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The author provides an outline of his argument in p. 11-12:

1.3 Outline of My Argument

I believe that these three forms of scepticism can be refuted by showing that the following four claims are true:

  • I There is no good reason to believe that S never knows that p.
  • II There are good reasons to believe that S sometimes knows that p.
  • III There is a good argument for the claim that S sometimes knows that p.
  • IV There are better reasons for believing that S sometimes knows that p than there are for believing that S never knows that p.

I take it that the conjunction of I and II provides the good argument referred to in III. That is, if I and II are true, then there is a good argument for the claim that S sometimes knows that p. Further, if III is known by S, S has the better reasons referred to in IV. For if I and II do provide S with a good argument for the claim that S knows that p, and if S knows that he/she has a good argument for that claim, then S has better reasons for believing that he/she sometimes knows that p than he/she has for believing that S never knows that p. Thus, Pyrrhonian Direct Scepticism will have been refuted.

Furthermore, if I is correct, there is no reason for accepting Direct Scepticism, and if II is correct, there are good reasons for rejecting it. And if IV is known by S (on the basis of having read this book, for example), Iterative Scepticism can be rejected. S may not know that he/she knows that p (because, for example, S does not believe that he/she knows that p) but S can know that he/she knows that p. For there is a good argument, knowable by S, for the claim that S sometimes knows that p. Thus, if S knows that p (and I through III show that there is a good argument for the claim that S sometimes does), and S knows that there is such a good argument, then S has all the evidence needed for the claim that he/she knows that p.

Thus, the core of my argument lies in showing that I and II are correct. That is the task of Chapter Two and Chapter Three respectively. I trust that after those chapters the argument strategy outlined above will become more clear.7

(IV) states that there are better reasons to believe that certainty is possible that there are to believe that certainty is not possible. Now, if there are better reasons to believe something, does it mean that that thing is true? Suppose my father goes to work every morning at 8 AM. My father went to work at 8 AM again today. So, I have a better reason to believe that my father went to work than I have to believe that he didn't go to work. But does it mean that it is impossible that my father didn't go to work today?

If it is not impossible, then has the author undermined scepticism at all through his argument?

benrg
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tryingtobeastoic
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  • It depends: are you interested into skepticism? – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Nov 10 '22 at 09:33
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    IV) is the classical reasonable assumption about a consistent behavior of nature; see Hume: " have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, and I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects." It is reasonable? Yes. It is "provable" in a strong sense? No. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Nov 10 '22 at 09:35
  • @MauroALLEGRANZA I am. But I don't want to read a book that is wrong. I have edited the post to reflect my question better. – tryingtobeastoic Nov 10 '22 at 09:37
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    Strong skepticism is inconsistent. For a summary of a formal argument, see Tim Button, The Limits of Realism. It is much more complex and directly addresses the existing arguments in favour of skepticism. – Philip Klöcking Nov 10 '22 at 09:50
  • As soon as someone says, "You can't build a house on sand" someone else rushes out and starts breaking ground. – Scott Rowe Nov 10 '22 at 10:54
  • @ScottRowe What do you mean? Me no get :-( – tryingtobeastoic Nov 10 '22 at 11:00
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    I'm really unsure about skepticism. – Boba Fit Nov 10 '22 at 14:57
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    "I don't want to read a book that is wrong." If you insist on dividing philosophical theories into binary "right" and "wrong", you will find that 99.9% of books on philosophy are "wrong" and that the whole world disagrees on which of the one-in-a-thousand is "right". Also, sometimes discovering the truth involves meticulously rooting out falsehoods, and therefore investigating faulty lines of reasoning is just as informative as investigating correct ones. – Him Nov 10 '22 at 21:34
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    @PhilipKlöcking +1. I can't recommend that book highly enough, but I'd forgotten its name and its author's, and thanks to you I remember them again. – J.G. Nov 11 '22 at 09:10

1 Answers1

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If one operates with a pragmatic definition of knowledge -- that one has strong justifications to accept p is the case, and treat p as a working hypothesis to build upon, then the argument in I-IV is quite effective. It is an argument that, while the truth of p has not been demonstrated with certainty, neither has skepticism of p. Therefore one is in situation of cumulative support, not of logical certainty, and the cumulative support for realism is significant, while that for skepticism is lacking.

BUT, in your question, you instead refer to knowledge as certainty. This is the analytic rather than pragmatic definition of knowledge. I could not tell from the selection you quoted if the author of your text has made an equivocation fallacy or not. The pragmatic justification to reject skepticism does not provide certainty and relies upon the pragmatic definition of knowledge. If the author uses the pragmatic argument hat relies upon a pragmatic definition of knowledge, but then switches to the analytic definition of knowledge to argue that one has certainty of p, then the author is engaged in an equivocation fallacy.

Note, philosophy is HARD. Philosophic problems are those that have resisted solution for millenia. And as philosophers disagree with each other about the solutions to those problems, EVERY philosopher will make arguments and claims that are "wrong". Not wanting to read a book that is "wrong" about anything, will lead you to abandon philosophy. The best way to approach philosophic works, is as learning exercises for your own philosophic skills. Find nuggets of value in a philosopher's work, AND understand where they may have mis-stepped, and why.

I have found your reference -- it is by Peter Klein, and it is a respected enough work that there is a lot of discussion of it in the philosophy literature since it was published in 1981.

This review https://philpapers.org/rec/FOLCAR-2 tends to support my critique above -- Klein makes the pragmatic argument that is a strong rebuttal of skepticism in I-IV, BUT, then tries to switch in "certainty" as a criteria of knowledge. He apparently does so by trying to justify our psychological sense of certainty, and then uses this justification of psychological certainty to assume logical certainty.

In my critique, I would just forthrightly say that if one uses logical certainty as a requirement for knowledge, then all of points I-IV are false. Starting with I, we have good reason to think that everything in our contingent world is contingent, hence can never satisfy the certainty requirement of knowledge. The rebuttal goes on from there.

The reviewer I found is more charitable, and just concludes "If he insists upon his absolute notions of confirmation, it turns out the skeptic is right".

But go ahead and read the work, and CRITIQUE IT! That is how to learn to do philosophy.

Dcleve
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  • "Philosophic problems are those that have resisted solution for millenia." Eh, many philosophic problems are less so resistant to solution and more so being solved over and over again - because it's different people, really, running up against the same perennial problems and not sufficiently understanding the echoes of previous times those problems have been faced. Some issues are struggled with every generation, some every few generations, and so on. You always have new people thinking they've discovered a clever explanation or deficiency, which often isn't new at all. – Jedediah Nov 10 '22 at 16:14
  • @Jedediah -- the emergence of sciences out of philosophy over the last 400 years, plus the discovery of the limits of logic over the last 150 years have been actual philosophic progress. Otherwise, I think "solutions" have been more pseudo-solutions, than repeatedly solved. – Dcleve Nov 10 '22 at 16:35
  • I think, to some extent, the emergence of sciences out of philosophy was the (unnoticed) death of philosophy. Instead of trying to understand the world for real, a lot of philosophers descended into word games and let the scientists wrestle with questions like how the world works. (Though science itself can suffer from skirting around the questions philosophy was useful for, but science is not, like purpose.) – Jedediah Nov 10 '22 at 18:04
  • @Jedediah -- philosophy has not died. The questions of how to do epistemology, valuing, and morality remain central and purely philosophic questions. The analytic methodology tends not to be useful in answering them, and analytics NEEDS precise word definitions. Yes the analytic bent of modern philosophy has made much of it irrelevant, at least to my view. But this is not a necessary result of the spawning off of science subjects once they are well understood enough to become separate fields. The maturation of science is a SUCCESS of philosophy! – Dcleve Nov 11 '22 at 16:23