Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Permissivism is the view that for some body of evidence E there may be more than one rational doxastic attitude that inquirers may take towards some proposition. This paper examines the aims and processes involved in doing the history of philosophy. It argues that the complexities involved in the process of doing the history of philosophy motivates hermeneutical permissivism. Section 2 of the paper discusses and motivates complexity. Section 3 focuses on a particular kind of complexity that historians face, namely, the problem of theory choice. Section 4 argues that complexity motivates permissivism. Section 5 argues for the value of thinking about the task of the historian of philosophy as contributing to the landscape of plausible interpretations. The paper demonstrates how this way of thinking about our discipline may be productive and useful for historians of philosophy with differing aims.
Source: Metaphilosophy
DOI: 10.1111/meta.12712
Author: Daryl Ooi
Institution: National University of Singapore
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4405419806