Unit:
Department of History and Philosophy of ScienceLibrary of the School of Science
Author:
SARAKATSIANOU MARIA-ELENI
Supervisors info:
Ελένη Μανωλακάκη, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Original Title:
On Scepticism Regarding Perceptual Knowledge: Anti-sceptical strategies by Barry Stroud, John McDowell and Donald Davidson
Translated title:
On Scepticism Regarding Perceptual Knowledge: Anti-sceptical strategies by Barry Stroud, John McDowell and Donald Davidson
Summary:
This paper aims to examine the traditional sceptical argument about perceptual knowledge as posed by Descartes, a certain kind of response to it and its prospects of success. Those responses can be thought to have a ‘Kantian’ origin, since their starting point is human thought and experience and the way we conceive the world in general. However, the nature of the conclusions they aim to establish and their levels of ambition vary, as does the way such arguments are formulated. A related view which will be considered in this paper is the suggestion that a direct answer to the sceptic, by proving the falsity of his conclusion, is impossible; therefore, a more fruitful direction of philosophical investigation would involve tracing the sources of the sceptical challenge and the way it arises, and demonstrate that it is a question which cannot be intelligibly posed, or perhaps that it would be wiser to ignore it altogether. This paper focuses specifically on Barry Stroud’s and John McDowell’s strategies, which will be analyzed in depth, along with the contribution of Donald Davidson’s externalist theory of mental content and its implications for scepticism.
Main subject category:
Science
Other subject categories:
Philosophy - Psychology
Keywords:
epistemology, scepticism, perceptual knowledge, perception, perceptual experience, transcendental argument, disjunctive theory of perception, veridicality of perception
