Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... II AXIOMS AS POSTULATES By F. C. S. Sch1ller I. The Growth Of Exper1ence 1. Agreement that the world is experience + connecting principles--why we should start rather than conclude with this. 2. But (a) whose experience? Ours. Why self cannot be analysed away; why knowledge of self depends on experience. 3. (b) Experience of what! The world. But what the world is, it is not yet possible to say completely. 4. (1) The World not ready-made datum but constructed by a process of evolution, 5. (2) i.e. of trial or experiment--original flexibility or indeterminateness of world. Experiment suggested by practical needs--conscious and unconscious experimenting. 6. (3) Limits of experimenting--' matter' as resisting medium--impossi bility of saying what it is in itself. Conception of material world developing in experience. Value of Aristotelian description of a iy capable of being moulded. 7. (4) The 'World, ' therefore, is what is made of it--plastic How far, to be determined only by trying. But methodologically plasticity assumed to be complete. Provisional character of our 'facts.' 8. Bearing of this 'pragmatism' or 'radical empiricism' on the nature of axioms. Their origin as postulates to which we try to get world to conform. Contrast with the old empiricism and apriorism. II. Cr1t1c1sm Of Emp1r1c1sm 9. (1) Its standpoint psychological, (2) intellectualist, (3) axioms pre supposed in the experience which is supposed to impress them on us-- Mill's admissions, (4) derivation not historical, but ex post facto reconstruction, (5) its incompleteness, (6) impossibility of really tracing development of axioms and so unprogressiveness. III. Cr1t1c1sm Of Apr1or1sm 10-25. DEGREESts superficial plausibility and real obscurity. Fallacy of inferring from
