The Third Stage

 

Memory and concept-forming activity convert the results of sense-perception into general terms. The final standpoint of the intellect is that in which it perceives the highest principle to be a self-determining or self-active Being, self-conscious, and creator of a world which manifests him. The persistent force is the sole and ultimate reality. The highest step of knowing is self-knowing. It is not mere consciousness, it is the recognition that reason is not only in me, but also beyond the world, or in its innermost, as its cause. Completed self-determination is not only intellect, but will. The will combines with the intellect to produce the higher orders of knowing. Self-knowing is made of two stages-Attention and analysis. After attention gathers the sense-impressions that proceed from the particular object it discriminates between them. This discrimination separates the object from other objects and defines it. This is how attention becomes analysis. All specialization of the attention is analysis. Analysis organizes the sense-impressions and through them the object is defined. In an isolated object analysis detects the influence of other objects and the influence of the isolated object on other objects. Analysis is composed of repeated acts of attention[1]. Through the analysis of an objects reaction to and from other objects the mind can trace the object into its unity with other objects. The result of repeated analysis is synthesis. Through repeated acts of attention, in analysis, we have synthesis. The activity which we have defined as reflection is therefore the ultimatum of analysis and the beginning of synthesis[2]. Attention, analysis, and reflection result in generalization, because they discover community of being between the object and its environment[3] (Harris 1969). Synthesis is the discovery of connections, of reciprocal actions, of the action of the object upon other objects, and of the reaction in turn of these objects upon it. Synthesis is the discovery of a system of relations which connect the object with other objects. The whole can’t be dependent on another whole, the whole must be independent. The whole must be self-active, because it can’t by any possibility receive its attributes and properties from another; and, on the other hand, it must originate activity within itself. This predicate of self-activity, applied to the whole, is the most important conclusion reached in this higher kind of knowing (Harris 1969).

Harris was a great philosopher of his time and arguably a World Historical Figure. Although his name is largely forgotten his works still persist, and in all of his works (but mainly the ones I have discussed) the reader can clearly see the foundation of Harris’s psychology grounded in his interpretation of Hegel’s notion of “Being.” Harris’ Psychologic System has much to say regarding the philosophy of perception. It is unfortunate that it has been ignored. I believe, and in future projects I will show, that Harris’s system is in line with Philosophers like Husserl, William James and Matten.

 

 

 

Bibliography

Bradley, P. L. (2005). The birth of tragedy" and "the awakening": influences and intertextualities. Southern Literary Journal, 37, 40-61

Garmo, C. D. (1898). Psychologic foundations of education by W. T. Harris. The Philosophical Review, 7(5), 557-558.

Harris, W. T., 1835-1909. (1969). Psychologic foundations of education. New York: Arno Press.

Harris, W. T. (1867). The speculative. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 14(1), 1-6.

Hegel, G. W. F, 1770-1831 (1957) Selections, Ed. J. Loewenberg C. Scribner. New York, Chicago.

            Lieidecker, K. F. (1946) Yankee teacher: the life of William Torrey Harris.  The Philosophical     Library. New York

Snider, D. J., 1841-1925. 1920). The st. louis movement in philosophy, literature, education, psychology. St. Louis, Mo: Sigma publishing co.

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[1] The object is isolated by attention; analysis discriminates and defines its properties and qualities The will isolates the object and excludes others from it; then again, it selects a portion of this object for its minuter attention, excluding the rest of the object; again and again narrowing its attention down to more and more limited fields of observation, it approaches the simplest elements. Such is analysis. But in taking account of the simplest elements of the object, it discovers its (the object's) complication with other objects.

[2] The mind, analyzing, abstracts and isolates, but at length discovers the relativity of the isolated object, and finds reflected in it other objects, and, thus synthesizing', it comes to define the isolated object as a bundle of relations to the rest of the universe.

[3] These stages of reflection, analysis and synthesis, belong to the understanding. Perception deals with isolated properties; the understanding* with abstractions and relations, the realm of relativity; the reason deals with totalities or wholes.