Reading Notes: December 4th, 2021

“Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.” (Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, 344) 

“The only distinction which can be drawn between [the “practical” interests of knowledge and the “speculative” interests of knowledge] is this: the “practical” interest may be satisfied with a provisional answer; we may know enough about a subject “for practical purposes,” and therefore close our enquiry; whereas the “speculative” interest can only be finally satisfied when the subject of enquiry has been grasped in all its relation, or, in other words, when a complete theory of the Universe has been formed.” (Temple, Mens Creatrix, 27)

“It is possible, for instance, that a student of Logic may be perplexed when told that, if once the mind has made a judgment, it cannot rest short of omniscience. When we are told that Reality is the subject of all judgments, or that from categorical judgments we are necessarily driven to hypothetical, and from hypothetical again to disjunctive, we are disposed to protest. When I say, “Charles I was executed,” I am not thinking about Reality as a whole at all; when I say, “Tragedy is a species of drama,” I am not even leading up to a complete disjunctive judgment about the drama. And all this is true, because most of our judgments are framed under the influence of “practical” interests; and when we know “enough for practical purposes,” we are content.” (Temple, Mens Creatrix, 27-28) 

“But if our interest were speculative, and we were determined not to rest until we understood fully every term employed, then we should find these doctrines of the Logicians verified; for when our procedure is “vitalized by a general will to know,” we go on asking “why?” of every statement made, until the circle is complete and all our statements support one another in a system known to include all the facts ; but unless the Universe consists of several unrelated parts, this system is itself quite plainly a disjunctive judgment with Reality for subject. For as long as any of the relations of any of the terms employed are still unknown, the speculative intellect will pursue its enquiry; and short of universal truth there is no stopping place. For even if (as is almost incredible) the universe consists of parts coexistent and otherwise unrelated, coexistence itself is a relation. And so, as we proceed under the influence of the speculative impulse, we find that nothing less than Reality is the ultimate subject of our thought, and nowhere short of omniscience can we rest content. In this point the will to know is typical of that effort for self-transcendence of which it is a case. It is this effort to escape from one's own particularity and realize one's membership in a whole which prompts alike the search for knowledge, the creation of beauty, devotion to duty, and worship of God. Man is a finite mind; but because he is Mind he cannot be content with his finitude. And one of the ways in which he tries to rise above it is in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake a pursuit which, once started, never stops until the whole Universe is focused in his intelligence.” (Temple, Mens Creatrix, 28-29) 

“The reason why different people are able to rest satisfied with different convictions about the same subject is often that they have asked different questions, to which different answers are needed. It can hardly be too often insisted that while all our knowledge is, in the end, rooted in some interest, that interest only dictates our question and not our answer to that question. I may treat a human being as so much physical mass, and weigh him; I may consider him aesthetically, and estimate his beauty or ugliness; I may consider him ethically, and pronounce him good or bad. I thus get different answers to different questions about one subject. They are in no way contradictory or incompatible, though the aesthetic and ethical judgments might be so worded as to be contradictory in appearance; my interest determines which question I am to ask, but in no way affects the answer I ought then to find.” (Temple, Mens Creatrix, 30) 

“According to the ordinary use of language, the word “logical” seems to be used only of the process by which we find an answer to our question, while the larger word “rational” is used alike of the question and of the method adopted to find the answer. Logic is therefore the science of intellectual process so far as this leads to knowledge; choice and preference have nothing whatever to do with it. But it needs some non-logical impulse to set this intellectual process in motion. Thus a man may want to know how many shillings must be piled one on the top of another to make a column that would touch the moon; in fact, one gathers from some journals that there is a whole public possessed of an appetite for such knowledge. The desire to know this is neither logical nor illogical; but there are logical and illogical, that is correct and incorrect, methods of satisfying it. The question, however, whether the desire to be satisfied is rational or irrational is quite legitimate. Scientific procedure “ought only to be vitalized by a general will to know.” Certainly; but to know what? To know the answer to some question set by a practical aim or a speculative impulse.” (Temple, Mens Creatrix, 30-31) 

“Truth is that system of notions which would give perfect intellectual satisfaction; if no one at all possesses it, that does not affect its nature or the meaning of the term. And particular statements are true if they can make good their claim to be elements in this whole system. But Truth is not Reality, not because it consists of a different kind of entity called Ideas, beyond which Reality lies, but because it is only one element in Reality which is compact of it and many others besides. It is easy to say that we can only know what falls within our own experience, and of course this is so; but when it is argued from this that the mind knows primarily its own ideas and from them infers a world outside, a grievous fallacy is introduced. An idea is not an object of the mind standing somewhere between the mind itself and the reality which it would know an idea is a mental apprehension of reality; it may be adequate or inadequate, just as the image on the retina of the eye may be correct or incorrect according to the health of the whole eye; if it is incorrect we see the object amiss, but it is perfect nonsense to say that what we see is the image on the retina; this is the one thing which we can never see at all, for it is that by means of which we see anything.” (Temple, Mens Creatrix, 50-51) 

“Similarly, if our mental grasp is either distorted or inadequate we may express this by saying that we have a wrong idea, but it is only for subsequent reflection that this idea becomes itself the object of thought; it is essentially the thinking mind, but because the mind is self-conscious it can think about itself qua thinking, and therein make its own ideas into its objects. Psychologists and logicians are always doing so, but they must not allow the process which constitutes their science to lead them to believe that the thinking which they study follows the same process. Thought itself is primarily concerned with the world; but this thought is itself part of the world, and there is therefore a special science of thought just as there is a special science of chemistry. If we begin with the notion that the mind never has any objects except its own ideas, we can never argue to a world beyond at all. Reality is the presupposition of all thinking; in actual fact the distinction between mind and its objects is drawn within the given totum of experience, and we have knowledge of the object or not-self before we have any knowledge of the subject or self. Self-knowledge, even knowledge of our own existence, is more inferential than knowledge of the world about us, just as, in its content, it is, as a rule, far more rudimentary.” (Temple, Mens Creatrix, 51) 

“Scientific truth, then, is a system of contents or, as we may express it, a nexus of relations; but we cannot suppose that Reality is a nexus of relations, for a relation at least implies related terms. A relation in which nothing is related is bare nothing. But a term cannot be altogether constituted by its relations. This has sometimes been suggested by the language of some philosophers, and perhaps believed by them. But it is impossible. Such a belief must rest on the root fallacy of Determinism a term generally reserved for ethics, but really a logical term. In fact, the main objection to Determinism is logical. Determinism, the theory that everything is constituted by its relations to other things that it consists, in fact, of these relations is seen to be fallacious so soon as its application is universally extended. It tells us that in a system A B C, A is only A in virtue of its relations to B and C; B and C determine it as A. And that seems easy; but why is B, B? It must be determined as B by A and C. And similarly C by A and B. If, then, each term is nothing till its external relations constitute it, we are confronted with the spectacle of nothing at all developing internal differentiation by the interaction of its non-existent parts.” (Temple, Mens Creatrix, 51)