Internal Difficulties in Defending the Method of Cases, and the Claim of Continuity (original) (raw)

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2017

Abstract

The chapter examines Timothy Williamson’s and Herman Cappelen’s attempts to defend the method of cases in its traditional, “armchair” form, against the “cognitive diversity” and “calibration” objections. The aim of the chapter is to continue the work of Chapter One of exposing the internal difficulties that have presented themselves for those wishing to defend the method, and to begin to work toward establishing the book’s basic contention that the method of cases rests on substantive and (therefore) challengeable presuppositions about language. More specifically, the chapter argues that Williamson’s and Cappelen’s defense of the method rests entirely on the claim of continuity between our employment of words outside philosophy and what we do with them when we ask the theorist’s questions and give our answers to them.

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