Skip to content
Shawords

Quote#Truth

If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were…

Quote byCharles Sanders Peirce · 1839–1914

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Law of Mind (1892).

English (original)

If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were still immediately before me, then on the same principle, the sensation preceding that would be immediately present, and so on ad infinitum. Now, since there is a time [period], say a year, at the end of which an idea is no longer ipso facto present, it follows that this is true of any finite interval, however short.

— Charles Sanders Peirce

More from Charles Sanders Peirce