Abstract

Those philosophical issues that are of the most vivid contemporary significance usually exhibit two striking characteristics. First, there is a widely-shared conviction as to the proper solution of the problem at issue. But, secondly, this conviction cannot be justified and elaborated. A certain general answer to the difficulty is felt to be correct. But this answer cannot be made logically and empirically reasonable. So inquiry, deprived of any basic doctrine that can give it impetus and direction, dwells morbidly upon the same questions: it digs its foundation deeper and deeper, but it seems never to feel sufficiently secure to start work on a super-structure. The terms in which the problem is conceived are, by continuing analysis, rendered ever more subtle; but the hypotheses that might satisfy the conditions posed by the problem, though everywhere implied and frequently adumbrated, are never systematically developed.