SOURCE: "The Philosophy of Samuel Alexander (II.)," in Mind: A Quarterly Review, Vol. XLIX, No. 194, April, 1940, pp. 136-49.

[In the following essay, which comprises the second installment of his analysis of Alexander's philosophy, Stout discusses Alexander's distinction between the ways objects and mental processes are experienced, his treatment of the knowledge of other minds, and his conceptions of space-time, intuitive knowledge, and the emergent quality of nature. ]

Enjoyment and Contemplation.

Alexander draws a hard and fast distinction between the way in which we experience objects and the way in which we experience our own mental (i.e., subjective) processes. We are said to enjoy the mental processes and to contemplate objects. Let no one suppose that this is only a new way of naming a distinction which can be readily understood and easily verified. At first I myself made this mistake. I took it to be in principle identical with the distinction between actual experience and thought. Then my main difficulty was with the view that only subjective processes and not sensa could be enjoyed, and also with the view that enjoyment and contemplation are mutually exclusive. But I soon discovered my mistake. The peculiarity of Alexander's view emerges with startling clearness in his denial that pleasure and pain are enjoyed. It is nonsense to say that the pain of a toothache or the pleasure of a lover in the presence of his beloved are not actually experienced. It is also nonsense to say that the pleasure and pain are existentially distinct and separable from the actual experiencing of them. Pleasure and pain exist only in being felt. When they are unfelt they not only cease to be known but altogether cease to be. I agree with Alexander that being pleased or pained is not the same as being conscious of the pleasure or pain. There is always the difference between what is known and the knowing of it. But in this case not only the knowing or being conscious but what we know or are conscious of is actually experienced and only exists in being actually experienced.

Let us now quote Alexander's own account of what he means by enjoyment as distinct from contemplation:—

Take the perception of a tree or a table. This situation consists of the act of the mind which is the perceiving; the object of which it is aware is so much of the thing called tree as is perceived . . . ; and the togetherness or compresence which connects these two distinct existences into the total situation is called the experience. But the two terms are differently experienced. The one is experienced, that is, is present in the experience, as the act of experiencing, the other as that which is experienced. . . . The word 'of' indicates the relation between these two relatively distinct existences. The difference between the two ways in which the terms are experienced is expressed in language by the difference between the cognate and the objective accusative. I am aware of my awareness as I strike a stroke or wave a farewell. My awareness and my being aware of it are identical. I experience the tree as I strike a man or wave a flag.¹

How, I ask, can my awareness and my being aware of it be identical? Such propositions are formally barred by Logic. What is known cannot be identical with its being known. Yet Alexander, when he speaks of awareness, means cognition. Everywhere he regards enjoyment as involving knowledge of what is enjoyed. Here he explicitly states that there is no difference between the enjoyment and the knowledge of it, between experiencing and the experience of the experiencing. What he says about the cognate accusative does not help him. For knowing is related to what is known not as striking to the stroke, but rather as striking to the object struck.² It is true that in the case of enjoyment the knowing is not existentially separate from what is known. But, as I have previously urged, the same is true of contemplation. Alexander's cognitive acts supposed to be existentially separate from the object cognised are impossible fictions. There are indeed what Alexander calls conations, i.e., ways in which the mind is interested in or occupied about the objects of which it is cognisant; and it may be that without such processes there could be no cognition. But in this respect there is no essential difference between contemplation and enjoyment. The enjoyed process consists in being interested in and occupied about its own object. But we may also be interested in and occupied about the enjoyed process itself as well as its object. In desiring food my attention may be wholly or almost wholly concentrated on the food as seen or smelled or thought of. But if satisfaction is postponed I become immediately interested in the desire itself. There follow exclamations such as: "I am dreadfully hungry; I would give the world for something to eat". Sometimes the interest in the enjoyed process is opposed to the interest in its object. This happens when we endeavour to suppress or conceal a desire such, for instance, as the morbid sexual cravings with which the psycho-analyst deals.

I conclude that "enjoyment" is not a way in which subjective states and processes are known, but a way in which they exist. I cannot see a fundamental difference between this way of existing and what I call being actually experienced. But I hold that sensa also are actually experienced. The question arises whether I am using the term with the same meaning when I apply it to sensa. If not, what is the difference? I have just pointed out that "enjoyment" of subjective processes is distinct from being cognisant of them. Is this also true of sensa as actually experienced? It seems too often assumed that the actual sensing of sensa consists only in knowing them by "direct acquaintance" instead of merely thinking of them. I cannot accept this view. What I find is that the actual experiencing is a necessary precondition of knowledge by acquaintance and is therefore not identical with it. It is no more identical with it than the placing of an object within my range of vision is identical with my seeing it. This is especially evident when the sensum is intensely pleasant or unpleasant or in other ways is in a high degree disturbing. Consider for instance a noise of overpowering intensity together with the organic sensa which accompany it. It is not my cognition of such sensa, however direct, but the sensa themselves which are so disturbing and intrusive. Their intrusiveness belongs to them as actually experienced and not as known. I cannot treat this question here with any approach to adequacy. I shall content myself with adding one argument which seems to me to have great force. If actual experience of sensa is just the same as knowing them by acquaintance it follows that nothing whatever can be sensibly experienced without being thus known. Further, nothing can be true of actual experience which is not true of the knowledge by acquaintance which is supposed to be identical with it. Now whatever is actually experienced is actually experienced in its completely determinate particularity. We cannot actually experience shape in general but only an entirely specific and particular shape. We cannot be actually experiencing a whole without actually experiencing each and all of its parts in their particular detail, as I can think of the town of Sydney without thinking of each and all of its particular roads, streets, etc. But if the actual experiencing of sensa is simply identical with knowing them by acquaintance, the knowledge by acquaintance must be no less particular and determinate. There ought to be no subconscious sensa. Every detail which is sensibly experienced ought to be separately discerned. But I am fully convinced that this is not so. If I ask myself what I am sensibly experiencing at any moment I find that only a relatively small part is discerned in detail. I am cognisant of the rest only inasmuch as I am cognisant of the whole sensible experience to which they belong. If I try to analyse this whole into its component parts, I find that I can pick out detail after detail, yet can never make the analysis complete. Further, the transition is quite different from that to new sensa, as when after seeing black I see white which was previously unseen. As each detail emerges into distinctness I am aware of something that I sensibly experienced before I discerned it—became conscious of it. I cannot here repeat what I and others have said in support of this doctrine of subconscious sensa. Some persons reject it as inherently absurd. But I have always found that they are really begging the question. They begin by assuming that what I call actual experience must be identical with knowledge by acquaintance. On this assumption I, of course, agree with them that there can be no subconscious sensa. Fully convinced, as I am, that they really exist, I can only infer that the assumption is false.

Can we distinguish enjoyment from sensible experience by saying that what is enjoyed actually exists only when it is actually enjoyed, whereas sensa may actually exist when they are not actually experienced? Once we have dismissed the view that sensa are selections from or distortions of objective facts, I can discover no evidence that they do in fact so exist, and it is at least doubtful whether they could do so. I am myself strongly inclined to agree with Berkeley that they could not. But even if we suppose that sensa can and subjective processes cannot actually exist without being actually experienced it does not follow that this is due to any fundamental difference in the way they are experienced. It may equally well be due to the difference between the nature of a subjective process and of a sensum.

Alexander, like James Ward, draws a hard and fast line between sensa and subjective process. He denies (though with some hesitation) that being pleased or pained by, with or about something is subjective or, as he would say, "mental". His reason is that pleasure and pain are sensory. It is curious that in this case at least he seems to have no way of directly determining what is mental. He has to fall back on this indirect criterion. To me it seems so clear that being pleased and the reverse are subjective that, if they are also sensory, I can only conclude that what is sensory constitutes or at least enters into the constitution of subjective states and processes. When we have got rid of the present alleged physical existence of sensa, this view does not present any insuperable difficulty. What stands in the way of it is a failure to distinguish the question of origin from the question of function. To be subjective is to be a way of being interested in something. Provided that this condition is fulfilled, a process is subjective whether or not it is partly or wholly sensory in its origin. In fact there seems to be good reason for asserting that subjective states are at least partly sensory in their origin.³ I agree with Alexander that being pleased and pained essentially involve organic sensa with their feeling-tone. It is still clearer that the same is true of emotions such as fear and anger. Conation too normally involves experience of motor tension.

Knowledge of Other Minds.

In contrast with his usual thoroughness, Alexander's treatment of the way in which we know other minds strikes me as somewhat perfunctory. Generally he speaks of contemplation and enjoyment as if they were the only primary and direct "ways of apprehension". But when he comes expressly to deal with the knowledge one mind has of others he refuses to regard this as inferential. He adds it to contemplation and enjoyment as a third primary and direct way of knowing which he calls "assurance". He fully admits that knowledge of other minds develops through inference, just as knowledge of the physical world does. But in both cases the starting-point and precondition of the inferential process must be found in knowledge which is not inferential. So far I can follow him and in general accept his arguments. In particular, I agree with him that "the idea of a foreign consciousness, unless directly supplied by some experience to that effect, is something to which we have no clue in ourselves".⁴ But I cannot accept Alexander's account of the conditions under which this primary knowledge of other minds arises. According to him it arises in the contemplation of a special kind of object. If we ask what kind of object this is, he answers that it is the kind of object in which we are socially interested. Alexander gives as examples "parental or filial affection, or sexual love, competition in pursuit of prey, or jealousy".⁵ Now the very meaning of the term social interest as Alexander understands it implies that it cannot exist apart from the idea or thought of the existence of other minds. But just for that reason it is putting the cart before the horse to say that social interest is an antecedent condition which first gives rise in the individual to the thought of minds other than his own. Unless this is already present, there can be only contemplation of physical objects. "There is," says Alexander, "all the difference between grasping a hand which returns the pressure and grasping an unresponsive piece of flesh in the shape of a hand."⁶ This is true. But the difference would not be appreciated if in grasping the hand we did not apprehend it as belonging to someone who was, or at least might be, capable of responsive feelings and desires. If this condition were not fulfilled, the pressure of the hand grasped would not be apprehended as a social response. It would be perceived merely as a physical fact. The same difficulty which Alexander finds in the theory of inference by analogy applies also to his own view. Social interest presupposes the thought of mental life other than our own and cannot therefore account for its existence.

My own view⁷ is that the thought of mind other than our own and connected with our own is primary and universal in the constitution of experience and in this respect is on a level with the thought of physical objects as involved in sense-perception. The function of actually experienced sensa in sense-perception is fulfilled by actually experienced subjective processes in the knowledge we have of mental life other than our own. This knowledge develops in detail through inference, in which the analogy of the bodily appearance and motions of others to our own, and also the experiences of social response, play a most important part. Of the two, social response is the more fundamental and important.⁸ Where and as far as these special clues fail, our apprehension of mental life beyond our own becomes comparatively vague and indefinite. But there is no reason for regarding it as baseless or unimportant. The primitive tendency, however, is to assume an individual life more or less analogous to our own individual selves even where special evidence for it is lacking. This anthropomorphic tendency is gradually corrected with advancing experience in much the same way as are primitive illusions of sense-perception, and just as the correction of perceptual error presupposes that sense-perception is always concerned with the objective world, however mistaken we may be about it, I submit that the same holds for the apprehension of mind other than our own.

Space-time and Intuition.

Alexander holds that there is a way of apprehending which he calls "Intuition," coming under the general head of contemplation, but distinct from Sense-Perception. I have postponed consideration of this way of apprehending because I find it impossible to examine it without first taking account of what seems to me most untenable in Alexander's ontology. In treating of sense-perception this complication did not arise. For there Alexander's fundamental ontological position was one which I share myself. It simply consists in the assumption that there really is a spatial-temporal universe, existing independently of being perceived. I should also agree that our knowledge of this universe is primarily direct in the sense in which 'direct' is contrasted with 'inferential'.

But his doctrine of intuition as a distinct way of apprehending is founded on a peculiar ontological theory of the ultimate constitution of the spatial-temporal universe. The basis of this theory is the view of pure space-time as existing independently of and even prior to the things, processes and qualities which are ordinarily said to exist in space and occur in time. From this pure space-time everything else develops, or, as he also puts it, pure space-time is the "stuff of which everything else is made. It is as if he had said that pure number comes first and all countable things are evolved from it. Neither time nor space are anything at all apart from things and events which are not merely spatial and temporal but have other characters. Space is a universal order in which extended things and their parts are correlated and connected. Time is a universal order in which changes are correlated and connected.⁹ The spatial order and the temporal mutually involve each other, and this fact is marked by the term space-time; and this, so far as I can see, is all that modern science means by it.

According to Alexander, pure space and pure time, considered apart from each other, are mere abstractions incapable of existing. But in their union as space-time they constitute one actual concrete process of great and everincreasing complexity. In working out this view in detail he displays his own brilliance and ingenuity in a most impressive way. But what he says corresponds to nothing in my experience. It is all in the air, or rather in an airless region in which I at any rate find myself suffocated. I shall not, therefore, make any attempt to follow him in this part of his work.

What I am here especially concerned with is the correlation of pure space-time, as Alexander conceives it, with that peculiar way of apprehending it which he calls "Intuition". Pure space-time is according to him not perceptible by the senses either as a whole or in its parts. The proper objects of sense-perception consist in qualities, including under this head not only colours, sounds, smells, etc., but mass and energy¹⁰ (what Alexander calls "materiality") Pure unqualified space-time must therefore be apprehended otherwise than by sense-perception: this other way of apprehending is "Intuition". But intuition, though radically distinct from sense-perception, is none the less dependent on it. Apart from sense-perception intuition would be a mere faculty. The actual exercise of this faculty is indispensably conditioned by the perception of qualities. But this condition is also a limitation. We have no determinate apprehension of the particular parts of space-time which is not found in or derived from experience in which sense-perception accompanies and makes possible intuition. Intuition is, so to speak, in the dark except in so far as sense-perception strikes a light for it to see by. If it could be set free from this limiting condition, it would be an apprehension of the whole of space-time, including all its parts severally. "Compresence," in the wide sense attached to that word by Alexander, would be all that is required for cognition. We are ourselves, according to him, parts of space-time. All other parts are therefore compresent with us and would be known in all their detail, if intuition were not limited by sense-perception. Even with this limitation we are, according to Alexander, cognisant, not indeed of the whole of space-time, but of space-time as a whole.

This theory of intuition as a separate and independent faculty is essentially dependent on the ontological theory of pure space-time as a separate and independent existence from which qualities, including mass and energy, somehow "emerge". Holding as I do that pure spacetime, apart from all that Alexander calls qualities, is an impossible abstraction incapable of existing by itself, I am bound to reject his doctrine of intuition as radically distinct from sense-perception. The reason why we cannot perceive pure space-time without qualities is that it can have no being without qualities any more than the qualities have any being apart from it. On the same principle, what Alexander regards as the indefinite apprehension of pure space-time as a whole is really the indefinite apprehension of the concrete universe as a whole including qualities and including mind as well as matter.

The Emergence of Qualities.

Let me begin by quoting Alexander's own formal and general account of what he means by "emergence" and by emergent qualities. "The world actually or historically develops from its first or elementary condition of Space Time which possesses no quality except what we agreed to call the spatio-temporal quality of motion."¹¹ But as in the course of Time new complexity of motions comes into existence, a new quality emerges, that is, a new complex possesses as a matter of observed empirical fact a new or emergent quality."¹² To this we have to add that qualities emerge in a certain serial order, so that the earlier precondition the occurrence of the later.

Now it is undeniable that a whole as such has characters different both from those of its own constituent parts and from those of the relatively separate factors which by their combination and interaction contribute to form it. But it is not any character which may thus belong to the parts and not to the whole. The character of the whole is limited and conditioned by the nature of the parts. This follows from the very meaning of the term whole. For a whole is nothing else than all its parts as such. It is simply identical with all its parts united and inter-related in the way appropriate to that kind of whole. The nature of the whole as such exists only in so far as the natures of the parts contribute to form it. It cannot therefore be disparate from that of the parts, as a colour is disparate from a smell. The integral character must be an integration of partial characters having the same generic nature: it must be a determinate of the same assignable determinable. Sounds united in a certain kind of complex whole form a melody; but they cannot form a smell or a colour. If a smell or a colour accompanies the process, it must be referred to other conditions than the mere union of the sounds. Now it seems to me that Alexander's conception of emergence as interpreted by his application of it involves this absurdity. It introduces as characters of a complex whole, due merely to its complexity, characters which are entirely disparate in their nature from the nature of the parts which in their union constitute the whole.

He starts from a purely spatial-temporal process¹³ which increases in complexity as it advances. When it has reached a certain kind and degree of complexity, the complex as a whole acquires a new character. The character is new in the sense that it is no longer merely spatial-temporal.

If it is not new in this sense it has not the distinctive novelty of an "emergent quality", such as belongs to the so-called secondary qualities where they occur. On the other hand, if it does have this kind of novelty, it cannot be accounted for as a character of the complex. For in whatever way or degree a purely spatial-temporal process may become complicated, the complication is not itself a transition to anything which is not pure space-time. All the parts of the resulting complex still remain purely spatial-temporal whether considered severally or in the union with each other which constitutes the whole. If a new quality occurs which has not this generic nature it must be due to other conditions or to no conditions at all.

According to Alexander, the first qualities to "emerge" are those which constitute "materiality", e.g., mass and energy. His position here may be interpreted in two alternative ways, and I am not sure which he means to adopt. He may mean that "materiality" is nothing but a complex development of pure space-time, so that it can be analysed without residue into purely spatial-temporal process. But if this is so, the purely spatial-temporal process has not the novelty of an emergent quality. On the other hand, if anything is supposed to occur which is not a purely spatial-temporal development, we are faced with the difficulty I have already stated. The novelty has no kind of relevance to the conditions from which it is said to emerge. It might as well be supposed to "emerge" from nothing at all.

The same difficulty presents itself in a more obvious and acute form when we consider the so-called "secondary" qualities of matter. The word "secondary" is misleading. The "secondary" qualities are the only qualities properly so called. Mass, energy, etc., are quantitative and relational characters. They are not qualities in the sense in which sweetness and redness are so, as we experience them in sense-perception. Now the difficulty of accounting for such qualities properly so called has been acute for all who have held in any form the mechanical view of nature which has been prevalent among men of science and philosophers from the time of Galileo and Descartes to the present. The essence of the mechanical view is the assumption that such non-qualitative factors as local motion, position, mass and energy are alone operative in determining the course of events in the physical world. It followed either that qualities have no physical existence or that they are somehow derived from or produced by such non-qualitative factors. The second alternative seemed to them, as it does to me, impossible. No mere combination, redistribution or transformation of nonqualitative factors can result in the existence of qualities. This was for them as it is for me an analytical proposition. Hence they were compelled to fall back on the first alternative. They accordingly deny that "secondary" qualities really belong to physical objects. They are perceived as qualifying the physical objects, but the perception is illusory. I have the idea of the paper before me as white; but it is really neither white nor any other colour. It has no quality at all in the proper sense of the word. All that really exists in the object is the power to produce such illusory ideas in us. Now this view is decidedly rejected both by Alexander and myself. But we differ in our reasons. Alexander relies simply on the testimony of the senses. But as Descartes pointed out the senses are very fallible, and apart from other reasons we cannot safely assume that they do not deceive us even as regards the objective existence of qualities in general. On the other hand, Alexander entirely ignores and tacitly rejects the Berkeleyan argument which seems to me perfectly cogent. The Berkeleyan argument is that a world having only "primary qualities" (i.e., quantitative and relational characters) is an impossible abstraction. Alexander on the contrary assumes that originally there was a universe empty of qualities. Hence he is bound to deal with the question: How do qualities arise in a non-qualitative world? He attempts to answer it by his conception of emergence. But the question does not arise from experience, but from his own presuppositions. And these presuppositions are not only intrinsically absurd; they are without a shred of empirical evidence. On the contrary, the concrete data of sense-perception show qualities everywhere and never mere extension, configuration and motion, and certainly never pure space-time. I accept "with natural piety" what is both suggested by the empirical evidence and required by the nature of the case. I assume that the qualitative aspect of the universe is as primary and universal as space-time, or as motion and configuration. New qualities occur as results of qualitative process, never of purely non-qualitative process. They no more do so than new motions and configurations result from purely qualitative process. Further, new qualities, like new motions and configurations, arise through changes, in which the old cease to exist in the transition to the new. Just so far as there is novelty, what previously existed vanishes. Previous positions of a moving body cease to be its positions as it passes to new ones. When red and yellow unite to form orange, the red and yellow as such cease to exist. The contrary holds good of what is called emergence. The emergent quality simply supervenes on and adds itself to the process from which it is said to emerge. The process might just as well exist and continue its course without the quality. If we suppose that the original space-time process was all that originally existed there is no reason why anything else should ever exist. If anything else does occur, it is a most misleading use of language to say that it emerges. All that we can say is that once it was not and now it is. But there is no process of change or transition through which it comes to be. In other words there is no process of emergence. But what is emergence if it is not a process? It can only be absolute creation—a concept which we should leave to the theologians.

Considered as a kind of causation, it is quite incapable of fulfilling the essential epistemological function of causation as what Hume calls "a principle of inference in matter of fact". If something occurs under certain circumstances, without any reason known or unknown why it should occur, there is no reason why it should occur again under similar circumstances in unobserved instances. As Hume pointed out, repetition of the conjunction, however frequent or uniform, makes no difference. In saying this I do not deny or belittle the logical value of repetition. My point is that inference to unobserved instances presupposes as a condition of its validity an inference which covers also the observed instances. Frequency and uniformity of repetition has logical value only inasmuch as it makes it probable or practically certain that A and B are causally connected and not merely conjoined—in other words, that there is a general reason why B should follow or accompany A, a reason common to observed and unobserved instances. But in what is called "emergence" there cannot be any such reason.

The view that qualities and qualitative process are as primary in the constitution of the physical universe as space and time and spatio-temporal process, is natural to commonsense, and if we except the atomists it was the prevailing view in Greek philosophy and science. What has stood in the way of its acceptance in modern times is a certain scientific prejudice. Galileo and his successors found that what alone-lends itself to exact, systematic and comprehensive treatment by physical science is spatial and temporal process, with the quantitative and other relations which it involves. Tacitly assuming that nothing but what thus lends itself to the purposes of physical science can be physically real, they banished all qualities properly so called from the physical world. Alexander, less consistently, admits that they now exist in it, but denies that they belong to its original constitution. Hence his doctrine of "emergence". But the assumption on which both he and they proceed is baseless. There is no reason why the limitations of scientific method should coincide with the limits of real existence.

¹S. T. and D., vol. i, pp. 11-12. Italics mine.

² I may point out that even the cognate accusative does not stand for just the same thing as its cognate verb. The verb, e.g., strikes, refers to a process with successive stages; the noun, e.g., the stroke, refers to the completion of the process, when the stroke has been struck.

³ I do not think that they are ever wholly sensory. But I have not time to discuss the question.

⁴S. T. and D., vol. ii, p. 32.

⁵Ibid., p. 33. Of course, this direct experience cannot be what I call "actual" experience but must be primary and non-inferential knowledge through experience. I had to argue this point in dealing with sense-perception. But here no argument is required.

⁶Ibid., p. 34.

⁷ Expounded in Mind and Matter.

⁸ I hold Alexander to be wrong in regarding social response as the sole primary source of the thought of mind other than our own. But in all other ways what he says about it seems to me to be sound and admirably worked out.

⁹ The correlation involved in measurement is of essential importance. Two extents are regarded as spatially equal which would coincide if they were superposed. Two changes are regarded as taking the same time which, if they began simultaneously, would end simultaneously. Relative changes of position, distance, simultaneity and succession, comparative speed and slowness, are perceived in perceiving things and events. We cannot perceive pure space or time or space-time.

¹⁰ This usage seems to take away the distinctive meaning of the word. For mass and energy are quantitative and relational, not qualitative characters.

¹¹ Which is not motion in any ordinary sense, but something which is purely spatio-temporal.

¹²S. T. and D., vol. ii, p. 45.

¹³ I have contended that such a process is an impossible abstraction. But I am here waiving this objection.