Doncaster pandas and Caesar's armadillo : Scepticism and via negativa knowledge
Journal article
Spectre, Levi and Hawthorne, John Patrick. (2024). Doncaster pandas and Caesar's armadillo : Scepticism and via negativa knowledge. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 108(2), pp. 360-373. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12974
Authors | Spectre, Levi and Hawthorne, John Patrick |
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Abstract | The external world sceptic tells some familiar narratives involving massive deception. Perhaps we are brains in vats. Perhaps we are the victim of a deceitful demon. You know the drill. The sceptic proceeds by observing first that victims of such deceptions know nothing about their external environment and that second, since we cannot rule out being a victim of such deceptions ourselves, our own external world beliefs fail to attain the status of knowledge. Discussions of global external world scepticism tend to focus on the second step, where a number of well-known lines of resistance have been offered.1 But there has been little attention to the first, seemingly innocuous step. That will be the focus of this paper. Part one – sections 1, 2, and 3 – will explain why these standard narratives are not convincing examples of cases where there is no knowledge of the external world. In part two – section 4 – we shall undertake a useful case study. David Lewis's ‘Elusive Knowledge’ is often thought of as presenting an epistemological vision that is somewhat friendly to external world scepticism: as Lewis himself presents things, there are contexts where external world knowledge ascriptions are uniformly false, and where true knowledge ascriptions are limited to either axiomatic truths or truths about our inner life. We examine his discussion in the light of the preceding reflections and show that the framework he presents is not so concessionary to global external world scepticism after all. |
Keywords | philosophy; deception; epistemology; knowledge; belief; external world; David Lewis |
Year | 01 Jan 2024 |
Journal | Philosophy and Phenomenological Research |
Journal citation | 108 (2), pp. 360-373 |
Publisher | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc. (US) |
ISSN | 0031-8205 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12974 |
Web address (URL) | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.12974 |
Open access | Published as non-open access |
Research or scholarly | Research |
Page range | 360-373 |
Publisher's version | License All rights reserved File Access Level Controlled |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
26 Apr 2023 | |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 29 Mar 2023 |
Deposited | 13 Nov 2024 |
Additional information | © 2023 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LLC |
Place of publication | United States |
https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/910x8/doncaster-pandas-and-caesar-s-armadillo-scepticism-and-via-negativa-knowledge
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