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Charles Travis on Truth and Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2020

Martijn Wallage Open the ORCID record for Martijn Wallage [Opens in a new window]
Martijn Wallage*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
*
Email: martijn.wallage@uni-leipzig.de
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Abstract

Charles Travis has developed a distinction between “the historical” (the sensible world) and “the conceptual” (thoughts and concepts), which underlies his influential contributions to the philosophy of language and perception. The distinction is based on the observation that there are, for any thought, indefinitely many different circumstances that would render it true. The generality of thoughts and concepts contrasts with the particularity of the sensible world. I challenge the assumption that what exhibits such generality cannot belong to the sensible world. I also defend a version of the claim that perception involves the exercise of conceptual capacities.

Keywords

TruthperceptionconceptualismCharles TravisJ. L. AustinMyth of the Givenscheme-content dualism
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 7 , October 2020 , pp. 878 - 889
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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