Reading Notes: April 14th, 2022

“All facts, every observation of a flower, or an insect, the discovery of the world, or the detection of the characteristics of man, what else are they but relations of objects to our senses? If a rotifer has but one eye consisting of a cornea only, will it not receive other pictures of objects than the spider, which exhibits in addition lenses and vitreous bodies? And accordingly the knowledge of the insect, the knowledge of the effects of the outer world is different in the case of the insect and in the case of man. Above the knowledge of these relations to the instruments of his apprehension neither man nor God can raise himself....Thus then we know everything in relation to ourselves; we know what the sun looks like to us, how the flower smells to man, how the vibrations of the air affect the human ear. This has been called a limited knowledge, a human knowledge conditioned by the senses, a knowledge that merely observes the tree as it is to us. That is very little, it has been said; we must know how the tree is in itself, that we may not longer delude ourselves that it is as it appears to us….But where then is this tree in itself that we are looking for? Does not all knowledge presuppose someone that knowledge, and consequently a relation between the object and the observer? The observer may be an insect, a man, or, if there are such things, an angel. If the two things exist, the tree and the man, it is just as necessary for the tree as for the man that it stands to him in a relation that manifests itself by the impression upon his eye. Without relation to the eye into which it sends its rays there is no tree. It is simply by this relation that the tree is in itself….All existence is an existence by means of qualities. But there is no quality that does not exist simply through a relation….Steel is hard as opposed to soft butter, ice is only cold to the warm hand, trees only green to the healthy eye.” (Moleschott, Kreislauf des Lebens, 15-19) 

“The body and brain are embedded in, and are integrally a part of, the surrounding material world, what I will call the field of matter…a continuum of points or positions. The motion of any “object” in this continuum is conceived to follow a trajectory or line, where the line itself consists of a set of points/positions. Each point successively occupied by the moving object is seen to correspond to an “instant” of time. Thus time itself is treated as simply another dimension of this abstract spatial continuum. The continuum is infinitely divisible; a line in the continuum is infinitely divisible. Thus between each pair of points on an object’s trajectory, it is always possible to insert another line, itself consisting of points. Since the two adjacent points are just that—static points, according to this treatment of an object’s motion, to explain its motion between the two static points, we must insert a new, yet smaller line of points, beginning the description of motion by successively occupied points yet again. This is of course an infinite regress. The end result of this infinite operation of division, even could we legitimately conceive of such an end, ignoring the mathematical hand waving of taking a “limit”, would be at best a mathematical point. At such a point there could exist no motion, no evolution in time of the field. Further, as every spatially extended “object” is subject to this infinite decomposition throughout the continuum, then we end with a completely homogeneous field of mathematical points. The continuum of mathematical points, both spatially and temporally, [has] no qualities—qualities at the least imply heterogeneity….[The] abstract “time” that is simply another dimension of the infinitely divisible space is equally completely homogeneous. Any “motion” in this space, logically, has no duration greater than a mathematical point, then another point, then another. The brain, as noted, is integrally a part of this abstract continuum….Nowhere in the brain, taken as part of the continuum, can there be anything but more homogeneous points/instants. There can be no actual time-extent of motions through the nerves, no “continuity of time-extended neural processes”—the logical time extent of any neural process is never more than a mathematical point….Within the brain, taken as a part of this abstract, homogenous continuum, we can never derive qualities, whether of objects or of time-extended motions. We cannot explain how we see a cube “rotating” let alone a “red” cube. Therefore, all qualia are logically forced, within this metaphysic, into the non-physical, or the mental, or somewhere, anywhere but the abstract continuum. But the step by which this generation of events unto and into another realm can occur [is made impossible since] the structure of the metaphysic makes the step impossible.” (Robbins, Review of “The Case for Qualia”, 3-4)