Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic* Nico Silins ns74@nyu.edu Introduction Suppose that, having concluded that there's an external world, Moore forges on, and reasons along the following lines: BIV (HANDS): I have hands. (LINK): If I have hands, then it's not the case that I'm a brain in a vat (BIV) who merely seems to have hands. So, (¬BIV): It's not the case that I'm a BIV who merely seems to have hands. My focus will be on two questions about Moore's justification to believe the premises and the conclusion of the argument above. At stake is what makes it possible for our experiences to justify our beliefs, and what makes it possible for us to be justified in disbelieving skeptical * For their helpful comments and questions, thanks to Richard Boyd, Stewart Cohen, Louis DeRosset, Ross Ford, John Hawthorne, Elizabeth Harman, David Jehle, Geoffrey Lee, Ram Neta, James Pryor, Stephen Schiffer, Declan Smithies, Scott Sturgeon, Adam Wager, Brian Weatherson, Ralph Wedgwood, Timothy Williamson, and Roger White. Special thanks to Matt Kotzen. I'm also grateful to audiences at the Universities of Calgary, Geneva, Kansas, Montana, Vermont, and North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Auburn, Columbia, Cornell, and Oxford Universities; and at MIT, SMU, and the ANU. 1 hypotheses about our experiences. The first question is (A) How is Moore justified in believing HANDS? Here my aim is to clarify and to defend the view that Moore's experience gives him immediate or non-inferential justification to believe that he has hands (Pollock 1974; Pryor 2000, 2004, forthcominga; Peacocke 2004; Davies 2004).1 Doing so will be the task of sections 1 and 2. Following the terminology of Pryor 2004, we can call the view Liberalism. The second question is (B) How is Moore justified in believing ¬BIV? Here I will defend the unorthodox view that, although Moore's experience does give him immediate justification to believe that he has hands, Moore's experience does not give him justification to believe ¬BIV. Moore does have justification to believe ¬BIV, but that justification is such that he could have it even if he didn't have his particular experience. I will defend this view in section 3. I will also show how the view undermines the core argument against Liberalism about how experience justifies belief. My main aim, then, is to hold on to the insight of the Liberal position while rejecting the Moorean response to the skeptic. In section 4 I will respond to the main objections to the overall package I endorse. 1 Also relevant are Burge (1993, 2003) or Huemer (2001). 2 1. Some Disputes about Perception and Justification In order to assess the main claims of this paper, we need a much sharper sense of what they are. I'll start with some general preliminaries, and then move on to formulations. First, a proposition might have a good epistemic status for a thinker, even though she does not believe the proposition, or believes the proposition though not on a justifying basis. In such a scenario, I will say that the thinker has propositional justification to believe the proposition. When a thinker has based her belief on something which justifies the belief, I will say that the belief is well-founded (Feldman and Conee 1985). My concern in the paper will typically be with what a thinker has propositional justification to believe, although at some points it will be crucial to consider well-founded belief. I'll remain neutral on how exactly to explain these notions, and about which if any is prior to the other. Second, my focus will primarily be on what a thinker has perceptual justification to believe. As I will use the expression, a thinker has perceptual justification to believe P just in case she has a possibly nonveridical experience with the content P, and her experience gives her justification to believe P.2 According to the particular framework in which I working, Moore's perceptual evidence is that it visually seems to him that he has hands, rather than his seeing that he has hands (which he cannot do in a case of illusion or hallucination), or his seeing some objects as being his hands (which he cannot do in a case of hallucination). 2 Here, as elsewhere, I set aside the natural thought that Moore also enjoys a non-visual, proprioceptive justification for believing that he has hands. I'm also setting aside questions about what propositional contents experiences exactly have, assuming that experiences have propositional contents at all. For some recent discussion of these questions see Siegel (2006) or Brewer (2006). 3 Finally, I will focus throughout the paper on the case of justification provided by visual experiences, thereby leaving open the possibility for different treatments of sources of justification such as testimony or memory, and even leaving open the possibility for different treatments of different types of experiences such as auditory or tactile experiences. 1.1. A Dispute About How Experiences Justify Belief in Their Contents In order to clarify the rival views about how Moore's experience justifies him in believing that he has hands, we need to introduce one more piece of terminology. Let's say that, when one has an experience which represents it to be the case that P, and one has some justification to believe some proposition Q, one's justification to believe Q is independent from the experience just in case one could have the justification to believe Q even if one did not have the experience. The key feature of what we can call the Conservative view---again adapting the terminology of Pryor (2004)---is that it explains the justificatory power of Moore's experience in terms of Moore's possession of independent justification to disbelieve skeptical hypotheses about his experience. On this view, when Moore's experience justifies him in believing that he has hands, his experience does not do so on its own, but instead jointly with some independent justification he has to believe ¬BIV (Wright 1985, 2000, 2002, forthcoming; Davies 1998, 2000, 2003, forthcoming).3 In more general terms: (Conservatism): Whenever your visual experience E gives you justification to believe its content that P (i) your experience does not give you immediate justification to believe that P, i.e. what makes 3 Also relevant are Bonjour (1985) or Cohen (2002). 4 your experience justify you to any degree in believing that P includes your having some independent justification to believe other propositions, and in particular, (ii) for any skeptical hypothesis H which entails that [you have E and it's not the case that P], what makes your experience justify you to any degree in believing that P includes your having independent justification to disbelieve H.4 The Conservative view says that, whenever your experience is a source of justification, it is only a source of mediate or inferential justification, one which relies on your independent justification to disbelieve skeptical hypotheses incompatible with the content of the experience. On this line of thought your experience is like a gas gauge: it provides you with justification only in conjunction with background information that it is not malfunctioning. Notice that the formulation of Conservatism concerns one's acquisition of any amount of justification from one's experience, and not just one's acquisition of enough justification to believe a proposition outright. Now that we have formulated Conservatism, it's a short step to formulate Liberalism. The Liberal accepts that Moore has perceptual justification to believe that he has hands, but rejects the first clause of Conservatism, and insists that experience can be a basic source of justification. According to the Liberal, Moore's experience gives him some justification to believe that he has hands on its own, separately from his having independent reason to believe ¬BIV or any other proposition. On this view, 4 Most Conservatives would also want to explain perceptual justification in terms of our having justification to reject certain hypotheses compatible with the contents of one's experiences, such as the hypothesis that one is hallucinating, or the hypothesis that one's experiences are not reliable, or even the hypothesis that one is not veridically hallucinating. However, giving a properly general formulation of Conservatism raises several complications I don't have the space 5 (Liberalism): It's not the case that: whenever your visual experience E gives you justification to believe its content that P, what makes your experience justify you to any degree in believing that P includes your having some independent justification to believe other propositions. On the Liberal view your experience is sometimes a source of immediate or non-inferential justification, where your having independent reason to believe other propositions plays no role in giving you that justification to believe that P. Here your experience is not like a gas gauge: it provides you with justification directly. Given that Liberalism is formulated as the rejection of the Conservative's (i), Liberalism does not yet say that there are any cases in which experiences give one enough immediate justification to believe a proposition outright. The formulation leaves open the possibility that experiences only give one enough justification to believe a proposition outright in conjunction with independent reason to believe other propositions. I believe that experiences do sometimes give one enough immediate justification for outright belief, and I believe that the arguments for Liberalism establish the stronger claim. However, my focus in what follows will mainly be on claims about degrees of justification. There is of course an intermediate position which accepts the Conservative's (i) yet rejects the Conservative's (ii), but I won't be addressing that position in this paper. As far as I can see, there is no tenable middle ground between the Liberal and the Conservative. In what follows I will assume that Liberalism is true if Conservatism is false. We should be clear that, according to the Liberal, experiences need not be a source of immediate justification whenever they are a source of justification.5 For example, if I'm justifiably confident that all of my experiences of grandfather clocks are veridical hallucinations, to address here. 6 and I have an experience as of a grandfather clock, my experience does not provide me with immediate justification to believe that there is a grandfather clock in front of me. In such a case, any capacity of my experience to give me non-inferential justification is undermined. Nevertheless, thanks to my background information that the experience is a veridical hallucination, my experience does provide me with mediate justification to believe that there is a grandfather clock in front of me. Such a case is not a counterexample to the Liberal view, which simply insists that experiences are sometimes a source of immediate justification when they are a source of justification. We can further clarify the dispute between the Liberal and the Conservative by comparing it with the dispute between foundationalists and non-foundationalists. Doing so also brings out the broader significance of the Liberal/Conservative debate. Consider the moderate foundationalist view that, for any inferentially justified empirical belief, its justification can be traced to some immediately justified perceptual belief about the environment. Liberalism does not entail the view, since perceptual beliefs could be immediately justified while failing to play the structural role required by foundationalism. However, the moderate foundationalist view about the structure of empirical justification is true only if Liberalism is true. Since it matters whether the moderate foundationalist view is true, it matters whether Liberalism is true. 1.2. A Separate Dispute About When Experiences Justify Belief in their Contents So far we have clarified a dispute about how experiences justify beliefs. A separate 5 Thanks to Brian Weatherson here. 7 question concerns when experiences justify beliefs. That question is left open by both views we have considered. In particular, the Liberal view should not be confused with the following claim: (Sufficiency): When you have a visual experience which represents it to be that case that P, and you have no reason to suspect that any skeptical hypothesis about your experience is true, then you have justification to believe that P (Pryor 2000: 532-537; Peacocke 2004: 70).6 Sufficiency is formulated in different terms than the Liberal and Conservative views. Liberalism and Conservatism are concerned with what makes it the case that one has perceptual justification. Sufficiency is itself silent on the matter, being merely the statement of a sufficient condition for experiences to justify beliefs. It's important that Sufficiency and Liberalism are logically independent. First, it could be that Sufficiency is true and Liberalism is false. On some views, we have "default entitlement" to reject skeptical hypotheses: whenever one has no reason to suspect that a skeptical hypothesis is true, one has reason to reject the hypothesis (Cohen 2000; Davies 2003; Wright 2004).7 This is a claim about when we have justification to reject skeptical hypotheses, and not yet the Field-like claim that there is no substantive explanation of why we have justification to reject the hypotheses (Field 2000, 2005). Default entitlement views are of course available to Conservatives. But if we are justified by default in rejecting skeptical hypotheses, then we have independent reason to reject skeptical hypotheses whenever the antecedent of 6 I borrow the "reason to suspect" phrase from Schiffer (2004). In n. 24, I state a caution about how to understand Sufficiency. 7 I pass over the complication that, in Wright (2004), our entitlement is described as one to an attitude other than belief. That's because I think everybody should say that we have justification to believe the obvious consequences of what we have justification to believe. See Jenkins (forthcoming) for critical discussion of Wright (2004). 8 Sufficiency is true. It is therefore open to Conservatives to accept Sufficiency. The upshot is that if one wants to commit oneself to the Liberal view, one cannot do so merely by endorsing Sufficiency.8 Second, it could be that Liberalism is true and Sufficiency is false. It might be that some experiences have contents which are too fine-grained for the experiences to immediately justify believing those contents.9 For example, if my glance at the skyline determinately represents that there are 11,122 lights on, yet I have no reason to suspect that a skeptical hypothesis ascribing that experience to me is true, I may fail to have justification to believe that there are 11,122 lights on. This case would be a counterexample to Sufficiency, but it would not show that experiences never provide immediate justification.10 In sum, the Liberal should not be confused with the proponent of Sufficiency, and the Conservative should not be confused with the opponent of Sufficiency. The Liberal/Conservative dispute is orthogonal to the question of when experiences justify beliefs. 1.3. A Question About Whether Experiences Can Justify Disbelief in Skeptical Hypotheses 8 Given that the most explicit commitment in Peacocke (2004) is to Sufficiency, it's not obvious that the position defended in Peacocke (2004) is a Liberal one. Chapter 3 of the book sets out an argument which could provide an independent justification for a reader to disbelieve certain skeptical hypotheses about her experiences. It's not clear whether a thinker's tacit grasp of that argument is supposed to explain her having perceptual justification for her beliefs. So it's not obvious that Peacocke (2004) is committed to Liberalism. 9 Discussions of the "speckled hen problem" are relevant here. See Ernest Sosa in Bonjour and Sosa (2003: ch. 7). 10 Steup (forthcoming) illustrates another way Sufficiency might fail even if Liberalism does not. Suppose my experience justifies me in believing its content only if I'm in a position to know that I'm having the experience. Suppose also that in some case I'm not in a position to know what experience I'm having (Williamson 2000, ch: 5). Such a case would be a counterexample to Sufficiency without posing any problem for the Liberal view. 9 So far we have discussed questions about how and when Moore is justified in believing that he has hands. By a straightforward and plausible closure principle for justification, Moore must have justification to believe ¬BIV if he has justification to believe HANDS. We can state the closure principle (or schema) as follows: (JB-Closure): Necessarily, if you have justification to believe that P, and you know that [P only if Q], then you have justification to believe that Q.11 Our closure principle, plus the plausible claim that Moore satisfies its antecedent, yields the result that Moore has justification to believe ¬BIV. However, the principle does not yield any result about exactly how Moore has justification to believe ¬BIV. According to the Moorean, Moore's experience in one way or another gives him justification to believe that he's not a BIV who merely seems to have hands. I should say right away that some Mooreans are beyond the scope of this paper. That's because there can be disagreements within the Moorean camp about how to characterize Moore's total evidence. Most Mooreans---internalist Mooreans---will think Moore could have the very same evidence if BIV were true. However, some Mooreans---externalist Mooreans---will think that Moore could not have the same evidence if BIV were true. For example, perhaps what justifies Moore in believing that he has hands is really that he sees that he has hands, where he can see that he has hands only if he does have hands. In this paper my focus will be on the 11 JB-Closure is formulated in terms of knowing that [P only if Q] rather than merely in terms of being justified in believing that [P only if Q]. It may be that the principle formulated in terms of justified belief rather than knowledge is false. Someone who has a justified though false belief that [P only if Q] might well have justification to believe that P while failing to have justification to believe that Q. 10 internalist Moorean view rather than the externalist Moorean view.12 Some philosophers will reject the Moorean view because they are skeptics, or because they deny closure. My focus, however, will be on the non-Moorean who allows that Moore has justification to believe ¬BIV, but denies that Moore's experience in any way supplies justification to disbelieve the skeptical hypothesis. We can think of this figure as the Rationalist.13 There are many ways to be a Rationalist. Cohen (2000) suggests a story on which the denials of skeptical hypotheses are non-evidentially rational to believe, Vogel (1990, 2005) offers a story in terms of an inference to the best explanation of one's experiences, and Wright (2004) offers a story in terms of broadly pragmatic considerations. My aim here will not be to decide between these or other accounts, but rather to defend the claim that at least one such account is correct.14 1.4. The Key Positions 12 For arguments against the externalist Moorean view, see Silins (2005a). There I argue that the view provides us with too little justification in the case in which we are deceived, and with too much justification in the case in which we are not deceived. 13 A further possible view is that Moore has both perceptual justification and independent justification to believe ¬BIV. I set this view aside in what follows. 14 As far as our knowledge of the falsehood of sweeping BIV or evil demon hypotheses is concerned, some philosophers hold that all worlds in which sweeping skeptical hypotheses hold are remote, and that the remoteness of these worlds in one way or another accounts for our knowledge that the hypotheses are false (e.g. Sosa 1999 or Pritchard 2005). Such philosophers typically exploit some "safety condition" on knowledge along the following lines: one knows p only if one is not mistaken in nearby worlds in believing p or a related proposition. Such views are vulnerable to skeptical arguments which purport to use skeptical hypotheses true in nearby worlds. Consider for instance the hypothesis that "the particles belonging to the desk remain more or less unmoved but the material inside the desk unfolds in a bizarre enough way that the system no longer counts as a desk" (Hawthorne 2004: 4-5). However unlikely such a hypothesis is to be true, it arguably is true in some nearby world in which I still believe that there's a desk in front me. Even if a condition for knowledge in terms of safety from error undermines some 11 Now that we have clarified and formulated the rival answers to our questions, we should consider how these views interact. To the best of my knowledge, Liberals in the literature have always been Mooreans, without allowing or considering that Liberals could be Rationalists.15 Also, Conservatives have always been Rationalists, without allowing or considering that Conservatives may be Mooreans. I think that far too narrow a view has been taken of how these positions interact. In fact we need to consider the following four views: Moorean Rationalist Liberal e.g. Pryor (2000, 2004) Davies (2004) Peacocke (2004) The author Conservative Space available! e.g. Wright (1985, 2000, 2002, 2003) Davies (1998, 2000, 2003) The slot for the Moorean Conservative is so far unoccupied, but it may well be taken in the future: consider philosophers' ongoing gentrification of logical space. The slot may still strike some readers as unoccupiable. A consequence of Conservatism is that Moore has justification to believe that he has hands only if he has independent justification to believe ¬BIV- --so how could Moore's experience remain a source of justification to believe ¬BIV? To address skeptical arguments, the safety condition threatens to underwrite other skeptical arguments. 15 More carefully: Liberals in the literature who have accepted standard closure principles have always been Mooreans. A denier of closure such as Dretske (1970) might count as a Liberal non-Moorean, since he would deny that Moore has justification to believe ¬BIV. 12 this worry, we should clarify that the Moorean makes a claim about how one can increase one's justification to disbelieve skeptical hypotheses, and not yet a claim about how one can acquire one's justification to disbelieve skeptical hypotheses for the first time. Moore's experience arguably could increase his justification to believe ¬BIV without providing his first justification to believe ¬BIV. On my view, the Moorean Conservative is doubly mistaken: both Liberalism and Rationalism are true. This space may also strike readers as unoccupiable. If Liberalism is true, what could stop Moore's experience from being a source of justification to believe ¬BIV? This concern, and others, will be addressed in sections 3.2 and 4. For now, I will simply stress that the question of how we have perceptual justification is a very different one from the question of how we have anti-skeptical justification. In particular, even if we enjoy independent justification to reject skeptical hypotheses about our experiences, our having that independent justification need not be what makes us have justification to believe the contents of our experiences. Analogously, even if all red things are disposed to look red, it does not follow that their being disposed to look red is what makes them red (Jackson and Pargetter 1987). There is therefore room to combine a Rationalist story about how we have anti-skeptical justification with a Liberal story about how we have perceptual justification. 2. Supporting Liberalism Now that we have a clearer view of the positions available in the debate, I will defend my own overall view, starting with the defense of Liberalism itself. I have no knock-down argument for Liberalism, but I do have three reasons to believe it. 13 First, Liberalism is more plausible than Conservatism because the Conservative faces a challenge the Liberal does not: the Conservative is in a weaker position to endorse the claim that our perceptual beliefs are well-founded in addition to being propositionally justified. In order for a belief to be well-founded, I take it, one must hold the belief on the basis of what justifies it. Thus, if Conservatism is true, then our perceptual beliefs are well-founded only if they are based on our independent justifications to reject skeptical hypotheses about our experiences. It's hard to see that we actually do base our perceptual beliefs on any such independent justifications, whether or not it is in principle possible for us to do so. So the Conservative may be forced to accept the moderate skeptical claim that our actual perceptual beliefs are not well-founded, even if the Conservative can accept the anti-skeptical claim that our actual perceptual beliefs are propositionally justified. The Liberal faces no such problem. That's because the Liberal does not say that our perceptual beliefs are justified only in conjunction with our independent justification to hold other beliefs. A major advantage of Liberalism is that it is psychologically undemanding and straightforwardly compatible with the well-founded status of our perceptual beliefs. Second, Liberalism is attractive because perceptual beliefs are among the best candidates to be immediately justified. I take it that, whether or not any version of foundationalism is true, at least some of our beliefs are not justified by their relations to any other beliefs. In particular, some of our beliefs about our own states of mind are immediately justified. Now, one might insist that none of our perceptual beliefs are immediately justified, even though some of our introspective beliefs are immediately justified. But I can see no reason to maintain this view. For instance, one might say that our perceptual beliefs are fallible and defeasible whereas our introspective beliefs are not. However, some of our immediately justified introspective beliefs--14 like our beliefs that we have such and such a belief, or such and such a desire---are fallible and defeasible as well. In general, we have introspective beliefs that are immediately justified, even though they are not better candidates than our perceptual beliefs to be immediately justified. Rather than concluding that neither perceptual beliefs nor introspective beliefs are immediately justified, we should instead accept that both perceptual beliefs and introspective beliefs are immediately justified. At the very least, we should not hold, as most Conservatives do, that denials of skeptical hypotheses are better candidates to be immediately justified than propositions about the external world such as the proposition that there is a hand. Finally, we can support the Liberal view by considering judgments about cases. But we need to proceed with caution. I'll start by criticizing a tempting though unsuccessful argument before moving to a successful one. Both arguments consider how one might answer the perceptual question: "why does Moore have any reason at all to believe that he has hands?" The first argument focuses on the pre-theoretical judgment: "well, it looks to him as if he has hands." According to this argument, the pre-theoretical judgment is plausibly a correct answer to the perceptual question, and we should believe Liberalism rather than Conservatism because the pre-theoretical judgment is plausibly a correct answer to the perceptual question.16 The first argument does not work. The problem with the argument is that both the Liberal and the Conservative can accept that the pre-theoretical judgment is a correct answer to our question. They do not dispute that Moore's experience justifies him in believing that he has hands. Their dispute is instead about whether Moore's experience justifies him in believing that he has hands only in conjunction with independent justification he has to disbelieve skeptical 16 This argument is arguably that of Pryor (2000: 536), criticized by Schiffer (2004: 173-4), 15 hypotheses. So the plausibility of the pre-theoretical judgment does not favor the Liberal view. The better argument focuses squarely on a Conservative answer to the perceptual question: "well, it looks to him as if he has hands, and he has good reason to believe that he's not being deceived by an evil demon or anything like that". Call this the Conservative judgment. At the very least, I take it that the Conservative judgment fails to be an intuitively correct answer to the question, so that there is no presumption in favor of the Conservative view. But I also take it that the Conservative judgment seems to be an incorrect answer to the perceptual question. Our question concerned why Moore has any reason to believe just that he has hands--I take the mention of positive reason to disbelieve skeptical hypotheses to seem beside the point. When the question concerns why Moore has any reason to believe just that he has hands, the answer should not involve his having reason to reject skeptical hypotheses. That is why Liberalism has the best fit with our judgments about the case.17 I conclude that Liberalism is correct. 3. Undermining the Case for Conservatism I will now argue for the Rationalist view about anti-skeptical justification. I will do so indirectly, by first setting out the main argument for the Conservative view about perceptual justification. The advantage of this approach is that it permits us to kill two birds with one stone: to see why the main case for the Conservative view fails, in addition to seeing why the Moorean Steup (2004: 416-8), or Neta (2004). My second argument aims to avoid their criticisms. 17 One might protest that, since Liberalism is not the negation of Conservatism, my considerations at best support rejecting Conservatism, and do not support accepting Liberalism. As mentioned earlier, I'm assuming that no intermediate position between Liberalism and Conservatism is true. 16 rejection of skeptical hypotheses does not work. 3.1. The Case for Conservatism The main case for Conservatism can usefully be stated as an inference to the best explanation.18 The fact to be explained, for now just assuming that there is such a fact, is that Moore's inference is not a way for him to acquire a well-founded belief in ¬BIV. Let's say that Moore's inference fails to transmit warrant just in case it fails to be a way for him to acquire a well-founded belief in ¬BIV. The thought is that the Conservative is best placed to explain why Moore's inference fails to transmit warrant. The explanation can be stated in the following three steps: (C) If Conservatism is true, then Moore's inference "begs the question", in the sense that Moore is justified in believing the premise HANDS only in virtue of having independent justification to believe the conclusion ¬BIV. (D) If Moore's inference begs the question, then Moore's inference fails to transmit warrant. So, (E) If Conservatism is true, then Moore's inference fails to transmit warrant. According to the Conservative, the argument just set out makes the best sense of what's wrong with Moore's inference. The usual way Liberals have responded to the argument is by denying that there is the phenomenon that the Conservative is trying to explain. Given that Liberals have been Mooreans, they have by no means conceded that Moore's inference fails to transmit warrant. Instead, they have at most conceded that there is indeed something wrong with the inference, and have tried to 18 See Wright (1985), pp. 436-437, (2000) pp. 141-143, 153-156, (2002), pp. 334-337, 342-345, 17 provide an alternative description and explanation of what is wrong with the inference. For example, they have emphasized that it is not a way of resolving justified or perhaps even unjustified doubts about the conclusion (Pryor 2004; Davies 2004). There are a couple of problems with the usual Liberal response to the argument for Conservatism. First, and perhaps most importantly, I take the Moorean Liberal response to be unmotivated: it's unclear why anyone should want to hold on to the view that Moore's inference transmits warrant. Second, the textbook examples of Moore's inference are not ones in which he performs it in order to resolve justified doubts or even unjustified doubts about whether BIV is true. The inference performed in the textbook examples seems defective all the same. However, given the usual Liberal diagnosis of the problem with the inference, it's unclear why anything should seem wrong with the inference except when it is performed in order to resolve justified or unjustified doubts about the conclusion. If Moore's inference isn't a means to X, it's not clear why we should take something to be wrong with his inference unless we take him to be trying to X. There might be a way to work out the usual Liberal explanation of what's wrong with Moore's inference, but it would be nice to have a simpler story. In response to the first point, Liberals might think that they are committed to being Mooreans, and that we have reason to believe the Moorean view given that we have reason to believe the Liberal view. To undermine Moorean Liberalism, and to start to reveal what's wrong with the main case for Conservatism, we may highlight a bad argument for the conclusion that the Liberal must be a Moorean. We can set out the line of argument as follows. First, and straightforwardly, if Liberalism is true, then Moore's inference does not "beg the question" in the stipulative sense discussed by (2003), pp. 59-63; Davies (2003), p. 29-30; McKinsey (2003), p. 101. 18 the Conservative. Second, and much less straightforwardly, if Moore's inference does not beg the question, then it is a way for him to become justified in believing ¬BIV. So, if Liberalism is true, then Moore's inference is a way for him to become justified in believing ¬BIV.19 The key assumption of this argument is that Moore's inference fails to transmit warrant only if it "begs the question" in the Conservative's sense. If the assumption is false, and an inference can fail to transmit warrant without begging the question, then there is space for a Liberal who rejects the Moorean view. In the following section, I will show just how one can reject the Moorean view without betraying Liberalism. 3.3. The Bayesian Explanation of Transmission Failure There is a clearer and better explanation of why, given the justification he has for believing HANDS, Moore's inference is not a way for him to become justified in believing ¬BIV. This explanation is itself consistent with the Liberal view (and the Conservative view). We can set it out in two stages. Stage 1 The aim of the first stage is to show that, when Moore responds to the evidence that it visually seems to him that he has hands (SEEMS), it is rational for him to decrease his 19 There might be an example of the reasoning in recent work by Martin Davies, where he discusses a "TABLE" inference analogous to Moore's inference: suppose that, as against Wright's view, there is no need for an antecedent warrant---not even an antecedent unearned warrant---for assuming, trusting, or believing that TABLE (III) is true. Suppose that the evidence described in TABLE (I) by itself supports TABLE (II). Then, not only do I have an evidential warrant for believing TABLE (II), but also, by following through the modus ponens argument, I can gain---perhaps for the first time---a warrant for 19 confidence in ¬BIV, rather than to increase his confidence in ¬BIV. We can use a probabilistic argument to establish the result.20 The intuitive point is that, since the skeptical hypothesis about Moore's experience predicts that he has the experience, Moore ought to increase his confidence in the hypothesis in response to the experience.21 We can set out the argument in more detail by showing how Bayes' theorem, together with facts about the case, entails the needed result. Let's take BIV to be the relevant H, and SEEMS to be the relevant E. First of all, by Bayes' Theorem, P(BIV|SEEMS) = [P(BIV)/P(SEEMS)] x P(SEEMS|BIV) Clearly, if Moore is a brain in a vat who merely appears to have hands, then he appears to have hands. Since BIV obviously entails SEEMS, P(SEEMS|BIV) = 1 Thus, P(BIV|SEEMS) = P(BIV)/P(SEEMS) believing TABLE (III) (2004: 237, see also 231 and 243). 20 Variants of this line of argument can be found in White (2006), and Cohen (2005). Also relevant is Williamson (2004), Hawthorne (2004), Okasha (2004), and Schiffer (2004). 21 As emphasized earlier, my target in the main text is the internalist Moorean. At least some externalist Mooreans will insist that, far from being predicted by the skeptical hypothesis, Moore's total evidence is in fact incompatible with the skeptical hypothesis. 20 So far, we can see that the probability of BIV conditional on SEEMS is the prior probability of BIV divided by the prior probability of SEEMS. Thus, provided that the prior probability of BIV is greater than 0 and the prior probability of SEEMS is less than 1, the probability of BIV conditional on SEEMS will be greater than the prior probability of BIV. After all, if the conditions on the prior probabilities are satisfied, the probability of BIV conditional on SEEMS will be the result of multiplying the (non-zero) prior probability of BIV by a number greater than 1, yielding a product greater than the prior probability of BIV. Since Moore wasn't certain that he would have an experience as of his hands, P(SEEMS) < 1 Also, however confident Moore is permitted to be in ¬BIV, he is surely permitted to be even more confident in other propositions, such as the proposition that all triangles are triangles. So P(BIV) > 0 Putting these pieces together, we have the result that P(BIV|SEEMS) > P(BIV) The final assumption we need is that Moore's degrees of confidence should track the facts about probability set out above. In particular, if you acquire the evidence E, when P(H|E) > P(H), you 21 ought to increase your confidence in H.22 Thus, when Moore responds to the evidence that he seems to have hands, he ought to increase his confidence in BIV, and decrease his confidence in ¬BIV itself.23 Stage 2 The aim now is to extend the result about the rational revision of Moore's partial beliefs to a result about the impact of his inference. The first step is to link our considerations in terms of probability with considerations in terms of justification. It's plausible that, if Moore's experience provides him with positive 22 One might protest that we should not think about the revision of belief in response to experience as a matter of responding to evidence. After all, we arguably can rationally respond to an experience without having a belief that self-ascribes the experience. On this line of objection, Bayesian considerations don't tell us anything about how we should revise our beliefs in the light of our experiences. In response to the objection, I should first stress that we often do have beliefs about what experiences we have, and that Bayesian considerations do tell us how we should revise our beliefs in the light of those beliefs which ascribe experiences to us (White 2006). Second, having a belief that you have an experience shouldn't undermine the power of the experience to justify other beliefs. So our experiences should have the same justificatory powers in the cases where we don't believe we have them: the Bayesian considerations can tell us whether our experiences justify us in rejecting skeptical hypotheses. 23 One interesting upshot is that we must be careful when stating a non-idealized sufficient condition for an experience to justify a belief. If one tries to identify such a condition, whether one is a Liberal or not, it's natural to start with the following template: (Sufficiency*): Necessarily, if one has a visual experience with the content P, and no reason to believe any skeptical hypothesis about one's experience, and _____, then one has perceptual justification to believe P. The problem with proposals along those lines is that the antecedent won't be satisfied by any ordinary subject. For any ordinary subject, the first conjunct of the antecedent is a sufficient condition for the falsehood of the second conjunct. To capture a non-vacuous sufficient condition for an ordinary subject to have perceptual justification to believe P, we will have to proceed along different lines. The phrase "reason to suspect" in the earlier Sufficiency is a place-holder 22 justification to believe ¬BIV, then the rational response to his experience should be to increase his confidence in ¬BIV. However, the Bayesian explanation does not depend on that claim. It's even more plausible that, if Moore's experience makes his justification to believe ¬BIV go up, then it can't be that his confidence in ¬BIV should instead go down.24 Regardless of whether epistemic justification can be analyzed in terms of epistemic probability, presumably his justification to believe ¬BIV does not increase when the rational response to his evidence is for his confidence in ¬BIV to decrease. The next step is to link the consideration about the epistemic force of Moore's experience with a more general consideration about the epistemic force of his inference. If Moore's inference is a way for him to become justified in believing ¬BIV, then in particular Moore's experience as of his hands must give him justification to believe ¬BIV, at least by giving him justification to believe HANDS. However, if the rational response to Moore's experience is to become less confident in ¬BIV, Moore's experience as of his hands does not even indirectly provide him with justification to believe ¬BIV. So Moore's inference is not a way for him to become justified in believing the conclusion. In sum, there is a strong probabilistic argument for the conclusion that Moore's experience does not provide him with justification to believe ¬BIV. The conclusion entails that Moore's inference fails to transmit warrant. To strengthen the argument, it's worth highlighting just how hard it is to hold on to the Moorean view. There are a couple of options to pursue. Both are unattractive. One option is to hold that, even though Moore's experience raises the probability of the skeptical hypothesis, Moore nevertheless gains justification to disbelieve the skeptical hypothesis. But it is obscure for the solution to this problem. 23 how, despite his experience's negative impact on his confidence in ¬BIV, his inference could still improve his position with respect to ¬BIV.25 Another option is to deny that Moore's experience lowers the probability of ¬BIV. To develop this option in any satisfying way, the Moorean would have to provide a model of why Moore need not raise his confidence in BIV in response to his experience.26 Here the Moorean owes us an independent motivation for the alternative model, with precedents in cases which are not problem cases for the view, and without new puzzle cases which are problem cases only for her view. A disadvantage of this approach is that it is revisionary: I take it to be a last resort. I take it that we now have a clearer and more straightforward explanation of why Moore's inference fails to transmit warrant. The explanation does not appeal to the Conservative claim that Moore is justified in believing HANDS in virtue of having independent justification to believe ¬BIV. The Liberal can explain the failure of Moore's inference at least as well as the Conservative. Before we proceed any further, it's worthwhile to consider what the Bayesian argument does and doesn't show. The argument does not show that our experiences fail to justify us in believing that there's an external world. That is because the argument applies only to hypotheses which predict our experiences. The hypothesis that there's no external world (understood strictly as the claim that there are no concrete objects) doesn't predict our experiences, but rather predicts that we don't exist at all. So the Bayesian argument does not affect a Moorean "proof of the external world." 24 See White (2006: n.10). Compare Peacocke (2004: 114-5). 25 One might say that Moore's experience as of his hands provides him with knowledge that he has hands, and that is really his knowledge that he has hands which justifies him in believing ¬BIV. I explore this option in Silins (2005b); I reject the option for reasons given in Silins (2005a). 24 The Bayesian argument does apply to hypotheses which predict our experiences and are consistent with the contents of those experiences. Consider the hypothesis that one is hallucinating hands or that one is veridically hallucinating hands. Just as Moore's experience does not justify him in rejecting the claim that he misleadingly seems to have hands, it also does not justify him in rejecting the claim that he is hallucinating that he has hands, or that he is veridically hallucinating that he has hands. Now, there are generic skeptical hypotheses that don't predict our experiences, yet still are incompatible with our ordinary beliefs (e.g. the hypothesis that one is a radically deceived BIV). Can our experiences justify us in rejecting such generic skeptical hypotheses? The Bayesian argument doesn't by itself answer that question, since it applies only to hypotheses which predict our experiences. A Conservative might protest that Moorean inferences to the falsehood of generic skeptical hypotheses are just as bad as Moorean inferences to the falsehood of specific skeptical hypotheses, and insist that we should believe a generalized version of Conservatism which provides a uniform explanation of what's wrong with the inferences. On this line of though, each inference is defective because it "begs the question" in the Conservative's sense. The Conservative objection is inconclusive. One possibility is that Moorean inferences against generic hypotheses succeed although Moorean inferences against specific hypotheses fail. Another possibility is that both inferences fail, although for different reasons. In the case of specific skeptical hypotheses, the problem is that our experiences have a negative impact on our credence that the skeptical hypotheses are false. In the case of generic skeptical hypotheses, the problem would be that our experiences fail to have any impact on our credence that the skeptical 26 Pryor (forthcoming) and Weatherson (forthcoming) are relevant here. 25 hypotheses are false. The Conservative needs to rule out both of these possibilities. Let me now sum up what we have seen so far. By now I hope to have motivated the Liberal position, and to have undermined the core argument for the Conservative view, by providing an alternative explanation of why Moore's inference is not a way for him to become justified in believing ¬BIV. The best overall position is the one which holds that experiences are an immediate source of perceptual justification, while denying that experiences are a source of anti-skeptical justification. This position nevertheless does not give up on closure.27 On my line of thought, the Conservative is indeed right in saying that Moore has independent justification to believe ¬BIV, just wrong in saying that Moore has perceptual justification to believe HANDS only because he has independent justification to believe ¬BIV. Section 4. Rationalist Liberalism My overall position has not been considered in the literature, let alone endorsed. That may be because philosophers have taken various objections to the view to be fatal. I'll now address what I take to be the two most threatening objections to the package. Objection 1 According to the first objection, the Bayesian explanation set out in section 3.3. 27 More carefully: my position accepts JB Closure. It's less clear what to say about closure principles formulated in terms of knowledge or well-founded belief. It may be that, if Moore knows that he has hands on the basis of his experience as of his hands, but believes ¬BIV only on the basis of deduction of HANDS, he has a badly-founded belief in ¬BIV, and fails to know ¬BIV. Here my views have evolved from those of Silins (2005b). 26 establishes that Liberalism is false, and not just that the Moorean view is false. According to the objector, that's because the explanation can be extended into an argument for the conclusion that, if Moore has perceptual justification to believe HANDS, then Moore has independent justification to believe ¬BIV. The thought is broadly that, when I give the Bayesian explanation of what's wrong with Moore's inference, I am playing with fire. I'll first rehearse how one might argue for the stronger conclusion, remaining neutral about whether the further argument is sound.28 I'll then show that, even if the stronger conclusion is established, it is compatible with my Liberal view. The upshot of the Bayesian explanation was that SEEMS disconfirms or lowers the probability of ¬BIV. Thus, P(¬BIV) > P(¬BIV|SEEMS) Now, since HANDS entails ¬BIV, P(¬BIV|SEEMS) ! P(HANDS|SEEMS) Putting the two things together, P(¬BIV) > P(HANDS|SEEMS) 28 See White (2006) or Okasha (2004). One might think that I'm already committed to the conclusion of the argument. I'm not. Since I accept JB Closure, but reject Mooreanism, I accept that everyone who has perceptual justification to believe HANDS and knows that HANDS is true only if ¬BIV is true also has independent justification to believe that ¬BIV is true. This leaves open whether everyone who has perceptual justification to believe HANDS has independent 27 The upshot so far is that, if the probability of HANDS conditional on SEEMS is to be high, the probability of ¬BIV must be higher. Now, the objector may appeal to the claim that, if Moore's experience is to justify him in believing HANDS, it must raise the probability of HANDS.29 Thus, if Moore's experience provides him with justification to believe that he has hands, then Moore has justification to believe that he is not a BIV who merely seems to have hands. Given that it is not his experience which provides him with justification to believe ¬BIV, the upshot is that, if his experience provides him with justification to believe HANDS, then he has independent justification to believe ¬BIV. It's tempting to think that the extension of the Bayesian explanation establishes Conservatism itself. The tempting thought is wrong. The Liberal view is compatible with the claim that Moore has perceptual justification to believe HANDS only if he has independent justification to believe ¬BIV. I'll now explain how these claims are compatible, and respond to the main worries one might have about their combination. The key to my response lies in the proper understanding of the Liberal view. The central Liberal claim is that some of our perceptual beliefs are non-inferentially justified, that is, justified in a way which does not involve our having independent justification against this or that skeptical hypothesis. The Liberal does not yet say that any of our perceptual beliefs are justified despite our lack of independent justification against skeptical hypotheses. So the Liberal can justification to believe ¬BIV. 29 The current probabilistic argument, like the earlier one, needs to use a linking principle to get from claims in terms of probability to claims in terms of justification. It's worth highlighting that the current argument needs to use a stronger linking principle than the earlier argument. The current argument needs the claim that, if e provides one with justification to believe p, then e raises the probability of p. The earlier argument only needed the claim that, if e provides one with justification to believe p, then e does not raise the probability of not-p. 28 allow that, whenever Moore has perceptual justification to believe HANDS, he also has independent justification to believe ¬BIV.30 There is of course a view on which one can be perceptually justified in believing some proposition P, while failing to have independent justification to disbelieve any skeptical hypothesis about one's experience. Call this view Strong Liberalism. Strong Liberalism is more than a view about perceptual justification, it is also a view about anti-skeptical justification. But in holding that we have immediate justification for some of our perceptual beliefs, one need not also hold that we lack independent justification against skeptical hypotheses about our experiences. The extension of the probabilistic argument at best establishes that Strong Liberalism is false.31 It may be tempting to think that Liberalism entails Strong Liberalism. To support the claim that Liberalism does not entail Strong Liberalism, we can cast doubt on the claim that, if S is perceptually justified in believing that P only if S has independent justification to believe that Q, then S is not immediately justified in believing that P. Consider the trivial proposition that all hands are hands, which I always have justification to believe, provided that I have the concepts required to entertain the proposition. Given that I always have justification to believe the 30 There's a delicate question as to whether Moore's independent reason to believe ¬BIV enhances his degree of justification to believe that he has hands, without explaining why he has perceptual justification in the first place to believe that he has hands. It could be that Moore's experience by itself justifies him in believing to degree n that he has hands, and that Moore's experience plus his independent reason to reject BIV justify him in believing to some greater degree that he has hands. I won't try to settle such questions here. 31 According to Pryor, "when you have an experience as of p's being the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on any other evidence or justification you may have. You could have this justification even if there were nothing else you could appeal to as ampliative, non-question-begging evidence that p is the case (2000: 532)." The first sentence of the passage nicely states the position we've been calling Liberalism (also relevant is Pryor 2004: 359). The second sentence goes further to state what we called Strong Liberalism. Strong Liberalism isn't required by Liberalism. 29 proposition, whenever my seeming to have hands justifies me in believing that I have hands, I will also have independent justification to believe that all hands are hands. However, my having independent justification to believe that all hands are hands is by no means something which makes my experience justify me in believing that I have hands. Even though I always have independent justification to believe that all hands are hands, we cannot yet infer that my perceptual belief is not immediately justified. My perceptual justification can be a sufficient condition for me to have some independent justification, without the independent justification threatening the immediate status of my perceptual justification. In particular, even if Strong Liberalism is false, it does not f my experience does not immediately justify me in my belief. In sum, it seems perfectly possible for me to gain immediate justification to believe P from a source S even if, whenever I gain immediate justification to believe P from S, I have independent reason to believe Q. One might concede that Liberalism does not entail Strong Liberalism, but still insist that once we have good reason to reject Strong Liberalism, we also have good reason to reject Liberalism. On this line of thought, it would be a bizarre coincidence if Liberalism were true and Moore had perceptual justification to believe HANDS only if he has independent justification to believe ¬BIV. Perhaps Conservatism makes the best sense of the possibility that Moore has perceptual justification to believe HANDS only if he has independent reason to believe ¬BIV, by assigning an explanatory link between Moore's having independent reason to believe ¬BIV and his having any perceptual justification at all. So perhaps we have good reason to believe that Conservatism is true if we have good reason to believe that Strong Liberalism is false. In response to this objection, we can sketch an equally good explanation of the correlation between perceptual justification and independent justification. First, reconsider the view on which one has default entitlement to believe ¬BIV, i.e. one has justification to believe that BIV is false provided that one does not have reason to suspect that BIV is true. This view is merely a thesis about when one has independent justification, not a thesis about how one has it or about what further role it plays, so the Liberal is free to help herself to the view. Second, notice that all parties in the debate agree that perceptual justification is defeasible, and in particular that one has perceptual justification to believe HANDS only if one lacks reason to suspect that BIV is true. It follows that, if one has justification by default to believe ¬BIV, one has perceptual justification to believe that one has hands only if one has independent justification to believe 31 ¬BIV. After all, the following argument is valid: (F) If one's experience as of hands justifies one in believing that one has hands, then one lacks reason to suspect that BIV is true. (G) If one lacks reason to suspect that BIV is true, then one has reason to believe ¬BIV. Therefore, (H) If one's experience as of hands justifies one in believing that one has hands, then one has reason to believe ¬BIV. Here the question of whether one has the perceptual justification only because one has the independent justification is left entirely open. Indeed, it might be that my lacking reason to suspect that the skeptical hypothesis is true plays a role in explaining both my independent justification and my perceptual justification. In this scenario my perceptual justification and independent justification would both be upstream from a common cause. In any case, my having default justification to believe ¬BIV is enough to explain the correlation between perceptual justification and independent justification, without requiring any appeal to Conservatism. It needn't be a bizarre coincidence that I have immediate justification to believe that I have hands only if I have independent reason to believe ¬BIV. In sum, the extended Bayesian argument may or may not establish that Strong Liberalism is false, but it does not establish that Liberalism is false. The Liberal is free to accept that, whenever Moore's experience justifies him in believing that he has hands, he also has independent reason to believe ¬BIV. In doing so, the Liberal still leaves room open for moderate foundationalism, and still reveals that the standard Conservative diagnosis of what's wrong with Moore's inference is wrong. Objection Two 32 My combination of Liberalism with Rationalism has no distinctive story about how one might be justified in rejecting skeptical hypotheses. I instead hold that some story (or stories) given by the Conservative will be correct. One might protest that the Rationalist Liberal has nothing distinctive to say to the skeptic, and that we have no reason to believe the view given that it has nothing distinctive to say to the skeptic. In response to this objection, I'll first illustrate that any Liberal does have something to say to the skeptic, albeit not very much. I'll then try to divorce the question of whether Rationalist Liberalism is true from the question of how to respond to skeptical arguments. There is at least one skeptical argument which any version of Liberalism undermines. It's no surprise that Liberalism undermines the argument, since the argument has a premise which is plainly inconsistent with the Liberal view. We can state the argument roughly as follows (relying on Pryor 2000: 530-532): (I) If Moore has perceptual justification to believe that he has hands, then part of what makes him have perceptual justification to believe that he has hands is that he has independent justification to believe that he is not a BIV who merely seems to have hands. (J) Moore does not have independent justification to believe that he is not a BIV who merely seems to have hands. So, (K) Moore does not have perceptual justification to believe that he has hands. We can think of this argument as the Conservative* argument, since its first premise is a weakening of Conservatism designed to be compatible with skepticism. If there is a presumption in favor of Liberalism---indeed if there simply fails to be a presumption against the view---this skeptical argument is not threatening until it is supplemented with a good argument for Conservatism*. We have yet to see any such case. So the Liberal does have something to say in 33 response to the Conservative* argument. The Liberal has something to say to the skeptic about perceptual justification, but not very much. If the skeptic is to exploit the premise that Moore does not have independent justification to d skepticism about perceptual justification.32 Even though Liberalism indeed fails to solve a hard skeptical problem, we should not conclude that we have no reason to believe the view. One point is that, given the diversity of skeptical arguments, we have reason to expect that no one-size-fits-all strategy will succeed. Thus, if there is a skeptical argument to which an epistemological view does not supply a response, that is by itself no failing of the view. Another point is that, in order to motivate a view, it is never sufficient just to say that it is in tension with a skeptical claim. If all one says to support a claim is that it is incompatible with a premise of a skeptical argument, or that it is incompatible with some further premise for the skeptical premise, the anti-skeptical claim is so far unsupported. One could always respond to the skeptical argument by denying another claim on which the argument depends. In order to assess whether we have good reason to believe Liberalism, we should not consider what the Liberal has to say to the skeptic. We should instead consider what it takes for our perceptual beliefs to be well-founded, which beliefs are the best candidates for immediate justification, and so on. Conclusion If Conservatism is true, then Moore's inference begs the question, in the sense that his independent justification for the conclusion is part of what justifies him in believing the premise. Given that Liberalism is true, Moore's inference does not, by begging the question, fail to be a 32 Compare Pryor's conclusion after his discussion of what is in effect the Conservative* argument: "What I have done is offer a plausible and intuitive account of perceptual justification that we can accept. I have also shown how, once we accept this account of perceptual 35 way of becoming justified in believing its conclusion. It is too quick to conclude that, if Liberalism is true, then Moore's inference is a way for him become justified in believing its conclusion. Begging the question is arguably sufficient for the inference to be epistemically deficient, but begging the question is not necessary for the inference to be deficient. I hope to have shown that Liberalism is true despite that, for probabilistic reasons, Moore's inference fails to be a way for him to become justified in believing its conclusion. On my view, Liberalism should be pried apart from the Moorean story about how we are justified in believing that radical skeptical hypotheses are false. What does Liberalism tell us, if it does not provide any distinctive story about rejecting skeptical hypotheses? To see why the view is important, we need to set aside skeptical arguments about whether we have perceptual justification, and turn our attention to the task of explaining how we have perceptual justification. After all, we arguably know that we have perceptual justification, regardless of what a skeptic might try to say to convince us that we don't. And we would be overly impressed with skepticism if we thought that, as far as perceptual justification is concerned, the central question is whether we have any. Our experiences in one way or another provide us with justification for our beliefs, but how exactly do our experiences do that? According to the Conservative, there is far more to perceptual justification than meets the eye: our experiences justify our beliefs only in conjunction with our having positive reason to disbelieve skeptical hypotheses about our experiences. This view rules out a moderate foundationalist story about the role of our perceptual beliefs in our overall economy of empirical beliefs. What Liberalism tells us is no more and no less than that the Conservative is wrong. By insisting that we have non- justification, the skeptic's best argument is revealed to rest on a false principle (2000: 541)." 36 inferentially justified perceptual beliefs, Liberalism leaves open space for the foundationalist story, without entailing it. What Liberalism secures is that, despite the failure of our experiences to underwrite a Moorean response to the skeptic, our experiences are a source of justification that is basic. 37 References Bonjour, Laurence (1985) The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Oxford). 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