Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/351

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337
DISCUSSION.
[Vol. XIII.

Dewey that the failure of an existing mode of response gives survival value to a supplementary variation. And as for the feelings arising from failure, these are surely a part of the empiricist's stock in trade, however he may in the past have undervalued them. The "negative elements in experience" are elements which empiricism has never failed to include in its survey. The effect of dissatisfaction upon the association of ideas is a problem by no means foreign to the spirit of empirical speculation.

Theodore de Laguna.

REPLY TO PROFESSOR BAKEWELL.

My object in replying to Professor Bakewell's review of my book Why the Mind has a Body in the last number of this journal is not to complain of misrepresentation or ill-treatment, for his article seems to me on the whole intelligent and fair; but to call attention to certain points where he has not completely understood me, and where a complete understanding would involve some modification of the judgments he passes. These points are my attitude toward the theory of a non-phenomenal subject, my view that transcendent knowledge is non-rational, and my account of the panpsychist solution of the problem of the relation of mind and body.

1. "The theory of a non-phenomenal subject," says Professor Bakewell, "is disposed of cavalierly in a couple of pages, mainly on the ground ... that that theory involves 'extruding the ego from experience,' which is precisely what that theory affirms to be impossible." This would be telling criticism were it not for the fact that by a 'non-phenomenal subject' Professor Bakewell and I do not mean the same thing. He means a subject which is experienced but not known; I mean a subject which is not even experienced, because it is conceived as being 'that which' experiences. The word 'phenomena' is, in fact, currently used in these two senses, by Professor Ward, for instance, for objects of thought as distinguished from feelings and will, and by Mr. Bradley (cf. the title of his article "A Defence of Phenomenalism in Psychology," in Mind for 1900) for whatever is experienced, a view which Professor Ward characterizes as 'presentationism.' Now, against the theory that the subject is not and cannot be a 'phenomenon' in the sense of an object of thought, I have not a word to say; that is rather my own view. But those who begin by making the subject non-phenomenal in this sense often end by making it non-empirical. Failing to distinguish sharply between experience and thought, they imagine that not merely thought but experience