Reading Notes: July 11th, 2022

“Those who identify what is generally called objective or transcendental idealism with subjective idealism or mentalism do but scanty justice to the profound conception of objective thought which, since Hegel’s masterly analysis of knowledge, has remained as one of the valuable achievements of idealism. In several well-known, but much misunderstood, passages Hegel warns that the term “thought” may be either used in the sense of “a faculty of thought, one among a crowd of other faculties, such as perception, conception and will, with which it stands on the same level,” or it may be used in its objective meaning as nous. It is in this latter sense that man is said to be a being that thinks, and, as a thinker, he is universal. Green is equally emphatic that the idealist’s contention about the foundational character of the thinking subject would be “an absurd impropriety” if thought is taken to be a faculty; and this accounts for the contemptuous tone in which he condemns the undergraduate’s conception of idealism….Green has remarked that the subject-object relation is the most generic element in our definition of the knowable universe because “matter,” in being known, becomes a relation between subject and object; mind, in being known, becomes so equally. It is incorrect, therefore, he continues, to speak of the relation between “matter” and “mind” as if it were the same with that between subject and object. “A mode of the latter relation constitutes each member alike of the former relation.” Once the confusion between the subject-object relation with the inter-objective relation is cleared, the term “thought,” as used in the idealistic analysis of knowledge, can no more stand for the subjective process of mind.” (Radhakrishnan, History of Philosophy: Eastern and Western, Vol. II, 301-302) 

“Since in philosophy, we must think, how is possible to transcend thought without self-contradiction? For theory can reflect on, and pronounce about, all things, and in reflecting on them it therefore includes them….If thought asserted the existence of any content which was not an actual or possible object of thought certainly that assertion would contradict itself….Everything, all will and feeling, is an object for thought, and must be called intelligible.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 175-176) 

“Stout holds that material events and conditions cannot produce mental events. In other words, Stout holds that material events and conditions could never completely explain a mental event….We must agree that there is no character which is specified both in is conscious and has an extensive quality; there is no highly generic character of which both these are species….But, if consciousness were to result from the movements of brain molecules, there would be no generic resemblance between cause and effect….If one situation S explains another S’, then S and S’ must be manifestations of specific forms of the same generic qualities and relations. This may be restated in our vocabulary as follows: If a set of facts, S, is the cause of a set of facts, S’, then the components (the qualities and relations) in the set S must specify the same generic characters as are specified in the components of the set S’. If we call generic characters and variables and their specific forms their values and completely generic characters supreme variables, then we can express this principle conveniently as follows: If S explains S’, then they must be manifestations of the same supreme variables. This may be called the Principle of Generic Resemblance….If we accept the principles of resemblance, we must reject the view that mental events are produced by material situations. For consciousness, as we have admitted, would be a supreme new variable. And even if we accept only the milder principle of continuity, we must reject the doctrine of production unless we are prepared to say that every material event produces a mental event. For the material events which happen in a brain when it is stimulated do not differ in kind, but only in complexity, from those which take place elsewhere, for example, in your kettle when it boils. They therefore, by the principle of continuity, cannot have some entirely new kind of effect.” (Wisdom, Problems of Mind and Matter, 86-95)