Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Really Hard Problem', 'The Nature of Mathematics' and 'Statements about Universals'

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2 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism
Experience is indeed our only source of knowledge, provided we include inner experience [Peirce]
     Full Idea: If Mill says that experience is the only source of any kind of knowledge, I grant it at once, provided only that by experience he means personal history, life. But if he wants me to admit that inner experience is nothing, he asks what cannot be granted.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898])
     A reaction: Notice from Idea 14785 that Peirce has ideas in mind, and not just inner experiences like hunger. Empiricism certainly begins to look more plausible if we expand the notion of experience. It must include what we learned from prior experience.
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique
The world is one of experience, but experiences are always located among our ideas [Peirce]
     Full Idea: The real world is the world of sensible experience, and it is part of the process of sensible experience to locate its facts in the world of ideas.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], III)
     A reaction: This is the neatest demolition of the sharp dividing line between empiricism and rationalism that I have ever encountered.