A Study of the Realistic Movement in Contemporary Philosophy Classic Reprint

Excerpt from A Study of the Realistic Movement in Contemporary Philosophy

It tends to take what immediately appears in the focus of conscious ness as the real, and that which lies beyond the focus as the ap parent, the inferential and more or less hypothetical. The focus is the starting point, and what is presented there, it is assumed is psychi cal and immediate.

Descartes is more certain of the existence of his own mind than he is of the existence of his body. The fact of self-consciousness is the one indubitable reality. The self is, above all, a thinking being, and thought constitutes the essence of its nature. The distinction 18 made between thinking as an Operation and thought as content. The traditional clearness and distinctness which for Descartes are the tests for the validity of knowledge apply, not to thought as con tent, but to the mind's own operations. I may think that blue is white, and thus on the side of content be in error, but I can never doubt that I think that I think blue is white. The Operation of the mind as a process of thinking is so clear and distinct that it transcends the possibility of doubt. Modern philosophy may be said, therefore, to begin with the clear and distinct knowledge of mind or self, whose essence is to think, and whose operations stand self revealed.

The view of the mind held by Locke and Berkeley is essentially the same as that of Descartes. Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object, but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowl edge is only conversant about them.

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