On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of KnowledgeFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of Knowledge
Fullerton, George Stuart
Knowledge, Theory of
In criticizing this, I may call attention, in passing, to the highly
disputable and gratuitously assumed premise, that, to be finite, a
thing must be limited by _something_. If this be denied, the ground
of the reasoning is removed; while, if it be granted, no argument is
needed to prove that something is infinite, for one has only said
in other words that all limits must be limits within something. The
question is begged at once. With this, however, I am not concerned.
What interests me is this: The argument assumes a limited thing and
a something beyond it, and then asserts that they are one. But two
things of the same kind in different places, or marked as different
by distinctions of any sort, are readily distinguished as two. To
come to the concrete, extension conceived as on this side of a point
and extension conceived as beyond the point are not extension simply,
but "this" extension and "that" extension. They are the same only
in sense fourth, not in sense first. We have here not merely the
attribute extension, but the further elements "this" and "that." The
conclusion, then, that what we started out with is infinite, is wholly
unwarranted. It is not this that is infinite, but this with something
else which is to some degree like it, although not wholly so. That is
to say, the thing assumed as finite can only be proved to be infinite
by confounding two samenesses. The thing proved to be infinite is a
new object including it and what it is assumed to presuppose. If it be
not permissible to make this distinction between the object assumed as
finite, for the sake of the argument, and the object which is proved
to be infinite, it is also not permissible to assert that an object
to be finite "would have to be limited by another of the same kind."
If the two are one, these words are meaningless. If they are not
one, one cannot conclude from the argument that every substance is
necessarily infinite, but only that something is necessarily infinite,
a conclusion already given in the single premise that what is limited
must be limited by something of the same kind. As a matter of fact,
Spinoza retains in his argument not only the attribute, but the mode,
the "this" and the "beyond this;" and then he overlooks the mode and
considers merely the attribute, which gives him strict identity. This
procedure we have met before in the dispute concerning universals.
SEC. 31. In the former part of my monograph I have mentioned Locke's
confusion of sameness in sense seventh with sameness in sense first.
I shall now quote a few sections from the "Essay concerning Human
Understanding" to show how significant his error is, and to what an
extent it is responsible for his position regarding ideas, things, and
substance. My extracts are from the eleventh chapter of the fourth
book, entitled "Of our Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things."
Locke argues as follows:[56]
[56] Locke's Essays, Philadelphia, 1846, p. 415, _et seq._
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