Paralogism

“ As therefore there, those who are not clever in calculation are deceived by the skilful, in the same manner also, with regard to arguments, those who are unskilled in the power of names are deceived by paralogisms, both when they dispute themselves, and when they hear others, for which reason also, and others which will be assigned, there may be a syllogism and elenchus in appearance, but not in reality. ”

“ It appears also evident, that in paralogisms there is nothing to prevent a contradiction of the hypothesis arising, as if a thing is an odd number, that it is not odd, for from opposite propositions there was a contrary syllogism ”

“ I must begin by denying a principle, or, as it seems to me, a prejudice with regard to continuity. Real existence (we must allow) either is or is not; and hence I agree also that, if in time, it cannot cease and reappear, and that it must, therefore, be continuous. But, on the other hand, we have proved that reality does not exist in time, but only appears there. What we find in time is mere appearance; and with regard to appearance I know no reason why it should not cease and reappear without forfeiting identity. A phenomenon A is produced by certain conditions, which then are modified. ”

“ If by reality we mean existence as a presented event, then to be real, in this sense, marks a low type of being. It needs no great advance in the scale of reality and truth, in order to make a thing too good for existence such as this. And I will illustrate my meaning by a kind of bastard use of the ontological proof. [22] Every idea, it is certain, possesses a sensible side or aspect. Beside being a content, it, in other words, must be also an event. Now to describe the various existences of ideas, as psychical events, is for the most part a task falling outside metaphysics. ”

“ When then you are asked whether the value of a poem lies in a substance got by decomposing the poem and present, as such, only in reflective analysis, or in a form arrived at and existing in the same way, you will answer, ‘It lies neither in one, nor in the other, nor in any addition of them, but in the poem, where they are not.’ And when you are told that you are talking a priori metaphysics, you will not mind. ‘Metaphysics’ does not mean anything. It is only a term of abuse applied to the effort to look at facts instead of repeating a priori fictions. ”

“ Any arrangement existing in my head must qualify the absolute Reality. But, when the false abstraction of my private view is supplemented and made good, that arrangement may, as such, have completely disappeared. The ontological proof then should be merely another way of insisting on this doctrine. Not every idea will, as such, be real, or, as such, have existence. But the greater the perfection of a thought, and the more its possibility and its internal necessity are increased, so much more reality it possesses. ”

“ If by some potent magic he can precipitate them into the world of sensuous images so that they make music to the eye, he need not even enter into the question of their reality, but in order to achieve this transmutation he should know something, at least, of the strange laws of their being, should lend ear to a fairy-tale in which each theorem is a paradox, and each paradox a mathematical fact.
He must conceive of a space of four mutually independent directions; a space, that is, having a direction at right angles to every direction that we know. ”

“ The idea, qualified as existing in a certain sensible event, is the predicate, in other words, which is affirmed of the Absolute. And since such a predicate is a poor abstraction, and since its essence, therefore, is determined by what falls outside its own being, it is, hence, inconsistent with itself, and contradicts its proper subject. We have in brief, by considering the spurious ontological proof, been led once more to the conclusion that existence is not reality.
Existence is not reality, and reality must exist. ”

“ With any view of the world which confines known reality to existence in time, and which limits truth to the attempt to reproduce somehow the series of events—with any view for which merely a thing exists, or barely does not exist, and for which an idea is false, or else is true—how is it possible to be just to the various orders of appearance? ”

“ We have seen that every idea, however imaginary, is, in a sense, referred to reality. But we saw also that, with regard to the various meanings of the real subject, and the diverse provinces and regions in which it appears, we are all, more or less, unconscious. This same want of consciousness, in varying amounts, is visible also in our way of applying the predicate. [10] Every idea can be made the true adjective of reality, but, on the other hand (as we have seen) , every idea must be altered. More or less, they all require a supplementation and rearrangement. ”

“ The fact of illusion and error is in various ways forced early upon the mind; and the ideas by which we try to understand the universe, may be considered as attempts to set right our failure. In this division of my work I shall criticize some of these, and shall endeavour to show that they have not reached their object. I shall point out that the world, as so understood, contradicts itself; and is therefore appearance, and not reality. ”

“ Its essence is that of surprise—which is the essence of humour.
The intellectual growth of humanity is shown by its increasing tolerance of the paradox. The greatest of all Paradoxers was crucified. Every true paradox is a little parable of human fallibility. A parabola is a conic section; a parable, one might say, is a comic section.
Mr. Chesterton once, in a delightful essay called “Christmas,” said something that lingers in our mind as an exhibition of the paradox both in its strength and weakness. He wrote:
It is not uncommon nowadays for the insane extremes in reality to meet. ”

“ All these objections certainly carry great weight, but they are not capable of killing the doctrine—they only scotch it. I think there is a radical vice in parallelism, which till now has not been sufficiently indicated, and I ask what can really remain of the whole edifice when this vice has been once exposed?
Parallelism implies a false idea, which we have already come across when discussing materialism. It is the idea that a phenomenon of consciousness constitutes one complete whole.
The error proceeds from the use of concepts which cause the reality to be lost sight of. ”

“ But this parallelism would be most wonderful indeed if it were a true parallelism consisting of two different and distinct lines. The simplest conception of the case is the monistic view, which considers the parallelism as an identity. Both motion and feeling are abstract conceptions. A motion exists of itself no more than a feeling. The reality from which the ideas motion and feeling have been abstracted is one inseparable whole, which if viewed as an objective process appears as motion, and if viewed from the subjective side appears as feeling. Feelings can only be felt, not seen ”

“ But we may here confine ourselves to the most general of the objections to the parallelistic theory. They apply to the general [pg 343] idea of parallelism itself, and affect the different standpoints of the parallelists in different degrees. The theory in no way corresponds to what we find in ourselves from direct experience. It is only with the greatest difficulty that we can convince ourselves that our arm moves only when and not because we will. ”

“ You cannot show how the series becomes a system in the soul; and, if you could, you cannot free that soul from its perplexed position as one finite related to other finites. In short, metaphysically your soul or Ego is a mass of confusion, and we have now long ago disposed of it. And if it is offered us merely as a working conception, which does not claim truth, then this conception, as we have seen, will not work in metaphysics. Its alleged function must be confined to psychology, an empirical science, and the further consideration of it here would be, therefore, irrelevant. [13] ”

“ Considered from this side, a thought, if it actually were bare, would stand at a level lower than the, so-called, chance facts of sense. For in the latter we have, at least, some internal connection with the context, and already a fixed relation of universals, however impure.
All reality must be revealed in the world of events; and that is most real which, within such an order or orders, finds least foreign to itself. Hence, if other things remain equal, a definite place in, and connection with, the temporal system gives increase of reality. ”

“ And, if we regard the situation from the side of phenomena, it is not more encouraging. We must take appearances in connection with reality, or not. In the former case, they are not rendered one whit less confused. They offer precisely the old jungle in which no way could be found, and which is not cleared by mere attribution to a Thing in itself. But, if we deny the connection of phenomena with the Real, our condition is not improved. Either we possess now two realms of confusion and disorder, existing side by side, or the one above the other. ”

“ Moreover, they are dynamic with the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, and so to make one's nature mediative or instrumental. ”

“ It is very far, indeed from following, as a necessary consequence, that every analysis of our sensations which affords a paradoxical result, is, therefore, a just one—for error may be extravagant in appearance as well as in reality. But it may truly be regarded as a necessary consequence, that every accurate and original analysis of our sensations must afford a result, that, as first stated, will appear paradoxical. ”

“ The idea that in time or in space there can be distinctions without any differences is to my mind quite unmeaning, and the assertion that anything can be successive in itself and yet merely the same, is to me an absurdity. Again to seek to place either the identity or the difference in mere ‘existence’ is, so far as I can see, quite futile—mere existence being once more a self-contradictory idea which ends in nonsense. ”

“ Very often, certain parallelists, after thinking they have discovered the duality of nature, endeavour to bring it back to unity by supposing that the two faces of the reality are as two effects of one unique reality, inaccessible to our senses and underlying appearances. ”

“ If the connections of substantive and adjective, and of quality and relation, have been shown not to be defensible; if the forms of space and of time have turned out to be full of contradictions; if, lastly, causation and activity have succeeded merely in adding inconsistency to inconsistency,—if, in a word, nothing of all this can, as such, be predicated of reality,—what is it that is left? If things are to exist, then where and how? ”

“ In this manner the experiences of sensation, perception, and apprehension are connate, they spring up together, and yet concepts of sensation precede concepts of understanding, and concepts of apprehension precede concepts of reflection. One part of the doctrine of presupposition, as it is put in metaphysics, is a fallacy, and is replaced by the doctrine of causation, which explains that that which was supposed to be antecedent is consequent, or that which was supposed to be cause is effect. This is the great contribution made by science in demonstrating the laws of evolution. ”

“ On the principle of going behind the conceptual function altogether, however, and looking to the more primitive flux of the sensational life for reality's true shape, a way is open to us, as I tried in my last lecture to show. Not only the absolute is its own other, but the simplest bits of immediate experience are their own others, if that hegelian phrase be once for all allowed. The concrete pulses of experience appear pent in by no such definite limits as our conceptual substitutes for them are confined by. They run into one another continuously and seem to interpenetrate. ”

“ Now if we re-establish facts as they are, if we admit a parallelism between physical phenomena, on the one hand, and phenomena at once physical and psychical, on the other, the parallelist hypothesis loses every sort of meaning. It ceases to present to us the image of two phenomena of an absolutely different order, which are found coupled together like the two faces of a unity, the front and back of a page, the right and wrong side of a stuff. If there is anything material in the psychical part, the opposition of nature no longer exists between the two terms ”

“ But, when we consider it, the objection breaks down altogether. It is true that, in a sense and more or less, we arrange all phenomena as events in one series. But it does not follow that in the universe, as a whole, the same tendency holds good. It does not follow that all phenomena are related in time. What is true of my events need not hold good of all other events; nor again is my imperfect way of unity the pattern to which the Absolute is confined. ”

“ I adopt the hypothesis that that which thinks in us has an ample experience, of which the intuitions we use in dealing with the world of real objects are a part; of which experience, the intuition of four-dimensional forms and motions is also a part. The process we are engaged in intellectually is the reading of the obscure signals of our nerves into a world of reality, by means of intuitions derived from the inner experience. ”