ON THE REVIEW OF R. B. PERRY’S BOOK
PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL
TENDENCIES
[6]
Mind. 1913. April. Review by F. C. S. Sculler of Ralph
Barton Perry’s
Present Philosophical Tendencies:
a Critical
Survey of Naturalism, Idealism, Pragmatism and Realism,
together with a Synopsis of the Philosophy of William
James, London and New York. (Longmans & Co.). 1912.
383 pages.
Schiller is against Perry’s “realism” and makes the charge
that “his mind is so preoccupied with the metaphysical
antithesis between realism and idealism that he is always
trying to reduce all other issues to this.”
It is to be noted that Schiller quotes the following pas-
sage from Perry: “The organism is correlated with an en-
vironment, from which it evolved and on which it acts.
Consciousness is a selective response to a pre-existing and
independently existing environment. There must be some-
thing to be responded to, if there is to be any response”
(p. 323 in Perry’s book). And Schiller raises the objection:
“Unless the question is begged in the ‘
independently
exist-
ing environment’” (Schiller’s italics), “nothing is here
proved except the
correlation
of the mind and its ‘environ-
ment’”... (p. 284).
[illegible]
Written later than April 1913
First published in 1938 in
Lenin Miscellany XXXI
Published according to the manuscript