Hélène Metzger on Precursors: A Historian and Philosopher of Science Confronts Her Evil Demon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Chimisso ◽  
Nick Jardine
Keyword(s):  
Evil Demon

The Evil Demon argument as based on closure plus meta-coherence

Synthese ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 195 (11) ◽  
pp. 4703-4731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Baptiste Guillon
Keyword(s):  
Evil Demon

The Plain Inquirer’s Plain Evidence against the Global Skeptical Scenarios

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Leite
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Epistemic Circularity ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
The World ◽  
Treatment Considerations ◽  
Limited Demand ◽  
Epistemic Asymmetry ◽  
Background Context ◽  
Rule Out

Penelope Maddy claims that we can have no evidence that we are not being globally deceived by an evil demon. However, Maddy’s Plain Inquirer holds that she has good evidence for a wide variety of claims about the world and her relation to it. She rejects the broadly Cartesian idea that she can’t be entitled to these claims, or have good evidence for them, or know them, unless she can provide a defense of them that starts from nowhere. She likewise rejects the more limited demand for a defense that makes use only of considerations that do not concern the world outside of her mind. She allows that some considerations about the world can be appealed to perfectly appropriately as fully adequate evidence in favor of other considerations about the world. So why can’t the Plain Inquirer rule out global skeptical hypotheses by producing evidence against them that depends upon other considerations about the world? Is there good reason for singling out global skeptical hypotheses such as I am not being deceived by an evil demon as requiring a different kind of treatment? Considerations about epistemic asymmetry and epistemic circularity, as well as Wittgensteinian considerations about the relation between evidence and the real-world and human background context, all lead to the conclusion that there is not.

Underdetermination and Perceptual Skepticism

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Michael Bergmann
Keyword(s):  
Relative Strength ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
New Evil Demon Problem ◽  
Underdetermination Argument

This chapter motivates narrowing the book’s focus to a particular kind of argument for perceptual skepticism (the underdetermination argument) and to two main kinds of response to it (inferential anti-skepticism and noninferential anti-skepticism). The first half of the chapter sets aside skeptical arguments (e.g. closure-based arguments) and responses to them (e.g. contextualism, contrastivism, and closure-denial) that overestimate skepticism’s appeal by taking for granted that we don’t know that skeptical hypotheses are false. It also sets aside disjunctivist and “knowledge first” responses to skepticism, both of which underestimate skepticism’s appeal by rejecting the intuitions supporting the New Evil Demon Problem. The second half of the chapter highlights the relative strength of underdetermination arguments for perceptual skepticism, according to which our sensory evidence underdetermines the truth of our perceptual beliefs based on it. This underdetermination problem requires us to be able to infer the likely truth of our perceptual beliefs via good arguments from our sensory evidence, if our perceptual beliefs are to be justified. Given that we aren’t able to make such inferences, the underdetermination argument concludes that our perceptual beliefs aren’t justified. The inferential anti-skeptic’s response insists that we are able to make such inferences. The noninferential anti-skeptic’s response says that, despite the underdetermination problem, our perceptual beliefs can be justified even if we aren’t able to infer their likely truth via good arguments from our sensory evidence.

Internalism and externalism in epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Alston
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
Reliability Test ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Forming Process ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
Positive View ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

The internalism–externalism distinction is usually applied to the epistemic justification of belief. The most common form of internalism (accessibility internalism) holds that only what the subject can easily become aware of (by reflection, for example) can have a bearing on justification. We may think of externalism as simply the denial of this constraint. The strong intuitive appeal of internalism is due to the sense that we should be able to determine whether we are justified in believing something just by carefully considering the question, without the need for any further investigation. Then there is the idea that we can successfully reply to sceptical doubts about the possibility of knowledge or justified beliefs only if we can determine the epistemic status of our beliefs without presupposing anything about which sceptical doubts could be raised – the external world for example. The main objections to internalism are: (1) It assumes an unrealistic confidence in the efficacy of armchair reflection, which is often not up to surveying our entire repertoire of beliefs and other possible grounds of belief and determining the extent to which they support a given belief. (2) If we confine ourselves to what we can ascertain on reflection, there is no guarantee that the beliefs that are thus approved as justified are likely to be true. And the truth-promoting character of justification is the main source of its value. Externalism lifts this accessibility constraint, but in its most general sense it embodies no particular positive view. The most common way of further specifying externalism is reliabilism, the view that a belief is justified if and only if it was produced and/or sustained by a reliable process, one that would produce mostly true beliefs in the long run. This is a form of externalism because whether a particular belief-forming process is reliable is not something we can ascertain just on reflection. The main objections to externalism draw on internalist intuitions: (1) If the world were governed by an evil demon who sees to it that our beliefs are generally false, even though we have the kind of bases for them we do in fact have, then our beliefs would still be justified, even though formed unreliably. (2) If a reliable clairvoyant (ones who ‘sees’ things at a great distance) forms beliefs on this basis without having any reason for thinking that they are reliably formed, those beliefs would not be justified, even though they pass the reliability test.

Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mylan Engel
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Truth Condition ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Externalist Theory ◽  
Process Reliabilism ◽  
Justification Condition ◽  
Internal States ◽  
New Evil Demon Problem ◽  
The Gettier Problem

The internalism/externalism distinction in epistemology applies to both theories of justification and theories of knowledge. The distinction is most clearly defined for theories of justification. An internalist theory of epistemic justification is any theory that maintains that epistemic justifiedness is exclusively a function of states internal to the cognizer. Externalism is the denial of internalism. Thus, an externalist theory is any theory that maintains that epistemic justifiedness is at least partly a function of states or factors external to the cognizer, i.e., states or factors outside the cognizer’s ken. There is no unified agreement among internalists as to which internal states are epistemically relevant, and different internalisms emerge based on the subset of internal states deemed relevant. (See Internalism and Justification for details.) Internalists typically maintain that justification is a normative notion in the belief-guiding/regulative sense. Internalists also typically maintain that one can tell whether one is justified in believing p simply by reflecting on one’s internal evidence for p. The central internalist intuition, as highlighted by the New Evil Demon Problem is this: There can be no difference in justification without a difference in epistemically relevant internal states. Externalism is motivated by the intuition that epistemic justification must be conceptually connected to truth such that the conditions that make a belief justified also make it objectively probable. Externalists are also typically motivated by the view that children and animals can form justified beliefs, while failing to satisfy the internalist’s intellectualist requirements for justification. The dominant externalist theory of justification is process reliabilism, a simplified version of which holds that a belief is justified iff it’s produced by a reliable process. There is less canonical agreement when it comes to applying the internalist/externalist distinction to theories of knowledge. In one sense, every plausible epistemology is an externalist theory because every plausible epistemology requires an externalist truth condition and an externalist Gettier-blocking fillip. However, in another widely used sense, “externalist” theories of knowledge are theories that replace the internalist justification condition with either an externalist justification condition or some other externalist constraint (such as a causal or modal constraint); while “internalist” theories of knowledge hold that internalist justification is necessary for knowledge and also typically hold that no other kind of justification is needed for knowledge, though they do incorporate some sort of externalist constraint to handle the Gettier problem.

scholarly journals Epistemic Value and the New Evil Demon

2014 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. C. Madison
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Evil Demon
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document