Reading Notes: June 4th, 2022

“Thought is that activity of mind which aims directly at truth…so far as we are seeking truth directly, we are thinking….The simplest activity of mind that aims at truth directly and may conceivably yield it…is clearly Perception. The simplest form of thought is, by general admission, judgment; and perception in turn is the simplest form of this. The reasons for these propositions are easy to see. First, judgment is thought at its simplest because nothing simpler could yield either truth or falsity. For example, while the judgment A is B, “snow is white,” may either be true or false, this would plainly not hold of either component singly; it would be meaningless to say that “snow” is true when nothing is true of it, or that “white” is true when it is true of nothing….But secondly, perception is judgment at its simplest. For with the barest and vaguest apprehension of anything given in sense as anything, perception is already present….Perception is that experience in which, on the warrant of something given in sensation at the time, we unreflectingly take some object to be before us….“Object” is a wide term here; it may mean a certain thing, a certain kind of thing, or what is no properly a thing at all, but a quality or relation….Perception is not perception unless it supplies us a ground in sensation for something that goes beyond this….Sensation is the nether limit of perception. Explicit judgment is the upper limit….[Perception] plainly involves sensation, though sensation moulded and “interpreted”; it involves judgment, but judgment that is still in the implicit stage.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 51-54) 

“We must not confuse what is analytically simplest with what is historically first. If we take our present field of consciousness and break it up into elements which cannot be analyzed further, we shall have on our list such qualities as “this shade of green” and “this particular sound”. When we try to break these up into something simpler, we find we cannot do it. They seem to be ultimate constituents of consciousness. And then when we try to show how our consciousness came to be what it is, we are tempted to start with these elements and to show how, in course of time, they might have been combined or aggregated into the patterns we now find. We are confronted with a Chinese puzzle; we ideally take it to pieces; then to show how the whole may have grown we build it up again, part by part, until it is complete as we know it. But this process, as applied to the mind, is radically vicious. It assumes that the mind is an aggregate of pieces, in which parts may be added or subtracted without any effect on the rest, and this assumption we shall find to be false. It assumes further that the simples gained by such analysis are the elements the mind starts with, whereas a very little reflection will show that to single out such a quality and attend to it in isolation requires a considerable power of abstraction, and that what is first in the order of nature may be last in the order of knowledge.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 55-56) 

“We do not explain how one thing arises by saying that it was preceded by something radically different.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 60) 

“The history of perception is a history of the gradually improving grasp of the universal….For if we are really confined to transient particulars, then every judgment of recognition, every identification of anything, and in the last resort every perception, is a snare and a delusion. For the claim of all these experiences is to take us beyond the moment’s impression, not merely to give us a “this” but to tell us something about it. And this they cannot do if impressions are the whole story. But if impressions are not the whole story, and we do in perceiving go beyond bare sensation, what is it that we first reach? It is clearly a universal….Indeed we may say confidently that there is no stage in experience, not even pure sensation, if such a stage exists, in which universals are not present….One cannot distinguish anything until one has perceived it as this rather than that (for otherwise what is distinct?) and in this first experience no “whats” have yet been recognized Distinctness of characters from each other and the use of universals as universals have their beginning together….To be for thought at all is to be distinct, and to be distinct is to be related to something else through space, time, degree, or otherwise. And this something else in turn receives and maintains its character for thought only through distinction from the first thing. [To] think involves the relating of the object thought of to something else within a system. Abstract thinking, in the sense of dealing with any character quite alone and apart is not only an impossibility; it is a self-contradiction.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 62-65) 

“As the mass of experience widens, the framework of inner relations gains greater explicitness and gives greater definition to the parts. Indeed, we shall see that the ordering of the mass of experience into a special kind of structure or system is at once the principal aim of thought and the measure of its advance. In the experience with which we start, then, sensation is present, and relations, and pleasure, and displeasure, and emotion. On the other hand, there is no proper perception, no memory, nor even recognition….Nor is there yet any sense of self and not-self, for it is only gradually that experience comes to be split up and apportioned, part to me and part to the world of external things. Is it possible to go beyond such summaries and get a notion through example of what this primitive state is like? It does seem that, in some present states of mind and in certain areas of our conscious field, we even now approach it….Indeed, something likes such a state we carry about with us always. On the margins of our field of vision there is a region where we can neither quite deny that we are sensing something nor be sure that we perceive. And then there is what the psychologists call coenaesthesia, or what Bradley called the “felt surplus in our undistinguished core”.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 66-67)