Erratum: "Two Kinds of Skeptical Argument" by Stewart Cohen

1998 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. iv
Keyword(s):  
Skeptical Argument

scholarly journals The Appearance of Skepticism: Possibility, Conceivability and Infinite Ascent

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
Sorin Bangu
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
External World Skepticism ◽  
Novel Strategy

AbstractThe paper articulates a novel strategy against external world skepticism. It shows that a modal assumption of the skeptical argument cannot be justified.

Doing One's Reasonable Best: What Moral Responsibility Requires

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN MONTMINY
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
General Condition ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Epistemic Condition ◽  
Michael Zimmerman

ABSTRACT:Moral responsibility, I argue, requires agents to do what is within their abilities to act morally. This means that an agent is to blame just in case his wrongdoing is due to an underperformance, that is, to a failure to do what he can to act morally. I defend this account by considering a skeptical argument about responsibility put forth by Gideon Rosen and by Michael Zimmerman. I explain why the epistemic condition they endorse is inadequate and why my alternative epistemic condition, which directly follows from my general condition on culpability, should be preferred. I then defend my view against potential criticisms.

scholarly journals Narrative Identity and Diachronic Self-Knowledge

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEVIN J. HARRELSON
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Narrative Self ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Self Knowledge

ABSTRACT:Our ability to tell stories about ourselves has captivated many theorists, and some have taken these developments for an opportunity to answer long-standing questions about the nature of personhood. In this essay I employ two skeptical arguments to show that this move was a mistake. The first argument rests on the observation that storytelling is revisionary. The second implies that our stories about ourselves are biased in regard to our existing self-image. These arguments undercut narrative theories of identity, but they leave room for a theory of narrative self-knowledge. The theory accommodates the first skeptical argument because there are event descriptions with retrospective assertibility conditions, and it accommodates the second argument by denying us epistemic privilege in regard to our own past. The result is that we do know our past through storytelling, but that it is a contingent feature of some of our stories that they are about ourselves.

scholarly journals The Argument from Variation against Using One’s Own Intuitions as Evidence

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Esther Goh ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
First Variation ◽  
Epistemic Peer

In philosophical methodology, intuitions are used as evidence to support philosophical theories. In this paper, I evaluate the skeptical argument that variation in intuitions is good evidence that our intuitions are unreliable, and so we should be skeptical about our theories. I argue that the skeptical argument is false. First, variation only shows that at least one disputant is wrong in the dispute, but each disputant lacks reason to determine who is wrong. Second, even though variation in intuitions shows that at least one disputant has the wrong intuition in the thought experiment, it is not evidence of unreliability of any disputant’s intuition regarding the philosophical theory being tested. So, variation in intuitions is not good evidence that one’s own intuitions are unreliable. One reply from the literature in peer disagreement is that we should conciliate if we cannot determine who is wrong. I argue that these disagreements are instead unconfirmed peer disagreements (i.e., no good reason to take or dismiss disputants as an epistemic peer, inferior or superior). I argue that if you have a strong intuition about a case, then it is rational for you to remain steadfast. Thus, variation in intuitions does not call for skepticism.

Skepticism and Internalism

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-54
Author(s):  
Halvor Nordby
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Cognitive Access

The skeptical Dream argument appeals to the possibility of dreaming. The skeptic holds that states of being awake are subjectively indistinguishable from possible dream states and that this means that we do not know that we are awake. This, the skeptic then claims, means that we have to accept that we do not have external world knowledge.It is natural to assume that there must be a connection between the Dream argument and epistemic internalism, the view that a belief is justified for a given person if and only if the person has cognitive access to all the factors that are needed for the belief to be justified. The problem, the skeptic thinks, is that in order for my belief that I am awake to be justified I have to have cognitive access to something that establishes that I am awake. But according to the skeptic, even if I am awake, this is not something I have cognitive access to. However, the more precise connections between internalism and the skeptical argument are not so clear.

scholarly journals HOW TO SOLVE HUME'S PROBLEM OF INDUCTION

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Inductive Reasoning ◽  
Psychological Explanation ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Problem Of Induction ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

ABSTRACTThis paper explains what's wrong with a Hume-inspired argument for skepticism about induction. Hume's argument takes as a premise that inductive reasoning presupposes that the future will resemble the past. I explain why that claim is not plausible. The most plausible premise in the vicinity is that inductive reasoning from E to H presupposes that if E then H. I formulate and then refute a skeptical argument based on that premise. Central to my response is a psychological explanation for how people judge that if E then H without realizing that they thereby settled the matter rationally.

Sensitivity, Reflective Knowledge, and Skepticism

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-367
Author(s):  
Daniel Immerman
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Knowledge ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Sensitivity Condition ◽  
Michael Huemer ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

Michael Huemer, Ernest Sosa, and Jonathan Vogel have offered a critique of the sensitivity condition on knowledge. According to them, the condition implies that you cannot know of any particular proposition that you do not falsely believe it. Their arguments rest on the claim that you cannot sensitively believe of any particular proposition that you do not falsely believe it. However, as we shall see, these philosophers are mistaken. You can do so. That said, these philosophers were close to the mark. There are some related propositions that you cannot believe sensitively. These propositions are interesting in another respect: they can be used to construct a new skeptical argument that is superior in some respects to a more traditional skeptical argument. This new skeptical argument also reveals insights about the relationship between internalism, externalism, and skepticism.

scholarly journals Self-Knowledge and Its Limits

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Schwenkler
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
First Person ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Psychological Well Being ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Many

A philosophical account of self-knowledge should offer more than an epistemological explanation of first-personal privilege. It should also address the many cases where the first-person perspective is not so privileged, and account for the importance of self-knowledge to a person’s social and psychological well-being. Quassim Cassam’s Self-Knowledge for Humans and John Doris’s Talking to Our Selves both emphasize the importance of these latter tasks, but neither author is wholly successful: Cassam’s argument rests on a gross distortion of the “Rationalist” picture he sets up as a foil, and Doris’s on a skeptical argument that stands in some questionable company.

Out-Gunning Skepticism

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 655-657
Author(s):  
L. S. Carrier
Keyword(s):  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Substitution Instance ◽  
Empirical Proposition ◽  
Psychological Disability ◽  
Adequate Evidence

Bredo C. Johnsen1 misconceives my strictures concerning acceptance of the following principle (where ‘p’ stands for any empirical proposition):(1) If A both knows that p and knows that p entails q, then A can come to know that q.Johnsen seems unaware that my criticism was intended to apply only after (1) is made to appear in its most plausible light; that is, only after its consequent is interpreted as: ’It is logically possible for A to know that q.’ Without this interpretation (1) might be dismissed simply on the grounds that A suffers from some physical or psychological disability that prevents him from drawing inferences from what he knows.Properly interpreted, (1) remains acceptable as long as the propositions substituted for p and q are such that it is at least logically possible for A to get evidence enough to make them known. Agreement on this point is itself enough to render Johnsen's own examples irrelevant. For instance, even though it may be physically impossible for A to get adequate evidence that in the constellation Andromeda there is a planet intermediate in size between Venus and Earth, the foregoing is still a fit substitution instance for q; but since such a q does not suffice to falsify the consequent of (1), it does nothing to generate any skeptical argument, either.

Moorean Methodology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith DeRose
Keyword(s):  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Brain In A Vat

In this chapter a Moorean approach, on which one seeks to defeat, rather than refute, skepticism, is explained, developed, and defended. The issue of whether skepticism was doomed to inevitable defeat on the methodology in question is explored, and the considerations on which that matter turns, are identified. The power of the AI, the classical skeptical argument from skeptical hypotheses, is defended, focusing mainly on the viability the skeptic’s first premise, that you do not know that you are not a brain in a vat. Finally, the importance of solving the puzzle that this form of skeptical argument confronts us with is vindicated, whether or not the skeptic who wields AI was doomed to defeat.

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