C. I. Lewis on the given and its interpretation

Midwest Studies in Philosophy

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 195-208

  Bonjour, Laurence ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33747833359     PISSN: 03636550     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4975.2004.00091.x     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1946. Hereafter abbreviated as AKV.
2. See especially his paper "Realism or Phenomenalism," Philosophical Review 64 (1955): 233-47.
3. Sellars's paper "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in which the phrase "the myth of the given" is first employed, appeared in 1956 (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1 [1956]: 253-329).
4. This is from Lewis's "Reply to My Critics" in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1968), p. 664.
5. See also Hans Reichenbach, "Are Phenomenal Reports Absolutely Certain?" Philosophical Review 61 (1952): 147-59;
6. and Lewis's reply, "The Given Element in Empirical Knowledge," Philosophical Review 61 (1952): 168-75.
7. All this is from a letter from Lewis to Professor Thomas E. Hill, dated March 28, 1953, a copy of which is in my possession.
8. See Roderick Firth, "Lewis on the Given," in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1968), for a sorting out of the various claims in the vicinity.
9. For a version of this objection, see my book The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 74-6.
10. I am thus rejecting David Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory of consciousness. See Rosenthal, "Two Concepts of Consciousness," Philosophical Studies 94 (1986);
11. and my discussion of this point in Laurence BonJour and Ernest Sosa, Epistemic Justification (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 66-8.
12. But see Peter Klein, "Foundationalism and the Infinite Regress of Reasons," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1998): 919-25, for an attempt at defending the genuine infinite regress view.
13. For my own earlier attempt to elaborate and defend a coherentist view, see The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, Part II; for my reasons for thinking that Lewis is right that such a view cannot succeed
14. see BonJour and Sosa, Epistemic Justification, pp. 53-59.
15. I limit the discussion here to empirical knowledge and justification. An analogous issue arises also for a priori knowledge, but that is beyond the scope of the present paper. (For my own attempt to defend a foundationalist account of the a priori, see my book In Defense of Pure Reason [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997].)
16. See, for example, Donald Davidson, "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge," in Dieter Henrich (ed.), Kant oder Hegel (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983), p. 428.
17. For Lewis's attempt to reply to this objection by arguing that his view of the physical world is not objectionably subjectivistic or phenomenalistic in character, see "Realism or Phenomenalism," cited above, and also AKV, pp. 200-202.
18. See especially H. H. Price, Perception, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1950);
19. and C. D. Broad, Scientific Thought (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1923), Part II.