Online research in philosophy

Charles Travis promotes a conception of knowledge on which knowledge is unmistakable. I raise some issues about what he means by this. Though sympathetic to his project, I give reasons for doubting that he has shown that all knowledge depends on having proof.

This is the third and final section of a paper, "Oxford Realism", co-written with Charles Travis.

A concern for realism motivates a fundamental strand of Oxford reflection on perception. Begin with the realist conception of knowledge. The question then will be: What must perception be like if we can know something about an object without the mind by seeing it? What must perception be if it can, on occasion, afford us with proof concerning a subject matter independent of the mind?

I answer an argument from Charles Travis to the conclusion that minimalism about truth cannot cope with the context sensitivity of words. To do this, I construct a thought experiment involving a community whose language does not manifest context sensitivity, but whose statements do seem to be subject to truth in a minimalist sense.

Mind and Language, 2006. Symposium on Insensitive Semantics. Reply to Ann Bezuidenhout, Steven Gross, Francois Recanati, Zoltan Szabo and Charles Travis.