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)