Idealist to Realist, Once More: A Reply
Idealist to Realist, Once More: A Reply
In a recent number of this Journal[1] Mr. J. E. Turner makes a justifiable criticism not, I think, upon my argument against “neo-realism,” but upon a questionable expression in my statement of the argument. He objects to my attributing to the realist the “certainty that he is … having a complex experience described by the terms yellowness, coolness, etc.”[2] As Mr. Turner truly says the realist would hold that he is describing “the object, not his experience as yellow.” Mr. Turner’s criticism is simply met, and my meaning is correctly expressed, by replacing the word “described” by the word “indicated.”[3] For however firmly the realist asseverates that he is describing an extra-mental entity he can not, and does not, deny that by the term “yellow” he also indicates that part of his experience (or consciousness) which he calls “seeing yellow.”[4]
The idealist’s argument may then be restated, omitting the term which Mr. Turner criticizes. Such a restatement runs, briefly, as follows: Both the idealist and the neo-realist admit (1) that they have a consciousness indicated by the terms “yellow,” “cold,” and the like. The neo-realist holds (2) that he also perceives directly an extra-mental object, yellow and cold. But if this second statement be challenged (as by one who says “the object is gray, not yellow”) the neo-realist must fall back upon the position which he occupies with the idealist. No reiterated assertions, “the object is yellow,” “yellow … is an adjective applicable only to material objects”[5] will prevail against the stubborn counter-assertion, “No. The object is gray.” There is nothing left to the realist except the insistent statement “I have the consciousness indicated by the term ‘yellow,’ not by the term ‘gray.’”
This proof, from the admitted occurrence of illusion,[6] that the object of immediate certainty is experience (i. e., consciousness) is merely the first step in an idealistic philosophy. But it is an undemolished barrier to all forms of neo-realism.
Mary Whiton Calkins.
Wellesley College.
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- ↑ “Miss Calkins on Idealism and Realism,” this Journal, Vol. XI, pages 46 ff.
- ↑ This Journal, Vol. VIII., page 453, quoted, Vol. IX., page 603. The sentence is not quoted entire by Mr. Turner.
- ↑ I have used this expression in the paragraph next to that from which Mr. Turner quotes. Cf. this Journal, Vol. VIII., page 453, paragraph 3.
- ↑ This Journal, Vol. XI., page 48, paragraph 2. There is much to be said for Mr. Turner’s contention that the term “experience” can not be unambiguously used. In the idealist’s mouth it means ”consciousness,” whereas the realist often interprets it to mean “object as experienced.”
- ↑ Turner, op. cit., pages 48–49.
- ↑ Cf. A. O. Lovejoy, Philosophical Review, 1913, XXII., pages 410 ff., for criticism of the various attempts of neo-realists, in “The New Realism,” to explain illusion.