Elements of metaphysics

Name: Elements of metaphysics
Author: Taylor, A. E. (Alfred Edward)

Taylor, A. E. (Alfred Edward)

Metaphysics

ONTOLOGY—THE GENERAL STRUCTURE OF REALITY


                               CHAPTER I

                         REALITY AND EXPERIENCE


    § 1. In a sense “reality” for each of us means that of which
         he must take account if his special purposes are to find
         fulfilment. § 2. But ultimately the world must possess a
         structure of which _all_ purposes, each in its own way,
         must take account. This is the “Ultimate Reality” or
         “Absolute” of Metaphysics. In Metaphysics we regard it
         from the special standpoint of the scientific intellect.
         There are other legitimate attitudes towards it, _e.g._,
         that of practical religion. § 3. The inseparability of
         reality from immediate experience involves the
         recognition of it as teleological and as uniquely
         individual. § 4. The experience within which all reality
         falls cannot be my own, nor yet the “collective”
         experience of the aggregate of conscious beings. It must
         be an individual experience which apprehends the
         totality of existence as the harmonious embodiment of a
         single “purpose.” The nearest analogue our own life
         presents to such a type of experience is to be found in
         the satisfied insight of personal love. § 5. The
         experience of such an “Absolute” must not be thought of
         as a mere reduplication of our own, or of the scientific
         hypotheses by which we co-ordinate facts for the
         purposes of inference. § 6. Our conception is closely
         connected with that of Berkeley, from which it differs
         by the stress it lays on the purposive and selective
         aspect of experience. § 7. Realism, both of the Agnostic
         and of the Dogmatic type, is incompatible with the
         meaning we have been led to attach to “reality.” But
         Agnosticism is justified in insisting on the limitations
         of our knowledge of Reality, and Dogmatic Realism in
         rejecting the identification of Reality with experience
         as a merely cognitive function of finite percipients. §
         8. Subjectivism, according to which all that I know is
         states of my own “consciousness,” is irreconcilable with
         the admitted facts of life, and arises from the
         psychological fallacy of “introjection”                    50


                               CHAPTER II

                    THE SYSTEMATIC UNITY OF REALITY

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Elements of metaphysics

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