The Sceptical Challenge (original) (raw)
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The Case against Scepticism: Part 1
The meaning of life is the attainment of knowledge regarding what is true and what is false. One of the longest surviving obstacles to the discovery of knowledge is an ideology that is known as scepticism. This ideology masquerades itself under the cover of various perspectives that pretend to have nothing to do with scepticism but really affirm its' existence after the masks of these perspectives are uncovered. Before we can uncover the existence of various forms of scepticism and refute scepticism as a false ideology, we need to have a clear grasp of the meaning of this ideology. A Google search comes up with the following definition of scepticism. Scepticism: In philosophy, this is the theory that certain knowledge is impossible.1 Anyone who is committed to a true search for the nature of reality would ask the question of how it is possible for certain forms of knowledge to be unattainable. Questions naturally arise regarding the boundaries of human knowledge and the kind of evidence that could be used to prove that certain forms of knowledge are impossible to attain. Another question arises. Who are the sceptics? In this modern era, very few people who secretly adhere to scepticism are willing to accept the label of being a sceptic. As a result of this denial, they do not actively campaign against the forms of knowledge that they reject. I have a strategy for three hidden forms of this ideology to be uncovered in three separate sections and then refuted. Firstly, this strategy involves a clear knowledge of self identification regarding the human condition. As modern scepticism is a denial of the existence of certain forms of knowledge, it eventually involves a refusal to admit to the existence of certain factors that are necessary for us to obtain self identification in regard to the concept of essence which will be explained later on. The concept of essence will be used as a factor that is essential in exposing and refuting scepticism. Secondly, I will explain the three classical laws of thought and demonstrate how a clear knowledge of them is an effective means of exposing the absurdities of scepticism. In parts two and three of this argument, I will show how an awareness of both secular and theological approaches to scepticism is beneficial to our understanding of how scepticism can be defeated. Before we can make a valid challenge to the strength of scepticism as an ideology, we need an historical example of what it is. In my opinion, the scepticism that was espoused by David Hume regarding the theory of induction provides us with an example of how strong scepticism can be as an argument. I will briefly explain what inductive reasoning is first, and then give an explanation of Hume's sceptical position on it, soon afterwards. Induction is a form of reasoning which advocates the view that we can draw a conclusion regarding an
2007
The study of scepticism might be said to define epistemology. As the enquiry into the nature and sources of knowledge, epistemology's two fold concern is to identify and explicate the conditions whose satisfaction will amount to knowledge. Familiarly, one of these crucial conditions is justification. The problems facing the justification of knowledge-claims can best and most powerfully be described by framing them as sceptical challenges, meeting which-if possible-will certify that we are at least sometimes indeed entitled to make claims to knowledge. Given the centrality of the question of justification in epistemology, and given that the work required of justification is defined by sceptical challenges to our claims to know, it is therefore essential to get the nature of scepticism itself right. My task in what follows is to describe the anatomy of scepticism correctly. At the end I remark that the anatomisation I offer suggests what form a response to scepticism should take. II Despite traditional appearances, scepticism is not well described as doubt or denial, nor is it properly understood without limitation of subject matter. Rather, it is best and most sharply characterised as a motivated challenge, in a specified area of discourse, to the makers of epistemic claims in that discourse. The challenge is to defend the grounds offered in support of those claims so that the concerns embodied in the sceptic's motivation for issuing the challenge will be met. His motivation consists in the battery of familiar sceptical considerations which, in the tradition of debate on these matters, have come to be called sceptical 'arguments'. One of the main points I urge is that this is a misdescription. Unravelling this characterisation gives us our anatomy of scepticism. First, it is a mistake to think of scepticism as consisting in an agniology, that is, a thesis to the effect that we are ignorant either globally or in some region of enquiry. Certain early forms of scepticism (notably the Pyrrhonian) appeared to take this form, but the briefest reflection shows that global agniology is trivially selfdefeating (if we know nothing, then we do not know that we know nothing), while local agniologies must themselves consist in positive claims to the effect that we are ignorant in the given sphere, and any positive claim can itself be challenged for its justification. Of course, weak forms of local agniology-which remind us that our knowledge in given regions of enquiry is incomplete, or provisional, and that a healthy attitude of open-minded scrutiny must greet each new claimed advance in them-are perfectly acceptable (and perhaps reflect moderate Academic scepticism, advanced in antiquity in opposition to Pyrrhonism on the grounds that life must be lived). But they do not amount to scepticism in the sense important in epistemology; in this guise they amount merely to injunctions to proportion assent to grounds-in short, to be rational.
Dialectica, 2005
According to the radical sceptic we have no reason to believe anything, being unable even to distinguish the more probable from the less. I propose to consider the practical problems engendered by this stance. It seems to require that we suspend judgement, but it is not clear that we can acquiesce to this demand. Is it psychologically possible to suspend belief? And if it is, can the sceptic live and act without believing? The practical difficulties, I shall argue, are genuine (although not always properly understood), but do not absolve us from the need to contend with sceptical arguments.
Another Failed Refutation of Scepticism
Jessica Wilson has recently offered a more sophisticated version of the self-defeat objection to Cartesian scepticism. She argues that the assertion of Cartesian scepticism results in an unstable vicious regress. The way out of the regress is to not engage with the Cartesian sceptic at all, to stop the regress before it starts, at the warranted assertion that the external world exists. We offer three reasons why this objection fails: first, the sceptic need not accept Wilson’s characterization of the sceptical thesis and thus need not start her regress; second, even if she did commit to the regress, it would not undermine scepticism in the way Wilson envisages; and third, the appeal to mental state scepticism which is necessary to generate the second and subsequent steps in the regress is not justified.
Introduction: Contemporary Skepticism
Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present, 2018
Overview of skepticism in contemporary epistemology, with attention given to how it intersects with internalism and externalism, fallibilism, contextualism, disjunctivism, disagreement with others, morality, and religion. Consideration of skeptical arguments about the structure of justification, the external world, induction, the a priori, and other minds.
A Modest Argument Against Scepticism
Quaderns de Filosofia, 2020
In this paper we don't intend to show, against the sceptic, that most of our everyday beliefs about the external world are cases of knowledge. What we do try to show is that it is more rational to hold that most of such beliefs are actually cases of knowledge than to deny them this status, as the external world sceptic does. In some sense, our point of view is the opposite of Hume's, who held that reason clearly favours scepticism about the independent existence of an external world rather than common sense belief in such an independent existence. In arguing for the superior rationality of this common sense, Moorean view, we also take a fallibilist conception of knowledge to be rationally preferable to an infallibilist view of it.
Sceptical Overkill: On Two Recent Arguments Against Scepticism
Mind, 1993
This paper is a discussion of a recent attempt by Crispin Wright (Wright 1991; page references to this work unless stated) to force at least some varieties of external world scepticism to succumb to a "head-on, rational response", contrary to well-known expressions of pessimism by, for example, Sir Peter Strawson and Barry Stroud. The varieties of scepticism in question are those that involve positing a "purportedly undetectable but cognitively disabling state", such as the state imposed by Descartes' malicious demon, in which a sufferer is unable to tell whether or not his or her experiences are caused by items in his or her perceptible environment, as opposed to some disassociated cause; the argument is completed by noticing that, if such a state were possible, then no-one could have complete confidence that he or she were not in such a state. Wright's project is more ambitious than the simple defeat of such a sceptical argument in debate; he claims, and I agree, that a generalised defeat would itself have to be achieved within three constraints. The reply must not be aimed solely at versions of scepticism that only attack knowledge. Against such an attack, the proper response is the "Russellian Retreat": "we can live with the concession that we do not, strictly, know some of the things we believed ourselves to know, provided that we retain the thought that we are fully justified in accepting them" (p. 88). What we should not tolerate are arguments that claim to undermine the distinction between grounded, earned beliefs, and ungrounded, dogmatic beliefs. The reply must not be ad hominem. We must not "be content to rely on attacks on the stability of the conclusion, or on the mutual coherence of the premises which are used to support it. That is good strategy against an opponent; but defusing (the sceptical) paradox demands a properly detailed diagnosis and expose of its power to seduce." (p. 89) The reply must undermine the sceptic's argument; a draw is no good. "If I find it totally unacceptable to think that none of my opinions about the external world, for instance, has any ground, it is hardly a comfort to be told that the case has been overstated-that it is merely that I have no justification for thinking that the situation is any better than that." (p. 89) For our purposes here the salient constraint is the second one. The anti-sceptical argument needs to be highly general, and capable of coping with a large number
Cartesian sceptical scenarios are traditionally understood as posing problems in epistemology. For example, if I cannot know I am not a brain in a vat, all empirical knowledge comes under threat. In this study, I argue that the problematic nature of Cartesian sceptical scenarios cannot be understood in epistemological terms alone; whereas both ancient and Cartesian sceptical arguments pose a global threat to empirical knowledge, the latter also pose a threat to the idea of engagement with the world. I explain this idea in terms of agency, self-constitution, social relations, and ethical life (chapter 1). In chapter 2, I argue that contemporary epistemology is by and large ill-equipped to deal with this threat, and that as a consequence it has not been given systematic treatment by contemporary philosophy. Finally, I adumbrate an alternative response, drawing on disjunctivist ideas in the philosophy of perception (chapter 3).
The Impossibility of Skepticism
The Philosophical Review, 2012
Epistemologists and philosophers of mind both ask questions about belief. Epistemologists ask normative questions about belief—which beliefs ought we have? Philosophers of mind ask metaphysical questions about belief—what are beliefs, and what does it take to have them? While these issues might seem independent of one another, there is potential for an interesting sort of conflict-the epistemologist might think we ought to have beliefs that, according to the philosopher of mind, it is impossible to have. In this paper, I argue that this conflict does arise, and that it creates problems for traditional skeptical views in epistemology. In particular, I will argue that on certain popular views about the nature of belief, it is impossible to adopt the near-global agnosticism recommended by the skeptical epistemologist. On other plausible views, it is only possible in special circumstances, and this limitation undermines skeptical epistemological claims. The only views about the nature of belief on which there are no metaphysical hurdles to adopting the agnosticism recommended by the skeptic are views that face powerful objections—objections that are completely independent of anti-skeptical epistemological considerations.