Abstract
Global doubt arises from the false move of judging that perception, language, and culture are distorting filters. The knower’s touch necessarily falsifies—an epistemic Midas Touch. Sweeping skepticism saps public purpose. Rationalism, empiricism, and Kant’s critical philosophy presume a purist split between subjective and objective. What the subject contributes—epistemic value-added—is factored from the objective, leaving it unknowable. For Hume, sensations are ordered by the mind’s sentiments and customs. For Kant, the given is ordered by the forms of our sensibility and the mind’s categories. W. V. O. Quine rejects as dogmas the analytic/synthetic distinction and factoring linguistic from empirical aspects of statements. Donald Davidson rejects Quine’s separating conceptual scheme from “sensory stimulation.” In eliminating that third dogma, Davidson rejects pure subjectivity and returns to the discourse of truth and error. Like Hegel, Davidson rejects picturing mind as a falsifying filter, the dogma of the epistemic Midas Touch.