Sunday, February the 3rd, 2008

It sleeted early this morning, when I woke up. As other family members got up, it changed into rain. Yet, it has been a very cold day, and so will it be.
Kant says: "when employed by the empiricist, understanding is always upon its proper ground of investigation --- the field of possible experience, the laws of which it can explore, and thus extend its cognition securely and with clear intelligence without being stopped by limits in any direction." (p.266, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) It reads that I am an empiricist. I prefer exploring, and thus extending my "cognition securely and with clear intelligence without being stopped by limits in any direction." As an empiricist, I ought to head "to the right mode of extending the province of the understanding, by the help of the only true teacher, experience." (p.267, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) Having my "only true teacher, experience", is not enough. He puts it: "if anyone could free himself entirely from all considerations of interest, ... such a person ... would live in a state of continual hesitation." (p.269, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York) That is to say, interest is a good guide. That is, we, empiricists, need a true teacher, experience, and a good guide, interest.