United States or American Samoa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If, then, everything happens solely in accordance with the laws of nature, there cannot be any real first beginning of things, but only a subaltern or comparative beginning. There cannot, therefore, be a completeness of series on the side of the causes which originate the one from the other. But the law of nature is that nothing can happen without a sufficient a priori determined cause.
But in fact, if this principle, in the subjective signification which we have shown to be its only true sense, may be guaranteed as a principle of the unceasing extension of the employment of our understanding, its influence and value are just as great as if it were an axiom for the a priori determination of objects.
They still began, as each new problem presented itself, whether relating to the animate or inanimate world, to assume an original and dissimilar order of nature; and when at length they approximated, or entirely came round to an opposite opinion, it was always with the feeling, that they were conceding what they had been justified a priori in deeming improbable.
For just as in politics the principle of democracy is the sovereignty of numbers, and that of monarchy the sovereignty of the prince; just as likewise in affairs of conscience religion is nothing but submission to a mystical being, called God, and to the priests who represent him; just as finally in the economic world property that is, exclusive control by the individual of the instruments of labor is the point of departure of every theory, so philosophy, in basing itself upon the a priori assumptions of reason, is inevitably led to attribute to the ME alone the generation and autocracy of ideas, and to deny the metaphysical value of experience; that is, universally to substitute, for the objective law, absolutism, despotism.
If then I am compelled to doubt the theory, by which the choice of characters was to be directed, not only a priori, from grounds of reason, but both from the few instances in which the poet himself need be supposed to have been governed by it, and from the comparative inferiority of those instances; still more must I hesitate in my assent to the sentence which immediately follows the former citation; and which I can neither admit as particular fact, nor as general rule.
I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other.
We cannot find the proof that a priori Radicalism ever at any time got a real hold of any considerable mass of the people of this country, or that any of the great innovations in domestic policy since the end of Lord Liverpool's administration have been inspired or guided by Rousseauite assumptions.
If the proofs of Clarke, who has drawn them up in twelve propositions, are examined with attention, I think they may be fairly shielded from the reproach with which they have been loaded; it does not appear that he has proved his positions a priori, but a posteriori, according to rule.
These sensations, which are merely animal, and from which we can, a priori, draw no inference, we are apt to transfer to inanimate objects, and to suppose that they have some such feelings whenever they transfer or receive motion."
The three Analogies together assert: "All phenomena exist in one nature and must so exist, because without such a unity a priori no unity of experience, and therefore no determination of objects in experience, would be possible." An extensive quantity is one in which the representation of the parts makes the representation of the whole possible, and so precedes it.
Word Of The Day