Making the Best of Austin’s Goldfinch

This paper discusses Austin’s goldfinch example from “Other Minds,” which plays a central role in Kaplan’s Austin’s Way with Skepticism. The paper aims to clarify the obscure distinction Austin makes in connection with this example, between cases in which we know and can prove and cases in which we...

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Auteur principal: Gustafsson, Martin (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Brill 2022
Dans: International journal for the study of skepticism
Année: 2022, Volume: 12, Numéro: 3, Pages: 226-244
Sujets non-standardisés:B disjunctivism
B Kaplan
B Skepticism
B Austin
B Knowledge
B Generics
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Résumé:This paper discusses Austin’s goldfinch example from “Other Minds,” which plays a central role in Kaplan’s Austin’s Way with Skepticism. The paper aims to clarify the obscure distinction Austin makes in connection with this example, between cases in which we know and can prove and cases in which we know but can’t prove. By discussing a couple of remarks that Austin makes in passing, a view is extracted from his text that stands in conflict with Kaplan’s reading at a fundamental point. The view proposed emphasizes the role of law-like generics in our practice of knowledge attribution, and brings out the disjunctivist elements in Austin’s conception. It is argued that the response to skepticism that Kaplan ascribes to Austin is not fully satisfactory, since it fails to tell us what makes some challenges to our knowledge claims appropriate and others outrageous. The alternative view proposed in this paper can handle this problem without postulating the sort of general external criterion that Kaplan’s Austin rightly rejects.
ISSN:2210-5700
Contient:Enthalten in: International journal for the study of skepticism
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/22105700-bja10004