COMMON SENSE (aND SCIENCE ) 11 



We perceive a complex of colors, shapes, motions, mingled with fra- 

 grance and perhaps tactile data, all suffused with an awareness of "out 

 there"; the whole experience is summed up in the declaration: This 

 is a flower. . . . The postulation of an external object is the first 

 phase of the cognitive act. 



Margenau is careful to emphasize that the spontaneous organization 

 yielding this vision of things 



involves more than integrations: it involves construction, construction 

 in accordance with rules. Objectivity emerges as a result of this pro- 

 cedure; . . . 



Objectivity? To be sure, we agree on what we "see" not because 

 the sensory stimuli are precisely the same— they cannot be— but be- 

 cause of the normative function of the conceptual patterns in terms 

 of which our constructions are made. The diflFerences in the stimuli 

 —due, for example, to individual diflFerences in sensitivity, and to 

 the necessarily diflFerent perspectives of two simultaneous observers 

 of the same thing— drop out as the construct is formed in a concep- 

 tual pattern used by all observers. The bare possibility of a common 

 sense depends on common acceptance of the same fundamental 

 group of mobilizing forms or patterns. The spontaneous interaction 

 of percepts and concepts is here enormously advantageous. 



Objectivity? Certainly not! What emerges from construction is 

 at most some degree of impersonality. The constructs involve a large 

 subjective ( conceptual ) component passing undetected because it is 

 common to all. "Pure observation," "naked fact," are no less hypo- 

 thetical than "atomic stimuli." Thus, as Mill emphasizes, the objects 

 of common sense— objects also for science— are far from purely ob- 

 jective. 



... in almost every act of our perceiving faculties, observation and 

 inference are intimately blended. What we are said to observe is 

 usually a compound result, of which one-tenth may be observation, 

 and the remaining nine-tenths inference. 



Thus we constantly infer the presence of massi\'e solid objects ( e.g., 

 tables, chairs, other people) from sensory data presenting neither 

 solidity nor massiveness. Generally such inferences are sound and 

 extremely helpful. But the spontaneous compounding of "one-tenth 

 observation" with "nine-tenths inference" is also potentially hazard- 

 ous—for a reason clearly suggested by a comment of Hebb's: 



