Skepticism vs Externalism

One of the purported benefits of externalism in epistemology is that it provides a straightforward response to skepticism. This video outlines the externalist response and then discusses the challenge that externalism makes knowledge too easy.

0:00 - Introduction
0:46 - Externalism
6:41 - Defeating skepticism?
Objections
15:08 - Non-response
17:32 - A conditional response
20:35 - Circularity
27:23 - Companions in guilt 1
29:16 - Companions in guilt 2
34:34 - Dialectical inefficiency
39:37 - Brute intuition

[KaneB]

Skepticism and inference to the best explanation:

Moore's argument against skepticism:

[WorldviewDesignChannel]

Very nice summary! I like how you draw out the mirror issues between internalists and externalists. For my part, despite the counsel of so many of my wiser externalist friends, I've found myself retaining the thought that an internalist conscious awareness (a la Fumerton's direct acquaintance) condition provides the deepest, and personally most helpful, kind of response to the skeptic, while I admit there remain some symmetrical challenges. Now I need to check out your video on IBE! Good work.

[MrAwesomeTheAwesome]

The fundamental skeptical question (the nagging recursive 'how do you know?') is probably unanswerable, and I find most attempts to answer it weak, especially common sense approaches. I'm more fond of a coherentist approach, though I'm not fully satisfied with it.

I like to start with this: 'I'm perceiving something, I'm making judgments about things, I appear to have some consciousness and thoughts'. This feels a pretty reasonable basis to jump off from, because it's hard to have a conversation if any party refuses all of these entirely. From there you get a trickle of ideas about something which purports to be an outside world, and it all seems to fit together rather nicely. Sometimes you see some incompatible things, but you usually figure out where the mistake or deception was before too long and find this 'outside world' coheres rather well, and it contains partial explanations for what we are and how we operate. But let's take a step back and address the question of 'where does all this information come from?'

To that I have a few answers, some I like more than others.
1) It comes from an outside world, just like it suggests. - Nice and clean.
2) It comes from an outside entity of some kind, through some deception. - Outside entity means outside world. That's a win on this step.
3) It comes from inside your mind. - But if I don't identify as my 'whole mind', but the part I experience, then another part of my mind is still an outside entity. Still winning.
4) It comes from inside your conscious mind. - This just doesn't make sense to me. If I identify as the part of my mind I experience, and I didn't experience making this stuff up or any of the creative process which would be necessary, then we're just assuming the information brims spontaneously from essentially nowhere. That I'm the only mind in all of being and I'm making up an incredibly complex world to dupe myself into believing in it, without any thought or intention behind it, and it's all popping into my consciousness fully-formulated and interconnected without any awareness or recollection of creating those connections.

I feel comfortable rejecting 4 out of hand, as my intuition that information, particularly complicated information, needs to come from somewhere is *very* strong. But I concede I don't have anything better than that on this point. So if the skeptic holds on here, I have to offer them a 'fair enough' and a change of conversation topic. I'm not happy with the weakness in argumentation here either. Perhaps there's a better approach? Anyways, if we are confident 1-to-4 cover all possibilities and 4 can be dismissed out of hand, we agree in the existence of an outer world of some kind. (Not necessarily physical, but outside of our experience.)

So, assuming we accept 'we experience things' and 'there is something outside of your experience', then we immediately get to play the next game: how do we sift beliefs out from all this information bombarding us? If I've gotten this far, I've done so by convincing my potential skeptic to trust their most fundamental intuitions: 1) ye olde *cogito ergo sum* and 2) disbelief in the spontaneous development of complex, coherent information from no outside source (and I guess 3 - something resembling logic works in some capacity). From there I just need one more allowance: the more coherent information is with other available information, the more likely it is to resemble truth. (Not that it *is* truth! Just resembles is enough for now. Maybe forever.) And then everything's just a cascade of reasoning and inference from there. A whole universe of probably-trues and probably-falses from a few simple assumptions. All my observations about how humans work and observations supporting the idea that I, you know, am one... it all helps everything come together to form the resounding conclusion: yeah, it's probably all real.

That's one of my favorite anti-skeptical approaches. I think it's more respectful to the core idea of skepticism than most 'common sense' approaches, which often frustratingly feel dismissive of the practical value of doubt, and can frequently be slightly altered to justify all manner of claims. I think many people hear the thrust of skepticism and interpret it as wholly impractical and therefore valueless. But I can imagine many circumstances where a paralyzing doubt is a lot less harmful than a misguided intention. Yes, radical skepticism is impractical and nobody 'practices' it. But more measured skepticism is built on the same ideas and deserves to be overcome with respect. The other benefit to this approach: it doesn't require resting everything on some 'first principles' which can be disproven, shattering your entire worldview. Any belief is still grounds to be reassessed and a coherentist will have room to regrow rather than rebuild. It still allows for simulationism and brain in a vat argumentation, but responds with: 'these lines of thought concede an outside world, and we'd much rather give preference to the realism of a present and interactive real world than a hypothetical one, particularly when the present one contains many avenues to research and reaffirm its internal coherency again and again and again'.

As for my other favorite anti-skeptical argument: if someone's going to go to so much effort to set this stage for me and invite me to treat it as real, it seems dreadfully impolite to decline. And I'd prefer to be polite. Ergo, it is polite to act as if reality exists, even if it does not. :P

Anyways, joking aside... that got long. It's 4:40 AM. I should probably get some sleep. Cheers, and thanks for the consistent videos on interesting topics! Have a great day. :)

[whycantiremainanonymous]

An eighth argument: the skepticist challenge is not only to the justifiability of our beliefs, but also to their truth. If I am in fact a brain in a vat, my beliefs about the external world are simply false, no matter how reliable the process of forming them is.
We can imagine that I was transformed into a brain in a vat overnight. Previously, my senses were as reliable as they get. They still provide me with sense data, and I have all the reasons in the world to trust their reliability. It's just that now my beliefs, justified as they may be, are false.

[wolfiedude]

Bizarrely well-timed, just had a lecture on this!

[nathangmichel]

Looking for papers on this very topic! Any pointers? Recommendations?

[aarantheartist]

Great video Kane.

Your discussion reminded me of the debate between Larry Bonjour and Ernie Sosa.

I’d say that what’s needed to respond to Scepticism in its traditional form is a fully reflective answer to the question “why believe that?”. The answer has to be such that I can articulate or “see” in my minds eye the entire answer, and it can’t be either circular or rest on assumptions. The form of scepticism that has been historically defended by folks is the kind of doubt which asks that “why?” and demands a reflective account of why one set of beliefs is better than any other.

I don’t think that the Externalist move of defining central terms of the debate (knowledge, justification) in terms which evade that discussion is at all helpful. The problem isn’t really anything to do with the mere words “knowledge” or “justification”. I think the move misunderstands the problem of scepticism as a kind of linguistic puzzle. That way of framing scepticism has become rampant lately, and comes up here when you formulate the “BIV argument”. That way of setting things up is already at odds with the sceptical tradition (not that I’m accusing you of making this mistake in any way).

Cheers!

[deepfritz]

Philosophical skepticism, a classic stance,
Doubts that knowledge can escape the bounds of chance,
Can we know anything beyond our own thought?
Or is all knowledge by our minds tightly caught?

Externalism is a view that could restore,
Some hope that our knowledge can reach beyond the door,
Of our own mental states and our cognition,
To reference and meaning in the world's construction.

The causal theory of reference holds,
That reference is made through our worldly moulds,
And meaning is not just mental representation,
But rather, it's tied to causal relation.

Externalism also suggests the view,
That knowledge can be shaped by factors anew,
Like empirical evidence or social context,
And thus knowledge depends on factors external and complex.

But skepticism lingers and cannot be ignored,
For it questions the foundations that we have adored,
Can we rely on our senses and our tools?
Or are we just building webs of beliefs like fools?

The solution may lie in our willingness,
To embrace the doubt and endlessness,
To recognize that knowledge is never wholly fixed,
And that skepticism is always lurking in the mix.

[Ansatz]

The problem with trying to solve the problem of skepticism is that it is a practical problem, not an intellectual problem. We cannot just think our way out of it, because no matter how much we think the fact remains that we might be a brain in a vat. We cannot use philosophy to stop being a brain in a vat any more than we could use philosophy to float up into the sky and play among the clouds. If we want to solve the problem of being stuck on the ground, we need to engineer a flying machine, and if we want to solve the problem of skepticism we need to find a way to step outside of ourselves and check whether we are brains in vats or not. If we lack the means to do these things, then we will have to live with these problems, and trying to solve the problems by means of just thinking can only result in us thinking ourselves into knots.

[justus]

Would you be interested in making a video on under what accounts of belief (dispositionalism, representationalism...) global skepticism is possible?
It seems like some (representationalism) are more skepticism friendly while other (dispositionalism) aren't.

[incoher]

feels like another recursive expression of apparent dualisms what pervade all we might perceive and conceptualize !!

[whycantiremainanonymous]

42:45: How do you know those are your hands, rather than somebody else's?
Sorry for the seemingly dumb question, but I do think that rote and poorly considered examples in philosophical discussions tend to lead to bad philosophical arguments.

[DeadEndFrog]

Since scepticism has the same grounding problem as externalism, im not sure what "winning" Even means. Proving one is a brain in a wat is obviously hard, but questioning If someone Else can know for sure they arent is easy. Seems to me that philosophy is just playing a mental game of rock, paper, scissors and whoever happens to argue for their position first (without any grounding) is leaving themselves open for an obvious attack by someone Elses questioning. Akin to using rock and being suprised the other person chose paper after the fact.

The easiest way to argue with sceptics is against their assertions, not their challanges to your blind assertions.

The thing thats interessting is that If all world views have a grounding problem, which one is the most benificial for you to hold? Pragmatically speaking im more of an externalist because that destinction is more help full when i attempt to assert my control over myself and the outside world versus the ideas in my head. This isnt the same for everyone Else, as i have argued for before on Kanes videos.
Assuming theres a general destinction for everyone is the problem. I notice my limits for myself and therfor make destinctions for me. Stirner says it best;
" for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively, not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest."
Limits, destinctions, and evaluation of those are whats important. All are sub categories of control, and the world is characterized by the amount of control we have over it.
Atleast for me :^)

[brandonsaffell]

The problem is that the Reliabilist and the Skeptic are talking about different things. The Skeptic is talking about True Belief. The Reliabilist is talking Likely True Beliefs, which are not at all the same thing. The Skeptic is looking to form beliefs that track the truth, rather than beliefs that tend to track the truth.

"For a Reliabilist a True Belief is a belief that is the output of a reliable process". And we should reject the reliabilist argument for true belief there. The Reliabilist swaps out Probably True Belief for True Belief and thus never actually addresses the concerns the Skeptic has for True Belief, instead preferred to address Justified Beliefs.

The Reliablist rejects True Belief entirely, and settles for some sort of Inference to the Best Explanation. I generally enjoy this pragmatism, and it's great. It doesn't matter if I'm a BIV, because my concerns are only associated with the world of my senses. The concerns of how the Relaiblist become confident in the reliability of their method of belief formation is the process of Science.

I watched your old video on Scientific Anti-Realism this weekend. In that you mention it's not psychologically possible to be a complete anti-realist. I propose this is the solution. To hold one set of views about True Belief, e.g. Anti-Realism or Radical Skepticism. But to hold a separate set of Pragmatic beliefs that we develop using our senses and reason and science to produce and that we justify our actions based on those Pragmatic beliefs.

[justus]

When is the response to frictions POC video coming?

[antondovydaitis]

I have two gut reactions to this discussion. The first is that "knowledge" is not a meaningful term. That is, it has the form of a word, and can be used in sentences, paragraphs, and so on, but doesn't actually refer to anything. For proof, I would consider some kind of diagonalization, something like "The set of all terms we cannot have knowledge of, " or some such.

My second reaction is that the "Brain in a Jar* hypothesis is inherently false, that such a flawless simulation is impossible.

Not a philosopher.

[depressivepumpkin]

if you dont have hands, how do you run this youtube channel

[darcyone]

So, the reliability account holds that S knows that P under 3 conditions:
C1) S believes that P
C2) P is true
C3) S forms P through a reliable process

You presented different ways by which the reliability account maybe begging the question regarding C3, but isn't it also doing the same regarding C2? During the whole process, the reliability account was assuming that we do have hands, that this belief is true!

Also, I don't exactly get responses 5 and 7, being too broad and being too easy, respectively. While I do sense that a response that is too broad and too easy seems suspicious, I wish there is more explanation for why it is so.

[KommentarSpaltenKrieger]

This is how you pronounce "gauge"? Wow, the English language strikes again.

[InventiveHarvest]

Let's say that Plato has a ray gun. The effects of this ray gun is that it wraps a He-Man costume around the victim and replaces their memories with the Masters of the Universe cartoon. If Plato shot me with the ray gun, in that moment I would be justified in believing that I have the Power of Grayskull.

The problem with the skeptic hypothesises is that they ignore the data. If an economist does a study, and the data shows that printing money leads to increased inflation. The data could be wrong, but it would be irrational for the economist to conclude that printing money leads to decreased inflation.