What does “Resistance” actually reveal?

What does “Resistance” actually “disclose”—when it is stripped and isolated from all other modes of sense experience and the qualities present therein? We find that “Resistance” gives us no solid, self-standing physical entity (neither as that which resists, nor as that which is resisted)

“[We] have no miraculous intuition of our body as spatial reality...” (F.H. Bradley, “Appearance and Reality,” 13)

“If we appeal to an immediate experience, which presents me with my body as something extended and solid, we are taking refuge in a world of exploded illusions. No such peculiar intuition can bear the light of a serious psychology. The internal feelings which I experience certainly give nothing of the sort; and again, even if they did, yet for natural science, they are no direct reality, but themselves, the states of a material nervous system. And to fall back on a supposed wholesale revelation of resistance would be surely to seek aid from that which cannot help. [I] For the revelation in the first place (as we have already perceived in Chapter X), is a fiction. [II] And, in the second place, resistance could not present us with a body independently real. [i.e., “Resistance”—by itself—e.g., abstracting it from those sensory modalities and qualities that we nevertheless find infused with that which “Resistance” delivers, discloses, or presents to us] [Resistance] could supply only the relation of one thing to another, where neither thing, as what resists, is a separate body, either apart from, or again in relation to, the other. Resistance could not conceivably tell us what anything is in itself. [Resistance] 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 [i.e., apart from the relation], being unknown and, so far, a nonentity.” (F.H. Bradley, “Appearance and Reality,” 233)

“[If] we separate from extension all other qualities, it is doubtful or rather not doubtful whether it is the object we mean—but apart from that. The extended is not only relative in itself, but it is perceived only by relation to my body….Does touch extension tell us anything of the object? No, it is a reference of the modification of my limb to the object. Pressure and touch give feelings which are referred to object, not in their own quality, but as resisting limits or change of motion; and resistance and motion can (ex hyp.) be known to belong to the object only when perceived, and perception is here (ex hyp.) touch, i.e., relation. Apart from its relation to my body, the object is not extended. Its extension is a mere construction from our body. Nor is my body extended. For one part is known to be extended only in relation to another part, and neither by itself is extended at all.” (F.H. Bradley, “On Knowledge,” 277)

Thus, supposing that we have the occurrence of a felt “resistance,” what is present is the following:

A[Rb]—R—B[Ra]

Insofar as resistance alone is taken to supply a disclosure or revelation of anything as an independently existing physical entity, said disclosure or revelation would—within the situation in question—fail to supply one with a knowledge of “what” either term is apart from the other and the relation. Within the situation, A is specified and qualified by its resisting B, and B is specified and qualified by its resisting A; bare resistance supplies only a qualification by relation and does not disclose (when taken in isolation from all other sensorial and qualitative aspects of experience) “what” either thing—as “what resists”—actually is (and thus cannot serve as a disclosure of the (alleged) independently existing physical constitution of natural objects). We have only one thing which is qualified by a state of another thing; neither of which—when viewed solely from the standpoint of “Resistance”—is given as a solid and independent being; we cannot find here any self-standing physical substantive.

The terms of the relation end up involving contradictions when you try to take resistance as the sole means by which we have access to self-existent & independent “reals.”

Again, mere “resistance” gives us:

A[Rb]—R—B[Ra]

- “A” is that which “resists” “B.”

- “B” is that which “resists” “A.”

- The “what” of A, so far as it is “disclosed” by “resistance,” is exhausted by A’s relation to B.

- The “what” of B, so far as it is “disclosed” by “resistance,” is exhausted by B’s relation to A.

- A’s “what,” as “disclosed” by “resistance,” is A as qualified by its relation to B.

- B’s “what,” as “disclosed” by “resistance,” is B as qualified by its relation to A.

But what is either of the terms apart from their relation? Answer: Unknown. The relation—that of mere resistance—does not give us either term—neither singly nor together—as a solid and independently constituted physical reality. Each term, so far as it is “disclosed” by resistance, is qualified or infected by its relation to the other; on the one hand, the relation falls between the terms, and yet, on the other hand, the relation enters into the very being of the terms. So far from supplying us with immediate access to, or “acquaintance” with, one or more solid, self-standing, and independently constituted physical existents, the “Revelation of Resistance” (i.e., the obtaining of the relation as an occurrence within our experience) supplies us instead with terms whose respective “whats” mutually-condition and mutually-precipitate one another. If one were to ask, “Why doesn’t resistance give us an immediate revelation of an independently existing physical object?”, an answer is readily available: Resistance is a relation, and that relation does not announce (for us) what it is that resists; nor, again, what it is that is resisted; moreover, the relation itself is one in which both terms are qualified by their relation to the other. Additional characteristics must be “introduced” or “disclosed” by means not themselves supplied merely by the relation of resistance before we can ascribe to either term an independently physical and entitative character (or even a merely independent entitative character as such) which is apart from the relation.