Reading Notes: June 14th, 2022

“In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy in 1885, Royce gave the basic proof of his Idealism. Does error exist?, Royce asked. It must, for consider the statement “There is error.” If the statement is true, there is error. If the statement is false, then there is error. Therefore, there is error. But what is error? A statement is in error if it does not correspond to its object. But what is the object referred to? A statement about a particular tree must correspond to that tree, not just to any tree. In other words, reference is intentional; the statement must correspond to its intended object. But for one to intend a given object, one must already know the object, and how can one be wrong about an object one already knows? Royce’s famous example is the case of John and Thomas, each of whom refers to the other. But when John refers to Thomas, it is to Thomas as John conceives him that he refers, and John can hardly be in error about his own idea of John. For error to be possible in this situation, a third knower is required who can compare John’s idea of Thomas with real Thomas, and Thomas’s idea of John with real John. But then we face a regress, for the third knower can only know his ideas of John and Thomas, and so we would need a forth knower to guarantee the third knower’s ideas, and so on. The solution, Royce held, is that John and Thomas are both ideas in the mind of the third knower, for about his own ideas the third knower cannot be in error. John and Thomas are therefore ideal; the third knower is the Absolute who knows not only what John and Thomas think but what they intended—namely, the real John and Thomas. This is possible in the same sense in which one can intend to recall a name one knows but cannot bring to mind. John and Thomas can intend each other as they really are, yet only be able to think of each other erroneously. But the Absolute, whose ideas John and Thomas are, knows their unconscious intentions, and so can compare the two. This argument led Royce to conclude that whatever we can be wrong about, and so whatever we can make true statements about, must be ideas in the mind of the Absolute. The world is therefore Ideal.” (Murphey, C.I. Lewis: The Last Great Pragmatist, 12-13) 

“Physiological theories, treating sense processes as the transmission of coded information, lead to self-refuting epistemological theories of perception, which are not themselves entailed by the physiological evidence, but to which physiologists are sometimes led by the tacit adoption of epistemological presuppositions.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 240) 

“Some writers have argued vigorously for unsensed sensibilia but none have succeeded in avoiding either confusion or self-contradiction or both. Consequently sense-data must be conceived, if one is to be consistent, as sensed data. This is so if only because the basic assumption of the theory is that the data of sense are the ultimate source of empirical knowledge. They cannot then reveal the existence of what is not included in their assemblage—that is, what is not sensed. But all physical objects have been excluded by the theory from this assemblage, they are all inaccessible things-in-themselves and no knowledge can therefore ever consistently be claimed, on this type of theory, about the external world, about relations, whether of resemblance, causation, or belonging, between sense-data and physical things.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 242) 

“A sense-datum was held to be a sort of replica or reflection of some character in the physical world reproduced in the brain (or mind). Quite apart from the evidence available from physiology that no such reflection occurs in the brain and the numerous other considerations which make any such view untenable, no mere replication of external qualities, even though complex in structure, would by itself amount to a perception. The reason for this is that perception is the acquisition of knowledge about an object and no copy, photograph, or replica of an object, though it may serve as a means to the acquisition of knowledge, can by itself constitute knowledge. That involves at least recognition of the replica as a representation of the object—an achievement always quite impossible, ex hypothesi, on any sense-datum theory (for nothing is recognizable as a replica unless the original is also available for inspection). The proper understanding of the nature of perception depends on the clear realization of this fact, that perception is a form of knowledge—and, of course, the acquisition of knowledge is an achievement. That is why verbs of perception are achievement words.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 245-246) 

“We do not, in fact, perceive stimuli, nor do we perceive neural processes and neither is in the least like the objects that we do perceive. We shall find psychologists most emphatic (for the experimental evidence is copious) that we do not “see” retinal images nor perceive objects in the way in which they are projected upon the retina. Still less are we aware of anything similar to the corresponding neural processes in the brain.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 247) 

“‘Unconscious perception’ might in some special instances be a permissible phrase, but it would have to be used with caution and serious qualification, and still smacks strongly of contradictio-terminorum.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 273) 

“Perceptual knowledge is thus a polyphasic unity. It us the awareness of a world continuously presenting itself through sentient experience as a system ordered both in space and in time. Each perceived object is a specification of the system which the organizing activity of the mind (what we may now call “perceptual thinking”) articulates out of the mass by applying the organizing or conceptual principles that enable it to “make sense” of its varied experience. Thus, each perceptum is a variation within the system, relevant to its structural organization (a relevant variation), which manifests, or realizes, the principle or principles of organization immanent in the whole.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 290) 

“Knowledge is a single developing polyphasic system, that has at all levels a sensuous as well as a structural aspect…” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 291-292) 

“It must not be forgotten that there are, strictly speaking, no fragmentary systems in experience, because every object cognized is interpreted in the light of the existing body of knowledge—the funded and accumulated experience as hitherto ordered. A defective theory is, therefore, not so much ‘incomplete’ as vague and confused. What was asserted earlier must be constantly borne in mind, that the progress of learning is from indefinite to definite, not from fragment to whole, and that at every stage we have a whole of related and connected elements.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 366) 

“Is the aim of science the comprehension of things as they really are, or is it no more than the construction of a symbolic notation convenient for action in a merely phenomenal world? And if the first is the aim that scientists profess, can they ever achieve more than the second? These questions cannot be answered directly for they presuppose tacitly metaphysical and epistemological doctrines which have to be examined in their own right. To speak of “what things really are” presumes potential knowledge of the hallmarks of reality. How is what they really are to be distinguished from what they seem to be? And if we cannot answer that question, how can we allege, in any circumstances, that the world of our experience is purely phenomenal? By reference to what Ding an sich could we give it that status? What seems is subjective, what is is objectively real; so the demand is for clarification of the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity and some definition of these terms.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 372) 

“This issue we have already faced in our account of perception. For common sense, what is objective is what belongs to an external world independent of our perceiving, and what is subjective is what is dependent upon our minds, or consequent upon the organic conditions of experiencing. To make this distinction, however, we must already be aware of those conditions as objective, and we cannot know what belongs to the external world as opposed to what is mind-dependent until we have already made the distinction between the subjective and the objective in experience. In primitive sentience there is no such discrimination, and the consciousness of a world of objects arises from it as the result of an activity of organizing and the imposition upon its content of schemata. Thus, the common-sense conception of an external world is itself dependent upon our thinking and on the conditions of experience, so that the distinction of objective from subjective cannot be made to rest on the common-sense criteria. The only reliable criterion we have of the “objectivity” of things is their stability and coherence in our experience and the persistent interconnexions which they display. Every other criterion proves unsatisfactory. Sensible immediacy will hardly do, for that is the acme of subjectivity. “Hard” sense-data are non-existent, so objectivity cannot be built out of them. Observation is reliable only to the extent that perception is veridical and the admission of veridicality already presumes the distinction of which we are in search. Objectivity, therefore, can only be understood as what repeated and consistent experience shows to be coherent.” (Harris, Hypothesis and Perception, 372-373)