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PHIL/PHIX2056 Knowledge, Language and Power
WEEK 2: THE PROBLEM OF SCEPTICISM

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Reminders
• Tutorials (for internal and zoom students) and assessed discussion (for online flexible students) start
this week. See iLearn for discussion questions, rubrics and instructions.
• Please complete the Reflective Task Part 1 Introductory Quiz if you haven’t already – It’s due Sunday,
6/8, and satisfactory completion guarantees you five marks
• Weekly quizzes start this week. This week’s quiz opens at 12 today and closes next Wednesday.
PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2

In today’s lecture:
• What is scepticism?
• Arguments for scepticism
[short break]
• Descartes’ Meditation 1
• How not to respond to scepticism
PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 4

What is Scepticism?
People are often described as being sceptics (or sceptical) in ordinary life:
eg someone could be:
-sceptical about vaccines

-sceptical about climate change. Etc
What does ‘sceptical’ mean in these contexts?

Philosophical Scepticism
A Philosophical Sceptic is someone who doubts the possibility of knowledge,

either in general or in some particular domain.
Scepticism can be local or global
Local varieties of Philosophical scepticism might question whether we can have

knowledge about (eg) the past, other minds, induction, the existence of God…
Global scepticism questions whether we can have knowledge at all

Our focus
Our focus will mainly be on Global Scepticism, and scepticism about the
external world.
(How much difference there is between these depends on how much we think it
is possible to doubt, and what we understand by ‘the external world’)

Note:
• This is an epistemological claim, not an ontological one
• ie the claim is that we can’t know about the external world, rather than a claim that there isn’t
one
• (Is there a disanalogy here with the vaccine/ climate change cases?)

A.C. Grayling
• Grayling notes that the sceptic should not be interpreted (as is common) as
claiming that there can be no knowledge or we cannot know anything.
Why?
• Instead, we should see the sceptic as challenging our claims to know: What
justification do we really have for our claims to know? What justification do
we have for thinking things are (more or less) the way we think they are?

How much could you be wrong about?

How much could you be wrong about?
• Fictional examples:
― The Truman Show
― The Matrix
• Global scepticism raises the possibility of a greater degree of error than these examples

Arguments for Scepticism
Today we’ll look at three kinds of argument that might lead to broad
philosophical scepticism.
1. The regress argument

2. The argument from appearance and reality
3. The Indiscernability argument: How could we tell?

Argument for Scepticism (1)
The Regress of Reasons
Last week, we examined the traditional definition of knowledge, according to

which knowledge is Justified True Belief.
ie, S knows that p iff:

S believes p
p is true, and
S is justified in believing that p

According to the Regress Argument, on the basis of that analysis of knowledge,
there can be no knowledge.
Why?

If knowledge requires justification, then in order to have some piece of
knowledge (A), my belief needs to be justified.
But what justifies (A)?
Presumably, it will need to be justified by some other belief of mine, (B).
But then what justifies (B)?
Some further justified belief, (C)? …

This argument is called the Regress Argument or the Regress of reasons.
(Note that we’ll consider some responses to this argument next week. For now,
let’s see how it leads to scepticism).

Option 1: the regress is infinite
JTB(A)

JTB(B)

JTB(C)

JTB(D)

JTB(E)

…

Option 2: The regress stops
JTB(A)

JTB(B)

JTB(C)

JTB(D)

…


Option 3: Justification is circular
JTB(A)
JTB(B) …
JTB(C) JTB(D)

Option 4: Scepticism
The failure of options 1-3 would mean that there can be no justified true
beliefs, and therefore no knowledge on the traditional analysis

Argument for Scepticism (2): Appearance vs
Reality
There are different ways of arguing for scepticism on the basis of the way things appear to us.
eg: Russell “Appearance and Reality” from The Problems of Philosophy
(Note: What was Russell’s purpose?)

Bertrand Russell
“Appearance and Reality”
Consider the table in front of you.
What is it that we know about a table by using our senses?

• the colour?
• the texture?
• the shape?
But are these really properties of the table?
• There is a distinction between the properties of the real table and the properties of the table
as we perceive it: We infer the real properties from what we sense. So what can we know
about the real table?

?

“the real table, if there is one, is not the same as what we immediately experience
by sight or touch or hearing. The real table, if there is one, is not immediately known
to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known. Hence, two
very difficult questions at once arise; namely, (1) Is there a real table at all? (2) If so,
what sort of object can it be?” (Russell, p3-4)
If we have no answers to such questions, we are left with Scepticism.
“[I]f the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is
any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?” (p6)

• The problem: If all we can even in principle have access to is our impressions
of the table, what justification do we have for making any claims about what
is actually out there?

An analogy (from Grayling)
“Imagine a man wearing a visorless helmet which so encloses his

head that he cannot see, hear, taste or smell anything outside it.
Imagine that a camera, a microphone and other sensors are
affixed to the top of the helmet transmitting pictures and other
information to its interior. And suppose finally that it is impossible
for the wearer to remove the helmet to compare this information
with whatever is outside it, so that he cannot check whether it
faithfully represents the exterior world. Somehow the wearer has
to rely on the intrinsic character of the information available
inside the helmet to judge its reliability …

… He knows that the information sometimes comes from sources
other than the external world, as in dreams and delusions; he has
deduced that the equipment affixed to the helmet works upon the
incoming data and changes it, for example adding colours, scents
and sounds to its picture of what intrinsically has none of those
properties…; he knows that his beliefs about what lies outside the
helmet rest on the inferences he draws from the information
available inside it, and that his inferences are only as good as his
fallible, error-prone capacities allow them to be. Given all this, asks
the sceptic, have we not a job of work to do to justify our claims to
knowledge?” (Grayling, pp48-9)

Arguments for Scepticism (3)
The Indiscernability argument: How could we tell?
eg 1. The Matrix
eg 2. Are you a brain in a vat?

• The problem raised by these examples:
If you were a brain in a vat, your experiences would (by hyothesis) be exactly the
experiences you’re having now.
So what makes you think you’re not a brain in a vat?

Short break
After the break: Descartes; and how not

to respond to scepticism

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyU3bRy2x44

René Descartes (1596-1650)

Reading: Descartes’ Meditation 1
NOTE: Descartes was not a sceptic!
But this Meditation is one of the most famous and influential presentations of
the sceptical challenge.

Meditation 1: What can be called into doubt
Descartes’ aim:
“Some years ago I was struck by the large number of
falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by
the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had
subsequently based on them. I realised that it was necessary,
once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely
and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish
anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.
… So today I have expressly rid my mind of all worries and
arranged for myself a clear stretch of free time. I am here quite
alone, and at last will devote myself sincerely and without
reservation to the general demolition of my opinions”. p12

The Method of Doubt
Descartes wants to work out whether there are any of his beliefs he could not
be wrong about. To identify any such beliefs, he attempts to doubt everything it
is possible to doubt:
“Reason now leads me to think that I should hold back my assent from opinions which are
not completely certain and indubitable just as carefully as I do from those which are patently
false. So, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, it will be enough if I find in each of
them at least some reason for doubt..” p13
So the aim is to doubt everything it’s possible to doubt.

If he can find anything that can’t be doubted, that can be used as a foundation
for knowledge.
The argument from sense deception
“Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from
the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the
senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have
deceived us even once.”
BUT
“Yet although the senses occasionally deceive us with respect to objects which
are very small or in the distance, there are many other beliefs about which
doubt is quite impossible, even though they are derived from the senses - for
example, that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown,
holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on.”

The argument from dreaming
BUT: Even if our senses could not deceive us in those cases, how do we know we’re not dreaming?
“How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events - that I am here in my dressing-
gown, sitting by the fire - when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!...”
BUT
Surely there are some things that we can be sure of even in dreams?
“For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than
four sides. It seems impossible that such transparent truths should incur any suspicion of being false.”

But…. 1
3 ………?
Couldn’t an all-powerful God deceive me about even those

things? Couldn’t he make me miscount every time I count
the sides of a square?

The evil demon argument
“I will suppose therefore that not God, who is supremely good and
the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost
power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to
deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours,
shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of
dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall
consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or
senses but as falsely believing that I have all these things. I shall
stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation; and, even if it is not
in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do what is in my
power, that is, resolutely guard against assenting to any
falsehoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he
may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree.”

“But this is an arduous undertaking, and a kind of laziness brings me back
to normal life. I am like a prisoner who is enjoying an imaginary freedom
while asleep; as he begins to suspect that he is asleep, he dreads being
woken up, and goes along with the pleasant illusion as long as he can. In
the same way, I happily slide back into my old opinions and dread being
shaken out of them for fear that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard
labour when I wake, and that I shall have to toil not in the light, but amid the
inextricable darkness of the problems I have now raised.”
(End of Meditation 1 – We’ll see where Descartes goes from here next
week)

How not to respond to scepticism
Over the coming weeks we’ll consider ways of responding to scepticism.
For the rest of today’s lecture, we will look at some common responses to
scepticism that are not adequate, to see why scepticism cannot be dismissed
too readily

Inadequate response 1
Scepticism is self refuting
eg: Sceptics claim that we can’t know anything. But they’re claiming to know
that we can’t know anything. So they’re refuting themselves.
Problems with this response?

Inadequate response 2
It’s just about language: the sceptic means something different by

“know”.
Eg: If the sceptic claims that we can’t know because we can’t have absolute
certainty, then that may be the case, but that’s not what we mean by “know”.
We can have knowledge, we just can’t have that kind of knowledge.

This response has something to it, and we’ll consider some developments of it
later in the unit.
But on its own this response is not sufficient.

Why? Consider the following quote from last week’s Ayer reading. (It follows on
from the question of whether we would consider someone who had a
successful run of lottery predictions without any apparent justification, to have
knowledge of the lottery results):

Did the lottery-predictor have knowledge?
“It does not… matter very greatly which decision we take. The main problem is
to state and assess the grounds on which these claims to knowledge are made,
to settle, as it were, the candidate’s marks. It is a relatively unimportant question
what titles we then bestow upon them. So long as we agree about the marking,
it is of no great consequence where we draw the line between pass and failure,
or between the different levels of distinction. If we choose to set a very high
standard, we may find ourselves committed to saying that some of what
ordinarily passes for knowledge ought rather to be described as probable
opinion. And some critics will then take us to task for flouting ordinary usage.
But the question is purely one of terminology….

One must not confuse this case, where the markings are agreed upon, and
what is in dispute is only the bestowal of honours, with the case where it is the
markings themselves that are put in question. For this second case is
philosophically important, in a way that the other is not. The sceptic who asserts
that we do not know all that we think we know, or even perhaps that we do not
strictly know anything at all, is not suggesting that we are mistaken when we
conclude that the recognised criteria for knowing have been satisfied. … What
the sceptic contends is that our markings are too high; that the grounds on
which we are normally ready to concede the right to be sure are worth less than
we think; he may even go so far as to say that they are not worth anything at
all.” (Ayer, p34-5)

Ayer’s ‘grading’ analogy
What are the two kinds of disagreement Ayer distinguishes? Which one is important,
and which isn’t?

• Philosophically uninteresting case: where the dispute over the rubric is just about where the line should
be drawn between HD, D etc – This would be a matter of terminology
• Philosophically interesting dispute: a case where the sceptic [by analogy] disputes the rubric on the
grounds that satisfying the criteria specified in the rubric is actually not evidence of a good essay.

How not to respond to scepticism:
So what?
No-one really believes they’re a brain in a vat (and even if I am, what
difference does it make? What could I do about it?)

And, according to this kind of response, we can’t really take the sceptical
hypothesis seriously anyway:
“My habitual opinions keep coming back, and, despite my wishes, they capture
my belief, which is as it were bound over to them as a result of long occupation
and the law of custom”
Descartes, p15

SO: Why should we care about scepticism?

The importance of the sceptical hypothesis
Why does it matter that you can’t be sure you’re not a brain in a vat?
If you admit that you don’t know you’re not a brain in a vat (ie that it’s at
least a possibility), the rest of your knowledge is undermineddon’t know it!

If you admit that you don’t know you’re not a brain in a vat (ie that it’s at least a
possibility), the rest of your knowledge is undermined
Here’s one version of the argument:
If you know you have hands, then you know you’re not a brain in a vat.
BUT:
You don’t know you’re not a brain in a vat.
SO:
You don’t know you have hands.
The same applies to (almost) anything else you might think you know: If you can’t rule out the
possibility that you’re in a brain in a vat, you don’t know it!

If you admit that you don’t know you’re not a brain in a vat (ie that it’s at least a possibility), the
rest of your knowledge is undermined
Here’s one version of the argument:
If you know you have hands, then you know you’re not a brain in a vat.
BUT:
You don’t know you’re not a brain in a vat.
SO:
You don’t know you have hands.
The same applies to (almost) anything else you might think you know: If you can’t rule out the
possibility that you’re in a brain in a vat, you don’t know that thing!
Next week
We’ll look at some classic responses to this challenge: Can we find

a foundation for our knowledge?
Between now and then: please do your Introductory Quiz.

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PHIL/PHIX2056 Knowledge, Language and Power

WEEK 2: THE PROBLEM OF SCEPTICISM

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 4

-sceptical about vaccines

What does ‘sceptical’ mean in these contexts?

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 5

A Philosophical Sceptic is someone who doubts the possibility of knowledge,

Scepticism can be local or global

Local varieties of Philosophical scepticism might question whether we can have

Global scepticism questions whether we can have knowledge at all

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 6

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 7

• This is an epistemological claim, not an ontological one

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 8

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 9

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 10

― The Truman Show

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 11

1. The regress argument

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 12

Last week, we examined the traditional definition of knowledge, according to

ie, S knows that p iff:

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 13

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 14

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 15

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 16

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 17

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 18

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 19

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 20

eg: Russell “Appearance and Reality” from The Problems of Philosophy

(Note: What was Russell’s purpose?)

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 21

What is it that we know about a table by using our senses?

But are these really properties of the table?

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 22

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 23

If we have no answers to such questions, we are left with Scepticism.

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 24

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 25

“Imagine a man wearing a visorless helmet which so encloses his

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 26

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 27

eg 2. Are you a brain in a vat?

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 28

So what makes you think you’re not a brain in a vat?

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 29

After the break: Descartes; and how not

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 30

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 31

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 32

NOTE: Descartes was not a sceptic!

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 33

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 34

So the aim is to doubt everything it’s possible to doubt.

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 36

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 37

Couldn’t an all-powerful God deceive me about even those

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 38

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 39

PHIL/PHIX2056 2023, Week 2 40