a. [f. Gr. type *κοσμοθετικ-ός, f. κόσμος world + θετικός positing; cf. κοσμοθέτης regulator of the world.] That posits or assumes an external world.
Cosmothetic Idealism, a term applied by Hamilton to that theory of perception which posits the existence of an external world, while denying that we have any immediate knowledge of it.
1836–7. Sir W. Hamilton, Metaph. (1877), I. xvi. 295. Those … Hypothetical Dualists or Cosmothetic Idealists.
1868. Bain, Mental & Mor. Sci., 209 (Hamilton). The phrase ‘Cosmothetic Idealism’; meaning that an External World is supposed apart from our mental perception, as the inconceivable and incomprehensible cause of that perception.
