ANALYSIS AND METAPHYSICS PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY Editors: WILFRID SELLARS, University of Pittsburgh KEITH LEHRER, University of Arizona Board of Consulting Editors: JONATHAN BENNETT, University of British Columbia ALAN GIBBARD, University of Pittsburgh ROBERT STALNAKER, Cornell University ROBER T G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University VOLUME 4 RODERICK CHISHOLM (1916- ) (photograph by Fred Feldman) ANALYSIS AND METAPHYSICS Essays in Honor of R. M. Chisholm Edited by KEITH LEHRER D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY DORDRECHT-HOLLAND / BOSTON-U.S.A. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Analysis and metaphysics. (philosophical studies series in philosophy; v. 4) Includes bibliographies and index. CONTENTS: Taylor, R. A tribute. - Epistemology: Cornman, J. W. Chisholm on sensing and perceiving. Ross, J. F. Testi monial evidence. Lehrer, K. Reason and consistency. Keirn, R. Epistemic values and epistemic viewpoints. [etc.] 1. Knowledge, Theory of - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Metaphysics - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Ethics - Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Chisholm, Roderick M. I. Chisholm, Roderick M. II. Lehrer, Keith. BDl61.A5 1975 110 75-5500 ISBN-13: 978-90-277-1193-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-9098-8 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-9098-8 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Inc. 306 Dartmouth Street, Boston, Mass. 02116, U.S.A. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1975 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1975 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH IX RICHARD TAYLOR / A Tribute 1 PART I. EPISTEMOLOGY JAMES W. CORNMAN / Chisholm on Sensing and Perceiving 11 JAMES F. ROSS / Testimonial Evidence 35 KEITH LEHRER / Reason and Consistency 57 ROBERT KEIM / Epistemic Values and Epistemic Viewpoints 75 MARSHA HANEN / Confirmation, Explanation and Acceptance 93 JOHN V. CANFIELD / 'I Know that 1 Am in Pain' is Senseless 129 THOMAS J. STEEL / Knowledge and the Self-Presenting 145 PART II. METAPHYSICS RICHARD CARTWRIGHT / Scattered Objects 153 TIMOTHY J. DUGGAN / Hume on Causation 173 RICHARD B. ARNAUD / Brentanist Relations 189 MAJOR L. JOHNSON, JR. / Events as Recurrables 209 PART III. ETHICS J. T. STEVENSON / On Doxastic Responsibility . 229 FRED FELDMAN / World Utilitarianism 255 JAMES W. LAMB / Some Definitions for the Theory of Rules 273 JOHN DONNELLY / Suicide: Some Epistemological Con- siderations 283 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF R. M. CHISHOLM 299 INDEX OF NAMES 309 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 314 PREFACE AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH This collection of essays in honor of Roderick M. Chisholm is the work of his former students. The book was conceived and the original con tributors invited by Richard Taylor. We restricted the contributors to former students of Chisholm as a special tribute to his acknowledged genius as a teacher of philosophy. The profundity of his contributions to epistemology and metaphysics are acknowledged throughout the phil osophical world. Those who have been present at his lectures and semi nars, who have been incited to philosophical cerebration by the clarity and precision of his exposition, know that his impact on contemporary philosophy far exceeds the influence of the written word. It is, we think, appropriate that his students should reserve for themselves the privilege of honoring Chisholm in this way as his 60th birthday draws near. The tribute paid to Chisholm in Taylor's essay conveys a personal impression. I shall, consequently, refrain from personal reminiscence here, and instead, mention some of the highlights of an illustrious life. Chisholm was born on November 27, 1916 in North Attleboro, Massachu setts. He married Eleanor F. Parker in 1943 and raised three children with her. He received an A.B. from Brown in 1938, a Ph. D. from Harvard in 1942, and served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946. After the war, Chisholm was Barnes Foundation Professor of Phil osophy at the University of Pennsylvania and the Barnes Foundation in Semester 1,1946-47 and Assistant Professor at the University ofPenw;yl vania during Semester II. He then returned to Brown University, where he was Chairman from 1951-1964, and is current Professor of Philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities. Though he has remained faithful to his Alma Mater since 1947, he has frequently visited elsewhere: Harvard in 1950, 1960, and 1969, University of Southern California in 1955, Karl-Franzens-Universitat as Fulbright Professor in 1959-60, Princeton University in 1961-62, University of California at Sanata Barbara in 1964, University of Alberta at Calgary in 1965, Uni versity of Illinois at Urbana in 1966, University of Chicago in 1967, and x PREFACE the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1970. Karl-Franzens Universitiit, Graz, Austria, awarded Chisholm the Honorary Degree, Doctor of Philosophy honoris causae, June, 1972. This degree was awarded partly in recognition of Chisholm's contribution to the study of Austrian Philosophy, in particular that of Brentano and Meinong. Other honors Chisholm has received include election as Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1958, President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1968, President of the Metaphysical Society of American in 1972-73, Chairman of the Council for Philosophical Studies since 1972, Executive Director of the Franz Brentano Foundation since 1970, President of the Fourth Interamerican Congress of Philosophy in 1957, and Secretary of the Sociedad Interamericana de Filosofia in 1946-47. He has served in editorial roles for Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, The American Philosophical Quarterly, Metaphilosophy, and The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy. He has been Carus Lecturer, American Philosophical As sociation, in 1967 and, in the same year, Nellie Wallace Lecturer, Oxford University in Hilary Term. The foregoing is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the professional activities or honors Chisholm has received. There are, for example, the many, too numerous to list, short seminars and institutes Chisholm has richly enhanced by his participation. The brilliance with which he has pinpointed error, his own as well as others, and found the precise formula tion needed to correct the error are remembered moments of enlighten ment. With cherished memories of such occasions, we present this volume to our teacher, Roderick M. Chisholm. I am personally indebted to the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences for the secretarial services they prov~ded for me and to Vincent Lazara for composing the name and subject indexes. KEITH LEHRER RICHARD T AYLOR A TRIBUTE Roderick Chisholm's intellectual stature needs no testimonials. His greatness as a teacher, and particularly as an inspiration to graduate students, is less well known. I am going to write of this, placing my re marks in the setting of a particular time and place that it was one of my greatest fortunes to belong to. I am sure that no student or colleague, during that time, knew Chisholm better than I. Certainly none was more profoundly influenced by him. That setting now belongs very much to the past. I have had no association with Chisholm for over a decade, and my own philosophical thinking has taken directions in which he would probably find it impossible still to recognize any of his influence. It is for this reason that I shall express myself in the manner appropriate to historical narrative. I want to describe that setting, not to indulge in nostalgia, but because it was, I think, unique. The vestiges of it that survive here and there are, precisely, vestiges. It began abruptly, without anyone noticing that any thing very unusual was starting, and it ended just as abruptly, again without anyone quite appreciating that fact at the time. The period en compasses the decade of the 'fifties', beginning a little before and extending a little beyond. Chisholm arrived at Brown University on approximately the day I did, in the fall of 1947, he as an assistant professor who had already made some brilliant contributions to philosophy, and I as an unfathomably ignorant graduate student. It is a commentary on what his arrival heralded that it had occurred to no one to provide any kind of office for him and he, so far as I know, did not notice this. The philosophy department was then housed in an ancient and ugly little building, all served by one telephone, which was adequate. Philosophers then had a higher purpose than to sit around in offices and use telephones. Chisholm's impact on the place was quick and devastating. A foretaste of it came when he stepped into a group in which an advanced graduate student, about to get his doctorate, was holding forth and, as casually as Keith Lehrer (ed.). Analysis and Metaphysics, 1-8. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1975 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland 2 RICHARD TAYLOR if announcing the time of day, demolished the entire framework of that man's philosophical scheme of things with about three perfectly chosen observations. Soon afterwards we saw something very much like this happen again, in a colloquium, but this time what was demolished was the philosophical scheme of a philosopher of long standing who was quite rightly considered eminent. Such performances, without the slightest hint of polemicism, always soft-spoken and always with the same result, became commonplace. The comparison with Socrates is, in retrospect, inevitable. I fell completely under this philosopher's spell, with only the slightest inkling of the effect it was going to have on my life. Yet oddly I do not recall ever writing any paper for him, or any examination. I certainly must have written many of these, but they were the least important part of my philosophical education. It would be hard to imagine Chisholm reading such things anyway. What we all learned from him was a way of thinking; and oral discourse, and response, was its natural mode of expression. We learned what a philosophical question is, and what counts as an answer - or what would count, if we ever got it. Chisholm did not expect questions to be couched within the presuppositions of any point of view. He had no use for formal symbolism, considering skill at the use of this to be, more often than not, an excuse for getting off the subject. His scorn was even heavier for those whose discourse was larded with terms and examples borrowed from physics, or other respectable branches oflearning in which the speaker was almost certainly incompetent. I think I remember the first philosophical question I ever asked Chisholm. I was embarrassed to raise it, and waited until after class to do so, for it seemed only to expose my naivete. I asked what it was that was supposed to be, as he expressed it, 'true'; that is, whether it was the chalk marks on the blackboard, sounds, or what. He did not answer the ques tion. He did not even comment on it. He only smiled, eloquently convey ing that I had asked a rather good question. I never learned the answer. Perhaps it does not exist. But I think my philosophical education began at about that point. Chisholm could detect instantly, and put in its true perspective, the pompous, the dogmatic, the merely polemical, and the phony. When as a newcomer he presented his first paper to the faculty and students, he had scarcely gotten into it when all his colleagues began trying, unmercifully, to tear him, and indeed each other as well, to shreds. The speaker was not