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The Rashness of Traditional Rationalism and Empiricism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Georges Rey
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Extract

I was brought up to believe that, in the “great debate” with the Rationalists, the Empiricists had largely won, particularly in view of Quine's holistic conception of justification, whereby even the claims of logic, though remote from experience, are indirectly tested by it. But some years ago I awoke to the possibility that there was something fishy in all this, and that the fallibilistic banalities that have played such a large role in driving the Quinean conception couldn't plausibly have such dramatic consequences. “Everything can be revised in the light of experience” is good advice for someone who hasn't noticed just how rich, complex and indirect our reasonings about any issue, including logic and mathematics, can be; but does it really tell against what Kant and the others had in mind when they believed that there were some claims whose justification needn't appeal to experience (which, it's crucial to remember, is how he and others thought of it, until the Positivists and Quine revised it to “unrevisability“)?

Type
Part B: Language and Mind
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 30: New Essays in The Philosophy of Language and Mind , 2004 , pp. 227 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2004

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