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Shwayder, David S. Griffin, Timothy Lee 2011-05-07T11:55:11Z 2011-05-07T11:55:11Z 10000-01-01 1995 Descartes' First Meditation presents a serious challenge to the theoretical enterprise of science by raising doubts about our belief that we know truths. The various strategies for refuting the challenge, represented by Descartes, Putnam and Austin, have proven unsuccessful, leaving theoretical knowledge without foundations. If we are to provide a secure basis for the scientific enterprise, we must provide an alternative to Descartes' conception of theoretical knowledge. Naturalists attempt to establish such an alternative by appealing to the continuity between the beliefs of other animals and our theoretical beliefs. Thus Hume urges that our beliefs owe to instinct and conditioning. The pragmatic naturalists--Peirce, Dewey, and Quine--may be seen as extending Hume's account to include the use of language and a fortiori, our beliefs that we know truths. However, these efforts fall short because they neglect the reflective character of theoretical knowledge. I argue for a more classical conception of naturalism, according to which theoretical activity as part of our natural history. This account provides an alternative to Descartes' conception of theoretical knowledge, without neglecting the reflective character of such knowledge. Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T11:55:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 9543598.pdf: 9336938 bytes, checksum: a71185ed48a14ee416740bbe75f1a834 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1995 Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding (hding2@illinois.edu) on 2011-05-07T14:34:16Z Item is restricted indefinitely. Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:13:02-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission U of I Only AAI9543598 (UMI)AAI9543598 http://hdl.handle.net/2142/19043 eng Copyright 1995 Griffin, Timothy Lee Philosophy Scepticism and naturalism text Philosophy Philosophy University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dissertation Ph.D.