Problem Of Skepticism Research Articles

The Self-Hollowing Problem of the Radical Sceptical Paradox

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new solution to the radical sceptical paradox. A sceptical paradox purports to indicate the inconsistency within our fundamental epistemological commitments that are all seemingly plausible. Typically, sceptics employ an intuitively appealing epistemic principle (e.g., the closure principle, the underdetermination principle) to derive the sceptical conclusion. This paper will reveal a dilemma intrinsic to the sceptical paradox, which I refer to as the self-hollowing problem of radical scepticism. That is, on the one hand, if the sceptical conclusion turns out to be true, then the epistemic principle employed by sceptics would lose its foundation of plausibility; on the other hand, if the sceptical conclusion does not follow, then the sceptical problem would not arise. In either case, the so-called sceptical paradox cannot be a genuine paradox. This new solution has three theoretical merits: it is undercutting, less theory-laden, and widely applicable.

A different kind of dream-based skepticism

Sextus Empiricus offers an underappreciated and under-discussed version of dream-based skepticism. Most philosophers interested in dreams and skepticism focus on the question of how you know you are not currently dreaming. Sextus points out that our waking experiences and dreams often conflict. And, the challenge goes, what reason do you have to trust the one over the other? This question presupposes that dreams and waking experiences are distinguishable. Thus the kinds of responses typically offered against dream-based skepticism do not apply. And if we accept an idea upheld by one camp in the contemporary debate over the epistemology of disagreement, Sextus’ challenge is difficult to answer. A G.E. Moore-inspired response to the problem is also proposed and explored. It is argued that Sextus’ version of the problem reveals a certain limitation in that sort of approach to skeptical problems.

Revisionism, Scepticism, and the Non-Belief Theory of Hinge Commitments

In his recent work, Duncan Pritchard defends a novel Wittgensteinian response to the problem of radical scepticism. The response makes essential use of a form of non-epistemicism about the nature of hinge commitments. According to non-epistemicism, hinge commitments cannot be known or grounded in rational considerations, such as reasons and evidence. On Pritchard’s version of non-epistemicism, hinge commitments express propositions but cannot be believed. This is the non-belief theory of hinge commitments (NBT). One of the main reasons in favour ofNBTover rival anti-sceptical Wittgensteinian views is that it has less theoretical costs and revisionary consequences than its rivals. In this paper, I argue thatNBTfares at least as bad as its rivals in terms of its theoretical costs and revisionism. In particular, I argue thatNBTis inconsistent with certain cases of philosophical disagreement; that it faces worries with mental-state scepticism; and that it faces difficulties in explaining how we can represent ourselves as committed to hinge commitments.

Reasonable Citizens and Epistemic Peers: A Skeptical Problem for Political Liberalism

Reasonable Citizens and Epistemic Peers: A Skeptical Problem for Political Liberalism

Disjuntivismo epistemológico e ceticismo radical

O disjuntivismo epistemológico é uma teoria filosófica que tem recebido uma atenção especial nos últimos anos. Particularmente porque ela tem sido encarada por muitos como uma via de renovação de discussões que vão desde a natureza da justificação das nossas crenças cotidianas até a possibilidade de desvendar as estruturas do ceticismo radical e responder ao problema estabelecido por ele. Duncan Pritchard é um dos autores que têm oferecido uma visão particular do disjuntivismo e maneiras de conceber tratamentos disjuntivistas para tais questões. Seu trabalho tem como fonte de inspiração, em grande medida, o trabalho seminal de John McDowell. Nesse artigo, eu apresento uma maneira de entender o problema cético radical e de que maneira o disjuntivismo epistemológico pretender oferecer soluções ao problema. Para isso, eu apresento a proposta disjuntivista geral de McDowell e discuto em que sentido essa proposta se diferencia da teoria disjuntivista defendida por Pritchard. Ao fim, eu tento mostrar como a abordagem de Pritchard pretender responder ao ceticismo radical não só apelando para uma leitura disjuntivista da nossa posição epistêmica, mas oferecendo uma revisão da nossa estrutura de razões.

Quality Improvement of Ground Works Process with the Use of Chosen Lean Management Tools – Case Study

Ground works are one of the first processes connected with erecting structures. Based on ground conditions like the type of soil or level of underground water different types and solutions for foundations are designed. Foundations are the base for the buildings, and their proper design and execution is the key for the long and faultless use of the whole construction and might influence on the future costs of the eventual repairs (especially when ground water level is high, and there is no proper water insulation made).Article presents the introduction of chosen Lean Management tools for quality improvement of the process of ground works based on the analysis made on the construction site of vehicle control station located in Poznan, Poland. Processes assessment is made from different perspectives taking into account that 3 main groups of workers were directly involved in the process: blue collar-workers, site manager and site engineers. What is more comparison is made on the 3 points of view to the problems that might occur during this type of works, with details analysis on the causes of such situation?Authors presents also the change of approach of workers directly involved in the mentioned processes regarding introduction of Lean Management methodology, which illustrates the problem of scepticism for new ideas of the people used to perform works and actions in traditional way.Using Lean Management philosophy in construction is a good idea to streamline processes in company, get rid of constantly recurring problems, and in this way improve the productivity and quality of executed activities. Performed analysis showed that different groups of people have very different idea and opinion on the problems connected with executing the same process – ground works and only having full picture of the situation (especially in construction processes) management can take proper problems-preventing actions that consequently can influence on the amount of waste generated on the construction cite which positively influence on the external environment.

On What Does Rationality Hinge?

The two main components of Coliva’s view are Moderatism and Extended Rationality. According to Moderatism, a belief about specific material objects is perceptually justified iff, absent defeaters, one has the appropriate course of experience and it is assumed that there is an external world. I grant Moderatism and instead focus on Extended Rationality, according to which it is epistemically rational to believe evidentially warranted propositions and to accept those unwarrantable assumptions that make the acquisition of perceptual warrants possible and are therefore constitutive of ordinary evidential warrants. I suggest that, even though Extended Rationality might be true, it cannot do the work that Coliva wants it to do. Although my objections do not show that it is false, they can serve to clarify what sorts of problem a theory of justification or rationality could possibly address. This provides an alternative to Coliva’s view of the skeptical problem and the question, on what does rationality hinge?

Moral Philosophy after Austin and Wittgenstein: Stanley Cavell and Donald MacKinnon

There are broad commonalities between the projects of Donald MacKinnon (1913–1994) and Stanley Cavell (1926–) sufficient to make the claim that they struck an analogous pose in their respective contexts. This is not to discount their manifest differences. In the milieu of 1960s and 1970s Cambridge, MacKinnon argued in support of a qualified language of metaphysics in the service of a renewed catholic humanism and Christian socialism. At Harvard, Cavell articulated commitments that made him more at home in the world of North American secular political liberalism. Where Nietzsche, Hume, Freud, Heidegger, Emerson and Thoreau were Cavell’s inspirations, Butler, Kant, G. E. Moore, Collingwood and the New Testament were MacKinnon’s. For all the stark differences, commonalities abound and the reason for this can be traced to a shared appreciation of Austin’s contribution to the ‘lingusitic turn’ together with Wittgenstein’s later work. They both developed projects obsessed with the problem of scepticism together with a commitment to a creative re-animation of moral discourse in light of it, with MacKinnon defending a qualified ‘moral realism’, and Cavell, ‘moral perfectionism’. Seen together, a distinctive post-Kantian and post-Wittgensteinian therapeutic moral philosophy is in evidence.

Causation and Time Reversal

What would it be for a process to happen backwards in time? Would such a process involve different causal relations? It is common to understand the time reversal invariance of a physical theory in causal terms, such that whatever can happen forwards in time (according to the theory) can also happen backwards in time. This has led many to hold that time reversal symmetry is incompatible with the asymmetry of cause and effect. This paper critiques the causal reading of time reversal. First, I argue that the causal reading requires time-reversal-related models to be understood as representing distinct possible worlds, and on such a reading causal relations are compatible with time reversal symmetry. Second, I argue that the former approach does however raise serious sceptical problems regarding the causal relations of paradigm causal processes, and as a consequence there are overwhelming reasons to prefer a non-causal reading of time reversal whereby time reversal leaves causal relations invariant. On the non- causal reading, time reversal symmetry poses no significant conceptual nor epistemological problems for causation.

External-World Skepticism in Classical India: The Case of Vasubandhu

The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (c. 400 ce) has seldom been considered in conjunction with the problem of external-world skepticism despite the fact that his text, Twenty Verses, presents arguments from ignorance based on dreams. In this article, an epistemological phenomenalist interpretation of Vasubandhu is supported in opposition to a metaphysical idealist interpretation. On either interpretation, Vasubandhu gives an invitation to the problem of external-world skepticism, although his final conclusion is closer to skepticism on the epistemological phenomenalist interpretation. The article ends with reflections on what light Vasubandhu might shed on the issue of whether skepticism is a natural problem in epistemology as well as why, despite Vasubandhu, the skeptical problem was not a central issue in the later Indian tradition.

Dreams, agency, and judgement

Sosa (Proc Addresses Am Philos Assoc 79(2): 7–18, 2005) argues that we should reject the orthodox conception of dreaming—the view that dream states and waking states are “intrinsically alike, though different in their causes and effects” (2005: p. 7). The alternative he proposes is that “to dream is to imagine” (2005: p. 7). According to this imagination model of dreaming, our dreamt conscious beliefs, experiences, affirmations, decisions and intentions are not “real” insofar as they are all merely imagined beliefs, experiences, affirmations, decisions and intentions. This paper assesses the epistemic implications of Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming. Section 1 outlines and assesses the reasons Sosa gives for thinking that his imagination model of dreaming introduces a new dimension to debates about dream scepticism. Sosa argues that his imagination model of dreaming invites a more radical version of dream scepticism, and also makes available a novel and more powerful response to dream scepticism. Objections are raised to both of those claims. This leads to a challenge to Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming. This is the concern that Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming lacks the resources to accommodate the intuition that there is something illusory or misleading about one’s situation when one is dreaming, and as a result his account of dreams fails to accommodate the common intuition that there is a sceptical problem about dreaming but not about dreamless sleep. Section 2 of the paper elaborates a version of the imagination model of dreaming that can overcome that challenge. This version of the imagination model of dreaming goes beyond what Sosa explicitly commits to when he outlines his view of dreams, however, it exploits ideas that are integral to a key theme in Sosa’s recent writings on virtue reliabilism—namely his proposal that epistemic agency should be accorded a central place in that approach to knowledge, and his related proposal that agency is exercised in conscious judgement. An implication of this version of the imagination model of dreaming is that an elucidation of a connection between the wakeful condition and our capacity to exercise agency over our mental lives should be central to an account of the nature, and epistemic significance of, wakeful consciousness. The final section of the paper considers whether this version of the imagination model of dreaming has anything novel to contribute to debates about dream scepticism.

VIII—Beliefs-in-a-Vat

The over-arching claim that I intend to defend in this paper is that while widespread ‘local’ error is conceivable, we cannot, in the end, make sense of the radical sceptical idea that all our perceptual beliefs might be false – that no one has, as it were, ever been in touch with an ‘external world’ at all. To this end, I will show that an asymmetry exists between ‘local’ and ‘global’ sceptical scenarios, such that the possibility of ‘local’ error does not imply that ‘global’ error must also be possible. Instead, we will see that what gives rise to the radical sceptical problem is an unquestioned acceptance of the ‘New Evil Genius Thesis’ (NET) – the notion that I and my ‘envatted’ counterpart share the same perceptual experiences, even though my benighted twin has never had any contact with an ‘external’ reality. Although most contemporary epistemologists take NET for granted, I will show that it cannot, ultimately, be rendered intelligible, and, consequently, that neither can the ‘global’ sceptical scenario that depends on it.

Excursus on Wittgenstein's Rule-Following Considerations

In this essay, I seek to demonstrate the interplay of philosophical voices – particularly, that of a platonist voice and a community-agreement-view voice – that drives Wittgenstein’s rule-following dialectic forward; and I argue that each voice succumbs to a particular form of dialectical oscillation that renders its response to the problem of rule-following philosophically inadequate. Finally, I suggest that, by seeing and taking stock of the dilemma in which these responses to the skeptical problem are caught, we can come to appreciate Wittgenstein’s own view of what might constitute a proper a response to the so-called problem of rule-following. This view can be preliminarily characterized by saying that Wittgenstein’s aim is to dissolve the temptation to philosophically rebut the skeptical challenge posed by the rule-following dialectic, an aim he achieves by revealing the semantic emptiness of the apparent sentences that raise the skeptical problem.

Superintelligent AI and Skepticism

It has become fashionable to worry about the development of superintelligent AI that results in the destruction of humanity. This worry is not without merit, but it may be overstated. This paper explores some previously undiscussed reasons to be optimistic that, even if superintelligent AI does arise, it will not destroy us. These have to do with the possibility that a superintelligent AI will become mired in skeptical worries that its superintelligence cannot help it to solve. I argue that superintelligent AIs may lack the psychological idiosyncracies that allow humans to act in the face of skeptical problems, and so as a result they may become paralyzed in the face of these problems in a way that humans are not.

Lyric Orientations: Hölderlin, Rilke, and the Poetics of Community by Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge

Reviewed by: Lyric Orientations: Hölderlin, Rilke, and the Poetics of Community by Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge James D. Reid Lyric Orientations: Hölderlin, Rilke, and the Poetics of Community. By Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 217. Paper $26.95. ISBN 978-0801479328. Philosophical engagement with poetry is a time-honored if hazardous enterprise. The philosophic penchant for abstraction and the clarity of conceptual analysis and argument are hard to square with the concrete imagery and the density, allusiveness, and Vieldeutigkeit of the poetic statement. It is tempting for the philosophically inclined reader to mine poetic work for illustrations of independently existing philosophical positions and to ignore the distinctively poetic qualities of the poems themselves. With full awareness of the risks, Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge has written an exemplary book that takes seriously the philosophical and ethical potential of lyric poetry in general, illuminates the contributions of Hölderlin and Rilke to the task of getting oriented in (communal) spaces of significance, and that rarely forgets that her principal objects are not philosophical essays or systematic treatises but poems. Lyric Orientations is a rich work that cannot be fully discussed, or fairly quarreled with, in a short review. Taking cues from Stanley Cavell on skepticism—as both a truth about the human condition to be acknowledged and, in certain (epistemological) forms, as a temptation to be resisted—Eldridge argues persuasively that several late poems by Friedrich Hölderlin and eight of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus reveal the importance, perhaps the human necessity, of replacing the quest for certainty, or the desire to attain certain knowledge of the world and others, with uncertain and unsponsored acknowledgment of the claims external reality and other minds make upon us. Students of Cavell are likely to find nothing especially novel in her rehearsal of his views on skepticism in [End Page 642] the first chapter, nor will it satisfy readers attuned to more philosophical efforts to overcome skepticism, but Eldridge summarizes the relevant problem clearly, and recourse to Cavell and skepticism set the stage for close and careful readings of the theoretical, literary, and poetic material to follow in the next four chapters. She manages to avoid anachronism, paying careful attention to the ways in which the overarching problem of skepticism shows up in the languages specific to each poet. The second and third chapters deal specifically with Hölderlin. Here her use of Cavell yields especially fruitful results. A large body of work on Hölderlin and/or his contemporaries in the romantic tradition (Henrich, Frank, Beiser, Nassar, inter alia) attempts to situate the poets from the period in relation to the systematic ambitions of German idealism. Although Eldridge is aware of Hölderlin's relation to Kant and Fichte, her work on Hölderlin's poetological texts (chapter 2), which sets the stage for engagement with the poems themselves, and three poems from his late period (chapter 3) sidestep debates over the poet's commitment to idealism or realism, in a reading that places the poet's aspirations in line with the problem of acknowledging the condition of uncertain subjectivity and discovering poetically mediated forms of communal and personally integrated life (in opposition to the tendency toward fragmentation emblematic of modern forms of life and its institutions). Her interpretation of "Das Nächste Beste" is one of the best brief discussions of the poem's complex and open-ended stances on the possibility of poetry's capacity to achieve the sort of wholeness Hölderlin's late poetry seeks. In the fourth and fifth chapters Eldridge enters the ranks of a small company of philosophically inspired readers of Rilke in the Anglophone world (Lysaker, Fischer). Chapter 4 paves the way with a provocative interpretation of Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) that reveals Rilke's persistent anxieties facing a world in which the boundaries between self and other have become unsettlingly insecure and, relatedly, "the (historical) institutions supposed to control such interpenetration [between self and other] consistently break down" (129). Addressing persistent doubts in the secondary literature about the relationship between the first and second parts of Rilke's novel, Eldridge provides an account of Malte...

Hinge Conditions: An Argument Against Skepticism

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the problem of skepticism as the Transmissibility Argument represents it, and to explore different avenues for overcoming the argument for skepticism. The fallibilist’s response to skepticism will be briefly explored, along with the skeptic’s counterargument to fallibilism. The main focus of the paper will be on Wittgenstein’s concept of hinge propositions; however, this will be supplemented by Dretske’s idea that the communication channels through which knowledge can be gained have built-in channel conditions. By the end of this paper, I will have put forth the notion that the existence of hinge conditions may be a possible solution to skepticism.

Doubt, our modern Crown of Thorns

This essay uses T. E. Lawrence's characterization of doubt as ‘our modern crown of thorns’, as an entrée into thinking through the coincidence of doubt and faith in the four canonical gospels. However much each of the gospels may wish to induce faith, it leaves its readers with the distinct impression that doubt, understood differently in each, cannot be fully dispelled. The gospels thereby testify to a lively, ancient appreciation for the irrepressibility of doubt. This essay then turns to the problem of scepticism in modern philosophy. In his work on Ludwig Wittgenstein, the American philosopher Stanley Cavell suggests that scepticism is a ‘condition’ of knowledge, both in the sense of something from which we suffer as if from a chronic illness, and in the sense of that which makes knowledge possible at all. The reader is invited to think of the dialectics of doubt and faith in a similar way, of doubt as the very condition of faith.

The Sources of Scepticism

It is claimed that the radical sceptical problem that is the focus of much of contemporary epistemological discussion in fact divides into two logically distinct sub-problems—a formulation that turns on the closure principle and a second formulation which turns on the underdetermination principle. The Wittgensteinian account of the structure of rational evaluation is set out, and it is shown how this proposal—at least when properly formulated—can deal with closure-based radical scepticism. It is also claimed, however, that this account fails to gain any purchase on underdetermination-based radical scepticism. The antidote to this latter form of radical scepticism lies elsewhere—with, it is suggested, epistemological disjunctivism.

Contextualism and radical scepticism

A critique of attributer contextualist treatments of the problem of radical scepticism is offered. It is argued that while such proposals, standardly conceived, gain some purchase against the closure-based formulation of this problem, they run aground when applied to the logically distinct underdetermination-based formulation. A specific kind of attributer contextualism—rational support contextualism—is then explored. This is better placed to deal with underdetermination-based radical scepticism via its endorsement of ascriptions of factive rational support in everyday contexts of epistemic appraisal. But such a proposal is faced with a dialectical impasse with regard to the competing epistemological disjunctivist response to radical scepticism. While the former has dialectical advantages over the latter with regard to closure-based radical scepticism, the latter has the dialectical upper-hand when it comes to underdetermination-based radical scepticism. It is claimed that the way to resolve this issue—and thereby to understand that we should not expect a unified treatment of these two formulations of the sceptical problem, much less one that is cast along contextualist lines—is to recognise how these two formulations reflect distinct sources of scepticism.

Epistemic Angst

Support is canvassed for a novel solution to the sceptical problem regarding our knowledge of the external world. Key to this solution is the claim that what initially looks like a single problem is in fact two logically distinct problems. In particular, there are two putative sceptical paradoxes in play here, which each trade on distinctive epistemological theses. It is argued that the ideal solution to radical scepticism would thus be a biscopic proposal—viz., a two‐pronged, integrated, undercutting treatment of both putative sceptical paradoxes. A particular biscopic proposal is then explored which brings together two apparently opposing anti‐sceptical theses: he Wittgensteinian account of the structure of rational evaluation and epistemological disjunctivism. It is argued that each proposal enables us to gain a purchase on one, but only one, aspect of the two‐sided sceptical problem. Furthermore, it is argued that these proposals are not only compatible positions, but also mutually supporting and advanced in the same undercutting spirit. A potential cure is thus offered for epistemic angst.