Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Phenomenalism and Species-Principle

What might be called 'Phenomenalist Foundationalism', according to which all Knowledge is based on private experiential data, supports Social Atomism, and, hence, seems to preclude the soundness of a thesis of the reality of Species-Being, as well as, thus, of any Species-Principle.  However, Rationalists, such as Spinoza, and Epiphenomenalists, such as Freud, show, in varying ways, that the evidentiary value of such private data is nil, i. e. either is no more than partly informative, or is a mere byproduct of some covert process.  Furthermore, data such as sympathy, sexual attraction, and parental instinct, elude easy reduction to Atomist privacy.  So, if there is a strong objection to the positing of the existence of a Species-Principle as the basis of a Political Philosophy, it would not likely be one that Phenomenalism can offer.

No comments:

Post a Comment