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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

The sceptic about the external world presents us with a paradox: an apparently acceptable argument for an apparently unacceptable conclusion—that we do not know anything about the external world. Some paradoxes, for instance the liar and the sorites, are very hard. The defense of a purported solution to either of these two inevitably deploys the latest in high-tech philosophical weaponry. On the other hand, some paradoxes are not at all hard, and may be resolved without much fuss. They do (...) not contain profound lessons about the human condition. Where should we place the sceptical paradoxes? (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine the sceptical problem of rule following presented by Saul Kripke in his interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later works: Do any facts determine what rule we were following in our apparently rule-following activities such as the use of language? I distinguish three ways of understanding this question--modest scepticism, radical scepticism, and metascepticism--and address them in Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the dissertation, respectively. ;Part 1 discusses modest scepticism, which asserts that no finite facts about (...) humans can determine rules which have infinitely many possible applications. I resolve this apparent conflict between the finite and the infinite by incorporating the recursiveness of rule applications into the theory of rules. ;Part 2 discusses radical scepticism, which asserts that no facts determine what normative rules we were following. I show first that this challenge has a wider scope than the Humean Thesis of the underivability of ought from is, and that as a result, the radical sceptic can refute attitudinal theories of norms, which have been considered a possible response to the Humean challenge. I then propose a solution to radical scepticism which explains our practice and beliefs about normative rules without assuming the existence of rule-determining facts. Unlike the solution Kripke ascribes to Wittgenstein, it offers no justification of our practice and beliefs about normative rules. Some methodological implications of the solution are also explored. ;Part 3 discusses metascepticism about rule following, whose challenge extends to the rules used for the very discussion of rule following. I examine first whether such a challenge is self-undermining in that it makes the sceptical argument itself impossible. I propose an extended form of reductio ad absurdum argument by which the metasceptic can challenge rules in general, including those used in the sceptical argument. Then I argue that the solution to radical scepticism given in Part 2 survives metascepticism as well. (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 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)

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)

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)

"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)

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)

Kripke argues that there are no genuine facts as to what words mean. The present chapter begins with a discussion of how this conclusion should be construed and proceeds to criticize the various considerations marshalled in favour of it. The central flaw is shown to be Kripke's explicit assumption that a given property of a word may provide it with a given meaning only if two interrelated conditions are satisfied: that, from the information that some word possesses the given property, (...) we may read off what it must mean, and that we can explain why this property will engender that particular meaning. It is concluded that there are, after all, perfectly genuine empirical facts of meaning. (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...

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)

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)

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.

This paper deals with Wright’s criticism of Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgeinstein and his understanding of the problem of following the rules, and particularly the understanding of a so called skeptical paradox. In the first part of the text, the author gives the basic points of Kripke’s position, whereas the second part examines Wright’s answer to the skeptical solution, that is, Wright’s defense of the objectivity of both the meaning and the connections of rules and their use. The third part (...) discusses the range and certain weak points of Wright’s position which have to do with the issue of the constitutive question of rules and the nature of their normativity. (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.

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)

Lucian’s Hermotimus, despite its first appearances of being a merely skeptical, even sophistical discrediting of philosophy, is better read as a powerful protreptic defense of the endeavor, whose key ancient intertext is Plato's Republic. To make this case, the paper involves three parts. In part i, we examine the metaphilosophical framing of the Hermotimus’s exchange between the eponymous hero, aged about 60 (§48) and Lucian’s favored interlocutor, Lycinus. We show that Lucian accepts that philosophy is intended to be an elevated (...) way of life cultivating wisdom and virtue, at the same time as he is concerned at how readily this pursuit can devolve into a hybristic, sectarian endeavor, in which pupils identify uncritically with instructors who do not match their words with their deeds. In part ii., we address the central elenchus and the action of the Hermotimus, the patient work by Lycinus to undermine Hermotimus’ dogmatic self-conceit, by refuting the different solutions he offers to the paradox involved in his having chosen a particular philosophical orientation, Stoicism, as a novice without philosophical training. Part iii. excavates the positive vision of philosophy that the action of the dialogue shows, highlighting the five key places in Hermotimus wherein Lycinus offers us entirely unironic visions of what philosophy at it best could be, in contrast to what it has become in Hermotimus or his teachers: or, as Lycinus heralds it, a kind of Ariadne’s thread out of the maze of Hermotimus’ paradox (§68). (shrink)

This chapter concentrates on two discussions, both of which enlist Wittgenstein's rule‐following considerations in support of radical and highly revisionary conclusions about the objectivity of meaning ‐ conclusions which may appear to entail, and have been taken to entail, consequences for the objectivity of truth and judgment which are no less radical and revisionary. There is widespread agreement that Wittgenstein advances, in the rule‐following sections of Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, considerations that are quite destructive of (...) certain conceptions of meaning, understanding, and rule‐following into which one may easily slide when attempts a general philosophical account of them. Saul Kripke interprets central sections of Philosophical Investigations as developing a 'skeptical paradox' about meaning. Kripke himself describes the skeptical conclusion as 'insane and intolerable'. (shrink)

I defend a neo-Lewisean form of contextualism about knowledge attributions. Understanding the context-sensitivity of knowledge attributions in terms of the context-sensitivity of universal quantifiers provides an appealing approach to knowledge. Among the virtues of this approach are solutions to the skeptical paradox and the Gettier problem. I respond to influential objections to Lewis’s account.

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)

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

Quine and Kripke's Wittgenstein both present “skeptical” arguments for the conclusion that there are no facts about meaning. In each case the argument for the conclusion is that if there are facts about meaning, then they must be determined by some more fundamental facts, but facts about meaning are not determined by any such facts. Consequently there are no facts about meanings. Within this overall framework, Quine and Kripke's Wittgenstein differ substantially — both in their reasons for thinking that facts (...) about meaning are not determined by other facts, and in their responses to the alleged elimination of these facts. Despite this, I believe that their arguments fail for essentially the same reason; each equivocates about what it means for one set of facts to determine another. Once the equivocation is eliminated, the arguments lose their plausibility. (shrink)

The standard contextualist solution to the skeptical paradox is intended to provide a way to retain epistemic closure while avoiding the excessive modesty of radical skepticism and the immodesty of Moorean dogmatism. However, contextualism’s opponents charge that its solution suffers from epistemic immodesty comparable to Moorean dogmatism. According to the standard contextualist solution, all contexts where an agent knows some ordinary proposition to be true are contexts where she also knows that the skeptical hypotheses are false. It has been (...) hoped that contrastivist theories of knowledge can mirror the contextualist solution while avoiding this epistemic immodesty. I review the main problems for contrastive closure and argue that none of the arguments currently in the literature pose an insurmountable problem for the contrastivist solution. However, I argue that contrastivist theories of knowledge, like their contextualist rivals, are indeed committed to epistemic immodesty. (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.

Epistemic contextualism was originally motivated and supported by the response it provides to skeptical paradox. Although there has been much discussion of the contextualist response to skeptical paradox, not much attention has been paid to the argument from skepticism for contextualism. Contextualists argue that contextualism accounts for the plausibility and apparent inconsistency of a set of paradoxical claims better than any classical invariantist theory. In this paper I focus on and carefully examine the argument from skepticism for contextualism. (...) I argue not only that the prima facie advantage of contextualism is specious, but also that contextualism is in fact at a competitive disadvantage with respect to two classical invariantist views. I also argue that contextualism takes an arbitrary and unsatisfying strategy in its response to skepticism. That contextualism is alone in taking this arbitrary strategy marks a second competitive disadvantage for it. In addition, I argue that the contextualist response to skeptical paradox regenerates a skeptical paradox which contextualism is powerless to solve. Consequently, the argument from skepticism for contextualism fails. Furthermore, this feature of the contextualist response to skeptical paradox completely undermines the motivation and support for contextualism deriving from its treatment of skeptical paradox. I conclude that the argument from skepticism for contextualism fails, and that the contextualist response to skeptical paradox fails to motivate contextualism, pending the success of another argument for the contextualist thesis. (shrink)

The article shows that Borisov’s direct solution to the problem of skepticism about meaning using a special type of introspection is associated with the assumption of the agent’s direct access to their own consciousness. This assumption has two complicating consequences: the analogy with Moore’s paradox and the Platonic concept of meaning. It is also shown that direct access to meaning as a way of Borisov’s direct solution of the skeptical paradox significantly uses the performativity of the speech act, (...) narrowing the scope of analysis of the original problem. The little-studied problem of distinction in the analysis of the skeptical paradox of meaningful and formalized mathematics is noted. (shrink)

In chapter 3 of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Kripke’s Wittgenstein offers a “sceptical solution" to the sceptical paradox about meaning developed in chapter 2 (according to which there are no facts in virtue of which ascriptions of meaning such as “Jones means addition by ‘+’” can be true). Although many commentators have taken the sceptical solution to be broadly analogous to non-factualist theories in other domains, such as non-cognitivism or expressivism in metaethics, the nature (...) of the sceptical solution has not been well-understood. The main aim of this paper is to advance our understanding of the nature of the non-factualism about meaning proposed in the sceptical solution. It attempts to outline some desiderata that should be respected by interpretations of the sceptical solution and considers two objections raised against it in Barry Stroud’s paper “Wittgenstein on Meaning, Understanding and Community". It attempts to correct misconstruals of the sceptical solution that have been promulgated by Davidson and some of his followers and suggests that the sceptical solution developed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein is best viewed as a form of quasi-realism about meaning. It ends by outlining what it takes to be the most pressing challenges facing the sceptical solution. (shrink)

I present an argument for a sophisticated version of sceptical invariantism that has so far gone unnoticed: Bifurcated Sceptical Invariantism (BSI). I argue that it can, on the one hand, (dis)solve the Gettier problem, address the dogmatism paradox and, on the other hand, show some due respect to the Moorean methodological incentive of ‘saving epistemic appearances’. A fortiori, BSI promises to reap some other important explanatory fruit that I go on to adduce (e.g. account for concessive knowledge (...) attributions). BSI can achieve this much because it distinguishes between two distinct but closely interrelated (sub)concepts of (propositional) knowledge, fallible-but-safe knowledge and infallible-and-sensitive knowledge, and explains how the pragmatics and the semantics of knowledge discourse operate at the interface of these two (sub)concepts of knowledge. I conclude that BSI is a novel theory of knowledge discourse that merits serious investigation. (shrink)