Roderick M. Chisholm (born North Attleboro, Massachusetts in 1916; died
Providence, Rhode IslandProvidence is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island, and one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the estimated second or third largest city in the New England region...
in 1999) was an American philosopher known for his work on
epistemologyEpistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge...
,
metaphysicsMetaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...
,
free willFree will raises the question whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions, decisions, choices. Addressing this question requires understanding the relationship between freedom and cause, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic...
, and the
philosophy of perceptionThe philosophy of perception concerns how mental processes and symbols depend on the world internal and external to the perceiver.Our perception of the external world begins with the senses, which lead us to generate empirical concepts representing the world around us, within a mental framework...
. He received his
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
under
Clarence Irving LewisClarence Irving Lewis , usually cited as C. I. Lewis, was an American academic philosopher and the founder of conceptual pragmatism...
and Donald C. Williams, and taught at
Brown UniversityBrown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III...
.
Chisholm's first major work was
Perceiving (1957). His epistemological views were summed up in a popular text,
Theory of Knowledge, which appeared in three very different editions (1966, 1977, and 1989).
Roderick M. Chisholm (born North Attleboro, Massachusetts in 1916; died
Providence, Rhode IslandProvidence is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island, and one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the estimated second or third largest city in the New England region...
in 1999) was an American philosopher known for his work on
epistemologyEpistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge...
,
metaphysicsMetaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...
,
free willFree will raises the question whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions, decisions, choices. Addressing this question requires understanding the relationship between freedom and cause, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic...
, and the
philosophy of perceptionThe philosophy of perception concerns how mental processes and symbols depend on the world internal and external to the perceiver.Our perception of the external world begins with the senses, which lead us to generate empirical concepts representing the world around us, within a mental framework...
. He received his
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
under
Clarence Irving LewisClarence Irving Lewis , usually cited as C. I. Lewis, was an American academic philosopher and the founder of conceptual pragmatism...
and Donald C. Williams, and taught at
Brown UniversityBrown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III...
.
Chisholm's first major work was
Perceiving (1957). His epistemological views were summed up in a popular text,
Theory of Knowledge, which appeared in three very different editions (1966, 1977, and 1989). His masterwork was
Person and Object, its title deliberately contrasting with W. V. O. Quine's
Word and ObjectWord and Object is a 1960 book of epistemology by Willard Van Orman Quine. In it, Quine develops his thesis of the Indeterminacy of translation....
. Chisholm was a metaphysical Platonist in the tradition of
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...
, and a rationalist in the tradition of Russell, G. E. Moore, and
Franz BrentanoFranz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Brentano was an influential German philosopher and psychologist whose influence was felt by other such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski and Alexius Meinong, who followed and adapted his views.-Life:Brentano was born at Marienberg am...
; he objected to Quine's
anti-realismIn philosophy, the term anti-realism is used to describe anyposition involving either the denial of an objective reality of entities of a certain type or the denial that verification-transcendent statements about a type of entity are either true or false...
,
behaviorismBehaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling — can and should be regarded as behaviors...
, and
relativismRelativism is the idea that some elements or aspects of experience or culture are relative to, i.e., dependent on, other elements or aspects.Common statements that might be considered relativistic include:* "That's true for you but not for me."...
. He defended the possibility of empirical knowledge by appeal to
a priori epistemic principles whose consequences include that it is more reasonable to trust your senses and memory in most situations than to doubt them. His theory of knowledge was also famously "foundationalist" in character: all justified beliefs are either "directly evident" or supported by chains of justified beliefs that ultimately lead to beliefs that are directly evident. He also defended a controversial theory of volition called "agent causation" much like that of
Thomas ReidThomas Reid , Scottish philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment...
. He argued that free will is incompatible with determinism, and believed that we do act freely; this combination of views is known as
libertarianismLibertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism, which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics...
. He developed a highly original theory of first person thought according to which the things we believe are properties, and believing them is a matter of self-attributing them. (A similar view was developed independently by
David Kellogg LewisDavid Kellogg Lewis was a 20th-century American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years...
, and enjoys considerable popularity, although it is now known mainly through Lewis's work.) Chisholm was also famous for defending the possibility of robust self-knowledge (against the
skepticalIn classical philosophy, skepticism is the teachings and the traits of the 'Skeptikoi', a school of philosophers of whom it was said that they 'asserted nothing but only opined.' In this sense, philosophical skepticism, or Pyrrhonism, is the philosophical position that one should suspend...
arguments of
David HumeDavid Hume was a Scottish philosopher, economist, historian and a key figure in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
), and an objective ethics of requirements similar to that of
W. D. RossSir David Ross KBE was a Scottish philosopher, known for work in ethics. His best known work is The Right and the Good , and he is perhaps best known for developing a pluralist, deontological form of intuitionist ethics in response to G.E. Moore's intuitionism...
. Chisholm's other books include
The Problem of the Criterion,
Perceiving, "The First Person" and
A Realist Theory of the Categories, though his numerous journal articles are probably better known than any of these.
Chisholm read widely in the history of philosophy, and frequently referred to the work of Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and even Continental philosophers (although the use he made of this material has sometimes been challenged). Nonetheless, he greatly respected the history of philosophy, in the face of a prevailing indifference among analytic philosophers. Chisholm translated some work by Brentano and by Husserl, and contributed to the post-1970 renaissance of
mereologyIn philosophy, mereology is a collection of axiomatic first-order theories dealing with parts and their respective wholes. In contrast to set theory, which takes the set–member relationship as fundamental, the core notion of mereology is meronomic, which means based on part–whole relationships...
.
Chisholm greatly influenced a number of his graduate students and colleagues, including
Richard TaylorRichard Taylor may refer to:*Richard Taylor , father of U.S. president Zachary Taylor*Richard Taylor , son of U.S...
,
Jaegwon KimJaegwon Kim is an American philosopher currently working at Brown University. He is best known for his work on mental causation and the mind-body problem. Key themes in his work include: a rejection of Cartesian metaphysics, the limitations of strict psychophysical identity, supervenience, and...
,
Keith LehrerKeith Lehrer is the Regent's Professor emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Arizona with an affiliation with the University of Miami in Florida. He previously taught at the University of Rochester....
, R. C. Sleigh,
Ernest SosaErnest Sosa is currently Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He has been at Rutgers full-time since January, 2007; previously, he had been at Brown University since 1964. While full-time at Brown, he was also a distinguished visiting professor at Rutgers every spring...
,
Fred FeldmanFred Feldman is an American philosopher who specializes in ethical theory.Fred Feldman received his PhD degree in philosophy from Brown University, where he studied under Roderick Chisholm. His doctoral dissertation concerned the metaphysics of identity...
, Terence Penelhum,
Selmer BringsjordSelmer Bringsjord is the chair of the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also a professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science. He conducts research in Artificial Intelligence as the director of the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Lab .-Early life and...
,
Dean ZimmermanDean Zimmerman is a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. He specializes in metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. He earned his PhD in philosophy from Brown University, and has taught at the University of Notre Dame and Syracuse University. He is widely regarded as one of the leading...
, Joseph Boyle and Bernard K. Symonds.
Direct attribution theory of reference
Chisholm argued for the primacy of the
mentalMental can refer to:* Mind, the collective aspects of intellect and consciousness* The Mental nerve, part of the peripheral nervous system in the face* The Mental scale, a snake scale pertaining to the chin or lower jaw that is addressed by the mental nerve...
over
linguisticLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
intentionalityThe concept of intentionality has its foundation in scholastic philosophy with the earliest theory being associated with St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God and his tenets distinguishing between objects that exist in the understanding and objects that exist in reality .-The...
, as suggested in the title of
Person and Object (1976) that was deliberately contrasted with Quine's
Word and Object (1960). In this regard, he defended the direct attribution theory of reference in
The First Person (1981). He argues that we refer to things other than ourselves by directly attributing properties to them, and that we indirectly or relatively attribute properties to them by directly attributing properties to ourselves. Suppose the following bed scene:
a man M is in bed B with a woman W, namely, M-B-W, or
a woman W is in bed B with a man M, namely, W-B-M.
If I were M and "U" were W, then I could directly attribute to myself the property (1) or M-B-W, while indirectly to "U" the property (2) or W-B-M,
thereby referring to "U". That is, to say (1) is
relatively to say (2), or to explicate M-B-W is to implicate W-B-M.
His idea of indirect attribution (1981) is relevant to
John SearleJohn Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and presently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Searle began his college education at the University of Wisconsin, and subsequently became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where he earned an...
's "indirect speech act" (1975) and
Paul GriceHerbert Paul Grice , usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H...
's "
implicatureImplicature is a technical term in the linguistic branch of pragmatics coined by Paul Grice. It refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even though not expressed nor strictly implied by the utterance...
" (1975), in addition to
entailmentIn linguistics, entailment is the relationship between two sentences where the truth of one requires the truth of the other . This relationship is generalized below.As a tool or method to make progress, one might use the entailment concept...
.
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