Ten Philosophical Mistakes

Mortimer J. Adler

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 1997
• Print ISBN: 9780684818689
• eBook ISBN: 9781439105061
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

An illuminating critique of modern thought from America's "Philosopher for Everyman" ( Time ). Ten Philosophical Mistakes examines ten errors in modern thought and shows how they have led to serious consequences in our everyday lives. It teaches how they came about, how to avoid them, and how to counter their negative effects.

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1 Consciousness and Its Objects

1

LET US BEGIN with something everyone understands and ask some questions about it. It is to these questions that opposite answers are given—wrong answers and right ones.

When we are sleeping and not dreaming, we are unconscious. When we describe ourselves as unconscious, we are in effect saying that

we are unaware of whatever is happening in the world around us or even in our own bodies,

we are apprehending nothing; we are aware of nothing,

our minds are blank or empty,

• we are experiencing nothing, or are living through an unexperienced interval of time.

To say that we are aware of nothing, or apprehending nothing, is equivalent to saying that we are perceiving nothing, remembering nothing, imagining nothing, thinking of nothing. We might even add that we are sensing nothing and feeling nothing.

That set of words—perceiving, remembering, imagining, thinking, sensing, and feeling—comes very near to exhausting the acts in which our minds engage when we are awake and conscious. When none of these acts are occurring, our minds are blank and empty. When that is the case, it may also be said that we have no perceptions, memories, images, thoughts, sensations, or feelings.

At first blush, it would appear that much of the foregoing is repetitious. We seem to be saying the same thing over and over again. But that is not the case, as we shall soon see. Among the various statements made above, some lead to right and some to wrong answers to the pivotal question: When we are conscious, what is it that we are conscious of?

Let me put that question in other ways in which it can be asked. What are we aware of? What are we experiencing or having experiences of?

The crucial word in all these questions is the little preposition “of.” Grammatically, it calls for an object. What is the object that provides the answer to all these related questions?

Still one more question: When we are conscious, and therefore our minds are not blank and empty, what are they filled with? It has become customary to speak of the stream of consciousness or the flow of thought to describe what successively fills our consciousness or makes up our experience from moment to moment. What does it consist of? In other words, what is the changing content of consciousness?

One answer to the question is given by using the word “idea” for all of the quite different sorts of things that fill our minds when we are conscious. That word has been so used by modern philosophers, notably by John Locke, who introduced the usage. In the Introduction to his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he told his readers how he intended to use the word “idea,” as follows:

Before I proceed on to what I have thought on this subject [human understanding], I must here in the entrance beg pardon of my reader for the frequent use of the word idea, which he will find in the following treatise. It being the term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express … whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking.… I presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such ideas in men’s minds: every one is conscious of them in himself; and men’s words and actions will satisfy him that they are in others.

Locke’s use of the word “thinking” is as omni-comprehensive as his use of the word “idea.” He uses “thinking” for all the acts of the mind, just as he uses the word “idea” for all the objects of the mind when it is thinking, or for all the contents of consciousness when we are conscious.

Thus used, the word “thinking” stands for all the mental activities that, when distinguished, go by such names as “perceiving,” “remembering,” “imagining,” “conceiving,” “judging,” “reasoning”; also “sensing” and “feeling.” In the same way, the word “ideas,” used in an omnicomprehensive fashion, covers a wide variety of items that can also be distinguished from one another: percepts, memories, images, thoughts or concepts, sensations, and feelings.

It would be unfair to Locke not to state at once that he does differentiate these various items, all of which he groups together under the one word “idea.” He also distinguishes the different acts of the mind that bring ideas of all sorts into it, or that produce ideas for the mind to be conscious or aware of.

Let this be granted, but the question still remains whether Locke has distinguished them correctly or not. That in turn leads to the pivotal question with which we are here concerned: What are the objects of the mind when it is conscious of anything? The wrong answer to that question, with all the consequences that follow in its train, is the philosophical mistake with which this chapter deals.

2

In the introductory passage of Locke’s Essay quoted above, two things are told to the reader.

One is that Locke expects him to agree that he has ideas in his own mind, ideas of which he is conscious.

The other is that the reader will concede that other individuals also have ideas in their own minds, ideas of which they, too, are conscious.

Since no one can be conscious of the ideas in the minds of others, Locke qualifies this second point by saying that, from the way others speak and behave, we infer that they, too, have ideas in their minds, often very like our own.

These two points together introduce a note of fundamental importance. The ideas in my mind are my ideas. The ideas in yours are yours. These possessive pronouns call attention to the fact that the ideas in anyone’s mind are subjective: they belong to that one person and to no one else. Just as there are as many human minds in the world as there are individual persons, so there are as many distinct sets of ideas as there are individually distinct minds.

Each person has his own. Only one’s own ideas are, according to Locke, the objects of that person’s awareness when he or she is conscious. No one can be conscious of another person’s ideas. They are never objects of which anyone else is immediately aware. To concede that another individual also has ideas, of which we can have no direct awareness, must always result from an act of inference, based on what others say and do.

If the word “object” applied to ideas as that of which we are aware when we are conscious leads us to think that ideas are objective or have objectivity, then an apparent contradiction confronts us. We appear to be saying opposite things about ideas: on the one hand, that my ideas, being exclusively mine and not yours or anyone else’s, are subjective; on the other hand, that my ideas also have objectivity.

We appear compelled to admit that, for any one individual, the ideas in the minds of other individuals are not objects of which he or she can be conscious. Their subjectivity puts them beyond the reach of his or her immediate awareness. In other words, the ideas in a given person’s mind are objects for that person alone. They are beyond immediate apprehension for everyone else.

Let us pause for a moment to consider the meaning of the words “objective” and “subjective.” We call something objective when it is the same for me, for you, and for anyone else. We call something subjective when it differs from one individual to another and when it is exclusively the possession of one individual and of no one else.

To reinforce this understanding of the distinction between the subjective and the objective, let me introduce another pair of words: “public” and “private.” These two words can be used to divide all our experience into that which is public and that which is private.

An experience is public if it is common to two or more individuals. It may not be actually common to all, but it must at least be potentially common to all. An experience is private if it belongs to one individual alone and cannot possibly be shared directly by anyone else.

Let me illustrate this division of all our experiences into public and private by proposing what I regard as (and what I hope readers will agree are) clear and indisputable examples of each type.

Our bodily feelings, including our emotions or passions, are private. My toothache, heartburn, or anger is something directly experienced by me alone. I can talk to you about it and if you, too, have had such bodily feelings, you can understand what I am talking about. But understanding what I am talking about is one thing; having these experiences yourself is quite another.

You may have had them in the past, and this may help you to understand what I am talking about. But you need not have them at the same time that I am having them in order to understand what I am talking about. In any case, you cannot ever share with me the bodily feelings that I am now having and talking to you about.

In sharp contrast to our bodily feelings, our perceptual experiences are public, not private. When you and I are sitting in the same room with a table between us on which there are glasses and a bottle of wine, you and I are perceptually apprehending the same objects—not our own ideas, but the table between us, the glasses, and the bottle of wine. If I move the table a little, or pour some wine from the bottle into your glass, you and I are sharing the same experience. It is a public experience, as the taste of the wine or the heartburn it causes in me is not.

My perceptions (or percepts) are not identical with yours. Each of us has his own, as each of us has his own bodily feelings. But though my perceptions and yours are in this sense subjective (belonging exclusively to each of us alone), our having them results in our having a common or public experience, as the subjective bodily feelings we have do not.

To use Locke’s terminology, both perceptions and bodily feelings are ideas and each of us has his own. But certain subjective ideas, such as bodily feelings, are exclusively subjective. They are objects of consciousness only for the one person who experiences them. Though they may be called objects for this reason, they do not have any objectivity. In contrast, other subjective ideas, such as percepts or perceptions, result in public, not private, experience, for their objects can be directly and simultaneously experienced by two or more individuals.

3

All ideas are subjective. I have mine; you have yours; and they are never identical or common to us both. They cannot be so, any more than the cells and tissues of your body can be identical or common with the cells and tissues of mine.

It is necessary here to introduce a distinction between ideas and bodily feelings, emotions, and sensations. Unfortunately, Locke fails to observe this distinction. Whatever can be properly called an idea has an object. Perceptions, memories, imaginations, and concepts or thoughts are ideas in this sense of the word, but bodily feelings, emotions, and sensations are not. We apprehend them directly. They do not serve as the means whereby we apprehend anything else.

What I have just said applies also, in rare instances, to sensations generated by the stimulation of our external senseorgans, such as the sudden gleam of light we see, the unexpected loud noise we hear, the strange odor we cannot identify. These sensations do not enter into our perception of anything. In contrast, when we are perceiving, we are directly conscious of something other than our percepts.

What is that something other? The answer is: the table, wine bottle, and glasses that you and I perceive when we are sharing the experience that results from our perceptual activity. Our experience of the table, bottle, and glasses is a public experience, not a private experience exclusively our own.

These really existing things are the objects of our perceptual awareness, not the percepts or perceptions that enable us to be aware of or to apprehend them. That is why we can talk to one another about them as things we are experiencing in common. The table, for example, that is the perceptual object that we are both apprehending at the same time is the table that you and I can lift together and move to another part of the room.

For John Locke, the awareness we have of our own ideas is entirely a private experience, exclusively our own. This holds for all those who, in one way or another, adopt his view of ideas as the objects of our minds when we are conscious—objects of which we are immediately aware and that we directly apprehend. They are in effect saying that all the ideas that an individual has in his mind when he is conscious result in private experiences for him, experiences no one else can share. To say this is the philosophical mistake that has such serious consequences in modern thought.

4

Before I point out the consequences of the philosophical mistake to be found in Locke’s view of consciousness and its ideas, let me expound the opposite view a little further.

To state that view in its own terms will not only sharpen the issue created by the opposite views, it will also bring to light certain difficulties inherent in the opposing view. These need to be resolved.

Objections to the opposing view may already have occurred to readers of the foregoing pages. They may have noted the difficulties just referred to. They may think that the opposing view goes too far in the opposite direction and that it gives rise to consequences as objectionable as those resulting from Locke’s view when that is carried to its logical conclusions.

It is necessary to remember that the opposing view does not apply to all ideas, but only to some. Excluded are bodily sensations, feelings, emotions, and, in rare instances, sensations generated by stimulation of our external senseorgans. All these are conceded to be private experiences, in which we are directly conscious of the pain we feel, the anger we suffer, or the sudden gleam of light, the unexpected loud noise, the strange odor that we cannot identify and that does not enter into our perception of anything.

All these are objects of immediate experience. They do not serve as means for apprehending anything else. They themselves are the objects of our apprehension.

With these exceptions noted, all our other ideas can be characterized as cognitive—as instruments of cognition. Instead of being themselves objects of apprehension, they are the means by which we apprehend objects that are not ideas.

Those two little words “by which” hold the clue to the difference between Locke’s view and the opposite view. For Locke, all ideas are that which we apprehend when we are conscious of anything. For the opposing view, some ideas (our cognitive ideas) are that by which we apprehend the objects of which we are conscious.

This view is expressed by Thomas Aquinas in a brief passage, comparable to the brief passage in Locke’s Introduction to his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. I will paraphrase it in order to avoid terminology that might prove baffling to contemporary readers.

In the Treatise of Man, included in Part I of his Summa Theologica, Aquinas takes up the question whether our ideas (I am here using that term in Locke’s omni-comprehensive sense) are that which we apprehend when we are conscious, or that by which we apprehend objects that are not ideas. With one qualification, to be reserved for later consideration when it becomes more appropriate, the answer he gives is emphatically: that by which.

Let me spell this answer out in all its significant details. It means that we experience perceived things, but never the percepts whereby we perceive them. We remember past events or happenings, but we are never aware of the memories by which we remember them. We can be aware of imagined or imaginary objects, but never the images by which we imagine them. We apprehend objects of thought, but never the concepts by which we think of them.

Do you mean to say (readers may ask) that I am never conscious or aware of the memories or images I am able to call to mind, and that I cannot directly examine the concepts or conceptions my mind has been able to form?

The answer to that question, however contrary it may be to our loose habits of speech, is emphatically affirmative. A cognitive idea (including here percepts, memories, images, and concepts) cannot, at one and the same time, be both that which we directly apprehend and that by which we apprehend something else—some object that is not an idea in our own minds, but unlike our subjective ideas is rather something that can be an object of consideration or of conversation for two or more individuals.

Let us go back for a moment to the table at which you and I are sitting with its bottle of wine and its glasses. We noted earlier that our awareness of these objects was a public or communal experience, one that we both shared. It could not have been that if each of us was aware of nothing but his own perceptual ideas—his own sense perceptions. Its being a communal experience for both of us, one that we shared, depended on our both apprehending the same perceptual objects—the really existing table, bottle, and glasses—not our own quite private perceptions of them.

Subjective differences do enter into our perceptions of something that is one and the same common object for two or more people. They are usually not difficult to account for.

For example, you and I sitting at the same table and looking at the same bottle of wine report differences to one another. I say that the wine appears to have the color of burgundy, and you say that it appears to have the color of claret. After a moment’s consideration, we realize that my perceiving it as having the darker shade of red is due to the fact that I am sitting with my back to the light source and for me the bottle is in a shadow. You are sitting with light from the window falling directly on the bottle.

To take another example: you perceive the glasses on the table as tinted green, and I say that they look gray to me. You, then, ask me whether I am color-blind, and I confess that I forgot to mention that I was.

In spite of such subjective differences in perception, the object perceived remains the same individual thing for the different perceivers—the same bottle, the same glasses. The subjective differences, when noted, whether or not...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• To the Reader
• Prologue: Little Errors in the Beginning
• The Ten Subjects About Which the Mistakes Are Made
• Part One
• Part Two
• Epilogue: Modern Science and Ancient Wisdom