Note 58 — “CONSCIOUSNESS” AND EXPERIENCE55

The following answer may fairly be anticipated: “This is true of the operations cited, but only because complex processes have been selected. Such a term as ‘knowing’ does of course express a function involving a system of intricate references. But, for that very reason, we go back to the sensation which is the genuine type of the ‘state of consciousness’ as such, pure and unadulterate and unsophisticated.” The point is large for a footnote, but the following considerations are instructive: (1) The same psychologist will go on to inform us that sensations, as we experience them, are networks of reference—they are perceptual, and more or less conceptual even. From which it would appear that whatever else they are or are not, the sensations, for which self-inclosed existence is claimed, are not states of consciousness. And (2) we are told that these are reached by scientific abstraction in order to account for complex forms. From which it would appear that they are hypothecated as products of interpretation and for purposes of further interpretation. Only the delusion that the more complex forms are just aggregates (instead of being acts, like seeing, hoping, etc.) prevents recognition of the point in question—that the “state of consciousness” is an instrument of inquiry or methodological appliance.