It is only as altering
my objects that I guess you to exist. If your
objects do not coalesce with my objects, if they
be not identically where mine are, they must
be proved to be positively somewhere else.
But no other location can be assigned for them,
so their place must be what it seems to be, the
same.(1)
Practically, then, our minds meet in a world
of objects which they share in common, which
---
1 The notions that our objects are inside of our respective heads is
not seriously defensible, so I pass it by.
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would still be there, if one or several of the
minds were destroyed. I can see no formal
objection to this supposition's being literally
true. On the principles which I am defending,
a 'mind' or 'personal consciousness' is the
name for a series of experiences run together by
certain definite transitions, and an objective
reality is a series of similar experiences knit by
different transitions. If one and the same experience
can figure twice, once in a mental and
once in a physical context (as I have tried, in
my article on 'Consciousness,' to show that it
can), one does not see why it might not figure
thrice, or four times, or any number of times,
by running into as many different mental contexts,
just as the same point, lying at their
intersection, can be continued into many different
lines.
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