Sellars And Socrates: An Investigation Of The Sellars Problem For A Socratic Epistemology

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Author: Ted Lanice Poston

Adviser: Jonathan Kvanvig

Philosophy, PhD
WS 2006

 

Public Abstract: Rational persons seek good reasons for their beliefs. They seek to discover whether they have good reasons for thinking that their beliefs about the world are, by and large, accurate. Ever since persons have raised this question some have sought to argue that we lack good reasons for thinking our beliefs are true. One powerful argument for reaching this judgment is the regress argument. The regress argument aims to show that beliefs about the world ultimately rest on blind posits, arbitrary assumptions. Many resist this conclusion by attempting to show how the posits are not blind, the assumptions not arbitrary. Yet there is a principled problem with this response. The posits need to be reasonable apart from argument, the assumptions need to be principled apart from reasons for making them. However, apart from such rationales the posits appear blind, the assumptions arbitrary. Thus, this popular response seems undermined. In the dissertation I investigate this problem. I argue that there is an additional way to understand how it is that we have good reasons for our beliefs. This solution has enduring philosophical interests, since it aims to answer a foundational philosophical issue.