Books: The Misuse of Mind
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Karin Stephen >> The Misuse of Mind
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6 PREFATORY NOTE
Being an extract from a letter by Professor Henri Bergson
AYANT lu de près le travail de Mrs. Stephen je le trouve intéressant
au plus haut point. C'est une interprétation personelle et originale
de l'ensemble de mes vues--interprétation qui vaut par elle-même,
indépendamment de ce qui j' ai écrit. L'auteur s'est assimilé l'esprit
delà doctrine, puis, se dégageant de la matérialité du texte elle a
développé à sa manière, dans la direction qu'elle avait choisi, des
idées qui lui paraissaient fondamentales. Grâce à la distinction
qu'elle "établit entre " fact " et " matter, " elle a pu ramener à
l'unité, et présenter avec une grande rigueur logique, des vues que
j'avais été obligé, en raison de ma méthode de recherche, d'isoler les
unes des autres. Bref, son travail a une grande valeur; il témoigne
d'une rare force de pensée.
HENRI BERGSON.
PREFACE
THE immense popularity which Bergson's philosophy enjoys is sometimes
cast up against him, by those who do not agree with him, as a
reproach. It has been suggested that Berg-son's writings are welcomed
simply because they offer a theoretical justification for a tendency
which is natural in all of us but against which philosophy has always
fought, the tendency to throw reason overboard and just let ourselves
go. Bergson is regarded by rationalists almost as a traitor to
philosophy, or as a Bolshevik inciting the public to overthrow what it
has taken years of painful effort to build up.
It is possible that some people who do not understand this philosophy
may use Bergson's name as a cloak for giving up all self-direction and
letting themselves go intellectually to pieces, just as hooligans may
use a time of revolution to plunder in the name of the Red Guard. But
Bergson's philosophy is in reality as far from teaching mere laziness
as Communism is from being mere destruction of the old social order.
Bergson attacks the use to which we usually put our minds, but he most
certainly does not suggest that a philosopher should not use his mind
at all; he is to use it for all it is worth, only differently, more
efficiently for the purpose he has in view, the purpose of knowing for
its own sake.
There is, of course, a sense in which doing anything in the right way
is simply letting one's self go, for after all it is easier to do a
thing well than badlyit certainly takes much less effort to produce
the same amount of result. So to know in the way which Bergson
recommends does in a sense come more easily than attempting to get the
knowledge we want by inappropriate methods. If this saving of waste
effort is a fault, then Bergson must plead guilty. But as the field of
knowledge open to us is far too wide for any one mind to explore, the
new method of knowing, though it requires less effort than the old to
produce the same result, does not thereby let us off more easily, for
with a better instrument it becomes possible to work for a greater
result.
It is not because it affords an excuse for laziness that Bergson's
philosophy is popular but because it gives expression to a feeling
which is very widespread at the present time, a distrust of systems,
theories, logical constructions, the assumption of premisses and then
the acceptance of everything that follows logically from them. There
is a sense of impatience with thought and a thirst for the actual, the
concrete. It is because the whole drift of Bergson's writing is an
incitement to throw over abstractions and get back to facts that so
many people read him, hoping that he will put into words and find an
answer to the unformulated doubt that haunts them.
It was in this spirit that the writer undertook the study of Bergson.
On the first reading he appeared at once too persuasive and too vague,
specious and unsatisfying: a closer investigation revealed more and
more a coherent theory of reality and a new and promising method of
investigating it. The apparent unsatisfactoriness of the first reading
arose from a failure to realize how entirely new and unfamiliar the
point of view is from which Bergson approaches metaphysical
speculation. In order to understand Bergson it is necessary to adopt
his attitude and that is just the difficulty, for his attitude is the
exact reverse of that which has been inculcated in us by the
traditions of our language and education and now comes to us
naturally. This common sense attitude is based on certain assumptions
which are so familiar that we simply take them for granted without
expressly formulating them, and indeed, for the most part, without
even realizing that we have been making any assumptions at all.
Bergson's principal aim is to direct our attention to the reality
which he believes we all actually know already, but misinterpret and
disregard because we are biassed by preconceived ideas. To do this
Bergson has to offer some description of what this reality is, and
this description will be intelligible only if we are willing and able
to make a profound change in our attitude, to lay aside the old
assumptions which underlie our every day common sense point of view
and adopt, at least for the time being, the assumptions from which
Bergson sets out. This book begins with an attempt to give as precise
an account as possible of the old assumptions which we must discard
and the new ones which we must adopt in order to understand Bergson's
description of reality. To make the complete reversal of our ordinary
mental habits needed, for understanding what Bergson has to say
requires a very considerable effort from anyone, but the feat is
perhaps most difficult of all for those who have carefully trained
themselves in habits of rigorous logical criticism. In attempting to
describe what we actually know in the abstract logical terms which are
the only means of intercommunication that human beings possess,
Bergson is driven into perpetual self-contradiction, indeed,
paradoxical though it may sound, unless he contradicted himself his
description could not be a true one. It is easier for the ordinary
reader to pass over the self contradictions, hardly even being aware
of them, and grasp the underlying meaning: the trained logician is at
once pulled up by the nonsensical form of the description and the
meaning is lost in a welter of conflicting words. This, I think, is
the real reason why some of the most brilliant intellectual thinkers
have been able to make nothing of Bergson s philosophy: baffled by the
self-contradictions into which he is necessarily driven in the attempt
to convey his meaning they have hastily assumed that Bergson had no
meaning to convey.
The object of this book is to set out the relation between
explanations and the actual facts which we want to explain and thereby
to show exactly why Bergson must use self-contradictory terms if the
explanation of reality which he offers is to be a true one.
Having first shown what attitude Bergson requires us to adopt I have
gone on to describe what he thinks this new way of looking at reality
will reveal. This at once involves me in the difficulty with which
Bergson wrestles in all his attempts to describe reality, the
difficulty which arises from the fundamental discrepancy between what
he sees the actual fact to be and the abstract notions which are all
he has with which to describe it. I have attempted to show how it
comes about that we are in fact able to perform this apparently
impossible feat of describing the indescribable, using Bergson's
descriptions of sensible perception and the relations of matter and
memory to illustrate my point. If we succeed in ridding ourselves of
our common-sense preconceptions, Bergson tells us that we may expect
to know the old facts in a new way, face to face, as it were, instead
of seeing them through a web of our own intellectual interpretations.
I have not attempted to offer any proof whether or not Bergson's
description of reality is in fact true: having understood the meaning
of the description it remains for each of us to decide for himself
whether or not it fits the facts.
KARIN STEPHEN.
Cambridge, January, 1922.
International Library of Psychology
Philosophy and Scientific Method
GENERAL EDITOR - - - - C. K. OGDEN, M. A.
(Magdalene College, Cambridge).
VOLUMES ALREADY ARRANGED:
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
by Q. E. MOORE, Litt. D.
CONFLICT AND DREAM
by W. H. R. RIVERS, F. R. S.
THE MEASUREMENT OF EMOTION
by W. WHATELY SMITH
Introduction by William Brown.
THE ANALYSIS OF MATTER
by BERTRAND RUSSELL, F. R. S.
MATHEMATICS FOR PHILOSOPHERS
by G. H. HARDY, F. R. S.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
by C. G. JONG, M. D., LL. D.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REASONING
by EUGENIO RIGNANO
THE ELEMENTS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
by WILLIAM BROWN, M. D., D. Sc.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
by E. VON HARTMANN
THE FOUNDATIONS OF MUSICAL AESTHETICS
by W. POLE, F. R. S.
Edited by Edward J. Dent.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC
by EDWARD J. DENT
SOME CONCEPTS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT
by C. D. BROAD, Litt. D.
PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC
by L. WITTGENSTEIN
Introduction by Bertrand Russell.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ' AS IF
by H. VAIHINGER
THE LAWS OF FEELING
by F. PAULHAN
THE HISTORY OF MATERIALISM
by F. A. LANGE
COLOUR-HARMONY
by JAMES WOOD and C. K. OGDEN
THE STATISTICAL METHOD IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICS
by P. SARGANT FLORENCE
THE PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM
by I. A. RICHARDS
CHAPTER I
EXPLANATION
IN order to understand Bergson it is not necessary to have any
previous acquaintance with philosophy, indeed the less the reader
knows of current metaphysical notions the easier it may perhaps be for
him to adopt the mental attitude required for understanding Bergson.
For Bergson says that the tradition of philosophy is all wrong and
must be broken with: according to his view philosophical knowledge can
only be obtained by "a reversal of the usual work of the
intellect."[4]*
* Introduction to Metaphysics, page 34.
The usual work of the intellect consists in analysis and
classification: if you have anything presented to you which you do not
understand the obvious question to put yourself is, "what is it?"
Suppose in a dark room which you expected to find empty you stumble
against something, the natural thing to do is to begin at once to try
to fit your experience into some class already familiar to you. You
find it has a certain texture which you class as rather rough, a
temperature which you class as warm, a size which you class as about
two feet high, a peculiar smell which you recognise and you finally
jump to the answer to your question: it is "a dog." This intellectual
operation is a sample of the way in which it comes natural to us to
set to work whenever we find ourselves confronted with any situation
which we are not able to classify off hand, we are not easy till we
can say what the situation is, and saying what consists in hitting
upon some class with which we are already familiar to which it
belongs: in this instance the question was answered when you succeeded
in describing the situation to yourself as "stumbling upon a dog." Now
you were only able to class what was stumbled upon as a dog after you
had recognised a certain number of properties as being those shared by
dogsthe rough texture, the size, the smell. You analysed the situation
as containing these qualities and thereupon classified what had been
stumbled upon as a dog.
Analysis and classification are the two methods which we are
accustomed to rely upon for improving our knowledge in unfamiliar
situations and we are accustomed to take it that they improve our
knowledge of the whole situation: anyone who said that after you were
able to say what you had stumbled upon you knew less of the whole
situation than you knew before would find it difficult to get you to
agree. And yet this is very much the position which Bergson takes up.
Analysis and classification, he would admit, are the way to get more
knowledge, of a kind; they enable us to describe situations and they
are the starting point of all explanation and prediction. After
analysis and classification you were able to say, "I have stumbled
upon a dog," and having got so far you could then pass on to whatever
general laws you knew of as applying to the classes into which you had
fitted the situation, and by means of these laws still more of the
situation could be classified and explained. Thus by means of the
general law, "dogs lick," you would be furnished with an explanation
if perhaps you felt something warm and damp on your hand, or again
knowledge of this law might lead you to expect such a feeling. When
what we want is to describe or to explain a situation in general terms
then Bergson agrees that analysis and classification are the methods
to employ, but he maintains that these methods which are useful for
describing and explaining are no use for finding out the actual
situation which we may want to describe or explain. And he goes a step
further. Not only do these methods fail to reveal the situation but
the intellectual attitude of abstraction to which they accustom us
seriously handicaps us when we want not merely to explain the
situation but to know it. Now it is the business of science to explain
situations in terms of general laws and so the intellectual method of
abstract-ion is the right one for scientists to employ. Bergson
claims, however, that philosophy has a task quite distinct from that
of science. In whatever situation he finds himself a man may take up
one of two attitudes, he may either adopt a practical attitude, in
which case he will set to work to explain the situation in order that
he may know what to do under the circumstances, or he may take a
speculative interest in it and then he will devote himself to knowing
it simply for the sake of knowing. It is only, according to Bergson,
in the former case, when his interest is practical, that he will
attain his object by using the intellectual method of abstraction
which proceeds by analysis and classification. These intellectual
operations have such prestige, however, they ' have proved so
successful in discovering explanations, that we are apt to take it for
granted that they must be the best way to set, to work whatever sort
of knowledge we want: we might almost be tempted, off hand, to imagine
that they were our only way of knowing at all, but a moment's
reflection will show | that this, at any rate, would be going too far.
Before we can analyse and classify and explain we must have something
to analyse, some material to work upon: these operations, are based
upon something which we know directly, what we see, for instance, or
touch or feel. This something is the foundation of knowledge, the
intellectual operations of analysis classification and the framing of
general laws are simply an attempt to describe and explain it. It is
the business of science to explain and intellectual methods are the
appropriate ones for science to employ. But the business of
philosophy, according to Bergson, is not to explain reality but to
know it. For this a different kind of mental effort is required.
Analysis and classification, instead of increasing our direct
knowledge, tend rather to diminish it. They must always start from
some direct knowledge, but they proceed, not by widening the field of
this knowledge but by leaving out more and more of it. Moreover,
unless we are constantly on the alert, the intellectual habit of using
all our direct knowledge as material for analysis and classification
ends by completely misleading us as to what it is that we do actually
know. So that the better we explain the less, in the end, we know.
There can be no doubt that something is directly known but disputes
break out as soon as we try to say what that something is. Is it the
"real" world of material objects, or a mental copy of these objects,
or are we altogether on the wrong track in looking for two kinds of
realities, the "real" world and "our mental states," and is it
perceived events alone that are "real?" This something which we know
directly has been given various names: "the external object," "sense
data," "phenomena," and so on, each more or less coloured by
implications belonging to one or other of the rival theories as to
what it is. We shall call it "the facts" to emphasise its indubitable
reality, and avoid, as far as possible, any other implications.
Controversy about "the facts" has been mainly as to what position they
occupy in the total scheme of reality. As to what they are at the
moment when we are actually being acquainted with them one would have
thought there could have been no two opinions; it seems impossible
that we should make any mistake about that. No doubt it is impossible
to have such a thing as a false experience, an experience is what it
is, only judgments can be false. But it is quite possible to make a
false judgment as to what experience we are actually having, or, still
more commonly, simply to take for granted that our experience must be
such and such, without ever looking to see whether it is or not. A
small child taken to a party and told that parties are great fun if
questioned afterwards will very likely say it has enjoyed itself
though, if you happened to have been there, you may have seen clearly
that it was really bewildered or bored. Even when we grow up names
still have a tendency to impose upon us and disguise from us the
actual nature of our experiences. There are not very many people who,
if invited to partake, for instance, of the last bottle of some famous
vintage wine, would have the courage to admit, even to themselves,
that it was nasty, even though it was, in fact, considerably past its
prime. Cases of this kind, with which we are all familiar, are enough
to make us realize that it is actually quite possible to make mistakes
even about facts which we know directly, to overlook the actual fact
altogether because we have made up our minds in advance as to what it
is sure to be.
Now Bergson says that such errors are not confined to stray instances,
such as we have noticed, in which the imposition of preconceived ideas
can readily be detected by a little closer attention to the actual
facts. He believes that a falsification due to preconceived ideas,
runs right through the whole of our direct experience. He lays the
blame both for this falsification and for our failure to detect it
upon our intellectual habit of relying upon explanation rather than
upon direct knowledge, and that is one of the reasons why he says that
our intellectual attitude is an obstacle to direct knowledge of the
facts. The intellectual method of abstraction by which we analyse and
classify is the foundation of all description and explanation in terms
of general laws, and the truth is that we are, as a rule, much more
preoccupied with explaining the facts which we know than with the
actual experiencing of them.
This preoccupation is natural enough. The bare fact which we know
directly is not enough to enable us to carry on our everyday lives, we
cannot get on unless we supplement it with some sort of explanation
and, if it comes to choosing between fact and explanation, the
explanation is often of more practical use than the fact. So it comes
about that we are inclined to use the facts which we know directly
simply as material for constructing explanations and to pay so little
attention to them for their own sakes that we simply take it for
granted that they must be what our explanations lead us to suppose
they are.
Now according to Bergson the attitude of mind required for explaining
the facts conflicts with that which is required for knowing them. From
the point of view simply of knowing, the facts are all equally
important and we cannot afford to discriminate, but for explanation
some facts are very much more important than others. When we want to
explain, therefore, rather than simply to know, we tend to concentrate
our attention upon these practically important facts and pass over the
rest. For in order to describe and explain a situation we have to
classify it, and in order to do this we must pick out in it properties
required for membership of some one or other of the classes known to
us. In the situation which we originally considered by way of
illustration, for instance, you had to pick out the qualities of
roughness, warmth and so on, in order to classify what you had
stumbled upon as "a dog." Now the picking out of these particular
qualities is really an operation of abstraction from the situation as
a whole: they were the important features of the situation from the
point of view of classifying what you had stumbled upon, but they by
no means exhausted the whole situation. Our preoccupation with
explaining the facts, then, leads us to treat what we know directly as
so much material for abstraction.
This intellectual attitude, as Bergson calls it, though practically
useful, has, according to him, two grave drawbacks from the point of
view of speculation. By focussing our attention upon anything less
than the whole fact, and so isolating a part from the rest, he says we
distort what we knew originally: furthermore just in so far as we make
a selection among the facts, attending to some and passing over
others, we limit the field of direct knowledge which we might
otherwise have enjoyed. For these two reasons Bergson insists that it
is the business of philosophy to reverse the intellectual habit of
mind and return to the fullest possible direct knowledge of the fact.
"May not the task of philosophy, "he says," be to bring us back to a
fuller perception of reality by a certain displacement of our
attention? What would be required would be to turn our attention away
from the practically interesting aspect of the universe in order to
turn it back to what, from a practical point of view, is useless. And
this conversion of attention would be philosophy itself."[5]*
* La Perception du Changement, page 13. 24
At first sight it appears paradoxical and absurd to maintain that our
efforts to analyse, classify and explain the facts tend rather to
limit than to extend our knowledge, and furthermore distort even such
facts as we still remain acquainted with. Common sense has no doubt
that, far from limiting and distorting our knowledge, explanation is
the only possible way in which we can get beyond the little scraps of
fact which are all that we can ever know directly.
If the views of common sense on this question were formulated, which,
for the most part, they are not, they would be something like this.
Until we begin to think the facts which we know directly are all
muddled together and confused: first of all it is necessary to sort
them by picking out qualities from the general confusion in which they
are at first concealed. It is possible that during this process, which
is what is called analysis, we may be obliged, at first, to overlook
some of what we already know in a vague sort of way, but this
insignificant loss is compensated by the clarity of what remains, and
is, in any case, only temporary. For as the analysis proceeds we
gradually replace the whole of the original mere muddle by clear and
definite things and qualities. At first we may be able to distinguish
only a few qualities here and there, and our preoccupation with these
may possibly lead us, for a time, to pay insufficient attention to the
rest of the muddle which we know directly but have not yet succeeded
in analysing. But when the analysis is completed the distinct things
and qualities which we shall then know will contain all that we
originally knew, and more besides, since the analysis will have
revealed much that was originally concealed or only implicit in the
original unanalysed fact. If, for instance, you look at a very modern
painting, at first what you are directly aware of may be little more
than a confused sight: bye and bye, as you go on looking, you will be
able to distinguish colours and shapes, one by one objects may be
recognised until finally you may be able to see the whole picture at a
glance as composed of four or five different colours arranged in
definite shapes and positions. You may even be able to make out that
it represents a human figure, or a landscape. Common sense would tell
you that if your analysis is complete these colours and shapes will
exhaust the whole of what you originally knew and moreover that in the
course of it much will have been discovered which originally you could
hardly be said to have known at all, so that analysis, far from
limiting your direct knowledge, will have added to it considerably.
Starting, then, originally, from a very meagre stock of direct
knowledge, analysis, according to the common sense view, by
discovering more and more qualities, builds up for us more and more
direct knowledge.
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