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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] requisite objects and prior events are missing. Accordingly he enjoins the philosopher to throw off all such purported believ- ings until he, the philosopher, has established that there is an external world and that perception is a reliable mode of access thereto, and that events did take place in the past and that memory is a reliable mode of access to them. Why does the skeptic enjoin that? Reid s skeptic is addressing the philosophers of the world, issuing to them an injunction. Why the injunction? Because the skeptic has in mind a certain under- standing of the philosopher s role in culture a certain under- standing of the high calling of the philosopher. He s simply applying that understanding to the case in hand. What is that understanding? Speaking of his skeptic, Reid says this: That our thoughts, our sensations, and every thing of which we are conscious, hath a real existence, is admitted in this system as a first principle; but everything else must be made evident by the light of reason. Reason must rear the whole fabric of knowl- edge upon this single principle of consciousness (IHM VII [206b; B 210]). All the necessary clues are there in that passage. Reid s skeptic is a foundationalist of the classically modern sort. Let me explain. Reid s Way with the Skeptic 187 foundationalism To describe a position as foundationalist without further expla- nation is to plunge into a swamp of verbal vagueness. The range of positions called foundationalism has been expanding by leaps and bounds in recent years, so much so that the expansion is well on the way to the point where the shared property will be little more than being an epistemological position of which the speaker disapproves. To be called a foundationalist in the contemporary academy is like being called a reactionary in general society. One is not so much described as accused. To the accusation, everyone in his or her right mind pleads innocent; no one responds: Yes, that s what I am; and so what? The term foundationalism was first used, to the best of my knowledge, some twenty-five years ago in the writings of episte- mologists working within the analytic tradition of philosophy; there it had, and continues to have, a rather precise meaning. The term s other uses can all be traced, genetically, to extension by analogy from its meaning there. That original meaning is the one with which I will be working. The most important preliminary point to get and keep in mind is that there is no one position which is foundationalism; there s only an extended family of positions that are foundationalist in character. There are foundational-isms. Furthermore, the members of this clan differ from each other along a number of different dimensions. It will be sufficient for our purposes here to point to just a few. Deep in human life, so deep that a life would not be human without them, are such states and activities as judging that, believ- ing that, hoping that, wishing that, accepting that, fearing that, regretting that, and so forth what are regularly called proposi- tional attitudes by philosophers. In their incorporation of propo- sitional content, the states and activities I have mentioned are similar to intending that, trying to bring it about that, and so on; they differ in that the latter go beyond taking up of an attitude toward a proposition, to trying or planning to change the world in such a way as to bring it about that some proposition is made true or false. All of us assume that these propositional attitudes of ours have a variety of different merits and demerits; we all evaluate them in 188 Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology various ways, our own and those of others. A judgment or belief, for example, may be justified, warranted, entitled, reliably formed, satisfactory for good science, and so forth. Some of the terms I have just used are from ordinary discourse; others are terms of art taken from the discourse of philosophers. They are alike in that, in one way or another, the concept of each incor- porates a reference to truth. They pick out truth-relevant merits in judgments and beliefs, with the mode of relevance different from case to case. There are other merits and demerits in our propo- sitional attitudes whose concepts do not incorporate a reference to truth; for example, the merit of making one happy and the demerit of making one unhappy. At the core of every foundationalism is a thesis as to the con- ditions under which some particular truth-relevant merit attaches to propositional attitudes as to the conditions under which [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |