Last time, we saw how the pure being of the beginning of ontology was determined to something and then opposed with others. Fichte continues by noting that in this opposition is also expressed the absolute relation of the opposed. In other words, he is suggesting that opposition isn’t the final truth, but at least implies that all positing of something and putting the something against another is possible only within the common sphere where both are reciprocally related. Thus, both previous categories develop into a third: affirmative positing and negative opposing are just one-sided expressions for positing or placing in a relationship. Fichte insists that this relatedness is the only true Ur-category, while the two first Ur-categories are just its interconnected moments or constituents. In other words, all determining is at the same time opposing, while this is just placing in a relation. Thus, Fichte notes, while earlier the original activity of thinking was seen to hover between affirmation and denial, we now find out that within this hovering movement, thinking relates the affirmative and negative members reciprocally to one another. In this sphere or space of relations, he declares, all thinking moves. Thus, all further categories and even all determined thoughts could be seen as mere further development of this Ur-category of relatedness.
Fichte describes the first three Ur-categories also with terms borrowed from his father: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. What he stated could then also be expressed by saying that the thesis and the antithesis led to synthesis, which is then something that could be discovered dialectically in all further oppositions. We thus find Fichte discovering the method of his ontology, which begins by noting how every position or thesis is one-sided and limited by its opposite of antithesis. He also points out that this is where the unspeculative thinking stops: it either fixates on one of the opposites, ignoring the other, or then it becomes aware of the opposition, but then just sceptically denies both positions. On the other hand, speculative thinking tries to solve these oppositions, even if it is not always aware of doing this or works only instinctually. Thus, speculative thinking should lead to the unification of opposites in something higher.
Fichte calls the result of uniting something (Etwas) synthetically with its opposite as this (Dieses). Fichte’s point appears to be that by determining something and relating it to other we can point out to it as one specific individual among many individuals, all of which are in the same space of relation and differentiation. Thus, he admits, opposition has not completely vanished, but the reciprocal exclusion of individuals goes on to infinity: even if we literally united two individuals together into a unity, this unified individual would have then to be determined in comparison to yet another individual etc. Fichte promises to return to this point later and continues to point out that every individual thus always reflects the sum of all individuals, because being determined by its relation to the other individuals, just like this sum or “all” reflects each single individual. This original synthesis of everything being in everything will then be developed further in the later parts of the ontology, he reveals, and should find its final form in the relation of the original personality or God to infinity of creations.
An important conclusion of the ontology so far, Fichte thinks, is that everything that is is determined as an individual. Thus, universal abstractions are not in the proper sense of the word, but are at most the unactual ontological foundation of the individual. This conclusion, together with the earlier one that everything reflects everything else, are, according to Fichte, truths that are just implicitly present in the Ur-categories and that must be developed in more detail through the course of the ontology. Then again, he assures us, if the development is done by following the dialectical method of mediation of opposites, the result cannot be different, no matter who is using this method: Fichte’s philosophy should just bring about what is already contained in its first principles.
Although Fichte adopts the three-level schema so often used in the German philosophy of his times, the origin of which he sees in Kantian idea that in all triplets of categories the third is the synthesis of the first two, but especially in the first presentation of his father’s Wissenschaftslehre, he warns the reader that by itself it does not exhaust the whole ontology. Instead, Fichte says, it is just the most empty or most abstract expression of the truth that will be found again in all more detail later. Only the highest synthesis will be the final truth, and each previous synthesis, including the original Ur-synthesis, are just more or less abstract preconditions of the highest synthesis.
Fichte recapitulates that the original being, which was still nothing, was determined as something and thus as a certain individual against other individuals. Now, in the category structure presented in a summarised fashion in his theory of knowledge, Fichte continued forward to space and time as the forms of perception or intuition, because we determine individuals through their positions in space and time. Ontology, on the other hand, should be involved only with pure thinking, not yet touched by perception and intuition, and thus this way of proceeding should not be open to it. Instead, Fichte continues by noting that describing an individual merely as this does not really tell us what it is and how it is different from other individuals: it is both distinguished and also not distinguished from them. Tantalisingly, Fichte just suggests that this contradiction leads us to the notion of quantity, but his point might be that at this stage the division of the infinity of everything into individuals is completely arbitrary: we might as well say that a set of individuals were combined instead of distinguished. As Hegel had already pointed out, such an arbitrary assignment of limits characterises in fact quantities, since e.g. a length of 6 metres could be divided into two lengths of 3 metres, but also to lengths of 4 and 2 metres.
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maanantai 5. elokuuta 2024
tiistai 6. heinäkuuta 2021
James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 2
Second volume of Mill’s work on philosophy of mind clearly divides into two different parts, and I shall treat the latter part in a writing of its own. The first part continues the discussion Mill started in the first volume, that is, the analysis of common concepts pertaining to human cognition.
The first of these concepts are relational terms. You might remember from my previous post that Mill appeared to accept only monadic predication, which seems, of course, problematic for understanding relations. Mill’s solution is to suggest that relational terms like “parent-child” are actually names for a single phenomenon, consisting of two things. The different names just emphasise different aspects of this same totality. Connected to this notion is Mill’s idea that difference and opposition is necessary at least for such conscious entities as us - we do not really sense or think anything, if there is no change in our sensations and ideas. Together these ideas suggest surprisingly close tendencies with broadly Hegelian philosophers, who view the world as an necessarily interconnected system of oppositions.
Mill goes into great details classifying the various possible relations: difference and sameness of sensations, sensations as preceding one another, spatial relations of objects, temporal relations of objects, quantitative equality and inequality of objects, qualitative likeness or unlikeness of objects, same or different composition of ideas and ideas as preceding one another. A clear fault in Mill’s schema is the ignorance of relations with more than two relata. The closest Mill comes to discussing them comes with spatial relations, as he admits that even the idea of position of an object involves relations to all other objects. Still, even here Mill tries to simplify matters and concentrates on juxtaposition of two objects and such pairs like high and low or front and back.
If we inspect Mill's account of spatial relations in more detail, we find him, in a manner reminiscent of Fichte, reducing the genesis of our experience of space into muscular exertions, by which we move ourselves or things around us. In another sense, Mill’s notion of space reminds one of Leibniz, because just like him, Mill says that space is nothing but an abstraction from all the concrete positions and spatial relations between things. While Kant would object that surely space is prior to positions in it, he might approve Mill’s admission of a subjective element in our notion of space - we always associate a place with a further place, thus making our notion of space infinite.
A further peculiar element in Mill’s notion of space is that when we think of empty space, he insists, we think of something positioned in that space and then the absence of this something. This is a feature of Mill’s general theory of privative statements - he insists that thinking of absence of something, we think of both that thing and its absence (e.g., when thinking of darkness, we think of light and its absence). In case of space, this would mean that by empty space, we always mean space empty of something. Indeed, he confirms, because our experience of space is intrinsically related to the idea of something resisting our efforts, we cannot think of any space empty of everything.
Mills account of time is similar enough to his account of space that we do not have to deal with it in great detail - like space is for Mill just an abstraction of all positions, time is nothing more than just an abstraction from all successions. Reminiscent of Kantian tradition, Mill connects numbers also with successions. In other words, he points out that although numbers are used to count the greatness of synchronously existing objects, the act of counting happens through some successive operation.
Mill also investigates the notion of personal identity, especially over time, and reflection. His basic solution to this conundrum is to point out that personal identity is just a special case of any identity. Identity as such, say, of other persons, we come to know by seeing a person and remembering that we saw her earlier. Similarly, Mill says, we are always conscious of ourselves, remember being conscious of ourselves and hear testimonies of others concerning us at times, which we don’t remember.
Mill’s explanation seems flawed in many ways. Firstly, one might point out that he hasn’t ever really explained what it means of being conscious of oneself, because saying that consciousness in general is just a general name for sensations and ideas explains nothing about self-consciousness - what are we conscious about when we conscious of ourselves? Secondly, Mill’s explanation would at most tell what evidence we use to justify our assertions of self-, or indeed, any identity, but not what it means that something is identical with itself. Finally, while it is undoubtedly obvious that our assertions and experiences of self-identity are particular examples of assertions and experiences of identity, one might wonder, in the manner of Fichte, whether e.g. our experience of self-identity underlies our experience of all other identities (that is, whether we must be able to identify ourselves, before being able to identify anything else).
The first of these concepts are relational terms. You might remember from my previous post that Mill appeared to accept only monadic predication, which seems, of course, problematic for understanding relations. Mill’s solution is to suggest that relational terms like “parent-child” are actually names for a single phenomenon, consisting of two things. The different names just emphasise different aspects of this same totality. Connected to this notion is Mill’s idea that difference and opposition is necessary at least for such conscious entities as us - we do not really sense or think anything, if there is no change in our sensations and ideas. Together these ideas suggest surprisingly close tendencies with broadly Hegelian philosophers, who view the world as an necessarily interconnected system of oppositions.
Mill goes into great details classifying the various possible relations: difference and sameness of sensations, sensations as preceding one another, spatial relations of objects, temporal relations of objects, quantitative equality and inequality of objects, qualitative likeness or unlikeness of objects, same or different composition of ideas and ideas as preceding one another. A clear fault in Mill’s schema is the ignorance of relations with more than two relata. The closest Mill comes to discussing them comes with spatial relations, as he admits that even the idea of position of an object involves relations to all other objects. Still, even here Mill tries to simplify matters and concentrates on juxtaposition of two objects and such pairs like high and low or front and back.
If we inspect Mill's account of spatial relations in more detail, we find him, in a manner reminiscent of Fichte, reducing the genesis of our experience of space into muscular exertions, by which we move ourselves or things around us. In another sense, Mill’s notion of space reminds one of Leibniz, because just like him, Mill says that space is nothing but an abstraction from all the concrete positions and spatial relations between things. While Kant would object that surely space is prior to positions in it, he might approve Mill’s admission of a subjective element in our notion of space - we always associate a place with a further place, thus making our notion of space infinite.
A further peculiar element in Mill’s notion of space is that when we think of empty space, he insists, we think of something positioned in that space and then the absence of this something. This is a feature of Mill’s general theory of privative statements - he insists that thinking of absence of something, we think of both that thing and its absence (e.g., when thinking of darkness, we think of light and its absence). In case of space, this would mean that by empty space, we always mean space empty of something. Indeed, he confirms, because our experience of space is intrinsically related to the idea of something resisting our efforts, we cannot think of any space empty of everything.
Mills account of time is similar enough to his account of space that we do not have to deal with it in great detail - like space is for Mill just an abstraction of all positions, time is nothing more than just an abstraction from all successions. Reminiscent of Kantian tradition, Mill connects numbers also with successions. In other words, he points out that although numbers are used to count the greatness of synchronously existing objects, the act of counting happens through some successive operation.
Mill also investigates the notion of personal identity, especially over time, and reflection. His basic solution to this conundrum is to point out that personal identity is just a special case of any identity. Identity as such, say, of other persons, we come to know by seeing a person and remembering that we saw her earlier. Similarly, Mill says, we are always conscious of ourselves, remember being conscious of ourselves and hear testimonies of others concerning us at times, which we don’t remember.
Mill’s explanation seems flawed in many ways. Firstly, one might point out that he hasn’t ever really explained what it means of being conscious of oneself, because saying that consciousness in general is just a general name for sensations and ideas explains nothing about self-consciousness - what are we conscious about when we conscious of ourselves? Secondly, Mill’s explanation would at most tell what evidence we use to justify our assertions of self-, or indeed, any identity, but not what it means that something is identical with itself. Finally, while it is undoubtedly obvious that our assertions and experiences of self-identity are particular examples of assertions and experiences of identity, one might wonder, in the manner of Fichte, whether e.g. our experience of self-identity underlies our experience of all other identities (that is, whether we must be able to identify ourselves, before being able to identify anything else).
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