The Basis of Realism, Vol. 6

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Excerpt from The Basis of Realism, Vol. 6: From the Proceeding of the British AcademyWe may, if we please, distinguish the partial element of the whole from the whole as content from object, and the only objection to this would be the introduction of a useless and misleading terminology. But those who distinguish the sensory content from the object of thought mean something different, they mean that the real thing or object is meant or intended or referred to by thought, and that sensations and images are but directing guides to the nature of this object. Now I have two objections to this. The first is to some extent a matter of language, though not entirely so. The content of a mental process should strictly or usefully mean those features which can be detected in the process as such, process characters. By process characters I mean such elements as speed, direction, configuration or pattern of a process. For example, if I am walking and diverge to look at a rose, the change in the process is described by the angle made by my new movement with the old. To call it a movement towards the rose is not a description of it in terms of the walking process itself. What the distinctive features of mental process are it may be difficult to say, but there is no reason why they should not be discovered.1 But no one pretends that a mental process as such is coloured or fragrant, and it is, I submit, an inconvenience to use a term which suggests that such characters are contained in mind. But if the term content is not thus used, but to mean that which the mental act is about, then I submit the object thought about is as much the content of the thought as the sensum is of the sensation or sensing.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.