When Timothy Sprigge's The Vindication of Absolute Idealism appeared in 1983 it ran very much against the grain of the dominant linguistic and analytic traditions of philosophy in Britain. The very title of this work was a challenge to those who believed that Absolute Idealism fell with the critiques of Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore at the beginning of the 20th century. Sprigge, however, saw himself as providing an underrepresented position in the philosophical spectrum rather than as advocating an (...) abandoned view. For him, idealism did not fall at any determinate point in the history of philosophy. The truth of any philosophical thesis cannot depend on what happens to be currently fashionable, but rather must stand on the soundness of philosophical argument. To this end, The Vindication of Absolute Idealism is a bold statement of his conclusions, a synthesis of panpsychism and absolute idealism, which he contends is the most satisfactory solution to the question of the nature of consciousness and the mind-body problem. Sprigge's view of consciousness remains a challenge to mainstream physicalism and a viable option that addresses pressing contemporary concerns not only in metaphysics and philosophy of mind but also in environmental ethics and animal rights. (shrink)

Originally published in 1988, this landmark study develops its own positive account of the nature and foundations of moral judgement, while at the same time serving as a guide to the range of views on the matter which have been given in modern western philosophy. The book addresses itself to two main questions: Can moral judgements be true or false in that fundamental sense in which a true proposition is one which describes things as they really are? Are rational methods (...) available in ethics which can be expected to produce convergence on shared moral views on the part of those who use them intelligently? (shrink)

The disciplined investigation of consciousness is of three main types: eidetic, anthropological (and historical), and psychophysical. The first concerns the essence of consciousness in general and of its main modes. Its method involves introspection, empathy, and insight into necessities present in what these reveal. As the study of the essence of that which is the locus of all value it is of unique importance, and it is also essential as a foundation of the other inquiries. Such inquiry has been the (...) main task set for itself by phenomenology as a philosophical school, but engagement in it need not imply acceptance of distinctive doctrines of this school. English language‐philosophy has developed in ways which discourage the eidetic investigation of consciousness, especially through insistence that modes of consciousness, conceived as a private possession, cannot be the referent of socially shared meanings. Its great mistake has been to expect ‘consciousness’ to refer to some elusive phenomenon to be looked for in the world and able to be studied as a distinctive reality only if conceptually isolable from what it reveals. Study of consciousness, however, is not primarily study of a phenomenon to be found within the world, but of the variety of ways in which the world can be present to us. (shrink)

An Important distinction between statements of fact and statements of value is widely recognised. Some philosophers are now saying that the distinction has been treated as more determinate than it is, but most philosophers would agree that the distinction is definite and important. The major contributions to Anglo-Saxon moral philosophy of this century have set out to illuminate the nature of this distinction. Ethical statements have been thevalue statements mainly at issue, but on the whole the aim has not been (...) to show wherein they differ from other value statements, but to show what distinguishes them in common with other value statements from factual statements. The characterisations of ethical statements which have become famous areones which if they apply to ethical statements at all apply equally to many other value statements as well. (shrink)

Various reflections on the nature of consciousness, partly inspired by Alastair Hannay's views on the subject, are presented. In particular, its reality as a distinct non-physical existence is defended against such alternatives as have dominated philosophy for many years. The main difficulty in such a defense concerns the contingency it seems to imply as to the relations between consciousness and its expression in behaviour. But it only implies such contingency if some version of the Humean principle that there cannot be (...) necessary connections between distinct existences is assumed. It is more promising to see this relation as the falsification of this Humean principle and thus avoid what seems the main recommendation of behaviourism, functionalism etc. Some final reflections on the nature of the physical suggest that something like consciousness may be the noumenal essence of the physical in general. (shrink)

D. C. Dennett propounds a ‘multiple drafts’ conception of consciousness which is both materialist and anti‐realist (in something like Dummett's sense). Thus there is no determinate truth as to what the components of someone's consciousness were over any particular period and the order in which they occurred. In opposition to this an anti‐materialist form of psychical realism is defended here. There really is a precise something which it is like to be a conscious individual at each moment. The main difficulty (...) in accepting this view is that it seems to make it quite contingent what type of consciousness performs what function in the economy of the organism, e.g. that pleasure acts as a positive, pain as a negative, reinforcer of behaviour. There is a problem here which can only be avoided by abandoning the Humean doctrine that there cannot be necessary relations between distinct existences. (shrink)

Of the two main interpretations of Spinoza's theory of the identity of the attributes, in particular those of Thought and Extension, the objective interpretation is now almost universally preferred to the subjective. Rejection of the subjective interpretation, according to which the attributes are merely our ways of cognizing a reality whose real essence remains unknown, is certainly justified, but the objective theory comes too near to replacing the identity by a mere correlation of diff rents to be quite satisfactory. Is (...) it not better to say that Thought and Extension represent two complementary conceptions of reality which are both correct? Yes, but in saying so some commentators ascribe to mind, as Spinoza conceives it, an unplausibly abstract status. An alternative proposal is made as to a way in which Spinoza might be right in essentials, though it requires that a certain tension in Spinozism as to the nature of body be resolved in a particular direction. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Reality as Experience Knowledge and Truth Intellectualism The Unity of Mind Metaphysical Pluralism.

Suppose that paranormal phenomena really exist. Telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, clairvoyance, and communication with the dead actually take place. In this article, Timothy Sprigge asks to what extent this would impact on our world view. In particular, how would it affect science, philosophy and religion?

Timothy Sprigge was one of the leading exponents of philosophical idealism in the last fifty years. The idealist worldview, long unfashionable, has been coming back into favour, and Sprigge's work has found a new readership. These selected essays focus on the view of consciousness on which his unique system of metaphysics and ethics is based.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Minds, Memes, and Multiples”Timothy Sprigge (bio)In his paper “Minds, Memes and Multiples” Stephen Clark discusses the problem of multiple personality, to some considerable extent in response to Stephen Braude’s recent book First Person Plural, with eloquence, subtlety and some apposite historical references. I am delighted to have been asked to make some comments on it, developing some points I made in discussion when Professor Clark read his (...) paper at a seminar in Edinburgh.Multiple personality is certainly a fascinating subject on which anyone with views about the nature of human persons does well to cast an eye. I am grateful to both Clark and Braude for having raised my awareness of it. Clearly, Clark has been persuaded by Braude of the reality of the phenomenon as something more than just a form of extreme role-playing or play acting, 1 but also agrees with him that there is an ultimate single self behind the genuine multiplicity (Clark 1969; Braude 1991). What this ultimate self is Clark seeks to explain by reference to a single “light” which illumines all the variety (extreme in the case of multiple personality), of ideas, thoughts, emotions etc. by which we are variously swayed.Let us for simplicity take the case where the putatively distinct “persons” associated with the one human organism are three. Prima facie, there are, in these cases, three distinct centers of consciousness associated with a single human organism each capable turn and turn about of being the dominant one (that which is using the first person pronoun out aloud to speak of itself and whose desires and wishes are what is most immediately expressed in behavior).There seem to be three main features of genuine and full blooded multiple personality (as described most famously—I shall assume correctly—in Morton Prince’s The Dissociation of a Personality and Thigpen and Cleckley’s The Three Faces of Eve). First, the different centers of consciousness exhibit very different personalities, so different that the individual seems in some ways even physically altered according as to which is dominant. By personality here I mean a system of character traits rather than the principle of personal identity, whatever we think that to be. The expression “multiple personality” tends rather to blur the distinction between personality in this sense and person. Someone can change quite radically in personality without ceasing to be the same person—or at least that is how we ordinarily look at it. Second, at least one of them does not “remember” the experiences and conscious behavior of at least one of the others, while one of them does. If they really are different persons, some would think that “memory” is the wrong word here. But I am using “memory” to refer to any cognitive relation sufficiently akin to that in which we stand to our own past experiences when we [End Page 31] remember them. Third, they co-exist in the sense that at least one other of the centers is often “looking on” at the contents and public manifestations of the then dominant one.Another important factor is that they have attitudes to one another, often of hostility, which seem much more like the attitudes one can have to another person than one normally does to oneself. However, important as this is, it should not be taken as part of the definition of multiple personality, since so many of these attitudes are ones many people direct at themselves, (e.g. self-hatred and self-pity). To say that these are distinct from the hatred and pity felt towards others just because they are self-directed seems rather to beg the question.It seems to me that unless the first three conditions are met, we do not have multiple personality in a full sense. I cannot consider all possible cases in which only one or two of the conditions are met but here are some examples. Suppose that the first condition is met but not the other two. Then we would have a person subjected to striking mood swings, each mood bringing with it a contrasting set of personal loves and hates, political opinions, aesthetic tastes, sporting enthusiasms, and... (shrink)

Santayana's later philosophical writings contain a critique of pragmatism and idealism which still has a little appreciated relevance as a critique of verificationist styles of thought which remain markedly influential. He urged that cognitive thought essentially consists in positing objects the existence of which cannot be verified except by other thoughts which likewise do no more than posit objects, and moreover that in a sense all such posited objects are substances lurking behind their various appearances. Granted that this is a (...) general truth about the objects of thought, one can never discredit the claim to know about objects of any particular type on the grounds that this truth applies to them, nor can it be thought a recommendation of some reductivist account of objects of a certain sort that it saves their existence from being unverifiable, for it will still leave the objects to which they are reduced in the same boat. The continuing relevance of Santayana's insight here is argued for. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

When I perceive a physical object I am directly aware of something. This something may be called a sense‐datum, leaving the question open whether it is indeed the physical object itself. Still, this question must be asked. It seems impossible that the sense‐datum can be identical with the physical object for we do not always say we have different physical objects when we say we have different sense‐data. On the other hand, the plain man does not think of the physical (...) object as something other than the sense‐datum. It is suggested that the plain man regards the sense‐datum as in a sense identical with the physical object he is perceiving. But it is a peculiar sense of ‘identity’ which is in question, one which does not conform to the rules logicians lay down for this word. (shrink)