The Double Activity in Mental Cognition :3.

In every mental cognition there is a twofold activity that takes place simultaneously. In India, in the schools of Vedanta, for example, this subject has been thrashed out threadbare, and such Vedantic works as the Panchadasi, for instance, have devoted an entire chapter to the discussion of this subject. It has been concluded by these teachers of philosophy that every object is transcendentally ideal and empirically real. It has a real character as well as an ideal character. Empirically it is real, but transcendentally it is ideal. The point is that every object is contained both in the cosmic set-up of things as well as in the empirical realm. Or we may say, the heads of people are in heaven and their feet are planted on the earth, so that we belong to both realms – heaven as well as earth. The perception of an object, both in its psychological character as well as its philosophical nature, is difficult to explain, and this is the entire problem of philosophy.


There is no philosophy except this point: how do we know things at all? The knowledge of a thing or an object is the recognition of the presence of something, as conditioned by the process to which the perceiving mind is subject. There is the necessity for the existence of something, and without that existence the mind would not be cognising anything, because it cannot perceive an airy nothing. The existence of something prior to the operation of the mental activity in perception should be there, and yet the mind cannot cognise that something as it is in itself. The mind cannot cognise an object as it is in itself because the mind is conditioned by space, time and causal connections. It can know an object only as it is determined by this threefold network of space, time and cause. An object cannot be known in any other manner. This is conditioned perception. The object is modified in perception by the structure into which the object has been cast, so that when we are presented with an object of perception, it is already cast in the mould of space, time and cause. It is the shape that it has taken in space, time and cause relation that is presented before the mind. We do not see the object as it is in itself. Not only that – even the mind is cast in this mould. The mind cannot think anything which is not in space, which is not in time, and which is not causally connected. There is a restriction imposed on the mind by these conditions of perception. Space, time and cause: these are the conditions. They operate objectively as well as subjectively. They are universally present, so their world is phenomenal. We call this world phenomenal because it is conditioned. Conditioned by whom? By this thing called space, time and cause. Minus these things, objects cannot be known. And yet, there is something which presents itself as an object.


What is that ‘something’? That something which is cast in the mould of space, time and cause is the real object. Some philosophers call it the thing-in-itself – the thing as it is in itself, which is impossible of cognition by the minds of individuals merely because they are cast in the mould of space, time and cause. While there is a necessity to logically admit the existence of something which is non-conditioned by space, time and cause, because of the fact that even conditioning would not be possible unless the objects exist in some status of their own, yet it is true that they cannot be known. Thus, the object as it is in itself would be a kind of inference rather than a perception. What is perceived is a process which has been introduced into this relationship between the mind and the object by the fact of space, time and cause.

To be continued   ...