An outline of philosophy
Source: Victorian Labor College lecture, circa 1970
First published: Labor College Review, 1990-94
Transcription, mark-up: Steve Painter
By referring all ideas to sense impressions, the empiricists from Bacon to Locke could be said to have replaced scholasticism. Their vigorous polemics against it certainly destroyed its influence. But although empiricism represented a great step forward in thought, its materialist side was caught up in metaphysical mysticism through its involvement in the development of the bourgeois system of production.
In Locke, we see some of the false impressions given by the senses. In fact, it is the inconsistencies in Locke’s philosophy in his attempt to reconcile it with capitalism that reveal the shortcomings of empiricism.
Locke’s simple ideas, which he considered as isolated atoms — that is, in static form neither in motion or interconnection — led him to the assumption in grouping these simple ideas to assert: “If anyone will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us.”
This mystic knowledge contained in the words, knows not what, enabled empirical thought to serve bourgeois rule in all its aspects. It left the opening for Locke in his last book to contradict his materialist observations with demonstrative and intuitive knowledge of God, private property, freedom, even to a cast-iron morality on the most variable phenomenon in human history, that of right and wrong.
Locke needed this aid of infallible intuition to compensate for his weakness, which is explained in Trotsky’s words on The Metaphysics of Democracy (Terrorism and Communism, chapter three):
Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty and is equal to Rothschild. In the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people become more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the state, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the labourer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack all are equal as “citizens” and as “legislators” … For the ignorant day labourer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.
Berkeley, a bishop, came to the defence of religion with a direct frontal attack on Locke’s conception of matter, which he did with the use of empirical philosophy. Locke had maintained: (1) that the “immediate objects” of knowledge are our own ideas and (2) that these ideas are produced by the action upon us of external things, which in their “primary qualities” present us with copies of external bodies.
Berkeley accepted proposition (1) and then set out to prove that the materialist addition (2) was absurd. In Principles of Human Knowledge, he wrote:
It is evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind; or lastly, ideas formed by the help of memory or imagination … That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind is what everybody will allow.
And to me it seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the senses, however blended or combined together, cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them.
Berkeley disposed of Locke’s distinction of “primary” and “secondary” qualities of matter in his same work by the following:
I desire anyone to reflect and try whether he can, by any abstraction of thought, conceive the extension and motion of a body without all other sensible qualities. For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an idea of a body extended and moving but I must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality, which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, extension, figure and motion, abstracted form all other qualities are inconceivable. Where therefore the other sensible qualities are, there must these be also, to wit, in the mind, and nowhere else.
And again in Principles of Human Knowledge:
An idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure … Again I ask whether these supposed originals or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? If they are, then they are ideas, and we have gained our point; but if you say they are not, I appeal to anyone whether it be sense to assert a colour is like something invisible; hard or soft like something that is intangible; and so of the rest.
It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding … For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? And what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?
Berkeley’s contended that some truths existed that compose the mighty frame of the world the mind does not perceive. In that case, they must either have no existence at all, or subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit. That this should not appear paradoxical to his conclusions he added:
Ideas imprinted on the senses are real things, or do really exist; this we do not deny; but we deny that they can subsist without the minds that perceive them … It would be a mistake to think that what is here said derogates in the least from the reality of things … We detract nothing from the received opinions of their reality, and are guilty of no innovation in this respect. All the difference is that, according to us, the unthinking things perceived by sense have no existence distinct from being perceived … Whereas philosophers vulgarly hold that the sensible qualities do exist in an inert, extended unperceiving substance, exterior to all thinking beings, or distinct from being perceived by any mind whatsoever, even the eternal Mind of the Creator.
Thus Berkeley claimed the elimination of matter would end atheism:
All their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a dependence on it, that when this cornerstone is removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to the ground.
Berkeley had reached these idealistic conclusions on the same ground as Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, that is on the doctrine that sensation is the source of all knowledge, that is empiricism. But it was inconsistent empiricism.
As already demonstrated, materialism must always take up an empiricist standpoint with regard to knowledge. Materialism holds that knowledge is derived from sensation, which is the beginning of knowledge — knowledge of the material world outside of us. For materialism, sensation arises from the action of external material objects upon the sense organs, and from tested scientific methods rendering a true account of what is going on in the external material world. From the laws of motion of material things.
For materialism, knowledge arises from the interaction between man and material objects which surround him. This is consistent empiricism.
On the other hand, Berkeley, while agreeing that all knowledge was derived from sensation, denied that sensations reflect or image the external material reality. For him, sensations led to knowledge of nothing but sensations themselves. He agreed that sensations were the source of our knowledge, and then denied the very possibility of knowledge of which they were the source. His empiricism, which sought to derive all knowledge from sensation, covered his view that no knowledge could be derived from sensation. All that we could know through sensation was that we experienced sensations. That led to no knowledge whatever of the real world outside us. Lenin commented:
All knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception. That is true. But the question arises, does objective reality belong to perception, that is, is it the source of perception? If you answer yes, you are a materialist. If you answer no, you are inconsistent and … the inconsistency of your empiricism, of your philosophy of experience, will in that case lie in the fact that you deny the objective content of experience, the objective truth of your experimental knowledge. (Materialism and empirio-criticism).
Berkeley’s idealism depended on disqualifying matter, which is the cornerstone of any form of materialism. In this his empiricism was hopelessly inconsistent. But his criticism did bring to light vulnerable points in the premises of empirical philosophy. Speculation by Berkeley upon the real origin of our sensations led him to postulate a third cognition in addition to sense impressions and ideas: he called this notions, and used it to prove the existence of God.
The inconsistency of empirical philosophy through Berkeley’s attempt to show it in the light of subjective idealism is not hard to discern. If all knowledge is derived from sense, how can we have “notions” of God and the soul? If it is permissible to have “notions” of these or “demonstrative” knowledge as in Locke, why is it absurd to have another “notion” of matter? Or, if “material substance” represents a meaningless expression, surely the same just apply to “infinite spirit”.
If it is absurd to imply that sensations are produced by the action of external objects, the question has still to be faced: from where comes our experience? Materialist philosophy answers this question simply in material terms. But for idealist philosophy it cannot be answered in an empirical way, as subjective idealism cannot go “beyond” sensations. Thus life, experience, and the reason why “I am” remains as much a mystery for the empiricist who embraces subjective idealism as for the most religious mystic.
It was these inconsistencies that provided the vulnerable points in empirical philosophy by which a philosopher with the ruthless logic of David Hume and an utter disregard of religion brought empiricism temporarily to a standstill. The conclusions he reached seemed intolerable, even to himself, but nobody knew how to refute them.
In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume presented the proposition: “All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call impressions and ideas.” Thus he accepted Locke’s starting point, that we have no source of knowledge other than simple ideas: sense data such as colours and sounds. He accepted also Berkeley’s criticism of abstract ideas, but he rejected the exception made by Berkeley of “notions”. All concepts must be obtained from sense data. But he improved both Locke’s and Berkeley’s terminology. Instead of calling sense data ideas, he called them impressions. He reserved the term “idea” for what we ordinarily mean by it — a copy either in memory of imagination. He distinguished impressions from ideas by their greater liveliness.
We have the idea of permanent substance, said Hume. From what impression does this idea come from? He looked for, but could not find, any direct sense perception that indicated the existence of material bodies. In that case the existence of an external world independent of our perceptions could not be demonstrated. From this, Hume went on to draw the inevitable conclusions:
We may observe, that ‘tis universally allowed by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion …
Now, since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are derived from something antecedently present to the mind: it follows that ‘tis impossible for us to so much as to conceive or form an idea of anything specifically different from ideas or impressions. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imaginations to the heavens, or to the ultimate limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can we conceive of any kind of existence but the perceptions which have appeared in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is here produced.
Thus the objects of the mind being strictly limited to our own impressions and ideas, any external reality “beyond” this circle of impressions and ideas is absolutely inconceivable.
Hume then went on to show: “There is another division of our perceptions, which it will be convenient to observe, and which extends itself both to our impressions and ideas. This division is into simple and complex. Simple perceptions, or impressions and ideas, are such as admit of no distinction or separation.”
Using greater strictness than Berkeley, Hume limited “all the perceptions of the human mind” to “simple”, that is indivisible impressions; plus “complex impressions”, which are merely combinations of simple impressions. Added to this were simple and complex ideas, the simple ideas being merely “faint images” of simple impressions and the complex ideas being formed by combining simple ideas together.
Metaphysicians in their analysis of substance made it the starting point for definitions in which they constructed possible universes. But — and this is the point of Hume’s criticism — unless the complex concept substance can be shown to contain components that are experiences (impressions), the universes so constructed are no more than dream castles. To be actual, they must be built up of something actual: sense impressions.
A universe made up of ideas, as it were, may be self-consistent, may be possible; but so far from giving us certain knowledge, as the metaphysicians claim, it does not even give us probable knowledge. Probability requires fact. A factual proposition can be upset by the discovery of a new fact. “All crows are black”, becomes false if we can produce a white crow. We cannot say that a white crow is unthinkable or a contradiction.
The way to test this sort of statement is to see whether it corresponds with facts. And how can we be ever sure in advance that some new fact, like a white crow, will not turn up to falsify our statement? We may say that it is unlikely, but we cannot say it is impossible.
There are relations between ideas and “matters of fact”. The former gives rise to analytic judgments, which lead to contradiction when denied. They merely tell us what is entailed by an idea. But unless we hold, as metaphysicians did, that whatever can be thought of exists, analytic judgment can give us no information about the real world. Propositions that assert facts are synthetic. When they describe an immediate experience: “This is black,” they are as certain as analytic judgments. But when they venture beyond immediate experiences, when they generalise as in: “All crows are black,” it is impossible to deny the proposition without logical contradiction. The truth or falsehood depends on correspondence with facts.
It is essential to grasp this basic position of Hume and how it differs from traditional philosophy, for without it his more startling conclusions cannot be followed. From the fact that there is no evidence that anything exists beyond impressions and ideas, he went on to point out that on the same principle, not only do material external objects disappear, but the knowing mind, or the soul, disappears as well.
Descartes urged that he had eliminated all doubt about his existence by taking the self as a starting point. Using the words: “I think, therefore I am,” he considered his existence to be a certainty. Hume denied this: “Self or person,” he wrote, “is not any one impression but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have reference.” And, he asked:
After what manner therefore do they belong to self, and how are they connected with it? For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself and may truly be said not to exist. And where all my perceptions to be removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect nonentity …
Setting aside some metaphysicians, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.
So, just as permanent external material objects are reduced to a collection of fleeting impressions, the same applies to the permanent self, of soul, or mind. “We may observe that what we call a mind, is nothing but a heap of collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.”
So much, therefore, for Berkeley’s “notion” of the soul. It has gone the same way as external bodies reduced to an illusion, and nothing remains but the series of fleeting impressions and ideas.
With the same relentless consistency, Hume attacked the idea of causality. Since our knowledge is limited to the world of such sense impressions, the popular idea of causality must be, like the popular idea of the external world, an illusion. Each event is absolutely independent of every other. The world we know consists of atomic sensible events, between which there is no necessity or causal connection. He wrote:
All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another, but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected.
Professor John Laird said of Hume’s analysis of causality that it had historical antecedents, as his references show, “but his own contributions to what he called the ‘sublime question concerning the power and efficacy of causes were momentous’. Did it stand to reason that every event must have a cause? If not (and the answer must be negative), produce the reasoning which demonstrates such a conclusion. Can the principle be established or refuted by experience? What can experience, even if far more complete than it is ever likely to be, succeed in showing except regularities of sequence combined with irregularities? Even if nature’s routine in the past had been unimpeachably regular, how could we claim to know for certain, or even to be logically confident, that the routine would continue? Deny causality resolutely and logic will never mock you. No sane man wants to deny it altogether. Very well then, how precisely does a sane man defend his sanity? Ever since Kant said that Hume’s discussion of causality had roused him from his dogmatic slumbers and compelled him to rethink his entire philosophy of the natural world, it has been usual to reckon Hume among the great, because he moved the great Kant so greatly. By the twentieth century, however, Hume is much more modern than that. Directly or indirectly his problems are the same as those that the twentieth century, intent upon examining the logic of all the sciences which generalise from sense observation, has so persistently examined. What is alive in his philosophy vastly exceeds the portion which is dead.”
Hume’s Inquiry concerning human understanding began with the intention of finding out what sensory evidence there was for our fundamental beliefs about the world. He ended by divorcing those beliefs from their foundation in objective reality. His denial that cause and effect had any existence in events or in connection of objects deprived science of any material objective basis. There were no necessary connections between one thing and another, or one idea and another. All were held together only through associations imposed by custom.
This was the basis for subsequent pragmatism; since our most cherished ideas could find a basis in independent reality, we must treat as true whatever enables us to get along best in everyday affairs.
The empiricism of Bacon and Locke had proclaimed confidence in the powers of the human mind to explore and know reality. Hume’s scepticism corroded the ties of their synthesis of ideas. Thereafter empiricism doubted everything on principle. It generated distrust of human abilities to know the world, to know it truly and transform it surely through the guidance of such knowledge.