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78 19 Notes on the Question of the Existence of an External World c. 1890 Houghton Library 1. The idealistic argument turns upon the assumption that certain things are absolutely “present,” namely what we have in mind at the moment, and that nothing else can be immediately, that is, otherwise than inferentially known. When this is once granted, the idealist has no difficulty in showing that that external existence which we cannot know immediately we cannot know, at all. Some of the arguments used for this purpose are of little value, because they only go to show that our knowledge of an external world is fallible; now there is a world of difference between fallible knowledge and no knowledge. However, I think it would have to be admitted as a matter of logic that if we have no immediate perception of a non-ego, we can have no reason to admit the supposition of an existence so contrary to all experience as that would in that case be. But what evidence is there that we can immediately know only what is “present” to the mind? The idealists generally treat this as self-evident ; but, as Clifford jestingly says, “it is evident” is a phrase which only means “we do not know how to prove.” The proposition that we can immediately perceive only what is present seems to me parallel to that other vulgar prejudice that “a thing cannot act where it is not.” An opinion which can only defend itself by such a sounding phrase is pretty sure to be wrong. That a thing cannot act where it is not, is plainly an induction from ordinary experience which shows no forces except such as act through the resistance of materials, with the exception of gravity which, owing to its being the same for all bodies, does not appear in ordinary experience like a force. But further experience shows that attractions and repulsions are the universal types of forces. A thing may be said to be wherever it acts; but the notion that a particle is absolutely present in one part of space and absolutely absent from all the rest of space is devoid of all foundation. In like manner, the idea that 19. Existence of an External World, c. 1890 79 we can immediately perceive only what is present, seems to be founded on our ordinary experience that we cannot recall and reexamine the events of yesterday nor know otherwise than by inference what is to happen tomorrow. Peirce’s “Notes on the Question of the Existence of an External World” was written on the same type of laid paper as “The Architecture of Theories” and several other documents all dated 1890. The paper Peirce used for these notes is an important clue in dating this document circa 1890. (By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.) ...

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