Nov 30, 2014 08:59 PM
http://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/...asons.html
EXCERPT: In response to a question from someone reading philosophy but not a philosopher (better: a poet).
The phrase comes from a paper (now published as a short book) called ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’ by Wilfrid Sellars, the mid C20 American philosopher. One question he addresses is whether knowledge has a foundation. His answer is that it does, it can be grounded in perceptual reports, but that these do not have a property sometimes expected of epistemic foundations: that they can be made independently of holistic considerations. They are not brute data in that sense. That, he suggests, is the ‘Myth of the Given’.
In building to that claim he comments:
"The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says." [Sellars EPM §36 italics added]...
EXCERPT: In response to a question from someone reading philosophy but not a philosopher (better: a poet).
The phrase comes from a paper (now published as a short book) called ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’ by Wilfrid Sellars, the mid C20 American philosopher. One question he addresses is whether knowledge has a foundation. His answer is that it does, it can be grounded in perceptual reports, but that these do not have a property sometimes expected of epistemic foundations: that they can be made independently of holistic considerations. They are not brute data in that sense. That, he suggests, is the ‘Myth of the Given’.
In building to that claim he comments:
"The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says." [Sellars EPM §36 italics added]...