Page:Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience.djvu/83

Rh of states of the soul and meant the same thing. We instinctively feel that consciousness is an inner thing rather than an outer one, and if now the tendencies pointed out by Professor James, and his own declarations mean that consciousness as a metaphysical concept is on the point of being dropped, and that with it goes the last bit of animism, does it not seem an unexpected verification of an important part of the theory of Avenarius? Avenarius calls the metaphysical idea of consciousness the last stage of animism, and says, 'am besten wärs man gäbe einen so verfänglichen Ausdruck ganz auf.' Naturally it is of particular interest to see whether consequences for idealism are likely to follow the new attitude toward consciousness.

And first, it does not seem to me that we should regard consciousness as a bad word. We can continue to use it to mean what we have really always meant by it, namely, what is essentially private to one observer. That there is a great mass of experience which is essentially private and is thus contrasted with what is public, is the basis of the familiar distinction between the inner and the outer world. Private objects are what we may intelligibly call subjective facts. For an object to be subjective is for it to be private. Now by any case of consciousness we mean what is equivalent to a mental state, and 'the fact that our mental states are incapable of observation by anybody but ourselves seems to be not an accidental, but an essential character of these mental states." In adopting this criterion of privacy, I am glad to find myself in agreement with Professor Miinsterberg, who writes: "The most general condition which characterizes a psychical fact is that it can be experienced by only one, and that as object it stands to the subject in the relation of mere capacity to be experienced (Erfahrbarkeit); it is distinguished from physical facts by the circumstance that these can be experienced by more than one. . . ."

The privacy character is, I think, not really different from the one advanced by Dr. Perry in his article 'Conceptions and Misconceptions of Consciousness.' Dr. Perry describes cognitive experience precisely as I have done. The earlier judgment which is pronounced error by a later one, is thereby viewed as idiosyncrasy or confusion. Such rejected convictions are 'definitely recognized as my experience.' "There is no experience of which one may not