V. The Act of Knowing (Cognizing) the World

For one who holds that the whole perceptual world is only representational, and, moreover, the effect of things unknown to him acting on his soul, the real problem of knowledge is naturally concerned, not with the representations present only in the soul, but with the things which lie outside his consciousness, and which are independent of him. He asks: How much can we learn about them indirectly, seeing that we cannot observe them directly? From this point of view, he is concerned, not with the inner connection of his conscious percepts with one another, but with their causes which transcend his consciousness and exist independently of him, whereas the percepts, on his view, disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from the things. Our consciousness, on this view, works like a mirror from which the pictures of definite things disappear the very moment its reflecting surface is not turned towards them. If, now, we do not see the things themselves, but only their reflections, we must obtain knowledge of the nature of the former indirectly by drawing conclusions from the character of the latter. The whole of modern science adopts this point of view, when it uses percepts only as an ultimate means of obtaining information about the processes of matter which lie behind them, and which alone really “are.” If the philosopher, as Critical Idealist, admits real existence at all, then his sole aim is to gain knowledge of this real existence indirectly by means of his representations. His interest skips over the subjective world of representations and pursues instead that which produces these representations.