Assumption

“ Philosophers tell us that we can assume any position we choose for the purposes of our argument, but that ultimately we must prove that assumption or admit ourselves beaten. We look anxiously for the proof of the assumption made by our author, but absolutely no attempt is made to give one. ”

“ The philosophic view, that there are two entities, body and mind, that neither can act on the other, but that there is a pre-established harmony between the activities of the one and the activities of the other, is, again, a pure assumption. The materialistic view, that matter [469] becomes at last self-conscious, is a pure assumption. The idealistic view, that the world of phenomena has no existence save as a fiction of my own mind, is, once more, a pure assumption. ”

“ Accordingly, a large proportion of the erroneous thinking which exists in the world proceeds on a tacit assumption, that the same order must obtain among the objects in nature which obtains among our ideas of them. ”

“ Even in works which we are all reading, and in companies where we daily find ourselves, the logical conclusion of arguments, the natural inference from assumptions, would be simply that extreme position. ”

“ They should be tentative assumptions which are gladly abandoned in the hope of reaching something better, stepping-​stones to farther and higher things, which are valued for their consequences, and logically dependent on the conclusions to which they formed the premisses. ”

“ What is the precise effect of our argument on the subject of the human mind? Its precise effect and bearing is to turn us to the study of fact—of a clear and a peculiar fact—from the contemplation of an object which is either an hypothesis, or else no object at all (not even an hypothesis but a contradiction) , or else an irrelevant object of research, and one which cannot by any conceivability contain the fact which it is our business to investigate. ”

“ Every assertion concerning Things, whether in concrete or in abstract language, is an assertion that some fact, or group of facts, has been, is, or may be expected to be, found, wherever a certain other fact, or group of facts, is found. Belief in this, is therefore either remembrance that we did have, or expectation that we shall have, or a belief of the same nature with expectation that in 418 some given circumstances we should have, or should have had, direct perception of a particular fact. ”

“ Of course, the consciousness is; but, however subjective, the consciousness must have more than its mere subjectivity, than its mere seeming or wanting or willing, being in some way genuinely objective or grounded in reality. In a word, all consciousness implies and demands, postulates and possesses, a real world ”

“ By these means I was led to see that a great part of what we call knowledge does not come to us, as we falsely suppose it does, through mere logic or Reason, nor through unaided experience, but through the emotions and the Imagination, tested by Reason and experience. ”

“ First, that even if your knowledge and its object are facts which when examined, say by a psychologist, appear to him to be causally connected, or which, when externally observed, seem to agree, still any such linkage, where it exists, is no part of the essential nature, i.e. of the mere definition, either of your object in so far as it is real, or of your knowledge in so far as it consists of mere ideas. If your knowledge is true, is sound, is valid, it is indeed such as somehow to agree with the object. ”

“ When I feel pleased or pained, or when I use my senses to perceive a pressure, a temperature, a flavour, an odour, a colour, a sound, or when I am conscious of feeling and perceiving, I cannot resist the belief that something sensible is present; and this belief that something exists is already a judgment, a judgment of existence, and, so far as it is limited to sense without inference, a true judgment. ”

“ Thus as perceptions, which are first, are the conclusions of reason, so the facts of true revelation, being given, become the conclusions of all sound logic; for every truth of the Word can be confirmed by irrefutable reasoning. ”

“ The instances we have given are all of them propositions or judgments, or else conceptions formed out of propositions or judgments, the purpose of which is to interpret experience. The actual experience itself, in so far as it consists of the actual presence of the object to the mind aware of it, is, as we have seen, neither truth nor error; it simply is what it is. ”

“ If there be necessary and universal truths expressible in propositions of axiomatic simplicity and obviousness, and having for their subject-matter the elements of all our experience and all our knowledge, surely these are the truths which, if experience suggest to us any truths at all, it ought to suggest most readily, clearly, and unceasingly. ”

“ I shall venture to affirm as a general proposition which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other; ... nor can our reason, unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact. ”

“ In the present question, the links of experience sequent upon an idea, which mediate between it and a reality, form and for the pragmatist indeed ARE, the CONCRETE relation of truth that may obtain between the idea and that reality. They, he says, are all that we mean when we speak of the idea 'pointing' to the reality, 'fitting' it, 'corresponding' with it, or 'agreeing' with it,—they or other similar mediating trains of verification. ”

“ What hypothesis, if any, do you oppose to our own thesis as to this complete and individual, this teleological constitution of the realm of Being, which we have asserted as our Fourth Conception. What is it that you doubt? And what alternative would be true if your doubt were well founded? Hesitate not to give your doubt all possible precision. Philosophy lives upon the comprehension of the meaning of its own doubts. ”

“ Reason (or, as some prefer to call it in this limited sense, Understanding) is the power by which we compare, and, from our comparisons, draw inferences or conclusions. By means of it we compare the suggestions of the Imagination with the suggestions of Experience, and accept or reject the former in accordance with the result of our comparison.
xii. Hope
Hope is desire, of which we imagine the fulfilment, while recognizing the presence of doubt. ”

“ All propositions intelligible to us, whether or not they primarily concern things only known to us by description, are composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted, for a constituent with which we are not acquainted is unintelligible to us. A judgment, we found, is not composed of mental constituents called "ideas," but consists of an occurrence whose constituents are a mind [10] and certain objects, particulars or universals. (One at least must be a universal.) ”

“ For distinction's sake, every fact which is solely composed of feelings or states of consciousness considered as such, is often called a Psychological or Subjective fact; while every fact which is composed, either wholly or in part, of something different from these, that is, of substances and attributes, is called an Objective fact. We may say, then, that every objective fact is grounded on a corresponding subjective one ”

“ We must ask, and find out, what we know, and what we think;—in other words, we must inquire whether matter per se be what we know or think, or whether we have not, all along, been practising an imposition upon ourselves in imagining that this was what we knew, when, in truth, this was not what we knew. ”

“ The belief or unconscious conviction that all propositions are of the subject-predicate form—in other words, that every fact consists in some thing having some quality—has rendered most philosophers incapable of giving any account of the world of science and daily life. ”

“ We have remark’d, that the conclusion, which we draw from a present object to its absent cause or effect, is never founded on any qualities, which we observe in that object, consider’d in itself, or, in other words, that ‘tis impossible to determine, otherwise than by experience, what will result from any phenomenon, or what has preceded it. ”

“ Our knowledge in such cases is limited to the recognition of the confusion of the subject, and knowledge in its widest sense is the consciousness of some definite content; in this case, confusion. Here, as everywhere, knowledge is not identical with truth; knowledge is only subjective truth. ”

“ If like from like is not established, then nothing can be established by observation and experience. What other theory do we believe which contradicts all that we know to be true in regard to the subject to which it refers? ”

“ But when, on the contrary, one accepts a logical and luminous system of thought, a revelation which offers an explanation of the mystery of being entirely consistent with reason, you think that very remarkable! ”

“ A certain theory of some conditions and circumstances of nature or mind may be, say these people, very fine and correct as a matter of speculation, but it contradicts experience and nothing of the sort is admissible in reality. ”

“ To prove, means, in the proper sense of the word, to test, to bring ideas, opinions, and beliefs to the ordeal of reason, of accepted standards of judgment. It is a criticism of the mind and its operations, and hence it may easily happen that to prove is to weaken and unsettle. ”

“ The conclusions of theory can not be trusted, unless confirmed by observation; nor those of observation, unless they can be affiliated to theory, by deducing them from the laws of human nature, and from a close analysis of the circumstances of the particular situation. ”

“ The uniform experience, therefore, of the inhabitants of the known world, agreeing in a common result, without one known instance of deviation from that result, is not always sufficient to establish a general conclusion. ”

“ For all having, so far, been held to be objective, the mind readily flies to the other extreme, and suspects all to be subjective. Or if all my apprehensions and certainties are the resultants from the interaction between impressions received by my senses and mind and reactions and elaborations on the part of this mind with regard to those impressions, how can I be sure of apprehending rightly, unless I can divide each constituent off from the other? ”

“ But by what rules of logic we make these inferences, it is impossible to show, nay, it is impossible to show how our sensations and thoughts can give us the very notion and conception either of a mind or of a faculty. ”

“ Connected with the distinction just made between ‘object’ in the sense of the qualities actually before the mind and ‘object’ in the sense of the whole thing which possesses the qualities actually before the mind, is another distinction of the utmost importance for a correct analysis of the constituents necessary to a valuable whole. ”

“ What now hinders us from inferring from the course of the argument that the procedure and terminology of our epistemological analysis is arbitrary and indifferent, and that the real test of truth comes, not from any distinctions we assume beforehand, but a posteriori and empirically from the manner of its working? ”

“ The mind of man is dual in its nature,—objective and subjective.
[Pg 208]
2. The subjective mind is constantly controlled by suggestion.
These two propositions would seem to have been so well established as to need no further elucidation at this time. The subsidiary proposition, which applies to the phenomena under consideration, is that,—
3. The subjective mind, or entity, possesses physical power; that is, the power to make itself heard and felt, and to move ponderable objects. ”

“ In estimating the characters or explaining the conduct of acquaintances or of public men, we frame hypotheses as to their dispositions and principles. 'That we should not impute motives' is a peculiarly absurd maxim, as there is no other way of understanding human life. ”

“ The arguments I am about to urge all proceed on two suppositions: first, when we make theories about the world and discuss them with one another, we do so in order to attain a conception of things which shall give us subjective satisfaction; and, second, if there be two conceptions, and the one seems to us, on the whole, more rational than the other, we are entitled to suppose that the more rational one is the truer of the two. ”

“ In those subjects which are at the same time familiar and complicated, and especially in those which are so in as great a degree as moral and social subjects are, it is a matter of common remark how many important propositions are believed and repeated from habit, while no account could be given, and no sense is practically manifested, of the truths which they convey. ”

“ Now in this extremely elementary consideration, namely, in the consideration that unless ideas first voluntarily bind themselves to a given task, and so, by their internal purpose, already commit themselves to a certain selection of its object, they are neither true nor false, — in this consideration, I say, there may be hidden consequences that we shall later find momentous for the whole theory of Being and of truth. ”

“ What has been said can be expressed in a formal manner by saying that the nature of judgment or the proposition in general, which involves the distinction of subject and predicate, is subverted and destroyed by the speculative judgment ”

“ Wherever a truth depends, as we say, upon observation, clearly in this case you cannot tell how much is left out, and what you have not observed may be, for all you know, the larger part of the matter. ”

“ The reasonable mind, however, will ponder and consider each feature of the case, and will rather prefer to countenance a supposition based on ordinary experience than an explanation brought ready-made from the domain of the miraculous. ”