The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Fraser - The Psychological Foundation of Natural Realism
The distinction of Realism and Idealism in philosophy is a case of the wider distinction between common sense and reflective thought. The former is practical and immediate, the latter is theoretical and mediated by reason. Psychologically expressed, the former is tactual, the latter visual. The course of evolution shows that touch is the practical sense par excellence; hence, even in later stages of intellectual development, this sense is the touchstone of belief in reality. In science, the ultimate appeal is still to touch; science never rests satisfied until it can define things in terms of the tangible. All physical hypotheses about atoms, fluids, vibrations, etc., are just the outcome of the attempt to join expression to this fundamental and unnamable yearning after tactual terms. In philosophy, the Scottish school represents the same effort of thought to reduce reality to terms of touch. The real external world which this school of philosophy so bravely defends, and tries so hard to express, is not a world known by some inexplicable divine intuitive act of consciousness as they thought, but the single, and hitherto unattended to, phenomena of the special sense of touch. The criticism made by the realistic Scottish school upon the idealistic method of reflection is also psychological. They find that the whole system is based on an analogy of visual processes. In the sense of touch alone is sensation identical with belief, and Reid's 'intuition' or 'conception' of reality is just the specific sense of touch. Must we not admit the possibility of finding a similar psychological statement for the chief categories underlying all systems of philosophy, and the need of revising these systems in the light of such a psychological criticism?