Part 4

Now there can be no doubt that awareness is a characteristic feature of the knowledge of cognition, whether it be present or absent in knowledge in the more extended sense. We must just accept this as what appears to be a fact. In science we do not pretend to say why facts are what they are and as they are. We take them as they are given, and endeavour to trace their connexions and their implications. Accepting, then, awareness as given, we must ask: Awareness of what? It is sometimes said that cognition is aware of itself. I am not sure that I understand what this means. If we are speaking of the cognitive relation, which is an awareness relation, the question seems to be whether a relation of awareness is related to itself. But of course if a field of cognitive relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness--if we must so call it!--is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of itself--though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity.

Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. The correlation between the two is only discoverable through a very elaborate and complex[73] application of further cognition in interpretative knowledge. We only know the correlated cortical process by description, as Mr. Bertrand Russell would say,[74] and never by direct acquaintance.

Parenthetic reference must here, I suppose, be made to psycho-physical parallelism. But it shall be very brief. The sooner this cumbrous term with its misleading suggestions is altogether eliminated from the vocabulary of science the better. The locus of the so-called parallelism is, we are told, the cortex of the brain. But the cortical process is only an incident--no doubt a very important one, but still an incident--in a much wider physiological process, the occurrence of which, in what we may speak of as primary cognition, implies events in the external world. It is of these events that there is direct physical, physiological, and cognitive knowledge. Of course there are also inter-cortical relations which underlie the relations of those ideal cognita (Spencer's faint class) that supplement the primary cognita which imply direct stimulation of sensory receptors (Spencer's vivid class). It is questionable whether any form of cognition, properly so called, is possible in their absence. Now I see no objection to labelling the fact (if it be a fact) that the cognitive process implies a physiological process in which, as in a larger whole, the cortex plays its appropriate part, by the use of some such convenient correlation-word as psycho-physical; but only so long as this does not involve a doctrine of parallelism; so long as it merely means that cognition implies, let us say, certain underlying cortical changes. Of course it implies a great deal more than cortical process only; but this may perhaps be taken for granted. My chief objection to the word 'parallelism' is that it suggests two separate orders of being, and not two types of relationship within one order of being for scientific study.[75] We do not speak of parallelism between physiological and physico-chemical processes. We just say that scientific interpretation proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a kind that physiological process implies a physico-chemical basis. So too, I urge, we should be content to say that scientific interpretation proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a kind that cognitive process implies a physiological basis.

It may be said that Spencer accepted the so-called identity hypothesis which does not lie open to the objection that it suggests two orders of being. He believed[76] 'that mind and nervous action are the subjective and objective faces of the same thing', though 'we remain utterly incapable of seeing or even imagining how the two are related'. Well, we may call them in one passage the same thing, we may speak, in another passage, of the antithesis between them as never to be transcended, and we may try to save the situation by reference to duality of aspect. But this kind of treatment does not help as much towards a scientific interpretation. It is true that, in yet another passage, speaking of the correlation of the physical and the psychical, Spencer says:[77] 'We can learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the order of phenomena.' Then why not leave it at that? And if there be a constant and uniform correlation which is 'in a certain indirect way quantitive', it would seem that we _do_ see, as far as science ever professes to see, 'how the two are related.' We see, or conceive, how they are related in much the same way as we do in the case of the connexion between the physiological and the physico-chemical, and in numberless other cases. Both parallelism and identity will have to go by the board in a philosophy of science. They must be replaced by the far more modest hypothesis, which seems to express all that they really mean for science, that cognition always implies certain physiological processes in the organism.

If we do speak of mind and nervous action as two faces of the same thing, it seems pretty certain that the one face is not directly aware of the other. When we speak of awareness in cognition we must therefore, it appears, exclude any direct awareness of concurrent physiological processes. Of what, then, is there awareness? Primarily perhaps of some occurrence in the external world. But the difficulty here is that, in the simplest case of human cognition there is awareness of so many things and in such varying degrees. There may be primary awareness of events in the external world (Spencer's vivid series), awareness of the relations involved in these occurrences as such, of the relations of these to ideal re-presentations of like kind (Spencer's faint series), of the relations of any or all of these to behaviour as actually taking place or as ideally re-presented; and all in different degrees within a relational meshwork of bewildering complexity, which we have not, as yet, adequately unravelled. The essential point to bear in mind is that the cognitive relation always involves relatedness of _many terms_, and that its discussion involves the analysis of what, in the higher phases of its existence, is probably the most complex natural occurrence in this complex world.

I cannot here follow up further the difficult problem of cognition[78]--save to add one or two supplementary remarks. First: it is, I suppose, fairly obvious that any given field of cognitive relatedness comprises _all_ that is then and there selectively cognized. Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of the whole relational web. In other words, the relatedness is of the part-whole kind, where whole means rest of the whole other than the specific part. In any such integrated system the part implies the whole--which, by the way, is quite a different matter from saying that the part includes the whole, or, as I understand the words, is equivalent to the whole. But, whereas gravitative knowledge is reciprocal--the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth knows the sun--cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept as a given feature of cognitive relatedness.[79]

Another very important point is that cognitive relatedness is effective. By this I mean that just as, when the earth is in gravitative relation to the sun and the other planets (the constitution of nature being what it is), changes take place because the parts of the system as a whole are in this field of effective relatedness; so too, when the organism is in cognitive relation to its environment, changes in this system also take place just because a part of the whole system is in cognitive relatedness to the rest of the system. That means that the cognitive relation really counts--that it is not merely an epiphenomenal accompaniment of changes which would be precisely the same if it were absent. The 'sum of energy' presumably remains constant. There is no necessary interference with physical principles. But we know of so many cases in which the direction of change may be changed without any alteration of the 'amount of energy', as the phrase goes, that I see no reason, based on physical science,[80] for denying this kind of effectiveness, within a field of cognitive relatedness, if the facts seem indubitably to point to its existence. To assert that the presence or absence of cognitive relatedness makes absolutely no difference appears to me, I confess, little short of preposterous; to urge that it may be brought under the rubric of physico-chemical relatedness surely involves the ignoring of differentiating features, which science should not ignore. But, on the other hand, to invoke an immaterial psychic entity[81]--unless this merely names the relatedness itself[82] as gravitation names the gravitative relatedness--appears to me quite unwarranted in the scientific universe of discourse.[83]

I must, however, draw to a conclusion. I cannot but think that Spencer failed to bring cognition and the conscious awareness it involves into really close touch with the rest of his philosophy of science. No such double-aspect theory as he accepted affords a satisfactory avenue of scientific approach. But where Spencer failed, who has come within measurable sight of success? We are only just beginning to see our way to stating the problem in such a form as to bring it within the purview of science. What we must insist on, as followers, at a distance, of Herbert Spencer, is the treatment of this type of relatedness on lines similar to our treatment of other types of relatedness within one order of nature.

Surveying his work as a whole, we may confidently assert that Spencer brought to a conclusion a great task, and was himself great in its execution. The present generation can, perhaps, hardly realize how potent his influence was on the thought of the latter half of the last century. Many of his conclusions ran counter to those which were, in his day, widely accepted. If only they seemed to him to be true, however, he held to them with a tenacity which his opponents branded as obstinacy. But as he himself said:

'It is not for nothing that a man has in him sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of his time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future; and his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world.'[84]

NOTES

[1] _Fragments of Science_, vol. ii, p. 132.

[2] _Essays_, vol. i (American reprint), p. 3.

[3] _Op. cit._, p. 32.

[4] _Op. cit._, p. 58.

[5] Cf. W. K. Clifford, _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 95.

[6] _More Letters_, vol. ii, p. 235.

[7] _Memories and Studies_, p. 139.

[8] _Ibid._, p. 140.

[9] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 212.

[10] James, _op. cit._, p. 124.

[11] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 211.

[12] _First Principles_, Sixth (Popular) Edition, p. 446 (hereafter F. P.).

[13] _Principles of Psychology_, Third Edition, vol. i, p. 508 (hereafter Ps.).

[14] Ps., vol. i, p. 627.

[15] _Ibid._, p. 158.

[16] F. P., p. 155.

[17] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.

[18] There is '_intrinsic_ force by which a body manifests itself as occupying space, and that _extrinsic_ force distinguished as energy'. F. P., p. 150.

[19] 'Divest the conceived unit of matter of the objective correlate to our subjective sense of effort and the entire fabric of physical conceptions disappears.' F. P., p. 151 note. Cf. Ps., vol. ii, pp. 237, 239.

[20] F. P., p. 171.

[21] e.g. 'Social changes take directions that are due to the joint actions of citizens determined as are those of all other changes wrought by the composition of forces.' 'The flow of capital into business yielding the largest returns, the buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, the introduction of more economical modes of manufacture, the development of better agencies for distribution, exhibit movements taking place in directions where they are met by the smallest totals of opposing forces.' F. P., pp. 193-6.

[22] _Creative Evolution_, English translation, p. 53.

[23] _Op. cit._, pp. 385, 6.

[24] According to Dr. Carr's interpretation of M. Bergson, 'The whole world, as it is presented to us and thought of by us, is an illusion. Our science is not unreal, but it is a transformed reality. The illusions may be useful, may, indeed, be necessary and indispensable, but nevertheless it is illusion.' _Problem of Truth_, p. 66.

[25] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389.

[26] 'But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for me to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots, they that cut the facts out of the whole of reality.' C. E., p. 389.

[27] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389.

[28] _Op. cit._, p. 387.

[29] _Introduction to Metaphysics_, English translation, p. 8 and _passim_.

[30] e.g. 'Organisation can only be studied scientifically if the organised body has first been likened to a machine.' C. E., p. 98. Science is, I think, generally used by M. Bergson for _intellectual_ knowledge in contradistinction to intuitional knowledge.

[31] F. P., p. 184.

[32] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 14.

[33] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 366.

[34] F. P., p. 156.

[35] 'There remained to assign a reason for that increasingly-distinct demarkation of parts, &c.... This reason we discovered to be the segregation, &c.... This cause of the definiteness of local integrations, &c.' F. P., p. 440.

[36] F. P., p. 43.

[37] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 47.

[38] F. P., p. 176.

[39] F. P., p. 154.

[40] _Proceedings Aristotelian Society_, 1912-13, p. 1.

[41] _Popular Scientific Lectures_, English translation, p. 254.

[42] _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 111.

[43] 'But when we ask what this energy is, there is no answer save that it is the noumenal cause implied by the phenomenal effect.' F. P., p. 154. It is towards this and like statements that my criticism is directed. There can be no objection to the treatment, by physicists, of energy as an entity in the sense given below in note 82. Those phenomena to which 1/2 _mv_^{2} has reference are fundamental realities for physical science.

[44] In a statement of the law of gravitation we may substitute the words 'in a degree' for 'with a force'; we may speak of 'the measure of attraction' instead of 'the force of attraction'.

[45] _System of Logic_, Bk. III, ch. v, § 3, Eighth Edition, vol. i, p. 383.

[46] _Ibid._, § 3 and § 5, pp. 379 and 389.

[47] Ps., vol. ii, p. 93; cf. p. 97. One has now, however, to add the realm of subsistence.

[48] As a more technical example the following may be given:--The difference in properties of isomers is caused by difference of internal molecular structure notwithstanding identity of chemical composition.

[49] If we take spark as cause and explosion as effect there is obviously no proportionality between the cause and its effect. Thus M. Bergson speaks of the spark as 'a cause that acts by releasing'; and he adds that 'neither quality nor quantity of effect varies with quality or quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable'. _Creative Evolution_, p. 77. Compare what Spencer introduced into the Sixth edition of F. P. (pp. 172-3), concerning 'trigger action which does not produce the power but liberates it'. According to the treatment in the text there can be no 'proportionality' unless both ground and conditions are taken into account.

[50] Spencer says (F. P., pp. 169-70) that 'the transformation of the unorganised contents of an egg into the organised chick is a question of heat' ['altogether a question of heat', in the Third Edition], and tells us that 'the germination of plants presents like relations of cause and effect as every season shows'. But he also says that 'the proclivities of the molecules determine the typical structure assumed'. Obviously here the 'heat supplied' falls under (3) of the text, and 'the proclivities of the molecules' is his notion of what should fall under (2).

[51] See Index to F. P., _sub verbo_ 'integration'.

[52] e. g. 'Diminish the velocities of the planets and their orbits will lessen--the solar system will contract, or become more integrated.' _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 28. Mere condensation is often spoken of as integration. But then the term is used with bewildering laxity. Cf. James, _Memories and Studies_, p. 134.

[53] I retain in this connexion the current term physico-chemical. It seems that the basal type of relatedness here is electrical. It may be said that when we come down to the atom the _things in_ relation are electrical, are electrons, are positive and negative charges. So be it. But is it not the _electrical relatedness_ that is constitutive of the atom as such?

[54] 'A large number of physical properties', says Nernst, 'have been shown to be clearly additive; that is, the value of the property in question can be calculated as though the compound were such a mixture of its elements that they experience no change in their properties.' But other properties are not additive. 'The kind of influence of the atom in a compound is primarily dependent on the mode of its union, that is, upon the constitution and configuration of the compound. Such non-additive properties may be called constitutive.' Quoted by E. G. Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 238.

[55] _System of Logic_, vol. i, Bk. III, ch. vi.

[56] _Problems of Life and Mind_, Series II, p. 212.

[57] Of course if a particular physico-chemical change (_a_) is correlated with a particular physiological or vital change (_b_), then (_b_) implies (_a_) as (_a_) implies (_b_). The statement in the text refers to the implications of classes of change. There may be physico-chemical relatedness without any correlated vital relatedness; but there does not appear to be any vital relatedness which is not correlated with physico-chemical relatedness.

[58] _Essays_, vol. iii, pp. 31, 55.

[59] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.

[60] F. P., p. 178.

[61] An ordinal correlation is one that couples every term of a series (_a_) with a specific term of another series (_b_) and _vice versa_ in the same order in each. Cf. Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 175. I shall sometimes speak of such correlation as serial.

[62] _Principles of Biology_, Edition of 1898, pp. 117, 120.

[63] _Op. cit._, p. 122.

[64] Ps., vol. i, p. 208.

[65] F. P., p. 61. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 134.

[66] Ps., vol. i, p. 132. James well says 'Spencer broke new ground here in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved together, they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind in isolation a definite quietus, and that certainly is a great thing to have achieved'. _Memories and Studies_, p. 140.

[67] Ps., vol. i, p. 206.

[68] Ps., vol. i, p. 124.

[69] F. P., p. 120. Ps., vol. ii, p. 472. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 98.

[70] The word underlying is used in the sense of occupying a lower position in the logical hierarchy above indicated. If any one likes to speak of the physico-chemical and the vital as two aspects of one process, he is free to do so. And if he likes to say that the vital is caused by the physico-chemical, let him do so; but he must define the exact sense in which he uses the ambiguous word cause. The word inner in the text means within the organism.

[71] See S. Alexander, 'On Relations: and in particular the Cognitive Relation.' _Mind._, vol. xxi, N. S., No. 83, p. 318.

[72] I have avoided the use of the word determine. It would be well to distinguish between that which is _determined_ from without, that is, conditioned, and that which is _determinate_, that is, grounded in the constitution. I am here, I think, in line with Bosanquet. (See _Principle of Individuality and Value_, e. g. pp. 341, 352.) I have also avoided all reference to teleology. Without committing myself to the acceptance of all that Mr. Bosanquet says in the fourth lecture of the series to which reference has just been made, his treatment, there, appears to be on right lines. There is no opposition in teleology, so treated, to what is determinate. Indeed, such teleology is the expression of the logical structure of the world, or, as Spencer would say, the universality of law. For just as higher types of relatedness imply a substratum of physico-chemical processes, so do all events imply the underlying logic of events. Cf. W. T. Marvin, _A First Book of Metaphysics_, ch. xiii, 'On the logical strata of reality.'

[73] Cf. Ps., vol. i, pp. 99 and 140.

[74] _Problems of Philosophy_, ch. v; cf. _Proc. Aristotelian Soc._, 1910-11, p. 108.

[75] It should be distinctly understood that I here speak of one order of being in reference to the phenomena dealt with by science, including the cognitive phenomena discussed in the text. Whether we should speak of the Source of phenomena as constituting a separate order of being is a question I cannot discuss in a note. Does the logic of events imply a Logos? That is the question in brief. But, since the implication in question is not of the scientific kind, I may leave it on one side in considering a philosophy of science.

[76] Ps., vol. i, p. 140.

[77] F. P., p. 178.

[78] I have confined my attention to the cognitive type of relatedness. Other higher modes supervene when the course of evolution is traced further upwards. Indeed, cognition is only part of the underlying basis implied by the richer forms of distinctively human relational life. Spencer has much to say of them in his _Sociology_ and his _Ethics_, though he fails to realize that the phenomena he is dealing with involve essentially new constitutive features in man and in society. Can music or any form of art be discussed in terms of cognition only? I merely add this note to show that I am not unaware of the patent fact that when we have reached the cognitive type of relatedness, we are nowhere near the top of the evolutional tree.

[79] The part which is the centre of awareness, may be spoken of as experienc_ing_, in contradistinction to what is experienc_ed_. It is clear that such experiencing is always correlative to what is experienced actually or ideally (Spencer's vividly or faintly). The centre of awareness is either the cortex, or some specific part of the cortex, or (more generally) the organism as owning the cortex, in each case in accordance with the universe of discourse.