Are There Limits to Cognition? 109place of our vantage point in life prevents us from perceiv-
ing the things in question. But what is not found today may
be found tomorrow. The limits determined in this way are
only temporary, and they can be overcome by progress in
perception and thinking.
Dualism mistakenly transfers the contrast between ob-
jects and subjects, which has meaning only within the
perceptual realm, to purely imagined entities outside this
realm. But things separated in the perceptual field are sep-
arate only as long as the perceiver refrains from think-
ing—for thinking suspends all separation and reveals it to
be merely subjective. Therefore a dualist is really trans-
ferring—to entities behind the percepts—categories that
have no absolute but only a relative validity, even for the
percepts. A dualist splits percept and concept, the two fac-
tors involved in the cognitive process, into four: 1) the ob-
ject in itself, 2) the subject’s percept of the object, 3) the
subject, and 4) the concept that relates the percept to the
object-in-itself.
For the dualist, the relationship between an object and a
subject is areal one; the subject is really (dynamically) in-
fluenced by the object. This real process is said not to
emerge into our consciousness. It is supposed to evoke a
response in the subject to the stimulus proceeding from the
object. The result of this response is supposed to be the per-
cept, which alone emerges into consciousness. The object
is supposed to have an objective reality (that is, a reality in-
dependent of the subject), while the percept is supposed to
have a subjective reality. This subjective reality supposed-
ly relates the subject to the object. That relationship is said