In the armchair, down and out
| Abstract | Sitting in the philosopher’s armchair, I am not engaged in any detailed empirical investigation of the world. But, as I pursue philosophy’s distinctive armchair methodology, I sometimes come upon arguments that appear to disclose requirements for thought. According to some of these arguments, being a thinking person requires having the right kind of history, or having the right kind of cognitive architecture. According to other arguments, being able to think about particular topics requires being a member of a community of speakers, or being in contact with the right kinds of stuff. These arguments have the potential to raise an epistemological problem. For, suppose that armchair philosophical arguments such as these can yield knowledge about requirements for thought, and suppose too that I can know from the armchair that I am a thinking being who has thoughts about various particular topics. Then I seem to have a route to armchair knowledge about my history, my cognitive architecture, my community, and my material environment – knowledge about these things that does not depend on detailed empirical investigation of the world | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | No categories specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links | This entry has no external links. Add one. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesMagdalena Balcerak Jackson & Brendan Balcerak Jackson (2012). Understanding and Philosophical Methodology. Philosophical Studies 161 (2):185-205.
Ernest Sosa (2011). Can There Be a Discipline of Philosophy? And Can It Be Founded on Intuitions? Mind and Language 26 (4):453-467.
Martin Davies (2004). Aunty's Argument and Armchair Knowledge. In J.M. Larrazabal & L.A Perez Miranda (eds.), Language, Knowledge, and Representation. Kluwer.
Martin Davies (2000). Externalism, Architecturalism, and Epistemic Warrant. In C. Wright, B. Smith & C. Macdonald (eds.), Knowing Our Own Minds. Oxford University Press.
Jonathan M. Weinberg & Stephen J. Crowley (2009). Loose Constitutivity and Armchair Philosophy. Studia Philosophica Estonica 2:177-195.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads10 ( #106,175 of 548,984 )Recent downloads (6 months)0How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
