tainty of the law of causality together with the postulate of the law of identity’s validity. For without this twin postulate knowledge becomes impossible to explain. If there exists no causation, how can any certain inferences and conclusions be drawn? Is it possible that our logical conclusions are certain, if no causal relationship between our logical observations and ensuing logical conclusions exist? Howcan our inductive inferences claim to be real if no causality exists?206 Therefore, even if properly speaking we cannot, by recourse to empirical evidence, prove the validity of the law of causality, then mere possibility of knowledge still forces us to postulate its validity. Accordingly, it is possible to argue that Hägerström’s wish to safeguard scientific knowledge is ultimately aimed at safeguarding knowledge in general, and the possibility of synthetic knowledge in particular (which also follows on from Hägerström’s anti-subjectivistic standpoint). As indicated, the goal of Hägerström’s philosophy was the destruction of metaphysics, his so-called anti-subjectivism, which is the generic term for his critique of metaphysics. For according to Hägerström, the traditional division of metaphysics into idealism and realism is misguided,207 insofar as both doctrines directly entail the impossibility of synthetic knowledge; idealism on account of its outspoken subjectivism, which results in certain solipsism (denying that anything can be known for sure of the external world); and realism on account of its quest for that object which can neither be perceived nor conceived, which results in epistemological nihilism (implying that ultimately the external world is cognitively inaccessible).To sum up, what is left p a r t i i i , c h a p t e r 4 238 206 Hägerström, “B. o. F.,” pp. 15-42. 207 N.B.When we speak of realism here, it is ontological realism in the Aristotelian sense of the word, namely the kind of realism predicating that knowledge is about objects, but in order for knowledge to be absolutely, apodictically certain the object sought in the cognitive act must be the object in itself, that is, the essence of the physical thing, or what Kant would call “das Ding an sich”or noumenonwhich is a thing that has so specific qualifications, that in fact is inaccessible to the human mind. Kant’s definition of the noumenon is that it is an object in its axiomatic form. Kant, Cr. P. R., pp. B343-345.
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