The Philosophy of the ConditionedMansel, Henry Longueville
Religion
The Philosophy of the Conditioned
Mansel, Henry Longueville
Hamilton, William, Sir, 1788-1856; Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873. Examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy
But if Mr. Mill is unjust towards the distinction between Knowledge and
Belief, as held by Sir W. Hamilton, he makes ample amends to the injured
theory in the next chapter, by enlarging the province of credibility far
beyond any extent which Hamilton would have dreamed of claiming for it.
Conceivability or inconceivability, he tells us, are usually dependent on
association; and it is quite possible that, under other associations, we
might be able to conceive, and therefore to believe, anything short of
the direct contradiction that the same thing is and is not. It is not in
itself incredible, that a square may at the same time be round, that two
straight lines may enclose a space, or even that two and two may make
five.[AZ] But whatever concessions Mr. Mill may make on this point, he
is at least fully determined that Sir W. Hamilton shall derive no benefit
from them; for he forthwith proceeds to charge Sir William with confusing
three distinct senses of the term _conception_--a confusion which exists
solely in his own imagination,[BA]--and to assert that the Philosophy
of the Conditioned is entirely founded on a mistake, inasmuch as infinite
space on the one hand, and, on the other, both an absolute minimum and an
infinite divisibility of space, are perfectly conceivable. With regard to
the former of these two assertions, Mr. Mill's whole argument is
vitiated, as we have already shown, by his confusion between _infinite_
and _indefinite_; but it is worth while to quote one of his special
instances in this chapter, as a specimen of the kind of reasoning which
an eminent writer on logic can sometimes employ. In reference to Sir W.
Hamilton's assertion, that infinite space would require infinite time to
conceive it, he says, "Let us try the doctrine upon a complex whole,
short of infinite, such as the number 695,788. Sir W. Hamilton would not,
I suppose, have maintained that this number is inconceivable. How long
did he think it would take to go over every separate unit of this whole,
so as to obtain a perfect knowledge of the exact sum, as different from
all other sums, either greater or less?"
[AZ] In reference to this last paradox, Mr. Mill quotes from
_Essays by a Barrister_: "There is a world in which,
whenever two pairs of things are either placed in
proximity or are contemplated together, a fifth thing is
immediately created and brought within the contemplation
of the mind engaged in putting two and two together....
In such a world surely two and two would make five. That
is, the result to the mind of contemplating two twos
would be to count five." The answer to this reasoning
has been already given by Archdeacon Lee in his Essay on
Miracles. The "five" in this case is not the sum of two
and two, but of two and two _plus_ the new creature,
_i.e._, of two and two _plus_ one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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