Scepticism

Chapter 6 addresses the problem of scepticism. More specifically, it focuses on a particularly difficult sceptical argument which proceeds from the plausible claims (i) that we don’t know that we are not radically deceived and (ii) that, if so, we don’t know much at all to the problematic sceptical conclusion that we don’t know much at all. It is argued that there is reason to take issue with both premises of this argument. More specifically, Chapter 6 presents a novel theoretical argument against the principle the knowledge transmits across competent deduction, which motivates the second premise. And it develops a new way of resisting the first premise. The key idea here is that we can have basic knowledge of the denials of sceptical hypotheses thanks to an ability to know that certain possibilities could not easily obtain. Having dealt with some objections, Chapter 6 compares the approach to scepticism developed here with its closest competitor, the sensitivity-based approach, and argues that there is reason to favour the former.

Knowledge and Truth in the Greatest Difficulty Argument: Parmenides 133b4–134b5

One of Plato’s central tenets is that we can know forms. In Parmenides 133b4–134b5, Plato presents an argument whose sceptical conclusion is that we can’t know forms. Although he indicates that the argument doesn’t succeed, he also says it’s difficult to explain how it fails. Commentators have suggested a variety of flaws. I argue that the argument can be defended against some, though not all, of the alleged flaws. But I also argue that Plato hints at a crucial distinction that hasn’t been brought to bear in this context, and that indeed he is sometimes thought not to draw: that between the content and object of knowledge. Once we are clear about this distinction, we can see that the sceptical argument doesn’t imply that we can’t know forms.

Epistemic Entitlement

This volume collects new work on epistemic entitlement partly motivated by Tyler Burge’s and Crispin Wright’s seemingly identical distinctions between two forms of warrant: entitlement and justification. But despite nomenclature, Burge and Wright are engaged in different projects. Recognizing that we cannot provide a non-question begging evidential reply to the sceptic, Wright seeks an a priori, non-evidential, rational right to accept and claim to know cornerstone propositions. He calls these rights epistemic entitlements. Epistemic justifications are evidential warrants, contributors to knowledge. Tyler Burge does not engage the sceptic. Instead, he assumes knowledge and investigates its structure. Burge’s two core notions are warrant and reasons. Warrants are exercises of belief-forming competences that are good routes to truth and knowledge. A reason is a proposition with a mode that contributes to an explanation of the belief-worthiness of a belief for the individual. A justification is a warrant with reasons. An entitlement is a warrant without reasons. The volume begins with a substantial chapter by Burge. Burge discusses the functional structure of epistemic norms, the case against internalism, clairvoyance and demon world cases, Moore’s anti-sceptical argument, so-called “easy-knowledge”, and Bayesianism in perceptual psychology and objections from Bayesianism to moderate foundationalism. The other chapters by leading figures in epistemology further advance our understanding and possibility of both forms of epistemic entitlement and related topics central to ongoing research in epistemology.

Realität durch Einbildungskraft. Fichtes Antwort auf Maimons Skeptizismus in der Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre

Concluding the deduction of imagination in § 4 of the Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte remarks that one lesson of the Wissenschaftslehre is that all reality is a product of imagination. One of the greatest thinkers of the age, Fichte writes, is teaching the same, but calls it a deception of imagination. Fichte’s remark is aimed at Salomon Maimon, and it shows that his deduction shouldn’t be read only as part of the systematic development of the theoretical Wissenschaftslehre, but should also be considered as an argument against a specific kind of scepticism. In order to examine this overlooked anti-sceptical aim in the first Wissenschaftslehre, an overview of the deduction of § 4 with a focus on the systematic role of imagination will first be given. Second, Maimon’s sceptical argument against transcendental philosophy will be explained. In the centre again will stand Maimon’s Humean concept of imagination. Finally, it will be shown in which sense Fichte’s deduction of imagination has to be taken in order to be an adequate response to Maimonian scepticism.An die Deduktion der Einbildungskraft in § 4 der Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre schließt Fichte die Bemerkung an, es werde hier gelehrt, dass alle Realität durch die Einbildungskraft hervorgebracht wird. Einer der größten Denker des Zeitalters – gemeint ist Salomon Maimon – lehre das Gleiche, nur nenne er es eine Täuschung durch die Einbildungskraft. Diese Bemerkung lässt erkennen, dass die Deduktion der Einbildungskraft nicht nur im Dienst der Entwicklung des theoretischen Teils der Wissenschaftslehre steht, sondern dass sie auch im Sinne eines antiskeptischen Arguments verstanden werden muss. Um diesen Aspekt von Fichtes Konzeption der Einbildungskraft genauer zu beleuchten, wird erstens die Deduktion in § 4 mit Blick auf die systematische Rolle der Einbildungskraft dargestellt. Zweitens wird Maimons skeptisches Argument gegen die Transzendentalphilosophie präzisiert, auf das sich Fichte mit seiner Äußerung bezieht, wobei Maimons sich an Hume orientierendes Verständnis der Einbildungskraft im Zentrum steht. Zuletzt wird geprüft, in welchem Sinn Fichtes Deduktion der Einbildungskraft als Antwort auf Maimons Skeptizismus verstanden werden muss.

2. Is knowledge impossible?

‘Is knowledge impossible?’ considers an influential argument that purports to show that we do not know much of what we take ourselves to know. If this argument works, then it licenses a radical sceptical doubt. It first looks at Descartes’s formulation of radical scepticism—Cartesian scepticism—which employs an important theoretical innovation known as a radical sceptical hypothesis. The closure principle is also discussed along with the radical sceptical paradox. If this radical sceptical argument works, then we not only lack knowledge of much of what we believe, but we do not even have any good epistemic reasons for believing what we do.

Radical Scepticism and the Epistemology of Confusion

The lack of knowledge—as Timothy Williamson famously maintains—is ignorance. Radical sceptical arguments, at least in the tradition of Descartes, threaten universal ignorance. They do so by attempting to establish that we lack any knowledge, even if we can retain other kinds of epistemic standings, like epistemically justified belief. If understanding is a species of knowledge, then radical sceptical arguments threaten to rob us categorically of knowledge and understanding in one fell swoop by implying universal ignorance. If, however, understanding is not a species of knowledge, then three questions arise: (i) is ignorance the lack of understanding, even if understanding is not a species of knowledge? (ii) If not, what kind of state of intellectual impoverishment best describes a lack of understanding? (iii) What would a radical sceptical argument look like that threatened that kind of intellectual impoverishment, even if not threatening ignorance? This paper answers each of these questions in turn. I conclude by showing how the answers developed to (i–iii) interface in an interesting way with Virtue Perspectivism as an anti-sceptical strategy.

Scepticism and Externalism

Like Descartes, many analytic epistemologists employ sceptical argument ‘methodologically’, affording undue respect to its illusory force in order to present their own theory as the way to avoid its conclusion. Like ‘fallibilism’ and ‘contextualism’, epistemological ‘externalism’ (or ‘reliabilism’) is commonly thus supported. Well-known argument by Fred Dretske is selected for critical examination, which leads into the assessment of externalist notions of defeasibility. Certain fundamental presuppositions of these externalist arguments are identified and questioned. The problem of how our belief that our cognitive faculties are reliable can be justified without circularity, and Ernest Sosa’s answer to it, are considered, and another, less intellectualist answer given. A final section turns to McDowell’s ‘internalist’ response to scepticism, broached in Chapter III, and his version of ‘disjunctivism’, a doctrine assessed as making a valid point misleadingly presented as semantic analysis. McDowell’s oddly quasi-externalist conception of defeasibility and justification is also assessed.

Knowing and Seeing

Knowing and Seeing explores the insight behind the distinction of kind between knowledge and belief drawn by most philosophers from Plato to Locke. Judging that S is P (with or without good reason) is distinguished from seeing that S is P (when reasons are unnecessary), having evidence that S is P from its being immediately evident that S is P. After a historical account of the rise and fall of the distinction, a detailed, careful phenomenological analysis of perceptual experience, consonant with recent empirical psychology, suggests that a distinction is indeed needed at the traditional place, on broadly traditional grounds, if not between ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’ then between what are here called primary and secondary knowledge. Primary knowledge is immediate awareness or grasp of reality or truth, and consciously so. The explanation given of these features is contrasted with McDowell’s conceptualist, rationalistic explanation. Part I ends with the traditional question, approached through an examination of ordinary language, whether knowledge and belief have different objects—for example, do nominalized sentences of the form ‘that S is P’ refer to the same kind of entity after ‘believe’, ‘know’, and ‘see’? Employing the results of Part I, Part II is a sustained critique of sceptical argument and its current ‘methodological’ use in philosophy, in particular by ‘externalists’, ‘fallibilists’, ‘contextualists’, and ‘reliabilists’. The relationship between ascriptions of knowledge and judgements of certainty, probability and fallibility is analysed, and a particular understanding of ‘defeasibility’ is defended. The thesis of ‘disjunctivism’ is assessed.

Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s Sceptical Paradox: A Trilemma for Davidson

Davidson’s later philosophy of language has been inspired by Wittgenstein’s Investigations, but Davidson by no means sympathizes with the sceptical problem and solution Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein. Davidson criticizes the sceptical argument for relying on the rule-following conception of meaning, which is, for him, a highly problematic view. He also casts doubt on the plausibility of the sceptical solution as unjustifiably bringing in shared practices of a speech community. According to Davidson, it is rather success in mutual interpretation that explains success in the practice of meaning something by an utterance. I will argue that Davidson’s objections to the sceptical problem and solution are misplaced as they rely on a misconstrual of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view. I will also argue that Davidson’s alternative solution to the sceptical problem is implausible, since it fails to block the route to the sceptical problem. I will then offer a problematic trilemma for Davidson.

A Hume-Inspired Argument against Reason

In the “diminution argument,” which Hume adduces in the Treatise section “Scepticism with Regard to Reason,” he infers from our universal fallibility that “all the rules of logic require a continual diminution, and at last a total extinction of belief and evidence.” My aim in this paper is, first, to show that on all extant interpretations of the argument, it turns out to be very weak, and, second, that there is in the vicinity a significant sceptical argument in support of the conclusion that all our beliefs are totally unjustified, an argument that cannot be easily dismissed.