Charles Hartshorne
Our rule is to seek to reduce given distinctions to the mode of continuity. Now the contents of awareness are distinguished as a whole from the awareness which embraces them. We infer from the rule that we are to regard the difference between content and awareness as a matter of degree only, involving discoverable extremes and their intermediaries. What, then, is there in experience which appears to partake to some extent both of the character of awareness and of its contents, or which seems unmistakably of the stuff of consciousness and yet at the same time something in which consciousness terminates? The first evidence that a thing is intermediate in such fashion is that opinions differ more widely as to its inclusion or exclusion from a given class than is true of the other things classified; for clearly an intermediary can be assimilated as readily to one of its extremes as to the other, and where the idea of an intermediary is overlooked, such assimilation is likely to occur. The riddle in the present case is not hard to guess. There is a class of entities concerning which classifications as to subjective-objective do differ more uncertainly than with other classes. Indeed, these entities are treated both as contents and as modes of awareness itself. These are the aesthetic and affective characters of things. Santayana says that in aesthetic experience pleasure is objectfied, appears as a content. Titchener agrees that affectivity extends at times over the whole of experience internal and external. Yet others deny all this, and only a very few thinkers admit that such characters are conceivable apart from awareness. There is a far less general agreement concerning the essential dependence of ordinary sensory qualities upon awareness. Now all these facts and many more are only what we should expect if affective qualities (those usually called such—for us all characters are affective) are in fact intermediate between pure subjective awareness and the most objective or purely “sensory” contents, such as red or green. How can we further test this hypothesis?
The proof of an intermediary is further intermediaries. Let us take the sweetness of the taste of sugar. Sweetness may not be admitted to be an affective quality, but it is idle to deny that it is easier to confuse it than the color red with such affective qualities as pleasantness and the like, for a whole section of language rests upon this confusion, if such it be. “Sweetness” is a value judgment about as often as not in ordinary parlance, if not more often than not. There is, then, some presumption that it is akin to affective qualities; but no less is it akin to the “neutral” sensations of color or sound, for while it appears absurd that a feeling of pleasantness should be disliked, it may sometimes happen, though with some appearance of paradox to most persons, that sweetness is disliked; while red may be liked or disliked without any very strong suggestion of paradox in either case. Suppose, then, for the moment that the sweetness of taste is intermediate in degree of subjectivity between a color and .a feeling of pleasantness. Are there further intermediaries in either or in both directions? Take a pleasant organic sensation, as of the exquisite feeling of healthily tired muscles in repose. Surely this feeling is more obviously inconceivable as a fact outside of consciousness than is a color.
Consider a pain. A pain is not infrequently considered a sensation in the proper psycho-physical sense. But this does not alter the fact that the classification “pleasure-pain” has always appeared a natural one. A pain, then, is perhaps more akin to genuine affectivity than is a taste, but is more nearly of the “neutrality” of taste than is pleasure. Let us consider pleasure itself. Does it lead to any further progress toward the subjective? Surely there are degrees of resemblance to the sensory in pleasure. For there are highly localized pleasures (and it is sensation that is local),1 and there are pleasures that merge into what is called “joy,” and which are scarcely distinguishable from the character of an awareness as a whole. From a state of ecstasy into which great music may throw us, appearing to color the entire warp and woof of our consciousness at the time, so that the very lights in the concert hall seem to be echoing with their twinkling brightness the joy which is in us, and all our thoughts, perceptions, and images seem held together by a bond of aesthetic enjoyment in no clear way distinguishable from the bond of awareness as a whole, from this all-pervasive joy down to the “sweetness” of a single violin note there is a vast series of intermediaries, with scarcely a gap of any magnitude. Thus there appears to be no good reason why the distinction of content and awareness should not be treated as continuous, with affectivity as the mediating concept. Let us call qualities of contents “content forms,” and qualities characterizing awareness as a whole “awareness forms”; and let us regard awareness forms as the upper section of an ascending series of more and more subjective or comprehensive affective states, and content forms as the lower section, the more. and more sharply localized and psychically distanced (socially individuated) members, of this series.
Is there anything “between” qualities from different senses, a color and a sound for example? If there is such a thing, it may be either another color or sound or else a character from still a third sense, say a smell. Between or intermediate means in some respect, that is to say as determining some line of variation. But such a line is a universal. Now psychology already admits a number of universals spanning the verboten chasm between classes of sensa. Such are the “attributes” of sensation: spatiality, temporality, intensity. If it can be shown that these are really lines of variation, that is to say admit of degree, so that it can have a verifiable meaning to speak of one sensation as more or less spatial or temporal than another, then we should find here one clue to the intermediaries we seek. Are the different senses equal with respect to spatiality or temporality? This is so far untrue that it has been disputed whether or not spatiality, at least, really is a universal attribute of sensation; and as for duration, it is so far diminished in much of our visual experience that the neglect of the category of time in most philosophy may not unplausibly be regarded as encouraged by the predominance of visual imagery over that from other senses. A color may be essentially a process, but who shall say that this is as obvious as it is that a sound is a process?2 Surely there is a diminution of emphasis upon temporality in vision as compared to hearing. To find intermediaries in this case is not so easy, but I suggest that smell may be one.
With such attributes as modes of graduated likeness we are in a position to interpret the ultimate meaning of the divisions among sensa. The attribute of spatiality alone accounts for an amazing portion of the differences. Imagine something resembling a temperature sensation—the sense of warmth, let us say—except that it is imagined as localized out there in space as is a color. Is there anything unfair or question-begging in this conception, or anything absurd; anything in the nature of space or of warmth as a quale which requires that that quale should be in one place rather than in another? Now in fact I do find for myself and—what is more to the point—there is evidence that the human race in general has found, that such a conception is perfectly possible. When I conceive of the warmth as out there where a color ordinarily is, I find that my conception is unmistakably that of the sort of color that would be called “warm,” namely, a reddish or orange glow. Cold, on the other hand, would be a paler color, of what hue I am less certain. The same imagined metamorphosis of a smell or a sound into a color is equally feasible.
What is the quality of sweetness if not a pleasantness sharply localized on the tongue instead of vaguely suffused over a larger area of consciousness? True, some people dislike “sweets,” but these produce a blend of sweetness with other tastes and smells, and it is this blend which is disliked. Or, if it is really the taste, say, of pure sugar which is considered insipid, this means that a small patch of rather mild pleasant feeling is found insignificant from the standpoint of experience as a whole, whereas an intrinsically unpleasant bitterness by providing a shock and foil may stimulate and enhance other reactions whose value outweighs that of mere sweetness. There is a similar value in cold showers and other not intrinsically agreeable sensory experiences. Value is enhanced by victory, dominance over its opposite. The cold sensation derived from ice-cream is in itself somewhat painful, as anyone who tries some made without flavor will find, but this negative affectivity enhances the positive feelings of taste and smell provided by the fruit juices, sugar, etc., as well as by the touch sensation of smoothness imparted by the creamy consistency. The Gestalt character of most of the values even of the despised chemical senses is commonly neglected, leading to the idea that the aesthetic attributes of color or sound combinations are something peculiar to the senses of vision and audition, whereas in fact the problems of gustatory preference involve the same principles of harmony, contrast, and dissonance which explain beauty in the higher senses. Even the principle of expression is not wholly absent. The analysis of what the taste of turnips expresses may be beyond me, but I know it does not express the sort of feelings I readily entertain, and that to like it very much I should have to have a fundamentally different personality, or a different olfactory nerve.
In considering these suggestions we must remember that the feelings identified with the sensory qualities mentioned are spatially localized and more or less externalized affectivities, distinguished as such from the more subjective kinds by the fact that they are given with more detachment from the self. They are given as feelings for rather than of one’s self—in other words, as semisocialized feelings, on the way from the “I” to the you. That such social objectification of feeling does not destroy its character as feeling is the presupposition of there being any genuinely social experience at all.
Consider a strong smell of a character no one would think to call fragrant, which none the less fascinates through its piquancy. Surely this pleasantness is very different from—in a way nearly the opposite to—the pleasantness of a genuine fragrance. The difference is irreducible by any associations and on our theory constitutes the difference between the fragrance as a datum and the piquant smell as a datum. Thus the smell of a skunk—which in moderate intensity may be enjoyed—is a bitter-like smell, a bitterness differently spatialized from that of the taste of strychnine, but plainly akin to it. In what respect? In respect to the negativity which is one with the negativity of suffering as opposed to pleasure, hate as opposed to love, darkness as opposed to light, the fundamental negativity which can be nothing else than the negativity of evil as opposed to good. Vary the spatialization of this factor and you have: sorrow, grief, unpleasantness, pain, sour or bitter in taste or smell, sad sounds, blackness, etc. Take positivity and you have: joy, pleasure, sweet tastes, fragrance, sweet sounds, joyful colors.
But of course other qualitative dimensions than that of positive-negative are required. Active-passive, and faint or dull (as opposed by intense or sharp), are the two additional ones we have suggested. Their application in some detail will be attempted in the next chapter.
There is, however, one argument against the assimilation of contents and awareness which deserves to be considered. This is based upon the contention that the chief characteristic of a mental state, or a psychic process, is the reverberation of the past in the present, i.e., memory, and that this characteristic is lacking to sense data.3 Now it is to be granted that the presence of anything like memory in sense data is not obvious. Yet there are, I suggest, grounds for supposing this presence. Here as everywhere we should reject the invitation to look upon the question as a matter of absolutes. A color looks static, purely contemporaneous, but does not a sound exhibit itself as rather plainly processional in character? And what can this mean if not that as given it includes a history—and what is this inclusion if not the inherence of a bit of memory in each present state of the sound? Indeed, does not the sense of musical relevance of a note to its predecessors enter into and alter the quality of the note? It is true that owing to their relative simplicity sense qualities cannot exhibit such an elaborate and explicit structure, temporal or otherwise, in their inner natures as can the more subjective aspects of experience. But this simplicity is due to vagueness, to our inability to analyze immediate intuitions except in crude terms. And the whole argument begs the question in that it supposes that a sense quality can be thought of as determinate without reference to its context, including the entire subjective side of experience with its explicit memories and other functions, whereas, as we have seen (sec. 4), only a generalization of the quality is independent of context. Finally, time as a continuum excludes non-processional qualities (see next section).
Notes
1. What account conventional dualistic psychology can give of the sex sensation-pleasure is hard to imagine.
2. All the distinctive features of color as contrasted to sound, smell, etc., are less apparent in the phenomena of “depth” color, “light” color, and “shine,” than in “surface” colors.
3. See H. H. Price, Perception (London, 1932), pp. 120 ff.
Source:
Charles Hartshorne, The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation, pp. 201-206.