The first-person authority and Nishida’s practical philosophy

Abstract

In this paper, I will examine 1) problems concerning the first-person perspective, especially its epistemological uniqueness, 2) Nishida’s idea of practical reasoning in a concrete historical reality, and 3) the latter’s complex relations to the former. I will first clarify the notion of the first- person authority, and the so-called rationality thesis on this epistemic problem in contemporary analytic philosophy. I will investigate Tyler Burge’s specific argument, and how it is based on a certain picture of practical rationality. I will then examine Nishida’s idea of an“inference,” more specifically, his notion of a universal of syllogistic inference( 推 論 式 的一般者). This concept has a few distinct features, but I will focus on its practical aspect. Nishida explicates the concept’s phenomenal complexity, examining an“inference”both as a logical necessitation of reason, and as a practical deliberation in a historical reality. The former is called its “constitutive” aspect, while the latter is its“intuitive”aspect. Examination of this latter aspect leads to his sceptic argument, which seriously questions assumptions of the rationality thesis on the first-person authority. I will also argue that Nishida’s ideas concerning “syllogistic inferences” are closely related to his noumenal self (叡智的自己), or noumenal world (叡智的世界).