Roderick M Chisholm (Seekonk, Massachusetts, 1916 – Providence, Rhode Island, 1999) 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.
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, Fred Feldman, Terence Penelhum, Selmer Bringsjord, Dean Zimmerman and Bernard
K. Symonds.
References
- Hahn, L. E., ed., 1997. The Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm (The Library of Living Philosophers). Open Court. Includes
an autobiographical essay and a complete bibliography.
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
