Abstract

Williams concerns himself with what he calls the "phenomenalist" approach to the philosophical problem of perceptual knowledge. His conception of phenomenalism is rather broader than most. Under that term he gathers all versions of "foundations" empiricism: any epistemology that works its way back to sensorily-given data of any sort, called by any name. His purpose is two-fold: 1) to argue that any theory of perceptual knowledge that is, in his sense, phenomenalistic is radically defective; and 2) to argue that epistemology as traditionally conceived does not constitute a coherent intellectual discipline.