Philosophy Quote for the day

[arynash]

Scanlon:

...I will presuppose the idea of a reason, and presuppose that my readers are rational in the minimal but fundamental sense that I will presently explain.

Wow. Is ti just me, or does that come off as amazingly pretentious?

Comments

[philosophyjeff]

It doesn't sound pretentious to my ear. Often one needs to bypass certain objections in order to get at a philosophical point. In my own work, I often have the need to say things like "I will simply assume that skepticism is false and so we do often know the things we take ourselves to know." Sometimes one wants to make a point about everybody's psychology or conceptual framework, but one doesn't mean for the point to cover the insane or the mentally deficient. That may be what Scanlon had in mind.