INTRODUCTION

Epistemology, as Charles Taylor understands it, is a discipline that arises along with the subject/object ontology introduced by Descartes. This ontology understands the subject as a self-sufficient mind related to the objects in the world by way of internal mental states that in some way represent those objects but in no essential way depend on them. The radical gap between what is inside the mind and what is outside in the world must be mediated in order for a subject to have knowledge of the world, and epistemology is the study of this mediation.

In opposition to this Cartesian picture, Taylor describes the positive role our bodily skills and taken-for-granted background practices play in making sense of the world and in putting us in direct touch with everyday reality. But, at the same time, he stresses the negative role our modern taken-for-granted background framework plays in blinding philosophers to these phenomena. This blindness is characteristic not only of earlier versions of epistemology such as sense data theory, Kant's scheme-content analytic, and Husserl's phenomenological account of the mediational role of intentional content; it also casts doubt, Taylor seeks to show, on the claims of contemporary thinkers such as Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty, to have overcome epistemology. According to Taylor, these philosophers are still thinking within the inner/outer picture of our epistemic situation.