Whenever anybody states a thought in words, there are a great many more thoughts in his mind than are expressed in his statement. Among these there are some which stand in a peculiar relation to the thought he has stated: they are not merely its context, they are its presuppositions.

The priority affirmed in the word presupposition is logical priority. It is not a priority in time.

Only by a kind of analysis, when I reflect upon it, do I come to see that this was a presupposition was making, however little I was aware of it at the time.

Here lies the difference between the desultory and casual thinking of our unscientific consciousness and the orderly and systematic thinking we call science. In unscientific thinking our thoughts are coagulated into knots and tangles; we fish up a thought out of our minds like an anchor of its own cable, hanging upside down and draped in seaweed with shellfish sticking to it, and dump the whole thing on deck quite pleased with ourselves for having got it up at all.

Thinking scientifically means disentangling all this mess, and reducing a knot of thought in which everything sticks together anyhow to a system or series of thoughts in which thinking the thoughts is at the same time thinking the connexions between them.



Prop. 1. Every statement that anybody ever makes is made in answer to a question.

A question is logically prior to its own answer. When thinking is scientifically ordered, this logical priority is accompanied by a temporal priority; one formulates the question first, and only when it is formulated begins trying to answer it. This is a special kind of temporal priority, in which the event or activity that is prior does not stop when that which is posterior begins.

Def. I. Let that which is stated [i.e. that which can be true or false) be called a proposition, and let stating it be called propounding it.

Prop. 2. Every question involves a presupposition.

Def. 2. To say that a question does not arise is the ordinary English way of saying that it involves a presupposition which is not in fact being made.

Def. 3. The fact that something causes a certain question to arise I call the ‘logical efficacy' of that thing.

Def. 4. To assume is to suppose by an act of free choice.

Prop. 3. The logical efficacy of a supposition does not depend upon the truth of what is supposed, or even on its being thought true, but only on its being supposed.

Prop. 4. A presupposition is either relative or absolute.

In this context the word ‘presupposition’ refers not to the act of presupposing but to that which is presupposed.

Def. 5. By a relative presupposition I mean one which stands relatively to one question as its
presupposition and relatively to another question as its answer.

Def. 6. An absolute presupposition is one which stands, relatively to all questions to which it is related, as a presupposition, never as an answer.

The "presupposition" is a bias which interferes with the true quest for knowledge, because it's an assumption of already knowing certain things... — Metaphysician Undercover

That's laughable considering how you have approached me in this thread. — Janus

R.G. Collingwood's recasting of metaphysics from its Aristotelian origin... — Pantagruel

Whenever anybody states a thought in words, there are a great many more thoughts in his mind than are expressed in his statement. - Among these there are some which stand in a peculiar relation to the thought he has stated : they are not merely its context, they are its presuppositions.

I'm in the middle of cutting and pasting from the essay as a means to provide an acceptable and accurate portrayal of RGC's notion of absolute presupposition. ↪tim wood hasn't done a bad job here, from what I can see thus far, but I think there's much more going on with RGC than first meets the eye.
— creativesoul

When you're done with your cut and paste, please send it out to the rest of us. — T Clark

...not all beliefs have to be believed. — Janus

(i) 'That all science is of the universal or abstract ; in other words, that its procedure is to ignore the differences between this individual thing and that, and attend only to what they have in common.

(ii) That there is potentially at least a science of every universal, that is, of everything which is common to the individual things we call its instances.

(iii) That there are degrees of universality or abstractness, and that these give rise to a hierarchy of universals and a corresponding hierarchy of sciences ; so that whenever a generic universal A is specified into sub-forms B and C there will be hierarchical relations between the superordinate science of A and the subordinate sciences of B and C.

(iv) That A is not only the indispensable presupposition of B and C, but their sufficient logical ground, so that the subject-matter of any superordinate science can be rightly described as generating or creating, in a logical sense, those of the sciences subordinate to it.

To adequately account for the existence of knowledge we need to understand the power which logic may have over will. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's exactly the reason why "absolute presuppositions" cannot serve the purpose of underlying any field of study, or any knowledge in general... — Metaphysician Undercover

Are we getting off-OP? — T Clark

Collingwood and Wittgenstein...

Take your time — tim wood

prop. i. Every statement that anybody ever makes is made in answer to a question.

I write these words sitting on the deck of a ship.
I lift my eyes and see a piece of string — a line, I must
call it at sea — stretched more or less horizontally
above me. I find myself thinking ‘that is a clothes-
line’, meaning that it was put there to hang washing
on. When I decide that it was put there for that
purpose I am presupposing that it was put there for
some purpose.

It speaks to both the believer and the belief that they form, have, and/or hold.
— creativesoul
They? — tim wood

They? And how can a belief itself be anything other than a belief? And certainly how can it be absolute? — tim wood

"Absolute belief"? This speaks to the believer, yes? And not the thing believed? — tim wood

If absolute presuppositions are claimed to be the unquestioned hidden basis of ones worldview,
— creativesoul

This is not the case. — T Clark

...your mother loves you... — tim wood

Collingwood wants to say that these have no truth value, — creativesoul

He does not say that. — tim wood

Collingwood defines absolute presuppositions as having no truth value. — T Clark

the key here is being more clever in the use of taxes. — javi2541997

A "belief" is a thing, the word used in this way is a noun. That thing is a memory which has been subjected to the process of believing. Believing is an activity and it is produced by the attitude of confidence. The belief is the result of this activity. So the belief is the memory which has been subjected to that process, of believing. It is not the attitude of confidence, nor is it the process (believing) which is produced by that attitude, it is the result of that process. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah the guy who shot McKinley, wasnt he at a meeting with some hotshot anarchist celeb before shooting the Hawaii stealer? — Ansiktsburk

Like the sophists of old, some believe words can harm the human body, and if they rid the world of the words their pain will end. — NOS4A2

The primary issue was a belief that Trump had been elected, that evil forces had interfered with the election, and that Mike Pence was committing treason. — frank