Varieties of Skepticism, Misc

Empirical work on motivated reasoning suggests that our judgments are influenced to a surprising extent by our wants, desires and preferences (Kahan 2016; Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979; Molden and Higgins 2012; Taber and Lodge 2006). How should we evaluate the epistemic status of beliefs formed through motivated reasoning? For example, are such beliefs epistemically justified? Are they candidates for knowledge? In liberal democracies, these questions are increasingly controversial as well as politically timely (Beebe et al. 2018; Lynch forthcoming, 2018; (...) Slothuus and de Vreese 2010). And yet, the epistemological significance of motivated reasoning has been almost entirely ignored by those working in mainstream epistemology. We aim to rectify this oversight. Using politically motivated reasoning as a case study, we show how motivated reasoning gives rise to three distinct kinds of skeptical challenges. We conclude by showing how the skeptical import of motivated reasoning has some important ramifications for how we should think about the demands of intellectual humility. (shrink)

Solipsism poses a familiar epistemological problem. Each of us has beliefs about a world that allegedly exists outside our own minds. The problem is to justify these nonsolipsistic convictions. One standard approach is to argue that the existence of things outside our own sensations may reasonably be inferred from regularities that obtain within our sensations. Certain experiences, which I will call tiger sounds and tiger visual images, exhibit a striking correlation. We can explain the existence of this correlation by postulating (...) an entity that is a cause of both. If there were tigers, it would be no surprise that certain sights and certain sounds tend to co-occur. Our rejection of solipsism can thus be justified by appeal to an abductive argument; we advance an inference to the best explanation conforming to the pattern that Reichenbach called the principle of the common cause. (shrink)

Although the imagination plays a salient role in the epistemology of the Treatise of Human Nature, it has received far less attention than many other topics. Taking a closer look at the Newtonian analogies Hume employs in his analysis of this faculty – passed over more often than not in this context – enhances the understanding of the origins of his scepticism and reinforces the landmark character of his theory for the history of constructivism.

I will divide my discussion into two. In the first part I will discuss Godin and Gingras's delicious claim that the experimenter's regress is anticipated by Sextus Empiricus's formulation of scepticism. In the second part, I will try to deal with Godin and Gingras's ‘critical argument’, that the experimenter's regress would be redundant if we were less concerned with ‘frightening philosophers’.

I seek to show that the skeptical argument from error turns crucially on the following assumption: because Bill1 with the same degree of evidence as Bill2 failed merely by virtue of John's1 absence to know that John1 would be at the party, then Bill2 must have got things right by coincidence if he got them right at all, as to the actual attendance of John2. And so he does not have knowledge. But the conclusion that coincidence entered here is a (...) non-sequitur. (shrink)

In these elegant, accessible, and provocative lectures, Sir Peter Strawson considers the prospects for a unified approach to apparently diverse philosophical debates. In each debate one side is skeptical, in a broad sense of the term that includes denial as well as doubt, while the other holds a more liberal or commonsense position. The unified approach comes into play by asking, for each debate, whether we could actually occupy both sides. If one side promotes a position we could only feign (...) to believe, because we are by nature incapable of really believing it, the position is to be rejected without refutation. If, on the other hand, we could maintain either side of the debate, they are both retained by means of a relativizing move which neutralizes their apparent incompatibility. Thus, the naturalistic approach Strawson here explores consists of endorsing exactly as much as we can really believe, ruling out what is beyond belief, however strong the arguments for it may appear, and ruling in both believable sides of a debate, though they may at first seem incompatible. (shrink)

With the entry of this carefully reasoned book into the academic world, the current debate on the philosophical bases of feminism reaches a new depth. Richards's analysis of some of the most fundamental issues in women's situation falls into two broad areas: a critique of various methods of reasoning used by feminists and a suggested number of positions on some central feminist concerns. While Richards's book is extremely successful in the first area, it is uneven in the second.

_'Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and acheived fewer results than any other branch of learning... I believe that the time has now arrived when this unsatisfactory state of affairs can be brought to an end'_ - _Bertrand Russell_ So begins _Our Knowledge of the Eternal World_, Bertrand Russell's classic attempt to show by means of examples, the nature, capacity and limitations of the logico-analytical method in philosophy.

This paper purports to provide a fresh cashing out of Debasing Scepticism: the type of Scepticism put on the map in a recent article by Jonathan Schaffer, with a view to demonstrating that the Debasing Sceptic's argument is not so easily dismissed as many of Schaffer's commentators have thought. After defending the very possibility of the Deception Sceptic's favoured sceptical scenario, I lay out a framework for thinking of the agent's power to hold their beliefs in the light of reasons (...) which I argue has initial plausibility. I then attempt to show that with this framework in tow, the Debasing Sceptic has an argument for their sceptical conclusion available to them which Schaffer's commentators have failed to undermine, and which is independently interesting. (shrink)

Jennifer Saul argues that the evidence from the literature on implicit biases entails a form of skepticism. In this paper, I argue that Saul faces a dilemma: her argument is either self-defeating, or it does not yield a skeptical conclusion. For Saul, both results are unacceptable; thus, her argument fails.

The scientific community, we hold, often provides society with knowledge—that the HIV virus causes AIDS, that anthropogenic climate change is underway, that the MMR vaccine is safe. Some deny that we have this knowledge, however, and work to undermine it in others. It has been common to refer to such agents as “denialists”. At first glance, then, denialism appears to be a form of skepticism. But while we know that various denialist strategies for suppressing belief are generally effective, little is (...) known about which strategies are most effective. We see this as an important first step toward their remediation. This paper leverages the approximate comparison to various forms of philosophical skepticism to design an experimental test of the efficacy of four broad strategies of denial at suppressing belief in specific scientific claims. Our results suggest that assertive strategies are more effective at suppressing belief than questioning strategies. (shrink)

There is a sentence in the Philosophical Investigations where Elizabeth Anscombe has missed an opportunity to distill a whole cloud of philosophy into the choice of one mot juste. Wittgenstein writes: ‘Ein Wort ohne Rechtfertigung gebrauchen, heisst nicht, es zu Unrecht gebrauchen’. Anscombe translates: ‘To use a word without justification does not mean to use it without right.’ The missing of the philosophical opportunity is at the same time a literary lapse. There is nothing in Anscombe’s version to mark the (...) echoing of the ‘Recht’ in ‘Rechtfertigung’ by the ‘recht’ in ‘zu Unrecht.’ My preferred alternative would be: ‘To use a word without justification does not mean to be unjustified in using it’, or: ‘To use a word without a justification does not mean to be unjustified in using it.’. (shrink)

Keith Lehrer describes in his Theory of Knowledge a Justification Game which is played by a Claimant who tries to establish his justification for some contingent claim and a rather harmless Skeptic who tries to stop the Claimant. The doubts of a serious philosophical skeptic are - in opposition to Lehrer - analyzed as doubts concerning the justification of our beliefs and not their contents. Making the reglementations for a solid philosophical argumentation more precise the setting of a Serious Justification (...) Game is defined and thus replaying the game it tums out that the philosophical skeptic succeeds in providing a profound philosophical argumentation for his denial of Lehrer's positive claim for justification. (shrink)

We offer a sceptical examination of a thesis recently advanced in a monograph published by Princeton University Press, entitled Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. In this dense and probing work, Christopher I. Beckwith, a professor of Central Eurasian studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, argues that Pyrrho of Elis adopted a form of early Buddhism during his years in Bactria and Gandhāra, and that early Pyrrhonism must be understood as a sect of early Buddhism. In making (...) his case Beckwith claims that virtually all scholars of Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy have been operating under flawed assumptions and with flawed methodologies, and so have failed to notice obvious and undeniable correspondences between the philosophical views of the Buddha and of Pyrrho. In this study we take Beckwith’s proposal and challenge seriously, and we examine his textual basis and techniques of translation, his methods of examining passages, his construal of problems and his reconstruction of arguments. We find that his presuppositions are contentious and doubtful, his own methods are extremely flawed, and that he draws unreasonable conclusions. Although the result of our study is almost entirely negative, we think it illustrates some important general points about the methodology of comparative philosophy. (shrink)

An apparently increasing number of philosophers take free will skepticism to pose a serious challenge to some of our practices. This must seem odd to many—why should anyone think that free will skepticism is relevant for our practices, when nobody seems to think that other canonical forms of philosophical skepticism are relevant for our practices? Part of the explanation may be epistemic, but here I focus on a metaethical explanation. Free will skepticism is special because it is compatible with ‘basic (...) moral reasons’—moral reasons acknowledged by all mainstream ethicists—and other minds and induction skepticism are not. One example is our reason not to intentionally harm others. Practical seriousness about other minds and induction skepticism undermines this reason, but practical seriousness about free will skepticism only undermines a potential overrider of this reason, that is, the reason of retribution. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 9 Global sceptical arguments seek to undermine vast swathes of our putative knowledge by deploying hypotheses that posit massive deception or error. Local sceptical arguments seek to undermine just a small region of putative knowledge, using hypotheses that posit deception or error of a more mundane kind. Those epistemologists who have devised anti-sceptical strategies have tended to have global sceptical arguments firmly in their sights. I argue here that local sceptical arguments, while less dramatic, ultimately pose (...) just as serious a challenge to our epistemic self-image and that some prominent anti-sceptical strategies are very poorly placed to meet it. (shrink)

What Do Philosophers Do? takes up the leading arguments for radical skepticism from an everyday point of view. A range of philosophical methods are examined and employed, for a revealing portrait of what philosophers do, and perhaps a quiet suggestion for what they should do, for what they do best.