The olfactory system was traditionally thought to lack a thalamic relay to mediate top-down influences from memory and attention in other perceptual modalities. Olfactory perception was therefore often described as an outlier among perceptual modalities. It was argued as a result that olfaction was a canonical example of a direct perception. In this paper we review functional and anatomical evidence which demonstrates that olfaction depends on both direct pathway connecting anterior piriform cortex to orbitofrontal cortex and an indirect thalamic (...) circuit connecting posterior piriform cortex and orbitofrontal cortices to the olfactory system. We argue that the indirect corticothalamic circuit has the structure to potentially mediate mediates top-down influences of memory and attention in olfactory perception. This suggests that olfaction is not an outlier after all. (shrink)

Self-evidence is plausibly taken to be a status that marks propositions as capable of being justifiedly believed on the basis of understanding them. This paper explicates and defends that view. The paper shows that the broadly linguistic kind of understanding implied by basic semantic comprehension of a formulation of a self-evident proposition does not entail being justified in believing that proposition; that the kind of understanding adequate to yield such justification is multi-dimensional; and that there are many (...) variables partly constitutive of such understanding—all philosophically interesting in themselves—that a theory of self-evidence must account for. The paper also shows why self-evident propositions need not be obvious, need not be unprovable, and, far from being beyond dispute, can be rationally disputed. The concluding section shows how knowledge of self-evident propositions is possible even if, on the one hand, their elements are abstract and causally inert and, on the other, beliefs constituting knowledge must meet both causal and reliability conditions connected with their truthmakers. (shrink)

According to ethical intuitionists, basic moral propositions are self-evident. Robert Audi has made significant progress articulating and defending this view, claiming that an adequate understanding of a self-evident proposition justifies rather than compels belief. It is argued here that understanding a proposition cannot justify belief in it, and that intuition, suitably understood, provides the right sort of justification. An alternative account is offered of self-evidence based on intuition rather than understanding, and it is concluded that once (...) we have an adequate understanding of a self-evident proposition, we can see that it does no distinctive epistemic work. It merely reports that intuition is doing some significant epistemic work. Since the very idea of self-evident moral propositions is so controversial, and self-evidence does no significant epistemic work, ethical intuitionists should drop this notion from their moral epistemology. All they need are intuitive propositions and our intuition of these. (shrink)

Here I criticise Audi's account of self-evidece. I deny that understanding of a proposition can justify belief in it and offfer an account of intuition that can take the place of understanding in an account of self-evidence.

According to rationalists about moral knowledge, some moral truths are knowable a priori. Rationalists often defend their position by claiming that some moral propositions are self-evidently true. Copp 2007 has recently challenged this rationalist strategy. Copp argues that even if some moral propositions are self-evident, this is not enough to secure rationalism about moral knowledge, since it turns out that such self-evident propositions are only knowable a posteriori. This paper considers the merits of Copp’s challenge. After clarifying (...) the rationalists’ appeal to self-evidence, I show why this rationalist strategy survives Copp’s challenges to it. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the epistemology of some contemporary moral intuitionists who believe that the notion of self-evidence is more important than that of intuition. Quite the contrary, I think the notion of intuition is more basic if intuitions are construed as intellectual seemings. First, I will start with elaborating Robert Audi’s account of self-evidence. Next, I criticise his account on the basis of the idea of “adequate understanding”. I shall then present my alternative (...) account of self-evidence which is based on the seeming account of intuition. Finally, I show how the seeming account of self-evidence can make the moral intuitionist epistemology more tenable. (shrink)

There seems to be an important historical connexion between changes in the concept of evidence and that of the person capable of giving evidence. Michel Foucault urged that during the classical age the relationship between evidence and the person was reversed: scholasticism derived statements’ authority from that of their authors, while scientists now hold that matters of fact are the most impersonal of statements.1 In a similar vein, Ian Hacking defines a kind of evidence which ‘consists (...) in one thing pointing beyond itself’, and claims that until the early modern period ‘testimony and authority were primary, and things could count as evidence only insofar as they resembled the witness of observers and the authority of books’.2 This captures a rather familiar theme of the ideology of early modern natural philosophy. Nullius in verba was the Royal Society of London’s motto. Robert Boyle, doyen of the Society’s experimental philosophers, tried to build up the credit of laboratory objects at the expense of untrustworthy humans. He reckoned that ‘inanimate bodies … are not capable of prepossessions, or giving us partial informations’, while vulgar men may be influenced by predispositions, and so many other circumstances, that they may easily give occasion to mistakes’. So an inanimate body’s deeds could function as signs of some other state of affairs in a way that the stories of vulgar humans could not.3 1. See Michel Foucault, L’Ordre du discours: Leçon inaugurale au Collêge de France prononcée le 2 décembre 1970 .2. Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference , pp. 34, 33.3. Quoted in Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump , p. 218. See also Peter Dear, ‘Totius in verba:’ Rhetoric and Authority in the Early Royal Society’, Isis 76 : 145-61. Simon Schaffer lectures in history and philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is the coauthor of Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life and coauthors of The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences. (shrink)

There is an argument, well known in the history of philosophy, which makes all knowledge ultimately depend on some kind of intuitive or sensory immediacy. According to this argument, either the proposition itself is self–evident; 2 or else it can be shown to follow, with the help of a chain of intermediate links, from other propositions which are self–evident. Moreover, it is this self–evidence of immediate knowledge and only this which, again speaking traditionally, sufficiently guarantees the (...) truth of the affirmations of a science as opposed to those of various and fluctuating opinions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This paper develops an account of what it is for a proposition to be self- evident to someone, based on the idea that certain propositions are such that to fully understand them is to believe them. It argues that when a proposition p is self-evident to one, one has non-inferential a priori justification for believing that p and, a welcome feature, a justification that does not involve exercising any special sort of intuitive faculty; if, in addition, it (...) is true that p and there exists no reason to believe that the proposition that p is incoherent, then one knows a priori that p. The paper argues that certain deeply contingent truths, e.g., the truth that I would now express by saying “I exist”, can be self-evident to, and thus known a priori by, the person they are about at the time they are about; but, since they cannot be known a priori, or even expressed, by anyone else or at any other time, they should not count as a priori truths. (shrink)

The paper explores the status of the proposition "God exists" in late scholastic debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in some key authors of the era. A proposition is said to be self-evident if its truth is known solely from the meaning of the terms and is not inferred from other propositions. It does not appear to be immediately evident from the terms that God exists, for the concept expressed by "God" is based on the relation to creatures (...) and negation of imperfection and does not reach to the divine essence. Thomas Aquinas maintains that there are two types of self-evident propositions: those self-evident in themselves but not to us and those self-evident in themselves as well as to us. "God exists" is of the fi rst type. For Scotus a self-evident proposition is such that if its terms are conceived by any intellect, the truth of the proposition becomes known from the terms, non-inferentially. In his view there is no distinction between a self-evident proposition in itself and that in relation to us, because any proposition self-evident in itself is known to be such to any intellect, even though it might not be actually known; it would be known, provided that the terms are conceived. So for Scotus the sentence "God exists" expresses diff erent propositions for the blessed in heaven, the angels and God on the one hand and humans on the other. The former is self-evident, the latter is not. While later scholastics accept either the solution of Thomas or that of Scotus, according to which "God exists" is not self-evident for humans, Thomas de Argentina diff ers in that for him "God exists" is self-evident for humans too. The position of Thomas Aquinas was defended by Domingo Ban¯ez, Francisco Zumel and Gregorio de Valentia. In contrast, Johannes Poncius was a famous adherent of Scotus. There is a fair number of scholastics harmonizing the doctrine of Thomas and Scotus: Bernard Sannig, Luis de Molina, Gabriel Vázquez, Rodrigo de Arriaga and Jean Lalemandet. According to these authors, when Thomas says that "God exists" is self-evident in itself, he speaks about the extensional proposition, i.e. the state of affairs being conceptualized, which does not contradict Scotus’s teaching. © FILOSOFIA, 2013. (shrink)

Moral epistemology, like general epistemology, faces a regress problem. Suppose someone demands to know why I am justified in holding a moral belief. In a typical case, I will respond by citing a further moral belief that justifies it. A regress arises because, in order for this further belief to justify anything, it too must be justified. According to a traditional position in moral epistemology, moral foundationalism, the regress comes to an end with some moral beliefs. Moral foundationalism is an (...) attractive position because it promises to answer the regress problem. However, it inherits the burden of explaining why some moral beliefs have a particular privileged epistemic position – that is, why these beliefs are justified without requiring inferential support from other beliefs. The standard answer to this question is to insist that some moral beliefs have as their content propositions that are self-evident.A common way of resisting moral foundationalism is to argue from the fact of moral disagreement to the claim that no moral proposition is self-evident. I argue that while a simple version of this argument fails, this argument can be developed in such a way that it poses serious difficulties for moral foundationalism. I develop this argument by drawing on recent work in epistemology on the nature of our epistemic burdens in the face of peer disagreement. I then suggest that even if this argument does show that moral foundationalism fails, it need not have skeptical implications so long as coherentism remains a viable option in moral epistemology. Finally, I claim that this argument has implications for normative ethics. Namely, it rules out a position advocated by Peter Singer in his early work and indirectly supports the method of reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

The distinction tentatively drawn by Mr. Porteous at the last meeting of the Society between logical and causal necessity depends on the more general distinction between what is known or capable of being known as self-evident and what is known only as matter of fact. That there are three cows in a field is a matter of fact. That 1 + 2 = 3 is self-evident and necessarily true . So soon as the question is raised it is (...) seen that there can be no alternative to its being true—otherwise it is not self-evident. But there is no necessity that a field should have cows in it, or that if it has they should be just three in number. Similarly, it does not seem self-evident that an unsupported stone must fall to the ground. (shrink)

Este estudo desenvolve uma abordagem do que significa para uma proposição ser autoevidente para alguém, baseado na ideia de que certas proposições são tais que plenamente entendê-las significa crer nelas. Argumenta-se que, quando uma proposição p é autoevidente para alguém, tem-se justificação a priori não-inferencial para crer que p e, eis um traço bem-vindo, uma justificação que não envolve exercer qualquer tipo especial de faculdade intuitiva; se, em adição, é verdade que p e não existe nenhuma razão para crer que (...) p é incoerente, então sabe-se a priori que p. O estudo argumenta que certas proposições profundamente contingentes, por exemplo, a verdade que eu agora expressaria ao dizer “Eu existo”, podem também ser auto-evidentes para e, portanto, conhecidas a priori pela pessoa sobre a qual elas são, no momento sobre o qual elas são; mas, uma vez que elas não podem ser conhecidas a priori, ou mesmo expressas, por qualquer outro ou em qualquer outro momento, elas não deveriam contar como verdades a priori. (shrink)

Controversy remains over exactly why Frege aimed to estabish logicism. In this essay, I argue that the most influential interpretations of Frege's motivations fall short because they misunderstand or neglect Frege's claims that axioms must be self-evident. I offer an interpretation of his appeals to self-evidence and attempt to show that they reveal a previously overlooked motivation for establishing logicism, one which has roots in the Euclidean rationalist tradition. More specifically, my view is that Frege had two (...) notions of self-evidence. One notion is that of a truth being foundationally secure, yet not grounded on any other truth. The second notion is that of a truth that requires only clearly grasping its content for rational, a priori justified recognition of its truth. The overarching thesis I develop is that Frege required that axioms be self-evident in both senses, and he relied on judging propositions to be self-evident as part of his fallibilist method for identifying a foundation of arithmetic. Consequently, we must recognize both notions in order to understand how Frege construes ultimate foundational proofs, his methodology for discovering and identifying such proofs, and why he thought the propositions of arithmetic required proof. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Relativism in an Extended Sense.

Finnis claims that his theory proceeds from seven basic principles of practical reason that are self-evidently true. While much has been written about the claim of self-evidence, this article considers it in relation to the rigorous claims of logic and mathematics. It argues that when considered in this light, Finnis equivocates in his use of the concept of self-evidence between the realist Thomistic conception and a purely formal, modern symbolic conception. Given his respect for the (...) modern positivist separation of fact and value, the realism of the Thomistic conception cannot be the foundation for the natural law as Finnis would reconstruct it. Nor can the purely formal modern conception of self-evidence provide a foundation for practical reason. This raises some doubt as to whether there can be self-evident principles of practical reason as Finnis suggests. The article contributes to the analysis of the Finnis reconstruction of the natural law by providing a rigorous analysis of his claim for self-evidence. It frames this analysis historically, suggesting the roles that certainty and mystery play in the apprehension of moral meaning. (shrink)

In this article I consider the recent revival of moral intuitionism and focus on its prospects, especially by thinking about what it means to understand a moral claim. From this I consider the implications for both generalists and particularists in normative ethical theory, or at least those who are also intuitionists. I conclude that the prospects for both theoretical families are bleak, and hence that intuitionism itself is in trouble and has some work to do.

Plausible probabilistic accounts of evidential support entail that every true proposition is evidence for itself. This paper defends this surprising principle against a series of recent objections from Jessica Brown. Specifically, the paper argues that: (i) explanationist accounts of evidential support convergently entail that every true proposition is self-evident, and (ii) it is often felicitous to cite a true proposition as evidence for itself, just not under that description. The paper also develops an objection involving the apparent (...) impossibility of believing P on the evidential basis of P itself, but gives a reason not to be too worried about this objection. Establishing that every true proposition is self-evident saves probabilistic accounts of evidential support from absurdity, paves the way for a non-sceptical infallibilist theory of knowledge and has distinctive practical consequences. (shrink)

The first phase of the recent intuitionist revival left untouched Ross’s claim that fundamental moral truths are self-evident. In a recent article, Robert Cowan attempts to explain, in a plausible way, how we know moral truths. The result is that, while the broad framework of Ross’s theory appears to remain in place, the self-evidence of moral truths is thrown into doubt. In this paper, I examine Cowan’s Conceptual Intuitionism. I use his own proposal to show how he (...) arrives at a skeptical position on self-evidence. First, he completely ignores the kind of epistemic appraisal intuitionism has always rested on; second, he is committed to the Reasons View of prima facie duty, rather than to Ross’s Properties View; third, he holds that a commitment to self-evidence often comes with a commitment to metaphysically extravagant entities, which he calls Perceptualism; fourth, he scrutinizes only a part of the contemporary theory of self-evidence, overlooking the strengths of the theory when considered as a whole. Revealing these several points supports the conclusion that Cowan has not provided a viable variety of Rossian Intuitionism. (shrink)

At the beginning of Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik [1884], Frege observes that “it is in the nature of mathematics to prefer proof, where proof is possible”. This, of course, is true, but thinkers differ on why it is that mathematicians prefer proof. And what of propositions for which no proof is possible? What of axioms? This talk explores various notions of self-evidence, and the role they play in various foundational systems, notably those of Frege and Zermelo. I argue (...) that both programs are undermined at a crucial point, namely when self-evidence is supported by holistic and even pragmatic considerations. (shrink)

Robert Nozick (1993) has offered an evolutionary account of self-evident beliefs that comes into conflict with a "mild realist" (Dennett, 1991a) view of beliefs. This chapter summarizes both views, and explains the conflict. Emergence is examined. Mild realism is found to embrace "emergence" in an acceptable sense, and to eschew it in its problematic sense. Nozick's cases of self-evident beliefs are examined and difficulties in his account are explained. An alternative approach is developed that avoids the difficulties in (...) Nozick's account and is compatible with mild realism. Implications of mild realism for concepts are drawn. (shrink)

In this article from 1928, translated here for the first time, Tanabe Hajime examines the concept of self-evidence, mainly in the light of Husserl and Brentano. The author starts out by establishing, through a preliminary analysis of the Cartesian cogito, two criteria for self-evidence, namely adequate fulfillment of the intention of Sosein, and the coextension of Dasein and Sosein (being-there, or existence, and being-such, or essence/properties). He then proceeds to consider four domains of knowledge through the (...) prism of the question of their claim to self-evidence: knowledge of mathematical objects, categorial intuition, the ontological proof for the existence of God and finally, outer perception. Dedicating the last paragraph to a critical assessment of Husserl’s account of perception, the author concludes that all self-evidence is founded on inner perception. Outlining a creative appropriation of phenomenology while elucidating the conditions for certainty, this text constitutes an important milestone in a period leading up to Tanabe’s break with Nishida as well as to his critique of Heidegger, thus laying the groundwork for his independent philosophical stance. (shrink)

In Fichte’s early views of the basic laws of traditional formal logic, primarily the law of identity, there is a tension that has gone surprisingly unexplored: While Fichte holds the statements of these laws to be self-evidently true and absolutely certain, he nevertheless claims that they remain to be justified by his “Science of Knowledge.” The aim of this article is to make sense of this tension and to explore how it translates into the dialectical structure and methodology of (...) Fichte’s first Jena Wissenschaftslehre. This is done by, first, conjecturing—in a somewhat ahistorical, yet Fichte-based, fashion—a reason for Fichte’s justificatory demand. It is argued that the validity of the law of identity can be questioned because our belief in its absolute generality appears to be self-refuting in that it involves an antinomy akin to Grelling’s semantic antinomy of the heterological. This antinomy, when, secondly, related to Fichte’s purported justification of the law of identity, serves as a key to understanding why there is an antinomic conflict between Fichte’s supreme principle—namely, the self-positing pure I—and its adversary, the not-I, in the first place. Tracing their contradiction back to that semantic antinomy inherent in our formal-logical certainties opens up a new way of seeing Fichte as radicalizing Kant’s critical philosophy, understood as the project of the self-preservation of reason against reason’s own antinomies. (shrink)

In Fichte’s early views of the basic laws of traditional formal logic, primarily the law of identity, there is a tension that has gone surprisingly unexplored: While Fichte holds the statements of these laws to be self-evidently true and absolutely certain, he nevertheless claims that they remain to be justified by his “Science of Knowledge.” The aim of this article is to make sense of this tension and to explore how it translates into the dialectical structure and methodology of (...) Fichte’s first Jena Wissenschaftslehre. This is done by, first, conjecturing—in a somewhat ahistorical, yet Fichte-based, fashion—a reason for Fichte’s justificatory demand. It is argued that the validity of the law of identity can be questioned because our belief in its absolute generality appears to be self-refuting in that it involves an antinomy akin to Grelling’s semantic antinomy of the heterological. This antinomy, when, secondly, related to Fichte’s purported justification of the law of identity, serves as a key to understanding why there is an antinomic conflict between Fichte’s supreme principle—namely, the self-positing pure I—and its adversary, the not-I, in the first place. Tracing their contradiction (whose synthetic resolution is the main goal of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre) back to that semantic antinomy inherent in our formal-logical certainties opens up a new way of seeing Fichte as radicalizing Kant’s critical philosophy, understood as the project of the self-preservation of reason against reason’s own antinomies. (shrink)

Representations of medicine in pop culture often have an iconographic character. Thereby, they set in a double sense of self-evidence. They represent on the one hand, self-evidently a medical context, and on the other hand, they act to transport or at least illustrate self-evident medical pieces of knowledge. In this contribution, we will give an overview of the current research about the visual self-evidence. Different strategies that serve the production of self-evident images in (...) medicine are described and their representation in popular culture will be displayed on the basis of three case studies. The case studies include the use of curves to record and display physiological movements, radiology as a tool to produce images from the interior of the body and neuroimaging techniques that were designed to illustrate the working brain. (shrink)

In the Summa Theologia I, beginning at question 2, article 3, and in the Summa Contra Gentiles I, beginning at chapter 13, Aquinas provides five proofs for the existence of God. These proofs are intended to demonstrate that God exists and to provide the foundation for a larger program to demonstrate many other doctrines which are held by faith. However, the program which Aquinas sets up for himself in the two great Summae is trivial and unnecessary if the existence of (...) God is self-evident in such a way that God's existence needs no demonstration. So, as a preamble to the five ways, Aquinas argues that the existence of God is not self-evident in any way that would hinder his program of rational theology.In STI the argument occurs in question 2, article 1, and in CGI it occurs in chapters 10 and 11. Aquinas also argues the same point in Commentum in Primum Librum Sententiarum distinction 3, question 1, article 2, and in Quaestiones Disputate De Veritate question 10, article 12. (shrink)