Here we reach the demonstration that evolution not only is a fact, and a fact of cosmic extent, but is a necessary law a priori over Nature. But we l… - George Holmes Howison

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Here we reach the demonstration that evolution not only is a fact, and a fact of cosmic extent, but is a necessary law a priori over Nature. But we learn at the same time, and upon the same evidence, that it cannot in any wise affect the a priori consciousness, which is the essential being and true person of the mind; much less can it originate this. On the contrary, we have seen it is in this a priori consciousness that the law of evolution has its source and its warrant. Issuing from the noumenal being of mind, evolution has its field only in the world of the mind's experiences, — "inner" and "outer," physical and psychic; or, to speak summarily, only in the world of phenomena. But there, it is indeed universal and strictly necessary.

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About George Holmes Howison

George Holmes Howison (29 November 1834 – 31 December 1916) was an American philosopher, who established the philosophy department at the University of California, Berkeley and held the position there of Mills Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity.He also founded the Philosophical Union, one of the oldest philosophical organizations in the United States. Howison’s philosophy is set forth almost entirely in his volume entitled, The Limits of Evolution, and other essays, illustrating the metaphysical theory of personal idealism. Scrutinizing the idea of evolution that had come to the fore, he proved not only that no Person can be wholly “the product of ‘continuous creation’”, evolution, but went on also to show that, rooted in the very same (a priori) reason, fulfilled philosophy necessarily ends in the “Vision Beatific”, “that universal circle of spirits which, since the time of the stoics, has so pertinently been called the City of God”. Friends and former students of Howison established the Howison Lectures in Philosophy in 1919. Over the years, the lecture series has included talks by distinguished philosophers such as Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky.

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Additional quotes by George Holmes Howison

Instead of any monism, these essays put forward a Pluralism: they advocate an eternal or metaphysical world of many minds, all alike possessing personal initiative, real self-direction, instead of an all-predestinating single Mind that alone has real free-agency.

When we say that the mind is a function of the brain, we are therefore to understand that in exact scientific truth we can mean nothing more than this: That physical and physiological changes go on, seriatim, side by side with changes in psychic experience; or vice versa, that psychic changes run parallel, pari passu, with physiological changes in the brain and the other neural tissues.

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