Note 45 — THE POSTULATE OF IMMEDIATE EMPIRICISM44

All labels are, of course, obnoxious and misleading. I hope, however, the term will be taken by the reader in the sense in which it is forthwith explained, and not in some more usual and familiar sense. Empiricism, as herein used, is as antipodal to sensationalistic empiricism, as it is to transcendentalism, and for the same reason. Both of these systems fall back on something which is defined in non-directly-experienced terms in order to justify that which is directly experienced. Hence I have criticised such empiricism (Philosophical Review, Vol. XI., No. 4, p. 364) as essentially absolutistic in character; and also (“Studies in Logical Theory,” pp. 30, 58) as an attempt to build up experience in terms of certain methodological checks and cues of attaining certainty.