If it were possible for an animal to describe the content of hisconsciousness, the result would be a transcript of Hume’s philosophy.Hume’s conclusions would be the conclusions of a consciousness limited tothe perceptual level of awareness, passi
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If it were possible for an animal to describe the content of hisconsciousness, the result would be a transcript of Hume’s philosophy.Hume’s conclusions would be the conclusions of a consciousness limited tothe perceptual level of awareness, passively reacting to the experience ofimmediate concretes, with no capacity to form abstractions, to integrateperceptions into concepts, waiting in vain for the appearance of an objectlabeled “causality” (except that such a consciousness would not be able todraw conclusions).To negate man’s mind, it is the conceptual level of his consciousness thathas to be invalidated. Under all the tortuous complexities, contradictions,equivocations, rationalizations of the post-Renaissance philosophy—the oneconsistent line, the fundamental that explains the rest, is: a concerted attackon man’s conceptual faculty. Most philosophers did not intend to invalidateconceptual knowledge, but its defenders did more to destroy it than did itsenemies. They were unable to offer a solution to the “problem ofuniversals,” that is: to define the nature and source of abstractions, todetermine the relationship of concepts to perceptual data—and to prove thevalidity of scientific induction. Ignoring the lead of Aristotle, who had notleft them a full answer to the problem, but had shown the direction and themethod by which the answer could be found, the philosophers were unableto refute the Witch Doctor’s claim that their concepts were as arbitrary as hiswhims and that their scientific knowledge had no greater metaphysicalvalidity than his revelations.The philosophers chose
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