Roderick Chisholm
Encyclopedia
Roderick M. Chisholm was an American philosopher known for his work on epistemology, metaphysics
, free will
, and the philosophy of perception
. He received his Ph.D.
at Harvard University
under Clarence Irving Lewis
and Donald C. Williams, and taught at Brown University
. He served as president of the Metaphysical Society of America
in 1973.
in 1938 and got his Ph.D. from Harvard University
in June 1942. He was drafted into the United States Army in July 1942 and did basic training at Fort McClellan
in Alabama
. Chisholm administered psychological tests in Boston
and New Haven. In 1943 he married Eleanor Parker, whom he had met as an undergraduate at Brown.
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 Object
. Chisholm was a metaphysical Platonist in the tradition of Bertrand Russell
, and a rationalist in the tradition of Russell, G. E. Moore, and Franz Brentano
; he objected to Quine's anti-realism
, behaviorism
, and relativism
. 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 Reid
. He argued that free will is incompatible with determinism, and believed that we do act freely; this combination of views is known as libertarianism
. 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 Lewis
, 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 skeptical
arguments of David Hume
), and an objective ethics of requirements similar to that of W. D. Ross
. 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 mereology
.
Chisholm greatly influenced a number of his graduate students and colleagues, including Richard Taylor
, Jaegwon Kim
, Keith Lehrer
, R. C. Sleigh, Ernest Sosa
, Peter D. Klein
, Fred Feldman
, Terence Penelhum, Selmer Bringsjord
, Dean Zimmerman
, Joseph Boyle and Bernard K. Symonds.
over linguistic
intentionality
, 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 Searle
's "indirect speech act" (1975) and Paul Grice
's "implicature
" (1975), in addition to entailment
.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
, and the philosophy of perception
Philosophy of perception
The philosophy of perception is concerned with the nature of perceptual experience and the status of perceptual data, in particular how they relate to beliefs about, or knowledge of, the world. Any explicit account of perception requires a commitment to one of a variety of ontological or...
. He received his Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
under Clarence Irving Lewis
Clarence Irving Lewis
Clarence Irving Lewis , usually cited as C. I. Lewis, was an American academic philosopher and the founder of conceptual pragmatism. First a noted logician, he later branched into epistemology, and during the last 20 years of his life, he wrote much on ethics.-Early years:Lewis was born in...
and Donald C. Williams, and taught at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. 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 ,...
. He served as president of the Metaphysical Society of America
Metaphysical Society of America
The Metaphysical Society of America is a philosophical organization founded by Paul Weiss in 1950 for promoting the study of metaphysics. The society is a member of the American Council of Learned Societies...
in 1973.
Biography
Chisholm graduated from Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. 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 ,...
in 1938 and got his Ph.D. from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in June 1942. He was drafted into the United States Army in July 1942 and did basic training at Fort McClellan
Fort McClellan
Fort McClellan, originally Camp McClellan, was a United States Army post located adjacent to the city of Anniston, Alabama. During World War II, it was one of the largest U.S. Army installations, training an estimated half-million troops...
in Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
. Chisholm administered psychological tests in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and New Haven. In 1943 he married Eleanor Parker, whom he had met as an undergraduate at Brown.
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 Object
Word and Object
Word 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 Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, and a rationalist in the tradition of Russell, G. E. Moore, and Franz Brentano
Franz Brentano
Franz 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-realism
Anti-realism
In analytic philosophy, the term anti-realism is used to describe any position 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...
, behaviorism
Behaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...
, and relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
. 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 Reid
Thomas Reid
The Reverend Thomas Reid FRSE , was a religiously trained 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 libertarianism
Libertarianism (metaphysics)
Libertarianism 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. In particular, libertarianism, which is an incompatibilist position, argues that free will is logically incompatible with a...
. 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 Lewis
David Kellogg Lewis
David Kellogg Lewis was an 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 skeptical
Skepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
arguments of David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
), and an objective ethics of requirements similar to that of W. D. Ross
W. D. Ross
Sir 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 mereology
Mereology
In philosophy and mathematical logic, mereology treats parts and the wholes they form...
.
Chisholm greatly influenced a number of his graduate students and colleagues, including Richard Taylor
Richard Taylor (philosopher)
Richard Taylor was an American philosopher renowned for his dry wit and his contributions to metaphysics. He was also an internationally-known beekeeper....
, Jaegwon Kim
Jaegwon Kim
Jaegwon Kim is a Korean 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,...
, Keith Lehrer
Keith Lehrer
Keith 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 Sosa
Ernest Sosa
Ernest Sosa is an American philosopher primarily interested in epistemology. He 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...
, Peter D. Klein
Peter D. Klein
Peter David Klein is a professor of philosophy and chair of the department at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Peter Klein received a BA at Earlham College, and a PhD from Yale University...
, Fred Feldman
Fred Feldman (Philosopher)
Fred 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 Bringsjord
Selmer Bringsjord
Selmer Bringsjörd 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...
, Dean Zimmerman
Dean Zimmerman
Dean Zimmerman is an American 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...
, Joseph Boyle and Bernard K. Symonds.
Direct attribution theory of reference
Chisholm argued for the primacy of the mentalMind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
over linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
intentionality
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...
, 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 Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
's "indirect speech act" (1975) and Paul Grice
Paul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice , usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H...
's "implicature
Implicature
Implicature is a technical term in the pragmatics subfield of linguistics, coined by H. P. Grice, which refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even though neither expressed nor strictly implied by the utterance...
" (1975), in addition to entailment
Entailment
In logic, entailment is a relation between a set of sentences and a sentence. Let Γ be a set of one or more sentences; let S1 be the conjunction of the elements of Γ, and let S2 be a sentence: then, Γ entails S2 if and only if S1 and not-S2 are logically inconsistent...
.