On The Philosophy Of Chisholm

Roderick Chisholm is known as the "American Kant" in history of philosophy, he is one of the most important philosophical thinkers of the twentieth Century,his research involves the fields of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, his works formed a huge system of philosophy.Chisholm is epistemology leader in the twentieth century in American, his thought of epistemology is almost a sign of the times of epistemology of America and even the whole Europe, Studying the Chisholm’s Philosophy is the only way which must be passed of the study of contemporary western theory of knowledge. In this paper, the main aspects of his thought of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics aspectsare analyzed, and his internalism epistemology and initiative theory are questioned.Chisholm’s epistemology possess the characteristic of internalism and fundamentalism. Influenced by the doctrine of Brentano and phenomenon, Chisholm’s philosophy emphasizes the consciousness and the way that things were presented, he recognize "self-presentation" proposition as the basic proposition of experience, it is directly obvious, but the basic proposition of a priori is "axiom" proposition, the knowledge of every one is based on the two kinds of propositions. Knowledge that any one possessed at any time is a structure, in which all parts are mutually connected, mutual support, but the whole structure is built on the foundation of knowledge. He proposed a set of epistemic principle consisting of nine steps, through these epistemic principle, we can see how we can have knowledge about the outside world.Mereological essentialism proposition that we must distinguish between the proper part in a philosophical sense and the part in a loose sense, the proper part as the object is essential for this object, existed certainly in every possible world that the whole existed. Aiming at the problem of Theseus boat, he pointed out that combination of parts existed at one time is ens per se, its existence depends on its own strength, and the ship of Theseus is a ens per alio, its existence depends on other things, therefore, in the strict and philosophical sense, T1is not equal to T3.Chisholm’s initiative theory has two basic concepts, namely, undertaking and causal contribution) and causality. He thinks, each behaviors include this engent’s undertaking, this is a basic concept in his behavior theory According to his initiative theory, if a person has done a action, then there must be an event that is caused directly by the behavior. Also, people causally contribute to his undertaking, and he undertaking something causally contributed to the occurrence of something.This paper presents some questions for his internalism epistemology and initiative theory. First, his epistemology has difficulty in epistemology and metaphysics principle. Chisholm’s way in which distinguish "self-presentation" property is questionable, because that our Introspective ability and his understanding in the epistemic principle is the same reliable is questionable, so he thought that the belief justified originally is indeed doubtful. His ideas about justification is both subjective and objective, however, what is justified Subjectively cannot be guaranteed objectively, hypothesis of the devil and brain-in-a-vat show thatknowledge satisfied most profound standard may in fact be at all wrong.Secondly, his initiative theory insist that, if a person is responsible for his action, then the agevt’s undertaking is directly caused by the agent, but his initiative theory have been unable to explain why a agent at one time caused him to undertaking freely. His nothions of causal contribution insist that agent contribute causally to his undertaking and he undertaking something contribute causally some things to happen, but there is no causal link between events and the reasons of action, only the causal concept is not able to explain why agent will cause his undertaking, also unable to account for how his reasons influenced him to cause that undertaking.