Scepticism and Causal Theories of Knowledge

Abstract

There is a feature of what I shall call (loosely) causal theories of knowledge which encourages the view that by adopting such a theory we are enabled to make a novel response to the challenge of scepticism. The feature in question is this. On a causal theory the conditions for knowledge that p are met just in case a certain natural relation does in fact obtain between the prospective knower and the world. It is not required that the prospective knower be able to tell' that this relation obtains, or indeed that he be able to tell that p, or tell that he knows that p. He knows just in case certain things are true, whether he can tell that they are true or not. Now it is commonly held that scepticism feeds on just the assumption that knowledge requires some special kind of assurance or ability to tell that what one professes to know is indeed the case. Hence we arrive at the view that by dropping such an assumption we may avoid scepticism. By way of illustration let us consider the particular case of Cartesian scepticism about the material world. This suggests that we might hold all those beliefs about a material world which we do in fact hold, even though none of those beliefs is prompted by such a material world, but instead is prompted by some other, quite different, world. For those who like their problem brought up to date, the Cartesian demon has (re-)materialised in the modern guise of a demon scientist who has us wired into a computer so sophisticated that it is capable of stimulating in us all those beliefs which we do in fact have, and which we believe to arise from our dealings with the straightforward material world of common sense. Such a hypothesis, it is suggested, is compatible with