Basic content and experience

pp. 77-95

in: Joseph Mendola, Human thought, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

Basic content is concrete content rooted in experience. This suggests a form of empiricism. But it is a severely chastened form. This account deploys an enriched conception of experience, and the expansive list of content generation operations surveyed in the last chapter. Still, there are important similarities between my view and traditional empiricism. Traditional empiricism held that experience plays a crucial role in generating thought contents, but nevertheless that we can think of more concrete things than those we in fact experience. Likewise, I believe that while all content is rooted in experience, even basic content is not exhausted by it. Basic contents consist solely of the sorts of elements we can experience, but not merely of those we do experience.