SUBJECT: KNOWLEDGE AND SCEPTICISM

TOPIC: Assignment on Philosophical scepticism

PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM
*What is epistemology?

The word itself comes from two Greek words: 1. ‘Episteme’ which means knowledge or understanding
and 2. ‘Logia’ which means science or study.

In philosophical context, epistemology is the study of knowledge , in general. Examples of

epistemological questions: What does knowledge mean? Or how does a person get to know something?

What is knowledge? Knowledge is justified , true belief. It means that :

1. The person must be able to justify the claim

2. The claim itself must be true, and
3. The person must believe in it.

Let us assume that a person says ‘ I know that people have walked on the moon’. For this to be true
knowledge: it must be possible to justify the claim , it must also be a fact that “ people have indeed been
to the moon” and, finally, the person must also actually believe that people have walked on the moon.

How do you justify a belief? Beliefs ( claims) must be justified. This is done by using evidence. This
evidence must be of good quality and also logical and reasonable.

Epistemology in a non-philosophical context:

The concept of epistemology is also used outside philosophy. This is because the task of producing new
knowledge is a major part of the everyday work of academics. Thus, epistemology has a significant
impact on the scientific endeavours of most scholars, given its importance for discussing the limits and
possibilities of creating and reporting new knowledge.

*What is scepticism?

The term Scepticism is derived from the greek verb ‘skeptomai’ which means ‘to look carefully, to
reflect’. And “ skepsis” meaning “ inquiry”.

In everyday usage scepticism, refers to an attitude of doubt or incredulity, either in general or toward a
particular object, on to any doubting or questioning attitude or state of min.

Scepticism, as an epistemological argument, poses the question of whether knowledge is possible at all.
It targets knowledge in general instead of individual types of knowledge. The theory that certain
knowledge is impossible , but is often also used to cover the position that there is no such thing as
certainty in human knowledge( ACADEMIC SCEPTICISM).

Scepticism is the philosophical position that one should refrain from makin truth claims, and avoid the
postulation of final truths. This is not necessarily quite the same as claiming that truth is impossible

In philosophy , it can refer to:

  An inquiry
 The limitations of knowledge
 A method of obtaining knowledge through systematic doubt and continual testing
 The arbitrariness , relativity or subjectivity of moral values
 A method of intellectual caution and suspended judgment
 It’s the process of finding a supported conclusion, not the justification of a pre conceived
conclusion.
Scepticism is an attitude , aptitude , outlook, approach , movement of asking arguments/further
arguments or of doubting knowledge of different areas. Scepticism always depends on an argument. The
best sceptical arguments give the conclusion that knowledge is impossible. None does know because no-
one can know. The boring sceptic simply repeats the “how do you know that?” question ad infinite. A
slightly less boring sceptic might argue:

1. No one knows that p unless he can say how he knows

2. Any attempted answer by simply reasserting p begs the question.

Dancy points out that both these propositions are dubious. The second one unreasonably requires
evidence for my being in pain beyond the feeling of pain itself. Another boring sceptic has the attitude
that most people are gullible and that standards for knowledge should be set higher. He only becomes
an interesting sceptic if the standards are set so high that knowledge is impossible, but even then only if
he offers an argument. He must show that normal standards are inappropriate and must appeal to our
standards as well as his. He then runs the risk of incoherence, for how can an argument that’s justified
by normal standards of evidence show that these standards are inappropriate?

Distinctions between types of sceptical argument :

1. Local and global scepticism: local scepticism is the view that one cannot possess knowledge in
some particular domain. The areas of interest for local scepticism are ethics, religion and the
future. Global scepticism argues that one does not absolutely know anything to be true or false.
It seems to require that absolutely nothing can be known, except for the knowledge that
nothing can be known. There is always a tendency to expand local scepticism to global
scepticism.
2. Second distinction dancy talks about is between weak scepticism and strong scepticism:
Weak scepticism attacks knowledge, but leaves related notions like belief untouched. Stronger
and more interesting sceptical arguments attacks both notions at once.
3. Failure of knowledge linked to failure of understanding. Strongest sceptical arguments claim
that we can neither know nor understand. A theory of understanding that links what we can
understand to what we could recognise to be true reduces all sceptical arguments to the
strongest types. A sceptical argument that claims we understand nothing fails (a) because we do
understand some things; in particular (b) we are expected to understand the sceptical argument
itself.

*Three Sceptical Arguments:

 1.Brains in Vats : The brain in a vat is a standard thought experiment which is most commonly used to
illustrate global or Cartesian scepticism. You are told to imagine the possibility that at this very moment
you are actually a brain hooked up to a sophisticated computer program that can perfectly stimulate
experiences of the outside world.

In form of sceptical argument: if you cannot now be sure that you are not a brain in a vat, then you
cannot rule out the possibility that all of your beliefs about the external world are false.

• Principle of Closure (of knowledge):

PCk: [Kap & Ka(p q)] Kaq.

Let p stand as “I’m sitting here reading a book” and q as “I’m not a brain in a vat”, then given ¬Kaq, then
¬Kap by modus tollens. That is, I don’t know I’m here reading a book if I don’t know I’m not a brain in a
vat [which I can’t know if the thought experiment is set up correctly], given that if I did know that I’m
here reading a book I would know that I’m not a brain in a vat. It is similar to Rene Descartes cogito ergo
sum “ I think therefore I am “ which was intended to answer the question “ what can I not doubt? “.
Descartes has p = “I am sitting by the fire” and q = “I’m not dreaming”.

Or to put it in terms of knowedge claims, we can construct the following sceptical argument

1. If I know that p, then I know that I am not a brain in a vat.

2. I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat
3. Thus, I do not know that p.

- Application of the “3 distinctions”:

1. All arguments of this form presuppose that Ka(p q), so are not globally sceptical.

2. There are analogous arguments for justified belief, that are even more convincing, using the closure
principle: PCj: [JBap & JBa(p q)] JBaq.

3. This form of argument doesn’t undermine understanding.

2.The Argument from Error : A person may mistake even in areas where he felt most confident, simple
mistakes in arithmetic, for example. You’ve made mistakes in the past, so how know not making one
now. Dancy comments that it relies on an epistemological version of the principle of universalizability
familiar in Hare’s ethical theory. An action is relevantly similar if it too has properties which constituted
one’s reason for the judgement. If an action is morally good, then a new and relevantly similar action is
also good. In other words, ‘If I recognized that I have once wrongly claimed to know that p than I cannot
ever claim to know that p unless I can show a relevant difference between the two cases. Example:
Yesterday I claimed to know that it would rain, on usual grounds. I was wrong. At the time, the fact that
it was not going to rain was evidence-transcendent, as all claims about the future must be. So, if today I
cannot justifiably make the same evidence-transcendent claim. Odd argument which is rejected by
Dancy is that a third party might see a difference and might be justified in saying that I didn’t know
yesterday, but do today. Hence, if I’ve ever been wrong, neither I (nor anyone else of me) can say I know
unless there are relevantly different circumstances. Even imagining cases in which I would have been
wrong (i.e., claimed K(p) but ¬p) will have the same effect as real errors. Brain in a vat is such an
imaginary case.
-Application of the “3 distinctions”:

1. There are no error-free zones, so the Argument from Error is global.

2. Not immediately obvious that the argument generalises to Justified Belief, since we can’t argue
straightforwardly that a false belief can’t be justified (whereas a false proposition can’t be known). What
we need for scepticism is the claim that you cannot claim that a belief is justified unless you can tell the
difference between cases where such beliefs are true, and those where they are false. Dancy thinks the
kind of argument that we don’t know we’re a brain in a vat might do.

3. No impact on understanding, unless we adopt a position that to understand a proposition is to

distinguish circumstances in which one would be justified in believing it from those in which one would
not.

3.The Justification of Arguments from Experience : Normally, we suppose that our experience is the
reliable guide to the knowledge of events. Hume argued that - “I cannot know that my diary is in the
(closed) bottom drawer of my desk unless I have reason to believe that my experience makes that
proposition probable. W e can suppose that my relevant experience is that I remember having put the
diary there five minutes ago and that I don’t remember having touched the drawer since, together with
my general knowledge of my consistent behaviour of the experienced world. But I only have reason to
believe that my experience makes that proposition probable. If I have reason to believe quite generally
that events which I have not observed are similar to events which I have observed'.u Here, our
experience guides us to the cases which we are not observing and in those favourable cases it gives us
knowledge. Hume concludes “I cannot suppose that experience itself has given me reason to believe
that the unobserved will resemble the observed, since the appeal to experience begs the question
asked; it argues not to put from the crucial belief that our experience is a reliable guide, or that the
unobserved will resemble the observed. Therefore I can have no reason to believe that my experience is
a reliable guide, and hence have no reason for any belief about events beyond my experience and so
cannot have knowledge of them”.i5 Our general belief that an experience is a reliable guide, therefore
cannot be justified. This argument attacks the notion of justification

- Application of the “3 distinctions”:

1. This argument only concerns the unobserved so it is not global.

2. It attacks justified beliefs as well as knowledge.

3. Hume allows that we understand propositions about unobserved objects, though he argues that they
are mostly false.

*A Short Way with the Sceptic

We might suppose it impossible to provide a global argument of the strongest type (that attacks
understanding – none of the above 3 does). Only by understanding the sceptic’s argument could we
come to such a conclusion (that we understand nothing), and even if we didn’t understand the
argument, we would understand the conclusion. So, the conclusion must be false.We can adopt this
“short” approach with sceptical arguments against:-
1. Knowledge (unconvincing): The sceptic claims to know his conclusion that knowledge is impossible.

2. Justified Belief (more effective): What’s the point of arguing that justified belief is impossible? If you
were right you’d be unjustified in believing your conclusion.

Such defenses against the sceptic ignore the arguments & focus on the conclusion. They either: Dispute
the sceptic’s right to assert the conclusion, or suggest the conclusion can’t be true, so we’re excused the
trouble of attending to the arguments. An example of 2 nd one is that against global failure of
understanding, but if successful it might also work against global failure of knowledge. Since we
understand what the sceptic is saying, we must have the sort of knowledge required for that
understanding. Dancy thinks the sceptic need be worried by neither defense. The sceptic has a valid
argument with true premises. If the argument concludes that the sceptic can’t know his premises to be
true, then we have either:

1. A reductio (if I know anything – such as his supposedly self-evident premises – then I know nothing) or

2. A paradox within the concept of knowledge (if a valid argument with true premises leads to a false or
impossible conclusion). Hence, we miss the point by simply focusing on the conclusion of the sceptic’s
argument.

*Another Reply :

A response to the Brain in a vat argument is that, since it makes no difference to your experience
whether or not you’re a Brain in a vat, the truth of the situation doesn’t matter. This makes out the
sceptic’s apparent strength to be his weakness. There are weaker and stronger forms of this argument
against the sceptic: 1.Weaker: This one says that though there is a radical difference between the two
hypotheses, neither makes any difference to you, so you’re justified in ignoring the difference. This is
analogous to whether or not we have free will , life goes on just the same. 2.Stronger: This denies that
there is such a thing as evidence transcendent truth, and so there’s no contrast for the sceptic’s
argument of work on. Dancy focuses on stronger one as he thinks the weaker ones are wrong headed.

The difference between the two arguments is that between realism (there are evidence-transcendent
truths) and anti-realism (there aren’t). Anti-realism isn’t intended as a response to the sceptic, but there
are affinities between the anti-realist and the sceptic. Both think we have no more than a tentative
grasp on the world. The anti-realist denies the existence of any “real” world beyond our grasp, which
makes the epistemological task easier since there are no evidence-transcendent properties. For a
property to be present just means that we have the best possible evidence for it. The anti-realist
believes that understanding of sentences derives from situations warranting their use, where they count
as true. Hence, if there’s no such thing as justified belief, there’s no such thing as understanding. For, to
understand a sentence is to be able to select situations that justify us in believing the sentence true. It
would seem that the anti-realist’s position is weak, given that any sceptical argument against justified
belief is thereby for the anti-realist of the strongest form, denying us understanding of our own
language. However, all the sceptical arguments that reach this conclusion make a move that’s invalid
from the anti-realist perspective; namely, they invoke the realist claim that the world might differ
radically from what it appears. Hence, there is no scope for global scepticism about either
understanding or justified belief.
The problem with anti-realism is that it’s on a par with scepticism as far as implausibility is concerned.
We can see this when we consider the questions the antirealist asks us to give up on:

1.Other minds: There’s a real question whether there are sensations which are not ours, but this is
evidence-transcendent (we can only observe possible that the experience of other beings is either non-
existent or different from ours).

2. The past: We presume that the past was once as determinate as the present is now, but there are
many propositions about the past which are now evidence transcendent. Yet, we think there is a
transcendent fact of the matter at stake, one that just happens to be beyond our recognition. This is a
realist attitude to the past.

There may be some areas where anti-realism is easy to construct, but the price of this route out of
scepticism may be too high where realism seems compelling.

*Conclusion:

We need to address the sceptic’s argument. One line of attack is the hope that a satisfactory account of
what knowledge is will expose errors in the sceptic’s reasoning. Another try is to abandon knowledge,
and be satisfied with justified belief. All the sceptical arguments presented and any other interesting
sceptical argument, are directed by notion of justified beliefs as much as by that of knowledge. This
means that the easy compromise position is unavailable and we need to find some better reply to the
sceptic.