The Myth of the Subjective
Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective: Philosophical Essays Volume 3
Donald Davidson
Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780198237532 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Nov-03 DOI: 10.1093/0198237537.001.0001
The Myth of the Subjective
Donald Davidson
DOI: 10.1093/0198237537.003.0003
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter is a direct attack on the idea of a subjective–objective dichotomy resulting in a fundamental distinction between uninterpreted experience and an organizing structure of concepts. Consequently, Davidson attacks the foundation of all metaphysical and epistemological dualisms and the philosophical stances based upon them. He attempts to make a case for their replacement by a view that combines the denial of objects before the mind with the claim that empirical knowledge does not and need not have an epistemological foundation.
Keywords: concepts, empirical knowledge, epistemological foundation, metaphysical and epistemological dualisms, subjective–objective dichotomy
This is an essay on an old topic, the relation between the human mind and the rest of nature, the subjective and the objective as we have come to think of them. This dualism, though in its way too obvious to question, carries with it in our tradition a large and not necessarily appropriate burden of associated ideas. Some of these ideas are now coming under critical scrutiny, and the result promises to mark a sea change in contemporary philosophical thought. The present essay, while clearly tendentious, is not designed primarily to convert the skeptic; its chief aim is to describe, from one point of view, a fairly widely recognized development in recent thinking about the contents of the mind, and to suggest some of the consequences that I think follow from this development.
Page 1 of 15
The Myth of the Subjective
PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2012. All Rights Reserved. Under
Donald Davidson
Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780198237532 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Nov-03 DOI: 10.1093/0198237537.001.0001
The Myth of the Subjective
Donald Davidson
DOI: 10.1093/0198237537.003.0003
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter is a direct attack on the idea of a subjective–objective dichotomy resulting in a fundamental distinction between uninterpreted experience and an organizing structure of concepts. Consequently, Davidson attacks the foundation of all metaphysical and epistemological dualisms and the philosophical stances based upon them. He attempts to make a case for their replacement by a view that combines the denial of objects before the mind with the claim that empirical knowledge does not and need not have an epistemological foundation.
Keywords: concepts, empirical knowledge, epistemological foundation, metaphysical and epistemological dualisms, subjective–objective dichotomy
This is an essay on an old topic, the relation between the human mind and the rest of nature, the subjective and the objective as we have come to think of them. This dualism, though in its way too obvious to question, carries with it in our tradition a large and not necessarily appropriate burden of associated ideas. Some of these ideas are now coming under critical scrutiny, and the result promises to mark a sea change in contemporary philosophical thought. The present essay, while clearly tendentious, is not designed primarily to convert the skeptic; its chief aim is to describe, from one point of view, a fairly widely recognized development in recent thinking about the contents of the mind, and to suggest some of the consequences that I think follow from this development.
Page 1 of 15
The Myth of the Subjective
PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2012. All Rights Reserved. Under