Abstract

This is a critical study of C. I. Lewis' Epistemology and metaphysics from an original existential-phenomenological point of view. The study is critical of Lewis' sense-data theory, his implicit representationalism or phenomenalism, and his idea that meanings are essentially analytic definitions. The study is critical as well of Lewis' explanation of lived experience as a constructed result of given data on the one hand and chosen analytic definitions on the other, which are then to be composed into predictions stretching into the future. The phenomonological viewpoint developed defends a basically direct understanding of the world and other persons and holds whole objects to be primary in perception. ;In the second half of the study Lewis' epistemological difficulties are traced to the basic ontology or world hypothesis which his view presupposes; this is found to be at odds with Lewis' own idea of metaphysical or categorial structures as pragmatic a priori adoptions. Considering our criticisms of Lewis' position, we are led to consider the question of the ultimate grounds from which one philosophical view may hope to criticize another, especially when each view rests on respectively different and conflicting categorial presuppositions. It is argued, in the end, that only a properly worked out phenomenological account of experience, thinking, and especially persons in relation , may enable one to make intelligible the possibility of philosophical systems in conflict at all. ;The study includes, in contrast to C. I. Lewis' presupposed world hypothesis, a sketch of the uniquely different world hypothesis which an existential-phenomenological point of view presupposes