Background
HICKS, George Dawes was born on September 14, 1862 in Shrewsbury. Son of Christopher Hicks, Solicitor.
HICKS, George Dawes was born on September 14, 1862 in Shrewsbury. Son of Christopher Hicks, Solicitor.
Studied at Royal Grammar School, Guildford. Chvens College, Manchester (Bachelor of Arts Viet. 1st Class Honours in Philosophy, 1888.
Master of Arts, 1891. Doctor of Letters, 1904), Manchester College, Oxford. University of Leipzig (Doctor of Philosophy, 1896).
Hibbert Scholar, 1891-1896. Minister of Unity Church, Islington, 1897-1903. Master of Arts; Doctor of Philosophy.
Doctor of Letters.
Lecturer for London School of Ethics and Sociology, 1897-1898. Vice president of Aristotelian Society, 1901. SubEditor of Hibbert Journal, 1902.
Examiner in Logic and Moral Philosophy in University of Glasgow, 1903. Examiner in Philosophy in the University of London, 1900. Professor of Moral Philosophy, University College, London, since 1904.
E>awes Hicks became a professional philosopher after some years as a Unitarian minister. He ended his career a disappointed man. unrecognized and undiscussed. Deeply learned and very ■ndustrious, he never managed to write a proper book; he nevertheless had one good idea, which he never succeeded in bringing to serious attention. That *dea is that in perception—and, indeed, the acquisition of knowledge, or ‘cognition’, generally—there is no need to interpose a third entity—idea, presentation or sense-datum—between the mind that knows and the object that is known. To Perceive is to become aware of part of the content °f the object, but that part is still part of the object, not a private mental item. To cope with error he developed a theory of the imaginative supplementation of the perceived with reproduced perceptual material. Since this deceptive imagery seems indiscriminate from the content of veridical perception, and yet is indubitably private and mental, the objectivity he ascribes to veridical content is rendered insecure. His Hibbert lectures on natural theology reject attempts to found religious belief on mystical experience, but are well disposed to the claims of religious experience of a more straightforward and coherently expressible kind. The main bulk of Dawes Hicks’ published work consists of careful criticism of the writings of his contemporaries: Bradley. Bosanquet. Moore. Russell. Alexander and, more favourably. Ward and Meinong. His reputed expertise on the philosophy of Kant received no interesting public expression. Dawes Hicks’s sense of failure was justified; his ideas have neither been influential nor even rejected. Yet he was a serious thinker and, in retrospect, cuts a better figure than many who pottered imitatively about on the topic of sense-data.
Club: Savile.
Spouse 1902, Lucy Katharine (d. 190S),daughter of late William Henry Garrett, Highbury, London.