Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

Reid, Thomas

doi:10.1093/oseo/instance.00106533

Cited by 455 publications

(83 citation statements)

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“…18 Reid argued that conceivability viewed as understandability is untenable, for we need, for example, to understand necessary falsehoods when employing reductio proofs in mathematics. 19 And Kripke and Putnam warn against conceivability as a guide to possibility. Putnam writes "we can perfectly well imagine having experiences that would convince us .…”

Section: Modal Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceivability and Defeasible Modal Justification

Geirsson

2005

Philos Stud

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This paper advances the thesis that we can justifiably believe philosophically interesting possibility statements. The first part of the paper critically discusses van Inwagen's skeptical arguments while at the same time laying some of the foundation for a positive view. The second part of the paper advances a view of conceivability in terms of imaginability, where imaginging can be propositional, pictorial, or a combination of the two, and argues that conceivability can, and often does, provide us with justified beliefs of what is metaphysically possible. The notion of scenarios is developed, as is an account of how filling out scenarios can uncover a defeater or, in many cases, strengthen the justification for the relevant possibility statement.

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Section: Modal Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceivability and Defeasible Modal Justification

Geirsson

2005

Philos Stud

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“…Insofar as he addresses this issue at all, he simply assumes that this capacity is natural and innate.27 However, that Comte should simply take the perception of ordinary objects for granted should not surprise us, once we recognize his background in the Scots philosophy of "common sense"-a background which Comte 34 Kames argued the same with respect to sight; but Reid offered a rather more sophisticated analysis which allows a role for learning in our capacity to move from the relational structures that we perceive visually to the relational structures that are given in the perception of physical bodies. 35 Kames and Reid not only infer from the phenomenological simplicity of perceptual judgments that they are innate, but also that their objects, that is, the physical objects which are, as one says, their intentions, are simple and ~n a n a l y z a b l e .~~ Since these simple perceptual objects are enduring, that is, continuants, they must be, in the traditional terminology, substances. Moreover, since the consciousness in which we ascribe our perceptual awarenesses to ourselves is also phenomenologically simple, it too must have a simple object; or, in short, the self too must be a simple s~bstance.~' Finally, Kames and Reid contend that introspective analysis reveals with respect to certain beliefs that there are no antecedent experiences which combine to generate those beliefs.…”

Section: Associationism and Its Scots Criticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mill and Comte on the method of introspection

Wilson¹

1991

J. Hist. Behav. Sci.

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August Comte's criticisms of the introspective method in psychology and John Stuart Mill's replies are examined, and it is argued that Mill's response is largely correct. It is suggested that Comte never understood what the method aimed to do because his roots were, through Franz Joseph Gall, in the tradition of the Scots critics of associationism, rather than the tradition of David Hartley and James Mill and John Stuart Mill. The innatist theories of perception and of morality had the consequence that the introspective method used by the associationists to uncover the genetic roots of mental phenomena can be of no use. With this background we are not surprised at Comte's view of the proper method for a science of psychology.

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“…While many epistemologists have claimed that there are sensory foundations for human knowledge, usually their accounts of the nature of sensory perception involve indirect realist positions about perception (Schlick 1959;Moser 1985;Fumerton 1995). The most prominent direct realists about perception, on the other hand, usually propose reliabilist or other non-foundationalist approaches to justification (Reid 1969(Reid /1785McDowell 1996;Alston 1999;Schantz 2001). A few brave philosophers combine these positions in the way I propose (Huemer 2001;Porter 2006), but even in these cases, their account of direct perception will differ from mine in important ways.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A role for abstractionism in a direct realist foundationalism

Bayer

2009

Synthese

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Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human psychology has no relevance to the prescriptive goal of traditional epistemology, that of providing first-person guidance in determining the truth. Contrary to both, I apply insights about the psychology of human perception and concept-formation to a very traditional epistemological project: the foundationalist approach to the epistemic regress problem. I argue that direct realism about perception can help solve the regress problem and support a foundationalist account of justification, but only if it is supplemented by an abstractionist theory of concept-formation, the view that it is possible to abstract concepts directly from the empirically given. Critics of direct realism like Laurence BonJour are correct that an account of direct perception by itself does not provide an adequate account of justification. However a direct realist account of perception can inform the needed theory of concept-formation, and leading critics of abstractionism like McDowell and Sellars, direct realists about perception themselves, fail to appreciate the ways in which their own views about perception help fill gaps in earlier accounts of abstractionism. Recognizing this undercuts both their objections to abstractionism and (therefore) their objections to foundationalism.

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Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

Cited by 455 publications

References 0 publications

Conceivability and Defeasible Modal Justification

Conceivability and Defeasible Modal Justification

Mill and Comte on the method of introspection

A role for abstractionism in a direct realist foundationalism

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