A Brief Outline of Fitch's Paradox of Knowability

P1) If (i) all truths are knowable, and (ii) there exists an unknown truth, X, then “X & X is unknown” is a truth.

P2) If “X & X is unknown” is a truth, then, ex hypothesi, it is possible to know that “X & X is unknown.”

C1) Therefore, if (i) all truths are knowable, and (ii) there exists an unknown truth X, then it is possible to know that “X & X is unknown.” [From P1 and P2]

P3) It is not possible to know that “X & X is unknown”—on pain of contradiction.

C2) Therefore, if (i) all truths are knowable, then it is not the case that (ii) there exists an unknown truth—on pain of contradiction. [From C1 and P3]

Defense of P3

P1) If it is possible to know that “X & X is unknown,” then it is possible to know that “X” when it is known that “X is unknown.”

P2) If it is known that “X is unknown”, then “X is unknown” is true.

P3) If “X is unknown” is true, then it is the case that “X” is unknown.

P4) If it is the case that “X” is unknown, then it is not the case that it is known that “X”.

C1) Therefore, if it is possible to know that “X & X is unknown,” then it is possible to know that “X” when it is not the case that it is known that “X”. [From P1—P4]

P5) It is not possible to know that “X” when it is not the case that it is known that “X”.

C2) Therefore, it not is possible to know that “X & X is unknown.” [From C1 and P5]

Reading Notes: May 20th, 2022

“The thing itself which we know about is simply identical with its intrinsic characters, taken all together as united in a quite peculiar form of unity, which we can name only by saying that they are all characters of the same subject. This complex unity includes all qualifications which are conceivably capable of being ascribed to it, as a whole includes its parts—as, e.g. the leg of a chair is distinguished from, yet belongs to, the chair. But here there is an obvious difficulty. How, it may be asked, can we refer a part to a whole without first knowing the whole, and how can we know the whole without first knowing all the parts? It would seem that we ought not to be able to know anything about a datum of experience without knowing all about it. Yet this is by no means always necessary, even in intuitive knowledge, though perhaps it is sometimes possible. If, for instance, we set out to examine the total content of our immediate sense-experience at any moment, we find ourselves pickling out, in successive analytic judgments, now these, now those partial features and aspects of it; and yet we are aware throughout of these partial features and aspects as belonging to a whole which includes and transcends them. We are aware of this whole as existentially present, though we are very far from knowing all about it in detail.” (Stout, God and Nature, 73-74)  

“It is plain that all the characteristics which we now ascribe to physical things are in their general nature ultimately derived from immediate sense-experience. We should not know what is meant by a thing’s being extended, figured, blue or smooth or hot, if we had not visual and tactual presentations of like nature. From the point of view of science, it may be denied that some of these characters really belong to the physical world. But in spite of this even the man of science still continuous to perceive the sky as blue in the same was as he perceives its extension. We may then take it that in primary and primitive sense-perception the physical object is apprehended as akin in nature to the perceptual sensum. In the second place, what appears to sense-perception as physically real is apprehended as conditioning the occurrence of the perceptual sensum in the special mode in which it occurs at the moment of perception. This condition is expressed by saying that in sense-experience we feel ourselves receptive. The present sensum would not be such as it is, if it were not determined to be so by the physical fact perceived. This causal reference must be taken as primary, inasmuch as it cannot be otherwise accounted for, and is presupposed in all subsequent developments.” (Stout, God and Nature, 144-145) 

“For (1) empirical evidence strongly supports the view that what we perceive depends for its qualities at least partly on our sense-organs. It is not only that we cannot e.g. see without eyes but that, if our optic nerve is affected in certain ways, we shall see what is not there. In order to see stars it is not necessary to look at the heavens on a dark night, it is sufficient to receive a blow on the head. If we get drunk, things look double; if we have jaundice, everything looks yellow; if we merely change our position, the things perceived alter drastically in shape and size. All this strongly supports the view that the objects we immediately perceive, though their nature may be causally determined partly by external physical things, depend for their existence on our perceiving them.” (Ewing, The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, 68) 

“But if we adopt a wholly representative theory, the question may be asked how we are to justify the belief in external independent physical objects at all. If you ask me why I believe there is a table in this room, the natural answer is: Because I see it; but if I did not, strictly speaking, see the table but only a representation of it, what then? Unless it is admitted that I sometimes at least perceive physical objects directly, I cannot compare my representations with the reality in order to determine whether they are good likenesses of it or not, and it is certainly at least conceivable that my representations might be all illusory and produced by quite different causes from those physical objects to which common sense attributes them.” (Ewing, The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, 71-72) 

“For this reason, and also for others which will become clear shortly, many realists make a distinction between primary qualities which they conceive as existing in physical objects independently of being perceived and secondary qualities which they do not. The former comprise such qualities as shape, size, velocity, duration, texture; the latter such qualities as colour, sound, taste, smell. Now it has been found that science can explain our experience adequately for its purposes without ascribing secondary qualities to physical objects, but not without ascribing primary. Colour vision itself can be explained scientifically without supposing that physical objects really have colour, but not without referring to the size, structure, etc., of the light waves and the things which reflect them.” (Ewing, The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, 78) 

“Faced with this distinction idealists have brought three arguments in order to show that the realist account of primary is no more tenable than that of secondary qualities, (a) It is pointed out that we are just as subject to illusions in regard to primary as in regard to secondary qualities. This argument will be dealt with later, (b) It is argued that primary qualities cannot be conceived as existing without secondary and that therefore the two are in the same position. This I think is invalid. It is true that it would be self-contradictory to suppose that there could be an object having only primary qualities. What has shape and size must have some other quality or qualities besides. For to talk about the shape of a physical object (or of a sense-datum for that matter) is only to talk about its boundaries, and there must be something within the boundaries. To talk about its size is to talk about the extent it occupies, but there must be some quality or qualities to occupy the extent. To have motion or velocity you must have some qualities which change their position. All the primary qualities are really relations, and relations imply terms which stand in the relations. Therefore, the philosophers like Descartes, and probably Locke, who thought that physical objects had no qualities but the primary ones must be wrong. It does not follow, however, that the other qualities they have need be identical with any of the secondary qualities we perceive. It might be that the qualities other than the recognized primary ones which physical objects possessed were quite unknowable to us, though they appeared as colour, hardness, warmth, etc. Consequently, the realist is committed to no logical absurdity if he ascribes primary qualities to physical objects but refuses to ascribe secondary.” (Ewing, The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, 78-79) 

“Some idealists have had recourse to an argument from relations in order to show that primary qualities really imply mind. They certainly involve relations, and it is argued that relations imply mind. If A and B are related, they are at once separate and together in a mysterious way, and it is contended that this combination of separateness and togetherness is only intelligible if we think of A and B as existing for a mind which at once distinguishes them and yet holds them together in the same unity of consciousness.” (Ewing, The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, 79) 

“If we hold to realism, it is difficult for us to avoid a representative theory of perception, and…if we hold a representative theory it is difficult, since we never see physical objects directly, for us to justify realism. Most realists have tried to meet the difficulty by an argument to the effect that physical objects were necessary to explain our experience causally. But we cannot understand by a physical object just an unknown X which causes our experience; if we are to understand such objects as common sense and science understands them, we must be able to ascribe to them more or less definite qualities. Now how can we tell what are the qualities of a cause from the qualities of its effects? It is commonly agreed that we can do so only because we have in the past experienced similar causes producing similar effects, e.g. though I have been asleep at night and not seen it rain, I can infer that the puddles in the road were caused by rain because I have on other occasions seen rain cause puddles. [But] the representative theory [states that] we have never directly experienced physical objects, and therefore we cannot know in this way what they are like. Nor are we entitled to say that the cause is necessarily like the effect. A draught is not even supposed to be like a cold in the head or the tearing of my flesh by a knife like the pain it causes. This argument is supported by…cases of admitted illusion which suggest that we can never say what the real shape, size or colour of any physical object is, even if we admit that they have some shape, size and colour. [It is reasonable to argue that], if we do introduce the conception of external physical objects, we can produce no good reason for saying anything whatever about them. [Thus] the conception becomes that of an unknown X, and it [is doubtful] whether it can be of any help towards the explanation of our experience to postulate an unknowable X. (Ewing, The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, 79-80) 

“[If we hold to a representative theory of perception, then] we can only perceive physical objects by the mediation of sense, and we can only infer their existence or properties by using some sort of causal argument from the sensa. Now, since particular causal laws can only be established by experience, it is difficult to see how we can pass by a causal argument to something quite different in kind from anything we have ever experienced. Further, if sensa are to represent physical objects adequately, the latter must contain in themselves elements which are like the sensa….[If (1)] we can only apprehend physical objects in so far as we apprehend sensa which we in our ordinary experience of perception regard as parts of [physical objects….(2)] we can only describe [physical objects] in terms of characteristics of sensa; [3] we can only determine their positions or characteristics either by taking “on faith” our sensa as giving characteristics belonging to them, or by causal argument from our sensa [then] this suggests the conclusion that physical objects are best regarded as groups of entities qualitatively the same in kind as our sensa but existing independently of being perceived. It would indeed be ridiculous to identify a physical thing with a single sensum, but it might well consist of a group of entities of the same kind as sensa, only existing unsensed….In that case it would really have something like the color, shape, hardness, or softness which we under the most favourable conditions perceive in it.” (Ewing, The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, 86-87)

Reading Notes: May 18th, 2022

“Mr. Bradley’s fundamental objection to the Self is that, in whatever sense we take it, it cannot be finally separated from the Not-self, and consequently cannot be affirmed as an independent reality. This objection vanishes at once if the Self be taken simply as the principle of unity in experience. In this case we do not affirm the independent reality of the Self, but only deny the independent reality of the Not-self.” (Mackenzie, Mr. Bradley’s View of the Self, 312) 

“Thought means, we may say, the effort to connect a manifold which has fallen asunder, so as to make it into a whole or system. The idea of system is the fundamental postulate or presupposition of thought; and nothing is properly thought or known at all, except in so far as it is somehow brought within the unity of a systematic experience.” (Mackenzie, Mr. Bradley’s View of the Self, 314) 

“It seems clear that, in the end, we can attach no meaning to a reality which is not a reality for an intelligence; and if in our ordinary knowledge we do not fully grasp reality, there is implied the ideal of a higher form of apprehension to which the reality would be present.” (Mackenzie, Mr. Bradley’s View of the Self, 316) 

“Mr. Eastwood’s note, for instance, in the last number of Mind, p. 222 sq., seems to me to have satisfactorily removed several of the misconceptions with regard to the meaning of Idealism.” (Mackenzie, Mr. Bradley’s View of the Self, 322) 

“What I have wished to emphasise is that the ultimate principle of unity is simply the ideal of our nature as thinking beings, or, as I have called it, the Ideal Self. It is a principle which is the fundamental postulate of our intelligence, and which is present as an ideal in that intelligence throughout the whole history of its activity, regulating and constituting its content. In emphasising this truth, I do not conceive, as I said at the beginning, that I am introducing anything new into Mr. Bradley’s system; I have only been trying to bring out the idea which underlies his work. It seems to me that he has not himself brought it out with sufficient emphasis, and that his work is on that account less complete and less convincing than it would otherwise have been.” (Mackenzie, Mr. Bradley’s View of the Self, 335) 

“As we have already seen, the familiar experience of the variations in perception which accompany differences in the permanent structure or temporary functioning of the organs of sense led, very early in the history of Philosophy, to the recognition of this relativity, so far as the so-called “secondary” qualities, i.e., those which can only be perceived by one special sense-organ, are concerned. We have also seen sufficiently (in Bk. II. Chap. 4) that the same consideration holds equally good of those “primary” qualities which are perceptible by more senses than one, and have probably for that reason been so often supposed to be unaffected by this relativity to a perceiving organ. Now, with regard to the whole physical order…two things seem fairly obvious upon the least reflection, that it does not depend for its existence upon the fact of my actually perceiving it, and that it does depend upon my perception for all the qualities and relations which I find in it. Its that appears independent of the percipient, but its what, on the other hand, essentially dependent on and relative to the structure of the perceiving organ….I perceive the properties of physical existence by special sense-organs, and the properties as perceived are conditioned by the structure of those organs. But each sense-organ is itself a member of the physical order, and as such is perceived by and dependent for its perceived qualities upon another organ. This second sense-organ in its turn is also a member of the physical order, and is perceived by a third, or by the first organ again. And there is no end to this mutual dependence. The physical order, as a whole, must be a “state” of my nervous system, which is itself a part of that order.” (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, 199)

Reading Notes: May 17th, 2022

“The menace of Materialism today has abated for the moment, more especially in educated circles, but while the world stands the old battle will assuredly have again to be fought through from time to time. Materialism on the surface is so simple, that its attraction will always be felt. If this be so, we owe an immense debt to the type of philosophy which in the nineteenth century most effectively routed the materialistic hypothesis, and did so with permanently useful weapons. It was from writers like T.H. Green in England, like Royce in America, that leading Christian writers drew their artillery and munitions for the fight. Adopting idealistic lines, they pointed out that if everything is to be construed in terms of matter, you must know matter first; but matter, as it appears in experience, cannot be the source of that which is itself a condition of appearance. What Materialism has invariably done is to take the emptiest and least significant conception we have—that of bare unqualified physical being, than which nothing could be more unlike real experience—and turn it into the very staple of a comprehensive theory of the universe. But, as a witty Frenchman puts it, if there were nothing but matter, there would be no Materialism.” (Mackintosh, Christianity and Absolute Idealism, 16-17)

Reading Notes: May 16th, 2022

“We cannot apply our anatomical knowledge to the explanation of the phenomena of life, if we do not remember that the body was dead when we dissected it; otherwise we are likely to find that the very process whereby we seek the truth has removed from our view the most important fact to be considered….He who wishes to know and to describe a living thing, endeavours first to drive the soul out of it; then he has in his hands the separate parts; only the spiritual bond, unfortunately, is gone.” (Caird, The Evolution of Religion, 323) 

“Now, among the elements of reality which are put aside or neglected by science, and which it is necessary to restore if we would have the truth of knowledge, is that of which we have been speaking, viz. the relation of all objects to a subject. Like the ordinary consciousness, and even more than the ordinary consciousness, science insists on a purely objective view of things. And here, too, the abstraction is useful and even necessary, so long as it is not forgotten that it is an abstraction. But this is just what Positivism forgets, when it attempts to universalize the mechanical view of nature and human nature. It treats the world as if it were complete in itself without any knowing subject; whereas it is almost an Irish bull to say that, if there be such a world, we do not and cannot know anything about it. The conscious self may be an important or an unimportant element of experience, of that we are not in the first instance called upon to decide; at any rate, it is an essential element. In the drama of our experience, the Ego may be the Hamlet, or it may be only a walking gentleman: one thing is certain, it is always on the stage; and, if it were not, the play could not go on. And if we wish to complete our view of the facts, we must restore to its place the part we have omitted, and consider what difference its restoration makes.” (Caird, The Evolution of Religion, 324-325) 

“We must recognise that the whole truth of our experience is not summed up in what we call the facts of the objective world, even if we add all the laws of their connexion which science has discovered or ever can discover; but that, besides, we must take account of the no less certain fact of the subjective unity of the intelligence for which these facts exist. Any merely objective explanation of the world, however complete it may be, leaves out an essential element in it, and is therefore abstract and hypothetical. For we cannot know a priori that the reintroduction of the element left out will not change our whole view of the other elements. Even if science were able to give a complete account of the world, and to explain all the relations of its parts on principles of mechanical necessity, it would not have secured the triumph of materialism. For it might well be that a careful consideration of the relation of this mechanically explained world to the mind that knows it, would invalidate or even invert all the results thus attained. A French writer has said that “If there were nothing but matter, there would be no Materialism.” The very presence of the consciousness which is implied in such a theory, is a demonstration that the theory is incomplete; and therefore that, if it be put forward as a philosophical dogma as to the nature of things, and not merely as an hypothesis which it is useful for certain purposes to assume, it is untrue.” (Caird, The Evolution of Religion, 325-326) 

“The cause of a motion is never to be sought in the wills, inclinations, or desires of matter. If a stone falls, it is not that it has any affection for the ground; if a flame rises, it is not that it has any love for the sky; if water rises in the interior of a pump, it is not that abhorrence of a vacuum is one of the elements of nature. All psychological terms, such as those of attraction, affinity, &c. &c., are metaphors; and the first condition for penetrating the real nature of phenomena is to beware of taking literally this figurative language.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 37) 

“One of Descartes’ important errors has reference to the conception of matter. He had reduced the idea of it to the occupation of a determined part of space. The fact of occupying a determined part of space, and consequently of resisting other bodies which might tend to penetrate into the same place, is the manifestation of a force. Of this force Descartes cannot help taking account. “A body,” says he, “always occupies a part of space in suchwise proportioned to its size, that it could not fill a larger, nor contract itself to a smaller, nor, so long as it remains there, allow any other body to find place in it.” Here we find, together with the affirmation of the absolute fixity of the space occupied by the elements of matter, the necessary idea of their force of resistance. But this idea of resistance in space, which is the true motion of a body, Descartes forgets, in consequence of his exclusive pre-occupation with mathematical conceptions; he identifies body with the geometrical conception of figurate extent. In his system, body is identical with extent, and contains nothing more, so that a vacuum is impossible and inconceivable.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 124-125) 

“The first guiding principle of all the sciences is the conviction that the phenomena are governed according to the laws of the understanding. Our understanding does not possess in itself the sources of the reality; we can discover nothing by combining simple ideas. In order to know nature, we must observe it: but observation gives scientific results only because the universe is rational. If in nature four bodies and three bodies could make eight bodies, and not seven; if in nature the third side of a triangle did not vary, according to the laws of geometry, with the length of the two other sides, and with the size of the opposite angle, it is clear that science would be forever impossible. Nature is governed in a way conformable to the laws of our understanding : and such, therefore, is the fundamental principle which directs all the researches of thought. This principle often remains unperceived, because it is instinctive, and disappears beneath the veil of the profoundest of habits. It is, in fact, supposed by the first why of the infant, as well as by the application of the highest formulæ of the infinitesimal calculus to physical phenomena. The child who asks the why of a fact asks one to give him a reason for the fact, which is as much as to say that he admits the conformity of facts and of the laws of the reason. This is the result of an instinct essential to the intellectual nature, in the absence of which no research could take place at all.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 161) 

“Harmony, or the relation of things between themselves in a hierarchical order, is the manifestation of unity maintained in multiplicity. Nothing is isolated; everything acts upon everything, and everything is subject to the influence of everything. The different classes of beings and the relations, which, while they do not allow us to confound them, do not any the more permit us to separate them. To discover the relation which would not otherwise be perceived, is on the most essential indications of scientific genius. This principle is expressed by a word which is often upon our lips, without our comprehending its profound significance. The word universe, by which we designate the totality of existences, has as its etymological meaning, according to our best accredited philologists, “that which is turned towards one.” To conceive of all things as turned towards a unity which places them in a mutual relation, is the highest expression of the idea of harmony.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 164-165) 

“To say that “thought is a movement of matter” is to maintain an absolutely desperate thesis. In fact, the question is to include thought as a species, in motion considered as a genus. Now, motion is specified only by its velocity and its direction. Vainly should we turn these two ideas over in all directions, we should never get anything out of them, I do not say identical with, but in the most distant degree analogous to thought, or to any fact of consciousness whatever. Recent labours are in danger of creating in this respect an illusion easy to prevent. Contemporary savants calculate the velocity and direction of corporeal motions which answer to psychical phenomena. It will be possible perhaps to determine with accuracy the time necessary for an external impression to be perceived by means of the centripetal action of the nervous system, and for a feeling or wish to be carried outwards by means of the centrifugal action of the same system. These researches are interesting; but we must well estimate their possible result. They will give greater precision to the theory of the relations between physics and morals, but without at all diminishing the distinction between those two elements. After all observations and all calculations, it will be always inconceivable that a displacement of molecules, or an undulation, or a vibration, or any mechanical phenomenon whatever, should be, not the condition of thought, but thought itself. The identity of corporeal and spiritual phenomena is an affirmation which must be consigned to the class of impossible hypotheses….To identify the two orders is, as Charles Secrétan has said: to pronounce words, the sense of which it is impossible to realise.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 248-253) 

“If physical and chemical phenomena are only motions, it follows that, the organism being given, all manifestations of life are mechanical phenomena. This granted, and if we allow again that all feelings, all ideas, all impulses, all volitions have corresponding phenomena in the domain of matter, it follows that if we suppose a transparent cerebral organ, and an observer capable of perceiving all and knowing all the laws of physiology, such an observer would read in the cerebral organism all the psychical phenomena (feelings, ideas, wishes), just as we read all the thoughts of a writer in the different arrangements of the letters of the alphabet. This is an inductive hypothesis. I admit it, if not as absolutely demonstrated, at least as invested by contemporary science with a high probability. When the essential difference of corporeal and psychical phenomena shall be well understood, their identity will not be inferred from their relations; nor will the extravagant idea be entertained, which figures in some writings of the present day, that physiology will be able to replace psychology. Those who talk in this way forget that they would have no idea of the phenomena of consciousness if they had not the immediate inner knowledge of them, and if they were reduced to the mere observation of physiological facts, which are nothing but motions. They seek in physiology for the signs of psychical phenomena, the knowledge of which is manifestly the necessary and previous condition of the researches to which they devote themselves.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 255-256) 

“Of course, we have no right to affirm, in an absolute sense, that there cannot exist thoughts without a cerebral organism; this would be an absolutely unwarranted induction. The inhabitant of one of the isles of Oceania who should affirm that the fauna and flora of the entire globe are identical with those of his own island would make an assertion not more imprudent than would be that of a savant who should infer, from the conditions of the spiritual phenomena observed upon our globe, the conditions of those same phenomena in the entire universe. That there exist, under other conditions than those of humanity, spirits—that is to say, beings capable of thought and will—is what a serious and prudent experimental science cannot affirm , and has not the right to deny.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 259) 

“We do not yet possess, and perhaps never shall, a settled doctrine upon the constitution of matter. The theory of atomism—that is, of the existence in determinate number of the first elements of bodies, has an experimental basis in the law of definite proportions and in that of multiple proportions. When bodies are brought together in any quantities whatever, those bodies always combine in determinate proportions; this is the law of definite proportions. When one body forms with another several combinations, the weight of the one varies with regard to the weight of the other according to simple numerical relations; this is the law of multiple proportions. These two affirmations experimentally demonstrated, are explained by the thought that bodies are formed of indivisible parts. Besides, every attempt at mathematical synthesis intended to account for phenomena supposes that the elements of matter are definite in number. We may, therefore, consider the atomic theory as expressing one of the postulates of modern physics. But, admitting that this theory is proved, what is the nature of the atom? Is it impenetrable, as is usually supposed? Is it only a centre of force, in such a way that several atoms may coincide in one and the same place. These are questions not resolved. What remains certain is that indefinite divisibility, an undeniable character of the conception of space, cannot be applied to the element of bodies, when once that element is considered as a unity. The confusion set up by Descartes between the idea of space and the idea of matter was, as we have seen the origin of some of his errors.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 294-295) 

“A distinction has been often drawn between two sorts of qualities, or properties of matter; the qualities called primary, which are represented objectively, and which are connected with form and motion, and the qualities called secondary, which are the causes of the different sensations designated by the names of sound, color, smell, taste. The value of this distinction has been disputed….The distinction between the first and second qualities of bodies, attacked by some philosophers, is unquestionably justified by the theories of the existing system of physics. In fact, according to these theories, the causes of our sensations, which are undetermined directly in the fact of perception, are determined scientifically, as diverse motions, whether of ponderable matter, or of ethereal fluid. We explain the second qualities by means of the first. How, after that, can the difference be ignored between phenomena explained and those which serve for their explanation; the difference between motions of matter—objective phenomena which are the object of a representation, and subjective states which result from the relation of sentient beings to motions? Here, it seems, is a question agitated by philosophers which is found to be definitively resolved by the progress of physics. It would be advantageous, we may say here, to replace the terms first and second qualities, by the terms essential and accidental qualities. Form and motion are conceptions without which the idea of body disappears; they are, therefore, essential; while sound and colour are accidental qualities, since they may disappear, as in fact they do for the deaf and blind, without the disappearance of the fundamental idea of body.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 296-297) 

“Is it the subjective fact, the datum of consciousness, which has an objective face? What is the objective face of a subjective phenomenon? If we speak of an objective condition—that is intelligible; but an objective face of a subjective fact is not intelligible. The very terms employed show the necessity of conceiving of an object which is placed in the face of a subject. Is it the objective fact, motion, which has a subjective face?” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 301) 

“Mind, then manifests itself in the knowledge of matter, which is the object of physics, as a subject irreducible to its object; and not only does it manifest itself in a general way, but It manifests itself in its different functions, as we are going to show. What is the essential idea of matter? Its resistance in space. In the idea of resistance analysis discovers two elements—effort and obstacle. The conscious exercise of motive power is the origin of our knowledge of matter. Now, in effort mind manifests itself as will. To say that we know matter as resistance is to say that the exercise of the will is the condition of the idea of body….The will, therefore, is really the starting -point of the phenomenon which gives us “the notion of exteriority.” Without the exercise of the will, we should not have the idea, either of our own or of foreign bodies….The motive power reveals to the mind the essential qualities of matter ; whence proceeds the knowledge of the second or accidental qualities? Physics reply: Physical motions determine in living bodies physiological motions to which sensations answer. Without the existence of beings capable of sensation, there would no longer be light, heat, smell, taste, but only motions which are the objective conditions of those sensations….Without the existence of sentient beings, the properties of bodies called physical, in opposition to pure mechanism, could not make their appearance; this is the positive teaching of modern science. In the knowledge, therefore, of the second or accidental qualities of matter, mind shows itself as endued with sensibility….To recapitulate: there is no knowledge of the essential qualities of matter without the exercise of the will; there is no knowledge of the second or accidental qualities of matter without the presence of sensibility; there is no science of matter without intelligence.” (Naville, Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, 305-310) 

“What is conceived by the mind is sometimes said to be in the mind. To be in the mind means to be the object of a conceiving, thinking, remembering, or imagining mind: not of course to be in the brain, or inside the skull.” (Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 61)

“A word may be added upon Kant's doctrine of Categories, and its relation to that of Aristotle, though it is very difficult to put the matter at once briefly and intelligibly in an elementary treatise. Aristotle had sought to enumerate the kinds of being found in the different things that are; Kant was interested rather in the question how there come to be objects of our experience having these diverse modes of being. He maintained that in the apprehension of them we are not merely receptive and passive; on the contrary, all apprehension involves that the mind relates to one another in various ways the elements of what is apprehended; if the elements were not so related they would not be elements of one object; and they cannot be related except the mind at the same time relates them; since relation exists only for a mind. Kant called this work of relating a function of synthesis; and he desired to determine what different functions of synthesis are exhibited in the apprehension, and equally in the existence, of objects; for the objects in question are not Dinge an sich, things by themselves, existing out of relation to the perceiving and thinking mind; of these, just because they are out of relation to it, the mind can know no more than that they are, not what they are; the objects in question are objects of experience, and their being is bound up with the being of experience of them.” (Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 61) 

“[Kant] maintained in the first place, that the mere perception of anything as extended, or as having duration, involved certain peculiar ways of relating together in one whole the distinguishable parts of what is extended or has duration. These modes of synthesis we call space and time. As to time, I know that I am the same in the succession of past, present, and future; I could not do this unless I distinguished as different the moments in which I am (as I realize) the same; I could not distinguish them except by the differences of what I apprehend in them; but unless these differences were conceived as differences in the being of something persistent and identical, I could not hold them together; hence through my function of synthesis there come to be objects combining manifold successive states into the unity of one and the same thing. It is the same with any spatial whole. I must be aware at once of its parts as distinct in place, and yet related together in space; space is a system of relations in which what is extended stands; but the relations are the work of the mind that apprehends that manifold together.” (Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 70)

 

Reading Notes: May 12th, 2022

“Now I say that whenever I conceive any material or corporeal substance, I immediately feel the need to think of it as bounded, and as having this or that shape; as being large or small in relation to other things, and in some specific place at any given time; as being in motion or at rest; as touching or not touching some other body; and as being one in number, or few, or many. From these conditions I cannot separate such a substance by any stretch of my imagination. But that it must be white or red, bitter or sweet, noisy or silent, and of sweet or foul odor, my mind does not feel compelled to bring in as necessary accompaniments. Without the senses as our guides, reason or imagination unaided would probably never arrive at qualities like these. Hence, I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated. But since we have imposed upon them special names, distinct from those of the other and real qualities mentioned previously, we wish to believe that they really exist as actually different from those.” (Galileo, The Assayer, 23) 

“The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever. For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for universal all such as universally agree with experiments; and such as are not liable to diminution can never be quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which uses to be simple, and always consonant to itself. We no other way know the extension of bodies than by our senses, nor do these reach it in all bodies; but because we perceive extension in all that are sensible, therefore we ascribe it universally to all others also. That abundance of bodies are hard, we learn by experience; and because the hardness of the whole arises from the hardness of the parts, we therefore justly infer the hardness of the undivided particles not only of the bodies we feel but of all others. That all bodies are impenetrable, we gather not from reason, but from sensation. The bodies which we handle we find impenetrable, and thence conclude impenetrability to be an universal property of all bodies whatsoever. That all bodies are moveable, and endowed with certain powers (which we call the vires inertiae) of persevering in their motion, or in their rest, we only infer from the like properties observed in the bodies which we have seen. The extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and vis inertiae of the whole, result from the extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and vires inertiae of the parts; and thence we conclude the least particles of all bodies to be also all extended, and hard, and impenetrable, and moveable, and endowed with their proper vires inertiae. And this is the foundation of all philosophy.” (Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 384-385) 

“On Bradley’s assumptions the distinction between conditions of being and conditions of being-known is not ultimately valid. Hence, the common method of attacking the experience theorem by citing such a distinction is not an adequate refutation of Bradley’s employment of it, unless these assumptions are undermined or called into question.” (Bedell, Bradley’s Monistic Idealism, 580) 

“Feeling is certainly not “un-differentiated” if that means that it contains no diverse aspects. I would take the opportunity to state that this view as to feeling is so far from being novel that I owe it, certainly in the main, to Hegel’s psychology. In the same way what I have urged as to the Association of Ideas is in principle mainly taken from the same source. It would be interesting to learn from some student of the history of philosophy to what extent and through what channels ideas from German Idealism have filtered unacknowledged into empirical psychology.” (Bradley, The Contrary and the Disparate, 472) 

“Facts and views partial and one-sided, incomplete and so incoherent—things that offer themselves as characters of a Reality which they cannot express, and which present in them moves them to jar with and to pass beyond themselves—in a word appearances are the stuff of which the Universe is made.” (Bradley, The Contrary and the Disparate, 475)

Reading Notes: May 11th, 2022

“Physiology teaches us that all perception is first produced in the brain, and connects with external objects, that is to say, here, placed outside the body by a number of intermediaries. For example, when we look at an object, its inverted image is produced on the retina. But, this image does not exist for ourselves, it exists only for the physician who can look at the retina from the outside using a device. The surface of the retina on which this occurs is connected with our perception by the optic nerve, and is also separated from it by the length of the nerve. That which reaches up to our perception is neither an object outside, nor its image, nor any other direct action on its part. It is only the affections of the optic nerve itself….But what those conditions are, what happens in the nerve when excited by the light beam, we know nothing about, and if we can get it somewhere, it will be “outside” and not by introspection….Now, let us look at the very facts of perception. We discover the following: We immediately see objects outside our body and we see nothing more. My inkwell is before my eyes. From it, so they say, emanate light waves, vibrations of ether, by millions every second; these vibrations fuse through the transparent cornea, the lens, the liquid of my eye to the retina, excite the surface of the optic nerve and thereby impress the molecules thereof with a movement, a vibration of sort, through which occurs our perception. Very good; but as regards the object I find no trace of it at all; I only see the inkwell and nothing more. We ask a child, a farmer, a person of the people, if they know something of the light waves, images of the retina, molecular movements of the optic nerve and the brain; they know absolutely nothing, but they see the bodies themselves as well or better than the physiologist. It is, therefore, clear that what we see as a body is only our own visual impressions.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 83-84) 

“What we showed for the sense of sight, can be applied in the same manner for the sense of touch. Here is, on this subject, an experience. We swipe in different directions the tip of the tongue over the surface of the palate. Thus, a clear picture will emerge of the entire configuration of this surface, absolutely as if it were seen with the eyes, regardless of the color. We feel its resistance, the polish, all the little inequalities, such as large protrusions and recesses; in a word, it is perceived immediately. Where does this perception originate? Obviously from our own impressions of touch provided by the tongue, not only because, in fact, there is nothing more there, but because there cannot be anything more, as shown by the simple reflection that follows.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 84-85) 

“The organ of perception of the palate, which allows to explore it, is the tongue. The action of the palate on my consciousness must, to get there, take the road through the tongue. And in effect, while I do not touch my mouth with my tongue, I do not perceive it. Now the question is whether we perceive anything of what happens in the tongue? Obviously not. Not only is it impossible to perceive or feel the molecular movements produced in the nerves that cross the tongue and all its special movements of perception, but we still see that by the contact of the tongue with other objects we do not become aware of the tongue itself, yet it lets us immediately know either the palate or the jaws, the teeth and whatever it can touch in the oral cavity. We can compare the tip of the tongue to these clear lenses that are themselves invisible and make other items plain. It is still evident, as we have shown in the case of sight that our perception of these objects can contain nothing but our sensations of touch and movement. When we ask a physiologist why the tongue is particularly suitable for the perception of other objects, he answers: Because it is very flexible, mobile, and its tip is provided with an infinite number of papillae and tactile nerves. But, as we immediately know nothing of the tongue itself and its features by perceiving other objects, we must first translate in psychological terms this physiological explanation and give it its true meaning. The mobility of the tongue and its rich tactile nerves mean, psychologically speaking, an abundance of sensations of touch and movement, which makes possible a more delicate differentiation and combination of these sensations.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 85-86) 

“Physiology teaches that all perception is through the sense organs and each organ of sense is only capable of a specific excitation, that is to say, peculiar to it, which is always the same, however different be the objects which act on the organ. The optical sense, for example, provides only light or color sensations, be it pinched or hit, affected by light waves or electricity. The acoustic nerve, similarly, gives only acoustic sensations whenever it is excited, and so of others. Most diverse stimuli acting on the same sense organ always give the same impressions, and, conversely, the same excitement, for example, electricity, acting on different organs, produces different impressions, that is those specific to each sense organ. Physiology thus recognizes that our feelings are actually separated from external things, they are totally different, and they are entirely incommensurable with them. The facts of perception prove, on the contrary, that we immediately perceive external objects, that we see and touch the bodies of our experience, that we feel them and taste them, that we are in direct contact with them, and we know nothing of the circumstances that make possible this perception. It follows, with evidence, that what we know as the body, or bodies, is nothing other than our own sensations. Once granted that what we know as bodies is only our sensations, it immediately follows that we conceive the given objects as unconditioned. When, for example, I see my own sensation of color as a quality of a thing in space, I attribute to it then, in thought, a support, a substance, which gives it an independent existence. What would it mean to ascribe to this thought of support, yet another support as foundation or motivation? This would be the equivalent to Hindu cosmology, in which the land is supported by an elephant, itself supported by a turtle, which itself is supported by who knows what.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 88-89) 

“To be clearer on this point, we must first ask the question: What external things do we properly talk about, when we want to explain the knowledge of external things? Do we talk of unknown things, different from the bodies of our own experience and simply assumed? But, we obviously have no knowledge of such things, and it is naturally not necessary to explain a knowledge that does not exist. Do we mean by external things bodies of our experience? But, knowledge of these bodies could not be acquired by induction, since it is an immediate perception. Our sensations are not, as we are used to believe, mere signs of external objects but these external objects themselves. We see, touch, hear, smell and taste, not mere signs, but objects, bodies; the world bodies are present to us, not in an abstract thought, but in intuition itself. No doubt much of our knowledge of the bodies is obtained by reasoning, but that reasoning is based ultimately on immediate perceptions of bodies. If we did not immediately perceive the bodies themselves, we could not think about them, because the reasoning cannot make something from nothing. One cannot, therefore, claim that our knowledge of bodies is due primitively to an induction.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 97-98) 

“When a body is at the same time red, round, soft, heavy and hard, the body is not in itself red, sweet, round or heavy, rather the body is red in relation to sight, mild in relation to taste, heavy relative to the mess of the earth, etc. The plurality of qualities in a body is produced and conditioned by relations with other things. A body, for example, if there were no light or seeing eye, might still be heavy and hard, but it would not be red or colored in any way, nor visible. If we imagined a world where attraction or gravitation no longer reign, the body might have a figure, a color, etc., but it would be weightless. It is the same with all the qualities of bodies. If we isolate in our thought a body from all other objects we find no longer in it the basis of a plurality of qualities. For, all we distinguish in a body, are only the various manners it has in relation to our perception and other bodies.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 155-156)

“By the expression “outside world” two things can be understood: (1) Either the bodies we in fact perceive, see, feel, touch, etc. (2) Or “external” things that are not themselves perceived—quite different, therefore, from the bodies of our experience, and unknowable—but, by hypothesis, produce our sensations. What makes it especially easy to mistake about our issue is that we confuse an “external world,” purely hypothetical and imaginary, with one which is actually perceived; although we willingly recognize, in general, that a truly “external world” cannot itself be perceived….Since the bodies [are] independent “external” objects, and, therefore, quite different from our sensations, the first step of logical thought is not to give to bodies any of the qualities given to the sensation. It is here that begins a truly scientific theory of bodies. They cannot be in themselves either colored or bright, hot or cold, sweet or bitter; they have really no sensible quality. But, since all real qualities are given in our sensations, the bodies themselves are without qualities. They are left with no other specific character other than being in space, filling space and acting on one another. But, the property of filling a space, of being extended, is logically contradictory. For, what is extended is present both at different points of space and there is an immediate contradiction in the thought that one same real thing be present simultaneously in different points in space. The essence of extension, in effect, resolves, if we look at it closely, in pure externalities, that is to say, a nothingness. What is extended is composed, but, nonetheless, composed of nothing, since all its parts—small as they can be supposed—are themselves extended and divisible to infinity and still composed. Bodies, therefore, have no “inside” because all bodies can be parted in the middle and then what was “inside” is put “outside,” becomes a pure surface, and so on to infinity.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 359-360) 

“The bodies are not the causes of sensations, but their essence precisely consists in the sensations. The bodies are only one way of representing sensations, as a manner for them to appear. What distinguishes in general bodies from sensations is their existence, their extension, in space. The fundamental concept of bodies is unquestionably that of something extended that resists. But sensations, as such, cannot be in space, have extension, precisely because they are not bodies. Hence, the intuition of space could never be derived solely from simple sensations and their relations. All the qualities of the bodies that are linked with their extent are not, in fact, of the nature of sensations and must let the bodies appear as something quite different from sensations. But, the extent could obviously not come from outside our knowledge, because nothing that comes from the outside can communicate with us but through our sensations. The extension, therefore, is added to the sensations by some internal reason.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 397) 

“For, the essence of the extension…consists in that everything is juxtaposed side-by-side and in such a manner that the different points are thought to be independent of one another.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 402) 

“Here are the reasons why an inner connection between bodies is absolutely inconceivable: What unites two bodies together must obviously be in each one of them simultaneously. A body, A, cannot be bonded to a body, B, without, at the same time, B to be bounded to A—without their common link being thus simultaneously in one and in the other. But, as the bodies are surrounded by space on all sides, the space between them—it is obvious that what binds the two bodies and is simultaneously in both—necessarily fills also the space between them. For, from one body to another, there is absolutely no other road than the space between them. But, a link between bodies which is in the interval itself is also corporeal, extended, and thus purely external. Likewise, two cities are connected by a railroad or by telegraph. There is here, obviously, no inner power of a body that produces changes in another body, but it is, as we see, the only connection between bodies that has, generally, a conceivable sense. Because, bodies, as we have already shown, have no interior and, therefore, cannot be linked together internally.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 413) 

“Is there not an immediate contradiction in affirming that we are part or a function of the “outside world?” If we were, there would be for us no outside world. Or, on the contrary, would not the parts of the brain be as corporeal as the other organs, would they not be parts of an “external” world” only in relation to us? But, the materials that currently form our brain come first from the “outside” as food and are then separated from the body through excretion. It is thus seen that in any case, Materialism is nonsense.” (Spir, Thought and Reality, 477-478)

Materialism and Representationalism

The following article presents a dilemma that takes aim at contemporary Materialism’s recourse to “representationalism”—a ghost which, so far as I can see, has long been laid to rest in the history of philosophy.

According to contemporary Materialism, we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature unless it is a “content” of our nervous systems’ representations—said representational states being parts or regions of our nervous systems. However, the relationship between a representation and its “content” is perplexing. For, we cannot arrive at an understanding of the “content” of a representation, X, without having an understanding of X as being the “representation of something” (and this involves having an understanding of X and characteristics of X); indeed, (a) both what is, and is not, the “content” of a representation (i.e., What a representation is a “representation of,” and what a representation is not a “representation of”) is determined by the characteristics and relations of said representation, (b) a representation’s “content” need not exist, (c) a representation need not “correspond” to its “content,” and (d) the relation obtaining between a representation and its “content” is not, and cannot be, merely one of “similarity,” “resemblance,” “co-existence,” or “effect” to “cause.” However, since we cannot arrive at an understanding of the “content” of a representation, X, without having an understanding of X as being the “representation of something” (and this involves having an understanding of X and characteristics of X), it follows that if we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature unless it is a “content” of our nervous systems’ representations, then we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of our nervous systems’ representations. However, since our nervous systems’ representations are themselves parts or regions of our nervous systems, it follows that if we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature unless it is a “content” of our nervous systems’ representations, then we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems. This is the first horn of the dilemma.

This horn can be defended in several additional ways.  Indeed, in his Gifford Lectures, The World and the Individual, Josiah Royce decisively refutes the view that the relation between a representation and its “content” either is, or could be, merely one of “similarity,” “resemblance,” “co-existence,” or “effect” to “cause.” Rather than including Royce’s entire discussion on the relationship between a representation and its “content,” I’ve include a passage that I found to be particularly germane:

“For consider: An object, as we have seen, has two relations to a [representation]. The one is the relation that constitutes it the object meant by that [representation]. The other is the sort of correspondence that is to obtain between object and [representation]. As to the first of these two: An object is not the object of a given [representation] merely because the object causes the [representation], or impresses itself upon the [representation] as the seal impresses the wax. For there are objects of [representations] that are not causes of the [representations] which refer to these objects, just as there are countless cases where my [representations] are supposed to have causes, say physiological or psychological causes, of which I myself never become conscious at all, as my objects. Nor is the object the object of a given [representation] merely because, from the point of view of an external observer, who looks from without upon [representation] and object, and compares them, the [representation] resembles the object. For the sort of correspondence to be demanded of the [representation] is determined by itself, and this correspondence cannot be judged merely from without. Again, my [representation] of my own past experiences may resemble your past experiences, in case you have felt as I have felt, or have acted in any way as I have acted. Yet when my [representations], in a moment of reminiscence, refer to my own past, and have that for their object, they do not refer to your past, nor to your deeds and sorrows, however like my own these experiences of yours may have been. One who, merely comparing my [representations] and your experiences, said that because of the mere likeness I must be thinking of your past as my object, would, therefore, err, if it was my own past of which I was thinking. Neither such a relation as causal connection nor such a relation as mere similarity is, then, sufficient to identify an object as the object of a given [representation]. Nor yet can any other relation, so far as it is merely supposed to be seen from without, by an external observer, suffice to identify any object as the object of a given [representation].” (Royce, The World and the Individual, Vol. I, 297)

I’ve also included several passages outlining contemporary views as to the relationship between a representation and its “content.”

“[If] awareness of an external object is constituted by having an internal representation of it; [then] the perceiver is not aware of the representation itself, but of what it represents (its content). Thus, one perceives the tomato (the object of awareness) in virtue of possessing an internal representation of it (the vehicle of awareness). This move satisfies some philosophers that perception is direct in the traditional sense, yet on this view, the perceiver experiences the content of a representation rather than the living tomato. The representation must somehow be derived from the visual input by a process that establishes its content….If perceptual awareness consists of having representations, how does the perceptual system determine the environmental entities to which they correspond? Without some independent, extrasensory access to the world, there appears to be no way to establish which internal states indicate which environmental properties, or which representations stand for tomatoes and which for elephants. The perceiver is trapped in a closed universe of sensory phenomena or uninterpretable representations. The indirect solution is inference to the best explanation: The perceptual system infers a representation of the world that best accounts for the order in sensory input....However, as Hermann von Helmholtz understood by the mid-19th century, this inference process presumes that the perceptual system already possesses knowledge about (1) the structure of the world, including the sorts of entities that exist and predicates to describe them, and (2) how the world structures sensory input, such as a theory of image formation and transduction. The trouble is that such prior knowledge must somehow be acquired, again, in an extrasensory manner....The [representationalist] position thus appears to be circular. There is a further problem with treating perception as a process of inference. Inference is a logical relation that holds between conscious mental states (beliefs, thoughts, statements) corresponding to premises and conclusions. But as we have just seen, if we are to avoid the representationalist fallacy, perception cannot be based on conscious awareness of internal states. If the perceptual process is unconscious, then whatever else it may be, it cannot be inferential; the same goes for related terms such as hypothesis, clue, evidence, and assumption. The notion of perception as unconscious inference, originally suggested by Helmholtz, is thus inconsistent. Computational theories seek to avoid this objection by treating perception as a process of computation over representations, but this leaves [the semantic or grounding] problem unresolved.” (Warren, Entry on “Direct Perception” in The Encyclopedia of Perception, Vol. I, 367-368) 

To help illustrate the importance the importance of the above passage. I have included a diagram showing an image projected on the retina of the eye (i.e., the representation) and the infinitely many possible sources (i.e., the “content”) that the projected retinal image can map onto.

 

“The states of a computer can be given many different semantic interpretations; indeed, the same symbolic states are sometimes interpreted as words, sometimes as numbers, chess positions, or weather conditions….What determines what a given (syntactically articulated) state represents? [What] causes certain mental events to have certain contents? [According to some theorists], at least some mental contents represent certain things because they resemble them. An image of X represents X precisely because the conscious mental representations, or images, look like X. Such a view probably is not far from the common notion of visual imagery. If you were to ask a group of people how they know their image of a duck actually represents a duck, rather than, say, a rabbit, they might reply that the image looks like a duck. For several reasons, however, this answer does not explain why the image is a representation of a duck. For example, even in the introspectionist approach, the image need not closely resemble a duck for people to take it as a duck since it is their image, they can take it as virtually anything they wish; after all, the word duck refers to a duck without in any way, resembling a duck. As Wittgenstein points out, the image of a man walking up a hill may look exactly like the image of a man walking backward down a hill; yet, if they were my images, there would be no question of their being indeterminate—I would know what they represented. The relation of resemblance is not well defined. Whether one thing resembles another is not a physically (or geometrically) definable property; resemblance depends on what the viewer knows or believes. To me, most birds closely resemble one another, but to a birdwatcher friend they are as different as ducks and rabbits. Resemblance cannot be specified except in relation to a viewer….Resemblance provides no basis for specifying the semantic content of mental representations.” (Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition, 40-41) 

“Mediational behaviorists and certain speculative neurophysiologists take the position that a brain event can be said to represent something if that event is sufficiently like (possesses a subset of the properties of) the event that takes place when that something actually is perceived. Another, more radically behaviorist version requires that the mediational event evoke an internal “preparatory response” that is sufficiently like the response that would have been evoked by the corresponding stimulus. Neither position is satisfactory, because of the properties of representations we have already noted (for example, we can think about objects we have neither perceived nor have any disposition to behave toward, such as, perhaps, quarks). In any case, the only mechanism behaviorism provides for explicating the representing relation is that of association. Association, in turn, must be established by such principles as contiguity and evoked by the activation of other associated items (otherwise we would not have provided the naturalistic account of the semantics of the functional states sought by behaviorism). A chain of continuous events mediating between a brain state and an object, however, cannot form the basis of representation, for reasons discussed above, namely, that it is neither necessary nor sufficient that the state of an organism be linked by a series of contiguous events to the object that the state represents. Not only can I think of things to which I obviously am not in this sort of relation (for example, nonexistent things), but when I do think of X, I do not thereby think of associates of X; indeed, I need not think of properties that are necessarily coextensive with X, such as shape, size, weight, color, and so on. The basic problem is that representing is a semantic relation, that semantic relations, like logical relations, appear not to be causally definable…” (Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition, 41-42)

I have also included a diagram from M.D. Vernon’s Psychology of Perception, that illustrates the problem of under-determination. For, two representations may be nearly indistinguishable with respect to their characteristics as “vehicles” and nevertheless have drastically different “content.” 

 

Let’s return to our argument by outlining the second horn of the dilemma:

Our nervous systems—and their parts—are themselves parts of Nature.

The Materialist cannot, on pain of inconsistency, deny or reject the second horn of the dilemma. Taken together, the first and second horns are the following: 

A) We cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems.

B) Our nervous systems—and their parts—are themselves parts of Nature.

The Materialist is thus caught in a snare : 

We cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of something that could never be understood by us.

If the dilemma doesn’t make itself explicit at first glance, it can be brought to light in the following way:

We cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(1). However, our nervous systems, N(1), are themselves parts of Nature; and so we cannot arrive at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(1)—the having of which is necessary for our arriving at an understanding of any part of Nature—without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(2). However, our nervous systems, N(2), are themselves parts of Nature; and so we cannot arrive at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(2)—the having of which is necessary for our arriving at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(1)—without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(3). However, our nervous systems, N(3), are themselves parts of Nature; and so we cannot arrive at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(3)—the having of which is necessary for our arriving at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(2)—without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(4). However, our nervous systems, N(4), are themselves parts of Nature; and so we cannot arrive at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(4)—the having of which is necessary for our arriving at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(3)—without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(5)…and so on, and so on, ad infinitum. Our arrival at an understanding of any part of Nature is thus thwarted by a vicious, downward spiral of mutually-presupposing terms.

In other words, a vicious regress would render it impossible for us arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature. However, since Materialism asserts that we do have, and indeed have arrived at, an understanding of some parts of Nature, it follows that Materialism is inconsistent with itself. Indeed, the truth of Materialism is incompatible with our knowledge of its truth.

The above argument is inspired by several passages in Chapter 22, “Nature,” of F.H. Bradley’s 1893 magnum opus, Appearance and Reality. Bradley’s argument receives an analysis in W.J. Mander’s article, F.H. Bradley and the Philosophy of Science. I have included Mander’s overview of Bradley’s argument below:

“Bradley has one further objection to physical nature which is rather unusual and worth quoting in his own words. In order to state the problem, says Bradley: 

“We may here use the form of what has been called an Antinomy. (a) Nature is only for my body; on the other hand, (b) My body is only for Nature…the outer world is known only as a state of my organism….And yet most emphatically…my organism is nothing but appearance to a body. It itself is only the bare state of a natural object….[This] gives us one thing as qualified by the state of another thing, each within that known relation being only for the other, and, apart from it, being unknown and, so far, a nonentity….Nature is the phenomenal relation of the unknown to the unknown; and the terms cannot, because unknown, even be said to be related, since they cannot themselves be said to be anything at all.” 

The puzzle is, that nature can only be understood through our sense organs, but our sense organs can only be understood as part of nature, which as before can only be understood through our sense organs. Thus, the physical world turns out to be an unknown relation between two mutually presupposing elements in a vicious downwards spiral. This is a curious argument, which might at first appear to be making a very obvious mistake. Surely Bradley should have referred not to our sense organs, but our experience. Is it not the case that nature, including our sense organs, simply comes to us in experience, in which case where is the circle? But in fact, this objection concedes precisely Bradley’s point. For what he is attacking is the notion of a purely physical world, and experience in order to do the task that it is being given here, must be something more or other than the physical world. His point is that a purely physical world, whatever else it may be able to explain (e.g. facts about us and our behaviour) can never account for its own cognition—that requires something more of a wholly different order. Within that restriction it seems reasonable to say that a knowledge of nature depends on an understanding of our sense organs. Since it is only filtered through them that cognition can take place, we have to understand the sense organs in order to understand what they give us. This is true in the same sense that we have to understand what a Geiger counter is doing in order to understand what it is telling us. But in that case, since our sense organs are part of nature, they too can only be understood in the same way, launching us on a regress. The only solution is to move to something outside of physical nature, like “experience,” for we do not have to understand experience in order to understand what it tells us. Its data comes already interpreted. Thus understood, I would maintain that this argument of Bradley’s is a valid and sound reductio of the idea of a purely physical nature.” (Mander, F.H. Bradley and the Philosophy of Science, 70)

E.E. Harris outlines Bradley’s argument in a similar fashion in his article, Bradley’s Conception of Nature:

“Although the word “Nature,” Bradley tells us (and rightly), has more meanings than one, when he discusses it in Chapter XXII of Appearance and Reality, he takes it in the sense of “the bare physical world.” “Abstract from everything psychical, and then the remainder of existence will be nature.” This forms the object of purely physical science and, we are told, “appears to fall outside of all mind.” It is obvious that such a conception is, as Bradley maintains, a pure abstraction….[We] construct a notion of [the physical world] as independent of our thought, consisting of things with primary and secondary qualities. It is the same for all observers and we regard our bodies with their sense organs as the media of observation which should convey it to us as it is and as it exists apart from them….But this view is full of confusion….Everything revealed to us of such a physical world can be so only as an affection of our own organisms; yet these again are physical things and so must be reduced to affections of themselves. We cannot infer from our affections to the causes which affect us, for to do that would be to conclude to some “thing-in-itself” which is in the nature of the case unknowable and could not therefore help us, nor could it conceivably be related causally to what is knowable so as to validate the inference. Accordingly, the physical world as the complex of relations between physical things turns out to be “the phenomenal relation of the unknown to the unknown.” Bradley develops this paradox at more length, asserting that inevitably the outer world exists only for my organs. If this means only that my perception of the physical world is so dependent, it can hardly be gainsaid; and, of course, my organs can be perceived as physical objects only on the same condition. In these terms any attempt to explain our experience of the world must lead to vicious regress and circularity. But what if we were to say that the world and our organisms are self-existent apart from any affection we may suffer and apart from our perceiving? That could help us in no way at all to comprehend the physical world, to explain what we know of it, or to say how we come to experience it. So, we are brought, Bradley concludes, to an unavoidable result: “The physical world is an appearance; it is phenomenal throughout. It is the relation between two unknowns, which, because they are unknown, we cannot have any right to regard as really two, or as related at all.” But this circular connection and contradictory interrelation between ourselves and nature is no mere mistake to be discounted. It is a necessary and unavoidable feature of our experience giving nature phenomenal reality as a grouping of facts, coexistence of objects and a sequence of events holding good within a section of what appears to us.” (Harris, Bradley’s Conception of Nature, 187-189)

Reading Notes: May 5th, 2022

“Absolute Idealism is the doctrine that reality is ideal or spiritual, and that there are not many such independent realities, but there is only one all-inclusive reality, which, being dependent on nothing else (there being nothing outside it), can be said to be independent, irrelative, or absolute.” (Datta, The Chief Currents of Contemporary Philosophy, 28) 

“Appearance and Reality is divided into two books, called, respectively, Appearance, and Reality. The first, occupying less than a quarter of the volume, argues in detail that the proper distinction between appearance and reality cannot be found by drawing a line between primary and secondary qualities, nor between substance and its attributes; nor can reality, as distinct from appearance, be identified with space and time, or motion, or causation, or activity; nor can it be discovered in the self as the subject of experience; and the book closes with a short and stinging attack on phenomenalism and a criticism of the idea of things in themselves. The thread connecting these miscellaneous topics is a polemic against the theory that the world can be cut in two so that one the one side of the division fall appearances, on the other reality….My suggestion is that Bradley’s Appearance is in the first instance a polemic against Mansel. It is from Mansel that Bradley borrows the antithesis of Appearance and Reality; it is against the project of dividing the one from the other that his book is directed ” (Collingwood, The Metaphysics of F.H. Bradley, 7-8)  

“Now one of the first things which strike us when we come to think about our own experience, which is evidently the only one to which we have direct access, is that it involves two factors, namely the “I”, or subject, who perceives, wills, imagines, etc., and the things which are perceived, willed, imagined, etc., which make up what is usually called the object of experience.” (Richardson, The Supremacy of Spirit, 14)  

“The cardinal tenet of the theory, however, on which most Neo-realists are agreed, is that sense-data exist quite independently of being perceived; this patch of red (for example) at which I am now looking will (they would say) continue to exist altogether independently of me when I am no longer looking at it. The external world consists of a great number of particulars, such as patches of colour, scraps of sound, etc., to which the name of “sensibilia” is given, capable of being perceived (in which case they become sense-data), but not necessarily perceived. The presentation of a sensible to a percipient subject is an incident which does not affect the being or the nature of the sensible in the slightest….To the present writer, the fundamental proposition of Neo-realism, viz. that sensibilia exist independently of being perceived, appears quite untenable….[It] may be pointed out that, although it is convenient, for purposes of thought, to isolate a sense-datum from the mind that perceives it, it is not actually separable in this way; just as, although in thought we separate the shape and size of a body and discover true propositions about the one which do not involve the other, actually they are inseparable. Sensation is, in fact, an act or process of the mind in which the particular sense-datum perceived constitutes the particular form which the process is taking. Doubtless this form is partly determined by entities external to, and independent of, the perceiving mind, but evidently cannot itself be separated from the process of which it is the form, so that it is partly dependent for its being on the mind. It is thus part of the very essence of sense-data to be perceived, so that we cannot assume the existence of entities (viz. sensibilia) essentially akin to sense-data with the exception that they are not necessarily perceived.” (Richardson, The Supremacy of Spirit, 39-41) 

“Sense-data belong to the realm of appearance. This does not mean that they are not real, for they are real appearances. But an appearance is not only an appearance of something—it must also be an appearance to someone. Hence, sense-data must depend in part for their being on being perceived. Moreover, there are other difficulties in the Neo-realist theory. It fails to give a satisfactory account of imagination or of error, nor is its system of separate independent sensibilia adequate to explain the gradual growth of the individual sense-experience, which consists essentially in the moulding of a unified whole, and is not a thing of shreds and patches.” (Richardson, The Supremacy of Spirit, 41)

“It is only as possibly presented in consciousness, actual or imagined, that we can attach any meaning to the object-world that, regarded from another standpoint, appears so much wider than the self that is included in it. For that self-knows as well as is known, and is subject as much as it is object. Although an object in knowledge it is yet devoid of meaning if, by our abstractions, we seek to exclude from the fashioning of the actual, the mind that knows. To be seems to involve and mean some form of knowledge, whatever beyond this may be involved. If we could conceive an object of experience, actual or imagined, which meant nothing at all, it could not be anything for us.” (Haldane, Human Experience: A Study of its Structure, 34-35)