Science, Materialism, Mysticism

Materialism and sense-perception

The scientific account of the complex of agencies involved in sense-perception is worth viewing in its correct bearings on the question whether materialism is a valid doctrine.

There is a tendency today in certain scientific quarters to declare: "Matter is only the version which sense-perception gives of an unknown reality. An impact comes upon the sense- organs; the nerve-terminals are stimulated; nerve- currents start moving; they reach the brain-cells and there is sense-perception as of actual objective matter existing. Now, evidently, the perception is an image. What proof have we that this image is true? Verification, in science, is always by seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling or touching. Yet, whether we see, hear, taste, smell or touch, we have nothing except sense-perception: that is, an image, in the broad connotation of the term. So there is no means of verifying sense- perception. At most we may aim at correlating the various sides of it. We cannot get beyond it. Hence we have on the one hand an image of the world and on the other the unknown world itself. Scientifically, we can be said to work not on the world itself but on an image of it produced by sense-organs, nerve-terminals, nerve-currents and brain- cells, and therefore there is no proof of the world being matter rather than a non-material reality which is imaged by us as material."

What shall be our comment on this declaration? Only one thing: it is capital balderdash. We cannot with logical consistency talk of an unknown world acting on the sense-organs and affecting the nerve-terminals and sending messages in the form of nerve-currents to the brain-cells, when clearly those very organs and terminals and currents and cells involve actual objective material existence of the precise sort which is said to be in doubt! We as good as say: "The material world as a real entity comes to be in doubt only if sense- organs, nerve-terminals, nerve-currents and brain-cells which are part of the same world really exist to receive the

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impact of the unknown reality which alone is their actual objective cause as it is also the sole objective cause of everything else in that world." Utter self-contrad8"86 of here. Is it not plain that the whole complex of agencies said to be responding to the unknown reality's impact should to fall under the category of image? How can we assume that these agencies are what we take them to be? Are they not as much part of the image-world as anything else we call by that name? Eyes are as much an image as floating clouds- ears breaking waves; noses, as violets and dew-drenched dust tongues, as bits of sugar and pieces of salt; hands, as stiff o soft clothes, rough or smooth wood-work, hot or cold steel regular or irregular stones; nerve-terminals, as blades of grass and strings of thread; nerve-currents, as running streams and drifts of air; brain-cells, as diamond-beads and flower-seeds. So we should be driven to declare that our image of the world is itself produced by means of images, or that images interact with the world and give us our image of it! This is unmitigated meaninglessness, a vicious circle, if our conclusion is intended to be that the world's nature is not material as our sense-perceptions incline us to believe.

To account for the image of the world, a particular set of images seems to be already granted, and we cannot use this particular set to account for itself. In other words, we cannot hold that the images of sense-organs, nerve-terminals, nerve- currents and brain-cells are due to sense-organs, nerve- terminals, nerve-currents and brain-cells. Either these things really exist as matter or they are a mere image. Call them mere image and we have no means of accounting for world-image of matter. Call them real material existences, and we have no ground for refusing real material existence the rest of the world, for we have already conceded materiality which was at debate!

If sense-organs, nerve-terminals, nerve-currents brain-cells do not exist actually and objectively as ma there can be for science no sense-perception and not even the image of any world. The scientific image-theory can make

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meaning only after we have granted that the image we have of essentially a true reflection of what exists. Then there will be real sense-organs, real nerve-terminals, real nerve-currents, real brain-cells - all essentially what they seem to us material existences receiving an impact from the world and getting the world truly imaged. This, of course, w not preclude incomplete imaging or a variation of p-structure depending on position and state of the receiving entity. Nor does it preclude error or illusion: in fact, there is no point in even speaking of error or illusion unless ,we can say we know what it is not to be committing an error or to be suffering from an illusion. But the granting of essential truth of image does preclude in science the possibility of the world being not the material existence we believe it to be on the evidence of the image we have of it. We must either accept the image as essentially true or repudiate the whole image-theory in its scientific garb. Scientifically, we can have only a fact of interaction between different parts of the world, resulting in the production of a true image which tells us that the world is material.

This conclusion does not prejudice the issue whether the ultimate constituent of matter is material or no. One point, however, needs to be stressed. Even if the ultimate constituent be non-material, we do not negate the existence of matter. For, we arrive at it by studying and analysing matter and as soon as matter is refused actual objective existence its constituent cannot remain in existence actually and objectively. Matter can never be cavalierly brushed away.

If we wish to assert that our image of the world gives us genuine indication of what the world is like, we must stop arguing on the lines of sense-organs, nerve-terminals, nerve-currents and brain-cells and begin with pure consciousness say that in perception we have only a certain kind of contents of consciousness and that we have no notion of outside our consciousness makes the contents such and land such. Here we go clean beyond scientific imagism and land in sheer philosophy, with three further steps to consider.

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These steps are: (1) solipsism, the belief in the existence nothing except oneself, because everything and everyone figuring in perception are just the contents of one'61701^ consciousness; (2) pluralism of consciousness, the belief the existence of many conscious beings who carry their own contents of consciousness and who interact among them - selves; (3) objectivism, the belief in an outer world other than one's own consciousness and composed of other conscious n beings and of an unknown reality whose impact makes the perception-contents of each consciousness such and such

Naturally the philosopher has to start with his own consciousness - in this case, the perception-contents of it But surely they have a certain involuntary character, we seem to suffer perception and not to will it, there is a given- ness about it which appears to go beyond the "1" 's wishful activity. Every time we stumble against a stone, are dazzled by a flash or hear a disagreeable bang, we realise that perception is not always according to our wishes. A strict solipsism centering in the "I" which one knows from day to day is, therefore, unconvincing. There must be a world outside this "I". But is that world composed only of other 'T" s who interact with one's own? To multiply the "I"s is not to solve the difficulty raised by the involuntariness, sufferance and given-ness noticeable in perception by each "I • Besides, if one goes beyond one's own "I" to acknowledge other 'T's there is no reason to deny outside existence to many other entities. Thus the whole familiar universe comes back. But because of our special starting-point in pure consciousness, a starting-point which does not presuppo5 the actual material existence of sense-organs, nerve-terminals, nerve-currents and brain-cells, we are under no logical obligation to consider the universe material. An alternative left us of conceiving it in non-material terms. ,

Strong reasons can be put forth either way. The decision must be given according as the materialistic or non-materialistic view explains and correlates the la e range of facts. But it may be mentioned that even the non

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materialistic view can be of several kinds, as is obvious from the host of idealist, religious and spiritual philosophies. The A which is perhaps most in tune with- the starting-point in one's own consciousness is that which Molds the involuntariness sufferance and given-ness noticeable in perception to due to reception's coming to the "I" from some wider range of one's own being, some range normally hidden. We nave actual awareness of memories, desires, thoughts, visualisations getting into focus out of concealed regions of our own being. Those regions could very well be the cause and creator of our perception. And when we weigh the sense of vastness in that aspect of perception which we call the universe, it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that the wider hidden regions are ultimately an infinite Consciousness, sole and supreme. But there is nothing inconsistent if the infinite Consciousness has many finite consciousnesses as its self- formulations and has also a world-order as another self- formulation for presentation to those finite consciousnesses through a particular perceiving arrangement, namely, sense- experience, which produces the impression of materiality. In fact, to regard the sole and supreme Consciousness in such a light harmonises best with the picture our perception gives us - the picture of many finite beings and a world-order. Then we shall have an outer world other than each consciousness and in that -world other conscious beings and a Sudden reality to be perceived as material. At the same time we shall have an explanation of why the hidden reality monies in an essentially common form to the various conscious beings: it comes so because, on the one hand, the same hidden reality is presented to them and, on the other, ^e same supreme Consciousness is their secret self of selves.

Commencing with consciousness we can arrive at a non- materialistic philosophy in which the living core of solipsism is combined both with pluralism of beings and with objectivism This way of thinking, however, simply ignores science as a starting-point, though by granting objectivism it leaves room for all the materiality of the world which we have seen

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to be inevitable in the scientific account of sense-n And here the image we have of the world is taken to be essentially-true and still spiritual: a material world is accepted as producing a true image of its materiality, but the materiality is seen to be the self-formulation of a s Consciousness. In the case of scientific as distinguished from philosophic imagism, we cannot go beyond materiality .So it is of no use as a weapon against materialists and does not per se, provide any possibility of a non-materialistic interpretation of the world or of affirming that science is based only o images and therefore true knowledge lies beyond science

All the same, we must not forget in what context scientific imagism stultifies itself. If the world-image is taken to be possibly different from what the world really is like, we end in swallowing our own tails. But if the world-image is taken to give a correct notion of the world, then while the immediate conclusion is the world's materiality a new problem arises whose solution cannot help being non-materialistic. The problem is: how is it that the stimulation of nerve- terminals produces a true image of the world? Our mode of perceiving carries no guarantee of the image corresponding with the object: on the contrary, the odds are that the image has a correspondence with the object in the same sort of way in which a catalogue has a correspondence with the thing catalogued. Take the fact of vision. Supposing that a coloured tree actually exists, how can we acquire a true image of it? Light is reflected from the coloured tree, conveying signs of its colour and its boundaries in the form of vibrations that have a certain frequency and pattern. These vibrations impinge on the nerve-terminals in our eyes, but how do brain-cells, to which the nerve-currents go, translate currents into the sensation of seeing a coloured tree. Neither the vibrations nor the nerve-currents were treelike either in colour or shape. How do the colour and shape of t manage to be transported by them? Code-message5 a we get: how are they correctly decoded by us? What ^ mates a genuine perception? The nature of the means of

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perception seems likely to leave us completely in the dark as to the true character of the world of so-called matter. And yet, as we have reasoned, it is impossible at the same time to hold the scientific view of perception and deny an essential correspondence between image and object. Common sense has' always accepted an essential correspondence, and logic confirms common sense in the teeth of a seeming to the contrary. But when we try to understand how the image world and the real world could tally, science has no illumi­nating word for us.

The sole means by which here the impossible can happen is some sort of intuitive activity on our part. It is as though our consciousness had a direct touch on the world, bringing a knowledge of what is outside our consciousness by a going forth and getting intimate with it and then interpreting the nerve-messages in the light of that intimacy! Otherwise there can never be any definite ground for the truth of our perception. But this manner of attaining essential correspon­dence is nothing that materialism can explain or allow. A secret extra-sensory perception, an occult super-normal knowledge, a direct intuitive comprehension, a cognition by some degree of identity - this is at work behind the condi­tions imposed by an arrangement of external stimulus and sense-response. In the very act of perceiving matter to be matter we have a non-materialistic phenomenon without which there would be utter ignorance of the world's nature. Hence, while refusing to be drawn towards a non-material­istic conclusion by way of a supposed ignorance of the world's nature, we are pushed inevitably into a view of perception which breaks sheer through the formula of materialism. But there is, of course, all the difference be­tween the right m0de and the wrong of getting to the nonmaterialistic discovery.

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