IMGs8
Ernst Mach
it possiblc to dcmarcatc with complctc ciarity bctwccn a “narrow" ego and thephysical cnvironmcnt around it.
Mach now had a defense against the possiblc charge of solipsism, a criticism often thrown at phcnomenalists and ccrtain kinds of idcal-ists. For if thcrc were no “ego" (and tlicrc was nonę in terms of bis common sensc theory of refcrcncc), then thcrc was no “sclf" to be alonc in the univcrsc and hcncc no solipsism. Also, if thcrc were a great many “narrow” egos (and thcrc were in terms of his rcfcrcntial phe-nomcnalism), then tliis vcry plurality of “selvcs” obviated solipsism.
But whilc Mach as a person adjusted to the modest status of bcing mcrcly “a group of sensations,” thcrc was a problem about other peo-plc. Assuming that other people were also mercly groups of sensations, how could it be that they could sensc conscious impressions which were not aspeets of what we sense about them? and which could not be conscious to us? Mach’s answer had two parts. First, we knew by an “irresistiblc analogy" that other people had thoughts and sensations thaTwe could not experiencc just as we knew that we, our$eIvcś7Tfad thoughts and sensations that they could not e.\pcricncc. And sccond, we should not try to locate or confinc the thoughts and sensations of other people to their brains. The relation bctwccn “mirnd’’ and “brain" was not a geographical one. Just as the causal relations between our own thoughts and actions were to be undcrstóod in terms of "psycho-physical” rclational constancics and mathcmatical functions and not in terms of geographical “forces” or some kind of alleged intcraction, so should we interpret the relations bctwccn other pcople’s thoughts and actions.20
Unlikc Fcchner, Mach was unwilling to push his “psychophysical parallelism” to the point of attributing thoughts and sensations to plants and other vegctation. It was plausible to arguc that for cvcry-thing mental there was some kind of accompanying, parallel physical activiry, but in spite of logical pressure, few people were willing to hołd the reyerse, namcly, that for every physical action there was also an accompanying parallel mental response. Mach's rcticence on this point should probably be attributed morę to fcar of ridiculc than to anything else. Fechncr was certainly criticizcd for his “logical" stand that if relational constancics could be found bctwccn ideas and the bchavior of plants or even of Stones, then “minds” should be attributed to them.30
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Mach acccptcd some of -hc amircligious conscqUcnces of his philosophy If thcrc was no I or mdmdual soul then clcarly there could be no individual salvat,on or survival of the "soul” after dcath AUo dcath itsclf was mcrcly a relational rcaiignmcnt. Furthermorc, his position suggcstcd cither athetsm or panthcism, that is, etther there was no God or “the appcaranccs" svcrc God. Though Mach occasionally madę side rcferenccs to h.s amircligious point of view, for practica! rcasons if for no other, he normally chosc to rcmain silem.
Hc did, howesrer, acccpt a kind of impcrsonal tmmortality. He elaimed that the important ideas that a person discovcrcd or believed would bccomc conscious for other people as svcll, and in this way ideas as a form of sensations could linger perhaps forcver in the conscious-ness of succcssivc persons.31 He held that it was this hope which spurred on many scientists and scholars.
A further consequence of Mach’* “cgoless” position was not so much logical as cmotional. He hoped that it might discouragc unduly aggrcs-Sivc “egotistical” hehavior. For if “I" were nothing. then how could “I” bc anything to brag about? Conccrning the objcction that person-ałity mcekness and sclf-cfTaccmcnt were inconsistent with Mach’s Dar-winian “$urvival of the fittest” belief hc would probably havc answered that individual restraint and social cooperation normally had a better chance of leading to the survival and progress of the race as a wholc than any form of self-asscrtive arrogance at the expcnse of other people, and that it was the civilizcd progress of the human species which shotild come first.
What might be called the positivc religious logie of Mach’s phe-nomenalism with its rcjection of both the human “ego” and “force” explanation seems to have cscaped him for some time. First, he was a strong belicver in scicntific and technological progress and often thought of religion as “reactionary”; second, hc was a strong Darwinian and admirer of Voltairc and the “Enlightenmcnt”; and third, he ap-parcntly associated religion with a belief in God. It was only in his last years that he began to notice the similaritics bctwccn his own underlying philosophy and Buddhism.32
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