Space-Time and the Proposition

John Anderson was the Challis professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1927 to 1958.

Editorial Prefaces

Introduction

Lecture 1: reading list and introduction – Plato and Kant the great guides to the categories; Hegel’s multiplication of the categories ‘reactionary’; Alexander as a ‘realistic Kantian’
Lecture 2: realism assumed in this course but empiricism the theme – connection between empiricism and realism; the problem of proof in logic and the doctrine of the ‘self-refuting’; the problem of ‘conditions of existence’ – categories have no significant opposite; how, then, is a situational logic possible?; Alexander doesn’t begin with a propositional approach – his theory of predication; the problem articulated and the solution proposed
Lecture 3: connection and distinction – Alexander: Space as the form of togetherness and Time as the form of distinctness; these come together in Space-Time; Hume’s ‘rationalism’; rationalism and monism; rationalism defined; empiricism defined; James and ‘vicious intellectualism’; Kant as the answer to Hume; Alexander as the answer to Kant
Lecture 4: rationalism treats relations as identities; Idealism as monism; objective and subjective Idealism; the problem of unity and diversity; the problem of causality; predication
Lecture 5: the ‘necessity’ of mathematical truths; Leibnizian theory of analysis; predication as a form of identity; clarity and vagueness; empiricism – the proposition is not derived from anything – problem of ‘essences’; Alexander on the mental and the neural; his evolutionism
Lecture 6: question of mental quality – Alexander’s evolutionism – the doctrine of levels; Space-Time as a ‘stuff’ – Alexander’s substantialism or materialism; criticism of materialism – how could qualitative things ever arise from pure Space-Time?; – Spencer – criticism of substantiality – mind not ‘higher’ than body
Lecture 7: Alexander’s treatment of quality unempirical and unpropositional; propositional theory – the mental and neural occur in same place; identity of the spatio-temporal and the propositional; ‘stuff’ theory inconsistent with propositional theory; criticism of ‘Time is the mind of Space’ (mind is the Time of body); Space as togetherness or continuity – Time as distinctness or structure; criticism of physical Space-Time
Lecture 8: criticism of Alexander’s substantialist view that Space-Time is a ‘stuff’; rejection of levels of qualities and compresence – problem of theory of perspectives; general theory of Space-Time; Space as togetherness – Time as distinctness; how can we advance a theory of Space-Time?; things as spatio-temporal
Lecture 9: the difficulty of speaking about Space and Time; lack of concreteness in Hegelian Idealism; Alexander’s debt to Kant; the spatio-temporal as conveyed by the propositional form; the medium of things cannot be Space alone nor Time alone; the argument from repetition; the characters of Time and Space
Lecture 10: Alexander’s contention that mind and body are genus and species – general characterisation of genus and species; the ‘mutual necessitation’ of Space and Time; importance of the proposition; successiveness and onedimensionality; analogical character of the statement
Lecture 11: motions – the problem of definition of a straight line; empirical grounds for geometry; irreversibility and transitiveness; criticism of ‘point-instants’
Lecture 12: Alexander’s confusion of transitiveness and irreversibility; discussion of pendular motion; difference of direction fundamental to transitiveness in Time and two dimensionality in Space; absolute difference of direction fundamental to irreversibility in Time and three dimensionality in Space
Lecture 13: successiveness, transitiveness and irreversibility in Time and one, two and three dimensionality in Space; problem of abstraction; the intractability of qualities
Lecture 14: Bradley on a) qualities and relations, b) Space and Time; the problem of ultimate ‘units’; rationalism of Leibniz and Russell; the problem of absolute terms; situational logic and spatio-temporal logic; Heraclitus and his all inclusive system – rejection of the ‘universe’ or ‘cosmos’; belief in ultimates and the desire for security
Lecture 15: situational logic recognises externality everywhere; cf Leibniz and the Pythagoreans; internality in Leibniz, Berkeley and Kant; empiricism and mind
Lecture 16: transition to the categories – Alexander treats Space- Time as an infinite whole; his failure to treat the question in terms of the proposition; Space and Time and the propositional form; subject and predicate of the proposition; ‘paradoxes’ of the situational logic
Lecture 17: problem of the ‘historical’; Alexander’s treatment of the categories as predicates – categories must also be subjects; categories as relations; categories have no obverse
Lecture 18: identity – as a relation; as coextension; the problem of coextension; the doctrine of unlimited intension
Lecture 19: identity: in a narrower sense; Alexander’s debt to Hegel; Kant: the categories and the forms of the proposition; categories as involved with the form of the proposition; identity as being a subject
Lecture 20: difference or diversity – as being a predicate; involved with the subject; identity embodies difference; identity embodies all other categories; the copula as occurrence – existence and truth the same; the category of existence; the copula as a relation; positive and negative copula; existence involves relation; the five categories of the proposition
Lecture 21: the five categories of the proposition (cont.) – relation – possible distinction between predication and relation; the function of the predicate – the qualitative predicate and Time – the predicate as activity
Lecture 22: relation – problems of Russellian logic; relational arguments; conjunctive and disjunctive arguments
Lecture 23: quantification of the predicate – relational arguments
Lecture 24: relational arguments (continued)
Lecture 25: predicative logic – the distinction of quantity
Lecture 26: universality – there are no universals nor particulars; ‘system’ in Hegel; optimism in Idealism; the ‘concrete universal’; the notion of system; the systematic thinker
Lecture 27: notion of the ‘term’ – both particular and universal; the universal as concrete or abstract (Moore-Russell view); universals as governing principles – connection with social activity; Cornford and ‘Moira’ – criticised by Taylor and Burnet; Parmenides on the Pythagoreans; Heraclitus
Lecture 28: Alexander on Universality as a plan: synthetic character of the proposition; the categories as universals
Lecture 29: no pure particulars – colour; plans; the concrete universal
Lecture 31: Stout’s theory of universals criticised
Lecture 32: order of the categories – quality and quantity; universality and quantity; the category of number – begins with integers; integers characteristic of groups
Lecture 33: rejection of category of ‘whole and part’ – Alexander’s haphazard treatment of categories
Lecture 34: general remarks about the categories – Alexander has no method of discovering the categories; the natural order of the categories; criticism of Hegel
Lecture 35: Alexander’s theory of number: enumeration; Alexander’s rationalistic treatment of mathematics; Alexander’s discussion of Russell-Frege theory of cardinal number
Lecture 36: ordinal numbers – category of order
Lecture 37: transition between categories – logical, mathematical, physical; category of quantity – from mathematical point of view as real number – from physical point of view as solidity; category of intensity – number dependent on quality – confused conceptions of degree
Lecture 38: measurement of sensation – Weber’s law; ‘threshold of consciousness’; cognitionalism in psychology
Lecture 39: category of substance outlined; category of intensity continued
Lecture 40: the categories related to the proposition – Idealism as a philosophy of degrees: category of substance
Lecture 41: Alexander confuses substance with identity: the three groups of categories – and the transitions between them; substance continued – as the constitution of a thing
Lecture 42: substance as constitution or composition – structure as harmony: Heraclitus; category of causality – Alexander emphasises spatial side – Kant emphasises temporal sequence – concomitance
Lecture 43: general points on the order and grouping of the categories; causality continued
Lecture 44: another grouping of the categories – causality continued – Alexander neglects the universality of causal connection
Lecture 45: Alexander neglects the causal field – Alexander’s immanentism; thinghood/individuality; reciprocity
Lecture 46: the source of the categories as the form of the proposition – the physical categories; structure and aesthetics; category of individuality

Index