This article critiques Stephen Mulhall's reading of Cavell's response to skepticism. In the first half of the article, I argue that Mulhall is mistaken in two respects: he elides differences Cavell notes between external world and other minds skepticism as well as conflates empathetic projection and acknowledgment. In the second half of the article, I argue for a novel reading of Cavell's account of acknowledgment, which addresses the concerns I raise for Mulhall. The paper closes by considering and responding to (...) a worry that one's efforts at acknowledgment are more complicated projections of one's self onto the other. (shrink)

The current standard interpretation of Moore’s proof assumes Moore offers a solution to Kant’s famously posed problem of an external world, which Moore quotes at the start of his 1939 lecture “Proof of an External World.” As a solution to Kant’s problem, Moore’s proof fails utterly. Similarly, a second received interpretation imputes an aim of refuting metaphysical idealism that Moore’s proof does not at all achieve. This study departs from the received interpretations to credit Moore’s stated aim for the proof (...) Moore performed in his 1939 lecture that is to impose a counter-example to an explicitly stated presupposition of Kant’s famously posed problem of an external world. The outcome would therefore subvert Kant’s problem. There is not, however, any rival external world problem that Moore commends in place of Kant’s problem. (shrink)

This volume sheds a new light on Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s master opus, by taking a new approach to its first stretch, with special emphasis on its atypical opening. The methodological conviction that subtends the volume is that the highly unconventional form assumed by the book is internal to its content and crucial to its reconception of the relation between logic and language. This disconcerting form is dictated by the new modes of criticism deployed by Wittgenstein as he engages the (...) philosophical tradition in the new terms afforded by the revolutionary “method of language-games”. In the essays collected here, seven authors, including some of the most influential figures in the field, offer close and often unorthodox readings of pivotal passages from the beginning of the book. These readings are also shaped by the conviction that the Philosophical Investigations are hardly intelligible apart from an appreciation of the concerns that they inherit from Wittgenstein’s early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The authors contend that we need to consider the continuities between the early and the later works if we are to disclose the true discontinuities between them. (shrink)

I argue that Moore's arguments have anti-skeptical force even though they beg the question against skepticism because they target the skeptic rather than skepticism directly. Moore offers two arguments which are usually conflated by his interpreters, namely, his proof of an external world and a reductio argument. I explain why the anti-skeptical force of the latter has to be derived from that of the former. I consider an objection to Moore that is based on distinguishing between the everyday and the (...) philosophical contexts. I argue that the objection fails even on the most plausible understanding of the distinction. (shrink)

A new reading of G.E. Moore's ‘Proof of an External World’ is offered, on which the Proof is understood as a unique and essential part of an anti-sceptical strategy that Moore worked out early in his career and developed in various forms, from 1909 until his death in 1958. I begin by ignoring the Proof and by developing a reading of Moore's broader response to scepticism. The bulk of the article is then devoted to understanding what role the Proof plays (...) in Moore's strategy, and how that role is played. (shrink)

There is a principle that both generates and destroys empiricism. It is a plausible principle, thus often appealed to. Its consequences prove it wrong. This is a story of empiricism's rise and fall. It is historically sketchy. But one should focus on the principle.

This article develops a logical (or semantic) response to scepticism about the existence of an external world. Specifically, it is argued that any doubt about the existence of an external world can be proved to be false, but whatever appears to be doubt about the existence of an external world that _cannot_ be proved to be false is nonsense, insofar as it must rely on the assertion of something that is logically impossible. The article further suggests that both G. E. (...) Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein worked towards the same solution but left their work unfinished. (shrink)

What is the nature of deep disagreement? In this paper, I consider two similar albeit seemingly rival answers to this question: the Wittgensteinian theory, according to which deep disagreements are disagreements over hinge propositions, and the fundamental epistemic principle theory, according to which deep disagreements are disagreements over fundamental epistemic principles. I assess these theories against a set of desiderata for a satisfactory theory of deep disagreement, and argue that while the fundamental epistemic principle theory does better than the Wittgensteinian (...) theory on this score, the fundamental epistemic principle theory nevertheless struggles to explain the variety of deep disagreement. (shrink)

Once, G. E. Moore scorned the “common point of view which takes the world of experience as ultimately real.” The argument Moore followed to this sceptical conclusion in his fledgling 1897 fellowship dissertation was a legacy from Kant's Antinomies. By 1899 Moore had renounced idealist conclusions; he set out both to disengage from Kantian arguments and to reconcile with “the world of experience.” Moore's work for a stable realist basis for knowledge to fulfil both aims occupied his most famous argument, (...) in his 1939 lecture “Proof of an External World.” Moore himself is sometimes supposed to have thought the argument of this masterwork unsatisfactory where it treats a traditional sceptical puzzle posed by dreaming. Critics, including Wittgenstein, have portrayed Moore's best reply to philosophical scepticism as dogmatic mere assertion, unresponsive or as ineffectual as sheer handwaving. However, these critics rate Moore's success against scepticism based on interpretations of “Proof of an External World” that neglect its part in Moore's campaign against Kant. Consequently, some potentially pivotal questions — which in this study I merely broach — remain wide open; for example, why in presenting his famous 1939 proof did Moore state that its purpose was to refute what “Kant declares to be his opinion, that there is only one possible proof of the existence of things outside of us”? And why did Moore explicitly reject the formula for posing philosophical scepticism in which Kant famously proclaimed this problem “a scandal to philosophy”? (shrink)

This paper responds to Stroud's important The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. The author defends a view in which statements in a natural language have truth-evaluable content only in concrete contexts. It is argued that just what counts as a concrete possibility that must be defeated before one can say that one knows something is a highly context-sensitive matter, and that Stroud's alternative to this context-sensitive account of the way the verb "know" functions seems to be either a semantics in which (...) knowledge claims (about the "external world") are trivially logically false or no intelligible semantics at all. (shrink)

Bergmann (2021) has written a sophisticated monograph on radical scepticism that offers a distinctive kind of commonsense response to this difficulty. My critic.

My interest is the kind of philosophical vertigo that is a theme of Cavell’s work on scepticism. This describes the anxiety that is elicited via philosophical engagement with certain kinds of sceptical questions. There is a standing puzzle about this notion of vertigo, however, forcefully pressed, for example, by McDowell. Why should a resolution of the sceptical problem, one that putatively completely undercuts the motivation for scepticism in that domain, nonetheless generate vertigo in this sense? I aim to resolve the (...) puzzle, in a way that I believe underwrites this Cavellian notion, via consideration of Wittgenstein’s remarks on the structure of rational evaluation in his final notebooks, published as On Certainty. (shrink)

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein conceives a novel way of dispelling skeptical doubts about our knowledge of the external world. He acknowledges that in his attempt to refute the skeptic, Moore uncovered epistemologically relevant propositions such as ‘I know that this is a hand’. But he denies that appealing to such truisms is likely to succeed in refuting skepticism–not because they cannot be doubted, but because they are not objects of knowledge in the first place. Rather than refuting skepticism about the (...) external world, Moore’s truisms form the background against which claims to knowledge and doubt are reasonable, meaningful, or justified. By incorporating such conditions for doubt, Wittgenstein seems to provide an effective rationale against skepticism: not only do we lack reasons for certain doubts about our knowledge of the external world, but those doubts also presuppose that much of what we take to know is exempt from them. This paper critically examines the claim that doubt requires reasons and uses Descartes’ famous dream argument as an example to show that not every doubt can be easily dispelled by invoking it. (shrink)

Many epistemologists are interested in offering a positive account of how it is that many of our common sense beliefs enjoy one or another positive epistemological status (e.g., how they are warranted, justified, reasonable, or what have you). A number of philosophers, under the influence of Wittgenstein and/or J. L. Austin, have argued that this enterprise is misconceived. The most effective version of this argument is to be found in Mark Kaplan’s paper “Epistemology on Holiday”. After explaining what this criticism (...) amounts to and why it is important, I then respond to it. My response is based upon, and is intended to display the explanatory power of, a contractarian account of our practice of epistemic appraisal. (shrink)

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about the external (...) world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context-sensitive in their semantics. It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits, and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world. (shrink)

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about the external (...) world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context‐sensitive in their semantics.It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits. and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world. (shrink)

Skepticism seems to have excessive consequences: the impossibility of successful enquiry and differentiated judgment. Yet if skepticism could avoid these consequences, it would seem idle. I offer an account of moderate skepticism that avoids both problems. Moderate skepticism avoids excessiveness because skeptical reflection and ordinary enquiry are immune from one another: a skeptical hypothesis is out of place when raised with in an ordinary enquiry. Conversely, the result of an ordinary enquiry cannot be used to disprove skepticism. This ‘immunity’ can (...) be explained by theories such as contextualism, or sensitive invariantism. Moderate skepticism avoids idleness, because it can eliminate dogmatic elements from our commitments. An analogy is used to illustrate this: Consider someone who is rootless—someone who doesn't have a home. She won't take this conclusion to undermine her judgment that she is flying home for the holidays—even if she is sleeping in the guest bedroom. Similarly, a skeptic won't take the skeptical conclusion to undermine ordinary claims to know. Yet concluding that one is rootless is significant: it can shape one's commitments; for instance it can check one's nationalism. Similarly, accepting the skeptical conclusion is significant; it can undermine dogmatic commitments and ultimately bring about intellectual catharsis. (shrink)

Do we directly perceive physical objects? What is the significance of the qualification ‘directly’ here? Austin famously denied that there was a unique interpretation by which we could make sense of the traditional debate in the philosophy of perception. I look here at Thompson Clarke’s discussion of G. E. Moore and surface perception to answer Austin’s scepticism.

This article discusses various dangers that accompany the supposedly benign methods in behavioral evoltutionary biology and evolutionary psychology that fall under the framework of "methodological adaptationism." A "Logic of Research Questions" is proposed that aids in clarifying the reasoning problems that arise due to the framework under critique. The live, and widely practiced, " evolutionary factors" framework is offered as the key comparison and alternative. The article goes beyond the traditional critique of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin, to (...) present problems such as the disappearance of evidence, the mishandling of the null hypothesis, and failures in scientific reasoning, exemplified by a case from human behavioral ecology. In conclusion the paper shows that "methodological adaptationism" does not deserve its benign reputation. (shrink)

A familiar form of scepticism supposes that knowledge requires infallibility. Although that requirement plays no role in our ordinary epistemic practices, Barry Stroud has argued that this is not a good reason for rejecting a sceptical argument: our ordinary practices do not correctly reflect the requirements for knowledge because the appropriateness-conditions for knowledge attribution are pragmatic. Recent fashion in contextualist semantics for 'knowledge' agrees with this view of our practice, but incorrectly. Ordinary epistemic evaluations are guided by our conception of (...) a person's standing with regard to the reasons that there are for and against the truth of a belief. Thus the objection from our ordinary practices is sound: fallibility is not an epistemological shortcoming, and a convincing sceptical argument must use only requirements which figure in ordinary epistemic practice. (shrink)

A familiar form of scepticism supposes that knowledge requires infallibility. Although that requirement plays no role in our ordinary epistemic practices, Barry Stroud has argued that this is not a good reason for rejecting a sceptical argument: our ordinary practices do not correctly reflect the requirements for knowledge because the appropriateness-conditions for knowledge attribution are pragmatic. Recent fashion in contextualist semantics for 'knowledge' agrees with this view of our practice, but incorrectly. Ordinary epistemic evaluations are guided by our conception of (...) a person's standing with regard to the reasons that there are for and against the truth of a belief. Thus the objection from our ordinary practices is sound: fallibility is not an epistemological shortcoming, and a convincing sceptical argument must use only requirements which figure in ordinary epistemic practice. (shrink)

Morality exercises a deep and questionable influence on the way we live our lives. The influence is deep both because moral injunctions are embedded in our psyches long before we can reflect on their status and because even after we become reflective agents, the question of how we should live our lives among others is intimately bound up with the more general question of how we should live our lives: our stance toward morality and our conception of our lives as (...) having significance are of a piece. The influence is questionable because morality pretends to a level of objectivity that it may not possess. Moral injunctions are meant to be binding on us in some way that is independent of the desires or preferences we may happen to have. When one asserts that a certain action is morally worthy or shameful one is, prime facie, doing more than merely expressing approval or disapproval or trying to get others to act as instruments of one's own will. If moral assertions were shown, at bottom, to be merely such exhortations, then they would be shown to wear a disguise. Morality would be revealed as pretending to an objectivity it does not have, and such a revelation could not but have a profound impact on our lives. It is doubtful that such a revelation could be kept locked up inside our studies. (shrink)

Morality exercises a deep and questionable influence on the way we live our lives. The influence is deep both because moral injunctions are embedded in our psyches long before we can reflect on their status and because even after we become reflective agents, the question of how we should live our lives among others is intimately bound up with the more general question of how we should live our lives: our stance toward morality and our conception of our lives as (...) having significance are of a piece. The influence is questionable because morality pretends to a level of objectivity that it may not possess. Moral injunctions are meant to be binding on us in some way that is independent of the desires or preferences we may happen to have. When one asserts that a certain action is morally worthy or shameful one is, prime facie, doing more than merely expressing approval or disapproval or trying to get others to act as instruments of one's own will. If moral assertions were shown, at bottom, to be merely such exhortations, then they would be shown to wear a disguise. Morality would be revealed as pretending to an objectivity it does not have, and such a revelation could not but have a profound impact on our lives. It is doubtful that such a revelation could be kept locked up inside our studies. (shrink)

It is widely thought that, in §201 of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein reveals himself to oppose a definite view or theory of rule-following. I argue that, due to the self-undermining character of that section, no such interpretation should be accepted. Then I sketch a reading of Wittgenstein’s method that accounts for the paradoxical nature of §201, and I show how this methodology is realized in his remarks on following a rule.

In this essay, we focus primarily on Moore’s “Proof of an External World” and Kant’s “Refutation of Idealism.” We are not exactly commenting on Clarke’s “The Legacy of Skepticism,” interpreting it, although what we do involves us in (some of) that. Instead of directly commenting on it, we do things with Legacy; we read Moore’s Proof and Kant’s Refutation with Clarke in mind. And by way of doing this, we bring onto the stage a post-Legacy Moore, and a post-Legacy Kant. (...) We do not claim to present Moore and Kant per se (to use Clarke’s term); we do not portray Moore and Kant as they are independently of “The Legacy of Skepticism.” We propose instead Moore and Kant as we read them after Legacy, i.e., in light of the pure/plain distinction. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of Truth, by EdwardsDouglas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 208.

The paper explores Quine's ?naturalized epistemology?, investigating whether its adoption would prevent the description or vindication of normative standards standardly employed in regulating beliefs and inquiries. Quine's defence of naturalized epistemology rejects traditional epistemological questions rather than using psychology to answer them. Although one could persuade those sensitive to the force of traditional epistemological problems only by employing the kind of argument whose philosophical relevance Quine is committed to denying, Quine can support his view by showing how scientific inquiry need (...) not confront any evaluative issues which cannot be addressed in naturalistic terms. A survey of Quine's own epistemological writings supports this account of his position: naturalized epistemology, it is argued, requires acceptance of the shallowness of epistemic reflection, and traditional epistemology employs general epistemic norms and principles which Quine endeavours to show that we can do without. The closing sections of the paper argue that Quine can consistently resist recent criticisms by Alvin Plantinga in spite of the fact that an unsympathetic reader could reasonably be unimpressed by this resistance. Finally, an attempt is made to understand the normative role of Quine's empiricism and of his claim that prediction is the checkpoint of inquiry. (shrink)

Stroud has argued for many years that skepticism is conditionally correct. We cannot, he claims, both undergo a Cartesian-style examination of the extent of our knowledge as well as avoid skepticism. One reason Stroud's position appears quite plausible is the so-called "totality condition" imposed for this kind of examination: as inquiring philosophers we are called upon to assess all of our knowledge, all at once. However, in this paper I argue that Stroud's apparent understanding of the totality condition is mistaken. (...) Evidently, Stroud thinks that honoring the totality condition amounts to imposing the strong requirement that we initially assume that we don't know anything about external reality. However, there is a weaker requirement available: that we initially not assume that we know anything about external reality. I argue i) that the weaker conception of the totality condition is most suitable for the kind of philosophical examination that Stroud seems to have in mind; and ii) that according to this same conception skepticism is not conditionally correct. (shrink)

This is the second book by Baz that aims to show that a big chunk of contemporary philosophy is fundamentally misguided. His first book, When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy (2012) adopted a therapeutic approach (in the Wittgensteinian style) to problems in contemporary epistemology, arguing that when properly thought through, the way philosophers talk about ‘knowing’ that something is the case ultimately does not make sense. Baz’s goal in his second book is less therapeutic and (...) more constructive: he aims to start a methodological revolution (in the Kuhnian sense)—to shake contemporary philosophers out of the unconscious habits of normal science and provoke them into making a radical change in the methods they use to do philosophy and the basic assumptions that motivate those methods. (shrink)

In his early essay, “Must We Mean What We Say”, Cavell argues that the claims of ordinary language philosophers regarding “what we say when” are not empirical generalizations about a given group of speakers but are rather to be understood as measuring the limits of what counts as a coherent act of thinking and speaking. Cavell’s charge against the skeptic about the external world is that he seeks to think and speak beyond these limits. In this paper I compare Cavell’s (...) response to the skeptic to Davidson’s. Both base their responses on a broadly Kantian approach that appeals to the conditions under which thinking or speaking about objects is possible. On this approach the skeptic isn’t giving a false answer to an intelligible question, but rather, the question to which the skeptic is giving an answer is shown to be in some way unintelligible. But while Davidson’s critique of the skeptic is based on the conditions of ascribing meaning to one’s words, and contents to one’s beliefs, Cavell’s critique is based on the failure of the skeptic to mean the words he uses in the way that he needs. This difference expresses an underlying disagreement about the meaning of “meaning”: for Davidson the world comes into view through the meaning of our words and concepts, through the contents of our beliefs; for Cavell, the world comes into view through the agreement in “criteria” that are a condition of applying words and concepts to the world. This difference illuminates what Cavell calls “the truth of skepticism”: the idea that “my relation to the world and to others in general is not one of knowing”. (shrink)

The paper uses thompson clark's theory of the relation of perceptual parts and wholes to illuminate certain aspects of our knowledge of other minds. The thesis is that the traditional problem can be usefully broken down into two parts--One of which calls for a better understanding of the logic of perceptual concepts; the other, For a closer look at what happens when we try to take the epistemological skeptic seriously.

According to its quietist readings, skepticism can be dissolved by demonstrating that the notion of ‘absolute objectivity’ is confused. The dissolution of this confusion is supposed to lead us to acquiesce in our finite and plain everyday life without being bothered anymore about the supposed need for objective knowledge. In contrast, I want to propose a transformative reading of skepticism according to which the philosophical practice of skepticism can be ‘epistemically transformative’. To this end, I will transpose L.A. Paul's notion (...) of ‘epistemically transformative experience’ from decision theory to the realm of philosophical practice and argue that the modern skeptical problem of an external standpoint can evoke transformative experiences that lead to a new, albeit non-propositional, insight into the finitude of the human condition. (shrink)

Scepticism and negative theology are best understood not as theoretical positions, but rather as forms of philosophical practice that performatively undermine our knowledge claims or our seeming understanding of God. In particular, I am arguing that both scepticism and negative theology invoke the failure of the attempt to understand the absolute, be it God or the notion of absolute objectivity. However, with reference to L. A. Paul’s notion of epistemically transformative experience, I am arguing that we still understand something about (...) the absolute through the experience of failing to think it. This, of course, is a non-propositional form of understanding, and I am arguing that there is something about the finitude of the human condition that can only be understood through a transformative philosophical experience with respect to the absolute. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that, like the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to negative–dogmatic skepticism in On Certainty turns on the attempt to free us from the demands of traditional philosophy and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking. Rather, it is a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view (i.e., to illumine) the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize (a) what I call the pragmatic–transcendental self–standingness (...) of the everyday and (b) its philosophical–rational groundlessness. The Pyrrhonian illumination of the everyday is therapeutic in that it aims to purify our metadoxastic attitudes of dogmatism. (shrink)

Radical skepticism relies on the hypothesis that one could be completely cut off from the external world. In this paper, I argue that this hypothesis can be rationally motivated by means of a conceivability argument. Subsequently, I submit that this conceivability argument does not furnish a good reason to believe that one could be completely cut off from the external world. To this end, I show that we cannot adequately conceive scenarios that verify the radical skeptical hypothesis. Attempts to do (...) so fall prey to one or another of three pitfalls: they end up incomplete, reveal a deep contradiction or recreate a non-skeptical hypothesis. I use these results to improve upon Pritchard’s recent attempt at undercutting radical skepticism. (shrink)

Epistemological disjunctivism (ED) has been thought to solve the conditionality problem for epistemic externalism. This problem arises from externalists’ characterization of our epistemic standings as conditional on the obtaining of worldly facts which we lack any reflective access to. ED is meant to avoid the conditionality problem by explicating subjects’ perceptual knowledge in paradigmatic cases of perceptual knowledge via their possession of perceptual reasons that are both factive and reflectively accessible. I argue that ED’s account of reflectively accessible factive perceptual (...) reasons is also prey to the conditionality problem. After that, I submit that Stroud’s influential formulation of the conditionality problem relies on a methodological requirement that is potentially dissociable from ED. So, it is possible to put ED in the service of a more modest anti-skeptical strategy. I close by suggesting that this modest anti-skeptical strategy successfully undercuts the underdetermination-based skeptical paradox. Nevertheless, it does not have substantial advantages over some forms of epistemic externalism. (shrink)

As the title – Husserl’s Legacy – and subtitle – Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy – make clear, Dan Zahavi’s new book is centrally concerned with developing and defending a particular account of Husserl’s legacy. Rather than tracing lines of influence or measuring the impact of various of Husserl’s ideas, Zahavi is interested in Husserl’s legacy in a different and more demanding sense that pertains to what he refers to as ‘the overarching aims and ambitions of Husserlian phenomenology’. He is (...) interested in the continued significance and relevance of Husserl’s philosophy as a comprehensive philosophical system that accordingly stakes out a position on fundamental questions concerning the mind, experience, and the nature of reality; hence the subtitle’s trio of phenomenology, metaphysics, and transcendental philosophy. The legacy that concerns Zahavi lies here, with how the first two notions find their completion in the third: properly understood, Husserl’s transcendental philosophy, which offers a phenomenological form of transcendental idealism, offers a powerful philosophical vision that is directly relevant to contemporary philosophical concerns.1 1 Thus Zahavi is interested in Husserl as a systematic philosopher, whose system is not just of historical interest, a relic from our philosophical past; in keeping with the notion of a legacy, Husserl’s philosophy is something whose inheritance might profit us here and now. (shrink)

In Fear of Knowledge, Paul Boghossian presents a series of arguments against epistemic relativism and constructivism, doctrines that he considers to have exerted an overly unjustified influence over the human and social sciences in the past two decades. In the presentation of his arguments, Boghossian charts out a terrain that closely identifies relativism with skepticism. Yet, the relationship between the two does not seem to be a simple matter of entailment or implication. The purpose of this paper is to clarify (...) the landscape surrounding relativism and skepticism and thereby to highlight their difference. The implications of such a clarification will include illustrating that some arguments thought to be against relativism are actually against skepticism, that there are very different ways of understanding the relationship between relativism and skepticism, and that a commitment to either relativism or skepticism does not entail commitment to the other. The overall objective is to show that Boghossian's conception of the terrain is incorrect and to offer an explanation for this pervasive misconception about the connection between relativism and skepticism. (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)

Recent literature on skepticism has raised a nearly univocal voice in condemning skeptical argumentation on the grounds that such argumentation necessarily involves our adopting some nonordinary or unnatural perspective. Were this really so, then skeptical conclusions would not speak to us in the way in which skeptics think they do: We would be "insulated" from any such conclusions. I argue that skeptical argumentation need not rely on any nonordinary or unnatural standards. Rather, the skeptic's procedure is to offer a critique (...) from within. Having given my argument for this claim (which I call the 'continuity argument'), I consider and respond to two important objections. I conclude that the skeptic has a powerful meta-argument to be deployed in defending the legitimacy of his skeptical conclusions against the slings and arrows of (those I call) the half-true theorists. (shrink)

The paper articulates a novel strategy against external world skepticism. It shows that a modal assumption of the skeptical argument cannot be justified.

Moore’s “Proof of an external world” and his “Four forms of scepticism” have long puzzled commentators. How are these adequate responses to sceptics? How, for that matter, is the so-called proof of an external world even pertinent to the challenge of scepticism? The notion of relativized burdens of proof is introduced: this is a burden of proof vis-à-vis one’s opponent that one takes on when trying to convince that someone of something. The relativized burden of proof is a making explicit (...) the truism that if you argue with someone with the intent of trying to convince that someone of something, and if you fail to, you have not met your own conversational goal. Assuming Moore is implicitly relying on the notion of relativized burdens of proof illuminates his approach in these papers. (shrink)