 [Cassirer 1942] argues that the empirical evidential basis for the cultural sciences starts from the same realm of perceived physical objects and processes distributed in space and time as do the natural sciences – in this case documents, artifacts, rituals, performances – but it goes on to imbue them with a symbolic “sense” or “meaning” that is not at issue in the natural sciences. We must distinguish, in particular, between the representative function (Darstellungsfunktion) and the expressive function (Ausdrucksfunktion) of thought, and only a prejudice privileging “thing perception [Dingwahrnehmen]” over “expressive perception [Ausdruckswahrnehmen]” can support the idea that the natural sciences have a more secure evidential basis than he cultural sciences. (It is precisely this prejudice which, according to Cassirer, lies behind Carnap’s “physicalism.”) For Cassirer, by contrast, both forms of perception are equally legitimate. While the natural sciences take their evidence from the sphere of thing perception, the cultural sciences take theirs from the sphere of expressive perception – and, in the first instance, from our lived experience in a human community sharing a common system of “cultural meanings.”