Even if our ideas did in themselves carry the
postulated self-transcendency, it would still
remain true that their putting us into possession
of such effects _would_be_the_sole_cash-_
_value_of_the_self-transcendency_for_us_. And this
cash-value, it is needless to say, is _verbatim_et_
_literatim_ what our empiricist account pays in.
On pragmatist principles, therefore, a dispute
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over self-transcendency is a pure logomachy.
Call our concepts of ejective things self-
transcendent or the reverse, it makes no difference,
so long as we don't differ about the
nature of that exalted virtue's fruits -- fruits
for us, of course, humanistic fruits. If an
Absolute were proved to exist for other reasons,
it might well appear that _his_ knowledge is
terminated in innumerable cases where ours is
still incomplete. That, however, would be a
fact indifferent to our knowledge. The latter
would grow neither worse nor better, whether
we acknowledged such an Absolute or left him
out.
So the notion of a knowledge still _in_transitu_
and on its way joins hands here with that
notion of a 'pure experience' which I tried to
explain in my [essay] entitled 'Does Consciousness
Exist?' The instant field of the
present is always experienced in its 'pure' state.
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