Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - The Idealist to the Realist (The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 1911-08-17).pdf/7

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We have so far been concerned with the criticisms of the realists on idealism. It is fair now to ask for their positive doctrine. And it must be confessed that the realists are more lavish of polemic than of constructive formulation. It is hard, for example, to understand why the six realists call their program a “platform”; for it clearly sets forth what they avoid, but gives no hint where they stand. And, to take another example, that subtle realist G. E. Moore is far more concerned to demonstrate that esse is not percipi than to tell what esse is. Other realists offer definitions so tautological or so self-contradictory that it is hard to take them seriously. Fullerton, for example, the dualist who takes the short-cut to realism just before reaching the end of the road to idealism, defines non-external reality in two ways. He says, most often, that the external thing is the phenomenon “in the objective order“ —as much a truism as if he should say that the external thing is external. But he earlier describes the external world as made up of sensations “abstracting from the relation of knowledge” —which is as inherently incredible as if one should speak of ether vibrations abstracting from motion.

The implication of most neo-realistic writers is, however, that all reality is describable in terms of the physical sciences. When, for example, Woodbridge conceives of the universe as a complex of terms and relations, and counts consciousness among these relations as coordinate with space and time, he is properly interpreted by Montague as assuming that the terms to which the relations are subordinate are physical, not psychical. More specific is Montague’s conception: Following Ostwald, he describes the universe in terms of energy and conceives the distinction between physical and psychical as identical with that between kinetic and potential energy.

Before entering on a discussion, necessarily condensed, of the “real” conceived as physical, a preliminary remark should be made: It should be pointed out that the realist has no right to the implication that in rejecting idealism and adopting a physical form of realism he finds ready-to-hand a compact system of ultimate physical doctrine. On the contrary, the physicists of one group, headed by Pearson and Mach, are frankly idealistic, reduce facts of science to contents of the mind, describe physical realities as made up of sense impressions, and define scientific law as “mental short-