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The Mind and knowledge:Preliminary Truths
By Peter Coffey
 
INTRODUCTION.CHAPTER I.THE MIND AND KNOWLEDGE : PRELIMINARY TRUTHS.i. NATURE OF MAN : His MENTAL FACULTIES : SENSES ANDINTELLECT. Since Logic deals with thought and thought is aproduct of the mind, we cannot better approach our subject thanby taking a general glance at the nature of the mind and theway in which it acquires knowledge. There is a special branch ofphilosophy which investigates all our mental activities : it is calledPsychology. We will here take over from psychology, withoutany detailed analysis or discussion, those of its conclusions whichwill help to throw light upon the subject-matter of logic proper.The mutual bearings of logic and psychology will be explainedfurther on (20). It is man himself, who, by his own thought,furnishes the subject-matter of logic. Now man is a corporealbeing, existing in space and time like all other corporeal or materialthings, and, like them too, endowed with many mechanical, physicaland chemical properties and powers; but he is also animate orliving, i.e. organically constituted in his material structure, andendowed with life in common with the things of the vegetable orplant world ; and he is sentient also, capable of sense perceptionsand sense desires, in common with the beings of the animal world;finally, he is rational, that is to say, possessed of a characteristicaptitude peculiar to himself and entitling him to a place apart inGod s visible creation, the faculty of reason or intelligence (46).Such is man s composite nature ; and this nature is the remoteprinciple or source of all his activities, rational, sentient, vegetative,and non-vital, all alike.The proximate principles or sources of his various activities arecalled faculties. To what faculty do his acts of thought belong,and by what features are we to recognize them? Well, even thevery highest and noblest thoughts of man reveal the compositenessof his nature. They spring from his reason or intelligence, ofcourse, but no single thought of his is an act of reason or intellectpure and simple. All his intellectual acts are dependent, both intheir origin and in their actual exercise, on the antecedent and concomitantactivity of other cognitive faculties of the lower or senseorder, faculties which man possesses in common with animals,faculties which act only in and through some bodily organ. Ofthose faculties of sense knowledge or sense cognition, as they arecalled, some are known as external senses, others as internalsenses. The external senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting,feeling or touching are our channels of information aboutthe outer world. The internal senses of imagination, sensememory and sense consciousness recall or reproduce in our minds,and modify in many ways, the experiences of our external senses.All those sense faculties, external and internal, subserve and ministerto the faculty of thought proper the reason, intelligence,intellect, understanding, as it is variously called. I cannot thinkof a thing unless some of these senses has already perceived it.Nor can I continue to think of it unless some of them continuesto assist me. If I want to recall it to mind I must conjure upsome sort of image of it: a natural image; or an outline orscheme or formula, such as the mathematician forms in geometry;or an imaginary model or design, such as the artist constructs in
 
his imagination to help him in the conception and execution of hiswork. All this deserves a little reflection.2. DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSE PERCEPTION AND INTELLECTUALCONCEPTION: DEPENDENCE OF INTELLECTUALTHOUGHT UPON THE SENSE FACULTIES. The first or simplestexercise of the faculty of thought is called, in logic, Simple Apprehensionor Conception. It is the process by which we form a conceptor idea of any thing or object. To do this we need the assistanceof the external senses; each of these seizing and presentingto our reason some sensible quality or other of external things.Here, for example, is a table-bell upon my desk; I look at itand ring it; my eye receives an impression which enables me tosee the outline and colour of the bell, my ear an impression whichenables me to hear a sound, my fingers the tactile impressionwhich makes me conscious of the shape and resistance of thebutton pressed, and so on. These are so many distinct externalsensations. But evidently these various sensible qualities ofcolour, outline, sound, resistance, etc., would remain isolated fromone another in my mind, did I not possess the power or facultyof associating them. Both men and animals possess this power;it is a sense faculty, an internal sense; the ancients called it theSensus Communis, modern philosophers call it the central sense, orthe faculty of mental association.As those sensible impressions are made practically together,it is easy to understand that the sensations produced by them areassociated with one another. The qualities perceived by the productionof those sensations come into our consciousness as formingone whole; this whole, the resultant of as many factors as thereare qualities perceived, constitutes what we call the sense object:the concrete, individual, material thing, existing here and now inthe actual conditions and circumstances of time and space in whichit is thus perceived by the senses. The cognitive activity of theselatter is called sense perception, or sensation, and the consciousproduct of this activity is called a percept.Our sensations do not continue indefinitely in consciousness;but on passing out of consciousness they leave behind them tracesof themselves, images of the sense qualities originally perceived.These images are preserved in the imagination and may be revived,or recalled to consciousness, by sense memory.Now it is by the exercise of those partly bodily and partlymental activities of external sense perception and imaginationthat we obtain possession of the materials or data necessary forthought proper. Aided by the sense percept or sense image, ourpurely mental faculty of thought, our intellect or reason, is ableto form a concept or idea by which we apprehend what the thingis, get a rational knowledge of it, give it an intelligible interpretationor meaning and bestow upon it a name. In this we surpassthe brute creation. Animals have indeed percepts and imagesof things; but they have not ideas or concepts; they do notunderstand what things are; they do not interpret their senseexperiences as we interpret ours and theirs; nor have they language,the medium for expressing and communicating thought.It is difficult for the beginner, but it is very essential to accuracy, todistinguish clearly between sensation with its concrete images, and intellectual
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