Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

In contrast to Hume, the philosophy of organism keeps ‘this stone as grey’ in the datum for the experience in question. It is, in fact, the ‘objective datum’ of a certain physical feeling, belonging to a derivative type in a late phase of a concrescence. But this doctrine fully accepts Descartes’ discovery that subjective experiencing is the primary metaphysical situation which is presented to metaphysics for analysis. This doctrine is the ‘reformed subjectivist principle’, mentioned earlier in this chapter. Accordingly, the notion ‘this stone as grey’ is a derivative abstraction, necessary indeed as an element in the description of the fundamental experiential feeling, but delusive as a metaphysical starting point. This derivative abstraction is called an ‘objectification.’

The justification for this procedure is, first, common sense, and, secondly, the avoidance of the difficulties which have dogged the subjectivist and sensationalist principles of modern philosophy. Descartes’ discovery on the side of subjectivism requires balancing by an ‘objectivist’ principle as to the datum for experience. Also, with the advent of Cartesian subjectivism, the substance-quality category has lost all claim to metaphysical primacy; and, with this deposition of substance-quality, we can reject the notion of individual substances, each with its private world of qualities and sensations.

SECTION II

In the philosophy of organism knowledge is relegated to the intermediate phase of process. Cognizance belongs to the genus of subjective forms which are admitted, orp. 244 not admitted, to the function of absorbing the objective content into the subjectivity of satisfaction. Its ‘importance’ is therefore no necessary element in the concrete actual entity. In the case of any one such entity, it may merely constitute an instance of what Locke terms ‘a capacity.’ If we are considering the society of successive actual occasions in the historic route forming the life of an enduring object, some of the earlier actual occasions may be without knowledge, and some of the later may possess knowledge. In such a case, the unknowing man has become knowing. There is nothing surprising in this conclusion; it happens daily for most of us, when we sleep at night and wake in the morning. Every actual entity has the capacity for knowledge, and there is graduation in the intensity of various items of knowledge; but, in general, knowledge seems to be negligible apart from a peculiar complexity in the constitution of some actual occasion.

We—as enduring objects with personal order—objectify the occasions of our own past with peculiar completeness in our immediate present. We find in those occasions, as known from our present standpoint, a surprising variation in the range and intensity of our realized knowledge. We sleep; we are half-awake; we are aware of our perceptions, but are devoid of generalities in thought; we are vividly absorbed within a small region of abstract thought while oblivious to the world around; we are attending to our emotions—some torrent of passion—to them and to nothing else; we are morbidly discursive in the width of our attention; and finally we sink back into temporary obliviousness, sleeping or stunned. Also we can remember factors experienced in our immediate past, which at the time we failed to notice. When we survey the chequered history of our own capacity for knowledge, does common sense allow us to believe that the operations of judgment, operations which require definition in terms of conscious apprehension, are those operations which are foundational in existence either as fie SUBJE@TIVIST PRINCIPLE __245 an essential attribute for an actual entity, or as the final culmination whereby unity of experience is attained!

The general case * of conscious perception is the negative perception, namely, ‘perceiving this stone as not grey. The ‘grey’ then has ingression in its full character of a conceptual novelty, illustrating an alternative. In the positive case, ‘perceiving this stone as grey,’ the grey has ingression in its character of a possible novelty, but in fact by its conformity emphasizing the dative grey, blindly felt. Consciousness is the feeling of negation: in the perception of ‘the stone as grey,’ such feeling is in barest germ; in the perception of ‘the stone as not grey,’ such feeling is full development. Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness. It finally rises to the peak of free imagination, in which the conceptual novelties search through a universe in which they are not datively exemplified.

Consciousness is the subjective form involved in feeling the contrast between the ‘theory’ which may be erroneous and the fact which is ‘given. Thus consciousness involves the rise into importance of the contrast between the eternal objects designated by the words ‘any’ and ‘just that.’ Conscious perception is, therefore, the most primitive form of judgment. The organic philosophy holds that consciousness only arises in a late derivative phase of complex integrations. If an actual occasion be such that phases of this sort are negligible in its concrescence, then in its experience there is no knowledge, owing to the fact that consciousness is a subjective form belonging to the later phases, the prehensions which it directly irradiates are. those of an ‘impure’ type. Consciousness only illuminates the more primitive types of prehension so far as these prehensions are still elements in the products of integration. Thus those elements of our experience which stand out clearly and distinctly in our consciousness are not its basic facts; they are the derivative modifications which arise in the process. For

1Cf. Part III, for the full account.

p. 246

example, consciousness only dimly illuminates the prehensions in the mode of causal efficacy, because these prehensions are primitive elements in our experience. But prehensions in the mode of presentational immediacy are among those prehensions which we enjoy with the most vivid consciousness. These prehensions are late derivatives in the concrescence of an experient subject. The consequences of the neglect of this law, that the late derivative elements are more clearly illuminated by consciousness than the primitive elements, have been fatal to the proper analysis of an experient occasion. In fact, most of the difficulties of philosophy are produced by it. Experience has been explained in a thoroughly topsyturvy fashion, the wrong end first. In particular, emotional and purposeful experience have been made to follow upon Hume’s impressions of sensation.

To sum up: (1) Consciousness is a subjective form arising in the higher phases of concrescence. (ii) Consciousness primarily illuminates the higher phase in which it arises, and only illuminates earlier phases derivatively, as they remain components in the higher phase. (iii) It follows that the order of dawning, clearly and distinctly, in consciousness is not the order of metaphysical priority.

SECTION III