Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

out content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” * In this last statement the philosophy of organism is in agreement with Kant; but for a different reason. It is agreed that the functioning of concepts is an essential factor in knowledge, so that ‘intuitions without concepts are blind.’ But for Kant, apart from concepts there is nothing to know; since objects related in a knowable world are the product of conceptual functioning whereby categoreal form is introduced into the sense-datum, which otherwise is intuited in the form of a mere spatiotemporal flux of sensations. Knowledge requires that this mere flux be particularized by conceptual functioning, whereby the flux is understood as a nexus of ‘objects.’ Thus for Kant the process whereby there is experience is a process from subjectivity to apparent objectivity. The philosophy of organism inverts this analysis, and explains the process as proceeding from objectivity to subjectivity, namely, from the objectivity, whereby the external world is a datum, to the subjectivity, whereby there is one individual experience. Thus, according to the philosophy of organism, in every act of experience there are objects for knowledge; but, apart from the inclusion of intellectual functioning in that act of experience, there is no knowledge.

We have now come to Kant, the great philosopher who first, fully and explicitly, introduced into philosophy the conception of an act of experience as a constructive functioning, transforming subjectivity into objectivity, or objectivity into subjectivity; the order is immaterial in comparison with the general idea. We find the first beginnings of the notion in Locke and in Hume. Indeed, in Locke, the process is conceived in its correct order, at least in the view of the philosophy of organism. But the whole notion is only vaguely and inadequately conceived. The full sweep of the notion is due to Kant. The second half of the modern period of philosophical thought is to be dated from Hume and Kant. In it the

* Cf. Transcendal Logic, Introduction, Sect. I.

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development of cosmology has been hampered by the stress laid upon one, or other, of three misconceptions:

(i) The substance-quality doctrine of actuality.

(ii) The sensationalist doctrine of perception.

(iu) The Kantian doctrine of the objective world as a construct from subjective experience.

The combined influence of these allied errors has been to reduce philosophy to a negligible influence in the formation of contemporary modes of thought. Hume himself introduces the ominous appeal to ‘practice’—not in criticism of his premises, but in supplement to his conclusions. Bradley, who repudiates Hume, finds the objective world in which we live, and move, and have our being, ‘inconsistent if taken as real.’ Neither side conciliates philosophical conceptions of a real world with the world of daily experience,

CHAPTER VII
THE SUBJECTIVIST PRINCIPLE

SECTION I

Ir is impossible to scrutinize too carefully the character to be assigned to the datum in the act of experience. The whole philosophical system depends on it. Hume’s doctrine of ‘impressions of sensation’ (Treatise, Book I, Part I, Sect. II) is twofold. I will call one part of his doctrine ‘The Subjectivist Principle’ and the other part ‘The Sensationalist Principle.’ It is usual to combine the two under the heading of the ‘sensationalist doctrine’ ; but two principles are really involved, and many philosophers—Locke, for instance—are not equally consistent in their adhesion to both of them. The philosophy of organism denies both of these doctrines, in the form in which they are considered in this chapter, though it accepts a reformed subjectivist principle (cf. Sect. II below and Part II, Ch. IX). Locke accepted the sensationalist principle, and was inconsistent in his statements respecting the subjectivist principle. With the exception of some lapses, he accepted the latter in the first two books of his Hssay, and rejected it tacitly, but persistently, in the third and fourth books. Kant (in the Critique of Pure Reason) accepted the subjectivist principle, and rejected the sensationalist principle.

The sensationalist principle acquires dominating importance, if the subjectivist principle be accepted. Kant’s realization of this importance constituted the basis of his contribution to philosophy. The history of modern philosophy is the story of attempts to evade the inflexible consequences of the subjectivist principle, explicitly or implicitly accepted. The great merit of Hume and of

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Kant is the explicitness with which they faced the difficulty.

The subjectivist principle is, that the datum in the act of experience can be adequately analysed purely in terms of universals.

The sensationalist principle is, that the primary activity in the act of experience is the bare subjective entertainment of the datum, devoid of any subjective form of reception. This is the doctrine of mere sensation.

The subjectivist principle follows from three premises: (i) The acceptance of the ‘substance-quality’ concept as expressing the ultimate ontological principle. (ii) The acceptance of Aristotle’s definition of a primary substance, as always a subject and never a predicate. (i111) The assumption that the experient subject is a primary substance. The first premise states that the final metaphysical fact is always to be expressed as a quality inhering in a substance. The second premise divides qualities and primary substances into two mutually exclusive classes. The two premises together are the foundation of the traditional distinction between universals and particulars. The philosophy of organism denies the premises on which this distinction is founded. It admits two ultimate classes of entities, mutually exclusive. One class consists of ‘actual entities,’ which in the philosophical tradition are mis-described as ‘particulars’ ; and the other class consists of forms of definiteness, here named ‘eternal objects,’ which in comparison with actual entities are mis-described as ‘universals.’ These misdescriptions have already been considered (Part II, Ch. I, Sect. V).

Descartes held, with some flashes of inconsistency arising from the use of ‘realitas objectiva,’ the subjectivist principle as to the datum. But he also held that this mitigation of the sensationalist principle enabled the ‘process’ within experience to include a sound argument for the existence of God; and thence a sound argument for the general veridical character of those presumptionsp. 240 as to the external world which somehow arise in the process.

According to the philosophy of organism, it is only by the introduction of covert inconsistencies into the subjectivist principle, as here stated, that there can be any escape from what Santayana calls, ‘solipsism of the present moment.’ Thus Descartes’ mode of escape is either illusory, or its premises are incompletely stated. This covert introduction is always arising because common sense is inflexibly objectivist. We perceive other things which are in the world of actualities in the same sense as we are. Also our emotions are directed towards other things, including of course our bodily organs. These are our primary beliefs which philosophers proceed to dissect.