Abstract

If a sensationalist theory of knowledge takes upon itself the name of philosophic empiricism defined as "the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense experience," it must recognize that what may be called "the empirical temper" is a much wider and vaguer matter. As such it is close kin to common sense where the latter, as distinctively practical, signifies average or normal experience-a fund of experience commonly admitted without need of analysis to be unquestionably real. Within this common fund one would find, on looking for it analytically, Descartes' subjective principle, at least when stated in the form that subjective experience is a real entity; something is going on in the experiencing subject...