In this essay I defend a solution to a skeptical paradox. The paradox I focus on concerns epistemic justification (rather than knowledge), and skeptical scenarios that entail that most of our ordinary beliefs about the external world are false. This familiar skeptical paradox hinges on a “closure” principle. The solution is to restrict closure, despite its first appearing as a fully general principle, so that it can no longer give rise to the paradox. (...) This has some extra advantages. First, it suggests a general strategy that provides solutions to other versions of the paradox, not just those that depend on closure. Second, it clarifies the relation between the paradox and other kinds of skeptical problem. (shrink)

Some philosophers understand epistemological skepticism as merely presenting a paradox to be solved, a paradox given rise to by some apparently forceful arguments. I argue that such a view needs to be justified, and that the best way to do so is to show that we cannot help seeing skepticism as obviously false. The obviousness (to us) of the falsity of skepticism is, I suggest, explained by the fact that we cannot live without knowledge-beliefs (a knowledge-belief about the (...) world is a belief that a person or a group of people know that p, where p is an empirical proposition about the world). I then go on to argue for the indispensability of knowledge-beliefs. The first line of argument appeals to the practical aspects of our employment of the concept of knowledge, and the second line of argument draws on some Davidsonian ideas concerning understanding and massive agreement. (shrink)

John Henry Newman starts the second half of the Grammar of Assent by laying out a “paradox,” and he announces that the purpose of the following chapters of the book is to resolve it. Surprisingly, recent scholarship has tended not to question the nature of this paradox. In this paper, I argue that we should understand Newman’s paradox to be a kind of skeptical paradox that arises when we accept “Lockean rationalism.” I then show how (...) Newman deals with the paradox. One of the upshots of this reading is that “naturalism” plays a smaller role in Newman’s anti-skepticism than previous commentators have suggested. Another is that we should understand Newman to be a kind of infallibilist. (shrink)

Предлагается виттгенштайновское решение скептического парадокса Крипке, который возникает в результате пренебрежения прагматикой и нормативным измерением производимых операций. Парадокс Крипке указывает на то, что натурализация смысла и проблемы следования правилу в рамках классического (ненормативного) натурализма невозможна. Анализируется и критикуется недавно предложенная Гинзборг интерпретация парадокса. Хотя её натуралистический «срединный путь» между диспозиционализмом и ментализмом и близок к нормативному виттгенштайновскому натурализму, вводимое ею понятие примитивной нормативности неудовлетворительно. Правильнее говорить не о натурализме с минимальным добавлением нормативности, как это делает Гинзборг, а о нормативном натурализме.

RESUMEN Se cuestionan las dos conclusiones imputadas a la aplicación de la "paradoja escéptica de Wittgenstein" al derecho, tal como es desarrollada por S. Kripke. A saber, o bien la paradoja se aplica a la práctica del derecho y esta es indeterminada e imposible, o bien aquella es completamente irrelevante para la práctica del derecho y la reflexión filosófica sobre este. Se sugiere que la filosofía del derecho puede aceptar la relevancia de esta paradoja y obtener nuevos elementos a partir (...) de ella. ABSTRACT The article questions the two conclusions attributed to the application of "Wittgenstein's skeptical paradox" to law, as developed by S. Kripke: that is, either the paradox is applied to the practice of law and it is indeterminate or impossible, or the paradox is completely irrelevant for the practice of law and for philosophical reflection in that respect. The paper suggests that philosophy of right can accept the relevance of the paradox and draw new elements from it. (shrink)

There is an epistemological skepticism that I might be dreaming now, or I might be a brain in a vat (BIV). There is also a demonstration that derives the skeptical conclusion about knowledge of the external world from the premise C1, i.e., I do not know “I am not dreaming (not a BIV) now.” Pessimistic critics (e.g., F. Strawson, B. Stroud) consider that the refutation of C1 is impossible, whereas others have attempted the direct refutation of C1 (e.g., G. (...) E. Moore, H. Putnam, C. Wright), and some (e.g., F. Dretske, R. Nozick) have attempted to refute the closure principle of knowledge used in the demonstration while permitting the validity of C1. Another scholar, M. Williams, maintains that the skeptical demonstration is true only if we presuppose the epistemological premise that we choose to accept or reject at will. It seems that most critics tend to adopt a strategy that allows them to effectively avoid the skeptical consequence, thereby conceding the validity of C1. However, it is difficult to say whether their attempts succeeded, and in my opinion, they are indeed unsuccessful. This is because their concession to Descartes’ argument is insufficient. Their lack of success could also stem from the incompletion of Descartes’ own methodological doubt. The somewhat paradoxical‐sounding aim of this thesis is to show that the skeptical paradox about knowledge can be dissolved only if the Cartesian skepticism is extended far beyond the endpoint of his attempt. The argument of this thesis is based on the important arguments of Wittgenstein's On Certainty （OC）. (shrink)

Saul Kripke is struck by a skeptical argument which he says is neither Wittgenstein’s nor his own. I call this new skeptic “Saul Wittgenstein”. SW’s conclusion is that there is no such thing as following a rule. My first aim is to show that Kripke misunderstands the Investigations when he says it offers a “skeptical solution” to SW’s paradox. Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy commits him to a dissolution of the paradox. I show next that LW’s writing (...) contains an implicit dissolution of it. Finally, I point out the main lesson to be derived from Kripke’s discussion--namely, that there is nothing which is common and peculiar to what we call following a rule. (shrink)

Saul Kripke is struck by a skeptical argument which he says is neither Wittgenstein’s nor his own. I call this new skeptic “Saul Wittgenstein”. SW’s conclusion is that there is no such thing as following a rule. My first aim is to show that Kripke misunderstands the Investigations when he says it offers a “skeptical solution” to SW’s paradox. Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy commits him to a dissolution of the paradox. I show next that LW’s writing (...) contains an implicit dissolution of it. Finally, I point out the main lesson to be derived from Kripke’s discussion--namely, that there is nothing which is common and peculiar to what we call following a rule. (shrink)

Saul Kripke is struck by a skeptical argument which he says is neither Wittgenstein’s nor his own. I call this new skeptic “Saul Wittgenstein”. SW’s conclusion is that there is no such thing as following a rule. My first aim is to show that Kripke misunderstands the Investigations when he says it offers a “skeptical solution” to SW’s paradox. Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy commits him to a dissolution of the paradox. I show next that LW’s writing (...) contains an implicit dissolution of it. Finally, I point out the main lesson to be derived from Kripke’s discussion--namely, that there is nothing which is common and peculiar to what we call following a rule. (shrink)

Resumo Embora controversa, o contextualismo epistêmico alega oferecer a melhor explicação para alguns fenômenos analisados em epistemologia contemporânea, por exemplo: alega responder ou explicar o apelo de certos paradoxos e, ao mesmo tempo, manter a verdade de nossas alegações ordinárias de conhecimento. Conforme alegado por contextualistas, a vantagem de sua teoria ao explicar o apelo de certos paradoxos reside no fato de que nenhum princípio lógico precisa ser rejeitado. O paradoxo do prefácio – que consiste na aparente incoerência lógica que (...) ocorre quando o autor de um livro declara em seu prefácio que, apesar de acreditar que é altamente provável que tudo o que o livro afirma seja verdadeiro, também é altamente provável que o livro contenha, pelo menos, algum erro – parece não ter sido explorado o suficiente pelos contextualistas. Portanto, pretendemos sugerir uma versão do paradoxo do prefácio apresentando um argumento análogo ao argumento que os contextualistas costumam apresentar para explicar o paradoxo cético. Desta maneira, pretendemos oferecer, por meio de uma análise contextualista, uma explicação para o paradoxo do prefácio. Se a resposta contextualista é ou não adequada para esse paradoxo, isso será questão de disputa e não nos caberá discuti-la aqui. Meu objetivo é apenas sugerir que uma análise contextualista semelhante à aplicada ao paradoxo cético pode ser construída para explicar o paradoxo do prefácio. Palavras-chave: Contextualismo; Paradoxo do prefácio; Paradoxo cético. (shrink)

Skeptics try to persuade us of our ignorance with arguments like the following: 1. I don’t know that I am not a handless brain-in-a-vat [BIV]. 2. If I don’t know that I am not a handless BIV, then I don’t know that I have hands. Therefore, 3. I don’t know that I have hands. The BIV argument is valid, its premises are intuitively compelling, and yet, its conclusion strikes us as absurd. Something has to go, but what? Contextualists contend that (...) an adequate solution to the skeptical problem must: (i) retain epistemic closure, (ii) explain the intuitive force of skeptical arguments by explaining why their premises initially seem so compelling, and (iii) account for the truth of our commonsense judgment that we do possess lots of ordinary knowledge. Contextualists maintain that the key to such a solution is recognizing that the semantic standards for ‘knows’ vary from context to context such that in skeptical contexts the skeptic’s premises are true and so is her conclusion; but in ordinary contexts, her conclusion is false and so is her first premise. Despite its initial attractiveness, the contextualist solution comes at a significant cost, for contextualism has many counterintuitive results. After presenting the contextualist solution, I identify a number of these costs. I then offer a noncontextualist solution that meets the adequacy constraint identified above, while avoiding the costs associated with contextualism. Hence, one of the principal reasons offered for adopting a contextualist theory of knowledge–its supposedly unique ability to adequately resolve the skeptical problem – is undermined. (shrink)

Skeptics try to persuade us of our ignorance with arguments like the following: 1. I don't know that I am not a handless brain-in-a-vat [BIV]. 2. If I don't know that I am not a handless BIV, then I don't know that I have hands. Therefore, 3. I don't know that I have hands. The BIV argument is valid, its premises are intuitively compelling, and yet, its conclusion strikes us as a absurd. Something has to go, but what? Contextualists contend (...) that an adequate solution to the skeptical problem must: (i) retain epistemic closure, (ii) explain the intuitive force of skeptical arguments by explaining why their premises initially seem so compelling, and (iii) account for the truth of our commonsense judgment that we do possess lots of ordinary knowledge. Contextualists maintain that the key to such a solution is recognizing that the semantic standards for 'knows' vary from context to context such that in skeptical contexts the skeptic's premises are true and so is her conclusion; but in ordinary contexts, her conclusion is false and so is her first premise. Despite its initial attractiveness, the contextualist solution comes at a significant cost, for contextualism has many counterintuitive results. After presenting the contextualist solution, I identify a number of these costs. I then offer a noncontextualist solution that meets the adequacy constraint identified above, while avoiding the costs associated with contextualism. Hence, one of the principal reasons offered for adopting a contextualist theory of knowledge -- its supposedly unique ability to adequately resolve the skeptical problem -- is undermined. (shrink)

This paper discusses an analogical argument for the compatibility of the evidential argument from evil and skeptical theism. The argument is based on an alleged parallel between the paradox of the preface and the case of apparently pointless evil. I argue that the analogical argument fails, and that the compatibility claim is undermined by the epistemic possibility of inaccessible reasons for permitting apparently pointless evils. The analogical argument fails, because there are two crucial differences between the case of (...) apparently pointless evil and the case of the preface. First, in the preface case, our non-cumulative evidence supports a claim of error, whereas the analogical argument is based on the idea that our non-cumulative evidence supports the success claim that there’s at least one instance of truly pointless evil. Second, our non-cumulative evidence of error in the case of the preface rests on a track record establishing author fallibility; in the case of apparently pointless evils, there is no relevant track record to support the claim that some apparently pointless evils are truly pointless. These differences, together with certain plausible assumptions about our fallibility and reliability with respect to propositions about evil, also indicate that inaccessible reasons for permitting apparently pointless evil are epistemically possible. Given the epistemic possibility of such reasons, we’re in no position to judge whether such reasons are present in every case no matter how large the set of such evils may be. (shrink)

Abstract Relativism about knowledge attributions is the view that a single occurrence of ‘S knows [does not know] that p’ may be true as assessed in one context and false as assessed in another context. It has been argued that relativism is equipped to accommodate all the data from speakers’ use of ‘know’ without recourse to an error theory. This is supposed to be relativism’s main advantage over contextualist and invariantist views. This paper argues that relativism does require the attribution (...) of semantic blindness to speakers, viz. to account for sceptical paradoxes and epistemic closure puzzles. To that end, the notion of semantic blindness is clarified by distinguishing between content-blindness and index-blindness, and it is argued that the attribution of index-blindness required by the relativist account is implausible. Along the way, it is shown that error-theoretic objections from speakers’ inter-contextual judgments fail against relativism. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9783-5 Authors Dirk Kindermann, Arché, University of St Andrews, 17–19 College Street, St Andrews, KY16 9AL UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

In the present article, I attempt to relate Saul Kripke's “sceptical paradox” to some issues about the self; specifically, the relation between the self and its mental states and episodes. I start with a brief reconstruction of the paradox, and venture to argue that it relies crucially on a Cartesian model of the self: the sceptic regards the Wittgensteinian “infinite regress of interpretation” as the foundation of his challenge, and this is where he commits the crucial mistake. After (...) the diagnosis, I attempt to sketch my own model of the self and its mental states and episodes. This tentative picture binds meaning and the self together, stressing the subjective aspect of meaning without committing the same fallacy. The solution ventured here is relatively independent of the secondary literatures on the sceptical paradox of following rules, for it aims to provide a new angle to understand and meet the challenge presented by the sceptic. (shrink)

"In philosophy," the author writes in his preface, "we have learned to get our satisfaction from showing that the other fellow is mistaken rather than from establishing the truth of our own positive tenets." The impeccably professional work of a mature and distinguished logician and scholar, Skeptical Essays propounds the view that the principal traditional problems of philosophy are genuine intellectual knots; they are intelligible enough, but at the same time the are absolutely insoluble. The problems Mates discusses are: (...) the Liar paradox and Russell's Antinomy of the class of all nonself-membered classes; the problem of determinism and moral responsibility; and the existence of the external world. Clearly written and effectively organized, the book will be an excellent text for advanced students. (shrink)

Davidson’s later philosophy of language has been inspired by Wittgenstein’s Investigations, but Davidson by no means sympathizes with the sceptical problem and solution Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein. Davidson criticizes the sceptical argument for relying on the rule-following conception of meaning, which is, for him, a highly problematic view. He also casts doubt on the plausibility of the sceptical solution as unjustifiably bringing in shared practices of a speech community. According to Davidson, it is rather success in mutual interpretation that explains (...) success in the practice of meaning something by an utterance. I will argue that Davidson’s objections to the sceptical problem and solution are misplaced as they rely on a misconstrual of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view. I will also argue that Davidson’s alternative solution to the sceptical problem is implausible, since it fails to block the route to the sceptical problem. I will then offer a problematic trilemma for Davidson. (shrink)

The epistemological consequences of paradox are paradoxical. They can be usefully generated by telling a series of once-upon-a-time stories that make various philosophical points, starting out innocent and ending up, well, paradoxical. This is an introduction to my Live Skepticism, defended in Skepticism Comes Alive.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Skeptical Selves: Empiricism and Modernity in the French NovelDaniel GordonSkeptical Selves: Empiricism and Modernity in the French Novel, by Elena Russo; 225 pp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, $35.00.Skeptical Selves explains how linguistic relativism has shaped French literature from the Enlightenment to the present. Elena Russo provides three cases: Prévost’s Histoire d’une Grecque moderne (1740), Constant’s Adolphe (1816), and des Forêts’s Le Bavard (1946). Her fascinating (...) scholarly goal is to portray the inexorable decline of the novel in a climate of ever growing doubt about the truthfulness of narration. Her remarkably ambitious philosophical goal is to save the novel by refuting skepticism!More precisely, Russo’s target is not every form of doubt but rather a specific current of French skeptical consciousness. In recent years, the representatives of this current have been Derrida and Blanchot. Its main feature is a denial of the correspondence notion of the language-truth relationship combined—paradoxically—with an intense nostalgia for a perfectly mimetic language that has allegedly been lost. The seemingly most radical critics of the sign, Russo claims, never overcome the perverse yearning for the very mimesis whose possibility they deny (p. 3).Russo is getting at an interesting distinction here, the distinction between epistemological modesty, which she upholds, and French skepticism, which she deplores. Epistemological modesty means the redefinition of truth according to some criterion other than perfect representation of the external world. French skepticism for her means the insistence on an absolute standard of mimetic reliability and a simultaneous denial that this standard can ever be reached. “Much of the language of negativity we have grown accustomed to in contemporary criticism rests upon the following syllogism: to know is to know directly and without mediation; this is not possible; therefore, the world is unknowable. Any conceptualization is ipso facto viewed as suspect, hence the flight towards nonverbal forms of expression, such as music and silence” (p. 13).After suggesting in her first chapter that French skepticism is a specific style of thought, not a final answer to our epistemological queries, Russo goes on to illustrate the impact of this skepticism on the novel. Prévost’s text, she observes, is one of the first novels built around the distorted point of view of a fallible [End Page 179] narrator. The narrator is the French ambassador to Constantinople who falls in love with a woman, Théophé, recently freed from a seraglio. Both his love and his comprehension are frustrated by the woman’s apparent simplicity and virtue. “Signs acquire a meaning opposite to their manifest one,” Russo notes. “It is precisely the discourse that should have made Théophé look credible that makes her appear suspicious. She is cunning and deceptive because she appears ‘naive’ and ‘innocent’; she is opaque because of her ‘simplicity’ and ‘openness’” (p. 42). The whole point of the novel is to show that we are imprisoned in subjectivity and there is no way out. For a time the narrator attempts to resolve his doubts regarding Théophé’s words by concentrating instead on her body. But here as well he can discover only ambiguity: nothing reveals clearly whether she is conquerable and whether she already has another lover.The novel ends with the unexplained death of Théophé, and Russo comments: “we are given the impression that, rather than ending his text, Prévost is ridding himself of an intractable problem” (p. 66). Artfully, the rest of the book helps us see that the tendency to thematize philosophical problems that have no solutions is intensified in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—to the point where not merely the ending of novels but novels themselves disappear. (Of course, Russo means not that people no longer write novels but that the genre has succeeded in diminishing its own stature by so frequently decrying the limits of language.)The chapter on Constant did not strike me as the strongest part of the book. The problem is due perhaps to the fact that Constant was a truly great thinker, a brilliant political theorist and philosopher of religion as well as a romantic novelist. One chapter does not... (shrink)

Kripke's skeptical interpretation of Wittgenstein's project in the Philosophical Investigations attributes to Wittgenstein a radical skepticism about the objectivity of rules and thus the meanings of words and the existence of language as well as a skepticism about the truth conditions underlying our alleged facts about the world. Kripke then contends that Wittgenstein solves this skeptical paradox by committing himself to what I shall call a Communitarian View of language. There are a number of difficulties with Kripke's (...) interpretation of the project of the Philosophical Investigations. These include his evaluation of the notion of the rule, his interpretation of the private language arguments, his uses of the term intention, and his truncated reading of 201. In this paper I shall address and attack this interpretation of Wittgenstein as a questionable reading of the Philosophical Investigations, and I shall suggest some alternative interpretations of Wittgenstein's views which avoid both radical skepticism and a Communitarian View of language. (shrink)

The paper puts forward a new skeptical solution to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox, a solution which revolves around the idea that human communication does not require meaning facts - at least as defined by Kripke. After a brief discussion of the paradox, I explain why I think that Kripkenstein’s solution needs revision and argue that the main goal of a skeptical solution to the rule-following paradox should be that of showing that communication does not require (...) meaning. After that, I offer two arguments for the thesis that communication does not require meaning. The first argument instantiates a rather direct strategy and focuses on the description of a concrete case of communication without meaning. The second one is more indirect in that I start by describing a world in which, although there are meaning facts, communication does not depend on them. The paper’s last section deals with the issue of meaning talk. (shrink)

To preserve freedom leibniz maintains that at any point in the development of the infinite series of a monad's states there will be an unlimited range of possible developments alternative to the actual. but if so a paradox analogous to kripke's arises. at any point in the development of an individual's states, no matter how far the series had developed, there would always be an unlimited number of rules, or concepts, the series could instantiate. but in such circumstances, it (...) would seem, god could not mean to create any particular individual. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new solution to the radical sceptical paradox. A sceptical paradox purports to indicate the inconsistency within our fundamental epistemological commitments that are all seemingly plausible. Typically, sceptics employ an intuitively appealing epistemic principle (e.g., the closure principle, the underdetermination principle) to derive the sceptical conclusion. This paper will reveal a dilemma intrinsic to the sceptical paradox, which I refer to as the self-hollowing problem of radical scepticism. That is, (...) on the one hand, if the sceptical conclusion turns out to be true, then the epistemic principle employed by sceptics would lose its foundation of plausibility; on the other hand, if the sceptical conclusion does not follow, then the sceptical problem would not arise. In either case, the so-called sceptical paradox cannot be a genuine paradox. This new solution has three theoretical merits: it is undercutting, less theory-laden, and widely applicable. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Nature: Two Conceptions of Truth Background on Logic and Paradox Nature and Logic And Now Revenge References.

This short paper offers a skeptical solution to Åqvist's paradox of epistemic obligation. The solution is based on the contention that in SDL/KDT logics the externalist features of knowledge, about which we cannot have obligations, are obscured.

Starting with Wittgenstein’s remark about his allegedly frequent visits to the performance of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the paper presents Wagner’s opera – being explicitly an opera about rules and rule-following – as a possible stimulus for the later Wittgenstein’s thinking about language. Besides Wittgenstein’s systematic interest in parallels between music and language, the paper draws on the choice of terminology and on Wittgenstein’s own examples of rule-following. More speculatively, the phrasing as well as the solution to what Kripke (...) called Wittgenstein’s sceptical paradox is used as a point of comparison that brings Wittgenstein’s aesthetic innuendos closer not only to mainstream philosophy of language, but due to the antithetical structure of Kripke’s argument, also to the broader philosophical and aesthetic tradition of German idealism. (shrink)

Starting with Wittgenstein’s remark about his allegedly frequent visits to the performance of Wagner’s _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,_ the paper presents Wagner’s opera – being explicitly an opera about rules and rule-following – as a possible stimulus for the later Wittgenstein’s thinking about language. Besides Wittgenstein’s systematic interests in parallels between music and language, the paper draws on the choice of terminology (such as the comparison of rules to rails) and on Wittgenstein’s own examples of rule-following. More speculatively, the phrasing (...) as well as the solution to what Kripke called Wittgenstein’s sceptical paradox is used as a point of comparison that brings Wittgenstein’s aesthetic innuendos closer not only to mainstream philosophy of language, but due to the antithetical structure of Kripke’s argument also to the broader philosophical and aesthetical tradition, with a particular focus on the great philosophical systems of German idealism. (shrink)

Demonstrates the uniqueness of Hume as an Enlightenment thinker, illustrating how his 'spirit of scepticism' often leads him into seemingly paradoxical positions. This book will be of interest to Hume scholars, intellectual historians of 17th- to 19th-century Europe and those interested in the Enlightenment more widely.

In Metaphysics Theta 3 Aristotle attributes to the Megarics and unknown others a notorious modal thesis: (M) something can φ only if it is φ-ing. Aristotle does not tell us what motivated (M). Almost all scholars take Aristotle’s report to indicate that the Megarics defended (M) as a highly counterintuitive doctrine in modal metaphysics. But this reading faces several problems. First: what would motivate the Megarics to hold such a counterintuitive view? The existing literature tries, in various ways, to motivate (...) (M) in a way neither trivial nor absurd. But, as we will argue, the main approaches end up attributing an unsustainable position to the Megarics. Second: most historical evidence for the Megaric lineage presents the group’s philosophical practice as dialectical or negative. So why think that the claim reported in Theta 3 presents a positive, and highly controversial, metaphysical claim? This paper addresses these problems by proposing a dialectical (or negative) reading of the Megarics in Theta 3. By ‘dialectical’ we here mean a mode of philosophizing that neither seeks to establish the truth or falsity of certain theses, nor takes a skeptical stance. There are different reasons why a philosopher might want to take up such a mode; in the case of the Megarics we argue that they might have wanted to put pressure on Aristotle’s idea of possibility and the ‘test’ for possibility that Aristotle mentions in several works. Reading, as we do, (M) as (part of) a paradox about possibility and actuality, we argue that the Megarics’ dialectical approach here aims to highlight a shortcoming of an intuitive conception of possibility, which underpins Aristotle’s idea of possibility and which features in his test for possibility. (shrink)

Given plausible assumptions about the nature of evidence and undercutting defeat, many believe that the force of the evidential problem of evil depends on sceptical theism’s being false: if evil is...

The main question of metasemantics, or foundational semantics, is why an expression token has the meaning (semantic value) that it in fact has. In his reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work, Saul Kripke presented a skeptical challenge that threatened to make the foundational question unanswerable. My first contention in this paper is that the skeptical challenge indeed poses an insoluble paradox, but only for a certain kind of metasemantic theory, against which the challenge effectively works as a (...) reductio ad absurdum argument. My second contention is that as a result of rejecting the theory which entails a paradoxical outcome, we will see that the foundational question essentially involves a temporal dimension. After arguing that the skeptical challenge gives us a strong reason to adopt a historical view of meaning, I shall further argue against certain authors who claim that meanings not only have histories but futures as well, or that the meaning of a word may change retroactively in time as a consequence of counterfactual change in its future use. The major aim of the paper is thus to bring together the arguably interrelated debates about the skeptical challenge and temporal externalism in philosophy of language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Skeptical Selves: Empiricism and Modernity in the French NovelDaniel GordonSkeptical Selves: Empiricism and Modernity in the French Novel, by Elena Russo; 225 pp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, $35.00.Skeptical Selves explains how linguistic relativism has shaped French literature from the Enlightenment to the present. Elena Russo provides three cases: Prévost’s Histoire d’une Grecque moderne (1740), Constant’s Adolphe (1816), and des Forêts’s Le Bavard (1946). Her fascinating (...) scholarly goal is to portray the inexorable decline of the novel in a climate of ever growing doubt about the truthfulness of narration. Her remarkably ambitious philosophical goal is to save the novel by refuting skepticism!More precisely, Russo’s target is not every form of doubt but rather a specific current of French skeptical consciousness. In recent years, the representatives of this current have been Derrida and Blanchot. Its main feature is a denial of the correspondence notion of the language-truth relationship combined—paradoxically—with an intense nostalgia for a perfectly mimetic language that has allegedly been lost. The seemingly most radical critics of the sign, Russo claims, never overcome the perverse yearning for the very mimesis whose possibility they deny (p. 3).Russo is getting at an interesting distinction here, the distinction between epistemological modesty, which she upholds, and French skepticism, which she deplores. Epistemological modesty means the redefinition of truth according to some criterion other than perfect representation of the external world. French skepticism for her means the insistence on an absolute standard of mimetic reliability and a simultaneous denial that this standard can ever be reached. “Much of the language of negativity we have grown accustomed to in contemporary criticism rests upon the following syllogism: to know is to know directly and without mediation; this is not possible; therefore, the world is unknowable. Any conceptualization is ipso facto viewed as suspect, hence the flight towards nonverbal forms of expression, such as music and silence” (p. 13).After suggesting in her first chapter that French skepticism is a specific style of thought, not a final answer to our epistemological queries, Russo goes on to illustrate the impact of this skepticism on the novel. Prévost’s text, she observes, is one of the first novels built around the distorted point of view of a fallible [End Page 179] narrator. The narrator is the French ambassador to Constantinople who falls in love with a woman, Théophé, recently freed from a seraglio. Both his love and his comprehension are frustrated by the woman’s apparent simplicity and virtue. “Signs acquire a meaning opposite to their manifest one,” Russo notes. “It is precisely the discourse that should have made Théophé look credible that makes her appear suspicious. She is cunning and deceptive because she appears ‘naive’ and ‘innocent’; she is opaque because of her ‘simplicity’ and ‘openness’” (p. 42). The whole point of the novel is to show that we are imprisoned in subjectivity and there is no way out. For a time the narrator attempts to resolve his doubts regarding Théophé’s words by concentrating instead on her body. But here as well he can discover only ambiguity: nothing reveals clearly whether she is conquerable and whether she already has another lover.The novel ends with the unexplained death of Théophé, and Russo comments: “we are given the impression that, rather than ending his text, Prévost is ridding himself of an intractable problem” (p. 66). Artfully, the rest of the book helps us see that the tendency to thematize philosophical problems that have no solutions is intensified in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—to the point where not merely the ending of novels but novels themselves disappear. (Of course, Russo means not that people no longer write novels but that the genre has succeeded in diminishing its own stature by so frequently decrying the limits of language.)The chapter on Constant did not strike me as the strongest part of the book. The problem is due perhaps to the fact that Constant was a truly great thinker, a brilliant political theorist and philosopher of religion as well as a romantic novelist. One chapter does not... (shrink)

This paper discusses John Horton’s influential theory of toleration. Starting from his analysis of the paradoxes of toleration, I argue that the avoidance of these paradoxes requires a moral justification of toleration based on practical reason. I cite the conception of toleration that Pierre Bayle developed to support this claim. But Horton is skeptical of such a moral justification, and this creates problems for his account of toleration.

The main aim of this paper is to analyse David Lewis’ version of contextualism and his solution to the Gettier problem and the lottery problem through the employment of his Rule of Relevance and Stewart Cohen’s response to these problems. Here I analyse whether Stewart Cohen’s response to David Lewis’ solutions to these problems is on the right track or not. Hence, I try to analyse some concept in David Lewis and Stewart Cohen which has remained unanalysed. Cohen tries to (...) show that when we try to solve some variation of the lottery problem and the Gettier problem by applying Lewis’s Rule of Relevance, then it generates some counterintuitive result. So Cohen gives Lewis some alternatives (which are explained in “The Strategy of Biting the Bullet and the Problem of Interference” and “Biting the Bullet Strategy as a Natural Extension of Contextualist Resolution to the Sceptical Problem and the Pity Poor Bill Variation of the Lottery Problem” sections) to avoid this counterintuitive result; this attempt, however, affects some other presuppositions of the contextual theory of David Lewis. My aim in this paper is to show how without taking these alternatives suggested by Cohen, Lewis can apply his Rules of Relevance to solve the lottery problem and the Gettier problem without any counterintuitive result. (shrink)

In this paper I argue first, that a contrastive account of self-knowledge and the propositional attitudes entails an anti-individualist account of propositional attitude concepts, second, that the final account provides a solution to the McKinsey paradox, and third, that the account has the resources to explain why certain anti-skeptical arguments fail.

In?201 of Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein puts forward his famous? rule - following paradox.? The paradox is how can one follow in accord with a rule? the applications of which are potentially infinite? when the instances from which one learns the rule and the instances in which one displays that one has learned the rule are only finite? How can one be certain of rule - following at all? In Wittgenstein: On Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke concedes (...) the skeptical position that there are no facts that we follow a rule but that there are still conditions under which we are warranted in asserting of others that they are following a rule. In this paper, I explain why Kripke?s solution to the rule - following paradox fails. I then offer an alternative. (shrink)

Causal reasoning is an aspect of learning, reasoning, and decision-making that involves the cognitive ability to discover relationships between causal relata, learn and understand these causal relationships, and make use of this causal knowledge in prediction, explanation, decision-making, and reasoning in terms of counterfactuals. Can we fully automate causal reasoning? One might feel inclined, on the basis of certain groundbreaking advances in causal epistemology, to reply in the affirmative. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that one still has (...) good skeptical grounds for resisting any conclusions in favour of the automation of causal reasoning. If by causal reasoning is meant the entirety of the process through which we discover causal relationships and make use of this knowledge in prediction, explanation, decision-making, and reasoning in terms of counterfactuals, then one relies besides on tacit knowledge, as might be constituted by or derived from the epistemic faculty virtues and abilities of the causal reasoner, the value systems and character traits of the causal reasoner, the implicit knowledge base available to the causal reasoner, and the habits that sustain our causal reasoning practices. While certain aspects of causal reasoning may be axiomatized and formalized and algorithms may be implemented to approximate causal reasoning, one has to remain skeptical about whether causal reasoning may be fully automated. This demonstration will involve an engagement with Meno’s Paradox. (shrink)

Scholarly debate about Kierkegaard’s fideism focuses upon whether his voluntarism—the doctrine that religious faith can be simply willed—is practicable or credible. This paper proposes that a close reading of Philosophical Fragments and The Concept of Anxiety reveals that there is a role for both the will and the intellect in Kierkegaard’s concept of faith. Kierkegaard arrives at a compatibilism that emphasizes the roles of both the intellect and the will. The intellect perceives a “moment” that paradoxically intersects time and eternity (...) and assents to a skeptical argument that one cannot understand how things and events come into existence. And beyond simply recognizing that belief is not unreasonable, the intellect perceives an internal logic to faith in a theological aesthetic—Johannes Climacus’s “poem” in Philosophical Fragments. Against the standard view of Kierkegaard’s voluntarism, this argument for compatibilism shows how the intellect combined with the will forms the “eyes of faith.”. (shrink)

In this paper I argue first, that a contrastive account of self-knowledge and the propositional attitudes entails an anti-individualist account of propositional attitude concepts (the concepts of belief, desire, regret, and so on), second, that the final account provides a solution to the McKinsey paradox, and third, that the account has the resources to explain why certain anti-skeptical arguments fail.