Consciousness and Its Objects
by Mortimer Adler
A chapter from the book 10 Philosophical Mistakes
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 modem 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 omni-comprehensive 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 sense-organs, 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 sense-organs. 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 arid 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 explained, would not cause the perceivers to doubt that they were looking at the same perceptual objects.
However, that might happen in the following instances. If I were to say of the bottle we are both looking at that it is half empty, and you were to say it is filled; or if I were to say it is corked, and you were to say it is uncorked; then we might have some doubts about our talking to one another about the same perceptual object. But it is difficult to imagine such perceptual differences occurring unless extraordinary and abnormal circumstances were at work.
Under ordinary conditions, perceptual experience is an apprehension of perceived objects. This applies also to memories, images, and conceptions. What is true of one type of cognitive idea, our perceptions, is true of all the other types of cognitive ideas—all of them the means, not the objects, of apprehension; that by which, not that which, we apprehend.
There is one important difference between our perceptions and our other cognitive ideas—our memories, images, and conceptions. In the case of the latter, our direct or immediate apprehension of the objects they put before our minds leaves quite open the question whether these objects are or are not really existing things. Here are some examples of how that question arises
We remember some past event or happening. But we know that our memory can play tricks on us. We may, therefore, be cautious enough to ask whether what we remember really happened in the past as we are remembering it. There are various ways of finding this out. Having recourse to them, we satisfy ourselves that our memory was correct, and so we make the judgment that the event that is the object of our memory did really occur in the past as we remembered it.
It is necessary to note here that there are two separate acts of the mind. The first is an act of simple apprehension—the act whereby we remember a past event. The second is a more complex act of judgment, usually the result of reasoning or of weighing relevant evidence. The judgment may be either affirmative or negative. It may involve our asserting that what we remember did, in fact, really happen in the past, or it may consist in a denial that it did.
Turning from memory to imagination, we find that the question about the real existence of an imagined object arises in a different way. In most cases, the objects of our imagination are objects we construct from our perceptual experiences; for example, a centaur, a mermaid, or a mountain of gold. Because we have ourselves constructed them, we know at once that they are purely imaginary objects and so we do not hesitate for a moment to deny their real existence.
However, we are sometimes called upon to imagine something that can really exist and can be perceived, either by us or by someone else. Then we may, upon reflection, affirm the real existence of the object we have imagined, but not perceived.
What is true of only some objects of imagination holds true for all objects of thought. For every object of thought that we apprehend by means of our concepts or conceptions, we face the question that calls for a judgment about its existence in reality. In addition to its being an object of thought, which may be a communal or public object that two or more persons can talk about with one another, is it also something that really exists? The object of thought, as we and others apprehend it and discuss it, remains the same whichever way this question is answered.
When, for example, angels are conceived as minds without bodies, they are objects of thought that can be discussed by two individuals, one of whom affirms their real existence and the other of whom denies it. While differing in their judgment on this point, they can still have the same object of thought before their minds and agree, in the light of the conception of angels they share, that angels do not occupy space in the same way that bodies do.
The question about the real existence of perceptual objects does not arise for most of our normal perceptions. Under normal circumstances, when we apprehend objects perceptually we, at the very same instant, make the judgment that asserts their real existence.
To say that I perceive the table at which you and I are sitting amounts to saying that it really exists. If I had the slightest doubt about its real existence, I would not dare to say that I perceive the table. In the case of normal perceptions, the simple act of apprehension is inseparable from the act of judgment that asserts the real existence of the object apprehended.
Hallucinations and dreams masquerade as perceptions. The person suffering a hallucination believes that he is perceiving what, in fact, he is not perceiving at all, because the object of his abnormal perception does not really exist. So, also, in the case of dreams: while we are dreaming, we suffer the illusion that we are having perceptual experiences.
The dreamer suffers an illusion of the same sort that the person hallucinating suffers. Both are taken in by the counterfeit perceptual experiences, and so they are deceived into believing at the time that these counterfeit perceptual objects really exist. Once awakened, or cured of hallucinosis, the illusion vanishes. Nothing in that experience was real; everything was imagined, not perceived.
5
The apprehended objects that are present to our minds through the agency of our cognitive ideas are public or communal objects. They are objects for two or more persons, objects that they can talk about with one another. This holds true for objects of thought and of memory and imagination, as well as for objects of perception.
It may be helpful to consider how a number of persons can be considering one and the same object when one of them is perceiving it, another is remembering it, and a third is imagining it. I shall postpone for later consideration (in the next chapter) how two or more persons can discuss the same object of thought. Since one of the three persons is perceiving the object common to all three by different modes of apprehension, we know that the object in question is one that really exists.
Let the physical thing in question be the wallpaper in a woman's bedroom. The woman is sitting in her bedroom looking at the wallpaper while talking about it on the telephone to her husband. For her the wallpaper is a perceptual object; for him, it is a remembered object. Though the woman and her husband are operating with ideas that are not only numerically distinct but are also distinct in character (one a percept, the other a memory), the two ideas can present the same object to their minds.
Furthermore, if it is one and the same object that both are apprehending, though by different modes of apprehension, then it must also follow that the object being remembered by the husband must be an entity that also really exists, since that same object is an object being perceived by his wife. If that object were not an entity which also really existed, she could not be perceiving it. So far, then, we are able to say that the wallpaper has two modes of existence: real existence on the wall and objective existence as both something perceived and something remembered.
A little later the wife telephones a friend of hers and discusses the wallpaper, asking for advice about putting wallpaper of the identical pattern on the guest-room wall. The friend says that she has never seen the wallpaper in question. The wife then tells her friend that the pattern is the same as that of wallpaper on the friend's bedroom wall, except that the pattern is red on white, not blue on white. At this point the friend says that she can imagine the wallpaper and recommends putting it on the guest-room wall.
For the friend, the wallpaper is neither a perceived nor a remembered object. It is an imagined object. Though an image is different from a percept and a memory, it can nevertheless present the same object to the mind of the friend that is present to the wife through perception and to the husband through memory.
It is thus one and the same object of discourse for all three of them. In addition, because it is an object of perception for one of them, that which is a common object for all three of them, though differently apprehended, must be an entity which also has physical existence on the bedroom wall. This is tantamount to saying that it is quite possible not only to remember but also to imagine an object that also really exists.
If two persons are talking about an object that is an object of memory for both of them, or an object of imagination for both, or an object of memory for one and an object of imagination for the other, the question about whether that common object is an entity which also really exists, which also once existed, or which also may exist in the future, cannot be so easily answered.
Let us consider first the case of two persons, both of whom are remembering the same object. That object may be an entity which now really exists and is, therefore, capable of being perceived by a third person. If that third person is not a party to the conversation, the conversation of the two persons about what at first appears to be a common object of memory requires them to exercise two cautions.
First, they must make a discursive effort to be sure that their numerically distinct memories have the same object. They can do this by asking each other questions about the object being remembered and thus become satisfied, with reasonable assurance, that it is the same object for both of them.
Second, they must not be precipitate in judging whether the remembered object either now really exists or once really existed and no longer does. Assuring themselves that they are both remembering the same object is hardly assurance that the object remembered is an entity that either has or had real existence. They could both be utterly deceived on this score, or be in some degree of error.
If they are not deceived or in error, and if the object that they are commonly remembering once had real existence but no longer really exists, can we say that one and the same entity has existence as an apprehended object and real existence as a thing?
The answer must be negative, since we know that the object being remembered no longer really exists. Nevertheless, it once did really exist. The fact that its two modes of existence are not simultaneous, as they are in the case of perception, does not alter the underlying principle.
What has just been said applies to the case of two persons, both of whom are imaginging the same object. They must exercise the same cautions in order to be sure that the object each is imagining is common to them both; and in order to discuss the question whether that common object may also have real existence at some future time.
Such a discussion, for example, might take place about an invention that they are commonly imagining. If they concur in the judgment that the particular piece of apparatus they have used their imaginations to invent is an imagined object that is also capable of real existence in the future, the principle already stated applies; namely, that the object of their imaginations may at some future time also have real existence as a physical thing.
6
The opposing views of consciousness and its objects have now been sufficiently set forth for our present purposes. I have deferred the consideration of certain problems because they can be more appropriately dealt with in the next chapter, where we shall be concerned with opposing views about the human mind.
What remains for treatment here are the consequences of espousing one or the other of the opposing views. Let us first examine the consequences of the philosophical mistake. Then let us see if the view which corrects this mistake enables us to avoid consequences that we find repugnant to reason and to common sense.
Those who hold the mistaken view of ideas as that which each individual directly apprehends—the immediate objects of which each individual is conscious—lock each of us up in the private world of his or her own subjective experience.
It may be thought that, from the experience we have of our own ideas, we can somehow infer the existence of things that are not ideas in our minds—the existence of individuals other than ourselves, and of all the other bodies that, as a matter of common sense, we suppose to be constituents of the physical world.
However, since I can have no direct acquaintance with or immediate awareness of anything that is not an idea in my own mind, it is difficult to see how any attempt to argue for or prove the existence of an external reality can be carried out successfully.
The ultimate consequences to which we are thus led are so drastic and repugnant that the names we attach to them are in general disrepute. No philosopher of sound mind has ever been willing to embrace or espouse them, even though, starting from Locke's little error in the beginning, Hume discovered that one is inexorably led to conclusions so extreme that common sense would prevent anyone from adopting them.
One of these extreme positions goes by the name of total skepticism concerning the possibility of our having any knowledge of a reality outside of or external to our own minds. The other is called solipsism—the assertion that everything of which I am aware or conscious is a figment of my own mind.
Common sense, in the light of experiences we all have, compels us to reject these conclusions as absurd. We cannot twist our minds into regarding all the conversations we have with other individuals as completely illusory—conversations in which you and I talk with one another about objects that we both experience, objects that we both refer to by the words we use to name them, among them objects that you and I can both handle at the same time that we are talking about them. We are certainly not talking about the ideas in my mind or the ideas in your mind.
Neither Locke nor any of his followers, including even the skeptical David Hume, lacked common sense. They had enough of it to prevent them from adopting the extreme conclusions to which the initial mistaken premise inexorably leads. In fact, Locke, in the opening passage in which he announces his use of the word "idea" to stand for whatever we are conscious of when we are awake, also announces that in the following pages of his Essay he is going to be concerned with the question whence come ideas into our minds.
Having, in Book I of the Essay, argued against the view that our minds at birth are endowed with innate ideas, Locke goes on in Book II to explain at length how our simplest ideas come into our minds by the action of external physical things on our bodily sense-organs. There is nothing in our minds that does not have its ultimate source in sense-experience. Locke's reiteration of this point reveals his tacit acknowledgment of the existence of Newton's world of bodies in motion, including our own and the bodies that act on us to stimulate our sense-organs.
One might think that rejecting as absurd the conclusions to which the initial mistaken premise inevitably leads would result in a rejection of the premise itself as equally absurd. That is the way a reductio ad absurdum argument is supposed to work. When we are shown that we have been led to an absurd conclusion by logically following out the implications of an initial premise, we are expected to respond by rejecting that premise as itself absurd.
That is what should have happened to Locke's initially mistaken premise. But it did not. On the contrary, the philosophical error with which we are here concerned was instead compounded by an effort to avoid its absurd consequences in another way, a way that did not involve rejecting the initial premise as itself absurd.
What was that other way? It consisted in saying that the ideas in our minds, at least some if not all of them, in addition to being the objects of which we are directly and immediately conscious, are also representations of things that really exist in the external, physical world. I have stressed the word that compounds the error.
When does one thing deserve to be called the representation of another? Only when we observe some resemblance between what is called a representation and the thing it is supposed to represent, as when we say that a portrait is a good likeness or representation of the person portrayed.
On this understanding of what a representation is, how can our ideas (the only objects with which we have direct acquaintance) be regarded as representations of really existing things (of which we cannot have any direct awareness at all)?
There is no satisfactory answer to this question. On the face of it, it is impossible to hold that ideas are the only objects that we do directly apprehend and yet are also representations of realities that are never objects that we directly apprehend, for one can be said to represent the other only if both can be directly apprehended and compared.
Nevertheless, illicitly converting ideas into representations somehow bolstered the ungrounded belief in an independent, external world of real existences, a world with which none of us, if imprisoned within the privacy of his or her own mind, could ever have conscious contact. The endorsement of this irrational belief is a mystery that has remained unsolved. The futile attempts to solve it have produced a variety of other mysteries, resulting in obscurities and perplexities that have riddled modern philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Modern thought would have been better off if it had substituted the opposite view instead of engaging in all its serpentine twistings and turnings to extricate itself from the absurdities that result from the effort of regarding all ideas as the only objects directly apprehended. In addition, the foregoing mistake is compounded by the error of regarding some ideas as representations of realities that cannot be directly apprehended.
The opposite view not only saves us easily from skepticism and solipsism; it also saves us from futile efforts to prove the existence of an external, physical reality.
In our perceptual experiences, we are directly acquainted with the existence of other bodies as well as our own. In addition, all the other objects about which we engage in conversation with one another—the events or happenings we remember, the fictions we can imagine, the objects of conceptual thought as well as the objects of our perceptual experience—all these are public, common, or communal objects that we can communicate with one another about.
We do not—in fact, we cannot—talk to one another about our own ideas—our percepts, our memories, our images, our thoughts or concepts. Our subjective feelings, yes; but not ideas that present objects to us. We are conscious only of the objects apprehended, not of the ideas by which we apprehend them.
The profound difference made by substituting the correct view for the mistaken one can be summed up as follows.
When ideas are treated as the only things with which we have direct acquaintance by our immediate awareness of them as objects apprehended, we are compelled to live in two worlds without any bridge between them.
One is the world of physical reality, in which our own bodies occupy space, move about, and interact with other bodies. Our belief in the existence of this world is a blind and irrational faith.
The other is the completely private world in which each of us is enclosed—the world in which our only experience is the experience constituted by consciousness of our own ideas. The assumption that individuals other than ourselves also and similarly live in the private worlds of their own conscious experience is as blind a faith as the belief that we all live together in the one world of external physical reality.
When we correct the initial error that generates all these results, we find ourselves living together in the world of physical reality, a world with which we have direct acquaintance in our perceptual experiences. We not only have bodily contact with one another in this world; we also communicate with one another about it when we discuss perceptual objects we can handle together.
That is not the only world in which we live together. We also live in the public world that is constituted by our common experience of objects other than the perceptual objects that are also perceptible physical things. I am here referring to past events or happenings that we remember, imaginary objects as well as things we imagine that may also exist or be capable of real existence, and all objects of thought.
There is still a third world in which we live—the world of our completely private, subjective experience, in which each of us is aware of his or her own bodily sensations, feelings, and emotions—experiences to which we alone are privy.
It would, perhaps, be more accurate and more consonant with common sense to speak of these three realms of experience as three dimensions of one and the same world, not as three separate worlds.
The three dimensions consist of (1) perceptual objects that are really existing things or events, (2) all other objects that may or may not exist, may have existed in the past but no longer exist, and objects that do not exist at present but may exist in the future, and (3) the subjective experiences that exist only for the individual mind that has them. The first two are public; the third, private. In addition, there are the cognitive ideas that have existence in the mind but, being the means whereby we apprehend all the objects we do apprehend, are themselves never apprehended.
Only when we fail to reject the fundamental mistake about consciousness and its ideas that was introduced by Locke, and perhaps by Descartes before him, is it appropriate to speak of the realm of physical reality, on the one hand, and the realm of the mind's conscious experience, on the other hand, as two separate worlds, the relation between which we cannot satisfactorily explain.
The philosophical mistake, when seen in all its consequences, is both repugnant to reason and to common sense. The correction of that mistake produces the opposite result—a coherent view of consciousness and its objects that involves no inexplicable beliefs and that accords with common sense and common experience.