Philosophical Quarterly 58 (231):234–243 (2008)
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Abstract |
Moore's proof of an external world is a piece of reasoning whose premises, in context, are true and warranted and whose conclusion is perfectly acceptable, and yet immediately seems flawed. I argue that neither Wright's nor Pryor's readings of the proof can explain this paradox. Rather, one must take the proof as responding to a sceptical challenge to our right to claim to have warrant for our ordinary empirical beliefs, either for any particular empirical belief we might have, or for belief in the existence of an external world itself. I show how Wright's and Pryor's positions are of interest when taken in connection with Humean scepticism, but that it is only linking it with Cartesian scepticism which can explain why the proof strikes us as an obvious failure.
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DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.513.x |
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References found in this work BETA
Warrant for Nothing (and Foundations for Free)?Crispin Wright - 2004 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78 (1):167–212.
(Anti-)Sceptics Simple and Subtle: G. E. Moore and John McDowell.Crispin Wright - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2):330-348.
Epistemic Entitlement, Warrant Transmission and Easy Knowledge.Martin Davies - 2004 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78 (1):213-245.
View all 7 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Varieties of Failure (of Warrant Transmission: What Else?!).Annalisa Coliva - 2012 - Synthese 189 (2):235-254.
Moore's Proof And Martin Davies's Epistemic Projects.Annalisa Coliva - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1):101-116.
Purposes of Reasoning and Moore’s Proof of an External World.Manuel Pérez Otero - 2013 - Synthese 190 (18):4181-4200.
Radical Scepticism Without Epistemic Closure.Sven Rosenkranz - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (3):692-718.
View all 6 citations / Add more citations
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