Page:Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience.djvu/86

78 and Natursein. We have the two kinds of objects; the distinction is commonplace, but strictly empirical.

Let us now see whether this return to the ungarbled facts of experience has any consequences for transcendental idealism. My purpose is precisely that of Dr. Perry in the article I have referred to, namely, to deal logically with the idealistic theory of an Absolute. The success of Dr. Perry's criticism depends, it seems to me, on the obligation which the idealist may be under to accept Dr, Perry's definition of consciousness. It does not seem to me that the idealist is obliged to accept this definition, but, as I have above remarked, all the intentions of this definition seem to me better carried out when we say that consciousness is private experience, and the idealist certainly would not deny that he conceives all objects as mental states and that these are, as such, essentially private and exclusive.

The word consciousness is so wrapped up with idealistic implications that it seems to me most desirable to get rid of the phrase 'objects exist in consciousness.' Consciousness is subjective, individual and private, and if we intend to give an accurate description of the empirical situation, it is wise to cease using phrases that have us ensnared before we know it in a metaphysical tradition. To come back to the chair, the actual test whether my visual object be chair or hallucination would be to find out whether you too see what I do. Meaning, then, by consciousness the kind of objects that are private and exclusive, there is no motive whatever for saying the chair exists 'in consciousness.' It exists in the room, in space, in time (although here I think we begin to use metaphors), it exists in the system of relations that constitutes knowledge of it.

From the point of view, then, of an accurate description of the empirical situation, I have no ground for claiming the chair as my private object, which it must be if it is a mental state or a case of consciousness. If the privacy of consciousness nowhere comes into play that identical chair can be your object and my object, by which we mean that you, I and the chair are all objects in one situation.

But if the above reasoning is sound, how fares it with the logic of idealism?

When the argument for idealism can be stated in so many ways it may seem futile perhaps to pick out one. The one I give is not the same as that quoted by Dr. Perry. I give the following argument because it has always seemed to me the best one, and because it is usually ignored by critics.

It begins by explaining that specific sense-qualities exist only by