96 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 



rate. He knows that his sense organs often transform the 

 stimuli which they receive; if his eyes are not good he may 

 misread the instrument. Hence, he says that he is directly 

 aware only of the coincidence as seen by his eyes, and under 

 the influence of his whole nervous mechanism as it exists 

 at the particular time of perception. He then corrects his 

 judgment by saying that on the basis of his own visual inter- 

 pretation of the reading of the instrument he infers the 

 actual reading and from this the heat of the gas. The 

 "screen" has again been moved and now is located between 

 the M- and 12-operators; the end-object is now " appearing' ' 

 in a still more inclusive object. But even here a further cor- 

 rection is possible. He recognizes that what he observes in 

 any situation is often influenced by unconscious associa- 

 tions, emotional attitudes, and expectations; he often 

 "sees" what he wants to see or what he has been prepared 

 to see. Hence he says that he is directly aware only of the 

 coincidence as he interprets it at the moment; from which 

 he infers the way in which he must actually have seen it; 

 from which, again, he infers what the reading must actually 

 have been; from which, finally, he infers the heat of the gas. 

 At this stage he is obliged to correct his judgment by saying 

 that there is, at any rate, something of which he is directly 

 aware at the moment, and that if he allows for mental, 

 bodily, and physical transformations he can infer the 

 character of the end-object. The "screen" which separates 

 the object and the awareness has again been moved, for the 

 end-object is now considered in its mental context, and the 

 awareness has been reduced to a bare awareness of some- 

 thing given. 



It should now be clear why attention was called at the 

 close of the last section to the need for admitting into knowl- 

 edge some type of awareness other than the direct sort. 

 Whether this additional aspect of knowledge which is infer- 

 ential rather than direct in character is properly a part of 

 perception, or something over and above perception, is 

 debatable. In a sense, reference to this aspect of knowledge 



