QUOTATIONS #6

W. F. Volkmann --: One might be tempted to answer the question of the origin of the time-idea by simply pointing to the train of ideas, whose various members, starting from the first, successively attain to full clearness. But against this it must be objected that the successive ideas are not yet the idea of succession, because succession in thought is not the thought of succession. If idea A follows idea B, consciousness simply exchanges one for another. That B comes after A is for our consciousness a non-existent fact; for this after is given neither in B nor in A; and no third idea has been supposed. The thinking of the sequence of B upon A is another kind of thinking from that which brought forth A and then brought forth B; and this first kind of thinking is absent so long as merely the thinking of A and the thinking of B are there. In short, when we look at the matter sharply, we come to this antithesis, that if A and B are to be represented as occurring in succession they must be simultaneously represented; if we are to think of them as one after the other, we must think them both at once.

William James --: The relation of experience to time has not been profoundly studied. Its objects are given as being of the present, but the part of time referred to by the datum is a very different thing from the conterminous of the past and future which philosophy denotes by the name Present. The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past -- a recent past -- delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the past and the future. Let it be named the specious present, and let the past, that is given as being the past, be known as the obvious past. All the notes of a bar of a song seem to the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place of a meteor seem to the beholder to be contained in the present. At the instant of the termination of such series, no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past. Time, then, considered relatively to human apprehension, consists of four parts, viz., the obvious past, the specious present, the real present, and the future. Omitting the specious present, it consists of three . . . nonentities -- the past, which does not exist, the future, which does not exist, and their conterminous, the present; the faculty from which it proceeds lies to us in the fiction of the specious present. [The Principles Of Psychology]

Bertrand Russell --: In fact, everything that we can directly observe of the physical world happens inside our heads, and consists of "mental" events in at least one sense of the word "mental". It also consists of events which form part of the physical world. The development of this point of view will lead us to the conclusion that the distinction between mind and matter is illusory. The stuff of the world may be called physical or mental or both or neither, as we please; in fact, the words serve no purpose. There is only one definition of the words that is unobjectionable: "physical" is what is dealt with by physics, and "mental" is what is dealt with by psychology. When, accordingly, I speak of "physical" space, I mean the space that occurs in physics. It is extrordinarily difficult to divest ourselves of the belief that the physical world is the world we perceive by sight and touch; even if, in our philosophic moments, we are aware that this is an error, we nevertheless fall into it again as soon as we are off our guard. The notion that what we see is "out there" in physical space is one which cannot survive while we are grasping the difference between what physics supposes to be really happening, and what our senses show us as happening; but it is sure to return and plague us when we begin to forget the argument. Only long reflection can make a radically new point of view familiar and easy. [Physical & Perceptual Space]

Bertrand Russell --: The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find... that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect. [The Problems of Philosophy]

William James --: Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is many means only that the sundry parts of reality may be externally related. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has on the pluralistic view a genuinely "external" environment of some sort or amount. Things are "with" one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word "and" trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. "Ever not quite" has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. However much may be collected, however much may report itself as present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity. Monism, on the other hand, insists that when you come down to reality as such, to the reality of realities, everything is present to everything else in one vast instantaneous co-implicated completeness -- nothing can in any sense, functional or substantial, be really absent from anything else, all things interpenetrate and telescope together in the great total conflux. [Pluralism, Pragmatism, and Instrumental Truth]

Hermann Helmholtz --: Even if we take the idealistic position, we can hardly talk about the lawful regularity of our sensations other than by saying: "Perceptions occur as if the things of the material world referred to in the realistic hypothesis actually did exist." We cannot eliminate the "as if" construction completely, however, for we cannot consider the realistic interpretation to be more than an exceedingly useful and practical hypothesis. We cannot assert that it is necessarily true, for opposed to it there is always the possibility of other irrefutable idealistic hypotheses. It is always well to keep this in mind in order not to infer from the facts more than can rightly be inferred from them. The various idealistic and realistic interpretations are metaphysical hypotheses which, as long as they are recognised as such, are scientifically completely justified. They may become dangerous, however, if they are presented as dogmas or as alleged necessities of thought. Science must consider thoroughly all admissible hypotheses in order to obtain a complete picture of all possible modes of explanation. Furthermore, hypotheses are necessary to someone doing research, for one cannot always wait until a reliable scientific conclusion has been reached; one must sometimes make judgments according to either probability or aesthetic or moral feelings. Metaphysical hypotheses are not to be objected to here either. A thinker is unworthy of science, however, if he forgets the hypothetical origin of his assertions. The arrogance and vehemence with which such hidden hypotheses are sometimes defended are usually the result of a lack of confidence which their advocates feel in the hidden depths of their minds about the qualifications of their claims. What we unquestionably can find as a fact, without any hypothetical element whatsoever, is the lawful regularity of phenomena. [The Facts Of Perception]

Kelley L. Ross --: It must then be asked, "Is science 'materialistic'?" The answer to that is "no," because, although many scientists may in fact be materialists, materialism is a metaphysical doctrine and is both inessential to science and independent of its method. We then must ask, "Is science 'naturalistic'?" The answer to that is "yes," because naturalism, properly understood, is a method, an empirical method, which is the very essence of modern science ever since Galileo. .... The naturalistic method of science involves one fundamental procedure, the use of observation and experiment to confirm or falsify hypotheses. This is "naturalistic" for two reasons: (1) the observations and experiments are done in nature, i.e. on empirical and phenomenal objects; and (2) the hypotheses are about the laws of nature. Thus, phenomena are observed, a theory is proposed to explain the phenomena, and the theory is tested by predictions that can be proven by observation or experiment. [Scientific Naturalism & Intelligent Design]

Henry P. Stapp --: In his plenary talk David Hodgson noted that our justice and moral systems are based on the normal *folk psychology* notion of personal responsibility for one's acts. Thus the abandonment of folk psychology, suggested by Patricia Churchland (1986) and others, would undermine the foundation of the social fabric. Hodgson asks whether this change in our conception of the nature of man is actually entailed by science. The quantum theoretical approach to the science of consciousness described here leaves folk psychology essentially intact: it abandons instead, at the foundational level, and on good grounds, folk physics (i.e., classical mechanics). The quantum framework leads naturally to the normal *folk* concept of free will and personal responsibility. The key point is the concept of *I*. In classical mechanics the personally experienced *I* is not entailed by the (dynamically complete) physical principles, and it thus lies impotently, and hence without responsibility, outside the causal chain of physical events. In the quantum picture the experienced quality of *I-ness* is experienced, and is therefore {it part} of the stream of conscious events: the experienced *I-ness* belongs to the experience, not vice versa. It belongs to what William James calls the *fringe* of experience. Surrounding the central focus of our experience is a slowly changing background part that keeps us vaguely aware of who we are and what we are doing, both in the long and short terms. The way the dynamics works is that the state of the brain (and universe) evolves under the control of the Schroedinger equation, and then a collapse occurs. This collapse actualizes a template for action that is the physical counterpart of the corresponding experienced thought. Thus the effect of the thought gets injected into the causal chain of events. The overall guidance part of the thought comes from the slowly changing fringe part that is the experienced *I*. This part is carried over time by the memory structure in the brain, and reflects both genetic input, educational training, and the effects of all earlier conscious experiences, which have likewise had their effects injected into the causal chain of brain/mind events by means of collapses to templates for action that are the physical images of these thoughts. In this way the experienced *I* feeds into one´s behaviour in essentially the way that we intuitively feel that it does, and is in turn being created in its forward development by the combined effect of its own input into the physical process and the action of the environment upon the body and brain. There is, of course, some *static* injected into this process of personally controlled behaviour by the quantum selection process, but this static is limited to selections between options to which our own personal process has assigned significant statistical weight. Thus although the quantum selection process gets the final say at the level of the individual selections, the statistical weights are controlled by the personal process that is itself controlled basically by the experienced *I*. [Science of Consciousness and the Hard Problem]

William James --: The mention of material substance naturally suggests the doctrine of 'materialism,' but philosophical materialism is not necessarily knit up with belief in 'matter,' as a metaphysical principle. One may deny matter in that sense, as strongly as Berkeley did, one may be a phenomenalist like Huxley, and yet one may still be a materialist in the wider sense, of explaining higher phenomena by lower ones, and leaving the destinies of the world at the mercy of its blinder parts and forces. It is in this wider sense of the word that materialism is opposed to spiritualism or theism. The laws of physical nature are what run things, materialism says. The highest productions of human genius might be ciphered by one who had complete acquaintance with the facts, out of their physiological conditions, regardless whether nature be there only for our minds, as idealists contend, or not. Our minds in any case would have to record the kind of nature it is, and write it down as operating through blind laws of physics. This is the complexion of present day materialism, which may better be called naturalism. Over against it stands 'theism,' or what in a wide sense may be termed 'spiritualism.' Spiritualism says that mind not only witnesses and records things, but also runs and operates them: the world being thus guided, not by its lower, but by its higher element. Treated as it often is, this question becomes little more than a conflict between aesthetic preferences. Matter is gross, coarse, crass, muddy; spirit is pure, elevated, noble; and since it is more consonant with the dignity of the universe to give the primacy in it to what appears superior, spirit must be affirmed as the ruling principle. To treat abstract principles as finalities, before which our intellects may come to rest in a state of admiring contemplation, is the great rationalist tailing. ..... To such spiritualism as this there is an easy answer, and Mr. Spencer makes it effectively. In some well-written pages at the end of the first volume of his Psychology he shows us that a matter so Infinitely subtile, and performing motions as inconceivably quick and fine as those which modern science postulates in her explanations, has no trace of grossness left. He shows that the conception of spirit, as we mortals hitherto have framed it, is itself too gross to cover the exquisite tenuity of nature's facts. Both terms, he says, are but symbols, pointing to that one unknowable reality in which their oppositions cease. [Pragmatism: Lecture 3]

Barbara Montero --: Almost twenty years ago, Carl Hempel posed a dilemma for those attempting to define the physical in reference to microphysics. On the one hand, it seems that we cannot define the physical in terms of current microphysics since today's principles of microphysics are, most likely, not correct. Despite some physicists' heady optimism that the end of physics is just around the corner, history cautions prudence. For the end of physics has been predicted before: toward the end of the nineteenth century, just before the relativity revolution, Lord Kelvin remarked that all that is left for physics is the filling in of the next decimal place; then, in the early part of this century Max Born supposedly claimed that physics would be over in six months. And, in all likelihood, today's claims that we've (just about) got it right are similarly unrealistic: today's physics is probably neither entirely true (some of our theories may look as wrong-headed to future generations as phlogiston theory looks to us now) nor complete (there is still more to explain). Yet on the other hand, if we take microphysics to be some future unspecified theory, the claim that the mind is physical is extremely vague since we currently have no idea of what that theory is. Geoffrey Hellman sums up this dilemma nicely: "either physicalist principles are based on current physics, in which case there is every reason to think they are false; or else they are not, in which case it is, at best, difficult to interpret them, since they are based on a 'physics' that does not exist." Faced with this dilemma, what is a physicalist to do? [BM: The Body Problem] [GH: Determination and Logical Truth]

Henry P. Stapp --: Quantum theory is basically a pragmatic theory: it is a way of making progress toward some practically useful understanding of nature without knowing how everything really works at the fundamental level. This is perhaps a humbling admission for science. But the fact is that we still have a long way to go. The creators of quantum theory did provide us, however, with a rational theoretical framework that allows progress to be made. [Science of Consciousness and the Hard Problem]

Hermann Helmholtz --: Fichte also believed and taught that the Ego constructs the Non-Ego, that is, the world of phenomena, which it requires for the development of its Psychical activities. His idealism is to be distinguished from the one mentioned above [solipsism], however, by the fact that he considered other individuals not to be dream images but, on the basis of moral laws, to be other Egos with equal reality. Since the images by which all these Egos represent the Non-Ego must be in agreement, he considered all the individual Egos to be part of or emanations from an Absolute Ego. The world in which they find themselves is the conceptual world which the World Spirit constructs. From this a conception of reality results similar to that of Hegel. [The Facts Of Perception]

Peter Gerdes --: It appears that the principle reason for favoring physical realism over some kind of idealism is our desire to explain the apparent consistency of the external world. It is tempting to think that taking tables and chairs to be real objects somehow explains why they appear to persist and exhibit predictable behavior regardless of our attention to them or mood. If you are committed to believing that the world we experience is much the same as that experienced by other humans postulating a mind-independent external world seems an attractive explanation (though arguably the inference should go the other way). Of course we could simply insist that the observed regularities and postulated inter-subjective agreement about the external world was a brute fact about the nature of experiences. It is simply the nature of experiences to come in consistent patterns as if they were caused by independently persisting objects. Clearly this approach to idealism can account for every observation that physical realism can explain but the jury-rigged nature of this response makes it an unattractive choice to many people. Thus the principle argument for physical realism over idealism is that physical realism offers a simple explanation of our experiences while appealing to relatively few seemingly arbitrary primitive facts. [A Puzzle about Modal and Physical Realism]

Lloyd Morgan --: Under what I call emergent evolution stress is laid on this incoming of the new. Salient examples are afforded in the advent of life, in the advent of mind, and in the advent of reflective thought. But in the physical world emergence is no less exemplified in the advent of each new kind of atom, and of each new kind of molecule. It is beyond the wit of man to number the instances of emergence. But if nothing new emerge - if there be only regrouping of pre-existing events and nothing more - then there is no emergent evolution. [Emergent Evolution, 1923]

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