The Northern Line
No 4 July 2007
An on-line journal dedicated to the life and work of John Anderson
Edited by Mark Weblin. This journal is funded entirely from donations. Please forward any donations to 226 Blaxland Rd, Wentworth Falls 2782 Email: [email protected]
In this issue:
Anderson on Alexander: A synopsis ...... 2 Space, Time and the Categories Reviewed ...... 3 Space-Time and Consciousness / or / The Non-Empirical (1917)...... 5 Letter to Alexander (1917) ...... 14 Anderson/Walker Correspondence (April 1952)...... 15 3/4/52 JA...... 15 Reversion and Libertarians...... 15 David Craig...... 15 Popper and Ayer ...... 15 Arnauld ...... 15 3/4/52 RW...... 15 Ritchie, Stove, Kelly, Mackie...... 15 Kant...... 16 Sandy ...... 16 10/4/52 JA...... 16 Stove’s farewell ...... 16 The Freud Lecture...... 16 The Philosophical Blues ...... 16 The Andersonians ...... 17 Mackie, J.L. (John) (1917-1981)...... 17 Bourke, J.O.A. (Joe) (1908-1965) ...... 17 Doniela, W.V. (Bill) (1930 - ) ...... 18 Conlon, A. A. (Alf) (1908-1963)...... 18
Donations gratefully received: AB $40; FH $30
In this issue of The Northern Line, three distinct subjects are presented. Firstly, the recent edition of Space, Time and the Categories is reviewed and Anderson’s 1917 essay ‘Space-Time and Consciousness’ and a letter Anderson wrote to Alexander at this time are published for the first time. Secondly there is the continued publication of the Anderson/Walker correspondence for 1952 which, apart from discussing a wide range of personalities and issues, also includes John’s ‘The Philosophical Blues’, written on the occasion of David Stove’s departure for the newly created ‘University of Technology’. (The actual party for Stove’s farewell must have been quite an affair for John didn’t get back to Turramurra until 6.30 am, not a bad effort for a man in his 59th year.) Finally there is a continuation of the biographical contributions on ‘the Andersonians’. Details on Mackie, Bourke and Conlon were derived from various public sources and I am grateful to Bill Doniela for providing details of his personal and professional life. I am currently seeking details on Margot Hentze, Peter Gibbons, Oliver Somerville, Ruth Atkins, Perce Partridge and Brian Beddie. If anyone can provide any information on any of these figures, it would be much appreciated. Finally, for some time I have been wanting to draw attention to the work of Jim Packer in advancing Andersonian studies. Jim typed the essay by Anderson reproduced below and has recently completed a full item listing of the entire contents of the Anderson Archives. This was an enormous task on which Jim has been regularly working for the last three years 2 and this work is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in John Anderson’s life and work. As one example of this work, I have reproduced below Jim’s description of a single item dealing with Nietzsche. The value of this work will be immediately obvious and is an excellent example of the ‘care for exactitude’ which Anderson listed as one of the characteristics of the ethic of the producer. (Studies p 325)
Series 4 Item 30/10 “25/6/47 1st Meeting of Ethics Group. ARW on Birth of Tragedy” [var. pages, pen & pencil; 1st p. pencil with this title; then: “Nietzsche on ‘moralists’ who make weakness into a fantastic strength” [1947, pen; 5 pp. w. other notes e.g. “Ethics and Education” p. 2 ref. to “dominance and submission”] [on p. 5: “Nietzsche vs time (cf. Hist. is a nightmare)—man can only find solution of his riddle in ‘being’ something definite and unchangeable (as against becoming)”; 2 half-pp. pencil notes with reference “[Ethics and Education]”, also: Epicurus; “Nature of ethics”, 1 p. different pen; politics, education, 1 p. different pen; 1 p. pencil “Marxism as egalitarianism”; “Re Nietzsche” 3 half-pp. pen/pencil (Nietzsche & Marx); pencil notes on Birth of Tragedy [2 p.; nd.]; 1 p. pencil notes “philosophy . . . no subject but a doctrine of procedures . . . (Nietzsche tends to this view)”. [nd.; pencil]
Anderson on Alexander: A synopsis
With the recent publication of Space, Time and the Categories, students of the philosophy of John Anderson now have a reasonably comprehensive record of Anderson’s views of Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity. However this record is not complete and there is other material, some of which could be reasonably regarded as significant, which is yet to be made publicly available. The purpose of this synopsis is to draw attention to the entire collection of Anderson’s writings on Alexander in the hope that they might one day see the light of day.
It is well known that Anderson attended Alexander’s Gifford lectures during 1917 and 1918, although I was surprised to learn from the publication of Alexander’s syllabus of the lectures that the lecture series in each year only ran for a period of six weeks. I had previously assumed that the lecture series were year long and had been based on a ‘work-in- progress’ manuscript of Space, Time and Deity. It is clear from the syllabus that while Alexander had worked out the main themes of this work for the Gifford lectures, he had not developed the detail which appears in Space, Time and Deity. The Gifford lectures must have been part of the assessment of Anderson’s M.A. degree for at the end of the first round of lectures in 1917, Anderson submitted a long essay on Alexander (see below). The essay is a solid piece of work although it is a little surprising that such a strong Hegelian influence is evident here. Following the submission of this essay, there is the first letter from Anderson to Alexander (see esp. para 2) which form a series that continues until 1930.1 During his residence in Scotland, Anderson made extensive notes on Alexander’s philosophy and in 1924 gave lectures on him as part of a course on Modern Realism.2
After his arrival in Sydney, Anderson published several articles dealing with Alexander although he does not appear to have lectured to students on him. (In the archives, there are several unfinished pieces written on the occasion of the second impression of S,T&D in 1927. These pieces are titled ‘Realism as Philosophy’ (9pp), ‘Alexander’s Philosophy of Space-Time’ (2pp), and ‘The Emancipation of Philosophy: The alternative to Idealism’ (1p).) However in 1939, Anderson gave his first public address on Alexander to the AAPP and in 1941 he discussed the introduction to Space, Time and Deity as part of a course on Dialectic. This was followed three years later by his first detailed lectures on Alexander, now published as Space-Time and the Proposition. Thereafter, in 1946 and 1948, Anderson gave two more public addresses on Alexander before the lectures series of 1949 and 1950, now published as Space, Time and the Categories.3 As mentioned in the following review, these lectures are unique in the Anderson corpus for they are the only lectures which treat the same subject continuously over a two year period. This means that it is highly unlikely that no single student attended the entire course. After this, there is no evidence that Anderson discussed Alexander in public again, although there is clear evidence that he was re-working the 49/50 lectures some time after 1954 for he makes reference to his Lectures on Criticism which were first given in 1954 (and repeated in 1955).
1 SA to JA 28/3/17, 6/11/17, 6/11/21 (Ser, 1 Item 5) 25/5/17 (Item 12) 11/2/23 (Item 24) 24/12/26, 19/1/30 (box 54) testimonial from SA (Box 78). Since all these letters are from Alexander to Anderson it seems to be a reasonable assumption that Anderson’s letters to Alexander would be contained in the Alexander Archives at Manchester University. 2 Anderson Archives Series 1 Item 25 3 There are also typed lecture notes on Alexander dating from 2/7/47 – 13/8/48 with annotations by JA. (Series 5 Item 35) 3 Space, Time and the Categories Reviewed
Review: Space, Time and the Categories Edited by Creagh Cole with an introduction by D.M. Armstrong. Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2007. 297pp
This book is the third in the publication of the writings of John Anderson undertaken by Sydney University as part of its legal responsibilities after the receipt of the Alexander (Sandy) Anderson bequest in 1995. I had the privilege of being the editor of the first two volumes. A Perilous and Fighting Life, a collection of Anderson’s political writings, appeared in 2003, and Space-Time and the Proposition, a scholarly edition of Anderson’s 1944 lectures on Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity appeared in 2005. This volume, edited by Dr. Creagh Cole, the current John Anderson Research Fellow, is another edition of Anderson’s lectures on Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity, these being delivered as two separate courses during 1949 and 1950.
Who was Samuel Alexander? In brief, Alexander was the first, and probably the greatest, native-born philosopher Australia has produced. He was born in Sydney in the middle of the nineteenth century and educated at Wesley College, Melbourne, before travelling to Britain to become one of the most important philosophers there in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1917, Alexander was invited to give the Gifford lectures at Glasgow University and one of those in attendance was the young John Anderson. Alexander’s Gifford lectures were eventually published as the two-volume Space, Time and Deity and while it is probably too much to say that Alexander was the defining influence on Anderson’s own philosophy, he certainly occupied a central place in Anderson’s thinking. After Anderson arrived at Sydney University in 1927, he published several articles dealing with Alexander’s philosophy but never lectured to students on Alexander in detail until 1944 and then again during 1949/1950. As John Passmore has noted, those who heard these lectures felt that they were being taken to the heart of the Andersonian system and disputes often arose amongst students as to which set of lectures were the best.
This edition of the Alexander lectures falls into two parts. The first half of the book is the record of the lectures themselves. These are composed of five introductory lectures, seven lectures discussing the interrelations of Space and Time, four lectures discussing the transition to the categories, twelve lectures on the categories of logic, five lectures on the categories of mathematics and twelve lectures on the categories of physics. The second half of the book consists of four appendices consisting of forty pages of additional lecture notes from the Anderson archives which are in John Anderson’s own hand, five pages of letters from Anderson on Alexander which date from 1917 and 1921, a forty page syllabus of the Gifford lectures, and a fifty page record of Anderson’s 1948 lectures on logic. The inclusion of so much secondary material means that the present edition, even though it is the same page length as the previous edition, is a little compressed with no spacing between paragraphs, no page breaks separating the lectures, and a very small font for the footnotes. With slightly less secondary material in the appendices, the spacing in the lectures could have been increased making it slightly easier to read, an important consideration in a book of this complexity.
Concerning this secondary material, the syllabus of the Gifford lectures is published here for the first time and is an important brief statement of the main themes of Alexander’s thought. Unfortunately, Anderson’s lectures on Alexander are referenced specifically to Space, Time and Deity and so the reader is presented with a complex three- way interaction between the syllabus, Space, Time and Deity, and Anderson’s lectures. While the publication of the syllabus is to be welcomed, it is of little specific value in understanding Anderson’s lectures on Alexander. Of the correspondence, the letter to Jenny Anderson is of minor historical interest, although in the Anderson archives there are at least seven letters from Alexander to Anderson. It may have been of more philosophical value to have published this correspondence. However the most problematic of the secondary material is the record of the 1948 lectures on logic. Anderson’s reference to these lectures throughout the Alexander lectures is only occasional and they are not the best brief exposition of Anderson’s logic in existence: the undated manuscript ‘Logic as the foundation of method’ (available at the John Anderson web site: http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/anderson/index.html) is a much clearer brief outline of the general features of Anderson’s logic. Also these lectures are not given the introduction they deserve and Anderson’s references in the Alexander lectures to the Logic lectures are not given specific page locations which can then be further checked. Finally, it is unfortunate that for an edition is on an identical subject as a previously published volume, that the practice employed in the earlier edition of including an analytical table of contents was not followed. 4 The simple numbering of the lectures in the present edition gives no indication of their content and it is therefore difficult to compare and contrast the two sets of lectures.
In the place of the logic lectures, there are several items in the Anderson archives which would have complimented the publication of Alexander’s syllabus. The most relevant of these is Anderson’s 1917 student essay, ‘Space-Time and Consciousness’, which is referenced extensively to Alexander’s syllabus and provides a unique insight into Anderson’s early thinking on the Gifford lectures. Also of importance are three public lectures Anderson gave on Alexander after his arrival in Sydney. The most detailed of these is a 1939 paper of 23 pages and deals with the main themes of Space, Time and Deity. In fact, this paper is a better analysis of the main themes of the whole work of Space, Time and Deity than the Alexander lectures themselves which deal primarily with Volume One. Two later papers include a 1946 paper on the theory of Space-Time and a 1948 paper dealing with Alexander’s Realism and Empiricism. The publication of these papers in the present volume would have given a better balance to this edition than the lectures on logic.
With regard to the lectures themselves, there is a difficulty regarding the choice of notes which are the basis of this edition. To fully appreciate this difficulty, it is necessary to understand Anderson’s lecturing style. Throughout his teaching career, Anderson’s teaching method was to dictate his lectures so that students could take down a reasonably full account of each lecture which could then be studied in detail. There are several surviving student records of the 1949/50 lectures, although only two complete sets survive. One set were taken down by Eric Dowling and D.M. Armstrong, while the other is in several hands including John Anderson himself, his son Sandy, John’s colleague Tom Rose, and a student, Vic Dudman. It should be noted that it is highly unlikely that any one person, apart from Anderson himself, was present for the entire duration of the lecture series and therefore any record will be a composite from various hands. The latter record (which for ease of reference I will call the Sandy Anderson copy) currently exists only as a manuscript in the John Anderson Archives at Sydney University, although Dr. Cole has promised that this record will be typed in full and placed on the Anderson web site. This record is unique in the Anderson corpus for no other copy of one of Anderson’s courses is in so many different hands, and it is unusual in that there is clear evidence that Anderson was re-working parts of it well after 1954, some five years after the lectures were first delivered. It might be thought that as a sound academic editorial principle, priority of publication would go to those notes where Anderson’s influence was strongest and on this basis the Sandy Anderson notes should have been the basis for this publication. It is surprising then to learn that the Dowling-Armstrong notes were the ones used for this edition, although additional supplementary material in John Anderson’s own hand, taken from the Sandy Anderson record, was also included.
This is unusual for several reasons. Firstly, the Dowling-Armstrong notes were never intended to be more than a record of the lectures as they were actually given during 1949 and 1950. In contrast, the Sandy Anderson record shows clear evidence of extensive revision by John Anderson for some time after 1954. Secondly there is no evidence that John Anderson ever saw the Dowling-Armstrong notes, although it was his practice to obtain at least one student copy of his lectures so that he could set exam questions on the basis of what he had actually said. Again in contrast, the Sandy Anderson copy contains several lectures re-written in full by John Anderson and it is reasonable to assume that he read and corrected every lecture in this series. Thirdly, the Sydney University Archives draws a clear distinction between those lectures in Anderson’s own hand and those taken down by students. The student records of lectures are not even included within the John Anderson and Family Archives but are consigned to a separate miscellaneous section. The Sandy Anderson record is contained within the Alexander Anderson section of the John Anderson and Family Archives and, as mentioned above, shows clear evidence of John Anderson’s influence. In contrast, there is not even a copy of the Dowling-Armstrong notes in the Sydney University Archives. Finally when a serious and obvious error in the Dowling-Armstrong record was noted by Dr Cole (p 95), it was corrected by reference to the Sandy Anderson copy which would appear to imply that Dr. Cole regards this copy as the more authentic record. The question then is whether other less obvious mistakes occur in the Dowling-Armstrong notes which have not been corrected. (One minor example of such an error is the consistent lower-case spelling of Space-Time in this edition. It would be impossible in a lecture to determine when ‘space-time’ or ‘Space-Time’ was being used and, as a matter of fact, in Anderson’s main work, Studies in Empirical Philosophy, ‘space-time’ is never used and on only one occasion (p 118) does he use the expression ‘space and time’. While this may appear to be a trivial example, it may in fact make as much difference to understanding Anderson’s philosophy as it would to a Christian being told that he worships god, and not God.) 5
Regarding any substantive differences between the two sets of records, until the Sandy Anderson record is publicly available it is impossible to determine whether any differences are significant or not. However it is possible to contrast one lecture reproduced from both records: the concluding lecture, number 45. The Dowling-Armstrong notes (p 151 ff) run for only three pages and after a brief discussion of aesthetics, moves on quickly to concluding considerations. In contrast, the re-written lecture by John Anderson taken from the Sandy Anderson record runs for nine pages and includes an interesting discussion of James Joyce, Marx, Kant, Popper and Vico. This is the mature Anderson, in his own hand, at his best and the record is significantly different from the Dowling-Armstrong record. For the general reader interested in Anderson’s metaphysics and its relation to his aesthetic and social theory, there is perhaps no better place to start this edition than here (p 189 ff).
This edition also contains an introduction by Professor Armstrong, although there is, apart from the syllabus referred to above, no general outline of Alexander’s position. Professor Armstrong may have thought that my own exposition of Alexander’s position in the previous edition served this purpose adequately and if this is the case I am happy to refer the reader to my introduction of Space-Time and the Proposition. There are several points in Armstrong’s exposition of Anderson’s metaphysics which would puzzle many ‘Andersonians’: that Anderson was committed to ‘negativity in the world’, that Anderson held to a ‘manifest’ image of the world in opposition to a ‘scientific’ image of the world, and that Armstrong learnt that the subject-predicate distinction was a functional one from George Molnar and not John Anderson. However there is one critical point of Armstrong’s introduction which can be briefly made. Armstrong states that Anderson’s position of an absolute or infinite Space-Time is one that would be very difficult to take up today. The theory of General Relativity, quantum physics and string theory, he says, all make it clear that Space-Time is a matter for scientific investigation. This is a proposition with which Anderson would strongly disagree. Space- Time, for Anderson, is a medium in which things exist, but is itself not a thing and hence is not susceptible to scientific inquiry. (This view, we can add in passing, leads to the rather unusual conclusion that for Anderson, ‘the Universe’ does not exist.) However if we accept Armstrong’s claim, it is surprising that he then says that Anderson is on firmer ground in his discussion of the categories of being or existence. While science may shed some light on whether causation, for example, is irreducibly statistical, how can it decide what causation is itself? This, it would seem, is a question only metaphysicians can answer. It comes as a surprise then to learn in a footnote (p 57) that ‘all the categories exist’, for if this is the case then there is no a priori reason why scientists shouldn’t study and define causation or any of the other categories. Some recalcitrant philosophers may want to keep the categories to themselves, but the scientists are on the march. If the categories exist, they will argue, then they too can be subject to scientific study. It would appear then that if a key assumption in Professor Armstrong’s introduction is correct, then there will be a lot of unemployed metaphysicians around at the end of the 21st century.
Space-Time and Consciousness / or / The Non-Empirical (1917)1
The principal points of importance in the philosophy of Alexander as so far expounded are his theory of a matrix with its specification as Space-Time, and his view of mind. As in the former instance he develops the theory of Plato, so in connection with mind he returns to the simpler point of view of Greek philosophy and does not endeavour to show that everything is mental, in some sense or other. Mind, in fact, is simply one member of the system of finite existences, and its special empirical character is consciousness. And philosophy, which is the “empirical study of the non- empirical” will use the facts of mind in illustration just as it might use any other empirical facts. The reason, indeed, why we start more often by reference to consciousness is simply that it is easier to understand than some other possible illustrations. There is nothing in the nature of mind which places it “above” other empirical phenomena: when a mind knows a thing, the two are together, just as when one thing is beside or on another. It is simply that kind of relation in which one partner is aware of the other. That knowing is a relation of this kind might be borne out “by the deliverance of experience itself,”(Synopsis, p. 4) [p 207] where there is not supposed to be any mystery about knowledge, such as is maintained in some philosophies with their elaborate explanations.
1 Student Essay by John Anderson dated 18 th May 1917. Professor John Anderson and Family Archives P42 Series 1 Item 10. The page numbers in the curved brackets refer to the original syllabus while the numbers in the straight brackets refer to the reproduction of the syllabus contained in Space, Time and the Categories. 6 The distinction of empirical and non-empirical is the important one here. Alexander points out that of the characters of things some belong to all alike, while others “e.g. materiality, colour, life, consciousness”(p.3) [p 206] belong only to some things. These characters are all empirical in that they are all found in experience. But the fact that some of them are characters of everything places them at once on a higher level than the others. They are a priori. In the case of the ordinary empirical characters we have to inquire which of them are present in anything we may wish to examine. But the other characters we know beforehand we will find in the things. They are thus strictly non-empirical: i.e. they are prior to any given experience. This is explained by Kant as implying they are contributed by the mind, they are ways of our knowing. But on the empirical procedure of Alexander such a conclusion is impossible. We have found them in the things, and we have got to explain the fact, not to explain it away. Experience is our only guide. Hence we must accept its data, and as far as possible explicate them. The theory which Alexander gives as the only possible way to “save the phenomena” is that of a “stuff” out of which all things are made, or “matrix” in which they are formed, and the non-empirical characters of things are taken as determinations of this matrix. This matrix Alexander takes as Space-Time, since “Space and Time for our experience are the media in which bodies move and events occur.” (p.6) [p 208] When we have shown that the two are indissolubly connected together, we may proceed to inquire what consequences follow from our regarding this “Space-Time” as a matrix or stuff, and whether it gives a comprehensive account of experience. If it does so, if we find that the system of reality so constructed is the system which is implied in our experience, we are entitled to say that the hypothesis has been established. Our procedure is not critical, as with Kant, but hypothetical, as with Socrates and Plato. Our fundamental method is the testing of a hypothesis, which is a judgment, by means of the propositions or judgments which can be deduced from it. We do not criticise the faculty of judgment, we assume it: we seek for truth, as Socrates did, εν τοις λογοις, in what we say about things. For any other assumption is self-destructive. And this method even Kant employs, as the metaphysical deduction of the categories will show. And we employ also the transcendental method in showing that our hypothesis is sufficient to account for experience, to make a system of it. It may be remarked that Kant found the fundamental unity of experience and the final justification of his method in Judgment. But the great difference between the two methods is that Kant throughout is examining knowledge, while we are expounding reality. And from this point of departure we may give an account of knowledge as empirical, while we are saved from the pitfalls of a transcendental philosophy for which the phenomena are only phenomena. For us there is no thing-in-itself. And since we regard knowledge as empirical we are justified in employing the facts of mind in our progressive definition of reality, just as much as any other empirical facts.
In the first place, then, Alexander has to show that Space and Time are intrinsically related to one another, that “neither is a reality without the other.” (p.6) [p 209] And to show this we take their character as presented to us in experience, and demonstrate that in order that Space may be as it is experienced, it must be presented with time, and that in order that Time may have its empirical characters, an experience of Space is necessary. It might be thought, Alexander admits, that to think of Space and Time as realities implies a “process of vicious abstraction,” (p.6) [p 208] since as the “media in which bodies move and events occur” they are experienced only in connection with material bodies. But this contention he rejects by the consideration that in our experience the material bodies have the distinguishable features of extension and duration, which are indeed their most simple features. We are fully entitled to consider these features apart from the others, since they are really features of things. Though this argument might appear to be sufficient, he supports it by the further argument that “to experience, not all space and time are filled with material bodies and events,” (p.6) [p 209] a view which he makes more clear in his account of Mental Space-Time. The only other view that would seem to be possible is that space and time are relations between things and events, and not features of them. But such a view is not empirically warranted; it is not the way in which we are acquainted with things. Moreover when we ask of those who hold the relational view, what these relations are, we find that they can only be expressed in terms of the very space and time of which they are supposed to be the explanation. But the final justification of the hypothesis, which is at least possible since it is in accord with experience, is that it gives a complete and connected account of all the phenomena, which the relational theory fails to do.
Beginning then with the character of time as duration, we find that it is “essentially succession and at the same time continuous.” (p.6) [p 209] And the question is, Is this compatible with the independent reality of time? Alexander finds that it is not. For, taking time only by reference to itself, we fail to establish continuity. Each instant (or each minimum duration, if the idea of instants is not accepted) would “in virtue of the very successiveness of time, cease to be.” (p.6) It must pass; the now, which was future, must become past. But by reference to itself alone it cannot be past or future. It can only be now: and we would have a succession of “nows” and no continuity. In order to make time a continuum, 7 some other correlated reality is required, some permanence in the succession. This, says Alexander, is Space. Again, if Space were an independent reality, it “would fail to be continuous, because it would admit no distinction of parts.” (p. 7) [p 209] By reference to itself alone, it would not be spatial. It would be mere homogeneity and so a “blank.” In order that this distinction may be made, so that we may get reference of parts to each other and not mere extension, we required the correlated reality of Time. Thus there is no Space or Time, but only Space-Time: no points or instants, but only point-instants or motions. The whole of Space-Time is the whole of “Motion.”
But this connection has to be brought out further. The function of time in securing the divisibility of space and that of space in securing the connection of time would not be performed if the correlation of point-instants were one-one. For in that case every point would be infected by the fleeting character of its instant, and the connection of time would not be made. Thus each point must be correlated with many instants. And also each instant must be correlated with many points, or space would be without structure. But we find this empirically to be so. Hence Space and Time do perform the mutual service required of them. For from the infinity which we find in Space and Time, i.e. that however much we may have of them, we can always have more, we deduce the further characteristic that any selection of points and instants may be correlated one-one with all points and instants. (i.e. any selection according to a principle). This is the positive character of infinity. And thus where many points are correlated with one instant, we do get the structure which is Space. And when many instants are correlated with one point, we get the continuous succession which is Time.
And the correspondence is closer still. We find that Space is, in our experience, of three dimensions, while Time is, as a continuous succession, one. But Time has also the character of transitiveness, which may be put in the form that no instant recurs, and irreversibility, or the possibility of distinguishing the direction of time (i.e. the nature of relation before is absolutely distinguishable from that of after). And it can be shown that these two characters imply that the dimension (or continuous succession) of Time is a dimension in a three-dimensional system (or space). It is not that the characters are dimensions: but since each of them establishes a dimension for the system in which the time-dimension is, they are mutually related in the same way as are the three dimensions of empirical Space. This through-and-through correspondence of the elements of Space and Time still further establishes the unity of the two as one reality.
“The simplest basis of reality is thus Space-Time, in which Space and Time are distinguishable but not self-subsistent elements. Consistently with this we are to regard the history of the world as a perpetual redistribution of motion, or in more exact phrase a perpetual redistribution of the instants of time among the points of space within the one infinite Space-Time.” (p.7) [p 210] Alexander objects to Kant’s procedure in identifying Space with the faculty of perception, because, while material objects can be thought away, space cannot. For Alexander this fact of experience simply shows that Space is one of the simplest forms of reality. Kant thought that as these elements are not due to the understanding, they must be due to sense. But according the Alexander, if they are facts of experience, we must take them as reality; otherwise experience would have no meaning. Moreover, to identify them with sense is to neglect the fact that they are partly constructions. But that they have an element of construction does not imply that therefore they are not characteristic of reality. When we say that anything is a conception or is conceptual, we are not making it peculiarly mental. We are simply saying that mind has conceived or can conceive it. In knowing things it stands in a certain relation to them, a relation which is real. The whole point of this or any other construction is that it claims to be an account of the reality which is in the things. What we say or think about things is about them. Only by this method can we ever arrive at a criterion of truth. Is what we say about things true of them? That is our criterion of knowledge. Thus not only is Kant not justified in holding that Space is not to be particularly connected with the faculty of perception. He has no title to make out that it is based on, or derives its validity from, any mental faculty whatever. Space and Time are characters of reality. But Kant’s procedure has shown that they are the simplest characters of reality. This at least has been shown for the external world. It remains to be shown that they are also characters of consciousness.
In reply to the Kantian distinction of Space as the outer form of sense and Time as the form of inner sense, Alexander must show that there is a mental space, that there is a mental time which is not simply the criterion of outer time but is distinguishable from it, and that there is a mental space-time which is of the same nature as a physical space-time and continuous with it, i.e. which is a part of the one Space-Time. In this connection he employs the distinction of “enjoyment” and “contemplation.” In contemplating any object, we are at the same time enjoying our mental act. He does not mean that “there is an unexperienced entity mind which is aware both of itself and its object,” but simply that 8 “in its own experience, (the mind), as enjoyed, is together with the thing it contemplates.” (p. 5) [p 207] That there is both an enjoyed and a contemplated space may be seen in considering a “pain in the toe.” The enjoyed pain is found to be in the same place as the contemplated toe. The two places are first distinct in our experience, and we proceed to identify them.
But the distinction of enjoyment and contemplation goes further than this. “Our localisation of enjoyed space within the space of the body is an incident in the empirical history of our self or person as the union of body and mind. The experience of the self contains two elements, a subject element which is enjoyed, and an object element, which is contemplated. Even the lower or bodily person contains not only the body but the consciousness of it. The object element is the body, and in the lowest form of experience of the person it occupies the predominant position. In our higher selves we seem to be minds engaged with objects different from the body, such as scenery or mathematics, which occupy our imaginations or thoughts. But examination shows that bodily experiences enter into the personal side of these experiences.” (p. 9) [p 212] We have thus to show the existence of a mental space, which is to be identified with bodily space. We see in general that it is identified with physical space from the consideration that the original notion of an external world is not of that whose form is externality, whose parts are external to each other, but rather of a world which is external to us, to our minds. At least, this space is continuous with bodily space, and if mental space is identified with bodily space, it also is continuous with the outer physical space.
Our experience, Alexander thinks, would warrant us in assuming that there is a mental space. “We feel our consciousness to be voluminous or spread out spatially and we localise it somewhere within our contemplated bodies and more particularly in our heads.” (p. 9) [p 211-2] This is the first step in the direction of the identification of mental with bodily space. The process is carried further when “we learn about the brain and of the special concern of special areas in certain processes which are accompanied by consciousness.” (p. 10) [p 212] And finally we arrive at a complete localisation in the brain, of mental processes.
Mental time, however, is distinguishable from physical time and again identified with it. For the mind has past and future, and not merely before and after, though they can be made continuous and connected with one another. It is from this distinction of mental time that we are able to arrive at the conception of a mental space-time. The question is “Has mental space different dates like physical space; or, as might seem from localisation in the brain, are not the past and the future of the mind enjoyed all in the present?” With the past and the future of the mind are correlated memory and expectation. In the case of contemplated memory “that is, remembered objects,” (p. 10) [p 212] the memory is “an image of the thing along with the experience of belonging to the past and more particularly to our past” and it “comes to us as something past, is experienced as past.” (p. 11) [p 213] “Only the act of remembering ... is present.” So enjoyed memory is “enjoyed as past.” Thus we obtain a “perspective” of mental space-time, as of physical space-time, with its events having different dates. And since “the present ... is spread out over many mental places, and a mental place may be repeated in time” we see that mental space-time is of the same character as physical space-time: it is, in short, a finite part of the one Space-Time. And we may go on to a consideration of Space-Time, without feeling that we have left anything out. The hypothesis to be justified is the view that Space-Time is the matrix in which things are formed, and “that all things are special modifications of Space-Time, eddies in the system of motions, and are, in their ultimate expression, groups of motions. With specific complexes of motions are correlated qualities.” (p. 15) [p 216] i.e. the empirical characters of things. But, as on Plato’s view, Space-Time is indifferent to these empirical characters. It is of motions that it is the matrix.
Alexander proceeds to work out his theory of reality, in which, as on Plato’s view, there are four levels. First, there is Space-Time the matrix or stuff of things. Then there are the categories, the non-empirical characters of things, which are shown to be modifications or determinations of Space-Time. There are, moreover, instances of the categories or their application to things. This is their empirical use, where their nature is not examined. But it serves to emphasise the fact that the non-empirical characters are also empirical; they are found to belong to the objects of experience. And lastly there are the empirical characters of things, which serve for the differentiation of the objects to which the categories apply. There is no break at any point, but we have a connected system of reality, which is successful in explaining the phenomena of experience. This is the final justification of the hypothesis. The use which is made of experience precludes the possibility of difficulties such as that of the thing in itself. That the non-empirical characters 9 are also empirical provides the connecting link, and makes that notion impossible. And that the categories derived from the forms of judgment are substantiated as differentiations of Space-Time makes the whole system coherent.
But it is with difficulty that we can admit that consciousness is an empirical character. When we know the truth, it is the real truth that we know, it is what things are. But does not the fact that we can know it connect it in some special way with our consciousness? Does it not imply that the truth of things is in some sense mental and thus that the non- empirical characters of things are mental characters? If this were so, we could also say that the characters of the mind are non-empirical characters, that it is not simply one thing among others, having its own empirical characters together with the non-empirical characters of all things, but that it is above everything else and is, indeed, the form of things. Such seems to be implied in the Hegelian principle of the “Idea,” which as thought is specifically mental. When we see, however, into what difficulties this theory led Kant in his account of knowledge, we are disposed to give full consideration to the theory of Alexander. And we can best begin by a consideration of his account of universals. “Universality as a category is the constancy of a spatio-temporal configuration. The categorial universals are the categories. Empirical universals are plans of configuration of Space-Time, to which are, of course, correlated qualities, or rather the plans of qualities.” (p. 19) [p 219] They are, in short, “habits of Space-Time.” In accordance, then, with the uniformity of Space-Time, all truth is universal truth. This is implied in our ordinary usage, when we speak of working out the full implications of any proposition. And it is only the final completion which we regard as true.
Now “truth” may be taken in two ways; as a character of certain judgments, or as that connection in things themselves according to which the judgments are said to be “true” in the first sense. This first sense is not that into which we are now inquiring. It is undoubtedly mental but it is equally undoubtedly empirical. It is a peculiar character of knowledge, and does not give that unity with reality which is required before we can say that the non-empirical characters of things are mental. It is the second sense with which we are here concerned; not truth as opposed to falsity, but truth as universal connection. It is, in fact, the correlation of qualities with their spatio-temporal plans of configuration. All truth is thus empirical but depends on the non-empirical, which is the criterion of truth. When e.g. we take “Two and two are four,” we find that “two” etc. are empirical. They are instances of the category of number and are at the same time “plans of qualities.” And when we say “two and two are four is true” we mean that it is a plan of qualitied events. But this is in no sense peculiarly mental. It is directly dependent on Space-Time. It might be said that “plan” is a conception and so referable to mind; that it is by mind that the connection with Space-Time is made. But this is but to say that in giving an account of truth we are giving an account of it, holding it in the mind. It is the peculiarity of mind that it knows, and we could not have a philosophy which was not knowledge. But in the notion of a [14] “plan” there is no further reference to mind. We know it but it is as the plan of events. It is not our knowledge and conceptions which make truth, but the nature of things: in the end, Space-Time. The “mysterious” factor which is found in our knowledge is simply the empirical character of consciousness. If we take it as no more than that, and knowing as a certain kind of relation, the difficulties disappear.
It is of importance in connection with the account of truth here given to notice Alexander’s view of the Laws of Thought. It comes out in his exposition of the categories. He begins with “Identity and Diversity, or Being and Not- Being. Identity is occupation of space-time (that is of a point-instant or complex of them); diversity the occupation of some other part of Space-Time. This means that anything is self-identical because it is or occupies a space-time and different to what occupies any other, and this is the most elementary category.” (p. 16) [p 217] It is the most elementary because it depends on the simple fact that a “finite” is a bit of Space-Time, i.e. that Space-Time is its matrix, and not on any further character that may be deduced from that. And Alexander goes on to say that “the law of contradiction means that that one configuration of space-time is not the same as a separate one. The other laws of thought are also mere expressions of the fact that anything is a space-time. Hence the impossibility of showing space or time to be self-contradictory seeing that Space-Time is the standard of what is contradictory.” (p. 17) [p 217] Such a statement appears paradoxical, but an examination of the laws of thought will show that there is something to be said for the view. The laws of thought are simply expressions of the fact that [15] identity and difference are ultimate and irreducible. And no more complete explanation of the laws can be given than by saying that finite things, as portions of a matrix, are determinations and differentiations of it. In this way identity and diversity are based on the conception of a matrix. And it is difficult to see how else they can be taken, or on what other basis we can have laws of thought. The notion of a matrix makes clear their necessity. 10 Exception might be taken to this view from a Hegelian standpoint, in that it is separating identity and difference. But we may say in reply that it is really connecting them in the matrix. But they must be distinguishable. “It is clear,” says Alexander, “that identity is not the same thing as diversity, but, on the contrary, the identical is only related to the different.” (p. 17) [p 217] “Identity is difference” does not prove the contrary; it merely brings out the point. There would be no meaning in talking of identity in difference, unless they were different characters. Otherwise, it would simply be a case of identity in identity, or difference in difference. That the two characters are connected, Alexander makes clear when he regards them both as categories; characters of everything. Thus when we say that a thing is identical with itself, we are also saying that it is different from other things. But the very ground of our saying these things with significance is that identity is not the same as difference. The notion of “identity in difference” does not take away the force of the notions of identity and difference. On the contrary, it is based on them. So that there is no ground for the view of Hegel that identity and diversity are less “true” than identity in diversity. It is certainly wrong to think that a thing can be identical without being at the same time different. But the mistake really consists in not understanding the meaning of identity and diversity. They are characters of everything, and the reason is, on Alexander’s view, that they are determinations of Space-Time. It is implied in the very nature of Space-Time that what occupies space-time (i.e. any portion of Space-Time) is identical with itself and different from other things: simply because there are portions of Space-Time. But the failure to understand identity is not to be attributed to any incompleteness in the category itself, but to the person who has misunderstood. Identity and diversity are both real characters of things or they would not be categories. And, moreover, when we speak of identity in diversity, it is the same characters which are separately identity and diversity, that we are speaking of. A thing has the character of “Determinate Being or Existence” which “is identity as qualified by diversity, or the union of identity and diversity,” (p. 17) [p 217] not because of a fusion of the two categories so that identity becomes diversity or diversity becomes identity, but because of its spatio-temporal character whereby a point may be repeated in time and an instant in space. The same point-instant is never a different point-instant: that is not what is meant by identity in diversity.
The alternation of categories in Hegel’s deduction would seem to imply this very point. If the alternate categories are not really different, there is no force in the deduction at all. If, as has sometimes been said in illustration of Hegel’s method, the deduction of Not-Being from Being is based on the fact that mere Being is mere Nothing; if the one category is just the other, then the deduction cannot proceed at all. But if we say, on the other hand, that when we say that a thing is (or is the same), we mean that it is a portion of Space-Time, and thus, that it is not (or is different from) another portion of Space-Time, we seem to be getting a real deduction or explication. If a thing is (anything), it is not (something else); that is what is implied in Hegel’s procedure. And only on such a basis can that procedure be justified.
Thus we see that Hegel’s criticism of the law of contradiction as being untrue and of the categories as being incomplete fails to justify itself. His own procedure is only significant on the assumption that the laws of thought hold good, that contradiction really is contradiction. And he cannot establish any superior kind of contradiction which does not contradict. Is and is not are ultimate elements in thought and reality. Or, at least, they can only be shown to be not ultimate by reference to a matrix. And the incompleteness of the categories is not an incomplete truth. As categories they are really characters of everything. No-one imagines that any one of them embodies everything that can be said about a thing. When we point to identity as a category, we do not mean to suggest that any thing is identical and nothing else. But we must mean that it is identical, at least. The categories are each a character of things. It is true to say that a thing is the same, no matter what else we may say about it. And so for all the categories. If they are incompletely true, they are simply not characters of things. And unless each is true, there is no truth. The notion of becoming more and more true will not hold, and it will not justify Hegel’s own procedure. If identity is false and diversity is false, identity in diversity must be equally false. It cannot be a truer notion than the notions on which it is based, and by reference to which alone it can be conceived. This is the conclusion we come to on a rigid examination of Hegel, and it is Alexander’s conclusion. Hegel, in endeavouring to discredit contradiction, was discrediting the foundation of his own method of deduction of the categories.
Hegel’s criticism of Kant, moreover, for finding the categories in the forms of judgment will not apply. We must find them there, for judgment is the all-pervading form of our experience, though we must remember that it is meaningless unless it is judgment about things. But, on the other hand, that is not how we justify the categories. We do so by showing their reference to the matrix. And Hegel himself, however he justified the categories, could only find them in the forms of judgment. He begins with being i.e. with the category derived from the simplest character of judgment viz. 11 that we say (something) is (something else). We see that this is the origin of the category, when Hegel says “Being . . . is an absolute absence of attributes.” (Logic p. 162) The reference to attributes makes the point clear; he is thinking of the judgment in which we say that “(Something) is” and then do not go on to say what it is. And for the development of the different categories the same reference to judgments must be maintained. “Being . . . is an absolute absence of attributes, and so is Nought.” The connection is made by means of the reference to judgments. Alexander’s method is, however, more precise: when we say that a thing is (or is the same), what do we mean in terms of Space-Time? That is the question, and in the answer we show how the category arises from the very nature of Space-Time.
The consideration, however, is suggested of the comparison between Space-Time and the Absolute Idea of Hegel. And we may find reason to think that the Idea is just such a stuff or matrix as Space-Time. We saw that it was important for the significance of Hegel’s doctrine that the categories should really be distinct, and that one should not simply become the next. And this difficulty would be met, if we were to say that the categories did not develop into one another, but were stages in the development of some independent entity. If it is the Idea which is progressively determined by the various categories, the difficulties of Hegel’s position will be reduced, and, moreover, a great resemblance will be established between his philosophy and the philosophy of Space-Time. But such, on a close enough analysis, is just what we find as Hegel’s conception of the dialectic process of thought. It is a process of thought or the Idea, of which the categories may be regarded as stages. Hegel says that the successive categories may be regarded as definitions of the Absolute, which is the Idea in its completion. At least the positive categories may, while the negative or alternate categories are rather to be taken as definitions of the finite. This involves a separation between the infinite and the finite, which is hardly in accord with Hegel’s general position. For Alexander, the categories are “differentiations” of the matrix and thus are applicable only to finite things. On this view the infinite and finite, as matrix and portions of it, are held together in one system; the specific relation of things to the matrix through the categories is shown. But we need not press Hegel’s language too far. The difference may simply be taken as a difference of emphasis. He may consider the categories then as definitions of the Absolute. But this would seem to imply that we get a progressive determination of the Idea through the categories, that it is just a stuff. Hegel, moreover, is in the habit of talking about the “thought in things,” which would seem to imply a universal stuff, even if it is regarded as “thought”’ and primarily mental.
But the use of “definition” instead of “differentiation” marks the difference according to which the categories are regarded as more or less “true.” A definition may be more or less complete; and so a category may be more or less true, according to the degree to which it represents the character of the Idea. We have seen reason to think that this is a wrong way of regarding the categories. If a category is really a differentiation of the matrix, if it is of the nature of space-time, it will be a character of things. It does not pretend to represent all such characters. So with Hegel’s characters of the Absolute. They are determinations of it, and as such refer to the finite. That is wherein they are incomplete. The “characters of the Absolute” are rather absolute (or non-empirical) characters of things; absolute, because they are directly referable to the matrix. There are thus many suggestions in Hegel, which point to the conception of the Idea as a matrix. But the matrix tends too much to absorb the particulars, so that instead of a systematic reality with differentiations within it, we find the various parts of it falling together into one. This is what is implied in the conception of degrees of truth or of reality. It is simply physical; the whole is one of parts which may be added to form a more or less, and we do not have sufficient differentiation of character within the system. Thus the Idealism of Hegel is in danger of becoming a materialism. It might be thought that this danger is even greater for Alexander, who takes Space-Time as his matrix. Surely, it will be said, this is no more than a physical whole. But in the working out it is shown not to be so. We have the various features of reality: the matrix, Space-Time; the categories; the non-empirical characters of things, or instances of categories; and finally the empirical characters. All these are held together in one system, by means of their differentiation. But Hegel makes the Idea pervade everything so that there is ultimately no distinction of empirical and non-empirical, and the infinite collapses into the finite. Alexander, for whom the finite has the character of a “portion” of the matrix, is yet by means of that very conception able to keep them from being ultimately identified: instead they have a definite relation to each other within the system of reality.
The defect which manifests itself in Hegel’s philosophy is due to the lack of specification of the Idea. For him it has no such definite character as that of Space-Time: it is simply the Idea, thought. This preoccupation with the facts of mind is the result of the Kantian influence. We must not forget the problem that was set to Kant. It was to show how 12 knowledge is possible, on the hypothesis of the intuitional manifold of Hume. And Kant showed the elements of synthesis that were required. But he was always to some extent under the domination of this method of procedure, and he attributed the synthesis to the faculties of mind. But what his conclusion should have been was that there never was such a manifold as Hume supposed; it already had the elements of synthesis in it. And so the activity of mind was not required. This would [have] saved him from the postulation of things in themselves, and would have saved all philosophy from the over-emphasis of the mind, the belief that, because things can be thought or known, they are therefore peculiarly mental. Such a belief cannot ultimately be saved from phenomenalism. Hegel only appeared to do so by considering the “thought in things” in such a way, that it was not mental in any sense beyond the fact that minds could enter into the relation of knowledge with them. Yet at the same time he tries to maintain, (what seems in direct contradiction to the notion of “thought in things”) that the Idea “comes to itself”, or is specifically involved ion self- consciousness. If this were so, we might ask what sort of “thought” it is that is in things, if it is less of the character of thought than what is found in self-consciousness. The only answer would be once more the materialistic notion of degrees of reality, which, as we saw, is not capable of giving an articulated system, such as may be found by using the conception of a matrix.
The Hegelian “Idea,” then, fails to be a “stuff,” exactly because it is not sufficiently specified, and the reason for this is that it was held to be sufficient to relate it simply to mind, whence it was worked out on the basis of the possibility of knowledge. But since it lacks the necessary specification, how was it possible for Hegel to work out the categories? The answer is that the dialectic movement of thought takes place by means of judgments, just as the categories are originally found in the forms of judgment. And it is possible to give an exposition of the categories in this way (though they are not defined with sufficient accuracy) because in judgment the characters of space-time are really revealed, even when we do not yet know that they are characters of space-time. We saw that, for Hegel, Being is the absence of all attributes; and so is thought. i.e. the procedure is to take the most rudimentary element of judgment. We say that x is —. We have not yet said what it is; we have said nothing about it; we may equally well say x is not —. The reference throughout is to judgment and predication. The next question is What do we mean by saying that x is — or x is not — ? And the answer is, we mean that it is or is not something. Something or Being Determinate or Becoming, the unity of Being and Not-Being, is accordingly the next category. Hegel pursues the connection through a host of categories; they are so many, because it is not sufficiently clear what his principle is, and so anything might be a category.
It is interesting to notice that Alexander refuses to consider quality a category. “We can find no character of all things alike which can be called quality, of which different qualities are modifications, in the way in which different quantities are modifications of the universal quantity. What we find is red or blue or sweet. Quality is rather a collective name for such qualities, just as colour is a collective name for red, blue, etc. Quality is, in fact, the distinctively empirical element in things.” (p. 23) [p 223] This so far seems sound: the fact that things have a variety of characters is hardly itself a character of things. But we may notice that Alexander regards “Determinate Being or Existence,” which is “identity as qualified by diversity, or the union of identity and diversity,” (p. 17) [p 217] as a category, though unfortunately he gives no further specification of it in terms of Space-Time. To this we may compare Hegel (Logic p. 170) — “Determinate Being is Being with a character or mode—which simply is; and such an unmediated character is Quality.” The question would be, then, whether quality really has reference to the empirical element of things or whether it has a wider reference, and is a differentiation of Space-Time, a category. It seems clear, at least, that the mere fact of having characters is not a character of things, and this is all that Alexander means.
We may notice two points of resemblance between the working-out of the Idea, and the unfolding of Space-Time. The first is that the Idea is essentially process. It is regarded as the essential movement of thought. And though the process is supposed not to be in time, this distinction is only made in order to uphold its universal character. But that is not incompatible with time, as we have seen. It only requires the conception of mental space to make the correlation of the Idea with motion possible. More important is [the fact] that, just as with Alexander motion is the most complex category or differentiation of Motion (which is Space-Time), so the final development of the Idea is into the category of the idea. This supports the regarding of the Idea as a stuff, since its essential character is the character of things also. For Hegel there is no question of differentiating empirical from non-empirical characters, because mental characters are characters of everything and every character is mental. Thus all the categories are categories in a similar sense to that in which Alexander uses the term. But the phrase loses its value, when this fundamental distinction is not made, And Hegel goes on to discover the “categories” of Nature (cf. Logic p. 155), where the Idea is reflected and mediated 13 by its other, and of Mind where the Idea returns into itself and abides by itself. One result of this is that the various sciences lose their distinctness and are all absorbed in philosophy. And another is that the failure to distinguish between empirical and non-empirical characters leads to the absence of any “otherness” and so militates against a differentiated system of reality, where the finite is held apart from the infinite. But the result of the distinction in Alexander’s philosophy is that we understand the empirical characters more clearly, and new vitality is given to the sciences. It is impossible to say with certainty what his views are, until the completion of his second course. But his working out of the conceptions of Value, Freedom, and Deity as empirical characters of certain beings may prove very suggestive for Ethics and Religion. The increased clearness with which we may regard mathematics under these principles lead us to hope that this may be so.
It might appear that the lack of articulation in the philosophy of Hegel, which is seen in his regarding the categories as characters of the Absolute which is itself their matrix, were also possibly to be found in Alexander’s work. The notion of “portions” might suggest this, and it is difficult to bring out clearly the nature of the matrix. Alexander recognises the difficulty of the position, and the possibility of circularity. But we must judge the hypothesis, ultimately, by the test of “saving the phenomena.”
“The categories have been described by pointing to certain empirical features of Space-Time. But being ultimate they cannot be defined, and to some extent the mere description of them involves the use of ideas drawn from empirical experience of finite things. This is inevitable. We approach the indefinable as best we can. Still more palpably do we do this when we speak of Space-Time as infinite and continuous. Those are ultimate properties we can only accept, and our mathematical or other conceptions of them are in terms of the finites which come out of Space-Time.
“Accordingly the categories which apply to things within Space-Time do not apply to Space-Time itself. Space-Time . . . does not exist or come into existence, for that would need a larger Space-Time; it is not a whole of parts, for a whole is related to another whole and the universe is not a ‘given whole’; it is not even substance, for a substance is related causally to other substances. These are but metaphorical phrases by which we attempt to describe the indescribable. For this reason Space-Time has been called by us not substance but the stuff out of which all things are made, as a coat out of cloth.” (p. 29) [p 223]
But we must not attempt to describe it in negative terms, for “the ultimate is the most positive of things,” nor must we “invest the universe with characters superior to those which it betrays in its creatures — ... call it spaceless or timeless (eternal) in some unique sense.” For it “is itself Space and Time, and is the totality of existence and substances and the like.”
“The many change and pass, but they are not lost in the ultimate or ‘absolute’, which is Space-Time, but, such as they are, are real and retain their reality. A triangle is not unreal because of the surrounding space, nor lost in it; but, on the contrary, is sustained by it. A man is not lost in his society but fulfilled by it. In the same way, the many empirical existents (whether finite or, so far as such exist, infinite) are not altered by the relations into which they enter as parts of the one Space-Time, except so far as those relations are extrinsic or purely empirical, and that is nothing but the empirical fact of change and life and death. But even empirical characters are real, though they change. This is the consequence of the truth that things are of the stuff which is the ultimate reality in its simplest and barest expression.” (p.29) [p 224]
For Alexander, as we have seen, the categories differ as to simplicity and complexity, through the whole range from being to motion. He might apply the dialectic of Hegel and show how, by reference to Space-Time, the one follows from the other. When he has done that throughout, the connection of his system will be complete.
[Examiner’s comment, rev. 26: You have not a system if your parts all coalesce. But you have a system if you have them all and have succeeded in tracing them all to a single origin. Such seems to be the main assumption of this paper; and the whole issue between the one way of construing the material of experience and the other seems to turn on it. I do not think it is quite sound. The work, however, displays critical ability of high order, and manifests a remarkably clear and accurate sense of what is wanted in philosophy. A] 14 Letter to Alexander (1917) Schoolhouse Stonehouse, Lanarkshire, 25th May, 1917. Dear Professor Alexander,
I have been rather longer in writing to you than I meant to be, but I have been very busy this term. Now that I am on vacation again, I will try to make a full statement of my position, somewhat more clearly perhaps than I have hitherto done. I had it worked out a fortnight ago, and submitted it to Dr Russell, and he has suggested where I could make the discussion clearer. He does not, I may say, agree with my views, but I think I am more in agreement with your general position than he is, and on that I base the hope that you will find something in what I am going to say. The suggestion for my present working out of the question came in a discussion with Russell, when he suggested that S[cott] was wrong as to the question of the independence of transitiveness and irreversibility, as a relation might be transitive or intransitive, and at the same time symmetrical or asymmetrical—we might have any combination. So that transitiveness and asymmetricality would be independent. I then examined your account of transitiveness and irreversibility, and I think I can show that they do not correspond to the logical relations of transitiveness and asymmetricality.
One point on which Russell criticised my working out of the connection of space and time on [[deleted: this]] a new basis, with a new definition of irreversibility, was that I did not employ the conception of point-instants. But here, I think, he has failed to see the point of your argument. The first point, as I see it, is that the experience of time as continuous as well as successive implies the concurrent experience of space, and the experience of space as a structure, and not a blank extension, requires the concurrent experience of time. Then you go on to show how this comes about, by means of the repetition of points in time and instants in space. Then finally you show that the two are really one, that space is temporal and time spatial. And to do this you must take each in its separation and show that it has the characters of the other. This may not be an exact statement, but I think it is approximately correct, in accordance with your position. You say, in your comments on my first letter, that the point does not merely represent an instant but is one. That means, I take it, that it is the instant we are talking of, all the time, and not the illustration by means of a point. And therefore I think that your position demands that we should not talk of point-instants in this part of the demonstration.
I have gone into the question of pendular motion again, and have tried to show that it is not an example of an irreversible series, which is yet not transitive. But the matter has to be argued out generally, and I have done that also. Then with a new definition of irreversibility, which is in accordance, I think, with the irreversibility which is an empirical character of time, I have attempted to build up the proof on this basis. The point that always struck me about your proof was that you simply suggested that there was first one dimension independent of the time-dimension by reason or irreversibility, and then another by reason of transitiveness. But to complete the proof you would have to show, I think, that these could not be the same, and the [[deleted: best]] way to do that is to show that, having got [deleted—two dimensions; above:] a second dimension by reference to one [deleted—dimension; above:] character, we can get a third dimension independent of both—a dimension added to a two-dimensional system—by reference to the other character. And this I have attempted to bring out in the subjoined proof.
I have given your MS. to Russell, who will send it on to you, when he has completed his study of it. I wonder if you would like to see some work I have done with reference to Euclid. I have what I believe to be a proof of the “axiom” of parallels [above:] in accordance with what has gone before, and I think it is possible to define a straight line in such a way that the “axiom” relating to straight lines is no longer necessary. If this were correct, then there would be no axioms, properly so-called, except the arithmetical ones, and the Euclidean would be the only possible synthetic geometry and the basis or starting-point of all analytical geometries, which are really not geometry but algebra. I have been re-reading your syllabus, and if you would allow me, I would bring up some points of connection between your philosophy and that of Hegel, who, I believe, has been largely misinterpreted by the so-called Hegelians.
Yours sincerely, John Anderson 15 Anderson/Walker Correspondence (April 1952)
3/4/52 JA
Reversion and Libertarians
The thing that bothered me in it (Ruth’s most recent letter, 21st March) was my own forgetfulness – it took me quite a while to recall that ‘Paul’s approval’ …referred to my talk in Orientation Week; and no amount of dredging has been able to bring up the bookie ‘joke’1, though little more than a fortnight had passed between my writing it (whatever it was) and my receiving your comment. I thoroughly agree, of course, that Jim’s ‘humour’ is pretty dull and school-boyish – indeed I had been thinking over the ‘reversion’ question, and deciding that what people reverted to was an irresponsible period and my comparison had done less than justice to Tom. Tom, incidentally, has just about given Jim away – particularly since his associating himself so prominently with the ‘Libertarian Society’ and its pretence at being more freethinking than I am. They had a silly meeting on Tuesday at which... a certain June Wilson gave vent to the remarkable aphorism that love is the basis of life and therefore free love is the basis of free living! This is regarded as the saying of the year by JL M[ackie], DC S[tove] and others to whom I passed it on after I heard it. I am quiescent at present as far as freethought is concerned but planning… to have a group on ‘Psycho-analysis and Religion’. I’ll get round to that after my public address next Tuesday (at 10 a.m.!) on ‘The Freudian Revolution’2 – preparation for that will occupy most of this weekend. I’ve been pondering on it for quite a while of course, though these ponderings have been diversified in the last few days (a) by the starting of the fourth year seminar on ‘Philosophical Problems’3 and of the lectures on Alexander (Ryle will have to wait – if he comes in at all) (b) by an attempt at a ‘Philosophical Blues’ as a parting gift for David [Stove], whom Tom and I will be entertaining next Thursday evening.
David Craig
You may be surprised to hear that I voted against Craig – mainly for the reason that the Committee didn’t appear to me to have made an adequate case against Iredale’s continuing, with higher status, essentially the kind of work he’d been doing for some time. Anyway, the majority of the Board were for Craig – of whom I have thoroughly pleasant and friendly recollections – though he may find it hard to get facilities here for the special work he has been engaged on.
Popper and Ayer
Reverting to your letter of the 18th – I was sure that Popper would be playing an in-and-out (or fast and loose) game with the truth of his postulates (rationality, etc). I am glad, however, that you got clear on the meaning of his hoping to see you later – even if you should in fact decide that other things are more pressing. (How about sampling one of Ayer’s arm-chairs?)
Arnauld
My memory again! I nearly forgot to say that Falkenburg, in his History of Modern Philosophy, says “The Port- Royal Logic (The Art of Thinking 1662), edited by Arnauld and Nicole, was based on a treatise by Pascal.” That, if true, might throw you back still more on ‘True and False Ideas’.
3/4/52 RW
Ritchie, Stove, Kelly, Mackie
It seems unlikely that Alec will come with us to the former place (a holiday with Pat and Peter to Chelmondiston near Ipswich), as he is planning both to see Kemp Smith and to do some solid library work in the vacation…. This
1 John’s letter of 14th March. See TNL No. 3 p 11. 2 Although this paper is re-printed in Studies with its date of publication as 1953, it is clearly a much longer version of this public address given in 1952. 3 In Box 39 in the Anderson Archives there is a collection of papers from around 1952 which are titled ‘Philosophical Problems’. 16 (the news about Stove’s appointment) is certainly embarrassing at this juncture and a problem for next year; I suppose Milo is the best man available at the moment. Presumably even if you considered Helen Sheils a possibility, she would be settled in where she is and not interested in such a junior job. But Gwen might be glad to enter into things again. I am thinking of how Margaret is planning to get back to her job again some three months after the event, but of course she and Gwen might feel differently, or face very different situations.
Kant
Before coming away I was going through notes (actual notes from Kant largely) and found myself feeling – I must get back to Kant – sufficiently so to put the K.S. [Kemp-Smith] translation amongst my few books for bringing over here. I think there might be a lot of suggestive stuff in Kant, e.g. some respectable criticism of Cartesianism, as well as the big lines of the stuff that we usually deal with.
Sandy
Did Sandy finally try for the Ultimo position? I think he is better anyhow where he is – it would be a bit sticky starting in at a place which is just beginning as a university (especially with its peculiar background) and under a man who is himself starting in a university job. One might find oneself caught up in all sorts of things, apart from any problems about work and though that may be enlivening it doesn’t seem the best way to start off.
10/4/52 JA
Stove’s farewell
Having got back from the farewell party (Tom, Jim, David and me in your room1) to David (to which I contributed a ‘philosophical blues’ which I’ll regale you with later)…
The Freud Lecture
I got the Freud lecture over on Tuesday; it seemed to be quite well received, and the Wallace was full. I didn’t put a great deal of work into it, but felt a bit edgy till the job was done; my first experience with a microphone was quite successful, and I had to do little in the way of repressing a tendency to wander around in my usual lecturing manner. Stuart Watts was there, of course, and expressed himself as highly pleased.
The Philosophical Blues2
As I’m just about falling asleep, I’d better give you the philosophical blues, and let other things wait till next time.
From the Railway end of Broadway came a burst of mournful song throbbing through the aspirations of the proletarian throng "I was a pioneer of Western culture but swopped it for mechanical sepulture And as I punch the bundy every blessed Monday I sing those philosophical blues"
Oh, the streets were chock-a-block with adolescent B.Sc.'s and the trams were running over with incipient B.E.'s But the voice came sadly wailing
1 Written at 6.30 am at Turramurra 2 Written on the occasion of David Stove’s appointment to the University of Technology (University of N.S.W.) 17 "Take away those dungarees I once thought that things are not what they seem The form of holiness was all my theme but since socio-technology became my new theology I sing those philosophical blues"
If at midnight you should wander through the wilds of Kirribilli You will hear the voice disclaiming "Being useful drives me silly Though I've massacred the tribe from Gay to Mill and proved the well in welfare should be ill Horny-handed erudition is my n. and s. condition As I sing those philosophical blues”
It hasn’t the same kick as the ‘Sydney Blues’, but David seemed quite pleased with it (while a little rueful over some of the cracks).
The Andersonians
Mackie, J.L. (John) (1917-1981)
John Mackie was the son of Alexander Mackie, the principal of Sydney Teachers College, and was schooled at home before entering Sydney University in 1934. Mackie studied philosophy under John Anderson and was an active member of the Freethought and Literary societies at the university. During the thirties, Mackie gave papers to student societies on ‘The Abyssinian Situation’, ‘Revolution in Rome’, ‘Religion and Society’ and ‘War for Democracy’. He graduated with first class honours in Latin and Greek in 1938 and won a Wentworth Travelling Fellowship to study the Greats at Oriel College, Oxford University. He graduated with first class honours in Master of Arts in 1940 and then undertook war service, rising to the rank of captain. In 1946, he was appointed lecturer in Alan Stout’s Department of Moral and Political Philosophy at Sydney University. In 1955 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand and in 1959 was appointed as Anderson’s successor as the Challis Professor of Philosophy at Sydney University. In 1963, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at York University and in 1967 he was elected as a Fellow of University College, Oxford. In 1974 he was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1978 was appointed to a personal readership in philosophy at Oxford University. Mackie published widely on philosophy. His main works include: Truth, Probability, and Paradox (1973); The Cement of the Universe. A study of causation (1974); Problems from Locke (1976); Ethics. Inventing Right and Wrong (1977); Hume's Moral Theory (1980); The Miracle of Theism. Arguments for and against the Existence of God (1982); Logic and Knowledge: Selected Papers, Volume I (1994) and Persons and Values: Selected Papers, Volume II (1995). Mackie, through his father’s friendship with Anderson, knew him well and was strongly influenced by his philosophy, although it is difficult to assess to what degree. Mackie was a contemporary of Ruth Walker at the university and was occasionally mentioned in the correspondence between John and Ruth. Mackie wrote the obituary on Anderson for the A.J.P.P. in 1962 which presents a fair and accurate assessment of the main themes of Anderson’s philosophy.
Bourke, J.O.A. (Joe) (1908-1965)
Joe Bourke attended North Sydney Boy’s High and completed the Leaving Certificate in 1924, coming fifth in the state in English. In 1925, he joined the NSW Department of Attorney General and Justice as a clerk and enrolled as an evening student at Sydney University, eventually graduating with second-class honours in philosophy in 1929. At the university, he came under the influence of John Anderson and helped re-found the University Labour Club in 1931. Anderson mentioned Bourke several times in his 1931 address ‘Support for Labour Club’. In 1936 Bourke was appointed acting-secretary of the correspondence courses in the teaching division of the technical education 18 branch of the Department of Public Instruction. From mid-1942 he was executive officer, transport and communications, on the State War Effort Co-Ordination Committee and in the following year was seconded to the Commonwealth Department of Supply and Shipping where he served as superintendent of personnel. In October 1945 he was made registrar of Sydney Technical College. From August 1947 to September 1951 he was an inspector with the Public Service Board, before becoming assistant-director of the Department of Technical Education. Bourke worked closely with W. C. Wurth towards the foundation of the New South Wales University of Technology in 1949 (University of New South Wales, 1959) and also came into contact with the university's Vice- Chancellor, Philip Baxter. Bourke resigned his public service position on 6 April 1954 to become the first bursar of the new university. As bursar, his influence was pervasive. He pressed vigorously for the establishment of a Faculty of Arts, was closely involved in the introduction of administrative and managerial studies, and played an important part in the creation of a medical school and in building a university union. He also supported improved library services and the development of residential colleges. Baxter and Bourke gradually forged a close working relationship and, with the registrar Godfrey McCauley, made up a strong management team. In addition to being a member of many university and hospital boards, Bourke was vice-president of the Old Tote Theatre Club. In attempting to lay down administrative procedures to cope with the pressures arising from rapid growth, Bourke drew heavily on public service practices. By so doing, he aroused considerable controversy and criticism, particularly from academic staff who resented what they saw as excessive regulation. For at least thirty years Bourke lectured in university extension courses, Workers' Educational Association classes and public service training programmes. He was widely known, particularly before World War II, as a speaker at labour rallies. Bourke died of lymphosarcoma on 11 November 1965 at Little Bay. A fountain at the University of New South Wales commemorates his achievements. (ADB; Barcan p 51)
Doniela, W.V. (Bill) (1930 - )
Bill Doniela was born in Lithuania and came to Australia in 1948 where he worked at an open-cut coal kine in South Australia under a post-war refugee contract. Student of Anderson’s in the early fifties, graduating with first class honours B.A. in 1954 and first class honours M.A. in 1956. Subsequently awarded a Sydney University Travelling Scholarship and in 1959 was awarded Dr. Phil. cum laude by the University of Freiburg for a dissertation on the history of the foundations of logic. In 1959 he was appointed to the University of Newcastle as a lecturer in the Philosophy department eventually becoming Associate Professor before retiring in 1987. He was active in the Newcastle University Philosophy Club and assisted with the publishing of its journal ‘Dialectic’ which contains many of his articles. He has read papers at Australian and international philosophy conferences and spent several terms at the Hegel Archives in Germany. In his teaching, he lectured on Logic, Rationalism, Kant, Hegel, Universals, Political Philosophy, etc, but singles out for special mention his lectures on the history of the foundations of logic which analyse the transition from Greek ontological logic to modern varieties of subjectivist logic and his lectures on Egalitarianism and Authoritarianism which provide the basis for a theory of objectivist ethics. He singles out three articles of particular importance: ‘What is dialectical about Hegel’s concept of Spirit’ (Prudentia 1985), ‘Anderson and Hegel’ (Heraclitus 1998) and ‘Nietzsche’s Vision of the Overman’ ( Heraclitus 2002). To this list one could add his ‘Anderson’s Theory of Education’ (Dialectic 1987) which is as good as, if not better than, any of the contributions on this subject by Partridge, Mackie or Kamenka which were published in Education and Inquiry (Blackwell 1980).
Conlon, A. A. (Alf) (1908-1963)
Alf Conlon graduated with third class honours in philosophy at Sydney University in 1931. In 1932, he enrolled in medicine and between 1933 and 1936 studied a variety of law subjects before returning to medicine in 1937. He played an important part in the newly formed National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS) and in 1939 became student senator on the University Senate. In 1942, he was appointed major in Military Intelligence and in 1943 assumed control of the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (DORCA) and gathered around him a team of exceptionally qualified people including James McAuley, John Kerr, Harold Stewart, Camilla Wedgwood, H. Hogbin, W. Stanner, Ida Leeson and James Plimsoll. After the war, he returned to Sydney University to study medicine and after working in Newcastle and Melbourne, established a psychiatric practice in North Sydney during the late fifties. (ABD, Passmore and Barcan. See also Alfred Conlon 1908-63 Benevolent Society of NSW)