Circularity and epistemic priority

The Externalist Challenge

Volumn , Issue , 2004, Pages 113-122

  Sosa, Ernest ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949522087     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1515/9783110915273     Document Type: Chapter

References (2)

1. By way of clarification, what unsuits a stretch of reasoning for securing knowledge, whether animal or reflective, and especially for securing what is most distinctive of animal knowledge (namely, the external connection) is not just that it circles back on itself, but that it is "unsupplemented," detached from appropriate "external input," whether this takes the form of sensory input or of simple a priori truths rationally intuited. Incidentally, the term "reasoning" should here be stretched to include also ones responses to sensory experience through introspective and perceptual beliefs, and one's responses to simple a priori truths through rational intuition.
2. A famous Reidian charge, to which Descartes also seems quite alive (ironically, as Reid's charge is made as an objection to Descartes), as suggested by the true depth of the skepticism that he takes up, which is in fact Pyrrhonian and not just Cartesian .