A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern PhilosophyCushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy
A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern Philosophy
Cushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy -- History
The particular world that human beings inhabit
is called physical nature, whose laws are known as the laws of science.
How can it be _one_ world in which so many millions of different human
beings live? Because these millions of human beings are under the same
fundamental rational laws, and they construct the world in a common
fashion. The laws of nature are, after all, the laws of our own minds.
They are the laws of reason. The laws of nature are not the laws of
absolute reality, but the laws of the human interpretation of reality.
All the linkage of facts, all the law and order of our universe, all
the combination of the variety of objects of knowledge――in a word,
the entire body of science or the world of physical nature is a human
mental synthesis. Does independent absolute reality exist? Yes; but
it exists behind the scenes for us as for the angels. Mental synthesis
is constitutive of the world in which we are actually engaged――mental
synthesis is shot through and through all our experiences. Mental
synthesis is the framework of the universe, and therefore Kant says,
“The world is my representation.”
=The Judgments Indispensable to Human Knowledge.= It will be seen
from the above discussion that Kant does not believe that an idea or a
sensation taken by itself constitutes knowledge. Knowledge consists of
sensations framed together in a synthesis. That is, ideas must be taken
together with other ideas. This is called in grammar a proposition,
having a subject and a predicate. In logic it is called a judgment.
The only way a human being can express knowledge is in the form of
judgments, but all judgments of human beings are not necessarily
knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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