On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of Knowledge — John Shaqi
On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of KnowledgeFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
On Sameness and Identity: A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations of a Theory of Knowledge
Fullerton, George Stuart
Knowledge, Theory of
can be represented in mind at all, it resembles the idea, and just so
far may the idea stand as its representative.
I have already pointed out that several of those who pin their faith to
"external" realities seem to apprehend at times but dimly, if at all,
that the relation of phenomenon and noumenon, or of idea and "real"
thing, is that of representative and thing represented, and that we
have here two things and not one. Certainly they sometimes pass from
one to the other without rhyme or reason, and apparently in complete
unconsciousness of the fact that they have made any change at all.
If, for the time being, they really take the two for one, they are
not thinking of the seventh kind of sameness, but of another kind. As
this is done through mere inadvertence and looseness of reasoning, and
cannot be justified on their own assumptions, it is not worth while to
dwell upon it farther. Where one really has in mind the seventh kind of
sameness, the elements I have mentioned will be found in it.
I. Finally, we come to the perplexing case that I postponed at the
outset. What has sameness of the first kind in common with the rest?
How can we speak of similarity when strictly one thing is in question?
Not one thing in the loose sense in which we call a material object
one thing in its successive states, nor one in the sense in which
the memory image and its original are one, but one thing as a single
element of knowledge is itself at any one instant? How can the idea of
likeness hold here? Dundreary's bird flocking all by itself would seem
to have found its philosophical prototype.
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