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Sceptical Overkill: On Two Recent Arguments Against Scepticism

Sceptical Overkill: On Two Recent Arguments Against Scepticism
Sceptical Overkill: On Two Recent Arguments Against Scepticism
This paper is a discussion of a recent attempt by Crispin Wright to force at least some varieties of external world scepticism to succumb to a "head-on, rational response", contrary to well-known expressions of pessimism by, for example, Sir Peter Strawson and Barry Stroud. The varieties of scepticism in question are those that involve positing a "purportedly undetectable but cognitively disabling state", such as the state imposed by Descartes' malicious demon, in which a sufferer is unable to tell whether or not his or her experiences are caused by items in his or her perceptible environment, as opposed to some disassociated cause; the argument is completed by noticing that, if such a state were possible, then no-one could have complete confidence that he or she were not in such a state. This paper argues that this lack of confidence also fatally undermines Wright's argument.
scepticism malicious demon dreaming maundering
0026-4423
315-27
O'Hara, Kieron
0a64a4b1-efb5-45d1-a4c2-77783f18f0c4
O'Hara, Kieron
0a64a4b1-efb5-45d1-a4c2-77783f18f0c4

O'Hara, Kieron (1993) Sceptical Overkill: On Two Recent Arguments Against Scepticism. Mind, 102 (2), 315-27.

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper is a discussion of a recent attempt by Crispin Wright to force at least some varieties of external world scepticism to succumb to a "head-on, rational response", contrary to well-known expressions of pessimism by, for example, Sir Peter Strawson and Barry Stroud. The varieties of scepticism in question are those that involve positing a "purportedly undetectable but cognitively disabling state", such as the state imposed by Descartes' malicious demon, in which a sufferer is unable to tell whether or not his or her experiences are caused by items in his or her perceptible environment, as opposed to some disassociated cause; the argument is completed by noticing that, if such a state were possible, then no-one could have complete confidence that he or she were not in such a state. This paper argues that this lack of confidence also fatally undermines Wright's argument.

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Published date: 1993
Additional Information: Commentary On: Wright, C. 1991: "Scepticism and Dreaming: Imploding the Demon". Mind, 100
Keywords: scepticism malicious demon dreaming maundering
Organisations: Web & Internet Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 254162
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/254162
ISSN: 0026-4423
PURE UUID: c6dd74ba-f3ad-418a-92d5-d4a3645436c1
ORCID for Kieron O'Hara: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-9051-4456

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Date deposited: 04 Nov 2000
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:09

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