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Show Page 176 Orson's rejection of materialism does not by any means endorse its opponents, as we have seen. On the contrary, he considers the learned metaphysicians of his own time, many of whom had taken up David Hume's attack on empircally acquired knowledge, to be victims of "wild and vague imagination." Orson deals at some length with the work of Dr. Thomas Brown, light of the Scottish "common sense" school of philosophy and disciple of Hume, who taught that mind is non-material because it does not conform to material criteria - extension and resistance when touched. Orson laughs off Brown's 't'resistance" test, using light as an example: "Has light in any way resisted his muscular efforts? Have his muscular organs ever been able to grasp a ray of light?...If that which produces a sensation or feeling be regarded a solid substance...where is the impropriety, in regarding that which receives the sensation or feeling, as a solid extended substance also?" In other words, he asks, why define light as a material phenomenon and mind as immaterial? Brown's "extension" test proves mind to be material - "If mind be unextended, how can it receive any sensations from things without? It could not act upon bodily organs, for they are extended. Neither could bodily organs act upon it." Brown is not hopelessly deluded, as were his predecessors in the school of skepticism, because he admits cognition of the external world to be valid - after all, he helped found the "school of common sense" which thought it pointless to call in question the certainties of every day experience. Brown teaches that the contact between mind and matter produces a "change of state" - how this happens, he does not pretend to conjecture. Orson agrees with Brown's "change of state" - "Now this, in our view, is really what happens. We believe that matter can only act upon mind because mind is an extended material substance. But Dr. Brown |