Scepticism

What are Descartes’ 3 skeptical considerations?

Fallibility of the senses, possibility that we are dreaming and doubts on our reasoning abilities through the evil demon and a priori proofs

What is the difference between doxastic and epistemic realities in the BIV argument? (meaning, roughly, belief)

The brain in a vat has a doxastically identical reality to the real world, so cannot supposedly be discerned by belief or intuition

What is the argument of fallibilism?

Truth and justification can be separated

Extending Moore’s argument, what is the Coherentist theory of truth?

Knowledge and truth are a well tuned machine and thus the sceptic is trying to make language do something it is not designed to do

What are the two arguments for Skepticism?

The infinite regress argument and the argument from closure

What is Closure? (In this skeptical context)

If I know that p, and I know that p entails q, then I know that q

What is the skeptical argument arrived at through closure concerning BIVs?

P1) I don’t know that I’m not a brain in a vat. P2) If I don’t know that I’m not a brain in a vat, then I don’t know that I have hands. C) Therefore, I don’t know that I have hands.

What is the Modus Ponens vs. Modus pollens

If P, then Q. P. Therefore Q vs. If P, then Q. Not Q. Therefore not P.

G.E.Moore quote for externalist response?

“I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands…By doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things”

What is the argument of for reliable belief forming process from Papineau?
(Note: If I come to a belief that I have hands through a reliable sensory process…and completely deduce from this that I’m not a brain in a vat…

“In order for a belief-forming process to be reliable, there is not need for its reliability, or even its existence, to be available to consciousness…according to reliabilism, we will know, say, that there is a table in front of us…whether or not we are aware of this”

What is the Moorean shift?
(e.g. parsimony of “here is a hand” over the complex skeptical premise “you cannot know that you are not a brain in a vat”)

Instead of accepting the sceptic’s modus tollens, Moore reverses it into a modus ponds by affirming that certain “common sense” facts are more certain than the skeptics premise

What is the “common sense” part of G.E. Moore’s argument against Skepticism?

The premises “here is a hand” and “here is another” are more obvious and probable in his models ponens than the premises in which the external skeptic’s modus tollens are grounded.

Descartes on A Priori verifiability?

“whether I am awake or asleep, “two and three together always form five, and the square can never have more than four side”

Descartes Evil Demon?

“Not that God…but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity”

What are the issues with Moore’s argument?

Question-begging (assumes the truth of what he is trying to prove), doesn’t bridge the gap between “knowing” and “proving” and potentially ignores the context of the inquiry by not addressing the underlying mechanism

What is something external to Moore? (e.g. example of a soap bubble - and then used for pointing out errors on a page) essentially not idealism

“If something is perceived, it follows from that proposition that it is external to my mind” and “I am implying that it is not a thing of a sort such that things of that sort can only exist at a time when somebody is having an experience”

Moore quote for philosopher’s wanting “something like a general statement as to how any propositions of this sort may be proved” (when they reject valid argument)

“I can know things, which I cannot prove; and among things which I certainly did know, even if I could not prove them, were the premisses of my two proofs”

What is Hilary Putnam’s case of a tree (aliens)?

“The alien’s mental image is not a representation of a tree. It is only a representation of the strange object that the mysterious picture represents”

What is Hilary Putnam’s case of a tree (Paint)?

(Note: “The same thing is true of words. A discourse on paper might seem to be a perfect description of trees, but if it was produced by monkeys randomly hitting keys on a typewriter for millions of years, then the words do not refer to anything” Infinite monkey cage - writing out a copy of Hamlet)

If paint accidentally spilt and formed a tree, humans would still have “mental images qualitatively identical with my image of a tree”

What is Putnam’s magical theory of reference quote?
(Key: How it was caused and what the dispositions of the agent are)
“Thoughts, words and mental pictures do not intrinsically represent what they are about” 

“Even large and complex systems of representations, both verbal and visual, still does not have an intrinsic, built-in, magical connection with what it represents - a connection independent of how it was caused and what the dispositions of the speaker or thinker are.”

What is Putnam’s main argument (quote)?

“although the people in that possible world can think and ‘say’ any words we can think and say, they cannot refer to what we can refer to. In particular, they cannot think or say that they are brains in a vat (even by thinking 'we are brains in a vať).”

Why does Putnam see the Turing test and other machine generated sentences as simple “syntactic play”? (Lack of sense organs and no consideration for continued existence)

“There is some causal connection between the machine and the real world apples, etc., via the perceptual experience and knowledge of the creator-designers. But such a weak connection can hardly suffice for reference”)

“What we have is a device for producing sentences in response to sentences. But none of these sentences is at all connected to the real world” and the user interprets its output in a meaningful way but that’s just the user

What are the major challenges to Putnam’s argument?
(Consensus: Argument is ingenious but doesn’t totally close off skeptical concerns)

Recently-envatted BIV, Question begging (assumes non-BIV status exists to identify failed reference), Descriptive reference and Externalism both ways (skepticism relocates, not dissolves - BIV has its own environment of reference)

Putnam quote for causal connection?
(“‘Vat' refers to vats in the image in vat English, or something related (electronic impulses or program features), but certainly not to real vats, since the use of 'vat' in vat-English has no causal connection to real vats”)

“The whole system of sense-data, motor signals to the afferent endings, and verbally or conceptually mediate thought connected by ‘language entry rules’ to the sense-data inputs and by ‘language exit’ rules to the motor signals as output, has no more connection to trees than the ant’s curve has to Winston Churchill”

Putnam key line of argument’s self-refutation?

“It follows that if their 'possible world' is really the actual one, and we are really the brains in a vat, then what we now mean by 'we are brains in a vat' is that we are brains in a vat in the image or something of that kind (if we mean anything at all). But part of the hypothesis that we are brains in a vat is that we aren't brains in a vat in the image”

Putnam quote for causal connection of meaning?

(example of beech and elm tree, in a Twin World. They are still the same thing and meanings refer to actual things, they are not produced by psychological state.)

“Contrary to a doctrine that has been with us since the seventeenth century, meanings just aren't in the head.”

Quote regarding concepts as abilities and not as occurrences?
(e.g. a man may have “all the images you please and still be completely at a loss when one says to him ‘point to a tree’)

—> Wittgenstein: “it is not the phenomena themselves that constitute understanding, but rather theability of the thinker to employ these phenomena, to produce the right phenomena in the right circumstances” Phenomenology

“We see that, on the one hand, those 'mental objects' we can introspectively detect words, images, feelings, etc. - do not intrinsically refer any more than the ant's picture does, while the attempts to postulate special mental objects, 'concepts', which do have a necessary connection with their referents, and which only trained phenomenologists can detect, commit a logical blunder 

Why does Rinard think that the Moorean approach is “deeply flawed”?

“Philosophical argument is, I have claimed, capable of rationally overturning our common-sense convictions. This means that we cannot simply dismiss the sceptic; we must take seriously the possibility that they may be right”

What are Rinard’s claims?

1) If it is rational to accept external world scepticism, then it is rational to accept scepticism about the past.
2) If it's rational to accept scepticism about the past, then it's rational to accept the argument from scepticism about the past to scepticism about complex reasoning. 
3) It is not rational to accept the argument from scepticism about the past to complex reasoning scepticism.
C) It is not rational to accept external world scepticism. 

What is the importance of complex reasoning in Rinard’s argument?

It is irrational to accept scepticism about complex reasoning because the sceptic’s argument uses complex reasoning

What is the argument for skepticism about complex reasoning? - which is ultimately rejected by sceptic!

For all they know, they haven't even been in existence long enough to have gone through an argument for G. So, by the time they conclude that G, they are not justified in believing it

What is the definition of anti-denouncement?

It is not rational to believe a proposition P while also believing that it is not rational for one to believe P

What is deference and how is it used?

If one (rationally) believes that a cognitively enhanced version of oneself would believe P, then rationality requires one to believe P and sceptic argues that complexity is agent relative

How is the existence of deference refuted?
(Its failure shows that if one accepts scepticism on the basis of this argument, their position is self undermining, because the above argument for scepticism about complex reasoning is complex)

According to Deference, one should believe whatever one knows an enhanced agent would believe, so according to Deference, one should believe that an enhanced agent actually exists, which is clearly false

Why is it irrational for the confident and unconfident suspender to suspend judgement on external world skepticism (and about the past and complex reasoning)?

Their position of radical uncertainty… was prompted by seeing how scepticism is self-undermining. But, since they suspend judgment on propositions about the past, and because these considerations are complex, they know nothing of them now. They are unsure of many things, but they have no idea why. Having adopted this position, they can no longer see any reason for maintaining it.

What is Endorsement?
(The confident suspender is irrational because they violate Belief Endorsement, whilst the unconfident suspender violates a generalization of Belief endorsement)

Rationality prohibits combinations of attitudes of the following kind: One takes doxastic attitude D toward P, but one takes some doxastic (relating to individual’s beliefs) attitude, other than belief, toward the proposition that taking D to P is rational.

What is a doxastic dilemma and why is it important?

A doxastic dilemma is a situation in which rationality prohibits believing P, rationality prohibits disbelieving P, and rationality prohibits suspending judgment on P and Rinnard thinks that these are impossible

What are the 3 things that Rinnard argues that Rationality cannot require? (And hence a position must be taken)

Cognitive deficiency, never consciously entertaining a thought and deliberating on something forever

What is the infinite regress argument?

Whereby we assert that the thing adduced as a proof of the matter proposed needs a further proof, and this again another, and so on ad infinitum, so that the consequence is suspension of assent, as we possess no starting point for our argument

What is the reason for not accepting that we know very little about the world?
(i.e. more general principle from premise 2 of the infinite regress argument - replace ‘I have for doing’ with ‘I have for believing’)

q is a reason I have for doing X only if I know that q, so sceptic either abandons this principle or accepts the radical conclusion that we have no reason to do or believe anything rather than anything else

Premises of Infinite Regress argument?
(Coherentism rejects p4 and Infinitism rejects p5)

P1) I know that p only if I’m justified in believing that p
P2) I’m justified in believing that p only if I have a reason for believing that p
P3) q is a reason I have to believe that p only if I know that q
P4) The is-a-reason-I-have-to-believe relation is asymmetric and transitive
P5) I don’t have infinite number of beliefs
C) Therefore, I don’t know anything

How can the second premise of the infinite regress argument be disputed?
(i.e. I’m justified in believing that p only if I have a reason for believing that p)

(e.g. propositions about how things seem to us, propositions like 2+2 = 4 or nothing is both true and false, the proposition that I exist)

Foundationalism - there are some things where no reason can be given

Internalism - What are foundational beliefs?

(1. Beliefs in propositions which are self-evident?)

Whether a belief is justified depends only on facts the agent is in a position to know through introspection alone

Externalism - What are foundational beliefs?

(2. Beliefs which are the result of a reliable sensory process)

Denial of internalism - I can be justified in believing that p in virtue of my belief being the result of a reliable process even though I can’t know the process I used is reliable through introspection alone

Examples for Internalism vs Externalism
(Note: Perfect pitch can be perfectly reliable without us knowing how it is used or operates through introspection alone)

Clairvoyance and Perfect Pitch

What is BonJour’s clairvoyance problem? (reliable process is not sufficient for true knowledge of something)

Samantha doesn’t actually know that the president is in New York, despite the fact that her belief was arrived at using a perfectly reliable process of clairvoyance