inkstand," and that there is such a thing, even if he does not agree
that this description applies to it.
I can, in fact, imagine that some of those who would call this thing a
sensation would deny that my judgment is _about_ it at all. It would
sometimes be spoken of as the sensation which mediates my perception
of this inkstand in this instance. And I can imagine that some of
those who would so speak of it might be inclined to say that when
I judge "This is an inkstand," my judgment is about this inkstand
which I perceive, and not, in any sense at all, about the sensation
which mediates my perception of it. They may perhaps imagine that the
sensation mediates my perception of the inkstand only in the sense
that it brings the inkstand before my mind in such a way that, once it
is before my mind, I can make a judgment about it, which is _not_ a
judgment about the mediating sensation at all; and that such a judgment
is the one I am actually expressing when I say "This is an inkstand."
Such a view, if it is held, seems to me to be quite certainly false,
and is what I have intended to deny. And perhaps I can put most clearly
the reason why it seems to me false, by saying that, if (which may
be doubted) there is anything which is this inkstand, that thing is
certainly not given to me independently of this sense-datum, in such
a sense that I can possibly make a judgment about it which is _not_
a judgment about this sense-datum. I am not, of course, denying that
I do perceive this inkstand, and that my judgment is, in a sense, a
judgment about it. Both these things seem to me to be quite obviously
true. I am only maintaining that my judgment is _also,_ in another
sense, a judgment about this sense-datum which mediates my perception
of the inkstand. Those who say that this sense-datum does mediate my
perception of the inkstand, would, of course, admit that my perception
of the inkstand is, in a sense, dependent upon the sense-datum; that
it is dependent is implied in the mere statement that it is mediated
by it. But it might be maintained that it is dependent on it only in
the sense in which, when the idea of one object is called up in my
mind, through association, by the idea of another, the idea which is
called up is dependent on the idea which calls it up. What I wish to
maintain, and what seems to me to be quite certainly true, is that my
perception of this inkstand is dependent on this sense-datum, in a
quite different and far more intimate sense than this. It is dependent
on it in the sense that, if there is anything which is this inkstand,
then, in perceiving that thing, I am knowing it _only_ as _the_ thing
which stands in a certain relation to this sense-datum. When the idea
of one object is called up in my mind by the idea of another, I do
not know the second object _only_ as _the_ thing which has a certain
relation to the first: on the contrary, I can make a judgment about the
second object, which is not a judgment about the first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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