Conviction may, therefore, be
distinguished, from an external point of view, from persuasion, by the
possibility of communicating it and by showing its validity for the
reason of every man; for in this case the presumption, at least,
arises that the agreement of all judgements with each other, in
spite of the different characters of individuals, rests upon the
common ground of the agreement of each with the object, and thus the
correctness of the judgement is established.
Persuasion, accordingly, cannot be subjectively distinguished from
conviction, that is, so long as the subject views its judgement simply
as a phenomenon of its own mind. But if we inquire whether the grounds
of our judgement, which are valid for us, produce the same effect on
the reason of others as on our own, we have then the means, though
only subjective means, not, indeed, of producing conviction, but of
detecting the merely private validity of the judgement; in other
words, of discovering that there is in it the element of mere
persuasion.
If we can, in addition to this, develop the subjective causes of the
judgement, which we have taken for its objective grounds, and thus
explain the deceptive judgement as a phenomenon in our mind, apart
altogether from the objective character of the object, we can then
expose the illusion and need be no longer deceived by it, although, if
its subjective cause lies in our nature, we cannot hope altogether
to escape its influence.
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