In this article, I am intent on rehabilitating Strawson's overall anti-sceptical strategy. First, I focus on his earlier attempt, which ignited the debate about the adequacy of transcendental arguments against the sceptic. I present Stroud's main reservation that Strawson's viewpoint is unworkable because it does not take into consideration the view of the external world upon which the sceptic is based in order to challenge our knowledge claims. I then focus on Strawson's later attempt, which is based upon a Humean-like (...) naturalistic strategy. I show that his naturalism is intractable for two reasons: first because it reproduces the proof structure of transcendental arguments and ends up employing a rational proof to counter rational proofs; and second, because it matches the sceptic's advice that we should live according to our natural inclinations without ever trying to justify our beliefs. In the last section, I claim that it is possible to rehabilitate transcendental arguments as sound anti-sceptical proofs if we argue for the senselessness of the idea of thing in itself completely apart from our powers of conceptualisation. (shrink)

Although Whitehead’s particular style of philosophizing--looking at traditional philosophical problems in light of recent scientific advances--was part of a trend that began with the scientific revolutions in the early 20th century and continues today, he was marginalized in 20th century philosophy because of his outspoken defense of what he was doing as “metaphysics.” Metaphysics, for Whitehead, is a cross-disciplinary hermeneutic responsible for coherently integrating the perspectives of the special sciences with one another and with everyday experience. The program of such (...) a meta-discipline is challenging to philosophical orthodoxy because it enlarges, rather than narrows, the range of empirical evidence that philosophy must acknowledge. This places Whitehead’s philosophy in a perennial tradition that seeks to resolve fundamental antinomies through synthesis and reconciliation rather than reduction or elimination. (shrink)