Classical literature; Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
(b) The fixedness of impressions of sense furnishes a link of connexion
between ancient and modern philosophy. The modern thinker often repeats
the parallel axiom, 'All knowledge is experience.' He means to say that
the outward and not the inward is both the original source and the final
criterion of truth, because the outward can be observed and analyzed;
the inward is only known by external results, and is dimly perceived
by each man for himself. In what does this differ from the saying of
Theaetetus? Chiefly in this--that the modern term 'experience,' while
implying a point of departure in sense and a return to sense, also
includes all the processes of reasoning and imagination which have
intervened. The necessary connexion between them by no means affords a
measure of the relative degree of importance which is to be ascribed to
either element. For the inductive portion of any science may be small,
as in mathematics or ethics, compared with that which the mind has
attained by reasoning and reflection on a very few facts.
II. The saying that 'All knowledge is sensation' is identified by Plato
with the Protagorean thesis that 'Man is the measure of all things.'
The interpretation which Protagoras himself is supposed to give of these
latter words is: 'Things are to me as they appear to me, and to you as
they appear to you.' But there remains still an ambiguity both in the
text and in the explanation, which has to be cleared up. Did Protagoras
merely mean to assert the relativity of knowledge to the human mind? Or
did he mean to deny that there is an objective standard of truth?
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