Matter, mind and meaning / by Whately Carington.

  • Carington, Whately, 1892-1947.
Date:
[1949]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Matter, mind and meaning / by Whately Carington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    42/288 (page 16)
    Under the heading ‘Positivism’ Webster says, ‘A system of philosophy originated by Auguste Comte. It excludes . . . everything but the natural phenomena or properties of knowable things, together with their invariable relations of coexistence and succession as occurring in time and space. All other types of explanation are repudiated as “theological” or “metaphysical”.’ This gives the general idea well enough, so far as it goes; but I would press the principle very much farther. In the first place, the attitude I want to see adopted and unswerv¬ ingly applied would be of no value if all it did was to lead to just another of these ‘systems of philosophy’, accepted only by those who happen to feel like it, and as open to all the rest to cavillings by those who do not. Either the way of going about thinking that you adopt is the only right one, or it is nonsense. Either you are going to confine yourself in your last analyses to statements exclusively in terms of what is immediately and indubitably knowable, or you are not; and if you are not, then you cannot set any limit to the nature or number of the hypothetical, mythological, etc., entities (alleged) that you are going to admit. Secondly, I will have no truck whatever with ‘phenomena and properties’ of knowable1 things. Phenomena and proper¬ ties, if by these terms are meant nothing more than observ¬ ables or cognizables, yes; but ‘things’ which they are said to be ‘of’—a thousand times Nol I shall insist at length on this later; at the moment I will only say that a so-called ‘positivism’ that accepts ‘things’ said to be knowable, and properties said to be ‘of’ them, is not radical, but only a half-way house. Nor am I altogether at home with the Logical Positivists: not that I have any objection to the logic, while there is much of their work, especially that of Ayer, which I greatly admire. On the other hand, they seem occasionally to come to very odd conclusions (as, for example, Carnap’s ‘sell-consistency’ 1 One might have expected the author to say ‘unknowable’ in view of his arguments below (pp. 107-9)- Presumably he means ‘allegedly knowable’. (H.H.P.)