More from Peter Coffey's Epistemology; Or the Theory of Knowledge follows. I find this rather obvious allusion to Kant's ideas rather funny.
"When the plain man distinguishes between "appearance" and "reality," between "what a thing appears to be" and what it "really is," he is certainly not thinking of two distinct "things," -- one a "mental" thing (an "appearance") and the other an "extramental" thing (a "reality"), -- but of one and the same (extramental) thing under two aspects, viz. of this thing as (he thinks that) it now appears, and he otherwise knows it to be. Yet philosophers, reflecting on the distinction, have come to think of two distinct things, viz. the extramental thing (the "thing in itself" the "noumenon") and a "mental" thing which they call an "appearance" or "phenomenon"; and some philosophers have concluded that we can never get beyond knowledge of the latter" (Vol. 2, p. 168).
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