Reading Notes: June 7th, 2022

“After a study of the possible issues, the Committee presented, as the first of its questions for debate, the following: “In cases where a real (and non-hallucinatory) object is involved, what is the relation between the real and the perceived object with respect (a) to their numerical identity at the moment of perception, (b) with respect to the possibility of the existence of the real object at other moments apart from any perception?” This question was to be understood by all who were to cooperate, as determined by the meanings assigned by the Committee to the terms “object,” “perceived object,” and “real object.” The definitions of these terms, as printed in the Committee’s report, are as follows: “By object in this discussion shall be meant any complex of physical qualities, whether perceived or unperceived and whether real or unreal. By real objects is meant in this discussion such objects as are true parts of the material world. By perceived object is meant in this discussion an object given in some particular actual perception.” It appears, from the context, and from the formulation of the question for debate quoted above, that the Committee very naturally laid some stress upon the fact that what is meant by “some particular actual perception” involved an occurrence at some “moment of time,” called also “the moment of perception”; or, again, involved some determinate set or sequence of such momentary occurrences, “in some particular individuated stream of perceptions,” that is, in the mind or in the experience of some person….The Committee did not define what it meant by the adjective “given,” used in the above-cited definition of “perceived object”….As a fact, however, their definition of the term “perceived object,” taken together with their formulation of their question, and the context in which they used the which they are used the word given, involved a very serious interference with the range of the cooperation which they invited. For what is “given” in a “moment of perception,” and what is not “given at a particular moment,” and the sense in which what is “given” can also be an “object”—all these matters are not topics of a merely pedantic curiosity about words. They are matters which have been lengthily, frequently, and momentously discussed, both in the controversies about perception and in other philosophical inquiries.” (Royce, On Definitions and Debates, 237) 

“In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), ideas are taken to be representations of real objects. As images of what is perceived or thought, a man’s ideas are all that is present to his mind. These ideas are the only content of his thought, and the objects represented remain outside his thought. To this extent the position of subjective idealism is correct, i.e. “my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas.” But an immediate problem for a subjective idealist is to account for the difference between truth and error. If all I think about will be my ideas, and what they represent are but other ideas of mine, then to assert anything about them must be correct. In that case, sincerity and truth are identical, for when I assert anything there is no reference to anything outside of my own thought. As long as I honestly consult my own ideas, I cannot be in error. The truth of my ideas, however, is commonly taken to be their correspondence to the objects they represent. There is a “commonplace assumption” that error is possible, that an assertion can fail to agree with a real object outside of thought. But how is one to judge if this particular assertion is true or false? To answer that, Royce considers what role the judgment plays in human cognition. It is not an act distinct from that of understanding. That is, the judgment by itself has no intelligible object other than the ideas present to all thought. Royce concludes that the judgment synthesizes my ideas—a position he explicitly avows to be neo-Kantian. But if the judgment reaches no object beyond ideas, the common-sense belief in error must either be abandoned or supplemented. The former course is impossible, for in choosing it one would be admitting the common-sense knowledge had been in error. To state “error is impossible” as a remedy for a mistaken assumption is clearly contradictory. So that latter course alone proves viable. Since no single judgment can be an error (for it reaches no object beyond itself), there must be a higher thought that includes both the judgment and its real object. By comparing the two, this higher thought determines whether the first thought was true or false. Left to itself, the latter remains a fragment “neither true nor false, objectless, no complete act of thought at all.” This is a very brief sketch of Royce’s method of presupposition by denial. He begins with the fact of error in the world, and concludes to an Absolute Thought.” (Zanardi, Idea and Absolute in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, 10-11) [Underlining is mine]

“What follows is a summarized version of Royce’s more lengthy argument. The fact of error is undeniable; to deny this is to contradict oneself, for how else can this fact be refuted if not by proving it erroneous? Each error implies a judgment whose intended object is other than my ideas and so lies beyond my judgment. Such an object will also be an object of a corresponding true judgment. Since the existence of error implies a higher thought, it will be this thought that contains the object of both the true and false judgments. Since the possibilities of error are infinite, the inclusive thought must be infinite. And since error is possible not only as regards objects but also as regards relations, all possible relations in the world must be present to this infinite thought. Finally, to know all relations at once is to know them in absolute rational unity, i.e. as one single thought….Even if one were to find fault with his argument, the error charged to Royce’s position is alleged to prove the existence of Absolute Thought. It alone knows the real and can compare a judgment with its intended object. Royce offers other arguments for the existence of Absolute Thought. The problem of knowing other minds is an instance of employing the already cited view of human understanding. My idea of another person can only be true or false if there is a third party to compare my idea with the real person. There is also a problem of relating a past idea to a present thought. The past idea was unique in its separate existence and in its view of the future. To determine the identity between its conception of the future and the present thought’s conception of what now has become reality requires an inclusive thought which compare them. How else could my past thought have made any assertion about a future moment? Royce refutes a response that rests on verifying a prediction only upon its fulfillment or failure to occur. My memory of an original thought differs from it and so is still in need of a comparison with that original thought. Again, Royce appeals to a higher thought to make a synthesis of what to the human knower are disparate ideas.” (Zanardi, Idea and Absolute in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, 11-12) [Underlining is mine] 

Royce’s argument is genius. However, the implicit Neo-Kantianism weakens it greatly. I have attempted to transpose the argument into less “subjectivistic” form that still arrives at Royce’s intended result: 

If erroneous judgments are possible, then all of the necessary conditions underlying this possibility actually exist. Erroneous judgments are possible. Therefore, all of the necessary conditions for the possibility of erroneous judgments actually exist. A necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to fail to agree with that which the thought making the erroneous judgment has intended for its object. But that which the thought making the erroneous judgment has intended for its object can only be that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment. Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to fail to agree with that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment. But an erroneous judgment cannot fail to agree with that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment unless the erroneous judgment is known as being in error with respect to its intended object. Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to be known as being in error with respect to its intended object. But an erroneous judgment is known as being in error with respect to its intended object only insofar as the erroneous judgment and its intended object are known to a thought which compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment and its intended object to be known to a thought which compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. Therefore, since all of the necessary conditions for the possibility of erroneous judgments actually exist, it follows that for every erroneous judgment that exists, there actually exists a thought which knows said erroneous judgment and its intended object, compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. There exists at least one erroneous judgment that had the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) as its intended object. Therefore, there actually exists a thought which knows said erroneous judgment and the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it), compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it). A thought which knew the aforementioned erroneous judgment and the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it), compared them, and judged the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) would be an all-knowing, Absolute Thought. Therefore, since all of the necessary conditions for the possibility of erroneous judgments actually exist, and there exists at least one erroneous judgment that had the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) as its intended object, it follows that there actually exists an all-knowing, Absolute Thought. Q.E.D. 

Materialism and Representationalism

The following article presents a dilemma that takes aim at contemporary Materialism’s recourse to “representationalism”—a ghost which, so far as I can see, has long been laid to rest in the history of philosophy.

According to contemporary Materialism, we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature unless it is a “content” of our nervous systems’ representations—said representational states being parts or regions of our nervous systems. However, the relationship between a representation and its “content” is perplexing. For, we cannot arrive at an understanding of the “content” of a representation, X, without having an understanding of X as being the “representation of something” (and this involves having an understanding of X and characteristics of X); indeed, (a) both what is, and is not, the “content” of a representation (i.e., What a representation is a “representation of,” and what a representation is not a “representation of”) is determined by the characteristics and relations of said representation, (b) a representation’s “content” need not exist, (c) a representation need not “correspond” to its “content,” and (d) the relation obtaining between a representation and its “content” is not, and cannot be, merely one of “similarity,” “resemblance,” “co-existence,” or “effect” to “cause.” However, since we cannot arrive at an understanding of the “content” of a representation, X, without having an understanding of X as being the “representation of something” (and this involves having an understanding of X and characteristics of X), it follows that if we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature unless it is a “content” of our nervous systems’ representations, then we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of our nervous systems’ representations. However, since our nervous systems’ representations are themselves parts or regions of our nervous systems, it follows that if we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature unless it is a “content” of our nervous systems’ representations, then we cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems. This is the first horn of the dilemma.

This horn can be defended in several additional ways.  Indeed, in his Gifford Lectures, The World and the Individual, Josiah Royce decisively refutes the view that the relation between a representation and its “content” either is, or could be, merely one of “similarity,” “resemblance,” “co-existence,” or “effect” to “cause.” Rather than including Royce’s entire discussion on the relationship between a representation and its “content,” I’ve include a passage that I found to be particularly germane:

“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)

I’ve also included several passages outlining contemporary views as to the relationship between a representation and its “content.”

“[If] awareness of an external object is constituted by having an internal representation of it; [then] the perceiver is not aware of the representation itself, but of what it represents (its content). Thus, one perceives the tomato (the object of awareness) in virtue of possessing an internal representation of it (the vehicle of awareness). This move satisfies some philosophers that perception is direct in the traditional sense, yet on this view, the perceiver experiences the content of a representation rather than the living tomato. The representation must somehow be derived from the visual input by a process that establishes its content….If perceptual awareness consists of having representations, how does the perceptual system determine the environmental entities to which they correspond? Without some independent, extrasensory access to the world, there appears to be no way to establish which internal states indicate which environmental properties, or which representations stand for tomatoes and which for elephants. The perceiver is trapped in a closed universe of sensory phenomena or uninterpretable representations. The indirect solution is inference to the best explanation: The perceptual system infers a representation of the world that best accounts for the order in sensory input....However, as Hermann von Helmholtz understood by the mid-19th century, this inference process presumes that the perceptual system already possesses knowledge about (1) the structure of the world, including the sorts of entities that exist and predicates to describe them, and (2) how the world structures sensory input, such as a theory of image formation and transduction. The trouble is that such prior knowledge must somehow be acquired, again, in an extrasensory manner....The [representationalist] position thus appears to be circular. There is a further problem with treating perception as a process of inference. Inference is a logical relation that holds between conscious mental states (beliefs, thoughts, statements) corresponding to premises and conclusions. But as we have just seen, if we are to avoid the representationalist fallacy, perception cannot be based on conscious awareness of internal states. If the perceptual process is unconscious, then whatever else it may be, it cannot be inferential; the same goes for related terms such as hypothesis, clue, evidence, and assumption. The notion of perception as unconscious inference, originally suggested by Helmholtz, is thus inconsistent. Computational theories seek to avoid this objection by treating perception as a process of computation over representations, but this leaves [the semantic or grounding] problem unresolved.” (Warren, Entry on “Direct Perception” in The Encyclopedia of Perception, Vol. I, 367-368) 

To help illustrate the importance the importance of the above passage. I have included a diagram showing an image projected on the retina of the eye (i.e., the representation) and the infinitely many possible sources (i.e., the “content”) that the projected retinal image can map onto.

 

“The states of a computer can be given many different semantic interpretations; indeed, the same symbolic states are sometimes interpreted as words, sometimes as numbers, chess positions, or weather conditions….What determines what a given (syntactically articulated) state represents? [What] causes certain mental events to have certain contents? [According to some theorists], at least some mental contents represent certain things because they resemble them. An image of X represents X precisely because the conscious mental representations, or images, look like X. Such a view probably is not far from the common notion of visual imagery. If you were to ask a group of people how they know their image of a duck actually represents a duck, rather than, say, a rabbit, they might reply that the image looks like a duck. For several reasons, however, this answer does not explain why the image is a representation of a duck. For example, even in the introspectionist approach, the image need not closely resemble a duck for people to take it as a duck since it is their image, they can take it as virtually anything they wish; after all, the word duck refers to a duck without in any way, resembling a duck. As Wittgenstein points out, the image of a man walking up a hill may look exactly like the image of a man walking backward down a hill; yet, if they were my images, there would be no question of their being indeterminate—I would know what they represented. The relation of resemblance is not well defined. Whether one thing resembles another is not a physically (or geometrically) definable property; resemblance depends on what the viewer knows or believes. To me, most birds closely resemble one another, but to a birdwatcher friend they are as different as ducks and rabbits. Resemblance cannot be specified except in relation to a viewer….Resemblance provides no basis for specifying the semantic content of mental representations.” (Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition, 40-41) 

“Mediational behaviorists and certain speculative neurophysiologists take the position that a brain event can be said to represent something if that event is sufficiently like (possesses a subset of the properties of) the event that takes place when that something actually is perceived. Another, more radically behaviorist version requires that the mediational event evoke an internal “preparatory response” that is sufficiently like the response that would have been evoked by the corresponding stimulus. Neither position is satisfactory, because of the properties of representations we have already noted (for example, we can think about objects we have neither perceived nor have any disposition to behave toward, such as, perhaps, quarks). In any case, the only mechanism behaviorism provides for explicating the representing relation is that of association. Association, in turn, must be established by such principles as contiguity and evoked by the activation of other associated items (otherwise we would not have provided the naturalistic account of the semantics of the functional states sought by behaviorism). A chain of continuous events mediating between a brain state and an object, however, cannot form the basis of representation, for reasons discussed above, namely, that it is neither necessary nor sufficient that the state of an organism be linked by a series of contiguous events to the object that the state represents. Not only can I think of things to which I obviously am not in this sort of relation (for example, nonexistent things), but when I do think of X, I do not thereby think of associates of X; indeed, I need not think of properties that are necessarily coextensive with X, such as shape, size, weight, color, and so on. The basic problem is that representing is a semantic relation, that semantic relations, like logical relations, appear not to be causally definable…” (Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition, 41-42)

I have also included a diagram from M.D. Vernon’s Psychology of Perception, that illustrates the problem of under-determination. For, two representations may be nearly indistinguishable with respect to their characteristics as “vehicles” and nevertheless have drastically different “content.” 

 

Let’s return to our argument by outlining the second horn of the dilemma:

Our nervous systems—and their parts—are themselves parts of Nature.

The Materialist cannot, on pain of inconsistency, deny or reject the second horn of the dilemma. Taken together, the first and second horns are the following: 

A) We cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems.

B) Our nervous systems—and their parts—are themselves parts of Nature.

The Materialist is thus caught in a snare : 

We cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of something that could never be understood by us.

If the dilemma doesn’t make itself explicit at first glance, it can be brought to light in the following way:

We cannot arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(1). However, our nervous systems, N(1), are themselves parts of Nature; and so we cannot arrive at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(1)—the having of which is necessary for our arriving at an understanding of any part of Nature—without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(2). However, our nervous systems, N(2), are themselves parts of Nature; and so we cannot arrive at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(2)—the having of which is necessary for our arriving at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(1)—without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(3). However, our nervous systems, N(3), are themselves parts of Nature; and so we cannot arrive at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(3)—the having of which is necessary for our arriving at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(2)—without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(4). However, our nervous systems, N(4), are themselves parts of Nature; and so we cannot arrive at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(4)—the having of which is necessary for our arriving at an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(3)—without having an understanding of parts of our nervous systems, N(5)…and so on, and so on, ad infinitum. Our arrival at an understanding of any part of Nature is thus thwarted by a vicious, downward spiral of mutually-presupposing terms.

In other words, a vicious regress would render it impossible for us arrive at an understanding of any part of Nature. However, since Materialism asserts that we do have, and indeed have arrived at, an understanding of some parts of Nature, it follows that Materialism is inconsistent with itself. Indeed, the truth of Materialism is incompatible with our knowledge of its truth.

The above argument is inspired by several passages in Chapter 22, “Nature,” of F.H. Bradley’s 1893 magnum opus, Appearance and Reality. Bradley’s argument receives an analysis in W.J. Mander’s article, F.H. Bradley and the Philosophy of Science. I have included Mander’s overview of Bradley’s argument below:

“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)

E.E. Harris outlines Bradley’s argument in a similar fashion in his article, Bradley’s Conception of Nature:

“Although the word “Nature,” Bradley tells us (and rightly), has more meanings than one, when he discusses it in Chapter XXII of Appearance and Reality, he takes it in the sense of “the bare physical world.” “Abstract from everything psychical, and then the remainder of existence will be nature.” This forms the object of purely physical science and, we are told, “appears to fall outside of all mind.” It is obvious that such a conception is, as Bradley maintains, a pure abstraction….[We] construct a notion of [the physical world] as independent of our thought, consisting of things with primary and secondary qualities. It is the same for all observers 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. So, we are brought, Bradley concludes, to an unavoidable result: “The physical world is an appearance; it is phenomenal throughout. It is the relation between two unknowns, which, because they are unknown, we cannot have any right to regard as really two, or as related at all.” But this circular connection and contradictory interrelation between ourselves and nature is no mere mistake to be discounted. It is a necessary and unavoidable feature of our experience giving nature phenomenal reality as a grouping of facts, coexistence of objects and a sequence of events holding good within a section of what appears to us.” (Harris, Bradley’s Conception of Nature, 187-189)

My Adaptation of Josiah Royce’s “Argument from the Possibility of Error”

At the dawn of the 20th century, Josiah Royce was considered to be the greatest representative of Absolute Idealism in the United States. Royce was well-respected for his logical rigor, clarity, and insistence upon the need for a holistic account of the relationship between Knowing and Being. In 1885, Josiah Royce published his groundbreaking work, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, which tackled questions of Morality, Doubt, Religious Truth, and Idealism. In the most famous chapter of the work, “The Possibility of Error,” Royce presents a powerful and unique argument for Absolute Idealism. The argument culminates in the form of a dilemma: “Either there is no such thing as error, which statement is a flat self-contradiction, or else there is an infinite unity of conscious thought to which is presented all possible truth.” Royce’s argument undergoes a variety of alterations throughout his later publications; however, I have decided to adapt the 1885 version because of its clarity as well as the intuitive plausibility of the premises. (Furthermore, it is much easier to visualize than his later renditions of the argument. For this reason, I have included a diagram of the relationship between a finite subject’s erroneous judgments and the Absolute Mind’s true judgments.) What follows is my presentation of Josiah Royce’s “Argument from the Possibility of Error.”

P1) If erroneous judgments are possible, then all of the necessary conditions underlying this possibility exist.

“An unexpected result…springs from the very heart of skepticism itself....[Skepticism and] doubt assume this, namely, that error is possible. And so [skepticism and] doubt assume the actual existence of those conditions that make error possible. The conditions that determine the logical possibility of error must themselves be absolute truth....Since error plainly is possible in some way, we shall have only to inquire: what are the logical conditions that make it possible?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 385-392)

P2) Erroneous judgments are possible.

If the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is true, then erroneous judgments are possible. If the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is false, then the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is itself an erroneous judgment. Therefore, erroneous judgments are possible.

C1) Therefore, all of the necessary conditions for the possibility of erroneous judgments exist. [From P1 and P2]

P3) A necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to fail to agree with that which the thought making the erroneous judgment has intended for its object.

“Logicians are agreed that single ideas, thoughts viewed apart from judgments, are neither true nor false. Only a judgment can be false....Error is therefore generally defined as a judgment that does not agree with its object. In the erroneous judgment, subject and predicate are so combined as, in the object, the corresponding elements are not combined. And thus the judgment comes to be false....The definition assumes as quite clear that a judgment has an object, wherewith it can agree or not agree….What then is meant by its object? The difficulties involved in this phrase begin to appear as soon as you look closer. First, then, the object of the assertion is as such supposed to be neither the subject nor the predicate thereof. It is external to the judgment. It has a nature of its own. Furthermore, not all judgments have the same object, so that objects are very numerous. But from the infinity of real or of possible objects the judgment somehow picks out its own. Thus, then, for a judgment to have an object, there must be something about the judgment that shows what one of the external objects that are beyond itself this judgment does pick out as its own. But this something that gives the judgment its object can only be the intention wherewith the judgment is accompanied. A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 396-397)

“Royce points out that all judgment involves purpose in two essential respects. (a) What it shall select as its object is fixed by the purpose of the knower. Even the realist does not deny that I can within certain limits select whatever I please as the object of my investigation or judge about whatever known truths or matters of opinion I choose, this choice being determined by my purpose, whether the purpose be a mere momentary whim or have as its object the most vital interests of the human race. (b) The way in which my thoughts or cognitions shall correspond to their object and so the standard by which they are to be judged is also fixed by my purpose. A map, a verbal description and a book of photographs of typical scenery all correspond to represent the same country in a different way and so are subject to different standards, and I can choose which I shall produce and so by which standard my production is to be judged. Similarly with any judgment its truth or falsehood must be tested by and so depends on the standard the judger sets himself. When a plank is 2.9999999999999 feet long, to say this line is three feet long may be true if I am talking about carpentry and false it the context of my assertion is to be found in the subject-matter of an exact science. Again I decide whether it is more serviceable to use a mental diagram or to think in mathematical symbols, and if I adopt the latter course I cannot possibly be criticized on the ground that the shape of the symbols is not in the least like that of the real object.” (Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey, 149-150)

P4) But that which the thought making the erroneous judgment has intended for its object can only be that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment.

“A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object. It has to conform only to that which it wants to conform. But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of what one intends. One can, for instance, intend a deed or any of its consequences only in so far as he foresees them. I cannot be said to intend the accidental or the remote or even the immediate consequences of anything that I do, unless I foresaw that they would follow; and this is true however much the lawyers and judges may find it practically necessary to hold me responsible for these consequences....Common sense will admit that, unless a man is thinking of the object of which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no real error by merely failing to agree with the object that I have in mind….So, then, judgments err only by disagreeing with their intended objects, and they can intend an object only in so far forth as this object is known to the thought that makes the judgment. Such, it would seem, is the consequence of the common-sense view. But in this case a judgment can be in error only if it is knowingly in error. That also, as it seems, follows from the common-sense suppositions. Or, if we will have it in syllogistic form:—Everything intended is something known. The object even of an erroneous judgment is intended. Therefore, the object even of an error is something known. Nor can we yet be content with what common sense will at once reply, namely that our syllogism uses known ambiguously, and that the object of an erroneous judgment is known enough to constitute it the object, and not enough to prevent the error about it. This must no doubt be the fact, but it is not of itself clear; on the contrary, just here is the problem. As common sense conceives the matter, the object of a judgment is not as such the whole outside world of common sense, with all its intimate interdependence of facts, with all its unity in the midst of diversity. On the contrary, the object of any judgment is just that portion of the then conceived world, just that fragment, that aspect, that element of a supposed reality, which is seized upon for the purposes of just this judgment. Only such a momentarily grasped fragment of the truth can possibly be present in any one moment of thought as the object of a single assertion. Now, it is hard to say how within this arbitrarily chosen fragment itself there can still be room for the partial knowledge that is sufficient to give to the judgment its object, but insufficient to secure to the judgment its accuracy. If I aim at a mark with my gun, I can fail to hit it, because choosing and hitting the mark are totally distinct acts. But, in the judgment, choosing and knowing the object seem inseparable.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 397-400) 

C2) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to fail to agree with that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment. [From P3 and P4]

P5) But an erroneous judgment cannot fail to agree with that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment unless the erroneous judgment is known as being in error with respect to its intended object.

“To illustrate here by a familiar case, when we speak of things that are solely matters of personal preference, such as the pleasure of a sleigh-ride, the taste of olives, or the comfort of a given room, and when we only try to tell how these things appear to us, then plainly our judgments, if sincere, cannot be in error. As these things are to us, so they are. We are their measure. But our present question is, How do judgments that can be and that are erroneous differ in nature from these that cannot be erroneous?....Since the judgment chooses its own object, and has it only in so far as it chooses it, how can it be in that partial relation to its object which is implied in the supposition of an erroneous assertion?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 400) 

“Yet again, to illustrate the difficulty in another aspect, we can note that not only is error impossible about the perfectly well-known, but that error is equally impossible, save in the form of direct self-contradiction, about what is absolutely unknown....[A]bout a really Unknowable nobody could make any sincere and self-consistent assertions that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions about the Unknowable would of necessity be meaningless. And being meaningless, they could not well be false. For instance, one could indeed not say that the Unknowable contemplates war with France, or makes sunspots, or will be the next Presidential candidate, because that would be contradicting one’s self. For if the Unknowable did any of these things, it would no longer be the Unknowable, but would become either the known or the discoverable. But avoid such self-contradiction, and you cannot error about the unknowable....Nonsense is error only when it involves self-contradiction. Avoid that, and nonsense cannot blunder, having no object outside of itself with which it must agree. But all this illustrates from the other side of our difficultly. Is not the object of a judgment, in so far as it is unknown to that judgment, like the Unknowables for that judgment? To be in error about the application of a symbol, you must have a symbol that symbolizes something. But in so far as the thing symbolized is not known through the symbol, how is it symbolized by that symbol? Is it not, like the Unknowable, once for all out of the thought, so that one cannot just then be thinking about it at all, and so cannot, in this thought at least, be making blunders about it?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 400-402) 

“Truth cannot mean mere conformity of [judgment] to external object; first, because nobody can [determine the truth or falsity of a judgment] merely by asking whether it agrees with this or with that indifferent fact, but only by asking whether it agrees with that with which the knowing subject meant or intended it to agree; secondly, because nobody can look down, as from without, upon a world of wholly external objects on the one hand, and of his [judgments] upon the other, and estimate, as an indifferent spectator, their agreement; and thirdly, because the cognitive process, as itself a part of life, is essentially an effort to give to life unity, self-possession, insight into its own affairs, control of its own enterprises—in a word, wholeness. Cognition does not intend merely to represent its object, but to attain, to possess, and to come into a living unity with it.” (Royce, Logical Essays, 111)

C3) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to be known as being in error with respect to its intended object. [From C2 and P5]

P6) But an erroneous judgment is known as being in error with respect to its intended object only insofar as the erroneous judgment and its intended object are known to a thought which compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object.

“Thus, then, for a judgment to have an object, there must be something about the judgment that shows what one of the external objects that are beyond itself this judgment does pick out as its own. But this something that gives the judgment its object can only be the intention wherewith the judgment is accompanied. A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object. It has to conform only to that which it wants to conform. But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of what one intends....[U]nless a man is thinking of the object of which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no real error by merely failing to agree with the object that I have in mind.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 396-397)

C4) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment and its intended object to be known to a thought which compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. [From C3 and P6]

C5) Therefore, for every erroneous judgment that exists, there exists a thought which knows said erroneous judgment and its intended object, compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. [From C1 and C4]

P7) There exists at least one erroneous judgment that had the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) as its intended object.

C6) Therefore, there exists a thought which knows said erroneous judgment and the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it), compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it). [From C5 and P7]

P8) A thought which knew the aforementioned erroneous judgment and the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it), compared them, and judged the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) would be an all-knowing, Absolute Thought.

C7) Therefore, there exists an all-knowing, Absolute Thought. [From C6 and P8]

“In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), ideas are taken to be representations of real objects. As images of what is perceived or thought, a man’s ideas are all that is present to his mind. These ideas are the only content of his thought, and the objects represented remain outside his thought. To this extent the position of subjective idealism is correct, i.e., “my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas.” But an immediate problem for a subjective idealist is to account for the difference between truth and error. If all I think about will be my ideas, and what they represent are but other ideas of mine, then to assert anything about them must be correct. In that case, sincerity and truth are identical, for when I assert anything there is no reference to anything outside of my own thought. As long as I honestly consult my own ideas, I cannot be in error. The truth of my ideas, however, is commonly taken to be their correspondence to the objects they represent. There is a “commonplace assumption” that error is possible, that an assertion can fail to agree with a real object outside of thought. But how is one to judge if this particular assertion is true or false? To answer that, Royce considers what role the judgment plays in human cognition. It is not an act distinct from that of understanding. That is, the judgment by itself has no intelligible object other than the ideas present to all thought. Royce concludes that the judgment synthesizes my ideas—a position he explicitly avows to be neo-Kantian. But if the judgment reaches no object beyond ideas, the common-sense belief in error must either be abandoned or supplemented. The former course is impossible, for in choosing it one would be admitting the common-sense knowledge had been in error. To state “error is impossible” as a remedy for a mistaken assumption is clearly contradictory. So that latter course alone proves viable. Since no single judgment can be an error (for it reaches no object beyond itself), there must be a higher thought that includes both the judgment and its real object. By comparing the two, this higher thought determines whether the first thought was true or false. Left to itself, the latter remains a fragment “neither true nor false, objectless, no complete act of thought at all.” This is a very brief sketch of Royce’s method of presupposition by denial. He begins with the fact of error in the world, and concludes to an Absolute Thought.” (Zanardi, Idea and Absolute in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, 10-11) 

“What follows is a summarized version of Royce’s more lengthy argument. The fact of error is undeniable; to deny this is to contradict oneself, for how else can this fact be refuted if not by proving it erroneous? Each error implies a judgment whose intended object is other than my ideas and so lies beyond my judgment. Such an object will also be an object of a corresponding true judgment. Since the existence of error implies a higher thought, it will be this thought that contains the object of both the true and false judgments. Since the possibilities of error are infinite, the inclusive thought must be infinite. And since error is possible not only as regards objects but also as regards relations, all possible relations in the world must be present to this infinite thought. Finally, to know all relations at once is to know them in absolute rational unity, i.e., as one single thought….Even if one were to find fault with his argument, the error charged to Royce’s position is alleged to prove the existence of Absolute Thought. It alone knows the real and can compare a judgment with its intended object. Royce offers other arguments for the existence of Absolute Thought. The problem of knowing other minds is an instance of employing the already cited view of human understanding. My idea of another person can only be true or false if there is a third party to compare my idea with the real person. There is also a problem of relating a past idea to a present thought. The past idea was unique in its separate existence and in its view of the future. To determine the identity between its conception of the future and the present thought’s conception of what now has become reality requires an inclusive thought which compare them. How else could my past thought have made any assertion about a future moment? Royce refutes a response that rests on verifying a prediction only upon its fulfillment or failure to occur. My memory of an original thought differs from it and so is still in need of a comparison with that original thought. Again, Royce appeals to a higher thought to make a synthesis of what to the human knower are disparate ideas.” (Zanardi, Idea and Absolute in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, 11-12) 

“In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy in 1885, Royce gave the basic proof of his Idealism. Does error exist?, Royce asked. It must, for consider the statement “There is error.” If the statement is true, there is error. If the statement is false, then there is error. Therefore, there is error. But what is error? A statement is in error if it does not correspond to its object. But what is the object referred to? A statement about a particular tree must correspond to that tree, not just to any tree. In other words, reference is intentional; the statement must correspond to its intended object. But for one to intend a given object, one must already know the object, and how can one be wrong about an object one already knows? Royce’s famous example is the case of John and Thomas, each of whom refers to the other. But when John refers to Thomas, it is to Thomas as John conceives him that he refers, and John can hardly be in error about his own idea of John. For error to be possible in this situation, a third knower is required who can compare John’s idea of Thomas with real Thomas, and Thomas’s idea of John with real John. But then we face a regress, for the third knower can only know his ideas of John and Thomas, and so we would need a forth knower to guarantee the third knower’s ideas, and so on. The solution, Royce held, is that John and Thomas are both ideas in the mind of the third knower, for about his own ideas the third knower cannot be in error. John and Thomas are therefore ideal; the third knower is the Absolute who knows not only what John and Thomas think but what they intended—namely, the real John and Thomas. This is possible in the same sense in which one can intend to recall a name one knows but cannot bring to mind. John and Thomas can intend each other as they really are, yet only be able to think of each other erroneously. But the Absolute, whose ideas John and Thomas are, knows their unconscious intentions, and so can compare the two. This argument led Royce to conclude that whatever we can be wrong about, and so whatever we can make true statements about, must be ideas in the mind of the Absolute. The world is therefore Ideal.” (Murphey, C.I. Lewis: The Last Great Pragmatist, 12-13) 

“For my next example I want to move forward only a few years and consider an argument from the existence of error put forward by the young Josiah Royce, in his book The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. That error occurs is undeniable, points out Royce, for if we deny it we commit at least to the erroneous belief that it does. But what is error? Error occurs when the thing we refer to is other than we say it is, when our judgement fails to agree with its intended object. It implies that there is a gap between what we judge about the world and what is actually the case. If they are to be in error ideas call for something other than themselves about which they err. And yet matters become more complex if we ask ourselves how this might come about, for on closer reflection it is hard to see how this gap might open up. How can our judgement fail to agree with its object if the only object it has it that which it describes? A paradox appears. By definition we are in error about what we don’t know, but how can we even speak about or refer to the unknown? “About a really Unknowable [writes Royce] nobody could make any sincere and self-consistent assertions that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions about the Unknowable would of necessity be meaningless. And being meaningless, they could not well be false.” He proposes an ingenious solution. If all reality is present to a single infinite thought in which, in our very limited and incomplete ways, we participate, then error may be explained as the phenomena in which, in our imperfect consciousness, we partially intend that which a wider thought successfully articulates. Our object of reference is given in the perfectly organized experience that completes it and which characterises the reality we meant, for if there is reference beyond our ideas there is no reference beyond ideas themselves. Reality just is ‘perfectly organised experience’. But Royce’s point is not merely that another sees fully what I grasp only in part, rather he is suggesting that the divine perspective fixes that which I intend but erroneously put, for it is a view in which I actually participate. The puzzling implication of this, that I somehow both known and do not know what I mean, Royce attempts to elucidate by reference to the familiar experience of finally hitting upon a lost name or idea—‘That’s what I meant all along’ we say.” (Mander, On Arguing for the Existence of God as a Synthesis Between Realism and Anti-Realism, 103)

“The centrality of epistemology in Royce’s work is evident in his earliest deduction of the absolute, the well-known argument from error. Royce developed this argument in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, published in 1885, and it contains elements that were to reappear in later work. The argument begins with a concern with skepticism and relativism, that either truth is unattainable or that there is no truth independent of a perceiver or someone offering a judgment. Royce makes short work of the “relativity of truth” by asking us to consider the proposition that error exists. If the proposition is false then error exists, and if it is true then error exists. When we ask, however, how error is possible, or what are its logical conditions, an answer is less clear. A mistaken judgment, Royce says, is defined as one that does not agree with its object, in which subject and predicate are combined in a way that does not correspond with the object. On the face of it, this does not seem to present a difficulty, but the situation becomes problematic when we consider the nature of the supposed agreement or correspondence between a judgment and its object. A particular judgment is not about just any object at all, or any one set of similar objects, but rather it has a particular object. A judgment “picks out as its own” a particular object, and it does so by intending that object. A judgment is about an object, has an object, only when the individual making the judgment intends just that object. But to intend a particular object, the individual must to some degree know the object, and here is the dilemma. To judge, one must intend an object; to intend, one must know the object; thus, a false judgment can only be about an object which one knows. Error is only possible about that which is known. One may be tempted to resolve the dilemma by distinguishing between an object as intended by a judgment and the same object as it is independent of the judgment. But a judgment has as its object an intended object, so that the question still arises, how can one be in error about an object as one conceives it? It appears that one cannot be mistaken about an object as conceived, because however it is conceived, so it is. Error, then, must somehow be in the relation between the object as intended or conceived and the object as independent. But a judgment requires intention, so an object unintended bears no relation to a judgment. The only way this dilemma can be resolved, Royce argued, is through the presence of a third term in the relation. The agreement or disagreement of the intended object of a judgment with the independent object requires that both be present to, or observable by, a third, more inclusive consciousness that is able to compare them and to know whether the judgment is true or in error. With this idea in mind, consider the case of a judgment that concerns the future. Here the possibility of a judgment, true or false, seems even more remote because we assume that the future does not exist, which is to say, no object exists for such a judgment to intend. Yet we do make judgments, including false judgments, concerning the future, and they are possible only on the supposition that the judgment and its object, the future, are present to a consciousness that relates them. In the end this implies a single, all-inclusive absolute thought in which all reality, all past, present, and future, is realized as intended object. The existence of error implies, then, the reality of absolute consciousness.” (Ryder, Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of the History of American Thought, 228-229)