Free Will as a Sceptical Threat to Knowing

Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 3 (1):139–154 (1999)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Sceptics standardly argue that a person lacks knowledge due to an inability to know that some dire possibility is not being actualised in her believing that p. I argue that the usual sceptical inventory of such possibilities should include one's possibly having had some freedom in forming one's belief that p. A sceptic should conclude that wherever there might have been some such freedom, there is no knowledge that p. (This is not to say that sceptics would be correct in that conclusion. It is just to say that the usual sceptical way of thinking should welcome the possibility of some such belief-freedom as much as it routinely welcomes the possibilities of dreaming and of evil demons.)

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 92,100

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Non-Elusive Freedom Contextualism.Sofia Jeppsson - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (3):793-808.
Kant’s Transcendental Strategy.John J. Gallanan - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (224):360–381.
Constraints on sceptical hypotheses.James Beebe - 2010 - Philosophical Quarterly 60 (240):449-470.
Scepticism, Infallibilism, Fallibilism.Tim Kraft - 2012 - Discipline Filosofiche 22 (2):49-70.
Scepticism by a Thousand Cuts.Martin Smith - 2016 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (1):44-52.
Knowledge, Epistemic Possibility, and Scepticism.Keith Douglas Derose - 1990 - Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles
Shattering a Cartesian Sceptical Dream.Stephen Hetherington - 2004 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 8 (1):103–117.
Why Sceptical Theism isn’t Sceptical Enough.Chris Tucker - 2014 - In Justin McBrayer Trent Dougherty (ed.), Skeptical Theism: New Essays. Oxford University Press. pp. 45-62.
The Sceptical Life.Ruth Weintraub - 1996 - Dialectica 50 (3):225-234.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-04-12

Downloads
41 (#389,432)

6 months
5 (#644,465)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Stephen Hetherington
University of New South Wales

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references