Royce: The World and the Individual 2

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   Royce’s pragmatic absolute idealism continues with his analysis of eternalism. Normally when we experience time there is a suc-cession of events such as from a to b with a passing over into b. When we hear for instance, a musical phrase, we see one note pass over to another, but at the same time, there is a present moment that lasts a very short period of time in which those notes are present to consciousness at once. The objection to this claim is that time lasts instantaneously. However, there is no way to figure what that is since an indivisible moment has no meaning for if the present moment of a spoken sentence is reduced to a single word the difficulty is not escaped since that word itself is a succession of sounds that are present to consciousness at once. The world is also in a sense temporal. However without any conflict with this, the entire world history is present to the abso-lute in an eternally present insight. In the same way that in the perceptual present, there is a succession of events that are simultaneously present, the entire world history occurs as a succession of events that are simultaneously present to the absolute. Thus change itself is unchangeable as everything is present to the absolute at once. The question now comes how to handle evolution, which seems to be devoid of rationality. However, this is less devoid of rationality than initially thought. Both mind and nature involve irrevocable processes to many of their phenomenon. Both mind and nature have parts that communicate in a sense with each other. But mainly, both mind and nature involve habits in which one series goes for some time and repeats itself later.  Thus we see that evolution is a conscious process.

     Royce’s pragmatism maintains that metaphysics as essentially an ethical discipline and can give no genuine ontological knowledge of the world, which leads to an issue regarding Royce’s eternalism, which seems to be a genuine ontological claim suggesting a static time sequence. 1 However, this is in line with Royce’s absolute idealism which is typically eternalist in nature, along with an immanent God and a differentiated community. Royce’s God, however, is in part theistic, although there is an immanent component. 2 Royce does not give proof that the world is eternal signifying his pragmatism. The main ethical problem with this theory is that it possible contradictrs free will.  Free will and temporalism occur on the microscopic scale whereas eternalism occurs on the macroscopic scale, which is further explained in Royce’s later chapter and his chapter on free will. Temporalism should be seen as an illusion which is characteristic of British and American idealism. (give example of ethical implications of eternalism). So overall, I believe Royce’s eternalism should be read as a genuine ontological claim, with the added assumption that this claim is only seen within the context of his system for the purpose of ethical considerations, which cannot be proven over any other system. Royce is attempting to adapt absolute idealism to a pragmatic standpoint. How well he succeeded is another story, but I don’t think there is any evidence that he is a temporalist. (Revise)

    There are two main areas of life: the world of nature and empirical facts, or the world of description, and the social world of mind and individuals or the world of appreciation. These two areas of life at first site appear to be sundered from each other, with the world of description operating according to rigid fixed rules and the world of appreciation which is a world of expression. Our belief in nature is inextricably linked to our belief in other men. The proof of the existence of fellow men is that they furnish us with the supplement to our own fragmentary meanings. Through time the individual learns to view others as falsely sundered from each other, but in fact they are all part of the unity of the absolute. All human purposes are thus related to our own. Society is seen to be an organism, which can be conceived only in terms of the fourth conception of Being. Nature at first site seems to be sundered from the world of appreciation since we develop rules that operate independently of mind and seem to hold invariant of space and time. However, when one comes to think about it, there is no way for the finite community to know this statement within their lifetime or future lifetimes. Thus the laws of nature are seen to be less sundered from mind than thought. We thus see the laws of nature as being social constructions. What happened was in the industrial arts, people made weapons and buildings and so forth and with time they extended these results to universal laws of nature, and these universal laws of nature are now seen as simply extensions of industrial art and are continuous with it. As such it gives us no indication of the true natre of things and is simply seen as a social construction.

     The self has a meaning in each of the four historical conceptions of Being, which have been shown to be paradoxical in the first book. In Royce’s absolute idealism, the self takes on the role of the purpose it serves with respect to the community. The individual’s self is his task as a friend, worker, citizen, and so on, as contrasted with other people, which amounts to its relation to the absolute. The individual can never be aware of who he is, as he can never know his relation to the absolute. The individual can never know when his purpose is fulfilled or he has yet to find his purpose. Thus he must give unity to his aims and intend something definite in his life. So every individual is unique, but unique as it is related to the absolute with a dependence on other individuals. There is unity, but also differentiation. . . .The being goes about trying to reach self-expression. In order to do this, he attempts to act a certain way, and when this does not fulfill his purpose, he looks for some new object between objects that has already attracted attention. The individual then imitates this model and modifies his actions accordingly. The individual grows through this repeated imitation over time. Royce claims that evolution takes on this same process. However, everyone has the ability to overcome this evolutionary process and find their place in the absolute. The psychologist attempts to explain the self as a causal process subject to law just like the rest of nature. This seems to endanger this conception of self in which the self is a being of expression. You can attempt to explain the persons behavior causally. However, what the psychologist says only takes on heuristic value and should be assessed pragmatically, that is, it should be taken as only one possible interpretation as analyzed from a technical perspective

    We now show how the world is moral. To be is to fulfill a purpose. The absolute is one and many: one because without unity, there is no finality of insight, and many because the interrelationship of contrasted expressions of the will is the way for the absolute to reach self-consciousness.  . . . III An objection now arises in what sense the subject has the ability to act morally in Royce’s world. In answer, Royce replies that freedom is no less paradoxical in our idealism than occurs in the other three conceptions of Being. IV According to Royce, the subject acts according to the Ought in that they are striving to act in accordance with the absolute. However, it seems to always be possible to act counter to this Ought. Royce replies: all beings, everywhere, serve the absolute purpose in so far as they know that purpose, but everything serves the Ought to varying degrees. VI Thus even though whatever the individual does is in accordance with the absolute, the individual must make the decision as to what sort of accordance that will be.

     Many believe there is an error in Royce’s reasoning in the first book when he transitions from the world as determinate negation to the world as conscious construction. However, this is less of a gap than prima facie thought and is made more clear throughout the second book. So the individual is left in a negative situation once he recognizes the impossibility of assigning an internal meaning to any external meaning. The other options would be to accept the Buddhist path in which the world is empty or an illusion, or to get on by trying to attach an internal meaning as closely as possible to the external meaning. . . . So it is ok to set up a new axiom at this point in order to construct a positive system and this axiom as the world as a constructive process is made more clear throughout the second book. There is no need for foundationalism in all philosophy. And this axiom is attempted to be shown to be the better alternative throughout the second book.

McTaggart: The Nature of Existence

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. . . Thus an substance A can be shown to exist if there is a one-to-one corre-spondence with each term of such an infinite series such that if A has parts B and C (where the number of parts could finite or infinite), there is a sufficient description of B such that the sufficient description of B determines the suffi-cient description the part of B corresponding to C. For simplicity, we write B ! C for that part of B that corresponds to C and B ! C ! D for that part of B which corresponds to C which corresponds to D and so forth. A is called the primary whole, B, C, and D the primary parts, and B ! C, B ! D, C ! D, etc. the secondary parts. If the condition above is satisfied, it follows that the sufficient descrip-tions of the primary parts will determine the sufficient descriptions of the parts within A through an infinite series.  For in B we will have B ! B and B ! C and in C we will have C ! B and C ! C, and these four parts of A will have parts corresponding to them in B and C. In B there will be B ! B ! B, B ! B ! C,  B ! C ! B, and B ! C ! C and in C we will have C ! B ! B, C ! B ! C, C ! C ! B, and C ! C ! C, and these eight parts of A will have parts correspondent in B and C, and so on without end. We now give definitions of these terms. A relation between a part B and a part C is a relation of determining correspondence if the sufficient description of C, (1) intrinsically determines the part of B in question, B ! C, and (2) intrinsically determines each of the parts of B ! C, and so on to infini-ty. The differentiating group of a primary part B consists of those primary parts and secondary parts to which B corresponds.

     Matter is defined by McTaggart to be that which contains the primary qualities, i.e. size, shape, position, impenetrability. McTaggart now asks what the primary parts of matter are and sees whether these divided into parts of parts to infinity by determining correspondence. The primary parts cannot be composed of nonspatial qualities alone since no such correspondence can determine sufficient descriptions of secondary parts. For example if you describe one primary part sufficiently as red and one primary part sufficiently as blue, then there would no way to compare the red and blue parts using these qualities alone. Let us then attempt to account for a piece of matter A in terms of its spatial qualities and nonspatial qualities. Matter cannot be made up of a set of indivisible points since these points would themselves be pieces of matter which would not be infinitely divisible. Thus we must divide space into a collection of divisible areas. There are two ways to distinguish spatial part from others. The first way is to describe qualities of that part which are not shared by any part in spatial contact with that part such as by saying that it is red and everything in contact with it is blue. The second is list a set of parts of that part such as listing the counties of England on a map, which leads to the same conception as the first way. Thus the nonspatial qualities of the spatial parts must be determined by determining correspondence since there would to be (an infinite number of coincidences between the determination of spatial  qualities and the determination of nonspatial qualities), and this was shown in the first paragraph to lead to a unresolvable infinite regress. But this is impossible since . . .

     McTaggart’s system is therefore appropriately titled a spiritualism in which all that exists is spirit (show that spirit, unlike matter and sensa has parts within parts to infinity determined by determining correspondence). Spirit is defined to be the substance having as quality the content all of which is one or more selves. McTaggart views it as unprovable that we perceive other selves directly but takes it as a positive claim in his system.  For very often we perceive ourselves without being aware of it and this argument generalizes to other selves. The sensorial perceptions of others are simply indirect manifestations of a direct perception. . . . Let A be a group of selves and suppose B and C are parts of A such that XYZ is a sufficient description of C and UVW of a sufficient description of B. Define a relation B ! C by letting B ! C mean “the perception of the only self that is XYZ by the only self that is UVW.” We show that this is a relation of determining correspondence. Then the sufficient description of C intrinsically determines B ! C since XYZ will include the fact that B perceives C. . . . .Thus the primary parts in this system are selves and the secondary parts are their perceptions of each other. The selves in any individual self’s differentiating group are only those selves that that self perceives directly, and it is possible that will be all the selves in the universe. These selves are perceived directly by each other by way of double mediation and only apparently perceived indirectly.

     These selves are bound by love. McTaggart defines love as an intense pas-sion or liking, and McTaggart sees love as the key emotion. Love should not be associated with a pleasure, as love often arises without any such pleasure. That conclusion according to McTaggart ultimately rests on the incorrect hy-pothesis of psychological hedonism. Love is thus simply a bond between selves of a union of an intense strength. This is supported by three character-istics of love. Love is not always proportional to the dignity of the qualities which determine it. We are very often unable to find any quality that the beloved substance has. And love often does not cease when it is found that the be-loved does not have the quality that it originally was believed to have. This does not, however, mean that love is completely independent of the qualities that the beloved substance has and the qualities help in creating and destroy-ing the unity. But the more intense the consciousness of unity, the greater the love. This does not, however, mean that if one self loves another, then that self necessarily loves the original self back. But in absolute reality every self will love every other self. It is possible that B should love C and C should love D but does not love B. In which case B will perceive C ! D and will create an emotion of complacency toward C ! D. Similarly, B ! C ! D ! E will create an em-otion of complacency of B toward E. When a self loves another, this may be accompanied by feelings that they should be different or even that they should not exist. But there is always the desire that they should be there.

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British and Continental Idealism

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McTaggart: The Nature of Existence, Royce: The World and the Individual 2; Julius Evola’s Magical Idealism; Defense of Evola’s Oscillatory Relationship; An Interview With Salvador Dali; Defense against Beiser’s Transcendent Interpretation of Schelling; Subjective Idealism: Argument for the Reality of Hallucination; First Experiences in Pixelated Subjective Idealism Bibliography: McTaggart, John & McTaggart, Ellis. The Nature of Existence Vol. 1 & 2.  Forgotten Books; Royce, Josiah. The World and the Individual. Vol 1 & 2. Forgotten Books, 1905; Auxier, Randall. Time Will and Purpose: Living Ideas from the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, Chicago Illinois: Open Court, 2013.