Abstract
Epistemic intuitionism provides an account of immediate justification that is currently unpopular among foundationalists. It is notorious particularly for its reliance on the doctrine of the epistemological given. Since there are various notions of the given in circulation, there are also various versions of intuitionism. To circumscribe the relevant versions of epistemic intuitionism, I find it useful to distinguish four general kinds of given: the phenomenological given, the factual given, the linguistic given, and the epistemological given.1
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Notes
Here I am following James Cornman’s article ’Materialism and Some Myths about Some Givens’, The Monist 56 (1972), 216–226. For a helpful survey of various theories of the given see J. J. Ross, The Appeal to the Given ( Allen and Unwin, London, 1970 ).
See Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966), pp. 27–28, and idem, Theory of Knowledge, 2d ed. ( Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1977 ), pp. 21–22.
A. J. Ayer suggests the following options in ’Basic Propositions’, in idem, Philosophical Essays (Macmillan, London, 1954), pp. 105–124. Cf. Alan H. Goldman, ’Appearing Statements and Epistemological Foundations’, Metaphilosophy 10 (1979), 229–230. The first of the following options is defended by Pollock in Knowledge and Justification ( Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1974 ), pp. 73–75.
See William Alston, ’Varieties of Privileged Access’, American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1971), 231. Cf. Bruce Aune, Knowledge, Mind, and Nature (Random House, New York, 1967), Chapter 2, and idem, ’Chisholm on Empirical Knowledge’, in E. Sosa (ed.), Essays on the Philosophy of R. M. Chisholm (Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1979), pp. 240–241. A. J. Ayer espouses something like the irrefutability thesis in ’Privacy’, in idem, The Concept of a Person (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1963 ), p. 73.
See Sellars, ’Epistemic Principles’, in H.-N. Castañeda (ed.), Action, Knowledge, and Reality, p. 339. Cf. Lehrer, Knowledge ( Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974 ), pp. 107 - 110.
See Quinton, The Nature of Things (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1973), Chapter 5, and idem, ’The Foundations of Knowledge’, in B. Williams and A. Montefiore (eds.), British Analytical Philosophy ( Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1966 ), pp. 55–86.
For a summary of and references to some of the important psychological literature relevant to this notion of attention-attraction, see David I. Mostofsky, ’The Semantics of Attention’, in D. Mostofsky (ed.), Attention: Contemporary Theory and Analysis ( Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1970 ), pp. 9–24.
The same is true of the accounts of immediate justification in Carl Ginet, Knowledge, Perception, and Memory (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975), Chapter 3; John Pollock, Knowledge and Justification, Chapter 3; James Cornman, Skepticism, Justification, and Explanation (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980), Chapter 2; and Alan Goldman, ’Appearing Statements and Epistemological Foundations’, Metaphilosophy 10 (1979), 227–246.
See Alston, ’Self-Warrant: A Neglected Form of Privileged Access’, American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (1976), 267.
See Cornman, Skepticism, Justification, and Explanation, pp. 33–34, and Reichenbach, ’Are Phenomenal Reports Absolutely Certain?’, Philosophical Review 61 (1952), reprinted in R. M. Chisholm and R. Swartz (eds.), Empirical Knowledge ( Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1973 ), pp. 354–356.
See Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1957), Chapter 4, and idem, Theory of Knowledge, 2d ed. ( Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1977 ), pp. 30–33.
See Lehrer, Knowledge, pp. 114–119.
See, for example, Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study, Chapter 7, and James Van Cleve, ’Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles, and the Cartesian Circle’, The Philosophical Review 88 (1979), 87–90.
See, for example, Lehrer, Knowledge, pp. 121, 143–144, 152–153, and Alvin Plantinga, ’Is Belief in God Rational?’, in C. F. Delaney (ed.), Rationality and Religious Belief ( University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1979 ), pp. 20–26.
See Ayer, ’Phenomenalism’, in idem, Philosophical Essays (Macmillan, London, 1954), pp. 134–139; idem, The Problem of Knowledge (Penguin Books, Ltd., London, 1956), pp. 125–126; and Dicker, Perceptual Knowledge (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980 ), pp. 193–209.
Dicker’s challenge to the deceiver hypothesis relies heavily on O. K. Bouwsma, ’Descartes’ Evil Genius’, The Philosophical Review 58 (1949), 141–151, reprinted in A. Sesonke and N. Fleming (eds.), Meta-Meditations ( Wadsworth, Belmont, CA: 1966 ).
See Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1946), pp. 248–250. Cf. Lewis, The Philosopher Replies’, in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis ( Open Court, La Salle, 1968 ), pp. 656–658.
See Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 1st ed. (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966), Chapter 3. Cf. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study ( Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1957 ), Chapter 6.
Heidelberger, ’Chisholm’s Epistemic Principles’, Noûs 3 (1969), 75–76.
Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 2d ed. (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1977), pp. 75–76; and idem, ’On the Nature of Empirical Evidence’, in G. S. Pappas and M. Swain (eds.), Essays on Knowledge and Justification ( Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1978 ), pp. 269–276.
See Firth, ’Ultimate Evidence’, Journal of Philosophy 53 (1956), reprinted in R. J. Swartz (ed.), Perceiving, Sensing, and Knowing (Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1965), pp. 486–496. For some further criticisms of Chisholm’s critical cognitivism, see Cornman, Skepticism, Justification, and Explanation, pp. 91–98, 110, and idem, ’On Justifying Nonbasic Statements by Basic-Reports’, in G. S. Pappas (ed.), Justification and Knowledge (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1979 ), pp. 138 — 141.
For some helpful suggestions in this connection, including a reply to Quine’s notorious objections, see Hilary Putnam, ’“Two Dogmas” Revisited’, and ’Analyticity and Apriority: Beyond Wittgenstein and Quine’, in Realism and Reason, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983), pp. 87–97, 115–138; and, especially, idem, ’The Analytic and the Synthetic’, in Mind, Language, and Reality, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 ( Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975 ), pp. 33–69.
On this kind of probability see Carnap, ’Inductive Logic and Rational Decisions’, in R. Carnap and R. Jeffrey (eds.), Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1971), p. 25; and Henry Kyburg, ’Epistemological Probability’, in Epistemology and Inference ( University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1983 ), pp. 204–216.
Here, of course, I am alluding to the forementioned distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. My present talk of “believing on the basis of” is intended to be basically equivalent to the above talk of “believing in light of”. For some other ways to construe ’believes on the basis of’ see George Pappas, ’Basing Relations’, in Justification and Knowledge, pp. 51–63. Cf. Robert Audi, ’The Causal struture of Indirect Justification’, Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), 398–415.
See, for instance, John Pollock, ’A Plethora of Epistemological Theories’, in Justification and Knowledge, pp. 98, 100; and Carl Ginet, Knowledge, Perception, and Memory (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975), p. 125. Cf. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind ( Hutchinson, London, 1949 ), pp. 242–243.
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Moser, P.K. (1985). Epistemic Foundationalism (II): Epistemic Intuitionism. In: Empirical Justification. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4526-5_5
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