Oyonale - 3D art and graphic experiments
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Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.
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Now the question arises how a thing passes from one state = a, into another state = b. Every passion, habit, or turn of character (say they) which has a tendency to our advantage or prejudice, gives a delight or uneasiness; and it is from thence the approbation or disapprobation arises. Even after we distinguish our perceptions from our objects, it will appear presently, that we are still incapable of reasoning from the existence of one to that of the other: So that upon the whole our reason neither does, nor is it possible it ever should, upon any supposition, give us an assurance of the continued and distinct existence of body. THAT THERE IS A PECULIAR ACT OF THE MIND, ANNEXT TO PROMISES; AND THAT CONSEQUENT TO THIS ACT OF THE MIND, THERE ARISES AN INCLINATION TO PERFORM, DISTINCT FROM A SENSE OF DUTY. It is requisite, then, to find some motive to acts of justice and honesty, distinct from our regard to the honesty; and in this lies the great difficulty. The memory, senses, and understanding are, therefore, all of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas. By it alone we could, therefore, never determine whether this manifold, as an object of experience, is coexistent or successive, unless it had for a foundation something fixed and permanent, of the existence of which all succession and coexistence are nothing but so many modes (modi of time). The mathematician, the natural philosopher, and the logician--how far soever the first may have advanced in rational, and the two latter in philosophical knowledge--are merely artists, engaged in the arrangement and formation of conceptions; they cannot be termed philosophers.