Spencer on Realism and the Spiders
Christian Gustafson
The following is a section from Herbert Spencer's monumental _Principles
of Psychology_, the 4th and 5th volumes of his _System of Synthetic Philo-
sophy_. The _Psychology_ is a tour-de-force presentation of Realist epist-
emology, for Spencer demonstrates how his several approaches to the subject
all converge to support his Realist hypothesis. This section is included
late in the second volume, just before he draws the various strings of his
argument together and examines a few corollaries that proceed from it. I
post it for your reading pleasure. From the 1887 edition (mine).
* * *
$474. And now the impossibility of all Anti-Realistic beliefs having been
shown by direct analysis in the preceding chapters, and having been again
shown still more clearly by this geometrical analogy [Spencer explained how
the image of a cube, when projected onto the surface of a cylinder, i.e. our
retina, is distorted from its true shape], the final remark to be made is
that Anti-Realistic beliefs have never been held at all. They are but ghosts
of beliefs, haunting those mazes of verbal propositions in which metaphysi-
cians habitually lose themselves. Berkeley was not an Idealist: he never
suceeded in expelling the consciousness of an external reality, as we saw when
analyzing his language and his reasonings. Hume did not in the least doubt
the existence of Matter or of Mind: he simply persuaded himself that certain
arguments ought to make him doubt. Nor was Kant a Kantist: that Space and
Time are nothing more than subjective forms was with him, as it has been and
will be for every other, a verbally-intelligible proposition, but a prop-
osition that can never be rendered into thought, and can never therefore be
believed.
...
So that, in fact, every Anti-Realistic system is not a fabric of
ideas but a fabric of pseud-ideas. It is composed not of thoughts properly
so-called, but of the forms of thoughts without any contents. Whether it
be or be not a true saying that Mythology is a disease of language, it
may be said with truth that Metaphysics, in all of its Anti-Realistic dev-
elopments, is a disease of language. For its Anti-Realistic developments
are results of those abnormal combinations of linguistic symbols in which
they no longer perform their functions as expressing ideas.
Nevertheless, we must not forget that these complicated aberrations
of reason have been the concomitants of a legitimate, and indeed necessary,
criticism. Crude Realism claimed as part of knowledge an unlimited territory
which transcends knowledge. In showing how unwarranted is this claim, Anti-
Realism went to the extreme of denying to Realism all territory whatever.
Metaphysical controversy has been the settlement of the limit; and the
history of it has been a history of those rhythms which antagonistic forces
always produce - now causing excess on one side of the limit and now on the
other. But as fast as the differentiation of Subject and Object approaches
completion, the oscillations become less and less; and along with the pur-
ification of Realism from all that does not belong to it, the controversy
ends: Realism contenting itself with affirming that the object of cognition
is an independent existence, and Anti-Realism having shown that the cognition
of it is entirely relative.
***
Steven Goldberg posted an uncharacteristically lengthy reply in response
to an argument that QM derails philosophic Realism. He succeeded in the
matter, for he clarified that 'objectivism' is not founded on the kind of
'Crude Realism' inveighed upon by Spencer above.
Words can sound quite fascinating at times and motivate great masses of
men, whether of rabble or of metaphysicians (babble), towards their philo-
sophic end. Just consult one of Il Duce's speeches for conclusive proof.
cg
(All Hail our Bo Jackson:individualist-sportsman-philosopher-hero of the 90s!)
--
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