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The Theory of Knowledge The Theory of Knowledge By MAURICE CORNFORTH First published in 1955 BY THE SAME AUTHOR Materialism and the Dialectical Method Historical Materialism Science and Idealism In Defense of Philosophy FOREWORD The theory of knowledge1 is concerned with questions about ideas—their source, the way they reflect reality, the way they are tested and developed, their role in social life. These questions have always formed an important part of philosophy. In bourgeois philosophy the theory of knowledge has come to occupy the first place, on the grounds that before any phi- losophical conclusions can be drawn about anything whatever we must first make certain of what we really do know and the foundations on which we know it. But bourgeois philosophers have generally approached the subject in the most abstract possible way. Taking nothing else for granted than the bare existence of the individual human mind, they have asked how knowledge could be born and grow up in it. But since human individuals, and still less their minds, do not exist in a void, this kind of inquiry was bound to raise unanswerable questions and to remain comparatively sterile. Marxism, on the other hand, considers that we ought to study the subject more concretely, and to ask how ideas actu- ally arise, develop and are tested, in the concrete conditions of real human life, in the material life of society. This is why the theory of knowledge is placed not first but last in this series on Marxist philosophy, and why it is introduced only after the dis- cussion of the materialist conception of history. This volume tries to apply the fundamental ideas of dialec- tical and historical materialism to show how human con- sciousness actually arises and develops. It tries to trace this process step by step from its beginnings in the simple condi- tioned reflex, which is the basic way in which an animal organ- ism enters into active relationship with the external world, up to the development of human knowledge and human freedom. From the conditioned reflex to human freedom—such is the path we shall try to trace. Approached in this way, the theory of knowledge has both positive and negative significance. Positively, it helps us to 1 Those who consider Greek a more philosophical language than English call it epistemology, or sometimes gnosiology. evaluate our ideas, to develop them and use them as instru- ments of human progress. Negatively, it helps us to get rid of all idealism and mystification about the mind of man. MAURICE CORNFORTH London, May 1954. CONTENTS Part One. The Nature and Origin of the Mind I. Mind and Body ..........................................................9 II. Mind as Product and Reflection of Matter ..............24 III. Social Labour and Social Thinking ..........................38 IV. Thought, Language and Logic ................................48.. Part Two. The Development of Ideas V. Abstract Ideas ...........................................................63 VI. Ideology .....................................................................73 VII. Ideological Illusions ..................................................86 VIII. Science .......................................................................100 IX . Science and Socialism ...............................................120 Part Three. Truth and Freedom X. Truth ..........................................................................141 XI. The Roots of Knowledge ...........................................154 XII. The Growth of Knowledge .......................................170 XIII. Necessity and Freedom ............................................188 XIV. The Realisation of Freedom .....................................203 Conclusion ................................................................216 Bibliography ..............................................................221 Part One THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE MIND CHAPTER ONE MIND AND BODY The mind is not separable from the body. Mental functions are functions of the brain, which is the organ of the most complicated relations of the animal to the ex- ternal world. The first form of conscious awareness of things is sensation, which arises from the development of conditioned reflexes. For the animal, sensations constitute a system of sig- nals of its relations to the external world. In man there has developed a second signal system—speech—which performs an abstracting and generalising function and from which proceeds the entire higher mental life pecu- liar to man. Matter and Mind The materialist view of the mind is the opposite of the ide- alist view. According to idealism, however closely the mind may be connected with its body, it is nevertheless distinct and separa- ble from the body. For idealism, the mind “animates” the body and makes use of the organs of the body both to receive im- pressions of the external world and to act on the external world; but its existence does not depend on that of the body. Moreover, idealism holds that while in some of its activities the mind makes use of the body, in other of its activities it does not. For instance, the mind makes use of the body in its sensu- ous activities, but in its “purer” intellectual or spiritual activi- ties it does not. This is in essence a very ancient conception. Thus some primitive peoples think of the soul as being a very fine va- pour—this is what the word “spirit” originally meant—which resides in the body but which can come out of it and lead an independent existence. For example, the soul journeys out of the body during sleep, issuing forth from the mouth. Again, the wrong soul can sometimes get into the wrong body—as in “possession”: a lunatic or an epileptic is said to suffer from an evil spirit having got into his body. And as part of this primi- tive conception of the soul there arises the conception of the 9 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE survival of the soul after death and also of the pre-existence of the soul before birth. Idealist philosophical theories about the mind are, in the last analysis, only refinements and rationalisations of such su- perstitions. Amongst such refinements and rationalisations is the doc- trine that mind and body are two distinct substances— spiritual substance and material substance. Material substance, or body, is extended, has weight, moves about in space. Spiri- tual substance, or mind, thinks, knows, feels, desires. This view is still very widely held. It is believed that such properties as thinking, feeling and so on are so absolutely different from the properties of matter, that however closely our thinking and feeling may be bound up with the state of our bodies, they be- long to an immaterial substance, the mind, which is distinct from the body. Similarly, idealism, which holds that the mind is separable from the body, holds that thoughts, feelings and so on are in no sense products of any material process. If we think and feel and act intelligently, for example, such behaviour is not to be explained from the conditions of our material existence but from the independent functioning of our minds. Admittedly, the mind makes use of the bodily organs; but intelligent be- haviour stems from the fact that the body is animated, in- formed and controlled by an immaterial principle or a spiritual being, the mind. But such idealist theories, widespread as they are, have long been offset by opposing materialist views. According to materialism, so far from mind being separable from body, all mental functions depend on their appropriate bodily organs and cannot be exercised without them. All people’s conscious and intelligent activities can be traced back to material causes, so that far from such activities being exclusive products of mind, mind itself is a product—the highest product—of mat- ter. Modern materialism, which is equipped with the results of scientific investigations into the forms of organic life and with the conception of evolution, is able to give a decisive answer to the idealist conception of the mind. Mind is a product of the evolutionary development of life. Living bodies which have 10 MIND AND BODY reached a certain level of development of the nervous system, such as we find in animals, can and do develop forms of con- sciousness; and in the course of evolution this consciousness eventually reaches the stage of thought, the activity of the hu- man brain. The mental functions, from the lowest to the high- est, are functions of the body, functions of matter. Mind is a product of matter at a high level of the organisation of matter. Once this is admitted, there is an end to the conception of the mind or soul as separable from the body and capable of leaving it and surviving it. A mind without a body is an absurd- ity. Mind does not exist in abstraction from body. To say that mind does not exist in abstraction from body is not, however, to say that mental processes do not exist or that the mind of man is a myth. Of course, mind, consciousness, thought, will, feeling, sensation and so on are real. Materialism does not deny the reality of mind. What materialism does deny is that a thing called “the mind” exists separate from the body. The mind is not a thing, or a substance, distinct from the body. This point can be illustrated by any example when we or- dinarily speak about “the mind”. Philosophers and theologians have imagined that the mind has an existence of its own, and qualities and activities of its own, distinct from the body. But nothing of the sort is ever implied in practical life when we talk about the mind. Suppose, for example, that you are asked, “What’s in your mind?” This means quite simply, “What are you thinking about?” In other words, it is a variant of the question, “What are you doing?” It does not in the least imply that there exists a thing called your mind, distinct from your body. Similarly, if you are told, “You have a first-rate mind”, or “You have a dirty mind”, or “You ought to improve your mind”, all these remarks are understood as referring to certain things which you normally do.
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