Mind and Matter

TL;DR: In this article, the author argues that it is no more difficult to conceive of matter being subjective than of spirit being subjective, and that this is a dogmatic statement about our powers of conceiving; no hint of help as to how we may conceive.

Abstract: BUT for illness I would have made an earlier reply to Mr. Duncan's courteously-expressed objections (NATURE, vol. xv., p. 295) to my analysis (NATURE, vol. xv., p. 217) of his very ingenious “solution” (NATURE, vol. xv., p. 78). A general “mistake,” and an “essential omission,” are the charges against me. The mistake is in “regarding what was intended to solve a problem as intended to prove an alleged fact.” “The alleged fact,” he adds, “that consciousness depends on nervous organisation, I assumed to be a fact, and undertook to indicate how the dependence might be conceived, or regarded, to exist.” He says that I clearly understood this “at starting.” Where now is it that I “fell into the error?” His first step towards “clearing away difficulties in the way of our conceiving the relation of consciousness to matter,” is to allege this fact: “It is no more difficult to conceive of matter being subjective than of spirit being subjective.” This is a dogmatic statement about our powers of conceiving; no hint of help as to how we may conceive. We ordinarily conceive of “spirit”—the “ego,” the “subject”—as susceptible to consciousness, or “subjective,” because we (the ego) feel we are conscious; but is it “as easy” to conceive of a stone as susceptible to consciousness, i.e. subjective? To say it is, I called a petitio principii, because it assumes that conceivability which has to be established. I used the word “probability” as involving conceivability; for can we intelligibly assume a probability without a conception of what that probability is? But Mr. Duncan contends that his position is “conceivable as a hypothesis, true or false.” Unquestionably we may conceive some one stating any hypothesis—a stone feels, fire freezes—but to conceive one doing this is not to have a concept of any part of the operation as hypothesised, however we may attach a meaning to the terms as such. Again, if any hypothesis, true or false, is already conceivable, this fact cannot favour Mr. Duncan.