CONCEPTION.THE SENSE OF SAMENESS.In Chapter VIII, p.221, the distinction was drawn between two kinds of knowledge of things, bare acquaintance with them and knowledge about them.
The possibility of two such knowledges depends on a fundamental psychical peculiarity which may be entitled " the principle of constancy in the mind's meanings ," and which may be thus expressed: " The same matters can be thought of in successive portions of the mental stream, and some of these portions can know that they mean the same matters which the other portions meant." One might put it otherwise by saying that " the mind can always intend, and know when it intends, to think of the Same."
This sense of sameness is the very keel and backbone of our thinking.
We saw in Chapter X how the consciousness of personal identity reposed on it, the present thought finding in its memories a warmth and intimacy which it recognizes as the same warmth and intimacy it now feels.This sense of identity of the knowing subject is held by some philosophers to be the only vehicle by which the world hangs together.It seems hardly necessary to say that a sense of identity of the known object would perform exactly the same unifying function, even if the sense of subjective identity were lost.And without the intention to think of the same outer things over and over again, and the sense that we were doing so, our sense of our own personal sameness would carry us but a little way towards making a universe of our experience.
Note, however, that we are in the first instance speaking of the sense of sameness from the point of view of the mind's structure alone, and not from the point of view of the universe.We are psychologizing, not philosophizing.
That is, we do not care whether there be any real sameness in things or not, or whether the mind be true or false in its assumptions of it.Our principle only lays it down that the mind makes continual use of the notion of sameness, and if deprived of it, would have a different structure from what it has.In a word, the principle that the mind can mean the Same is true of its meanings , but not necessarily of aught besides. The mind must conceive as possible that the Same should be before it, for our experience to be the sort of thing it is.Without the psychological sense of identity, sameness might rain down upon us from the outer world for ever and we be none the wiser.With the psychological sense, on the other hand, the outer world might be an unbroken flux, and yet we should perceive a repeated experience.Even now, the world may be a place in which the same thing never did and never will come twice.The thing we mean to point at may change from top to bottom and we be ignorant of the fact.But in our meaning itself we are not deceived; our intention is to think of the same.The name which I have given to the principle, in calling it the law of constancy in our meanings, accentuates its subjective character, and justifies us in laying it down as the most important of all the features of our mental structure.
Not all psychic life need be assumed to have the sense of sameness developed in this way.In the consciousness of worms and polyps, though the same realities may frequently impress it, the feeling of sameness may seldom emerge.We, however, running back and forth, like spiders on the web they weave, feel ourselves to be working over identical materials and thinking them in different ways.And the man who identifies the materials most is held to have the most philosophic human mind. CONCEPTION DEFINED.The function by which we thus identify a numerically distinct and permanent subject of disclosure is called CONCEPTION ; and the thoughts which are its vehicles are called concepts.But the word 'concept' is often used as if it stood for the object of discourse itself; and this looseness feeds such evasiveness in discussion that I
shall avoid the use of the expression concept altogether, and speak of 'conceiving state of mind,' or something similar, instead.The word 'conception'
is unambiguous.It properly denotes neither the mental state nor what the mental state signifies, but the relation between the two, namely, the function of the mental state in signifying just that particular thing.It is plain that one and the same mental state can be the vehicle of many conceptions, can mean a particular thing, and a great deal more besides.If it has such a multiple conceptual function, it may be called an act of compound conception.
We may conceive realities supposed to be extra-mental, as steam-engine;
fictions, as mermaid; or mere entia rationis , like difference or nonentity.But whatever we do conceive, our conception is of that and nothing else - nothing else, that is, instead of that, though it may be of much else in addition to that.Each act of conception results from our attention singling out some one part of the mass of matter for thought which the world presents, and holding fast to it, without confusion.
Confusion occurs when we do not know whether a certain object proposed to us is the same with one of our meanings or not; so that the conceptual function requires, to be complete, that the thought should not only say 'I mean this,' but also say 'I don't mean that.'
Each conception thus eternally remains what it is, and never can become another.The mind may change its states, and its meanings, at different times; may drop one conception and take up another, but the dropped conception can in no intelligible sense be said to change into its successor.
The paper, a moment ago white, I may now see to have been scorched black.
