Skepticism

This paper argues that the PIE Sequence (Perception-Inquiry-Experimentation) embodies the Law of Epistemic Warrant—a structural necessity governing how warrant is generated for any conscious agent. Unlike competing epistemological schools, PIE is not a theory but the meta-structural law that dissolves Agrippa’s Trilemma and defines warrant as Justified Coherent Belief (JCB) or Justified Reliable Belief (JRB). The Pentalemma proves necessity; the defeat of Agrippa proves universality; these together grant PIE authority to redefine knowledge structurally.

O Guarda-Chuva de Regras é um original ensaio sobre o positivismo legal, em especial acerca das circunstâncias inglesas da Jurisprudência filosófica. Ainda que consista em uma investigação de natureza analítica, o autor mostra uma profunda sensibilidade no que concerne à invenção conceitual. Seja atrelando o direito moral mínimo ao conteúdo mínino do direito natural, de modo a evidenciar os vínculos entre Hart e Hume, seja mostrando os requisitos mínimos à própria concepção de natureza humana. Kiraly incorpora ao debate filosófico jurídico (...) em língua portuguesa autores fundamentais para a academia anglo-americana, mas pouco lidos no Brasil e em Portugal, como John Austin e o já citado Herbert Hart. No início do ensaio são abordados aspectos estruturais do positivismo legal na Inglaterra. Os conceitos de comando e soberania em Austin são explorados para dar ambiente à contestação apresentada por Hart à idéia da fundamentação do direito em ordens com ameaças correlativas. Assim, se o objeto é a concentração de poder pelas soberanias, o hábito pacífico fundado em ameaça parece ser uma hipótese incompleta. Para tanto, Kiraly expõe a classificação de Hart sobre as regras sociais, evidenciando a especificidade do direito, uma vez ligado a uma regra de reconhecimento. (shrink)

“Há algo mais quente que o frio?” E se o frio fosse a verdadeira essência da crueldade? Em Alma e Frio: ensaios sobre a crueldade, Cesar Kiraly conduz o leitor por uma reflexão densa e provocativa sobre as múltiplas formas da crueldade na experiência humana e nas estruturas sociais. Através de ensaios filosóficos que dialogam com Hume, Montaigne e Maquiavel, o autor tece uma narrativa que explora a política, a moralidade e o ceticismo como elementos inseparáveis da condição contemporânea. Com (...) uma linguagem ao mesmo tempo poética e analítica, Kiraly nos desafia a enxergar a crueldade não apenas como uma manifestação do mal, mas como um componente histórico, político e emocional que nos obriga a confrontar nossas crenças, medos e desejos. Cada página revela um olhar sensível e crítico sobre os paradoxos humanos: o calor e o frio, a paixão e a razão, a justiça e o abismo ético. Alma e Frio é um convite para repensar o mundo, a política e a própria ideia de humanidade, ampliando os limites do ensaio filosófico e da prosa reflexiva. (shrink)

I offer replies to the four sets of critical comments on my book, Morality: From Error to Fiction, appearing in the same issue of this journal.

In Morality: From Error to Fiction, Richard Joyce builds a case against the existence of moral facts that consists of three independent arguments. In my assessment, these arguments are unpersuasive. The argument from naturalism presupposes that the world contains only physical facts. I present several reasons to reject such a restriction. The argument from unreliability rests on the claim that moral intuitions are untrustworthy and thus cannot justify moral beliefs. Joyce’s reasons to that effect do not hold up to critical (...) scrutiny. The argument from responsibility states that moral facts do not exist because they necessitate moral responsibility, which is nowhere to be found. I question both premises, arguing that some moral facts do not necessitate moral responsibility and that some form of moral responsibility exists. Overall, while Joyce’s arguments are not entirely bad, I think they are not good enough to make a powerful case for error theory. (shrink)

Richard Joyce proposes an innovative form of moral fictionalism according to which the moral error theorist can willingly suspend her moral disbelief by distracting herself from the systematic error that, in reflective moments, she believes to afflict moral thought and discourse. In this paper, I ask three questions about the life of ‘distraction fictionalists’. Specifically, I ask what distraction fictionalists should say about (a) the use of self-distraction as a psychological coping strategy, (b) some limitations of the comparison that Joyce (...) makes between his fictionalist response to moral error theory and our response to the paradox of happiness, and (c) certain commonly occurring situations in which transparency and the avoidance of deception are highly valued. (shrink)

Richard Joyce’s new book, Morality: From Error to Fiction, is a sophisticated and enjoyable work. While the book’s ambitions and structure are similar to those of Joyce’s 2001 book, The Myth of Morality, there are also several important differences. This time Joyce’s case for moral error theory appeals to a collection of arguments of different kinds, and he criticizes his earlier self as well as J. L. Mackie’s seminal 1977 book, Ethics, for relying too heavily on one or two master (...) arguments. We argue, however, that some of Joyce’s arguments, especially his critique of moral naturalism, bear closer resemblance to Mackie’s than Joyce lets on. We also argue that Joyce’s critique of moral non-naturalism is less persuasive than Mackie’s. Finally, we briefly criticize some of Joyce’s ideas concerning the implications of metaethical indeterminacy. (shrink)

While the skeptical undercurrents of early modern thought have received sustained scholarly attention, such work has tended to be inattentive to hermeneutical or exegetical skepticism. This is a form of skepticism that threatened to stop hermeneutical theorizing in its tracks and absorbed several central hermeneutical concepts in its orbit. Hermeneutical probability was one of them. In this paper, I aim to examine whether the doctrine of hermeneutical probability as it was originally formulated by Christian Thomasius is a surrogate of exegetical (...) skepticism. I argue that not only is the examined view incompatible with skepticism, but that it can indeed articulate a promising response to it. Since general reflection on probability shaped the philosophical landscape of the Early German Enlightenment, the viability of the Thomasian view has much broader ramifications that extend beyond hermeneutics to historics, ethics, and physics. (shrink)

abstract: G. E. Moore’s “Proof of an External World” has long vexed readers. That Moore could regard the proof as cogent, despite its apparent circularity, has often been read as a failure to register the worry, underwriting the charge of philosophical naivete. This paper offers a new interpretation. Drawing on newly discovered archival material, I argue that “Proof” is best read as the culmination of Moore’s efforts to come to grips with a “fourth condition” on proof—beyond premise–conclusion distinctness, known premises, (...) and validity—namely, a proof’s capacity to extend knowledge. On this interpretation, Moore’s proof embodies a more complex account than commentators have recognized, clarifying both its seemingly paradoxical character and the unease it provokes in readers. (shrink)

This essay examines the overall strategy and structure of Kevin McCain’s proposed solutions to skeptical subjects, with some further application to the particular topic of external world skepticism. More specifically, I argue that his Phenomenal Explanationist account of propositional justification as the key to answering skeptical concerns runs into difficulty, especially when it comes to the justification of beliefs about necessary truths.

Considering the persisting disagreement between the common sense philosophers and the sceptics, it seems that they are faced with a deep epistemic disagreement. Taking stock from Wittgenstein's On Certainty, one generally thinks that deep epistemic disagreements cannot be rationally resolved. Hinge epistemology, inherited from Wittgenstein, is also considered as an illuminating detour to understand common sense epistemology. But is there really a deep epistemic disagreement between the common sense philosophers and the sceptics? Could it not be considered that they share (...) a common background? If so, is the rational resolution of their disagreement logically possible? What rational means can common sense use to convince someone of the privileged status of an epistemic principle? Relying on Reid's, Alston's and Lynch's arguments, I show that common sense epistemology is a more promising approach than hinge epistemology, because it is driven by an optimism about reason in the solving of deep epistemic disagreements. (shrink)

On his deathbed, Adam Smith ordered the burning of two unfinished works on epistemology and politics, fearing that his image as a philosopher would be tarnished and that his ideas would be misinterpreted. This book argues that the inability to complete these two works is symptomatic of tensions for which Smith found no resolution. The loss of Smith’s final manuscripts led to a century and a half of deliberate neglect from philosophers and misinterpretation from economists. The book reconstructs the lost (...) works from fragments, lecture notes, correspondence, and chapters from published works. It also examines the reasons for changes in various editions of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and explores the hybrid argumentative strategy employed in the Wealth of Nations. The output serves as a map of a coherent system that addresses the same questions as Kant and later takes the path later taken by the Pragmatists. This roadmap will guide twenty-first-century readers through Smith’s work. The book is essential reading for Adam Smith specialists, historians of economic thought, and philosophers of science. (shrink)

Open-mindedness requires us to be receptive to new evidence that contradicts our own views. Laurie Paul (2021) argues that there are situations in which we should, in fact, avoid exposure to putative evidence, as it may undermine our rational abilities. One example she discusses is the sensus divinitatis (SD) as a transformative experience. If an atheist agrees to be exposed to this experience, he may become a theist and, by his pre-transformation atheistic standards, irrational. Paul contends that we have valid (...) reasons to avoid encountering putative evidence in these circumstances. This paper will argue that there are rational strategies to help us determine whether to expose ourselves to transformative experiences like the SD. (shrink)

This is a précis of "Morality: From Error to Fiction," broken down chapter by chapter. Each chapter, plus a chapter-length Epilogue, is summarized in a few sentences.

In Morality: From Error to Fiction, Richard Joyce argues that ordinary moral discourse is committed to the existence of ontologically robust moral facts, on the basis that ordinary speakers consider moral belief to be a sincerity condition of moral judgement. I object to this argument, on the basis that it seems likely that ordinary speakers associate moral judgements with minimal moral beliefs rather than robust moral beliefs – and minimal moral beliefs are not ontologically committing.

Scientific confirmation relies on the convergence of independent sources of evidence. When multiple observers, instruments, or experiments yield the same result, the improbability of coincidence supports the conclusion that an external fact caused the agreement. This paper argues that the independence assumptions underwriting such inferences cannot be justified without presupposing the external-world framework they are meant to establish. Independence is not an observable property of data but a structural claim about data-generating processes---a claim that requires substantive background assumptions about distinct (...) systems, causal separation, and error mechanisms. These background assumptions are justified only relative to models that already presuppose external reality. The result is not that external realism is false, nor that intersubjective agreement provides no evidence, but that the degree of confirmation is underdetermined without framework-level commitments that cannot themselves be confirmed by the same methods. This underdetermination extends to perception itself: the intervention-structured patterns of experience are compatible with multiple metaphysical embeddings. The paper concludes not with an alternative metaphysics but with the recognition that questions about the ultimate source of experience are underdetermined by any evidence expressible within experience. (shrink)

In this précis of Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition (Oxford 2021), I highlight the book’s main lines of argument and provide an overview of each of the book’s three parts. I explain how: part I identifies the best kind of argument for radical skepticism and objects to one of the two main ways of responding to it; part II presents my version of the other main way of responding to that skeptical argument (a version that relies heavily on epistemic intuition); (...) and part III defends epistemic intuition (and, thereby, my response to radical skepticism) from several important objections. (shrink)

Abstract: This short paper explores the “innermost” and “outermost” limits of what we, as profoundly fallible beings, could consider “knowledge.” -/- Résumé : ce court texte explore les limites « internes » et « externes » de ce qu’on peut penser considérer « connaître » en vertu des profondes limites inhérentes à notre être.

The aim of these lines is to articulate David Hume’s thinking with contemporary art. The suggestion is that the proximity between skepticism and poetry makes it easier to understand how common objects become works of art, such as boxes of washing powder or simple chairs are made in visual operations of concepts. Contemporary art would be dependent, in its broad spectrum, on the ability to perceive as a skeptic. For Hume, time is not extemporaneous with human nature, but contemporary. The (...) works of art are not anachronistic, but are in a horizontal relationship, they are taken as contemporary with each other, because they are related at the same time. (shrink)

This paper defends the existence of a largely overlooked cognitive virtue within the framework of telic virtue epistemology: doxastic courage. Doxastic courage is an exercise of doxastic control that mediates between the vices of excessive doubt and reckless belief. On this view, doxastic courage focuses on one’s own reflective assessment of the strength of the justification for their beliefs, assessing when it is prudent to risk being wrong to achieve truth. I argue that doxastic courage operates as an Aristotelian mean (...) between four vices of belief including: hyperbolic doubt (excessive skeptical suspension), gullibility (deficient skeptical suspension), anti-expertise (deficient self-confidence), and dogmatism (excessive self-confidence). Using lessons from Cartesian methodological skepticism, I demonstrate how doxastic courage enables one to critically assess defeaters without succumbing to skepticism or unfounded ‘certainty.’ I argue that Cartesian and skeptical doubts, in being excessively timid, do not access the aim of cognitive prosperity that is implicit in theories of justified belief. With this telos in mind, doxastic courage is meant to support a nuanced balance that fosters intellectual growth without compromising necessary rigor. (shrink)

In this chapter, I outline what I take to be a promising Strawsonian response to the sceptic who asks for a justification of our responsibility practices. I provide a brief overview of three kinds of response that have been given to the responsibility sceptic on the basis of Strawson’s work: Humean, Kantian, and Wittgensteinian ones. I argue that they all face difficulties and look for a different kind of response, drawing attention to a functional strand in Strawson’s thought. A functional (...) or pragmatic account of moral responsibility along Strawsonian lines emphasizes that our responsibility practices are rooted in our nature as social beings, which comes with a basic concern for the attitudes and intentions of other people towards us. We have a need to manifest this concern, which we do through the reactive attitudes, and to adopt reactive attitudes towards people is to hold them responsible. I argue that the fact that our responsibility practices are rooted in the need to express a basic concern is a weighty reason for not abandoning these practices. My functionalist Strawsonian response to the responsibility sceptic has several advantages over existing Humean, Kantian and Wittgensteinian responses: it makes better sense of Strawson’s references to human nature, it draws the right kind of connection between responsibility practices and interpersonal relationships, and it does not send the sceptic away with the message that she is asking the wrong kind of question. (shrink)

Adam Leite’s core claim is that there is no need for epistemological theory in addressing the challenge of external world scepticism, that our “pre-philosophical position” already contains resources sufficient to neutralise it. It is argued on the contrary that, properly understood, the best of the sceptical paradoxes arise within our pre-philosophical position. An “upper-level” paradox, targeting not knowledge but the notion of being in a position to claim knowledge, is developed to illustrate this, and it is suggested that the real (...) lesson of scepticism is one repeatedly hinted at in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty: that all enquiry rests upon framework presuppositions which are not themselves the product of enquiry, and of which we accordingly have no knowledge when that is understood as requiring cognitive achievement. The mistake of ‘The Sceptic’ is to interpret this point as somehow debunking our knowledge, rather than as teaching us something about its nature. (shrink)

The Pyrrhonian Skeptic’s Agrippa Trilemma asserts that any knowledge claim is doomed to infinite regress, arbitrary dogmatism, or circular reasoning. This paper argues that the Trilemma is an axiomatic consequence of the historical reliance on the problematic Justified True Belief (JTB) definition and the failure to rigorously define the necessary structure of conscious inquiry. This paper introduces the Gageian Epistemic Model (GEM), a descriptive meta-epistemology that formalizes the mandatory procedure of conscious warrant into the PIE Sequence (P1-P5). The GEM offers (...) a unique, structural response to the Trilemma: the infinite regress is terminated by the self-vindicating, structurally mandated axiom, P1: The Axiom of Subjective State (S). Arbitrariness is overcome by demonstrating the structural necessity of P3 (the Goal of resolution), and circularity is controlled by establishing two distinct, warranted standards for belief. The GEM formalizes all warranted belief across two categories: Intrinsic Knowledge as Justified Coherent Belief (JCB), warranted by internal coherence via P4, and Extrinsic Knowledge as Justified Reliable Belief (JRB), warranted by external predictive success via P5. This axiomatic procedure provides the foundational justification for the methodology of modern science and mathematics, proving it is the only structurally defensible path available to a conscious agent. (shrink)

Susanna Rinard argues that philosophical skeptics can be rationally persuaded to abandon their position. She claims the classic brain-in-a-vat (biv) argument is so complex that it requires trust in memory—a faculty that skepticism itself undermines. The argument, she concludes, is therefore self-defeating. This paper counters that Rinard’s critique only applies to unnecessarily elaborate formulations of the skeptical argument. The essential biv argument is actually a simple inference that can be grasped in a single moment of reflection, without relying on memory. (...) Because this simpler argument is immune to her self-undermining charge, Rinard has not shown that rational persuasion is possible for skeptics who arrive at their position through this more direct route. (shrink)

Bootstrapping and the easy knowledge problem can be understood as puzzles about conflicting intuitions. On one hand, each step of the inference seems correct, but on the other, the overall process seems unacceptable. These puzzles will be resolved by establishing two distinctions. First, untargeted cognitive processes of belief formation must be distinguished from processes of intentional inquiry. Second, conditions on justification transmission must be distinguished from conditions on rationality understood as an internal criterion of coherence. Bootstrapping as a process of (...) settling the question about the reliability of a source violates internal criteria of rationality, but this does not entail that justification cannot transmit via bootstrapping reasoning. The intuitive defectiveness of bootstrapping can be explained in terms of the violation of rules of rationality in contexts of inquiry without being committed to accepting the general defectiveness of bootstrapping in all contexts. (shrink)

Edward Craig’s function-first methodology says we can illuminate the concept of knowledge by asking what functions the concept evolved to fulfil. To do this, Craig imagines a fictional state of nature in which humans lacked the concept. Hilary Kornblith rejects every part of Craig’s methodology. He instead develops a naturalistic epistemology, according to which we should study knowledge—not its concept—through the scientific study of animal cognition. These two approaches appear starkly opposed. But, I argue, they have important similarities and can (...) learn from each other. Rather than enmity, I suggest that the two approaches—suitably adjusted—can be reconciled. The result, naturalistic function-first epistemology, offers a much-needed alternative to counterexample-driven conceptual analysis. It is a more expansive naturalism that properly appreciates the significance of social epistemology and the breadth of epistemic normativity. (shrink)

Can we rationally choose between philosophical hinge commitments if they resist argument and evidence? At first glance, such choices seem arbitrary. Coliva and Palmira (2020, 2021) and Coliva and Doulas (2022) argue, however, that adopting a constitutivist account of hinges allows for rational choice through what Coliva terms ‘extended rationality’. They claim that accepting the hinge ‘there are physical objects’ is constitutive of epistemic rationality. This paper challenges that view, arguing that the idealist hinge is misrepresented in their work and (...) that this particular hinge may not ground rational belief. The paper shows that constitutivism, though promising, faces a criterion problem in philosophical hinge disagreements. It concludes that while constitutivism and extended rationality can explain belief rationality, they must be supported by independent criteria for selecting between competing hinges. (shrink)

Moore is a skeptic and Descartes is the ultimate social epistemologist. Jonathan Ichikawa misses this, and as a result he inherits the problems of insularity and exclusion that plague other Moorean skeptics.

Fourteen original essays by philosophers, theologians, and social scientists explore the challenges to moral and religious belief posed by disagreement and evolution. The collection represents both sceptical and non-skeptical positions about morality and religion, cultivates new insights, and moves the discussion forward in illuminating ways.

In his excellent book, Adam Leite argues that we can give a “fully satisfactory refutation” of Cartesian skepticism without epistemological theory. Here Leite claims to be defending the tradition of Moore, Austin, and Wittgenstein against the dominant methodology of contemporary epistemology. This essay clarifies Leite’s thesis and the anti-theoretical methodology that he recommends, and then argues for the necessity of epistemological theorizing in a philosophically satisfactory refutation of skepticism. In effect, there are two central issues before us. First, what does (...) “epistemological theorizing” or “development of an epistemological theory” amount to? Second, what would constitute a philosophically satisfactory refutation of the kind of skepticism that Leite’s analysis targets? (shrink)

In the context of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the intensification of hostility against the Huguenots in the 17th century, Pierre Bayle uses the notions of tolerance and intolerance to explain the difference between the effects of literal interpretation of the scriptures and the effort to understand. To explain Hume's political history, I employ the concept of melancholy to measure the challenge of escaping indolence and despair without yielding to the sectarian imposition of the idea and activity (...) as resources to avoid confronting collective impasses. History would undergo the reverse tension between tolerating melancholy, to work through its reasons, and intolerance of melancholy, moving toward the anticipation of political effects. (shrink)

Pinillos’ Why We Doubt presents a powerful critique of such global skeptical assertions as “I don’t know I am not a brain-in-a-vat (biv)” by introducing a cognitive mechanism that is sensitive to error possibilities and a Bayesian rule of rationality that this mechanism is designed to approximate. This multifaceted argument offers a novel counter to global skepticism, contending that our basis for believing such premises is underminable. In this work, we engage with Pinillos’ adoption of Bayesianism, questioning whether the Bayesian (...) principle that he invokes truly does fail to generate the verdict that we don’t we aren’t biv s, contrary to what Pinillos asserts. Furthermore, we argue that Pinillos’ empirical argument is not empirical enough; we need a lot more empirical work if we are going to counter global skepticism and win over neutral bystanders. (shrink)

How important is atheism for Jewish history and Jews for the history of atheism? Modern Jewish histories have tended to focus on Jewish secularization rather than atheism, and historical surveys of atheism in the West have tended to neglect the Jewish experience which is subsumed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is possible to make the case that the secularization narrative privileges social change over Jewish intellectual engagement with non-belief, and that just as Jewish and Christian conceptions of theism differ, so (...) do their atheisms. Jewish historical attitudes towards atheism are complicated and have shifted over time. Here, skeptical tendencies, that is, attitudes and ideas that would be associated later with atheism, will be considered alongside claims about atheism per se. (shrink)

I review the dispute between Ribeiro (2011) and Brown (2021) over whether the radical transformation which a human self would need to undergo in order to be heaven-admissible would be such that it leads to a loss of self. Ribeiro thinks it would; Brown thinks it wouldn’t. My primary intention here is to advance the debate by trying to better understand what’s in dispute between these disputants. From this better understanding of what’s in dispute, we can see what would be (...) needed to substantively advance the debate, and one claim I defend here is that in order to substantively advance this debate, a disputant would need to have a compelling defense of his side’s view on (at least) one of the two main issues that my analysis herein identifies. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to some criticisms raised in Evan Fales’ review of my book The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs that was published in this journal. The points I will address are the following: (i) Fales’ complaint about unclarity in my epistemological position, (ii) his complaint about my insufficient presentation of alternative explanations, and (iii) his complaint about my use of the terms ‘naturalism’ and ‘naturalistic explanation’.

In Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer offers resourceful arguments against each of non-reductive realism, reductive realism, and non-cognitivism, in order to motivate his version of the normative error theory, according to which normative predicates ascribe properties that do not exist. In this contribution, I argue that none of the steps of this master argument succeed, and that Streumer’s arguments leave puzzles about what it means to ascribe a property at all.

Negative disjunctivists like Mike Martin and Bill Fish understand hallucinations in purely epistemic terms, and do not attribute phenomenal character to these visual misfires. However, the approaches by Martin and Fish are importantly different, and there has been little systematic work on how negative disjunctivism is motivated. In this paper, I argue for a version of negative disjunctivism that centers on the idea that perception involves the exercise of a fallible self-conscious capacity. I claim that this at once explains hallucinations (...) in purely negative terms that are close to Martin’s approach, while at the same time providing negative disjunctivism with an explanatory basis that Fish attempts to provide and Martin’s view lacks. (shrink)

“I know that p but it is possible that not-p” sounds contradictory. Some philosophers, notably David Lewis, have taken this as evidence that knowledge requires infallibility. Others have attempted to undermine that inference by arguing that there is a plausible pragmatic explanation of why such sentences sound odd, and thus do not undermine fallibilism. I argue that the proffered pragmatic explanations fail and I raise challenges for any possible pragmatic explanation of the character of concessive knowledge attributions. It is reasonable (...) to conclude that concessive knowledge attributions are genuine contradictions. (shrink)

Sextus Empiricus’ definition of skepticism as a search for truth still poses great problems for research today. Perhaps the most urgent of these is: How can we reasonably assert the possibility of knowledge and at the same time deny its reality? The paper tries to solve this question by drawing attention to a hitherto neglected variant of skepticism: the so-called critical skepticism. In confrontation with Hume and Kant, Salomon Maimon develops a skeptical position which, with the help of transcendental argumentation, (...) produces a knowing of not-knowing. Maimon defends with Kant (and against Hume) transcendental knowledge which at the same time offers a reason to reject with Hume and against Kant empirical knowledge. By doing so, he distinguishes a knowledge of possibility from a (non-)knowledge of reality, whereby the search for truth—expressed in the assumption that knowledge is possible—is and remains the only truth. (shrink)

Introduces the topic of skepticism in Indian philosophy as well as the contents of a special issue of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism: “Skepticism in India.”.

We can find in Henry David Thoreau’s work a response to Cartesian skepticism. Thoreau takes this skepticism to get its start in us only when we are not attuned to the world, that is, only when we lose sight of our being integrated with the world in the way we quite naturally are. Thoreau posits for human beings a natural and unshakeable integration with the world. This develops into an attunement with the world, making us ready to engage with the (...) world as mature epistemic agents. Yet even if we fall out of attunement with the world, perhaps in response to the reasonableness of a comprehensive doubt, our natural integration with the world remains. Skepticism lacks force because we are integrated with the world even when we are not attuned to it, and because our integration with the world can always help us return to a healthy epistemic engagement with the world. (shrink)