"Strictly speaking, "The wine tastes sour to me," and "something looks red to me," do not express what is self-presenting in our sense of this term. For the first statement implies that there is a certain thing—namely, the wine— that I am tasting, and the second statement implies that there is a certain external thing that is appearing red to me. But, "I am tasting wine," and, "There is a certain external thing that is appearing red to me," do not express what is self-presenting. What justifies me in thinking that I am tasting wine is not simply the fact that I am tasting wine, and what justifies me in thinking that a certain thing is appearing red to me (and that I am not, say, merely suffering from a hallucination) is not simply the fact that a certain thing is appearing red to me. To arrive at what is self-presenting in these cases, we must remove the reference to the external thing—to the wine in, "The wine tastes sour to me," and to the appearing thing in, "That thing appears red to me." This, however, is very difficult to do, since our language was not developed for any such philosophical purpose."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Theory of Knowledge (3rd ed., 1989), Chap. 3 : Certainty and the Self-Presenting
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roderick_Chisholm
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Roderick Chisholm
Roderick Milton Chisholm (November 27, 1916 – January 19, 1999) was an American philosopher known for his work on epistemology, metaphysics, free will, value theory, and the philosophy of perception.
11 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Roderick Chisholm →
Related Quotes
"What we have been saying, of course, is not likely to convince the skeptics and we can hardly claim to have "refuted"…"
"In making their assumptions, epistemologists presuppose that they are rational, beings. This means, in part, that the…"
"The category of being beyond reasonable doubt is illustrated by the proposition that the building in which I now find…"
"It is sometimes said that playing it safe is always more reasonable than taking any chances. And this would seem to b…"
"Our second "anti-Pyrrhonian" principle is this: (A4) If anything is probable for S, then something is certain for S"
"The objectivity principle tells us what kind of justification we can have for beliefs about justification: (A5) If S …"
"To see the point of such a hierarchy, let us turn back to the concept of the evident. An evident proposition is one t…"
"It is true, of course, that most of us have very little knowledge of our psychological makeup and that we are likely …"
"It has been suggested that the sentences giving rise to the problem of the synthetic a priori are really "postulates …"
"You may have knowledge, then, without having any insight into the epistemic status of what you know. In other words, …"