Now Hume looks thoughtful. He does not say anything for some minutes, whil flora an Amy look on. When he does speak it is very slow.
“ What you have said about narratives, and there unity moves me deeply. I have argued before two intermeshed cases of my own on this regard. The narrative approach I argued funded ones belief within a single god. I mean here that if one tales the world simply as it is in the mind, a chain of effects, then those effects lie curiously within consciousness, in that they all adhere, somehow together within a single thread of a story, within a world of unbroken causality. What makes this so curious (as the good Berekely notes ) is that at no point in this process s anything approaching diversity evident. Nor is this lack of a God quite the same as the lack of the clear perception of a person. A face is no the same as a human, and yet the face and the human are synomous; or better the human is naturally included within the idea of the face. Now same is clearly not true for creation and divinity. It is then never custom which unties God with creation, but rather reason itself, which demands that such a connection must be thought (and thought in the lack of any possible perception, by which the thought can be justified). Reason there, as it were looks into itself, as it is conscious of itself, and of the world, and demands a set of causes capable of creating the orders it finds within it. Or perhaps even better, in ones mind’s eye, or ones consciousness, finds itself perpetually suspended across a series of effects, and but knows though its reason, that both itself, and the world it finds itself within are united inspite of this apparent division into lesser units. The mind then supposes a godhead to exist within a creation, in no doubt he same spirit as it knows of itself as conscious in-between the series of perception by which it is constituted. Now, I must stress that I am note quite saying the same as our learned author was. For him this being conscious (courtesy of reason) was itself synthetic. The entire process therefore led up to the moment of Reason, that is, to the ‘I Think’ of consciousness (whose pretensions then need to be clipped, and quite properly too, if that was how one understands reason. For me however, although reason and consciousness lie together, and reason’s more outrageous claims do need to be clipped, one cannot do so, if in so doing, one makes the entire explanation then turn on reason itself. To argue this way, to my mind is simply to throw all sense (and with it reasosn0 to the wind. Or better, it is to confuse two very different sentiments; To claim that everything in the world will, as lies a posterti within the conscious mind conform to reason is one statement (and one whose explaination might lie in as many different causes, as the godhead might have effected the world in a multitude of ways). It is clearly quite a different thing to claim that this must simple be the case, and that the mind must be organizing itself such that it is. Here one needs so much caution. I (for one) am of course perfectly happy with the idea that there are numerous invisible springs within creation, which bind bodies together (‘mine’ effected by others), and give me the world in which I inhabit, This hypothesis is I say more than likely, is it almost inevitable. And yet that is not to say that the mind itself (let alone my conscousness is directly acting as a unity to make this move. The unity,, which reason demands, I see, in your argument is the final point in the process (a move I might partially, at least, accept) .
The profound question then of course becomes how one understands the link point, that is the point the hidden springs of the world force there way into the mind itself. now this is where a second thread surely enters. Humans are partial. They are fundamentally pitched into the world, as a speck of perceiving stuff. The obvious place then for the mind to start its enquires is not the realities demanded by meta reasons (which one some level must of course, still be respected – there must be a link between the chains of effect of the world) but the conditions, the process in which a human mind is first made a posteri. This is then the world of perception, and whatever happens to inform that perception. The problem of course then becomes the deep one of how one forms in ideas (simple and complex) a web of intricated links between different aspects of the world. This is less a problem of consciousness, and more a problem of how one realites to that which makes one aposteri.
Here perhaps there are two quite different strategies. In other company (one that did not look on Catsby with foreboding, I might have argued, or might see that it is possible to argue that one need here to feed back a loop of time, from what occurs within the unities of the conscious mind, and what occurs within perceptions. This domain that celebrated author reserved for ideas (and reason) might then be made to sing to quite another song, if one reverses the drift of his thought, and argued that a priori reality is not a question about what the consciousness needs in order that it is thought, but rather resolves around the deep connection which intermeshes a simple (and to all intense and purposes external) unity in time (that is, in consciousness) to the myriad perceptions by which it is made. Between the two, perhaps, one might set up an empirics (of a sort) based around reason (if it is taken in that Authors sense, as what resonate between impressions and concepts. However this was very firmly not my project, as I would be far from happy making the first move here. That is allowing that there needs be a sense in which reason’s pretensions can directly (as it pretends it unity to enter into impressions. Reason therefore (and here I quite agree with that celeberated Author) must be kept back, and allowed only to resolve those matters that occur within the human psyche directly (that is within he chain of effects within the mind alone). The problem of course becomes how one then understands exactly how the mind is made a posteri within its perceptions, and what might also follow for reason (understood here in a sceptical sense) from this move.
It is then her, I see poetry has a profound power (according to what who are now saying. But let my stat somewhere lese. If theism appeals to reason and so to the philosopher, in is no doubt the case that paganism ha an immediate appeal to custom, and so to the vulgar. This is because, humans are rendered into the world, they are so as partial and particular objects. They live therefore in a world of conflicts, of storms in realty and thought which are riven between different directions (139). Nor can this be otherwise when one considers the most likely explaination for the body: that is the hidden springs connecting it to its world. Each body is then caught up in a diversity of influence (141 each of which is only ‘united’ in their being beyond the mind. Each mind is the not only riven by other thoughts, it is also dragged into a scope beyond what it is (which it only gives through perception).
The notion then of differing divinities, which are but a little different from humans themselves, and yet, being more powerful catch up the humans in things as they are, and impels their minds in unseen directions, is not only a most natural of thoughts it is also one almost integral in ones being a mind at all. I mean here, from within a mind, pulled in such direction, it is only natural that one should look to a unity in these direction, which is at once other to the mind itself, and yet not a simple product of ones own conscious it is then very natural, as a perception is conscious (and occurred within a simple idea) to draw that idea off into a simple unity of its own, which it is inferred must lie priori to what can only be given within the mind itself. Hence The mind turns its thoughts of Gods. It is worth noting here however that these Gods are very different from the God of reason. Such God’s are fundamentally not creating the universe itself, so much as allowing humans to explore what it is to be caught up in things immediately greater than itself. The problem is then, of course, how one understands the connections within these thoughts, that it is impossible then to drag such ideas across human consciousness itself. Gods are thereby caught up within a doubly reverberating stories an allegory, at time accurate (or lust is the child of love, as Eros is of venus), and yet also awrong (for why is this child the bastard off the god of war/ r even more problematically why is love married to the smith?
Again here one needs care with what I am saying. The problem with allegories, as with consciousness itself, is the problem of over extension. I mean then lend themselves to a poetry where one cannot easily tell a fancy from anything else, as one waxes allegorical. The passage to the conscious minds of such stories is then problematic. All the more so because this is paganism pitches on within a mind of parts so very directly. Conscious thought is then truly in a spin, looking this way and that to make belief reasons interconnecting the poems given to them in perception. Poetry, and its allegory is then a treacherous surface for such thought. Hence then in philosophy the recourse to monotheism, which is at once removed from the human mind, and yet this appeal, guaranteed by reason, which is the master of allowing the relations between things to stand, in is own right, in the consciousness. In the case of paganism, these extra stories float as legends across the mind, mixing up poetic formations of truth and fancy within various fractures, and eclectic traditions.
Here I suppose one needs to isolate three elements in this process, all of which makes this way of thinking so very different to that of theism, or reason. On the one hand there the initial element, the great truth, which paganism uniquely conspires to display. The truth is that humans are not simply caught up by the invisible springs of the world, as if those springs were simply things in themselves, and so complete, and therefore simply external to the mind itself. One the contrary the mind even as it reaches or its own in perception, or in passions is always jolted away from what it thought it was, and is so jolted even as, in the simply idea it grasps as the content of the impression for its very own. Things that are, are then loitering around in some simplistic ‘thing in itself’, which would no doubt be far better names a thing which keeps itself to itself, as the unknown God. Paganism, on the contrary directly faces up to the problem that things are not quite all they seem to be even within every individual, and that the fact of matters in themselves catches individuals up in never quite being as they were. The Pagan beliefs therefore are very aposit both in their pitching of the mind into this plethora of non-human, and yet still intra-human aspects that moreover on a deep sense we also share, even as we appear so divorced from them. Hence there very fine pitching within th mind. The beliefs are, after all, not beliefs of creation, but beliefs that centre around humanity not being able to control its own mind. But also, and perhaps even more importantly creating the attitude in the mind towards this excess which appears itself valid. The point of these intra-human aspects, is that while they are of themselves beyond humanity (they compose a world within which that humanity is given, and yet not utterly so. The boundary therefore between matter in themselves, and the mind they are busy giving, is therefore somewhat (although not highly) porous. Men might well then aspire to become as Gods are (that is as matter in themselves), and in so doing impress their fellow humans passions and customs.
This then is the first unique feature of the pagan. The second aspect, which is in its way just as important appears initially at least in the negative aspect thought above, it is of course impossible for the conscious mind to leave such aspects of itself well alone. thy then become caught up in the whirl of allegory, and legend. These legends then move in highly complex manner, sometimes directly commentating on the fractures status of thoughts (which are nonetheless interrelated (hence the Eros-Venus-Mars link, and sometimes being caught up, even as the fracture is given within other dimensions, other powers of the mind or even political realities, or customs of the day, here then is formed within the conscious mind a beautiful texture, poetic in the extreme of thought. Hence paganism moves increasing into confusion, and increasing far from any attempt of reason to breed unties. In this it is of course accurate to the principles of diversity that engendered it. Here one needs caution.
On its own ground such paganism is certainly valid, in that it does not seek to ground itself in reason), and therefore does not need to be able to formerly reduce its tenets to a set of reasoned beliefs. And yet, without that link it is prone to all the excesses of the human mind. However, at this point one needs to remark two points that reason develops within this plethora of nonsense. On the one hand, paganism is never solemn in its religion. It therefore breeds ludicrous thoughts absolutely necessarily, almost integrally, within itself, but then allows itself to laugh at itself. It poetry is then freed up from tragedy by its own comic element. Paganism therefore carries with it its own delimit. This is of course necessary given the high degree of texture necessary in such thinking. I mean remember that the poetic is at once more detailed that the historical (the narrative), and yet in peril by its very detail. In peril of wearing the mind out with the texture of its connection (and therefore loosing sight of itself, or rather losing sight of being caught up as a cause); but also it is now clear that before boredom sets in, , it is also possible that the mind might be gripped with increasingly ludicrous thought, as each poetic image spills beyond its immediate confines. In both cases (no doubt) paganism as recourse to laughter, and merriment, hence in comedy one laughs at over fussy detail, and ludicrous situations. On the other hand paganism’s very methodology is given over to toleration and inclusion. As people wander across the world, they see many diverse peoples and sites, each of which they associate with some local divinity, and an ever expandable pantheon.
The final aspect of paganism, comes again. I mean here in Paganism men ressemble God in having their perceptions (which come from outside) and passions into the poetry. Paganism’s great strength lies then in the orchestration of these stepping beyond what is simply within its mind. Humans therefore step into a domain which is never simply beyond them, and yet which they cannot inhabit alone (a perception could be your in the same sense as its mine, a society is likewise always ours). Reason, then comes in at this point. It task is to uncover what in this sharing belongs to what, or far better what habits are caught up in what thoughts. It therefore creates within the strange world of perception that are at once partial (a perception is mine) and yet shared (I am my perception’s, both of us have similar perception) lexicon a demonologies of ownership. This in then the great question which causality asks. That is the problem of how to pull out of all this poetry, these shifting ressemblances, anything that a human might know as their own.
And yet here (and this is also way I made the causality so general an aspect), it is only by being general that it is able to inhabit as reason each occasion. I mean here reason requires a highly complex, nuanced and tripartiate regime. First reason has, in the hands of the sceptical philosopher a negative role I clipping the pretension of perception (but also reasosn). That is, it is reason that must remind us what we do not know; That identity or even the certainty of the Sun’s rising are not simply given over to as external realities. The second dimension though swings in the counter direction to this one, and makes the absolutely opposite claim, that it would however not be reasonable not to belief the sun would rise, given the long train of thoughts. Reason therefore both undermines absolutely certainty and yet affirms the truth of possibility as what it is reasosnable to expect. Now of course this is just what that celeberate successor of mine found quite so incomprehensible he built a carrer in devising new clever ways to deny it. Andyet it seems o me to be the case(and to that thinker, if only he was honest ) that it is far more problematic, and reasonable o allow reason (whose urgency in my mid seems the same come what may), a complex and nuanced role, that encompasses many differing dimension, than it is to devise new names for the same process.
It is then the last task of reason that carries most weight in the mind. Reason will not rest content with the comparison between things as they are drawn in the imagination. It will therefore immediately abstract non-philosophical relations, a means of comparisons. Now these relations, are then highly problematic. On the one level, each such relation is clearly unique within the mind. One might therefore expect it to be impossible to create a lexicon of such principles, and yet this reasons way. Reason of course abstracts from any relationship an rule for comparison. Hence it creates within itself principles of identity and principles of causality, and principles of space and time. Now these principles are at once a local response to a certain combination of relations, and yet, for this is reasons way can then be resolves into only seven individual philosophical relations. At the top of the list mere is ressemblance (hence the point is that one must start in a poetic manner although here the ‘poetry’ is of the most general of kinds – and encompasses dimension which lack ressemblances directly: this is a topic to return to). One then has the principle of identity. Now this is complex, as it is at once a fancy to be de-bunked in reason, and yet also its necessary construction. The belief will become all the more problematic as complex when it is linked to personal identity, which is at once wrong (one does change), and yet right (one does at time have an experience of what one is, even through that change), and valueble (without such a self, one cannot have in pride a finishing point for passions, and would dissolve into an abysss of intermeshed passionate wanderings).. Reason therefore really does us a favour is creating a somewhat false category. That is, is the case of pride, reason’s creation of a single principle aids and abets the need of passions.
Or again take the great principle of space and time. Here that author makes so much of reversing me. For me they were a merely philosophical comparison It would be conceivable, if hard to imagine myriad other spaces, and different types of time, of which ours was a mere part. The problem was then always merely the matter of how one understood where and why one perceived the world as one does, but also the far greater problem of how the same perception could be caught up into numerous othering dimensions. Reason was therefore here, both a challenge and a confirmation: it confirmed the principle of the connection, and they gave out new a dimension (and so opened new experiences) on that confirmation. The author of the critical philosophy however had rather a different take on all of this. He wants to hollow out, beyond all natural reason merely one aspect of such relations: Namely the relations in the direct world of experience, which allow one to lock a mind into a certain sets of understanding s about the world, a set that is then both exclusive and exhaustive.
Or take again the principle, in reason for causality. Here again one has abstracted, one then knows that there are cause and effects, and looks to the world to find and refine causes Reason here again plays the role of advancing the minds in new direction (and allowing in possibility, the means to review these advances. A cause is then are once a particular construction (each cause, or the relations is therefore unique), but also a highly flexible reason which advances and links aspects of that causes into increasingly general regimes. A single cause treats a perception as if it were apebble thrown into the ater, around which many circles of causes can operate.
Here I would have you note the difference I draw (all the while arguing the two are conjoined) between differing manners of defining causality. On the one hand a cause might be understood to a relation of assumes precedency and immediacy, between two sets of impressions. Alternatively one might include within the definition an interlinking of the two, and therefore of belief. A cause then inspires in the seeing one impression an enlivened idea of the other impressions. Of these two definition, and according to our current arguments, I say now that the latter relates to the world of custom, and to Flora, and therefore directly to you Amy. The external here, is then as you say the enriching of the vivacity. Each mind will therefore suddenly uncover its own wealth of external links, which breeds mermaids of belief within the mind. Realities and vivacities become then syonomous with one another (even as the mind thinks it is learning of the external world). This is Flora. And yet the other defintion with its sets of impressions placed in immediacy is a cold affair of reason. Reason demands necessary precedency is thought as cause and effect, as runs across experience in looking for dimensions of this interlinking.
Flora interputs here.” So you are now saying that the general is in service of reason, and not in the name of the external world? If that the problem as you now say you think it is so, exactly how are you avoiding that elegant writers poisitoin (Amy and possibly Hume, understand the last world as punning poison and position) ?”
Hume replies, looking all the while at Amy. “ The argument to make here has I think three distinc elements. Firstly there is a no standing principles of mine that one should never needless spawn new principles. The problem with the mind is not then that here are no principles within it, or merely very few (which then need to be discovered by the rules of Logic, or whatever), but rather then far more problematic and nuanced problem of a plethora of principles. Any experience can then be, with a will, and due (or even undue) care be set into a principles. The game is then not to spawn ne ones, bu rther to uncover within old ones new dimensions, new ways that hey can be thought.
Here then are two ways one can move caused. In terms of common experience one move then towards vivacity: here I have accepted that this move, is actually problematic and the generalizing element in what places one in the most particular the experiences, and therefore not to be taken utterly seriously. The ‘real’ world of hidden causes, and the old of custom, are, as Reason has it separated by a void wider than might initially have been suppose (and generalized principles are to the degree they are not allowed to allow for this, misleading: Ones based on experience, within experience would then be a maxim). And yet from the side of reason things are again not so simple (I will explain exactly why in a while). For once reason stops understanding itself as a stodgy and simply given self-conscious (a feeling which is clearly created within a mind), the it becomes arranged across the two poles I mentioned earlier. On the one hand reason can deny all reality save impressions and their viviacities (at is base therefore always lies May), at the other is affirms the reasons for a custom. Between these two perhaps one might say, reason endlessly abstracts possible truths. That is, in the case of cause, it notes perpetually notes the links between effects and causes, and runs ahead (and behind0 to breed new links. It then (again within reason) understands the breeding into belief (on the part of custom), in terms of possibilities. The world, and the ‘logic’ of the world is then really perpetually being reworked, across these reasonings. Or to put it another way the hidden springs f thought are being sprung and re-sprung across these wandering paths of reason. Reason of course does not directly know of these springs, or directly comprehend their nature, and yet explores endlessly, in perceptions, different manifestations of their effects.
This point will eventually lead one back to the consideration of the argument from the alternative direction. I mean from the perspective to reason as it directly grasps at itself and the hidden orders of nature. But before we do this it is worth quickly exploringt he breach that thereby opens between my approach, and that of our ‘elegant‘writer, He could of course allow for the fact that understanding, and its concepts work out a different reason. Such other reasonings were for him were his categories. Modelled very closely upon lexicons of logical judgements, they allowed the mind to work out the logic conditions given within experience, by which impressions can be grasped within a single consciousness. Reason therefore devolves itself into understanding (and remains merely subsidiary). One the face of it an original move, and yet a clearly flawed one the starting point as were three agree is not the consciousness, which is rather a subsidiary dimension to the impression-simple idea nexus, or is at least as far as it is lived : hence one cannot base identity upon self consciousness, but must rather manufacture it within pride.
So much then is evident. and yet there is a deeper flaw within that thinkers workings. By keeping reason, as I did, out of harmony with experience or better, by keeping it not as a legislative so much as a speculative function, I installed a real dynamism between reason and impressions, which I think this author lacks. I mean here that custom itself will install, in its own dynamic. Within this dimension, reason will then merely support what is, and all experiment, all thought is lost under the mundane action of understanding.
Now of course our author would no doubt claim that this last remark was rather unjust. After all in judgement, with its imagination an reason he allows or just he reasoning I allow for. And this is certainly true.. However this truth itself leaves me wondering exactly where the Author’s great advance lies? After all, after huffing and puffing about the importance of understanding, it strikes me al the real work in his thought is done by reason and imagination, pretty much as I said they were. It is after all judgement that will allow the mind to deploy its imagination in working out where to allow the categories of understanding within. And what are then those great categories. On the one hand they are clearly an apriori assertion, of what is only know a posteri (a point the author somewhat chirpily accepts). What then are the reasons for saying that this apriori must be? Well they are no more than the dual fact that whatever is found in concepts must accord to reason: but of course it must, and that was never in dispute. And that without this recourse to understanding there is a real danger that an impressions once grasped will fall out of the mind and that there therefore must be a principle stopping this slippage. And yet I had, in the splitting of impression and simple ideas, and the vivacity that follows on, discovered just such a principle. Moreover my principle had the added advantage that the sense it needed to be thought of linear was itself highly textured. One time might then be being passed, but that passing was not measured by time itself, but by vivacity. The same impression might then be caught up. Or re-worked within a linear sequence, and as that sequence is linear,”
It is Amy who stops Hume this time…She says that Hume is here, she feels, makig a real and very important dsincion. It seems to her, Amy saysthat there are two very different reading to time, and Catsby here. On the one hand one could read times as a series of parallel threads. There are then numerous different tracks, numerous different threads to time all of which run concurrently, and all of which jump into one another causing varying degrees of alarm and Mayhem. In her world, she continues, their in then the whirly-gig of society, and of the Marshalsea, and Pisa, all different world, imperfectly relating to one another: The family then would agree that once out of the Marshalsea it would be as if it never existed in their new worlds. Such worlds then relate by their difference from one another, as much as any difference of one to another. Each world falls then as a thunder bolt, breaking upon the others, as her poor father died having seen the innocent John Chivery, and nearly having missed the Marshalsea.
However Amy continues this was never here experience or her way. For She got everywhere, be it society or the jail or Pisa; and in each place remained the same Amy. This was her power. The power to rewrite and rework a story already half told – to make it sing slightly differently than it can seemed. Her power is the arranged as the power of poetry, and yet within the narrative. This is how she says she understands Hume’s of both poetries deep texture, but also its location which a narrative: that is within the rigours of passing away (and so causality), a rigour that prevents the links being two great, or burdensome. Indeed it seems your author wants to present a synthesis of these two positions. He wants to keep time linear, and yet also keep the far greater dimension of power that the parallel worlds give him. He then attemtps to achieve this with the aid of his concepts, his understandings, which at once straddle all possible world, even as they arrange the one world. That is they close down a possibility, (that another world is) even as they compose a single linear time.
Hume has not listened that carefully to what Amy has said and carries on. He continues’ the mystery then is simply not here, not with time, itself seen something external. Its power is then again merely an adjunct of your vivacity. The final argument , and one which I am certainly happy to attribute to this author alone (for I do not want it!) concerns the argument that understanding is necessary for consciousness and for reason. What for me is troubling about this argument is that it important a more general level of reason into a fractured particular. Let me explain. It is of course merely one of reasons general features tht it can as reasosn calim everything to itself (this is the secret power of monotheism, as I will come onto). And yet this does not mean tha one should simply allow this power to found a metaphysics which founds it as itself. Quite to the contrary I show that conscious (and the reason which generalizes it) are themselves produced within the process of impressing. To take then, as this author does, this produced level (and its admitted claim of universalisable reason), as the fundamental paradigm of the mind, is to reverse the customary order of thing. I do not deny such a move is possible. F course it is, and yet the price is not worth paying for whatever certainties you persuade yourself you get. For you gain nothing that I did not have, (and better, if you want my opinion): While I certainly allowed for more than this author ever could .
This last point brings us back to reason, and to that issue we have already thought on, the issue of teleology. We have already discussed that I present three telologies, where our author finds himself only able to think the one. The problemis the where one needs to start, when one consider the exact issues here. I think possibility best is somewhere else, and gradually build back will start then with the issue of the I Think. The I think, is I suppose how that author attempts to annex to his own way of thing the personality of Amy. The I think, is the pure empty form of consciousness. It is nothing save the ability to have a perception as ones own. That is to amount to the demand that very impression in bent into ones own mind . as it is givien. What ne is, empirically then, he says quite rights, must follow one from this bending. I am myself, or rather I have the ability to be a self, therefore before all else: before essentially I am at all. This is then the domain of that which transcends the empirical self, the transcendental ‘I’. The author therefore here wants to neatly avoid the consquences of my argument. In that argument perception (and within it identity –I mean mere not merely personal identity, but also empty consciousness) were ultimately given with the body in the impressions-vivacity-simple idea nexus, and yet related to the hidden spring that drag a mind outside itself. Reason’s role here then, for me, is as an adjunct of thought that is created within these effects. It therefore is free then to speculate and infer cause from within the effects, and yet has no direct access to those causes themselves (or none not mitigated by possibility and experience). No, no doubt our ‘Good-author’ cannot accept the worrying implication of this argument: Namely that one s caught up, in an almost pagan poetry which drags to soul into other dimension. The intersplicing and emrging of world from the hidden springs of the God, by no means, for me implies anything about individuality. Individuality (and e reason which supports to is invariably create within that intermeshed reality. It makes then no sense o ask whether the mind is one or many, ans our minds are already caught into perceiving, which at once multiples there natures, while creating within tem an illusion of unity (or rather an awareness in Reason, and across all vivacities) of this unity. Please though note her, it makes no more sense to say ones body is ones own, that it makes to say that ones soul is on own. What it ’possesses’ are perceptions (and reflective passions), that are always owned by matter as hey re, of which we have no awareness of (beond he vapid speculations of reason).
The I think, as I mentioned demands the unity is thought before the diversity, thereby reversing the order, and making the monothesism which lies at the heart of consciousness and its reasonings, the only possible explication of the world. Now this claim is to my way of thinking flawed in two directions. On the one hand it becomes very clear., it is even clear to this author that here is really not at all supporting this I, it can just as easily be It (indeed it is certainly more true to say that it is It). Once this concession is allowed the it must surely also be the case that this ‘ transcendental-it’ which thinks is neither strictly speaking one or many: It its effects it produces a singular mind sure enough, and yet it only does his in running across numerous differences. This no doubt is not unknown to our reasoner. Perhaps it is why he asserts that impressions relate to the empirical (and so derided self). In doing so he wants to ensure the power of that unitary self over the multiplicities that are insipid to it. He thereby very quietly distracs ones attention from what really matters; Namely the connecion between the hidden springs of thought, and the perceptions they give us (which their attendant conscoiusness). This failure This then leaves the perplexed reasonerr two possibilities. Either they can attempt to tackle fairly directly the nature of that It, which oscillates between one and many, perceptions and self hood, transcendental unity, and empirical diversity. This is I suppose what you, Amy were talking of in the first of your options. Alterntively then can stay within my trajectory, and comprehend the self created within the it merely as a product of vivacities. Either way around, it seems impossible to hold the line that conscousness, the supreme effect, was really the cause all along.
This last point then leads one into the second strange problem implict in the account. . This Ulysses of the mind makes the claim one needs to behave when one is undersanding, as if one were caught up within a great empricial known consciousness. Our transcendental self, our ability to reason is then to this author the key stone. It creates in us (directly) an empirical consciousness of our own unity, and creates indirectly the intermeshing of thoughts such that we must (as the too good Berkeley says) attribute the world as to a divine mind. Our thinker therefore has enough rigour to understand then, that there lies at the heart of understanding a problematic sense of unity. The same thing that allows me to call myself an empirical self, also demands that that same self is caught into a divine mind that includes me (and what I make myself to be), as it works though its purposes, and includes everything else. At my innermost heart I am only myself because I am also with everything else. Moreover it is highly perceptive of him to realise that in this formula, conscious is caught up between the external (and yet strangely shared) world, and whatever reflexive identity one manages to generate for oneself to inhabit that world with – I mean here pride, which clearly, once generated allows one to feel oneself to be. His Archtoinc (as he might describe it) is then perfectly reasonable (I suspect ht he hs quietly lifted it for me). Were h is simply mistakn in of the staus then of this I. In his formular it is the I that forms the entire process. Giving the two in one go. For me, the process is a double headed one in which that I (and its reasonings) have a role, but not a definate one. I mean the I itself, I as we have been considering merely the last point in a process of understanding; but then leaps up t have a new identity within reflection (where it is caught up in the feeling of pride, the holding passion, into which all others, once they are fallen remain caught).
It is as if then in this strange formation of his, he wants to hold down, as if with some fierce thumb the splitting of impressions and ideas. The anonymity of perceptions are then related back to something beyond us (and yet still understood as reliant upon us, on our consciousness, but now attributed to our consciousness itself. At the same moment the careful subsuming of consciousness under a feeling of identity that I augmented, is lost under the maze of ‘empirical selves, as it is forced to accord to the rigours of the transcendental self(which demands of I a unity, that was never simply it own (and when it demures it is dimissed as a mere empirical construction- that is of course precisely the point.) What we can own is then missed, what we possess (without owning), I mean our impressions is arbitrarily attributed to a conscious mind (and therefore caught up in ownership). { Amy has gone very, very pale in all this talk of owning and possessing. Flora is tight lipped. Hume has the impression that there is more going on than meets he immediate eye here, and yet decides simply not to care, and carries on regardless).
Now this then has another some what horrid effect. I show that monothesm, while I accords very much (at least superficially) to human reason, it gives a free hand to whatever prides and the poisions that hatch from those prides, that is once the true lines of causality have been so inverted. A man discoyering that he is always conscious, assumes the world is all his, to use as he pleases (including the divinity itself) and uss the world for its gain. He will moreveor see himself as the centre of hat history it has, as all conscious it annexed to his narrative . Such a man will then depart, in the very name of reason, from the path of the reasonable, and in reasosn’s assertion.
No doubt our goodly (or Godly) author would claim two points here. Firstly that the I think was a mere empty form of consciousness, and therefore immune to the warping and distorting effects of pride. Well this might then be the case formally or as he has it transcendentally. And yet, in effect his flea-jump to the transcendental is an attempt of the behalf of this reasoner to translate into the domain of a higher plain the feelings of pride that are constructed within this dimension, and without these dimensions, the connection would be unthinkable, as logic itself will not give (hence the author ‘deducing’ it as an a posteri’ clue. Identity, as unity comes then with a pride attached. It is then no wonder, now of the transcendental plane that that pride claims unutterly to itself all of creation, including divinity as to its own. The Author then because he treated idenity as simple and unified, when it was already compound and complex, is caught n the inflation that the extra demands upon thought creates within his mind.
Secondly, no doubt the author would argue that I am imperiling morality by founding it on sensation and taste while for me, it is him who has imperilled everything, by transfiguring a pride , such hat it seeps into all of knowable creation. He would therefore argue that the proof of Divinity in morality, and the God of the nature need not be one and the same Godhead. And that therefore the effect of consciousness was not to make humans always at the centre of the universe, so much as to fashion a double axis by which there being caught up in the world is orchestrated. They are caught up then within a divine mind, and humbled by its sublimity, even as they understand. They are likewise caught up within a greater morality, that inspires awe in their breasts. As long as these process are kept apart (as they assuredly are at the end of the first critique) perhaps this line might be held. Humans then could feel themselves doubly humble, as they are doubly caught up in two totally different Godheads. And yet, as he admits, this thought is impossible for a human mind to maintain. Now for him his is a problem no doubt ultimately of reason. But I might say something somewhat stronger. It is not reason solely to blame here, so much as the engine which produces these unties in the first place, namely pride.
Pride, you must rembmer I demonstrate is formed when the mind forms a nexus of pleasures which are indiscernible from one another (I might here, and here alone chance the word synthesis) and to ideas, of selfhood and somethign assocated with that self hood. It this case selfhood, that is consciousness stands at the meeting point of the world of morality (and its practical assumption of a divinity), and the world of telology (and its perceives order). They are given together, and the human burst in the pride of being the key stone to the nature they found in the world. In terms of my explaination, the unity of nature, and the unity of morality as they are so presented have become caught up in a single human pride, which then gives itself within the two. More, by the logic of what I have said is that pride anything other than necessary and natural. The feeling of unity, and the feeling of pride are one and the same feeling. what I logically separate is then necessarily by the very conditions which allowed it to be thought, united.
A move that then imperils morality, in ht it once gin, and in a more vivacious form, reverses cause and effect. I pride is taken as the sole schemata for the world, then the world is indeed fixed within a single axis, and yet at a cost all the diversity, all the multiple pleasures of the world are subsumed within a dreary durge about humanity, and its varying pleasures Al…”
Hume never finishes the last point. Amy has been getting paler, and paler, as he has be building up his pedoration. She how faints. Flora Stand over her: And yet even as she stands so protective for her Amy, she seems to Hume to fade.
As though se fades she speaks ver quickly summing up, for her the course of the argument.
“ We have said many things. Key surelys the idea that causality breed the mermaid mind. To be caught up in external causes is then never to have quite finished within what one is. This never finishing is difficult, because it can disobey all the normal rules of being. That is it can splice together not’s within the imagination. It can breed a series of linked addition thought, that run across the mind as a series of And’s. China was therefore oth a nest of of dreams, but also I place Arhur wnet to. In all of this thinking, one is haunted with a strained realtion ot the outside. One auges then that a cause is gneralized, from my angle, and tha all of it must be gathered in a single cause, because one is alsowys wanting it to be a aprt within a single narrative. That is within a single stoy. Ths is however as far as perception is concened not the case. There is no one story here. There are rather multiple threads. Hence the And’s jump around: Intermeshed impressed even but never simply linked. I might retage a thread bare act, and yet I know I am the cause knows it own faded nature therefore (as I knew my rose had faded – and only the Aunt really needed me, my legacy.
From the side of foolish custom therefore everything as, and must remain an enigma. A one of the outside world, and yet in its process, in the way it thinks upon, and deals with Amy hear herself, not of it. The vivacity is the related to what is not there, I mean to the aunt, to the confronation wihin beyond. And yet vivacity then has its probems 9most partcualry I think wit pride, and with passions). It is at this point yo then say one needs a second dimension to genrality. One needs nt merely genral casaulity, which isbesottedwith the outside world which cannot nevertheless be itself every factually present. One needs also the idea of reasosn. It isreasosn which orchestreates spheres of difference (al lheld within iself0, and then holds these spheres as itself. and yet here It seems clear to me yo want two elements kept apart. The mind itself, you mean reason altogether is not then merely one of this layer amgonst all the others. It is rather thr residual effect of all these layers taken togther. It might how then in how, but even as it givies that being one, it is nothing to do with the pasrts (it is then on its own access and not a aprt amongst all the others). One cannotthen reverse this moce. I mean if reasosn;s entire life was to be thought in the same breadth as the lives of the parts wihin it, then ne would be able either to draw parraelles between the two, or to subsume the lesser within the former…’ Flora is not fairly fait. She seems to swig something out of a bottle Hume had not realized she was carrying. The smell of sherry seems to increasingly come out of her, even as she fades.
‘ I mean’, she continues, going even faster’, I mean to say in the first of these two case, on would hand everything over to my father. Narrative and poetry would then arise together, in the single blind gasp. Consciousness, and its narratives would then be merely just another narrative amongst all the rest, and the pecualiar role of vivacity lost within the smoke and mirrors of reflections, without end (and time without a purpose beyond itself). The generality of consciousness, is it is based then upon the genrality of consciousness the generality of the transfer of vivid lively thoughts, is and must the be kept apart. And yet one then must then simply to reverse the order, and demand the genrlaities in conscious mind are simply synoous with and for reality iself.
One the contary one needs to think with meticualos detail both what is different about consciousness, namely it is made up in vacities. But also how that difference gives it a pecualriy role in constutiting reality It is not restricted to the needs of simply being. On the contrary it finds itself caught into means of thinking which,as hey realte to ideas are never straight fowardly there. Moreover in thnkin these elements it need to compose a world as reality (but is closer to thinking it as if it were real).It therefore uses possibility, that is the increasingly of vivacities as its medium (and arranges an understanding to tense based upon this). Rality is therefore essentially always provision, as or reasosn another diemnsin can layas be pulled out of the same thought. Here reason is at nce a delimted. Tht is in the gernal aspect of the vivacious, it allows that the same thought cold be dfferent. Here one of its moe gnernal aspects is no doubt present. Alternatively it is the greate spinner of hypthosesis. Yhe same construcion of imprssions might then be spun and respun across numerous possibilities, which can be tires, and tired again, to see which is augmented,a nd which lost.