No abstract
lex newman180 what-questions take precedence. Proper inquiry begins by identifying exemplary cases of particular propositions that we know. What counts as exemplary? According to G. E. Moore, "Here is a hand" is exemplary (while holding up your hand and looking at it). These exemplary cases are then used to help sort out better and worse answers to how-questions -the better answers will have it that the exemplary cases count as knowledge. The methodist camp reverses the order of inquiry. How-questions take precedence. Accordingly, we can only correctly identify a knowledge claim as exemplary if we have already sorted out answers to how-questions. A proper such sorting might indeed reveal that Moore's celebrated knowledge claim is not well founded.Descartes is a methodist par excellence. His methodist orientation is perhaps best explained in historical context. The early seventeenth century is entrenched in dogma. Centuries of Aristotelianism having prevailed, the philosophical world is captivated by ancient authorities and longstanding traditions. If the new mechanist philosophy is to supplant Aristotelianism, a strategy is needed to effectively call into question venerated authorities and traditions, but -importantly -without directly impugning their credibility. In a stroke of genius, Descartes devises a broader methodist strategy to accomplish this. As part of the strategy, we're to carry out a once-in-a-lifetime epistemological audit -a thorough examination of the books, as it were, scrutinizing our beliefs and their basis. The opening lines of the Meditations present a simple and compelling rationale for the audit:descartes ' rationalist epistemology remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. It first explains Descartes' account of innateness. It then develops two rationalist doctrines in Descartes -methodist doctrines concerning the proper foundations of knowledge. It then addresses how Descartes' famed method of doubt figures in his treatment of the two doctrines. Descartes on InnatenessThe how-question most characteristic of the rationalism-empiricism debate concerns the origin of mental content. Rationalism standardly affirms a doctrine of innate mental content. Talk of innateness may be applied to a variety of items, including ideas (both sensations and concepts), truths, and knowledge. Ideas are at the center of much of the early modern debate. 1 A near litmus test of one's camp is a commitment to, or against, innate ideas -specifically, innate concepts. Our focus will be on concepts, by which I mean general ideas -those with general content. (Innate truths also come into play, where truths and concepts amount to distinct ways of regarding eternal essences -more on this below.) Below, I develop three aspects of Descartes' account: the criterion of innateness, the innateness of sensations, and the dispositional element of innateness. The criterion of innatenessWhat, according to Descartes, makes ideas innate rather than non-innate? Descartes introduces a threefold distinction of ideas by way of ...
Interpreters of Locke's Essay are divided over whether to attribute to him a Representational Theory of Perception (RTP). Those who object to an RTP interpretation cite (among other things) Locke's Book IV account of sensitive knowledge, contending that the account is incompatible with RTP. The aim of this paper is to rebut this kind of objection -to defend an RTP reading of the relevant Book IV passages. Specifically, I address four influential assumptions (about sensitive knowledge) cited by opponents of an RTP interpretation and argue that in each case the assumption is false.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. International Phenomenological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.Recent scholarship suggests that Descartes's effort to establish a truth criterion is not viciously circular (notwithstanding its reputation)-a fact that invites closer scrutiny of his epistemological program. One of the least well understood features of the project is his deduction of a truth criterion from theistic premises, a demonstration Descartes says he provides in the Fourth Meditation: the alleged proof is not revealed by a casual reading, nor have commentators fared any better; in general, the relevance of the Fourth Meditation has not been duly appreciated. This paper reconstructs the argument of the Fourth Meditation, detailing the steps in the demonstration of the criterion and clarifying its role in the larger program. Surprisingly, Descartes deduces a truth criterion more fundamental than clarity and distinctness; this more fundamental criterion helps explain what are otherwise cryptic (though central) epistemological moves in the Sixth Meditation.According to the so-called problem of the criterion, efforts to establish a truth criterion involve an inevitable circularity: in advancing the steps of a proof one thereby presupposes the criterion one endeavors to prove. Famously, the epistemological program of the Meditations was thought to provide a case study of the problem. Descartes's efforts to establish a criterion of clarity and distinctness look (prima facie) to unfold as a circle defined by two arcs: he endeavors to demonstrate a veracious God by appeal to the veracity of the criterion; he endeavors to demonstrate the veracity of the criterion by appeal to a veracious God. As a perusal of recent scholarship suggests, it is now widely held that the project is not straightforwardly circular-numerous commentators have challenged the first arc.2 The second arc, however, is not in ques-I am grateful to
Among the more notorious of Cartesian doctrines is the bête machine doctrine — the view that brute animals lack not only reason, but any form of consciousness (having no mind or soul). Recent English commentaries have served to obscure, rather than to clarify, the historical Descartes's views. Standard interpretations have it that insofar as Descartes intends to establish the bête machine doctrine his arguments are palpably flawed. One camp of interpreters thus disputes that he even holds the doctrine. As I shall attempt to show, not only does Descartes affirm the doctrine, his supporting arguments are not palpably flawed — even if they ultimately come up short. It will indeed emerge that, in making his case, Descartes employs interesting argumentative strategies that have not been duly appreciated.
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