Epistemic Legitimacy: Experiential Unity, First Principles, and Strategy K

Abstract

This chapter discusses Hume's empiricist commitments. Since all knowledge must be derived from experience—in Hume's Concept Empiricist version, all ideas must be derivable from impressions—there are concepts which we take ourselves to have but actually cannot have, and, correctively, there are ‘every-must’ judgments that we in fact do make but cannot legitimately make. In contrast to Hume, Kant explicitly distinguishes sensory contents from cognitive judgments. Kant's insight is hardly likely to seem helpful or illuminating. Nevertheless, it does suffice to suggest a further strategy for coming to grips with the problem of first principles and the synthetic a priori and Kant's transcendental deduction relies precisely on Strategy K. Such an application of Strategy K would then give us a new way of bringing reason to bear on questions of epistemic legitimacy, but one that did not presuppose any new form of non-logical and non-evidential epistemic grounding relation.