Inferential Anti-skepticism about Perception

Abstract

This chapter examines multiple kinds of deductive and nondeductive anti-skeptical arguments from our sensory experience to the likely truth of our perceptual beliefs based on that evidence and finds them all wanting. In the first two sections, it briefly considers deductive anti-skeptical arguments (of the theological and transcendental variety), inductive anti-skeptical arguments from past correlations of sensory experience with true perceptual beliefs based on it, and anti-skeptical arguments based on a priori knowledge of probabilistic principles saying that our sensory evidence for our perceptual beliefs makes probable the truth of those beliefs. In the final three sections, the focus turns to abductive or inference to the best explanation (IBE) arguments, which are currently the most popular anti-skeptical arguments. IBE anti-skeptical arguments conclude that our sensory experience, or some feature of it, is best explained by the truth of our perceptual beliefs. These three sections argue that we lack good reasons for thinking that our sensory experience is better explained by a Standard Hypothesis (saying that the world is approximately as it seems) than by a skeptical hypothesis, such as the hypothesis that a deceptive demon wants to mislead us into falsely believing the world is as it seems.