Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Institutes of Metaphysic (1875)/Section 1/Proposition 11
PROPOSITION XI.
PRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATION.
DEMONSTRATION.
Representation is the iteration in thought of what was formerly presented in knowledge. It is therefore a contradiction to suppose that what never was, and never can be, known, can be iterated or represented in thought. Repetition necessarily implies a foregone lesson. Therefore that alone can be represented in thought which can be presented in knowledge; in other words, it is impossible to think what it is impossible to know;—it is impossible to think that of which knowledge has supplied, and can supply, no sort of type.
OBSERVATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS.
Why this proposition is introduced.1. In this proposition a distinction is laid down between knowing and thinking—between cognition and conception. This distinction is necessary in order to unearth the verdicts of common opinion and of psychological science from the burrows into which they may run, when dislodged from their usual positions by the cannonade of the preceding propositions. When the articles specified in these propositions, and particularly in IV., V., and IX., are proved to be altogether unknowable, common opinion and psychological science may perhaps concede this, and yet may entertain the supposition that they are not absolutely unthinkable. Hence, lest it should be supposed that thought is competent to represent what cognition is incompetent to present, and that the absolute unknowables have thus another chance of being, in some way or other, the objects of the mind, it has been deemed necessary to introduce this and the following proposition for the purpose of destroying that opinion, and of pursuing the unknowables, not into their ultimate place of refuge (for, as we shall find in the agnoiology, they have still another hiding-quarter into which they must be followed and slaughtered by the sword of necessary truth), but into their penultimate citadel of shelter. This dialectical operation will unfold itself in the next proposition. Meanwhile all that is necessary to bear in mind is the distinction between knowing and thinking, cognition and conception, presentation and representation, which is laid down in the following paragraph.
Distinction between knowing and thinking.2. The term knowledge might be used, and sometimes is used, in this work, in a general way, to signify both any given presentation or cognition at the time when it is actually experienced, and the subsequent thought or representation or remembrance of such experienced presentation. But at present the distinction to be signalised is this: The word knowledge or knowing is employed to express our original experiences—the perceptions, for example, which we have of things when they are actually before us; and the word thought, or thinking, is employed to express our subsequent experience—that is, our representation or cogitation of that previous knowledge. To know, then, is to experience a perception or presentation of any kind in the first instance, or at first hand; to think is to revive such perception at a subsequent period, or to have it at second hand.
3. This proposition, and not the scholastic brocard which forms the tenth counter-proposition, is the foundation of a true philosophy of experiences. The scholastic dogma is false and contradictory. It This proposition the foundation of a true philosophy of experience.affirms that the mind can think of nothing but mere objects of sense; but the truth is, that the mind cannot think at all of mere objects of sense. It is, however, an undoubted truth that the mind can think only of what it can know or experience. For suppose it could think of something, at first hand, which it had never known; in that case the thing would be merely a known, instead of being a thought, thing; and the truth of the proposition would be in no degree compromised. It is impossible for any intelligence to take at second hand what it never had at first hand, because, whenever this happened, the thing so taken would be no longer taken at second, but at first, hand; instead of being thought, it would be known, and the law expressed in this proposition would be vindicated all the same. This is the whole truth of the philosophy which makes experience the source and mother of all that the mind of man can conceive.
Representation—its two insuperable restrictions.4. The law which declares that representation must copy the data of presentation—that thought can walk only in the footsteps of an antecedent knowledge—is, in certain respects, not to be interpreted too strictly. Thought can alter the arrangement of the data of experience. It can mould the materials of knowledge into new combinations. This is called the play of the imagination, which at pleasure can fabricate representations of which experience has furnished no exact type or pattern. Moreover, when knowledge has supplied thought with a single type or model of any kind, it can conceive other cases of that type or model, though these should never fall under its direct knowledge or observation. It can conceive the type of which one example has been submitted to it, repeated ad infinitum, and with certain variations. And, further, supposing intelligences different from ours to exist, we can conceive them both to know and to think much which is inconceivable to us. But still in all its dealings with knowledge—in all its cuttings and carvings upon the data of experience—our thought, and all thought, is subject to the two following restrictions, which cannot be, in the slightest degree, transgressed.
First restriction by way of addition. Second by way of subtraction.5. The first restriction to which all thought or representation is subject is this: Thought cannot transcend knowledge so as to invent any entire and absolute novelty. It cannot add to the data of experience anything of which knowledge or experience cannot possibly furnish any sort of type, either direct or remote. Thought cannot create any element beyond what might possibly be given in knowledge or experience. The second restriction is this: Thought cannot so transgress knowledge as entirely to leave out or abolish, any element which is essential to the constitution of original cognition, of antecedent experience. The two restrictions may be stated thus: Thought cannot transcend knowledge—representation cannot go beyond presentation, in the way of adding to the materials of knowledge any element absolutely new; nor can thought transgress experience in the way of subtracting from the materials of knowledge any element essential to the very formation of cognition. The one restriction may be termed, shortly, restriction by the way of addition; and the other, restriction by the way of subtraction. By these two restrictions all thinking is incapacitated from carrying beyond certain limits its operations on the data of experience.
The latter restriction unrecognised by philosophers. Eleventh counter-proposition.6. All philosophers have seen that thought could not transcend experience by the way of addition: no philosopher (except Berkeley, who had a glimpse of the truth) has seen, or at least has stated, that thought is equally incompetent to transgress experience by the way of subtraction. And the consequence of their oversight shows itself in the following counter-proposition, which, although never literally propounded, may be accepted as a faithful expression of the common and psychological opinion on the subject of presentation and representation. Eleventh Counter-proposition: "Less can be represented in thought than can be presented in knowledge: it is possible to think of less than it is possible to know; in other words, in conception some element essential to cognition may be left out."
Its invalidity shown.7. But what would happen if we could think or represent less than we could know, or have presented to us? This would happen, that we should be able to represent what could not be known or presented to us, because less than what can be known cannot possibly be known; and, therefore, if less than what can be known could be thought of or represented, something could be thought of or represented which could not be known. But it has been proved by this proposition, and it is a necessary truth of reason, that neither we nor any intelligence can think or represent what we cannot know or have experience of; and, consequently, we cannot think of less than we can know: in other words, this counter-proposition, the progeny of psychology and inadvertent thinking, is false and contradictory. We are indebted for it to the psychological doctrine of "abstraction" which has been already animadverted on (Prop. VI., Obs. 32.)
The minimum cogitable equates with the minimum scibile.8. This proposition fixes the unit or minimum of thought as commensurate, in its essential constituents, with the unit or minimum of cognition. It fixes object (some thing or thought) plus subject as the unit of subsequent cogitation, just as Propositions II. and III., fixed this as the unit of antecedent or original cognition. It was necessary to remove all dubiety upon this point, in order to obviate any misunderstanding as to what this system really accomplishes, as well as to correct one of the vaguest inadvertencies of ordinary opinion, and to strip away from psychology one of the last coverings with which she endeavours to conceal her weakness and deformity. The minimum cogitabile per se is neither more nor less essentially than the minimum scibile per se; but the two are of the same dimensions and composition.
Dr Reid's mistake in his assault on representationism.9. These remarks might be followed up by some notices of the history of representationism, or, as Dr Reid terms it, the ideal theory of perception, and by some account of the controversy in regard to it in which our countryman is supposed to have particularly distinguished himself. It is, however, unnecessary to say more than this, that the whole polemic had its origin in a blunder on the part of Dr Reid, who supposed that his adversaries understood by the term "representative knowledge," something different from what he understood by the term "intuitive knowledge." Both parties meant exactly the same thing, only they called it by a different name. The representationists held that real objects stand face to face with the mind quite as decidedly as Dr Reid did, or as any sane man could do—that is to say, they held that it was our perceptions of these things which were immediately present to our minds. To these perceptions they gave the name indifferently of ideas, images, phantasms, or representations; whereupon Dr Reid, getting embarrassed by the ambiguity caused by a diversified nomenclature, taxed them roundly with maintaining an hypothesis which was unsupported by facts, and had for its consequence the denial of all intuitive cognition—of all knowledge at first hand. There never was a more mistaken or unfounded charge, made though it was in perfect good faith by Dr Reid. By ideal or representative knowledge they meant, as has been said, exactly what he and his school mean by intuitive or presentative knowledge: by ideas, or images, they meant what philosophers now usually term intuitions, and what the world at large calls perceptions. And further, what Dr Reid and his school mean by ideal or representative knowledge, his opponents would have called re-representative knowledge, had they used such a term; but, instead of employing it, they expressed their meaning quite as well by the common words memory or imagination. The history of philosophical controversy has no more memorable mistake to record than this of Dr Reid, in which he supposed that his adversaries understood by representation what he meant by that term: he meant imagination, and supposed that they did the same; they, however, meant intuition, which was precisely the point in defence of which Dr Reid was contending; so that in reality there was no controversy at all between them, or at most a purely verbal one. Intuition may be a better word for its purpose than idea or image: presentation may be more suitable than representation to indicate what is meant. But that is all; and this, therefore, ought now to be distinctly understood, that Dr Reid and his followers, instead of scalping a doctrine, have merely tomahawked a word.
The truth and the error of representationism.10. The truth contained in the doctrine of representative perception is this, that it is an approximate, though imperfect, enunciation of the necessary law of all reason, which declares that nothing objective can be apprehended unless something subjective be apprehended as well. The errors of this system are traceable to its neglect or inability to eliminate from the subjective contribution in the total perceptive operation, all that is contingent, retaining only so much as is proved to be necessary, and unsusceptible of abstraction, by a reference to the law of contradiction. But the explication of this subject must be reserved for the last proposition of the epistemology, in which the contingent are disengaged from the necessary laws of cognition.