ew we take
of self-consciousness. Obviously, a "conscious experience" is different
from a physical object; therefore it is natural to assume that a thought
or perception whose object is a conscious experience must be different
from a thought or perception whose object is a physical object. But if
the relation to the object is inferential and external, as I maintain,
the difference between two thoughts may bear very little relation to
the difference between their objects. And to speak of "the present
modification of the individual's consciousness by which an object is
cognized" is to suggest that the cognition of objects is a far more
direct process, far more intimately bound up with the objects, than I
believe it to be. All these points will be amplified when we come to the
analysis of knowledge, but it is necessary briefly to state them now in
order to suggest the atmosphere in which our analysis of "introspection"
is to be carried on.

Another point in which Stout's remarks seem to me to suggest what I
regard as mistakes is his use of "consciousness." There is a view which
is prevalent among psychologists, to the effect that one can speak of "a
conscious experience" in a curious dual sense, meaning, on the one hand,
an experience which is conscious of something, and, on the other hand,
an experience which has some intrinsic nature characteristic of what
is called "consciousness." That is to say, a "conscious experience" is
characterized on the one hand by relation to its object and on the
other hand by being composed of a certain peculiar stuff, the stuff of
"consciousness." And in many authors there is yet a third confusion: a
"conscious experience," in this third sense, is an experience of
which we are conscious. All these, it seems to me, need to be clearly
separated. To say that one occurrence is "conscious" of another is, to
my mind, to assert an external and rather remote relation between them.
I might illustrate it by the relation of uncle and nephew a man becomes
an uncle through no effort of his own, merely through an occurrence
elsewhere. Similarly, when you are said to be "conscious" of a table,
the question whether this is really the case cannot be decided by
examining only your state of mind: it is necessary also to ascertain
whether your sensation is having those correlates which past experience
causes you to assume, or whether the table happens, in this case, to be
a mirage. And, as I explained in my fi