The object of the present article is to indicate where and how Gestalt psychology bears on the problems of the ethical philosopher. Unlike the other “schools” of psychology (Behaviourism, Freudianism, and Purposivism), Gestaltism has no obvious bearing on these problems; and yet, if we accept its fundamental tenet, it appears to carry important implications for ethical philosophy. This tenet concerns the primacy of totalities or wholes. I will begin with it, and then proceed to consider certain further principles of Gestalt which are of interest to the moralist.

Contemplating certain residual mists, the net proceeds of a material world exploded and disintegrated by the relentless penetration of scientific intellect, the more advanced physicist has been led in recent times to co-operate with the philosopher on a common plane. Not so long ago, and not always without reason, the philosopher was regarded somewhat askance. It is the old antithesis between the practical man and the theorist, the scientific man himself having been regarded for long as a dreamer. All depends upon the level of action. Operating in the wilds the black tracker has nothing to gain by pausing for the slow, if sure, dictum of the scientist; and if a Mercator projection of the world, or a sextant, were offered to a primitive navigator of well-known home waters, these important aids to the sailor of longer voyages would probably be thrown in a corner, if not overboard. The launching forth on to wide oceans created the occasion for, and proved the value of, such products of exact thought. Thus, in his highest abstractions, the physicist must perforce become a philosopher. At the very least, the need of review and evaluation from a more general standpoint will be conceded.

In the October number of Philosophyx appears a very interesting article by Professor H. H. Price, entitled “Our Evidence for the Existence of Other Minds,” the main object of which is to formulate the grounds on which we (or I, as one should say at this stage) may claim logical justification for asserting that other minds exist. No attempt is made to “prove” the existence of other minds—an effort which is regarded as a wild-goose chase. Neither does Prof. Price seek to identify the actual process by which a particular mind accepts the existence of others as a fact; that, presumably, is a matter for the psychologist, and it may well turn out that the phenomena which give the conviction that other minds exist may vary from individual to individual and may often be logically unevidential. The object of the article, in short, is simply to state why it is reasonable to believe that other minds exist.