The Aristotelian Prescription: Skepticism, Retortion, and Transcendental Arguments
International Philosophical Quarterly 46 (3):263-276 (2006)
Abstract
From a number of quarters have come attempts to answer some form of skepticism—about knowledge of the external world, freedom of the will, or moral reasons—by showing it to be performatively self-defeating. Examples of this strategy are subject to a number of criticisms, in particular the criticism that they fail to shift the burden of proof from the anti-skeptical position, and so fail to establish the epistemic entitlement they seek. To these approaches I contrast one way of understanding Kant’s core anti-skeptical arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s goal is the more modest one of showing the applicability of the concepts of substance and cause to experience, against those who might call such application incoherent, or a category mistake. I explain why this goal makes Kant’s approach more promising than those of neo-Kantian practitioners of otherwise structurally-similar strategies.Author's Profile
ISBN(s)
0019-0365
DOI
10.5840/ipq200646318
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Citations of this work
What is the Scandal of Philosophy?Roberto Horácio de Sá Pereira - 2018 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 8 (3):141-166.
Disentangling Cartesian Global Skepticism from Cartesian Problematic External-World Idealism in Kant’s Refutation.Roberto Horácio de Sá Pereira - 2020 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 102 (2):242-260.
References found in this work
Cogito, ergo sum: Inference or performance?Jaakko Hintikka - 1962 - Philosophical Review 71 (1):3-32.
Cogito, ergo sum as an inference and a performance.Jaakko Hintikka - 1963 - Philosophical Review 72 (4):487-496.