Nevertheless, the _Refutation_ may be considered to suggest the proper refutation of Descartes. It is possible to ignore Kant's demand for a permanent as a condition of the apprehension of our successive states, and to confine attention to his remark that he has shown that external experience is really immediate, and that only by means of it is the consciousness of our existence as determined in time possible.[11] If we do so, we may consider the _Refutation_ as suggesting the view that Descartes' position is precisely an inversion of the truth; in other words, that our consciousness of the world, so far from being an uncertain inference from the consciousness of our successive states, is in reality a presupposition of the latter consciousness, in that this latter consciousness only arises through reflection upon the former, and that therefore Descartes' admission of the validity of self-consciousness implicitly involves the admission _a fortiori_ of the validity of our consciousness of the world.[12]
Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press by HORACE HART, M.A.