Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/273

Volume III. Number 3.

COMPLETE Theory of Knowledge, as I at least understand it, undertakes to answer three questions: (1) What are the premises and facts which lie at the foundation of all our reasoning,—what are the premises which we can assume without having inferred them as conclusions from other processes of reasoning, and what are the facts which we can claim to know that have not been inferred from other facts? (2) How do we know them to be true,—what sort of justification can we give of them? (3) Given these facts and premises, what process justifies me in passing from them to any fact or principle believed because of them? In a word, what can I assume without proof? Why can I assume it? How can I pass from what is so assumed to anything else?

Remarks as to the importance of the careful determination of a Theory of Knowledge would seem to be out of place in such a journal as this. And yet I hope I may be pardoned for adverting to the fact that some of the gravest and most profoundly important questions that now divide the philosophical world are questions that can only be settled when philosophers have agreed upon a Theory of Knowledge. Take, for example, the question of automatism. No one can read the arguments of Clifford, Höffding, and Münsterberg, in support of the theory, without being convinced that what leads them to believe it, is not primarily its success as a hypothesis in explaining facts, but certain preconceived opinions as to what facts can enter into causal relations with each other.