Page:Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience.djvu/7

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CONTENTS


    page
  INTRODUCTION 1
     
  APPRECIATIONS OF EXPERIENCE  
I. 
The independent outer world is an object not of reasoned belief but of spontaneous experience which philosophical theory has no power to alter. To say, however, that the independent existence of the outer world is a characteristic feature of normal human experience is to say nothing whatever about its real metaphysical independence
5
II. 
An object of experience need not be of the sort that can be presented to sense-perception
7
III. 
Avenarius: his way of describing the experience of knowing something. Knowledge is experience with the cognitive character
9
IV. 
This definition of knowledge is not self-contradictory, since it makes no metaphysical assumption to contradict. It is not a question-begging term
14
V. 
Two meanings of the word experience. The word is used here to mean direct cognition of fact
15
VI. 
There is a natural (not necessarily true) view of the world. This is naïve realism
16
VII. 
Distinction between the Independent and the Transcendent. Independence is a character of objects within the field of experience. Transcendence means existence without necessary reference to any field of experience. The outer world and my fellow men are evidently independent, and they are characterized in normal human experience as transcendent also
22
VIII. 
Solipsism can not be logically refuted, but this makes no difference to experience
25
IX. 
A review of some attempts to show that experience guarantees the transcendent object. The attempts fail. Summary of the discussion thus far
29

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