“Nothing in the end is real but what is felt, and for me nothing in the end is real but that which I feel….We never in one sense do, or can, go beyond immediate experience. Apart from the immediacy of “this” and “now” we never have, or can have, reality. The real, to be real, must be felt. This is one side of the matter. But on the other side the felt content takes on a form which more and more goes beyond the essential character of feeling, i.e. direct and non-relational qualification. Distinction and separation into substantives and adjectives, terms and relations, alienate the content of immediate experience from the form of immediacy which still on its side persists. In other words, the ideality, present from the first, is developed, and to follow this ideality is our way to the true Reality which is there in feeling.” (Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, 190)
“We have an object, a something given, and it is given to the subject. the subject given? No, for, if so, it would itself be an object. We seem, then, to have one term and a relation without a second term. But can there be a relation with one term? No; this appears to be self-contradictory, and, if we assert it, we must justify and defend our paradox. But, again, can a term be known only as a term of a relation or relations, while it is not, in any aspect, known otherwise? No, once more; this is impossible, and in the end unmeaning. Terms are never constituted entirely by a relation or relations. There is a quality always which is more than the relation, thought it may not be independent of it….But, once more, can we have a relation, one term of which is contained in the experienced and the other not? No; for a term, which is not in some sense experienced, seems nothing at all. If in itself it falls outside the experienced, then it appears to be unmeaning, and it cannot therefore consistently be said to exist….And now, leaving the terms, consider the relation. Is there, in the end, such a thing as a relation which is merely between terms? Or, on the other hand, does not a relation imply an underlying unity and an inclusive whole? And then, once again, must not this whole be experienced or be nothing? Here are points surely which at least require some discussion. But consciousness must lead to self-consciousness, where possibly these difficulties are lessened. If the object is given to me, then I also must be given, and on reflection I so find myself. I find myself given not in the abstract but as concrete experienced matter. Both terms are now objects, experienced with their relation, and the question is whether the difficulties are now less. We must reply in the negative. The correlated terms are for a subject which itself is not given. The correlation falls in the experience of this new subject, which itself remains outside that object. And of the relation to this new subject the old puzzles are true. This relation must have two terms, terms more than their relation; and the “more” again must be experienced, or else be nothing. Any attempt to pass from within the experienced to that which in itself is not experienced, seems quite suicidal. The distinction between the experienced and experience seems in the end totally inadmissible. And the infinite regress is but an actual unremoved contradiction. It is itself an absolute irrational limit.” (Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, 192-193)
“If what is given is a Many without a One, the One is never attainable. And, if what we had at first were the mere correlation of subject and object, then to rise beyond that would be impossible. From such premises there is in my opinion no road except to total scepticism.” (Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, 199)
“For the whole of our knowledge may be said to depend upon immediate experience. At bottom the Real is what we feel, and there is no reality outside feeling. And in the end Reality (whatever else we say of it) is experience. Our fundamental fact is immediate experience or feeling. We have here a many in one where, so far, there is no distinction between truth and fact. And feeling again is mine, though of course it is not merely my feeling. It is reality and myself in unbroken unity. We in a sense transcend this unity; that is clear, for we could not otherwise speak of it. But that we should ever in any way reach a reality outside of it, seems impossible. And if this is so, as I have contended more fully elsewhere, then experience is reality. For in attempting to deny this thesis, or to assert something else, we find on experiment that we have asserted this thesis or nothing. We have here a matter for observation and experiment and not for long trains of reasoning. [Footnote: In Mind, No. 75, p. 335, I notice, for instance that Prof. Perry, while uprooting Idealism, demolishes in passing myself. He takes me to argue to a conclusion which I do not hold, from a basis which I have rejected as an error, and then wonders at the unnamable vice of the process. But, if Prof. Perry wishes to get an idea as to the view which he is anxious to refute, why should he not suppose (for a moment) that on my side there is no argument at all, and that on his side there is an inference by way of vicious abstraction?]” (Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, 316)
“The theoretical criterion, for myself, is in theory supreme. The truth for any man is that which at the time satisfies his theoretical want, and “more or less true” means more or less of such satisfaction.” (Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, 317)
“We must pass on to enquire as to the sense which we give to the Meaningless. The Meaningless, I should reply, is some object which, first (a), taken as itself, is positive, but which further (b) offers a meaning—an idea which it contains—though this meaning and idea is really none. The Meaningless is the absence of meaning from that which is before us as an object which owns meaning and offers it. We have thus a thinking which is empty and is no real thought, not because it excludes its object, but because the object fails. That which is offered as contained in the object, and deprived of which thought is helpless, proves trial to be lacking. Of the ideas which we were to examine there remains the Self-contradictory….It is this character of self-discrepancy and internal strife which, when we abstract it, is held as our idea of the Self-contradictory. It consists in a conjunction of jarring elements, that everywhere tends to dissolve itself on scrutiny, except so far as it remains fixed externally by error or artifice. For merely as and by itself, and apart from a conjunction which superadds a unity from without, the Self-contradictory is unthinkable. But, like the other negative idea which we have discussed, the Self-contradictory has everywhere in experience a positive side. And it is held together and maintained in existence by this foreign bond, from which, in order to become truly itself, it must abstract, but apart from which, it could not even appear as a fact in experience.” (Bradley, The Principles of Logic, Vol. II, 671-672)
“I cannot argue the point here, but to me Realism and Pluralism (so far as denying what I hold) each essentially consists in an abstraction—an abstraction which is not only untenable but is downright illusory. The assertion of the Pluralist vitally depends on the unity which he rejects, and the doctrine of the Realist is thinkable only so long as it still involves that experience from which it claims to be free….I, on my side, find, not only that Realism and Pluralism maintain what is self-contradictory and in the end unthinkable, but, again and also, that they leave unexplained not a less but a far greater part of the undeniable facts.” (Bradley, The Principles of Logic, Vol. II, 682-684)
“Everything, that in any sense is experienced, is felt, and what in particular is felt is always in feeling. It falls, that is, within an immediate experienced whole, which whole is not itself relational, and is not subject to any strict application of the category of Whole and Parts. Attempting here in predication to apply that category, you are forced to recognize that something in the end has been left outside. You have omitted, that is, the aspect of immediate inclusive oneness. There is, and there can be, no such given thing as a mere object, of whatever kind. There is experienced always with the object a content not included in the object, a content which is positively felt. An object therefore, as an object, is never more than an abstraction. And no feeling, emotion, desire, or volition, can ever by any device be resolved in objects or terms in relation.” (Bradley, The Principles of Logic, Vol. II, 693)
“How could I possibly deny the existence of the soul?” (Bradley, A Reply to a Criticism, 149)
“Mr. Strange, like some other advocates of realism, fails to understand the position which he is anxious to attack. The contention which he has to meet is this, that he is taking a mere abstraction for reality, and that the burden of showing that what we contend is an abstraction is really more, rests properly with him. Such an idea seems not to have occurred to him, but he will find that it is perhaps more worth his attention than the ingenious arguments which, I must acknowledge, he does not attribute to myself.” (Bradley, A Reply to a Criticism, 150)
“The primary form of experience may, I think, be best called “immediate experience” or “feeling”….I mean here by “feeling” such a mode of experience of sameness and difference in one as in an awareness direct and non-relational of that which is at once one and many. If we may permit ourselves to speak here prematurely of a whole and parts, then in immediate experience the whole qualifies every part while the parts qualify all and each both one both another and the whole.” (Bradley, Relations, 631)
“Logical Positivism…is, as we have hinted, a descendant of Hume’s sensationalism, a mode of considering the world to which the English mind, it would seem, is naturally prone. Thought sets itself, positivism informs us, to construct satisfying propositions; and all propositions not founded on or capable of being established through sense experience are unmeaning; e.g. that the sensible world is unreal, or that there is a transcendent God….On the other hand, propositions founded on sense experience have meaning; but they can never be known to be true or false; they are either probable or improbable. The only true propositions are mathematical or logical; analytic, not synthetic. This is why the task of thought is to analyse propositions; to make them say exactly what they mean; and this involves the use of symbols. As early as 1881, J. Venn, in his Symbolic Logic, extending the earlier operations of the quantification of the predicate, had transformed into quasi-mathematical equations the traditional logical forms of propositions, A, E, I, and O, and of syllogisms, Barbara, Celarent, and the rest. But the process has been carried far beyond Venn by Carnap and Wittgenstein….If, however, we are to reach what Russell calls the habit of basing our beliefs on observations purely impersonal, we shall have to be prepared for Russell’s transformation of the sentence “Scott was the author of Waverly” into “One and only one man wrote Waverly, and that man was Scott”; or, more fully, “There is an entity c such that the statement x wrote Waverly is true if x is c, and false otherwise; moreover, c is Scott”. No wonder that Whitehead has remarked that if our remote ancestors had been wise positivists they would never have sought for reasons, they would never have apprehended connexions or consequences, and civilization would have ended before it had begun.” (Lofthouse, F.H. Bradley, 114-115)
“[In] Mr. Hobhouse’s work on the Theory of Knowledge, I find an argument against “subjective idealism” which it may be well to consider briefly. The same argument would appear also suited, if not directed, to prove the reality of primary qualities taken as bare. And though this is very probably not intended…I will criticize it…from both points of view. The process seems to consist, as was natural, in an attempt at removal by elimination of all the conditions of a relation A—B, until A—B is left true and real by itself. And A—B in the present case is to be a relation of naked primary qualities, or again a relation of something apart from and independent of myself. After some assertions as to the possibility of eliminating in turn all other psychical facts but my perceptive consciousness assertions which seem to me, as I understand them, to be wholly untenable and quite contrary to fact the naked independence of A—B appears to be proved thus. Take a state of things where one term of the connection is observed, and the other is not observed. We have still here to infer the existence of the term unobserved, but an existence, because unobserved, free (let us say first) from all secondary qualities. But I should have thought myself that the conclusion which follows is quite otherwise. I should have said that what was proved from the premises was not that A—B exists naked, but that A—B, if unconditioned, is false and unreal, and ought never to have been asserted at all except as a useful working fiction. In other words, the observed absence of one of the terms from its place, i.e. the field of observation, is not a proof that this term exists elsewhere, but is rather here a negative instance to disprove the assumed universal A—B, if that is taken unconditionally. Of course, if you started by supposing A—B to be unconditionally true, you would at the start have assumed the conclusion to be proved.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 614-615)
“And, taken as directed against Solipsism, the argument once more is bad, as I think any argument against Solipsism must be, unless it begins by showing that the premises of Solipsism are in part erroneous. But any attempt at refutation by way of elimination seems to me even to be absurd. For in any observation to find in fact the absence of all Cœnesthesia and inner feeling of self is surely quite impossible. Nor again would the Solipsist lightly admit that his self was co-extensive merely with what at any one time is present to him. And if further the Solipsist admits that he cannot explain the course of outward experience, any more than he can explain the sequence of his inmost feelings, and that he uses all such abstract universals as your A—B simply as useful fictions, how can you, by such an argument as the above, show that he contradicts himself? A failure to explain is certainly not always an inconsistency, and to prove that a view is unsatisfactory is not always to demonstrate that it is false, Mr. Hobhouse’s crucial instance to prove the reality of A—B apart from the self could to the Solipsist at most show a sequence that he was unable to explain. [Footnote: The position of the Solipsist I understand to be is this, that no reality or fact has any existence or meaning except the reality of his self…] How in short in this way you are to drive him out of his circle I do not see unless of course he is obliging enough to contradict himself in advance by allowing the possibility of A—B existing apart, or being real or true independently and unconditionally.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 615)
“The Solipsist, while he merely maintains the essential necessity of his self to the Universe and every part of it, cannot in my opinion be refuted, and so far certainly he is right. For, except as a relative point of view, there is no apartness or independence in the Universe. It is not by crude attempts at elimination that you can deal with the Solipsist, but rather (as in this chapter I have explained) by showing that the connection which he maintains, though really essential, has not the character which he assigns to it. You may hope to convince him that he himself commits the same fault as is committed by the assertor of naked primary qualities, or of things existing quite apart from myself—the fault, that is, of setting up as an independent reality a mere abstraction from experience. You refute the Solipsist, in short, by showing how experience, as he has conceived it, has been wrongly divided and one-sidedly narrowed.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 615-616)
§29
Metaphysics is the systematic study of the ultimate nature of Reality. Anyone who embarks upon such a journey is, strictly speaking, a metaphysician. To say that such a task is either beyond the scope of knowledge, meaningless, or impractical, is to unconsciously enter the arena of metaphysical speculation. Indeed, any would-be objector to metaphysical inquiry is none other than “a brother metaphysician with a rival theory of first principles.”
§30
Metaphysics, despite being a spiritual endeavor, is not a discipline which necessitates the embracing of a species of theism, agnosticism, or atheism. Nor again should a metaphysic be identified with—heaven forbid—a mere quibbling over words, or a tedious regurgitation of banal truisms. A metaphysic, or at least a genuine metaphysic, is a systematic and holistic illustration of the concrete world of Experience—it is a spiritual act, a reflective act that is expressive of the world within which we live, move, and have our being.
“All of our information about the world is derived from the function of our senses, and thus they are the principle source of all our knowledge….In a very real sense, who we are and how we see the world are the result of the experiences that are mediated by our sensory systems….A fundamental task of cognitive systems is to interpret incoming sensory information so that behaviors appropriate to the situation can be produced. While this is certainly not the only function of cognitive systems, it is one that is essential for survival. Because of the consequences of inefficient information transmission are no less severe than those of improper use of this information, the task of accurately representing external reality has been a powerful driving force in evolution. The result is that extant organisms possess an impressive array of highly specialized senses for which unique peripheral organs have evolved. Each of these sensory organs is a marvel of bioengineering and contains receptors that transduce a specific kind of energy into a code which the brain can use to detect and interpret external events. More impressive still is that while each of our sensory systems has its own specific neural machinery, which provides us with unique sensory impressions that have no counterparts in other senses…the brain regularly integrates these inputs to provide a coherent perceptual experience.” (Stein, Wallace, and Stanford, Single Neuron Electrophysiology, 433)
“In the early analytic period of Moore, Russell and Ayer, British Idealism was caricatured and misinterpreted based on an emotional dislike against the dense writings of Kant and Hegel. Neither Moore’s Refutation of Idealism, nor Russell’s various pre-1930 philosophical works, ever actually seriously addressed even British Idealism in any detail.” (Pushpakumara, The Power of Negativity: A Philosophical Study of the Hegelian Heritage in Philosophy, 189)
“If it is true that, whenever something has the quality X, something has the quality Y, this involves that, besides the relation between the two propositions “something has the quality X,” and “something has the quality Y,” there is a relation between the qualities X and Y. I propose to call this relation Intrinsic Determination….The quality X will be said to determine intrinsically the quality Y whenever the proposition that something has the quality X implies the proposition that something has the quality Y. The two qualities may be in the same thing or in two different things. The occurrence of blueness as a quality of anything intrinsically determines the occurrence of spatiality as a quality of the same thing….If, on the other hand, the occurrence of X does not intrinsically determine the occurrence of Y, we may say that Y is Intrinsically Undetermined by X, or Contingent to X.” (McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, Vol. I, 111-112)
“For consider: An object, as we have seen, has two relations to a [representation]. The one is the relation that constitutes it the object meant by that [representation]. The other is the sort of correspondence that is to obtain between object and [representation]. As to the first of these two: An object is not the object of a given [representation] merely because the object causes the [representation], or impresses itself upon the [representation] as the seal impresses the wax. For there are objects of [representations] that are not causes of the [representations] which refer to these objects, just as there are countless cases where my [representations] are supposed to have causes, say physiological or psychological causes, of which I myself never become conscious at all, as my objects. Nor is the object the object of a given [representation] merely because, from the point of view of an external observer, who looks from without upon [representation] and object, and compares them, the [representation] resembles the object. For the sort of correspondence to be demanded of the [representation] is determined by itself, and this correspondence cannot be judged merely from without. Again, my [representation] of my own past experiences may resemble your past experiences, in case you have felt as I have felt, or have acted in any way as I have acted. Yet when my [representations], in a moment of reminiscence, refer to my own past, and have that for their object, they do not refer to your past, nor to your deeds and sorrows, however like my own these experiences of yours may have been. One who, merely comparing my [representations] and your experiences, said that because of the mere likeness I must be thinking of your past as my object, would, therefore, err, if it was my own past of which I was thinking. Neither such a relation as causal connection nor such a relation as mere similarity is, then, sufficient to identify an object as the object of a given [representation]. Nor yet can any other relation, so far as it is merely supposed to be seen from without, by an external observer, suffice to identify any object as the object of a given [representation].” (Royce, The World and the Individual, Vol. I, 297)
“For [Russell] mere resemblance in effects will no longer constitute meaning; these effects must be appropriate to the object, i.e., apparently they must fulfil some purpose or desire that we entertain in regard to it. Does this amendment help? Unfortunately, no. Several of the defects that we have just found in the amended form break out again in this one. We would point especially to the old hysteron proteron that dogs the heels of every causal and pragmatic theory of the idea. The word or image is to cause behavior appropriate to some object; through causing this it means that object. But it does seem a little miraculous that a word or image which means nothing at all should have this special and gratifying result. Why my thought of something thought help me to act appropriately toward it if it had no reference to this whatever before the behaviour supervened, is very hard to see. Surely, it is because I can think of it before I adjust myself that I succeed in adjusting myself at all; the thought conditions the adjustment, not the adjustment the thought.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 294-295)
“We are told that an image means an object through being similar to it. Now, that when I think of something I may have an image that resembles it is of course admitted. But that the image’s meaning the object is not the same as its likeness to it may be shown very readily. Suppose you have just seen an unlabeled picture of the Nawab of Pataudi and think of it by help of its image, while I think of the Nawab himself. It is quite clear that your image may be more like him than mine, but yours will not mean him at all while mine will. Your image happens by accident to be like some particular man of whose existence you have probably never heard. If meaning consists in likeness, your image should mean him more obviously than mine. But it cannot mean him, for you know of no such object to mean. If accidental resemblance is meaning, then in our everyday thoughts we are thinking of things and persons that we never heard of. This is absurd. Hence meaning does not consist in similarity.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 288)
“To develop [Dr. Schiller’s argument] in our own way, we should say: If meaning were resemblance, then the clearer the image, the more evidently would it mean one particular object, whereas in fact it does not. If Mr. Russell replies that it does, he must also say some very strange things.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 289)
“[According to Russell:] “What is called an image “of” some definite object…has some of the effects which the object would have. This applies especially to the effects that depend upon association”….And this similarity in producing effects is what we mean by meaning. How will this serve? Difficulties crowd in. (1) A moment ago, at Mr. Russell’s suggestion, I did think of St. Paul’s, but before the thought could sprout associates, it was cut off by my hearing footsteps outside my door. If meaning consists in giving rise to later associates, my image, so far as I can see, meant nothing. And this is incredible. When I mean something, does my image happen first, and its meaning arrive later? It seems to me quite clear that I can make a passing reference to St. Paul’s and that this reference is equally genuine whether it gives rise to a train of associates or not. Should I have meant St. Paul’s more truly if I had gone on to think of Dean Inge, and then of his love of epigrams, and then, perhaps, of the epigrams of Martial? We may agree that my first image started off the train, but surely not that it was meaningless until the train appeared. And how much of the train is needed? Would my image have meant St. Paul’s more clearly if five steps rather than two were included within its causal efficacy?....But that the image did not delay for its meaning until it had proved its causal efficacy can be shown by a consideration already used. [You] cannot explain how one image calls up another if you take the first as quite meaningless. It is only because my image already meant St. Paul’s that it could lead on to the thought of this cathedral’s former Dean. If the image did not already mean St. Paul’s, why should it call up the head of St. Paul’s rather than the head of St. Peter’s, or indeed anything rather than anything else? And if it did mean St. Paul’s already, what becomes of the theory that meaning lies in causal efficacy.” (Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, Vol. I, 292-293)
“The law of any phenomenon, when expressed in mathematical form, is a differential equation connecting some measured quantity which is observed in a certain place at a certain time with some other measured quantity which is observed in some other (or it may be the same) place at some other (or it may be the same) time. The law will also involve the distance between the two places and the time-lapse between the two dates….Now it is clear that such laws are, in the end, only in so far as they express relations between actually measured magnitudes, such as clock-readings, deflexions of galvanometers or magnetometers, number of weights put into a balance, number of times that a certain rod has to be laid down to get from one place to another, and so on. We may take these measures to represent so much time-lapse, so great a current or magnetic force, such and such a gravitational attraction, so much length, etc.; and we may if we like (and if we can make clear what we mean), raise the question whether these actual measures which we read off our instruments “truly” represent the “real” physical magnitudes in question. But, so far as our laws and their verification are concerned, the measured magnitudes are the important things, and the question of what they stand for in the physical world is a secondary matter of theoretical interpretation. E.g., Maxwell’s equations, so far as they can be verified, state relations between the readings of electrometers, magnetometers and galvanometers in various places; the readings of clocks in these places; and the number of times rods have to be laid down to get from one place to another.” (Broad, Scientific Thought, 149-150)
“Several writers including Paul Churchland and Gary Hatfield make the case that the argument for dualism commits the masked man fallacy; that the Cartesian argument relies on mere ignorance of the body to reach its conclusion. In this paper, I show that the argument from Cartesian doubt to mind-body dualism does not depend on mere ignorance. It depends on reliable knowledge about what can and cannot be known. Descartes’ method of doubt leads to the conclusion that the body can never under any circumstance be known as the mind is known. The argument for dualism rests on that knowledge, not on ignorance….Arnauld went on to say that Descartes’ distinction between mind and body is analogous to a person believing a right triangle to be something distinct from a figure which instantiates the Pythagorean ratio, merely because that person happens to not know that all right triangles do instantiate the Pythagorean ratio. The point of this objection is that merely knowing or doubting a thing does not count as a genuine property of the thing in question. How we happen to think about things, the knowledge we happen to lack, and the resulting certainty or doubt cannot in general be used to deduce the nature of things. Arnauld was pointing out what is usually called the intensional fallacy or the masked man fallacy…. Churchland went further than any other of Descartes’ critics by arguing against a potential objection to his accusation of fallacy. Because he did the most to defend the claim, I will primarily engage with Churchland in my argument against Descartes’ critics. (Doyle, Cartesian Dualism Does Not Commit the Masked Man Fallacy, 1-3)
“Now I will refute the critique, using Churchland’s 1988 book, Matter and Consciousness as the main mark, with Hatfield as a collateral target. The wording of the Cartesian argument which I introduced above is from Churchland. It is the argument he sets out to knock down. For ease of reading, here it is again: “(1) My mental states are introspectively known by me as states of my conscious self. (2) My brain states are not introspectively known by me as states of my conscious self. Therefore, by Leibniz’ Law (that numerically identical things must have exactly the same properties), (3) My mental states are not identical with my brain states.” Churchland then gives what he sees as an analogous argument to show by example how the masked man fallacy works: “(1) Muhammad Ali is widely known as a heavyweight champion. (2) Cassius Clay is not widely known as a heavyweight champion. Therefore, by Leibniz’ Law, (3) Muhammad Ali is not identical with Cassius Clay.” This example of the masked man fallacy by Churchland shows that merely being thought of or recognized in one way or another is not a genuine property of a thing which actually distinguishes it from supposedly separate things. How people apprehend a thing can be wrong, incomplete, or change with time. One and the same thing might be recognized under one name, and yet fail to be recognized under another accurate name. Hatfield uses a very similar example meant to demonstrate the same point: “From the fact that the Joker cannot, at a certain moment, doubt the existence of Batman (because he is with him), but he can doubt the existence of Bruce Wayne (who might, for all the Joker knows, have been killed by the Joker’s henchmen), it does not follow that Bruce Wayne is not Batman. In fact, he is Batman. The Joker is merely ignorant of that fact.” The problem with both analogies is that they mischaracterize what is known and what is unknown. When considered more carefully, Descartes’ method of doubt does not merely lead to a lack of knowledge about the body; it leads to absolute certainty that the body will in principle never be known. The premise is not merely “I happen to lack knowledge of the body”; it is “The body is in principle uncertain from any and all perspectives.” The body is uncertain from the perspective of mind, and there are no alternative perspectives from which the body might be known. Any perspective from which knowledge of the body might be sought would be a subjectivity, a mind. There is no knowledge, certainty, or doubt that is not within a mind, and the body is uncertain to mind, so there is no certainty of the body from any logically possible perspective. In Hatfield’s analogy, “being with Batman” stands in for “certainty of the mind”, while “not being with Bruce Wayne” stands in for “uncertainty of the body”. To be truly analogous, the Joker should truthfully know that he in principle could absolutely never “be with” (be certain of) “Bruce Wayne” (that which stands in for the body). He would then rightly conclude that Batman (whom he is with) is not Bruce Wayne. To fully correct the analogy, the name “Bruce Wayne” should be replaced with a name that does not contradict the true conclusion. The Joker cannot, at a certain moment, doubt the existence of Batman (because he is with him), but he can doubt the existence of Frank Castle (whom he truthfully and for good reason knows can never be with him). It follows that Frank Castle is not Batman. This refutes Hatfield’s refutation of the argument for Cartesian dualism. But Churchland partially anticipated this response.” (Doyle, Cartesian Dualism Does Not Commit the Masked Man Fallacy, 4-5) [Underlining is mine]
“Churchland knew that someone like me might insist on premises like the following, which replace “known” with “knowable” in what I’ll call the updated argument: “(1’) My mental states are knowable by introspection. (2’) My brain states are not knowable by introspection. Therefore, by Leibniz’ Law, (3’) My mental states are not identical with my brain states.” Churchland readily admits that being knowable by introspection is a genuine property of a thing, and that the updated argument avoids the masked man fallacy. In order to counter this, he denies the updated premise (2’). As a proponent of physicalism, Churchland holds that mental states really are brain states. And if mental states actually are brain states, then it is really brain states that we introspect. In the case that physicalism is true, we all know brain states by introspection, but some of us just don’t know that we know brain states, much like the Joker could be with Bruce Wayne, but not know he is with Bruce Wayne. According to Churchland, premise (2’) is false and also begs the question. He again illustrates his critique by using a supposedly parallel argument: “(1) Temperature is knowable by feeling. (2) Mean molecular kinetic energy is not knowable by feeling. Therefore, by Leibniz’ Law, (3) Temperature is not identical with mean molecular kinetic energy.” Since we scientifically consider temperature and aggregate kinetic energy to be equivalent, premise (2) is false even though it does not seem obviously false to most people who are not thinking in terms of physical theories. Churchland says, and I agree, that, “Just as one can learn to feel that the summer air is about 70°F, or 21°C, so one can learn to feel that the mean KE of its molecules is about 6.2 x 10-21 joules, for whether we realize it or not, that is what our discriminatory mechanisms are keyed to.” But this temperature-energy example is not truly analogous to the updated mind-body argument. I’ll point out the difference and explain why premise (2’) of the updated argument is true and does not beg the question. The difference between the updated argument for dualism and Churchland’s temperature analogy is that we have from Descartes a very good reason to believe (2’), but there is no such reason to believe premise (2) of the analogy. Average molecular kinetic energy is something that might seem like it would not be knowable by feel, but no argument has been made as to why it can’t be known by feel. In contrast, there is an argument that tells us the body can never be known by introspection. That is Descartes’ persistent doubt. One can always doubt the existence of the body, since any visual or kinesthetic sensation could be an elaborate hallucination, dream, demonic influence, etc.” (Doyle, Cartesian Dualism Does Not Commit the Masked Man Fallacy, 5-6) [Underlining is mine]
“If we were to somehow scientifically learn that the mind is the body, we would only “know” that fact at the epistemic level where science takes place—where empirical measurements of the body are just assumed for practicality’s sake to not be elaborate hallucinations, dreams, or demonic influence. No matter what we learn about the body, nothing can bring that learning to the higher epistemic plane where it can’t be suspected of being some kind of dream. To put the same truth in another way, the body is uncertain from the perspective of mind, and there are no alternative perspectives from which the body might be known. Any perspective from which knowledge of the body might be sought would be a subjectivity, a mind. There is no knowledge, certainty, or doubt that is not within a mind, and the body is uncertain to mind, so there is no certainty of the body from any logically possible perspective. So premise (2*) is true. My brain states are not knowable by introspection. Obviously, the temperature analogy lacks any such justification for its premise (2). So it isn’t really analogous. Temperature and kinetic energy both begin and end in the empirical epistemic realm. Neither one is immune to doubt. By Cartesian standards, temperature and kinetic energy may be distinct, may be identical, or may not be properties of anything real at all. From the practical scientific perspective, temperature and kinetic energy are identical, though they were thought for some time to be distinct. But to work within the practical scientific perspective is to depart entirely from Descartes’ method of doubt, which is where premise (2*) of the updated argument for dualism comes from. Premise (2*) does not beg the question. It is itself the conclusion of a good argument. And (2*) would do a terrible job of begging the question, since it does not on its own imply that physicalism is false and mind-body dualism is true. Premise (1*) and Leibniz’ Law are also required in order to reach that conclusion. Since these other elements of the argument are required, it is clear that (2*) is just doing the work of an ordinary premise; it is not begging the question. Proving the truth of (2*) is the main Cartesian innovation. That innovation is not touched by any analogy such as Churchland’s, which does not prove the truth of its supposedly analogous premise in a comparable way. Premise (2*) does not beg the question, but if it did, that would be even worse for the physicalist, since (2*) is true. A true premise which begs the question would lead directly to the conclusion without even a need for the other elements of the argument. Since 2(*) is true, the updated argument for mind-body dualism is valid and sound, or at least it has not been shown to be otherwise.” (Doyle, Cartesian Dualism Does Not Commit the Masked Man Fallacy, 6-7) [Underlining is mine]
“The Religious Aspect of Philosophy features, among other positions, one of Royce’s governing insights: a transcendental proof of the Absolute from the possibility of error. First, that there is error is an experiential fact. Error is the failure of an idea to represent its object. But how is an error known to be an error? The mind must have an idea of the intended object along with the misrepresented object. Kelly Parker gives a concrete example: “If I think that my keys are on the hall table, but discover that my idea is erroneous, I do not conclude that my keys never existed as the object of my thought. Rather, I focus on an idea that I had all along—that my keys do definitely exist somewhere. They are the true object of an idea, and an object which is at the moment available to me only imperfectly.” This is a higher order idea, that for Royce eventually concatenates into an all-inclusive Absolute Thought.” (Brunson, Voluntarism: A Difference that Makes the Difference between German Idealism and American Pragmatism?, 84)
“Royce fulfills this promise to see the Absolute as more than Thought in at least two ways in The World and the Individual. The first is his definition of ideas as essentially purposes: “Whatever else our ideas are, and however much or little they may be, at any moment, expressed in rich, sensuous imagery, it is certain that they are ideas not because they are masses of series of images, but because they embody present conscious purposes. Every idea is as much a volitional process as it is an intellectual process.” In other words, the correspondence to its object that makes an idea true or false is not similarity, as in a photograph looking like the person photographed, but rather in the fulfillment or frustration of the embodied purpose. “When I have an idea of the world, my idea is a will, and the world of my idea is simply my own will itself determinately embodied.” Second, Royce combines this reconceptualization of ideas with his argument from error to provide a non-Hegelian conception of the Absolute, one that Royce does not hesitate to call God: “In him, namely, and as sharing in his perfect Will, my will comes consciously to find wherein lies precisely what satisfies my will, and so makes my life, this unique life, distinct from all other lives.” In other words, now the final unity of the Absolute is a unity of Willing, not only Knowing.” (Brunson, Voluntarism: A Difference that Makes the Difference between German Idealism and American Pragmatism?, 85)
“There is no philosophical or scientific inquiry, there is no thinking of any kind, unless the thinking has faith in itself or in its own value, unless there is spontaneous and unyielding conviction of thinking the truth. The skeptic, who thinks he has cut this faith off at the root by suspending judgment—as the only reasonable alternative left to his thinking—stops with the unshaken certainty that his suspension is reasonable, and, since he continues to think, faith in this stubborn and empty thought of his is what he goes on. The fact of thinking, and, therefore, of philosophy, whatever the solution at which it aims, presupposes this affirmation of the truth of thinking as it thinks what it actually thinks.” (Gentile, The Act of Thinking as Pure Act, 683)
“The limit of thinking cannot be a limit of thinking unless it starts by being thinking itself, unless, as limit, it is in the sphere of thinking itself. Nature—the only possible limit of thinking—is nature only abstractly; in the concrete it is thinking in its internal mediation….Nothing, in short, transcends thinking.” (Gentile, The Act of Thinking as Pure Act, 687-690)
“When, in the act of thinking it, we attend to what we think, all points of time, distinct and successive, merge and contract into a single and unmultipliable point.” (Gentile, The Act of Thinking as Pure Act, 689)
“The act of the I is consciousness in that it is self-consciousness: the object of the I is the I itself. Every cognitive process is an act of self-consciousness. This is not abstract identity and immobility but concrete act. If it were something identical, inert, it would need another to be moved. But that would annihilate its freedom. Its movement is not a posterius in relation to its being; it coincides with the being. Self-consciousness is movement itself or process….It is otherness within: not being, but being that bends back on itself, thus negating itself as being. A thing (abstractly considered, fixed by abstraction) is (always that), but precisely for that reason it is not thinking—self-consciousness, in other words.” (Gentile, The Act of Thinking as Pure Act, 691-692)
“In the Greater Logic, Hegel asserts that “every philosophy is essentially Idealism, or at least has idealism as its principle,” and this, it seems in several ways. First, every philosophical first principle (e.g., even the water taken as such by Thales) is an idea. It is the universal, water, not the actual liquid itself, so far as it constitutes the universal essence of different and changeable finite things. Also, the finite forms themselves are reduced to mere appearances of the universal, which is their essence and so are idealized. Much more so is this the case with Concept, Idea, and Spirit, taken as first principles. Secondly, the finite so-called “concrete” reals are all sublated in consciousness, in concept and idea, and only as so sublated can they become objects of philosophical reflection. Thus, the truly concrete, or whole, turns out to be the ideal—it is only grasped as a whole in idea—while its finite moments (its specific differentiations, its content) as moments, are no less ideal. Even Realism, accordingly, is a type of idealism, because the reality which it affirms is a conceived or thought reality, a reality defined and conceptualized by philosophical thinking, as is the antithesis it postulates between the real and the ideal. And any philosophy which hypostasizes finite existence as such as the ultimate truth, or as absolute, Hegel says, is not worthy of the name.” (Harris, An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel, 113-114)
“The point of all this is that philosophy of any sort can emerge only on the level of self-awareness and self-reflection, the level at which an organism has become conscious and brings to self-awareness the natural world with which it is in contact and in organic relationship. Here the thinker has become conscious of him or herself as subject confronted by an object, which, on reflection, is found to be the subject’s own self-development. In other words, the subject is now aware of itself as the object sublated in and as Being-for-self. Philosophy is this turning back upon itself, the reflection upon the experience of the world and the discovery of itself as the world brought to consciousness as subject. So, whether it be called “realism” or “idealism,” it is inevitably the idealization of the external world—its Fürsichsein.” (Harris, An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel, 114)
“What Hegel called the Concept is not the abstraction of a feature common to many particulars, but a principle of order, structure and organization which specifies itself by determining the elements of the system it organizes….Hegel’s basic contention is that the universal principle (Idee; Begriff) is not externally related to its particulars, but “holds them in itself” and thus generates a system through self-specification.” (Smith, Review of Harris’ “An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel”, 464)
“Bradley has one further objection to physical nature which is rather unusual and worth quoting in his own words. In order to state the problem, says Bradley; “We may here use the form of what has been called an Antinomy. (a) Nature is only for my body; on the other hand, (b) My body is only for Nature…the outer world is known only as a state of my organism….And yet most emphatically…my organism is nothing but appearance to a body. It itself is only the bare state of a natural object….[This] gives us one thing as qualified by the state of another thing, each within that known relation being only for the other, and, apart from it, being unknown and, so far, a nonentity….Nature is the phenomenal relation of the unknown to the unknown; and the terms cannot, because unknown, even be said to be related, since they cannot themselves be said to be anything at all.” The puzzle is, that nature can only be understood through our sense organs, but our sense organs can only be understood as part of nature, which as before can only be understood through our sense organs. Thus, the physical world turns out to be an unknown relation between two mutually presupposing elements in a vicious downwards spiral. This is a curious argument, which might at first appear to be making a very obvious mistake. Surely Bradley should have referred not to our sense organs, but our experience. Is it not the case that nature, including our sense organs, simply comes to us in experience, in which case where is the circle? But in fact, this objection concedes precisely Bradley’s point. For what he is attacking is the notion of a purely physical world, and experience in order to do the task that it is being given here, must be something more or other than the physical world. His point is that a purely physical world, whatever else it may be able to explain (e.g. facts about us and our behaviour) can never account for its own cognition—that requires something more of a wholly different order. Within that restriction it seems reasonable to say that a knowledge of nature depends on an understanding of our sense organs. Since it is only filtered through them that cognition can take place, we have to understand the sense organs in order to understand what they give us. This is true in the same sense that we have to understand what a Geiger counter is doing in order to understand what it is telling us. But in that case, since our sense organs are part of nature, they too can only be understood in the same way, launching us on a regress. The only solution is to move to something outside of physical nature, like “experience,” for we do not have to understand experience in order to understand what it tells us. Its data comes already interpreted. Thus understood, I would maintain that this argument of Bradley’s is a valid and sound reductio of the idea of a purely physical nature.” (Mander, F.H. Bradley and the Philosophy of Science, 70)
“[We] construct a notion of [the physical world] as independent of our thought, consisting of things with primary and secondary qualities…and we regard our bodies with their sense organs as the media of observation which should convey it to us as it is and as it exists apart from them….But this view is full of confusion….Everything revealed to us of such a physical world can be so only as an affection of our own organisms; yet these again are physical things and so must be reduced to affections of themselves. We cannot infer from our affections to the causes which affect us, for to do that would be to conclude to some “thing-in-itself” which is in the nature of the case unknowable and could not therefore help us, nor could it conceivably be related causally to what is knowable so as to validate the inference. Accordingly, the physical world as the complex of relations between physical things turns out to be “the phenomenal relation of the unknown to the unknown.” Bradley develops this paradox at more length, asserting that inevitably the outer world exists only for my organs. If this means only that my perception of the physical world is so dependent, it can hardly be gainsaid; and, of course, my organs can be perceived as physical objects only on the same condition. In these terms any attempt to explain our experience of the world must lead to vicious regress and circularity. But what if we were to say that the world and our organisms are self-existent apart from any affection we may suffer and apart from our perceiving? That could help us in no way at all to comprehend the physical world, to explain what we know of it, or to say how we come to experience it.” (Harris, Bradley’s Conception of Nature, 187-189)
“Formal logic…treats negation merely as a logical operator, as a mere striking out or erasure of the negated term, whereas in dialectical logic it is always significant negation: that is, it has positive as well as negative import….To negate is to indicate an alternative, a neglected compliment; it is to delineate a determination and to fix a definitive character. Negation is a necessary feature of all systematic structure, without which it has no coherent function, and within which it is the instrument of specification….The essential point is that negation differentiates between the elements of a system, or, what have found to be the same thing, between the gradations of a scale of continuously diverging forms. It sets the distincta in mutual contrast and so makes them contraries. It excludes one from the other and so makes them contradictory opposites. It defines each in terms of the other and so makes them complementaries. In a dialectical scale, the differing degrees in which the universal manifests itself are its specific forms. They are thus species of the genus (or generic essence), and so they rank as distinct elements of the system. As mutually complementary, they are contraries. But they also exclude one another and the level of gradation appropriate to one is inappropriate and inimical to any other. They are in this respect contradictories. Negation, which differentiates them, denotes either or both of these relationships. Not-A, as substitute for A, is its contradictory; as complementary of A, it is contrary. It is always both, for as complement it can never be substitute, and as contradictory it is always complement. The substitution of not-A for A is what the Law of Non-contradiction forbids; their complementarity is what the Law of Excluded Middle affirms.” (Harris, Formal, Transcendental, and Dialectical Thinking, 157-158)
“Now, it ought to be clear that if something emerges from something else, the emergent must be present in some way or other in that from which it emerges. Otherwise, it cannot emerge, but must come into being independently of what appears to be the prior stage. The butterfly is said to emerge from the chrysalis only because it has all along been present in the chrysalis, even if it has not always been there in the same form. However difficult it may be to understand the notion of becoming or development, so much seems plain, that if the process is to be truly continuous what emerges at the end of the process must have been present in some form, or in some degree, at the beginning.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 96-97)
“In the modern age, realism, in its many forms, has invariably become entangled in insoluble problems in its efforts to give a feasible account of knowledge. If the material world exists independently of our consciousness, if (as has been often asserted) “knowing makes no difference to the known,” and if our minds are lodged in a material body, how do we become aware of these facts? How do we acquire consciousness of what lies outside of ourselves? And how are our minds related to the bodies they are alleged to inhabit? ourselves? and how are our minds related to the bodies they are alleged to inhabit? There is no need for me to recapitulate here the tortuous history of attempts to answer these questions. Every freshman is familiar with the paradoxes to which those attempts have led. Either we are seduced by the epistemologist’s fallacy to give an account of knowledge, from which we exempt ourselves, as epistemologists: we explain our awareness of the external world as ideas, mysteriously produced from the transmission into the brain by physical processes of effects caused by external things upon our sense organs; an account which, if it were true, could on its own terms never be known; and, if it is known, must certainly be false. Or else we are induced by brilliant and persuasive writers, like Berkeley, to renounce the external world altogether and to lose ourselves in a radical subjectivism, which leads either to scepticism or to a still more paradoxical solipsism.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 109)
“The first essential is accurately to grasp the nature of the dialectic and the relation between its successive phases. To this, Hegel’s pronouncement is fundamental that the truth is the whole. The whole, moreover, is no blank unity or any undifferentiated uniformity (not, as Hegel protested against Schelling, “a night in which all cows are black”). The whole is system. Not a set, fixed, or static system, but one that is infinitely and eternally self-diversifying. It is dynamic, self-activated, “infinite restlessness,” at once a self-realizing process and an eternally self-realized activity, like Aristotle’s energeia. It is not a whole of separable parts, except as conceived at a specific level of the dialectic where whole and parts is a limited and provisional category. According to the level on which it is conceived it may be viewed as an aggregate of constituent segments, a process of successive phases, a series or scale of developing forms, a totality of distinguishable but inseparable moments, or a gamut of logical categories dialectically interrelated. But at every level, and in all manifestations, the whole, which is essentially self-actualized and self-complete, is immanent. Yet because it is dynamic and constantly, actively, self-specifying, it manifests itself perpetually in forms or aspects of itself which are only partial and provisional (its moments). At the same time, nothing less than the self-complete whole can render the partial phase or provisional moment intelligible, for the truth is the whole; and it is this truth, immanent in the partial phase, which reveals its limited and finite character. It is this, likewise, that generates the internal contradiction of the finite, drives it into its opposite (what it lacks and excludes, what negates it) and forces it to unite with its other to produce a more complete representation of the whole in which the less adequate manifestations are sublated.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 110)
“Because the whole is immanent in every manifestation, each phase of the process is a whole of sorts, and the relation between phases is a relation between wholes. But they are wholes in varying degrees, and each is a specific form of the ultimate whole of which it is a partial expression. The negative relation between them due to their mutual exclusion as differents emphasizes itself as opposition; but, for all that, they are interdependent for their own intrinsic characters as moments of the whole, and they merge into one another in a continuous scale of increasingly concrete forms of self-differentiated unity, in which each reveals a higher degree of truth than its predecessor, a degree to which the prior aspires.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 110)
“Mind, as it first emerges, is mere subjective feeling, in which subject and object are not distinguished, and no world is cognized as “external.” The distinction of external object from cognizant subject is the result of mediation characteristic of consciousness proper, which supervenes upon mere sentience and is reflective in a higher degree, making sensation its object. Thus, what is sensorily presented appears as immediately “given” object, which simply is for the subject, and which, only on reflection, is seen to be mediated by the subject-object antithesis. The discrimination of objects as “external” to the mind and to one another in space and time involves (as must be obvious to reflection) a systematizing activity of judging. Hence thought is already at work at the perceptual level where the world of common sense is constructed. Further reflection upon that again brings us to the rational level of observational science, the stage at which consciousness explicitly seeks the universal (idea), which is its own essence, in its object as observed in Nature, and finds it in the system of natural laws.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 111-112)
“Consciousness is shown here to begin with immediate sense-certainty the direct awareness of a this-here-now; but to be this it must at once become something more, for no this, or here, or now can maintain itself except in relation to a that, a there, and a then. And though the purport of “this” is particular, the term applies indifferently to every this, and so is universal—as are “here” and “now.” The conflict resolves itself in a here which is many heres, a present which embraces a lapse of several nows, and a this which is a complex of sensuous thises—an individual object. So, sense-certainty develops into perception, the cognition of individual objects and their mutual spatio-temporal relations. Here again individuality and universality vie with each other. The thing is one, but its qualities are many, and though it is individual its qualities are each shared with innumerable other things. The merely apparent (qualities) comes to be contrasted with what is veridical, the subjective with the objective, and perception appears now as the one and now as the other. The urge towards assurance locates certainty in each in turn and finds it in neither, until it seeks truth in a new form of the universal, unconditioned by sense. This is the form of essential reality, unsensed, yet imagined as lying behind, or beneath, the play of sensuous appearances. The phase of consciousness that thus emerges is what Hegel calls Understanding (Verstand). It moves from the postulation of force as the underlying explanation of sensible change, to the idea of a law governing the play of forces. It presents the object as double and self-reflected, as reality and its appearances, as substance and accident, as cause and effect. It analyzes and distinguishes, and keeps the distincta apart, as if in their mutual dependence they were separable and self-contained.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 123)
“In defending Kepler’s conception of the movement of the planets, Hegel stresses the fact that their motion is a single curved movement, and he inveighs against Newton’s analysis of it into two rectilinear movements, one tangential to the curve of the orbit and the other radial. The protest is against the rigid divisions and separations of the understanding. Hegel’s point is that the two elements in the planet’s motion are not two separate and accidentally combined forces, producing separate rectilinear courses, neither of which is actually pursued, and which could not actually be combined to constitute an elliptical curve. “The motion of the heavenly bodies,” he says, “is no such hither and thither drag (Hin- und Hergezogensein), but free movement; they go on their way, as the ancients said, like the blessed gods.” So poetic, and apparently fantastic, a description of the astronomical facts is apt to be laughed to scorn by the hard-headed scientist. Yet Eddington made this quotation a text on which to elaborate his own version of the movement of the planets in the new light of relativity theory in the twentieth century. The Einsteinian conclusions, that the “forces” are simply curvature in space-time, and that the planets move freely along geodesics, precisely vindicate Hegel’s contention….Hegel is not wrong to insist that what must here be conceived is not a collection or a bundle of forces, but a single movement along a geodesic determined by the total configuration of the system. And that is exactly how present-day physicists would wish to represent the fact.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 135)
“The whole…is a self-differentiating system. It is a whole that determines, by the principle of organization that is universal to all its parts and moments, the nature and interrelations of its elements, making them mutually interdependent and constitutive. Accordingly, if their distinction one from another is elevated into a separation, and if they are severally isolated from each other and from the system, as is wont to happen under the influence and operation of the understanding, they contradict themselves and one another, a contradiction symptomatic of defect that is occasioned by their mutual exclusion and the oversight of their mutual complementarity.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 142-143)
“As a result of the presence of matter—or curvature—in space-time, the physical universe curves in upon itself and becomes a four-dimensional hypersphere, described by modern cosmologists as finite but unbounded. It could just as truly be described as infinite but closed, and it answers aptly to what Hegel called the true infinite, as opposed to the spurious infinity, or endless progression of repeated finites. The hypersphere is an all-inclusive whole, whereas the absolute space of Newtonian physics was endless extension, never self-complete.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 145)
“The unity of the universe—of Nature—is the ultimate determinant of all its detailed forms and phenomena. Their explanation and the truth about them is ultimately to be found in the universal principle ordering the whole….Only when it is cognized and comprehended as a systematic whole—when it becomes für sich—is the ultimate unity fully realized.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 153)
“Consciousness is self-transcendent in a manner that is impossible for material things. It not only stands in relation to its objects, but is aware of that relationship, it grasps within itself both of the terms. No physical body can do this. The relations of physical bodies to one another are at best an sich, whereas the relation between consciousness and its object is für sich.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 155)
“Hegel saw the activity of thought as one of construction, and what it constructs is a concrete universal, or system—a world, which is a single totality comprised of a multitude of internal differences. This kind of union of differences is organization, and that involves distinction and relation between elements which is impossible without negation. Distinction and discrimination require the identification of “this not-that” and the combination of both by correlation within one complex. The negative, therefore, plays an indispensable part in the process of thought, or dialectic. But what is negatively distinguished from what is other than itself ranks, in that negation, as its opposite, and the distincts and their subsequent correlation therefore present themselves as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The structure is triadic because the negative relation is essentially bipolar whether the negated other is simple or complex….The object of thought thus reveals itself ultimately both as the world and as the thinking self-awareness, a statement that ought not to surprise us, for the final goal of thought is generally admitted to be both the comprehension of its object as a self-differentiating and self-differentiated system, as well as of its own procedure. The object of knowledge is the world, which, while it is the content of experience, is also a world of which the subject who thinks is aware that he or she is a member. Reflective thought, therefore, always presupposes (more or less tacitly) the whole of experience as its prepredicative background; and that experience presupposes in its turn the world, not only as its object but also as the source of its own development. Accordingly, in increasing its knowledge of the world, the mind ipso facto increases its knowledge of itself.” (Harris, The Spirit of Hegel, 156-158)
2.png)