The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

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repeated, things spoken of have a determined being in abstraction from
the occasion of experience which includes that act of speech.
The difference of ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what
have we experienced, and the moderns asked what can we experience.
But in both cases, they asked about things transcending the act of
experience which is the occasion of asking.
Section V. The translation of Hume's question from "What do we
experience' to What can we experience' makes all the difference, though
in his 'Treatise' Hume makes the transition, time and again, without
explicit comment. For modern epistemology the latter form of the
question - with its substitution of can for do - is accompanied by the
implicit presupposition of a method, namely that of placing ourselves in an
introspective attitude of attention so as to determine the given
components of experience in abstraction from our private way of
subjective reaction, by reflexion, conjecture, emotion, and purpose.
In this attitude of strained attention, there can be no doubt as to the
answer. The data are the patterns of sensa provided by the sense organs.
This is the sensationalist doctrine of Locke and Hume. Later, Kant has
interpreted the patterns as forms introduced by the mode of reception
provided by the recipient. Here Kant introduces the Leibnizian notion of
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