The Lure of Radical Skepticism
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Infinite regress
12 min read
The article dedicates significant discussion to the epistemic regress problem as a core skeptical argument. A deep dive into this classical philosophical problem would help readers understand the foundational challenge to justified belief.
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Brain in a vat
12 min read
The BIV thought experiment is central to the article's discussion of skeptical scenarios. Understanding its philosophical history and variations would enrich the reader's grasp of external world skepticism.
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David Hume
15 min read
Hume is explicitly cited as the source of the argument about direct awareness and the external world. His broader philosophical contributions to empiricism and skepticism provide essential context for understanding these arguments.
Note: For the past few years, I’ve been dedicating every other Fake Nous post to a summary of one of my academic papers. (It turns out that you can give a 2000-word version of an 8,000-word academic paper, and it often won’t be obvious what’s missing.) But I’ve finally run out of papers. So now I’m going to try summarizing ideas from my books. Only some of the ideas, from only some of the books.
Here, I explain skepticism in epistemology, why it’s interesting, and what the main arguments for it are.*
[ *Based on: Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), chs. 1-3. ]
1. What Is Skepticism?
There are many “skeptical” positions in philosophy—moral skepticism, inductive skepticism, external-world skepticism, etc. What they have in common is that they are positions that challenge a significant class of common sense beliefs.
By “common sense beliefs,” I mean beliefs that have about the highest degree of initial plausibility of any beliefs (they seem really obvious on their face). They should be cross-cultural and cross-temporal (e.g., people in all societies in all times will believe that a hand exists when they see one in front of their faces). Denying one of them is a sign of insanity (unless you’re doing philosophy). Note that this is a stipulative, technical use of “common sense” (it does not mean “belief that a lot of people have”!), so don’t complain that this isn’t what “common sense” means.
To “challenge” a belief is to advance a view that could not rationally be embraced in conjunction with said belief. E.g., I could not rationally believe, “I have two hands, but I have no justification for thinking that.” Hence, [I have no justification for believing I have hands] poses a challenge to [I have hands].
A skeptic will challenge some large class of common sense beliefs, not just one or two beliefs. Here, I’m interested in these two forms of skepticism:
External World Skepticism: The view that we lack knowledge of the external world (the world independent of our minds).
Global Skepticism: The view that we lack knowledge of anything whatsoever.
Also, there are different reasons why we might lack knowledge, including:
Certainty Skepticism: We lack knowledge because our beliefs are not absolutely certain.
Justification Skepticism: We lack knowledge because our beliefs are not even justified.
I find certainty skepticism uninteresting. Here, I’m interested in
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