MS 841 (1908) - A Neglected Argument - Text and Fragments

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Final draft article plus miscellaneous fragments, including draft ending to second Additament

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with the action of a sheriff's posse, which, though it be but the performance of a reasonable duty, is nevertheless, in itself considered, a mere exercise of Brute force.

The three Universes of Experience are familiar to everybody. They cannot be defined, since they are three single aggregates; but they can be Indicated by descriptions. The first comprises all mere Ideas; everything whose Being merely consists in the fact that painter, versifier, novelist, pure mathematician, schemer, child, or any other intelligence could mean to express it in any form, or give

Last edit over 7 years ago by jasirs94
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to it a local habitation and a name. In short, it is the Universe of so-called "airy nothings": though every such "airy nothing" is Real, in the sense that it possesses properties sufficient to distinguish it from every other, and would possess these even if nobody in the past or future actually thought of it, so long as it could be fully represented. Whether they be real in any other sense or not, I cannot tell, until somebody adequately describes that other signification;—a thing that nobody has yet done, to my knowledge.

The second Universe is the aggregate of all Things,

Last edit over 7 years ago by jasirs94
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majority of mankind are naturally optimistic. Now the majority of every race depart but little from the norm of that race. My second reason is that there are two types of pessimists. The more prominent of these, that to which the famous pessimi[s]ts belong, is shown to be abnormal by Crude Induction. No good judge can consider the conduct of Voltaire, Schopenhauer, and their kin as that of perfectly sane persons.

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of inquiry, consists in. Now the reason given for this is so flimsy, while the inference is so nearly the gist of Pragmaticism, that the argument of that essay may justly be said to beg the question. The first part of the essay, however, is occupied with showing that, if Truth consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction which would ultimately arise if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and unshakable issue. This is a very different position from that of Mr. Schiller and the pragmatists of today, whose avowedly undefinable position seems to me to be more characterized by angry hatred of logic and some disposition to rate exact thought as all humbug, than by anything more definite. At the same time, I hasten to add that their partial acceptance of the pragmaticist principle and their very casting aside of difficult distinctions has enabled them clearly to discern some very fundamental truths that other philosophers have seen only through a mist, or not at all. Among such truths, (all of them old enough,) I reckon the denial

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of necessitarianism, the denial of any "consciousness," other than a visceral or other external sensation, the recognition of Real habits i.e. of Real generals (which is the essence of scholastic realism,) the insistence upon interpreting hypostatic abstractions in terms of what they would or might (not actually will,) come to in the concrete. It is a pity they should allow a philosophy so instinct with life to become infected with the seeds of death in such ill-considered notions as that of the rejection of all ideas of infinity, that of the mutability of truth, and the confusion of active willing (willing to control thought and conduct, and to weight reasons), with willing not to exert the will (willing to believe).

Last edit over 7 years ago by jasirs94
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