Reading Notes: September 23rd, 2024

“Reality or real, Mr. Bradley maintains, cannot be a predicate because Reality is the subject in all judgment, and thus the ideal content of the judgment is ipso facto by judging pronounced real. This view forms a remarkable contrast with Lotze’s saying, “In fact, however, real is an adjectival or predicative conception,” and has, I should imagine, been formulated partly by way of criticism on the latter. We must remember that Mr. Bradley’s reality is not simply presentation, but is the systematic whole with which we come in contact through presentation. It appears to follow from this that Reality owes something to the judgment which analyzes it, besides lending something to that judgment. It gives a good name, but receives solid cash. Reality is for us such as our judgments have made it and maintain it. Our consciousness may be regarded as a permanent judgment, which is constantly, with more or less wakefulness, predicating the detailed content which is our ideally constructed world, as an interpretation and extension of the present perception and general self-feeling in which we from time to time find our contact with reality.” (Bosanquet, Knowledge and Reality, 45-46)

“We have noticed that for Bradley the identity of a quality is what it is by virtue of the relations by which it is differentiated. Since any quality is that quality, rather than this one, by virtue of its relations, it will be clear that any alterations in those differentiations ipso facto is an alteration in the quality they differentiate. For those differentiations contribute to constitute the identity of that quality. We have noticed also that the character of a relation is what it is by virtue of the qualities which it differentiates. The infinite process of quality and relation is reciprocal. Qualities are determined to be what they are by the relations which differentiate them. And relations are determined to be the differentiations they are by the qualities they differentiate. Consequently, any alteration in those qualities ipso facto alters those relations.” (Church, An Analysis of Resemblance, 46-47)

“If an alleged being were not distinct from something or other, it would not be distinct from anything else. Hence, “it” would be nothing at all. To be determinate is to be this being rather than that being. A being that were not this rather than that would be no being. That is why to be determinate is equivalent to to be.” (Church, An Analysis of Resemblance, 66)