Transcendental Arguments in the Theory of Content: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford on 16 May 1989

Christopher Peacocke is Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy. This is his inaugural lecture, delivered before the University of Oxford on 16 May 1989. After paying tribute to his predecessor, Professor Peacocke notes certain affinities between the theory of content on which he has been working in the past few years and Kant's views. He goes on to argue that sound trancedental arguments can be validated within the theory of content he endorses. The argument proceeds from the nature of the representational content of experience. This content should be given in part by a spatial type, the type which the experience represents as instantiated. The question then arises of what it is for one spatial type rather than another to be involved in an experience's content. He argues that a correct answer to this question must mention the potential role of the experience in the production of actions explicable under spatial descriptions. This answer is developed in a way which rules out the possibility that all actual experiences are hallucinatory. The lecture concludes by applying the ideas underlying this argument to the work of some prominent recent philosophers.