Abstract

Even the so-called empiricists, though they rejected an extreme rationalization of reality, nevertheless performed an analogous operation, replacing the object of reason by the object of sense. Reality thus became sensation, or sense impression, rather than concept. The individual substance was interpreted as a cluster of sense data, and change as the mere succession of impressions. This noetic etherealization of existence, however, was soon subjected to attack by a number of critics, resolved to follow the concrete facts of existence, irrespective of their agreement or disagreement with the apparent structure of human cognition.