I show that some of the most initially attractive routes of refuting epistemological solipsism face serious obstacles. I also argue that for creatures like ourselves, solipsism is a genuine form of external world skepticism. I suggest that together these claims suggest the following morals: No proposed solution to external world skepticism can succeed which does not also solve the problem of epistemological solipsism. And, more tentatively: In assessing proposed solutions to external world skepticism, epistemologists should explicitly consider (...) whether those solutions extend to knowledge of other minds. Finally, and also tentatively: epistemological solipsism warrants more philosophical attention than it currently enjoys. (shrink)

We face reality presented with the data of conscious experience and nothing else. The project of early modern philosophy was to build a complete theory of the world from this starting point, with no cheating. Crucial to this starting point is the data of conscious sensory experience – sense data. Attempts to avoid this project often argue that the very idea of sense data is confused. But the sense-data way of talking, the sense-data language, can be freed from every blemish (...) using ideas from contemporary metaontology. We can adopt a sense-data framework that vindicates the traditional claims of sense-data theories and leads to plausible theories of perception and color. We can, we should, and in a sense, we must. Yet when we do, we face the traditional problem of external world skepticism, head-on. The real challenge of skepticism is forced upon us; it cannot honestly be avoided using externalist tricks, burden of proof shifting, or other razzle dazzle. But the challenge can be met: we are rational to posit the external world as the best explanation of the many synchronic and diachronic patterns over our sense-data. This paper argues for all of these points and ends with a plea for analytic empiricism – a traditional sense-data version of empiricism that uses all of the tools of analytic philosophy while avoiding the more questionable doctrines of the Vienna Circle (phenomenalism, verificationism). Analytic empiricism is our last best hope for completing the great philosophical project of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

David Chalmers has recently developed a novel strategy of refuting external world skepticism, one he dubs the structuralist solution. In this paper, I make three primary claims: First, structuralism does not vindicate knowledge of other minds, even if it is combined with a functionalist approach to the metaphysics of minds. Second, because structuralism does not vindicate knowledge of other minds, the structuralist solution vindicates far less worldly knowledge than we would hope for from a (...) solution to skepticism. Third, these results suggest that the problem of external world skepticism should perhaps be construed as two different problems, since the problem might turn out to require two substantively different solutions, one for knowledge of the kind that is not dependent on other minds and one for knowledge that is. (shrink)

Half of Dilman's book deal with skepticism about the physical world and the other half with skepticism about other minds. His main thesis in each case is that the very general doubts that have traditionally troubled philosophers must not be answered on their own terms but by showing that they are confused. Exposing this confusion helps us to understand better the "logic" of our ordinary talk about things and persons. He draws illuminating parallels between problems about knowledge (...) of the external world and about knowledge of other minds. His principal contribution lies in organizing arguments urged by Wittgenstein, Wisdom, and Malcolm. (shrink)

Skepticism about the external world may very well be correct, so the question is in order: what theory of knowledge flows from skepticism itself? The skeptic can give a relatively simple and intuitive account of knowledge by identifying it with indubitable certainty. Our everyday ‘I know that p’ claims, which typically are part of practical projects, deploy the ideal of knowledge to make assertions closely related to, but weaker than, knowledge claims. The truth of such claims is consistent with (...) skepticism; various other vexing problems don’t arise. In addition, even if no claim about the world outside my mind can be more probable than its negation, the project of pure scientific research remains well motivated. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell's work is distinctive not only in its importance to philosophy but also for its remarkable interdisciplinary range. Cavell is read avidly by students of film, photography, painting, and music, but especially by students of literature, for whom Cavell offers major readings of Thoreau, Emerson, Shakespeare, and others. In this first book-length study of Cavell's writings, Michael Fischer examines Cavell's relevance to the controversies surrounding poststructuralist literary theory, particularly works by Jacques Derrida, J. Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, and (...) Stanley Fish. Throughout his study, Fischer focuses on skepticism, a central concern of Cavell's multifaceted work. Cavell, following J. L. Austin and Wittgenstein, does not refute the radical epistemological questioning of Descartes, Hume, and others, but rather characterizes skepticism as a significant human possibility or temptation. As presented by Fischer, Cavell's accounts of both external-world and other-minds skepticism share significant affinities with deconstruction, a connection overlooked by contemporary literary theorists. Fischer follows Cavell's lead in examining how different genres address the problems raised by skepticism and goes on to show how Cavell draws on American and English romanticism in fashioning a response to it. He concludes by analyzing Cavell's remarks about current critical theory, focusing on Cavell's uneasiness with some of the conclusions reached by its practitioners. Fischer shows that Cavell's insights, grounded in powerful analyses of Descartes, Hume, and Wittgenstein, permit a fresh view of Derrida, Miller, de Man, and Fish. The result is not only a revealing characterization of deconstruction but a much-needed and insightful introduction to Cavell's rich but difficult oeuvre. (shrink)

This article defends Cavell and Levinas’ view that anti-skeptical arguments cannot attain universal assent. In the first half of the article, I argue that Conant’s reading of Cavell is mistaken in two respects: he ignores Cavell’s inheritance of Kant as well as the differences Cavell emphasizes between external world and other minds skepticism. In the second half of the paper, I examine affinities between Cavell and Levinas’ thought, viz., acknowledging the facticity of the other and their (...) remarks on skepticism. I close the paper by noting three metaphysical and ethical truths that arise from Cavell’s way with skepticism. (shrink)

Hume’s understanding of the external world, particularly, his conception of objects, or what he occasionally refers to as “bodies,” is the subject of much dispute. Are objects mind-independent? Or, are they just what we see, feel, smell, taste, or touch? In other words, are objects just sense data? Or, are they ideas about sense data? Or, are objects, somehow, mind-independent, but we have ideas of them, and we receive sense data from them? In this paper, I provide some (...) answers to these questions—by way of distinguishing between the vulgar position, the philosophical position, and Hume’s position. (shrink)

Skepticism about the external world may very well be correct, so the question is in order: what theory of knowledge flows from skepticism itself? The skeptic can give a relatively simple and intuitive account of knowledge by identifying it with indubitable certainty. Our everyday ‘I know that p’ claims, which typically are part of practical projects, deploy the ideal of knowledge to make assertions closely related to, but weaker than, knowledge claims. The truth of such claims is consistent with (...) skepticism; various other vexing problems don’t arise. In addition, even if no claim about the world outside my mind can be more probable than its negation, the project of pure scientific research remains well motivated. (shrink)

Radical skepticism about the external world is founded on two assumptions: one is that the mind and the external world are logically independent; the other is that all our evidence for the nature of that world consists of facts about our minds. In this paper, I explore the option of denying the epistemic, rather than the logical assumption. I argue that one can do so only by embracing externalism about justification, or, after all, by rejecting the (...) logical independence assumption. Since (I argue) externalism is not a solution to the problem of skepticism, this means that skepticism is false only if the mind and the world are not logically independent. (shrink)

Kant’s Refutation targets what he calls the problematic idealist. This is understood by the mainstream of Kantian scholarship as the global skeptic that Descartes briefly adumbrated in his first Meditation. The widespread view in the literature is that the fate of the Refutation is tied to its success as an argument against this Cartesian global skepticism. This consensus is what I want to question in this paper. I argue that Kant’s opponent – the problematic idealist – is not the Cartesian (...) global skeptic but rather what I prefer to call here the Cartesian problematic external-world idealist. According to Cartesian global skepticism, we cannot know whether our commonsensical beliefs are true until we rule out that the skeptical hypotheses are false. In contrast, the Cartesian external-world idealist sees as problematic the assumption that the underlying nature of outer things of which we have ideas is mind-independent rather than caused by our own thinking. My aim here is to disentangle Cartesian global skepticism from Cartesian problematic external-word idealism and show that, if measured against global skepticism, Kant’s Refutation is doomed to fail, while against problematic idealism, it is at least a promising argument. (shrink)

The theory of recognition arises within Hegel's confrontation with epistemological skepticism and aims at responding to the questions raised by modern skepticism concerning the accessibility of the external world, of other minds, and of one's own mind. This is possible to the extent that the theory of recognition is the guiding thread of a critique of the modern foundational theory of knowledge and, at the same time, the point of departure for an alternative approach. In this article (...) I will dwell on six stages of the evolution of Hegel's thought prior to the Phenomenology (1797-1806),stages shed great light on the direction taken by his argumentative strategy. Synthetically, the stages are as follows: 1. Hegel naturalizes the epistemological questions; 2. to do so he critiques foundationalism qua theory of empirical knowledge; 3. and qua theory of epistemic justification; 4. the critique of foundationalism is linked to a critique of the corresponding representationalistic theory of perception; 5. this, in turn, is linked to a critique of the monological theories of self-consciousness and to the development of a model of the rise of self-conscious knowing; 6. finally, Hegel synthesizes these epistemological views in a theory of knowledge qua recognition and in a metaphilosophical theory of philosophical rationality qua self-recognition: knowledge without foundation is thus the condition of possibility of philosophy’s self-justification. (shrink)

Kant’s Refutation targets what he calls the problematic idealist. This is understood by the mainstream of Kantian scholarship as the global skeptic that Descartes briefly adumbrated in his first Meditation. The widespread view in the literature is that the fate of the Refutation is tied to its success as an argument against this Cartesian global skepticism. This consensus is what I want to question in this paper. I argue that Kant’s opponent – the problematic idealist – is not the Cartesian (...) global skeptic, but rather what I prefer to call here the Cartesian problematic external-world idealist. According to Cartesian global skepticism we cannot know whether our commonsensical beliefs are true until we rule out the skeptical hypotheses are false. In contrast, the Cartesian external-world idealist sees as problematic the assumption that the underlying nature of outer things of which we have ideas is mind-independent rather than caused by our own thinking being. My aim here is to disentangle Cartesian global skepticism from Cartesian problematic external-word idealism and show that, if measured against global skepticism, Kant’s Refutation is doomed to fail; while against problematic idealism, it is at least a promising argument. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the traditional problem of our knowledge of the external world was dissolved by Wittgestein and others. They argue that it was not really a problem - just a linguistic `confusion' that did not actually require a solution. Bruce Aune argues that they are wrong. He casts doubt on the generally accepted reasons for putting the problem aside and proposes an entirely new approach. By considering the history of the problem from Descartes to Kant, Aune shows (...) that analogous arguments create difficulties for the contemporary philosophical consensus. He makes it clear that the problem remains acute, particualarly for our understanding of scientific evidence. The solution he proposes draws upon contemporary philosophy of science and probability theory. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the traditional problem of our knowledge of the external world was dissolved by Wittgestein and others. They argue that it was not really a problem - just a linguistic `confusion' that did not actually require a solution. Bruce Aune argues that they are wrong. He casts doubt on the generally accepted reasons for putting the problem aside and proposes an entirely new approach. By considering the history of the problem from Descartes to Kant, Aune shows (...) that analogous arguments create difficulties for the contemporary philosophical consensus. He makes it clear that the problem remains acute, particualarly for our understanding of scientific evidence. The solution he proposes draws upon contemporary philosophy of science and probability theory. (shrink)

What would it take for Hume to be an external world skeptic? Is Hume's position on knowledge sufficient to force him to deny that we can acquire knowledge of propositions about the external world? After all, Hume is extremely restrictive about what can be known because he requires knowledge to be immune to error. In this paper, I will argue that if Hume were a skeptic, then he must also deny a particular kind of view about what is (...) immediately present to the mind. I will argue that direct realisms—views that maintain that mind-independent things are immediately present to the mind—combine with Hume's position on knowledge to entail the negation of skepticism. So, despite his position on knowledge, Hume could still consistently reject skepticism, if he were to endorse direct realism. (shrink)

THE HYPERBOLICAL DOUBT OF THE FIRST MEDITATION is often taken for the epitome of skepticism. Thus Myles Burnyeat, in his 1982 paper, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,” argues that Descartes goes further than the ancient skeptics in doubting the existence of his own body—a given of everyday experience they never doubted. Nor was “the existence of the external world,” which was imperiled by the agency of the evil demon and has been recurrently questioned ever (...) since, a major subject for doubt in the skeptical tradition. Moreover, Burnyeat explains, Descartes was able to carry skepticism to this extreme because his doubt was merely methodological: it left his provisional rules of conduct intact while he was searching theoretically for a truth that would itself be in the first instance theoretical. Of course we should not forget that eventually, Descartes believed, the truth he was on the way to discovering would have excellent consequences for practice also, namely, in medicine, mechanics, and morality. Meantime, however, Burnyeat is certainly correct in maintaining that Cartesian doubt was indeed insulated against practice—as Hume’s doubt would eventually be also, confined as it was to his closet. So Descartes, and other modern skeptics after him, could be as skeptical as you like, as skeptical as any one can be. The ancient skeptics could not go that far, Burnyeat argues, because it was daily life they were concerned with, not some purely theoretical gambit. Like the philosophers of other Hellenistic schools—though differently, of course—they were seeking peace of mind, and they wanted to eliminate those unnecessary questions about hidden things—causes or “ultimate” realities—that served to obstruct the state of mind they called “tranquillity.” Merely methodologically, doubt can become much more radical, and it is that radicalization that, with the help of his demon, Descartes accomplishes. (shrink)

The Sixth Meditation deals, as its title proclaims, with ‘the existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and body of man’. In this paper, I want to start by examining Descartes' argument for the existence of material things—for the existence of an ‘external’, physical world around us. Next, in section two, I shall use this argument concerning the external world to bring out an important general point about the ‘dialectical’ way in which Descartes presents (...) his reasoning in the Meditations. This will lead me on to the third section of the paper, which will analyse the concept of ‘nature’ and the role it plays in Descartes' reasoning, particularly in the Sixth Meditation. And this in turn will bring me to the fourth and final part of the paper, which will focus on what is by general consensus the most fascinating part of the Sixth Meditation—Descartes' account of the relation between mind and body. What I shall try to do in this final section is to highlight a curious tension between Descartes' recognition of the facts of human experience on the one hand, and on the other hand his doctrine that we are essentially incorporeal or non-physical substances. (shrink)

Davidson aims to explain how it is that we come by knowledge of the world, our own minds and other minds, and to show that knowledge of other minds is the more fundamental. A community of minds is the basis of all knowledge and provides the measure of all things. Davidson believes that understanding this will provide a reply to the skeptic. I argue that while Davidson's work may provide a reply to a new (...) skeptical problem, it is not clear how it engages with traditional skeptical problems. In order to better understand Davidson's work in connection with the latter, I suggest that we look to the writing of Wittgenstein. I also suggest that when Davidson writes of knowledge, he is not thinking along traditional lines. Finally, I suggest that, while there exist inferential and perceptual models of our knowledge of another mind, Davidson's work offers yet another model. (shrink)

In this concise book, one of the world's leading epistemologists provides a sophisticated, revisionist introduction to the problem of knowledge in Western philosophy. Modern and contemporary accounts of epistemology tend to focus on limited questions of knowledge and skepticism, such as how we can know the external world, other minds, the past through memory, the future through induction, or the world’s depth and structure through inference. This book steps back for a better view of the more general (...) issues posed by the ancient Greek Pyrrhonists. Returning to and illuminating this older, broader epistemological tradition, Ernest Sosa develops an original account of the subject, giving it substance not with Cartesian theology but with science and common sense. -/- Descartes is a part of this ancient tradition, but he goes beyond it by considering not just whether knowledge is possible at all but also how we can properly attain it. In Cartesian epistemology, Sosa finds a virtue-theoretic account, one that he extends beyond the Cartesian context. Once epistemology is viewed in this light, many of its problems can be solved or fall away. -/- The result is an important reevaluation of epistemology that will be essential reading for students and teachers. (shrink)

The Sixth Meditation deals, as its title proclaims, with ‘the existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and body of man’. In this paper, I want to start by examining Descartes' argument for the existence of material things—for the existence of an ‘external’, physical world around us. Next, in section two, I shall use this argument concerning the external world to bring out an important general point about the ‘dialectical’ way in which Descartes presents (...) his reasoning in the Meditations. This will lead me on to the third section of the paper, which will analyse the concept of ‘nature’ and the role it plays in Descartes' reasoning, particularly in the Sixth Meditation. And this in turn will bring me to the fourth and final part of the paper, which will focus on what is by general consensus the most fascinating part of the Sixth Meditation—Descartes' account of the relation between mind and body. What I shall try to do in this final section is to highlight a curious tension between Descartes' recognition of the facts of human experience on the one hand, and on the other hand his doctrine that we are essentially incorporeal or non-physical substances. (shrink)

Skeptics claim that we know radically less than we think we do. For example, skeptics might claim that we have next to no knowledge of the past, the future, or other minds. Here we will consider the skeptical claim that we have next to no knowledge of the external world: the world of physical objects that we at least seem to perceive. One well-known argument in support of this claim appeals to the possibility of being a BIV: (...) a brain in a vat. According to the BIV Hypothesis, you are a mere BIV without a normal body. This of course means, among other things, that you don't have hands. The nerve endings of your brain are stimulated in a manner so sophisticated that the perfect illusion of a normal life is generated. Let's distinguish between the.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Russell's external world: 1912-1921 by Ronald E. Nusenoff IN "The Relation of Sense-data to Physics",lOur Knowledge ofthe External World,2 and "The Ultimate Constituents ofMatter",3 Russell presents a phenomenalistic reduction ofphysical objects. On this theory, the external world becomes a physical space of six dimensions, which must be logically constructed by a three-dimensional ordering of three-dimensional phenomenal spaces. In what follows, we will consider Russell's varying (...) views, from causal realism in The Problems of Philosophy,4 through phenomenalism, to neutral monism in The Analysis ofMind,5 on the nature ofthe external world. We will pay particular attention to the relation between physical and phenomenal space, and the status ofthe causal theory ofperception. 1. Realism (1912) In The Problems ofPhilosophy, Russell distinguishes a single "real" space ofscience from the "apparent" spaces ofperception. He begins with various cases of perceptual relativity, illusion, etc., and from these infers that those object which are immediately known to us are not the physical objects which the layman might take them to be. Rather, what are immediately known are sense-data, these being caused by, and so in some sense "corresponding" to, physical obI "The Relation of Sense-data to Physics", Scientia, 4 (1914), reprinted as Chapter VIII of Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (London, 1918). 2 Our Knowledge ofthe External World as a Fieldfor Scientific Method in Philosophy (London, 1914). 3 "The Ultimate Constituents of Matter", Monist, 25 (1915), reprinted as Chapter VII of Mysticism and Logic. 4 The Problems ofPhilosophy (London, 1946 [lst published, 1912]). 5 The Analysis of Mind (London, 1921). 65 66 Russell, nos. 29-32 (1978) jects. Physical objects are located in "one public all-embracing physical space", while "our sense-data are situated in our private spaces, either the space of sight or the space of touch or such vaguer spaces as other senses may give us".6 Through experience, we are able to correlate these various private sense-data spaces (i.e., in so far as we can correlate experiences in one with experiences in another). What Russell does not go on to do here is define physical space in terms of private spaces. Given that (a) Space is relational rather than absolute, and (b) All that we can know about physical objects is that both they and their relations "correspond" to our sense-data and their relations, then (c) "we may assume that there is a physical space in which physical objects have spatial relations corresponding to those which the corresponding sense-data have in our private spaces".7 Our knowledge of physical space is then merely knowledge of relative position, and other features, e.g., shape, are "only supposed to correspond to the physical space so far as is required for the preservation of the order".8 On this view, the existence ofa physical space is necessitated solely by, and so is no more plausible than, the need for physcial objects. Russell's argument for accepting our "instinctive" belief that physical objects exist is less than compelling. Since this belief does not lead to any difficulties, but on the contrary tends to simplify and systemize our account of our experiences, there seems no good reason for rejecting it.9 In what follows, ~e shall see that Russell's phenomenalism is not explainable as differing from the realism found in The Problems of Philosophy merely in the rejection of this "instinctive" belief. II. Phenomenalism (1914-?) In his "Reply to Criticisms" in the Schilpp collection,IO Russell seems to deny that he ever really accepted phenomenalism. 6 The Problems of Philosophy, pp. 30-1 7 Ibid., p. 31. 8 Ibid., p. 33. 9Ibid., p. 24. 10"Reply to Criticisms", in P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell (Evanston and Chicago, 1944), pp. 679-741. Russell's external world 67 Mr. Boodin quotes a passage from me according to which it appears that at a certain time I thought only percepts were real. This was a technical hypothesis which I was trying to make logically adequate. II However, only a few pages earlier he had remarked: There are some who would deny that physics need say anything about what cannot... (shrink)

Moorean arguments are a popular and powerful way to engage highly revisionary philosophical views, such as nihilism about motion, time, truth, consciousness, causation, and various kinds of skepticism (e.g., external world, other minds, inductive, global). They take, as a premise, a highly plausible first-order claim (e.g., cars move, I ate breakfast before lunch, it’s true that some fish have gills) and conclude from it the falsity of the highly revisionary philosophical thesis. Moorean arguments can be used against (...) nihilists in ethics (error theorists), too. Recently, error theorists have recognized Moorean arguments as a powerful challenge and have tried to meet it. They’ve argued that moral Moorean premises seem highly credible to us, but aren’t, by offering various debunking explanations. These explanations all appeal to higher-order evidence—evidence of error in our reasoning. I argue that drawing attention to higher-order evidence is a welcome contribution from error theorists, but that the higher-order evidence actually counts further against error theoretic arguments—including their debunking explanations—and further in favor of Moorean arguments and the commonsense views they support. Along the way I answer a few prominent objections to Moorean arguments: that they are objectionably question-begging, rely on categorizing some facts as “Moorean Facts”, and that reports of one’s credence in a proposition bears no interesting relation to that proposition’s credibility. (shrink)

I defend the view that there is a privileged class of propositions – that there is an external world, among other such 'hinge propositions'– that possess a special epistemic status: justified belief in these propositions is not defeated unless one has sufficient reason to believe their negation. Two arguments are given for this conclusion. Finally, three proposals are offered as morals of the preceding story: first, our justification for hinge propositions must be understood as defeatable, second, antiskeptics must (...) explain our knowledge in the face of 'actual world' skepticism (like dreaming skepticism) as much as in the face of the usual sort (like brain-in-vat skepticism), and, finally, our justification for hinge propositions is basic (i.e. non-inferential). (shrink)

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about (...) the external world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context-sensitive in their semantics. It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits, and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world. (shrink)

Is the Smartphone (SP) an extension of consciousness or just an (other) externalization of the mind and an extension of the social? The concept of externalizing the mind more appropriately describes a series of processes that tend to be considered extensions of the mind. The human mind has evolved concurrently with various externalizations, such as utensils and language, as contributions to the development of the common environment of humanity: culture and civilization. Externalizations indicate the appearance of the human mind (...) while the extensions take into account the possibility of passing to another level (the singularity of consciousness). SP is a handy tool that mediates the personal relationship with the world, benefiting from a level of integration into the global workspace of the mind. Externalization called the SP could be a bridge from the externalization of the mind to its extensions, making the ontological leap from the utensil status to that of "part of the mind". SP is a mediator of an environment: it mediates between the mind and a special social environment called the Internet (mediates access to cognitive support provided by society through the virtual world), which is gradually becoming another reality. SP is part of the extension of human society by introducing tools into the network of personal relationships. Not the mind is expanded, but the social network, increasing the number of entities with which the human can create and maintain relationships. SP may be an extension of the social rather than an extension of the mind because it mediates an increase in the complexity of social relations that can lead to the emergence of "collective minds" (causing a change in the ontological status of society). Changing cognitive demands is a feature of the world's progress. Progress brings along with it cognitive costs of integration, technical solutions like SP, aimed at reducing these costs, generating an evolutionary advantage in the new social context. From an evolutionist perspective, the world means precisely this kind of modification of cognitive demands necessary for survival, SP joining the set of tools that mediate the cognitive progress of the world in which the human is inserted. We propose the use of an evolutionary cognitive economy principle, based on avoiding unnecessary costs, reducing losses and optimizing cognitive gains. (shrink)

Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology provides a novel account of the structure of epistemic justification. Its central claim builds upon Wittgenstein's idea in On Certainty that epistemic justifications hinge on some basic assumptions and that epistemic rationality extends to these very hinges. It exploits these ideas to address major problems in epistemology, such as the nature of perceptual justifications, external world skepticism, epistemic relativism, the epistemic status of basic logical laws, of the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature, of (...) our belief in the existence of the past and of other minds, and the nature of testimonial justification. Along the way, further technical issues, such as the scope of the Principle of Closure of epistemic operators under known entailment, the notion of transmission failure, and the existence of entitlements are addressed in new and illuminating ways. (shrink)

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about (...) the external world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context‐sensitive in their semantics.It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits. and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world. (shrink)

Following Wittgenstein’s lead, Crispin Wright and others have argued that hinge propositions are immune from skeptical doubt. In particular, the entitlement strategy, as we shall refer to it, says that hinge propositions have a special type of justification because of their role in our cognitive lives. Two major criticisms are raised here against the entitlement strategy when used in attempts to justify belief in the external world. First, the hinge strategy is not sufficient to thwart underdetermination skepticism, since underdetermination (...) considerations lead to a much stronger form of skepticism than is commonly realized. Second, the claim that hinge propositions are necessary to trust perception is false. There is an alternative to endorsing a particular hinge proposition about the external world, external world disjunctivism, which permits us to trust perception, while skirting the difficulties raised by skepticism. (shrink)

In apparent vogue, perhaps as a reaction against excesses on the part of certain Wittgensteinians, is the idea that the existence and nature of other people's mental lives are things known to us on broadly empirical grounds. A particularly unabashed version of this idea is to be found in Hilary Putnam's “Other Minds”1. Therein Putnam defines empirical realism as the “position that the existence of the external world is supported by experience in much the way that (...) any scientific theory is supported by observational data,”2 His concern in this article is to defend, after entering some criticism of detail, Paul Ziff's attempt to show that the same general sort of position is the proper one to adopt with regard to the traditional problem of other minds. I wish to argue here that the empirical realist's solution to the problem of other minds offered by Ziff and defended by Putnam is wrong. (shrink)

The usual way with scepticism is to formulate a problem in connection with the external world and then apply this to other minds. Drawing on work by Stanley Cavell and Richard Moran, I argue that the sceptic misses an important difference in our concepts of mind and of body, and that this is reflected in the sceptic’s formulation of a problem regarding other minds. I suggest that an understanding of this important conceptual difference is also (...) missing from the work of those who attempt to reply to (dismiss, or ignore) the sceptic. In this connection I discuss both inferential and perceptual accounts of our knowledge of other minds. I identify an error in these accounts that may be thought to arise from a lack of understanding of the important conceptual difference here, and then develop an understanding of this error that draws on the work of Edith Stein and Stanley Cavell. (shrink)

In contrast to the recent trend of taking external world skepticism as a narrow problem for a demanding conception of "objective" or "certain" knowledge about the world, my thesis offers a re-examination of the distinctively perceptual basis of the skeptical problem. On my view the skeptic challenges the very possibility of rationally justifying beliefs in so far as they are based on sense experience, a characterization that helps to explain the continuity into the modern period of the ancient skeptical (...) challenge to the pretensions of reason. What is newly radical in external world skepticism is the discovery of the inner realm of the mind, and hence, of inner states as a component of every sense experience. ;I argue that the skeptic relies upon a distinctive, intuitively compelling, conception of sense experience which I call the causal model of experience. This is the view that experience is constituted by self-standing subjective experiences and their external causes, where cause and effect are logically distinct existences. The causal model is not to be identified with a view of perception as epistemically mediated by a "veil of ideas", though it can lead one to embrace that doctrine. My aim is twofold: to understand the motivation for the skeptic's causal model of experience; and to show that, when thought through, this model can ultimately be shown to be incoherent. ;The causal model has its roots in 17th century scientific metaphysics and the idea that the world can be exhaustively explained in terms of mechanical interactions between primary-qualified corpuscles governed by mathematically describable laws. I argue that the perceptual relation is not a mere efficient causal relation and I show that the skeptic is in the incoherent position of wanting a "private" language to describe his subjective experiences despite insisting on conditions of autonomy that deprive his terms of the normativity that is a necessary condition of meaning. Thus I do not answer the skeptical problem so much as undercut the basis upon which it is posed in the first place. (shrink)

We can and do reflect in very general terms on human beings and their place in the world, and we do so for a number of reasons and in a variety of ways. We can notice similarities between human beings and other parts of nature, or differences between them and most other things, or even respects in which they are unique in the world as we know it. Human beings are born and grow and they decline and die. (...) They are the only things in the universe who laugh. Human beings also act. Unlike rocks on a mountainside or branches of a tree, they do not just move, they do things. Other animals also do things, but humans differ from them in the extent to which they think about what to do, and then act as a result of that deliberation. And, not coincidentally, human beings also know things about the world around them. Knowledge is essential to deliberation and to informed action. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo pretende mostrar cómo el filósofo danés Søren Kierkegaard, mediante su concepto de conciencia, establece una crítica al escepticismo cartesiano al afirmar la imposibilidad de la duda del mundo exterior, puesto que la misma posibilidad de la duda supone de antemano la existencia de una conciencia que produce y es producida por la relación tricotómica entre idealidad y realidad, o, con otras palabras, mediatez e inmediatez. Para ello se realizará en primer lugar la explicación del planteamiento cartesiano, a (...) saber: la postulación de los tres niveles de duda y el cogito ergo sum; luego se explicará la noción de conciencia y posibilidad ideal de la duda del autor danés, y por último se expondrá cómo, bajo la óptica de esa noción de conciencia, Kierkegaard realiza una fuerte crítica a la duda metódica y al cogito cartesiano como demostración de la existencia.: This article aims at showing how the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, through his concept of conscience, criticizes Cartesian skepticism upon affirming the impossibility of doubting the outside world, since the very possibility of doubt presupposes the existence of a conscience that produces and is produced by the trichotomic relationship between ideality and reality, or, in other words, mediate- ness and immediacy. For this, the Cartesian approach will be explained in the first place, namely: the three levels of doubt and the cogito ergo sum. Then the notion of conscience and ideal possibility of the doubt of the Danish author will be explained, and finally, it will be explained how, in the perspective of this notion of conscience, Kierkegaard makes a strong critique to the methodical doubt and to the cartesian cogito like demonstration of existence. (shrink)

In this paper I will draw attention to an important route to external world skepticism, which I will call confidence skepticism. I will argue that we can defang confidence skepticism (though not a meeker ‘argument from might’ which has got some attention in the 20th century literature on external world skepticism) by adopting a partially psychologistic answer to the problem of priors. And I will argue that certain recent work in the epistemology of mathematics and logic provides independent (...) support for such psychologism. (shrink)

How do rational minds make contact with the world? The empiricist tradition sees a gap between mind and world, and takes sensory experience, fallible as it is, to provide our only bridge across that gap. In its crudest form, for example, the traditional idea is that our minds consult an inner realm of sensory experience, which provides us with evidence about the nature of external reality. Notoriously, however, it turns out to be far from clear that there (...) is any viable conception of experience which allows it to do the job. The original problem is to show that thought is rationally constrained by external reality. If sensory experience is to provide the solution--in particular, if it is to provide the answer to sceptical challenges--it must therefore meet two criteria. First, it must itself be `receptive'--i.e., appropriately constrained by external reality. Second, it must be the kind of thing that can enter into a logical or rational relationship with belief--it must already be `conceptual,' in other words. In arguing against the idea that anything could serve both roles, Wilfred Sellars termed this conception of experience "the Myth of the Given.". (shrink)

Easy to understand philosophy papers in all areas. Table of contents: Three Short Philosophy Papers on Human Freedom The Paradox of Religions Institutions Different Perspectives on Religious Belief: O’Reilly v. Dawkins. v. James v. Clifford Schopenhauer on Suicide Schopenhauer’s Fractal Conception of Reality Theodore Roszak’s Views on Bicameral Consciousness Philosophy Exam Questions and Answers Locke, Aristotle and Kant on Virtue Logic Lecture for Erika Kant’s Ethics Van Cleve on Epistemic Circularity Plato’s Theory of Forms Can we trust our senses? Yes (...) we can Descartes on What He Believes Himself to Be The Role of Values in Science Modern Science Kant’s Moral Philosophy Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy Schopenhauer on Human Suffering Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy The Philosophical Value of Uncertainty Logic Homework: Theorems and Models Searle vs. Turing on the Imitation Game Hume, Frankfurt, and Holbach on Personal Freedom Manifesto of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Secular Society Michael’s Analysis of the Limits of Civil Protections Bentham and Mill on Different Types of Pleasure Set Theory Homework Aristotle on Virtue Nagel On the Hard Problem Wittgenstein on Language and Thought Camus and Schopenhauer on the Meaning of Life Camus’ Hero as Rebel without a Cause My Little Finger: Camus’ Absurdism Illustrated Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? Does Mathematics Assume the Truth of Platonism? The Self-defeating Nature of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism Generally What is The Good Life? Bentham and Mill regarding types of pleasures Kant’s Moral Philosophy Five Short Papers on Mind-body Dualism Tracy Latimer’s Father had the Right to Kill Her: Towards a doctrine of generalized self-defense Arguments Concerning God and Morality Goldman, Rousseau and von Hayek on the Ideal State J.S Mill on Liberty and Personal Freedom A Kantian Analysis of a Borderline Date-rape Situation Living Well as Flourishing: Aristotle’s Conception of the Good Life Three Essays on Medical Ethics: Answers to Exam Questions on Elective Amputation, Vaccination, and Informed Consent Hobbes, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche: Their Central Themes De Tocqueville on Egoism Mill vs. Hobbes on Liberty Exam-Essays on the Moral Systems of Mill, Bentham, and Kant Kant’s Moral System Aristotle on Virtue Plato’s Cave Allegory An Ethical Quandary Superorganisms The Tuskegee Experiment A Rawlsian Analysis Why Moore’s Proof of an External World Fails A Defense of Nagel’s Argument Against Materialism A Utilitarian Analysis of a Case of Theft The Paradox of the Self-aware Wretch: An Analysis of Pascal’s Moral Philosophy Jean-Paul Sartre: Decline and Fall of a Marxist Sell-out A One Page Proof of Plato’s Theory of Forms Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy The problem of the one and the many Four Short Essays on Truth and Knowledge What is ‘the Good Life?’ The Ontological Argument Different Political Philosophies: Plato, Locke, Madison, Rousseau, Hayek, and Mill on the State What do I know with certainty? Skepticism about skepticism Neuroscience and Freewill Operant Conditioning What makes us special? Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? No Two Papers on Epistemology: Gettier and Bostrom Examination Nietzsche on Punishment God’s Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility . (shrink)

Reid was the founder of Scottish common sense realism, a branch of empiricism which avoids the skepticism inherent in the tradition of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Reid did not attempt to justify the beliefs which fall victim to Humean skepticism--the belief in an external world, in the identity of the self, or in the efficacy of human will and planning--concepts which he found to be present in men's minds from the start of their rational lives. "Men may dispute (...) about things which have no existence," he writes, but "they cannot dispute about things of which they have no conception." The job of philosophy is therefore not to justify beliefs which men cannot help but hold, but rather to clarify what problems are involved in holding these "common sense" beliefs, and to improve upon the assumptions underlying empiricist conclusions when these are antithetical to common sense. Thus, much of Reid's work consists of conceptual analysis, and critical examination of the role of language in creating philosophical problems. As examples: in the fourth essay in this book, he challenges Hume's analysis of "cause," and in his work on the Intellectual Powers he objects to Berkeley's use of one term, "smell," to refer both to the object of thought, and to the object thought of. The Essays on the Active Powers contain Reid's work in theory of action, freedom of the will, and ethics, especially meta-ethics. Reid finds that reason not only can determine the ends to be aimed at in morality, but the ends in other areas of human endeavor as well. M.I.T. has reproduced an American edition of the Essays from 1815. This is an appropriate choice, as Reid's epistemology and ethics had wide and prolonged influence in American philosophy, and both their spirit and substance have been incorporated in pragmatism. Besides their historical interest, the detailed replies of Reid to Hume offer students an instructive example of philosophical argument.--M. B. M. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish two ways of raising a sceptical problem of others' minds: via a problem concerning the possibility of error or via a problem concerning sources of knowledge. I give some reason to think that the second problem raises a more interesting problem in accounting for our knowledge of others’ minds and consider proposed solutions to the problem.

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 3, pp 147 - 172 The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu has seldom been considered in conjunction with the problem of external-world skepticism despite the fact that his text, _Twenty Verses_, presents arguments from ignorance based on dreams. In this article, an epistemological phenomenalist interpretation of Vasubandhu is supported in opposition to a metaphysical idealist interpretation. On either interpretation, Vasubandhu gives an invitation to the problem of external-world skepticism, although his final conclusion is closer (...) to skepticism on the epistemological phenomenalist interpretation. The article ends with reflections on what light Vasubandhu might shed on the issue of whether skepticism is a natural problem in epistemology as well as why, despite Vasubandhu, the skeptical problem was not a central issue in the later Indian tradition. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether introspection plus externalism about mental content warrant an a priori refutation of external-world skepticism and ontological solipsism. The suggestion is that if thought content is partly determined by affairs in the environment and if we can have non-empirical knowledge of our current thought contents, we can, just by reflection, know about the world around us -- we can know that our environment is populated with content-determining entities. After examining this type of transcendental argument (...) and discussing various objections found in the literature, I argue that the notion of privileged self-knowledge underlying this argument presupposes that we can learn, via introspection, that our so-called thoughts are propositional attitudes rather than contentless states. If, however, externalism is correct and thought content consists in the systematic dependency of internal states on relational properties, we cannot know non-empirically whether or not we have propositional attitudes. Self-knowledge (apropositional attitude) is consistent with us lacking the ability to rule out, via introspection, the possibility that we don't have any propositional attitudes. Self-knowledge provides us with knowledge of what is in our minds, but not that we have minds. Hence, the combination of externalism with the doctrine of privileged self-knowledge does not allow for an a priori refutation of skepticism and is therefore unproblematic. (shrink)

While the notion of the mind as information-processor--a kind of computational system--is widely accepted, many scientists and philosophers have assumed that this account of cognition shows that the mind's operations are characterizable independent of their relationship to the external world. Existential Cognition challenges the internalist view of mind, arguing that intelligence, thought, and action cannot be understood in isolation, but only in interaction with the outside world. Arguing that the mind is essentially embedded in the external world, Ron (...) McClamrock provides a schema that allows cognitive scientists to address such long-standing problems in artificial intelligence as the "frame" problem and the issue of "bounded" rationality. Extending this schema to cover progress in other studies of behavior, including language, vision, and action, McClamrock reinterprets the importance of the organism/environment distinction. McClamrock also considers the broader philosophical question of the place of mind in the world, particularly with regard to questions of intentionality, subjectivity, and phenomenology. With implications for philosophy, cognitive and computer science, AI, and psychology, this book synthesizes state-of-the-art work in philosophy and cognitive science on how the mind interacts with the world to produce thoughts, ideas, and actions. (shrink)

I defend external world realism. I assume that the principle of inference to the best explanation is justified: roughly, a hypothesis that provides a better explanation of the total evidence is more probable than one that does not. I argue that the existence of a world of spatial objects provides a systematic explanation of the spatial contents of visual experience, and that it provides a better explanation than traditional skeptical hypotheses. This paper thus pursues the explanationist strategy of Laurence (...) BonJour and Jonathan Vogel. It is an improved, more compelling defense, for at least two reasons. First, the attention to spatial properties, and in particular to what I call perspectival projections, makes the explanatory power of the realist hypothesis much more vivid and concrete. Second, the argument preserves and elucidates much that seems correct in the explanationist arguments others have offered while avoiding significant problems and shortcomings. (shrink)

Recent literature in epistemology has focused on the following argument for skepticism (SA): I know that I have two hands only if I know that I am not a handless brain in a vat. But I don't know I am not a handless brain in a vat. Therefore, I don't know that I have two hands. Part I of this article reviews two responses to skepticism that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s: sensitivity theories and attributor contextualism. Part II considers (...) the more recent ‘neo-Moorean’ response to skepticism and its development in ‘safety’ theories of knowledge. Part III argues that the skeptical argument set out in SA is not of central importance. Specifically, SA is parasitic on skeptical reasoning that is more powerful and more fundamental than that displayed by SA itself. Finally, Part IV reviews a Pyrrhonian argument for skepticism that is not well captured by SA, and considers a promising strategy for responding to it. (shrink)

How should we understand the relationship between the contents of our color, causal, modal, and evaluative beliefs, on the one hand, and color, causal, modal, and evaluative properties, on the other? According to Barry Stroud (2011), because of the nature of the contents of those types of beliefs, we should also think that what he calls a “negative metaphysical verdict” on the latter is not one that we could consistently maintain. The metaphysical project aims to arrive at an improved (...) conception of ourselves and our relation the world, no matter if that conception is positive or negative. But if Stroud is right that we cannot consistently arrive at the view that all of our causal, modal, and evaluative beliefs are systematically false, we will see that we cannot consistently reach the negative verdict. But failure to reach the negative verdict doesn’t mean that we have reached the positive verdict. Stroud calls this philosophical failure “metaphysical dissatisfaction”. In this paper, I argue that we can appropriate a metaepistemological response to the problem of the external world which shares its core features with Stroud’s (2000, 2011) arguments, but which nevertheless leaves us with a distinctive kind of epistemological dissatisfaction. (shrink)

In Mind and World, John McDowell intends to make the diagnosis of a fundamental philosophical anxiety, whose hard core, from his point of view, is deeply rooted in the relationship that usually occurs between mind and world, as the title suggests. Moreover, assuming entirely the clinical consequences of metaphor, McDowell’s main aim is to point towards a cure. This therapy, as we shall see, doesn’t have an effective Wittgensteinian direction, in contrast with McDowell’s assertions. On the other hand, I (...) will show, in particular on the issue of skepticism, a contrasting vision of «analytical» and «phenomenological» approaches to the problems of knowledge. (shrink)

Commentators generally agree that Foucher presumes the resemblance theory of representation and uses it to substantiate external world skepticism. In this paper, I challenge this picture. First, I argue that he does not assume that representation is reducible to, or even just works through, resemblance between representation and object. Indeed, his functional-similarity theory primarily appeals to resemblance between the respective effects the representation and the object (would) have on our minds. I also propose that his argument for the (...) resemblance-requirement of representation depends on the causal likeness principle, and clarify its role in Foucher’s theory. Second, I show that his main interest lies with representation in the sense of truthfully making the object present. Accordingly, when Foucher concludes that we can only represent our own ideas, he merely means that our ideas reveal the ways objects affect us through our senses, as opposed to how they are in themselves. (shrink)

Introduction -- Part I: The classical problems of epistemology -- Descartes's epistemology -- The concept of knowledge -- The problem of induction -- A priori justification and knowledge -- Immediate experience -- Knowledge of the external world -- Some further epistemological issues : other minds, testimony, and memory -- Part II: Contemporary responses to the cartesian epistemological program -- Introduction to part II -- Foundationalism and coherentism -- Internalism and externalism -- Quine and naturalized epistemology -- Knowledge (...) and skepticism. (shrink)