By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
We need to distinguish between philosophical assumptions and philosophical presuppositions.
An assumption is a belief or theory taken for granted and built upon as a premise or ground of one's thinking about something else. On the other hand, a presupposition is a necessary condition of the truth or meaningfulness of some sentence.
Thus a philosophical assumption upon which one's thinking is built will be presupposed by that thinking. But not all philosophical presuppositions make their entry into our thinking via assumption. Those that do not are the basic ones that are involved in our primary ways of experiencing, thinking, and talking and that, therefore, provide the ultimate touchstones for philosophical reflection. Since they have not entered the fabric of experience and thought by assumption, they cannot be rejected because they are inconsistent with some philosophical assumption. On the contrary, whenever such inconsistency arises, so much the worse for the philosophical assumption. Philosophical reflection must be responsible, first of all, to the philosophical presuppositions of ordinary discourse.
12 July 1996
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