" APPEARING THING ".

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From all that has been said in the pre

ceding sections regarding the distinction between what things

are " and what they " appear," the general conclusion emerges

that this distinction can be satisfactorily explained without

erecting the "appearances" of things into a system of secondary,

subsidiary, mental "things," realities "of the second order," so

to speak, and supposing these to intervene as a tertium quid

between the knowing mind and the primary, original realities.

"Knowing" in any form, whether by perceiving, conceiving,

judging, interpreting, etc., is a mental activity or process which

implies that something, some reality, " appears," or " is presented "

or "represented," as object to the knower : the "appearing,"

etc., being identically the cognitive process regarded from the

objective side. We are, of course, at liberty to transform

these verbs into substantives, and to speak of " perceptions,"

"appearances," "presentations," "representations," etc.; but

even if we do, they still signify processes, and certainly the mere

linguistic change from verb to substantive does not transform

processes of cognition into objects of cognition. Yet it has been

VOL. II. 12

i?8 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

a ratlier too common procedure on the part of philosophers, in

their analysis of cognition, to interpret this process as implying

a set of intramental objects, which they variously describe

as "appearances," "representations," "phenomena," "images,"

"symbols," etc., intervening between the knowing mind and

the reality which is given to it to know.

The scholastics spoke, indeed, of a " species " or " imago,

similitude intentionalis ( impressa}" as determinant of the cognitive

process, but they took care to make it abundantly clear that they

did not regard this "species " as a known object : " species non est

id quod cognoscitur, sed id quo mens cognoscit rem ". And when

they spoke of the achieved cognitive process as terminating in a

" species intentionalis expressa " of the known reality, they meant

just as clearly, not that the mind consciously apprehended any

mental image of this reality, but that by virtue of the whole cog

nitive process the mind became "assimilated " or "conformed"

to the known reality (112).

It was with the advent of Idealism that the immediate object

of the mind s awareness, in the process of cognition, began to be

regarded as being something necessarily immanent in, or really

one with, the knowing mind, and not as being the extramental

reality itself. To vindicate for the mind the possibility of know

ing the latter became henceforth a problem of how to " construct

the bridge " from the knowing mind or subject to the extramental

reality as object. 1 For, once it is assumed that the mind can

come into direct cognitive contact only with its own conscious

states a serious doubt arises as to whether or how it can ever

know any reality beyond these, any extra-subjective or extra-

mental reality (112, 113). Naturally, those who believed in the

possibility, despite the assumption, regarded those directly known

conscious states as " impressions," " ideas," " images," "representa

tions," "appearances," "phenomena," etc., produced by the extra-

mental reality in the mind, and as mentally "reproducing,"

" mirroring,"" reflecting," " representing " this reality, which would

thus be known indirectly and inferentially through the medium of

these conscious, mental substitutes. But the question immediately

arose : How can we be sure that these conscious states are pro

duced by anything extramental, or that if they are they represent

it faithfully? To vindicate certitude on this point Descartes

appealed to the Divine Veracity, and Malebranche to Divine

1 C/. JHANNIERE, op. cit., p. 443.

IDEALISM ON "APPEARANCE" AND "REALITY" 179

Revelation ; while Berkeley combined the assumption of Idealism

with the principle of causality to reason away the material uni

verse and to infer the existence of God from human minds and

their "ideas". These attempts to establish reasoned certitude

about extramental reality failed, and could not but fail. Mean

while, some scholastics came gradually to consider that so far as

the objects of the individual mind s direct and immediate awareness

are concerned, these objects cannot in any circumstances be the

non-self, but must always be the self, variously affected or deter

mined in the ways revealed as conscious states (127); and in re

gard to sense perception they therefore naturally adopted the

representationist theory. But holding, and rightly, that in these

states reality as such is revealed to intellect^ and that the intel

lectual concepts of substance, cause, etc., derived from these

states, are objectively and really valid, they have contended that

reasoned certitude about the existence and nature of a real non-

self or external universe can be mediately attained by the prin

ciple of causality. We have pointed out the need there is, in this

procedure, to vindicate the objective and real validity of another

intellectual concept, which is inevitably involved if certitude

about a real non-self universe is to be attained, viz. the concept of

real externality or real otherness from the self-reality, which latter,

on this theory, forms the total conscious content from which the

individual intellect derives all its concepts (104, in). Nor do

we see how the validity of this concept is to be vindicated if we

allow that in our direct cognitive processes non-self reality is

never present to consciousness and is never an object of the mind s

direct cognitive awareness. Not only, therefore, do we think that

there is no sufficient reason for abandoning the perceptionist posi

tion, but furthermore, we consider it is by adopting it, by main

taining that among the conscious data of our direct cognitive

awareness the real non-self is revealed with the same directness and

immediacy as the real self (105, 1 1 1), that we can most effectively

meet all forms of subjectivism and agnosticism, which either by

denying the validity of the principle of causality altogether, or

what comes practically to the same thing; limiting its valid applica

tion to the conscious domain of mental states or " appearances "

or "phenomena," conclude that speculative reason offers no

reliable " bridge " from knowledge of these appearances to know

ledge of any reality beyond consciousness.

It is Kant, especially, who has made the widest use of those

1 80 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

supposed direct objects of awareness called "appearances" or

"representations," as interlopers between the mind and reality.

His whole system is based on a confusion of the process of cogni

tion with the object of cognition 1 : for it is only by such confusion

that an " appearance " can be set up as a tertium quid between

the mind and reality. We may, therefore, introduce his doctrine

on sense perception by seeing how he involves himself in this

confusion.

He asks whether space and time are relations which belong to

things as they are in themselves even if these were not perceived,

or which belong to things only as these are perceived ; 2 and he

concludes that they belong to things only as these are perceived.

This can only mean " that things are not in reality spatial [and

temporal] but only look or appear spatial [and temporal] to us ". y

But if so, "space is an illusion, inasmuch as it is not a property

of things at all " ; 4 and the same is true of time. This, however,

"is precisely the conclusion which Kant wishes to avoid. He takes infinite

trouble to explain that he does not hold space and time to be illusions.

Though transcendentally ideal (i.e. though they do not belong to things in

themselves), they are empirically real. In other words, space and time are

real relations of something, though not of things in themselves.

" How, then, does Kant obtain something of which space and time can be

regarded as really relations ? He reaches it by a transition which at first sight

seems harmless. In stating the fact of perception he substitutes for the

assertion that things appear so and so to us the assertion that things produce

appearances in us. In this way he obtains an assertion which introduces

a second reality distinct from the thing, viz. an appearance or phenomenon,

and thereby he gains something other than the thing, to which space can be

attached as a real predicate. He thus gains something in respect of which,

with regard to spatial relations, we can be said to have knowledge and not

illusion. For the position now is that space, though not a property of things

in themselves, is a property of phenomena or appearances ; in other words,

that while things in themselves are not spatial, phenomena and appearances

are spatial. . . . 5

" It may be said, then, that Kant is compelled to end with a different

distinction from that with which he begins. He begins with the distinction

between things as they are in themselves and things as they appear to us,

the distinction relating to one and the same reality regarded from two

different points of view. He ends with the distinction between two different

realities, things-in-themselves," external to, in the sense of independent of,

1 Cf. vol. i., 92-3. ^Critique (Muller), p. 18.

3 PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 73. 4 Ibid. Ibid.

6 " It should be noticed that things-in-themselves and things as they are

in themselves have a different meaning."

IDEALISM ON "APPEARANCE" AND "REALITY" 181

the mind, and phenomena or appearances within it. Yet if his argument 1

is to be valid, the two distinctions should be identical, for it is the first

distinction to which the argument appeals. In fact we find him expressing

what is to him the same distinction now in one way and now in the other as

the context requires." 2

The perception process looked at from the side of the per

ceiving subject, is the perceiving of an object by a subject, and

looked at from the side of the object, is the appearing of an object

to a subject. We now see how Kant erected this event into

a tertium quid which he interposed as a " phenomenon " or

"appearance" or "mental object," or "object of awareness "

between the mind and the real object. By this identification

of process and object he succeeded in getting a set of subsidiary,

secondary, mental entities, of which space and time might be

really predicated, and our knowledge of which, as spatial and

temporal, might be said to be genuine knowledge and not

illusion. This procedure of converting the perceiving or appearing

of objects into objects perceived has set an example which has

been too easily adopted and too widely followed in philosophies

far removed from Kantism. Its legitimacy should not be allowed

without full justification. As a matter of fact we shall find

Kant attempting to justify it, in other words, attempting to

prove that the spatial objects of our empirical perception must

be only mind-dependent or intramental objects, "phenomena,"

or "appearances," from a consideration of the nature of space

as revealed in geometrical judgments, his contention being

that space can be only a mental form of perception and that

therefore spatial objects can be only mind-dependent entities. 3

And we hope to show that he fails to make good his contention.

Neither, however, can we assume a priori, or as beyond all

possibility of at least provisional doubt and investigation, that

what the mind immediately apprehends in perception is not

an intramental and somehow mind-dependent object, which

would be, perhaps, an "image," "representation," "appearance,"

etc., produced in consciousness by the extramental reality.

What we have rather to show, and what we have so far endeav

oured to show, is that in the facts of our cognitive experience

there are no sufficient grounds for such a supposition ; and that

the supposition itself, whatever about its grounds, so far from

1 For the argument in question, cf. infra, 133.

2 PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 75. 3 Cf. infra, 133.

1 8 2 THE OR Y OF KNO WLED GE

helping us to understand those facts, rather introduces a further

perplexing factor into attempts at explaining them. These

remarks are prompted by the following passage in which

Prichard urges rather forcibly the untenability of Kant s posi

tion :

The final form of Kant s conclusion, then, is that while things in them

selves are not, or, at least, cannot be known to be spatial, " phenomena," or

appearances produced in us by things in themselves, are spatial. Un

fortunately, the conclusion in this form is no more successful than in its

former form, that things are spatial only as perceived. Expressed by the

formula "phenomena are spatial," it has, no doubt, a certain plausibility;

for the word " phenomena " to some extent conceals the essentially mental

character of what is asserted to be spatial. But the plausibility disappears

on the substitution of "appearances" the true equivalent of Kant s

Erscheinungen -for " phenomena ". Just as it is absurd to describe the

fact that the stick only looks bent by saying that, while the stick is not bent,

the appearance which it produces is bent, so it is, even on the face of it,

nonsense to say that while things are not spatial, the appearances which

they produce in us are spatial. For an " appearance " being necessarily

something mental, cannot possibly be said to be extended. 1 Moreover, it is

really an abuse of the term " appearance " to speak of appearances

produced by things, for this phrase implies a false severance of the appearance

from the things which appear. If there are appearances at all, they are

appearances of things and not appearances produced by things. The import

ance of the distinction lies in the difference of implication. To speak

of appearances produced by things is to imply that the object of perception

is merely something mental, viz. an appearance. Consequently access to a

non-mental reality is excluded. . . . 2

This passage precedes the author s detailed analysis of the

distinction between " appearance " and " reality " ; and, admitting

its summary character, the author proceeds to vindicate it in

the manner already examined (125, 128).

The objection (he writes :! ) will probably be raised that this criticism

is much too summary. We do, it will be said, distinguish in ordinary

consciousness between appearance and reality. Consequently there must

be some form in which Kant s distinction between things in themselves and

phenomena and the conclusion based on it are justified. Moreover, Kant s

reiterated assertion that his view does not imply that space is an illusion

and that the distinction between the real and the illusory is possible within

phenomena requires us to consider more closely whether Kant may not after

all be entitled to hold that space is not an illusion. The objection of course

J Cf., however, supra, 125.

2 PRICHARD, op. cit. t pp. 75-6 (cf. supra, 125, p. 144). 3 Ibid., pp. 76-7.

IDEALISM ON "APPEARANCE" AND "REALITY" 183

is reasonable. No one can satisfy himself of the justice of the above criticisms

until he has considered the real nature of the distinction between appearance

and reality.

But in investigating the nature of the distinction, Prichard

unfortunately admits that the secondary qualities are mere

"mental facts" or "sensations"; and hence "access to a non-

mental reality," from their presence in consciousness, "is ex

cluded ". Moreover the admission is fatal to the accessibility of

"a non-mental reality" as the veritable subject of the primary

qualities or "spatial relations". Nor can the "non-mental"

reality of these be vindicated against Kant by the mere assertion

that their non-mental reality is a necessary presupposition of

knowledge; or that the distinction between a "deceptive"

(" Schein ") and a "genuine " (" Erscheinung") " mental fact " or

"appearance" is unintelligible.

CHAPTER XXI.

KANT S THEORY OF SENSE PERCEPTION, SPACE AND TIME.