Reading Notes: August 16th, 2024

“(I) Ultimate reality is no absolute plurality; it does not consist in a plurality of utterly disconnected units. For we directly experience relations and connections; every one of the supposably discrete, distinct ‘units’ is both comparable with and dependent upon other units: it implies others in being itself distinct, and it is connected with others by virtue of their all existing….(II) But ultimate reality is, furthermore, no mere manifold of units which are both distinct and yet related. For absolute distinctness and relatedness are mutually exclusive predicates. If the units remain entirely distinct, they are then distinct from the relations as well as from each other; in other words, the relations themselves become mere unrelated units. So long as the units are, by hypothesis, distinct, so long the supposed relations fail to relate. But relation is experienced, it is immediately known to exist. Hence, the alternative, entire distinctness, must be abandoned. There results the conception of ultimate reality not as mere including system, but as relater of its parts, not as mere one-of-many, but as unique Individual. And if it be objected that this conclusion, reached as it is by logical analysis and elimination, lacks the confirmation of concrete experience, it may at once be replied that each one of us has in his consciousness of self the example of a unique being which is a one-of-many. For every self is directly known both as particular, single individual (as this one self), and as one-of-many—as the includer of perceiving, thinking, and feeling experiences, and yet as diversified in its constantly varying experiences. In a word, every self is immediately known to be a unique, differentiated one. (III) The conclusion that ultimate reality is an Absolute, not a mere related plurality, combined with the conclusion, already argued, of all personal idealism, pluralistic as well as monistic, that the irreducible nature of the universe is self, gives—as the final outcome of philosophy—the conception of ultimate reality as Absolute Self.” (Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 418-420)

“By ‘temporal’ is meant that which exists at this moment or that. But a moment is precisely that which has both past and future. There is then neither beginning nor end of time; every moment is what it is by virtue of its relations to the irrevocable and to the unattained. Thus, the temporal is the essentially incomplete; and because of this incompleteness, the Absolute cannot be conceived in purely temporal terms. On the other hand, the temporal has reality. Temporal distinctions are objects of actual experience. We live in time….Pluralistic and monistic systems, therefore, share the difficulty of reconciling the rationality of the human consciousness with the contradictoriness of time; and monistic philosophy faces, in addition, the problem whether—and in what sense—the absolute consciousness is temporal.” (Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 440-441)

“In order to accomplish this, we must first take care not to commit ourselves to a search, going back to infinity—that is, in order to discover the best method for finding out the truth, there is no need of another method to discover such method; nor of a third method for discovering the second, and so on to infinity. By such proceedings, we should never arrive at the knowledge of the truth, or, indeed, at any knowledge at all. The matter stands on the same footing as the making of material tools, which might be argued about in a similar way. For, in order to work iron, a hammer is needed, and the hammer cannot be forthcoming unless it has been made; but, in order to make it, there was need of another hammer and other tools, and so on to infinity. We might thus vainly endeavor to prove that men have no power of working iron. But as men at first made use of the instruments supplied by nature to accomplish very easy pieces of workmanship, laboriously and imperfectly, and then, when these were finished, wrought other things more difficult with less labor and greater perfection; and so gradually mounted from the simplest operations to the making of tools, and from the making of tools to the making of more complex tools, and fresh feats of workmanship, till they arrived at making, with small expenditure of labor, the vast number of complicated mechanisms which they now possess. So, in like manner, the intellect, by its native strength, makes for itself intellectual instruments, whereby it acquires strength for performing other intellectual operations, and from these operations gets again fresh instruments, or the power of pushing its investigations further, and thus gradually proceeds till it reaches the summit of wisdom.” (Spinoza, On the Improvement of the Understanding, 10)

“For by ideas I do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought.” (Spinoza, Ethics, Note to Prop. XLVIII)

“Moreover, the activity of the mind can become reflexive, it can be turned upon itself or its own products; and this “reflection” occurs in two very different ways. (1) In desiring, we know that we are desiring; in knowing, we know that we are knowing. Josiah Royce speaks of this as the “self-representative” power of knowledge, that is, knowledge can reflect on its own processes. (2) The activity of the mind tends also to crystallize into a content which is still wholly within the mind. To think of or intend something is to set in motion the whole apparatus of cognition; the thought refuses to continue merely as a pure intention but strives to become concrete, that is, to fulfill itself; and thus an image or “reflexive content” appears. The image is a deposit of the activity. To know the image is therefore not merely to know that we are knowing; it is to be aware of something the mind creates. Images are the products of minds rather than minds themselves; they arise in the process of mental activity, but they are not the activity, nor are they of the same stuff as non-mental objects.” (Eaton, Symbolism and Truth, 292-293)

“Mind is cognitively continuous with non-mental objects in the same general sense as other things in this world are continuous with one another. And we are not speaking here of the mathematical theory of continuity, but of something found in experience, which M. Bergson describes as “interpenetration” and Mr. Whitehead as the general “togetherness” of objects and events. This continuity is not, we believe, a relation. It is rather the unity or wholeness within which both terms and relations arise. Distinct things singled out as self-identical always mere in the wholes within which they are distinguished, and this union of the parts in the whole is not due to confusion in the perception that distinguishes them, but to the nature of reality. Let us recall what was said previously in connection with relations. A is related to B not because the relation R which unites A and B is related to its terms, for if this were so an infinity of relations would be needed to bring about a unity of the terms. The terms and relation are joined once for all. They form a whole in which the aspects A, B, and R can be distinguished; this is what we mean by saying the relation R holds between A and B. There is no point where the relation ceases to be a relation and becomes a term, or where the terms cease to be terms and become a relation. Motion is an apparent case of such continuity. There is no point at which the moving object ceases to be in one place and passes into another; in fact, the passage is just a continuous process which cannot be completely described in terms of places or points, any more than a relation between terms can be described in terms of elements and a relation. We must have the ultimate concept of the unity of the elements. We must think of the elements as abstracted from this unity, instead of thinking of the unity as added to the elements. We must think of the points and instants, in terms of which we describe the motion, as abstracted from the passage, rather than of the passage as superimposed on the points and instants.” (Eaton, Symbolism and Truth, 293-294)

“The mind and its objects fuse as one segment of a motion fuses with another, as a relation merges with its terms, as any part of a whole or any whole, with another. The mind projects itself into the non-mental and the non-mental into the mind. There is an unbroken flow or process, and throughout a stretch of this process—at the segment of “greatest luminosity”—the cognition of the object comes into being….What sort of unity or continuity is this cognition of a non-mental object? Certainly it is not a spatial continuity. Though the object known may be spatial, the cognition is not in space but of space. These two types of whole—the spatial and the non-spatial—come together in the wider whole of cognition. On the other hand, the continuity of mind and its non-mental objects is both in and of time; the mind as well as the world it cognizes is a changing, temporal unity. In the specious present of knowledge we grasp, in an act which is itself temporal, the immediate past and future of the thing known, so that each whole of cognition—being itself in time—is nevertheless a survey of time/ And yet the object of knowledge has its non-temporal aspect. It is a “what,” a universal as well as across space and belongs intrinsically to no single time or space. This is indeed the greatest paradox of knowledge, that being in time it takes hold of both the temporal and the non-temporal….Finally, the act of knowledge is inclusive of itself. In knowing objects we know the process by which we know, the mind reveals itself through its commerce with its non-mental environment. And beyond all this, knowing has its peculiar tang which is no more subject to description that the sound of a tonic triad or a chord of the seventh. Analysis discerns in knowing, as in the chord of the seventh, a number of phases, but it still remains simply what it is—a unique union of mind and object.” (Eaton, Symbolism and Truth, 295-296)

“Thought being nothing but a secretion of the brain, it is as absurd to call one thought true and another untrue, as it would be to call the secretion of saliva true or false….In short, pure materialism ends in pure absurdity.” (Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 33)

“If thought and all combinations of thought are nothing but the result of a simple natural process, which, being as such under the given circumstances and conditions unavoidable, must result so and not otherwise, then all thoughts, all conceptions, judgments, and conclusions have absolutely equal right; to none of them can be ascribed any superiority to the others.” (Ulrici, Gott und der Mensch, Vol. I, 4)