6. Correcting an Erroneous Conception of Experience as a Whole
At this point we must indicate a preconception, existing since Kant,
which has already taken root so strongly in certain circles that it is
considered axiomatic. If anyone were to question it, he would be
described as a dilettante, as one who has not risen above the most
elementary concepts of modern science. The preconception I mean is the
view: It is already established from the very beginning that the whole
world of perception, this endless manifoldness of colors and shapes,
of sounds and warmth differentiations, etc., is nothing more than our
subjective world of mental pictures (Vorstellungen), which
exists only as long as we keep our senses open to what works in upon
them from a world unknown to us. This view declares the entire world
of phenomena to be a mental picture inside our individual
consciousness, and on the foundation of this presupposition one then
erects further assertions about the nature of our activity of knowing.
Even Volkelt adhered to this view and founded upon it his
epistemology, which is masterful with respect to its scientific
execution. Even so, this preconception is not a fundamental truth and
is in no way qualified to stand at the forefront of the science of
knowledge.
But do not misunderstand us. We do not wish to raise what would
certainly be a vain protest against the physiological achievements of
the present day. But what is entirely justified physiologically is
still far from being qualified on that basis to be placed at the
portals of epistemology. One may consider it to be an irrefutable
physiological truth that only through the participation of our
organism does the complex of sensations and perceptions arise that we
have called experience. But the fact remains, nevertheless, that any
such knowledge can only be the result of many considerations and
investigations. This characterization — that our phenomenal
world, in a physiological sense, is of a subjective nature — is
already what thinking determines it to be, and has therefore
absolutely nothing to do with the initial appearance of this world.
This characterization already presupposes that thinking has been
applied to experience. The examination of the relationship between
these two factors of knowing activity must therefore precede this
characterization.
By this view, people believed themselves elevated above the
pre-Kantian “naïveté” that regarded things in space and time
as reality, just as the naive person with no scientific education
still does today.
Volkelt asserts “that all acts claiming to be an objective
activity of knowing are inextricably bound to the knowing individual
consciousness; that all such acts occur immediately and directly only
within the consciousness of the individual; and that they are utterly
incapable of reaching beyond the sphere of the individual person and
of grasping or entering the sphere of reality lying outside it.”
It is nevertheless still the case that an unprejudiced thinking could
never discover what it is about the form of reality which approaches
us directly (experience) that could in any way justify us in
characterizing it as mere mental picture.
This simple reflection — that the naive person notices absolutely
nothing about things that could bring him to this view — shows us
that in the objects themselves there lies no compelling reason for
this assumption. What is there about a tree or a table itself that
could lead me to regard it as a mere configuration of mental pictures?
At the very least this cannot therefore be presented as an obvious
truth.
By presenting it as an obvious truth, Volkelt entangles himself in a
contradiction with his own basic principles. In our view, he had to be
untrue to the truth acknowledged by him — that experience
contains nothing but an unconnected chaos of pictures without any
conceptual characterization — in order to be able to assert the
subjective nature of that same experience. Otherwise, he would have
had to see that the subject of knowing activity, the contemplator,
stands just as unrelated within the world of experience as any other
object in it. But if one applies to the perceived world the predicate
“subjective,” this is just as much a conceptual
characterization as when one regards a falling stone as the cause of
the depression in the ground. But Volkelt himself, after all, does not
wish to acknowledge any connection whatsoever between the things of
experience. There in lies the contradiction in his view; this is where
he became untrue to the principle he stated with respect to pure
experience. By doing this he encloses himself within his individuality
and is no longer capable of emerging from it. Indeed, he admits this
without reservation. Everything remains doubtful to him that lies
beyond the disconnected pictures of our perceptions. In his view, our
thinking does indeed struggle to draw inferences from this world of
mental pictures about an objective reality; it is just that going
beyond this world cannot lead to really sure truths. According to
Volkelt all knowing that we attain through thinking is not protected
from doubt. In terms of certainty it cannot compare at all with direct
experience. Only direct experience can provide a knowing not to be
doubted. But we have seen how defective this knowing is.
But all this indeed stems only from the fact that Volkelt applies to
sense-perceptible reality (experience) a characteristic that cannot
pertain to it in any way, and then he builds up his further
assumptions on this presupposition.
We had to pay particular attention to Volkelt's book because it is the
most significant contemporary achievement in this sphere, and also
because it can be taken as the prototype for all the epistemological
efforts which, in principle, stand in opposition to the direction we
are presenting on the basis of the Goethean world view.
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