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)