| 释义 |
as if, phr. Philos.
[Cf. as 9 b; often used to represent G. als ob (freq. in Kant and taken up by Vaihinger as a key expression).]
Introducing a supposition, or way of conceiving some entity or situation, that is not to be taken literally, but yields some insight or convenience in metaphysics. Also absol. and attrib. Hence as-ˈifness.
1892J. Royce Spirit Mod. Philos. iv. 113 You act as if God were your..visible companion, as if the moral law..were spoken in your ear.., as if the unsearchable God..were as familiar to you as your daily walk... This is to do what Kant calls postulating God's existence. 1900― World & Indiv. I. v. 206 This as if, or as it were, becomes to some thinkers, a sort of ultimate category. 1921Hannay & Collingwood tr. Ruggiero's Mod. Philos. ii. 61 A champion has now arisen in Vaihinger to erect the ‘as if’ into a philosophical method! 1924C. K. Ogden tr. H. Vaihinger (title) The Philosophy of ‘As If’. 1937G. W. Allport Personality (1938) xi. 289 There is no real objection to this ‘as if’ epistemology provided it is applied equally to all the data of psychology. 1937Mind XLVI. 114 The ‘as-if’ concepts, like ‘wave’, ‘corpuscle’, etc., which we borrow from macroscopic perception in order to interpret the nature of phenomena too small to be perceived in their own right. 1940H. H. Price Hume's Theory of Ext. World v. 154 There are different degrees of as-ifness. This is acknowledged in ordinary speech, where we find such phrases as ‘to some extent as if’, ‘rather as if’, ‘very much as if’, ‘exactly as if’. |