Reading Notes: December 9th, 2021

“Let us look at some of Moore’s main philosophical contributions. In his important essay “The Refutation of Idealism,” Moore undertook to prove that the main conclusion of idealism—that reality is spiritual or mental—can never be proved to be true by any idealistic argument. He maintains that every such argument must contain an essential premise which, under every non-tautological interpretation of it, is false. That premise is: To be is to be perceived (i.e., to be is to be the object of sensation or thought). Under certain interpretations, this premise, Moore shows, is self-contradictory. In all others, it is also false (but not self-contradictory). Hence the idealist conclusion can never be shown to be true.” (Turner, Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, 544) 

“We are only justified in attributing reality to an idea if reality is already present in the discovery of the idea….My real must already be given, in order that my idea may be found real….Reality can only be proved by the ontological argument; and conversely, the ontological argument can only be applied to reality. But in so far as reality dwells in Self, or Other Mind, or Nature, an ontological argument may be stated in proof of their existence. Thus, the Cartesian certitude may with greater validity be put into this form: I think myself, therefore I exist; or, I have an idea of Self, Self exists. For in thinking myself I find myself in experience and thus in living relation to that reality which experience presents.” (Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 313-314) 

“While from the assumption that two contradictory statements cannot both be true, it is possible, as we saw above, to launch at once upon the dialectic of idealism, the more common route is through the concept of the knowability of things. All conceptual dealing with the world assumes, so the argument runs, that knowledge is possible, and from the fact that knowledge is possible one may finally reach the conclusion that the outer world is in some sense a thought product or is “cast in the molds of thought.” Whatever be the force of this deduction better, known as the epistemological argument, it is mentioned in this connection only to remark that it is essentially the same as the objective reading of the principle of non-contradiction. If it be assumed that the detection of inherent contradiction is what is meant by inconceivability, then from the statement that the inconceivable is not true one may infer the obverted converse that the true is conceivable—which is to say that the world is amiable to thought, or that knowledge is possible.” (Van Riper, “Some Epistemological Premises” in Studies in Philosophy and Theology, 209) 

“If we had things on one side and thought on the other whose function it was to penetrate and know the things; and if thought apprehended or comprehended those things only in terms of ideas which were essentially the product and creatures of the thinking subject; and if in relation to each other these ideas were possessed of certain intrinsic qualities known as mutual compatibility or consistency, and contradiction, in virtue of which the mind could categorically permit or deny certain combinations of predicates from any real subject qua real, then, certainly, thought processes might at once be taken as a prototype for the philosophical understanding of the world. To be specific: The judgment “S is P” professes to describe a certain reality, “A,” which may or may not be named by the grammatical subject, “S.” The judgment “S is P” is either true or false of “A,” and it is evident that the ground of this relationship must be either “A” itself or something that may, without loss or gain or modification, be substituted for “A.” And so, if there are purely mental qualities of ideas—such as consistency and contradiction—that can of themselves to any degree mark the judgment as true or false then those qualities must be epistemological equivalents (in the sense that the one may legitimately and validly be substituted for the other) of some assignable properties of the reality in question, “A.” In so far that is to say, as the ideas “S” and “P” have about them inherently logical marks that determine to any extent the truth or falsity of the judgment “S is P” then to just that extent is “A” built on a framework of logical laws This would be the epistemological argument in an irrefragable form, since it would require as an alternative either the condemnation of knowledge as a whole (or at least of that part of it which is logical in character), or the acknowledgement of a Reality in which mental principles are structural.” (Van Riper, “Some Epistemological Premises” in Studies in Philosophy and Theology, 210-211) 

“Indeed, Professor Royce comes to the conclusion that error contributes to the epistemological enterprise only insofar as the fact of error can be shown to involve a basis of truth. A judgment is not true or false in general or in and of itself. It can be true or false only concerning some ideally designated object or other, and for it to be false in that necessarily teleological sense it must assume in particular the validity…of the reference by which its object is identified.” (Van Riper, “Some Epistemological Premises” in Studies in Philosophy and Theology, 241) 

“Does the possibility of knowledge mean that everything is ultimately knowable?....It is hard to see, if it be regarded as an epistemological necessity, how any limiting line is to be drawn. If the limitation were in the facts themselves, we could never know it any more than we could know a limit of space. Just as, in the latter case, we would be thinking back to a region (a space) in which there was no space, so in this case we would assume to know of strata in reality that could not be known. This would mean (1) that there were things so at parallax with our minds that our judgments could be neither correct nor mistaken concerning them, or else (2) merely that they were so constructed that our thought about them could not be valid concerning them. And either is obviously set aside by the familiar consideration that to know such a limit is already to transcend it.” (Van Riper, “Some Epistemological Premises” in Studies in Philosophy and Theology, 241-242) 

“Reality, according to the school to which Bowne belonged, is not definable in the terms and categories of mechanical physics, but in terms of consciousness. Moreover, consciousness is not a mere collection of passive and passing states, mere momentary and shifting ideas, as Hume had taught; consciousness, when adequately understood, can only be a conscious self, the permanent and independent subject of experience and of life. The universe is immaterial, conscious and personal in its constitution: this is the sweeping formula of personal idealism.” (Wilm, Bowne’s Philosophy, 10) 

“And when you come to the subject-object relation, the consequences are tremendous. Here, if anywhere, the relation must be strictly external if realism is to stand. That is to say, if you take the subject and object as your terms and knowing as your relation, knowing will not be grounded in the nature of either subject or object; subject and object alike will make no difference to knowing; though, if we take Dr. Moore’s reservation into account; knowing may make a difference to the terms. It may make a difference to the object, then, as well as to the subject. But this is just what cannot happen on a realist hypothesis; so that Dr. Moore’s reservation, which rested on the distinction between relations and relation properties, cannot in this case apply. Subject, object, and the relation of knowing, will be three hard, distinct, mutually repellent entities, and it is hard to see how, on the realist theory, they ever could have contrived to come together. Nor are you a bit better off if you take the form of this relation to be: the subject’s knowing-of-the-object, or (reduced to the simplest possible terms) contemplation-of-object, when, whatever mysterious relation “of” may be, it is equally indifferent to “contemplation” or to “object.”” (Sinclair, The New Idealism, 40) 

“On the other hand, once recognize that terms are sympathetic to their relations, once admit that it does make a difference to the object to be known and to the subject to know, and you have let in the thin end of the idealist’s wedge. If knowing is not grounded in the “nature” of the object, it will at least be grounded in a “relational property” of the object. And this can only mean that there is something in the object by reason of which it is known; it has a side by which knowing takes it. But this relational property, so far from being the only property of the object which is known, is precisely that property which is not known, since it is impossible to mark down the property in question and say it is this rather than that. And supposing all the properties of the object to be known except this one property which makes it known, each of those properties will have its own relational property as being one property of the object among others, but as something pertaining to or inherent in the object as a whole and in each one of its properties, and that is as good as saying we cannot think of it as a property at all, but as a relation grounded in the nature of its terms, which brings us straight to the idealist position that the nature of known things is to be known; in other words, that being known makes a difference to things. Or, you may knock out the term “nature,” as introducing an unnecessary complication, and say simply: the relation is grounded in the object, and the being of objects is to be known.” (Sinclair, The New Idealism, 41) 

“But modify the position in the interests of realism and say: Things are, and are such that they are known, draw a hard and fast line between the “are” and the “are such,” and you are landed, again, with an unknown thing-in-itself. Carry on the process with each of the “are-suchnesses,” and distinguish between their being and their “suchness,” and you are only multiplying things-in-themselves within things.” (Sinclair, The New Idealism, 41-42) 

“You can only avoid the conclusion by regarding consciousness as an empty transparency; and you are then faced with a difficulty. If consciousness is an empty transparency that makes no difference to its object, its objects, presumably, must make a difference to it. But it is hard to see how anything can make a difference to an empty transparency. Either objects are the content of consciousness or they are not. If they are, they cannot be said to be either outside or independent of consciousness. If they are not, consciousness remains an empty, meaningless transparency. Meaningless, because if it had meaning, its meaning must profoundly modify its objects. And if you contend that objects themselves have meaning, you must either distinguish between the meaning and the objects or not distinguish. If you do not distinguish, you have no business to take about meaning at all. (If meaning is to have any meaning, it must be distinguishable). If you then say, distinguishing, that objects have meaning for consciousness which they have not apart from it, you are again admitting that consciousness makes a difference to objects; consciousness will invade them at all points of meaning. If you simply say that consciousness adds its own meaning to the object, you are again carrying consciousness over into the objective world.” (Sinclair, The New Idealism, 42) 

“Let us now examine Professor Perry’s theory of value. He has made it very easy for us to classify him under one of our rubrics. Since he holds that “value is dependent on consciousness,” specifically on interest (for the unitary self of personalism is to him, discoverer of the “ego-centric predicament,” anathema) his seems obviously to be what we have called an impersonal, subjective, consciousness theory of value. Herewith a veto is interposed on an immediate investigation of Professor Perry’s theory of value; for if value be dependent on consciousness, it becomes of prime importance to know what is meant by consciousness….Professor Perry asserts that “the nature of mental action is discoverable neither by an analysis of mental contents nor by self-intuition;” for him, then, consciousness is neither awareness nor agency….[Perry] means by mind “only the peculiar way in which a living organism endowed with a central nervous system behaves.”….The subject is the activity of the organism, the object or content is the parts of the environment “selected” by that organic activity.” (Brightman, Neo-Realistic Theories of Value, 33-34) 

“Of the alliance between realism and behaviorism, Professor Perry is aware. American realists, he tells us, are in accord with behaviorism…the theory that means by mind “only the peculiar way in which a living organism endowed with a central nervous system behaves.” Taken literally, this means that mind is certain peculiarly organized motions of “matter” in space, and is nothing else. The old distinction of subject and object is reinterpreted. The subject is the activity of the organism, the object or content is the parts of the environment “selected” by that organic activity. Behaviorism has something in its favor, else it would not be so widely held….It employs the categories of biological science, which is now in the ascendency….[It] is important to emphasize the sharp line of distinction that must be drawn between extreme behaviorists and believers in consciousness. The failure to be conscious of the distinction is productive of much confusion in recent discussions. Behaviorism has rendered discussion peculiarly difficult; for whatever a behaviorist says must be taken in a Pickwickian sense. He uses the language of consciousness, but refers to the objects of biology. If his theory is correct, he is, of course, justified. But, justified or not, if he means by desire, for instance, a certain tendency or group of tendencies of a physical object, my body, to move in a particular way, he cannot intelligibly use the term in conversation with one who regards it as meaning conative consciousness. The two persons would simply talk past each other. It must gloomily be confessed that most contemporary philosophical discussion consists of a series of mutual misunderstandings; it is all but unprecedented to find a philosopher admitting that his critic has understood him. And lo!—perhaps we are even now misunderstanding Professor Perry and behaviorism.” (Brightman, Neo-Realistic Theories of Value, 34-35) 

“But Professor Perry's own solution remains true to behaviorism. Question: what is the unity of consciousness, the secret of mental action? Answer: it is not a conscious self that acts, nor is it the feeling of “intra-cephalic movements;” but it is “bodily action itself,” to which the question of whether it is “felt” or not is quite accidental and indifferent. “Feeling" still remains, as the last echo of a dying self, but it doesn't explain anything, is utterly unimportant and irrelevant to our understanding of mental unity. The mental unity in listening (to use Professor Perry’s illustration) is not a unity of consciousness, but a unity of bodily action, of “operation of a nervous system.” To this theory our author gives the name of “the immanence of consciousness." His explanation of that term strikes one as perhaps too metaphorical to be exact. It is, he tells us, the theory that “mind and the surrounding world interpenetrate and overlap as the university interpenetrates and overlaps the other systems and groupings from which its components are drawn.” How else than physically, we may inquire, does this occur? How can one, in short, with the best will in the world, avoid regarding this view as materialistic naturalism?” (Brightman, Neo-Realistic Theories of Value, 37-38) 

“The doctrine of “neutral entities” is a more thoroughgoing attempt to avoid naturalism in all its forms. This doctrine may be summarized as follows: If I analyze “consciousness” into elements (such as the quality “blue,” or hardness, or number), I find that I ascribe these same elements to physical nature, and to other minds. The elements of which the universe is made up are themselves neither distinctively “physical” nor distinctively “mental;” they are “neutral.” This theory does, it is true, avoid naturalism; it is dogmatic, not agnostic; metaphysical, not positivistic; and neutral, not materialistic. It attains this result by a double abstraction; for it abstracts not merely from reference to a subject, but also from reference to an object. It asserts “the indifference of the terms of experience not only to their subjective relations, but to their physical relations as well.” In themselves, the neutral entities have no “home,” are not “anywhere.” Each entity apparently exists as it is, eternally unchangeable, with a nature independent of and unaffected by the relations into which it may enter. This perhaps avoids some of the difficulties of naturalism; but whatever we may say of the logic by which this new [neutral stuff] is arrived at, we must say of the entities themselves that they defy conception in their unrelated, individual isolation. Even Professor Perry admits that the minimum cognoscibile may be a complex, that we cannot know any entity by itself, but only in relations. The ultimate neutral terms cannot then be conceived as they “really” are homeless, unrelated, unchangeable. Is this not ground for suspecting that we must regard them as abstractions rather than as reality? To attribute ontological reality to every abstraction arrived at by logical analysis is not merely a return to scholasticism, as it has been called; it is worse than scholasticism.” (Brightman, Neo-Realistic Theories of Value, 40-41) 

“Professor Perry seeks to build up an account of purpose, yet without any appeal to consciousness. He would not impute “causal efficiency to mental states”; he does not find it necessary “to believe that any mysterious psychic force is at work”; indeed, “to explain this process by a reference to what is commonly regarded as consciousness would be to commit the fallacy of obscurum per obscurius.”….Let us make explicit what [R.B. Perry’s] view of purpose means. A physiological organism (quite free from any obscure and mysterious conscious purposes, in the familiar sense) is controlled by something to be done that does not yet exist, or even by a generalized object that never could exist physically, and then both selects and consolidates the means of attaining this something by which it is to be controlled. In our author’s own words, action is “determined by its relation of prospective congruence with a controlling propensity.” One is tempted to inquire, Which language is more obscure: that which speaks of a conscious self as having ideas, forming plans of actions, making choices, or that which employs the terms just cited from Professor Perry and speaks of objects that do not exist in the physical environment as nevertheless stimulating my organism , which is a physical object?....In a moment of exceptional frankness, [Perry] confesses that so simple a purposive activity as looking for a pin “evidently requires an epistemological construction beyond the scope of a strictly physiological behaviorism.” We have found above that modern realism and behaviorism had concluded an alliance; they cried “Peace! Peace!” but there is no peace....Does it not seem more promising to return again to consciousness—yes, to personality itself?” (Brightman, Neo-Realistic Theories of Value, 44-45) 

“That Professor Spaulding is himself not satisfied with his account of consciousness is evidenced by numerous contradictions in his thought on the subject, contradictions that do honor to his love of truth and willingness to face the problems….His argument that, since there can be a relation between consciousness and its “elements” (and other “things”), consciousness itself cannot be merely a relation, not only concedes much to personalism, but also cuts deep into the external theory of relations. [Cf. The New Rationalism, p. 482. Spaulding is here on the verge of the truth that all terms and relations are relative to the purposes of some mind. But this would lead us back to personality as unitary substance, and the forbidden “ego-centric predicament”].” (Brightman, Neo-Realistic Theories of Value, 50-51) 

“The following series of considerations will show some of the grounds for confidence in the personalistic synthesis as opposed to the realistic theories that we have been considering. (1) Professor Perry’s unit of value, “interest,” is distinctly impersonal. As a mere tendency to act for its own self-preservation, it is an entity in the life of the organism, considered by itself, apart from any ideal or obligation or recognition of a unitary personality, with its laws and its claims. (2) Where morality is (as for Professor Perry), a massing of impersonal interests “against a reluctant cosmos,” interest being interpreted behavioristically, morality becomes logically identical with physiological efficiency….(3) A fundamental difficulty with Professor Perry’s view is that “interest” in actual life is (contrary to his theory) not made up by a massing of interest-units….(4) Interest-in-relation-to-object is not (as Professor Perry holds) the unit of intrinsic value….(5) Value…is always relative to an idea of what humanity ought to be, or at least to an ideal of one’s own personality, either implicit or explicit….(6) Value is objective, as well as dependent on consciousness….(7) The personalistic theory is not open to Professor Perry’s criticism of Absolutism….(8) Personalism affords a more rational basis for freedom than does Neo-Realism….(9) Personalism gives a more reasonable account of religious values than does Neo-Realism. Professor Perry with his repudiation of every moral and spiritual ontology, with his universe of neutrals, nevertheless makes “the hazard of faith” to a belief in a “forward movement of life”….but this is “provincial and unimaginative”….Life is after all too much for Professor Perry's rigid scientific method and anti-romanticism….Professor Perry’s explanation, although a consciousness theory, is sub-personal, reducing personality to behavior, and value to interest as a biological unit.” (Brightman, Neo-Realistic Theories of Value, 55-63)  

“What high satisfaction this system affords to my understanding! What order, what firm connexion, what comprehensive supervision does it introduce into the whole fabric of my knowledge! Consciousness is here no longer a stranger in Nature, whose connexion with existence is so incomprehensible—it is native to it and indeed one of its necessary manifestations. Nature herself ascends gradually in the determinate series of her creations. In rude matter she is a simple existence—in organized matter she returns within herself to internal activity—in the plant to produce form—in the animal motion—in man, as her highest masterpiece, she turns inward that she may perceive and contemplate herself—in him she, as it were, doubles herself, and, from being mere existence, becomes existence and consciousness in one. How I am and must be conscious of my own being and of its determinations is in this connexion, easily understood. My being and my knowledge have one common foundation—my own nature. The being within me, even because it is my being, is conscious of itself. Quite as conceivable is my consciousness of corporeal objects existing beyond myself. The powers in whose manifestation my personality consists—formative, self-moving, thinking—are not these same powers as they exist in Nature at large, but only a certain definite portion of them; and that they are but such a portion, is because there are so many other existences beyond me. From the former, I can infer the latter; from the limitation, that which limits. Because I myself am not this or that which yet belongs to the connected system of existence, it must exist beyond me—thus reasons the thinking principle within me. Of my own limitation I am immediately conscious, because it is a part of myself, and only by reason of it do I possess an actual existence; my consciousness of the source of this limitation—of that which I myself am not—is produced by the former, and arises out of it.” (Fichte, The Vocation of Man, 339-340) 

“Away, then, with those pretended influences and operations of outward things upon me, by means of which they are supposed to pour in me a knowledge which is not in themselves and cannot flow forth from them. The ground upon which I assume the existence of something beyond myself, does not lie out of myself, but within me, in the limitation of my own personality. By means of this limitation, the thinking principle of Nature within me proceeds out of itself, and is able to survey itself as a whole, although, in each individual, from a different point of view.” (Fichte, The Vocation of Man, 340-341) 

“In the same way there arises within me the idea of other thinking beings like myself. I, or the thinking power of Nature within me, am conscious of some thoughts which seem to have arisen spontaneously within me as an individual form of Nature; and of others, which seem not to have arisen in the same spontaneous manner. And so it is in reality. The former are my own, peculiar, individual contributions to the general circle of thought in Nature; the latter are deduced from them, as what must surely have a place in that circle; but being only inferences so far as I am concerned, must find that place, not in me, but in other thinking beings:—hence I conclude that there are other thinking beings besides myself. In short, Nature becomes in me conscious of herself as a whole, but only by beginning with my own individual consciousness, and proceeding from thence to the consciousness of universal being by inference founded on the principle of causality—that is, she is conscious of the conditions under which alone such a form, such a motion, such a thought as that in which my personality consists, is possible. The principle of causality is the point of transition from the particular within myself to the universal which lies beyond myself; and the distinguishing characteristic of those two kinds of knowledge is this, that the one is immediate perception, while the other is inference.” (Fichte, The Vocation of Man, 341) 

“In each individual, Nature beholds herself from a particular point of view. I call myself—I, and thee—thou; thou callest thyself—I, and me—thou; I lie beyond thee, as thou beyond me. Of what is without me, I comprehend first those things which touch me most nearly; thou, those which touch thee most nearly—from these points we each proceed onwards to the next proximate; but we describe very different paths, which may here and there intersect each other but never run parallel. There is an infinite variety of possible individuals, and hence also an infinite variety of possible points of outlook of consciousness. This consciousness of all individuals taken together, constitutes the complete consciousness of the universe; and there is no other, for only in the individual is there definite completeness and reality.” (Fichte, The Vocation of Man, 341-342)