Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/487

 processes, more exactly as “perception” or as “ideation,” etc.

In Empiriocriticism, then, we must regard “perception” as being a sign in just the same way as “blue”—both complexes of sounds are dependent upon a secondary change-process and enable the individual to characterise in the one case the external condition, R, in the other the relation of this R to the constitution of the system at the time in question. In using these signs the individual does not intend to say what the external condition of change, or the object, is in itself (e.g., it is blue in itself, i.e., without being in the relation of essential co-ordination to an individual), nor does he intend by his statement to denote that he himself brings a subjective faculty (the faculty of perception) to the blue which is present outside. The external condition of change is not blue in itself, and the individual has not the perception.

The question as to the object “in-it-self” is absurd, for it means a question as to an object which is not an object for any one. “Apart from the logical contradiction of this question,” says Avenarius, “it is also full of contradiction from the point of view of a general theory of knowledge. We may, indeed, think of an environment into which no human individual has as yet entered; but we cannot think of any part of this environment, nor any part of any environment at all, which is not also a counterpart, or what is the same, we cannot think ourselves (as central part) away. What we can do in this respect is either to disregard ourselves, or to think that at one time no living being was to be found in the whole world. But in the first case, when we ignore ourselves, we merely play the part of the unnoticed spectator; or, if we like, of the spectator who is so absorbed in looking that he forgets himself in the spectacle. In the second case, where we assume that at some time there was no living being in the world, this world still remains for the questioner the totality of his counterparts—he merely admits no other central parts (himself, as we have said, he cannot think away) to whom his counterparts might also be counterparts. But for the parts of the environment to be counterparts it is sufficient that he, the questioner, continues to be the central part; and that he continues to be, so long as he still confronts the universe with questions.”

But the other suggestion, that the individual has the perception, is also absurd; it means that he has the perception in himself. The individual has indeed his brain in himself, and in the brain the cortical layers of the cerebrum following