| dc.description.abstract | Common sense, affirmed Ferrier, can neither be set
aside nor taken for granted by philosophy. Rather, it
must be converted into philosophy, and this "by accepting
completely and faithfully the facts and expressions of
common sense as given in their primitive obscurity, and
then by construing them without violence, without addition,
and without diminution into clearer and more intelligible
forms". In the period under discussion, the early nineteenth century, the attempt to elucidate the phenomena of
mind and their linguistic moulds came under the title of
'mental science' or 'analysis'. More specifically, the
process envisaged for this science was inductive, what
Dugald Stewart would call a dual operation of analysis
and synthesis or Cabanis the method of decomposition and
recomposition. Agreement on the use of such a procedure
for the philosophy of mind or on the details of the technique employed was never unanimous: in the case of the
latter, it had first to be established whether the
'scientist' was dealing at the outset with 'simple' or
'compound' phenomena and whether he was to proceed from
the known to the unknown or vice versa. Beneath this
controversy lay the roots of an earlier separation between
the 'analysis of nature' (wherein our representations
are viewed as scattered across the linear board of their
presentation, and so distantly and only vaguely related)
and the 'analytic of imagination' (which arranges and
orders the disparate segments of temporal presentation
into a simultaneous table of comparative representations).
Michel Foucault, whose distinction this is, argues that
these two directions of analysis begin to converge towards the end of the eighteenth century. But the moment
of convergence, being fraught with difficulties for those
at the intersection, is less than happy. This uneasiness
of mind accounts, moreover, for the strain of conversion
in 'Common Sense' philosophy.
Nevertheless, where the struggles at the juncture
are most intense, there is a commensurate heightening of
philosophical awareness. Faintly visible in the first
inquiries of Thomas Brown (1778-1820) into causality and
volition, it reaches a crescendo in his more mature reflections on memory and attention, the nature of consciousness and reflection itself. Emerging with this
apprehension, and giving it depth, is Brown's sensitivity
to the feelings of selfhood and his belief in the recovery,
however imaginary, of the individual's past. That sense
of an order to be captured and restored, combined with a
recognition of the affections which, more often, reap
the havoc of human nature, create in his writings the
sort of excitement associated not with the resolution of
dilemmas, but with a prolonged, agonizing and continual
tension. The subsequent discussion moves towards as it
is moved by that realization. | en |
