A Priori Bootstrapping

Abstract

In this essay, I shall explore the problems that are raised by a certain traditional sceptical paradox. My conclusion, at the end of this essay, will be that the most challenging problem raised by this paradox does not primarily concern the justification of beliefs; it concerns the justification of belief-forming processes. I shall argue for this conclusion by showing that if we can solve the sceptical problem for belief-forming processes, then it will be a relatively straightforward matter to solve the problem that concerns the justification of beliefs. In the first section of the essay, I shall set out the problem that this sceptical paradox raises for the justification of your beliefs. In the second section, I shall present some reasons for thinking that any adequate solution to this problem must imply that you have a priori justification for believing that you are not in a sceptical scenario (that is, a situation in which your sensory experiences are in some undetectable way unreliable). In the third section, I shall try to make it plausible that you do indeed have such a priori justification, by arguing that there is at least one possible process of non-empirical reasoning— what I call the a priori bootstrapping reasoning—that can lead you to a justified belief in the proposition that you are not in such a sceptical scenario. As I shall explain in the fourth section, however, there is absolutely no prospect that this argument will be able to solve the problem that the sceptical paradox raises for the justification of belief-forming processes: that deeper problem will have to be solved in some other way. Finally, I shall close by commenting on the significance of my arguments for the idea of a priori justification, and for the attempts that other philosophers have made at solving the problems that are raised by the sceptical paradox.