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An epistemological problem for minimalist views about composition
- Source :
- Synthese. 199:9649-9668
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Some philosophers accept what I call minimalist views about composition. They either deny that composition ever occurs, or they only allow that composition occurs when some things are taken up into a life. While minimalists often take their views to be somewhat revisionary, they usually want to distinguish their views from truly radical views such as the view that there is no external world at all. They often do this by noting that, although they don’t believe that there are tables, chairs, or planets, they do believe that there are mereological simples arranged tablewise, chairwise, and planetwise. In this paper, I appeal to the nature of perceptual experience to present a problem for this move. I contend that, given some plausible assumptions, compositional minimalists cannot consistently maintain that they are justified in their minimalism and justified in believing propositions about the arrangements of mereological simples. I will argue that this commits such minimalists to external world skepticism.
- Subjects :
- Philosophy of science
Philosophy
media_common.quotation_subject
05 social sciences
Appeal
Minimalism (technical communication)
General Social Sciences
Metaphysics
06 humanities and the arts
0603 philosophy, ethics and religion
050105 experimental psychology
Epistemology
Philosophy of language
060302 philosophy
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Composition (language)
Skepticism
media_common
Mereology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15730964 and 00397857
- Volume :
- 199
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Synthese
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........f4fa5c775d22f78d9100265a58d81ce3