Abstract

The central argument of this book is that it is necessary to adopt a naturalistic epistemology in order to overcome the dualism of activity and passivity in the conceptual framework of idealism. The problem, as Hoffman sees it, arises from the old dilemma of idealism. If knowers are active in knowing, that is, if they impose an a priori framework on the objects of sensation, then the objects themselves cannot be given as a reality independent of knowledge. But if knowers are passive, if they merely receive reality in the form of some pre-conceptual intuition, then what are given in experience can never become objects of knowledge. Thus Hoffman contends that the idealistic theory of mental activity implies either that reality is dissolved in an a priori conceptual scheme or that it is unknowable.