Consciousness / by Henry Rutgers Marshall.

  • Henry Rutgers Marshall
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Consciousness / by Henry Rutgers Marshall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The psychologist is entirely warranted in adopting this objective attitude, which indeed all scientific investigators adopt in their work, provided he does not overlook the fact that there is an entirely different mode of considering this relation between mind and body which, following common usage, we may call the thoroughgoing subjective view, which is in a sense more fundamental and more significant than the objective view, and according to which, as we have seen, the outer world, and the objects within it, are complex systematized concepts which are within and part of con- sciousness. It is not easy to keep this distinction of stand- points clear, and therefore not surprising that we find ourselves shifting from one to the other, and often to our great discomfiture.1 In as much as I shall deal with this relation of mind and body from the objective standpoint in much that follows, and in order to avoid unusual forms of statement shall use the objective terminology where I refer to the relation in my consideration from the subjective point of view, it has seemed well here to state briefly the relation of mind to body in non-objective terms. 1 It seems clear for instance that if we maintain the objective view we are unable to entertain the suggestion of the idealistic ontologist that esse is percepi. For as objectively viewed the existence of the object in this world is not dependent upon any such relation of the man’s body to this object as will necessarily involve the existence of a percept in his consciousness. The man may close his eyes, and then in this objective view I still have in my experience the real existent object in the outer world ; and also the man’s nervous state now unaffected by this object as it was when his eyes were open ; and also his assumed state of consciousness correspondingly altered. But the case is quite different if we consider the question altogether subjectively ; and it would seem that, if we are to deal ontologically with the relation of consciousness to the world which appears as apart from it, we must abandon the objective attitude altogether. For the problem set for himself by the ontologist is this : what is the meaning of the fact that our percepts have a reference to objective realities. Now he cannot “get into the skin ” of his objectively viewed man to take cognizance of the evidences
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