Notice that I don't wish to deny the possibility to be in state (1b), of course that is a logical possibility. What I do deny is the possibility that ...
But I don't see why does it have to be so. And as I said before, even if we grant that you are correct, don't you agree that if an evil demon is causi...
I think it's perfectly possible to ask yourself from within your own dream whether you are dreaming or not. Some people can in fact do just that (luci...
Sorry I'm not following... And of course the evil demon is merely an hypothesis, the skeptic doesn't actually claim to be able to prove that there is ...
But again, if the skeptic is only a local and not a global one, he can argue, without inconsistency, that some things cannot be doubted, while retaini...
Once again, the skeptic can restrict the scope of his skeptical claim and exclude the possibility of doubting one's doubt. The most interesting type o...
It seems to me that even if this inference is correct, it still would not refute skepticism because the skeptic need not argue for strict solipsism (i...
Well, if doubt can only exist when there is lack of certainty, and if one can doubt whether solipsism is an actuality, then at most it follows that so...
Nice to see you too @"Posty McPostface", thanks =) concerning your question, I'm not sure what you mean by "epistemological solipsism", could you elab...
I think the argument would still work even if you replace 'know for sure' with a simple 'know'. According to the skeptical argument, all possible evid...
I do not wish do deny any possibilities. But what is crucial is HOW we describe those possibilities. If we agree that (a) and (b) are logically exhaus...
I'm not sure what you mean here by "always logically possible". Surely if it seems to me that I see my hands, then it IS logically possible that I see...
This cannot be right, because obviously not everything intelligible (having truth conditions) can be experienced from a first-person perspective, e.g....
It seems to me that what you are proposing is some form of anti-realism, but that would be to surrender to the skeptic, rather than answer him. Becaus...
I'm not quite understand the question, but the basic idea is that a waking experience is a state where you experience reality as it really is (so if y...
Why not? That's a really extravagant claim to make for someone who calls himself a "skeptic". This simply begs the question. If this is meant as an ar...
"Objective reality" simply means that things are exactly as they appear to you perceptually (when you see a tree, there's really a tree in front of yo...
I didn't mean to say that hallucinations are 'unreal' in your sense, relax... When you have a hallucination of course your experience is as real as an...
They are sometimes real, but not always (at least they need not be, or you can't prove that they have to). I tried to show in that other post on skept...
The evidence is simply my perceptual state (of seeming to see that something is the case in the world). Again, you are misunderstanding what 'non-infe...
Now you are just using the Cartesian argument which I discussed in my other post. I thought that your 'trilemma argument' was a different argument fro...
I don't understand what you mean. If your argument fails, then it fails, which means that you haven't proved your conclusion (skepticism or whatever i...
My point is that your argument doesn't prove that we don't know things non-inferentially, and since most people believe that they do know things on th...
But that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that your argument is wrong because I know that there is such and such in front of me because I can see...
The obvious answer to this is to say that not all knowledge is based on arguments with premises as you claim. You can know many things non-inferential...
You completely misunderstood my argument (from that other thread on skepticism). I didn't assume that we have knowledge, or that there is a world, but...
As philosophical arguments for skepticism, the two arguments are plainly incoherent. It doesn't make sense to doubt our knowledge of the external worl...
The answer is that knowing about the world is not a matter of knowing what causes your beliefs/experiences. It is true that (as a matter of scientific...
Evidence is connected to belief via its relation to the facts. One usually believes that such and such is the case because the evidence tells him that...
Fine, if you don't like the definition, then you can weaken it, e.g., evidence is something that makes what is believed more probable or likely to be ...
Maybe you are right about Plato and Hume, but I'm not concerned with the views of any particular philosopher, but with a generic view (or rather a for...
No, he doesn't say that - rather he's saying that there's no such thing as knowledge of the external world as such. See the conclusion of the skeptica...
It depends on what one means here by "evidence". On my understanding, having evidence for p is being in a state of such kind that you cannot be in thi...
I meant to exclude such cases, of course there are many ceteris paribus conditions that we must take into account. I meant that when you perceive a tr...
In that case, meeting my brother (or meeting my mother) is simply not an instance of you "having evidence that X is my brother/mother", because the co...
You have to distinguish between two senses of recognizing your evidence: a. knowing that if you have evidence of type E then you cannot be a brain in ...
You just repeated the world "know" here, but I asked what are the relevant conditions (according to the skeptic) for knowing such a thing? (which we a...
On my account there's no difference between knowing that something is a tree and knowing that something is an "external world tree", so I don't unders...
Again, we've been over this already. I don't know what you mean by "knowing that your experience is veridical". As it stands it just means nothing, an...
I didn't say that having this sort of capacity is sufficient for knowledge, that's a different question. Obviously you have to be responsive in the ri...
But that's not what I'm saying. Compare the case of believing that there's a tree outside because you seem to see that there's a tree outside, and jus...
I didn't actually deny what you said that I denied (that knowing p means ruling out p's falsehood) - and I agree with you on this. I only disputed the...
We've been over this already. There's no much that I can add. Again, you are just assuming here that knowing that p requires the ability to detect eve...
The skeptic can claim this, but as I said many times, it doesn't follow from this that we cannot know anything about the external world. As I said, in...
Comments