Roderick Milton Chisholm (; November 27, 1916 – January 19, 1999) was an
American philosopher known for his work on
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epis ...
,
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
,
free will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...
,
value theory, and the
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.cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-epi ...
.
The ''
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' remarks that he "is widely regarded as one of the most creative, productive, and influential American philosophers of the 20th Century."
Life and career
Chisholm graduated from
Brown University in 1938 and received his
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in 1942 under
Clarence Irving Lewis
Clarence Irving Lewis (April 12, 1883 – February 3, 1964), usually cited as C. I. Lewis, was an American academic philosopher. He is considered the progenitor of modern modal logic and the founder of conceptual pragmatism. First a noted logic ...
and
D. C. Williams. He was drafted into the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
in July 1942 and did basic training at
Fort McClellan
Fort McClellan, originally Camp McClellan, is a decommissioned 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 tr ...
in
Alabama
(We dare defend our rights)
, anthem = "Alabama"
, image_map = Alabama in United States.svg
, seat = Montgomery
, LargestCity = Huntsville
, LargestCounty = Baldwin County
, LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham
, area_total_km2 = 135,765 ...
. Chisholm administered
psychological tests in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and
New Haven. In 1943 he married Eleanor Parker, whom he had met as an undergraduate at Brown. He spent his academic career at
Brown University and served as president of the
Metaphysical Society of America
The Metaphysical Society of America (MSA) is a philosophical organization founded by Paul Weiss in 1950. As stated in its constitution, "The purpose of the Metaphysical Society of America is the study of reality." The society is a member of the ...
in 1973.
He was editor of ''
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research'' from 1980 until 1986.
Chisholm trained many distinguished philosophers, including
Selmer Bringsjord,
Fred Feldman,
Keith Lehrer,
James Francis Ross,
Richard Taylor, and
Dean Zimmerman. He also had a significant influence on many colleagues, including
Jaegwon Kim
Jaegwon Kim (September 12, 1934 – November 27, 2019) was a Korean-American philosopher. At the time of his death, Kim was an emeritus professor of philosophy at Brown University. He also taught at several other leading American universities d ...
and
Ernest Sosa
Ernest Sosa (born June 17, 1940) is an American philosopher primarily interested in epistemology. Since 2007 he has been Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, but he spent most of his career at Brown University.
Educa ...
.
Philosophical work
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'' is a 1960 work by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, in which the author expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in ''From a Logical Point of View'' (1953), and reformulates some of his earlier arguments ...
''. Chisholm was a metaphysical
Platonist
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at l ...
in the tradition of
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
, and a
rationalist in the tradition of Russell,
G. E. Moore
George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...
, and
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters ...
; he objected to Quine's
anti-realism
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument ...
,
behaviorism, and
relativism
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. Ther ...
.
Chisholm defended the possibility of
empirical knowledge
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
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
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...
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
Property is the ownership of land, resources, improvements or other tangible objects, or intellectual property.
Property may also refer to:
Mathematics
* Property (mathematics)
Philosophy and science
* Property (philosophy), in philosophy an ...
, and believing them is a matter of self-attributing them. (A similar view was developed independently by
David Kellogg Lewis
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
, 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, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...
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
Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history cov ...
,
Medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
,
Modern, and even
Continental
Continental may refer to:
Places
* Continent, the major landmasses of Earth
* Continental, Arizona, a small community in Pima County, Arizona, US
* Continental, Ohio, a small town in Putnam County, US
Arts and entertainment
* ''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.
Direct attribution theory of reference
Chisholm argued for the primacy of the
mental over
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
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 indirectly 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:
:(1) a man M is in bed B with a woman W, namely, M-B-W, or
:(2) 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
In the philosophy of language and linguistics, speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the kimchi; could you please pass it to me?" ...
" (1975) and
Paul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice (13 March 1913 – 28 August 1988), usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language. He is best known for his theory of implicature and the cooperative pri ...
's "
implicature
In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...
" (1975), in addition to
entailment
Logical consequence (also entailment) is a fundamental concept in logic, which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically ''follows from'' one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one ...
.
"Chisholming"
Stylistically, Chisholm was known for formulating definitions and subsequently revising them in the light of counterexamples. This led to a joke definition of a new verb:
While intended as a joke, the term has found some use in serious philosophical papers (for example, Kevin Meeker's "Chisholming away at Plantinga's critique of epistemic deontology").
Persistence and Identity
In his book ''Person and Object,''
Chisholm endorses a mereological essentialism for everyday objects such as tables and chairs. He distinguishes two ways of thinking about identity of such objects and the way in which they may lose or gain parts over time: a "strict philosophical sense" and a "loose sense." In a strict philosophical sense, we must say that everyday vulgar objects do not persist through even the slightest change of parts. This is a strict
mereological essentialist view. If any part of an everyday or 'vulgar' object is lost or gained over time, the object would cease to exist. (See Chisholm'
Stanford Encyclopedia entryfor more about vulgar objects). The object from before is now a new and different one. Chisholm argues that these vulgar objects persist through time only in a philosophically loose sense. If we consider these objects carefully, they are better understood as merely feigning identity, what Chisholm calls "ontological parasites" or ''ens per alio.'' If we consider a table in which we change out individual parts each day for a week, we may at the end of the week say there has only been one table in front of us; however, this is only the loose way of talking. The single 'table' we are referring to in that sentence is really only (Chisholm borrowing a phrase from Hume) a 'succession of related objects.' The single "table" we refer to plays loose with identity. In a strict philosophical sense, if the table has had seven changes to its parts, there have been seven different tables. We may innocently discuss much of the world around us as persisting through change in the loose sense, but when we consider strict philosophical puzzles, we must not be fooled by ontological parasites.
Chisholm considers this theory with the famous philosophical puzzle of
The Ship of Theseus. According to mereological essentialism, once a single plank of the ship is removed, the ship has become a different object. We may continue to talk about the Ship of Theseus as if it persisted, but this would only be in the loose sense discussed above. Chisholm solves the puzzle by saying that, in the strict and philosophical sense, there is no persistence between the mereologically different objects. Note the possible implication for the "reconstructed ship" that is often a part of the thought experiment. If every single part of the original ship were saved perfectly, so that they were materially identical, and rebuilt next to the new ship, Chisholm's mereological essentialism may lead him to agree that this is ''the'' original Ship of Theseus.
However, Chisholm's mereological essentialism does not extend to persons. Persons, unlike everyday vulgar material objects like ships and tables, persist in the strict and philosophical sense, even when they change their parts. This runs counter to his mereological essentialism in vulgar objects. He provides various arguments for why there is such a dividing line between the two and why persons are special. One argument is from the first hand experience of the unity of consciousness.
He argues that these evidences, first person reporting and consciousness, are strong and should be innocent until proven guilty. He offers thought experiments as evidence including the surgery example and the use of Leibniz's Law (
Identity of indiscernibles
The identity of indiscernibles is an ontological principle that states that there cannot be separate objects or entities that have all their properties in common. That is, entities ''x'' and ''y'' are identical if every predicate possessed by ''x'' ...
).
The surgery thought experiment (attributed to
Charles Sanders Peirce) runs like this. Imagine you could save a substantial amount of money by undergoing surgery without an anesthesia. Instead, you will be given drugs afterwards that cause amnesia of the whole experience. You ask your friends and family what to do and they encourage you to skip the anesthesia and save the money. They have come up with a solution to help you avoid the pain of undergoing the surgery fully aware:
"Have no fear,” they will say. “Take the cheaper operation and we will take care of everything. We will lay down the convention that the man on the table is not you, Jones, but is Smith.” What ''ought'' to be obvious to you, it seems to me, is that the laying down of this convention should have no effect at all upon your decision. For you may still ask, “But won’t that person be I?” and, it seems to me, the question has an answer.
Chisholm's point is that our identity and persistence as person is not like the mere convention of the loose persistence of vulgar objects. Regardless of the convention, you will still experience the pain of the surgery. This is meant to strengthen his position that person's have strict philosophical persistence and are ''ens per se'' and not merely ''ens per alio.'' Persons are entities in themselves; vulgar objects are merely entities through another, or by entities by mere convention. Hence, if this thought experiment provides the intuition that we are not mere conventions, then mereological essentialism must be false for persons.
A second thought experiment is modal. It asks whether I, as a person, can persist with my identity through the loss of a hand.
The answer according to first person reporting and the experience of consciousness is yes. If I have survived the loss of my hand (a mereological part) then mereological essentialism cannot hold for persons. This applies to Leibniz's Law in the following way. If my body were identical to its collection of parts then the collection of parts could not survive the loss of my hand. Leibniz's Law therefore implies that either I must not merely be the collection of parts that was my body or I am no longer myself. The evidence of consciousness rules out the latter; therefore, mereological essentialism must be false for persons. If mereological essentialism held for persons, then I would have been annihilated along with my hand.
Bibliography
* ''Perceiving: A Philosophical Study'' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 1957.
* ''Realism and the Background of Phenomenology'' (Free Press), 1960.
* ''Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study'' (London: G. Allen & Unwin), 1976.
* ''Essays on the Philosophy of Roderick M. Chisholm'' (ed. R.M. Chisholm and Ernest Sosa. Amsterdam: Rodopi), 1979.
* ''The First Person: An Essay on Reference and Intentionality'' (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press
The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018.
Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its boo ...
), 1981.
* ''The Foundations of Knowing'' (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1982.
* ''Brentano and Meinong Studies'' (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press), 1982.
* ''Brentano and Intrinsic Value'' (New York: Cambridge University Press), 1986.
* ''Roderick M. Chisholm'' (ed. Radu J. Bogdan. Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company), 1986.
* ''On Metaphysics'' (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1989.
* ''Theory of Knowledge'' (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall), 1st ed. 1966, 2nd ed. 1977, 3rd ed. 1989.
* "The Nature of Epistemic Principles," ''Noûs'' 24: 209–16, 1990.
* "On the Simplicity of the Soul," ''Philosophical Perspectives'' 5: 157–81, 1991.
* "Agents, Causes, and Events: The Problem of Free Will" in: Timothy O'Connor, ed. ''Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will'' (New York: Oxford University Press): 95–100, 1995.
* ''A Realistic Theory of Categories: An Essay on Ontology'' (New York: Cambridge University Press), 1996.
See also
*
American philosophy
*
List of American philosophers
Notes
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.
* "Roderick M. Chisholm" (
Dean Zimmerman,
Richard Foley), in Companion to Analytic Philosophy, ed. by
David Sosa and
Al Martinich (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2001), pp. 281–295
*"On the Simplicity of the Soul," ''Philosophical Perspectives'' 5: 157–81, 1991.
*''Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study'' (London: G. Allen & Unwin), 1976.
External links
*
Information Philosopher on Roderick Chisholm on Free Will*
On Roderick M. Chisholm by Matthew Davidson (preprint of article published in ''
Philosophy Now
''Philosophy Now'' is a bimonthly philosophy magazine sold from news-stands and book stores in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada; it is also available on digital devices, and online. It aims to appeal to the wider public, ...
'']
"CHISHOLM, RODERICK M."by Richard Foley (preprint of entry in the ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Cabanis - Destutt de Tracy'')
Chisholm: Epistemology ''
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chisholm, Roderick
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