Reading Notes: January 9th, 2022

“F.H. Bradley’s Presuppositions of Critical History, a work to which Collingwood later appealed, had been written in 1874 to show that the positivist criteria failed, that history was the history of mind, the criterion of history the historian.” (Patrick, The Magdalen Metaphysicals, 41) 

“Kant had shown that the ordinary contrast between a priori and a posteriori, according to which experience was something given upon which thought had to work, was untenable. He did so by showing that thought enters into the very constitution of all we call experience….It meant, as we have seen, that thought was operative from the first, containing in itself and developing from itself at once the distinction and unity of subject and object. But it was impossible to leave the matter there, for this in turn meant that underlying all our experience there was an ideal principle at work under the pressure of which the mind could never cease from the endeavor to realize a form of experience in which all differences should be seen as necessary elements in one coherent system of truth….Having gone so far, it might have been expected that Kant should have gone one step further and shown that while in the most elementary forms of experience we can in a real sense be said to know objects, we know them only imperfectly so long as they fail to exhibit themselves as parts or necessary elements in the ideal whole to which reason points….[However], instead of holding that reflective experience, as it develops…is an ever closer approximation to knowledge of objects as they are in reality, he takes the contrary line, and, for the very reason that these objects are mixed up with thought, maintains that we fail of real knowledge of them. Instead of taking the distinction of appearance and reality as one that holds within knowledge and applying it to different stages of knowledge, he takes it as a distinction between our knowledge of “objects,” as they appear to us who know them, and “things, as they are in themselves.” Instead of condemning experience at any particular stage because it fails to correspond to its own idea, he condemns it at every stage because it involves an element of the ideal in it.” (Jones, The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird, 279) 

“Self-consciousness, to Caird, is our normal consciousness developed into the form in which we are first fully aware of what we really are. This, of course, is an ideal to which individual consciousness approximates in various degrees, but we can realize enough of it to be able to analyze its contents. Of these the first and most obvious is the consciousness of something opposed, something given and so far independent of us—the so-called object. But along with this there is involved the consciousness of a subject in contact with and reacting upon the object. Subject and object may thus be thought of as opposite poles between which the field of experience lies. But this is a simplification which requires to be corrected by further analysis. For, along with the consciousness of opposition between subject and object, there goes a consciousness of their essential relation to each other. As the deepest element in consciousness we have the sense that they are not simply opposed to each other, but that the subject sees its own fact only as reflected in the object, and vice versa that the object reveals its true nature only as it is apprehended by a subject. It is for this reason that to contemplate our world from either aspect must end in throwing a new light on the other and raising it to a higher power. “To contemplate our experience as inner experience is simply to enrich our outer experience by bringing in the thought of its relation to feeling in ourselves as sensitive subjects”. Vice versa, to contemplate it as outer experience is to enrich our inner experience by bringing in the thought of its relation to a real objective world of which it is the revelation in and to us.” (Jones, The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird, 281) 

“It is in the light of this movement of conscious experience, from object to subject and thence to the unity of the two, that we must read Caird’s constant insistence that consciousness of self is not a consciousness we realize by withdrawing from all objects as into a solitude out of which nothing can come, but that it is the “transparent unity-in-difference” which “contains all the keys by which we may unlock the secrets of the world…the brief abstract of the whole process of knowledge and so of all knowable reality; for as it is the first unity out of which all the principles of knowledge must be developed, so it is itself the final unity in which they are summed up and brought to completion”. (Jones, The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird, 282) 

“In the first place we have the doctrine that man's conscious life is dominated by the assumption or the ideal of a unity in which the elements of experience are related to one another as organic parts of a systematic, ultimately logical, whole….[Caird’s aim] was to cut the ground under [an] ultimate dualism that Caird constantly returned to the point that this antithesis [between Subject and Object is] itself is one that only holds within a wider unity by whatever name we call it, thought, or spirit, self-consciousness or feeling.” (Jones, The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird, 284-285) 

“It need hardly be said that [Caird] did not mean that subject and object were merely verbal correlatives, though this fallacy has often been attributed to him. He does not, as he has been accused of doing, begin by defining a subject as that to which an object is presented, and an object as that which is presented to a subject, and then proceed, on the ground of this question-begging definition, to proclaim that these two exist in essential and indissoluble connection with each other. What he taught was the precise opposite of this. It was that the antithesis between subject and object emerged at a certain stage in the development of experience and was bound up with its very nature. Subject and object are correlatives in language because they are correlatives in reality. We do not go from a relation we establish in our thinking to the assertion of a relation in reality, but from the relation in reality to a relation in our thought. We not only cannot think object apart from subject, subject apart from object, but we cannot think at all except upon the assumption of an identity underlying the difference. The unity which is the ideal of knowledge and the ultimate test of reality cannot, any more than the unity which is our ideal of love, be one in which all the difference between subject and object, self and other, has disappeared. The difference is as essential as the unity: it is essential to the unity. For the unity, of which we are in search, is the unity of an individuality that maintains itself, not only in spite of difference, but in and through the difference. To give up this ideal, or to use it as a means of cutting away the ground on which all self-conscious experience rests, is to give up everything.” (Jones, The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird, 285-287) 

“It is our self-consciousness that puts the standard or test of organic unity into our hands, and the test is a deadly one if it only cuts the hand that uses it. What it is necessary to emphasize…is the positive character of the relationship between self and object that underlies the negative and is the logical prius of it. Each stands opposed to the other, yet each contains the secret of the other’s life. “Objects can be recognized as real only if, and so far as they have that unity in difference, that permanence in change, that intelligible individuality, which are the essential characteristics of mind”. Vice versa, it is only as subjects realize in themselves that which is permanent amid change, that which is one in the many, that they attain unity with themselves and rise to a sense of their own individuality and permanence. It is this reciprocity of relation between knowledge and reality that has been the central light of all the seeing of idealistic writers since Plato, and that flashes out in all their deepest utterances. It is implied in Plato’s theory in the Meno that the soul in knowing anything may be said to know all things, seeing that “all things are akin,” and that in knowing it participates in the being of things. It is still more explicitly contained in Aristotle’s doctrine that the reason in a true sense is all things that it knows. It is implied, however little he realized its full significance, in Kant’s doctrine that the Self, instead of being as he sometimes seems to think, an empty-form that recedes from its relation to the object into itself, is a centre of activity whose nature it is to go out of itself to objects and other selves, and to return thence with a new consciousness of itself and of that which is other than itself.” (Jones, The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird, 287-288)

Reading Notes: January 8th, 2022

“The second feature of the Advaita analysis of consciousness lies in its insistence that consciousness is always distinct from the object of consciousness. The things, therefore, should on no account be identified with the consciousness which makes them its objects. From this [it] follow[s]…that consciousness cannot be its own object…” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 119) 

“The most important and far-reaching of [Sankara’s] contentions is to be found in what may be called the foundational character of knowledge or consciousness. It ought to be accepted as a universal rule, he insists, that there can be no object of knowledge without knowledge. None can prove something that is not known, and the attempt to prove it would be as absurd as to maintain that there is no eye though the form is apprehended. The objects may change their essence, but consciousness cannot be said to change inasmuch as it witnesses all objects irrespective of the place where they may happen to be; the fact-of-being-known is thus implied by all objects without exception. Even when something is supposed to be non-existent, this very non-existence cannot be proved in the absence of knowledge.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 118) 

“Consciousness, when regarded in this light, is the ultimate principle of revelation for which alone the world of objects has a meaning; it is not a relation between two elements, on the contrary, it is the light which manifests all objects. It is “the center of the whole world comprising the objects, the senses and the mind, and it has neither inside nor outside, it is altogether a mass of knowledge.” This is generally known as the center theory of self; conscious self, according to it, occupies the central place of the universe, inasmuch as all objects owe their meaning and significance to the relations in which they stand to the self that essentially is consciousness….To put it in the language of modern idealism, existence-for-self is the highest category to which must conform all objects. Matter, mind, electron, proton, etc., have meaning for us only insofar as they stand in relation to the conscious self whose reality, therefore, has to be presupposed by every intelligible entity. In this sense, consciousness is the prior principle or the foundational fact which cannot be reduced to something other than itself except through a confusion of thought.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 119) 

“The internal paradox of the contemporary theories of consciousness may best be exposed by enquiring whether the elements…into which consciousness is reduced are themselves unknown or known. The former alternative would evidently render them undistinguishable from pure nothing or mere naught, and, as such, they must repel all predicates. And in that case they cannot be brought in for explaining anything. The only alternative, therefore, would be to admit that they are objects of knowledge and, as such, presuppose the reality of knowledge or consciousness….All objects, no matter what they are in detail, are, insofar as they are appealed to in explanation of something, known objects, and must have their prius in “I think,” “I know,” or “I am conscious”….[T]he majority of modern theories of consciousness have unwittingly pledged themselves to an altogether unwarranted postulate. This postulate, to put it simply, is that consciousness is an object, and as such can be investigated and explained in the same way in which we explain all other objects of the world….[T]he indubitable reality of consciousness provides a brilliant instance of a reality which, though incapable of being known as an object, is yet a foundational fact…Consciousness, according to the Advaita thinkers, being the ultimate principle of revelation, cannot stand in need of a more ulterior principle for its own revelation. That which is the prius of the knowable objects cannot itself be conceived as an object among other objects much as the light which reveals everything does not require a second light for its own manifestation.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 127-130) 

“That which reveals every object and illumines the entire world of things cannot itself be apprehended as a “this” or a “that”. The nearest analogy to it in the physical world is furnished by the light which, therefore, has been frequently appealed to in illustrating the peculiar character of consciousness by the Indian as well as the Western thinkers. The light which manifests all material things cannot be appropriately said to be here and not there, it is not a particular thing existing by the side of other things; yet it is the condition of the revelation of the particular things. Hence arise the difficulties which our psychologists experience in defining consciousness, the reality of which they find it necessary to emphasize; it is something, they say, that can be defined only in terms of itself.” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 131-132) 

“The fact is that all [Hume’s] difficulties about the self, as put by Dr. Haldar, are “due to his identification of it with its content”. And once this identification is assumed to be true, it would be a comparatively easy task to condemn the self as a gross fiction, a mere monster, or a mere metaphysical chimera….The conclusion that emerges out of these considerations is that no theory of consciousness is likely to survive the light of critical thought which leaves unexamined and unchallenged the identification of consciousness with what is presented to it. And it further follows that consciousness cannot be dismissed as a mere chimera simply on the ground that it cannot be known as an object….From the dictum that there is no consciousness…to materialism, there is but a short way. The latter does not deny the fact of consciousness, but accepting it as an indubitable fact, materialism considers it to be a product of matter. But none the less materialism and the doctrine of no-consciousness meet on the confusion of consciousness with the content…” (Mukerji, The Nature of Self, 135-137) 

“The distinction between mind and matter, observer and observed, appears now to be one that falls within knowledge itself and assumes it as already there. Any particular activity in knowledge is found to proceed by way of abstraction downwards from what is most concrete, that is the actual.” (Haldane, The Philosophy of Humanism, 4) 

“If the main thesis of the Greeks and of Goethe is a true one, it carries with it far-reaching consequences in the adoption of method in philosophy. For it imports that what we must start with as our basic fact is first of all the world as it seems to us, the concrete, many-sided world, with the whole of its riches, that appears present in our every-day experience. We must not begin by trying to find elements out of which this world of actuality is put together and pieced up. As soon as we try to start explanations of this kind we fall into the fallacy for which Aristotle criticises his predecessors, the fallacy of the abstract mind. Our experience is no passive awareness put together out of isolated elements of sensation that exist as self-subsistent entities in independence of each other. The ideas of such entities are themselves arrived at only by abstract methods, and give us merely phases within a larger entirety in which they stand in everchanging relations which are integral for the whole. All such relations are therefore internal, that is they are inseparable from the reality of the phases into which they enter. What are termed “external” relations, and are treated as severable, are themselves abstractions, without reality independent of the whole in which they have meaning. Meaning, indeed, enters into reality everywhere, and is of its essence. Now the character of meaning is that of mind. Meaning imports the presence of mind and has its home there. It is beside the point to say that such mind is always the mind of a particular individual. For such an individual himself has only meaning as an object within the world as it is for mind. Knowledge as such therefore comes first.” (Haldane, The Philosophy of Humanism, 5-6) 

“Those who try to reduce reality to isolated and self-subsistent sensations encounter the difficulty that the nerves, and the brain itself which receives stimulation from without, and so builds up the external world which has to be accounted for as inclusive of all these, must be assumed to be present before we can conceive ourselves as having any sensations to build with. Just so the fact of individual experience has to be presupposed before we can make any departure at all. But those who thus start with experience as already there are at least free from a fatal obstacle which confronts the subjective idealist and the materialist alike.” (Haldane, The Philosophy of Humanism, 6-7) 

“If I look at the people who are crowded into a room, listening it may be to myself who am speaking, there is a fact that confronts me. Into the sensations produced in their respective brains, by the electro-magnetic waves of light or the atmospheric waves of sound which stimulate their optic or auditory nerves, I cannot enter. These produce sensations which belong exclusively to the individual in whom they are awakened. I, the speaker, know and can know nothing directly of these sensations. They cannot come within my immediate awareness. Nor can the audience enter into my own sensations. But yet we are certain that we see the same room and hear the same words. How is this possible? Only in one way. What we know in common cannot consist in immediacy of feeling, which is excluded from everyone excepting the person whose private feeling it is. But there may be knowledge in common of a kind that is logically quite different from mere feeling, the knowledge in common which arises from thinking about our private experiences in identically the same conceptions as others employ, and thus giving to our respective sense experiences an identical meaning. It does appear as though what those present have in common is not sensation but knowledge about sensation. Apart from interpretation such sensation amounts to nothing at all. Yet without material to set for itself into objective form, the thought would be an abstraction which had no objective or individual character in which to make itself real. If it can so set itself in individual form the form becomes symbolic of the conception through which it is fashioned. Neither the lecturer nor his audience in the lecture-room seem to separate the two aspects which their individual experiences present. These vary with the individual. But in the differences there is pervading identity, and it comes from the identity of form in thinking. The particularism which is the other aspect has the character of a “happening” in space and time. But no conception used in interpretation appears to be any such happening. It belongs to a different order, one which is concerned not with events, but with what is required before events can have the meanings that have to be inherent in them if they are to belong to reality.” (Haldane, The Philosophy of Humanism, 6-7) 

“Those assembled in a lecture-room have thus identities before minds which differ numerically only in that the organisms in which they express themselves differ numerically as objects in space and time. But these objects are individual, that is to say they are actual objects only insofar as judgments through universals as much as the particularism of feeling enters into their character….The particular of sense could have no meaning at all for us, and therefore no existence, but for its setting in universals imported by some mode of reflection, however slight. In this fashion concepts enter into the constitution of reality. Because of the distinctions with which the particularism of the actual is so endowed, mere logical identity becomes identity in difference, or correspondence. It is correspondence in our conceptions thus based, not on “happenings” which are necessarily diverse, but on identity of thought, that makes us experience the same lecture-room, the same sun, moon and stars, and, generally, the same world. A single world is before us by reason of an identity in our thinking apart from which it would not be there in common for us. It is for such thinking and only for such thinking that space and time themselves are present and are possible. Such reflection appears to be foundational for the very possibility of an object world, and of ourselves as in that world.” (Haldane, The Philosophy of Humanism, 9-10) 

“The thinking in which the world of objects has its foundation is no event to be looked on as a particular object among others in the world to which it gives the significance of reality. Nor can it be an attribute or activity of the self as an object in that world. Such a self is made present to itself as object only in abstraction which does not yield the whole truth. The entirety appears to be that activity of knowledge within which not only object but subject for which it is object arise. The genuine subject aspect within this entirety remains intact in the abstractive process which segregates the object but cannot reach that for which it is there. It is only by watching thought develop itself in its own self-implications that we can discover its nature. The process must be in its essence one of mediate inference. For in what we call self-consciousness we are always tending to make the abstraction which identifies the self with the thinghood in which it expresses itself even for the mind that it is aware of itself as knowledge. From that knowledge, from what experience implies and reveals, we start. We assume it as our point of departure and behind it we cannot get by any direct inspection. But although we cannot by analysis resolve our experience into further elements out of which it is constructed we can by analysis study its nature conceptually, as we do in logic. Only the logic must be one in which the facts are simply made free, through the exclusion of what is foreign to them, to do justice to themselves by revealing their own implications. Something of this kind we seem to approach whenever we are brought to the sense of the fullest reality, in poetry, in art, in religion.” (Haldane, The Philosophy of Humanism, 13-14) 

“The doctrine that the origin of knowledge may be found in habitual association in contiguity has to encounter this initial difficulty. How is a series or aggregate of contiguous impressions possible except as presupposing the knowledge within which it is presented? Assume such knowledge as conceded, then the association principle becomes very useful as showing uniformities in the ways in which ideas treated as external phenomena suggest each other. But it is of no value in throwing light on the genesis of a knowledge which it has already presupposed for its foundation. Sensations, even if we could conceive bare sensations, would not bring other sensations into being by suggestion. For it is only ideas that are suggested. We are thus forced back to the subject, which is itself no event happening in externality, for the explanation of the world as it actually seems to us. By subject we mean here neither a thing in space nor an activity in space. We mean that for which such things and activities are, and apart from which they have no significance and no reality. Thus interpreted the presence of the subject aspect of reality, of knowledge as that to which reality is essentially relative, is everywhere apparent, even in what, looked at superficially, we take to be a mere object world.” (Haldane, The Philosophy of Humanism, 15-16) 

“I may add that whatever might be my conclusion if it were possible for me thoroughly to examine Dr. McTaggart’s special argument—a matter not of a few days—I can have no hesitation in saying that I completely sympathise with the doctrine which he proposes to sustain, “the idealism which rests on the assertion that nothing exists but spirit”.” (Bosanquet, The Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy, xii)

Reading Notes: January 6th, 2022

“I should not like to say it in public, but I am convinced that Stirling never understood Hegel.” (Bosanquet, A Letter to Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, dated Jan. 4, 1886) 

“If consciousness is an empty transparency that makes no difference to its objects, 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.” (Sinclair, The New Idealism, 42) 

“If the external object exists, it is either an aggregate of simple atoms or a complex body with an existence over and above that of the constituent atoms. It cannot be an aggregate of simple atoms, since their existence cannot be proved either by perception or by inference. We never perceive atoms. We perceive only gross objects like jars, posts, and the like….The existence of atoms cannot be established by inference. Inference depends upon an observation of invariable concomitance of the middle term and the major term. Atoms are to be inferred: they constitute the major term. They are imperceptible. So their invariable concomitance with the middle term or the ground of inference can never be perceived. Thus the existence of atoms can neither be perceived nor inferred….The external object cannot be a complex body which has an existence over and above that of the constituent atoms. If a single atom cannot be established, a complex body which is made up of many atoms cannot be established. Without atoms the gross body, which is a mere aggregate of atoms, is a mere name.” (Sinha, Indian Realism, 62-63) 

“A cognition and its object are two distinct realities. They are distinct from each other because they possess opposite qualities. Firstly, cognition is internal while its object is external. Secondly, cognition is posterior to its object while the object is prior to its cognition. The object exists before its cognition is produced by it. It is independent of its cognition. Its existence is not affected by its cognition….Hence an object can never be regarded as identical with its cognition.” (Sinha, Indian Realism, 63) 

“The relation of cognition to its object cannot be reduced to identity or co-essentiality. Identity is denial of relation. The cognitive relation is a unique relation which makes the cognitive act apprehend the object…Kumārila is a realist. He emphatically denies identity of the cognitive act with the cognized object like any modern realist. Laird also emphatically denies identity of the knower and the known….“According to the realists, the process of knowledge always implies that the mind is confronted with an object, and always implies that we are never under any conceivable circumstances identical with that object. Even when we apprehend our own experiences, the process of apprehension cannot be identical with the experience which is apprehended.” Thus knowledge presupposes the distinction between knower and known, knowledge and known. Identity between them makes knowledge impossible.” (Sinha, Indian Realism, 137-138) 

“Professor G. Watts Cunningham has described...the [Idealistic] argument a contingentia mundi…[as] the advance from…the essential relativity of all forms of experience (whether intellectual, aesthetic, or volitional), to the idea of an absolute reality, revealing itself with varying degrees of completeness in these, but transcending even the highest of them in the fullness and harmony of its contents.” (Muirhead, Bernard Bosanquet and His Friends, 26) 

“[Bosanquet] saw in [the argument a contingentia mundi] a restatement in modern and brilliant language at once of the Platonic doctrine expounded in the Republic and the Symposium of the different degrees of truth and reality that belong to our experience at its different levels and of the criterion which Plato himself had clearly enunciated of their relative values, namely, the degree to which they are “filled with reality”.” (Muirhead, Bernard Bosanquet and His Friends, 26-27) 

“Thought, in so far as it is itself life (that is to say, the life which is thought, and therefore life of life), and in so far as it is reality (that is to say, the reality which is thought, and therefore reality of reality) has in itself opposition; and for this reason it is also affirmation and negation; it does not affirm save by denying, and does not deny save by affirming. But it does not affirm and deny save by distinguishing, because thought is distinction, and we cannot distinguish…save by unifying.” (Croce, Logica, 99)

My Adaptation of Josiah Royce’s “Argument from the Possibility of Error”

At the dawn of the 20th century, Josiah Royce was considered to be the greatest representative of Absolute Idealism in the United States. Royce was well-respected for his logical rigor, clarity, and insistence upon the need for a holistic account of the relationship between Knowing and Being. In 1885, Josiah Royce published his groundbreaking work, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, which tackled questions of Morality, Doubt, Religious Truth, and Idealism. In the most famous chapter of the work, “The Possibility of Error,” Royce presents a powerful and unique argument for Absolute Idealism. The argument culminates in the form of a dilemma: “Either there is no such thing as error, which statement is a flat self-contradiction, or else there is an infinite unity of conscious thought to which is presented all possible truth.” Royce’s argument undergoes a variety of alterations throughout his later publications; however, I have decided to adapt the 1885 version because of its clarity as well as the intuitive plausibility of the premises. (Furthermore, it is much easier to visualize than his later renditions of the argument. For this reason, I have included a diagram of the relationship between a finite subject’s erroneous judgments and the Absolute Mind’s true judgments.) What follows is my presentation of Josiah Royce’s “Argument from the Possibility of Error.”

P1) If erroneous judgments are possible, then all of the necessary conditions underlying this possibility exist.

“An unexpected result…springs from the very heart of skepticism itself....[Skepticism and] doubt assume this, namely, that error is possible. And so [skepticism and] doubt assume the actual existence of those conditions that make error possible. The conditions that determine the logical possibility of error must themselves be absolute truth....Since error plainly is possible in some way, we shall have only to inquire: what are the logical conditions that make it possible?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 385-392)

P2) Erroneous judgments are possible.

If the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is true, then erroneous judgments are possible. If the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is false, then the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is itself an erroneous judgment. Therefore, erroneous judgments are possible.

C1) Therefore, all of the necessary conditions for the possibility of erroneous judgments exist. [From P1 and P2]

P3) A necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to fail to agree with that which the thought making the erroneous judgment has intended for its object.

“Logicians are agreed that single ideas, thoughts viewed apart from judgments, are neither true nor false. Only a judgment can be false....Error is therefore generally defined as a judgment that does not agree with its object. In the erroneous judgment, subject and predicate are so combined as, in the object, the corresponding elements are not combined. And thus the judgment comes to be false....The definition assumes as quite clear that a judgment has an object, wherewith it can agree or not agree….What then is meant by its object? The difficulties involved in this phrase begin to appear as soon as you look closer. First, then, the object of the assertion is as such supposed to be neither the subject nor the predicate thereof. It is external to the judgment. It has a nature of its own. Furthermore, not all judgments have the same object, so that objects are very numerous. But from the infinity of real or of possible objects the judgment somehow picks out its own. Thus, then, for a judgment to have an object, there must be something about the judgment that shows what one of the external objects that are beyond itself this judgment does pick out as its own. But this something that gives the judgment its object can only be the intention wherewith the judgment is accompanied. A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 396-397)

“Royce points out that all judgment involves purpose in two essential respects. (a) What it shall select as its object is fixed by the purpose of the knower. Even the realist does not deny that I can within certain limits select whatever I please as the object of my investigation or judge about whatever known truths or matters of opinion I choose, this choice being determined by my purpose, whether the purpose be a mere momentary whim or have as its object the most vital interests of the human race. (b) The way in which my thoughts or cognitions shall correspond to their object and so the standard by which they are to be judged is also fixed by my purpose. A map, a verbal description and a book of photographs of typical scenery all correspond to represent the same country in a different way and so are subject to different standards, and I can choose which I shall produce and so by which standard my production is to be judged. Similarly with any judgment its truth or falsehood must be tested by and so depends on the standard the judger sets himself. When a plank is 2.9999999999999 feet long, to say this line is three feet long may be true if I am talking about carpentry and false it the context of my assertion is to be found in the subject-matter of an exact science. Again I decide whether it is more serviceable to use a mental diagram or to think in mathematical symbols, and if I adopt the latter course I cannot possibly be criticized on the ground that the shape of the symbols is not in the least like that of the real object.” (Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey, 149-150)

P4) But that which the thought making the erroneous judgment has intended for its object can only be that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment.

“A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object. It has to conform only to that which it wants to conform. But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of what one intends. One can, for instance, intend a deed or any of its consequences only in so far as he foresees them. I cannot be said to intend the accidental or the remote or even the immediate consequences of anything that I do, unless I foresaw that they would follow; and this is true however much the lawyers and judges may find it practically necessary to hold me responsible for these consequences....Common sense will admit that, unless a man is thinking of the object of which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no real error by merely failing to agree with the object that I have in mind….So, then, judgments err only by disagreeing with their intended objects, and they can intend an object only in so far forth as this object is known to the thought that makes the judgment. Such, it would seem, is the consequence of the common-sense view. But in this case a judgment can be in error only if it is knowingly in error. That also, as it seems, follows from the common-sense suppositions. Or, if we will have it in syllogistic form:—Everything intended is something known. The object even of an erroneous judgment is intended. Therefore, the object even of an error is something known. Nor can we yet be content with what common sense will at once reply, namely that our syllogism uses known ambiguously, and that the object of an erroneous judgment is known enough to constitute it the object, and not enough to prevent the error about it. This must no doubt be the fact, but it is not of itself clear; on the contrary, just here is the problem. As common sense conceives the matter, the object of a judgment is not as such the whole outside world of common sense, with all its intimate interdependence of facts, with all its unity in the midst of diversity. On the contrary, the object of any judgment is just that portion of the then conceived world, just that fragment, that aspect, that element of a supposed reality, which is seized upon for the purposes of just this judgment. Only such a momentarily grasped fragment of the truth can possibly be present in any one moment of thought as the object of a single assertion. Now, it is hard to say how within this arbitrarily chosen fragment itself there can still be room for the partial knowledge that is sufficient to give to the judgment its object, but insufficient to secure to the judgment its accuracy. If I aim at a mark with my gun, I can fail to hit it, because choosing and hitting the mark are totally distinct acts. But, in the judgment, choosing and knowing the object seem inseparable.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 397-400) 

C2) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to fail to agree with that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment. [From P3 and P4]

P5) But an erroneous judgment cannot fail to agree with that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment unless the erroneous judgment is known as being in error with respect to its intended object.

“To illustrate here by a familiar case, when we speak of things that are solely matters of personal preference, such as the pleasure of a sleigh-ride, the taste of olives, or the comfort of a given room, and when we only try to tell how these things appear to us, then plainly our judgments, if sincere, cannot be in error. As these things are to us, so they are. We are their measure. But our present question is, How do judgments that can be and that are erroneous differ in nature from these that cannot be erroneous?....Since the judgment chooses its own object, and has it only in so far as it chooses it, how can it be in that partial relation to its object which is implied in the supposition of an erroneous assertion?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 400) 

“Yet again, to illustrate the difficulty in another aspect, we can note that not only is error impossible about the perfectly well-known, but that error is equally impossible, save in the form of direct self-contradiction, about what is absolutely unknown....[A]bout a really Unknowable nobody could make any sincere and self-consistent assertions that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions about the Unknowable would of necessity be meaningless. And being meaningless, they could not well be false. For instance, one could indeed not say that the Unknowable contemplates war with France, or makes sunspots, or will be the next Presidential candidate, because that would be contradicting one’s self. For if the Unknowable did any of these things, it would no longer be the Unknowable, but would become either the known or the discoverable. But avoid such self-contradiction, and you cannot error about the unknowable....Nonsense is error only when it involves self-contradiction. Avoid that, and nonsense cannot blunder, having no object outside of itself with which it must agree. But all this illustrates from the other side of our difficultly. Is not the object of a judgment, in so far as it is unknown to that judgment, like the Unknowables for that judgment? To be in error about the application of a symbol, you must have a symbol that symbolizes something. But in so far as the thing symbolized is not known through the symbol, how is it symbolized by that symbol? Is it not, like the Unknowable, once for all out of the thought, so that one cannot just then be thinking about it at all, and so cannot, in this thought at least, be making blunders about it?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 400-402) 

“Truth cannot mean mere conformity of [judgment] to external object; first, because nobody can [determine the truth or falsity of a judgment] merely by asking whether it agrees with this or with that indifferent fact, but only by asking whether it agrees with that with which the knowing subject meant or intended it to agree; secondly, because nobody can look down, as from without, upon a world of wholly external objects on the one hand, and of his [judgments] upon the other, and estimate, as an indifferent spectator, their agreement; and thirdly, because the cognitive process, as itself a part of life, is essentially an effort to give to life unity, self-possession, insight into its own affairs, control of its own enterprises—in a word, wholeness. Cognition does not intend merely to represent its object, but to attain, to possess, and to come into a living unity with it.” (Royce, Logical Essays, 111)

C3) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to be known as being in error with respect to its intended object. [From C2 and P5]

P6) But an erroneous judgment is known as being in error with respect to its intended object only insofar as the erroneous judgment and its intended object are known to a thought which compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object.

“Thus, then, for a judgment to have an object, there must be something about the judgment that shows what one of the external objects that are beyond itself this judgment does pick out as its own. But this something that gives the judgment its object can only be the intention wherewith the judgment is accompanied. A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object. It has to conform only to that which it wants to conform. But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of what one intends....[U]nless a man is thinking of the object of which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no real error by merely failing to agree with the object that I have in mind.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 396-397)

C4) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment and its intended object to be known to a thought which compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. [From C3 and P6]

C5) Therefore, for every erroneous judgment that exists, there exists a thought which knows said erroneous judgment and its intended object, compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. [From C1 and C4]

P7) There exists at least one erroneous judgment that had the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) as its intended object.

C6) Therefore, there exists a thought which knows said erroneous judgment and the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it), compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it). [From C5 and P7]

P8) A thought which knew the aforementioned erroneous judgment and the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it), compared them, and judged the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) would be an all-knowing, Absolute Thought.

C7) Therefore, there exists an all-knowing, Absolute Thought. [From C6 and P8]

“In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), ideas are taken to be representations of real objects. As images of what is perceived or thought, a man’s ideas are all that is present to his mind. These ideas are the only content of his thought, and the objects represented remain outside his thought. To this extent the position of subjective idealism is correct, i.e., “my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas.” But an immediate problem for a subjective idealist is to account for the difference between truth and error. If all I think about will be my ideas, and what they represent are but other ideas of mine, then to assert anything about them must be correct. In that case, sincerity and truth are identical, for when I assert anything there is no reference to anything outside of my own thought. As long as I honestly consult my own ideas, I cannot be in error. The truth of my ideas, however, is commonly taken to be their correspondence to the objects they represent. There is a “commonplace assumption” that error is possible, that an assertion can fail to agree with a real object outside of thought. But how is one to judge if this particular assertion is true or false? To answer that, Royce considers what role the judgment plays in human cognition. It is not an act distinct from that of understanding. That is, the judgment by itself has no intelligible object other than the ideas present to all thought. Royce concludes that the judgment synthesizes my ideas—a position he explicitly avows to be neo-Kantian. But if the judgment reaches no object beyond ideas, the common-sense belief in error must either be abandoned or supplemented. The former course is impossible, for in choosing it one would be admitting the common-sense knowledge had been in error. To state “error is impossible” as a remedy for a mistaken assumption is clearly contradictory. So that latter course alone proves viable. Since no single judgment can be an error (for it reaches no object beyond itself), there must be a higher thought that includes both the judgment and its real object. By comparing the two, this higher thought determines whether the first thought was true or false. Left to itself, the latter remains a fragment “neither true nor false, objectless, no complete act of thought at all.” This is a very brief sketch of Royce’s method of presupposition by denial. He begins with the fact of error in the world, and concludes to an Absolute Thought.” (Zanardi, Idea and Absolute in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, 10-11) 

“What follows is a summarized version of Royce’s more lengthy argument. The fact of error is undeniable; to deny this is to contradict oneself, for how else can this fact be refuted if not by proving it erroneous? Each error implies a judgment whose intended object is other than my ideas and so lies beyond my judgment. Such an object will also be an object of a corresponding true judgment. Since the existence of error implies a higher thought, it will be this thought that contains the object of both the true and false judgments. Since the possibilities of error are infinite, the inclusive thought must be infinite. And since error is possible not only as regards objects but also as regards relations, all possible relations in the world must be present to this infinite thought. Finally, to know all relations at once is to know them in absolute rational unity, i.e., as one single thought….Even if one were to find fault with his argument, the error charged to Royce’s position is alleged to prove the existence of Absolute Thought. It alone knows the real and can compare a judgment with its intended object. Royce offers other arguments for the existence of Absolute Thought. The problem of knowing other minds is an instance of employing the already cited view of human understanding. My idea of another person can only be true or false if there is a third party to compare my idea with the real person. There is also a problem of relating a past idea to a present thought. The past idea was unique in its separate existence and in its view of the future. To determine the identity between its conception of the future and the present thought’s conception of what now has become reality requires an inclusive thought which compare them. How else could my past thought have made any assertion about a future moment? Royce refutes a response that rests on verifying a prediction only upon its fulfillment or failure to occur. My memory of an original thought differs from it and so is still in need of a comparison with that original thought. Again, Royce appeals to a higher thought to make a synthesis of what to the human knower are disparate ideas.” (Zanardi, Idea and Absolute in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, 11-12) 

“In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy in 1885, Royce gave the basic proof of his Idealism. Does error exist?, Royce asked. It must, for consider the statement “There is error.” If the statement is true, there is error. If the statement is false, then there is error. Therefore, there is error. But what is error? A statement is in error if it does not correspond to its object. But what is the object referred to? A statement about a particular tree must correspond to that tree, not just to any tree. In other words, reference is intentional; the statement must correspond to its intended object. But for one to intend a given object, one must already know the object, and how can one be wrong about an object one already knows? Royce’s famous example is the case of John and Thomas, each of whom refers to the other. But when John refers to Thomas, it is to Thomas as John conceives him that he refers, and John can hardly be in error about his own idea of John. For error to be possible in this situation, a third knower is required who can compare John’s idea of Thomas with real Thomas, and Thomas’s idea of John with real John. But then we face a regress, for the third knower can only know his ideas of John and Thomas, and so we would need a forth knower to guarantee the third knower’s ideas, and so on. The solution, Royce held, is that John and Thomas are both ideas in the mind of the third knower, for about his own ideas the third knower cannot be in error. John and Thomas are therefore ideal; the third knower is the Absolute who knows not only what John and Thomas think but what they intended—namely, the real John and Thomas. This is possible in the same sense in which one can intend to recall a name one knows but cannot bring to mind. John and Thomas can intend each other as they really are, yet only be able to think of each other erroneously. But the Absolute, whose ideas John and Thomas are, knows their unconscious intentions, and so can compare the two. This argument led Royce to conclude that whatever we can be wrong about, and so whatever we can make true statements about, must be ideas in the mind of the Absolute. The world is therefore Ideal.” (Murphey, C.I. Lewis: The Last Great Pragmatist, 12-13) 

“For my next example I want to move forward only a few years and consider an argument from the existence of error put forward by the young Josiah Royce, in his book The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. That error occurs is undeniable, points out Royce, for if we deny it we commit at least to the erroneous belief that it does. But what is error? Error occurs when the thing we refer to is other than we say it is, when our judgement fails to agree with its intended object. It implies that there is a gap between what we judge about the world and what is actually the case. If they are to be in error ideas call for something other than themselves about which they err. And yet matters become more complex if we ask ourselves how this might come about, for on closer reflection it is hard to see how this gap might open up. How can our judgement fail to agree with its object if the only object it has it that which it describes? A paradox appears. By definition we are in error about what we don’t know, but how can we even speak about or refer to the unknown? “About a really Unknowable [writes Royce] nobody could make any sincere and self-consistent assertions that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions about the Unknowable would of necessity be meaningless. And being meaningless, they could not well be false.” He proposes an ingenious solution. If all reality is present to a single infinite thought in which, in our very limited and incomplete ways, we participate, then error may be explained as the phenomena in which, in our imperfect consciousness, we partially intend that which a wider thought successfully articulates. Our object of reference is given in the perfectly organized experience that completes it and which characterises the reality we meant, for if there is reference beyond our ideas there is no reference beyond ideas themselves. Reality just is ‘perfectly organised experience’. But Royce’s point is not merely that another sees fully what I grasp only in part, rather he is suggesting that the divine perspective fixes that which I intend but erroneously put, for it is a view in which I actually participate. The puzzling implication of this, that I somehow both known and do not know what I mean, Royce attempts to elucidate by reference to the familiar experience of finally hitting upon a lost name or idea—‘That’s what I meant all along’ we say.” (Mander, On Arguing for the Existence of God as a Synthesis Between Realism and Anti-Realism, 103)

“The centrality of epistemology in Royce’s work is evident in his earliest deduction of the absolute, the well-known argument from error. Royce developed this argument in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, published in 1885, and it contains elements that were to reappear in later work. The argument begins with a concern with skepticism and relativism, that either truth is unattainable or that there is no truth independent of a perceiver or someone offering a judgment. Royce makes short work of the “relativity of truth” by asking us to consider the proposition that error exists. If the proposition is false then error exists, and if it is true then error exists. When we ask, however, how error is possible, or what are its logical conditions, an answer is less clear. A mistaken judgment, Royce says, is defined as one that does not agree with its object, in which subject and predicate are combined in a way that does not correspond with the object. On the face of it, this does not seem to present a difficulty, but the situation becomes problematic when we consider the nature of the supposed agreement or correspondence between a judgment and its object. A particular judgment is not about just any object at all, or any one set of similar objects, but rather it has a particular object. A judgment “picks out as its own” a particular object, and it does so by intending that object. A judgment is about an object, has an object, only when the individual making the judgment intends just that object. But to intend a particular object, the individual must to some degree know the object, and here is the dilemma. To judge, one must intend an object; to intend, one must know the object; thus, a false judgment can only be about an object which one knows. Error is only possible about that which is known. One may be tempted to resolve the dilemma by distinguishing between an object as intended by a judgment and the same object as it is independent of the judgment. But a judgment has as its object an intended object, so that the question still arises, how can one be in error about an object as one conceives it? It appears that one cannot be mistaken about an object as conceived, because however it is conceived, so it is. Error, then, must somehow be in the relation between the object as intended or conceived and the object as independent. But a judgment requires intention, so an object unintended bears no relation to a judgment. The only way this dilemma can be resolved, Royce argued, is through the presence of a third term in the relation. The agreement or disagreement of the intended object of a judgment with the independent object requires that both be present to, or observable by, a third, more inclusive consciousness that is able to compare them and to know whether the judgment is true or in error. With this idea in mind, consider the case of a judgment that concerns the future. Here the possibility of a judgment, true or false, seems even more remote because we assume that the future does not exist, which is to say, no object exists for such a judgment to intend. Yet we do make judgments, including false judgments, concerning the future, and they are possible only on the supposition that the judgment and its object, the future, are present to a consciousness that relates them. In the end this implies a single, all-inclusive absolute thought in which all reality, all past, present, and future, is realized as intended object. The existence of error implies, then, the reality of absolute consciousness.” (Ryder, Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of the History of American Thought, 228-229)

Reading Notes: January 3rd, 2022

“Philosophical investigation at the beginning of the 20th century was dominated, in America as well as in England and Sweden, entirely by idealistic tendencies with a decidedly speculative trend….[The] thought, that all real objects are dependent on Consciousness, is a central theory in the idealistic philosophical system, which at the beginning of the 20th century set its stamp upon European and American philosophy. A reaction against this united idealistic front appears, however, during the first decade of the century almost simultaneously in England as well as in America and in Sweden. We cannot here enter into a more detailed exposition of the background to this reaction, but its connection with the expansion of the natural sciences can be mentioned. In these anti-idealistic philosophers a contact with the exact sciences can often be traced, which was entirely foreign to the contemporaneous idealistic thinkers.” (Boman, Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of the American New Realism, 11-12) 

“In the book The New Realism a fair amount of space is devoted to an exposition of seven common false conclusions. These are not attributed to any particular philosophical author but are considered as some typical examples of false inferences and oversights which explicitly or implicitly have entered into mainly idealistic theories. Among the false conclusions enumerated, one, the so-called “argument from the ego-centric predicament”, occupies an outstanding position. In the polemics of the neo-realists against idealism the untenability of this argument is of central importance, and Spaulding considers the solution of the predicament as nothing less than “the central doctrine of Realism”. The origin of the discussion about the predicament, which won considerable notice in contemporaneous debate, derives, however, not from the exposition in The New Realism but from a paper by Perry. He was the first to expose and discuss the problem, and seems to have been the first who coined the expression “the ego-centric predicament”. Harlow declares Perry’s paper “the most important and most permanent single study” deriving from the neo-realistic school, and this opinion is certainly fitting...” (Boman, Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of the American New Realism, 23) 

“Perry…defines what he means by the term ontological idealism [and] states that it is “a theory to the effect that T necessarily stands in the relation Rc to an E, or that the relationship Rc(E) is indispensable to T”. A predicament arises, however, when an attempt is made to prove this theory. Every attempt encounters the difficulty arising from the impossibility of examining “the precise nature of the modification of T by Rc(E)”. The elimination of Rc(E) during the course of the investigation is not possible, since every kind of investigation implies that the object stands in relation Rc to a subject. This constitutes for Perry the significance of the ego-centric predicament. According to him, this predicament cannot be an argument for idealism—it proves, on the whole, nothing except the impossibility of using a certain method….It is not correct to use the method of agreement without simultaneous support from the method of difference, but the latter is not available in this case.” (Boman, Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of the American New Realism, 23-26) 

“The theory that the perception relation modifies the thing seems to contain the notion that in a certain sense something exists which, placed in the relation Rc(E), either modifies one or several of its properties or obtains a new property which is not identical with Rc(E). In a certain sense the perception relation can then be said to define the object of perception. A more exact formulation of such a theory meets with difficulties mainly from the claim that what exists unperceived must be different from and yet in some sense identical with what exists and is perceived. This difficulty might perhaps be partly avoided by bearing in mind that there must exist a property G of such a nature that if A is perceived then A has the property G and if A is not perceived then A does not have the property G.” (Boman, Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of the American New Realism, 30-31) 

“[Mill] says in his book A System of Logic that according to [the method of agreement and difference] we must examine “a variety of instances in which A occurred, and found them to agree in containing A,” and afterwards examine “a variety of instances in which A does not occur, and find them agree in not containing A”.” (Boman, Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of the American New Realism, 39) 

“[It] is hardly possible to say that [Perry] has succeeded in refuting an argument which is frequently used by the idealists. In all likelihood no historical philosopher has used an inductive conclusion of the kind which we have exposed above, as an argument for an idealistic point of view. The main reason for this not being the case is certainly the fact that [the] proposition (X)[(X is a thing) ⊃ (X is perceived)] is too weak to correspond to any accepted idealistic theory.” (Boman, Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of the American New Realism, 41) 

“Perry’s argumentation seems to be irrelevant also from an entirely different point of view. According to the rules of formal logic, it is quite correct to use [the] proposition “Of A1, A2, A3,…An, it is true that they have the property of existing as well as that of being perceived” as the only premise for the conclusion that all things are known, i.e. the Method of Agreement provides a sufficient ground for the inductive generalization.” (Boman, Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of the American New Realism, 41) 

“The contradiction [that Idealism commits itself to] which Moore has in mind is of a kind which, according to him, enters into many idealistic theories, and which consists in both denying and asserting that the sensed and the sensation, e.g. yellow and the sensation of yellow, are two different entities….The first proposition can in this connection be expressed as asserting tat perception is something distinct from its object, i.e. “the perception of A ≠ A”. If maintaining the other proposition at the same time will lead to a contradiction, this proposition must contain the notion that “the perception of A = A”….The aim of Moore’s investigation is, in fact, to show by an analysis of the concept of sensation, that a perception of A cannot be identical with A. Thereby he believes that he has either refuted a fundamental argument for idealism, or idealism itself…. [The New Realists] stresse[d] the importance of maintaining the distinction between perception and the perceived. The failure of certain philosophers to do so has, according to [them], given rise to idealistic theories.” (Boman, Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of the American New Realism, 49-52) 

“A perception [is] necessarily a perception of something and this something cannot be one with the perception…If I suspend the difference between the perception and the content of perception, then I suspend perception itself.” (Phalen, A Criticism of Subjectivism in its Various Forms with Special Reference to Transcendental Philosophy, 128) 

“If A is independent of B, then A must be definable, if at all in terms other than B.” (Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, 319) 

“Now what is the application of this to the question of the dependence of things on knowledge? It shows, in the first place, that the content of things is in no case made up of relations beyond themselves. So the content of a thing cannot be made up of its relation to consciousness. Of course, the consciousness of a thing is made up of the thing and its relation to consciousness.  But then thing then contributes its own nature to the conscious complex, and does not derive it therefrom. If A is in relation to consciousness, then consciousness-of-A is constituted in part of A, but A itself is not constituted of consciousness.” (Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, 319) 

“[W]hether the relation of a thing to consciousness is a relation of dependence or not, is an empirical question. It is necessary to examine the relation, and see.” (Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, 319) [Underlining and Italics are mine]

“Consciousness is different from its object….The idealist…fails to see that they are distinct, that they are two, at all….In other words, the object of [perception] is not the [perception] itself. In order that a [perception] shall be an object [of perception], it is necessary to introduce yet another [perception]…which is not at all essential to the meaning of the [former perception itself].” (Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, 319) 

“The theory of Physical Realism as brought forward by Case affords an admirable orientation of the study of English realism….Physical Realism is the doctrine that the immediate data of sense are physical and not psychical. The immediate object is the nervous system itself sensibly affected by external objects. The sensible object is neither identical with the external object which causes it nor with the internal operation of consciousness which apprehends it; it is neither the physical object without nor a psychical object within; it is within, but physical. The results of physical science, it is held, establish the fact that the sensible object is internal, a modification of the nervous system due to its sensible affection from external causes….There is no rupture of physical continuity, no transformation from physical to psychical.” (McClure, A Study of the Realistic Movement in Contemporary Philosophy, 13-14) 

“So far as [perceptions] go, consciousness is that in respect to which they are all alike. [Perceptions] differ only in respect to [their percepta].” (McClure, A Study of the Realistic Movement in Contemporary Philosophy, 14) 

“The analysis of perception begun by Mr. G.E. Moore, [consists] in the separation of the [perception] into the object of which we are conscious, and the consciousness of the object….Any experience whatever which may be termed mental experience is characterized by a fundamental distinction between what is experienced and the act of experiencing. In all mental experience there is this polarization, the two poles representing fundamental distinctions of every experience….The something experienced is always other than the mind which experiences it. It may be variously termed a thing, an object, a [perceptum]…Experience differs only with reference to the [perceptum]….Such are the two elements present in every experience.” (McClure, A Study of the Realistic Movement in Contemporary Philosophy, 14) 

“To “identify” a term means…to establish one property which determines the term without ambiguity.” (McClure, A Study of the Realistic Movement in Contemporary Philosophy, 14)