What the World Is Made of

Abstract

2.1 The external and the internal world—There is more in the universe than objects and states of consciousness—Animal and human certitudes—Sosa on “animal knowledge” and “reflective knowledge”—What is peculiar to man: cultural historicity as a meta-competence. 2.2 History as science versus history as worldview—Unreliability of our information sources—Distinction between strong and weak knowledge: how the immediacy or scientificity of strong knowledge contrasts with the testimonial character of weak knowledge—Differences to Malcolm’s view—Russell on the acquaintance with “historical knowledge” and the case of scientific testimony—Epistemological precision: Quine’s radical empiricism—Immediate, mediate and scientific knowledge as interconnected: their problematic heterogeneity—Personal perspectives and interpersonal praxis—The world primarily consists of states of affairs, which are independent of our subjectivity. 2.3 Relevance of the ontological intertwinedness suggested by the early Wittgenstein : the concepts of “case”, “fact” and “state of affairs”—Lewis’ understanding of what facts are—The difficulties posed by the Tractarian solipsistic-realistic representation—Looking for a halfway between extreme internalism and naïve materialism—Each event in the world necessarily exceeds the many possible representations (true or false) that construe it so-and-so—The world as depository of what exists or has existed—DeRose and the variable truth-conditionality that seems specific to a contextualist approach.