Epistemology (Volume 2); Or, the Theory of Knowledge. an Introduction to General Metaphysics

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ...involved if certitude about a real non-self universe is to be attained, viz. the concept of real externality or real otherness from the self-reality, which latter, on this theory, forms the total conscious content from which the individual intellect derives all its concepts (104, 111). Nor do we see how the validity of this concept is to be vindicated if we allow that in our direct cognitive processes non-self reality is never present to consciousness and is never an object of the mind's direct cognitive awareness. Not only, therefore, do we think that there is no sufficient reason for abandoning the perceptionist position, but furthermore, we consider it is by adopting it, --by maintaining that among the conscious data of our direct cognitive awareness the real non-self is revealed with the same directness and immediacy as the real self (105, 111), --that we can most effectively meet all forms of subjectivism and agnosticism, which either by denying the validity of the principle of causality altogether, or--what comes practically to the same thing--limiting its valid application to the conscious domain of mental states or appearances or phenomena, conclude that speculative reason offers no reliable bridge from knowledge of these appearances to knowledge of any reality beyond consciousness. 1 C/. Jeanniere, op. tit, p. 443. It is Kant, especially, who has made the widest use of those ra supposed direct objects of awareness called appearances or representations, as interlopers between the mind and reality. His whole system is based on a confusion of the process of cognition with the object of cognition1: for it is only by such confusion that an appearance can be set up as a tertium quid between the mind and reality. We may, ...