edge with reference to his ontological principle of selfbeing,which is the logically based concept determining the basis for intelligible reality, and thus the basis for objective knowledge about reality.141 In fact, the ontological principle of selfbeing only expresses the principle of identity, and it appears as if it is only through this specific principle that things become intelligible and discernable from one another to the perceiving subject.142 If objects lack the quality of identity (whichselfbeing expresses), then it becomes impossible to discern different objects from one another.143 The transition from ontology to epistemology is conducted by laying down a methodological rather than an objective perspective to the concept selfbeing, thereby construing it as a principle, a rule, a method which helps explain under which conditions that the objective side and the subjective side of the cognitive relation correspond to one another. Accordingly, if selfbeing is also understood methodologically (epistemologically), then there exists a valid cognitive criterion.144 It is only when there is a noncontradictory apprehension of something as being real, when selfbeing is applied in the form of the principle of contradictions, that real knowledge exists.145 All in all, the principle of identity’s use as an epistemological principle is justified since it tells us that the only things that we may have knowledge about are those objects that fulfill the requirements of the (ontological) principle of identity, as it is through selfbeing that objects or things become cognitively accessible to the subject. Furthermore, cognitive access to objects, things, implies specific claims and demands on the judgment in question that are only possible to satisfy on condition that a determinate relationship between thing and mind is possible to establish - that is, if the correspondence theory of truth and the principle of identip a r t i i i , c h a p t e r 3 216 141 A form of reality that Hägerström, especially in his later works, also calls existence or objective reality. 142 Cf. Hägerström, Till analysen, pp. 21-22 and 29. 143 Ibid. 144 Cf. Hägerström, “Hägerström.”; “The Philosophy of Axel Hägerström.” 145 Cf. Hägerström, “Hägerström.”; “The Philosophy of Axel Hägerström.”
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