Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - The New Rationalism and Objective Idealism (The Philosophical Review, 1919-11-01).pdf/1



In The New Rationalism Professor Spaulding presents a serious, systematic and impressive formulation of ‘neo-realism’ as he conceives it, a pluralistic conception of the universe as a totality of ‘externally’ related entities, of which very many are non-mental. This conception of the universe is reached by way of a critical examination and elimination of the chief anti-realistic systems. Spaulding contends, indeed, that all philosophical systems, saving only neo-realism, must be rejected as inherently self-contradictory. “Phenomenalism,” conceived after the Kantian fashion, contradicts itself since, on the one hand, it explicitly teaches that ultimate reality is unknowable while, on the other hand, it implicitly assumes that “the facts about knowing can be known as they really are.” Pragmatism claims truth as “relative and shifting“ but none the less presupposes “that this claim is itself an absolute and permanent and not a relative&bnsp;… truth.” Naturalism which sets out to acknowledge empirically discovered facts wholly ignores “cognitive emotional and volitional processes.” Positivism, on the other hand (and by this term Spaulding means Humian idealism), so far from ignoring mental reality, holds that only impressions and ideas exist. But positivism contradicts itself in that it can not define these impressions and ideas except in terms of the selves and physical objects whose existence it denies.

There remain non-Humian, or ‘personal’ idealism (to which Spaulding always refers as ‘subjective’ idealism) and numerical monism or Absolutism. Both doctrines must successfully be eliminated if the argument for pluralistic realism is to be valid. Both are combined in the system called by Spaulding ‘objective idealism,’ the doctrine that the universe consists in One Being, mental or spiritual in nature. To the refutation of this doctrine the greater number of Spaulding’s