¡Puede el mundo desempeñar un papel espistémico en la justificación de la creencia? Rorty, Davidson y McDowell en debate

DANIEL KALPOKAS

REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE FILOSOFíA

Centro de Investigaciones Filosóficas

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2004 vol. 30 p. 37 - 64

0325-0725

This paper faces the following question: can the world have an epistemic role in the justification of beliefs? In order to answer that question, it is examined the debate between Rorty and Davidson, on one hand, and McDowell?s ideas, on the other. It is held that Davidsonian and Rortyan coherentism can not explain how our beliefs acquire their empirical content. That is showed by analysing the Davidsonian externalist conception of meaning and belief and his answer to the standard criticism of coherentism: that many coherent systems, incompatible among them, are possible. It is asserted, against Davidson and Rorty, that without an epistemic link between beliefs and the world that objection can not be refused. It is also held that Rortyan anti-representacionalism, as the Davidsonian coherentism, makes the world unattainable. Finally, it is suggested McDowell?s minimal empiricism, as the pragmatist direct realism, can solve those problems.