reliability of much of our daily knowledge. Descartes, for example, remarks that "it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are deceptive" and goes on to say that "there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep. " 2 But how does one know that the senses sometimes deceive and that there is no sure sign enabling one to distinguish a dream from a per­ ceived obj ect ? Certainly no mere definition of the nature of the sense organs or the act of dreaming or being awake is sufficient. If, from the definition of the senses, we can deduce that they are deceptive, or if, from the definition of dreaming and perceiving, we can deduce that their obj ects cannot be distinguished, we shall have ground for doubting the reality of anything we perceive-but unfortunately we shall, in our initial definitions , have already begged the question at issue. If we do not want merely to define various agencies of sup­ posed knowledge as worthless, we must adduce evidence of their untrustworthiness. To show that the senses are un­ reliable, Descartes has to trust to his memory of the fact that they have misled him in the past; and to know that a dream can be mistaken for a reality, he has to be awake, trusting to his memory of the nature o f his dreams. If his memory were not infallible, he could not be certain that "it has some­ times been proved to me that these senses are deceptive" or know that "there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep. " But memory is not and cannot be infallible, since it testifies to its own untrustworthiness. Like Epimenides, the Cretan, who said all Cretans were liars, and by thus lying showed that some, but not all Cretans were liars, a memory which can report that the reports of memory cannot be trusted, is one which is neither completely infallible nor completely fallible. But 2

Haldane and Ross translation, Vol. I, pp. 145, 146.

26

REALITY

such a memory does not reveal which of its reports are to be trusted, for otherwise by scrutinizing it care£ ully, we could without further ado distinguish its truths from its falsehoods, and it would never be able to deceive. Having only an unre­ liable memory to go on we should not, according to Des­ cartes' own principles, trust it when it says that our senses deceived us in the past, or when it testifies that the content of our present wakefulness is like that of our dreams. Since it is fallible memory that provides the rationalist with his evi­ dence, his principle "that we are not to trust entirely to any­ thing by which we have once been deceived," instead of being the first step of philosophy, is one ,vhich must prevent him from going further. To make rationalism rational, one must first accept its program, that the primary object of philosophic inquiry is a first principle that could not possibly be denied. Then one must hold that the principle can only be found in the crevice of a supposed rational soul which has somehow been kept free from the taint of error. Evidence of actual error is now no longer necessary. In this mood the rationalist can and does reject every non-intellectual mode of knowledge as a mode which might possibly mislead. But even if his entire pro­ gram be accepted, it will not be possible to deny reality to the kind of elements which function as component parts of all possible perceptual errors. The acknowledgment of possible or actual perceptual error involves the acknowledgment of the real ity of the kind of elements out of which errors might be composed. Only entities of the same genus necessarily exclude one another from the same domain ( red and blue, e.g., not red and triangularity, necessarily prevent one an­ other from being resident in the same obj ect) so that to know something as conceivably erroneous is to know it as having the same generic nature as the reality which excludes it, and thus as having specific f ea tures other than, yet similar in kind to those of the excluding reality. Generically, the erroneous is the real ; it is its specificity which alone is ex-

T H E REA LIT Y O F T H E PER C EI V E D

27

eluded by an equally or more specific real. ( One might, of course, hold that the real is in fact generic in nature and that the erroneous is the result of sptcifying it, not incorrectly, but at all. In that case, however, the real as intelligible would have to be indeterminate, and the sensuous defined as a possible specification of it. But then the more clearly and distinctly I knO\v, the more surely I know falsely, a consequence not only absurd but rejected by the rationalistic realists as well. ) The properties of a hook, now wrongly attributed to a box, are excluded by the presence of a determinate, existent box, and if the former properties are sensory, quantitative, formal, intelligible, spatial or temporal, so are the latter. It is because the real has sensory qualities that it can exclude the presence of those definite sensory elements which are erroneously attributed to it. A rat ionalist thus affirms that the real is sensory whenever he urges that the senses deceive. To admit that known reality is sensory as well as intelligible is to abandon rationalistic for naive realism. Naive realism affirms with phenomenalism that the sensory is real, and with rationalistic realism that the sensory has the same status as any other perceptual element, di ffering from both only in that it accepts what they \vish to deny. In common with the rational­ ists, the na·i ve realists assume that the erroneous is completely other than the real, but instead of holding wi th them that the experienced is at once erroneous and unreal, they take it to be completely real, free from any possible taint of error. As a consequence, an occasional naive realist who has carried his convictions to their ultimate conclusions, has found himself forced to assert that the world contains ghosts and unicorns, visual books located where we discover that only empty physical boxes could have been, and tables where, in the next moment, we can find only their mi rror images. The reality of the kind of thing that could be met with in daily experience is affirmed ; but the price that is paid is the desperate false­ hood that daily errors are external existents. The naive realists give up that world of daily knowledge, in whose de-

28

REALI T Y

fense they had enrolled, for one in which even follies are external facts, and the objects of general experience are no more real than the objects of a momentary hallucination. Though we in fact perceive realities, as the naive realists jn­ sist, the actual specific nature of any real may be different from what it is now perceptually taken to be. I n any given case the characters, attributed to the object judged, may not be possessed by it. Though colors are real, the green I now attribute to the book may not belong to it in fact. I n opposition to the na1ve realists one must insist that it is sometimes erroneous to perceive a book as green. But despite the rationalistic realists, one must then urge that that is not because colors are unreal but because the book has in fact some other equally specific color, unequivocally manifest to us only in its generic form.

3. IDEALISM AND lRRATION ALISM The perceptually erroneous is a result of man's activities and has the same kind of constituents as the perceptually veridical. It does not, however, follow, as some idealists sup­ pose, that both the erroneously and veridically perceived are therefore pure creations of mind. The perceived, as distorted by error, is a determinate object, depending on the knower only for its specificity-its occurrence and generic nature being provided by a real external object. I f the entire world were a mere creation of mind, the objects of error would be too; but if the known exists apart from the act of knowing it-as thought and minds themselves, even for the idealist, must-the objects of perceptual error cannot be pure fictions. Perceptual errors are distortions of something real, and thus have an aspect which is actual apart from any knower. \Ve do not know with certainty exactly what the object before us is ; but we do know with certainty that it is some­ t�ing which now con fronts us and which we can wrongly characterize. I f our errors permeate experience, it can only be because the real is had in a guise which is receptive of our

T H E R E A L I TY O F T H E P E RC E I V E D

29

follies. If the real has none of the traits we ascribe to it, it is at least designatable, and comes to us with a trait capable of receiving erroneous determinations. To know what errors can be made regarding it, is already to know something of its nature. One can question the objectivity of any character of a perceived object, but such doubts only go to support the truth that the real is partly embodied in the perceived in the shape of a present, generic, sensory, intelligible object, speci­ fied by us truly or falsely. Because perceptual errors embody a generic fact, their objects can appear in real relations to the rest of the world. The hallucinations of the mad and the drugged, to take ex­ treme cases, are not isolate phenomena floating in a void, but aberrant events possessed of an element of stabiJity and objectivity, sufficient to enable them to be related to real objects. The man in delirium tremens doesn't see demons in an emptiness ; he finds them climbing on his real bed and dancing on his real chest ; phenomena which are possible only because the aberrant mind has turned the real and generic features of present objects into specific fantastic shapes. He sees demons on the bed because, being drugged, he misinter­ prets by incorrect specification, under the influence perhaps of the past, some real experienced object actually related to the bed. If our perceptions are erroneous, they contain a specified element which, as excluded by the objectively real, has no other domicile but our minds, the generic character being untouched by the false determination ; if our perceptions are veridical, the specifications provided by us yield an object which is the real as present and known, and thus as at once outside and inside the mind. \Ve must, with the rationalists, recognize that the erroneous is man's contribution to the world's goods ; otherwise we would no longer be able to relate the true to the real and identify the false with the subjective. And with the na·ive realists, we must recognize that the hallucinatory has the same kind of constituents as the real; otherwise we would have to

v

30

REALITY

suppose that it bore a label testi fying to its own untrust­ worthiness, and like a bad counterfeit was incapable o f deceiving the wary. And finally, with the phenomenalists, we must hold that the real is perceived, for otherwise we would have to suppose that no valid perceptual evidence could ever be produced in support of any fact. \Vhether true or false, a perception always embodies a meaning contributed by us within a generic framework contributed by the object, the contributed meaning serving to hide the specific articulatable nature of the perceptual real from us whenever we commit an error, but merging, in veridical perception, with the ob­ jective fact. The generic perceptual datum is always in the mind and outside it as well, while the specific percE-ption is always in the mind, but outside it as well only when one perceives truly. The perceived must have been made determinate by the perceiver and be capable of being viewed by him as a real obj ect. Otherwise we wou Id never make an error or be oblivious to the fact that we had made it. The perceived, however, is more than a nature ; it is something present. If it were not, it could never be a perceptual fact, but only a concept or a fancy. The perceived must there fore result from the union of at least two factors. O n the one hand, there must be a factor which marks the presence of an obj ect, and on the other hand, there must be a generic sensory intelligible character marle determinate, rightly or wrongly, by the per­ ceiver. It is necessary to affirm the reality of a generic deter­ minable element in order to avoid the pitfalls of phenomenal­ ism and realism; but it also is necessary to affirm the existence of a point o f ohjective reference in order to escape the embarrassments of idealism. But then there must be still another element marking the fact that the real is not ex­ hausted in being perceived. There is a third element in all per­ ception, provi ding the evidence that we are in fact perceiving concrete obj ects, which are still partly unknown and about which we have yet much to learn. This third factor is a

T llE R E ALITY O F THE P E RC E I V ED

31

necessary component of any kind of knowledge which, like perception, is at once a report of and inseparable from the real. It at once gives body to and makes possible the synthesis of the other hvo factors, enabling them to form an articulate object o f perceptual knowledge. The opposition between the mathematician or logician and the romanticist or irrationalist may be defined in terms o f the way in which the former is inclined to neglect and the latter to emphasize the third element which is essential to the being of the real in the shape of the perceived. The former knows precisely, but has almost lost the world of experience, while the latter holds to that world tenaciously, though he has almost lost the power to say anything intel­ ligible about it. Both think that what is articulate can be and must be sundered from what is inchoate, but both recog­ nize that the two realms do in fact exist. They are extremes, which can be made to yield one another by reciprocal pro­ cesses of concretion and abstraction, or which can be syn­ thesized with one another to yield a view which incorporates them both in a richer context. Taken in isolation from one another, neither can affirm that we know the real discursively and as more than what ,ve discursively know. \Ve understand a concrete obj ect only so far as we abstract and discriminate; yet the obj ect remains concrete and undiscriminated and is known to be such. The perceived is a present, sensed, intelligible, not com- \ pletely understood obj ect, because three distinct but inter­ dependent modes of apprehension-the mode of "indication, " "contemplation" and "adumbration," which isolate a presence, a nature, and an unarticulated concreteness respectively­ have been made to coalesce. The objects of these three modes of apprehension will be termed the "indicated," the "contem\ plated" and the "adumbrated," for these designations suggest their corresponding activities, are intended to be functional rather than static in significance, and are somewhat freer from the associations which cluster about and distort the

32

REA L I T Y

somewhat analogous traditional terms, "subject," "predicate" and "the intuited. " �rce_p!�oi:i is the wedding of a�__jnter­ preted contemplated with an objective indicated to for!Il an articulate object of knowledge, which itself merges intoi an adumbrated as a more substantival but unarticulated vers on of it.

CH APTER III

T HE NA T U RE , THE BA S IC V A R IET IES , AN D T HE L OC U S OF T HE PERCEP T UA L ELEMENT S

T

I . T H E I NDICATED

H E indicated is the logical subject of what we know, the "it" about which articulate discourse pivots. It is ingredient in each object of perceptual knowledge, functioning as an epistemological point in a one-to-one rela­ tion to a perceiver. We are able to perceive objects at a dis­ tance from us, not because they have travelled to us through space or we to them, but because the known is indicated through the use of a one-to-one relation which has been isolated in the act of attending. A one-to-one relation is capable of pairing spatially distant objects without affecting their spatial connection, their natures, or their status as independent beings, because it is nothing more than an abstract aspect of, and is completely indifferent to, the spatial relation which holds in fact. Neglect of the truth that the same object can, at the same time, be spatially or existentially, and non-spatially or cog­ nitively related to the same being, has brought distress to three different schools. According to the naive idealist, the perceived is nothing other than the terminus of a non-spatial cognitive relation. Because he does not hold that that cogni­ tive relation is an aspect of the spatial relation which actually unites the being of the perceiver and the perceived, the naive idealist is forced to deny that he knows externally existent obj ects. According to the naive realist, on the other hand, the perceived is nothing other than the terminus of a real

34

REALI T Y

existential relation connecting it with the perceiver across a span of space. Because he does not hold that when we per­ ceive we transcend a spatial relation to obtain a non-spatial connection between ourselves and the object beyond us, the na1ve realist is forced to deny that the perceived might be tinged with private error. One views the external world as being internal to the knower ; the other regards the content of the mind as a public world. In contrast with t�e_!11,_ the critical realists-, recognize and ev� en�phas.iie the fact that the�e are objects which exist independently of being known and that what we perceive might not exist in the specifi_c:__ form �;h1ch we know it. They nevertheless do not make the double fact intelligible, largely because they assume that objects in non -spatial, and objects in spatial relations are com­ pletely asunder. For the critical realists ) the knO\vn is a pri­ vate fact internal to the knower, symbolizing an altogether di fferent obj ect existing apart from the knower. But as the only space they can know is for them i nternal and subjective, the referent of what they know must be located in an unper­ ceivable and unknowable space. They are thus driven to admit that external, objective entities, which constitute the real world for them, arc in a space which is forever bevond thei r reach and somehow external to the only space they can com­ prehend. \Vhi le the naive realists and na·ive idealists think it impossible to affirm that perceivers have both spatial and non­ spatial relations to objects, the critical realists, in the acknowl­ edgment of both kinds of connection, force a chasm between the known and the existentially real. The indicate