Reading Notes: March 3rd, 2022

“On the other hand, induction is dependent upon deduction; for we cannot reason from particular instances to a universal proposition, unless we assume as basis of the whole inductive process some postulate which has real universal significance. Otherwise, we reach only a high degree of probability, but not necessity; a rude generalization, but not universality. When we assert some such general statement as this, that arsenic always acts as a poison, we have based the universal character of the proposition upon an underlying postulate that is understood even though it is not expressed, such as the uniformity of nature, that under identical conditions we always look for identical effects. This will be discussed later more in detail; it is referred to at this point merely to illustrate the deductive basis of induction. Bradley insists that there can be no such thing as induction, because it always rests upon an implied universal which gives to the process as a whole a deductive character….This dependence does not, however, necessarily vitiate the integrity of induction as a mode of the inferential process….Deduction serves to extend and correct the results of induction, and at the same time it itself is dependent upon the results of inductive generalization for the material to form its premises. We come to see, therefore, how intimately associated these two processes are in actual reasoning.” (Hibben, Inductive Logic, 21-22) 

“The end of induction is to discover a law having objective validity and universal application….A law expresses the essential and universal relations subsisting between given phenomena, eliminating entirely all accidental and local coloring. A law has objective validity, and preserves a constant nature.” (Hibben, Inductive Logic, 30) 

“A man who never observes a place of public resort but once in every seven days, and that on a Sunday afternoon, has no right to suppose, because it is crowded then, that it is as crowded on a week-day.” (Lotze, Logic, 343) 

“Locke…had held that while the secondary qualities of matter—colors, sounds, odors, flavors and the like—do not represent the actual properties of the object perceived, but rather the manner in which our peculiar kind of organism may be affected, the primary qualities of form, figure, extension and solidity, nevertheless, do fairly represent the nature of the object as it really is. Berkeley, on the contrary, completely wipes out all distinctions whatsoever between the supposed primary and secondary qualities of matter, and considers the ideas of extension, figure, motion, rest, solidity, and number quite as subjective as taste, color, or sound. The primary and secondary qualities shade off so imperceptibly the one into the other that it is impossible to draw a consistent line of demarcation between them….If the color is subjective, so also is the extended surface, because you cannot have a surface which is not at the same time colored as well. Mere extension void of color is…without any correspondence whatsoever with our actual experiences….[Berkeley] attempts to show in detail that we have no immediate intuition of distance by sight, but that our perception of it is indirect, composed of a group of suggestions and inferences connected with the elemental sensations attending the process of vision, and further complicated by the intimate associations with the materials of knowledge furnished by the sense of touch. It follows, therefore, that the idea of distance and of position, with the consequent ideas of form and figure, are quite as dependent upon the interpreting mind as the ideas of color and taste. The same may be shown also of the ideas of solidity, motion, and rest, number and the like.” (Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 61-62) 

“[Berkeley] discovers…that all objects of perception reveal themselves as to their existence and characteristic qualities within the all-embracing element of consciousness. They fall wholly within this element, and never can appear outside of it. As they pass beyond the bounds of consciousness, they at once fade out into nothingness. While in the focus of our attentive and perceiving mind, they appear with an indefinable atmosphere of reality about them. As they disappear from the field of perception, the idea of them as a memory can never compete with the original impression in vividness, in distinctness of detail or in the actual warmth of reality. When I speak of the external world, that world is never external to my thought, although I may properly conceive of it as external to me. My thought, so far as it perceives the world, completely embraces and possesses it. Moreover, these objects of my perception, these objects which make up the world for me as I know it, take on a certain character from the very nature of the consciousness itself wherein they stand revealed. There is no object of perception which is not tinged by this consciousness coloring. We perceive all things through the many-hued glass of our sense-furnished minds….Sound, color, size, and shape all vary with the senses through whose channels they become objects of perception to the mind. The object, therefore, in its entirety, as it appears in consciousness, is a composite of sense-received and mind-interpreted qualities. Whatever we imagine to be present in such an object as a supposed property, and yet with no capacity whatever of disclosing its nature to the observing mind, must remain forever unknown, and therefore, must be regarded as wholly unreal; it is a fancy, and not a fact of the mind. Every property of every object, therefore, is in reality what it appears to be in the consciousness of the mind which observes it.” (Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 62-63) 

“As all perceived properties of the objects of experience are in terms of sense elements according to the capacity of the mind to interpret them, they are not only mentally discerned, but they are also, in a certain sense, mentally constituted. The world, therefore, exists for the observing mind….Whatever the world may be in itself, we know it, and we are so constituted that it is possible for us to know it, only when all its various elements are translated in terms of thought and appear as ideas in the mind….The nature of the world, therefore, is capable essentially of just that kind of self-expression which possesses this peculiar significance for the observing mind, and as such exercises a function which must needs represent the very core of its reality.” (Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 63-64) 

“Stated broadly, the epistemological problem may be said to center in the question how the same fact can be at the same time a member in the “objective” and in the “subjective” order; how it can be both a physical reality and an experiential fact. To postulate this identity is apparently the only alternative to historic dualism. It seems, however that the fact which thus figures in two different orders at once is not quite the same fact in both cases. The difference, moreover, if we are agreed to forswear the old-time soul and its degenerate descendant, an entitative consciousness, must be located in the fact itself. In other words, the coming into consciousness necessarily means that the fact has undergone some kind of change. Hence the question how the fact can be known as it was before the change took place. At first glance such a formulation of the problem seems to make the whole epistemological undertaking an absurdity. It is like turning on the light in order to see the darkness. That the arrival of consciousness means a change on the part of sensuous objects is conceded by Professor McGilvary, and indeed can scarcely be denied by anyone, if change be taken in a sufficiently wide sense.” (Bode, Consciousness and its Object, 505-506) 

“Consciousness is selective, without doubt. Moreover, it is a peculiar togetherness of things. It involves a kind of centrality, to borrow the term employed by Professor McGilvary, and this centrality may properly be characterized as unique….Let us consider for a moment this togetherness or grouping which is said to constitute consciousness. Leaving aside cases of false perception, our facts by hypothesis undergo no change save that they now appear in this new relational complex. This latter presents us with two new elements, viz., that the facts in question are now marked off from the facts which are not in the field of consciousness, and that they sustain to each other the relations which give to the complex as a whole its centrality. These two statements, in fact, denote the same thing. To have membership in a system which possesses this centrality is precisely what marks off these facts from other facts. It would seem to be fairly evident that unless we take this centrality as a criterion, we have no criterion whatever by which to differentiate between what is and what is not in consciousness. Without this criterion the marking off necessarily presupposes the very fact it is introduced to explain. The grouping together of a certain number of facts would be intelligible only from the standpoint of a consciousness which was already on the scene and constituted a point of reference. The facts in question would constitute a group, marked off from other facts, because this consciousness saw fit to bestow upon them this momentary distinctiveness. Without this consciousness the marking off would become an empty name, since it would indicate no intelligible difference between the facts which are thus marked off and those which are not.” (Bode, Consciousness and its Object, 507-508) 

“Things are sometimes grouped in the way called consciousness and sometimes they are not. This distinction would cause no difficulty if we could suppose that both types of situation were presented in juxtaposition to an intelligence standing apart from both. But the intelligence which makes the discrimination is immersed in the fats, so to speak, and is hence called upon for an act of self-transcendence which at first sight seems mysterious enough. In some sense both situations must enter into experience in order to be discriminated from each other….The distinction between the experienced and the non-experienced must, from the nature of the case, be made within the experiential situation. The danger to which realism is exposed is that in the endeavor to maintain the independence of objects all change may be excluded and the relationship in which consciousness consists become so “external” as to deprive it of all significance. In other words, there is danger of gravitating towards an independence which can be made plausible only by comparing the experienced with the non-experienced from a standpoint external to both.” (Bode, Consciousness and its Object, 509)