Externalism is always the answer! Accept that some unlucky people who are in sceptical scenarios would be doomed; but that doesn’t mean that you, who are not in a sceptical scenario, are not, even though they’re subjectively indistinguishable.
You might think that you’d be laughed at, but actually externalism about evidence and knowledge is not an uncommon view in philosophy. Reliabilism, for instance, has it that whether or not you know something is a function of the objective reliability of your perceptual faculties and not merely of their input to your conscious experience. Timothy Williamson has also defended externalism about evidence (in Knowledge and its Limits I think).
I would be laughed at if I made the claim with merely the arguments you gave. I’ve never seen a decent argument for externalism- all of the ones I have seen are circular in one way or another. I’ll look up your sources, but I don’t hold out much hope.
I didn’t give any arguments—you’re confusing me with Larks. Also, my providing sources is not to be understood as endorsing externalism. I’m not sure about it.
Nor was I in fact making any arguments—I was simply stating the position. It’s been a few years since I’ve studied epistemology, so I wouldn’t trust myself to do so. SEP is normally a good bet, and I seem to recall enjoying Nozick (Philosophical Investigations) and the Thermometer Model of Knowledge.
I don’t recall being convinced by any of the Externalist models I studied (Relevant Possible Alternatives, Tracking, Reliablism, Causal and Defeasability accounts) but I think something in that ballpark is a good idea. Externalism has been, in general, a very successful philosophical project, in a variety of areas (e.g. content externalism).
Also, I hate to say it, but I think you would be better off ignoring everything that has been said on this thread. LW is good for many things, but its appreciation of academic philosophy is frankly infantile.
Part of the point of externalism is to change the question—although it’s useful to note that to the extent the original question was framed in the term “knowledge”, the question hasn’t entirely changed. So, you can’t rule the skeptical scenario out, but you don’t need to. That sub-question is being abandoned, or at least severely demoted.
I second Larks’ recommendation, in another comment, of Nozick’s Philosophical Investigations. You can probably google up a summary or review to get a taste.
All the arguments for changing the question seem to be either pragmatist arguments (pragmatism does not correlate with truth in any event) or basically amount to “Take the existence of the world on faith” (which is no more useful than it is to take anything else on faith).
Externalism is always the answer! Accept that some unlucky people who are in sceptical scenarios would be doomed; but that doesn’t mean that you, who are not in a sceptical scenario, are not, even though they’re subjectively indistinguishable.
If I said that I would be rightly laughed at. How can I rule it out if it’s subjectively indistinguishable?
You might think that you’d be laughed at, but actually externalism about evidence and knowledge is not an uncommon view in philosophy. Reliabilism, for instance, has it that whether or not you know something is a function of the objective reliability of your perceptual faculties and not merely of their input to your conscious experience. Timothy Williamson has also defended externalism about evidence (in Knowledge and its Limits I think).
I would be laughed at if I made the claim with merely the arguments you gave. I’ve never seen a decent argument for externalism- all of the ones I have seen are circular in one way or another. I’ll look up your sources, but I don’t hold out much hope.
I didn’t give any arguments—you’re confusing me with Larks. Also, my providing sources is not to be understood as endorsing externalism. I’m not sure about it.
Sorry about that. I’ll check it out.
Nor was I in fact making any arguments—I was simply stating the position. It’s been a few years since I’ve studied epistemology, so I wouldn’t trust myself to do so. SEP is normally a good bet, and I seem to recall enjoying Nozick (Philosophical Investigations) and the Thermometer Model of Knowledge.
I don’t recall being convinced by any of the Externalist models I studied (Relevant Possible Alternatives, Tracking, Reliablism, Causal and Defeasability accounts) but I think something in that ballpark is a good idea. Externalism has been, in general, a very successful philosophical project, in a variety of areas (e.g. content externalism).
Also, I hate to say it, but I think you would be better off ignoring everything that has been said on this thread. LW is good for many things, but its appreciation of academic philosophy is frankly infantile.
Part of the point of externalism is to change the question—although it’s useful to note that to the extent the original question was framed in the term “knowledge”, the question hasn’t entirely changed. So, you can’t rule the skeptical scenario out, but you don’t need to. That sub-question is being abandoned, or at least severely demoted.
I second Larks’ recommendation, in another comment, of Nozick’s Philosophical Investigations. You can probably google up a summary or review to get a taste.
All the arguments for changing the question seem to be either pragmatist arguments (pragmatism does not correlate with truth in any event) or basically amount to “Take the existence of the world on faith” (which is no more useful than it is to take anything else on faith).