The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Külpe - Das Ich und die Aussenwelt
As different accounts of a matter of fact have given rise to contradictory theories (or, as the author terms them, "Reflections"), so have contradictory theories in science given rise to problems whose solution is the aim of “philosophic reflection” or theory of knowledge. The title of the article indicates one of these problems, which arises from ascribing contradictory spatial qualities to the same event or sum of events. On One side, the events which make up sense-perceptions are represented as belonging to a world outside of me; on the other side, they are called ideas within me. There are three ways of reconciling the contradiction: 1st. By duplicating the qualities of the events; this way may be termed the material standpoint. 2d. by making the two spatial qualities coincide, or by setting one aside altogether; the formal standpoint. 3d. The meaning on the qualities can be so interpreted that the contraction, which exists merely for the spatial difference of the same matter of fact, disappears; this is the critical standpoint. Of the material standpoint there are five aspects, varying from the attribution to the ego of mere form, — indefinite and empty, — through the vulgar aspect, where along with qualitative identity of the inner and outer worlds there is mere numerical differences, up to the view which regards the outer world as only the indefinite "Ding an sich," while to the ego belongs all that is qualitative in sense-perception. The material standpoint is a logical solution of the problem, but the numerous forms it has assumed arouses doubt of its truth. More especially it is to be said that the pure ego and the "Ding an sich" are artificial concepts corresponding to nothing in experience. Ideation and matter are expressions derived from facts of experience; but there is no faculty of feeling or perceiving which exists alongside of that which is felt or perceived. The formal standpoint presents the forms of subjective idealism and of materialism as its extremes. This standpoint is an arbitrary solution of the problem which puts out of sight the essential conditions; the force of the opposition between the "in me" and the "outside of me" is here not operative. Psychologically, subjective idealism rests on an inverted concept of the development of self-consciousness; logically, it errs in asserting that everything perceivable is only an idea of the ego, because it does not take into account the relations of the objects of perception or ideation to one another. The considerations urged against an exclusive "in me" hold good, mut. mutan., against the exclusive "outside of me" of materialism. More than any line of philosophic thought has materialism forgotten that the concepts of natural science and psychology are only imperfect theories of what experience is, and are not the experiences themselves, and that we attain to and grasp reality only in what has been or can be experienced.