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Immediate Awareness*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 1969

Robert A. Imlay
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Extract

The purpose of this paper is to show that we should dispense with the concept of immediate awareness, when it takes for its object the existence and nature of our sensations and images.

The question of whether we are immediately aware of the existence and nature of our sensations and images cannot be answered in a reasonable manner unless we have a firm grip on the concept of immediate awareness. Philosophers who have employed it have usually employed it in such a way that the word “immediate” in the corresponding phrase “immediate awareness” describes both the nature of the awareness and how it came to have that nature. When it describes the nature of the awareness “immediate” means “incorrigible”.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1969

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References

1 The following passage from Russell is relevant in this regard. “At any given moment, there are certain things of which a man is ‘aware’, certain things which are ‘before his mind’. Now although it is very difficult to define ‘awareness’, it is not at all difficult to say that I am aware of such and such things…. If I describe these objects, I may of course describe them wrongly, hence I cannot with certainty communicate to another what are the things of which I am aware. But if I speak to myself, and denote them by what may be called ‘proper names’, rather than by descriptive words, I cannot be in error.”—“On the Nature of Acquaintance”, Logic and Knowledge, edited by Robert C. Marsh, (London, 1956) p. 130. In this passage it is clear that in Russell's view there can be immunity from error only because the things are before the mind. But to say that something is before the mind is, again in Russell's view, to rule out inference as a way of reaching it. Thus he can say, “I am inclined to think that perception, as opposed to belief, does go straight to the fact and not through the proposition. When you perceive the fact you do not, of course, have error coming in because the moment it is a fact that is your object error is excluded.”—“The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”, Logic and Knowledge, (London, 1956), p. 228. The second sentence in this passage, it should be noted, is tautologously true. It is, however, only because perception allegedly goes straight to the fact that one can be sure that one is perceiving it.

2 The philosopher who immediately comes to mind here is H. H. Price. In the process of giving what might be called a phenomenological description of immediate awareness he informs us that the object of immediate awareness is always just as it is apprehended in the act of awareness. His only reason for saying this, however, seems to be that immediate awareness is supposed to be a form of knowing. See Perception, (London, 1954 2nd ed.) p. 3. H. A. Prichard, interestingly enough, tried to turn the tables on Price and others who think like him—he mentions Moore, Russell and Kemp Smith—by arguing that since mistakes in this area can be made perceiving is not a form of knowing. See “The Sense-Datum Fallacy,” Knowledge and Perception, (Oxford, 1950) p. 208.

3 Ayer, A. J., Philosophical Essays, (London, 1954) p. 120Google Scholar.

4 Chisholm, Roderick M., “Russell on the Foundation of Empirical Knowledge,” The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 2. (New York 1963) pp. 434–35Google Scholar. Chisholm indicated that the argument, which he himself employs, is employed by Russell both in The Problems of Philosophy, (London, 1912) pp. 150–51 and An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, (London, 1940) pp. 68–69. As Chisholm further indicates, however, Russell's primary purpose in constructing it was to show that there is one true universal, namely, identity.

5 Russell, Bertrand, Human Knowledge, (New York, 1948) p. 416Google Scholar.

6 Reichenbach, Hans, “Are Phenomenal Reports Absolutely Certain?” Philosophical Review, Vol. 61, 1952CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, (London, 1940) p. 131.Google Scholar