Introduction to ‘dissolving Hume's Paradox: On Knowledge of Mind and Self’ James Frederick Ferrier University of St Andrews (1845–64)

Abstract

The following essay, whose title has been provided by me for this occasion, is taken from James Ferrier's work The Institutes of Metaphysic where it appears in Section I., the general theme of which is ‘The Epistemology, or Theory of Knowing’. The essay is a statement and elaboration of the ‘ninth proposition’ of the Institutes, and an examination of its implications as these bear upon knowledge of mind and self. The precise source of the text is the 3rd edition of the Institutes of Metaphysic (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons 1875). Ferrier indicates earlier that ‘generally throughout this work the word “cognition” signifi es the known, the cognitum. This remark is necessary lest the reader should suppose that it signifi es the act rather than the object of knowledge’ (p. 156). In the last section of this introduction I list the preceding eight propositions.