Truth of scepticism: on the varieties of epistemological doubt
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Date
04/12/2021Item status
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04/12/2022Author
Tana, Guido
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Abstract
This research aims to analyse and investigate the character and philosophical
strength of epistemological scepticism and whether contemporary anti-sceptical stances
can conclusively refute its threat. It proposes an understanding of scepticism that differs
from the traditional scenario-based model of possible deception and tries to capture
scepticism as raising a legitimate philosophical question about the rational standings of
our beliefs. The expected outcome of this analysis is twofold. Firstly, to establish
scepticism as a bona fide philosophical issue that cannot be neglected in contemporary
theories of knowledge. Secondly, the careful examination of the anti-sceptical attempts in
the various chapters makes a case for the impossibility of refuting epistemological
scepticism without simultaneously accepting some of its key insights. It is proposed that
scepticism is not to be conceived as a foe of philosophy but as its rational and free side.
The problem of scepticism is developed starting from the historical background and its
standard reception within analytic epistemology. The analysis of the engagement with
anti-sceptical endeavours supports the idea that scepticism raises a genuine
epistemological question targeting the possibility of rational belief in general and the
rational support that our knowledge-claims are presumed to possess. This will involve
rejecting the idea that scepticism relies merely on error scenarios or that it can only be
made intelligible appealing to uneliminated possibilities of deception. This strategy
attempts to rehabilitate scepticism as a bona fide and essential philosophical question
about rational belief. This question stems from the very demands of philosophical
reflection, against the idea that scepticism is merely ‘a disease’ or an idle worry that we
have no requirement to take seriously.
The research is structured as a series of engagements with anti-sceptical perspectives in
order to assess whether they mistakenly characterise the issue and if they manage to
provide a conclusive refutation of the problem to epistemological standards. The analysis
starts in chapter one by presenting the main characteristics of the two classical varieties
of scepticism, Cartesian and Pyrrhonian. The scope of the first chapter is to highlight the
rational and therapeutic element within scepticism that is often overlooked in
contemporary treatments of the subject. Chapter two investigates the closure principle as
the primary source for sceptical arguments in contemporary analytic epistemology,
offering a defence of the sceptical argument based on it against recent objections.
Chapter three introduces a radical answer to scepticism, neo-Moorean dogmatism, which
will become a sort of sparring partner for the middle part of the thesis. It will be assessed
whether it is a necessary requirement for the epistemologist to engage with scepticism
for the proposed epistemological theory to be epistemically sound. This will set off the
trajectory of both chapters four and five. It is shown that the neo-Moorean attempt fails
because it cannot evade engaging with scepticism by simply waving it off as a dialectical
concern. To develop this thesis adequately, in chapter four, the focus will shift on the
classical Pyrrhonian dialectic of the Problem of the Criterion, which will then be carried
on in chapter five into the problem of the Agrippan Modes and the problem of
arbitrariness. The goal is to show how the dogmatic perspective cannot vindicate the
status of our epistemic belief as being more than arbitrary and that this does not require
any contentious assumption on behalf of the sceptic, nor placing scepticism outside of
legitimate epistemological inquiry. If scepticism is tied to a philosophical demand
concerning reasons for belief, it cannot be cast aside as irrelevant and must be
confronted.
This outcome is then generalised in the same chapter by appealing to the
Underdetermination principle. The problem establishes scepticism as a justificatory
challenge concerning the very possibility of offering non-arbitrary rational support for
beliefs and knowledge-claims. In chapter six the sceptical argument based on
underdetermination is understood as unveiling a semantic problem, underlying the implicit
normativity of the common-sense picture of the world the dogmatist tries to defend,
through a recourse to Sellars’ Myth of the Given. At the heart of the sceptical problem,
this semantic challenge is then established under the guise of rule-following scepticism
via Wittgenstein and Kripke. It is argued that the conceptual and normative demands of
rational support pertain to, and ultimately establish, a distinctive Kantian question about
the rational purport of our thoughts about the world. A sceptical solution is analysed and
proposed in the last chapter. Kripke’s own communal solution is partly defended as
individuating the right track to address scepticism as a problem properly, but it is found to
be crucially wanting as a definitive answer. An amendment is proposed through appeal
to Hegel’s integration of scepticism within the epistemological enterprise and his concept
of normative mutual recognition as constituting the basis of justificatory statuses. It is
argued that to salvage rational normative justification, we must understand it as a
dialectical intersubjective practice, where what constitutes objective, rational support for
our beliefs is the recognitive structure of those activities we engage in with other subjects.
Knowledge and justification are conceived as immanent practices, normative all the way
down, eschewing reductions to something non-normative. This solution aims at
embodying the following insight: scepticism is not an epistemological foe but emerges as
the rational side of philosophy and epistemology. It constitutes a standing philosophical
question about the rational status purportedly possessed by our beliefs and knowledgeclaims.
It acts as a reminder of the contingent and ineradicable fallible character of our
reasons and attributions of knowledge and justification, which, however, does not impede
us from claiming and endorsing our beliefs as objective and justified.