An enquiry concerning the principles of natural knowledgeWhitehead, Alfred North
Philosophy
An enquiry concerning the principles of natural knowledge
Whitehead, Alfred North
Knowledge, Theory of; Science -- Philosophy; Space and time
The other type of answer was first given by Kant. We must distinguish
between the general way he set about constructing his answer to Hume,
and the details of his system which in many respects are highly
disputable. The essential point of his method is the assumption that
'significance' is an essential element in concrete experience. The
Berkeleyan dilemma starts with tacitly ignoring this aspect of
experience, and thus with putting forward, as expressing experience,
conceptions of it which have no relevance to fact. In the light of
Kant's procedure, Johnson's answer falls into its place; it is the
assertion that Berkeley has not correctly expounded what experience in
fact is.
Berkeley himself insists that experience is significant, indeed
three-quarters of his writings are devoted to enforcing this position.
But Kant's position is the converse of Berkeley's, namely that
significance is experience. Berkeley first analyses experience, and then
expounds his view of its significance, namely that it is God conversing
with us. For Berkeley the significance is detachable from the
experience. It is here that Hume came in. He accepted Berkeley's
assumption that experience is something given, an impression, without
essential reference to significance, and exhibited it in its bare
insignificance. Berkeley's conversation with God then becomes a fairy
tale.
3.5 What is 'significance'? Evidently this is a fundamental question
for the philosophy of natural knowledge, which cannot move a step until
it has made up its mind as to what is meant by this 'significance'
which is experience.
'Significance' is the relatedness of things. To say that significance is
experience, is to affirm that perceptual knowledge is nothing else than
an apprehension of the relatedness of things, namely of things in their
relations and as related. Certainly if we commence with a knowledge of
things, and then look around for their relations we shall not find them.
'Causal connection' is merely one typical instance of the universal ruin
of relatedness. But then we are quite mistaken in thinking that there is
a possible knowledge of things as unrelated. It is thus out of the
question to start with a knowledge of things antecedent to a knowledge
of their relations. The so-called properties of things can always be
expressed as their relatedness to other things unspecified, and natural
knowledge is exclusively concerned with relatedness.
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