Some philosophers argue that we are justified in rejecting skepticism because it is explanatorily inferior to more commonsense hypotheses about the world. Focusing on the work of Jonathan Vogel, I show that this “abductivist” or “inference to the best explanation” response rests on an impoverished explanatory framework which ignores the explanatory gap between an object's having certain properties and its appearing to have those properties. Once this gap is appreciated, I argue, the abductivist strategy is defeated.

It is widely thought that if knowledge requires sensitivity, knowledge is not closed because sensitivity is not closed. This paper argues that there is no valid argument from sensitivity failure to non-closure of knowledge. Sensitivity does not imply non-closure of knowledge. Closure considerations cannot be used to adjudicate between safety and sensitivity accounts of knowledge.

I use some ideas of Keith DeRose's to develop an (invariantist!) account of why sceptical reasoning doesn't show that I don't know that I'm not a brain in a vat. I argue that knowledge is subject to the risk-of-error constraint: a true belief won’t have the status of knowledge if there is a substantial risk of the belief being in error that hasn’t been brought under control. When a substantial risk of error is present (i.e. beliefs in propositions that are (...) false in nearby worlds), satisfying the constraint requires bringing the risk under control. This is achieved either by sensitivity, i.e. you wouldn’t have the belief if it were false, or by identifying evidence for the proposition. However, when the risk of error is not substantial (i.e. beliefs in propositions that are not false in nearby worlds), the constraint is satisfied by default. My belief that I am not a brain in a vat is insensitive and I have no evidence for it, but since it is not false in nearby worlds, it satisfies the constraint by default. (shrink)

The topic of the dissertation is this: How well does contextualism, in general, fare as an epistemic theory? And the answer comes in three parts. The root of the skeptical problem. I argue that the source of the skeptical problem is neither the underdetermination principle nor the closure principle. Instead, I claim that it is a change in context that generates the problem in the first place. Though I make no explicit argument in favor of contextualism as a solution to (...) skeptical problems, the chapter amounts to a de facto defense of the contextualist solution to skeptical problems. The problem with Gettier. I consider criticisms of contextualism's capacity to resolve Gettier cases. As it stands, Lewis' contextualism can't resolve a wide range of Gettier cases. However, I offer a new rule, the Rule of Special Similarity, as a replacement rule for Lewis' Rule of Resemblance. I then show how the new rule, though not problem-free, can do a much better job of resolving the Gettier problem. Contextualism, then, needn't fail because it can't solve Gettier problems; it can. The ways of context. One goal is to get a clear map of the territory, one that underscores the fact that precisely how context is incorporated into the theory matters epistemically. Another is to make the point that contextualism—the claim that context plays an essential semantic role in knowledge ascriptions—is not just one particular view, but a family of similar views. Also, I offer a new kind of contextualism that avoids many of the substantial criticisms aimed at the others in the family. Though the primary aim of the dissertation is a defense in three parts of the contextualist approach I general, a view emerges from the dissertation. I call the view condexicalism, and the dissertation is, secondarily, a development and defense of that view. (shrink)

The problem of skepticism is often understood as a paradox: a valid argument with plausible premises whose conclusion is that we lack justification for perceptual beliefs. Typically, this conclusion is deemed unacceptable, so a theory is offered that posits conditions for justification on which some premise is false. The theory defended here is more general, and explains why the paradox arises in the first place. Like Strawson’s (Introduction to logical theory, Wiley, New York, 1952) “ordinary language” approach to induction, the (...) theory posits something built into the very notion of justification: it is loaded with a bias towards the proposition that we are not massively deceived. Beyond the paradox, remaining skeptical problems consist of metaphysical and practical questions: whether we are massively deceived, or why we should use our loaded notion rather than some other. Such challenges have profound epistemological significance, but they are not problems that an a priori theory of justification can solve. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 2, pp 114 - 135 It is a commonly accepted assumption in contemporary epistemology that we need to find a solution to ‘closure-based’ sceptical arguments and, hence, to the ‘scepticism or closure’ dilemma. In the present paper I argue that this is mistaken, since the closure principle does not, in fact, do real sceptical work. Rather, the decisive, scepticism-friendly moves are made before the closure principle is even brought into play. If we cannot avoid the (...) sceptical conclusion, this is not due to closure’s holding it in place, but because we’ve already been persuaded to accept a certain conception of perceptual reasons, which both issues a standing invitation to radical scepticism and is endemic in the contemporary literature. Once the real villain of the piece is exposed, it will become clear that the closure principle has been cast in the role of scapegoat in this debate. (shrink)

In this paper a candidate for a rational reconstruction of skeptical arguments is presented and defended against a competitor called ‘The Argument from Ignorance’. On the basis of this defense, Michael Williams’ claims that foundationalism and epistemological realism serve as presuppositions for skepticism are criticized. It is argued that rejecting these two theses, as his version of contextualism does, is not sufficient for answering the skeptical challenge.

The Mundane World Hypothesis (mwh) says that we have material bodies, we have brains located inside our bodies, we have sense organs which process visual information, the direct cause of our perceptual judgments is typically macroscopic material objects, and we live in a material world. Skeptics using underdetermination arguments arguemwhhas no more epistemic merit than some skeptical competitor, e.g., that we are in the Matrix. Since such competitor hypotheses are equipollent, we are not justified in believingmwh. This paper takes the (...) underdetermination skeptic’s premises to a more radical conclusion: skeptical dogmatism, which is the view thatmwhis probably false based on the idea that there are many equipollent competitors tomwh. (shrink)