Treści myślowe a poznanie (I)

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the question of how the knowledge of external things depends upon the content of our acts of thought. The author distinguishes, after Bolzano, between the act and the content of apprehension, and he shares the opinion, that the one and only one way for knowing the external world – if the external world is at all know able – comes from the content of thought, that is, from the content of our acts of apprehension, or of cognition altogether. For we do not know immediately either the primary or secondary qualities of an external object, or our acts of perception, but only the content of our acts of thought. We may, perhaps, distinguish between the primary and secondary content of our acts of perception, but this distinction, even if justified, is for our purpose irrelevant. The method of present investigation is not an analysis of facts, but that of concepts, for the problem of know ledge cannot start, as Kant once did, from a fact of knowledge, since in this problem even the fact of knowledge is called in question. Since the one and only way of apprehending, perhaps, the external world comes from the content of our acts of thought, we ought to investigate: (I) what causes the content of acts of thinking, (II) if the contents of thought give us the knowledge of the external world, (III) if the contents of perceptions are true copies of external things. Since the contents of acts of thought, being neither physical events, nor psychological ones, belong to the domain of intentions, they are entirely beyond causes and beyond causality, at least beyond a physical ones. Moreover, since the act of thought is immanent, and every act of knowledge is an act of thought, neither an aid of knowledge, nor, a fortiori, the content of an act of knowledge may be caused by any external cause. For the immanency of an act consists in the fact, that the cause of an immanent act ought to be just the subject of this act. Since the subject of an act of knowledge is surely the mind, the cause of an act of knowledge ought to be only the mind. We ought to remark that the immanency is proper to the act of knowledge as well as – all the more so – to the content of this act, but for different reasons, namely as the psychological immanency in the former case, and as the epistemological immanency in the latter one. For that reason we ought to raise the question of if and how the mind perceives external beings, especially the material world. If we assume, that external things not only are existing, but also demand of a rational creature a suitable behaviour, we have to explain, how the mind may come into contact with the external world. In that case we ought to assume the existence of an intermediary between a mind and the external world. This intermediary would be a part of the external world, that is, such a part which would be under the control of the mind. This intermediary may be called the sensorium. Such a sensorium is, perhaps, no other being than a human body or a certain part of it. The mind perceives neither the external things, nor any states of its own sensorium, but, being in contact with its own body, it builds up its own world out of its own images, which it recalls from its own potentiality. This world is a mere fancy or an eidolon, which exists only for one and the only subject. This private world is a reply to the activities of the external world. Manipulating with our private world we are able, at least in some degree, to control the activities and states of our own body and to find a suitable manner of behaviour in the external world. The private world is, in fact, a mere fancy, but we have a natural propensity to make a projection, that is, objectification and externalization of that, which is, as a product of the activity of mind, in fact, only a subjective being. The mind extrapolates its own products into the domain of external reality, that is, it views its own mental images as objective reality. The mind, therefore, is not a merely passive principle of the acts of knowledge, but on the contrary, it is an active one. Hence we may travesty Heraclitus’ sentence, and say, that the mind enkindles the light for itself. What is, therefore, the value of the human knowledge, as it is concerned with the external world? Since we are knowing immediately only our own subjective world, we are able neither to compare this world with that objective one, nor even to assume that we experience external things as they are in themselves. If the expression “as they are in themselves” ought to mean that a thing may have any appearances (τάεǐδη) which do not appear, this expression seems to be contradictory or empty of meaning. For the expression “to experience external things as they are in themselves’, involves an assumption, that external things may have any appearances, which do not appear.