are dependent not merely in the sense of existing only when and as experienced by the individual, but also as involving the actual existence of the corresponding nervous states in his body at that particular moment. The subject-matter of inquiry remains, however, objective throughout: all we have to do with is, on the one hand, the causal relation of objects to one another and to the nervous system, and on the other the functional relation of states of the nervous system to the complete experience which includes this whole spatial environment with all its causal relations within itself. Throughout we are dealing with reality, and with a reality in which there appears no dualism, and therefore no insoluble problems. The only possible questions are questions which can be solved by a possible extension of experience. Insoluble problems only arise when the true and natural and primitive attitude is departed from, and such departure is in all cases due to that illegitimate process to which Avenarius has given the name, introjection.
But consideration of this falsifying process of introjection I must defer until I have stated more completely Avenarius’ own view of reality. To illustrate the truth of his assertion that there is nothing which need lead to radical alteration of pure experience, and that all questions which are insoluble from its point of view are problems which involve illegitimate assumptions, Avenarius takes the following crucial instance.[1] Two individuals, one of whom is red-blind, apprehend an object as being numerically the same for both, and name it cinnabar. They agree that the number of vibrations which it communicates to the ether is such and such. They also agree that these vibrations are independent of their presence or of their apprehension of the cinnabar. But in regard to the colour they differ: the cinnabar is red to one, black to the other. Now, since these statements as to the colour of the cinnabar contradict one another, both cannot be true, and we seem forced to the conclusion that one or both experiences must be false and therefore merely subjective.
As we have already observed, two points of view are possible without desertion of pure experience. From the absolute point of view, each individual describes reality just as he finds it. But since this, as in the above instance, often leads to contradictory assertions, we are frequently forced to reinterpret it in the fuller light of the relative point of view. We preserve the simpler attitude so long as it works; when
- ↑ Der Menschliche Weltbegriff (Anmerkung 58).
