Abstract

Modern philosophers have often likened perception/cognition to a fabrication process. But disanalogy can be seen in the fact that in real fabrication the raw materials get used up, being literally present in the product. The metaphor has arguably misled both ‘logical construction’ philosophizing and epistemology influenced by the fabrication view's arch‐exponent, Kant. In fact, though, there isn't any reason to trace the results of our cognitive processes to inversely varying inputs from ‘the world’ and ‘the mind’ in such a way as to commit realism to the cognizing mind's ‘passivity’.