Reading Notes: June 8th, 2022

“I do not believe in any knowledge which is independent of feeling and sensation…Our intelligence cannot construct the world of perceptions and feelings, and it depends on what is given—to so much I assent.” (Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, 203) 

“A man’s body as related to himself is no independently real thing of alien nature but a complex sensational experience, in great part shared with other selves to whom it serves as a sign of his existence.” (Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 457) 

“Egocentric Space: A map of space coded relative to the position of the body. Allocentric space: A map of space coding the locations of objects and places relative to each other…..Space, as far as the brain goes, is not a single continuous entity. A more helpful analogy is to think of the brain creating (and perhaps storing) different kinds of “maps.” Cognitive neuroscientists refer to different spatial reference frames to capture this notion. Each reference frame (“map”) may have its own center point (origin) and set of coordinates….The hippocampus is often considered to store an allocentric map of space (the spatial relationship of different landmarks to each other, rather than relative to the observer)…” (Ward, The Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, 159-160) 

“If the objective is that which is outside perception, the objective is out of our reach, and the world of our perception can never be objective….It was quite true that the world is unaffected by the withdrawal of my individual perception and consciousness (except in so far as I acted qua bodily thing in the world); but it does not follow from this that if it becomes the object of a consciousness in me, it can be so otherwise than as presented within that consciousness. We must distinguish between the idea that the objective is outside consciousness and therefore not in consciousness, and the idea that the objective can be in the individual consciousness, but identified with something beyond the individual consciousness. It may be that consciousness is capable of containing a world, not as a copy of a ready-made original, but as something which it makes for itself by a necessary process, and which refers beyond this finite and momentary consciousness.” (Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic, 10-11) 

“According to these ideas, the objective is, shortly stated, whatever we are obliged to think. This, though it is in our thought, is not considered merely as our thought, or as a train of images or whole of presentation in our minds….Knowledge refers beyond its mental self, and has no limitation in time or in kind except its own necessity. Thus, I am forced to think, by a certain context of ideas and perceptions, that there is now a fire burning in my study at home. This judgment is not barred by the fact that…my body is here three miles away. The thought is objective for me, so long as I am obliged to think it. My presence in or absence from the room where the fire is burning has no effect on the question, except as it furnishes me with evidence one way or the other. Not only absence in space is no obstacle, but succession in time is no obstacle. My thought, which is here and now, refers confidently to what has happened in long intervals of time, if the necessity of consistency obliges it to do so. Thus, if I go back to my room and find the fire out and the room very cold, I infer without hesitation to certain acts and events which are needed to explain this state of things. And interpretations or explanations of this kind make up my world, which is for me in my thought, but is presented as more than my thought, and cannot be a world at all unless it is more than in my thought. It is in as far as my thought constructs and presents a world which is more than my momentary psychical state, that my thought, and the world as presented to me in it, is objective. The world is not a set of my ideas, but it is a set of objects and relations of which I frame an idea, and the existence of which has no meaning for me except as presented in the idea which I frame. We are not to think of (i) Ideas, and (ii) Things which they represent; the ideas, taken as parts of a world, are the things.” (Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic, 11-12) 

“We begin to see, then, how the nature of knowledge meets the puzzle which I stated above. How, I asked, can a connected “world,” whose parts act on one another quite independently of my perception, be in my individual mind? I answer that it does not follow, because the world is for me only in my presentation, that my presentation is the only thing which goes on in the world. “What I am obliged to think” may represent a real development depending on laws and a system which is not confined to my individual course of consciousness. The “objective” in this sense is for Logic an assumption, or rather a fact to be analyzed. We do not attempt to prove its existence, except in the sense of calling attention to its nature in detail. It will be seen that “outside the mind” ceases, on this view of objectivity, to have meaning as regards anything that can be related to us. “Outside” is relation of bodies to one another; but everything, about which we can so much as ask a question, is so far inside the mind, i.e. given in its continuum of presentation or idea.” (Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic, 12-13) 

“Thus, for the purposes of Logic, we must turn our usual ideas upside down. We must try to imagine something of this kind. We have all seen a circular panorama. Each one of us, we must think, is shut up alone inside such a panorama, which is movable and flexible, and follows him wherever he goes. The things and persons depicted in it move and act upon one another; but all this is in the panorama, and not beyond it. The individual cannot get outside this encircling scenery, and no one else can get inside it. Apart from it, prior to it, we have no self; it is indeed the stuff of which oneself is made. Is everyone's panorama exactly the same? No, they are not exactly the same. They are formed round different centres, each person differing from all the others by individual qualities, and by his position towards the points and processes which determine his picture. For—and here is the remarkable point—everyone of us has painted for himself the picture within which he is shut up, and he is perpetually painting and re-painting it, not by copying from some original, but by arranging and completing confused images and tints that are always appearing magically on his canvas. Now this magical panorama, from which the individual cannot escape, and the laws of which are the laws of his experience, is simply his own mind regarded as a content or a world. His own body and mind, regarded as things, are within the panorama, just as other people's bodies and minds are. The whole world, for each of us, is our course of consciousness, in so far as this is regarded as a system of objects which we are obliged to think….Consciousness is consciousness of a world only in so far as it presents a system, a whole of objects, acting on one another, and therefore independent of the presence or absence of the consciousness which presents them.” (Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic, 14-15) 

“I take another very rough metaphor to explain this curious contrast between my mind as a working system, observable from without, and belonging to my individual body…and my mind as a continuum of presentations which includes, as objects, itself, and all the other minds in the room, and the whole world….All of us are familiar with the appearance of a microscope ready adjusted for use, with its little lamp, its mirror and illuminating apparatus under the stage, with a specimen on the stage under the object-glass, its object-glass and its eye-piece. Anyone who understands the working of a microscope finds this a most suggestive spectacle. He follows in his imagination the light as it comes from the lamp to the mirror, through the illuminating lenses, through the transparent specimen, through perhaps a dozen lenses arranged as an object-glass within an inch of distance, through the eye-piece and into the observer’s eye. Give him the parts, lenses, prisms, and mirrors into his hands, and he will test them all, and tell you exactly how they work. This scientific onlooker may be compared to the psychologist looking at another man’s mind. He sees it as a thing among other things, a working system of parts. But there is one thing that the mere onlooker cannot see. He cannot see the object. That can only be seen by looking through the tube. And everyone has felt, I should think, the magical transformation, suggestive of looking through another man’s eye and mind, which occurs when you put your eye to the eye-piece of an optical instrument. The outside world of other objects, the tube, the stage, the mirror, the bystanders, the external light, all disappear, and you see nothing but the field of vision and whatever distinctly pictured structure may be displayed within it. The observer who looks through the tube may be compared with each one of us as he contemplates his own world of know ledge and perception. This is a thing that no one else can ever do.” (Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic, 15-16)

“The metaphor, indeed, breaks down, in so far as each of us is able to observe the history and character of his own mind as an object within the field of presentation which is before his mind. Of course, such a metaphor must break down at some point. But it remains true that the mind, while directly observing its field of objects, cannot observe its own peculiarities, and when turned, as we say, upon itself, is still observing only a part of itself. It remains true that my mind contains the whole presented world for me, and is merely one among thousands of similar mind-things for you. Thus, I repeat, the world for each of us is our course of consciousness, looked at in that way in which it presents a systematic, organized picture of interacting objects, not in that way in which it is a stream of ideas and feelings, taking place in our several heads. In the former point of view, it is the world as our idea; in the latter point of view it is simply the consciousness attached to our body. We might soon puzzle ourselves with the contradictions which arise if we fail to distinguish these points of view. In one sense my mind is in my head, in the other sense my head is in my mind. In the one sense I am in space, in the other sense space is in me. Just so, however rough the metaphor, from one point of view the microscope is one among a host of things seen from the outside; from the other point of view all that we see is in the microscope, which is itself not seen at all.” (Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic, 16-17) 

“In one sense my mind is in my head, in the other sense my head is in my mind. In the one sense I am in space, in the other sense space is in me.” (Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic, 17)