Adam Leite

Consider the form of external world skepticism typified by Descartes’ Evil Demon argument. Here the anti‐skeptic must hold a very particular sort of position. Siding with common sense, the anti‐skeptic says that we can know things about the world outside of our minds, for instance that we have bodies and see tables. These things are incompatible with the Evil Demon scenario: if one has a body and sees that there is a table right there, then one is not a disembodied spirit being fed deceptive experiences. So the anti‐skeptic is committed to holding that in the actual world, in which one is not a victim of Descartes’ deceiving demon, one can know that one is not, or has evidence or good reason to believe that one is not, or at least knows things incompatible with this scenario—even though if one were a victim of Descartes’ deceiving demon, one would think, incorrectly, that one is not. According to the anti‐skeptic, then, there is an epistemic asymmetry between the actual case, in which we have bodies and see objects in the world, and the bad case in which Descartes’ Evil Demon scenario is correct. Timothy Williamson places epistemic asymmetry at the center of his engagement with skepticism (2000, 168, 180–181; 2013, 8), and he offers a theory of knowledge and evidence that buttresses this response (2000, chapters 9 and 10). This theory has been the topic of significant controversy (e.g., Greenough and Pritchard (2009)). Perhaps surprisingly, no one to my knowledge has carefully considered the various kinds of epistemic asymmetries in relation to skeptical arguments. It would be nice if we could show, using completely decisive examples and without assuming any contentious epistemological theory, that we should expect asymmetries of precisely the sort the anti‐skeptic needs. By “completely decisive examples” I do not mean examples with which the skeptic would agree, since they will concern knowledge of the world. Rather, I mean examples that would be accepted by reasonable people in ordinary life as displaying asymmetries structurally analogous in all relevant respects to those the anti‐skeptic proposes. Such examples would reasonably be taken, prima facie, to illuminate how knowledge and related epistemic categories work, thereby providing data for downstream theorizing. If we aim to respond to the skeptic from a standpoint that does justice to our pretheoretical commitments, as I do,2 such examples should aid us in accepting precisely the sort of asymmetry the anti‐skeptic needs. My goal is to identify key desiderata for an example suited to the anti‐skeptic's purposes and to provide such an example. It may seem odd to appeal to considerations about the world as grounds for dismissing the deceiving demon‐type skeptical scenarios, since such considerations are among the things about which one would be badly wrong if such scenarios were the case. One aim of this paper is to show that this sort of structure is in fact a familiar feature of ordinary epistemic life.

Penelope Maddy claims that we can have no evidence that we are not being globally deceived by an evil demon. However, Maddy’s Plain Inquirer holds that she has good evidence for a wide variety of claims about the world and her relation to it. She rejects the broadly Cartesian idea that she can’t be entitled to these claims, or have good evidence for them, or know them, unless she can provide a defense of them that starts from nowhere. She likewise rejects the more limited demand for a defense that makes use only of considerations that do not concern the world outside of her mind. She allows that some considerations about the world can be appealed to perfectly appropriately as fully adequate evidence in favor of other considerations about the world. So why can’t the Plain Inquirer rule out global skeptical hypotheses by producing evidence against them that depends upon other considerations about the world? Is there good reason for singling out global skeptical hypotheses such as _I am not being deceived by an evil demon_ as requiring a different kind of treatment? Considerations about epistemic asymmetry and epistemic circularity, as well as Wittgensteinian considerations about the relation between evidence and the real-world and human background context, all lead to the conclusion that there is not.

The clinical concept of projective identification encompasses both unconscious fantasies of putting aspects of oneself into another person, as well as interpersonal processes aimed at evoking a corresponding response in another person, all for purposes of defensive evacuation, control and/or communication.1 In thinking about this complex situation, we need to consider its interpersonal dimensions as well as the intrapsychic processes that take place in each party. Louise Braddock's paper is thought provoking, far-reaching, and important in its use of concepts from analytic philosophy to attempt to bring clarity on both fronts. Her account makes use of two crucial philosophical notions...

Self-consciously attempting to shape one's beliefs through deliberation and reasoning requires that one stand in a relation to those beliefs that might be signaled by saying that one must inhabit one's beliefs as one's own view. What does this amount to? A broad swath of philosophical thinking about self-knowledge, norms of belief, self-consciousness, and related areas assumes that this relation requires one to endorse, or be rationally committed to endorsing, one's beliefs. In fact, however, fully self-conscious adherence to epistemic norms requires the ability to self-consciously hold a belief without endorsing that belief as true, as well-supported by the evidence, or as meeting some other epistemic standard, and there are cases in which no such commitment is rationally required. This ability is necessary if there is to be any such thing as a fully self-conscious process of changing one's mind.

A familiar form of scepticism supposes that knowledge requires infallibility. Although that requirement plays no role in our ordinary epistemic practices, Barry Stroud has argued that this is not a good reason for rejecting a sceptical argument: our ordinary practices do not correctly reflect the requirements for knowledge because the appropriateness-conditions for knowledge attribution are pragmatic. Recent fashion in contextualist semantics for 'knowledge' agrees with this view of our practice, but incorrectly. Ordinary epistemic evaluations are guided by our conception of a person's standing with regard to the reasons that there are for and against the truth of a belief. Thus the objection from our ordinary practices is sound: fallibility is not an epistemological shortcoming, and a convincing sceptical argument must use only requirements which figure in ordinary epistemic practice

Tom Kelly argues that instrumentalist aeeounts of epistemie rationality fail beeause what a person has reason to believe does not depend upon the eontent of his or her goals. However, his argument fails to distinguish questions about what the evidence supports from questions about what a person ought to believe. Once these are distinguished, the instrumentalist ean avoid Kelly’s objeetions. The paperconcludes by sketehing what I take to be the most defensible version of the instrumentalist view.

My dissertation aims to understand external world skepticism and its place in our epistemic lives. I propose that the best way to investigate skepticism is to seek the strongest possible argument in its favor. In order to determine what requirements such an argument would have to meet, I develop and defend a novel contextualist account of empirical justification. This account involves four theses. In order to be justified in holding a belief, one must ordinarily be able to justify holding it, because epistemic basing relations depend upon the subject's justificatory activity. Justificatory status is relative to the real-world circumstances . The demand for a global justification of beliefs about the world is incoherent. Claims about the world can constitute fundamental justificatory starting-points in virtue of one's recognition that there is no reason to doubt them in one's circumstances. Taken together, I urge that being justified in holding an empirical belief is ordinarily a matter of being able to defend one's belief by appealing to other claims about the world which are adequate reasons for holding the belief in one's circumstances. I argue that a version of the skeptic's dream-argument goes through even if this account of empirical justification is correct. This argument is not generated by a closure principle, nor does it assume experiential foundationalism or any views in the philosophy of perception. I take this argument to be the strongest possible argument for skepticism. However, I maintain that it depends upon empirical considerations about the nature of dreams which we have good phenomenological and neurophysiological reasons for rejecting. I thus conclude that skepticism is an empirical issue and that we have good empirical reasons for rejecting the skeptic's claim. However, the fact that skepticism could be empirically true shows that the positive justificatory status of all of our empirical beliefs depends upon contingent facts. Our epistemic practices are vulnerable to empirical collapse, along with everything which depends upon them

Traditional epistemological reflection on our beliefs about the world attempts to proceed without presupposing or ineliminably depending upon any claims about the world. It has been argued that epistemological externalism fails to engage in the right way with the motivations for this project. I argue, however, that epistemological externalism satisfyingly undermines this project. If we accept the thesis that certain conditions other than the truth of one's belief must obtain in the world outside of one's mind in order for one to have knowledge (or justified belief) about the world, then there is no good intellectual motivation for taking up the traditional project. This results stands even if we accept the traditional theses that knowledge requires justified belief and that justified belief requires the ability to provide good reasons for one's belief.

In Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson argues that knowledge is a purely mental state, that is, that it is never a complex state or condition comprising mental factors and non‐mental, environmental factors. Three of his arguments are evaluated: arguments from (1) the non‐analyzability of the concept of knowledge, (2) the ‘primeness’ of knowledge, and (3) the (alleged) inability to satisfactorily specify the ‘internal’ element involved in knowledge. None of these arguments succeeds. Moreover, consideration of the third argument points the way to a cogent argument that knowledge is not a purely mental state.

Guided by an account of the norms governing justificatory conversations, I propose that person-level epistemic justification is a matter of possessing a certain ability: the ability to provide objectively good reasons for one's belief by drawing upon considerations which one responsibly and correctly takes there to be no reason to doubt. On this view, justification requires responsible belief and is also objectively truth-conducive. The foundationalist doctrine of immediately justified beliefs is rejected, but so too is the thought that coherence in one's total belief system is sufficient, or indeed necessary, for justification. The problem of the regress is solved by exploiting the 'localist' idea that in order to possess the ability to justify any given belief, one only needs to be in a position to draw upon appropriate justified background beliefs to provide good reasons for holding the belief; one needn't be able to defend the relevant background beliefs, and so on, all at one sitting.

Modern-day heirs of the Cartesian revolution have been fascinated by the thought that one could utilize certain hypotheses – that one is dreaming, deceived by an evil demon, or a brain in a vat – to argue at one fell swoop that one does not know, is not justified in believing, or ought not believe most if not all of what one currently believes about the world. A good part of the interest and mystique of these discussions arises from the contention that the seeds of such arguments lie in our ordinary epistemic practices, so that external world skepticism can arise “from within”. But is this contention correct? I doubt it. Taking skepticism seriously requires that we address this question head on. To do so, I will approach skeptical arguments from a certain vantage point. I will try to stand, as far as possible, with both feet squarely in ordinary life. I will start out with all of our ordinary commitments about what is the case, about what we know or have reason to believe, about when someone knows, is justified, or has good reason to believe something, and about how one should proceed in deciding what to believe. My question, then, will be this. From within that vantage point can I somehow be moved in a reasonable way to accept the conclusion that I know far less about the world around me than I thought, or that epistemically speaking, I really ought not believe much of what I have believed about the world around me? In order for such movement to take place, I will have to find reason from within my ordinary standpoint to discount or reject much of what I ordinarily accept. And of course, that reason will have to come from some..

Traditional epistemological reflection on our beliefs about the world attempts to proceed without presupposing or ineliminably depending upon any claims about the world. It has been argued that epistemological externalism fails to engage in the right way with the motivations for this project. I argue, however, that epistemological externalism satisfyingly undermines this project. If we accept the thesis that certain conditions other than the truth of one’s belief must obtain in the world outside of one’s mind in order for one to have knowledge about the world, then there is no good intellectual motivation for taking up the traditional project. This results stands even if we accept the traditional theses that knowledge requires justified belief and that justified belief requires the ability to provide good reasons for one’s belief.