in consciousness is the mere Ego, the mere selfness, a unique and individual experience in the moment of feeling or thinking or willing.[1] As already said, a feeling is only real, in the lowest sense of reality, as my feeling, a thought as my thought. This absolute subjectivity is the ultimate reality: we never can get behind it. That other persons are, each of them, subjects in the same way we know only by inference. That the "I" is the same in different moments of our own experience we know only by inference. That the transcendental Ego is identical in any way with the phenomenal Ego (what we call our "real self") is an inference. The mode of that identity is a matter of speculative hypothesis, as is also the question whether or in what way it is the same or different to different persons. "I" is experienced directly; or rather it is "I" alone that experiences. "You" is a matter of inference. The relation of "I" to "you," "they," etc., is a matter of hypothesis.
An analysis of the nature of the logical judgment gives the same result. The subject of every logical judgment is ultimately “I.” “I am such that A is B,” “I experience (I feel or I think) A B.” Recent writers on logic generally lay down that “Reality” is the ultimate subject. “Reality is that which . . . ,” or “Reality is such that . . .” This comes to the same thing. The only fault I can find with the latter formula for the ultimate logical judgement, is that reality is a notion capable of farther analysis, whereas the mere “I” is not. Whether we say that judgment always contains a reference to and implies “Reality” or “the unity of the cosmos” or “I” is a matter of indifference in the science of logic. The last term seems to me preferable philosophically, simply because then the judgment is expressed in a way that corresponds most exactly to our actual experience. Thus, if we examine judgment in its simplest form, where it is just becoming differentiated from mere inarticulate cries, we find a predicate such as “hot,” “hungry,” “happy,” “sore,” “[it] hurts.” Now the subject of these predicates, the x which may
- ↑ In the act of judgment, involved in all perception, I compare and put together the experiences of different times, but only as present now to my consciousness.
