Truth and Error or the Science of Intellection/Chapter 17

by John Wesley Powell

CHAPTER XVII

REFLECTION

We have now to describe that faculty of the intellect by which concepts of causation are produced. It will be remembered that the essential, constant, or absolute of this property is persistence, that the relative is change, and from the two time is derived; then, as motion becomes force through the collision of particles, time becomes causation as antecedent and consequent, or cause and effect; then, causation becomes metagenesis, and metagenesis becomes heredity, and heredity becomes evolution.

Words are used with many meanings, but in science we are compelled to use them with one meaning. All psychological words are singularly ambiguous, because they are used as tropes to such an extent as to conceal their fundamental meaning. It is necessary to select a word to signify the cognition of causation, or cause and effect, in the various phases of time and evolution, and I select the term reflection for this purpose. The term may also have a meaning synonymous with contemplation, but I select it with the meaning which is involved in it as a sign for the cognition of causation.

Once more it may be well to remind the reader of the total unlikeness of the properties of matter, so that they can not be classified. Things can be classified that are partly alike and partly unlike, but properties are totally unlike. We may consider properties separately, but this is abstraction, not classification, and we may schematize the properties. Fundamentally, we reason by abstraction because we consider properties severally. By reason of the total unlikeness of disparate properties, the most fundamental and clearest distinctions in psychology are those which we make when we call a faculty the cognition of a property. Reflection is one of those faculties because, as the term is here defined, it is the cognition of the property of causation.

Reflection, also, has the pentalogic elements, but in the inference the choice is of a concept of causation. These pentalogic elements are a consciousness of a sense impression, a choice, a concept, a comparison, and the judgment of likeness or of unlikeness.

Reflection is one of a series of judgments, and by its place in the series others are presupposed or posited. The series, so far as it has been built up, is composed of sensation, perception, apprehension, and reflection. I see an oak, and may make a judgment of sensation and conclude that it is green. I see an oak, and I may make a judgment of perception and conclude that it is a tree. I see an oak, and may make a judgment of apprehension, and conclude that its leaves and branches are in motion; I see an oak, and make a judgment of reflection and conclude that the motion in the tree is caused by the wind. These judgments differ from one another in the nature of the concept recalled, and these concepts differ in degrees of compounding.

Why do I make a judgment of sensation? Because I wish to note the color which I am painting. Why do I make a judgment of perception? Because I wish to seek the shade of the tree? Why do I make a judgment of apprehension? Because I am looking for birds. Why do I make a judgment of reflection? Because I wish to note the direction of the wind. Here again we see that the particular inference which we make depends upon the choice of a concept, and that this choice of the concept depends upon our purpose.

The concepts of reflection are compounded of judgments of causes and effects of events. Thus by reflection the relations of time are compounded into the relations of causation, and then these are compounded into relations of metagenesis, and these are compounded into relations of heredity, and these are compounded into relations of development, and these are compounded into relations of evolution.

It will be seen that the concepts of causation are exceedingly compound. In the practical affairs of life, events are of profound importance, for the events of yesterday affect the events of today, and those of today will have a consequence in the events of tomorrow; thus life is a constant discipline.

The time of which we speak is not void time, but the time of states and events, for of void time we know absolutely nothing, and language fails to express any concept of void time, and any reification of it is a pseudo-idea—a mythological notion.

It must be understood that, as the cognition of form comes by experience, so cognition of force comes by experience. Cognition of form antedates the cognition of energy only in the sense that the full knowledge of form is necessary before there is full knowledge of force; the experience upon which they both depend is contemporaneous. This may be stated in another way to be made clear. Cognition of kind by sensation arises with a certain degree of experience; cognition of form arises with a higher degree of experience; cognition of force arises with a still higher degree of experience; but judgments of kind, judgments of form, and judgments of force are accumulated contemporaneously. So concepts of causation succeed concepts of force; but the judgments of causation are contemporaneous with the judgments of force, form, and kind, and there can be no judgments of causation without judgments of force, form, and kind.

Here we arrive at a paradox, as it seems, to those who fail to comprehend the nature of causation. Consider a valley down which a river runs. There can be no river without a valley, yet the river has caused the valley. You affirm that the river has carved the valley, which seems to be a paradox; there must have been a valley in order that the water should be gathered into a stream; and that the river presupposes or posits the valley.

You explain that a small tract of land is gradually left bare by the retiring sea, that is, the land is slightly upheaved; the rain falls upon the land and carves channels, the tract of land is extended, new channels are formed and the old channels are deepened; still the upheaval goes on with increasing dry land, multiplication of channels, deepening of channels, and the widening of channels into valleys, and this continues until at last a great area of land is upheaved from the sea, and the rains have carved channels and the channels have coalesced again and again until a great valley is formed through which a river rolls. The river in the process of its growth has carved a valley, and the enlarging land has at last caught water enough to fill a river; the growth of the valley and of the river are contemporaneous, but the forming of the valley logically succeeds to the falling of the rain and the flowing of the river with its lateral streams; that is, effect succeeds cause.

This is the metaphysical fallacy which mistakes an effect for a primordial cause, and practically says that the valley existed before the river, for it gathers the rain which constitutes the river. The valley was from the first, but the river is caught by the valley from the rain which falls. Examine the doctrine of presupposition in metaphysics, and in every case a fallacy will be found.

In this manner the experiences of sensation, perception, and apprehension are connate, they spring up together, and yet concepts of sensation precede concepts of understanding, and concepts of apprehension precede concepts of reflection. One part of the doctrine of presupposition, as it is put in metaphysics, is a fallacy, and is replaced by the doctrine of causation, which explains that that which was supposed to be antecedent is consequent, or that which was supposed to be cause is effect. This is the great contribution made by science in demonstrating the laws of evolution. Another part of the metaphysical doctrine is erroneous in assuming that the concomitants or properties are derived one from another, one school affirming that all of the properties are derived from force, the other that they are all derived from intellection.

There is a valid concept involved in the use of the term presupposition, so often occurring in metaphysics, for when one property is considered abstractly the others are known to exist; though not overtly affirmed, they are implied, and presupposition used in this manner and understood in this manner would be just as good a term as implication or concomitancy; the term presupposition leads astray when it suggests the further idea that the things implied are antecedent things, instead of antecedently known things.

Judgments of evolution are constituted in the same manner as other judgments, and to become certitudes they must also be verified. But judgments are consolidated as habits of thought; thus we come across the phenomena of intuition. When the mind makes one judgment and uses other knowledge which was derived by previous judgment to make a new judgment apparently far remote from the first, this new judgment is said to be a judgment of intuition, for the steps seem to be cancelled in reflection, and the long course of reasoning is made to appear as a direct result.

I see the track of a man in the sand. The left track is full, the right track shows only the impression of the toe. I see the one and then the other, and I infer that the man was lame and walked upon his right toe. John Smith is lame, and I infer that John Smith has walked along the trail. John Smith lives at a distance; I have heard that his mother is ill, and that he has been sent for, and I infer that he has passed along the trail to the home of his mother. Thus a series of judgments flash through my mind when I see the half footprint, and so speedily do these judgments arise in succession that the intervening steps seem to be cancelled from intellection, and I appear to infer from the footprint directly to the visit of John Smith to his mother; but in fact I have carried on a series of judgments derived from elements of knowledge that have been recalled by the sight of the footprint.

This reasoning in series by unrecognized steps is intuition. It is the same old story of habit. Certain kinds of reasoning, like certain kinds of muscular activity, come by frequent repetition to be so easily accomplished that the processes involved are unrecognized by the mind. Perhaps this can be explained by the theory that in recalling one concept we recall others with which it is associated, reviving them as they are woven into the structure of the cortex by the act of choice. All judgments of causation are more or less serial in this manner, and as most of them are habitual they become intuitive. For this reason it is often more difficult to analyze judgments of reflection than judgments of apprehension; and more difficult to analyze judgments of apprehension than judgments of perception; but by careful attention to the subject and by the acquisition of skill in introspection, it can always be discovered that every judgment of reflection is founded upon a consciousness and involves an inference which recalls a compound concept, and to reach the stage of certitude it must be verified. Finally, it must be remembered that intuition, which is supposed by careless thinkers to be occult, is in fact developed by experience. Such is the nature of presentative judgments of reflection.

We have yet to consider representative judgments of reflection. Again, we see that as presentative judgments follow upon sense impression, so representative judgments follow upon choice, and the choice may be discursive or volitional. The discursive choice is sporadic, and by following such concepts the stream of thought is directed in a meandering course that flows to nowhere; but the choice for a fixed purpose, in which there is an interest, leads to results that influence the conduct of life. The presentative judgments of reflection are removed from the sense impression by intuitional or by more deliberate judgments of sensation, perception, and understanding, so that the judgments of reflection, both presentative and representative, are more deliberative than of the lower faculties.

When both cause and effect are external, the judgments of them are mediated by other judgments, the causes of which are external and the effects internal; hence the judgments of external cause and effect are still further removed from sense impression, so that there is again another degree of deliberation. It is this characteristic that has led to the selection of the term reflection to designate the faculty, and although the reflective judgment may never have been defined as it has been here, yet this definition will serve to reveal the unconscious wisdom of the selection of the term in current speech. In judgments of original cognition the pentalogic elements can always be discovered by introspection, but in the judgments of recognition it is difficult to discover them in the cortical consciousness. When cognition is fairly accomplished recognition thereafter becomes instantaneous.

Audition is the primordial sense of causation. Sound comes to us through a medium, and primordial man has no knowledge of this medium; he does not recognize the ambient air. Thus he thinks that sound is something emitted from bodies, just as Newton believed that light was something emitted from bodies, and Plato that forms were emitted from bodies. So the savage looked about him for the cause, and often the cause as a form he could not see, and as he knew nothing of molecular force he formed no concepts of force in relation to sound; so his concepts of sound were concepts of cause until he could discover the cause as a form. It was thus that concepts of cause were primitively generated in the mind of man. Hearing is also the sense by which time, the reciprocal of cause, is first conceived. We must remember that properties are concomitant, and though the faculties operate abstractly in that they primarily conceive properties as abstract, yet the indissolubility of the concomitants compels us to consider the manifestation of one property as the symbol of all others. In this manner the senses all become vicarious, and we make judgments with one sense that we might make with another. Of all the primordial senses we have hitherto discussed as the primal sense of a faculty, that of hearing is the most facile to perform the functions of the others, though we shall hereafter observe that seeing is the grand vicar of the senses.

Judgments of reflection are verified by the judgments of a higher faculty, but they themselves are used to verify the judgments of lower faculties. Motion and force are expressed in rapidly passing events, but causes produce effects that remain; causes and effects are states; forces are events that separate states; hence it is that the judgments of understanding are relegated to those of reflection for verification.

I suppose that I see a woodpecker tapping a tree. I look and see the fresh pit made, and my judgment is confirmed. I obtain the glimpse of an animal running through the forest, and think it to be a wolf. I come to the spot where it was supposed to be, and the tracks of a deer are seen, and so I correct my judgment. Thus a higher judgment will serve as a verification of a lower.

Judgments may be measured. I judge of a distance, and find, when the distance is measured, the error of the judgment. I do not find the error of the line measured, but only the error of the judgment made. So, whenever we make a judgment of length or distance or size or weight or mass, or what not, we measure our judgments by measuring the what-nots judged. All judgments are liable to error, and cognition comes only with verification. In quantitative judgments the liability to error is infinite as that term is used by mathematicians, and all judgments must be verified unless the amount of error may be neglected.

In scientific research verification is often by measurement. Counting itself is measuring, and the sum is the number of units which the measured body contains, and these units are units of a kind. It is only in counting that the units are natural; all other units are conventional in that something other than the thing measured is taken as the unit or standard. I measure time by the revolution of the earth, by the revolution of a hand on the dial of a clock, or by the flow of water from a clepsydra. Thus one measurement is mediated by another, and different standards are taken. The nature of measurement is well understood except in so far as it relates to psychological phenomena; in this realm metaphysicians seem wholly to misconceive its nature. I cannot measure the number of the ultimate particles of a body by counting them, but I may measure the relative number of its atoms by weighing it. I do not determine its force, but its mass only, when I weigh the body, for the total force in the body is the sum of its motion in all its incorporations. A pound of powder has much more force than that which is measured as a pound. What we really arrive at in weighing a body is the proportionate number of its particles. I may measure the length of the wall by counting the brick lengths in the wall. I cannot measure this stick by counting the number of particles as atoms, molecules, or cells which constitute its length, but I use a conventional unit, say an inch, and I find it ten inches long. Had I taken some natural unit I might have found it, say, ten million molecules in length. Now, what have I measured? Only the distance which separates the positions of the molecules in its termini, but I have not measured the extension of any of the molecules, for probably they are separated by interspaces filled with ether, and may be with air. It is thus that I measure space. I cannot measure form, for form is internal structure and external shape.

I have a body which is of very irregular shape, and hence I cannot well determine its extension in three dimensions, but I put it into a beaker of water, and determine how much it displaces, and measure that; thus, while I do not measure the body itself, I measure its equivalent. Now this leads us logically to the statement that of the five concomitants in every particle or body every one can be measured, and it is only necessary to measure one property to have a measure of them all. But more than this, I must measure one property in terms of another; thus, I measure motion in terms of space or length, and I measure speed in terms of length and time. We must remember that measurement is always a conventional process to serve a purpose, and the way in which we measure a thing is by some device for the purpose, and the purpose is always the relation of the thing measured to some other thing. I measure force as motion, so I measure the force of the cause in its effect, and measure the effect in space elements. I measure a judgment by measuring the thing of which the judgment is made; thus, I judge of a distance, and may measure the distance to determine the amount of error in my judgment. It is in this manner that I can measure judgments.

I cannot longer dwell on this subject to set forth the devices by which judgments are measured, but must content myself with the statement that the attempt to measure judgments has but recently been made, and that already there are many devices. All of the properties can be reduced to or considered as number. Space can be considered as number, when its elements are counted in natural units, or it can be considered as number when its elements are measured in conventional units. Motion can be considered as space, and then as number. Time may also be considered as motion, then as space, and finally as number; judgments may be considered as time, and time as motion, and motion as space, and space as number. The device by which the other properties are considered as number is measurement, and measurement is experimentation.

We are prepared to give a more adequate definition of reflection. Reflection is the faculty of cognizing causation. Again, we may define it as the process of making a judgment about causation or its reciprocal, time, which judgment must be verified to become a cognition.