Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/325

No. 3.] it, it does not exist for me. So far as experience goes, I can thus manifestly never get beyond the rubric of perception, past, present, or to come. Hence Mill identifies the thing itself with present and possible sensations. Exactly the same line of thought leads to the substantiation of experience and possible experience in the writings of the Neo-Kantians. The nature or predicates of the thing can only be learned in experience; the Neo-Kantian accordingly generalizes his different experiences of any trans-subjective thing, and substantiates these as a phenomenal object. The world of such objects assumes with him the same independent and trans-subjective position as Mill's world of permanent possibilities, and with just as little right. What we are to think of this professedly immanent world we have already seen. This phenomenal world, which will neither be subjective appearance nor the frank trans-subjective thing, but suspends itself in vacuo between the two, is a philosophical hybrid to which no real existence or fact corresponds. These so-called phenomena, in complete detachment from the subjective consciousness of mankind, are epistemologically transcendent, not immanent, and the causality which obtains between them is likewise transcendent; it is the causal action of one real thing upon another.

Is it not the case, in short, that the term 'experience,' as used throughout this epistemological discussion, whether by Neo-Kantian or by English Empiricist, covers a huge petitio principii? The question at issue is the possibility of a knowledge of the trans-subjective, but I cannot experience the existence of another being. I can be aware that another being exists, but its existence can be experienced by itself alone. I know that you exist; my experience furnishes ground for believing as much. But you are not part of my experience: I do not experience your states. In short, I am not you. Similarly, I know that something which I call the table exists, because it resists the pressure I exert against it. The table is the trans-subjective explanation of certain features of my experience; the table itself cannot strictly be said to be