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The Problem of the Criterion. By R. M.

Chisholm. Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press, 1973. Pp. 38. \$2.50

Gunars Tomsons

Dialogue / Volume 14 / Issue 03 / September 1975, pp 536 - 538

DOI: 10.1017/S0012217300026408, Published online: 05 May 2010

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Gunars Tomsons (1975). Dialogue, 14, pp 536-538 doi:10.1017/
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 COMPTES REND US

disease worth considering? None on the implications of deter-

minism for the treatment of anti-social behaviour? What about
the works of the existential psychiatrists, such as Glasser and
Ramirez (who have studied and treated juvenile delinquents and
narcotics addicts, respectively)? This whole movement in psy-
chiatry, the hallmark of which is an emphasis on personal
responsibility, is entirely neglected by Flew. It is also lamentable
that Flew's effort to address non-philosophers philosophically
often fall into prolixity and turgidness, and that he cannot refrain
from occasional and snide put-downs: Dr. Jahoda and her col-
leagues are said to experience "the hankering... for some robustly
North American accentuation of the positive" (p. 27); and M.D.
Wolfgang, a sociologist who argues that criminology must take
account not only of psychic determinants of criminal behaviour,
but also social ones, is dismissed as merely "urging that the
members of his own particular academic craft union should also
have a cut of the action" (p. 131, note 163). Flew provides a les-
son here on how not to win friends for philosophy.

Queen's University MICHAEL FOX

THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION. By R. M. Chisholm.

Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1973. Pp. 38. $2.50
This is the 1973 Aquinas Lecture delivered at Marquette
University. It discusses a basic methodological problem in epis-
temology, one that some philosophers have seen not only as basic
but as having no solution, thereby leading them to argue that a
theory of knowledge is impossible.
The genesis of the problem can be found in the belief that an
adequate epistemological theory must produce testing procedures
for distinguishing between the presence and the absence of
knowledge (between good beliefs and bad beliefs, as Chisholm
puts it). It has sometimes been argued that one cannot know
whether a proposed testing procedure is adequate unless one
can test the testing procedure against some items of knowledge;
yet one cannot know whether one has an item of knowledge
unless one knows the correct testing procedure. Consequently
we have a procedural problem on our hands.
The problem of the criterion was discussed by Chisholm
previously in Theory of Knowledge (Prentice Hall, 1966). He now
presents the issue in easily accessible language, and offers a
solution within the context of a simplified account of his own

536
 BOOK REVIEWS

theory of evidence. He now chooses the concept of epistemic

preferability for defining epistemic terms rather than the concept
of one belief being more reasonable than another. The latter
concept functioned as an undefined one in Theory of Knowledge.
Other changes in the presentation and discussion of the problem
are in focus and emphasis rather than of substance.
Chisholm thinks that there are three distinct ways of dealing
with the problem of the criterion. A particularist assumes that he
has knowledge of some facts and attempts to formulate procedures
for testing purported items of knowledge. Chisholm supports this
solution and interprets the epistemological theories of Thomas
Reid and G. E. Moore as having adopted it. A methodist, however,
assumes that a particular testing procedure is the correct one
and uses it in testing purported items of knowledge. Locke,
Hume, and many unnamed empiricists are said to have proceeded
in this manner. The sceptic argues that it is impossible to show
that purported knowledge is in fact knowledge, on the grounds
that both particularism and methodism beg the question.
I favour Chisholm's approach to the methodological problem,
but I have some doubts prompted by his claims concerning
methodism. The methodist is said to be one who embraces a
testing procedure without having provided reasons for doing so.
Thus, in every form of methodism "the criterion is very broad
and far-reaching and at the same time completely arbitrary"
(p. 17, my italics). But neither Locke nor Hume started with
an arbitrary selection of a testing procedure. A scientific causal
theory of perception, and the observations supporting it (and
lengthy arguments against the possibility of innate principles in
Locke's case) have been implicitly and explicitly used by both
in their arguments in favour of the empiricist criterion. If
methodism is characterized as involving a completely arbitrary
choice of a criterion (i.e., testing procedures), then the class of
methodist philosophers may turn out to be an empty one.
The sceptic's position is rejected by Chisholm on the grounds
that one does not have to apply a test in order to know that
we have perceptual and memory knowledge, and the same grounds
are used to defend the particularist position. With this I can
readily agree, since I believe that a theory of knowledge should
define and explain knowledge, taking its existence as a datum.
However, I find Chisholm's concluding paragraphs concerning the
problem of the criterion unsatisfactory, since one is left with the
impression that the positions of the particularist and the methodist
are not quite rational because their arguments beg the question,

537
 COMPTES RENDUS

though one is also told that the position of the particularist is

more reasonable than either that of the sceptic or the methodist.

Lahehead University GUNARS TOMSONS

LA PHILOSOPH1E DE L'AMOUR CHEZ RAYMOND LULLE.

Par Louis Sala-Molins. Preface de Vladimir Jankelevitch, Paris
et La Haye, Mouton, 1974, 15 x 23 cm, 304 p. Prix: 48 F.
Une substantielle preface de Vladimir Jankelevitch souligne,
dans un beau style lullien, l'interet des ouvrages de Lulle et de
son interprete. Le prefacier et l'auteur ne cachent point leur
sympathie pour un penseur original et puissant, rationaliste et
mystique, procureur des infideles, temoin de la rencontre de trois
cultures — arabe, juive, chretienne — et dont 1'ouverture s'oppo-
sait au courant inquisitorial. Le savant Catalan fut le premier
europeen a conceptualiser en philosophic theologie et science
dans une langue «vulgaire» — et de surcroit en poete. Sa pen-
see se resume en deux mots: Agentia, l'agir qui a primaute sur
l'etre; Amantia, l'activite amoureuse. Ces deux themes qui s'en-
trelacent font de Lulle un precurseur de maints philosophes et
mystiques posterieurs. En Dieu, l'agir implique la predominance
du trinitarisme, cependant que la diversite extrinseque de cet agir
dans la finitude s'opere par des dignites, telles que Bonte, Gran-
deur, Eternite, Pouvoir, Sagesse, Volonte, Vertu, Verite. Louis
Sala-Molins s'interesse davantage a la phenomenologie lullienne de
la demarche de Tame, dont l'essentiel est \ajoie. Cette philosophic
de l'affirmation et de la joie annonce Spinoza. La theorie du signe
et la logique du penseur marjoquin presentent un interet actuel.
Les elements primordiaux de l'explication de toutes choses sont
difference et relation. «La difference raymondienne, agentielle,
est qualitative; elle permet de preciser de plus en plus les natures
reelles des choses», cependant que la relation fait apparaitre
necessite et rationalite (p. 218). Le dernier chapitre presente la
grande ascension d'Amour agentiel vers Dieu, Amour qui est
enrichissement de soi. Car Lulle tient a la liberte humaine dans
1'infinie et complexe distance entre homme et Dieu, en qui La Dif-
ference constitue la totalite de I'essence.
La lecture de l'analyse de Sala-Molins est d'autant plus atta-
chante que l'auteur ne dissimule point ses jugements dans cette
redecouverte de l'optimisme lullien. Bien presente, le livre est
agremente de douze reproductions d'illustrations du XIV e siecle.
Universite de Toulouse — Le Mirail JEAN-MARC GABAUDE

538