Plausibility

“ For it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove than by other perceptions which there is just the same ground to suspect; or to attempt to prove the truth of our faculties, which can no otherwise be proved than by these very suspected faculties themselves.’ This is the substance of the argument that rests on the data of the sense or reason with which human nature is inspired. ”

“ Thus it is that while a thing may exist, it may not always be apparent, and if apparent, only to a few. Men take views according to the texture of their mental cuticle, mercurial or otherwise, thick or thin; and can decisions based upon such capricious contingencies be accepted as a philosophic solution of a doubt, or a truth? But I shall, farther on in my recital, have to deal more practically with this topic, because I shall be drawn to its revelation by the inevitable force of circumstances and incidents. ”

“ 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! ”

“ But as a theory—shall we say?—he may advance an explanation which is satisfying to one who has wondered as much as any others and inquired as often during many years, while yet it still leaves a place for mystery and a suggestion of eternal doubt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the same way, in the next division of my speculations, the essential subject and proper aim will be to carry that feeling, call it as we will, whether of pure love, or inner life, or higher truth, whose existence we have, we think, clearly established, through the crisis of doubt, to a determinate judgment of profound certainty and unwavering conviction, or at least to a rigorous distinction between that which is certain and that which must forever remain uncertain. ”

“ There had seldom been a case in which he had not successfully employed a curious subterranean logic—an apparently wilful insistence upon what seemed at first glance the unvital and immaterial—as a preliminary to a swift volte-face by which he turned the evidence at a new and unexpected angle of inference, and drove home the doubt with a brilliant display of oratory which captivated and—for the moment—convinced. ”

“ Should you not rather expect to find difficulties in the revelation as in Nature?’ So that the champion of the standard of probability ends by putting an element of improbability as a mark of divine truth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This proposition I take to be a mere interpretation of universal experience, a statement in words of what every one is internally convinced of. No one who believed that he knew thoroughly the circumstances of any case, and the characters of the different persons concerned, would hesitate to foretell how all of them would act. Whatever degree of doubt he may in fact feel, arises from the uncertainty whether he really knows the circumstances, or the character of some one or other of the persons, with the degree of accuracy required ”

“ Since therefore all knowledge resolves itself into probability, and becomes at last of the same nature with that evidence, which we employ in common life, we must now examine this latter species of reasoning, and see on what foundation it stands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus speculation gives out as the substantial what nature herself has fixed as such; and, moreover, gives out as the phenomenal the elements which result when this substantial is tampered with and broken up. Psychology, on the contrary, gives out as the substantial the elements which result when the substantial is tampered with and broken up; and, moreover, gives out as the phenomenal that which nature herself has fixed as the substantial. ”

“ What is called explaining one law of nature by another, is but substituting one mystery for another; and does nothing to render the general course of nature other than mysterious: we can no more assign a why for the more extensive laws than for the partial ones. The explanation may substitute a mystery which has become familiar, and has grown to seem not mysterious, for one which is still strange. And this is the meaning of explanation, in common parlance. ”

“ Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness;4 the latter, of Inference. The truths known by intuition are the original premises from which all others are inferred. Our assent to the conclusion being grounded on the truth of the premises, we never could arrive at any knowledge by reasoning, unless something could be known antecedently to all reasoning.
Examples of truths known to us by immediate consciousness, are our own bodily sensations and mental feelings. ”

“ But when the hypothesis, of itself and without adjustment for the purpose, gives us the rule and reason of a class of facts not contemplated in its construction, we have a criterion of its reality, which has never yet been produced in favour of falsehood. ”

“ A truth, necessary and universal, relative to any object of our knowledge, must verify itself in every instance where that object is before our contemplation, and if at the same time it be simple and intelligible, its verification must be obvious. ”

“ We first discard absurdity and impossibility, then exact greater and greater degrees of probability, but at last become cold and insensible to the charms of falsehood, however specious, and, from the imitations of truth, which are never perfect, transfer our affection to truth itself. ”

“ Sense-deceptions, faulty observation, distraction, exaggeration, illusion, fallacy, and error are not idle abstract fancies of the psychologist, but stern realities; and their existence emphasizes the need in the determination of truth and the maintenance of a sound rationality, of a calm, unprejudiced judgment, of an experienced and balanced intelligence, of a discerning sense for nice distinctions, of an appreciation of the circumstances under which it is peculiarly human to err. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You invariably lead me into the realms of speculation, and then throw me upon the defensive by asking me to prove my own theories, or with apparent sincerity, you advance an unreasonable hypothesis, and then, before I am aware of your purpose, force me to acquiesce because I can not find facts to confute you. ”

“ We misconceive therefore the nature of reason if we exclude reflection or mediation from ultimate truth, and do not take it to be a positive moment of the Absolute. It is reflection which constitutes truth the final result, and yet at the same time does away with the contrast between result and the process of arriving at it. ”

“ Reasoning in it, we learn what we are, and whence, and also to know Creator and creature; through it we trace truth and detect falsity, we argue and discover what is consequent and what inconsequent, what is contrary to the nature of things, what is true, what is probable, and what is intrinsically false in disputations. ”

“ But, as the problem we are about to be engaged with has much in common with these speculations, and as its solution has been retarded by the assumption of various false facts which have invariably been permitted to mingle with them, we must, in a few words, strike at the root of these spurious facts, and, employing a more accurate observation, we will then bring forward, purified from all irrelevant admixture, that great question of psychology—how, or in what circumstances, does Consciousness come into operation? ”

“ What then is the hidden mystery which ferments in the bosom of this painful nature and endeavours to expand?
"The more cannot issue from the less," said the schoolmen, and no doubt in abstract logic they were right. But reality smiles at logic. It shows us everywhere the triumph of the opposite maxim. ”

“ Strange as it may at first seem, a closer examination of the nature of truth makes easily manifest that what is, quite apart from any causal theory, must be viewed by the consciousness that faces Being as a selection from abstractly possible contents. ”

“ Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and the very heart of our human experience. ”

“ Extraordinary events, to which no such moral aim and purpose can be assigned, may be unusual occurrences, but are in no proper sense of the words evidential miracles. An isolated occurrence of an extraordinary nature, and an event marked with a definite moral purpose, are two wholly different things. The one may be credible, and the other wholly incredible. We habitually recognise the distinction in ordinary life, and it entirely affects our judgment of the probability of an event. ”

“ 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 inquire, therefore, if there are necessary truths, is to inquire, if individual, if general reason exists; if what we call reason, and discover in all men, really exists, or is but a fantastical illusion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The same fantastic conclusions, drawn from rude analyses and associations, and from seeming connections of cause and effect, the same bewildering entanglement between things which we know can have nothing in common, meet us; and the same scientific method by which we determine the necessary place of each in the advance of man to truth through illusion is applied. ”

“ In subjects adapted to the narrow compass of human reason, there is commonly but one determination, which carries probability or conviction with it; and to a man of sound judgement, all other suppositions, but that one, appear entirely absurd and chimerical. ”

“ He will hesitate to say, therefore, that because a belief seems certain it is true, and to trust the formal claim to infallibility which is made in every judgment. And when 'intuitions' are appealed to, he will ask how 'true' intuitions are to be discriminated from 'false,' sound from insane, and inquire to what he is committing himself in admitting the truth of intuitions. ”

“ The imperfect character of this view is freely admitted; no other, consistent with known facts, presents itself by which the effect can be explained. The fact stands as a truth; the hypothesis by which it is attempted to be interpreted is open to doubt, and it is opposed to some favourite theories. ”

“ There are two ways of passing beyond the domain of practical certainty, and of looking into the vast range of possibility. One is by asking, "What is knowledge? What constitutes experience?" If we adopt this course we are plunged into a sea of speculation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The materialistic view, that matter becomes conscious without containing psychic elements, is an assumption without proof and without logical consistency. The idealistic view, that the world of objects is simply a fiction of conscious mind, is equally devoid of proof and probability. ”