image of 'reality' is remembered as a notion surprisingly naive, is it not altogether likely that minds of the purely intellectual type, which devote themselves to problems about an ultimate reality, may feel disposed to regard their concepts as science regards hers?
For the example of science in such ways is authoritative. Metaphysics has become very eager to be 'scientific,' in all possible ways, and there is no reason to suppose that the methods of science will be less alluring than formerly.
Well,—if this happens (and the new epistemology of science makes it seem not unlikely)—if it comes to pass that the concepts of God, the Absolute, the Unknowable, the concept of reality itself as something distinguished from appearance, should be looked upon as working hypotheses, then a long step would have been taken toward the clarified experience which Avenarius sought to describe as the limit of the evolution of experience.
But then these concepts must do one of two things. They must either (1) lead to new observations by proving convenient instruments of description, for a working hypothesis must work, or (2) they must attempt to describe something which is confessedly removed from all possible observation. In the former case metaphysics becomes a natural science, in the latter case it is difficult to see that metaphysics remains anything at all. For that which is removed from all possible observation is no longer accepted without question as existing, and this concept of reality is itself a working hypothesis used, it may be said, to make phenomena intelligible, by which is meant, however, to make them dramatically interesting.
But, it may be said, there will still be those who refuse to surrender the existential judgment. They will keep metaphysics true to its ancient function, the search for reality behind appearance.
No doubt they will, but it is a question of how much honor will be paid to their literature. Of course speculations as to the future are generally idle, but we have here certain definite data. We have, I think, the beginning of a new epistemological situation of a perfectly statable kind, and we have a large amount of experience showing the recent growing dependence of philosophy upon the special sciences. This dependence is growing ever greater. See such definitions of philosophy as that given by Wundt, in which philosophy is expected to follow behind the special sciences, collecting, organizing and criticizing their results. And if the existential predicate as applied to the working concept comes to be regarded by scientists as an evidence of medieval simplicity, it will be but natural, the prestige of science being what it is, and growing ever greater, that this new epistemology should be adopted by the more critical students
