Reading Notes: December 11th, 2021

“Reality is a differentiated unity, in which the unity has no meaning but the differentiations, and the differentiations have no meaning but the unity. The differentiations are individuals for each of whom the unity exists, and whose whole nature consists in the fact that the unity is for them, as the whole nature of the unity consists in the fact that it is for the individuals. And, finally, in this harmony between the unity and the individuals neither side is subordinated to the other, but the harmony is an immediate and ultimate fact….It still remains true that it is that particular relation of which the only example known to us is consciousness.” (McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 21) 

“If I am to distinguish myself from any other reality, then, obviously, I must be conscious of this other reality. But how can I be conscious of it without it being in me? If the objects of consciousness were outside me, they would make no difference to my internal state, and, therefore, I should not be conscious of them. And, also, if they were outside me, I should not exist. For the pure I, though doubtless an essential moment of the self; is only a moment, and cannot stand alone. If we withdraw from it all its content—the objects of cognition and volition—it would be a mere abstract nonentity….Thus the nature of the self is sufficiently paradoxical. What does it include? Everything of which it is conscious. What does it exclude? Equally—everything of which it is conscious. What can it say is not inside it? Nothing. What can it say is not outside it? A single abstraction. And any attempt to remove the paradox destroys the self….its content is both in and outside it. By the very act of knowledge it at once accepts the content as part of itself, and repels it as an independent reality. And thus no limits can be put to the self. For if we exclude whatever is not self, the self shrinks to a point, and vanishes altogether. On the other hand, if we include all that is self, it includes all of which we are conscious, and, in the ideal self, would include the whole of reality.” (McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 22-40) 

“When Socrates, in the immortal conversation at the house of Cephalus, defined the philosopher as the lover of the vision of the truth, he was describing, not the metaphysician, but the seer. For philosophy, in the more technical sense, differs from the mere love of wisdom; it is reasoned knowledge, not pure insight, and the philosophic lover of the vision must work out the blessed way to realized truth. With philosophy in this more restricted meaning of the term, a meaning which Plato and Aristotle fixed by adopting it, this chapter and this book will principally deal. Philosophy, once conceived as reasoning discipline, is not, however, completely defined. Thus regarded, philosophy is indeed distinguished, as reflective, from everyday experience which accepts or rejects but does not reflect on its object; and is distinguished, as theoretical, from art which creates but does not reason. In both these contrasts, however, philosophy resembles natural science, for that also reflects and reasons. The really important problem of the definition of philosophy is consequently this: to distinguish philosophy from natural science. Evidently, philosophy differs from science negatively in so far as, unlike science, it does not seek and classify facts, but rather takes its materials ready-made from the sciences, simply reasoning about them and from them. But if this constituted the only contrast, then philosophy would be a part, merely, of science, not a distinct discipline. For science does not stop at observation, though it begins with it; in truth, science as well as philosophy reasons and explains. Philosophy, therefore, if conceived simply as the process of reasoning about scientific phenomena, would be merely the explanatory side of science. There are, however, in the view of most students, two important contrasts which hold between science and philosophy: philosophy must take as its object the utterly irreducible nature of some reality; and philosophy may take as its object the ultimate nature not only of a single fact or group of facts, but of all-that-there-is, “the ultimate reality into which all else can be resolved and which cannot itself be resolved into anything beyond, that in terms of which all else can be expressed and which cannot itself be expressed in terms of anything outside itself”. In both respects a natural science differs from philosophy. To begin with the character last named: philosophy, as has been said, may concern itself with the all-of-reality—and an adequate philosophy will certainly seek to discover the nature of the all-of-reality; a science, on the other hand, studies facts of one order only, that is, it analyzes merely a limited group of phenomena. Again, philosophy, whatever its scope, always concerns itself with the irreducible nature of some reality; whereas a science does not properly raise the question whether these, its phenomena, are in the end reducible to those of another order.” (Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 3-4) 

“These distinctions may be readily illustrated. The physiologist, for example, does not inquire whether or not the limited object of his study, the living cell, is in its fundamental nature a physical or a psychical phenomenon—whether, in other words, protoplasm reduces, on the one hand, to physical energy, or, on the other hand, to consciousness. On the contrary, the physiologist, properly unconcerned about the completeness or about the utter irreducibleness of his object, confines himself to analysis within arbitrary limits of his living cells, leaving to the philosopher the questions: What is the real nature of these psychical and these physical processes? Is reality ultimately split into psychical and physical? Is the division a final one, or is the psychical reducible to the physical? Is thought a function of brain activity? Or, finally, is the physical itself reducible to the psychical; that is, is matter a manifestation of conscious spirit? More than this, the physicist links fact with fact, the rising temperature with the increased friction, the spark with the electric contact. The philosopher, on the other hand, if he takes the largest view of his calling, seeks the connection of each fact or group of facts—each limited portion of reality—with the adequate and complete reality. His question is not, “How does one fact explain another fact?” but “How does each fact fit into the scheme as a whole?”. Both characters of the object of philosophy are indicated by the epithet “ultimate,” of which frequent use is made in this book. Because the object of philosophy is entirely irreducible and because the object of philosophy may be the all-of-reality—for both these reasons, it is often called ultimate and is contrasted with the proximate realities of natural science. It is ultimate because it is utterly irreducible and is not a mere manifestation of a deeper reality; it is ultimate, also, in so far as there is nothing beyond it, in so far, that is, as it includes all that exists. It follows, from the utter irreducibleness and from the absolute completeness which an adequate philosophy sets before itself, that philosophy is rather a search, a pursuit, an endeavor, than an achievement….All these characters assigned to philosophy may finally be gathered up into one definition: Philosophy is the attempt to discover by reasoning the utterly irreducible nature of anything; and philosophy, in its most adequate form, seeks the ultimate nature of all-that-there-is.” (Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 4-6)

“Causality is not an external relation—that is, a relation existing independently of consciousness….Now, if causality be mental, the facts connected by causality must be mental facts; in other words, the causal relation, being through and through mental, cannot extend beyond mind….If causality is a purely mental connection, it surely cannot be a bridge between the mental and the non-mental....Objects inferred to exist are…none the less objects of consciousness, objects “present to the mind.” But nothing which is present to the mind can possess an existence independent of mind. It is then a contradiction in terms to teach that the mind must infer (whatever be the principle of inference) the existence of external objects; for it is the nature of such objects to be independent of consciousness….Descartes and the other dualists had taught that matter, namely, reality independent of consciousness, must exist as cause of our perceptions. In reply to this…causality is a relation within consciousness and consequently cannot assure us of the reality of anything outside consciousness; and second, whatever the basis of the inference, inferred objects must be known objects, objects present to the mind, and cannot therefore be possessed of independent existence….Causality is no character or relation of things independent of consciousness, and that, on the contrary, causality is a transition of the mind, a mental connection…this mental transition [is] “thought”….Unity and causality are mental activities, ways in which we think.” (Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 170-219) 

“If anything exists besides itself, then any limited reality is necessarily related to this other reality by relations of comparison and dependence. And now…my consciousness of my own limitation is a direct witness to the existence of more than one reality. Thus, in knowing the limited reality as related to whatever else may exist, I know it as related, not only to an ideal other (or others), but to an actual other.” (Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 374) 

“The Absolutist does not deny the existence of many reals, but merely asserts that the really many things are parts of one unique and all-including being and that the universe is one in a sense more fundamental than that in which it is many.” (Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 442) 

“Relation does not lie in objects and cannot, so to speak, be borrowed from them by sense perception and so first be taken up into the understanding; on the other hand, connection is exclusively an achievement of the understanding.” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B134) 

“There is no possible form of being which we can form a conception such that we can form a conception of its being actualized in some manner which is definitely non-psychical.  That is, with every possible form of being, though we may conceive it as actualized, without bringing its being experienced or otherwise into question, wherever we raise this question and try to conceive it either as actualized in a whole, or as a whole...which is experienced, or as actualized in detachment from any such whole...we find we can form a conception only of the first.” (Sprigge, The Vindication of Absolute Idealism, 127)