It gets rid of the need of an absolute
of the Roycean type (similarly sterile) by
its pragmatic treatment of the problem of
knowledge [a treatment of which I have already
given a version in two very inadequate
articles].(1) As the views of knowledge, reality
and truth imputed to humanism have been
those so far most fiercely attacked, it is in
regard to these ideas that a sharpening of
focus seems most urgently required. I proceed
therefore to bring the view which _I_ impute
to humanism in these respects into focus as
briefly as I can.
---
1 [Omitted from reprint in _Meaning_of_Truth_. The articles referred
to are 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure Experience,'
reprinted above.]
196
II
If the central humanistic thesis, printed
above in italics, be accepted, it will follow
that, if there be any such thing at all as knowing,
the knower and the object known must
both be portions of experience. One part of
experience must, therefore, either
(1) Know another part of experience -- in
other words, parts must, as Professor Woodbridge
says,(1) represent _one_another_ instead of
representing realities outside of 'consciousness'
-- this case is that of conceptual knowledge; or else
(2) They must simply exist as so many ultimate
_thats_ or facts of being, in the first instance;
an then, as a secondary complication,
and without doubling up its entitative singleness,
any one and the same _that_ must figure
alternately as a thing known and as a knowledge
of the thing, by reason of two divergent
kinds of context into which, in the general
course of experience, it gets woven.
Pages:
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181