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"My title is a pun, as between (a) what philosophers may use as evidence for theories and (b) what sorts of things philosophers may consider to be evident. Each of those is a central topic of this book.
I shall sketch an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. No element of it is original with me, but I do not think it has ever before been put together in the way I will do here.
What are the ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief ?
First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term—the sorts of contingent propositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics: “Here is one hand ...”; “I had my breakfast before I had lunch”; “Right now I am standing up and talking to a roomful of people.”
In Chapters 1 and 2 I shall begin in the dialectical (not literary!) style of Moore, though considerably honing his method, defending facts about everyday human activities as being immune to existing idealist and skeptical challenges. The method itself is immune to all the sorts of objections that have been made against it (that it begs the question, that it is dogmatic, that it privileges a particular class of propositions, that it awards commonsensicalness a positive epistemic status, etc.). Chapters 3 and 4 apply my particular version of Moore’s technique to each of two philosophical issues on which Moore has not previously been brought to bear: eliminativism in the philosophy of mind, and the free-will debate.
It must be emphasized that every Moorean–commonsensical belief is defeasible. Any of them might be refuted in context by some combination of reasons. I have said they are evidence, not that they are infallible. To call them evidence is controversial enough and requires considerable argument.
Our second source of justified philosophical belief is the deliverances of current science, particularly the “hard” physical and basic biological sciences—at least, whatever is well confirmed and fairly uncontroversial within the relevant field." (pp.1-2)
-William G. Lycan, On Evidence in Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2019, 140 pages.
I shall sketch an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. No element of it is original with me, but I do not think it has ever before been put together in the way I will do here.
What are the ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief ?
First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term—the sorts of contingent propositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics: “Here is one hand ...”; “I had my breakfast before I had lunch”; “Right now I am standing up and talking to a roomful of people.”
In Chapters 1 and 2 I shall begin in the dialectical (not literary!) style of Moore, though considerably honing his method, defending facts about everyday human activities as being immune to existing idealist and skeptical challenges. The method itself is immune to all the sorts of objections that have been made against it (that it begs the question, that it is dogmatic, that it privileges a particular class of propositions, that it awards commonsensicalness a positive epistemic status, etc.). Chapters 3 and 4 apply my particular version of Moore’s technique to each of two philosophical issues on which Moore has not previously been brought to bear: eliminativism in the philosophy of mind, and the free-will debate.
It must be emphasized that every Moorean–commonsensical belief is defeasible. Any of them might be refuted in context by some combination of reasons. I have said they are evidence, not that they are infallible. To call them evidence is controversial enough and requires considerable argument.
Our second source of justified philosophical belief is the deliverances of current science, particularly the “hard” physical and basic biological sciences—at least, whatever is well confirmed and fairly uncontroversial within the relevant field." (pp.1-2)
-William G. Lycan, On Evidence in Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2019, 140 pages.
