sm, if followed out, will be found
to affect his statement of the problem as well as that of its
solution. It will be seen that the problem is mis-stated, and that the
solution offered presupposes it to be mis-stated. His statement of the
problem takes the form of raising a difficulty which the existence of
_a priori_ knowledge presents to the ordinary view, according to which
objects are independent of the mind, and ideas must be brought into
conformity with them. In a synthetic _a priori_ judgement we claim to
discover the nature of certain objects by an act of our thinking, and
independently of actual experience of them. Hence if a supporter of
the ordinary view is asked to justify the conformity of this judgement
or idea with the objects to which it relates, he can give no answer.
The judgement having _ex hypothesi_ been made without reference to the
objects, the belief that the objects must conform to it is the merely
arbitrary supposition that a reality independent of the mind must
conform to the mind's ideas. But Kant, in thus confining the
difficulty to _a priori_ judgements, implies that empirical judgements
present no difficulty to the ordinary view; since they rest upon
actual experience of the objects concerned, they are conformed to the
objects by the very process through which they arise. He thereby fails
to notice that empirical judgements present a precisely parallel
difficulty. It can only be supposed that the conformity of empirical
judgements to their objects is guaranteed by the experience upon which
they rest, if it be assumed that in experience we apprehend objects as
they are. But our experience or perception of individual objects is
just as much mental as the thinking which originates _a priori_
judgements. If we can question the truth of our thinking, we can
likewise question the truth of our perception. If we can ask whether
our ideas must correspond to their objects, we can likewise ask
whether our perceptions must correspond to them. The problem relates
solely to the correspondence between something within the mind and
something outside it; it applies equally to perceiving and thinking,
and concerns all judgements alike, empirical as well as _a priori_.
Kant, therefore, has no right to imply that empirical judgements raise
no problem, if he finds difficulty in _a priori_ judgements. He is
only able to draw a distinction between them, because, without being
aware that he is doing so, he takes a