Shadows of Doubt: On the Psychological Foundations of the Skeptical Problem

Skepticism;Experimental Philosophy;Epistemology;Philosophy

Waterman, JohnGross, Steven ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: Skepticism;    Experimental Philosophy;    Epistemology;    Philosophy;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/60539/WATERMAN-DISSERTATION-2015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

Abstract: Why is it that we can know so much about the world, but skeptical arguments seem so hard to resist? My dissertation offers a psychological diagnosis of the attraction of skeptical arguments. Just as vision scientists investigate illusion to better understand how perception is successful, I think that by investigating the causes of doubt we can better understand the nature of knowledge.Most contemporary accounts of the skeptical problem describe it as appealing to our ordinary intuitions about knowledge, and trace its origin to linguistic confusions. I argue that this diagnosis is mistaken on both counts.The received diagnosis assumes that skepticism is a byproduct of our ordinary epistemic practices. However, this diagnosis is overly reliant on armchair appeals to intuitions about cases by philosophers - individuals who are not ordinary epistemic agents by any means. To better understand the nature of skeptical arguments and their relation to our ordinary epistemic practices, I use the methods of the psychological sciences to empirically investigate how ordinary individuals reason about skeptical arguments, and the factors affect their evaluations. Using this empirical work as a foundation, I argue that the linguistic diagnosis of the skeptical paradox is inadequate because it does not do justice to skepticism’s intransigence: linguistic mistakes are easy to recognize, but skeptical doubts are hard to dislodge.I argue, instead, that the skeptical problem is a byproduct of a conflict between two separate components of our epistemic psychology. Specifically, I defend the idea that we deploy two different heuristic standards of evaluation towards potential beliefs. Toward favored sources, like perception and the testimony of friends, we apply the heuristic can I believe P?, and search for evidence that is consistent with P. Toward disfavored sources, like the arguments of rivals, we ask instead must I believe P?, and search for possibilities in which P might be false. These two standards, the first fallibilist and the second infallibilist, are inconsistent, and thus lead to the skeptical paradox.I then argue that the appeal of skeptical arguments rests on a cognitive bias.