Philosophical Studies · G. E. Moore
THE CONCEPTION OF REALITY
The fourth chapter of Mr. Bradley's _Appearance and Reality_ is a chapter headed "Space and Time," and he begins the chapter as follows:-- "The object of this chapter is far from being an attempt to discuss fully the nature of space or of time. It will content itself with stating our main justification for regarding them as appearances. It will explain why we deny that, _in the character which they exhibit_, they either _have_ or _belong_ to reality."[1] Here, it will be seen, Mr. Bradley states that, in his opinion, Time, _in a certain character_, neither has nor belongs to reality; this is the conclusion he wishes to maintain. And to say that Time _has not_ reality would seem to be plainly equivalent to saying that Time _is not_ real. However, if anybody should doubt whether the two phrases are meant to be equivalent, the doubt may be easily set at rest by a reference to the concluding words of the same chapter, where Mr. Bradley uses the following very emphatic expression: "Time," he says, "like space, has most evidently proved _not to be real,_ but to be a contradictory appearance" (p. 43). Mr. Bradley does, then, say here, in so many words, that Time _is not_ real. But there is one other difference between this statement at the end of the chapter, and the statement at the beginning of it, which we must not forget to notice. In the statement at the beginning he carefully qualifies the assertion "Time neither has nor belongs to reality" by saying "Time, _in the character which it exhibits,_ neither has nor belongs to reality," whereas in the final statement this qualification is not inserted; here he says simply "Time is not real." This qualification, which is inserted in the one place and omitted in the other, might, of course, be meant to imply that, in some _other_ character--some character which it does _not_ exhibit--Time _has_ reality and does belong to it. And I shall presently have something to say about this distinction between Time in one character and Time in another, because it might be thought that this distinction is the explanation of the difficulty as to Mr. Bradley's meaning, which I am going to point out.
However, so far it is clear that Mr. Bradley holds that _in some sense,_ at all events, the whole proposition "Time is not real" can be truly asserted. And, now, I want to quote a passage in which he says things which, at first sight, seem difficult to reconcile with this view. This new passage is a passage in which he is not talking of Time in particular, but of "appearances" in general. But, as we have seen, he does regard Time as one among appearances, and I think there is no doubt that what he here declares to be true of all appearances is meant to be true of Time, among the rest. This new passage is as follows:-- "For the present," he says,[2] "we may keep a fast hold upon this, that appearances _exist._ That is absolutely certain, and to deny it is nonsense. And whatever exists must _belong to reality._ This is also quite certain, and its denial once more is self-contradictory. Our appearances, no doubt, may be a beggarly show, and their nature to an unknown extent may be something which, _as it is,_ is _not_ true of reality. That is one thing, and it is quite another thing to speak as if these facts had no actual existence, or as if there could be anything but reality to which they might belong. And I must venture to repeat that such an idea would be sheer nonsense. What appears, for that sole reason, most indubitably _is;_ and there is no possibility of conjuring its being away from it."
That is the passage which seems to me to raise a difficulty as to his meaning when contrasted with the former passage. And the reason why it seems to me to raise one is this. In the former passage Mr. Bradley declared most emphatically that Time is not real; he said: "Time has _most evidently_ proved not to be real." Whereas in this one he seems to declare equally emphatically that Time _does_ exist, and _is._ And his language here again is as strong as possible. He says it is sheer nonsense to suppose that Time does _not_ exist, is _not_ a fact, does _not_ belong to reality. It looks, therefore, as if he meant to make a distinction between "being real" on the one hand, and "existing," "being a fact," and "being" on the other hand--as if he meant to say that a thing may exist, and be, and be a fact, and yet _not_ be real. And I think there is, at all events, some superficial difficulty in understanding this distinction. We might naturally think that to say "Time exists, is a fact, and is," is equivalent to saying that it is real.
What more, we might ask, can a man who says that Time _is_ real mean to maintain about it than that it exists, is a fact, and is? All that most people would mean by saying that time is real could, it would seem, be expressed by saying "There is such a thing as Time." And it might, therefore, appear from this new passage as if Mr. Bradley fully agreed with the view that most people would express by saying "Time is real"--as if he did not at all mean to contradict anything that most people believe about Time. But, if so, then what are we to make of his former assertion that, nevertheless, Time is _not_ real? He evidently thinks that, in asserting this, he is asserting something which is _not_ mere nonsense; and he certainly would not have chosen this way of expressing what he means, unless he had supposed that what he is here asserting about Time is incompatible with what people _often_ mean when they say "Time is real." Yet, we have seen that he thinks that what he is asserting is _not_ incompatible with the assertions that Time is, and is a fact, and exists. He must, therefore, think that when people say "Time is real" they often, at least, mean something _more_ than merely that there _is_ such a thing as Time, something therefore, which may be denied, without denying this. All the same, there is, I think, a real difficulty in seeing that they ever _do_ mean anything more, and, _if_ they do, what more it is that they can mean.
The two expressions "There _is_ such a thing as so and so" and "So and so is real" are certainly sometimes and quite naturally used as equivalents, even if they are not always so used. And Mr. Bradley's own language implies that this is so. For, as we have seen, in the first passage, he seems to identify belonging to reality with being real. The conclusion which he expresses in one place by saying that Time does not belong to reality he expresses in another by saying that it is not real; whereas in the second passage he seems to identify the meaning of the same phrase "belonging to reality" with _existing;_ he says that whatever exists must belong to reality, and that it is self-contradictory to deny this. But if both being real and existing are identical with belonging to reality, it would seem they must be identical with one another. And, indeed, in another passage in the Appendix to the 2nd Edition (p. 555) we find Mr. Bradley actually using the following words: "Anything," he says, "that in any sense _is,_ qualifies the absolute reality and so is real." Moreover, as we have seen, he declares it to be nonsense to deny that Time _is_; he must, therefore, allow that, _in a sense,_ at all events, it is nonsense to deny that Time is real. And yet this denial is the very one he has made. Mr. Bradley, therefore, does seem himself to allow that the word "real" may, _sometimes_ at all events, be properly used as equivalent to the words "exists," "is a fact," "is." And yet his two assertions cannot both be true, unless there is _some_ sense in which the whole proposition "Time is real" is _not_ equivalent to and cannot be inferred from "Time is," or "Time exists," or "Time is a fact."
It seems, then, pretty clear that Mr. Bradley must be holding that the statement "Time is real" is in _one_ sense, _not_ equivalent to "Time exists"; though he admits that, in _another_ sense, it is. And I will only quote one other passage which seems to make this plain. "If," he says later on (p. 206) "Time is not unreal, I admit that our Absolute is a delusion; but, on the other side, it will be urged that time cannot be mere appearance. The change in the finite subject, we are told, is a matter of direct experience; it is a fact, and hence it cannot be explained away. And so much of course is indubitable. Change is a fact and, further, _this fact, as such,_ is _not_ reconcilable with the Absolute. And, if we could not in any way perceive how _the fact_ can be _unreal,_ we should be placed, I admit, in a hopeless dilemma.... But our real position is very different from this. For time has been shown to contradict itself, and so to be appearance. With this, its discord, we see at once, may pass as an element into a wider harmony. And with this, the _appeal to fact_ at once becomes worthless." "It is mere superstition to suppose that an appeal to experience can prove _reality._ That I find something in existence in the world or in my self, shows that this something _exists_, and it cannot show _more._ Any deliverance of consciousness--whether original or acquired--is but a deliverance of consciousness. It is in no case an oracle and a revelation which we have to accept as it is a fact, like other facts, to be dealt with; and there is no presumption anywhere that any _fact_ is better than appearance."
Here Mr. Bradley seems plainly to imply that to be "real" is something _more_ and other than to be a fact or to exist. This is the distinction which I think he means to make, and which, I think, is the real explanation of his puzzling language, and this is the distinction which I am going presently to discuss. But I want first to say something as to that other distinction, which I said might be supposed to be the explanation of the whole difficulty--the distinction implied by the qualification "Time, _in the character which it exhibits_"; the suggestion that, when we talk of "Time," we may sometimes mean Time in one character, sometimes in another, and that what is true of it in the one character may not be true of it in the other. It might, I think, be suggested that this is the explanation of the whole difficulty. And I want briefly to point out why I think it cannot be the only explanation.
Stated very badly and crudely, the difficulty which requires explanation is this: Mr. Bradley says, "It is sheer nonsense to say Time is not real." But this thing which he says it is sheer nonsense to say is the very thing which he himself had formerly said. He had said, "Time has most evidently proved not to be real." Now, Mr. Bradley certainly does not mean to say that this proposition of his own is sheer nonsense; and yet he says, in words, that it _is_ sheer nonsense. This is the difficulty. What is the explanation? Quite obviously, the explanation can only take one possible form. Mr. Bradley must be holding that the words "Time is real" may have two different _senses._ In one sense, the denial of them is sheer nonsense; in the other sense, so far from being sheer nonsense, denial of them is, according to him, evidently true. Now, what are these two different senses, between which the difference is so enormous? It is here that the two different explanations come in.
The first and, as I think, the wrong explanation (though I think Mr. Bradley's words do give some colour to it) is this. It might be said: "The whole business is perfectly easy to explain. When Mr. Bradley says that Time is _not_ real, what he means is that Time, _in the character which it exhibits,_ is not real. Whereas, when he says, Time does exist, is a fact, and is, and that it is nonsense to deny this, what he means is that Time does exist, _in some other character_--some character _other_ than that which it exhibits. He does _not_ mean to make any distinction, such as you suppose, between two meanings of the word I real '--the one of them merely equivalent to 'exists,' 'is,' 'is a fact,' and the other meaning something very different from this. The only distinction he means to make is a distinction between _two_ meanings of 'Time' or of the whole sentence 'Time is real.' He distinguishes between the meaning of this sentence, when it means, 'Time in the character which it exhibits, is real,' which meaning, he says, is evidently false; and its meaning when it means, 'Time in _some other_ character, is real,' and this meaning, he says, is evidently true. This is the complete explanation of your supposed puzzle, which is, in fact, therefore, very easy to solve."
This, I think, might be offered as an explanation of Mr. Bradley's meaning. And it must be admitted that it _would_ furnish a complete explanation of the particular puzzle I have just stated, it would completely absolve Mr. Bradley from the charge of inconsistency; and would show that where he appears to contradict himself about the reality of Time, the contradiction is verbal only and not real. We might, indeed, object to this distinction between Time in one character and Time in another; on the ground that anything which has not got the character which Time exhibits, but only some _other_ character, ought not to be called Time at all. We are, indeed, perfectly familiar with the conception that one and the same thing may _at one time_ possess a character which it does _not_ possess at another, so that what is true of it at one time may not be true of it at another. We are, that is, familiar with the idea of a thing _changing_ its character. But Time itself as a whole obviously cannot change its character in this sense.
Mr. Bradley cannot mean to say that it possesses the character "which it exhibits" and in which it is unreal _at one time,_ and possesses some other character, in which it is real, at _some other time._ And hence we might say it is certainly wrong to speak as if Time itself could have two incompatible characters; since nothing can have two incompatible characters, unless it has them _at different times._ And this is an objection which does seem to apply to Mr. Bradley's doctrine in any case, since he does in any case seem to imply this distinction between Time in one character and Time in another, whether this distinction is the complete explanation of our particular puzzle or not. Yet this objection would not necessarily be more than an objection to Mr. Bradley's words; it would not necessarily be an objection to his meaning.
Where he seems to imply that Time, in some character other than that which it exhibits, may be fully real, he may only mean that something completely different from Time, but which does in some sense correspond to it, is fully real; and if he does mean this, our objection would only amount to an objection to his giving the name of "Time" to this supposed counterpart of Time; we might say, and I think justly, that it is misleading to speak of this counterpart of Time as if it were Time itself in some other character; but this would go no way at all to show that there may not really be such a counterpart of Time, which _is_ real, while Time itself is unreal. We might ask, too, what this supposed counterpart of Time is like, or (to put it in Mr. Bradley's way) what the precise character is, in which Time Areal? And I think Mr. Bradley would admit that he cannot tell us. But this, you see, would also be no objection to his actual doctrine. He might quite well know, and be right in saying, that there is and must be a real _counterpart_ of Time, completely different in character from Time, as we know it, even though he has not the least idea what this counterpart is like.
We must, therefore, admit that this proposed explanation of our puzzle would be a complete explanation of it. It would completely vindicate Mr. Bradley from the charge of inconsistency, and would give us, as his doctrine, a doctrine to which we have hitherto found no objection except verbal ones. But, nevertheless, I think it is a wrong explanation, and I want to explain why. If we were to suppose that this distinction between Time in one character and Time in another were the only one on which Mr. Bradley meant to rely, we should have as his doctrine this: We should have to suppose him to affirm most emphatically that Time, in the character which it exhibits, neither is real, _nor_ exists, _nor_ is a fact, _nor_ is. We should have to suppose him to be using all these four expressions always as strict equivalents, and to mean that it is _only_ in its other character that Time either exists, or is a fact, or is. And if he did mean this, there would, of course, be no doubt whatever that he does mean to contradict the common view with regard to Time; since, of course, what most people mean by "Time" is what he chooses to call "Time in the character which it exhibits." Yet, his language, even in the passages that I quoted, seems to me to indicate that he does not mean this.
I think, on the contrary, he means to affirm emphatically that Time _even_ in the character which it exhibits, does exist, _is_ a fact, and indubitably _is,_ though it is _not_ real in that character. In the second passage, for instance, where he insists so emphatically that appearances do exist, are facts, and indubitably _are,_ he is, I think, plainly talking of appearances, in the character which they exhibit--or, as he there puts it, their nature, _as it is_--he does, I think, mean that appearances, even in this character, are facts, exist, and are, though, in this character, they are not "true of reality." And, so again in the third passage, where he says, Change _is_ a fact, and this fact, _as such,_ is not reconcilable with the Absolute; this language is surely quite inexcusable, unless he means that Change, as such--change, in the _character which it exhibits_--change, _as it is, is_ a fact: though, of course, he holds that _in_ this character it certainly is not real. I think, therefore, we have to assume that Mr. Bradley means to make a distinction not merely between Time, in one character, and Time in another, but also between "real," in one sense, and "real" in another.
His meaning is not so simple as it would be, if he were merely making a distinction between Time in one character and Time in another, and it is not, after all, at all plain whether he means to contradict what ordinary people hold about Time or not. He does not mean to assert that Time, _as such, neither_ is real, _nor_ exists, _nor_ is a fact, _nor_ is; but, on the contrary, that Time, even _as such,_ does exist, _is_ a fact, and _is_; _but,_ nevertheless, is not real. This, at least, is what I am going to assume him to mean. And on this assumption, we are brought face to face with the question as to the meaning of the word "real," and also as to the meaning of these other words "exists," "is a fact," and "is." Mr. Bradley seems to admit, we have seen, that "real" may _sometimes_ be properly used as _merely_ equivalent to these other phrases. We are, however, now supposing that he also holds that in another sense they are not equivalent, but that "real" means something more than the others, so that it is quite consistent to maintain that Time is _not_ "real," and yet _does_ exist, is a fact, and is.
In holding this I think he is mistaken; and what I want to do is to explain, as clearly as I can, what sort of a mistake I take him to be making, and what seems to me to be the source of this mistake. I may, perhaps, be quite wrong in thinking that Mr Bradley has made this mistake, and that it is in any degree the source of the distinction he seems to draw between "reality" and "existence." To maintain that it is so is no part of my main object. My main object is simply to make clear the nature of this particular mistake, whether committed by Mr. Bradley or not, and that it is a mistake; because it seems to me that it is a mistake which it is very easy to make, and very important to avoid. I am, of course, not concerned at all to discuss the question whether Time _is_ real or not, but only to discuss the question what sort of things would have to be true, if it were unreal, and whether if those things were true it could still be true that Time either exists, or is, or is a fact.
Now, to begin with, I think I know pretty well, in part at least, what Mr. Bradley means when he says that it is unreal. I think that part at least of what he means is just what he _ought_ to mean--just what anyone else would mean if he said that Time was unreal, and what any ordinary person would understand to be meant, if he heard those words. But I can conceive that, when I have explained as well as I can what this is that he _ought_ to mean, some people may be inclined to dispute whether he means any such thing at all. They may say that he is using the word "real" exclusively in some highly unusual and special sense, so that in asserting that "Time is unreal" he is by no means denying any part of what ordinary people would mean by saying that "Time is real." And that some special sense may _come in_ to his meaning I am prepared to admit.
I do think it is possible that _part_ of what Mr. Bradley is asserting may be something which no unsophisticated person would think of expressing in the same way, and I will admit, therefore, that he does not, very likely, mean by "Time is unreal" _merely_ what other people would mean by this phrase, but something else _as well._ What, however, I cannot help thinking is that, even if he means something more, he _does_ mean what ordinary people would mean _as well_: that what they would mean is at least a _part_ of his meaning. And if even this is disputed, if it is maintained that he is using the words _exclusively_ in some special sense, I own I do not know how to argue the question. If anybody really does take the view that, when he says "Time is unreal," absolutely all that he means is something which is in no way incompatible with what most people would mean by saying "Time is real," I do not know how to show that this view is wrong. I can only say that if this _had_ been all that he meant, I cannot believe that he would have expressed his view in the form "Time is unreal."
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.