Reading Notes: March 19th, 2022

“The argument which has met us again and again, and which Bradley treats as cardinal, satisfyingly consistent, is that what must be, if there is nothing against it, really is (239, 242). Such satisfaction, Bradley claims, his system offers.” (Lofthouse, F.H. Bradley, 177) 

“[T]he repeated argument from “may be” to “must be”…is stated more than once in the needlessly provocative form that in the Absolute, “possibility is enough” (199); “possibility is all we require in order to prove reality” (218). We know that all is reconciled in the Absolute, though we do not know how; “but because this result must be, and because there is nothing against it, we believe that it is” (239). There is nothing which “declines to take its place within the system of our universe”; nothing which tends to show that the Absolute is not possible, and that is all we need; since it is necessary, it is certain (242). This is indeed a matter of logic rather than metaphysics. “Where you have an idea and cannot doubt, there logically you must assert” (514). Either affirmation or negation; and since a single possibility (such as the existence of the Absolute) cannot contradict itself, it must be affirmed (ibid).).” (Lofthouse, F.H. Bradley, 189) 

“Show me your idea of an Other, not part of experience, and I will show you at once that it is…nothing else at all.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 523) 

“Feeling is certainly not “un-differentiated” if that means that it contains no diverse aspects.” (Bradley, The Contrary and the Disparate, 472) 

“However, the adverbial analysis of sensory acquaintance seems to fit Bradley’s general position, since it retains an idealist flavour by construing sensations as types of experiences, or modifications of the conscious perceiver….Adverbial analyses oppose act-object analyses of immediate sensory acquaintance.” (Crossley, The Multiple Contents of Immediacy, 182-183) 

“If we call a mental state which can have another mental state as its object a second order mental state, then a first-order mental state will be one which cannot, for whatever reason, have a mental state, even itself, as its object.” (Crossley, The Multiple Contents of Immediacy, 189) 

“The point is whether idealism, taken either in the sense of Prof. Pattison or in that of Mr. Richardson, is able to yield a satisfactory interpretation of the world of external experience. The reaction in recent years [Note: the year is 1920] to some form of realism is a token dissatisfaction with current idealistic theories. And, perhaps, in this connexion it may be worthwhile to indicate some objections which idealism has to meet. Let me begin with the view of the outward world set forth by Prof. Pattison in his Gifford Lectures….The Berkeleyan type of idealism is rejected, and a clear distinction is drawn between existing “in a mind” and “for a mind”. Hence a “thing” is not identified with a “form of conscious experience,” which is described as mentalism. On the other hand, the Kantian figment of the unrelated “thing in itself” is condemned….But Prof. Pattison warns us that his view is not to be taken as implying that the external world presupposes a system of independent existences; and he falls back on the idea of the “essential relatedness” of matter and mind, nature and spirit. Nature, we are told, is organic to mind, and the material world in the end falls within the scope of the larger idealistic principle of the centrality and supremacy of mind. Here we seem to have the theory that the nature of the material is solved by regarding it as organic to mind in that wide sense which it is sought to distinguish from mentalism.” (Galloway, Idealism and the External World, 72-73)

“It is characteristic of realists to separate ontology from epistemology and of idealists to mix the two things up. By “idealists” here I am mainly referring to the British neo-Hegelians (“objective idealists”) but the charge of mixing up ontology and epistemology can be made against at least one “subjective idealist”, namely Bishop Berkeley, as his well-known dictum “esse is percipi” testifies. The objective idealists rejected the correspondence theory of truth and on the whole accepted a coherence theory….The idealists’ notion of coherence included that of comprehensiveness, which allows for empirical control….Now coherence provides a good account of warranted assertability, but it is a poor definition of truth. This confusion between epistemology and ontology is starkly evident in H.H. Joachim’s use of the horrible phrase “knowledge-or-truth” in his posthumously published lectures….[To] base the notion of truth on that of warranted assertability in general, not just on that of rigorous proof…[is to] slide into idealism and [loosen one’s] intellectual grip on the real world. This epistemological approach restricts the real to the field of the cognitive abilities of rational beings, and we have no reason to suppose that reality must be so restricted.” (Smart, Realism v. Idealism, 295) [Underlining is mine]

“Confusion of theories and the world they are about is a persistent temptation….In idealism the confusion (if it exists) may be kept hidden from view because of the use of psychologistic language. Theory is supposed to articulate what in less sophisticated experience is apprehended as a “vague whole of immediate feeling”., to use G.R.G. Mure’s words in his Idealist Epilogue. Mure says “The intuitive moment is the immediate grasp of the experienced content” and “…attention selects within a vague whole of immediate feeling”. With this selection comes articulation and synthesis and we are on the way to physics and other sciences. It is easy to see how this sort of talk can lead temptingly to idealism. Thus, Mure talked (characteristically of neo-Hegelian idealists) of an experienced content. But it can be confusing to say that we experience contents. A drunkard may have an experience as of seeing a pink rat. We must not say, however, that a pink rat is part of the content of the drunkard’s experience. There is no pink rat and so no pink rat to be part of the content of the experience. An idealist might reply that the pink rat has some sort of minimal reality, since it forms part of a system of ideas, even though a not very coherent or comprehensive one. Once more I detect the same sort of analogue of a use-mention fallacy. It is the idea of a pink rat that forms part of a pink of a not very coherent or comprehensive system of ideas, and the idea of a pink rat is not a pink rat. I have indicated that I suspect this fallacy of operating, in a hidden way, in G.R.G. Mure’s system. I am more uncertain about Bradley…but there are other passages [in Bradley’s work] which do strongly suggest the confusion I have in mind.” (Smart, Realism v. Idealism, 296-297) 

“[P]ropositions…(or “judgments” as the idealists psychologistically put it)…” (Smart, Realism v. Idealism, 301) 

“Suppose we encounter something that seems anomalous, in the sense of being radically inexplicable within our established scientific worldview.” (Frankish, Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 2)

My Adaptation of A.E. Taylor’s Argument for Idealism

P1) If X is a real physical object at T1, then X is perceivable at T1.

Prima facie, it seems that the difference between a “real” physical object and an “unreal” physical object is nothing other than the following: a “real” physical object either is, or could be, the perceptum (i.e., object) of a perceptual state, whilst an “unreal” or merely “imaginary” physical object neither is, nor could be, the perceptum of a perceptual state. Indeed, Kant insisted upon this in his critique of the ontological proof. For Kant, the difference between a “real” physical object and its merely “imagined” or “unreal” counterpart, lied in the fact that the “real” physical object—unlike the merely “imaginary” or “unreal” physical object—is, or could be, the perceptum of a perceptual state. Taking a hundred dollars as his example, Kant pointed out that the “real” hundred dollars are, or could be, something felt, touched, and handled; seen, smelled, and tasted; exchanged for a currency of a different type, used for purchasing goods and services in the market, or simply deposited in a bank for future use. The “imaginary” hundred dollars, on the other hand, neither are, nor could be, felt, touched, and handled; seen, smelled, and tasted; exchanged for a currency of a different type, used for purchasing goods and services in the market, or simply deposited in a bank for future use.

With that being said, it is crucial to recognize that to “imagine” something is not to “perceive” what is being “imagined.”  Whenever I “imagine” anything, there is always a distinction between my psychical act of “imagining” and the “imaginatum” which I am “imagining.” My psychical act of “imagining” the “imaginary” hundred dollars is certainly “real” and not “imaginary,” because the psychical act of “imagining” is one with, and enters into, my Experience, it is something that I am actually doing. On the other hand, the “imaginatum” that I am “imagining” (i.e., the “unreal” or “imaginary” hundred dollars”) neither is, nor can be, something that enters into my Experience. If one muddles the distinction between the “imagining” and the “imaginatum,” then one inevitably falls into one of the following two absurdities: (a) they end up committing themselves to the “reality” of griffins, round-squares, and leprechauns because they collapse the “unreal” “imaginatum” into the “real” psychical act of “imagining;” or (b) they end up committing themselves to the “unreality” of psychical acts of “imagining” because they collapse the psychical act of “imagining” into the “unreal” “imaginatum.” For a further defense of this premise, confer the passages from Taylor’s works below.

P2) If X is perceivable at T1, then all of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 are themselves real at T1.

 

P3) If all of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 are themselves real at T1, then all of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 are themselves perceivable at T1.

 

P4) If all of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 are themselves perceivable at T1, then none of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 are themselves imperceptible at T1.

 

P5) If none of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 are themselves imperceptible at T1, then none of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 have the property of “being unperceived at T1.” 

If X has both the property of “being perceivable at T1” and the property of “being unperceived at T1,” that would mean it is possible to perceive X at T1—the time at which X also has the property of being unperceived—but this is a contradiction. Indeed, it is just as contradictory to assert that X, when perceived, is imperceptible. Therefore, if X has the property of “being perceivable at T1,” then X cannot also have the property of “being unperceived at T1.” For a further defense of this premise, confer the passages from Taylor’s works below.

C1) Therefore, if X  is a real physical object at T1, then none of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 have the property of “being unperceived at T1.” [From P1—P5]

 

P6) One of the necessary physical conditions that make X perceivable at T1 is X itself.

 

C2) Therefore, if X is a real physical object at T1, then X  does not have the property of “being unperceived at T1.” [From C1 and P6]

 

P7) If X  does not have the property of “being unperceived at T1,” then X is not unperceived at T1.

 

P8) If X is not unperceived at T1, then X is perceived at T1.

 

C3) Therefore, if X is a real physical object at T1, then X is perceived at T1. [From C2—P8]

“And, as to the principle of the contention that presence in an experience is the very meaning of existence, it is, to my mind at least, as Mr. Bradley says it is to his, so evident that I should find it impossible to meet anyone who disputes it on common ground. Its full force will perhaps be best brought out by our disregarding the special grounds upon which it is supported by Berkeley, some of them only too insecure, and restating it in the form of a challenge. Produce, we may say to the objector, any piece of fact whatever of which you are prepared to maintain the real existence, and I will undertake to show that what makes it real can be nothing but its presence as an inseparable aspect of a sentient experience. What the special fact you choose for the purpose of the experiment may be, whether a physical quality or process, an artistic effect, or a moral excellence, makes no difference to the principle of the argument. For when you have chosen your fact, and made your assertion, “This fact, A, really exists,” we shall invite you to think, as you always can, of a corresponding A which is not real but merely imaginary, and then to say what it is that makes the difference between the real and the imaginary or unreal A. If you will try the experiment, you will always find, as Kant proved in the historical case of the hundred dollars, that the difference does not lie in the addition of a new predicate to those by which the imaginary A is characterized, but always in the actual presence of the real A to a sentient experience, its entrance into some immediately apprehended whole. Even in the case of an A which, for some reason or other, is wholly inaccessible to human perception you cannot really escape from this conclusion. For, suppose you say, “The ice at the South Pole really exists, though it is impossible for a human eye to behold it,” we shall invite you to explain more precisely what you mean by such a statement. You will then find yourself in a dilemma: either you mean that the Polar ice exists with all its qualities, including those which have no meaning at all except in relation to a perceiving organ, precisely as we should see it if we were there, and in that case the ice with all its qualities must presumably be always present, as such, to an experience which is not ours; or you mean that there really exist certain conditions, such that, on the addition of one further condition, the presence of a human spectator, they would yield a perception of the ice. But, not to insist on the point that the reality of a certain object and the reality of some of its conditions are not the same thing, what do you mean by a really existing condition as distinguished from one which is merely imagined to exist? Any answer to this question will show that the appeal to conditions only puts the difficulty back a stage, without in any way affecting the validity of the Berkeleian contention.” (Taylor, Mind and Nature, 58-59) 

“Reality...is truly known to be a connected and self-consistent, or internally coherent, system; can we with equal confidence say anything of the data of which the system is composed? Reflection should convince us that we can at least say as much as this: all the materials or data of reality consist of experience, experience being provisionally taken to mean psychical matter of fact, what is given in immediate feeling. In other words, whatever forms part of presentation, will, or emotion, must in some sense and to some degree possess reality and be a part of the material of which reality, as a systematic whole, is composed; whatever does not include, as part of its nature, this indissoluble relation to immediate feeling, and therefore does not enter into the presentation, will, and emotion, of which psychical life is composed, is not real. The real is experience, and nothing but experience, and experience consists of “psychical matter of fact.” Proof of this proposition can only be given in the same way as of any other ultimate truth, by making a trial of it; if you doubt it you may be challenged to perform the experiment of thinking of anything whatever, no matter what, as real, and then explaining what you mean by its reality. Thus suppose you say “I can think of A as real,” A being anything in the universe; now think, as you always can, of an imaginary or unreal A, and then try to state the difference between the A which is thought of as real and the A which is thought of as merely imaginary. As Kant proved, in the famous case of the real and the imagined hundred dollars, the difference does not lie in any of the qualities or properties of the two A’s; the qualities of the imagined hundred dollars are precisely the same as those of the real sum, only that they are “imaginary.” Like the real dollars, the imagined dollars are thought of as possessing such and such a size, shape, and weight; stamped with such and such an effigy and inscription; containing such and such a proportion of silver to alloy; having such and such a purchasing power in the present condition of the market, and so forth. The only difference is that the real dollars are, or under specified and known conditions may be, the objects of direct perception, while the imaginary ones, because imaginary, cannot be given in direct perception. You cannot see or handle them; you can only imagine yourself doing so. It is in this connection with immediate psychical fact that the reality of the real coins lies. So with any other instance of the same experiment. Show me, we might say, anything which you regard as real,—no matter what it is, a stone wall, an aesthetic effect, a moral virtue,—and I will ask you to think of an unreal and imaginary counterpart of that same thing, and will undertake to prove to you that what makes the difference between the reality and the imagination is always that the real thing is indissolubly connected with the psychical life of a sentient subject, and, as so connected, is psychical matter of fact.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 23-24) 

“Two points should be carefully noted if we wish to avoid serious misapprehension. It might be objected, by a disciple of Kant or of Mill, that a thing may be real without ever being given as actual psychical fact in immediate apprehension, so long as its nature is such that it would be psychical fact under known and specified conditions. Many, if not most, of the objects of scientific knowledge, it may be said, are of this kind; they have never entered, possibly never will enter, into the contents of any man’s direct apprehension, yet we rightly call them real, in the sense that they would be apprehended under certain known conditions. Thus I have never seen, and do not expect that any one will ever see, the centre of the earth, or, to take a still stronger case, no one has ever seen his own brain. Yet I call the centre of the earth or my own brain real, in the sense that if I could, without ceasing to live, penetrate to a certain depth below the soil, I should find the centre of the earth; if an opening were made in my skull, and a suitable arrangement of mirrors devised, I should see the reflection of my own brain. A comet may be rushing through unpeopled space entirely unbeheld; yet it does not cease for all that to be real, for if I were there I should see it, and so forth. Hence the Kantian will tell us that reality is constituted by relation to possible experience; the follower of Mill, that it means “a permanent possibility of sensation.” Now, there is, of course, an element of truth in these arguments. It is true that what immediately enters into the course of my own direct perception is but a fragment of the full reality of the universe. It is true, again, that there is much which in its own nature is capable of being perceived by human beings, but will, as far as we can judge, never be perceived, owing to the physical impossibility of placing ourselves under the conditions requisite for perception; there are other things which could only be perceived if some modification could be effected in the structure of our perceptive organs. And it may therefore be quite sufficient for the purposes of some sciences to define these unperceived realities as “possibilities of sensations,” processes which we do not perceive but might perceive under known or knowable conditions. But the definition, it will be seen, is a purely negative one; it takes note of the fact that we do not actually perceive certain things, without telling us anything positive as to their nature. In Metaphysics, where we are concerned to discover the very meaning of reality, we cannot avoid asking whether such a purely negative account of the reality of the greater part of the universe is finally satisfactory. And we can easily see that it is not. For what do we mean when we talk of the “possible”? Not simply “that which is not actual,” for this includes the merely imaginary and the demonstrably impossible. The events of next week, the constitution of Utopia, and the squaring of the circle are all alike in not being actual. Shall we say, then, that the possible differs from the imaginary in being what would, under known conditions, be actual? But again, we may make correct inferences as to what would be actual under conditions suspected, or even known, to be merely imaginary, and no one will maintain that such consequences are realities. If I were at the South Pole I should see the Polar ice, and it is therefore real, you say, though no one actually sees it; but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, yet you do not say that the riding of beggars is real. Considerations of this kind lead us to modify our first definition of the “possible” which is to be also real. We are driven to say that, in the case of the unperceived real thing, all the conditions of perception except the presence of a percipient with suitable perceptive organs, really exist. Thus the ice at the South Pole really exists, because the only unfulfilled condition for its perception is the presence at the Pole of a being with sense-organs of a certain type. But once more, what do we mean by the distinction between conditions which really exist? We come back once more to our original experiment, and once more, try as we will, we shall find that by the real condition as distinct from the imaginary we can mean nothing but a state of things which is, in the last resort, guaranteed by the evidence of immediate perception. If we take the term “actual” to denote that which is thus indissoluble from immediate apprehension, or is psychical matter of fact, we may sum up our result by saying we have found that the real is also actual, or that there is no reality which is not at the same time an actuality. We shall thus be standing on the same ground as the modern logicians who tell us that there is no possibility outside actual existence, and that statements about the possible, when they have any meaning at all, are always an indirect way of imparting information about actualities. Thus “There really exists ice at the South Pole, though no human eye beholds it,” if it is to mean anything, must mean either that the ice itself, as we should perceive it if we were there, or that certain unknown conditions which, combined with the presence of a human spectator, would yield the perception of the ice, actually exist as part of the contents of an experience which is not our own.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 24-26) 

“What our intellect can accept as finally real, we saw, must be indissolubly one with actual experience, and it must be an internally coherent system….When we say that a thing “is” or “has Being,” we seem primarily to mean that it is an object for the knowing consciousness, that it has its place in the system of objects which coherent thought recognizes. When we call the same object “real” or a “reality,” we lay the emphasis rather on the consideration that it is something of which we categorically must take account, whether we like it or not, if some purpose of our own is to get it fulfilment. Thus again the “non-existent” primarily means that which finds no place in the scheme of objects contemplated by consistent scientific thought; the “unreal,” that with which we have not, for any human purpose, to reckon.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 50-51) 

“Produce any instance you please, we said to the realist, whom we had not then learned to know by that name, of what you personally regard as reality, and we will undertake to show that it derives its reality for you from the very fact that it is not ultimately separable from the experience of a subject. A thing is real for you, and not merely imaginary, precisely because in some aspect of its character it enters into and affects your own experience. Or, what is the same thing in other words, it is real for you because it affects favourably or otherwise some subjective interest of your own. To be sure, the thing as it enters into your experience, as it affects your own subjective interests, is not the thing as it is in its fullness; it only touches your life through some one of its many sides. And this may lead you to argue that the real thing is the unexperienced “condition” of a modification of your experience. But then we had again to ask what you mean by saying that facts which you do not experience are real as “conditions” of what you do experience. And we saw that the only meaning we could attach to the reality of the “condition” was presence to an experience which transcends your own.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 69-70)

“To this general argument we may add two corollaries or supplementary considerations, which, without introducing anything fresh, may help to make its full force more apparent. (1) The argument, as originally presented, was concerned directly with the that of reality, the mere fact of its existence. But we may also state it, if we please, from the side of the what, the nature possessed by the real. You cannot affirm any doctrine about the real existence of anything without at the same time implying a doctrine about its nature. Even if you say “Reality is unknowable,” you are attributing something beyond mere independence of experience to your reality; you are asserting that what is thus independent possesses the further positive quality of transcending cognition. Now what, in logic, must be your ground for attributing this rather than any other quality to your independent reality? It can only be the fact or supposed fact…that our experiences themselves are all found to be self-contradictory. There is no ground for taking the unknowable of Reality to be true unless you mean by it a character which belongs not to something which stands outside all experience, but to experience itself. The same contention applies to any other predicate which the realist affirms as true of his ultimate reality. (2) Again, we may with effect present our argument in a negative form. Try, we may say, to think of the utterly unreal, and see how you will have to conceive it. Can you think of sheer unreality otherwise than as that of which no mind is ever aware, of which no purpose has ever to take account as a condition of its fulfilment? But to think of it thus is to attribute to it, as its definition, precisely that independence in which the realist finds the mark of ultimate reality. And if “independence” constitutes unreality, presence to and union with experience must be what constitutes reality.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 70) 

“The question, so interpreted, is indeed only a special case of the more general question, “Is anything what it is known as being, outside the experience in which it is so known?” To answer this question fully would take us much deeper into metaphysical controversy than we can reasonably desire to go in a work of which metaphysics is neither the only nor the principal subject, but we must, at any rate, briefly indicate the conclusions which would naturally follow from the view which has been enunciated in our opening chapter as to the scope and the methods of metaphysics. If our original conception of the metaphysical problem was a correct one, it is clear that metaphysics can never reveal to us any existence entirely beyond or entirely independent of an experience in which it forms an inseparable aspect. As we have indicated already, the whole problem of metaphysics is to construct a description of the world of experience which shall answer to our ideal of “pure” experience—that is, shall contain no single element which cannot be completely described in terms of experienced fact. Just in so far as metaphysics or any other branch of science departs from this ideal, and employs in its theories concepts which cannot be resolved into descriptions of experienced fact, it ceases to be fully and completely true and becomes infected to an unknown degree with errors and false assumptions, which it is the work of scientific progress to remove. Thus, as against certain forms of philosophic Realism, we feel bound to maintain that metaphysics is incapable of ever transcending that reference to actual or possible experience which is involved in every assertion about existence. What is means for us, as for the plain man, what is or what would, under definitely known conditions, be experienced by a consciousness, and wherever we find science and philosophy apparently transcending these limits, and informing us of the existence of objects which, from their nature, cannot as such be contents of any experience, we expect to detect the presence in scientific theory of “symbolic” and unreal concepts.” (Taylor, The Problem of Conduct: A Study in the Phenomenology of Ethics, 448-449) 

“We maintain, then, that taking existence in the full and proper sense of the terms, nothing ever is, outside the concrete experience in which it is an ingredient, what it is within that experience. The utmost reality that can be conceded to any object of experience outside the experience in which it is known, is the reality of certain conditions which, with the addition of the further condition of certain psychological dispositions in the percipient, will yield the experience of the object in question. And by the reality of these “conditions” we must once more mean, unless we are to play fast and loose with words, their presence as an ingredient in some other experience. We cannot too strongly insist that of “existence,” in any full sense of the word, we can form no notion whatever except as forming the content of an experience. As Mr. Bradley puts it, “being” is indissolubly one with “sentience.” That this truth is so frequently denied by realists and misconceived by idealists is probably to be accounted for by the general prevalence of a most unfortunate error in philosophical order. If, instead of treating experience as a kind of knowing, metaphysicians had treated knowing as a kind of experience, it would have been less easy to mistake the mere symbols of inadequate conceptual thought for transcendently real things existing outside of, and independently of, the experience in which they are thought of.” (Taylor, The Problem of Conduct: A Study in the Phenomenology of Ethics, 450)

Reading Notes: March 16th, 2022

“For, if the qualities impart themselves never except under conditions, how in the end are we to say what they are when unconditioned? Having once begun, and having been compelled, to take their appearance into the account, we cannot afterwards strike it out. It being admitted that the equalities come to us always in a relation, and always as appearing, then certainly we know them only as appearance. And the mere supposition that in themselves they may really be what they are, seems quite meaningless and self-destructive.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 13-14) 

“For what is possible, and what a general principle compels us to say must be, that certainly is.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 196) 

“The Absolute has no history of its own, though it contains histories without number.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 500) 

“The Absolute has no seasons, but all at once bears its leaves, fruit, and blossoms. Like our globe it always, and it never, has summer and winter.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 500)

“The actual starting point and basis of this work is an assumption about truth and reality. I have assumed that the object of metaphysics is to find a general view which will satisfy the intellect, and I have assumed that whatever succeeds in doing this is real and true, and that whatever fails is neither. This is a doctrine which, so far as I see, can neither be proved nor questioned. The proof or the question, it seems to me, must imply the truth of the doctrine, and, if that is not assumed, both vanish.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 553-554) 

“And this brings us, lastly, to ask how the position of absolute idealism, that Reality is one Experience, individual and perfect, is found to be absolute truth. Mr. Bradley’s answer, as it seems to me, is: By the ontological argument. Of this argument, he says: “It is used of the Absolute, and if confined to that, will be surely legitimate. We are, I think, bound to admit this claim. The idea of the Absolute, as an idea, is inconsistent with itself; and we find that, to complete itself, it is internally driven to take in existence…And, whether you begin from the side of Existence [the cosmological argument] or of Thought, the process will remain essentially the same” (p. 396). “The principle underlying these arguments—that given one side of a connected whole, you can go from this to the other sides—is surely irrefragable” (p. 396)….Whatever the universe may be, we must say it is; and however contingent—externally determined—the existence of any part may be, the existence of the Whole, ex vi termini, can be contingent on nothing. Again, if we take the logical conception of universe, it will yield us, “individuality or the idea of complete system” (p. 542).” (Ward, Review of Bradley’s “Appearance and Reality”, 113-114)

Reading Notes: March 14th, 2022

“Reality, then, in spite of the sceptic’s objections, is truly known to be a connected and self-consistent, or internally coherent, system; can we with equal confidence say anything of the data of which the system is composed? Reflection should convince us that we can at least say as much as this: all the materials or data of reality consist of experience, experience being provisionally taken to mean psychical matter of fact, what is given in immediate feeling. In other words, whatever forms part of presentation, will, or emotion, must in some sense and to some degree possess reality and be a part of the material of which reality, as a systematic whole, is composed; whatever does not include, as part of its nature, this indissoluble relation to immediate feeling, and therefore does not enter into the presentation, will, and emotion, of which psychical life is composed, is not real. The real is experience, and nothing but experience, and experience consists of “psychical matter of fact.” Proof of this proposition can only be given in the same way as of any other ultimate truth, by making a trial of it; if you doubt it you may be challenged to perform the experiment of thinking of anything whatever, no matter what, as real, and then explaining what you mean by its reality. Thus suppose you say “I can think of A as real,” A being anything in the universe; now think, as you always can, of an imaginary or unreal A, and then try to state the difference between the A which is thought of as real and the A which is thought of as merely imaginary. As Kant proved, in the famous case of the real and the imagined hundred dollars, the difference does not lie in any of the qualities or properties of the two A’s; the qualities of the imagined hundred dollars are precisely the same as those of the real sum, only that they are “imaginary.” Like the real dollars, the imagined dollars are thought of as possessing such and such a size, shape, and weight; stamped with such and such an effigy and inscription; containing such and such a proportion of silver to alloy; having such and such a purchasing power in the present condition of the market, and so forth. The only difference is that the real dollars are, or under specified and known conditions may be, the objects of direct perception, while the imaginary ones, because imaginary, cannot be given in direct perception. You cannot see or handle them; you can only imagine yourself doing so. It is in this connection with immediate psychical fact that the reality of the real coins lies. So with any other instance of the same experiment. Show me, we might say, anything which you regard as real,—no matter what it is, a stone wall, an aesthetic effect, a moral virtue,—and I will ask you to think of an unreal and imaginary counterpart of that same thing, and will undertake to prove to you that what makes the difference between the reality and the imagination is always that the real thing is indissolubly connected with the psychical life of a sentient subject, and, as so connected, is psychical matter of fact.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 23-24) 

“Two points should be carefully noted if we wish to avoid serious misapprehension. It might be objected, by a disciple of Kant or of Mill, that a thing may be real without ever being given as actual psychical fact in immediate apprehension, so long as its nature is such that it would be psychical fact under known and specified conditions. Many, if not most, of the objects of scientific knowledge, it may be said, are of this kind; they have never entered, possibly never will enter, into the contents of any man’s direct apprehension, yet we rightly call them real, in the sense that they would be apprehended under certain known conditions. Thus I have never seen, and do not expect that any one will ever see, the centre of the earth, or, to take a still stronger case, no one has ever seen his own brain. Yet I call the centre of the earth or my own brain real, in the sense that if I could, without ceasing to live, penetrate to a certain depth below the soil, I should find the centre of the earth; if an opening were made in my skull, and a suitable arrangement of mirrors devised, I should see the reflection of my own brain. A comet may be rushing through unpeopled space entirely unbeheld; yet it does not cease for all that to be real, for if I were there I should see it, and so forth. Hence the Kantian will tell us that reality is constituted by relation to possible experience; the follower of Mill, that it means “a permanent possibility of sensation.” Now, there is, of course, an element of truth in these arguments. It is true that what immediately enters into the course of my own direct perception is but a fragment of the full reality of the universe. It is true, again, that there is much which in its own nature is capable of being perceived by human beings, but will, as far as we can judge, never be perceived, owing to the physical impossibility of placing ourselves under the conditions requisite for perception; there are other things which could only be perceived if some modification could be effected in the structure of our perceptive organs. And it may therefore be quite sufficient for the purposes of some sciences to define these unperceived realities as “possibilities of sensations,” processes which we do not perceive but might perceive under known or knowable conditions. But the definition, it will be seen, is a purely negative one; it takes note of the fact that we do not actually perceive certain things, without telling us anything positive as to their nature. In Metaphysics, where we are concerned to discover the very meaning of reality, we cannot avoid asking whether such a purely negative account of the reality of the greater part of the universe is finally satisfactory. And we can easily see that it is not. For what do we mean when we talk of the “possible”? Not simply “that which is not actual,” for this includes the merely imaginary and the demonstrably impossible. The events of next week, the constitution of Utopia, and the squaring of the circle are all alike in not being actual. Shall we say, then, that the possible differs from the imaginary in being what would, under known conditions, be actual? But again, we may make correct inferences as to what would be actual under conditions suspected, or even known, to be merely imaginary, and no one will maintain that such consequences are realities. If I were at the South Pole I should see the Polar ice, and it is therefore real, you say, though no one actually sees it; but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, yet you do not say that the riding of beggars is real. Considerations of this kind lead us to modify our first definition of the “possible” which is to be also real. We are driven to say that, in the case of the unperceived real thing, all the conditions of perception except the presence of a percipient with suitable perceptive organs, really exist. Thus the ice at the South Pole really exists, because the only unfulfilled condition for its perception is the presence at the Pole of a being with sense-organs of a certain type. But once more, what do we mean by the distinction between conditions which really exist? We come back once more to our original experiment, and once more, try as we will, we shall find that by the real condition as distinct from the imaginary we can mean nothing but a state of things which is, in the last resort, guaranteed by the evidence of immediate perception. If we take the term “actual” to denote that which is thus indissoluble from immediate apprehension, or is psychical matter of fact, we may sum up our result by saying we have found that the real is also actual, or that there is no reality which is not at the same time an actuality. We shall thus be standing on the same ground as the modern logicians who tell us that there is no possibility outside actual existence, and that statements about the possible, when they have any meaning at all, are always an indirect way of imparting information about actualities. Thus “There really exists ice at the South Pole, though no human eye beholds it,” if it is to mean anything, must mean either that the ice itself, as we should perceive it if we were there, or that certain unknown conditions which, combined with the presence of a human spectator, would yield the perception of the ice, actually exist as part of the contents of an experience which is not our own.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 24-26) [Underlining is my own]

Reading Notes: March 12th, 2022

“One dislikes to hear of “idealism,” when it is a subjectivistic epistemology which is under discussion—provided, of course, one’s own view has no “taint of subjectivism.” That the attack of the six realists has been upon a subjectivistic theory of knowledge, we have their assurance. That all idealists are thereby called upon to feel aggrieved, may or may not be the case. Almost every idealism holds as important certain considerations about the predicament of the knower. But they need not be those which Professor Perry has exhibited in his paper on “The Egocentric Predicament,” or the similar ones which figure in the introduction to “The New Realism.” The idealist is there represented as arguing that all reals must be known, or that knowing is constitutive of reality, because no real can ever be discovered out of relation to a knower. The writer, for one, admits the invalidity of any such argument. It would prove—if it proved anything—altogether too much. For “known” here means “completely and explicitly possessed as content of consciousness,” the identity of the object with present experience….The identification of reality with that which is present to some one’s experience, or with the sum total of present experiences, carries sinister implications. For the whole problem of knowledge, as idealism sees it, turns upon the fact that the knowing experience means or intends something beyond itself, something which just now it is not….It is characteristic of knowing, as a human activity, that its meaning is not satisfied by the self-evident presence of its own experience or content of consciousness. Hence the part played in idealistic theory by “immediacy and mediation,” and the recognition of the “inevitable fragmentary character of human knowing.” Thus, the history of idealistic epistemology in the last century might be summed up as the history of the recipe for getting out of the egocentric predicament.” (Lewis, Realism and Subjectivism, 44-45) 

“The recognition that nothing can be known except present content of consciousness would be fatal to the idealist’s program, for it would dismiss his problem without a hope of solution. The subjectivist’s dogma—that to be is to be perceived, or otherwise given in consciousness—is as distressing to idealism as to realism. To be sure, the idealist often makes use of the conception of an ideal or limiting case of knowledge—the toilless knowledge of an absolute mind—for which knowing would mean just that detailed and explicit identity of thought and object which subjectivism maintains for knowing in general. But the idealistic theory of knowledge can get on very comfortably without hypothecating the existence of such a case of knowing, provided only its validity as an ideal be allowed. As an event among other events, no such case of knowing can occur anywhere at any time. The epistemological interest in the absolute is the interest in the validity of an ideal. Idealism must explicitly deny that the total reality is identical with the experience of any finite knower. Hence it is, in general, more accurate to represent idealism as maintaining the essentially knowable character of reality than to take it as holding that all reals are known.” (Lewis, Realism and Subjectivism, 44-45) 

“The knower’s predicament is, then, this: all that ever is and ever can be explicitly possessed by a mind which attempts to know will be a present experience; while the sure possession of this experience can never satisfy the interests of knowledge. To glorify the immediate data of consciousness with the adjective “independent” will not help the situation in the least. The present content is there; it is experienced; its “cash value” is already ours. If one has bitten an apple, one is certain of the taste in one’s mouth. It matters not whether it be an independent taste or no. What knowledge requires is that a “credit” attach to the taste. It must be significant of the quality of the apple or of another taste; it must intend something which it is not. What knowledge signifies is its meaning; and meaning always reaches beyond the present experience. The problem of the validity of this meaning is the problem of knowledge, as idealism—since Kant—conceives it. The idealistic interest in the egocentric predicament is to point this problem, and to call attention to the fact that unless it is solved by proving some necessary relation of reality to our ways of knowing, we have only the alternatives of skepticism or various unproved and unprovable dogmas which can neither refute one another nor establish a constructive case.” (Lewis, Realism and Subjectivism, 45) 

“We may state the problem in realistic terms. “Realism does not deny that when a enters into a relation, such as knowledge, of which it is independent, a now acquires that relation, and is accordingly different by so much; but denies only that this added relation is necessary to a as already constituted. Thus when a is known, it is a itself, as constituted without knowledge, which is independent of that circumstance. The new complex known-a is of course dependent on knowledge as one of its parts.” To restate the egocentric predicament: All the a’s and x’s anybody can ever hope to know will be known-a’s and known-x’s, and as such dependent on knowledge, while it is that a’s and x’s as constituted without knowledge that are independent. The known-a’s and known-x’s will differ from these independently real a’s and x’s “by so much,”—that is, by as much as they are affected by entering into relation to a knower. All this is trivial enough until we remember that it is exactly the fundamental tenet of all skepticism, and the bête noire of every dogmatism. The critical question is: By how much does known-a differ from a?” (Lewis, Realism and Subjectivism, 45-46) 

“The logical realism of Plato was troubled to make clear how the greater could be also less. Similarly, it might trouble the new realism to make clear how independent a can be identical with an a which is known, when known-a is not independent. The difficulty is to explain identity in difference when relations are external; to explain how known-a is still the same a and yet different by being related….To revert to the predicament in which the knower finds himself; he seems to be confined to the experience of such realities as are, by their nature, capable of entering the knowledge relation—if knowing is passive—or which are transformed or selected according to certain principles—if knowing is a way of acting. If knowledge transforms or interestedly selects, of if some reals are by nature unfitted to the knowledge relation, then known reality will so far fail to indicate the character of reality as it exists independently of knowledge. That independent reality is neither transformed nor otherwise misrepresented by known-a’s, the knower cannot, from the nature of his predicament, ever know; while the seemingly active character of knowing lends color to the supposition that “knowledge” misrepresents the independently real. The assertion even that there is such an independent reality must remain a sheer assumption. The realist may point out the fallacy of arguing from the fact that all known reals are known. And the subjectivist may retort that if there be any unknown real, it is an identical proposition that nobody knows it. That reality is not transformed when brought into the knowledge relation, is a similar assumption. The proof of it would require the impossible comparison of known-a with unknown-a. That an independent reality has this or that character must remain an unwarranted assertion, when all the a’s which can be known will be known-a’s.” (Lewis, Realism and Subjectivism, 46-47) 

“When the number and variety of activistic theories of knowledge is remembered, it seems a hardy dogmatism which opposes to them all the necessarily unproved thesis that the real is independent of knowledge; and then adds that this independent reality is already so finely divided that no analysis can ever be carried so far as to violate its nature; but that all the relations and all the organization which mind can “legitimately” think are also already there; in particular, that these independent reals maintain all the logical relations; and, finally, that any of these reals or any complex of them may enter into the knowledge relation—a notable case of a relation not already there—without being transformed. Such a happy conjunction of miracles reminds one of Leibniz’s preestablished harmony. But this latter-day best-of-all-possible-worlds appeals to no sufficient reason. Whoever takes the principles of knowledge to be legislative for whatever can properly be called real, and holds reality to be so far dependent on knowledge, will be assured—if he makes out his case—that known-a’s and real a’s are not of essentially different character, and that knowledge is objectively valid. But the person who recognizes his egocentric predicament and at the same time insists that reality is independent of knowledge and its conditions, is confined within the circle of his experience, whose relation to reality beyond he cannot know. Hence, from the idealistic point of view a subjectivist is not one who takes reality to be essentially relative to knowledge, but one who takers it to be independent. Subjectivism and dogmatism are twins.” (Lewis, Realism and Subjectivism, 47-48) 

“The first consideration to be noted is that before thinking can take place at all there is something thought about, and the object of thought is (ideally) the controlling factor in the thought-situation. In whatever sense thought may be creative, it certainly cannot be said to be so in the sense that it produces its own object. Its object is there as a datum which is not created, but found; and this datum exerts a determining influence, since the necessity of thought has its habitat there. That thought is the acquiescence under compulsion is a thesis in which we are in the end compelled to acquiesce. To the extent that thought cuts itself free from this compulsion, to that extent it tends to depart from its own nature and to fall away into mere “imagination” and, carried far enough, to insanity. The position here stated is foundational. The direction in which its proof may be found is pointed by a rigorous analysis of the actual procedure of intelligence itself. Such an analysis would disclose, I take it, that prima facie all our judgments are interpretations of objective situations and that, in the end, every hypothetical judgment has its categorical aspect. The necessity of thought lies in the situation with which thought deals; and apart from this objective reference the necessity of thought is a meaningless, because empty, phrase. Of course, in its first formulation the controlling situation may be hypothetical, a matter of postulates and assumption; but as such it still controls, and beyond there is always a context within which postulates move and which gives to them the signification whereby they are amenable to critical consideration and evaluation.” (Cunningham, Emergence and Intelligibility, 154-155) 

“Possibility never wholly loses touch with actuality, or, if it does, it is entirely fruitless for intelligence; it is vain and void, and vain because void. On this point Leibniz’s persistent efforts to give a specific formulation to his principle of the sufficient reason are especially enlightening and, to my mind, decisive. Prepossessed as he is by the view that sufficient reason is entirely independent of existence and “must needs be outside of” the sequence of contingent things, he nevertheless finds himself at last to hold that the principle “must be in a substance which is a cause of this sequence, or which is a necessary being, bearing in itself the reason of its own existence, otherwise we should not yet have a sufficient reason with which we could stop.” And this is to say that the necessity of thought is in the object which it itself does not create….There would seem to be, then, no possibility of ultimately sundering the other of thought from the order of existence…inevitably ends in ruin; for in last analysis it leads back to the identification of the object of thought with thought itself…” (Cunningham, Emergence and Intelligibility, 155) 

“Thus it would appear that we must admit the truth of the contention that things as they are constitute the criterion of intelligibility. What is intelligible and what is not cannot be determined apart from the given situation; in the abstract and without reference to the given, there is no meaning to be attached to the notion of intelligibility. And what the given compels us to affirm, that we must hold is the intelligible aspect of the situation in question; and it is intelligible because we are compelled to affirm it. Whether the moon is made of green cheese has no intelligibility in abstraction from the meaning of the proposition; but meaning is meaningless except as in some important sense a description of an objective situation with characteristics of its own. Thus it is precisely this situation which must determine the intelligibility of our proposition. What is intelligible is what has meaning, and it is intelligible in precisely the sense in which it has meaning; what is unintelligible is what has no meaning, and its unintelligibility is precisely identical with its meaningless character. But what has or lacks meaning, and what meaning it has or in what sense it is meaningless, the object alone can tell us. Intelligibility is of the object’s making, not ours. If the situation in nature should force us to hold that “The moon is made of green cheese” it is a meaningful proposition, then ipso facto the proposition would be for us a thoroughly intelligible proposition and would be accepted. Since the situation drives us to hold that such is not the case, it is to us unintelligible and absurd to hold that such is the case. The criterion of intelligibility is nature’s revelation of herself, and our categories are consequently denotative. This, I understand, is the basis on which rests the attitude of natural piety.” (Cunningham, Emergence and Intelligibility, 156-157) 

“But of more direct concern to our immediate purpose is the consideration that the principle before us discloses the futility of a certain type of argument which at times is supposed to have considerable weight. That argument is broadly as follows: since it is possible that things may be conceived otherwise than as we in fact do and must conceive them, it follows that there is reason for hold that in fact they are quite other than we can conceive. An example of this sort of reasoning is found in the rather common contention that since our sense-organs might be differently constituted and consequently give us quite different impressions, we may reasonably conclude that as they really are things are blankly unintelligible to us. The fallacy of this argument, of course, lies in the surreptitious introduction of a notion of intelligibility at variance with the principle previously outlined. For the argument tacitly assumes that there is a sort of conceivability in terms of which we can logically condemn all categories to the status of merely phenomenological points of view; and this is equivalent to the assumption that something may be conceived in a purely a priori manner and may also be seen to be foundational. But this is a mistaken assumption, if the principle that nature alone may tell us what is conceivable is allowed to stand.” (Cunningham, Emergence and Intelligibility, 157-158) 

“I am indebted to many friends and colleagues for valuable assistance in preparing this book for publication…But most of all, I am indebted to my friend and teach, Josiah Royce, who first aroused my interest in this subject, and who never failed to give me encouragement and wise counsel. Much that is best in this book is due to him.” (Lewis, A Survey of Symbolic Logic, vi) 

“Broadly stated, one proposition or notion is logically fundamental to another when the truth of the first is necessary to the truth of the second, or when a comprehension of the first is essential to a comprehension of the second. Thus, the elimination of friction is logically fundamental to the invention of a perpetual motion machine, since the existence of the latter presupposes the accomplishment of the former; and the notion of gravitation is logically fundamental to the motion of an object through space, since, an understanding of the latter necessarily involves an understanding of the former. If X must be true or understood in order that Y may be true or understood, then X is logically fundamental to Y.” (Cunningham, Five Lectures on the Problem of Mind, 4-5) 

“For the Nineteenth Century two of the chief spokesmen of materialism are the German thinkers Ludwig Buchner and Ernst Haeckel….Despite its former popular appeal, however, materialism was pretty generally condemned by leading thinkers twenty-five years ago. Haeckel then was but a voice crying in the wilderness. But in very recent years the view has in principle been revived by a group of thinkers who are by no means negligible. Though, generally speaking, the views of these thinkers are not quite so grossly materialistic as were the older views, the spirit is the same; mind and brain-states are to all intents and purposes reduced to synonymous terms. The older materialism, once supposed dead and decently buried, has come to life again clad in the armor of up-to-date biological terminology. It may even be said to have grown once more into a lusty and militant doctrine and to have assumed a rather formidable offensive.” (Cunningham, Five Lectures on the Problem of Mind, 22-23) 

“The older arguments for materialism are generally quite well known…Two of the main ones must, however, at least be mentioned. The first is based upon the intimacy of the relation that obviously exists between mind and body—a relation whose intimacy is being progressively emphasized by developing knowledge….With progress in modern physiological analysis it has become increasingly clear that mental processes are bound in intimate union with the central nervous system, that mind is to be found enmeshed within that intricate network of neurons which constitute the brain and its path of contact with the environment….Special regions within the brain have long since been discovered for the several senses, such as seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling. Motor regions of the brain have also been definitely located, and associative areas have been fairly well mapped. This intimacy between mind and nervous system is further established by the numerous revelations of comparative anatomy in respect of the concomitant variations between mind and the complexity of organization of the nervous system—the greater the complexity the broader the scope of mind, and vice versa.” (Cunningham, Five Lectures on the Problem of Mind, 4-5) 

“Such facts as these…have at times been supposed to lie in support of materialism. Mind is enmeshed in brain: injure a part of the brain, a portion of mind is deranged; stimulate the brain, mind is affected thereby; develop the complexity of the nervous system, mind gains in scope and power; destroy the brain, mind disappears. Mind, therefore, is brain—so rand the older argument for materialism. It is fairly clear nowadays, however, that this argument lacks cogency….[T]he only inference warranted by the facts is that the relation between mind and nervous system is a peculiarly close and intimate one; to hold that the facts establish the relation of identity is certainly to outrun the evidence. Such facts have all along been accepted by those who strenuously deny the relation of identity, nor is there any contradiction in this position. One may hold that the different mental processes are distributed throughout the brain, and at the same time, and without the slightest trace of inconsistency, maintain that mental processes are quite distinct from brain activity….“Mind is closely, even indissolubly connected with the neuro-muscular system” and “mind is identical with the neuro-muscular system” are two quite distinct assertions; the relation of “close connection” and the relation of “identity” are different types of relation. And the facts disclosed by psycho-physiological analysis prove the first relation, not the second. Materialism is, therefore, not established by such facts.” (Cunningham, Five Lectures on the Problem of Mind, 25-26)  

“Spirit: Wilt thou then not explain to me what is a cause? 

I: I find a certain thing determined this way or that. I am not content with knowing that it is so, I assume that it has become so, and that, not by and through itself only, but by means of a power out of itself. This foreign power, that made it what it is, contains then its cause. That my sensation must have a cause, means merely that it must be produced in me by a force out of myself. 

Spirit: This force or cause, thou addest in thought to the sensation of which thou art immediately conscious, and thus arises in thee the concept of an [external] object….But how then dost thou know, and how can it be proved, that thy sensation must have a cause?....Dost thou know this by immediate perception? 

I: How could I? Since in perception there is nothing more than a consciousness that in me something is, by no means however that it has become so; far less that it has become so by an extraneous force lying beyond the limits of perception. 

Spirit: Or this idea obtained by generalizing thy observation of things, out of thyself, whose cause thou hast invariably discovered to lie out of themselves, and applying this observation subsequently to thyself and the various states of thine own being? 

I: Do not treat me like a child, and ascribe to me evident absurdities. By the idea of cause I first arrive at a knowledge of existence of things out of myself; how then can I by observation of these things obtain the idea of a cause. Shall the earth rest on the great elephant, and the great elephant again upon the earth?” (Fichte, The Destination of Man, 44-45)

Reading Notes: March 10th, 2022

“A “constant” magnitude, in any given process, is one which does not change its value. A magnitude to which, in the course of any given process, different values are assigned, is said to be “variable.” The earlier letters a, b, c,… of the alphabet are generally used to denote constant, and the later letters …u, v, w, x, y, z to denote variable magnitudes.” (Lamb, Infinitesimal Calculus, 1) 

“One variable quantity is said to be a “function” of another when, other things remaining the same, if the value of the latter be fixed that of the former becomes determinate. The two quantities thus related are distinguished as the “dependent” and the “independent” variable respectively.” (Lamb, Infinitesimal Calculus, 12) 

“The following investigations proceed on the assumption that the matter with which we deal may be treated as practically continuous and homogeneous in structure; i.e. we assume that the properties of the smallest portions into which we can conceive it to be divided are the same as those of the substance in bulk. The fundamental property of a fluid is that it cannot be in equilibrium in a state of stress such that the mutual action between two adjacent parts is oblique to the common surface. (Lamb, Hydrodynamics, 1) 

“For some good observations on the fallacy of assuming that mathematical symbolism must always be interpretable, see B. Russell, Foundations of Geometry, p. 45-46…” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 36) 

“[W]e may set up…the following definitions: a priori applies to any pieces of knowledge which, though perhaps elicited by experience, is logically presupposed in experience: subjective applies to any mental state whose immediate cause lies, not in the external world, but within the limits of the subject….Now the only mental states whose immediate cause lie in the external world are sensations. A pure sensation is, of course, an impossible abstraction—we are never wholly passive under the action of an external stimulus.” (Russell, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, 2) 

“But modern logic has shown that necessary propositions are always, in one aspect at least, hypothetical. There may be, and usually is, an implication that the connection, of which necessity is predicated, has some existence, but still, necessity always points beyond itself to a ground of necessity, and asserts this ground rather than the actual connection.” (Russell, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, 4) 

“I use “experience” here in the widest possible sense, the sense in which the word is used by Bradley.” (Russell, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, 4) 

“Conceptions of magnitude, according to Riemann, are possible there only, where we have a general conception, capable of various determinations (Bestimmungsweisen). The various determinations of such a conception together form a manifold, which is continuous or discrete, according as the passage from one determination to another is continuous or discrete. Particular bits of a manifold, or quanta, can be compared by counting when discrete, and by measurement when continuous….We thus reach the general conception of a manifold of several dimensions, of which space and colours are mentioned as special cases….But by the assumption, from the start, that space can be regarded as a quantity, he has been led to state the problem as: What sort of magnitude is space? Rather than: What must space be in order that we may be able to regard it as a magnitude at all? He does not realize, either…that an elaborate Geometry is possible which does not deal with space as a quantity at all. His definition of space as a species of manifold, therefore…leaves obscure the true ground for this nature, which lies in the nature of space as a given system of relations, and is anterior to the possibility of regarding it as a system of magnitudes at all.” (Russell, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, 4) 

“We may define a continuous manifold as any continuum of elements, such that a single element is defined by n continuously variable magnitudes. This definition does not really include space, for coordinates in space do not define a point, but its relations to the origin, which is itself arbitrary. It includes, however, the analytical conception of space with which Riemann deals, and may, therefore, be allowed to stand for the moment. Riemann then assumes that the difference—or distance, as it may be loosely called—between any two elements is comparable, as regards magnitude, to the difference between any other two.” (Russell, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, 20) 

“In the first place, externality is an essentially relative conception—nothing can be external to itself. To be external to something, is to be an “Other” with some relation to that thing. Hence, when we abstract a form of externality from all material content, and study it in isolation, position will appear, of necessity, as purely relative—it can have no intrinsic quality, for our form consists of pure externality, and externality contains no shadow or trace of an intrinsic quality….The same argument may also be stated as follows: If we abstract the conception of externality, and endeavour to deal with it per se, it is evident that we must obtain an object alike destitute of elements and of totality. For we have abstracted from the diverse matter which filled our form, while any element, or any whole, would retain some of the qualities of a matter. Either an element or a whole, in fact, would have to be a thing not external to itself, and would thus contain something not pure externality. Hence arise infinite divisibility, with the self-contradictory notion of the point, in the search for elements, and unbounded extension, with the contradiction of an infinite regress or a vicious circle, in the search for a completed whole. Thus again, our form contains neither elements nor totality, but only endless relations—the terms of these relations being excluded by our abstraction from the matter which fills our form. In like manner we can deduce the homogeneity of our form. The diversity of content, which was possible only within the form of externality, has been abstracted from, leaving nothing but the bare possibility of diversity, the bare principle of differentiation, itself uniform and undifferentiated. For if diversity presupposes such a form, the form cannot, unless it were contained in a fresh form, be itself diverse or differentiated.” (Russell, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, 136-138) 

“Finally, it is interesting to observe that…the relativity of position involves…the most glaring contradictions. For, as we have seen, it is only possible to define points by their relations, i.e., by lines, while lines can only be defined by the points they relate. This involves either an infinite regress or a vicious circle, the penalty of our attempt to give thinghood to a mere complex of relations.” (Russell, The À Priori in Geometry, 112) 

“What our intellect can accept as finally real, we saw, must be indissolubly one with actual experience, and it must be an internally coherent system….When we say that a thing “is” or “has Being,” we seem primarily to mean that it is an object for the knowing consciousness, that it has its place in the system of objects which coherent thought recognizes. When we call the same object “real” or a “reality,” we lay the emphasis rather on the consideration that it is something of which we categorically must take account, whether we like it or not, if some purpose of our own is to get it fulfilment. Thus again the “non-existent” primarily means that which finds no place in the scheme of objects contemplated by consistent scientific thought; the “unreal,” that with which we have not, for any human purpose, to reckon.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 50-51) 

“Produce any instance you please, we said to the realist, whom we had not then learned to know by that name, of what you personally regard as reality, and we will undertake to show that it derives its reality for you from the very fact that it is not ultimately separable from the experience of a subject. A thing is real for you, and not merely imaginary, precisely because in some aspect of its character it enters into and affects your own experience. Or, what is the same thing in other words, it is real for you because it affects favourably or otherwise some subjective interest of your own. To be sure, the thing as it enters into your experience, as it affects your own subjective interests, is not the thing as it is in its fullness; it only touches your life through some one of its many sides. And this may lead you to argue that the real thing is the unexperienced “condition” of a modification of your experience. But then we had again to ask what you mean by saying that facts which you do not experience are real as “conditions” of what you do experience. And we saw that the only meaning we could attach to the reality of the “condition” was presence to an experience which transcends your own.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 69-70) 

“To this general argument we may add two corollaries or supplementary considerations, which, without introducing anything fresh, may help to make its full force more apparent. (1) The argument, as originally presented, was concerned directly with the that of reality, the mere fact of its existence. But we may also state it, if we please, from the side of the what, the nature possessed by the real. You cannot affirm any doctrine about the real existence of anything without at the same time implying a doctrine about its nature. Even if you say “Reality is unknowable,” you are attributing something beyond mere independence of experience to your reality; you are asserting that what is thus independent possesses the further positive quality of transcending cognition. Now what, in logic, must be your ground for attributing this rather than any other quality to your independent reality? It can only be the fact or supposed fact…that our experiences themselves are all found to be self-contradictory. There is no ground for taking the unknowable of Reality to be true unless you mean by it a character which belongs not to something which stands outside all experience, but to experience itself. The same contention applies to any other predicate which the realist affirms as true of his ultimate reality. (2) Again, we may with effect present our argument in a negative form. Try, we may say, to think of the utterly unreal, and see how you will have to conceive it. Can you think of sheer unreality otherwise than as that of which no mind is ever aware, of which no purpose has ever to take account as a condition of its fulfilment? But to think of it thus is to attribute to it, as its definition, precisely that independence in which the realist finds the mark of ultimate reality. And if “independence” constitutes unreality, presence to and union with experience must be what constitutes reality.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 70)

Reading Notes: March 9th, 2022

“Any experience whatever may be analyzed into two distinct elements and their relation to one another. The two elements which are the terms of the relation are, on the one hand the act of mind or the awareness, and on the other the object of which it is aware [Footnote: the distinctness of these two elements was made clear in Mr. G.E. Moore’s paper on The Refutation of Idealism]; the relation between them is that they are together or compresent in the world which is thus so far experienced. As an example which presents the least difficulty take the perception of a tree or a table. This situation consists of the act of mind which is the perceiving; the object which is so much of the thing called tree as is perceived, the aspect of it which is peculiar to that perception, let us say the appearance of the tree under these circumstances of the perception; and the togetherness or compresence which connects these two distinct existences (the act of mind and the object) into the total situation called the experience. But the two terms are differently experienced. The one is experienced, that is, is present in the experience, as the act of experiencing, the other as that which is experienced. To use Mr. Lloyd Morgan’s happy notion, the one is an -ing, the other an -ed.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 11-12) 

“The act of mind is the experiencing, the appearance, tree, is that upon which it is directed, that of which it is aware. The word “of” indicates the relation between these two relatively distinct existences. The difference between the two ways in which the terms are experienced is expressed in language by the difference between the cognate and the objective accusative. I am aware of my awareness as I strike a stroke or wave a farewell. My awareness and my being aware of it are identical. I experience the tree as I strike a man or wave a flag. I am my mind and am conscious of the object. Consciousness is another general name for acts of mind, which, in their relation to other existences, are said to be conscious of them as objects of consciousness. For convenience of description I am accustomed to say the mind enjoys itself and contemplates its objects. The act of mind is enjoyment the object is contemplated….What is of importance is the recognition that in any experience the mind enjoys itself and contemplates its object or its object is contemplated, and that these two existences, the act of mind and the object as they are in the experience, are distinct existences united by the relation of compresence. The experience is a piece of the world consisting of these two existences in their togetherness. The one existence, the enjoyed, enjoys itself, or experiences itself as an enjoyment; the other existence, the contemplated, is experienced by the enjoyed. The enjoyed and the contemplated are together.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 12-13) 

“We have called the two elements united in an experience an act of mind and the appearance of a thing. In strictness they are but an act or event with a mental character and a non-mental object of just such a character as it bears upon its face….A mental act is only a salient and interesting act which stands out in the whole mental condition. At any one moment a special mental act or state is continuously united with other mental acts or states within the one total or unitary condition….Moreover, not only is the mental act continuous with others at the same moment, but each moment of mind is continuous with preceding, remembered, moments and with expected ones. This continuum of mental acts, continuous at each moment, and continuous from moment to moment, is the mind as we experience it. It is in this sense that we have to describe any limited element of mental action as an act of mind….Thus, immediately, or by a union of many experiences, we are aware not merely of a mental act but of an enjoyed synthesis of many mental acts, a synthesis we do not create but find.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 13-14) 

“Always, however, the object is a distinct existence from the mind which contemplates it, and in that sense independent of the mind. At the same time, every object implies a selection from the world of being. The selection may be a passive one; only those features of the world can be revealed to a mind for which the mind possesses the appropriate capacities….In part the selection is determined actively by the interests of the mind. The color-blind man may be unable to distinguish red and green, the tone-deaf man to distinguish a tone from its octave. In part the selection is determined actively by the interests of the mind. In the one case the objects force themselves upon the mind as a bright light upon an open eye. In the other case the chief determinant in the selection is the direction of a man’s thoughts or feeling’s, so that, for instances, he will not hear suspicions of a person who he loves, and forgets the risks of death in the pursuit of duty. This selectiveness of the mind induces the belief that the objects of mind are made by it, so that they would not be except for the mind. But the inference is erroneous. If I stand in a certain position I see only the corner of the table. It is certainly true that I am responsible for seeing only that corner. Yet the corner of the table belongs to the table. It belongs to me only in virtue of my confining myself to that aspect of the table. The shilling in my pocket owes it to me that it is mine, but not that it is a piece of silver. In the same way it is the engine-maker who combines iron and steel upon a certain plan of selection, but the steam-engine only depends on him for this selection and not for its characters or for its existence as a steam-engine. On the contrary, if he is to use it, he must learn its ways and adapt himself to them for fear of disaster.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 15-16) 

“Object is, in fact, a question-begging word. It implies a subject. A table cannot be an object to my mind unless there is a mind, to which it is an object. It must be selected for contemplation. It cannot be known without a mind to know. But how much does it owe to that mind? Merely that it is known, but neither its qualities as known nor its existence. We cannot therefore conclude legitimately from the obvious truth that an object would not be perceived without a percipient, that it owes its being and character to that percipient. Berkeley saw the truth that there is no idea to act as middleman between the mind and external things, no veil betwixt the mind and reality. He found the reality therefore in the ideas themselves. The other alternative is not to discard the supposed world of reality behind the ideas but to discard the ideas, regarded as objects dependent on the mind. Either way, ideas and reality are one. But for Berkeley reality is ideas. For us ideas are reality. In so far as that reality enters into relation with the mind, it is ideas. When the prejudice is removed that an object, because it owes its existence as an object to a subject, owes to that subject its qualities of white or green and its existence; the appeal lies from Berkeley to experience itself. So appealed to, my experience declares the distinct existence of the object as something non-mental. I will not yet say physical, for so much is not implied in every experience, for example the experience of universals or of number, but only where the object is physical. But the distinct existence of my object from my mind is attested by experience itself. This is a truth which a man need only open his eyes to see.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 16) 

“I do not underestimate the difficulty of that operation….But the first condition of success is to distinguish between the different experiences which the mind has of itself and of the object. Only so can we realize that experience declares mind and things to be fellow members of one world though of unequal rank; and this was the purpose of our reference to knowledge. To be an experiencer of the experienced is the very fact of co-membership in the same world. We miss this truth only because we regard the mind as contemplating itself. If we do so the acts of mind are placed on the level of external things, become ideas of reflection in the phrase of Locke; and thus we think of mind as something over and above the continuum of enjoyments, and invent an entity superior both to things and to passing mental states. Such a mind is never experienced and does not enter, therefore, in the view of an empirical metaphysics.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 16-17) 

“Nor is it of any avail to answer that, although not experienced, it must be postulated to account for certain experiences. The empirical method approves such postulation, which is habitual in science. But the unseen entities, atoms or ions which physics, for instance, postulates, or the molecules of the chemist, are all of them conceived on the analogy of something else which is known to experience. The mind, however, which is postulated in our case, is a mere name for something, we know not what, which claims all the advantages of the mind which we do experience, but accepts none of the restrictions of that mind, the most important of which that it shall not go beyond what is found or suggested by experience. Whatever else the evidence entitles us to say of the mind, its connection with mental acts must be as intimate as the connection of any substance with its functions, and it cannot be such as to allow the mind to look on, as it were, from the outside and contemplate its own passing states. The possibility of introspection might seem to falsify this statement. It might be thought that in observing our own minds we were turning our mind upon itself and making itself an object of contemplation. But though looking into one’s mind is sometimes described, without objectifying tendency, as looking into one’s breast, which is a contemplative act, it is very different. Introspection is in fact merely experiencing our mental state, just as in observation of external things the object is contemplated.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 17-18) 

“Moreover, we are sometimes victims of misapprehension as to what it is that we introspect. I am sometimes said to discover by introspection the images that flit before my fancy or the subject of my thoughts. But the landscape I imagine, or Lorenzo’s villa on the way down from Fiesole that I remember with the enchanting view of Florence from the loggia, are no mere discovered to me by introspection than the rowan tree which I perceive in front of my window as I write. These objects are presented to me by imagination or memory or perception, not by introspection, and are the objects not of introspection but of extrospection, if such a word may be used, all alike. What I introspect is the processes of imagining and thinking or remembering or perceiving. Hence it is that introspection is so difficult to the untrained person to perform with any niceness, unless it is the introspection of some complicated and winding process of mind, as when we describe the growth of our feelings, as distinguished from the objects to which those feelings relate, or some of the less simple mental processes such as desire where it is easy to note how the mind is tantalized by straining after a fruition which is still denied. In so simple a situation as mere sensation of green introspection can tell us next to nothing about the actual process of sensing, only its vaguely enjoyed “direction.” The green which is the object sensed, the sensum, is observed by extrospection. Thus my own mind is never an object to myself in the sense in which the tree or table is. Only, an -ing or an enjoyment may exist in my mind either in a blurred or subtly dissected form.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 18-19) 

“If I could make my mind an object as well as the tree, I could not regard my mind, which thus takes in its own acts and things in one view, as something which subsists somehow beside the tree. But since I cannot do so, since my mind minds itself in being aware of the tree, what is this but the fact that there is a mind, whose consciousness is self-consciousness, which is together with the tree? Imagine a being higher than me, something more than mind; let us call him an angel. For him my consciousness would be an object equally with the tree, and he would see my enjoyment compresent with the tree, much in the same way as I may see a tree compresent with the earth. I should be for him an object of angelic contemplation, and he would have no doubt that different as are the gifts of minds and trees they are co-ordinate in his contemplated world, as external things are in mine.” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. I, 19-20)