Elements of metaphysicsTaylor, A. E. (Alfred Edward)
Philosophy
Elements of metaphysics
Taylor, A. E. (Alfred Edward)
Metaphysics
Now it is fairly clear that some such idealistic solution is already
contained in germ in the pre-scientific view of the world of things.
There can be little doubt that our original notion of the unity of the
thing as contrasted with the multiplicity of its qualities has been
obtained by “introjectively” ascribing to whatever groups of qualities
act upon us as one in respect of some interest of our own, the same
conscious unity of feeling which we know in ourselves and our fellows.
We shall have frequent opportunities, as we proceed, of discovering the
enormous extent to which the whole pre-scientific view of the world is
based upon the interpretation of all existence in terms of our own.
Systematic Idealism will thus gradually be found to be no more than the
consistent and deliberate carrying through of that anthropomorphic
interpretation of Reality which lies at the bottom of all man’s attempts
to make his surroundings intelligible to himself. It will follow, if our
general attitude towards the problem of substance is tenable, that only
what we have already defined as an individual experience can truly be
called a “substance,” and that such experiences are “substances,” if the
word is to be retained in our philosophical vocabulary, to the same
degree to which they are truly individual. And thus we should be led in
the end to the distinction between the one infinite substance which
forms the whole of Reality and the finite and imperfect substances which
are its components.
Again, we should have once more to remember that since, in general, we
call that group of qualities one which acts on our interests as one, and
our insight into those interests themselves is limited and confused, the
boundaries assigned by us to the group of qualities we ascribe to a
single substance as “its” states will be more or less arbitrary, and
dependent upon the degree of our actual insight. It is possible for us
to group together as states of the same thing qualities which a
profounder insight would have disjoined, and _vice versâ_. And in the
end, if all that is is contained in a single coherent self-determined
system, it is clear that, speaking rigorously, there will ultimately be
only one “substance”—the central nature or principle of the system
itself—of which all subordinate aspects or parts of existence will be
the attributes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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