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p.3 conceptual idealism... maintains that the concepts we standardly employ in constituting our view of reality - even extramental, material reality - involve an essential... reference to minds and their capabilities... what the mind 'makes' is not nature itself, but the mode-and-manner-determining categories in terms of which we conceive it. Accordingly, it is maintained that the mind shapes (rather than 'makes' pure and simple) not nature itself, but nature as it is for us.
p.3 One must inevitably use the descriptive mechanisms of a conceptual framework to sort the products of our experience into conceptual pigeon-holes that represent at a very basic level a view - deeply ingrained in our cultural tradition - of how things work in the world.
p.4 Reality - 'our reality,' as we can and do view it - is a 'mental construct' built up in the transaction and experiential encounter of person and environment by means of a conceptual framework that invariably and inevitably makes essential use of organizing principles.
p.10 The 'reality' that is encountered does not of itself determine... how we are to think of it, independently of the apparatus of thought that we for our part bring to the transaction.
p.12 The workings of the symbolic process invade all of our conceptualized apprehension of things.
p.14 One obviously can and must distinguish between things and the thoughts-of-things.
p.15 Thus, according to the position espoused here, it is not 'the thing itself' - whatever that might be - that is mind-involvement, but 'the thing as we think of it,' that is 'the thing under a certain characterization.'
p.20 any adequate account of the matter must in the ultimate analysis make reference to minds and their capabilities and activities - no matter how covert or tacit such reference may be 'in the first analysis.'
p.23 The conception of a mind-invoking conceptual framework plays a central part in our articulation of conceptualistic idealism... Categorical frameworks... inhere in conceptual schemes... Categorical frameworks are a social reality: they embody a shared conception of 'the way the world works.'
The conceptual machinery we deploy in shaping our view... is very largely a cultural artifact, socially formed and transmitted. Its features are not determined by the 'real world' itself - or rather are only partially determined by it.
p.25 space, time, material objects, and causality... must figure centrally in any discussion of idealism... Leibniz assigns all of them to the sphere of phenomenal appearance: they are phenomena (albeit a well-founded phenomena) that are devoid of substantial reality. Kant accords all of them a transcendental - and so mind-dependent - status. For Bradley... none of them can have any sort of independent reality because in each case a logical inconsistency is in each case involved
p.25-26 The idealism that is espoused here maintains that each of these key features of our common conception of nature (viz., particularity, spatiality, temporality, and causality) are in the final analysis mind-involving in the conceptualistic manner this opening chapter has sought to clarify.
[JLJ - viz. is latin for videlicet, "namely", "that is to say", "to wit", or "as follows".]
p.27 The sphere of the possible covers a wide range.
p.34 Unlike 'actual' things that actually exist in their own right, unrealized possibilities exist only as objects of thought.
p.44 Unrealized possibilities... can only be said to 'exist' in a secondary and dependent sense, as the actual or potential objects of thought.
p.47 By their very nature, unrealized possibilities cannot exist as such, but must be thought of: they must presumably be hypothesized, or imagined, or assumed, or something of this sort.
p.48 What is being said when - for example - one speaks of the (unrealized) potentialities of actual things? Whatever it is, it is clearly to be framed by a hypothetical proposition... The paradigm of such potentiality-claims is that, given the way things work in the world (or some relevant sector of it), then, subject to a certain assumption or hypothesis or supposition... some result must be accepted as ensuing... Every hypothetical claim requires us to refer to some supposition or its consequences.
p.49 Applicability of the conception of unrealized possibilities demands recourse to the patently mind-invoking resources of hypothesis and supposition, which alone afford a footing for the sphere of the inexistent.
p.50 There is clearly an absolute gulf fixed between reality and irreality, between the actual and the 'merely possible.' Our theory has it that this gulf can be crossed only by mental acts of assumption and supposition. The only entry-point into the realm of the unreal is via a mind, capable of essentially imaginative processes like assuming, supposing, and the like.
p.59-60 Lawfulness manifests itself it two related ways: nomic necessity and hypothetical force. Nomic necessity represents the element of must, of inevitability... This nomic necessity manifests itself most strikingly in the context of hypothetical suppositions... It is preeminently this element of hypothetical force that distinguishes a genuinely lawful generalization from an accidental generalization like 'All coins in my pocket weigh less than one half ounce.' ...The critical difference between a merely factual (and so potentially accidental) generalization and an authentically lawful one does not reside in the reference to a specific particular... nor in reference to a limited period of time... Rather, the critical aspect of a law lies in the force of necessity it carries.
[JLJ - This is similar to the concept of critical success factors used in the business world. You ponder then establish the critical success factors, develop low-cost metrics or projects to monitor them, creatively finding ways to keep all the factors at acceptable levels.]
p.61 When a generalization is taken as lawful it obtains added force.. It is in the conceptual nature of things that nomic necessity manifests itself most strikingly in such hypothetical and counterfactual contexts.
p.63-64 A thesis that is put forward as a genuine law thereby purports to pertain not only to things and states of affairs as they stand, but also to their dispositional and hypothetical variations.
p.67 The very essence of inductive procedures is to warrant the step from observed to unobserved cases, whereas any law... takes not only this inductive step from observed to unobserved cases, but also takes the added step from actual to hypothetical cases, and specifically to cases which... are in principle unobservable.
p.73 Does this view of lawfulness entail the consequence that if there were no rational minds then there would be no natural laws? The answer is a Yes so heavily qualified as to amount to No.
[JLJ - Only Rescher would contemplate a Yes masquerading as a No.]
p.83 Men impute lawfulness to certain generalizations by according to them a particular role in the epistemological scheme of things, being prepared to use them in special ways in inferential contexts (particularly hypothetical contexts), and the like.
p.83 By being prepared to put it to certain kinds of uses in modal and hypothetical contexts, we, the users, accord to a generalization its lawful status, thus endowing it with nomological necessity and hypothetical force. Lawfulness is accordingly... a matter... of its epistemic status as determined by the ways in which it is deployed for explanatory and predictive applications and in hypothetical reasoning.
p.86 While it is, of course, 'we' who 'decide' upon the placement of a law in the epistemological scheme of things, and 'we' who make an 'epistemic commitment' to the law, the crucial point is that this be done on the basis of rational grounds... and not on the basis of merely random choice or personal predilection... lawfulness... represents an imputation that is (or should be) well-founded upon evidential grounds.
p.87 we can only observe what is, i.e., forms part of the realm of the actual, and not what corresponds to the modally necessary or the hypothetically possible.
p.97 'Can machines think?'
[JLJ - Perhaps it is better to ask the equivalent question: Since for Aquinas 'to think is to order' [Cognitive Pragmatism (Rescher, 2001)], can we write a script which - when executed on a machine:
- performs clever and automated categorizations,
- which can be used in a larger scheme for managing attention,
- which uses 'under the hood' what might be considered tricks that work, including possibly diagnostic tests of effectiveness/ adaptability, rules of thumb, or even a kind of internal conversation, and ultimately
- produces an end result which - in competitive situations perhaps - compares favorably with results from human thinking?
I would answer this question as Yes. Humans think by cycling through the tricks that work and settling on the scheme that will be most practically-ethically-effective, in the current predicament.]
p.98 But the question remains: What justifies an imputation?
[JLJ - The intelligently-crafted and tested scheme to 'go on' calls for an imputation. We choose of our own free will to execute the scheme. You might as well ask, what justifies free will?]
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