INTUITIONALISM

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY.

By the Rev. John Blacket.

No. VII. INTUITIONALISM.

 Immanuel Kant.

Intuitionalism in philosophy is the very antithesis of Sensualism or Empiricism. The Sensualist affirms that all knowledge has its basis in the senses. The Empiricist, says it is the outcome of experience. In the last analysis between the two there is not much difference. Experience, rightly so-called, denotes what the mind becomes conscious of through the senses. I hear a sound; this is experience or sensation: the mind locates the sound, and defines it. It affirms that the sound is vocal or instrumental music, the rumble of wheels, or distant thunder. The eye is affected by some object: a sensation is experienced; the mind cognizes that object and judges it to be a man, tree, or house. I touch some substance: a sensation is experienced; the mind conceives that substance to be hard, soft, hot, or cold, as the case may be.
 In the interest of truth, experience must be restricted to what the word means, viz., "something experienced" —something of which the soul becomes conscious through the senses. Looseness of expression lies at the basis of many a philosophical error. There are some materialists who wish to give the word experience a wider application. They would apply it to everything of which the soul is conscious, whether given in sensation or not. In fact, some go so far as to say that the mysterious something (mind or spirit) which experiences is itself the outcome of experience. Said the late G. H. Lewes, one of the leading philosophical students of his day: "Mind is a successive evolution from experiences." To me it seems to be a self-evident truth that that which experiences (mind or spirit) must be anterior to that which is experienced.
 Sensualists, Empiricists, and Sceptics lose sight of the innate powers of the soul. If there are no innate ideas there are inborn intuitions and instincts. "There is nothing in the intellect that did not previously exist in the senses," said the disciples of Hobbes and Locke. "Yes," responded Leibnitz; "nothing but the intellect." Notwithstanding the ridicule with which that rejoinder has been treated, there are heights in it that we cannot scale and depths that we cannot sound.
 Locke, the Empiricist, said: "There are no ideas in the mind till the senses have let them in." In the attainment of knowledge he gave the first place, not to the soul, but to the senses; Now if there were no soul there would be no consciousness of sensations. As I pointed out in the section on Locke, the senses cannot "let ideas into the mind": they can only reveal objects; it is the soul that forms the ideas in relation to those objects.
 If there were no knowledge anterior to experience then self-consciousness could not exist. Is self-consciousness given in experience? No. It is the basal and congenital factor that makes experience possible.
 That all knowledge is not given in sense experience is proved by the fact the soul has the power to transcend experience. It is these innate powers or intuitions, existing anterior to all experience, that disciples of the sensualistic school of philosophy have largely overlooked.
 Again, experience deals with the past; it cannot reveal to us the future. The mind has the innate power to infer that under the same conditions the future will resemble the past. We see the sun rise to-day. That is a sense experience. But the mind is so constituted that it can transcend experience, and affirm that if the conditions are the same a hundred years hence the sun will rise in the same way. No doubt we gather from experience that two and two make four; but the mind has power to go beyond experience, and to affirm that two and two must make four throughout all space and time.
 One of the first of modern philosophers to draw attention to the innate powers of the soul was Leibnitz. He rightly held that experience could not give to us truths that were necessary and universal.
 But we deal more especially with Kant, one of the profoundest intellects that ever grappled with the mysteries of mind and matter. He was born in 1724, at Konigsberg, in Prussia. Kant was of Scotch descent, and of humble parentage, his father being a saddler. Throughout life Kant was connected with Konigsberg, first as a student at the university, then as a professor. He died in 1804, aged eighty years, having immortalized his name by the publication of "The Critique of Pure Reason."
 Kant's work, like Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding," was epoch-making. Like Locke, he also dealt with the "origin, extent, and limits of the understanding," but on very different lines.
 His "Critique of Pure Reason" was not only an answer to some crudities in Locke, but also to the scepticism of Hume. Said he: "I honestly confess the suggestion of David Hume was the very thing which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumbers, and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction."
 Building on foundations laid down by Locke and Berkeley, Hume held that all knowledge was the product of experience. Amongst other things he denied that there was any essential connection between cause and effect, because such connection could not be an object of sense—that is, could not be experienced or perceived through the senses. (1) He affirmed that what Intuitionalists regarded as a necessary and universal truth, viz., "that to every effect there must be an adequate cause," was really an assumption, based upon custom or mere association.
 It was here that Kant entered into the arena, and did battle with Hume. He drew attention to the innate powers of the soul—to mental potencies that were anterior to all experience— that made knowledge possible. Of the concept "to every effect there must be an adequate cause " Kant said: "It contains an element of necessity which no experience can ever supply, because experience (though it teaches us that after one phenomenon something else follows habitually) cannot teach us that it follows necessarily." The judgment "to every effect there must be an adequate cause" is true universally and necessarily. What assures us of its truth? It cannot be actual experience, because we cannot have a universal experience. The answer is to be found in the constitution of the soul. It is so constituted that it can go beyond the limitation of the senses—it can transcend experience—and arrive at knowledge that can never be given in experience.
 Hume had represented the soul as a mere series of fleeting impressions, as unreal as Berkeley regarded an external world of matter. But Kant pointed out that there must be some abiding subject to be conscious of fleeting impressions. Said he : "If there were no 'ground of unity' for our ideas, a whole crowd of phenomena might rush into our soul without ever forming real experience," all relation between our knowledge and objects of knowledge would be lost. If the soul were but a "series of fleeting impressions" there would be mere sensation only, knowledge could not be. There would be no permanency to our ideas.
 Kant called his immortal book "The Critique of Pure Reason." By "pure reason" he means mental and spiritual powers, independent of experience, existing anterior to it, and making experience or knowledge possible. In the opening of his book he truly points out that experience (that which comes under the notice of the senses) is the basis on which the mind operates in its first quest for knowledge. He then goes on to show that "experience is by no means the only field to which the mind is confined" in the pursuit of knowledge. The constitution of the soul is such that it can transcend the limitation of the senses. As Kant puts it "Experience (or sensation) tells us what is, but not that it must be necessarily as it is." He affirms, and that most truly, that "universal truths," which "bear the mark of an inward necessity," cannot be the product of experience, because they are not given in experience. For instance, take the concept that two straight lines might run parallel for ever without enclosing space. This is a truth that cannot be given in experience. Why not? Because it would require an eternal experience to prove it. This cannot be. Yet we know the proposition to be true. Why? Because the innate constitution of the soul is such that it can transcend the limitations of the senses—it can go beyond experience.
 Instead of the soul being "an empty cabinet." as Locke affirmed, or "a series of impressions," as Hume stated, it is found to be a mysterious basal something with marvellous potencies and possibilities. This is the truth that Kant brings out, and that needs to be iterated and reiterated in materialistic times. Instead of the soul being the product of experience, it is before all experience, as God was before all creation—it makes experience possible, and can transcend the limitation of the senses.
 Kant's belief was that the soul in some mysterious way had been constituted for experience, shall I say as the eye is constituted to reflect the light or the ear to respond to sound? Hence, he laid down the principle that to be absolutely sure of the existence of an entity it must be revealed in experience. This led him into difficulties in relation to things supersensuous: but with these there is no space to deal.
 Of course, there were weaknesses in his philosophy, as there have been in all efforts made by men to grasp ultimate realities. Blemishes in Locke and Hume are such in Kant. He, too, held that we do not know things in themselves, only representations; or, as Hume said, "impressions." Said he, ''What we call external objects are nothing but representations of our senses," the "true correlative of which" (the objects themselves) "are not known, nor can be known by these representations. . . . Things which we see are not by themselves what we see, nor their relations by themselves such as they appear to us. . .
 They cannot, its phenomena (or as mere appearances), exist by themselves, but in us only. It remains completely unknown to us what objects may be by themselves, and apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them." . . . "However far we may carry our investigations we can never have anything before us but mere phenomena"—that is, representations or appearances.
 If this be true—that we cannot know things in themselves—then Hume's doubt presents itself: How do we know that the representations correspond to the things? How do we know that the universe is true to our conception of it? The real world may be altogether dissimilar to the ideal one. What ground have we for certitude ?
 What is our answer to all this? It is this: that a representation must be a representation of something. What Kant calls "the thing in itself" is given in the representation. We do not merely know representations, as he affirms; we know things. If we want to know how—how the real outside of us becomes the ideal within us; how the universe is translated into thought; how the objective becomes subjective (the modus operandi); if we want an answer to these questions then our appeal is vain. The questions are unanswerable. It is possible for the objective to become subjective, because of the compatibility of the two. The perceiving subject is mind, and the object perceived is a manifestation of mind, hence it can be cognized, considered, and translated into thought. But how all this is effected we cannot tell. The answer involves the mystery of creation. As Tennyson says: —
 "Flower in the crannied wall,
 I pluck you out of the crannies—
 Hold you here, root and all, in my
 hand;
 Little flower—but if I could understand
 What you are—root and all, and all
 in all—
 I should know what God and man
is."
 We have no need to trouble ourselves as to whether the universe in itself is different from our conception of it. This no more concerns us than a question as to whether sugar and aloes would be sweet and bitter to angels. The universe is so constituted that it has the power to affect us and to appeal to us in various ways. Of this we are sure. We may know these affectations; we may be conscious of these appeals. This is all that is necessary. Behind all there is the mind of God making itself, as it were, objective, challenging man's attention, appealing to his intellect. As we look at the universe—the appeal that a creative mind makes to a perceptive one—We are constrained to say: "Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out."
 We cannot follow Kant any further in his speculations. To do so would require more space than the editor would be willing to put at my disposal. Kant's was a majestic mind, but it had its limitations. He quite failed to grasp some of the great truths the reality of which his philosophy made evident. For instance, he demonstrated that the mind could transcend experience; that it had knowledge not given in experience; yet affirmed that there could not be a rational science of the soul, because the latter could not be an object of senses—could not be experienced; losing sight of the great fact that that which lies at the basis of experience, and makes it possible, must not only exist anterior to it, but, in the nature of things, cannot be experienced.
 (Concluded.)

(1) "Treatise on Human Nature," p. 450.

Australian Christian Commonwealth (SA : 1901 - 1940), Friday 1 February 1907, page 3