Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

In an intellectual feeling the datum is the generic contrast between a nexus of actual entities and a proposition with its logical subjects members of the nexus. In every generic contrast its unity arises from the two-way functioning of certain entities which are components in each of the contrasted factors. This unity expresses the conformation to the second categoreal condition (the Category of Objective Identity). The common ‘subject’ entertaining the two feelings effects an integration whereby each of these actual entities obtains its one roéle of a two-way functioning in the one generic contrast. As an element in the subject no objectified actual entity can play two disconnected parts. There can only be one analysable part. Thus what in origination is describable as a pair of distinct ways of functioning of each actual entity in the two factors of the generic contrast respectively, is realized in the subject as one réle with a twoway aspect. This two-way aspect is unified as ‘contrast.’ This one analysable part involves in itself the contrast between the sheer matter of fact, namely, what the objectified actual entity in question contributes to the objectified nexus in the physical feeling, and the mere potentiality of the same actual entity for playing its assigned part in the predicative pattern of the proposition, in the eventuality of the proposition’s realization. This contrast is what has been termed the ‘affirmationnegation contrast.’ It is the contrast between the affirmation of objectified fact in the physical feeling, and the mere potentiality, which is the negation of such affirmation, in the propositional feeling. It is the contrast between ‘in fact’ and ‘might be,’ in respect to particular instances in this actual world. The subjective form of the feeling of this contrast is consciousness. Thus in experience, consciousness arises by reason of intellectual feelings, and in proportion to the variety and intensity of such feelings. But, in conformity with the seventhp. 408 categoreal condition (the Category of Subjective Harmony), subjective forms, which arise as factors in any feeling, are finally in the satisfaction shared in the unity of all feelings, all feelings acquire their quota of irradiation in consciousness.

This account agrees with the plain facts of our conscious experience. Consciousness flickers; and even at its brightest, there is a small focal region of clear illumination, and a large penumbral region of experience which tells of intense experience in dim apprehension. The simplicity of clear consciousness is no measure of the complexity of complete experience. Also this character of our experience suggests that consciousness is the crown of experience, only occasionally attained, not its necessary base.

SECTION III

A feeling is termed a ‘belief,’ or is said to include an element of ‘belief,’ when its datum is a proposition, and its subjective form includes, as the defining element in its emotional pattern, a certain form, or eternal object, associated with some gradation of intensity. This eternal object is ‘belief-character.’ When this character enters into the emotional pattern, then, according to the intensity involved, the feeling, whatever else it be, is to some degree a belief.

This variation in the intensity of belief-character is insisted on by Locke in his Essay. He writes (IV, XV, 3): “The entertainment the mind gives this sort of propositions is called ‘belief,’ ‘assent,’ or ‘opinion,’ which is the admitting or receiving any proposition for true, upon arguments or proofs that are found to persuade us to receive it as true, without certain knowledge that it is so. And herein lies the difference between probability and certainty, faith and knowledge, that in all parts of knowledge there is intuition; each immediate idea, each step has its visible and certain connection: in belief not so.”

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Locke’s distinction between certainty and uncertain belief is admirable. But it is not nearly so important as it looks. For it is not the immediate intuition that we are usually concerned with. We only have its recollection recorded in words. Whether the verbal record of a recollection recalls to our minds a true proposition must always be a matter of great uncertainty. Accordingly our attitude towards an immediate intuition must be that of the gladiators, “morituri te salutamus,’ as we pass into the limbo where we rely upon the uncertain record. It must be understood that we are not speaking of the objective probability of a proposition, expressing its relation to certain other propositions. Comparative firmness of belief is a psychological fact which may, or may not, be justified by the objective evidence. This belief-character takes various forms from its fusion with consciousness derived from the various types of intellectual feelings.

SECTION IV

Conscious perception is the feeling of what is relevant to immediate fact in contrast with its potential irrelevance. This general description must now be explained in detail.

‘Conscious perceptions’ are of such importance that it is worth while to rehearse the whole sequence of their origination. It will be seen that alternative modes of origination are involved, and that some of these modes produce erroneous perceptions. Thus the criticism of conscious perceptions has the same importance as the criticism of judgments, intuitive and inferential.

In the first place, there is one basic physical feeling, from which the whole sequence of feelings originates for the ‘subject’ in question. From this physical feeling, the propositional feeling of the sort termed ‘perceptive’ arises. The conscious perception is the comparative feeling arising from the integration of the perceptive feeling with this original physical feeling.

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In the account of the origination of the ‘perceptive’ feeling (Part III, Ch. IV, Sect. IV), the various species of such feelings are analysed first into ‘authentic’ feelings and ‘unauthentic’ feelings; and secondly, ‘authentic’ feelings are analysed into ‘direct’ feelings, and ‘indirect’ feelings. Without qualification a direct perceptive feeling feels its logical subjects as potentially invested with a predicate expressing an intrinsic character of the nexus which is the initial datum of the physical feeling; with qualification this statement is also true of an indirect feeling. The qualification is that the secondary conceptual feelings, entertained in the nexus by reason of reversion (cf. categoreal condition V), have been transmuted so as to be felt in the ‘subject’ (the final subject of the conscious perception) as if they had been physical facts in the nexus. Of course such transmutation of physical feeling only arises when no incompatibilities are involved.

Thus, in general, a transmuted physical feeling only arises as the outcome of a complex process of incompatibilities and inhibitions. Apart from exceptional circumstances only to be found in few high-grade organisms, transmutation only accounts for physical feelings of negligible intensity. It is, however, important to note that even authentic physical feelings can distort the character of the nexus felt by transmuting felt concept into felt physical fact. In this way authentic perceptive feelings can introduce error into thought; and transmuted physical feelings can introduce novelty into the physical world. Such novelty may be either fortunate or disastrous. But the point is that novelty in the physical world, and error in authentic perceptive feeling, arise by conceptual functioning, according to the category of reversion.

Putting aside the case when these transmuted perceptive feelings have importance, consider the prehending subject with its direct perceptive feeling. The subject has its concrescent phase involving two factors, the orig-

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